Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 218, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 January 1935 — Page 8

PAGE 8

The Indianapolis Times (A BCBIPPH-HOWABD NEWSPAPEB) HOT W. HOWARD President TALCOTT POWELL Editor KARL D. BAKER Business Manager Phone Riley 5581

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MONDAY. JANUARY 21. 1935. THE RIGHT DIRECTION WHILE this mad old world of ours stares sadly at the ominous specter of war, the hands of the great powers’ diplomats tight in their pockets, the representative elected to the Congress of the United States by Indianapolis points the way to peace for America simply and forcefully. Rep. Louis Ludlow hasn’t penned some gloriously phrased tome, no stirring appeal for world peace, no astounding plan for disarmament, no amazing new scheme for naval strength reduction. Rep. Louis Ludlow’s stroke is very short, very concise. Introduced in the House of Representatives, it is labeled “H. J. Resolution 89." Here’s what it says: ‘‘Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several states: “Section 1. Except in the event of attack or invasion, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a nation-wide referendum. Congress may by law provide for the enforcement of this section. “Section 2. Whenever war is declared, the President shall immediately conscript and take over for use by the Government all the public and private war properties, yards, factories and supplies, together with employes necessary for their operation, fixing the compensation for private properties temporarily employed for the war period at a rate not in excess of 4 per centum, based on tax values assessed in the year preceding the war.” There it is—simple, direct, forceful. The words of Rep. Ludlow need no amplification. All America should stand behind that overpowering gag on munitions makers, war makers and trouble makers in general.

FOR THE LEGISLATURE— A LITTLE more than a week ago, Atty. Gen. Philip Lutz made a speech. In that speech was one significant paragraph? We print it here for the benefit of our General Assembly now in session, Here’s what Mr. Lutz said: “There is a big cry abroad to eliminate or consolidate units of government and abolish offices—all in the furtherance of efficiency and economy. While we must, under our Constitution, maintain townships and counties as units of the state, there is nothing to prevent the consolidation of townships or the consolidation of counties.” Atty. Gen. Lutz has placed his finger on one thing the Legislature of Indiana could do of great service to the citizens of this state. There is little doubt that the system of townships and counties is antiquated and obsolete. The whole setup inspires waste, overlapping. inefficiency. The Legislature would do well to think deeply about the problem of consolidation of townships and counties. It would be one very fine way of saving the citizens of Indiana fortunes in wasteful governmental expenditures. THE CIVILIZED WAY IN the name of good business and conscience, Senator Wagner and Rep. Lewis have been exhorting America for years to adopt unemployment insurance in place of private and public doles. “Let us,” Senator Wagner urged three years ago. "be like civilized beings and organize for the exigencies of the future.” “Even slavery and feudalism.” said Rep. Lewis, “provided security for workers. Dare our industrial order do less?” Today the prestige of the Roosevelt Administration backs the program of this former German immigrant boy of New York City’s streets and the one-time coal mine helper of the Alleghenies. The Administration’s Wagner-Lewis security bill would establish a state-national system of unemployment insurance. The jobless insurance features of this bill are less sweeping than some 35.000.000 European workers have lived under for years. But they break ground, and they seem peculiarly adaptable to this country’s patchw'ork of state industrial practices and standards. The measure levies a general Federal tax on industrial pay rolls, which, minus 10 per cent for administration purposes, would be forgiven industries paying the tax into state reserve funds. Thus states would pass compulsory insurance laws or lose the taxes to the Federal Treasury. Each state would be free to work out its own system, whether one like Wisconsin's, providing for plant pools and employer contributions, or the British employer-worker-state contribution scheme. The President’s committee urges benefits that will begin after four weeks’ idleness, continue for 15 or 16 weeks and amount to not more than sls a week. Several things seem essential to this program’s success. First, we should not mix insurance with relief as England did. Next, we should have a back-log of public works to employ workers which industry fails to reabsorb. Also the states should set up effective, non-political unemployment exchanges as clearing houses for the insurance systems. There should be no long delay in Congress. State Legislatures now meeting must know quickly what laws they should enact. Even at best unemployment insurance, of

course, is a misnomer. It is merely a stop-gap. Only a planned society, busy and working to the steady and uninterrupted tempo of healthy industry, will insure employment. GOVERNMENT IN BUSINESS A LMOST seven billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money has passed through the hands of the Reconstruction Finance Corp. If the expectations of the RFC materialize, taxpayers may never nave to dig down into their pockets to pay off any of this except the one billion two hundred million expended for relief. Theoretically, .he remainder of the disbursements ultimately will be redeemed, when and as the RFC's loans are repaid and its investments marketed. Already more than two billions in loans have* been repaid. But the significance of using about five billion eight hundred million dollars of the taxpayers’ credit to bolster up and hold together the Nation's private credit structure should not be lost. * The RFC—greatest of the Government’s depression enterprises—was created in the Hoover Administration, later expanded by the Roosevelt Administration, and now is to be further extended—all at the insistence of private business. The RFC is government-in-business on a grand scale, and it serves t£e needs of the very interests that agitate loudest to take the Government out of business. Each conservative agitator, it seems, nas his own private reserations. He is against government in business on principle, but favors it in practice—when it is grist for his own mill. Banks, insurance companies, railroads, mortgage houses, building and loan associations, home owners, farm owners and industries of many types ha'>e eagerly partaken of Government credit. Indeed, if the Government had not come to the rescue, our whole system probably would have collapsed. And at the bottom of the debris would have been the bank depositors, insurance policy holders and others whose financial interests are riveted into the private credit structure which now stands upon a Government-made foundation. The Government probably is in business to stay. Whether its activities will be enlarged or curtailed will depend, not upon arguments pro or con, but upon the extent that private business in the future is able to get along without Government help. HAITIAN LIBERTIES IT is not surprising that those who fought long and hard for American withdrawal from Haiti should now find themselves criticising acts of the independent Haitian government. A number of political opponents of the present regime in Haiti have been thrown into jail for writmg a letter to Dr. Ernest Gruening, head of the U. S. Division of Territories. It is a repressive act, but none need be astounded that it occurs under a recently freed government dedicated to liberty. After all, Washington imperialists used the marines to deprive the Haitians of 19 years of self-government. A generation inexperienced in political rule might be expected to make mistakes more crude than those practiced under our benevolent despotism. American occupation- of Haiti was a military guardianship, a financial overlordship, an unctuous assumption of the White Man’s Burden. Haitians enjoyed the social order and civil liberties w r e chose to give them. But our suave dictatorship was hardly a good schooling in democratic processes.

A NEW MODEL NEEDED /’-p'HIS is the season of the year when the 4. automotive industry operates at high gear, employing thousands of additional workers to turn out hundreds of thousands of 1935 model cars. In a few months thousands of workers will be dropped from the pay rolls and returned to the relief rolls, to wait for the industry to get ready for another seasonal spurt. Donald Richberg, Administration spokesman on industrial matters, bluntly told the industry in a Detroit speech that it must cease this irresponsible treatment of workers. He advised the manufacturers to agree on yearround production and permit workers to bargain collectively for steady employment. “An investment of 100 million dollars in producing capacity which is used for six months is obviously uneconomical, compared with an investment of 50 million dollars which is used for 12 months. To employ 200,000 men at comparatively good wages for six months, especiilly under the strain of continuous high speed operations, is obviously a less efficient use of human labor than to give a smaller number of men continuous employment at lower wages under better conditions.” By denying workers the right to bargain, Mr Richterg said, automotive manufacturers are inviting Government regulation of hours and wages and working conditions. “There is only one sure deterrent of increased political control of business along these lines,” he said, “and that is increased reliance upon collective bargaining.” If Mr. Richbergs admonition is not heeded, some such statutory measure as a 30-hour week probably will be fastened upon the industry. This issue may come to a head speedily. The NRA will report in a few days on working conditions and Seasonal employment in the automotive industry. When he ordered NRA to make this investigation, President Roosevelt said: “It is not very useful to pay a man $lO a day if he is employed only 65 days in a year.” PRESERVING WEALTH npHE Interior Department’s seven new soil erosion projects in as many states will demonstrate methods of stopping waste of land. Each project typifies aporoximately a million acres of land in need of protection. The cost is estimated at $910,000. The importance of the work is emphasized by the findings of the National Resources Board's land planning section. “There is enough land in America for all .. . uses,” the board found, but “provided the necessary steps are taken to put it in the proper uses and preserve its usefulness.” Erosion control is one of the first of those necessary steps. A friend says Huey Long does his best thinking at 3 in the morning. That clears up our suspicion that some of the Senator’s ideas were dreams.

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

“America’s Hour of Decision.” By Glenn Frank. (McGraw-Hill Book Cos. $2.50.) "Labor, Industry and Government." By Matthew Woll. (D. Appleton Century Cos., $2.) “The Mortgage Problem.” By Harold G. Aron. (Georgic Press, $1.50.) GLENN FRANK is the dean of liberal phrace makers and his book is by all odds the most colorful product of liberal rhetoric m our day. While in general sympathetic with President Roosevelt and the New Deal, he is critical on a number of points, especially the adoption of the economy of scarcity. The best chapter in his book is his vigorous attack upon the renunciation of plenty. He brings out clearly the point that we can no longer stumble along. We face either resolute liberal reforms or revolution. He draws very clearly the distinction between a successful program of relief and a statesmanlike reconstruction of th; economy of the nation: “I applaud the willingness of any leadership that goes bravely to bat in a moment of crisis and, without standing on ceremony, does whatever may be necessary to see to it that men and women snd children are fed and clothed and sheltered. “But relief and economic realism present different problems. Long-time statesmanship requires that we go beyond planless borrowing to bolster up an economic order that does not, in its normal day-to-day operation, spread buying power widely enough to stabilize an adequate market for its output and give to the millions those basic factors of goods, services, and leisure which are the essential raw materials of satisfactory living. u n u “ A ND it is. I repeat, in the authentic procaA. esses of economic enterprise, not in the artificial processes of political action, that the economic problem must finally be solved.” The weakest point in Dr. Flank’s book is to be discerned in the fact that after he has magnificently exposed the policies of our economic and financial leaders, stating literally that they have been so stupid as to breed the suspicion of deliberate suicide, he places his faith in the future upon the leadership of these same individuals. Matthew Woll has written a very clear and interesting book setting forth his economic and labor philosophy. He boldly and wholeheartedly defends the right of labor to organize and strike, and claims that Clause 7A of the NIRA is merely a step on the way to the full rights of labor in a democracy. He denounces any interference with the right of labor to strike as a Fascist challenge to our liberties. Unfortunately Mr. Woll’s acts in his role as an official of the American Federation of Labor do not square with his rhetoric. He failed to take a position of decisive leadership in 1533 which would have enabled labor to get as much as possible out of the NRA, while the A. F. of L. backed away from the strikers and let them down in notorious fashion in many critical strikes of the last year. nun EVEN some of Mr. Woll’s rhetoric for public consumption is hardly of a liberal vintage, for he continues the, absurd Gompers policy of opposing the organization of a strong labor party. The holders of mortgages in this country, especially on city real estate, are in a notoriously bad way. Finance capitalism has gutted the mortgage system from the inside, while the inflationists would greatly reduce the actual value of these mortgages and the interest due thereon. Mr. Aron has written an impassioned plea for the protection of these mortgages and the reorganization of the mortgage system: “The largest single investment in America is in mortgage securities. They are the spearhead of the capitalistic system and their owners are the soldiery who can save America from inflation, national collapse, confiscation of private property, the end of individualism, the death of free competition and the annihilation of democracy.” Mr. Aron would do away with the private system of title insurance and create a public mortgage authority: “Merely to police the avenues of trade and commerce, so the thug can’t use his blackjack, and the ruffians can not terrorize the public or loot the shopkeeper.”

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABELL PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT entertained at luncheon the other afternoon in honor of the former President of Mexico, Gen. Abelardo Rodriguez, who came here from New York on a flying visit and later took a train for California. Pink roses glittered on the White House table as Gen. Rodriguez, short, broad shouldered, wearing a single-breasted blue suit, entered the dining room. Meticulous protocol experts had picked exactly the right place at table for Abelardo —the right hand of President Rosevelt. On the left, they placed clever, capable Pablo Campos-Ortiz, Charge d'Affaires of Mexico. Abstemious Gen. Rodriguez sipped a little red wine, discussed Mexican conditions with President Roosevelt, who inquired about the new national highway being completed between Laredo, Tex., and Mexico City. “In about five months,” replied Gen. Rodriguez in his bass voice. Eagerly Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, who is interested in Mexican silver, leaned forward, joined in the conversation. He recalled the delights of his recent visit to that country. "Charming country! Charming people!” he beamed. nun INTERESTED in the highway project (which he fostered—together with much other public roads and schools legislation), Gen. Rodriguez described the new route and its possibilities. He and the President chatted animatedly, with Charge d’Affaires Campos-6rtiz putting in an occasional tactful word. Coffee, cigars and cigarets were served at table. Rodriguez puffed a cigaret (he never smokes cigars). Guests rose to go—Secretary Cordell Hull, silver-haired, wearing his inevitable morning coat; Secretary Dern, with a polite bow to the guest of honor; Rep. Sam D. Mcßeynolds (.who had kept up a lively conversation with his table companion and fellow Tennesseean, Mr. Hull, during the salad course); Protocol Arbiter Jimmy Dunn, always well dressed and correct; tall, lean Secretary Morgenthau, adjusting his pince-nez. On the White House steps, Gen. Rodriguez was photographed, standing between morning:oated Secretary Hull and Charge d’Affaires Campos-Ortiz, dapper and slight in his Oxford gray suit and tortoise-rimmed glasses. Enthusiastically, Gen. Rodriguez exclaimed: “Ah, President Roosevelt . . . such a wonderful personality . . . such affability . . . what a host . . . really, a remarkable man, remarkable . . .” He was still loud in his praises as a car whisked him away to the home of Charge d’Affaires Campos-Ortiz, to meet the Mexican embassy staff and drain a second cup of coffee. That Hollywood committee which reported the average annual income of more than half the film actors at less than S3OOO mustn’t have had a press agent on the board. Another woman has broken an aviation record, and the men are all up in the air about it. The man who has Just become the father of his fifth set of twins says he’d rather have twins than quintuplets. Two are enough of a blow at one time. If Roosevelt is for Garner as his running mate in 1936, he must be awfully sure of winning his re-election all by himself.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all cat . have a chance. Limit them to 2io words or less.) nun SUGGESTIONS MADE ON WORK, WEALTH By an Indiana Taxpayer. The four billion dollar relief program of the President should be diverted from public work relief to production of commodities for the use of those on relief. The state of Ohio, through its relief commission, is blazing the trail in opening closed factories, leasing the equipment for operation by those on relief. How sensible! Many of the workers who formerly worked in those closed plants are now being re-employed, not by the owner, but by the state, making shoes, clothing, stoves, foods, furniture and underwear for use of those families on relief. It is not in competition with private employers, as these persons on relief have no money, so private industry can not and would not sell to persons without money. The demand for raw materials is increasing private indue try.. Will the President permit the millions of unemployed to produce adequate volume of goods for consumption or follow the minimum production plan? We do not need pensions for ablebodied workers, neither do we need to pay more depression “bonus bonds” to our credit factories; their “interest pensions” must stop. Produce new wealth, Mr. President; force our bankers to create wealth instead of eating other people’s wealth. Government bond “coupon pensions” are not the way to recovery. n n n HONEST EFFORT NEEDED TO SOLVE PROBLEMS By Einstein Jr. Well, I see the faddists and theorists are still at it, flooding the Message Center and other columns for the voice of the people with their Townsend plan of getting something for nothing and out of nothing. And if I am not mistaken. 1 see evidence in 90 per cent of these letters of the fine Italian handwriting of a highly trained and highly paid publicity agent, who writes them and parcels them out to the faithful to sign and mail in. And I also see that Brother Townsend is in Washington giving dinners to Congressmen and telling them about his plan. If I know anything about the Congressmen I know they didn’t pay for their own dinners. Now, let me ask, who is paying for all this organization, all these publicity agents, all these regional managers, all these offices and dinners? It certainly is not paid for out of thin air like the proponents of the Townsend plan would provide the pension, but must be paid for by good hard cash. Can it'be that someone is getting poor old people to donate out of their meager dollars in chasing a will-o’-the-wisp? I firmly believe that Dr. Townsend is sincere in his belief that he has struck on a master plan to relieve distress, and I am convinced by talking to people that many old folk and lots of young believe a person can lift himself by his bootstraps. * It just won’t work, boys, this plan that sounds so plausible in theory. Every time a dollar changed hands the Government would get 2 per cent, and how can a dollar circulate and be sent to Washington at the same time? From the beginning of time people have found that good times were based on savings. This Townsend plan teaches

t ' .e/ | 7 just mop over ! /, V : '-y* ■ if \ TO Jll

The Message Genter

WOMAN’S WORK IS NEVER DONE-!

By Tom BerHngr. The slanting rays of the September sun fell across the school yard, as I left the job and started home. The pupils had all gone and only workmen were left. Up on the scaffold I heard the bricklayer telling his son to hurry up, throw in the mortar and watch the line. Glancing up it seemed, for an instant, time and place were forgotten and that I had a glimpse of something beautiful, eternal, vital and almost divine. The transmission of knowledge from father to son, from generation to generation, from teacher to pupil. School never closes and all the teaching is not on the inside of the class room. Possibly in the same situation you would have seen something else and perhaps we all see differently. As I come in contact with business men today I feel America working. I do not see brutal, heartless, inhuman men seeking for an opportunity to crush humanity.

that good times are based on spending all you have. There is the fallacy, or one of them. But we are living in an interesting age. We have had the World War in which the nations of the west tried to commit suicide, and almost succeded; the farm boom of 1919; the Ku-Klux Klan; the Florida gambling boom of 1923 and 1924; the stock market Doom of 1928 and 1929, when 10,000,000 Americans, who had no business there, were gambling on the stock market; the CoolidgeHoover era of two chickens In every pot and two cars in every garage, spend all you have to make prosperity, boys; then the New Deal, so we might as well try something else. Gold and more gold—the dollar and more dollars. When we begin to think of our neighbor as a fellow man, when we in our communities make decent provision for the old who have tried and failed or those who are sick, crippled and unfortunate, when we get willing to work at what we can find and remove the jealousy and envy from our hearts, when we pay some attention to the public officials we are electing and quite rushing out blindly to vote the straight ticket because of greed or ignorance, when we curb the national power trust and other nation-wide corporations, and when we get right with God, this country will once again be a good place to live in. It will not be done by waving a wand and crying "HocusPocus” or “Abra Ca Dabra.” All that the latter ever brought forth was Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves. nun FLAYS HEARST FOR ARTICLE ON RUSSIA By Algernon Goodboy. Again let me commend The Times in its fearless policy of following the straight and narrow path of truthfulness, even though at this particular time it is extremely dangerous to do so. In the Jan. H issue of The Times Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes, in commenting on William Randolph Hearst’s tirade against Russia, says: “The beginning of 1935 is not a strategical time in which to launch any capitalistic criticism against Russia on a material basis,” meaning, of course, that with capitalism gone to seed, and millions in America suffering from hunger, cold and distress, it would be well for Mr. Hearst to turn around and take a slant at this country and then “cast the beam out of thine own eye before you try to pluck the mote out of your neighbor’s eye.” Dr. Barnes again says that within

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

A Nation Fights Back

I see men who have slipped, fell and hit the bottom and now courageously are struggling to climb back up the hill. Climbing slowly, while the stones of severe competition rain down upon them. Planning while their men sleep, eating often without tasting and gaining ground daily. Contractors earnestly endeavoring to land the smallest job. Material men looking for any order. Sub-con-tractors, an almost forgotten group, taking the small job and the small profit and fighting it with craft and vigor. Fighting their way back and enjoying it. And soon we shall see America working. The credit will belong in a large measure, not to codes and alphabetical combinations, or dissatisfied and criticising groups, but to these men. Men who have nerve and who are in the game now fighting. To those who are working their money, to those who to help building conditions are using their brains and skill, to those who are working and to those who wish to work, the best of luck.

the last six months no one has tried harder to crush intellectual freedojn than has Mr. Hearst. The reader may recall the fact that at one time Mr. Hearst owned a large ranch in Mexico, superintended by American overlords, who because of their extreme cruelty to the peons were murdered. Mr. Hearst immediately raised the cry that innocent Americans were being murdered by the Mexican bandits and prevailed upon President Wilson to send the Army into that country. Mr. Wilson refused to be a catspaw for Mr. Hearst and consequently he still is nursing a giouch. I would like to ask Mr. Hearst why it is that after nearly four centuries of the most Horrible suffering from starvation, slavery and slaughter in Russia that you have become so intensely interested in the Russians’ condition at this late date; and why is it that the article you published recently about finances in Russia is almost a verbatim copy of one you published in your paper 17 years ago? It might be well for the American public to find the ulterior motive for Mr. Hearst’s ranting. nun TOWNSEND ADVOCATE THANKS THE TIMES. By a Times Header. I wish to congratulate The Indianapolis Times for the courtesies shown the Townsend old-age pension plan. I wish the plan could be put into effect at once. That the elders would give their positions to the younger folk, that all could appreciate what a wonderful insurance it is for the young. They could spend what they earn more cheerfully and really live. Two hundred dollars is not too much a month. It will take that much to bring prosperty—it is not hard to use SSO a week in our homes and churches. It would help every part of the United States at the same time. Since the Government has tried the rest, why not try the Daily Thought Awake to righteousness and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God; I speak this to your shame.—l Corinthians, xv, 34. J-'IND earth where grows no weed, JL i and you may find a heart wherein no error grows.—Knowles.

JAN. 21, 1915

best? I wish the Government would stand by the people like the people have stood by the Government. Give the ex-soldiers immediate relief. They need it and deserve it. Don’t be in a hurry to join clubs such as the “For President” and “Vice President” clubs. Wait until they make a showdown. One party failed. The party in power now has not done much yet to bring relief and stop so much worry. Someone will say, “Where will the money come from?” Answer, “The same place the many millions have been coming from.” It seems like when there is a need there has been a place for our Government to get the money. If our two great parties can not help the masses it must be time to try the Townsend plan. n n n Editor’s Note—Officials of the Indianapolis Abattoir Corp. state they have no knowledge of a complaint stated in a Message Center letter published Friday signed “By FERA Worker.” The letter stated that the writer had been unable to collect back pay of $8 which ne said had been earned as an employe of the corporation. The officials of the corporation expressed willingness to confer with the letter writer regarding the matter. So They Say It is impossible, with a team drawn from a student body of 450, to play great universities unless that team is built up by extensive subsidization of athletes.—President Ralph C. Hutchison of Washington and Jefferson College. The ability to analyze and a good memory are the two important things which make the difference between a good checker player and an expert.—Asa Long, world checker champ. The farmer’s great need now is that of getting full employment to the industrial population in order that consumers may be able to pay fair prices for higher consumption. —Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, I want the people to know I’m a good fellow. If they see a picture of me sitting down with the boys holding five aces, they’ll know I’m regular.—Mayox William N. McNair of Pittsburgh. No matter where the fleet may go, we find usually that the agitators have arrived ahead of it.— Commander V. L. Kirkman, United States Navy. Nobody can live in a world that has gone by, and at the same time lead the voters in the world of today—Gov. Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania.

SNOW

BY MAUD C. WADDELL Deep snow and all that you recall! So silent, soft and cool you fall Till earth completely turns to white, As I watch close approach of night. Falling, steady as passing time— Each flake of snow like tiny chime Mystic, magic design in white To shut familiar forms from sight. Silent, relentless in your flight, Shutting all that was—from my sight. As time softly veils memory’s view Leaving dreams of the past and