Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 224, Indianapolis, Marion County, 28 January 1935 — Page 8

PAGE 8

The Indianapolis Times (A SC RIPPS-HOWARD XEH SPAPF.B) rot W. HOWARD President TAI.COTT POWELL Editor EAKL D. BAKER Business Manager Thone Riley 5551

Mmhor of I'nlfod Pro**. Scripp* - Howard News pi per Alliance. Newspaper Enterprise Association. Newspaper Information Service anil Audit Bureau of Circulations. Owned and published dally (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Company. 214-200 West Maryland street. Indianapolis Ind. Price in Mariop courry. 2 cents a copy: e’sewhere. 3 cents —delivered by carrier. 12 cents a week. Mail subscription rates in Indiana. $3 a year: outsidp of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

Giv* Light and tha Peapla Will find Thtir Oven Wav

MONDAY JANUARY 28

SAFETY AT SEA WHEN the lmer Mohawk sank off New Jersey and left 45 dead or missing, she did more than add a third disaster within five months to a single company’s log. She and her victims became pleaders sos a more adequate system of American safety-at-sea laws. It is unthinkable that ship owners’ lobbies should block such legislation any longer. Last fall when the Morro Castle burned, causing the 134 deaths, hearings revealed that her crew included many untrained, poorly paid and overworked aliens. At the same time a report to the National Labor Relations Board criticised many American lines for low wages, short crews, long hours and bad working conditions. Some of these lines are heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. This week congress will receive a set of measures prepared by the Department of Commerce and covering all phases of ship safety. This program would provide that all plans for new American ships meet rigid government requirements, that maximum loading standards be applied to coastwise as well as transocean vessels, that other safety standards be fixed and rigidly enforced by an enlarged inspection personnel. Daniel C. Roper, Secretary of Commerce, is urging ratification of the 1929 international convention for safety of life at sea. Had the Mohawk been as strongly constructed as this treaty requires, it would not have sunk, according to Joseph B. Weaver, chief of the United States Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection Service. But the labor provisions of the treaty need careful scrutiny. DEEDED CUBAN REFORMS "DOTH the Havana and Washington governments are put on the spot by the Commission on Cuban Affairs in its report on conditions and its recommendations for reform. Since the commission was appointed at the request of President Mendieta and consists of leading non-partisan experts, its findings can not be ignored. The report has the scientific poise and informed courage to be expected from such men as the commission chairman. Dr. Raymond Leslie Buell of the Foreign Policy Association, Professors Fetter, Graham and Jenks, Director Gruening of the U. S. Division of Territories and Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Wilson. In its conclusion that the Cuban revolution, which overthrew the Machado dictatorship, has since been prevented from producing most of the promised political and economic reforms, the commission confirms the findings of virtually all unofficial investigators who have written on the subject. Likewise, it agrees with the opinion of other investigators that Washington's partisan diplomatic interference was partly to blame. Deserved praise is given to the Roosevelt Administration for its enlightened trade policy, for withholding Marine intervention, and for abrogating the Platt amendment. Among the commission’s economic recommendations the most important call for development of non-sugar crops, taxation of unused land, government development of small holdings, a public health and social welfare program, and government jurisdiction over public utilities. Only after sweep! ig economic reform of conditions which now keep many Cubans in a state of illiteracy and semi-star-vation. does the commission expect the island to achieve real political democracy and stability. Os even more interest to Americans are the recommendations for changes in United States policy. These include: 1. Cease using diplomatic recognition as a partisan club. 2. Surrender the Guantanamo naval base lease and use other harbors such as Vieques Sound. 3. Restrict future intervention to evacuation of foreigners from ports in disturbed areas. This enlightened policy would pay big dividends in Latin-American friendship. It deserves the most sympathetic consideration by President Roosevelt and Secretary of State HulL COLLEGE YOUTH FLAMING youth may have built a pretty hot fire on our college campuses during the frenzied post-war decade, but the fire has gone out now and the ashes are cold and forgotten. So. at any rate, says Dr. Charles W. Gilkey, dean of the University of Chicago. The present collection of undergraduates. Dr. Gilkey says, is "the best generation of college students I have seen in 30 years of contact with students." The Chicago dean finds the improvement manifest in several ways. For one thing, there is a greater attendance at chapel services, and a wider expression of interest in religious discussions. For another, students are serious-minded and realistic in their attitude toward current events. They are at last awake to the fact that something must be wrong with a social scheme which offers them so little. “Students are not at all convinced about the solution of our situation, but they are convinced that something is wrong.” says Dr. Gilkey. Yet they are not turning red on us. Communism, the dean reports, attracts the smallest of all campus groups, "because it is a dogma, and if there is one thing a college student can’t stand, it is a dogma.” All in all. then, this college generation seems to be in much better health mentally and spiritually than any of recent years; and that, when you stop to think about it, is simply

a reflection of a corresponding improvement on the part of the older generation. For young people In college are not a race apart, born in some cloudy vacancy beyond the stars and transported suddenly to earth to perplex the graybeards. They are, in the main, what we have made them. They have grown up in a world for which we older folk are responsible, and the things they do and think and say simply mirror conditions which we have created. If they acted in a distressing way during the great boom years, so that higher education became more or less of a mockery on some campuses, they were just doing as we might have expected them to do—for we older ones likewise acted in a distressing way, and we’re still paying for it. If flaming youth became a by-word, the fault really lay with flaming youth’s elders. So if college youth has grown quieter, more serious, and more thoughtful of late, it is a sign that similar change has been coming over the nation as a whole The depression has been a hard school, but we all have learned something in it; one of the surest and most hopeful indications is this new spirit that Dean Gilkey finds on the university campus. A MACHINE-AGE CONSTITUTION r T''HE country is again indebted to the bold thinking of Secretary Wallace. The lowan who heads the Department of Agriculture is a firm believer in democracy. He challenges the people to do their own thinking and their own governing. Having introduced democracy into the economic affairs of agriculture, Mr. Wallace proposes in the current issue of Collier’s that this principle be extended in the affairs of the nation as a whole. He would give the people the direct power to amend the Constitution, by referenda on questions submitted to them by a National Economic Council. His method may be no better than a dozen others that have been suggested. For many years progressive leaders have recognized that our horse-and-carriage system of government is a clumsy instrument for handling the problems of an era dominated by machines and monopolies. Thomas Jefferson, foreseeing the need for flexibility, suggested that the Constitution be revised every 20 years. Our present methods of amending the Constitution are very cumbersome. The Child Labor amendment, for example, has been pending before state Legislatures for 11 years. Yet there is little doubt that a vast majority of the American people have long favored its ratification. Mr. Wallace’s plan, or some other, we trust, will some day be adopted to make our government more responsive to the wishes and needs of the people. PAROLE BOARDS I\i|"OST of the criticism of paroles for prisoners, so widespread recently, can bo traced to blunders of parole boards which have turned loose confirmed criminals to prey upon society. Humanitarians and persons experienced in the rehabilitation of casual criminals brought the parole system into being, but in too many states incompetent politicans have been given the job of administering it. Such a system can be successful only by intelligent administration. The Federal parole system is often held up as a model. Its success is due to the high caliber of the personnel of the United States Parole Board. Disquieting reports that political spoilsmen are looking enviously at these jobs should be answered by a firm statement from the attorney general that he will not yield to the patronage mongers. A report that Dr. Amy Stannard, an outstanding psychiatrist, will be eased off the board to make room for some deserving party worker should have no foundation in fact. Dr. Stannard’s record of fine service could never be duplicated by a political job-seeker. WHERE BUILDING STOPS EITHER more ample credit nor direct government stimulation will restore health to the building trades until rents go up or building costs come down. So says a bulletin issued currently by the National Industrial Conference Board. Building costs today, says the bulletin, are somewhat lower than they were 10 years ago, but rentals are a great deal lower. Ten years ago a man could put S6OOO into anew house and lot and could rent it for $360, or a net return of 6 per cent. Today the same house and lot would cost him $4950, but the rental income would be only SIBB, a net return of 3.8 per cent. To get a 6 per cent return, the original cost would have to be reduced to around s3loo—That, adds the bulletin, is why private capital is loath to invest in new building. Unless rents go up or costs come down, its reluctance will remain unshaken. SCRAMBLE FOR PORK TT is never safe to render an appraisal on an action by Congress until you appraise the motives back of the action. The congressional rebellion against the "gag rule” in connection with the Administration’s $4,800,000,000 work relief bill might be a very praiseworthy thing indeed, if it were based on a determination to exercise the full powers of representative government in an untrammelled manner. Unfortunately, however, it is commonly reported from Washington that the rebellion was designed chiefly to open the way for log-rolling tactics of the traditional type, so that a proper amount of "pork” could be injected into this measure. Viewed from that angle, the rebellion is less a symptom of congressional good health than of political greed. There are valid arguments against the gag rule—but the desire to dip both hunds into the pork barrel is not one of them. No doubt Dr. Townsend means well, but can he guarantee that all the homes for the aged won’t become hilarious night clubs and gambling joints? The World War cost us nearly $42,000,000.000, and the world has still to be saved for democracy. It’s said you need a vocabulary of 10,000 words to understand the day’s news, unless you confine your reading to the funnies, qf course. ,

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

'T'HE decision of the Supreme Court voiding a part of the oil code and the prospects of other adverse pronouncements on the New Deal by this august body bring sharply to the fore the whole question of Constitutions and their purposes. It raises the issue of whether or not we shall save the country' *or save the Constitution, in the vain supposition that the Constitution itself can be preserved if the present economic system in the United States collapses. In the first place, just how did Constitutions arise in the modem world? With the exception of certain post-war Constitutions, most notably that of Russia, our modern Constitutions have one dominating purpose, namely, to put property beyond the reach of law. The movement of Constitutions began in the seventeenth century in England when it was sought to make English property and business secure from the arbitrary influence of a would- 1 be absolute monarch. The middle class formulated its great slogan of the natural rights of man—life, liberty and property—and the greatest of these was property. The movement spread into the English colonies in America and into France during the latter part of the next century. In this country we adopted a whole flock of state Constitutions following 1776 and a Federal Constitution in 1789, all of which embodied the fundamental ideas of the British middle class. The French brought a series of Constitutions out of the French Revolution. In the course of the nineteenth century, the movement for Constitutions spread throughout the rest of the major countries of continental Europe, hitting Russia at the opening of the present century. tt it tt ALMOST everywhere this first era of Consti-tution-making was motivated by the desire to protect the middle or capitalistic class from arbitrary confiscation of their property by the royalty and aristocracy which stood above it in the social scale. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, the challenge from the proletariat below was taken into account, and some of the later Constitutions were so formulated as to protect capitalism from the mob. In this country we did not adopt a second Constitution to safeguard us from possible radicalism of the masses, but perverted the Fourteenth Amendment from its supposed role as a bulwark against the exploitation of the Negro into a defense of corporate property. Incidentally, this amendment vastly facilitated the power of the Supreme Court to set aside threatening laws as unconstitutional. Now there is nothing at all sacred about a Constitution. It is merely an organic document which defines the type of government under which the country must live and enumerates the immunities which property and the citizens may enjoy against possible invasion by this government. The major reason for the mystical arid sanctified attitude which has grown up about Constitutions is the fact that the custodians of the vested interests have recognized clearly enough that the Constitution is the chief bulwark of the economic system under which they operate. tt tt tt IN other words, it has been the economic rather than the political foundations of Constitutions which have promoted Constitution worship, and have supplanted the divine right of kings by the theory of the divine right of Constitutions. It is now pretty well recognized even by enlightened capitalists that the old system of rugged individualism and predatory finance which has been supported in the past by the Constitution and the Supreme Court is on its last legs. The alternatives are either gradual but resolute reform on the one hand or collapse and revolution on the other. If the road to reform is steadfastly blocked by the Constitution as Interpreted by the Supreme Court, the country as we understand it today is headed for a disaster which will engulf rot only the Constitution, but the court itself. The only way of saving the Constitution is first to save the country. This is the fundamental issue which is involved in the Supreme Court decisions of the present season. These may play a very decisive role in the future of our country—exceeding beyond all comparison in their broad implications specific character of a particular decision.

Capital Capers BY GEORGE ABELL

BRILLIANT stars and orders, blue-and-gold china recently bought for the White House for S9OOO, pink carnations, pink roses and Andalusian tangoes by La Argentina, featured the diplomatic dinner given by President and Mrs. Roosevelt. All the chiefs of foreign diplomatic missions in town attended. Shrewd Soviet Ambassador Troyanovsky flew from Los Angeles by speedy plane to be there in time. Japanese Ambassador Saito, not to be outdone by any Russian maneuvers, hastened back from Athens, Ga., just in time to dress for dinner. The new Belgian ambassador, Count van der Straten-Ponthoz, a charming gentleman, was on hand with his affable countess. Minister Finot of Bolivia and Minister Bordenave of Paraguay, whose countries are at war, did not bow to each other as they glanced across the table. Fortunately, they didn’t sit side by side. If any one except the Roosevelts invited them to the same table, he’d be looked upon as goofy. The new Cuban ambassador landed in New York, but couldn’t appear in time, so faithful Dr. Baron, who has represented Cuba in many crises before this, put on his white tie and appeared instead. tt tt tt MONSIEUR LELY, who used to be chief of the monks of Mount Athos, went as the charge d'affaires of Greece—nc new ambassador having been sent here yet to replace Charalambos Simopoulos. (The long, curly mustachios of the lamented Charalambos will live in Washington diplomatic history.) Mexico was represented by Charge d'Affaires Campos-Ortiz, who has been doing diplomatic honors for his embassy for some months. His serene highness, Prince Damras Damrong Devakul, the Siamese minister, looked like a midget next to big Sir Ronald Lindsay. He’s the tiniest diplomat in Washington—just as Sir Ronald is the biggest. Precedence was as strictly adhered to as in Dolly Gann’s heyday. First marched the bulky British ambassador, Sir Ronald Lindsay, dean of diplomats. (Lady Lindsay stayed in New York.) tt tt tt THEN the Peruvian ambassador, Mr. Freyre, who talks with more of an Oxford accent than Sir Ronald. If something happened to Sir Ronald (euphoniously termed “His Britannic Majesty’s ambassador”) Freyre would take first place. After Freyre came r.he much-lionized Ambassador Espil of Argentina, with his pretty American wife, who used to shoot lions in Africa. Ministers followed the ambassadors, with Marc Peter of Switzerland as dean of ministers. Envoy Peter has been here 6ince the day when beards were fashionable, and, in fact, he used to wear one. Sandwiched between ambassadors and ministers was Secretary of State Hull, making anew sort of diplomatic sandwich. After the ministers came Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Sam Mcßeynolds, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Then—all the charges d'affaires, finishing with the charge d’affaires of the Dominican Republic. The Roosevelts came at the top and the bottom of the list. President and Mrs. Roosevelt headed it and the Elliott Roosevelts ended it. Nowadays a college is rated by the number of professors it has on President Roosevelt's brain trust.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

\ \ vlSfi x ' ' ms sj&wjfi **' .Am j? Ms / ~ 11|| Imu Ji) f 111 111 /Jr / ■— /fff £ I|| *OO jT, m 1 U YV r

The Message Center

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your tetters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 2SO words or less.) tt tt tt LETTER BY JUNIOR DRAWS FIRE FROM WAR VETERAN By James Brooks. Glancing over The Times I happened to see “Junior’s” little piece on soldiers and the bonus we are now asking for. The American Legion also is making its plea. I have been a member of the legion, but at present I do not belong, as I haven’t any money to spare. However, lam for the organization. I am a World War veteran and I am proud of it. We are asking for the money that we feel the government owes us. You also spoke of this. If we had not stepped in and won the war, where would you be today? Have you a large enough income to have to pay taxes? If so, you must have a grand job. I also expect your father was making sls or S2O a day for his work—off us. Do you realize the fact that every soldier who was killed in action made just one more millionaire? Compare your father’s income with ours. We were getting $1 a day and paying $7.50 a month of that for insurance. Was that enough for a life? Os course, you were just a boy under mama’s wing, so you have nothing to squawk about. You state that you are in the Reserves. You don’t know what military training is. I have been wounded twice. I get $lO a month. Maybe I could loan you half of that to help you pay your taxes. tt a tt NEW SOLDIERS MAY BE NEEDED SOME DAY M. O. Otto. What a shame it is “Junior” (your name typifies you) you missed going to the front to starve and freeze and go half insane. What a pity you didn’t come home legless and armless. Dollars to doughnuts your old man stayed home and made his $lO a day while I drew my $1 a day. Fifteen of these dollars went to my mother each month, the other sls was blown in on such luxuries as 5-cent chocolate bars, donations from this country that sold for $1 each from the Y. M. C. A. over there. Cigarets, also donated, were $1 a pack some places. How did we know they were donated? Why, because when we opened them we found notes, even in some cases Amercian money concealed in the pack. You can call us whiners in a news column, but your kind of people don’t §ay things like that to exsoldiers’ faces. Take yourself up to Marion, Junior, and look over those whiners. Go out to our own veterans’ hospital. If you have the nerve, tell these fellows they are whiners. Fellows who remark as you do speak only because they are ignorant—they can't help it. You enjoyed life at its best, Junior. You ate the good eats, you saw the good shows and spent the good wages or perhaps attended some elite prep school. Your judgment of the majority of Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars members certainly calls for an apology. I admire our President as much as any one, but because we need it, I feel that he should pay the adjusted service compensation certificates. Dire need prompts many things, Junior. Better think it over, Junior. An!A

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!

Ludloiv Accused of Hampering President

By George Gould Hine. I note that Mr. Ludlow is now busily engaged in frustrating the President’s desire to substitute jobs for doles. As this is the first important request the President has made of Congress at this session, this is Mr. Ludlow’s first opportunity to fulfill the promises he made to the voters of Marion County in his victory statement after his election. It renews our interest in that statement. Every one knows that in each campaign it is necessary for each side to invent its own expressive sayings, phrases and slogans. No one is surprised when they are repeated from coast to coast by politicians too lazy or dumb to invent their own. But when a politician after he is safely elected, unconsciously repeats in his victory statement all the pet slogans of the opposite party, it occasionally produces in any one but a Democrat a slight start of surprise. Putting the stand-pat Republican slogans in quotation marks, Mr. Ludlow’s victory statement presents a very definite scenario with a synopsis as follows: Fully realizing, with regret and sorrow, that the President, ever since his inauguration, has been “wandering after false gods,” Mr. Ludlow promises the voters of Marion County that he will take the President gently by the hand and, “correcting his errors” in a kindly way, because he is a “huother war might come some day, and if it does, Uncle Sam will have to locate about five million new soldiers. tt tt a MORE BACKBONE IS NEED OF NATION By Ross James. There seem to be a lot of people for and against the old-age pension. Why not give people over 60 years, $l5O or $200? President Roosevelt gave the farmers a pension for not raising hogs, corn, wheat, etc. In doing so he never brought back good or even better times. Now, the poor can't eat meat. Don’t take my word for it. Ask any poor man. What do we need with job insurance? It would just be a chance for graft and making more men rich. What they need is to cu; all incomes, in any one family, to SIO,OOO a year. No man should earn more than that. I don’t care what he is, a man’s income should be no more than his service to the public for the public pays the bill. The money thus saved could be used to make shorter hours and hire more men. Some of the men on the relief seem to think they should not have to work for what they get. I wonder how many have tried to help themselves. What the United States needs is more backbone and not so many rich and poor hogs. o a # SUGGESTS CLEAN-UP * OF CITY'S BOOKIES By a Reader. I have been following closely Mr. Feeney’s zealous attempts to clean up those slot machines that abound in Indiana, but I think it queer, if he wishes to make the city so clean and a better place in which

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

manitarian,” he will lead him back where they can kneel together before the only true gods and give thanks to the voters of Marion County and the nation for their emphatic indorsement of Hoover. He then will lead the President up the gang plank to the ship of state, where he will be securely fastened under the bowsprit as the emblem, figurehead and peerless leader of all heads of ivory and hearts of gold. Mr. Ludlow will then take the helm, while Chairman Fletcher of the G. O. P. "charts a safe course” far from the troubled waters of “governmental interference with business.” Arriving in “known and charted seas” and no longer “on nervous edge” the New Dealers will then be invited to walk the plank and their alphabetical arrangements will be dumped in the soup. Os course, no Democrat could appreciate Mr. Ludlow’s scenario. In the first place, he would not recognize the slogans. Give a Democrat a victory at election, a tin can, and his opponents can have the contents, the results of the victory. As witness, not a Democratic eye has opened, not a Democrat’s voice has been raised. And thus it comes to pass, in Marion County at least, as (Arthur Brisbane predicted it would come to pass in the nation, that the people did not vote for a New Deal, but only for a handsome and smiling gentleman—a figurehead.

to live, he doesn’t take on a few hundred bookies who make their money on race horses. If you would walk from South-st on Illinois, to Washington-st, you would encounter at least fifty. T have yet to receive a letter from a slot machine operator telling me when to play a machine, but these bookies do send letters telling you when and how to place bets. tt tt tt RODNEY DUTCHER TAKEN TO TASK By a Daily Deader. I see Rodney Dutcher takes a “crack” at the Townsend plan in The Indianapolis Times, in his Washington correspondence dated Jan. 21. Rodney, I just wonder under what code of ethics you were reared, cr just what kind of a Sunday school you may have attended that allows you to “juggle facts" in such a careless manner, so that many who read what you say might be led to believe that they were going north when really they were traveling south, just because you had their faces “veiled" with misconception and blighted faith in real truth. However, Rodney, you might fool more people than you are if you would keep your name out of your “mushy” articles. They are “on to you,” Rodney. Speaking of “hearts being broken”

Daily Thought

For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a 'bramble bush gather they grapes.—St. Luke, vi:xliv. OUR deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds. — George Eliot.

JAN. 28, 193S

—These poor "old souls” would certainly “freeze to death" if they depended on your “soulless and senseless jabbering” for cheer and help. Just why, Rodney, are there so many postal cards and letters “contacting” Congress? Isn’t it proof that the Townsend plan has quickened the souls and “spirit” of America? Again you remark that many of these messages on these cards and letters reflect a “desperate character.” Do you remember what Patrick Henry said in the Virginia Legislature more than 150 years ago? Perhaps your memory and vision have not the interpretive propensity. I wonder if poverty causes men who are good, loyal, law-abid-ing citizens to do desperate things because their morale is broken. You say that many of these letter writers remark, “We voted for you in the last election.” And then you say they tell Congress just what they will continue to do if the Townsend bill passes. But no one knows just what they will do in regard to voting if this bill does not pass Congress. Use your head occasionally, Rodney, and your mouth less. tt a a NRA DECLARED TO BE MONOPOLY BREEDER By John C. Bankett. "Other People’s Money” by Justice Louis D. Brandeis is a volume of reprinted articles, all of which were written before 1914 and before he was placed on the United States Supreme Court bench. In these articles the Justice strongly condemns the leading bankers of those days for their control of credit and for their use of other people’s money to get control of the industries and utilities for the purpose of stifling competition. The NRA of the New Deal Is a greater effort to bring about monopoly than J. P. Morgan ever dreamed of. The Sherman Anti-Trust law was passed by a Republican Congress to prevent the combining of business in restraint of trade. The NRA of the Roosevelt Administration repealed the Sherman Anti-Trust law to the end that competition *ould be destroyed and monopoly be established with the protection of .aw. Under the rule of the Republican party monoply was unconstitutional, and so declared by the Supreme Court in upholding the Sherman law. The NRA sanctions monoplj. How will Justice Brandies rule on this question when it reaches hi.*; court?

So They Say

We face a world totally out of date and which must be revised consecutively.—William B. Stout, automotive engineer.

MASKS

BY MAUD COURTNEY" WADDELL Daily we see in the busy strife, In joy and sorrow, all walks of life, Faces of those we think that we know; But deep m their hearts, deep down below, Are sad tears and grief they never show. Only once in awhile one may know In a tender moment of mutual kin— They open their heart—w look within.