Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 287, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 April 1934 — Page 12

PAGE 12

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their o%en TToy

WEDNESDAY. APHID 11. 1834. FUNNY—AND SAD T>OOR DR. WIRT started his publicity stunt by saying that a member of the brain trust told him that the President was “the Kerensky of this revolution." Put on a congressional Investigating stand and he has changed his story: It was not a brain truster, but a newspaper correspondent never connected with the government. Those at the dinner where Dr. Wirt says he heard the Kerensky statement deny that it was made. Indeed, they say that no one else could express any opinions because Dr. Wirt made an uninvited and uninterrupted four-hour speech on his pet hobby in favor of revolutionizing the American monetary system. Describing Mrs. Roosevelt’s project for homestead-factory development to save the unemployed in West Virginia, Dr. Wirt soberly—at any rate apparently soberly—called this a “Communistic effort.” We shudder to think what he would call the Hoover RFC. Dr. Wirt has not harmed the Roosevelt administration. Mrs. Roosevelt and Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, who seem to be his particular hates, are more secure in the esteem of the country than when he began his low comedy. He has succeeded merely in making himself a national laughing stock. We are sorry, because, before he went off on this strange mental tangent, he was a great man in his special field. For twenty years he had the courage to lead in educational reform. And, curiously enough in the light of his present cheap publicity parading his behavior was marked by modesty and humility. So, however much Dr. Wirt now invites us to ridicule him, we can’t get fun out of it. \ VOTERS’ REGISTRATION r | 'Wo hundred fifteen thousand persons are reported to have registered in Marion county as prospective voters in the Republican and Democratic primary elections which will be held May 8. This figure, according to Glenn B. Ralston, county clerk, is 3,000 more than The number of persons who voted in the last election. Mr. Ralston says compilation of registration data ■will not be completed for several days and this figure may increase. County officials and Marion county residents have responded to the call of duty in effecting the registration. The next question is whether these thousands will appear at the polls May 8 to vote on the hundreds of candidates who seek nomination and its subsequent privilege of running for office in November. Voters of Indianapolis and the county must respond, despite the unprecedented length of the hallots that will result in a tiresome job of voting, if they desire to have their voice in control of governmental branches. Your registration card is just so much pasteboard unless you cast the ballot that is your privilege. Don't believe, county voters, that your job is done. The task only has started. It is up to you to carry on. FREE SEEDS distribution of seeds to approximately A 5,000 persons in Indianapolis in the last few days is to be commended as a real public service. Ground has been broken for enormous gardens in the Mallot and Washington park garden tracts and at Butler university. This service to the unemployed does more than provide food. It provides work that will occupy time and aid these people in forgetting the troubles they have experienced. If any method to increase the number of packets of seeds and garden space can be found it should be accomplished immediately. Perhaps there are business men in Indianapoli* who possess unoccupied ground who would be willing to furnish such tracts and seeds to carry on this work. It would be a service which would bring ten-fold repayment. IT DOES CHANGE T TENRY WALLACE, secretary of agriculture, advises that the new deal's social success depends upon a change in the human heart. And he needn't worry and work for that. The human heart changes itself, often very suddenly and with no reason that Mr. Wallace will be able to discover Change in the human heart. It reminds afresh an instance in the past. We—using the editorial “we” as writer’s license—we, of the age of 7, fell idiotically, torturously in love with a young lady. Alicia Burke by name. So did six other fellows of our years. Miss Alicia was 12, a foot taller and twen-ty-five pounds heavier than we. But true love tramples iron-shod upon such incongruities. Just about the time when we felt that we had retired our six rivals into the gloom of defeat, mother attired us in our imitations of Little Lord Fauntleroy and we entered upon a social gathering occasionally permitted to immature, but noble, scions of leading families of that period. The other six were there in worship at Alicia's feet. She had on blue shoes and cream-colored stockings and was otherwise beautiful all the way up. As we entered and bowed lovely Alicia rose from her chair, clasped us, lifted us to her knees, cuddled us, rocked ua in her arms. She could do so, all right. That infernal half-dozen snickered out loud and whispered half-aloud, “Baby Bob! Baby Bob!” Right there was a change in the Human

heart. Secretary Wallace. Love for Alicia was supplanted by mad hunger for vengeance In every reorss of our boyish heart. For ten years that “Baby Bob’’ nomen stuck to us much tighter than did our baptismal name but, during that decade, w licked each of those six contumelious rivals and thirty-five years later in life met Alicia, the mother of seven children and unable to keep any two of them in shoes. Let the human heart alone, Mr. Secretary of grain, pigs, cows and farms. Bet the blue eagle at control of its changes and that admirable bird Is likely to lose many of its wing feathers. AN ANNIVERSARY pOND as we are of celebrating anniversaries, 1 we let the seventeenth anniversary of our entrance in the World war slip by, the other day, almost without noticing it. The seven men remaining in congress who voted against the declaration of war, on that April day in 1917, Issued brief statements saying that they felt more sure than ever that they had done the right thing. The newspapers printed brief stories recalling the circumstances surrounding our declaration of war. Some of them recreated the long-lost atmosphere of that time by telling what songs, movie stars and athletic heroes were in vogue then. But we let it go at that. No speeches, no parades, no flags. Here is one anniversary, evidently, that we don't care to celebrate. Seventeen years is quite a long time—especially when they are years like the last seventeen, full of disillusionment and perplexity. And if we feel that the entire war was an unspeakably tragic mistake, a thing which consumed lives and treasure to no purpose, we only share an emotion which seem3 to possess all the countries that took part in the conflict. For it is worth noticing that the one war anniversary which is celebrated ‘in all the combatant nations Is Armistice day. The people who fought do not parade for victories or chant songs of triumph; they remember of the war only one thing worth a ceremony —the day that It ended. In that fact can be read the verdict of the world on the war. What good docs it do to recall all this now? We have been disillusioned about the fight to save the world for democracy for many years by now; why rake over the ashes of our disillusionment again? Simply because we paid an enormously high price for an object lesson in the futility of force in this modern world, and we might as well make sure that the force of the lesson is still sticking. The war clouds are on the horizon once more, in Europe and in Asia. When the danger of anew war is rising, it might pay us to remember what the last war did to everybody concerned.

SIGN OF PROMISE IF there is anything to the theory that Increased wages will, by boosting consumer purchasing power, create widespread business prosperity, we ought to be due for a pretty brisk revival in the immediate future. Whatever else may be happening in the world of industry these days, wages at least are going up. Such basic industries as steel and automobiles have granted increases to hundreds of thousands of workers in these last few weeks, and other lines have followed suit. The result is almost certain to be a very substantial increase in the buying of consumers’ goods. Despite all that has been said, it is not yet entirely clear just how much increased consumer buying power can do to restore prosperity. If it can do as much as its advocates say it can, we ought to have some pretty prosperous times ahead of us. GRANDMOTHER VINDICATED TT is exceedingly Interesting to read that -*■ Dr. Knight Dunlap, professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins university, heartily disapproves of the modern, let-him-cry-it’s-good-for-him method of rearing babies. “When a baby cried in grandmother’s time,” says Dr. Dunlap, “they figured something was wrong—and it was the same way with the Indians. After all. grandmother and the Indians know a great deal about babies.” And he adds that the highly recommended method of leaving babies severely alone “is richly productive of social maladjustments later.” Plenty of parents will find in this a vindication of their own private reactions. They have suspected that there was a good deal of hooey to the modern method of caring for infants. Now they get corroboration—from an expert.

BEER REVENUES its first anniversary under the new dispensation lawful beer came last Saturday bearing golden gifts. Into the coffers of the federal government and the forty-five states and the District of Columbia where beer is legal, a stream of some $174,000,000 of revenue has been poured. Considering that only eighteen states have had legal beer for a full year, this is a goodly sum. It comes up to the United States treasury promises. The treasury estimated that beer taxes would bring in between $125,000,000 and $150,000,00 of federal moneys. The government's share for the year is $137,000,000, a sum that we believe would be even larger if the taxes and tariffs were reduced. Beer revenue totaled more than $1,000,000 in ten states. In New York it was $4,903,167; Pennsylvania. $4,192,611; Ohio, 53.834.956; Illinois, $2,734,000; Wisconsin, $1,353,000; New Jersey, $1,145,000; California, $1,125,000; Michigan, $1,226,00; Texas, $1,103,000; Massachusetts, more than $1,000,000. Wine and liquor taxes have brought in $62,800,000 since legalization on last Dec. 5. A Russian surgeon operated on a young man's heart successfully. The second girl probably t wait long enough for Time to heal Cupid's wounds. Learn to bite wine, not swallow it. says the famous Viennese surgeon. Dr. Adolph Lorenz. But be sure to leave the glass. Dr. Knight Dunlap of Johns Hopkins says a baby is no vegetable and shouldn’t be coddled- In other words, it’s no egg, either.

Liberal Viewpoint DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES =

IN its recent struggles against reactionary American employers, labor has been endeavoring to remove the beam from the eye of American industry. In this matter it has a wellnigh perfect case. But it is likely to get ahead faster if it first removes a very sizeable mote from its own eye. There took place late last winter in New York city one of most flagrant examples of the seeming inability of American labor to reveal intelligent insight and to bury its minor differences in behalf of larger causes. New York Socialists called a monster mass meeting in Madison Square Garden on Feb. 16 to protest against the reprehensible activities of Chancellor Dollfuss in destroying the remarkably successful Socialist experiment in Austria. If there was ever a time when American liberals and radicals might have been expected to suppress their minor divisions and set forth a firm protest against reaction, this was the time. Dollfuss had revealed himself as one of the most contemptible puppets and pretenders in all modern history. Even Mussolini or Hitler should be more palatable to honest and candid men. New York progressives and radicals should have united from the beginning in calling a meeting of protest and in seeing to it that it was devoted solely to a denunciation of the menace to decency in Austria and other European countries. It was left to the Socialists, however, to call the meeting. Guided no doubt by their sad experiences in the past when Communists were present, they did not invite the latter. They came, nevertheless, with bands and banner and full of defiance. During the afternoon, the “Daily Worker” got out a special edition demanding that Mayor La Guardia and Matthew Woll, announced speakers at the Garden meeting, must not be allowed to speak. nan THE meeting broke up in riot and disorder. Six persons speaking under Socialist auspices made an effort to address th.e crowd but with no success. Clarence Hathaway, editor of the “Daily Worker” was assaulted when he mounted the platform uninvited, though he alleged that he had come forward in the effort to calm the tumult which he had plainly incited in his paper the previous afternoon. So. this one important meeting called in the metropolis of the world to protest against the raid on decency in Austria ended up in the breaking of heads among the protesters. If the meeting had been attacked by a contingent of “Silver Shirts” the results could not have been worse. The American Civil Liberties Union has busied itself since this time in making an unusually thorough investigation of the meeting and drawing up a carefully phrased report. It is indicative of the difficulty which liberals and radicals find in suppressing their differences of creed and procedure that even the members of the American Civil Liberties Union were unable to agree. nun TN addition to the majority report, there were A two minority reports. One signed by Robert Dunn and Mary Van Kleeck held that the majority report had been unfair to the Communists, while another minority report signed by Norman Thomas thought that the majority had been too fair to them. If a group of reactionary capitalists had indulged in such a burlesque as the Garden fiasco, labor would have unmercifully pilloried them. Here was present an impressive assemblage of no less than 18,000 radicals—unionists, Socialists and Communists. We could hardly expect them on all occasions to neglect the relatively petty dogmas and convictions which divide their ranks. But they certainly could have been expected on that evening to have dropped their differences in order to battle so obvious a foe as Fascism. American radicals are on the alert in nosing out alleged examples of Fascism, however tenuous. Even the new deal frequently comes in for their condemnation on this ground. They will do better if they save, their energy and alertness to detect the folly in their own inner strife.

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABEUI

SIGNS of spring in Washington’s official and diplomatic set: Bald-headed Representative Jim Beck of Pennsylvania, hatless, taking a noon walk around the Capitol. • • * Senator Bob Reynolds, dapper North Carolinian, besoming forth in a light-weave blue creation, which caused much lorgnetting from the galleries. * * * Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles relaxing at his estate at Oxon Hill and attempting to coax a rare variety of white tulip to show springtime enthusiasm. * * * Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Muhtar using less wax on his mustache, it melts in the sun. * * * Walter Foote, far eastern expert of the state department, greeting his dog, Caesar, in Malay, and being rewarded by a yowp of joy. * • * The talented children of Senator Felix Hebert of Rhode Island playing Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” to delighted guests. Two sons play the violin, one daughter the cello, another the piano.

Senator Bill Borah getting his hair trimmed at least an inch shorter. * * • Frugal Swiss Minister Marc Peter returning from Palm Beach and boarding a street car as usual. . * • * Pomaded Brazilian Ambassador de Lima e Silva wearing a lighter toupee. * * * Spanish Ambassador Cardenas icing his Andalusian sherry when he serves it before luncheon. * • * Representative Woodrum of Virginia taking a stroll between sessions of the house and mopping his forehead with a large white linen handkerchief. * • * Undersecretary of State Phillips thawing perceptibly when he says “Good morning!” * * * Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes curling his heard optimistically with gay insouciance. * * * Don Adolfe Urquiza. 220-pound arbiter of elegance of Argentina, making one of his famous spring cocktails—flavored with anisette. * * * Don Enrique de Lozada, Bolivia’s Londontailored young counselor, locking up his office early and moting far away from Paraguay and the Chaco war. Alfalfa is as good for us as spinach, says a dietitian. That's begging the question. How good is spinach? The thyroid gland was removed to relieve a heart ailment in twenty patients in Boston, but what girl wants her heart treated in that way? It's harder to find women comedians than men, says a Hollywood director. Be yourself, is man's motto. The artist who created Little Lord Fauntleroy was found working for the CWA at S3B a week. If you ever had to wear one of those trick suits, you might wonder how that artist held out so long.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make pour letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to SSO words or less.) nun MONEY IS THEIR OWN, TRIO DECLARES By Three Tabernacle Members. We are interested greatly in your Message Center. We also would like to join your writers and give T. S. Martin an answer to his letter. We wonder if he ever was in Cadle Tabernacle or ever donated a penny? If he hasn’t why should he worry what the rest of us do with cur money? We are regular attenders at the tabernacle and this operator (as you call him) and all his aids are Christian people who are trying to live right and tend their own business. ■ If this operator can have from $30,000 to $40,000 a year donated to him he must be pretty well thought of. Our money is cur own, and if we feel like donating it why I don't see as that is any of Mr. T. S. Martin’s affairs. As far as giving to the poor I expect as much of our money goes to poor as yours does. One thing, you would learn more about your Bible and maybe something about yourself. As to the family prayer period, if you don’t like it turn off your radio.

WAR OR COMMERCE ARE WORLD'S CHOICE By H. Hurd. I wish to express my opinion of war. War and commerce are the two great antagonistic principles which struggle for mastery of the human race, the functions of the one being to preserve and that of the other to destroy. Commerce causes cities to be built and fields to be cultivated, and diffuses comfort and plenty and all the blessings of peace. It carries organization and order everywhere. It protects property and life. It disarms pestlience and prohibits famine. War, on the other hand, destroys. It disorganizes the social life. It ruins cities, depopulates and condemns men to idleness and want. And the only remedy it knows for the evils which it brings upon man is to shorten the miseries of its victims by giving pestilence and famine the most ample commission to destroy their lives. War is the great enemy, while commerce is the great friend of humanity. When the World war started, it affected countries engaged peacefully and prosperously in exchanging the productions of the various countries. Commerce was promoting everywhere the comforts and happiness of mankind. In a short time war turned all their energies into the new current of military aggression. Which shall we choose in the future, commercial prosperity and peace, or military achievements and ruin? We can have either, but not both. War and commerce do not mix. a a a CONSUMERS MUST PROFIT TO RETURN PROSPERITY By H. L. Seerar. It is pathetic to find a child who is lost and is looking for his parents, or trying to decide on which way to go home. It is however, more pathetic to see a nation and nearly the whole world looking for “lost prosperity” and well being. Especially so, if we knew that society is standing before

DON’T LAUGH—IT’S AN AFFLICTION

The Message Center

Jurors and Criminals

By A Subscriber It took a jury of ten men and two women fifty-five minutes to sentence Harry Pierpont to death. Little do the jurors think of the significance of their combined efforts—those adherents to the doctrine of an eye for an eye and the same with a human life. Burnt offerings, though they appease the blood-thirsty, long since have been* abolished in Christian civilizations. Or have they? They never will end crime; never will settle the score against society, rather serve to make it the more lopsided; never will make amends for the first life unfortunately lost; will open new wounds in the hearts of friends and relatives of the condemned; and must of necessity be a haunting memory gnawing on the conscience of every psuedo-Christian juror who has no less broken the commandment. Mind you, I am not sympathizing with the unfortunate man’s crime but with the man himself and with countless other victims of this system of society. In my tolerance, I recognize the adverse forces that have beset these poor unfortunates whose intimate weaknesses we do not know and for which society has always condemned them to ruthless destruction in the name of justice. I question the integrity of the meaningless phrase that these criminals are dangerous to society. Hold on, gentle reader, you have not heard all yet! I even wall say that society has wronged the criminal; actually made him what he is by subjection to the

a door, leading to undreamed of wealth for all mankind. The door to this paradise is locked with the bolt of “profits” to private “operators” of industry. The “rugged individualist” who owns the equipment, does not “operate” the production equipment, but “delegates” the operation to others, who think they are “rugged individualists,” but who, of necessity, are co-operators. No industry could operate in modern times, if each worker had his own "rugged individual plant.” Profits of industry in modem society, with high speed production facilities must be distributed to the consumer. When profits pile up for capital to hoard, or to produce more production equipment which the consumer does not absorb, the capital invested there, and in other equipment becomes stagnant and creates economic collapse. Capital has “dollar” cents, but mighty little economic sense. Normal will not return with production for capital profits. Consumers profits are the only profits in the cards for modem industry. ARMY SERVICE°WORTH MORE THAN SI A DAY By a Reader. I have been reading your Message Center for some time. I am a veteran and very much interested in veterans’ affairs. We all were told before we crossed the pond that we would be taken care of when we came back. Well. I will say that many of us have been forgotten. I was on four battle fronts and in three battles. I was not wounded. I don't draw any pension and doubt if I ever will. If I am not worth more than $1 a day and board, which I must admit was only enough to exist on, I don’t want nothing. If any one thinks that it is fun to face bullets all (Say and then

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

worst treatment and exposure to the most inhuman and degenerate rule conceivable. I have no use for the man who will not steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving babies., Suppose then, that the reader, out of work and reduced to poverty, is driven on in despair by want and hunger to steal that loaf. If he is apprehended, he stands a small chance of being released; and if he is, what has he to look to? Continued want. But, for the sake of continuily in the example, the prisoner is sentenced to thirty days on the penal farm or in some jail whose authorities are entirely devoid of principle and- understanding of human nature and whose every action is motivated by gain and greed. Under such conditions of prison supervision and prison personnel, life for the prisoner becomes a blackest hell. It requires no great imagination to visualize even the most dogmatic jurist in a similar position. Subject Pierpont to the inflictions of society just recalled and you have started him on his reactionary course. Jurist or criminal, then, they are all the same only a step removed with the jurist receiving $2 a day to send his fellow man to death. His parasitic work completed, he may tomorrow find his efforts fraught with desperate need and unemployment. Again the man prevails—again the story of the loaf with all its dire results—and in the end another human life falls, tribute to a jury. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

; sleep on the ground, 111 say in a year or even six months later that you will not have the pep you once | had. This pension bill that recently ! passed, helped some of the poor | veterans, but if the men hadn't benefited by it, the bill would have ; been turned down, and you still 1 would be in my class. This American Legion is a joke j to me. I don't know of a veteran who ever has benefited by being a i member of the legion. BUB | SUGGESTS DILLINGER BE GIVEN HIS FREEDOM By a Reader. I have been a reader of The | Times for years. Every word written l about the bankers and Dillinger is the truth. The people of Indiana should sign | a petition so Dillinger can return as a free man. He is the peoples’ friend, he gave to the banker what ! the bankers gave to us. a a a MAIL CARRIERS WILL SUFFER UNDER PAY SLICES By a Wife and Mother. There has been a curtailment of mail service, and reduction of the substitute carriers’ and clerks’ pay to nothing! It was stated that the SSO monthly wage could be expected to be one-half, or $25 for the next three months. Perhaps a few get as much as SSO, but a majority gets less than S4O a month. It is not right to go after NRA violators when the government is not following the codes with its own employes. The government has cut wages and made men work with no pay to keep from using the extra employes. Some of these extras have spent over four and five years in that capacity, not getting living wages for some time, but trying to keep children clothed and fed and respectable and la school. They

.APRIL’ 11,1934

have no money for dental work or doctor bills. Government employes are not eligible to any relief from county, state or government. I want to help uphold justice, but there doesn’t seem to be much meted out by Mr. Farley. The public naturally thinks the postal employes are doing well compared to the army of unemployed. They don't understand that carriers report at 6 a. m. daily and sometimes stay the entire day without an hour's work. They are only paid for the time they really work. They are required to purchase and keep their uniforms in good condition. Mr. Farley's new act will cut off chances of work and will bring suffering to the families of these extra men. n n n HE’S WAITING FOR SOME OTHER VIOLATORS By E. E. Taylor. I have been listening to the police court broadcast over WKBF and would like to ask a question. Why is it that no street car motormen or people owning “big” cars have been arrested and tried before this court for failure to stop at preferential streets. Every one brought before the court has been poor. They have a hard time getting along as it is?

HONEST BANKERS ARE UPHELD IN LETTER By a Subscriber. I always have read your editorials and I am sure as fair-minded as you always have been you will see my point and grant a subscriber this favor. . I have been a teller for the last seven years in one of the banks which still is open 100 per cent. Banks that now are open have been fair and honest in their dealings and for this reason still are open. They have suffered because of the unfair practices of the ones which closed by having to pay large sums of money for insurance to protect their deposits. Asa teller In an honest institution should my life be endangered by a criminal such as Dillinger? Do you have any right to say he should be loose to kill and rob some innocent person? Is myj life not dear to me and my family? Would you want your loved ones to be in the same position? Did Dillinger beat and torture an old man to find his money? Would you want this to happen to you oi your family? I state again, you have no right to wish this danger on innocent people. The crooked banker has been forced out of the banking field. You are wrong to ever uphold a criminal under any circumstances. Please show some sporting blood and give the good banker a break. DAILY THOUGHT And he said to David, Thou art more righteous than I; for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.—l Samuel 24:17. THE first lesson of history Is the good of evil.—Emerson.

STRANGE!

BY VIRGINIA KIDWELL Strange how people Judge and blame Folks for trivial things they do, N Forgetting they have done the same Or have faults of blacker hue. Who’s so pure himself that he Dares to judge us bitterly? 'Live and let live' Is a creed .We should all do well to heed. .