Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 276, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 March 1934 — Page 16

PAGE 16

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■ '*'**/ Git# Ligh t nnd th§ Peoplo Will rind Thrir Own Way

THURSDAY, MARCH 25. mi. OUR NONPARTISAN SENATOR "CO far as I am concerned.” said Senator Arthur R. Robinson of Indiana, “there Is not a scintilla of partisan politics in this matter . . . This matter should be too sacred for politics.” Our senator, of course, was taking part in the debate centering on the senate's action on the President's veto of the independent offices bill. Needless to add, the senate colleagues of Senator Robinson apd the spectators in the gallery burst into roars of laughter. Senator Robinson then went a step farther. He spoke derisively of Mr. Roosevelt's trip to Florida. Then he added: “Don’t forget, gentlemen, we may have to call upon these despised veterans for another war.” It was Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi upon whom the burden fell of cautioning Indiana's senator. “As bad as have been his previous speeches in provoking prejudices, this is the worst,” said Harrison. Referring to Robinson’s remarks about the President's trip, Harrison added this: “There is no other senator here who would resort to that kind of a speech to get votes.” It is too bad that Indiana has no way of making a formal apology to the nation for sending Arthur Robinson to the United States senate* Senators from lesser states feel it below them to even exchange greetings with Indiana’s Republican senator. The veterans’ issue is not an issue for Indiana's voters when it comes to considering Arthur Robinson. He could have been one of the most respected members of the senate. Many of those who fight for the same issue are respected and admired. But Senator Robinson, throughout his senate career, has stooped to degrading levels to prove his points. He is not even a size number one in size thirteen shoes. Indiana’s only way of apologizing is to send a man to the senate —not an intellectual midget. WHO IS THE WOLF? A HERETOFORE obscure Hoosier educator named Dr. Wirt of the steel town of Gary, has become unduly prominent as the result of his attack on the so-called brain trust in Washington. These unnamed aids to the President appear, from Dr. Wirt's alarms, to be a band of red wolves dressed in the sheepskins of harmless reformers. One of them (unnamed) let. it out. according to Dr. Wirt, that they look upon Franklin Roosevelt as only the Kerensky of their revolution, with a Stalin to come later. The good doctor's fever at first was diagnosed as an ordinary rash of the familiar Star-Spangled jitters, such as breaks out periodically among the patrioteers. Certain congressmen—Mr. Bulwinkle, Mr. Fish, the rabble-rousing Indiana senator, Robinson—have seized the occasion to call for a traitor hunt and are pushing “an investigation.” “Nobody minds such an investigation except that it takes time from the serious work to be done before adjournment. But, since the affair has gone so far, the people should be reminded of what's behind it. Dr. Wirt's letter first was read by one James H. Rand Jr., in a hearing on the Fletcher-Rayburn bill regulating thq stock market. Mr. Rand’s committee of the nation is fighting against the exchange reform bill. In an interview Dr. Wirt showed his animus when he attacked the pure food bill, called the Wagner labor bill “a noose for labor,” and generally assailed the NRA and codes. The real target, then, is not the brain trust, but the White House. The big bad radical is President Roosevelt and the revolution, at which we're supposed to shudder, is the new deal. Patriotism remains the last refuge of reaction. NEGLECTED INSURANCE SINCE President Roosevelt has made the Wagner-Lewis unemployment insurance bill a part of his “program to build a more ample and secure life” for America, congress should waste no time in adopting it. For three reasons delay in setting up a national security scheme would be social folly. First, as the President says, this measure will act as a “stabilizing device in our economic structure," and help industry to reach its goal of planned production. Under the bill employers who regularize plant output and employment will pay less into the reserve funds than employers who do not. Second, the time to start building unemployment reserves against future depressions is as we emerge from the present one. Business and politics are inclined to imitate the farmer who wouldn't build a roof over his house, because “when it rains I can't, and when it stops rainin’ I don't need no roof.” How little business has thought of the welfare of its workers is shown by the record of five years preceding 1929, when it increased the volume of wages 13 per cent and corporate dividends 265 per cent. Third, the states await federal leadership. Next spring some forty legislatures meet. The Wagner-Lewis bill contemplates a system of forty-nine separate unemployment insurance systems administered by states and the District of Columbia. By collecting a pay roll tax from all but a few exempted employers, the government would encourage universal state action by allowing offsets in these federal taxes of the amount paid into state funds. Certain minimum standards and prohibitions are *et up, and the states can not act until they know what these standards are to be. If congress act* now this country could have a nation-wide system in full swing in two years. Os all industrial nations, oars alone leaves

to costly, humiliating and random hand-out* the relief of industry's casuals. As President Roosevelt says, “This is a practice that necessity will compel us to change to a very substantial degree.” The time to start, changing ib is now. LITTLE TAMMANIES YYTHILE New York City is reaping rich * * rewards for its clean-out of Tammany, Kansas City permitted Tom Pendergast's “Little Tammany” to crush fusionist reform opposition in Tuesday's city election. The victory for spoils, waste and graft was won to the tune of gun-play, slugging and terrorism. The casualties were four dead and many wounded. Kansas City apparently has not learned the depression's hard lesson that machine politics is too expensive. This sort of rule has left more than 1,500 cities broke. They form anew federal problem, and asking congress for bankruptcy relief and the RFC for loans to permit them to carry on their simple functions of police, fire protection, schools. Hundreds of American cities have cleaned their municipal houses. Ma% have adopted city manager systems, others have gone Into business as proprietors of profitable power and other services, others are cutting expenses to to the bone. Too many cities and towns still allow their parasitical bosses to bleed them, POLITICAL GALLANTRY \TOW, Postmaster-General James Farley, spoils distributor, who is convinced he is the bass of the Democratic party, is up against it, as the man said who went circling around a tree grasping a bear’s paws. Mr. Farley daringly told the world that it looks to him as h Wisconsin Democrats want Charlie Broughton for United States senator and Mrs. Gertrude Bowler, Wisconsin’s Democratic national committeewoman, has had her bonnet in the ring for just that job for weeks past, making a fierce fight for the senatorial nomination that delights multitudes of Wisconsin's choicest Democrats, since a real fighter has got to successfully combat young Bob La Follette on election day, or it surely will be six years more of Bob, bless his efforts! Does Mrs. Gertrude Bowler fear powerful Mr. Farley? Does any woman, nowadays, fear any masculine wearing pants and vest? Mrs. Bowler's reaction or repartee to Mr. Farley’s interference in Wisconsin takes the form of an intimation that Mr. Farley's sticking his nose into Wisconsin Democratic affairs is unseemly and likely to much impair the beauty of his probosis. The Mr. Broughton concerned is reported to be a newspaper man and “a good mixer.” If wo were given to placing odds, we should put some on Mrs. Bowler’s mixing of both Mr. Farley and that newspaper man. Mr. Farley's endeavor to make a wallflower of Mrs. Bowler should arouse the gallantry of Wisconsin Democrats. have some of it. FACTS MUST BE KNOWN TF a member of President Roosevelt's official family actually is working toward a Communist state in America, and is pulling the wool over the President's eyes so that the nation can be maneuvered to the edge of Marxism without realizing it, the fact needs to be established definitely and the man’s name should be published. And then the man needs to be thrown out of Washington so fast that he won’t know what hit him. But, on the other hand, if none of this is true—if someone has just been indulging in a lot of loose talk, creating a bogey-man out of nothing to scare us out of adopting a law or a set of laws which certain important gentlemen do not like—then the man who started all the talk needs to be shown up as an irresponsible rumor-monger and discredited forever. The charges spread before the house commerce committee in the letter read by James Henry Rand Jr., must be investigated qiiickly and thoroughly. The public has a right to know the exact facts in the matter. ECONOMIC FREEDOM A GREAT shift in the popular idea of freedom, which ultimately will have a very great effect on our political thought, has been taking place in this country during the last few years. This shift has been moving us away from our traditional notions at a rapid pace. It is giving anew twist to the things we demand from our government, and it steadily is changing our concept of the relation of the individual to the society of which he is a part. Briefly, the shift can be explained by saying that we are beginning to demand economic freedom rather than political freedom. Once we demanded freedom from the oppression of rulers—freedom to talk, write, and worship as we pleased, abolition of inherited caste distinctions, formal recognition of the fact that, as far as rights are concerned, all rfen are created equal. Now we are beginning to demand freedom from economic disabilities; freedom from poverty, for Instance, and from the fear of poverty. We are beginning to Insist that political equality be balanced with economic security. It is this demand which is back of such pending bills in congress as the WagnerLewis unemployment insurance law and the Connery thirty-hour week bill. Now the thing to notice is that never before. in all the world's history, could a demand for economic security have been made sensibly. In all former times it was inevitable that insecurity be the lot of the average man, There simply wasn’t enough of everything to go around. Somebody had to be left out. Population, as Malthus pointed out, tended to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Poverty was inescapable. But today our troubles come because there is too much of everything. For the first time since this old planet started spinning, every man can get a fair whack of things. Insecurity is no longer necessary. The abolition of poverty is perfectly possible. The ordinary man ha* come to realize this. He knows there is enough of everything to go around and he wants his share; and—which is a point worth remembering—he doesn't care very much how he gets H

BEAK AND TALONS AT a time when the great majority of the people are making sacrifices, in their businesses and in their individual affairs, to lift the country out of the rut of depression, and actually are accomplishing something along that line, it is no time in which to add millions of idlers to the millions already out of employment by a so-called “labor war.” It Is time for the blue eagle to use beak and talons on the obstructionists, the chiselers and the recalcitrants, if present efforts to beat off such war by persuasion, compromise and mutual sacrifice fail. To renege on such methods to prevent a war in which the efforts, the sacrifices and progress of the whole country would be involved, no organization, wageearner or wage-payer, has a right, and In instances where greed and selfishness assume such right the new deal eagle should perform as a predatory bird. The rights and policies of elements, organized men or organized money, end where the policy that is best for the whole country begins, and there is no doubt but Mr. Roosevelt's policies are producing uplift of the general welfare. Every one of us with any standard of living worth while is sacrificing, in the form of increased taxation or in form of reduced profits from business. Dull Is the economist and observer of human nature who does not realize that we must have still more of such sacrifice. The individuals or elements which would obstruct or drag the national policy back into the sticky mud of depression and do-nothingness should feel the power of the new deal eagle. There must be no industrial war. Else, the NRA emblem is a crow, no eagle. GANGSTER BRAINS Ti/fOST newspaper readers, probably, would like to know more about this Fred Goetz, the gangster who was taken for a ride the other night after several years of activity as one of Chicago’s worst gunmen. This gangster never came from one of thase slum regions that breed most of our criminals. He was a small-town product, of a good family. Furthermore, he was a college man, an honor student at a great university, and an athlete of considerable prominence. All in all. he was emphatically not the kind of material of which gangsters are made. Yet he plunged into the underworld, became a hired killer, served as counselor to the notorious Fred Burke and died at last, ganglandstyle, in a ditch, full of bullets. A strange and tragic story much await the telling there, if one could only get at it I

Liberal Viewpoint DR. HARRY FLMER BARNES =

THE American Civil Liberties Union is at present engaged in two excellent battles. One is the fight upon a proposed law to exact a special oath of loyalty from teachers, and the other is the attempt to end official movie censorship in New York state. The new deal and its accompanying liberalism was bound to alarm the reactionaries. As is usually the case in such crises, the Tories have attempted to clamp down the lid on our schools. A bill has been introduced and been passed by the state assembly which provides that: . . . “Every professor, instructor or teacher, w j ho is now licensed or shall hereafter apply for a license, shall subscribe to the following oath or affirmation: ‘“I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America, the Constitution of the state of New York, and the laws of the United States of America, and the laws of the state of New York, and justly perform all the duties of any position to which I am assigned or may hereafter be assigned.’ ” The committee on academic freedom of the American Civil Liberties Union has done well to brand this proposed academic tyranny as “wholly useless and a reflection on the loyalty of the teachers.” It will be well to recall the w'ords of Governor Alfred E. Smith when he vetoed a similar bill back in 1920: “The bill unjustly discriminates against teachers as a class. It deprives teachers of their right to freedom of thought, it limits the teaching staff of the public schools to those who lack the courage or the mind to exercise their legal £1; jUs , fc criticism of existing institutions. The bill confers upon the commissioner of education a power of interference with freedom of opinion which strikes at the foundation of democratic education.” ana CUCH a bill as this is not only silly and autocratic. It also is opposed fundamentally to the very purpose of sound pedagogy in the fields of history and the social sciences which would be mast directly affected by such legislation. Now, jf ever, is a time for boldness and courage in American teaching. We need a thorough and candid examination into the historical and scientific facts about the Constitution. As the result of such a search, we may, perhaps, find that we need anew Constitution or extensive amendments to the one which we have. The men who originally made the Constitution certainly expected that such would be the case. They would be staggered if they could rise from the dead and find that we still are trying to govern the country under the system which they brought into being a century and a half ago. Moreover, the reactionaries who would pass and enforce such legislation would be very loose in their interpretation of w'hat it means for a teacher to “support the Constitution.” Our Tories would like nothing better than to identify support of the Constitution with favoring company unions, child labor, the gold standard, the protective tariff and the like. Even a defense of the new deal might be interpreted as treason and disloyalty. a m tt IT is not the function of teachers to “uphold” the Constitution or anything else. Their task and responsibility is to get the relevant facts and to expound them fearlessly, if these facts indicate the desirability of supporting the Constitution, well and good. If not, then every consideration of intellectual integrity demands that we follow the facts where they lead us. To demand that teachers support the Constitution in an unthinking fashion is as preposterous as to demand that they support the theory of special creation. If the senate passes the bill, it will put itself on the same intellectual level with the Tennessee legislature which passed the law under which Mr. Scopes was prosecuted. It is equally desirable that the nuisance of official motion picture censorship should be abolished in New York state. It exists in only six states and the other forty-two do not seem to have suffered any notable moral disaster from their failure to provide a state board of snoopers. The National Council on Freedom from Censorship puts the facts very concisely: “The censorship of motion pictures in New York state has not accomplished its professed object of protecting the public from indecent, obscene or salacious films. Lurid reels of vice and violence pass the censors provided that the film teaches the lesson that virtue is rewarded and sin punished. Producers have learned thus to get away with anything. suggestive or immoral if it has a proper ending. “It is submitted that the judgment of a jury on so controversial an issue as obscenity or indecency, on which man’s opinions differ, is the only fair test of current standards of morality, and vastly superior to the judgqaeafc of professional censors."

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

The Message Center

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less.) DILLINGER. *CORTEZ AND PIZARRO—WHAT A GANG! By C. A. Lott. Let’s forget modern progress and look back. Pizarro and Cortez, with less than 20,000 soldiers, conquered Peru and Mexico (with millions of people) back in the early days of the Sixteenth century. That was 400 years ago and without airplanes, machine guns, or poison gas. Let’s stop and think of men who were men. Today, in 1934, it takes a small army to watch three Hoosier boys in Lima (O.) jail to keep a fourth one (John Dillinger) from making their escape, “and that’s something,” as Amos and Andy say. Three cheers for the Spanish of 1535 —five guns for John Dillinger—and a groan for the state militia of Ohio. Well —well, without doubt, if John D. should arrive in Lima he could chase the entire bunch with his wooden gun! The entire outfit of “cake eaters” and “soda jerkers” would beat it for safer places crying for home and feather bed. Uncle Sam knew what they were, and sent the Eighty-third division to Italy instead of Germany back in 1918. That’s cold truth! Look up the facts and details. If such a thing was possible, Cortez, Pizzaro and John Dillinger would get the boys of the Lima bean soup and put an end to the depression within thirty days. Those three lads knew how to get gold and how to spend it for the sake of prosperity. ARE THE PEOPLE “ LOOKING FOR WAR? By a Soldier’* Wife. . When the boys joined in the World war, they were considered heroes. Nothing was too good for them. While they received little more than $1 a day, fighting for their country, men and women at home made $8 to SlO a day in soldiers’ places. Surely the boys are entitled to some consideration now. Is it fair to withhold the boys’ bonuses? At the least, they should get their disability allowance back. They have pensioned soldiers in every war except the World war. The boys are nothing now, only dogs under the big mens’ feet. Why not pay the bonus and help relieve us of this depression? They can’t possibly forget the boys fought for their country so that you and I might live and prosper. What do the people want, another war? ANOTHER READER* SAYS CAR CO. WAGES SLICED By an Employe. Here is a question I would appreciate having someone answer. Maybe the person who has been conducting the explanations of the recent improvements in the transportation line* of the Indianapolis street car company can answer the question. Can any one explain to me how they figure that no employe received a cut in wages or salary .during the depression since the NRA code has been in effect. Maybe they haven’t, but they have cut their bonus and have made each man employed on the street cars take a day off. If that is not cutting their wages and salary what is it doing? And here is another thing. All of 'ifeis new equipment the mea have

IS HE COMING OFF HIS PERCH?

By Times Reader. Unless some of the beer “joints” in Indianapolis stop trying to emulate the most vicious of the old-time saloons, it will not be surprising if repeal fails. Last Saturday night, accompanied by my wife and another couple, I witnessed two fights in two beer taverns within half an hour. In one case a waitress was knocked “cold” by a customer. In the other case two lads had removed their coats and were battling with great vigor. A week ago we were in a place which advertises itself as a “beer tavern.” Young women of questionable character held forth in the basement while upstairs at the bar, the hostess seemed intent on “gyping” as many beer customers in as short a time as possible. In one instance, we saw her

to substitute, don’t they? Well, they don’t get paid for that either. I am for the street car company, and my father still is working on the cars. He was making approximately S9O every two weeks and now he does good to make SSO every two weeks. They must have received a cut in wages and salary. a a a STREET CAR CO. IS CRITICISED By a Times Reader. In regard to the street car comuany, controlled by city residents which was in the March 19 issue of The Times, it states during the depression no employe received a cut in wages. Well, they were not paying much to begin with at 28 cents an hour for laborers. Mr. Chase didn’t happen to be here with the company then. Since the NRA certain wages have increased. Negro sweepers w’ere raised and now are getting the same as the car washers and fireman, which is $14.40 a week. The foreman and officials also were raised. They are the ones who reap most of the bonus. The bonus is a joke if you ask me. The same applies to the credit union. It’s easier to put in than to borrow because there is' so much red tape. I'm in a position to know these facts, as I have a relative who works there. The men are afraid to open their mouths, knowing they will lose the $14.40 a week. There is too much advertising of the new cars. Any one could have gone in debt or leased 150 new cars as Mr. Chase has done. He won’t have to pay for them or worry about the expense. Why boast about it. UPHOLDS IVTNUTT IN REWARD REFUSAL By a Steady Customer of The Time*. I read your paper every day. I like to read what different people have to say about John Dillinger. I really get a big kick out of it. He sure has nerve and isn't a bad sort, if you really know him. I w r as reared in Morgan county and lived in Martinsville about ten years. Johnny used to come there a lot, and as we were around the same age, we knew each other. I also know Governor McNutt’s family. I knew his father very well, but I never knew of any relation between the Governor and Johnny. I think Governor McNutt did the right thing to refuse to offer a reward for Dillinger. If I were the ones trying to oust tbs woman aheuff from Crown

/ wholly disapprove of what you say and will _ defend to the death your right to say it — Voltaire.

They Are ‘Taverns'

collect a cover charge twice from a party of eight people by telling two of the male members separately that the charge had not been paid. The victims, not wishing to start a brawl, accepted their fate and went to a place where the management could be trusted. A majority of the beer taverns are operated by honest, respectaable people and are places which no one need fear to enter. But their busines. is threatened with ruination by the “joints.” operated by persons who never have and never will be qualified to obtain a license. Tha object of this communication is not to have the beer taverns abolished —they are too much fun—but to save them from abolishment.

Point, I would forget it. There are worse ones holding office today’. I wish Dillinger luck. a a a CWA JOB PREFERENCE DRAWS ATTACK By One Who Knows. This is in answer to a letter in Monday’s paper by a person who signed himself, “By a Friend.” You are not the only one who thinks and knows there is something wrong in the way CWA workers have been handled. I wonder how Roosevelt, McNutt or Fred Hoke hope to end unemployment? For instance, I personally know a widow, the mother of two children, who was discharged at one of the Indiana university hospitals and CWA women did her work, it was a saving of about S3O a month to the hospital. This is just one case of many. No doubt the CWA women need the work, but whythrow others out of employment to make room for them? RID WORLD* OF EVIL, IS WRITER’S PLEA By Charles Hooper, Coeur d'A!ene, Idaho. Birth control and sterilization bills are before federal and state legislatures. Advocates of these measures either are those who are jealous of persons who have big families, or they are those who regard man as only an animal, to be bred as other animals are bred. They fail to realize that the power of God can so change the soul and body of man that the worst criminal can become the greatest saint, the dullest man a genius, and the feeblest a Samson. Laws of heredity are so little understood that no man can predict what kind of children or descendants will proceed from parents. Real idiots beget few or no offspring. Nature, herself, who is the best judge, takes care that only the fit will survive. We rightly blame those who try to censor the press. No man and no body of men can say absolutely that this idea is true, and that idea is false. But it is even more impossible for any man or any body of men to censor a human life, and to say that this man is fit to beget offspring, and that man is not. Even the sterling virtue of humility may make a man seem feeble-minded and a subject for sterilization. The idiosyncrasies of adolescence also counterfeit feeblemindedness and insanity. Many a man is not so green as he looks. “Man looketh on the outward ap~ I

3IARCH 29, 1934

pea ranee, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” The essence of religion is contained in the words, “When I am weak, then am I strong,” and “I believe because it is impossible.” Easter gives point to this. Let us stop this damnable and un-American censoring, prohibiting, prosecuting, and punishing of persons and ideas. God knows we shall have enough to do to brandish the swords of justice and punishment against crime and criminals and against evil and evil-doers in high and low places. ana DISHONESTY HAS EDGE ON HONESTY NOW By a Reader. To business men of the city, who refuse to employ men who have reached the age of 40, can you expect anything else but a rising tide of crime and robbery? I’m just dropping a line of praise for The Times as one paper, which, in my opinion, is trying to give the common people a fair deal. I. for one, am opposed to the methods of living such as are carried on by Dillinger, but let me say I have slept in the attic of my home all winter. Yes, some nights were far below zero, but we had to rent out rooms so I could keep my rent paid, i walked the streets trying to sell a few articles in an effort to obtain something to cat, and ;f honesty counts for anything I feel entitled to work. I have made repeated efforts to abtain CWA work, but always have .met with “Nothing open.” Now if the old saying that honesty is the best policy, why all this army of unemployed? It begins to look as If dishonesty had gotten far in the lead. a tt ECONOMY ACT IS BRAND2D DISGRACE Bv a N>w Reader. I think G. Brook is narrowminded. Let him, anci all rest, who think like him, read article IV of the Constitution and there won't be any national economy act in this country of ours for it is a disgrace to the people. All men’s names on pension and compensation rolls of United States are heroes. Is G. Brook’s name on the roll? The V. F. W. :'s in the front line. Let veterans v ake up such people as Mr. G. Brooks.

Dead Lover

BY HAROLD FRENCH She once was life. In a sunny field. Breathing the breath That flowers yield. • But she is death In a dreamy wood. She had smooth lips As warm as blood. I gaze for hours Into the grass And watch the failing Figures pass. There was one That I would save And meet upon A thwarted grave. But she is gone Where dark owls are. I try to think It isn’t far*