Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 177, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 December 1934 — Page 8

PAGE 8

The Indianapolis Times <A BCRIFP*.HOWARD NEWSPAPER) *OT W. HOWARD Pre*Mnt TALCOTT POWELL Editor XARL D. BAKER Bailneta Manager Pbona Riley 5551

G<’ Light nnO the People Will Find Thrir Own TTow

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TUESDAY. DECEMBER 4 1934. COMPULSORY DRILL T EGAL efforts to protect religious objectors from compulsory military training in state colleges receiving federal grants have been blocked by the United States Supreme Court. Yesterday the court upheld the University of California’s suspension of students for refusal to take compulsory military courses. This was in line with the recent Supreme Court dismissal of the appeal of a Universuy of Maryland student in a similar case. Since Justices Cardozo, Brandcis and Stone concurred in the unanimous decision, in a supplemental opinion written by Justice Cardozo, there is little hope that the so-called liberal Justices later will reverse the decision. It would be fruitless to question the legal validity of a unanimous decision of a Supreme Court containing the illustrious names included in the present court membership. But that does not answer the larger questions involved. The militarizing of land-grant colleges may be within the letter of the United States Constitution and of the law. Still, as admitted by the Cardozo-Brandeis-Stone opinion, such regulations “may be condemned by some as unwise or illiberal or unfair when there is violence to conscientious scruples, either religious or merely ethical.” We condemn, and an increasing body of American citizens condemn, compulsory military training as unwise, illiberal and unfair. Moreover, we condemn it as inefficient and wasteful of the taxpayers’ money. It is unwise because it breeds disloyalty to the government by large numbers of the highest types of citizens who, though themselves not conscientious objectors, can not respect an authority which violates the religious scruples of others. It is illiberal because it distorts the spirit of free inquiry into goose-step education. It is unfair because it denies higher education to religious objectors who can not afford to attend more expensive private colleges, as. in the case of these University of California students. It is inefficient and wasteful because many of the students who are compelled to take military training in their first years at college drop out in the later years, and do not become suitable material for reserve officers, either in training or morale. The battle against compulsory militarizing of the students of state universities should go on. But the fight will have to be made in Congress, which controls appropriations for the Army and the Reserve Officers Training Corps, on which the state compulsory military education system rests in practice. And the fight also will have to be continued in the states. Just as Wisconsin and Minnesota recently changed from compulsory to elective military courses, so other states can be persuaded by proper methods. MUNITIONS RACKET AGAIN A MERICA and other nations will watch with keen interest the Senate munitions inquiry which resumes today. Disclosures before this committee last September startled many countries. Evidence tended to prove that some arms manufacturers had formed an international cartel, banded together to divide world markets and share profits, used bribery and propaganda to keep nations arming against each other, and misused for their own profit advantage the United States naval and diplomatic services. Chairman Nve is justified in assuming that the world understands the importance of his committee's work. His intimations of still more astounding revelations have commanded wide attention. His promise to show how munitions makers have thwarted the peace efforts of statesmen indicates that the climax of the inquiry is ahead. The desire for peace is universal. If it is proved that arms manufacturers have fomented prejudices and fears to gain profits and have undermined peace conferences —as charged some years ago by a League of Nations commission the Parliaments of the world will get a mandate to bring the traffic in death weapons under firm international control. That our own senate investigation has forced the British government to start a similar inquiry shows how widespread is popular concern. Before we can act intelligently, we need to learn the whole truth about the arms business. We depend upon the Nye committee to educate us. A LESSON IN FREEDOM HUEY LONG seems to have done the students of Louisiana State University a double-barreled favor —quite unintentionally. The unrest which seized the student body, or a part of it, when the student newspaper was gagged may not last very long. It may not bother the Kingfish in the least, and it may do absolutely nothing toward freeing the university from his domination. But it is giving these young students the best possible kind of object lesson in two kinds of freedom First of all, it is teaching them—in the most approved laboratory manner—just what this famous old freedom of the press argument is all about. When the staff of the student paper resigned after discovering that it would be lese majeste to criticise the Senator, they learned something that newspaper editors of all times and places have known, to wit: That a newspaper is worth nothing whatever, to its readers or to its publishers, if it be not free to express opinion and present facts without interference from above. They will not need to be told, any more, that a people is not free if its newspapers are

gagged. They have learned that much by sad experience and the lesson will stick. So much for the first object lesson. The second one runs parallel; it is a succinct and memorable demonstration of the nature and value of academic freedom. If there is one place above all other where men’s minds should be free to rove In any direction that seems good to them, it is a university, There must be freedom there, if there is none anywhere else. Without it, a university ceases to be a place where minds are broadened and culture is developed, and becomes —a country club, a political organization, an athletic association, or what you wish; anything at all but a university. And when that transformation takes place, the institution is no longer worth what it costs. Now a person who has succeeded in imparting these two important lessons in freedom has accomplished something noteworthy. Many people grow old and die without ever learning that if freedom can be squelched in the editorial rooms and on the campus it is in danger everywhere. Senator Long, amazing as it may seem, has actually broadened the education of the youngsters at Louisiana State. DUPLICATING TAXES SOMETHING should be done about our confused tax system, President Roosevelt has said several times. Duplication in Federal, state and local taxes grows more serious. Last winter, Administration leaders in and out of Congress said they had no time for tax reforms and co-ordination. So they continued for another year various so-called luxury excises in fields already pre-empted by state and local governments. With Congress about to convene again, the Administration still is without a plan. The leaders talk of continuing various sales and nuisance taxes for yet another year. That would promote further Federal and state tax competition. Gasoline, liquor and tobacco are taxed by Federal, state and some local governments. On each of these commodities the total levy is higher than w’hat many tax experts agree would yield the maximum revenue. The oil and tobacco industries are over-burdened and bootlegging of liquor and gasoline is widespread. Federal levies on automobiles, electrical energy and appliances, matches, sporting goods and other “luxuries” also are duplicated by state levies. Even cities are resorting to general sales taxes, multiplying the already heavy burden on trade. New York City is about to join this procession. We need Federal leadership. The states can not begin to co-operate until the Government limits the scope of its taxes. This the Government can do easily by withdrawing from tax fields which logically belong to the states, and substituting revenue from higher income and inheritance taxes. Until this is done the states and cities probably will increase their encroachments in the Federal field and multiply the unjust and self-defeating tax duplication. WOMEN WORKERS GAIN • NRA has done more in one year to improve and standardize working conditions for women than was accomplished in the preceding 20 years, according to Mary Anderson, director of the United States Women’s Bureau. By outlawing or regulating industrial home work and by raising pay minima, NRA codes have checked abuses that were spreading rapidly under the depression. But one-fourth of the codes, Miss Anderson says, still permit the employment of women at wages less than are paid to men for the same work. Efforts will be made to standardize labor law’s and insure fairer treatment of women workers in all of the 44 states whose Legislatures meet next year. The President’s unemployment insurance program for the next Congress offers hope of greater security to both men and women workers. “I am sure," Miss Anderson says, “that as women we rejoice in the advances made, but we must respond even more strongly to the call for organized effort to bring security to all members of society.” FACTS ARE NECESSARY 'T'HE senatorial munitions committee, which dug up so many interesting and appalling facts about the trade in guns and explosives for us a month or so ago, is broke now. It has much work still to do, but its investigating staff has been decimated, and such investigators as remain will have to work without pay through December, according to a recent dispatch from Rodney Dutcher. This would seem to put the issue squarely up to congress. The committee has spent only $50,000, to date—and the disclosures it nas made have been worth many times the price. If more money is needed to enable the committee to finish its job, the new Congress should provide it without delay. This work should not be allowed to lapse for want of financial support. COST-OF-LIVING FIGURES THE national cost-of-living survey promised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is long over-due. It will be the first since 1919. Field agents will go into homes of wage earners, list the goods they buy and prices they pay, learn how much they spend for food, clothing, rent and what portions of their incomes go for such comparatively new things as radios, automobiles and silk stockings. Data thus collected will show consumption trends, and enable the Labor Department to revise its inaccurate cost-of-living index. It is one of the many enterprises of Isador Lubin, who, since becoming labor statistics commissioner, has tried to bring new vitality and meaning to the Government’s tables and charts. The Bolivians captured Ft. Senator Long from the Paraguayans in the Gran Chaco, making this the first defeat Huey has felt since the last session of congress. That New York father who threatens to return a baby girl to the maternity hospital if she doesn’t look like him would better square himself with the mother first. The Hindu rope trick remains unsolved, and the world still has something to look forward to.

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES I' N this period of the second breath of the New Deal much attention is being given pro- ( posaLs for social insurance, better housing, the . development of public health agencies, and the like. It is important that perhaps the most important element in the whole program of sounder health for the American people—Socialized Medicine—should not be overlooked. The most vital item in any system of social insurance is the health of the public. An ailing, under-fed population is no foundation upon which to build tne new industrial era, to which purpose our President has dedicated an administration. The efficiency of an industrial organization is no greater than the health of its workers. The hundreds of millions of dollars lost to national productivity by reason of disease, and the hundreds of thousands of days lost by confinement in bed as a result of illness are no mean items in the cost of medical care to the community and in industrial inefficiency to business. Among 100,000 industrial workers examined by Life Extension Institute, about 40 per cent showed dental defects; 45 per cent exhibited a variety of nose and throat diseases; 25 per cent had eye defects and more than 20 per cent were affected by digestive disorders. About 1 per cent of the population on any average day are treated for venereal diseases which could have been avoided by prophylactics. Tuberculosis, drug-addiction and diabetes together affect in a single day more than 800,000 piersons. Malaria, although preventable, still is widely prevalent in the South, and smallpox, also preventable, boasts more than 30,000 cases a year. All these facts indicate the enormous development of preventive medicine still necessary and the broader medical service and larger number of physicians yet to be required for it. 0 0 0 '"■"'URNING to therapeutics we note equally A disturbing conditions. In 1927 (prosperity days) 6,000,000 American families, or about 21 per cent of the total, had incomes of less than SIOOO. About 12,000,000 families, some 42 per cent of the total, received less than SISOO. They received in the pre-depression years an annual average of 1932 visits per 1000 persons from physicians, or roughly two calls a pierson a year. At the other extreme are the 2.3 per cent of all families at the top, namely those that had incomes in 1929 of SIO,OOO or over. These persons received an annual average of 4734 visits per 1000 persons, or an average of 4 : ?i visits each a year. According to standards of good medictl se’vice any average group of 1000 persons should have on the average of 5650 calls from cr to a physician during the year. If all the population were to receive adequate hospital care when necessary we should discover a dearth of hospital beds. Standards of good medical care require 1158 hospital beds per 100,000 peri ons in this country. This would mean that 1 389,600 beds ought to exist. Actually there are less than a million beds, a shortage of 400,000 beds. Only 25 per cent of our population receive any sort of dental treatment during the year. A total of about 48 per cent of the people in the lowest income class have no medical, dental or eye care whatsoever during the year, although 14 per cent of the people in the top income class who could get all necessary treatment appeared ! to be free from illness. It is very obvious then ! that the American public receive inadequate medical care. B B B UNDER the present system of private medical practice on the single-fee-for-service basis, it is thus evident the income of the masses is far too low to meet the cost of proper medical care. v Modern medical diagnosis and treatment involve expensive specialists’ examinations, and costly X-ray and laboratory tests are beyond the means of the individual patient in the overwhelming portion of the American public. Private competitive medical practice is a social failure. Public health is a public matter. The people’s health, including the care and cure of disease and injury, is fundamentally a social interest and obligation. It is essentially a social function, and it should no longer be left to the economic and medical uncertainties of the present private or institutional practice. Public health must be taken care of in exactly the same manner in which the state has taken care of its public education system. Social need—not charity—m the underlying principle of a proper system of medical cure and practice. There is only one real and logical remedy for the inadequate and costly care of the health and sickness of the American people. That remedy is socialized medicine, or public medicine. Public health and care of the sick should have full governmental sanction and subsidy, side by side with education, or policing or fire fighting or courts or any other functions of the state. The interest of the patient and doctor, of the public and the profession, must be made identical. This can be accomplished only by purging their relationship of any immediate economic obstacles or considerations and of any ulterior financial motivations of a personal nature. The profit motive and business technic of medicine must be abolished. Socialized medicine implies that the public has a right to adequate medical care guaranteed by society through the state, and that the expensively trained doctors have a right to work and be paid for their services in adequate manner by the state. SHOWING UP WELL ' I ''HE financial angle of the farm program **■ is interesting. Newest figures released in Washington show that farmers participating in the crop adjustment programs have received, to date, slightly more than $507,000,000 in cash benefits. This, however, has cost the treasury nothing, the processing taxes having taken in $558,000,000. These payments in themselves are an important contribution to farm income. But the AAA program must ultimately stand or fall on its success in increasing the farmer’s income indirectly, by raising the prices of the things he sells, rather than by its direct payments; and in this field, too, the record is not half bad. Farm income for the current year is estimated at $6,000,000,000, which is about 19 per cent above the 1933 total and some 39 per cent above the total for 1932. In other words, the program is costing the treasury nothing, and it is slowly succeeding in raising farm prices. u. S. IN ANTARCTICA 'T'HE United States seems to have received A title, or something resembling it, to a considerable quantity of new land. Admiral Byrd, having explored a large stretch of hitherto undiscovered land in the Antarctic, claims it for the United States in the traditional manner. All in all, now this country has a more or less valid claim to some 200,000 square miles in the vicinity of the South Pole. To be sure, there is precious little to show that ,this land is ever going to be worth anything to us. Even if the frozen soil should be found to be rich in mineral wealth, for instance, Antarctica is a mortally cold sort of place that might easily resist development to the end of time. Still, with the world almost completely mapped and surveyed, it is somehow thrilling to be able to claim new territories in the timehonored way—by right of discovery.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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The Message Center

(Times readers are incited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Idmit them to 250 words or lessj nun COMPLAINS OF SERVICE AT CITY HOSPITAL By A Times Reader. One morning I had taken my little girl out to City Hospital for an examination and also to get information on report of my oldest daughter I had there the week before. I was 15 or 20 minutes late, but I explained my situation. Now, as my income isn’t a fortune and I had to be out there the same day at 3 p. m., naturally, I had to stay from 8 a. m. till 3 p. m., as I can’t get the examination of the little girl and the report on the other one on account of being 20 minutes late, which I’m not in the habit of doing I suppose the hospital staff members think I can come out at anytime, keep the child out of school and come out for another day. They don’t realize I have a husband to get off to work and two children to send to school and lunches to fix, not mentioning myself and the one I take with me to get ready. Can’t those persons show at least a little respect and consideration for others? The self-centered are often the best satisfied persons in the world because they do not suffer by the disaffection of others. To them, there's no one of sufficient importance the loss of whose esteem is a matter of deep concern. Too high to be hit and too big to be hurt, they are hardly conscious of opposition or persecution, of insult or offense. They never take a hint, because they imagine a thrust at their dignity could never have been meant, and they never see a point against themselves. To laugh at such conceited persons is asinine, and to avoid them is to compliment them, they think, with wholesome respect. n # a ANSWERS OBJECTIONS TO TOWNSEND PENSIONS By A Reader. I wonder if it occurs to the public the why of the underlying reason of the opposition of the big interests and their cohorts to the Townsend old-age pension plan off hand before one advances any arguments, they bark out, “Oh! it won’t work.” That is positive evidence that they know that it will work and proves the old suspicion that they don’t want anything to work that will benefit the multitudes. Oh, yes, they have put plenty of study on it. They like to pooh pooh it and pretend that its supporters are so ignorant that they believe in some magic wand transition. Big interests know only too w r ell the plan is workable. Why do they object? First, they know that by removing all the old steady men from behind the works puts a crimp in the morale and more responsibility on the management. They tried that back in the old efficiency racket days; they know by experience now that that doesn’t work. They also fully realize that there would be better conditions and therefore make the workmen more independent. If there is anything employers are afraid of it is liability of scarcity of labor. There isn't actually one good argument against the general sales tax. Thousands of our citizens escape direct tax at all times and boast about it. Well, that type of a person isn’t a good citizen. He enjoys all the public improvements. With a sales tax he will take more interest in them and cultivate more

TRYING TO USE IT FOR A DAM!

Solution Offered for Traffic Problem

By a Times Header. Let Capt. Johnson, with the aid of all the newspapers in the city, through the medium of a coupon published in the papers, get a promise from every downtown business man and his employes, to keep their automobiles parked out of the mile square during business hours. If every business man and his employes would leave their cars outside of the downtown area, it not only would make more business downtown, but there would not be any traffic problem such as double-parking. Mr. Business Man, how do you

civic pride. He will see things as he has never noticed them before. Heretofore the street lights and pavements haven’t cost him anything so why should he worry? We all know men and their wives who are both employed and live in apartments; enjoy all modern conveniences yet never pay one cent of tax. They even move about to avoid the assessor. I ask you is this a fair state of affairs? The very poor whom the objected a e pretending to sympathize with never notice the difference. Their money all goes anyway. It might as well be made to give them protection in their old age when they will need it most. Their wage will be much better under this plan. Now they are only eking out a miserable existence. A tax like the sales levy will never be a hardship when it provides for old age. Here is another stock objection—old persons don’t need that much money. Granted, but the 60-year-old persons are the mothers and fathers of the multitudes out of work. When we took the money from the hands of the parents we also took the authority away from them, which in turn gave youth more liberty than was good for it; hence the crime situation. An entire reversal of circumstances has been brought about m the last few years, wherein the aged have had to be dependent on the young. It had always been considered a problem to manage them when occupying the advantageous position of providing for them, so we are reaping natural results from the situation as it is today. 000 INFLATION POWER HELD SOLELY BY BANKS Bv Periscope. These discussions relating to inflation are based upon the false assumption that currency inflation, that is, printing of twice the present five billion dollars of currency, would upset the value of the national currency. The real value of the currency is determined by and upon the amount of credit created with the available supply of money by our banks. In the last orgy of fake rtoney values, our banking system permitted banking credit to reach fifty-three billion dollars, all based on the paltry five billion of currency then existing and which sum has not diminished today. This credit, today, however is about 40 per cent smaller in bank credit circulation. When banks get more currency on hand than they want for use in credit expansion to borrowers, they retire the currency by sending it to the Federal Reserve Banks, where it builds up reserve credit for future use, but not present use. For this very reason there can

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

expect your customers to park their cars when you and your employes have every space used by 8:30 a. m., and in most cases your cars stay parked all day, through the kindness of the corner policeman, forcing a great many to do their shopping outside of the downtown section? You pay high rent for your location and then keep your customers aw'ay from it by parking cars in front of your door. This idea was tried in a small city in Wisconsin by its own Merchants Association and it worked. It will work in Indianapolis.

never be what most persons term inflation of money. This can come only by the bank system permitting more credit to circulate. The banks can choke every attempt to inflate by printing more money, in that it would go into the Federal Reserve vaults and rot there if the banks so decide. We do business with bank credit in 90 per cent of all our transactions. The cash, as some persons know money, is but a drop in the bucket. We are suffering from wild bank credit inflation during the Republican prosperity daze. Credit is created to suit those who manipulate the stock market. Credit expansion is a move to create a “come on” movement to sell the stock credit certificates to suckers after they have recuperated from the last “sell them out” movement, brought on by shutting off credit. When the market has been shaken down enough and the public has dumped its stock, so that it is back in the dice loaders’ hands, then bank credit is expanded for a new crop of fish. The insiders get out from under long before the fish do in the inflation boom. While the fish are taken for a cleaning we have hard times. When they are baited we have boom times. Inflation only can come when the insiders are ready to set the nets to make their haul. Credit inflation will not come soon because the wringer has not yet produced enough deflation to suit the insiders. 000 CLERK URGES PATRONS TO BE COURTEOUS By An Over-Worked Clerk. If you want to see the worst side of human nature, the grasping, deceiving. vain, petty, mean side, try working behind a counter for several years. The average customer regards the clerk as an enemy who is going to cheat nim, if possible, or attempt to sell him something he' doesn’t want. Now, I like for you who are my customers to feel that I am your friend. Os course, I don’t give a hang about your Aunt Martha’s operation or your daughter’s birthday party. You needn't try to impress me with who you are, what you have or where you’ve L:en. I’ve seen thousands of you and could tell you facts about you: self that you would not care to believe But, if there is something in my department that you want or need, I will do my best to help you. But I don’t like to wait on a pig-head-ed. obstinate, mercenary old grouch. It is best to have a definite idea of what you need before you go downtown. How am I to know whether this green hat matches your suit if the suit is at home in your clothes closet? Bring samples.

.DEC. 7, 1934

take measurements, watch the advertisements, read the labels, and look at the signs, and you will be saving yourself and me, too, a lot of trouble and time. Getting mad and reporting clerks seldom does you any good. More often than not, the floor-walker winks at them behind your back because they know your type. Talk loudly enough to be heard. Be sure you have your money ready before demanding attention. Don’t take your friends with you unless you have to do so. Do not make sarcastic remarks aside to other customers. Do not interrupt a clerk counting change or measuring. Ask directions from a floor-walker, not a clerk. Do not question a clerk about merchandise in other depart-'* ments or in other stores. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Christmas Shopper, show common courtesy to me and I will meet you more than half way.

So They Say

Every one has a right to work if he wants to, and we will stand for no interference from the radicals. —George W. Marland, chief of Denver police. Now I can park my car in a mil-lion-dollar garage, the senate gar-age.—Senator-Elect Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi. We (women) don’t want and never have asked for sympathy. Sympathy has never been a substitute for justice.—Mrs. Mary Murphy, president of the Womens League. Present-day social situations may seem new ar_d intricate, but in the last analysis it is the same heroic struggle to win the minds and hearts of men from the call of the world, the flesh and the devil.—Edward D. Kohlstadt, executive secretary of Methodist board of home missions. No prudent nation can efford to be unarmed in the world today.— Lammot Du Pont. I’m not a witty person. I just try to be funny.—Fanny Brice. I hope I’ll act until I’m old, but at any rate I’ll be working at something.—Sylvia Sidney, film actress. Every dog should have fleas.—Edward A. O’Neal, president, American Farm Bureau Federation.

Daily Thought

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.—Psalms, 23:4. THE charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.—Emerson.

Autumn Winds

BY MORRIS KING The wind has doffed the cloaks of trees, And whistles through their naked limbs— A gusting, shrilling, bitter swirl. Its somber music grates the ear — Prepares us for the harsh, cold time.