Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 279, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 April 1934 — Page 10

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The Indianapolis Times (A RCRtrPS-HOWABD N'KWSTA PFR) ROT W. HOWARD President TALCOTT POWELL Editor EARL D. BAKER . Business Manager Phono—Riley 5551

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*<# / \ia Olvo Light and tha People Will rind Their Own Wag

- MONDAY. APRIL 2. 1934. APRIL FOOL! some time we've suspected this Dr. Wirt of being a sly Hoosier humorist, who along about April 1 would let us know he’d been spoofing us about the big bad reds of the administration and their revolutionary plots. Listen now to these samples of subversive doctrine as Just quoted by the good doctor from the pen of Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace: "To a free people the pain of nationalism is actual. As yet we have applied in this country only the barest beginning of this sort of social discipline which a completely determined nationalism requires.” "Our people on the streets and on the soil must change their attitude concerning the nature of men and of human society. They must develop the capacity to envision a cooperative objective and be willing to pay the price to attain it.” "Enduring social transformation, such as our new deal, ia impossible of realization without changed human hearts.” And all tha time we thought the doctor was serious. Are our faces red? LET’S REBUILD T TEARTENING is the news that the national emergency council experts are framing measures to thaw private credit for long-delayed home building and renovation on a nation-wide scale. The plan calls for a federal mortgage insurance fund in which private loaning concerns could insure the mortgages they hold. Borrowers would repay the loans, not under the old usurious and chaotic terms, but on the basis of a single long-term mortgage, drawing about 5 per cent interest and amortized over a long period. Reduction of interest rates and amortization provisions would in effect reduce the present principal debt. Such a plan would supplement the aid now offered defaulting mortgagors by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Corporation's slum abatement project, the subsistence homestead plan and other government aids to home owners. A well-rounded rehousing program led by the government would release billions of private credit, help the strained heavy industries, re-employ millions of jobless, rehouse a big proportion of American families. Times are over-ripe for socially sound building. The country is at least five years behind. Normally we build 400,000 homes a year; last year we built only 50,000. Private construction dropped from $5,500,000,000 in 1928 to $580,000,000 last year. A NRA survey estimates a housing shortage of 800,000 dwellings, exclusive, of course, of those needed to rehouse millions of families now condemned to slum and other substandard "homes.” No single national project, we believe, offers brighter prospects for the new America than the proposed construction of modern, commodious and attractive homes through cooperation by federal government, states, cities and private industry. TREES AS CROPS AMENDMENTS to the lumber code approved by the President and effective June 1 mark a turning point in not only the economy but the psychology of the private timber industry. For 150 years American timber barons have looked upon trees as they .would on minerals rather than crops for growing and harvesting. Their ruinous cut-and-run policy now is to be changed to a cut-and-grow method. Under the new amendments, owners of the nations 400.000,000 acres of private timber lands will be required to adhere to general standards of logging practice, to cut only trees of a certain size, to dispose of slash and enforce strict fireprotection rules. "Timber lands are to be handled on the same broad basis as farm lands,” says the United States forest service in announcing the change, "with growing timber constituting a succession of crops to be protected, tended and harvested as a continuing resource,” The government, with its valuable CCC work and its purchases of $20,000,000 worth of timber land for national forests, is making the Roosevelt promise of conservation a reality. UNEMPLOYMENT T'vURING the last few years we have got into the habit of looking back on those dim pre-depression days as on a halcyon, never-never time in which the grass was always green, the sun always shone, and every story had a happy ending. No depression then, no breadlines, no bank failures —at least not very many; it was a fine time, and we would all like to get back to it and go about sniffing the aroma of a chicken in every pot. Once in a while, though, someone rises to remind us that those days weren't quite as paradisical as memory persuades us they were. Wa had an unemployment problem even then, We had families that didn’t know just where the next meal was coming from, we had discouragement and doubt and want; and these things were made worse by the fact that most of us pretended they didn't even exist. Miss Helen Hail, famous leader of the Henry’ street settlement in New York, made some pointed remarks about this sort of thing the other day, before a house of representatives sub-committee, in the hearings on the Wagner-Lewis unemployment insurance bill. Away back in 1928, she pointed out, the settlement houses noticed the pressure of un*%mployment on their people. Men lost their job* through no fault of their own—and, says Miss Hall, th# Jobless man faced "the smug impression on tha part of tha community that

If h* had been any good his factory would not have closed down or introduced new machinery or indulged In style or seasonal changes.” Yes. there was an unemployment problem, paid for in human suffering. The history of the jobless men’s families, says Miss Hall, was "written on pawn tickets, on eviction notices, on foreclosures;” children went undernourished, and if a family applied for help it had a chance, but no definite assurance, of getting it. Now the point in raking up this ancient history is that we shall have the same thing to cope with even after the depression is over. The unemployment problem, like the poor, is always with us; we might remember it in connection with the unemployment insurance bill now pending in congress. "It is an old story now,” says Miss Hall, "but unfortunately it is still a living one, and will continue to be so if the insecurity of men and women and children seems less important than a 5 per cent tax.” MACHINE POLITICS A LL chickens, sooner or later, come home to roost. Sometimes the manner of their return is rather painful; but those who own them have very little kick coming if they don’t like it. This makes a somewhat clumsy way, perhaps, of saying that nobody need be surprised at the plight in which the average city government in the United States finds itself these days. The chickens are just getting back up on their perches. If we had had eyes to see, we could have had foreknowledge of it long ago. The depression seems to have traveled in waves. The worst is over, for industry, for commerce, and for the federal government; it is just arriving, as far as the cities are concerned. And since the ordinary city was governed so clumsily and so inefficiently that it just barely got by in prosperous times, the arrival of this delayed second wave means little less than catastrophe. Here’s a sample case—a large manufacturing city in the middlewest. The treasury is bare, tax delinquencies are approaching astronomical proportions, fire and police services are below the safety level, hospitals and other health services are being skeletonized, streets are going unrepaired and poorly lighted, recreation facilities are being discontinued, school teachers are going unpaid, and the morale of all city workers is being ruined. Bearing in mind that this is by no means an exceptional case, in the America of 1934, the question mast of us are interested in is, why and how did all this happen? The answer is pretty clear; we brought it all on ourselves, by putting up with the kind of rotten municipal politics that could not possibly carry a city government through a storm. We prepared for this sort of thing, in other words, years ago, when we blithely let our city governments increase their debts beyond reason. let politicians run them for their own benefit, and made no attempt to insist on having efficient and public-spirited men in city offices. Machine politics laid its hand on ourcities; we sat back innocently and made no protest. Now we’re getting what we might have foreseen, if we had looked at things realistically. Our chickens are just coming home to roost. ONLY PART WAY 'X'HE Vinson-Trammell navy bill, authorizing construction of 102 warships and 1,140 airplanes for the United States navy during the next five years, is now a law, passed by congress and signed by the President. But it is worth noticing that the law does not actually commit the country to immediate construction of these armaments. As President Roosevelt pointed out in signing the bill, what we'have here is simply a formal statement of policy. Congress and the executive have gone on record as favoring the building up of the navy to the strength authorized by the treaties to which the United States is a party. However, the bill appropriates no money for this work. Not one keel will be laid down as a result of it. There is a vast difference between ships authorized and ships appropriated for. Until this bill is supplemented by an actual appropriation measure, it is a gesture and nothing more. ROOSEVELT REPLIES "PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S indorsement of the Norris-Lea amendment to the Constitution for more direct election of Presidents blows like fresh air across the fevered hysteria of the current revolution and dictatorship bogey. Tire plan the President indorses would make it virtually impossible for any party or any individual to perpetrate himself in office against the wishes of a majority in an election. Under the electoral college system of choosing Presidents, three men have been elected against the wishes of a majority of the voters. This can not happen again if the Norris-Lea amendment is ratified. It provides that hereafter the electoral vote of each state shall be divided among the candidates according to the proportion of the popular vote they receive. New York's forty-five electoral votes would have been divided between Roosevelt and Hoover in 1932, under the new plan, instead of being given to Roosevelt as a unit because he had a majority of the popular vote cast in the state. In 1928 they would have been divided between Hoover and Smith. Instead they were all counted for Hoover though he had a bare majority of the popular vote. The huge group of New Yorkers who voted for Smith were disfranchised when final results were tabulated under the electoral college system. , If the Norris-Lea amendment is approved by congress this year as Mr. Roosevelt urges, the states will have an opportunity to ratify it before the next presidential election. No more convincing proof could be given of the President’s desire to perpetuate popular government. American women, says a Persian philosopher, are too busy to be beautiful. That's an alibi for some, but not all, American women. Isn’t it about time the movie producers got after Insult?

JOBS FOR YOUTH SOME way must be found to furnish jobs for some 6.000,000 young men and women in the United States, if they are not to drift into chronic malcontent which would make them bad citizens. This is the warning Issued by the New York committee on mental hygiene, which finds in extended joblessness a grave menace to the mental balance of young people. Young people who want to work and can not, the committee asserts, tend to discover in themselves "a growing sense of guilt, discouragement, and even chronic malcontentment;” and once this feeling has taken root, it is very difficult for them to adjust themselves to the society in which they live. Stating a problem, of course, is vastly easier than finding a remedy. That the depression has put a great strain on young people is undeniable. Finding jobs for all of them, however, is a thing that can’t be done overnight. Nevertheless, the warning of this committee is a thing well worth keeping in mind. THE BOSS GOES ON ■\T7HEN New York City voters booted Tam- * ’ many Hall out of control last fall, it was taken for granted that a movement was beginning in the nation w'hich would replace old-line political bosses everywhere with reform administrations. Apparently this supposition was a gross overestimate. Kansas City, for instance, indulged in a hot campaign, held a somewhat riotous election—and Tom Pendergast, Democratic boss, still rules the roost. The Fusion ticket that was raised against him went down to a decisive defeat. The fight against bossism in the United States has hardly more than begun. When an outfit like the Pendergast machine can win out over a well-financed and ably-led reform campaign, it is evident that the average citizen has not yet awakened to the importance of a housecleaning in municipal politics. The Governor of Illinois has vetoed a bill giving men the right to stand up at a bar and drink. Now they’ll have to sit down to get drunk. A Brazilian legislator is fighting for repeal of woman suffrage there. Proving that women do vote sensibly somewhere.

Liberal Viewpoint By DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES =* NOTHING is more likely to force the new deal ahead into even more bold and adventurous experimentation than the unemployment problem. Mr. Roosevelt seemed conscious of this in his address to those assembled in Washington to comment qn the national recovery act. There are around ten millions of unemployed today. Even if the new deal, as at present conceived, were operating at top sped* with no significant opposition from reactionary employers, it would require an irrepressible optimist to imagine that we could reduce unemployment beneath the five million mark. And there are today few new and expanding industries which promise to absorb our great army of unemployed men and women. This inevitably has stimulated a demand for the limitation of labor-saving devices. Avery intelligent and tolerant presentation of this point of view has been set forth by Mr. I. N. Ornburn, in an article on “Men Before Machines,” in the “American Federalist.” He pays tribute to the human ingenuity which has produced our present marvelous technology: “Man’s inventiveness and skill have led him forward from the day when he fashioned all the simple things for his simple needs by his hands, until today when Herculean dynamos and engines, intricate levers, screws and pulleys, accomplish tasks which could never be done by hand. tt tt tt “/CONTEMPLATION of the amazing tools and V> devices which the mind of man has built so that he may wrest more and more goods for himself from the stores of nature leads us to marvel at man’s ingenuity and to pay homage to his skill.” This technological progress has, however, been accompanied by definite social disadvantages, due to our failure to bring about proper readjustment between the introduction of new machinery and the labor setup of the country. We have failed sufficiently to reduce hours and spread work along with the progress of laborsaving devices: “Unfortunately, the multiplication of machinery has not been an unmixed blessing. “It is one of the counts against machinery, or its too rapid introduction, that it runs away from our capacity to control it for our better welfare. Those who are enthralled by the vision of a completely mechanized civilization often overlook our backwardness in adjusting ourselves to new conditions. “The unhappy truth is that unless we bring about a proper balance between technological speed and social adjustment, the blessing of the machine will not only be lost to us, but will destroy our present form of government.” tt tt tt THIS serious problem can be controlled perfectly only under public supervision. Under purely private initiative, labor takes all the shock of technological change. When the business man feels that a particular invention may reduce his profits, he combines with others of like mind to suppress it. But, as is usually the case, when business feels that it will take profit by laborsaving devices, it introduces them with little thought of the disastrous effects upon labor. Thus we can follow Mr. Ornburn. but his proposal for solving the difficulty is scarcely on a plane with his clear and forceful presentation of the issue before us. By fines, assessments and jther means, he would restrict or discourage the introduction of labor-saving machinery. It seems to me that the technocrats are on solider ground. The thing to do is to shorten hours and spread work to whatever degree proves necessary. The ideal social goal is not work in itself, but securing the necessary production with a minimum of human effort. If the manufacturer gets his product turned out at the same price per piece, it should matter little to him whether he pays $6 an hour for a one-hour day or 50 cents an hour for a twelve-hour day. Let the shortening of hours and the spreading of work be supplimented by systematic unemployment insurance, which is financed in considerable part by business. This will be the best possible check upon the tendency of business to be forgetful of the right of labor to employment and living wages. Let us look ahead instead of trying to set the :lock back. We probably could not do the latter even if we wished to do so. Lloyd George suggests that Great Britain start anew deal along our lines, too. Then we could play duplicate—as bridge players say. A Montreal shoe manufacturer is suing a late employe’s estate because the worker slept on the job for fifteen years. The man's death woke up the boss. Men are flocking to beauty parlors out west, says a beauty specialist. But the women are too smart to fall for that, since they started the beauty parlor idea.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Timet readert are invited to express their views in these columns. Make pour letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to ZSO words or less.) tt tt tt SHOOTING IN CITY LIMITS PROTESTED By Mrs. Emerson Terrell I have been a subscriber of your paper for years and like it very much. You may be able to do something now that may save some person’s life, for it is an evident fact that there is shooting being done inside the city limits. We have had a Llewellyn setter dog since he was five weeks old and he will be three years old in May. He loves children and they like to play with him. We have been letting him out for a short while during mornings and evenings and he only stays about an hour. Tuesday morning he was gone longer than usual. We became alarmed and started looking for him and here he came dragging his right foot with a .22 rifle bullet in his shoulder. If this was done on purpose, which I can’t believe, or by accident, it easily could have been some person or child. Don’t you think something should be done about it? tt tt tt AMERICAN LEGION SHOULD CLEAN HOUSE, HE SAYS. By Thomas C. Shepard I am proud to be a reader of your paper. I want to commend you for giving views of the people. I am a disabled World w T ar veteran. Ido not condemn the rank and file of the American Legion. My remarks are based on the Congressional Record of March 16, 1934. Louis Johnson last year in a letter to a member of the congress which was read into the record, approved the economy bill. Raymond Kelly, now chairman of the legislative committee of the American Legion, at the state convention at Grand Rapids, showed the alleged connivance that was going on at the national headquarters at Indianapolis for years. A small group of men, known as Kingmakers were alleged to be directing the legion for their own purposes. These men are said to have boasted that they controlled the policies of the legion and picked the national commanders. The rank and file of the legion protested against this. The American Legion should clean house and make a clean fight for the buck private in the rear rank. The colonels can take care of themselves. The privates need help, not the colonels. When the Legion cleans house give each and every member a legal vote instead of letting some delegate vote for the rank and file. Make a clean fight for all disabled veterans and I will be proud to wear the legion button again. tt it n CHURCHES AND RICHES DO NOT HARMONIZE By * Times Reader I read “The Life of Our Lord” by Charles Dickens, and I have been trying to adjust his writings to fit this modern age, but it seems absolutely impossible. When I enter the realm of the Lowly Nazarene, “who was born in a cow stable and who had nowhere to lay his head,” it is then I am transferred to primitive surroundings. and vice-versa. When I return to our culture, modernistic attainments and achievements I am persuaded to believe we are living in a modem hell. Could anything more constitute a hell than the ora we are trying to

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The Message Center

CRACKED ICE

Underpaid Postal Workers

By a Substitute Postal Employe. Substitute postal employes of the country recently held a convention in Chicago to devise ways and means of making a decent living. At our local office last Friday there many pay checks, issued to substitute employes, which totaled less than sls for fifteen days’ work. One substitute drew 53 cents. How can we raise our families, pay bills, taxes and eat on such money? It is time the government has taken heed of the pitiful condition of its substitute employes. Reports from over the country show most of the big cities are hurt worse than we are. More than 500 substitutes in Chicago were furloughed and in New York City substitute workers staged a parade of protest against $3 a week jobs. How about a little NRA for the despised and rundown sub postal employe?

live through today? Children are left fatherless and motherless by the hundreds of thousands by the decree of the divorce courts; left to the unfriendly mercies of an environment saturated with lust, pride, and salacious indecent literature, an environment bereft of any real sterling Christian influence. The so-called Christians of today are so enslaved to the modern vices you can not detect them from the sinners. The multitudes of today are sadly in need of the inspired, Godly, humble preachers who ministered to our forefathers. These ministers didn’t drive automobiles, wear SSO suits, and brag about a $5,000 budget for their church that year. Those ministers were clad in home spun clothes, came on horseback, afoot, in farm wagons or anyway to get there with a message from God that sent mothers and fathers down on their knees praying mightily to I God to direct their homes and save their children. If our forefathers and mothers who lived such noble lives were living today with modernistic preachers to guide and instruct them, they wouldn’t’ be any better than we are. Let us not deceive ourselves, God does not modernize. tt tt tt WAR PROFITEERS SHOULD PAY SOLDIER BONUS By a Veteran’s Wife I am a reader of The Times, and I feel I have a right to my views on Henry Comingores’ letter in the Message Center. I see he never gave his war record. I suppose he is drawing a fat pension from the government, but not one word did he say in favor of the disabled veterans who have been so unfortunate as to get their disability connected to service. He spoke of them as able-bodied men. Dr. Oxnam of De Pauw, and the person who signs his name as “Man,” are right. In 1917 the young man was called to the colors to fight the war to end wars, although I see they still want to prepare for another one. I don’t like to see God’s name mixed in the ! pieces that are being written, unless they really want justice for all dis- j abled veterans. Os course every one knows that the Legion’s four-point program that I was put before congress was a fine ( thing for the ones already service connected. I wish Mr. Comingore could read what Representative Woedman of Michigan had in his article about the legion. He said that if the Legion would get the King makers (money makers) out of directing the American

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

All of us have passed a civil service test in competition with thousands of others. Does not the fact that oniy about thirty out of every 1,000 applicants receive appointments; that the government expects and gets only men of the better trained and educated type. What good is an education if the best you can expect is an average of only sl2 a week over a period of two years? The government always has run the postoffice for service. Rates were raised to help pay expenses. Now they cut their employes to save more. Yet the service is worse. Under Mr. Farley’s latest order deliveries can be restricted to three-a-day in the business district and one in the residential areas. He stopped vacations until July 1. The public has a right to postal service and should demand it.

Legion all would be o. k. for disabled veterans. How about the soldier who was gassed or wounded in action. He got sl2 and $lB a month. Hundreds of them can’t prove service connection. I suppose they are the able-bodied men referred to. The ones who never saw any service can get service connection, but the ones who went overseas can’t get service connection. The steps the legion is taking are responsible. The legion should have said that if we don’t ask for the bonus, the American soldier, widows and orphans will be jeopardized. I It would put hundreds of dollars ; in the small man’s hands and if I this depression ever is ended it will j be when the little fellow gets jusI tice, so he can buy the necessities of life. You Legion men use the Legion for your own gains. The war made a few rich men worth millions, so why not let the rich hogs take some of their blood money and pay the bonus. Now wouldn’t it have sounded better if you had of said we sold ourselves to Hoover for beer? Preparedness is all right if it is used in a sensible way. tt St tt COPS HOUND EX-CONVICTS BACK TO PRISONS By a Times Reader I wish every state official and law maker could look into the minds and hearts of the public. It is abi solutely inconceivable that they can | reform convicts by turning them out cf jails, etc., and expect them to do right with a gang of blood-thirsty cops and detectives hounding them, placing no confidence in them. Every time they get a job some wise guy slips in and tells the employers he is an ex-convict and whiz goes his job. Take Mr. Blunk for instance. They are getting him ready to be another delinquent, because he won’t admit to a bunch of fabrications to satisfy some who are worse than he. Dillinger never killed any one and how they can call him a terrorist is ; a mystery, we, the citizens are not , afraid of him. The entire comj munity hopes he never gets caught, j Johnny Dillinger is wonderful. a tt a POLITICIANS. BANKERS ARE WORSE THAN DILLINGER By M. J. E. I am writing this In behalf of the people of Indiana. Why all the noise about public enemy No. 1? Why shouldn’t the people wish he never would be caught? Because he is out and out with what he i&

APRIL 2, 1934

Others do all their dirty work under cover and get away with it. If you have a pull higher up you can get ary Job from Governor on dow’n to the lowest policeman on a beat. When we put our money in the bank the men are all smiles and when your back is turned these same men gamble your money on worthless stocks and real estate. Then they come out with the statement they are forced to close. You are out. But the state says it is legal. If Dillinger robs a bank, that’s robbery. The state says it's illegal. Why don’t the police go gunning for our bankers? No wonder Indiana is noted for rotten politics. The blame is not on these crooks, but on the boys higher up. tt an UTLEY’S SPEECH FELL FLAT WITH HIM Bv Reformed Republican. Much as I hate co resurrect the dead, your story “United States on the Road to Moscow” has awakened in me a genuine fear “of the big. bad wolf.” The most amusing thing about it was that you had sense of humor enough to publish such bellicose bellenngs from a quite obviously puerile alarmist. Surely, Mr. Editor, wasn't it some sort of practical joke you were playing on the Hoosier members of the National Metal Trades Association? It can’t be possible that Mr. Utley’s audience took him seriously and it is hard to conjecture that a man of his position likewise can hope to be taken seriously by mouthing such asininities. Apparently Mr. Utley is not read so widely on his subject or he never j would have made such absurd stateI ments. And coincident with his | talk, when, if ever, didn’t big busi- | ness dictate to government? The j record is too long and filthy even to essay a chronological report here, : but the point is. does Mr. Utley propagandize for a return to Hooverism, Coolidgeism. Hardingism? The only thing I have to say is, if members of Mr. Utley's audience actually took him seriously they are far more susceptible to the ranting of a puppet of Mellon's monarchy than the workers who punch their employers’ time clocks. His ravings sound more like excerpts from some of Li'l Artha’s speeches and carry just about as much weight with intelligent people. The man is ‘utley’ impossible. Hurray for the Roosevelt revolution.

Daily Thought

And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God’s. St. Luke 20:25. ALL are born to observe laws; few are born to establish them.—Carlyle.

Virtue

BY HARRIETT SCOTT OLINICK He loved her—yes—with taut rein pulled. To quench all burning passion. He loved her as a distant star, And in the same cool fashion. He loved her—yes—but stemmed his blood, And today he did discover She had tired of all his pale gray words And took a wanner lover.