Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 228, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 February 1935 — Page 18

PAGE 18

The Indianapolis Times <% M-mrrs-HO>vAD XE§rAPER> ROT TV. HOWARD PrewMent TAI.COTT POWELL Editor EARL D. BAKER Buld*m Manager Phone Riley 5.W1

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FRIDAY FFBRU/RY 1. 193

THE WIATION MESSAGE T7OR more than a year our government has * had no aviation program. Uncertainty as to figure policies has hindered development In the airplane manufacturing and transport Industries, and has made the Army and Navy hesitant to go ahead with air defense plans. This stalemate can be broken within the next few months if Congress grapples with the problems which President Roosevelt submitted yesterday when he forwarded the Federal Aviation Commission’s report. Then we may again move forward toward the many potential benefits of air travel, transportation, communication and defense. The commission has made good use of the months that have elapsed since the last Congress adjourned. It has canvassed almost every conceivable problem of the present and future and has made definite recommendations. All of its proposals may not be wi.se, but all deserve consideration bv Congress. The commission proposed creation of a separate air commerce commission. President Roosevelt’s more objective viewpoint led him to disagree with this proposal and say that air commerce should be considered along with interstate railroad, highway and waterway transportation. He would give aviation control—wisely, we believe—to the Interstate Commerce Commission or its successor. But with most of the commission's many Constructive proposals, the President agrees. The immediate necessity of untangling the airmail is generally conceded The ICC, after an unbiased study of the finances of the airlines carrying mail, has declared tfiat a revision of rates is imperative to save many of th'' companies from bankrutey. But adequate safeguards are suggested to prevent a recurrence of the conditions which prevailed until the Senate committee discovered that some holding companies and speculators had been bleeding operating companies. After permanent government machinery has been established, the commission says, ; mail contracts should be let on a business basis, the Postoffice Department paying out only the amount that it receives from airmail service. Then supplemental subsidies may be granted to weaker companies if necessary. This would be much more honest and efficient that the old method of lumping subsidies into the Postoffice Department s deficit. ANOTHER BLUNDER WITHIN 48 hours the Roosevelt Administration has made two serious blunders Jeopardizing our foreign relations and trade. First, it mishandled a legislative situation and by needless delay and over-confidence lost the World Court victory which was within its grasp. Asa result foreign nations are now suspicious of our good faith in important political and trade negotiations. On top of that fiasco, the Administration last night went out of its way not only to break of! trade and debt negotiations with Russia, but to do so in a provocative manner. We do not pretend to pass judgment on the merits of the secret proposals and counterproposals in the American-Russian negotiations. Doubtless each side maneuvered to get as much as possible, as usual. But we do know that it was the job of the United States government to make every effort to get a settlement so that American manufacturers. the unemployed, and cotton farmers could reap the waiting benefit of billions of dollars in Russian trade. These are not matters on which the Administration can afford to get temperamental. The debts still exist, and the trade is still needed. Only yesterday. Secretary Cordell Hull admitted to a- congressional committee that "we can not get anywhere with our trade agreement* unless we keep on speaking terms j with these nations. . , . Sympathetic nations do not yet have faith in our intentions.’’ As for debts, with the sole exception of little Finland. we can not induce the otht r governments e\en to discuss more payment. So the United States can not wisely scorn Russian negotiations and offers. Giving the Administration e ’erv benefit of doubt and admitting for the sake of the argument that the Russian proposals were absolutely unacceptable, the fact remains that there was no excuse for interrupting the discussions a bare five minutes after the Russian ambassador arrived and then curtly announcing all negotiations at an end. Such action is unprecedented in the history of the State Department. Does it mean that President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull are running to cover before the blind and destructive isolationist drive which defeated the World Court resolution? That is not leadership. DICTATORSHIP AND LIBERTY w \ THETHER it stirs you to laughter, tears, * or acute boredom. Huey Longs recent clash with the ‘Square Dealers’’ of Baton Rouge was an excellent small-scale model of the typical European blood purge. About all that it lacked was blood. Os that, luckily, there was only a trace. One citizen was wounded by buckshot, and another was badly mauled by citizens who suspected him of being a spy. The rest suffered injuries to nothing but their sensibilities. But the affair was a sign and a portent, nevertheless. Senator Long seems to be the American model of the twentieth century dictator, and this shindig was the sort of thing that happens where dictatorships flourish. Note the parallels. We had, first of all, indignant citizens who felt that they could not accomplish anything at the polls and who therefore armed and drilled in preparation for feghung, Next we had the Senator orderuif

out troops to quell them; next, a public hearing at which the Senator tells about a widespread plot to assassinate him. The thing had an odor of comic opera, to be sure; but it followed the blueprints of the real thing, and it leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling that next time it may go whole hog and end up with shooting. It tfas just a little too life-like to be really funny. What is happening, obviously, is that in this one state American libert.es as we have known them are giving way to one-man rule, which is bolstered up just as one-man rule in Italy and Germany is bolstered. The Huey Long model of Fascism is running on ominous parallel with the Mussolini and Hitler models. u and in de ft me of all this, that * :. scrupulous and overbearing political machihe, so that he is really accomplishing much ;for the plain people of his state even while he takes their ( j ment, that all of this is true, there is one more fact to remember. I This is precisely the excusejthat dictators everywhere give for their aq*s. Mussolini Hitler Lenin—they all knew thaj. tale by heart, hanted it in season and tout of season. The lesson ought to be clear. By irrendcring its liberties! to gain reliet from a bad situa’ion, a people ,s apt to get a great deal more than its bargains for. It is easier to set up a dictatorship than it i. to knock one down. The Baton Rouge flurry is a disturbing sign to people who believe that liberty is the American people’s most priceless possession. REFRESHING DISGUST ONCE in a while a man will decide, suddenly and unexpectedly, that he is just naturally fed up with things. When he does so, he is more than likely to do something very uueer; but the very queerne.vs of his action {sometimes makes it rather refreshing to the innocent bystander. A sample is the case of the Washington street car motornian who came abruptly to the decision that he didn't like his work. He reached this decision while piloting his car through crowded traffic along a main street; but having reached it he never hesitated. He simply turned to his passengers, said, “To hell with this job,'’ got off the car and walked away, leaving street car and riders to get home as best '.hey could. This would be an odd sort of world if men generally used that method of giving up a distasteful job. But there is, nevertheless, something humorously appealing about this little story. It gives the imagination something to play with. Ml <T JULEP COLONELS RUBY LAFFOON of Kentucky has a far-flung staff of colonels. Wherever he goes he can muster a bodyguard to help crush the ice and press the mii’at. Indeed, the Governor has passed out so many commissions he is frequently embarrassed by unexpected encounters with members of his staff whose names he can not recall. There are other disadvantages. As the faithful turn toward Mecca, these alien colonels migrate to their adopted state oh Derby Day to see the races and be entei'tair.ed by their Ccmmander-in-Chief. So it is not surprising that the Governor at last has decided to institute a system of merit appointments. Hereafter! the Governor will weed out those who are ihcrely anxious for epaulets and choose only fhose who are “worthy.” It is not unlikely that this house-cleaning project originated with the Governor’s wife. In any case, it is she who announced the Governor's decision. THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED npHE little hard-up town of Everson, Pa., gets its water from a private company. Because some 90 per cent of the families are on relief, the town is two years behind on annual water payments. According to a recent United Press dispatch, the company lost patience and sent out a crew armed with sledge hammers. They wrecked the fire hydrants, say borough officials, leaving water to gush forth and freeze. The town’s 1900 inhabitants were left without protection from a disastrous fire. The water company hardly helped the cause of private utility ownership. ALONG BUSINESS LINES / soNUKESSiONAL opposition to giving Secretary Ickes a controlling voice in supervision of the proposed $4,800,000,000 work relief fund is not altogether of a type which dees much credit to Congress. It can be granted that Secretary Ickes has enough to do without taking on any more new jobs, that he is occasionally a bit dictatorial, and that expenditure of earlier public works funds under his direction proceeded much more slowly than had been expected. But the Congressmen's chief objection to him seems to be that he insists that a program of this kind shall be strictly businesslike. He frowns on pork. He demands that Uncle Sam get 100 cents' worth of value for every dollar spent. He will not appoint men to jobs just because they know such-and-such a Congressman. Opposition based on such leasons hardly commends itself. THE WIDOW S COURSE THE “widows and orphans" and their trustees should consider the remarks of David E. Lilienthal in New York on utility holding company evils. The individual investors, insurance companies. banks and estate managers are being exhorted to enter the fight against President Roosevelt's holding company regulations. “In the electric industry there are two major classes of investors whose interests conflict.” Mr. Lilienthal said. “In the firsr class are the owners of bonds and. to a certain extent, holders of preferred stock, of the operating companies. These bonds are to be found in the portfolios of most insurance companies, banking in*i • jtions, and in fiduciary investments. .And then, on the other hand, is the equity gre up, the holders of common stock in the operating companies . . . “The record shows that throughout the country, with important exceptions, these common stock management groups have, in effect, been confiscating senior security values. The trouble is chiefly that the holders o i cohunon

stock have erected upon that stock second, third and even fourth capital structures, all of whic’h they are struggling to keep afloat." A, gain, the best interest of the much-taiked-of Widows and orphans is shown to be, not wit hi the lobby attempting to shield utility holding companies, but with the Administration attempting to regulate such companies effectively. POSTOFFICE SCANDALS T EGISLATION “to end scandals in the Postoffice Department” is being considered by the House Postoffice Committee. Proposals have been made to reform purchasing methods, to give the Controller General powers to review contracts, to construct or buy outright quarters for postal substatnns and garages—thereby eliminating cost y leases which reached scandalous proportion! in the late Republican Administration. lieanwhile, the philatelic scandal, which has so outraged stamp collectors, is headed for a committee pigeon-hole. Democratic Congressmen, accustomed to berating Postmaster General Farley for his failure to provide more political jobs, apparently are not concerned over Mr. Farley's distribution of rare stamps on a basis of friendship. Resentment over this may not spread far outside the ranks of collectors. IJut there is another Postoffice Department scandal of acute interest to all taxpayers.* It is the active, continuing scandal ol having a part-time Postmaster General drawing jfuli-time pay, dividing his allegiance between the pubic interest and the Democratic party's political welfare. Mr. Farley may have the qualifications to be either a good Postmaster General or a good parjy chairman, but no man can handle both job., well at the* same time. Necessarily Mr. Farley frequently has to choose between serving! the party which gave him his job or the taxpayer who foots the bill. This scandal snould be pulled out of various pigeon-holes, including the one at the White House. : CALL FOR UNITED ACTION TT is to be hoped that President Roosevelt's -*• jletter to the 48 state governors urging immediate action to reduce automobile fatalities wil> be productive of concrete results. It should not be necessary to say anything further about the extreme urgency of the problem. We are killing people with our autos at the rate of 35,000 a year—a record appalling beyond words. Something drastic needs to be done, and concerted action by the states is about the only possibility. As the president points out, proposals for uniform state legislation have been worked out by safety experts in co-operation with state officials. There is pretty general agreement as to advisability of certain measures. The states should act, and act promptly. Here is a reform which needs immediate attention. ' STILL LONGING TO RULE Tj' UROPEAN affairs these days are somber -*- v and discuraging enough, heaven knows; btft every now and then the needed comic touch is supplied by-one or the other of the pietenders to the various unoccupied thrones. The latest affair of this kind comes from P ince Napoleon, who .eels that by rights he si ould be emperor of the French. This 21-year-olds descendant of the great Bonaparte iijes safely in Switzerland, and most Frenchman are not aware of his existence; but he h:ts just issued a manifesto asking “my people" to accept another Napoleonic regime, and h| has drawn up an elaborate program for the “authoritarian democracy” which would result. Fiance has another pretender, incidentally -ja descendant of the Bourbons. Every European country which used to have a king and hjis none now has its pretenders. I Most of them are taken seriously by no one bit themselves; but their own extreme seriousness is great enough to make up for this neglect—and, incidentally, to be pretty funny. PRINCE OF WAILS T TNTIL now we've considered the Prince of Wales the most estimable of young Englishmen. He was, we thought, exemplary in all things, even to the right royal way he fell off of horses. Word now comes that he has just composed a slow march for bagpipes, and presented it to the Scots Guard to play in his father's jubilee. Worse yet, the story says he has learned to play one of these instruments. Over here the definition ox a perfect gentleman is one who can play the saxophone and doesn't. Now what can be said of the Prince of Wales who can play the bagpipes and does? Now if the World Court could knock the “1" out of the “world,” maybe there would be less objection to letting our Senators join it. Jeff Davis, “King of the Hoboes,” has a job, the two-faced traitor! What a glorious life children have before them—imagine being able to take Vitamin B for your health without being obliged to eat spinach or turnips! Postal jobs in Germany hereafter will go only to active Nazi workers. Germany has learned that much from Postmaster Genera! Farley. A woman in Chicago threatens to bob her hair to spite a hairpin maker, if she doesn’t get the Republican nomination for Mayor—such has the Republican party come to. * The scientist who drank heavy water and lived has nothing on many Americans who have survived bootleg liquor. This movement for single house state legislatures is promising as a step toward no legislatures at all. A law is being sought in Germany to prevent hunters from telling tall tales of their adventures. Those Germans take everything so seriously. Ohio is collecting a sales tax to prove to the rest of the country that people are buying. Whatever you may think of the Rev. Father Coughlin, when he tells his listeners to wire Washington for any reason at all, the telegraph companies are all for him.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

C?rf \ ' •

HTI TV T ~ T- T 1 wholly disapprove of what you say and will 1 1 lie Message (center [defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.]

(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 lessj ana ASSERTS PLEA FOR AID SPURNED By R. R. My husband has a job. He works 30 to 32 hours a week at 40 cents an hoar. This week he will have $12.40. We have nine in the family. We do not receive help from any one. I have some children going to school and the school board has reused to get them anything. I have asked several times. They are going to school now with no stockings, no underwear or shirts. Ail they have are pants and sweaters. Os all the money that was gathered by different charity groups, my children did not receive anything. They had no Christmas because our money would not buy any. We have my husband's mother to take care of. She is 79. I asked at the trustee’s office for help for her and was almost thrown out. Now, I ask why things are like this in a country where there is so much. I don’t care about myself, but I do hate to have my children suffer. Why is there no one who will help one who is trying to do for themselves and not living altogether on the government. I have a baby 8 months old. We have no heating stove and the bitter cold weather has made her sick. I could not get a doctor and I could not take her to the City Hospital and the doctor would not come to the house. Now that is the condition we are in and there are manymore persons in the same fix. My husband is not a Federal Emergency Relief Administration worker, and it seems as if one must depend entirely on the government or charily or they will not get help at all. ana HE DOESN’T CARE FOR WESTBROOK PEGLER By a Times Reader. I like The Times and all of its writers except Westbrook Pegler, and he has a bad case of egotism, if I am not mistaken, or is he just a plain smart-aleck? However, it was" by looking over one of his articles I discovered the Townsend pension plan. I knew it must be good, for he knocks the good things; outside of that, he just rambles along. Don’t worry, Pegler; maybe all the old folk will stop reading your articles, which is very likely, then all you need to do is hunt for a job the rest of your time. a a a PICTURES FUTURE AS MANOR HOUSE ERA By B. M. G. When a man falls down the only way to help him up is to knock him down again. Does that make sense? Neither do the various elaborate explanations of economic security and how to arrive at same. In the last two years, with plans enthusiastically continuing, with just the same promise for success in keeping the balloon of prosperityblown up, as long as the cheeks are puffed out with the people’s moneyloaned for made work charity programs—what permanency was or is to be accomplished? “Can't he stand up? Well, knock him down again. We must help the poor fellow to stand up. My good man, don’t struggle so, don’t you see we are trying to help you?” “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” So, as an economist, I am probably very dangerous. I only read to page 3. where it said black is black artd white is white. These master economists, dictators, international missionaries, etc., as soon as the are counted and they have been vaccinated against the

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING!

*The Commonwealth Plan ’ Advocated

By H. C. A. In your editorial regarding Matthew' Well’s letter you put fc rth a statement which is rather su -prising. The editorial stated: "llr.ke it possible for our people t<' buy what they would buy if the; ha a the and the chickcm-in-every-pot dream could come true, easily, ajid poverty could be abolished from the land. But the combination has not been found.” Asa matter of fact the combination has been found. A newspaper, depending upon advertisements paid for by the followers of a doomed economic system, may have difficulties in admitting it, but nevertheless, the combination has been found. The answer is collective ownership of industry and natural resources. That remains the oniy way in which it is mathematically passible to balance production and consumption. Not only has that combination been found in theory, but a definite plan has been worked out regarding how to go about it an practice. “The Commonwealth Plan” is the name of a booklet, written by Paul Porter. Anybody who is interested in knowing how to establish the co-operative commonwealth, with its yearly income of SSOOO for every farr.'ly and indiseases of the common peopld back home, take up their advanced economics which unfold the higher arts, the mauves, the dove colors, and royal purples of the king’s counting house. ' Apropos of nothing, a distiller’s announcement the other day caught my fancy. He had paid to the United States governmerat for a period covering six months only, $15,000,000. I began in my simple way playing with multiplicat ion, addition and subtraction of the possible cost no longer incurredl by prohibition enforcement, just al though ) were balancing my foolijih little budget. It made me wish that Ve were living again in the old, simfile days, when we jiist paid our few, government servants good salaries When we w-ere a big people, prosperous and had a small though efficient government, which didn't have such an economic problem balancing the budget. It just seems to me that in about 10 years with the 20-year pry homesteads, the farm loans, the home loans, the Civilian Conservation Corps, etc., Washington is going to be the big manor house and jve the tenants of her big estate. Thankee, marster! *Thankee. marm! Yus, a pot of tail, and a bit of tripe. a a a BACK-TO-BEARD ERA PROPOSED By Walter Scott. I am going to try to start a crusade amongst the women of this nation so that there will be no objection on their part if the men of these gre; - United States forswear shaving and become men again, with the flowing beard that nature designed for them. Our forefathers all wore beards--except perhaps George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—and who knows that the portraits of these tw were not faked in some way or another? Santa Claus has a beard. General Grant wore whiskers, also Robert E. Lee. Chief Justice Hughes of th’ United States Supreme Court has a nice chin piece also Justice George Sutherland is adorned likewise. Then, with all thosd examples be-

disputable security, ought to read it. I believe that W. H. Richards, printer on Massachusetts-av, has it. To Mr. Woll I should like to say the following: High wages will not do the trick of bringing "prosperity” back and keep it here; neither will low wages. The only thing that counts is the relative difference between wages and prices. But in order to make the total wages approach the total price of goods for sale it would be necessary to squeeze out the profits, and Mr. Woll can hardly expect those who won and rule the country to take steps toward economic suicide. There is no such thing as stability under the capitalistic system. We must have either booms, in periods of expansion, or we must continuously go down hill. For several reasons we can expand no more; consequently we must go down hill, and we are doing just that, although government spending conceals this fact and postpones the hour of reckoning. Fortunately the people are now beginning to do a little economic thinking. Amateurish to be sure, but they are getting started. New ideas, however impossible, are better than none at all. “There is sprouting time in the land.”

fore us why do the women folk insist that we “he men” shave every day iruorder to simply please them? I am tired of shaving and also about 95 per cent of all the men are tired of it, too. Then, that fact being admitted, why, shouldn't we all rebel and appear just as nature intended as to look? John W. Kern, our mayor’s father had a beard. Gen. John A. Logan had a beard. Visit University Square and look at Benjamin Harrison and see if you can discern the hirsute appendage that adorned the lower part of his pnvsiognomy. Charles Dickens, the author of 'David Copperfield,” had whiskers. Half of the tillers of the soil never shave and they are happy. Let us men arise in our might and ignore the female sex, if we have to shave in order to curry favor with them. I would like to hear from the women regarding this. a a a ANOTHER ANGLE OF AGE PENSION ISSUE. Bv a Reader. While the subject of old-age pension is being discussed pro and con, I should like to tell what the effect on me would be, provided it finally is raised to a figure that will provide thase it is intended for a decent living. In all respect to my aged parents, i this act will free me from almost a life of sacrifice to them, as I can not keep them going and a home for myself, too. No one, only those who are experiencing these things, can ever know the sacrifice thousands are making to provide for their parents. Are we not entitled to a home and children and peace? They may talk about the old folk not needing so much. Perhaps the Townsend plan, with its S2OO a month, is extreme for the period we now are living in, hut S3O a month is extreme in the other direction, as it would provide very little in relieving them or their offspring. Why not add S7O to the proposed Wagner bill pension and take 8100 off the Townsend plan and give them SIOO a month, which would enable them to be entirely self-supporting. If they carried out Townsend's idea of having to spend ever*, cent

FEB. 1, 1935

of it monthly it would start recovery right now. We would not have to spend billions on work relief projects, but could have work making the necessaries of life. Furniture, clothing, cars, etc., are the needed things now and we do not need further expenditures at this time for anything unnecessary. a an URGES PAYMENT TO VETERANS NOW By Virgil M. Colliort. My hat is off to James Brooks apd M. O. Otto for replying to a j certain Junior's contribution to this : column. The writer would like to see just what kind of a monkey this Junior is. in case he wants to show me he can find my address in the city directory. The writer is a veteran of no war except the present one, but I firmly believe the veterans should get what has been theirs for a long time and they should get it now! There is no need for me to say anything as to why they should get their money. Any idiot should know why they need and deserve it. Just wait until the next war, if any, and watch the Juniors howl and rave about being paid to fight. I think about the most disgraceful, un-American, revolting thing this great country of ours could do is not pay the man who fought and suffered and died for those who stayed home and read about it. I only hope our great President and our great Congress see fit to do what is right and pay the adjusted service certificates and now!

So They Say

I venture the prediction that our present age, because of its craze for the new regardless of the true, will be looked back upon with amazement and ridicule. —Dr. Robert A. Millikan, famous scientist. The question of war and peace is not one on which the opinion of the uninstructed should be invited.—Sir John Simon, British Foreign Secretary. From a purely commercial viewpoint, the recognition of Russia has proved a delusion. —United States Senator W. W. Barbour, New Jersey. For my part, I believe that the forgotten man is he who by his industry, economy and honest efforts earns his living and supports his family.—Silas H. Strawn, attorney. I am not a prophet, but I feel absolutely, or at least nearly, sure that it will not be possible to convert matter into energy for practical purposes.—Prof. Albert Einstein.

Daily Thought

Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy testimonies.—Pslams, 119:22. THE first great law is to obey. —Schiller.

Afterthought

BY KATHRYN MASON I think, if ! could have you Id run irom you instead, For once, :f I should give my heart I'm sure I'd lose my head.