Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 195, Indianapolis, Marion County, 25 December 1934 — Page 16

PAGE 16

The Indianapolis Times ( MRIPPI-HOWART) NEWSPAPER) ROT W HOWARD TAI.COTT POWELL Editor EAKL D. BAKER Business Manager Phone Riley 5361

G”* l.ight npn the pfoplr It ill f,nd Thnr (Urn Way

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KKIMY, DECEMBER 25. 1934

IF DKBTS WERE PAID C CITIZEN'S of Alcorn County, Mississippi, organizcd the Alcorn Electric Power Assn., a co-operative organization, to acquire the local distribution facilities of the Mississippi Power Cos., so the> could use the cheaper power of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The set-up provided that the plant should be paid for out of revenues. It was estimated that this would take from eight to ten years. Although customers are saving 40 per cent on bills, revenues during the first five months of operation have been so much larger than expected it is now estimated that the system will be paid for in five or six years. On his recent visit to this and other TVA enterprises. President Roosevelt said: "By using good business methods, we can instruct a good many businesses in this country.” The President could well have had in mmd the vast and perpetual mortgage about the neck of business in this country. Would it not be logical to ask. if the Aicorn County Electric Power Assn, can pay off its entire debt in a period so short as six years, why it would not be possible for any wellmanaged private utility to do the same? The TVA enterprises can be more than a mere power yardstick. They can, and may be, a yardstick of good business management and sound finance. Why must railroads, utilities, and, for that matter, private businesses, be forever refinancing their debts? What a happy, peaceful revolution there would be if business ceased to rr rd debt as normal and perpetual, but looke. pon it as justified only as a means of start a needed business, or to make an imperatively needed expansion, and if payment on principal of debt, as well as interest, were made annually! Debt-free business would be able to pay higher wages and salaries and offer goods to the public at lower prices. Thus it would promote consumption. Once it was free of debt, it could apply a considerable portion of its revenues each year to accumulating reserve funds so it could continue to pay its employes wages and its stockholders dividends during years when business was off. Thus purchasing power would be continued, and “poor business” would not develop into depression. REALITIES OF POLITICS r FHE board of education in a large middlewestern industrial city not long ago appointed a committee to make a survey of the citizenship training being given in the city's public schools. The committee went out, looked around, and came back presently to report that the citizenship training was going over big except for the fact that the children were learning too much about their city outside of school hours. . In class the youngsters heard much fine talk about civic duty, honesty, political theories and such like. Then they would go home and listen to their parents talk, or they would read the daily papers, and in that way they got the low down on the way the city really was being run. The result, unfortunately, was to persuade them that the citizenship training being given in school was all very pretty, but that it didn't mean very much in everyday life. The child who lives in a boss-controlled ward, where "the fix” is a common, taken-for-granted feature of community life, is apt to get a different slant on representative government than the text books will give him. A youngster who hears his father gleefully tell a crony how he got a traffic ticket fixed isn t apt to imbibe that fine respect for the integrity of the courts which the school teacher tries to inculcate. , The child who knows that his school teacher is going unpaid, and at the same tine reads in the paper that the political gang which runs the city is loading up the pay rolls preparatory to election day, learns something of politics which no school book wall tell him. Home conversation in which corruption in public office, undue influence exer'ed by big business combinations, and the low caliber of off eholders generally are taken for granted, makes an effective antidote to fine talk by the teacher about the ideals of a democracy. Now all this boils down to a small but unpalataole little pill, which we might just as well swallow without making any faces. We can put all the citizenship courses we please in our schools, but as long as our own actions speak louder than the teacher's voice the courses won t mean much. Children can't be kidded on things like that. If we bring them up in cities run by ward bosses for the benefit of secial interests they're going to catch on. If we want our children to respect the society we are operating, we must begin by reforming it. Until we do. our citizenship courses will only teach them cynicism. MODERN CHRISTMAS STORY YNICAL people can make caustic jokes about the Christmas spirit. Sometimes the jokes are pretty funny, and we all get a laugh out of them. But the Christmas spirit does exist, just the same, and it sometimes has unexpected effects on supposedly hard-boiled human beings A Brooklyn store was invaded by a holdup man a few nights before Christmas. The bandit tied the proprietor in a chair and turned to the cash register. Then, as he prepared to scoop up the loot, he paused. Some echo of the Christmas spirit, apparently, sounded faintly m his ears. He broke into tears, sobbed out that he was

desperate and that he had a wife and two children —and then went over, untied the proproprietor and said, “I don't think I’ll take your money,” and walked out. At the door he paused to wish the storekeeper a Merry Christmas. Then he left. In spite of all our jokes, there is something in this Christmas spirit that can make itself heard even above the desperate voice of hunger and want. GREATER THAN FICTION | -HE modern novelist delirhts in the triangle story, and in most cases his two favored lovers are not married to each other. But their love is so great that they go away together regardless, leaving behind a deserted wife or a husband, or sometimes both, and cutting very romantic figures. Real life drama sometimes follows that pattern. sometimes doesn’t. There died the other day a university professor in the Middle West who had had a chief part in a different kina of triangle. His wife eloped with another man. Instead of playing the outraged husband, the professor said that he hoped they would be happy, and offered his wife a divorce if she wished it. But she didn't; after three weeks she came back to him, and the dashing lover whom she left in the lurch was so chagrined he committed suicide. Sometimes life takes a twist that defies the writers' traditions. THE GRIST OF NEWS 'T'HE week in review . . . Madame Valentine Fraya, eminent French astrologer, communes with the stars and announces that the United States will emerge from the depression in 1935, thereby placing second to Charlie Dawes on predictions, and the Federal Government adopts plans to pave the way for revival of the old neighborhood grist mill. Premier Flandin of France promises that his country ‘‘will omit nothing to assure the organization of peace,” and the Chamber of Deputies adds 800,000 francs to the army budget, just to make sure. Five Cleveland youths engage in 11 holdups and find that the pay only averages sls a week, and Jim Farley sends election congratulations to a Massachusetts politician who wasn't even nominated. The Department of Agriculture continues its efforts to counteract the drought, and Arab tribesmen complain that heavy rains in the Sahara Desert have ruined all their crops. Meanwhile a cold wave hits Florida and paralyzes the fish in Philippi Creek. The Soviet government prepares to execute four men who attacked and killed two girls near Samara, explaining that it isn't executing them for murder, but for counter-revolutionary activities, the girls having been members of the Communist Young Pioneers outfit. Fritz, the dog that hung around the campus of Sewanee University for 17 years, had a charge account and understood three languages, drops dead, and Pittsburgh dedicates a $5,000,000 postoffice only to find that it lacks a slot through which you can mail letters. Two brothers condemned to death in Yugoslavia protest because the hangman is too busy to execute them, complaining that they have been fed the traditional hearty breakfast seven mornings in a row and that it is getting on their nerves. An Ohio landlady has her star boarder pinched after he sold her bed-slats and a chair to get money to buy booze, and then set fire to her skirt in a spirit of playfulness. A Massachusetts woolen mill assessed at $90,000 is sold at auction to a man who bid SIOO just to keep the bidding alive, and the purchaser find he’s stuck for $3,000 in taxes and wants to hold another auction. Federal horticultural experts find a way to grow potatoes in gaudy Easter egg colors, and a Wisconsin expert finishes a survey showing that families on relief rolls have more babies than those which are self-supporting. A dizzy record? Just a glance at the week's happenings, as reflected in the newspapers. LACK OF THOUGHT DOTH the kind of firmness which officers of the law ought to show in times of stress and the utter irrationality which can pervade a mob were strikingly illustrated by the tragic events at Shelbyville, Tenn. where National Guardsmen foiled an attempted lynching. The bloodshed which attended that clash is, of course, an extremely regrettable thing. Yet it goes without saying that if officers of the law everywhere were as determined about protecting the prisoners in their charge as these Tennessee officers were in this case, lynching would speedily cease to be a disgrace to American civilization. But it would be hard to think of anything much more senseless than the would-be lynchers' action in burning down their own Courthouse. They will have to build anew one, and the money will come out of their own pockets. A more unintelligent way of venting their anger could hardly be imagined. MOTTO FOR SOLDIERS FN the early days of American history, nearly every regular Army and Militia regiment had its motto, which was proudly emblazoned on its regimental colors and which served as the basis for innumerable toasts, public speeches and what not. The custom has fallen into disuse, in recent years. Now. however, it is being revived again; and it is somehow pleasing to note the 150th infantry of the West Virginia National Guard adopted as its slogan the succinct motto, “We can take it.” Here, indeed, is something for a hard-boiled infantry outfit to live up to! No fine Greek or Latin phrases here, as in the old days; just a snappy and expressive Americanism, ideally adapted to military usage. This West Virginia regiment seems to have set a standard, in the matter of mottos, for other military organizations to live up to. Doctors are baffled by the continuous yawning of a woman, the last several days. Don't they know any new jokes? If. as Gen. Johnson is reported to have said, the NRA is as dead as a dodo, the fuss going on now must be over who'll have the eagle for stuffing. Tile Prince of Wales has been seen wearing hom-nmmed spectacles. But the girls can see through that disguise even better than he can.

CRIME NEWS KV r R prTrBC

THOMAS JEFFERSON and other constitutional fathers to the contrary notwith--1 standing, every so often somebody bobs up to cry down freedom of speech and to demand censorship of newspapers. Recently there has been a periodical recrudescence of this sort of thing. As usual, it is .based largely on a quite prevalent impression that the newspapers give too great prominence to crime news. Last August a committee of the New York Bar advocated censorship. But that is not with- | out precedent. In 1926 the New York Crime Commission urged censorship of crime and court news. In the last issue of The State Bar Journal of California. Judge Leon R. Yankwich of the Superior Court of Los Angeles presents results of his own study of the subject. He believes that the two pleas for censorship mentioned above approach the problem from too narrow a standpoint because they overlook entirely the function of the newspaper. They also overlook, he says, “the fact that every right the newspapers possess even the very right to exist—is the result of centuries of struggle.” He further points out that “the history of free government may be written in the history’ of the struggle for free expression.” tt tt tt JUDGE YANKWICH quotes Pennsylvania welfare authorities and University of Oregon investigators to the effect that newspapers devote not to exceed 3 per cent of their total newspaper space to crime news and that the newspapers carry far less such news than they did 50 years ago. He believes that modern newspaper technique and the way in w’hich some newspapers handle crime news is partly responsible for the common belief that crime is increasing, although the Federal Council of Churches reports it is decreasing. He holds that newspapers are not the creators or censors of news,* which he defines as anything new or interesting. He emphatically contends it is not only the right, but the duty of newspapers to report crime news and record court activities as their proper function. His chief concern is how they should perform that function. Judge Yankwich’s most stringent criticism is directed (1) at those newspapers which embellish crime, glorify criminals and perhaps induce persons of subnormal intelligence to imitate their crimes; (2> at thase newspapers which, before trial and sometimes before capture of the person accused of crime, publish all details of the crime, testimony of witnesses, clews, surmises and theories of the prasecuting officers, often thereby enabling the guilty to escape arrest and making it more difficult to secure jurors to fairly try a case. tt tt tt "CENSORSHIP,” says Judge Yankwichin conelusion, “will not solve the problem. Nor will the exercise of the power of courts to punish as contempt. What will solve it is cooperation between those charged with the administration of justice, the public and the newspapers.” Such a program of co-operation, in the opin- | ion of Judge Yankwich, would call upon the newspapers, on their part, to be guided not by the lowest but by the highest standards of the profession—“a judicious use of their great powers in recording facts relating to the administration of justice. "On the part of the public, a consideration of this problem should lead us to realize that, despite temporary annoyances and inconveniences, which may be occasioned by modern newspaper technique, the freedom of the press is the greatest safeguard of free institutions. We should, therefore, lend a deaf ear to those who would encroach upon that great American fundamental.”

Capital Capers BY DAVID DIETZ

DIPLOMATIC parents (by which is meant parents who belong to the diplomatic corps) are having a proud day today. For several weeks these parents have been carefully schooling their young sons and daughters to take part in the children’s radio program sponsored by the Greater National Capital Committee. / Fifteen diplomatic children are broadcasting Christmas to their native lands. The parents are prouder than the children and just as nervous. Such mopping of forehead , such promptings and whisperings, such nudg. rgs and hand wavings Iwe seldom been seen in the diplomatic corps except during a world political conference. Mrs. Torr, wife of the new military attache of Great Britain, called up to say that her little 9-year-old daughter, Camilla, has written her own speech. It's entitled “How Santa Claus Comes to Little Children in England.” Col. Torr swears he didn’t help to write it. “Pablo, I hope, will give a goto talk,” said Counselor Pablo Campos-Ortiz of the Mexican Embassy, referring to his 10-year- old son. Last year, Pablo broke his aim a few days before Christmas and couldn't speak over the radio. So he’s been practicing doubly hard for this occasion, with Pablo Senior watching from the sidelines. a u 'T'INY, self-possessed Dominic de Leusse, 5JL year-old son of Count and Countess de Leusse of the French embassy, made a hit when he orated last season. “Yes, he speaks very good English as well as French.” says Papa de Leusse, w'hen any one mentions Dominic. And he does. Dominic is so good at elocution that his parents wouldn’t be surprised to see him enter the Chamber of Deputies. Ach, Ach! How plump, chubby Eva Maria j Luther, daughter of Ambassador Hans Luther of Germany, causes her father’s heart to go | pitterpat! If you don’t think so, you should; watch the Herr Doktor when Eva Marie ap- I proaches the microphone. It’s in the blood of little Sakiko Saito. daugh- j ter of the Japanese Ambassador and Mme. Saito, to sing songs of old Japan. Mme. Saito sings exquisitely about cherry blossoms during the cherry blossom festival here. Sakiko is following her mother's instructions. She has a pretty voice and her parents hope her Japanese song today will be just another tie between their country and the United States. Envoy Saito thinks more of Sakikos voice than of naval parity. an u “A-VH, MR. MINISTER, your little daughter v-/ spoke so nicely over the radio last year. Will you let her speak again this time?” said a representative of the Greater National Capital Committee to Minister Otto ■ Wadsted of Denmark. A hearty Danish laugh resounded on the telephone. “I’m afraid I can't accommodate you,” boomed Envoy Wadsted. “I have no daughter. I have a fine son. but I fear he can’t articulate sufficiently well yet. Call me up next year.” The Wadsted son and heir, a bouncing baby boy, has just arrived in the United States from Denmark, after a stormy Atlantic crossing. Mercedes. 9-year-old daughter of Counselor and social arbiter Adolfo de Urquiza of the Argentine embassy, will recite Christmas greetings <her parents predict* as elegantly as Don Adolfo recites a precedence list to admiring diplomats. Mme. Sokolowska, wife of the Polish counselor. promised her young son, Peter Daniel Sokolowski, that he could speak over the radio as a Christmas gift. That’s one present his par- ; ents gave him. This column knows another present they're going to give him. but it won’t I tell—except to say it was bought in New York. | Yeung Radu Florescu, 11-year-old son of the new Rumanian counselor and Mme. Florescu, is maxing his radio debut. “But I’m afraid he can't speak English,” said Florescu. “May he speak in Rumanian?” So Radu will talk to Bucharest and the United States in his native tongue.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less.) PENSIONS WOULD *SOLVE U. S. CRIME WAVE By T. D. Danaher. It won’t be long now. We'll soon be in contact with the best and likely the most successful and profitable turn of events our United States has ever known, and one which will operate, considering certain present prevailing circumstances, at a nominal cost to our already heavily burdened taxpayer. When we get the S2OO a month pensions, I would suggest that a certain regulation be in force which will, I am sure, make the proposition more of a profit than a cost. We can use the pension fund as a mighty lever to deter crime and criminals, by working it like this: To every married man, give S2OO a month, and to every single person reaching the age of 60 SIOO a month. For every conviction of guilt, make a deduction proportionate to tne depths of that guilt; and in the case of extraordinary crimes, inflict a complete loss of pension, as should also be done in the case of membership in public enemy organizations, such as K. K. K. or the Communist party. Consider for a moment the cost of this country’s crime to its taxpayers, and our pension system could be made to fit in to abolish all that cost, because it would help to put the Insull-Dillinger class on the straight track, and thus have ■no more need of criminal courts, ! criminal judges, prosecutors, police, I jails and jailers, bailiffs, detectives and all the nuisances which crime I inflicts on the already over-bur-dened taxpayer. Yes. after a few years of intelligent work of our pension system, we can turn all our jails, police stations and the like into profitable taxpaying properties. 8 8 8 BELITTLES INSURANCE AS ECONOMIC AID By a Times Reader. Senator Frederick Van Nuys, speaking before the Professional Men’s Forum, stated that the proximate cause of economic depression could be found in the abrupt termination of industrial pay rolls. He urged a *form of unemployment insurance as a remedy. His premise is wrong and his conclusion doubly wrong. If insurance is. or ever will be. a remedy, the European countries, having had insurance of this type on a grand scale for more than 20 years, would not have had a crisis like our own. You can not laugh that off. Insurance for economic security is just another of those wild dream panaceas that ignore the real cause of economic depression. All that stuff is for home consumption for shallow-minded headline readers. Calling Senator Van Nuys’ attention to the “profit” as the underlying motive power of industry, we must first realize that profits are not dollars, but goods. If profits were only dollars, we could manufacture dollars and be rich even if we had to live like Tarzan. If goods do not flow in a steady stream while all the facilities and man power are available, we have poverty regardless of mountains of bank credit money, greenbacks, coppers or dimes. To turn out goods for service to consumers is the only function industry has, plas-

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The Message Center

THE BIGGEST YET

Sales Tax for Indiana Favored

By One Who Pays. The Indiana General Assembly, to be convened early in the new year, should repeal the obnoxious, unfair gross income tax law and in its stead enact a sales tax program. The gross income tax law probably is unconstitutional. Further than that, it is a piece of legislation which is so unfair that one often wonders why the public ever stood for its enactment. To exact a tax from a man making S2O a week or more, without regard to how many dependents he has, is on its face a most unjust action. The Federal income lax law, based on an entirely different theory, is just. It provides exemptions for those with dependents, and the basic exemption is high enough to give the man earning little pay some semblance of a break. That can not be said of the Indiana law, A sales tax is fair, one pays ac-

ters of insurance and vote-catching nostroms notwithstanding. The product of industry is a social product, and is so decreed by the natural law of economics. By hiding the product under the term money, certain groups in our system of production are enabled to cover up their unfair seizure of the products of industry. The workers who produce also are the consumers of the goods. When the money credits are diverted to the wrong channels, where they can not be mobilized for consumers’ product consumption, as for instance, in speculative ventures that are based on stock market tickers, these credits are neither productive of new facilities or consumers’ credits. When profits taken out of production are not returned to the field of new production, they shake the foundation on which the whole social structure is built. Profits taken to be hoarded, prevent the consumption of the goods they represent. Through our bottle glass spectacles we see only dollar profits as the basis of industry; by bottling profits, we bottle the goods, so that no insurance can uncork the goods that should flow to consumers in ever increasing volume. 8 8 8 CHRISTMAS TREE WASTE CITED By Harry E. ConnWl. Since there apparently is no governing law between the supply and demand covering Christmas trees, j it looks again this year like the Courthouse lawn and a lot of vacant lots and store fronts are going to be cluttered up Christmas Day with quantities of unsold trees. During this time of the year every one seems charitable except those who sell Christmas trees; every one who can afford one and wants it will purchase it not later. than today. It seems like it would be a good thought for some of these tree venders to call some charitable I headquarters not later than 3 tonight and tell them they have a number of unsold trees that could be had for asking. These institutions, I am sure, would be glad to issue some sort of a card to families on their lists and one could be assured that some lad from any of these families would be very glad to go nearly any place, even at that hour, if he could have a tree lor Christmas. This surely

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

cording to' his ability to pay, instead of having to hand over part of a meager salary regardless of circumstances. A single man, with no dependents, who is making $25 a week, can pay the Indiana tax far easier than a married man with a houseful of children who is making SSO a week. With the repeal of the income tax law and enactment of a sales tax statute, the tax situation in Indiana would be greatly improved. In another field, that of education, there is a law which should be undisturbed. That is the teacher tenure law, protecting veteran teachers from the whims of politically minded office holders. A man or woman who chooses to devote a life to teaching certainly should have security in employment and that security is provided by the tenure law.

would make a lot of persons, especially children, happy, who otherwise will hot be able to purchase a tree. Surely these tree merchants can t expect much business after 8 tonight and nothing looks more pitiful than a yard or lot full of Chirstmas trees on the day itself. If the venders of the trees fail in thi|, it would be a good thing if the city would draft an ordinance for next year confiscating all trees at 8 on Christmas eve and turn them over the Salvation Army and the various church organizations who could arrange distribution on an orderly basis, to the many families who are registered on the various rolls and who would be happy to call for a tree. tt u a BARCE ACTIVITY IS BRANDED “WHITEWASH” Bv Disgusted. For many months the daily press carried news of prison and jail breaks in this state, Something had to be done, so apparently a man was picked to take the heat. This man was J. Edward Barce, Deputy Attorney General. His job, it seems to me, was to get sorr.e one in jail to replace the dozens who have escaped recently. Therefore, he set out with his blond stenographer for Chicago. He couldn't find a victim in Indiana, so he went into a state where he had absolutely no authority or jurisdiction and put on a Sherlock Holmes act. The next thing we know, this cultured, educated gentleman was posing as a gangster and had caused a bad-bad mans to be captured. Now. through his noble efforts, the reputation of Indiana is saved and all is forgiven. Politics pure and simple. Is this one very foolish gesture on the part of a state official to be a complete whitewash of all prison and jail breaks?

Daily Thought

And, behold. I come quickly; and I My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be. —Revelations, 22:12. BLESSINGS ever wait on Virtuous deeds, and though late, a sure reward succeeds.—Congreve.

DEC. 25, 1934

OBJECTS TO PROPOSED PENSION PLAN By .Joe Hat/. By The Times I see some United States Senators have received a lot of letters from old people, asking them to pass the Townsend old-age pension plan. I think these old people should be ashamed for such grasping. They say there is no fool like! an old fool. They should have saved their money when they were young and now they would not be begging. I have saved hard all my life. Let them do like me. I am not asking for charity. If you give them money, it will make business good the whisky business. You can not get them to do anything around the store unless you pay them two times what it is worth. Now they want to put out S2OO a month. They should go home and pray to God to forgive their sins.

So They Say

Our plan is to make all the people capitalists and thus save the capitalist system from Communism or Fascism.—Dr. Francis E. Townsend, author of the Townsend old-age pension plan. The Middle West is the heart of the United States of the future.— Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler. There are more corrupt politicians in this world than there are policemen—a lot more.—Austin J. Roche, former police commissioner of Buffalo. The American Legion is not in politics. Partisan politics places us in a position where our objectives are misunherstod.—National Commander Edward H. Hayes. I have never advocated the rcdistnbutior of wealth. This is perfectly impossible under a capitalistic system.—Marriner S. Eccles, governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Tact and complacency have long been woman's attributes, and I think they prove a drawback to good reading.—Kay Boyle, author.

Infatuation

BY ALONZO RICE I sometimes wonder if you really are The all of sweet perfection that I deem, Or gazing in a crystal bowl I dream And fashion it by some deceptive star! Did fancy shape the shrine I seek . from far And wrapped in rainbows that illusive beam, The fragile, shifting sphere that I esteem, And which possession’s lightest touch would mar? I do not seek to know, since wisdom brmgs So hard a penance. I would rather! be | Deceived and happy kneeling at your throne! What though my god be wood or brass? ?here rings / The chime of truth in these old words fcr me, ••Joined to his idols, cease, let him alone!'’