Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 227, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 January 1934 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times il iciippn-Howard tr.wsp%rrß) ROT W. HOWARD Presldrat TALCOTT POWELL Editor EARL D. BAKER ....... Bu*lie* Manager Phono-Riley 5iM

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!*•< One Li'jht and the People Wifi Find Their Own Wop

WEDNESDAY JAN. 31. 1834 A GOOD MOVE Pip HE Board of County Commissioners has acted wisely in coming to the rescue of distressed taxpayers. It would have been criminal to have sold scores of homes of Marion county citizens for delinquent taxes. These homeowners are good citizens. They are an excellent moral risk. Circumstances over which they have no control have made it impossible for them to meet their tax bills. By giving them a breathing spell the county will lose nothing. They will pay as soon as they are able Allen. Wayne, Dubois and Rush counties already have decid'd not to sell out their delinquents. The Marion county commissioners had ample precedent for their leniency. William Bosson. who led the fight for the property owner- throuch the Federated Civic Clubs, deserves every credit. People must not forget, however, that failure to sell delinquent properties may mean a further sharp curtailment in county government costs during the next year. Certain county functions may have to be curtailed or temporarily eliminated. These inconveniences should be borne cheerfully. The old proverb about not having your cake and eating it, too. is still true.

A PARTISAN PROBE? '"■"'HE country is indebted to Chairman Black and the senate committee now investigating the ship and air mail rackets under the Hoover administration. But those who had supposed that the inquiry transcended the partisan level will be surprised by the extreme hesitancy with which Senator Black and the Democrats questioned Postmaster-General Farley, national chairman Os the Democratic party. It is important that the committee go to the bottom of the Hoover administration's subsidy contracts, a task on which Senator Black has made a brilliant beginning. But it is also important that the committee inquire with equal thoroughness into the relations of present administration officials with the subsidized corporations. Why did not Postmaster-Genera! Farley and his aids, in office ten months, discover and report that the subsidy contract files were missing and certain other suspicious factors? Is Mr. Farley incompetent to carry out his oath of protectine the public interest, thus leaving past and possible present irregularities in his department to accidental discovery by a senate committee? ■ Or is Mr. Farley too busy building up the Democratic party for the fall elections and passing out patronage to know his job and to do his job as a cabinet official and department head for which the taxpayers pay him? ,Is there basis for the reports that Mi Farley and other administration officials, including Assistant Secretary of Labor Battle, accept pfmnal favors frotr ■’se subsidized corporations. t-Kh as free p!a es for junkets? This is nn/ as sample of numerous pertinent questions v*nich will occur to Senator Black if he is as keen on getting the facts about Democratic officials as Republicans.

F. T. C. REGAINING PRESTIGE 'T'HE federal trade commission is coming into its own again. Twenty 3ers ago when it was created to curb the business anarchy of monopolies. President Wilson appointed to the commission a group of outstanding men with the intelligence and inclination to do the job. For a few years it was an effective guardian of the Interests of consumers and the rights of small business But court decisions in anti-trust cases. Harding-Coolidge-Hoover personnel replacements and the old guards denial of adequate appropriations rapidly changed the commission into a toothless, famished watchdog. It became just another government bureau. Then things again began to happen. The present congress raised the eommission to new prominence by empowering it to administer the important Truth-in-Securities law. President Roosevelt eliminated ex-congressman, exlobbyist Chairman Humphrey and appointed Commissioners Landis and Matthews, notably improving the character and fibre of the commission. ' New responsibilities rest upon the commission by reason of the NR A. which has opened new avenues for evading what is left of the anti-trust laws. The forthcoming stock market legislation may still further expand the commission's duties and powers. Because of the increasing importance of the commission in our industrial, commercial and financial life, it is significant and encouraging that this body has adopted a longneeded reform In administrative procedure. No longer does the commission hand down curt and cryptic findings. Instead decisions are buttressed with narrative and description, like the opinions of the supreme court and interstate commerce commission, which analyze and dispose of all pertinent arguments. These exhaustive opinions should discourage many appeals to higher tribunals, and at the same time guide business interests that heretofore had no way of learning the considerations which determined decisions. THE ELEPHANT TURNS Q*OME weeks ago we were unkind enough to note the intellectual bankruptcy of G. O. P. leadership. We now present our apologies to three of the old guard. Mr. Ogden Mills, ex-secretary of the treasury and presidential aspirant; Mr. Walter Edge, ex-am-bassador and ex-senator from Hew Jersey,

The Light Company Pleads Guilty — An Editorial

The Indianapolis Power and Light Company has pieaded guilty. It formally admitted to the Public Service Commission yesterday that it had been overcharging residents of this city by 5 per cent. When a guilty man goes before a court charged with a major crime he often tries to plead guilty to a lesser offense. He knows he can not beat the major accusation so he offers to pay the penalty on a trivial charge. Pa offer of an immediate rate reduction of 5 per cent in return for dismissal of the present rate case bears a strong resemblance in procedure to a wTongaoer attempting to “cop a plea.” Last spring The Times employed certified public accountants on behalf of its readers to make a thorough audit of all available records of the utility. This audit took five months to complete and The Times’ accountants brought in a verdict of “Guilty!" Still The Times was not satisfied. Before printing a line it turned its audit over to Sherman Minton, public counsellor, who had his own experts check it. After weeks of impartial investigation Mr. Minton came to the same conclusion as this .newspaper. The result was an order upon the Mr Hamilton Fish of New York', leading Redbaiter of congress. These three Republican leaders on the same day in different parts of the country expressed constructive ideas which merit favorable consideration by the Roosevelt administration and the country. Mr. Mills, in a Topeka speech comaining much tosh about dangers of dictatorship and national planning, demanded tariff reduction. Shades of Smoot and Hawley! Mr. Edge proposed that the President be given greater latitude for renewal of war debt negotiations, and acceptance of noncompetitive imports in part payment He pointed out that the debt deadlock is delaying other international settlements and recovery; and ‘ anyhow, as the matter now stands, we have the prospect of receiving nothing except international repudiation as well as a continuation of insurmountable trade restrictions.” Mr. Pish introduced in the house a resolution for repeal of the Platt admendment provision under which the United States guarantees the maintenance of democratic government in Cuba. This obligation of intervention in Cuban affairs, which has properly been ignored by recent Republican and Democratic administrations. is obviously in violation of the recently proclaimed Roosevelt doctrine of nonintervention in Latin America. Any more ideas?

WAR ART By R. F. Paine jyjANY newspapers, including this one, arc publishing daily what their editors frankly describe as “horrible pictures” from Laurence Stallings’ book, “The First Worid War-." The purpose is to show thjs generation of young folks what war really means in the way of horrors, there being plenty of extraordinary, perfectly novel horrors in that war of 1914-18. The purpose is a worthy one. Anything calculated to convince the rising, risen or even coming generation that war is hell, onlyvolcanic hell spewing forth as aftermath irresistible streams of red hot lava to the ruination of millions of human lives, aspirations and progressions—is worth trying. Since “seeing the blood run” usually makes a strong impression upon the masses, it is probable that pictures of the World war horrors will have some desirable educational effect upon this generation of young folks. But it is fact that the greatest of any war’s horrors come after the conclusion of that war. A Gold Star mother is hunting through a foreign cemetery for her boy’s grave. There's a subject for a war-horror picture. Visit one of the great asylums for the blind, where hundreds of able-bodied, comparatively young men are, in darkness, living out their lives in the monotonous making of reed furniture, and you will get a mental picture of war's horrors that it will stump the best newspaper to duplicate. Ask the armless, legless or otherwise muti-lated-for-life veteran if war’s greatest horror is to suffer in a trench and be shot at occasionally. Picture for the mothers of the youth whom we are trying to educate against war the multitude of war orphans, cared for by the government, ’tis true, but many of them hellhound because fatherless. It is not possible to picture many of the war horrors that carry on through the lives of war's victims, prolonging human misery and in many cases producing degradation. The horrors of the First World War! Mere primer lessons, comparatively. War to come will depend very little upon the mere pulling of triggers. The horses and firearms of Cortez cowed and conquered the Mexicans. For fifteen years past some of the brightest minds of our Christian civilization have been perfecting gases and inventions for the instantaneous slaughter of human beings by the tens of thousands, be the same noncombatant or armed. Heaven not interfering, we will soon be equipped with means to scientifically produce war horrors beside which the advantage of Cortez over these Mexican heathen will appear to be a very small matter. Verily, all the education possible as to all of war’s horrors! BETTER TO STAY HOME IT would be a good thing if men who want jobs could be warned not to go to Detroit to find them. The auto trade is reviving marvelously this winter, and employment in the Detroit area is picking up at an amazing rate. It is to be hoped, however, that this will not cause a gredt influx of job-hunters to Detroit. * Manufacturers in the area point out that there still is a vast reservoir of unemployed men in and around Detroit. In almost every case, manufacturers are giving preference to these men in handing out jobs. The man who picks up and moves to Detroit in the hope of cashing in on the auto trade revival is apt to get a very painful disappointment.

power company to show cause why its rates should not be immediately reduced. Then, yesterday, the utility entered a formal plea of guilty. That is the first thing upon which The Times has been able to agree with the Indianapolis Power and Light Company. Os course it is guilty—guilty of heartlessly overcharging the unemployed wage earner, guilty of oppressing the struggling business man, guilty of throttling the progress of Indianapolis, guilty of ruthlessly abusing the sacred privilege of monopoly granted by a public which believed the company's glittering, and unfulfilled, promises. But the question now is, how guilty? If, crowded into a comer at last, this desperate corporation admits a 5 per cent guilt, is it not possible that it has been culpable by two or three times as much as it admits? Ask any miscreant. Ask any trapped evildoer. They are thoroughly familiar with such tactics. They know the trick of pleading to a lesser offense. The public needs immediate relief from exorbitant light rates. By all, means let the commission accept this offer from the light company IF in doing so it can keep the door open for a further, and adequate, slash in electric costs. THAT FREAK HAND Just as every golfer fondly longs for a hole in one, so the bridge player wistfully dreams of a hand with thirteen of one suit. Mathematicians have calculated that such an event is a several-million-to-one shot. In fact, some statisticians say there just isn’t any such ani mal as a hand of thirteen of a suit. We prefer to believe that when August Roeder, 3124 Kenwood avenue, picked up a bridge hand on Monday night he really did find thirteen hearts in it. We envy him for achieving what will always be a vision to most bridge players—too bad it wasn’t thirteen spades. A TEMPORARY PLAN TT is somewhat reassuring to hear Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Tugwell telling a Cincinnati audience that the present administration measures to curtail agricultural and industrial production are purely temporary. One of the contradictory features of the administration’s revival program has been the fact that the naticn’s’productive capacity has been retarded. The production of foodstuffs has been cut down in a land where many people do not get enough to eat; factory production has been cut down in a land where an almost infinite variety and quantity of factory products are needed badly. Asa method of meeting an emergency, such a scheme may be wise and effective. As a long-range program, however, it would suffer from overwhelming contradictions. It is good to get this reassurance that the administration realizes the fact.

Liberal Viewpoint “——By DR. HARRY ELMER BARXFS

This is the second of two articles by Dr. Barnes on the moderate character o£ inflationary measures before the country. ONE of the things most likely to reassure us with respect to the financial program of the administration is the character of those who lead the opposition. One can hardly fail to be amused by the personnel of the shock-troops who stand in opposition to the Roosevelt monetary policies. They are chiefly the money-changers whom he promised to drive from the temple, though he has thus far notably failed to make good his promise. These great bankers and brokers are not distinguished for soundness or caution outside of technical monetary philosophy. Indeed, they are the greatest of inflationists. The common stock of the great billion dollar steel trust, for example, was at the outset mainly the product of the printing press. As the questioning of Ferdinand A. Pecora brought out in many cases, an investment of a few millions by many an investment banker between 1925 and 1929 was expanded into paper claims of hundreds of millions. One man pryamided $253 into $35,000,000 in securities. Stock dividends, so common before 1929, represent almost pure inflation of its kind. So, too, does the watered stock which oozes from most corporate manipulation. In the decade before 1929 .there was an inflation of stock values on the New York Stock Exchange alone which amounted to over $75,000.000.000. The bankers helped to ruin our banks by pumping into Wall Street nearly $7,000,000,000 in loans for speculative and gambling purposes. And yet these same men have the audacity to view Mr. Roosevelt’s timid inflation policy which has raised prices a scant 20 per cent, and to accuse him of reckless inflation. If he were to print $3,000,000,000 of paper money, these persons who shot up stock values by a figure twenty-five times this amount would utter a resouding howl of protest. If anybody is to run printing presses the money changers wish to be in charge. This group of men are really addicts to the printing mania. If it pains them deeply to contemplate ] any one running off treasury notes, they dearly love to keep the printing presses busy on stock I certificates. a u u T ET us not forget, moreover, that the most vocal opponents of President Roosevelt’s inflation policies are the bankers. They had their own way with our banking policies down to the present year. Their follies and chicanery have brought about the failure of more than 16.000 banks since 1920. losses of more than $5,000,000,000 in deposits. and more of a blow to confidence in our financial system than resulted to the French financial system from the French inflation of 1922-27. These are the men who are now raising their voices for soundness, stability, caution, conservatism, the welfare, of widows and orphans and [ the like. President Roosevelt has only taken us temporarily off the gold standard. The bankers had driven us off all standards by March 3. 1933. Back in the period following the Civil war. when it had been decided that the country would resume specie payment, a leading financial statesman of that time frequently reiterated that “the only way to resume is to resume.” It would be cogent today to observe that the same line of reasoning applies to either reflation , or inflation. The only way to inflate is to inflate. The enemies of the President have shown no appreciation of his concessions to their feelings as embodied in his slow and roundabout measures up to his message of Jan. 15. It is high time that the President should attain his objectives in the monetary field by the measures best adapted to securing the results which he desires. He should not saciiflce effectiveness to any effort to soothe the feelings of money changers who will do their best to wreck his administration in any event. His message of last week on the gold policy was a step in the right direction.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to ?50 words or less.) - 9 0 0 THIS IS SOMETHING TO LOOK INTO Bv A. L. S. I want to congratulate The Times for exposing the Indianapolis Power and Light Company. It is gratifying to know' there is one newspaper in Indianapolis which is not afraid to print the “TRUTH” and which stands for a square deal to all. The following is just one of the many tricks practiced by the Light Company: I live west, one-half mile outside the city limits, and the electric rates in this locality are exorbitant, also the minimum here is much higher than in the city. But besides having to pay my regular bil, the company adds 63 cents additional each month, and this they call “demand charges.” When I inquired at the office about this extra added amount, they informed me that was to ec#er the cost of supplying the current outside the city. I then told them that previously I had been living five miles out and no “demand charges” were added to my bill there. They then attempted to explain that the company has several different rates for coftsumers living outside the city and that I just happened to get the rate with the 63 cents added each month. I ask: Is it fair that some have to pay this extra amount while others, living in the same neighborhood, do not? I hope The Times will investigate this and bring it to the attention of the public service commission. Thank you. j Daily Thought t For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.—l Peter, 1:24. THINGS may serve long, but not serve ever. —Shakespeare. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise thou not the chastening of the Almighty.—Job. 5:17.

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The Message Center

A Woman’s Viewpoint y MRS. WALTER rrnr.rsnv

IN the Atlantic Monthly, Philip Curtiss discusses “The Twilight of the Business Woman,” and prophesies a return to the ancient and honorable professions of daughterhood, wifehood, motherhood, ladyhood. And it is true, perhaps, that mo6t girls wanted to go into business because all their friends were doing so, and that now they find the office as dull a place as home. It's far, far duller in many ways. If you are not particularly interested in your work, for instance, an office is the very dullest and dreariest place in the whole world. The modern woman is beginning to find that out. In an office, occupying a subordinate position, you're nothing but a little cog in a very big machine. At home, no matter what your status, you are an individual and have the privileges of one. Every minute of the day you can behave as an individual'instead of conducting yourself as an automaton. Analyzing woman's desire to get into business in the first place, it is easy to miss the main point, I think. Is it not true that girls were driven by a subconscious urge to be where men were?

‘BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA’

He Wants Justice From the CWA

By Old Timer. You would think in spending the government’s money for labor under CWA that the officers in charge of placing this help would try to get as much value for the expenditure as possible, wouldn’t you? In any other venture where men are used, this is true, isn’t it? Would you put a pressman in the composing room or on the editorial staff, when competent men in these departments were obtainable? However, this has not been true in placing men under CWA. Someone was sincere when they devised the employment card that is used. It gives a picture of the man's experience and capabilities. It quickly shows what he is best fitted for and should be the criterion for placement. The clerks are quite tenacious in getting complete information regarding a man’s experience. Then the irony of it all —after this information is obtained, the whole word picture is immediately buried* discarded, covered up completely by the one word written across the face of the employment card of LABORER.” Probably this is the quickest way out of a tireless and laborious job for the file clerks. Probably it makes the job of placing men with academic training easier, or men who are “politically right,” even though, we are told this has no bearing on the case. In any event competent experience does not get CWA responsibility. Experience and training, unless academic, does not mean anything here. College men and politicians are “in the saddle.” The old army adage was never more true than now: “They don’t go to the corral to get officer material.” Neither do the officers of the CWA go to the files of “laborers” to get experienced, capable men for the $1.20 hour jobs or 80-cent foremen. Probably an efficient man might be too exacting and demand a quality brand of labor. This would never do! Here are a few cases in point!' A former successful builder of roads, and who is considered very capable, signed up with CWA. He is a “laborer.” Because of his

WHEN business became the most powerful force in American life and when men began giving it all their attention, interest and time, it was natural for girls to think it must be something far more fascinating and wonderful than just .making a living. It must be a thrill—and about that time all girls were hunting thrills. So they too. when the opportunity came, went into business by the thousands. And I have no doubt many of them got good husbands because of it. Better husbands, probably, than they might ever have found sitting around home. We make a mistake, however, if, when discussing careers for women. we always come around to the ttieory that everything a girl does has for its sole purpose the capture of a man, or that she seeks by these devious ways to come home. Because this business interlude. if such it proves, has given women other incentives for ljving. Our age has developed a number who don’t want to be married any more than some men do. These are the real new women.. The rest of us are just as old-fashioned in our essential beings as our great-grandmothers.

[I wholly disapprove of what you say and will 1 defend to the death your right to say it — Voltaire. J

physical condition he was given a timekeeper’s job on a road gang. The engineer, a recent college graduate, is in charge. A capable man, no doubt. An automotive engineer and capable draftsman, formerly employed by one of the country’s biggest corporations, is a “laborer.” A paint shop foreman, formerly with one of the city’s largest automotive manufacturers—a ca pable mechanic, is a “laborer.” This man tried to get employment with the school board. They didn’t want him. But they did hire a man whose home is in Kentucky, and who is getting $1.20 an hour. A builder and contractor of a few years ago also became a “laborer.” Through political manipulation, etc.* he finally got his status changed and now he is .getting $1.20 an hour. A brick contractor. The usual procedure and another “laborer.” This man tried to better his condition through CWA. He tried to get transferred on projects where his experience and ability would enable him to get the $1.20 hour rate. He was told that no vacancies existed. However, there were two men being replaced. And so it goes. These few cases cited are just a few of the known ones of men who are high type, capable and efficient. There are places for all of them where they would be worth much mort to the government than they are now. But they are as helpless in getting places as they have been in getting profitable business during the last couple of years of depressed conditions. It is not just to the government nor the men. The. government is paying for competent labor. They should get it. There are men who would gladly give the benefit of their knowledge and experience if just given a chance. Most of these capable . men have been accustomed to making much more than $1.20 an hour and are worth it. Many men now making this amount never made that much money in'their lives before! There are many men today on the small end of a pick, shovel or “Irish buggy” who would be more valuable to the government in an Environment of which they were familiar, than to be working as a “laborer.” It is my guess that the time and effort consumed in going over these files and re-classifying the men as to trades or professions, then to try and place them accordingly, would more than pay for the extra clerical hire in giving a more competent and satisfactory service for the money spent. Why not send one of your “Inquiring Reporters” out and interview some of these “laborers” and see how they check up as to trades, etc.?. Believe you will be surprised with what you find. Then, you might be able to bring this information before the proper tribunal which would not only result in a reclassification of these men—a probable shake up in present personnel, but the distribution of labor where the government would be getting the most value for its money. This should be as vital to you as it is to me. When it’s all said and done, you and I pay the bill, finally. We are the government and it is your problem as well as mine. What shall we do about it? 9 0 9 FOR THE GOVERNMENT “IN BUSINESS’ B? Edrd Barker. Considerable dust has been stirred up and severe criticism made of the governments going into the field oi

.JAN. 31,1935

domain of private business by its proposing to make its own equipment for its own postoffices. A little care is needed in the explanation of this matter, and the reasons therefor. This step by the government has not been taken lightly or with the object or purpose of going into business or putting any one out of business, but it is a purely social and economic experiment sponsored by the government to test out a plan which many groups of welfare workers have thought over and have urged private capital to sponsor, and which they have failed to do with the exception of Henry Ford, who is experimenting along these lines. The plan of the administration, like Ford's, is to build factories in country towns, where the workers in these factories can, at small cost, have a few acres around a cottage and raise their own food in large degree and provide themselves an anchorage of safety when employment stops at the factory, thus providing the workers an independence such as they do not generally have when the factory closes. To understand what the government is trying to do in this particular matter, one must be in sympathy with the vast and far reaching emprise of our Modern Moses—the President. The economic and social order of the past has failed miserably—has broken down. In a crisis, such as we are just emerging from, great courage and resourcefulness -are called for and needed, and this experiment in my opinion is well worth trying, and is very promising of good results. Surely there should be no objection to the government going into this business of men saving, if at the same time if can make its own postoffice equipment at absolute cost, which is in line with its economy program. Thus, the government serves two purposes—men saving and money saving. Critics to the contrary, I stand with the President. 0 0 9 HE WANTS EDITORfAL, COMIC PAGE SPLIT Bt N. M. Stark* I certainly agree with The Times reader who suggested changing the editorial page in your paper from the one connected with the comic sheet. We have a royal battle each evening at our horse, as I have two youngsters who scramble for the comic sheet while I am dying with curiosity for the editorial page. I think this would be a worth while change. Editor's Note—We’ll try. but advertising contracts make radical changes in mak-vip difficult. Infatuation By HARRIETT S. OLINICK His mind has never learned to still the body's clamoring For her whom it demands as just and right; And clings to as a child in sudden fright Clings when that he loves is vanishing. And argues with futile brandishing Os threatening words that mingle with the night. And beat against her face, so inscrutable and white; And so achingly, and damnably enamouring. His mind is a white temple placed sharply on a hill; That he may enter and thus wisely locked and barred Secure himself against the passion of his body’s ■will, And make of his love nothing more than a mass of broken shards. But he has never acted in this fashion For fear her cool arrogance may one day change to passion.