Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 120, Indianapolis, Marion County, 28 September 1934 — Page 24

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FRIDAY SEPT 2*. 1934 FUTILE VIOLENCE 'T'HE causes of the textile strike are remote from Indianapolis. They are a part of a nation-wide struggle between a big industry and its employes. This conflict, we think, would never have taken place had it not been for the shillyshallying of the NR A over the problems of the workers. Now. at last, the administration has appointed a competent board to iron out these grievances. At the same time Mayor Sullivan is bending every effort to discover a fair settlement of the local trouble at the bleaching works. With competent national and local authorities doing all they can to adjudicate this dispute it is deplorable that the textile strikers in this city are indulging in malicious violence. Throwing stones convinces no one, accomplishes nothing. In many strikes the mill management imports hired thugs to stir up strife. The management of the Indianapolis Bleaching works has not been guilty of this. It has brought no professional strike breakers from out of town. It has scrupulously avoided even the appearance of violence. We watched the strikers shower stones upon the employes of the mill and the police yesterday afternoon. The police, we thought, showed amazing forbearance and excellent discipline. Not a nightstick was swung, not a prisoner roughly handled. After all it is pretty hard for a human being, whether he is a policeman or not, to stand quietly while he is being stoned. They arrested those whom they saw hurling rocks and that was all The only real damage was a smashed windshield received by a truck driver who was not connected with the strike in any way, but was simply going about his business on a public highway, as he had a perfect right to do. The strikers have talked pretty freely about their rights as citizens. That truck driver was a citizen, too. Yesterday's stone throwing was particularly reprehensible in view of the fact that the authorities had reduced the bail of several strikers arrested the day before upon the assurance of strike leaders that there would be no more violence. The textile strikers have a case which is being heard by established authorities. But the textile strikers do not own the streets of Indianapolis. They happen to belong to all the people. This needless and lawless violence must stop.

FREEDOM OR FREEBOOTING? TT was said of the fiery pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, that his pen was a more effective weapon in the Revolutionary war than Gen. Washington's sword. Colonists, emotionally In favor of a New Deal, went to Paine's writings for arguments to support their own convictions. Henry A. Wallace, secretary of agriculture, is the Thomas Paine of the New Deal. If excerpts published by Collier’s Weekly from his forthcoming book, “New Frontiers,” are typical. New Dealers will find it a valuable source of campaign ammunition. The Roosevelt administration boasts many competent economists, but none other has Wallace's ability to make complex modern problems understandable to the man in the street. His chapter on “The Tyranny of Greed" does more than answer former President Hoover’s “Challenge to Liberty.” Spiking the cry of “less government in business and more business in government," Mr. Wallace points out that busmess has had both hands in government since the early days of the republic, and has built up vested interests through tariffs, subsidies, government loans and government protection of big banking houses. “The legalized thievery of the tariff probably is workmg more harm to the people of the United States than all other forms of robbery put together” he writes. Os special interest is his expose of the lobby racket. “The alarming thing in Washington is not that there are so many special pressure groups, but that there are so few people who are concerned solely with looking at the picture from a broad national angle.” What the old dealers want, according to Mr. Wallace, is not "freedom," but “freebooting.” The purpose of the secretary is to keep the old order on the defensive; he seems to be succeeding. AN INDISPENSABLE COG A LBERT D. LASKER, one of the leaders of the advertising profession, speaking before the Boston Conference on Retail Distribution. expressed a highly controversial personal opinion of the New Deal and the defeated Tugweil bill, but there can be no controversy whatever as to the credit he gives to advertising for the enrichment of American life. The high standard of living in this country is directly the result of advertising. Mr. Lasker pointed out. A desire for more things to use. consume and enjoy—dormant in the backwoods and among the illiterate —is created and fanned into an active buying demand by advertising. In consequence orders pour in. mill wheels turn. Jobs are afforded to the unemployed, money passes beneficially from hand to hand. As Mr. Lasker puts it: “I maintain that advertising has stimulated production by stimulating consumption. I maintain It has done it an ao vast a scale as to bring about a higher standard of living among the American people than would have possibly existed without advertising under any system." Advertising put up the national consumpA %

tion of oranges from 32 per capita per year to 72, of canned soup from a gross of half a million cans a year to 18.000.000. The great mechanical developments, the automobile and the radio, were made items of household necessity by advertising. Attempting without advertising and by the primitive salesmanship of the peddler to create an ordinary modem demand for new products would be not merely bad business but a physical and financial impossibility. An army of doorbell-ringers and house-to-house canvassers could not reach the consumers. Volume of production Is linked permanently to mass demand, which can be created effectively in no other way than by advertising. Not merely the pioneer and the wealth of natural resources have built up the United States as we know it. Mr. Lasker has pointed out another factor of Importance second to none—advertising, an essential cog in making our modern industrial engine hit on all cylinders. NEW DEAL REORGANIZATION DONALD RICHBERG emerges on top of the heap. That seems to be the significance of the elaborate reorganization of NRA promulgated today by President Roosevelt. It puts another official stamp upon Mr. Richberg's function as chief adviser and assistant to the President, wnich has been increasingly apparent since last spring. Though Mr. Richberg has nis faults, the President probably could not have found a more effective man for this many-sided job. In addition to serving as director of the industrial emergency committee, executive secretary of the executive council and executive director of the national emergency council, Mr. Richberg is to have “such further functions and duties as shall be prescribed by the President.” according to one of last night’s executive orders. That appears to make him, in effect, director-in-chief of the New Deal. For these sundry executive and emergency councils and committees, or super-cabinets, will handle not only NRA, but the whole range of New Deal activity, including agricultural recovery relief and public works. Os course, these councils are not new, but the fact that the President re-emphasizes their co-ordinating and policy functions at the time he is reorganizing the NRA and pulling the entire New Deal operation closer together, is important. Under Director Richberg and the industrial emergency committee—consisting of Secretaries Ickes and Perkins, the NRA chairman, AAA administrator and federal relief administrator—will be the new NRA administrative board. The latter will replace General Johnson. It is to be composed of two conservative business men, Clay Williams and A. D. Whiteside; two public representatives, Professors Leon C. Marshall of Johns Hopkins and Walton Hamilton of Yale, and Sidney Hillman, the very able labor representative. All of these men served under the Johnson NRA. The effectiveness of the President's new organization can be judged only by its record in action. But such names as Richberg, Hamilton and Hillman encourage hope. •

SUSPICIOUS DELAY VERY lover of good sportsmanship might have had some degree of sympathy for Captain T. O. M. Sopwith in his protest of a foul on the part of his opponent in the international yacht races off Newport. Somehow or other, the amenities so aptly defined by the ancient comics, Alphonse and Gaston, are required under the racing rules, when the commander of an overtaking vessel—in this case the Rainbow—suddenly is confronted with a determination on the part of the leading boat, the Endeavour, not to be overtaken. Quite possibly, Commodore Vanderbilt should have bowed himself away to permit Captain Sopwith to luff into the wind ahead. But what lost the Britisher both the decision and the sports-loving Americans’ sympathy was the fact that he took three hours to plow through the rules for cause of protest before flying the red flag. In America, he should know, protestants yell first and find the cause later. THE DOLE IS ON US EMOTIONAL Americans, accustomed to throw devil-words at things they do not like, for year* have been hurling the word “dole" at England's system of unemployment insurance. The word has boomeranged and struck our own relief system. “The immense and still inadequate ‘dole’ which we have had to establish,” Frances Perkins, labor secretary, says, “has cost us far more and given our people far less security than the British unemployment insurance scheme.” Miss Perkins is right. Our dole is spread out thinly over 17,000,000 persons, including 7,000,000 children under 16 years of age. It is inadequate, averaging just a little more than $23 a family a month. What of England? Recently the American Association for Social Security sent an open letter to congress and the state legislatures, declaring that had the United States been operating under the British system our taxpayers would have saved $70,000,000 last year. We should have been able to care for a "much larger number of unemployed persons, twice as adequately,” and still saved that amount. The reason is simple. In England employes and industry helped the government to the extent of some $150,000,000 last year. Here, except for scant charity, the taxpayers pay it aIL Miss Perkins announced herself in favor of compulsory jobless insurance on a national scale. With the President committed to a broad social security program she should have better success with a measure like the WagnerLewis bill next winter than she had last session. The word “dole" will be found in Webster s dictionary to mean: “That which is distributed, especially a gift of charity, alms, a limited portion.” It is a mean thing to have cost us more than $1,000,000,000 a year. We nave had it four years too long. Simile: As bold as the man who drops a button in the collection plate of the Nancon trolled church in Germany. The Utah thief who stole thirty colonies of buzzing honey bees would make a good politician. He can certainly handle opposition without getting stung.

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES—

THE opening of schools, colleges and universities re-emphasizes the educational experiences in American life. But there is a vast new educational experiment going on which many of us are entirely unaware. This is the broad educational program of the Federal Emergency Relief Admininstration, admirably described by Miss Beush Amidon in the Survey Graphic. This began in August, 1935, and when it got well under way, about $3,000,000 a month was allocated by the relief administration to the support of various educational projects. The federal government always has been loath to enter education in a large way, but the depression has been something that education logic never was able to achieve. The general purpose and scope of this new educational venture carried on by the federal government is well described in the following paragraph: “Between August and October, 1933, the FERA authorized the use of relief funds for six educational purposes to keep rural schools open; to establish and conduct nursery schools; to teach adults to read and write English; to provide vocational training; to give vocational retraining to the handicapped; to provide ‘general adult education,’ Including workers’ education and parent education. Work relief for needy college students was later added.” nun THERE was no dearth of expert pedagogical and available for the experiment. There were about 60,000 unemployed school teachers, and some 18,000 of these had been put to work in various emergency education projects. In addition to this, funds were turned over to rural communities which enabled them to keep the local schools open and to retain some 12,000 teachers who would have otherwise been jobless. ' Another mode of aid to existing educational activities and institutions came in the assistance given to some 75,000 young men and women who were thereby enabled to continue in their college and university courses. The procedure followed is to have the state department of education in each state submit a plan and definite budget for federal aid. These are passed upon by experts in Mr. Hopkins’ office in Washington and the federal fund is then allocated. The emergency education program has taken more than 60,000 little “run abouts” off the street and put them in nursery schools, which have provided employment for 5,000 teachers, nurses and nutritionists. Many classes for adult illiterates have been organized and instructed. In Mississippi alone there have been 21,000 students in classes for the illiterate. n n n A CONTRIBUTION both to education and to industrial betterment exists in the case of the marked attention given to classes in vocational instruction teaching trades. More than 200.000 have enrolled in these vocational classes, which have required nearly 7,000 teachers. The need for workers to have a broader vision of the present social scene has been recognized in the extensive program of workers’ education, where instruction in the social sciences, general natural science, English and public speaking have predominated. The major need of parents today is to have money enough to shelter, feed and clothe their children, but family responsibility involves something more than this. Hence, classes have been established for parent education, in which more than 18,000 have been enrolled. All in all, more than 18,000 teachers and half a million pupils have participated in the educational experiment of the government to date. As Miss Amidon concludes: “Probably the most important result of emergency education is the way it has widened the horizons of its students and its teachers The program has brought fresh viewpoints into the schools themselves. And this is perhaps the largest item of the credit side of the far-flung, colorful, uneven emergency program—the possibilities opened up for growth and adventure for adults and children and the communities in which they live.”

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABELL

FROM Mexico City comes word via grape-vine channels that Mr. Javier Sanchez Mejorada, Mexican ambassador to Berlin, will be offered the post of ambassador to Washington, succeeding Dr. Gonzales Roa. Mejorada is one of the most distinguished men in Mexican public life. He has been ambassador to Berlin, secretary of communications and president of the national railways of Mexico. He was one of the closest friends of the late American ambassador, Dwight Morrow, and the bronze placque which today honors Morrow's memory at the United States embassy in Mexico City is there largely through Mejorada’s efforts. If Mejorada comes to Washington he will outtop the tallest man in the diplomatic corps, the towering British ambassador, Sir Ronald Lindsay. The Mexican envoy is 6 feet 8 inches, tall, and his shoulders are broader than Sir Ronald’s. A small tailor who once measured him for a coat had to use a stepladder. When Morrow and Mejorada walked down the street together, it was like a graphic vision of Mutt and Jeff. In addition to his bulk and political background, Mejorada possesses charm and manner. His popularity is enormous. Americans who know him describe him as “the most wonderful fellow in the world" and Latins accord him that highest of all Spanish compliments—“muy simpatico.” He is married, 46 years old, and his children are honor graduates of the National University of Mexico. He started life as a civil engineer on a railroad and rapidly rose to power. His career here is as brilliant as it has been on the other side of the Rio Grande, friends predict that Mexican-American relations will be more closely cemented than they are at present by visiting polo players. nun ARGENTINE Ambassador Felipe Espil has' broken another diplomatic taboo (the first one was when he placed linoleum on the floor of his embassy), by actually calling to. see the new ambassador of Brazil, Mr. Aranha. It may sound strange to those unaccustomed to the intricacies of diplomatic etiquet, but Espil’s conduct is regarded in the corps here as little short of revolutionary. New ambassadors customarily are without social contact of any kind for several weeks after their arrival. They sit in their embassies, decipher cables, twiddle their thumbs and call up the state department to make an appointment with Secretary Hull. Then Mr. Hull graciously takes up with the President a convenient date for the formal presentation of credentials. After that ceremony, the new envoy breathes a deep sigh of relief and goes to call on his colleagues. None of them ever dreams of calling on him before that. So the surprise and delight of the Brazilian envoy may be imagined when the phone rang and a voice said: “Hello, this is the Argentine ambassador. I’m coming over to have a little talk with you.” “Come right over,” replied Aranha. That was all there was to it. Espil simply deduced that there was no sense in waiting weeks until Aranha had seen President Roosevelt, before talking to him. He wanted to see him immediately. And he did. Meanwhile, the staid school of diplomats are putting up figurative lorgnettes and acting as startled as a group of dowagers confronted by the Dolly Gann precedence puzzle. With, grand opera companies now on tour in many cities, the theater business ought to pick up—in small towns. Why don’t the munitions men continue operations during the investigation by carving soap and wood guns? There seems to be a market for them.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

‘IS THAT ANOTHER OF THOSE FORD JOKES?’

if-/"' V•- A* V - A

The Message Center

(Timet readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Hake your letters short, to all can have a chance. Limit them to tSO words or less.j SUPPORT DISCLOSED FOR ROOSEVELT By Morris Frisch. When you talk to Mr. Average Citizen about present conditions you hear him praise President Roosevelt and the NRA. When you ask a merchant, “How is business?” he will tell you it is much better than it was two years ago. So will the man in the shop, the owner of a rooming house, the poultry man, the shoe repair man and the peddler in the streets. It is the President who is trying to aid those who got a bad chicken in the Hoover pot. Average citizens tell you they voted for Roosevelt and that was their first time to vote Democratic and they feel happy about it. n n n TEXTILE STRIKER ASSAILS POLICE By a Striker. I would like to express my views in The Mesage Center about the textile strike. It seems like the striker does not have a chance to do anything. When the strike first started the police stood on the picket line eating the strikers’ food because they were then on the strikers’ side. Now since one man has the new dining room, he has been feeding the cops and coaxing them along so they could protect the scabs. They are helping the scabs and beating the strikers with their clubs.

HOMESTEAD PLAN DETAILS DISCUSSED Bv Bert Wilhelm. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his inaugural address, likened the condition of the country to a storm at sea. It has been the rule of the sea for centuries that when a boat is foundering, to save the women, children and the aged first. This rule is one of the President’s ideals, but he has been unable to follow it to any great extent up to the present and had to be satisfied with temporary relief until other important matters were taken care of. However, a start has been made to extend lasting aid to those too old to obtain employment in industry. The best minds of the nation have pointed out that the day of mass production and centralization of wealth and population is coming to an end. The small factory for the small community, serving a limited area and the back to the land movement of those past the middle of life is the solution of the problem of decentralization. Mrs. Roosevelt, taking her place beside the President, has developed a typical settlement of the kind mentioned, In Reedsville,. Va. The whole problem can be stated in these few words, “Put the idle man on the idle land with a sack of seed and a hoe in his hand and they both will be idle no more.” To accomplish this we must provide the idle man with a modest home on a small acreage. The sum of $2,000 would supply nve acres of land and a well-built cottage, garage and small outbuildings, prepare the land for a crop, buy the seed, twelve chickens and a cow and support a family of five for five months. Marion county in 1933 spent $3,000,000 to aid the needy. This money would supply 2,000 of these houses and put 10,000 persons out on land where they could have their own gardens, milk and eggs and require no assistance. Construction of the homes would employ 1,000 workers for mo6t of the winter and would stimulate business to a great extent by pay rolls being

Spoils System Declared Blow to State Library

By a Reader. , State officials are proclaiming the opening of the new Indiana state library and are hailing it as one of the great achievements of the present administration and one of the outstanding events of Indiana history. Although the library, which is one of the finest in the world, has been completed during the present administration, no credit can be claimed for its construction by the Democratic party. The construction of the building was authorized by “an act providing for the construction and equipment of a state library.” This act of the legislature was approved by Governor Harry G. Leslie on March 9, 1929. Regardless of where the credit belongs, what good is any public institution if handled inefficiently? What good is anew battleship with an untrained crew? Build-

distributed regularly in the channels of trade. The national subsistence homestead plan is not anew idea. More than 2,000 years ago, when Caesar recommended agrarian laws of Rome, the condition was similar to our present economic condition. While labor-saving machinery still was unheard of, slave labor was so plentiful that the Roman citizen found himself in the same condition as the industrial worker today. Napoleon adopted the same plan in France, borrowing the idea from the Romans and enjoyed the same satisfactory results. Through a similar system the Irish people, after centuries of depression, emerged prosperous after a few years of freedom, fortified by home life and the healthful environment of a rural habitation. The province of Quebec is the only spot on the American continent which never has felt the effect of the present depression, and the answer is the homestead. n n n PREDICTS ROBINSON WILL BE WINNER By M. D. Moss. Postmaster-General Farley, upon his visit here a few weeks ago. growled and roared in true Tammany Tiger fashion and hundreds of Hoosier Democrats brayed their loud huzzas in approbation of the New Yorker’s attack upon the senior United States senator, Arthur R. Robnison. , That the President should select a Tammany Democrat to deliver a message to Hoosiers doesn’t speak very well for the President’s judgment. That the senator should be made a target for a veiled presidential attack and the fact that he is marked for defeat by the national administration, establishes his worth to the people of Indiana. The senator truly has been a thorn in the side of the dictatorial clique and the brain trust, and no doubt they would feel better and freer without Senator Robinson’s constant protests against what he believes is against the best interests of his constituents. Whatever else may be said about the senator, he always is consistent in his fight for the soldier and for evertyhing else he believes right and just. When the President called upon congress for support on programs which he himself termed experimental, the senator laid aside his partisanship and in true patriotic American spirit responded to the President’s request for support and he accordingly voted to give the President power and authority to put his proposed programs into force. The senator’s critics forget that the President of the United States is the chief executive of all the

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

ing anew state library and manning it with political appointees is just as consistent as Governor McNutt's proposed plan for building the prison walls higher in order to keep convicts from escaping through the doors, which method of escape was made possible by the appointment of inefficient guards to replace the efficient and trained personnel of the state penal institutions. The discharge of practically all experienced state librarians and the appointment of inefficient political workers to replace them is one of the greatest blots on the records of the state, and is the direct result of the spoils system inaugurated by the McNutt administration. The efficiency destroyed by this spoils system will require fifteen years to replace and is a loss too great to be accurately estimated.

people of this country, and not the personal property of Jim Farley and a few other Democratic politicians. Now, since the sum total and net result of the NRA, CWA, PWA, AAA, FERA and other alphabetical experiments with the destinies of the American peiple Is that 23,500,000 will be dependent upon relief next winter, The Times and others are not justified in their criticism and ridicule of Senator Robinson in his position on national affairs. Os course, Hposiers have as much political sense tis New Yorkers who presented Jim Farley and the national administration a swift kick when they defeated the administration candidate for mayor at the last municipal election. Hoosiers will follow the example of California, where Democrats defeated George Creel, whose race for the Democratic nomination for Governor Jim Farley espoused and nominated Upton Sinclair instead. Don’t worry, Jim, Indiana will return Senator Robinson to the senate and not a mere rubber stamp. nun DANGER OF FIRE AT ARMORY CITED. By Mr*. E. B? W. I attended the wrestling match at the armory Tuesday night. The hall was packed with men and women, and there were several small children there. Smoking was very much in evidence all over the hall. The interior of the hall is wood. The floor appeared to have been oiled. If a fire had broken out in that hall I shudder to think what would have been the outcome. I heard this discussed by quite a few who were there. Where are the fire inspectors? Why do they allow smoking in the hall? Can't something be done before It is too late? nun CONCERNING “LESSER OF TWO WEEVILS” By Daniel B. Luten. The United States department of agriculture formerly expended tremendous effort and money in attempting to eradicate the boll weevil because it was destroying the cotton crop. Now the secretary of agriculture himself advocates the destruction of cotton. He has become as serious a pest as the boll weevil; in fact, it Is difficult now to say which is the lesser of the two weevils. What a government! Hearts of gold, heads of ivory. n n REPENTANCE VOICED BY STRIKE BREAKER By a Lonely Scab. I am writing this letter to The Message Center hoping it will keep others from making the mistakes I have made. Brother and sister scabs, for I am

_SEPT. 28, 1934

one too, but not in a recent strike. Everywhere I go people whisper, “There is a scab.” Once you are stamped your conscience never will let you rest. I realize now that my best friends, my lifelong pals, were fighting for me; not so we could be rich, but that we might have time to enjoy living. I am without work now, because I found all the flowery promises of the bosses soon wilted. While the strike was on, we scabs were patted on the back and treated very friendly, but I am telling you, no pat of the boss can take the place of the love of your fellow-workers and friends and you can not live on your scab wages after you have been let out of a job. I am glad I lost my job. I couldn’t have stood the cold shoulder much longer anyway.

So They Say

Give us some bread and meat and we’ll get out into the country to get some beans.—E. L. Sandefur, treasurer textile strike relief committee at Gastonia. We oppose Russia’s entry because Russian Communism seeks to take root everywhere and because its ambition is a world revolution.— —Giuseppe Motta, League of Nations representative from the Netherlands. I seem to attract friendships, not romance.—Jean Harlow. The state should keep the Individual; not the Individual the state. —Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. You can not have a Constitution that will stretch when you want It and rigid when you want that.— Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher. Time and again those in high official positions in Germany or Italy explained that they were delighted to see that our President had adopted their policies.—Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. It should be established that any state is entitled to demand reasonable security from its near and remote neighbors. This, however, should never be interpreted as distrust—Maxim Litvinov, Soviet commissar so? foreign affairs.

NOISE

BY POLLY LOIS NORTON The voices of the great city, Though clamorous and loud and never ceasing. Sing to me, tell me how the city lives— They are the heart-throbs, the pulse beats That say, “Here is life.” The rapidly moving throngs, The clang of cars, The whirring of wheels, The bells’ soft chime. The rush of hurried ambulances through the streets The creak of high-boards in the wind, The cry of extra-editions paper boys. All are bone and muscle, Flesh and sinew, A vital part, and natural of thia town. But in the country When the night comes down And one lies waking, fearful in the dark. And hears the croaking frogs, The noisy bugs. The lonesome call of a far-off train. The soft twitter of nesting bird* disturbed. Then one knows what true noise is— The rasping noise of silence.