Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 20, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 June 1934 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER) HOT W. HOWARD President TALCOTT POWELL Editor EARL D. BAKER ...... Business Manager Phone RI ley 5551

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/ r ' t> f s Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Wav

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 1934. __ A SHAMEFUL INCIDENT /'T'HE parole of Harold Herbert Schroeder is A one more humiliation to the citizens of Indiana. Our public officials turned a mad dog loose upon society by releasing John Dillinger. There is scarcely a community in the civilized world that does not hold Indiana’s law enforcement in contempt. There was some excuse for paroling Dillinger. Complaining witnesses and the presiding judge felt that he should “have another chance.” There was no excuse at all for the state prison parole board’s liberation of Schroeder. Members of the board must have realized that their action was questionable for they surrounded the Schroeder parole with such secrecy that, although it occurred March 30, it was only discovered by accident on Saturday. Schroeder’s crime was peculiarly vicious. He was involved in a clandestine love affair. He picked up an unknown man in his car, stabbed him to death and then burned the body beyond hope of identification. Apparently the victim was some poor unfortunate. The motive was a life insurance fraud. Schroeder hoped the body would be identified as his own and that his wife would receive his $22,500 worth of insurance. It takes a particularly cold blooded and scheming type of criminal mind to plan and execute such a crime. No wonder Judge Frank P. Baker, when he heard of the parole, denounced it as “a breach of faith.” No wonder Prosecutor Herbert E. Wilson was shocked beyond measure and exclaimed that Schroeder was “very .dangerous” and should have served his full sentence of twentyone years instead of less than four. The parole board failed to consult either Judge Baker or the prosecutor. It based its curious leniency only upon Schroeder’s good prison record and upon letters written by citizens of the convict’s home town, Mobile, Ala. These citizens may have had good intentions, but they knew nothing of the crime. It is, unfortunately, easy to get people to sign their names to anything. This was proved several months ago by the wag who got up a petition urging the appointment of Zangara, Mr. Roosevelt’s would-be assassin, to the President’s cabinet. The kindest thing that can be said about the members of the parole board is that they paroled Schroeder either because they were grossly ignorant or astonishingly naive. They have proved themselves utterly incompetent and an incompetent parole board is a grave danger. There should be a thorough and public investigation of the Schroeder parole. Decent citizens are tired of their public servants making a joke of the dignity of a great state. MARKET CONTROL AT LAST . 'T'HE stock market control measure has beep ground out of the legislative mill and on to the White House desk, where the President's signature will make if the law. Is it not time for the exchanges of the country to drop their dog-in-the-manger attitude toward this effort of the federal government to establish order and fair dealing in the marketing of securities? The objectives of this legislation are the same objectives that the boards controlling exchanges have long professed. It is a law’ designed to stamp out the admitted abuses that the exchanges themselves could not prevent, or at least did not prevent. • There w-as nothing hasty about this legislation. It came only after many years of trial of self-government by the exchanges had exhausted public patience. There were full, open and fair hearings before committees of both houses of congress. Spokesmen for the exchanges had their say, and scores of their recommendations w r ere written into the law. There was unlimited debate, and on the floors of congress the exchanges had stout and brilliant champions. The legislative battle is over. • Let the controversy die with it. Any attempt to sabotage this new law will work great harm both to the exchanges and the country. Enlightened self-interest on the ; part of exchanges and their members calls for faithful co-operatiofl with the new federal 1 commission. Instead of pouting that the law is unworkable, they should turn to and help to make it work. By this spirit and method they can gain whatever changes in the law that experience proves desirable. But to buck the law and the commission would be to court even more drastic legislation. It is no idle prophecy that if the law' fails because the exchanges do not co-operate the next congress may go beyond mere regulation. On the President rests the responsibility of selecting the five members of the new control commission. They should possess technical competence and high honesty. They should know how to deal tactfully with men without yielding on the principles well defined in the law'. To allow partisan politics to enter into the selection would mean a board made up to appease class interests, sectional interests, racial interests. The only test should be •public interest. And that can be served only by absolute nonpartisanship. * These five commissioners who are to undertake a reform of our investment practices should be men who regard exchanges not as c'ubs for the convenience of gambling gentlemen, but a market where industrialist and investor can engage in fair barter, the one to secure capital necessary for his enterprise, the f investors can meet to buy and sell with access other to make sound use of his savings; where to knowledge of what it is that they buy and sell.

A PREMIUM ON VIOLENCE PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S executive order prescribing a penalty against any employer found guilty of dismissing or demoting an employe for giving evidence in regard to an NR A code violation is the minimum of protection that the government can give to workers. Violations of hour, w r age and collective bargaining provisions of codes have reached the proportions of a national scandal. There can be no enforcement unless the workers themselves are free to supply information. The workers can not testify unless the government protects them from the wrath of unfair employers. But how feeble is this arm of government reaching out to protect the workingman! Passage of the Wagner labor-disputes bill would put more muscle and bone in that protecting arm. Violence is growing in the strike areas on both coasts. And in the Minneapolis strikes there is much fighting. There a regional labor board, hamstrung by inadequate laws, strives desperately to restore industrial peace to the community. Even under the Wagner labor bill—and properly so—that board could not enforce compulsory arbitration, but it would have greater power and prestige. There would be no question of its legal standing. It could insure the enforcement of •well-defined laws against practices which now make orderly collective bargaining in many industries difficult if not impossible. THE TARIFF STAKE 'T'O the man who wields the hoe and follows the plow’ in the cotton fields of the south, the reciprocity tariff bill, soon to become iaw, offers more hope than any other measure considered by this congress. To the man who w’orks in the automobile plant in the north, and the man who stands at the factory gates, the measure is also of vital importance. In 1929, three out of every five bales of American cotton and one out of every ten American automobiles were sold abroad. In 1933, we exported 14 per cent more bales of cotton, but received for it about half as much money. And we exported one-fifth as many automobiles, receiving less than onesixth as much money. Cotton field workers and automobile factory workers are tw'o groups of American laborers w'ho have no. faith in the efficacy of high tariffs as protection to American wages. • Largely because of the disruption in our foreign trade, field wages in the depression dropped to an average of 50 cents a day, and for the same reason, to a lesser extent, unemployed queues lengthened outside automobile factories. Given a fair opportunity, our cotton and our automobiles w’ill dominate the markets of the w'orld. A fair opportunity presupposes an arrangement whereby our customers abroad are allowed to sell enough of their goods in the American market to balance the exchange. If reciprocal trade treaties do not open world markets, America may have to undergo a regimentation that will make our present efforts of production control seem a laissez faire policy. An “America Self-Sustained” may mean the elimination of three out of every five cotton growers, two out of every five tobacco growers, one out of every tnree hog raisers. REMEMBER CHICAGO! Iyyf'EMBERS of the Massachusetts Real Estate Owners’ Association are told by a fellow' member that “bums who own no property and pay no taxes” have been dictating to politicians and causing unduly heavy public expenditures, and that the solution is for the property owner to stop paying taxes. “After all,” says the speaker, “while we taxpayers may be in the minority as far as numbers of votes go, it’s our money w'hich pays the bills.” The taxpayer, heaven knows, has been getting it in the neck for a long time; and yet to class those who pay no taxes as bums, and to suggest that only the taxpayer has a right to tell the politicians what money to spend, is a peculiarly un-American and undemocratic doctrine. After all, the majority of people own no real property and pay no income taxes. Are they to be disfranchised therefor? Chicago not long ago showed what happens when property owners stop paying taxes. Does any other city care to duplicate Chicago’s experience? UNFINISHED BUSINESS /CONGRESS will commit a serious sin of omission if it tables the entire pending program of social legislation as some of its leaders seem determined to do. It also will commit an act of political folly. Before congress are a number of measures vital to the welfare and security of the American people. Some are controversial beyond all hope of agreement in the time left to the present session. But others have been scrutinized carefully and revised after lengthy hearings, and are favored so widely in and out of congress that their passage is certain once they are permitted to come to a vote. Among the latter are: Wagner-Lewis unemployment insurance bill, to encourage state security law's by means of a federal pay roll tax returnable to states adopting standard measures. Dill-Connery old age pension bill, for federal aid up to a third of state funds to pension the aged poor, a measure that would cost only $10,000,000 a year for the present. Wagner-Costigan anti-lynching bill, to make communities and their peace officers responsible for mob murders. Wheeler-Koward Indian rights bill, granting land and other reforms to oppressed Indians. Copeland pure food and drug bill, containing protective amendments to the old law. The immigration program, tempering harsh practices in departments. Wagner labor disputes bill, when properly amended, to provide a labor court and strengthen labor’s rights to free collective bargaining. The housing bill, to standardize home mortgages, facilitate new home building and aid in slum abatement. None of these measures materially affects the federal budget. Opposition comes not from the treasury or the White House. If at all I it comes from small special interest groups.

I Chiefly these measures are in danger because of the indifference of certain congressional leaders. We are not impressed with, the suggestion that all security legislation be postponed, referred to an interim committee and lumped into a broad program covering insurance against sickness, old age, unemployment and other hazards. Delay, a familiar device of former administrations, is not in the spirit of the new deal. Members of congress, about to fold their tents to go back to their electorates, should ask themselves what they will tell the people. They have done some splendid and courageous things this session. But, outside of providing for the bare necessities of relief, the measures they have passed chiefly have been to make savings, investments and other property more secure. This was necessary. But what of the security of the propertyless, the jobless, the aged poor, the red men and the black men and other submerged and voiceless millions? What will members of congress say when they go home and these ask: What have you/ done for us? OLI> AND THE NEW blue plains of the mid-Atlantic offered -*■ a fascinating and uncommon sight not long ago—the spectacle of a race between an square-rigged sailing vessel and one of the fastest of modern ocean greyhounds. The four-masted bark Abraham Rydberg was coming up from Australia to England, carrying grain. She was flying before a moderate gale at a prodigious clip—and suddenly she found herself alongside the Mauretania, going in the same direction. And while the Mauretania’s passengers lined the rails, the skipper of the bark cracked on all sail and, for a time, actually held abreast of the great liner. In the end, of course, when the wind moderated, the steamer drew ahead, and the “race” w'as over. But the event is a deeply interesting illustration of the fact that, w'hen conditions are just right, the windjammer can hold her ow'n with the best of them—for a little while, anyway. DANGEROUS DRIVING 'T'HE w’riter of this editorial sat on the front -*• porch of a house in a residential suburb the other night and saw one of the commonest and most appalling sights modern America offers—an automobile zipping along at thirty-five miles an hour down a narrow street, along which children were playing. To be sure, nobody got hurt. It just happened that all the children kept out of the car’s path. Nobody suddenly forgot and chased a rolling ball out into the street; no child came down a driveway on roller skates and headed out for the opposite curb. Children get absorbed'in their play and do such things frequently; this time they didn't. But the point is that if one of them had done so, that car never could have been stopped in time. Technically the driver might l have been guiltless; but no one who has seen cars dashing along streets where children are .playing would have found it easy to forgive him. The man who drives fast where children are playing is a potential killer. A University pf London professor has traced the origin of the human brain to the organ of smell in marine animals. But there’s many a man, even today, who’s been called a poor fish. Dr. Edwin Hubble, famous Mt. Wilson astronomer, says the universe is a sphere 36,000,000,000,000,000,000.000 (36 sextillion) miles in diameter—still not big enough to hold men like Dillinger.

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABELL

DECORATION DAY and the impending fleet review in New York left stay-at-home Washington notables looking like characters in Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village.” Nearly every one was out of town. Those who weren’t acted for the most part as if they wished they were. In fact, a number of diplomats and officials tried valiantly to get away, but were caught in the net of daily work. One party of diplomats sought to charter a small boat and follow the fleet around the harbor. Two things stopped this plan—first, the money it cost to charter the small boat; second, the fact that the boat might sink if as many as it would take to pay the bill climbed aboard. And they couldn’t swim. An active Chilean envoy, Mr. Mario Rodriguez, paid S2O for a stateroom on board the steamer Virginia of the Panama-Pacific line. This vessel was scheduled to set out from her pier at 7:30 this fnorning, anchor near the Indianapolis, where the President’s party stands, and return at 5 o’clock. Others wished to follow' Mario’s example, but the Virginia was sold out. There were 1,200 guests aboard. tt tt tt Decoration day notes; The Persian minister, Hitler-mustached Monsieur Dialal, limped about painfully with the aid of a hickory stick. He scalded himself badly with a samover full of boiling water. * * • Ambassador Andre de Laboulaye of France wore the pink rosette of the Legion of Honor, but woke up too late to meet the French fliers, Codos and Rossi, at union station. The usual mixup between daylight and standard time. * * 0 Ruddy-cheeked Michael Mac White, the Irish minister, hurried away to New York to see the fleet reviewed, after hearing a field mass in Baltimore. Envoy Mac White looked very formal in a black coat, with plenty of Paris pomade on his hair. * * • Mr. Arthur Schoenfield, American minister to Santo Domingo, appeared as usual, carrying gray suede gloves and umbrella a l’anglaise—a custorfi he follows in fair and foul weather. For once he was right. It rained. * * • Minister Prochnik of Austria wore his monocle at a big dinner in the Mayflower hotel. (The minister only wears his monocle on important occasions.) ' * * • Brigadier-General Horton, known as the most decorated (as well as -most affable) army officer in Washington, fittingly celebrated Decoration day with three rows of decorations on his khaki uniform. * * • White-haired Governor Paul Pearson of the Virgin islands was the only passenger on the night plane to Miami, as he departed for St. Thomas, carrying an altimeter presented by admirers as a “Virgin islands elevator.” * * ° Dan Moody, former Governor of Texas, spent a busy day looking up old friends. He’s in town for a few days—maybe longer. His hotel phone is always busy. . * * • Secretary of State Cordell Hull entrained for New York, dressed with his customary simplic-ity-dark suit, plain dark tie —and planning to utilize the time en route by working on affairs of state just as if still in his own office.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

THE ONLY WEAPON HE HASN’T TRIED!

The Message Center

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all car, have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or lessJ PARK BOARD COULD USE ALMANACS By E. L. It seems to me: That the city park board should spend more time checking up on weather forecasts and getting the park swimming pools ready for opening during a hot spell rather than running around the town worrying about whether Mr. Whoois is to be the next mayer or Mr. Whatsagain runs for prosecuting attorney. Some way or other, the only time some politicians consider the children is when they can chuck them under the chin with the parents’ ballots in view. It’s time that we got a little bit more administration and less apologetic “sorrys” from city officials who are vitally concerned with the needs of citizens only when those needs bring a flock of ballots to the party in power. tt tt tt COMMON SENSE URGED TO BETTER TRAFFIC By B. V. D. Why are the police so anxious to “bawl” out all and sundry for minor traffic violations, giving stickers and arresting moto.rists for perhaps a one-minute overtime parking offense, and yet so blind as to let cars roam the streets at night with no lights, maybe one light in a grfcat number of instances, no tail lights.* I understand the city has an ordinance prohibiting parking of a car on the street at night without front and rear lights, but I have as yet to find a car parked on the street for the night with any lights. I may have overlooked one or two but my business takes me out frequently until early in the morning and these parked cars with no lights constitute a real hazard. Perhaps the worst offender of the lot is the motorist who starts out, fills up on beer and then forgets to turn on his lights. They swing around corners and if you’re lucky, you dodge them. Why is it the police can’t try to protect the fellow who is trying to obey the law by forcing the other fellow to observe merely the simple laws of common sense in driving. tt n tt LEGALIZED MURDER AND SPEEDWAY By L. B. N. The Times carried recently a long-winded interview with Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker, the Speedway and aviation impresario, giving our “ace of ace’s” impression of the 1934 500-mile race. Colonel Rickenbacker nobly pointed out the great engineering advances. But he forgot to mention the fact that before the race that he lauded as “so free of accidents” two men lost their lives on his Speedway track. Wasn’t it Colonel Rickenbacker who roared about “legalized murder” when President Roosevelt cracked down on his (libel deleted) aviation company and put the mail service in the hands of the army. If anybody had any right to shout about “legalized murder” it is not Colonel Rickenbacker of the motor speedway. tt tt tt BELIEVES LASTING DRY ERA IS ON WAY By A Dry. It won’t be long now! When the repealists fought so hard for death of prohibition, they promised, as a vote bait, that the old-time conditions of drunkenness would not return; in fact, that the

Court Victory Won by Old Age Pensions

By An Eagle. Old age pensions have won a signal victory in Grant county—a victory that surely will mean something to even the most reactionary and selfish of officials. Fully advised that the pension law would become effective Jan. 1, 1934, the Grant county council nevertheless appropriated only $4,000 for pensions, which soon was depleted. Recently, eleven pension applications filed a mandate suit m an effort to obtain payment, and Circuit Judge O. D. Clawson upheld the mandatory clause of the pension law and ordered the council to appropriate $25,000. In compliance with the court order, the council made the appropriation. Clay Kearns, Grant county

existing drunkenness, which they tried to blame on prohibition, would disappear. We have had legal beer and whisky about a year now, and what is the situation? The old fashioned saloon, except for whisky, has returned. Every restaurant and case where a decent, God-fearing man could take his family, now sells beer and is overrun with boisterous drunks, falling over each other and respectable persons as well. I stepped into a little restaurant the other Sunday morning to get a bottle of milk, as the milk man had missed us. While I was waiting at the counter, up walked a poor besotted creature with a stein of beer in one hand and a whisky bottle in the other. He started telling me his life history, although I gave him no encouragement, and tried hard to make me drink some of his foul “rotgut.” Such conditions are intolerable. Everywhere one goes he sees youths and adults, as well, in a polluted condition. Unless there is an immediate and decided change, the public will rise up in arms and prohibition will be back, this time to stay. Hasten the day. n tt tt ‘WARDEN, BRUSH THOSE WALLS AWAY’—SO LONG By F. A. D. Yo! Ho! and a bottle of “humbug”—and as it’s too hot for a yawn you’ll have to let this go at just wondering what next at the Indiana state prison. First, ten men escape from the Indiana state prison. Second, along comes John Dillinger and makes a travesty of the Crown Point jail with his little whittling knife. Third, Harold Schroeder, alleged torch slayer, is released by the prison’s board of trustees without askig the prosecuting attorney of Marion county or the criminal court judge who sentenced him whether he should be free. What next? Just any day now and Stephenson will be out of prison garb and dining with the McNerts and other Scottish clans, while the public thinks he still is in prison where he so richly deserves to be. tt tt a BEER DISPENSING SYSTEM ASSAILED By H. A. K. Asa Times reader who enjoys a glass of beer in the cool of the evening, after the day’s hard work and hotter sun has disappeared, I would like to enter a protest against the way the working man’s beverage now is handled. I actually am ashamed to take my wife and children into restaurants any more in the evening. The

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

auditor, announces that payment of pensions on the basis of the court's order w'ill not entail a loan. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the proper enforcement of the old age pension law can be obtained if a determined fight to that end is made. Within a few days, the Fraternal Order of Eagles in Indiana, chief advocate of the pension system, will meet in state convention at Evansville. This is to serve notice on shortsighted, reactionary politicians and other groups like minded, that the order intends to see that the 1935 Indiana legislature strengthens the present pension law to bring real benefit to every needy old man gnd woman. In simple justice, the order can not take any other course.

first thing you encounter is a flip young waitress who seems to question your presence unless you im mediately order beer and continue ordering it. Quite close to you. as it usually happens, will be a party of young drunks whooping it up, yelling and telling obscene stories in a too easily heard tone of voice. Take a look around and the character of the women present is forcibly impressed on you in many cases. In the old days they stayed on the streets and kept out of the places supposedly reserved for decent folk. Another flagrant affront to decent people is the great number of minors one sees in the beer parlors these evenings. Those under 21 are in about as great a majority as those who have reached their majority. Is this the way we are supposed to raise our children—teach them to become drunkards? Please understand I am not against the enjoyment of beer in the proper place and in the proper amounts but something should be done about it if we are to keep our self-respect. Must we continue to associate with harlots and their ilk merely to drink an innocent glass of beer? tt tt tt WHEN KNIGHTHOOD TRIES TO FLOWER Bv Sir Walter. Women who do not have the courtesy to thank members of the male sex trying to perform small acts of ordinary courtesy for them are not only annoying but are doing the very thirg which eventually will curtail all efforts of men to be polite. Several times during the hot weather I have paused at the entrance of office buildings to hold open heavy doors for women who were passing in or out. They sailed by without so much as a thank you, or an attempt to take hold of the door. I realize that my effort in courtesy was a very small thing. It involved a few seconds of my time while hurrying about the city. The physical discomfort involved was trivial. But the mental discomfiture suffered by the realization that many women are ungrateful for small courtesies is distressing. When one tries o perform even the smallest act of kindness and is not even rewarded with a “Thank you,” one’s natural inclination is to say, “well, the hell with them next time.” tt a tt PINK PAPER EXIT FULLY APPROVED By C. T. Smyth. Congratulations to The Times. It seems that I arrived in Indianapolis the very day you abandoned the pink paper editions. It has been

. 'JUNE 4, 1934

many months since I last visited here and my fondness for ScrippsHoward policy and Scripps-Howard newspapers always leads me to purchase The Times. I must say that The Times has improved 1.000 per cent since 1 last saw it. And doing away with the pink paper was one of the greatest improvements. Compared with your new newspaper, your competitor strikes me as outstanding among sensational sheets. May you continue the good work. tt tt a STREET WORK AT RACE TIME HIT By J. T. C. I agree wholeheartedly with your stand against the annual procedure by our city authorities of tearing up every street and highway in town leading to the Speedway just about race time. It is high time some newspaper started stepping all over our city officials. tt tt tt REAL LIBER THINKERS NEEDED FOR INDIANA By a New Dealer. Should the state conventions nominate Louis Ludlow and Arthur Robinson, both love children of the reactionaries, as candidates for senator, citizens of Indiana will be in the peculiar position of having to elect a man neither liberal nor in sympathy with the policies of President Roosevelt. While Robinson is the most flagrant bellower against the administration, Ludlow has quietly voted against. many White House measures. The real liberal thinkers have not broken through the political dogmatism in Indiana sufficiently to be in a position to place themselves before the voters. tt tt a MILITIA ACTIONS AT SPEEDWAY SCORED By Another D. D. Disgusted Democrat's letter on the actions of national guardsmen at the Speedway should be instructive as to the caliber of men in the guard and should raise a very pertinent question. The question; Under what possible law does the adjutant general of the state allow the use of national guardsmen in army uniforms as private guards, privately paid, for a sporting event? This question is asked in all good faith and without thought of criticism for the Speedway, which, this year at least, provided a grand spectacle. The action of the guardsmen in searching fcfle drunk—and there were plenty of drunks —is in line with the actions' of the guardsmen called in to Toledo. There to “keep order,” these tough young men murdered two strikers before the Governor began to order them out.

So They Say

We’ve had few strikes, but much publicity—and that’s good.—Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. THE MEETING BY ALYS WASCHSTETTER Ago I said at parting, “Time will heal my heart, To forget will be so easy, We shall go our ways apart,” So I thought my love was over, But today we met once more, The same desires rush thru me As they did before. Your eyes are just as dear to me, Your touch is yet a thrill, A yea* has come and gone, my love, And I ache for you still.