Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 99, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 September 1934 — Page 10

PAGE 10

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TUESDAY. SEPT 4. 13

THE ANSWER TNDIANA should by all odds be the best govA emed state in the country. Situated squarely in the ’ Valley of Democracy." its people are known throughout the world for an intense, continuing interest in politics. Theoretically, an alert citizenship is the fulfillment of the American ideal. Why then should the name of Indiana have become a synonym for lax law enforcement? Why should we be celebrated throughout the western hemisphere for the Dillinger mob? For prisons that are mere sieves? For courts so lax that gangsterism laughs at them? For the fact that a great state has surrendered to the underworld? The Democrats have an answer. They will teU you that they have inherited a nauseating mess from previous Republican administrations, which callously and stupidly sold out the public interest to every vagabond special interest that came along with a twenty dollar bill in its wallet. The Republicans have an answer. They will tell you the Democrats, elected to power by voters of both parties, have sacrificed trust placed in them to build a wholly selfish and bungling political machine—unable to fulfill the fundamental obligation of government, protection of lives and property. Both are right. No state in modern times has been victimized by such incredibly ignorant and corrupt leadership as has Indiana. Not all Republicans are knaves. Nor are all Democrats fools. There are high-grade, publicminded individuals in both parties—men who could restore this state to its traditional and rightful place, if their respective machines would allow it. The answer to our law enforcement problem is simple and inexpensive: take politics completely out of the police and penal systems. Civil service and the merit system can do it. Give a young man a real chance to make a life career in the state police, in our prison administration. Give him surety in his job. a decent salary, the nght to pride in his work and a pension for his dependents if he lays down his life for his fellow-citizens. That is a common sense, reasonable program, which will be opposed to the last ditch by the professional politicians of both parties. Why? Because they wish to prostitute law enforcement to keep themselves in office. Partisan politics has no place in this problem. The voters of Indiana should remember that, in the last analysis, they are not Democrats or Republicans, but Americans. A SPLENDID RECORD ONE of the most encouraging signs in modern government is the fact that graft is still news. A public official who conducts his office with a decent regard for honor and justice is seldom in the headlines. People still expect just such behavior from those in whom they repose their trust. So Mayor Reginald Sullivan and his controller. E\ans Woollen Jr., have received little attention from the press. Their administration has been untouched by even a breath af scandal. There have been no payless paydays for city employes. While bigger and richer cities have wallowed in bankruptcy, begged the federal government for aid, the credit of Indianapolis has remained sound. Mayor Sullivan began his term with a $567,000 indebtedness wished on him by his predecessor. He will end it with a surplus of around a quarter of a million dollars. We know of no other city of this size which is even within reaching distance of a surplus. Most municipalities are wondering where the money is coming from for the next garbage collection. Indianapolis has been through the worst depression in the history of mankind and has come out—with a surplus! City officials who can hang up such a record should have a special decoration invented for them THE RELIEF RECORD T*HE Richberg report on federal relief is shocking in its disclosure of the depth and extent of want in this, the worlds richest, nation. Mr. Richberg tells us that in June the government was providing relief to 4.200.000 families, embracing 16.500.000 persons. This is about 13 per cent of the entire population. Os course, the drought has increased the burden of suffering, accounting partly for 1.000.000 cases in eighteen states. But where, among all the modern "annals of the poor." can b? found a parallel to such poverty in the midst of plenty? The burden, too. is staggering. According to Mr. Richberg s incomplete figures, direct relief cost the federal government $1,338,000,000 between January. 1933. and June of this year. This does not include last winter s huge CWA expenditures or other indirect relief projects financed from Washington. Some circumstances soften the harsh outlines of this stark picture. One Is that the New Deal has put both heart and brains into relief. It has standardized relief at a much higher level than in the old ostrich days. In May. 1933. the average family on relief was reeei%-ing sl6 a month: now the average Is about $23. The upward trend is caused in part by price increase of some 20 per cent, but also by larger food and clothing budgets under the work relief programs. It sull is too low for physical and social health. Work relief is being substituted lor alms Soma 1.600.000 cases, one third of the total, now get relief in the form of wages Under the new emergency work divisions, the wages are only S3O a month for each famJy. compared with between S4O and $57 under CWA. One

hopes that the awes of petty graft and polities that marred CWA'i otherwise splendid services are being eliminated from the state programs. Such a wage leaves nothing for grafters and exploiters. The most hopeful sign Is the government’s determination to offer a better answer than charity. The rural rehabilitation program, CCC, the subsistence homestead projects, other experiments are feeling their way to more lasting relief. There should be more useful work to fit the training of the unemployed instead of wasteful made-work. Chiefly, hope lies In forthcoming plans for social security. Fortunately, the government realizes that it must do more than Just keep the wolf from the doors of its destitute. In place of costly, inadequate and unscientific doles it Is formulating plans for a nation-wide system lor social security to put before the next congress. MARY MOONEY A STORY of "hope deferred that maketh the heart sick” was the life of Mary Mooney, who died at 85 on the eve of Labor day in San Francisco. Eighteen years ago Mother Mooney saw her son Tom snatched from the family, tried for killing ten persons with a bomb, convicted and sentenced to hang. Never did she doubt what the whole world now knows, that Tom was innocent, that he had been victimized by a conspiracy During all those years she believed that one day truth and justice would triumph over class hatred to open San Quentin’s great prison gates for him. Old as she was, recently she set out to rouse the world to the horror of what California was doing. She traveled 20,000 miles, to the capitals of Europe, and to Washington, and pleaded with kings, dictators and Presidents. She had begged five Governors for pardon, written thousands of letters, made scores of speeches in her Irish brogue. Just before she died things looked brighter. Upton Sinclair had promised Mooney a pardon and had been nominated lor Governor, An appeal was being taken to the United States supreme court. Hope lay in both directions. Mary Mooney never will see her boy free and vindicated. Will the rest of-us? GRIM REMINDER TF the last czar of Russia has a ghost, that shade must have Indulged in an ironic chuckle or two the other day—a chuckle at a death-bed. For a blind, nearly deaf woman of 90-odd was dying In a Czechoslovakian village near Prague, and the ghost of the last czars could be pardoned if it found something grimly amusing in the circumstances. This woman was Katharina BreschkoBreschkowskaya; and since that name is pretty long and unpronounceable, it is simpler to refer to her by the title she used to wear so proudly—“grandmother of the Russian revolution.” She was already an old woman when the last Romanoff was shot to death in a cellar at Ekaterinburg; and before that time she had spent no less than fifty years of her life in one or another of the czar’s prisons for revolutionary activities. She had been one of that devoted band of Russian dreamers who hated autocracy and oppression and risked the worst that the czar could do to bring them to an end. Well, these dreamers finally had their way. The czar's government fell, the Siberian prisons were emptied, and the great era of democracy and freedom seemed at last ready to dawn across Russia. And then the revolution ran out from under its little grandmother. Instead of freedom and democracy, Russia got Communism. The czar was dead, and his nobles either were dead or in exile; but there was no place in the new order for those who had given their lives to the fight against czarism, unless they happened to believe In the particular kind of revolution that Russia’s new rulers were handing out. So this aging veteran of the czar’s prisons had to flee from Russia, just like any purseproud nobleman. She went to foreign lands, remarking that she had waited half a century for the downfall of the czars and was willing to wait equally long, if need be, for the downfall of the Bolsheviks. And when she came to her death-bed, at last, one of the friends who hastened to her side was Alexander Kerensky—another revolutionary who found the revolution running out from under him, and who dares not return to Russia. So the czar’s ghost must have smiled a grim little smile. A revolution is such an incalculable thing. Starting one is like loosing some great, uncontrollable force of nature. The solid land itself seems to break up—and the one who started it all is no safer than anyone else. ANOTHER WINTER COMING THE critical nature of the unemployment relief picture in the United States is shown graphically by the news that just about one-fourth of the inhabitants of New York City now are receiving substantial relief of some kind. Welfare Commissioner Hodson says that fully 200.000 New York families are on relief now. and that the number may rise to half a million before the end of the year. The effort to find the money to finance this tremendous relief load is jarring New York to its foundations, naturally enough. Such a load can not be borne indefinitely. It can not be borne at all without full public realization of the prime importance of keeping people from starvation. If the New York case were an isolated instance, things would not be so bad. But it is not. Ail across the country the situation is very similar. It is not pleasant to think of what may happen if a substantial and lasting industrial revival does not come very soon. AFTER FOUR CENTURIES CENTURIES ago. when the Spaniards were looting the incalculably rich treasure chests of the Incas of Peru, the Job of getting the gold home safely was a ticklish and uncertain one. Great galleons took the bullion across the Atlantic but in spite of the fact that the whole Spanish navy was sent out to guard them. English corsairs got their hands on plenty of it. The noble art of hijacking was performed in a way to turn the Spaniards’ hair gray. One is reminded of this, somehow, by the extreme precautions that had to be taken

when the federal government began to move $2,000,000,000 in gold from the San Francisco mint to the Denver mint. A small army of police, federal men and soldiers was on hand to guard it. Two hundred machine guns were ready to shoot down hijackers. The moral is unpleasant, but clear. Conditions in the United States today are very much like those on the high seas in the lawless sixteenth century. “COME AND GET IT” HPO the music of this familiar dinner call Chicago has started paying its teachers their long overdue salaries. The back pay came out of a fat feed bag of $26,300,000, of which $22,500,000 was a federal RFC twenty-year loan. This loan had been made legal by anew act lobbied through the last congress by the Illinois delegation. Certainly the teachers should be paid. But Chicago’s payoff isn’t a pretty picture any way you look at it. Why should Uncle Sam, with all the legitimate calls on his generosity, nave to advance millions to a rich city to pay delinquent teachers’ salaries? Because that city’s politicians had tangled its tax and assessment system into a hopeless snarl. Given this situation and the specially-fraxned law, the federal government could do no less than it did. Other mendicant cities should be warned by the Chicago mess. Most of them probably can not borrow under this new law, which requires revenue-producing property as security for a federal loan. They need to curb their politicians and reform their antiquated and unfair tax methods. MORE FOR FARMERS IT'ARM purchasing power is going to be up this year, in spite of the drought. Latest estimate are that farm income from the year will exceed $6,000,000,000 —fully a billion above last year’s figures. A good part of this increase, of course, is due directly to the federal government’s benefit payments. These are expected to run to approximately $780,000,000. Higher prices for farm produce will make up the rest of the anticipated increase. Now while the bulk of this rise is artificial, the good effects of it should be evident, nevertheless. The farmer will be able to buy more things this year than he bought last. This, in turn, will help to stimulate industrial production—and, we hope, will help to start us on that upward spiral by which the prosperity of each class or group communicates itself to the whole country. A learned doctor says there Is no such thing as growing pains, but he probably never treated a fat woman who was still gaining weight while trying to reduce. One reason the melancholy days are melancholy is that so many awful poets insist on writing about them. It looks as if Germany has a valid reason to declare war on the United States. A prominent publisher, returning from: Europe, says Hitler is a male Aimee Semple McPherson,

Liberal Viewpoint —BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

IT seems to be agreed pretty generally among thoughtful persons that the problems of today present a complexity which defies solution through anything short of a more adequate and realistic educational system. But it seems to be equally clear that the complexity and difficulty of these problems are developing much more rapidly than the educational policies needed to cope with them. Dean Randall has written a very interesting book on the human side of conventional college life as seen by an educational administrator. (“The Dean’s Window.” By Otis E. Randall. The Stratford Company. $2.50.) From this standpoint there are many promising suggestions which reveal the author to be a warm-hearted human being if not an educational revolutionist. There is, unfortunately, very little effort to come to grips with the necessity for a complete recasting of the whole curriculum. The human side of education is discussed with equal freshness and vividness from the standpoint of the student in John Coulter’s account of the mental experience of a typical freshman in an average small American college. (“In Freshman Year.” By John G. Coulter. William H. Wise & Cos. $1.50.) There is plenty of incidental implication of woefully archaic and unrealistic character of the content of temporary education. a a a THE major problems of educational reconstruction revolve more around the issue of what to teach than how to teach it. There is room, however, for a clear manual for educational psychology, and Professor Leary has written a very good one. (“Educational Psychology.” By Daniel Bell Leary. Thomas Nelson & Sons; $2.50). Its outstanding merit's are good organization, clarity of style, and a broad attitude toward the whole subject of psychology and pedagogy. No one is making a more heroic effort to bring education up-to-date than Professor Walter B. Pitkin. In this volume he wrestles with the problem created by the fact that some older lines of occupation and professional activity are disintergrating with the process of technology ! and social institution. (“New Careers for 1 Youth.” By Walter B. Pitkin. Simon & Schuster; $1.50.) Others are becoming terrifically overcrowded. Mr. Pitkin takes into account not only the changes of the immediate past, but the probable trends in the near future, and advises the youth of the land how to prepare for a job which may exist when they are ready to step into it. a a a PROFESSOR PITKIN'S other work embodies systematic suggestions as to how those who I have lost their jobs or are about to lose them may find themselves again and organize a com- | munity life which will enable them to live pas- ■ sablv even in the terminal stages of capitalistic civilization. ("The Chance of a Lifetime.” By Walter B. Pitkin. Simon & Schuster. $2.) One of the most critical phases of modern education is that which is produced by the rapid progress of knowledge. A man who had a good education in 1914 is hopelessly out-of-date if he has not freshened his knowledge since. A recognition of this fact has brought about the very important adult education movement. Mr. Fansler has made an important contribution to technique of adult education in presenting satisfactory ways for operating the symposium and the informal discussion groups in adult education. (“Discussion Methods for Adult Groups.” By Thomas Fansler. American Association for Adult Education. sl.) One of the chief indictments against contemporary civilization is that we may plan for manufacturing goods and managing money, but rarely plan intelligent community life. The American Association for Adult EduI cation has sponsored an illuminating survey of a very interesting and promising planned community. that of Radburn in Bergen County, N. J.* It is quite obvious that this local com- | munity planning will be quite as important in ; reconstrucing American life and society as the large scale national planning which is let down upon us from above. •t' Radbum. a Plan of Living." By Robert B. Hudson. American Association for Adult Education. sl.)

THE TNDIANAI’OLIS TIMES

Ty yr ✓'"'i < IVleSSage v>IOIXUOX*

(Timet readers are Invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so a'l can have a chance, himit them to ISO words or lets.) m m a SCHOOL BUILDING WORK URGED By H. L. Seeger. To James A. Moffett: To stimulate the construction of new buildings your department and the RFC might jointly promote an extensive program of construction of new school buildings. Realizing the heavy indebtedness of many school corporations and the clamor for tax reduction we know that our needs for new schools will be long delayed in realization. However, a tremendous impetus would result in the construction industry if all the needed and delayed school construction were begun at once. To overcome the tax difficulty and the heavy debt of school corporations and yet get immediate action for construction, I want to outline a plan that will help the recovery program through employment of labor of the better grades and also meet the imperative needs of adequate school facilities for the nation’s youth. 1. Where bonded indebtedness has reached its limit, preventing the sale of school bonds, let the school boards apply to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for a school lease contract, the buildings to be financed by the RFC and leased to the school authority for a period of twenty-five years, the contract to be a lease with option to buy. Lease to be on a basis of 4 per cent of total cost of building for a period of the first five years, the remaining twenty years to be on a basis of 9 per cent, including the 4 per cent interest, deducting 5 per cent annually from the principal representing cost of the building. Millions of dollars of new school j construction and much employment can be started immediately, leaving ; us a permanent value for the money ! expended. The crippled condition of local public finances will delay this type of work until great damage will be done to communities. If we will use just a littie horse sense we can solve this condition. n a o SUSPECTS MASK ON LIBERTY LEAGUE By a Times Reader. The American Liberty League •seems to be sponsored by the same crowd that fostered the Association Against the Eighteenth Amendment. History perhaps gives us as many examples of crimes committed in the name of liberty as in the name of religion. The purpose of this crowd, in repeal of the eighteenth amendment was to unload income taxes of the rich on poor beer buyers. They were like the Greeks bearing gifts, clothed in personal liberty uniforms. The second act of the drama presents the same leading characters. In the monologue we again hear liberty as the catchword to feel the victims of the plunderbund. Yesterday the rabble yelled, “Repeal that part of the constitution which interferes with our liberty to shift our taxes from rich to poor.” Today the battle cry is "Stop the New Deal!” It may be unconstitutional, at least our liberty to dominate is threatened. There must not be any attempt to bring changes which threaten our omnipotence over our business. That would be dangerous and un-American. These fellows only want a Constitution which gives them the power to act as if they were the only people in the country. Individualism put on a harness when our Constitution became our compass. The Constitution carries

SUGAR FOR HIS COFFEE

Former Convict Discusses Prison Life

By An Ex-Convict. I am writing in reference to an article written by Ed Featherings, headed “Incompetency blamed in jail breaks.” I know from his article that he is not informed as to the present condition of plac.es of incarceration. There always will be jail breaks under the existing form of government. Most inmates confined in institutions in this country are there because of the struggle for existence or what might be termed economic prisoners. Prison punishment in this state and in other states is barbaric, and if you would suffer the punishment imposed on you by a bunch of low minded guards, you soon would become desperate and you would be glad to obtain liberty by escaping, thus risking your life and if returned, more time added to your sentence. For a very slight infraction of some prison rulfe, the warden don’t mind putting you in the hole (isolation) for ten or fifteen days on bread and water If that won’t make a very desperate man out of you, what will? obligations as a foundation of personal rights. It was a surrender of personal rights which are incompatible with group rights, public rights and social well being. Let’s hope the mask of liberty will not disguise the real purpose of our gentlemen of fortune, who intend to promote and continue misfortune on a national scale. u ft ft REPORTS METEORITE IN BRILLIANT FLIGHT 0 By Phillip Vi. Carpenter. After reading my copy of The Times, I was surprised # not to see something in print about the meteorite that fell at 8:46 p. m., Aug. 29. I have worked nights as a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania railroad for a period of twenty-seven years, and have seen hundreds of meteorites, but nothing like this one. It so happened tnat I was looking out of an east window when suddenly the sky lighted .up, and instantly the meteor appeared —the most beautiful object I ever have seen in the sky. It appeared the size of a large barrel and quite close; in fact, I thought it would fall in a field near where I was. Its color was a brilliant blue and. it suddenly exploded with quite a display. Its flight duration, to my eye, was about five or six seconds. I wondered if any one reported this to your paper. Undoubtedly, others beside myself must have seen it. I would be pleased to know more about this. n ft a YOUTH PRESENTS VIEW OF SEX By R. M. Waller. I have just read H. S. Osgood’s letter in The Message Center. I would like to dispute his statement that the so-called “flaunting of suntanned bodies” has a demoralizing influence upon the young men of today. Well, Mr Osgood, I’m one of these young men and I saw that sign advertising bread every morning and evening while going to and from work You see. Mr. Osgood, the younger generation has graduated from the age that I imagine you were reared in, to an age when sex is not a subject to be referred to only vulgarly. We do not have the morbid curiosity that prompted young men to stand near corners so they could

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

Sometimes a man is punished by being made to stand at attention in a small circle on the floor for long lengths of time. Try this. Just do without food, except two thin slices of bread and a cup of water three times a day for a period of three days. It makes you very weak. Try standing erect for five minutes without moving your body or arms or speaking a word and see how you like it. That taxes every nerve in your body and also every muscle, and very soon you will be so weak you hardly can stand at all. Everything produced in institutions in this state nets a large profit for the state. Prison officials don’t try to reform prisoners. That would be impossible to undertake with degenerate guards, many of whom do not have a grade school education. Men in prison should be taught a trade or be able to attend school and educate themselves, so that they will be capable of earning livings when released. There should be more probation under the direction of a probation officer who is fitted to help other men. catch a, glimpse of a carelessly exposed ankle. Young men and girls of today go swimming attired in abbreviated trunks and one-piece bathing suits and yet their minds are free of lewdness. They have been accustomed to seeing each other practically nude, and think nothing of it. We are called wild, and for what reason? Just because we are frank with each other, drink, keep late hours, freely discuss sex and don’t watch our conduct in public. And why this clamor about cars being parked on lonely roads. Well, why not? It’s a lot safer than one arm driving. And what sometimes is done in those parked cars is no worse than what you more than likely did in a buggy. CARAWAY CARTOON BRINGS PROTEST By E. B. Asa rule, I enjoy the work of your cartoonist, but his cartoon last week ridiculing Senators Long, Robinson and Caraway was crude and uncalled for. Why must The Times continually show the veteran how very little you think of *him? Like all veterans I know you threw this mud at these three senators because they are the little handful the Spanish and World war veterans really can depend on year after year to vote in their interests. Senator Robinson is here and can speak for himseif. As for Senator Long, your Westbrook Pegler said in his column in The Times the same day that the lamentable truth was that Long's opponents were as low and dirty as he. I presume Mr. Pegler included The Times in this indictment. But, as an Arkansas citizen who twice has had the honor of voting for the first woman senator in our nation’s history, I protest your caricature of her as a buffoon. Women interested in Mrs. Cara-

Daily Thought

And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him.—Leviticus, 24:19. CHRISTIANITY teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself; modem society acknowledges no neighbor.—Lord Beaconsfield.

SEPT. 4, 1934

way know how she overcame early obstacles to education, stood by her square-shooting husband in the swamp lands of Arkansas while he worked as prosecuting attorney to m-ike it a place where decent people might rear their families in peace. I believe even The Times will have to admit that Mrs. Caraway has proved that a woman can make good in a position of high responsibility in our nation’s crisis. Mrs. Caraway holds office by virtue of having been elected without opposition for her first term, and by more than twice as many votes as her field of opponents in the election for the regular teflf^ Thomas Jefferson’s test of a candidate for office was: “Is he honest?” Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?” I challenge you to prove that Senator Caraway is not. To be still more specific, I challenge you to take the record show one single vote Mrs. has cast against the interests J 1 the common people. V Mrs. Caraway is indorsed 100 per cent by Labor, national union publication, which printed a special Arkansas edition to aid her campaign. The Times claims itself to be tha working man’s friend, yet pictures this modest little champion of tha worker as a fool in cap and bells. In conclusion. I do not blame your cartoonist or even the local editors because I realize you can no more call your souls your own than any chain employe. But I would advise the Scripps-Howard chain on two things: First, better wash the windows of your lighthouse and get your facta straight, before you assail the character of a good woman who stands for the very ideals your paper used to stand for in better days. And secondly, I called your cartoon crude because you published it only a few days after the death of Mrs. Caraway’s son. Even in war the enemy is given time to bury its dead. Common decency should cause a paper, like an individual, to treat any bereaved woman with respect.

So They Say

I never would advise a young man to take up boxing as a profession. It isn’t worth the chances one takes.—Jess Willard, ex-heavy-weight champion. Real revival of the construction industry would end the depression almost over night—Walter F, Schmidt, president-elect National Association Real Estate Boards. The alliance of crime and politics has so prostituted police departments that Dillinger found it possible to buy protection.—C. Ray Hansen, former Cook county (111.) prosecutor.

Lovely World

BY EUGENIE RICHABT This lovely world will cling to me Beyond the grave in memory. Though I shall die, I shall not sleep. Insentient, I still shall keep Some dream of earth’s bright ecstasy. • There I shall lie, but ardently Long for the sky, the brilliant sea. Remembering, though buried deep, This lovely world. My dust shall feed the budding tree, Shall turn to blossom. I shall be A living, flowering, earthy, heap, Shall turn to daisies lovers reap. It wins the final victory— This lovely world, (