Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 243, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 February 1935 — Page 14

PAGE 14

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TOBDAT FEBRUARY I*. IMI THE GOLD DECISION A GOLDEN sword of Damocles no longer dangles overhead. By holding that Congress’ power to regulate the value of currency can not be infringed by gold-clause contracts of private corporations or subordinate units of government, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for Adm.mstration recovery plans. Business firms now know the definite limits of their indebtedness and may make future coir,m.tmen?s accordingly. The Administration now may proceed with its five billion dollar re-employment program with assurance of control over its budgetary obligations. In the pm ate bond and gold certificates dec.s.ons yesterday, the court upheld the government unconditionally. In the fifth, or Liberty Bond decision, a hypothetical loophole was lift by the court for bondholders who may in the future be able to prove that they have suffered real damages. This is a warning to the government against unrestricted inflation. It should aid the Administration’s fight acainst dangerous currency expansion, and give business added confidence in the future soundness of the dollar. The reassuring gold decisions, fortunately, come amicst many signs of business revival. L* ng-prostrate heavy industries show’ new Ilf • Production mounts in the steel and automobile industries. If private industry and the Administration can take advantage of the psychological effect of this judicial vote of confidence, we may soon scale depression's barricades. • • m ''l'HE new-born boom in the security and commodity markets was inevitable. And it is beneficial insofar as it is a manifestation of new vigor in the lately paralyzed limbs of Industry. But care should be taken by the Administration and by business leaders not to permit this manifestation to turn into a sell-defeating speculative orgy. With commendable realism, the court majority went beyond the legal technicalities to discuss the obvious social and economic inequities of awarding the creditor more than his pound of flesh and adding 69 per cent to the staggering burden of private and public gold debts. ”Thc de\alUation of the dollar placed the domestic economy upon anew basis,” the Chief Justice said for the majority. “In the wrrency as thus provided, states and municipalities most receive their taxes; railroads, their rates and fares; public utilities, their charges for services. The income out of which they must meet their obligations is determined by the new standard. *‘lt requires no acute analysis or profound economic inquiry to disclose the dislocation of the domestic economy which would be caused by such a disparity of conditions in which, it is insisted, those debtors under gold clauses should be required to pay $169 in currency while respectively receiving their taxes, rates, charges and prices on the basis of $1 of that currency."

iirE do not share the alarm voiced so ’ ’ vehemently by Justice Mcßeynolds of the minority. Instead of meaning the overthrow of constitutional government as he remarked. the majority decision properly reasserts the constitutional authority of Congress to establish and maintain a uniform currency without interference. “The contention that these gold clauses are valid contracts and can not be struck down." the court majority said, “proceeds upon the assumption that private parties, and states and municipalities, may make and enforce contracts which may limit that authority. Dismissing that untenable assumption, the facts must be faced. We think that it is clearly shown that these clauses interfere with the exertion of the power granted to the Congress and certainly it is not established that the Congress arbitrarily or capriciously decided that such an interference existed.” The gold decisions will go down in history with several other recent liberal rulings of the court which have interpreted the Constitution in the spirit in which it was written not as a strait-jacket but as a living body of orderly government. THE DEMON SPEED THE new stream-lined automobiles that dart through our city streets and hum along our highways are built for speed. They are a great technological achievement. But our streets and highways and Jiuman nature are not geared to a mile-a-minute pace. Our streets are too congested, our highways too tricky. They are built for slower travel. And so are human beings, only one generation removed from the horse and carriage. Last year, automobile accidents in this country climbed to a fearsome peak, killing 36.000 and injuring a million persons. Too mich speed accounted for nine out of ten accidents in which driving errors were to blame, according to a tabulation bv the Travelers Insurance Cos. In Marion County. 138 persons were killed by autos in 1934 and 18 have died so far this year. While only one accident out of four was due primarily to exceeding the speed limit, excessive haste admittedly was at the bottom of most accidents, charged to: Driving on wrong side, passing on curve or hill. pacing standing Street car. cutting in. reckless driving. failure to signal. Approximately 20.000 persons were killed ise automobile drivers were in a hurry at the wrong time. More than persons were killed on open highways where speed is most common. The rate of death per accident on highways was 100 per cent greater than, the aveqflpe for all accidents combined. The death rate

per accident between intersections was 52 per cent worse than at intersections. This doubtless was due to the habit of spurting between, and slowing down at, intersections. Carelessness of pedestrians, bad lighting, defective brakes and other common causes of death on our streets and highways are secondary, compared to the demon speed. ALIENS ARE HUMAN A BILL carrying out the New Deal’s policy toward aliens will soon be an issue. It is to be hoped that Congress will avoid a fiasco like that of last summer, when a similar Administration measure was smothered in an avalanche of last-minute business. Few will quarrel with the Labor Department's purposes in the pending bill. It sets out to crack down hard on criminal aliens but to humanize treatment of law-abiding aliens, who are technically deportable but whose presence here is not socially harmful. The measure adds to the deportable list alien violators of state narcotic laws, those convicted of carrying deadly concealed weapons, and smugglers of other aliens. It permits the Secretary of Labor to halt the exile of aliens who have been here 10 years, whose deportation would separate families or whose presence here would be in the public interest. No law has caused more senseless sorrow than the one this measure seeks to humanize. Families rooted in our society have been torn apart, some to remain, others to be deported to an unfriendly land. Humanely the Labor Department has held up the exiling of deportable alien members of 2000 families. A study of 455 such cases reveals that if the law is carried out the deportees will leave stranded here 987 relatives, of whom 665 are almost certain to become a public charge. The new measure will not increase immigration, since for every alien allowed to remain one will be checked from his country’s quota. It will, as Col. D. W. MacConnack, immigration commissioner, says, “save no end of needless suffering.” But some parts of the proposed measure are questionable. One provision would permit immigration agents to hold without warrants those merely suspected of illegal entry. This practice was freely indulged in under previous administrations regardless of law. Last year the Labor Department halted it only to find that some 2600 suspects slipped through its fingers. Now the department proposes to legalize warrantless arrests, provided suspects are held only 24 hours and brought at once before an official. Like the law passed last year to allow the Federal Division of Investigation to arrest without warrant, this proposal treads dangerous ground. A REMINDER TY ESTORATION of the last 5 per cent Federal pay cut on April 1, instead of July 1, as the President had planned, is gratifying to government employes. But the President’s reminder that additional revenues should be provided to meet the unbudgeted 16-million-dollar increase in expenditures is appropriate. Congress has the power to follow or disregard the President’s budgetary plans. On the issue of the pay restoration this session and last, and on the issue of veterans’ benefits last session, Congress chose to boost the government's spending program. But neither last session nor tills has Congress manifested any eagerness to raise taxes to cover in part these larger expenditures. Asa matter of fact, Congressmen who voted in both sessions to raise their own salaries took time in the last session to reduce taxes on all incomes up to $30,000 a year. This, of course, included most congressional incomes. With income equal to less than half its expenditures, the Federal government is skating on thin financial ice. The President’s plan to keep the regular government budget balanced, borrowing only for emergency expenditures, provides a minimum of safety. Congress has the responsibility to provide the money.

WITHIN SOCIETY’S WALLS 'T'HERE died in Painesville, 0., the other day a woman named Mary Cole. She was 81, and she had spent almost her entire life in public institutions. When she was a year old, Mary Cole w r as brought to the county home by her mother, who had encountered some misfortune or other which prevented her from caring for her child. Then the mother went away—disappeared, died. Heaven knows just what. Anyway, Mary Cole w’as left for the state to rear. The state did its job. Mary Cole grew up in an orphanage and spent her womanhood in the county home. Even the earliest moment she could remember, she was a pensioner. She lived longer than most people, but she never once lived in her own home with her own people, never knew a moment of independence, never got even a glimpse of the life ordinary folk enjoy. A strange and tragic commentary on modem society—this long and pathetically wasted life! TO BE CONGRATULATED Mrs. James H. R. Cromwell, who A was famous as Doris Duke, “richest girl in the world,” until her marriage a few days ago, seems to deserve some kind of vote of thanks from her fellow countrymen. Here, for a change, was a young woman of wealth and position who got married in a quiet, un-press-agented manner; an American heiress who actually found it possible to take unto herself a husband without the aid of an army of cameramen, newsreel truck, gaping spectators, and the like. Furthermore, the young woman married an American, and not a fortune-hunting member of some obscure European titled house. All this, on the principle of when-the-man-bites-the-dog-it's-news, is worthy of notice. And sine* it’s such a pleasant change. Mrs. Cromwell deserves some kind of thanks. A Cleveland Chamber of Commerce committee has discovered so many signs of Communism there that the city is trying to raise money quickly just to get out of the red. A Columbia University survey reveals the fact that poor children fight more than rich children. Poor pprents should get betttt governesses for their young.

Liberal Viewpoint • BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES PERHAPS the most natural and commendable reaction to the Hauptmann case will be a sigh of relief. Now we may be able to get some real news on important events—the state of the nation ar.d the set-up in foreign affairs. The original kidnaping knocked the JapaneseChinese war off the front page and the trial threatened to obscure the record of world events. The publicity horsepower of the Lingbergh myth will certainly constitute and interesting problem for future students of American history. My own prejudices were all linked up with the detection and conviction of the person who kidnaped the Lindbergh baby. Having long been a friend and admirer of Dwight Morrow', few persons had a warmer interest in the arrest, conviction and punishment of the dastardly culprit who engineered and executed the kidnaping. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the formal conviction of Hauptmann by any means settles this question. Hauptmann's conviction and sentence settle the case legally, at least for the time being, but no sane criminologist will be likely to admit that they settle the problem at all in point of literal fact. 0 8 8 IN my way of looking at the case, which I have followed carefully in the papers, the whole affair w’as a colossal burlesque and one of the outstanding proofs of the utter futility of the jury trial as a method of ascertaining guilt *or innocence. The responsibility of Hauptmann for the kidnaping and murder had to be determined on the basis of a rigorous scientific analysis of a large number of highly technical and difficult facts—the issue of which battery of liars and perjurers was to be believed, the psychological testing of credibility of the witnesses, the science of lumber identification, the problems of handwriting and the like. Trained experts from the Department of Justice might have passed on these matters with intelligence and competence, but the untrained lay jury at Flemington might just as well have been called upon to decide as between Millikan and Jeans on the issue of cosmic rays. Their judgment may be legally all important and conclusive, but from the standpoint of scientific and reliable fact it must be branded as utterly worthless. FOR many years the jury trial has been a special study of mine. I have rarely, if ever, read a more staggering example of irresponsible ferocity and venomous verbiage than Atty. Gen. Wilentz’ final summation for the prosecution. Mr. Reilly trailed behind only because he was called upon by nis position in the case to appeal to mercy and sympathy rather than to sadism and blood-letting. One hesitates to imagine what he might have said if he had been in the role of prosecutor. The great lesson of the Hauptmann case is the necessity of udping out the jury system root and branch, once and for all. I wouid like to know w'ho really kidnaped the baby. I do not know anything about it now. If Hauptmann is not guilty, then the demand of the mob for a victim and a scapegoat and the deference of the jury to this demand will raise up great, if not insuperable, obstacles to our ever discovering the actual culprit. Sacco and Vanzetti were sent to the chair for a crime which we now know they did not commit. But t£e fact ftiat they were sacrificed to the mob now prevents us from prosecuting the guilty parties whose identity has now been established almost beyond the slightest peradventure of a doubt. 8 8 # HAD a paid board of scientific experts been in charge of handling the Hauptmann case we would now know whether or not he is guilty. The great majority of the identification witnesses for the prosecution and the alibi witnesses for the defense would have been thrown outside ai once as most palpable frauds and fakers. There would have been no hired procession of alleged experts on lumber or handwriting. Th • board would itself have possessed all this knowledge and its information would not have been stultified by partisanship. Such a board would have gone right to Hauptmann’s attic and looked at the floor. It would have settled the genuineness of the controverted ladder —whether the slat and the nailholes were deliberately planted and substituted by the prosecution or whether they were genuine and real—a very vital point which the trial has not settled in the mind of any competent and skeptical person. The Hauptmann trial is said to have cost $600,000 and yet we are still in the dark as to the major facts involved. Experts would have handled the case for a maximum of SSOOO and we would know what we wish to—whether Hauptmann is guilty or whether we should continue the search for the contemptible being who really did commit the crime.

■ * - Capital Capers BY GEORGE ARFT.i THE new Virgin Islands’ rum which the government hopes will be one of the most successful beverages in the world, already has the indorcsement of two connoisseurs. Back from a speedy 10-day trip to the islands have come Oscar Chapman, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, and Dr. Ernest Gruening, director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions. Both are enthusiastic about the rum. “We sampled it.” observed Dr. Gruening, with a knowing look. “It was a little new . . . but good, very good. “Excellent,” reminisced Mr. Chapman. “In fact, quite delicious,” added Gruening, looking at a pitcher of ice water on the table. “Every one in the islands is sanguine about the future of the rum.” said Chapman. Dr. Gruening broke in: “The best way to drink it is to pour it In a glass with crushed ice, and fill the glass up with gingerale.” NOTE—Virgin Islanders, reported Messrs. Chapman and Gruening are excited about the forthcoming visit to St. Thomas of their royal highness, the Duke and Duchess of Kent. The new Bluebeard Castle Hotel, erected at St. Thomas through the efforts of Gov. Paul Pearson, they pronounce magnificent. It wits so crowded that the two Administration officials were forced, to bunk elsewhere. Strong approval of Gov. Pearson’s work In the islands, word that Edna St. Vincent Millay, noted woman poet, has taken a villa there, and several modem remedies for sunburn also have been brought back by the two travelers. 000 SENATOR EDWARD P. COSTIGAN of Colorado has had a rather narrow escape from an elevator aocident. He was returning with Mrs. Costigan from a visit to his colleague. Senator Alva Adams of Colorado, at the latter’s hotel apartment, when the elevator fell several feet. Senator and Mrs. Costigan were shaken up. Friends of the legislator have been joking with him about political enemies who might have had a hand in the matter. “Who cut the cable?" they grin. And Costigan grins back. An Illinois farmer sold his 160-acre farm for $125 an acre, while Broadway still is looking for suckers from the country. ' Peggy Joyce says she’s only 32. That pats her first wedding ’way back in her pre-school days. Destruction of the Macon just goes to show that the United States couldn’t stand inflation even with helium. The pink slips Uncle Sam has handed out for report of net income tax returns, probably are la lieu of re* ink.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Hake your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 25 0 words or less. Your letter must be sinned, but names will be withheld at request of the letter writer.) 0 0 0 THE SHERIFF S FOOD BILL GETS ANOTHER RAP By the Doctor. According to the papers, up there in the Senate they’re voting whether or not they should give the county sheriffs a cut in lunch money. You know, if that bill goes through, something terrible is going to come of it. My wife tried that on me once and I know. When the depression first started I was getting 40 cents for lunch. Then she cut me down to 30 cents and I had to leave out the pie. That’s where the sheriffs are now, where they’re barely getting pie money. Now, last year my wife cut me again, this time to 20 cents and you know what I was doing? I was going down to work and shooting the whole 20 on one turn oi the dice. You see, that way, if I hit I eat the same as always, and if I miss, well I don’t eat that day. Well, that’s what’s going to happen around these jails if that bill goes through. Tire sheriffs are going to come around to the prisoners and shoot them for their meals. Something like this: “Johnnie, I'll roll you high man to see if you eat meat, potatoes, bread, butter and coffee today, and I get nothing, or if you eat bread and water and I get the dime.” Can’t you see what that’ll do. Some of these sheriffs will start using loaded dice, a lot of the prisoners are going to get hungry, and they’re going to start a break. Well, that’ll be just exactly what the sheriffs will want, see, because all they have to do is keep quiet about the break, and naturally, “no prisoners, no food.” First thing you know’ we’re going to have a lot of escaped convicts running around loose and I’ll bet a cookie some of them’U be wanting to run for sheriff next term. - 000 APPEAL SOUNDED FOR TOWNSEND BILL PASSAGE Bv N. Hiatt. The Townsend plan at this time has been day-by-day cussed and discussed. Is it not time to stop this foolishness—the consensus in every state in the Union being that the Townsend plan is the only permanent salvation for this depression. Now we have the great Brisbane with his phrenitis on this plan and Babson with his great phrenological idea, but none changes the principle of the Townsend old-age revolving pension plan. Forty million voters says it is right and can and are appealing to Congress to pass this bill at once Now is it not time to open our minds and listen to reason. We have tried the NRA, the AAA. the FERA and many other A’s and as I remember our good President said in the beginning that he could go to bat, but he could not always knock a home run. and he said should he make a mistake he would be big enough to try something different. So at this time the millions of voters who made it possible for our President and our Representatives and our Senators to occupy their present, positions are, I say, insisting upon tha immediate passage of this bill. Now I do not think our President and Congress art holding

, **"* i. "Vis*—-

The Message Center

DROP HIM!

Criticizes Bromley Article

By Bill Hines. Talcott Powell has acne an outstanding job and accomjlished wonders with The Times. His editorials are clear, concise and very enlightening. However, he certainly went “haywire” if he approved Dorthy Dunbar Bromley’s "War Leaves Women Out of Picture.” First, I question her qualifications unless she was one of the “Nurses or other women who were with the A. E. F. giving of their bodies again and again out of compassion for men about to face death.” in 18 months I went through the grades from private to first lieutenant, United States Marines, A. E. F., was in constant contact with army nurses corps, Red Cross and Y. W. C. A. workers and I did not find them more gratuitous than modern women with whom I come in daily contact. Really—Bromley and The Times owe these gracious ladies of the old A. E. F. an apology. Next, it is apparent Miss Bromley does not understand the difference between the professional soldier and those “for the duration of the emergency” or their women either, for that matter. “The wife of the colonel of the Bengal Lancers couldn’t take the gaff.”

back simply to be contrary as thousands think they are. No they want to be right, but again the people that put them at Washington in a great majority believe the plan right. To my mind the people are the government and it is of greatest importance to all, so we can immediately be off charity with its undesirable bread-line, as no one in this great country God has so greatly blessed with plenty desires to beg. So to make this short, write your Congressman and Senator at once asking their immediate support of this bill. 0 0 0 CIVIL WAR VETERAN UNABLE TO OBTAIN AID By a Friend. What is wrong? A useful man nearly 80, the son of a Mexican and Civil War veteran, a taxpayer from 21 to 70, is now down and out, refused a pension from the sta,e because he had reared 11 children, all taxpayers, none on NRA. He had two sons in World War, neither of whom is drawing compensation or pensions. His children are not able to keep him. n n a TRAFFIC LAWS ARE VIOLATED BY POLICE, CHARGE By Peters. I have just read in The Times of the incident of an Indianapolis police car running a red warning signal at a railroad crossing and being hit. When the conductor of the train attempted to find out why’ the car ran the red light, the brave sergeant arrested him for violation of a law. Dear! Dear! JuSt another case of the police making themselves ridiculous, then trying to shift the blame. The police are the most flagrant violators of the traffic laws. One can see these violations every day. Is it any wonder that motorists continue to get in dutch over traffic violations when the.police set the example? ,v An hour or so spent at any busy

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

Neither can some modern wives, outside the army. On the other hand, go out to Ft. Benjamin Harrison, the Phillipines or any other army post and see how well most of the officer’s wives take it. Lady Clive took a couple of “hitches” with his lordship in India and emerged inviolable, retaining his love and respect. But, “Our men in the A. E. F. did not see enough action to scar their soul tissues” takes the cake and shows conclusively her ignorance of the Subject. Let her talk with some of those lads at Walter Reed Hospital or look into what’s left of the souls of some surviving members of the 11th Marines, Ist or 42d divisions. In fact, lady, some of those soul tissues are not only scarred but seared to the extent that one marvels they have left one iota of respect or consideration for law or order. Poetry? I never saw any of our men in the trenches with sufficient time or the inclination to write poetry. The man you referred too must have been a quartermaster lieutenant of the S. O. S. So —Powell, don’t fail us now but in the future, edit the Bromley articles and keep her out of the A. E. F.

railroad crossing will convince the most skeptical that the motorists, and not the railroad, are to blame in nine out of 10 cases. However the railroad company gets the worst end of the deal in almost every instance. If Chief Morrissey, would concentrate on speeders, drunken drivers, stop-light runners and double parkers steadily for two or three months at a time, instead of digging, up some silly law and spasmodically swooping down on unsuspecting, peaceful automobile owners with floods of stickers, then Indianapolis would become a much safer city and her police force would become more popular and respected. Let the police clean their own backyard and comply with all traffic laws then it will have no trouble getting other drivers to do likewise. 000 JAIL MEAL BILL INQUIRY ASKED By J. E. Barnys. It seems strange that men will campaign for office on platforms such as “the people’s choice” and then attempt to take advantage of the people. Sheriff Otto Ray is one of those I refer to as a result of his stand for the prisoner fee system. By the way, why is Ray on such friendly terms now with Greenlee and the Statehouse crowd as to be able to get such fast action on his legislation? I don’t believe the legal advertising which Sheriff Ray has to hand out would interest Greenlee because Daily Thought Better is the poor that walketh in his uprightness, than he that is perverse in his ways, though he be rich—Proverbs 28:6. POVERTY, labor and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent and the* fortunate in vain. seek, for.—Hazlitt*

FEB. 19, 1935

Greenlee is out of the newspaper business I mean publicly. Os course making Ray look bad now will not hurt the Statehquse candidate for sheriff next yean Now we hear about Mark Gray, i who they say is some kind oi a ! political chairman or other. All he has done is collect $4200 of taxpayer’s money for advertising in his paper which just wasn’t run. Well, why all the talk about the county attorney and others investigating. Why not the grand jury? 000 FAVORS FEWER OFFICIALS AND HEAVY PAY CUT By S. E. Hamilton. What this country needs more than a state NRA is the elimination of all state and Federal incumbrances who are not really needed, and then the reduction by not less than one-half in salaries of all officials left to function after the elimination. This would be more satisfactory to the taxpaying public than mast any other legislation than could be enacted. So They Say If women are not willing to pay the price of peace, we may find it necessary to pay the price of war.— Mrs. William Dick Sporborg, former president New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs. People prefer to have four or five feet of engine in front of them. They feel safer—Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, automotive designer. The Republican party is still loyal to sound fundamentals. Its ailments can not be cured by feeding it on either Socialism or Communism.—Senator L. J. Dickinson, lowa. The scales of justice are not balanced for the people, but for the criminal. Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine of New York. After four years of unprecedented crisis, the franc today is more solidly supported than ever.—Jean Tannery, governor of the Bank of France. If a man or a woman wants to be tempted, they can be tempted just as easily on a street car as they can on a movie set.—Gloria Stuart, mo/ie actress. Even though a lawyer has a choice and he chooses to defend a man of evil reputation, it does not prove at all that he was engaged in conspiracy.—Federal Judge W. H. Holly, Chicago * SHOCK BY VIRGINIA KIDWELL This dire calamity coming today Seems a vague happening still far away,. Doesn’t seem possible—doesn’t seem real This that has happened as yet I can’t feel. This that has happened my mind won’t admit Later I’ll realize and suffer for it Will ravish my heart and be with me to stay But now it is bearable— still far awajv