Indianapolis Times, Volume 46, Number 246, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 February 1935 — Page 10

PAGE 10

PENSION MONEY CAN BE RAISED. SAY FOLLOWERS Transaction Tax Suggested by San Diego Townsend Cluo Members.* r<Mr Xt*—This H the fifth f Hi 4rtrnhin the *lft math •f T*-nd 0b In *n Dieo— tK*i of the i Itr.id m mm other mlm BV >IAGM R WHITE Time* Sifrul WrK-r RAN DIEGO, Cal. Feb 22 “Where will they get the money to pav a pension of 4200 a month to eligible person in the United 6’ates over 60?” This is the biggest question that confronts the Townsend Old-Age Revolvmg’Pension group. They have an answer for it. Sometimes they do not agree among themselves on how much money would be required for the pension And there are divers opinions on what the effect on the economy of the United States would be. But all insist such a pension is feasible. The money would come from a transaction tax. Every time a sale or transaction took place, a tax would be collected. It isn’t exactly like a sales tax Gives an Illustration Here’s an example given by Charles J. Creller, president of the Townsend Clubs executive council of San Diego County: Suppose you buy soles for jour shoes, you pay a sales tax on the leather soles. But transaction tax would start back with the original hide. The proposal is a 2 per cent tax to raise the $24,000,000,000 'this seems to be the agreed approximate figure) to pay the annual Townsend pensions. The cattle man would sell the hide to a tanner. A 2 per cent tax would be collected. The tanner would sell the tanned hide at a higher price, of course, to the manufacturer. A 2 per cent tax would be collected on this transaction. The manufacturer, working the leather up into soles, among other things, would sell to a jobber. Another 2 per cent for the old-age pensions. Finally, the finished hide would land in the hands of the cobbler who fixes your shoes. Another 2 per cent on the sale to the cobbler. Now. you buy the soles. You pay the cobbier 2 per cent. Minimizes Pyramiding Undoubted. Mr. Creller points out. sizing up all these transactions, you would have the impression that a

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JUST ‘HOOEY’ BOMB

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When Senator Huey Long received a mysterious package it was turned over to Washington police as a “bomb.” Here is S. W. Burke, chief of detectives, exploding the “bomb’’ story. The package contained a dry cell battery and a broken bottle.

lot of taxes had been passed on to you. the ultimate consumer. Pyramiding. as *t were. That's what critics of the plan mean when they say: ’’Prices would go out of sight with this plan in effect. The consumer would be at the base of a tax pyramid.” “But.” Mr. Creller insists, as do other Tow nsendites, “your final tax would not he 2 per cent added to another 2 per cent, and another and another, every time the leather changed hands. “Each time, the unit gets smaller and smaller, so that a large number would be paying on that final tax. because one hide would make a lot of soles, or a lot of various types of leather roods. “We have figured it out that the ultimate consumer would pay only about 4 per cent altogether on the original piece of leather. It will be that way with all raw goods which work down into smaller units.” Next—Further discussion of Townsend plan economics.

AIR MAIL BILL SPEED URGED BY ROOSEVELT Congressional Leaders Are Asked to Give ICC Rate Control. BV THOMAS L. STOKES Tlmti Special Writer WASHINGTON, Feb. 22.—President Roosevelt prodded congressional leaders today for early enactment of a bill to give the Interstate Comm-ice Commission control over payments of air mail operators and thus pave the way for meeting a reported crisis. aviation officials, descending on Washington, brought stories of mounting losses due to present mail pay schedules. They claimed a loss of $2,908,000 on 29 of the 33 air mail i lines in the last 7’ 2 months of 1934. and forecast a $5,000,000 loss in 1935 unless rates are raised. Under orders from President Roosevelt, Chairman Kennett McKellar and James M. Mead of the Senate and House Postoffice Committees met with Harllee Branch, Assistant Postmaster General in charge of air mail, to draft anew bill. ICC to Have Broad Powers The ICC will be clothed with power to fix rates within certain ranges. The maximum will be 33 1-3 cents per airplane mile for loads up to 300 pounds. For heavier loads, the rate for the excess will be onetenth of the base rate, but not to exceed 40 cents per airplane mile. This provision follows the oill introduced this week by Rep. Mead, which has become the working model. The Mead bill would “freeze” present rates as a minimum below which the commission could not go. This principle is expected to be adopted in the new measure. Higher Rates Assured Increased rates on most routes are assured since the ICC, in a recent report to Congress, recommended increases on 19 routes, with decreases for 11 and one left un- , changed. These recommendations I were based on a study ordered by Congress in last session's temporary air mail bill. Haste in legislation is necessitated by expiration of most contracts on March 1. Some expire in April, some in May. Postmaster General James A. Farley has authority to extend contracts temporarily, but not to change rates. The ICC is ready to act promptly in adjustments. It recently completed hearings and denied Mr. Farley’s plea that the hearings be reopened. McKellar Belittles Losses Chairman Mead said today he could get the bill through the House by March 1, but such speed is not possible in the Senate. Mr. Mesld agreed with the air line operators that rates are too low. He said the smaller companies would be driven out of business if there was no change. Senator McKellar on the other hand, said the companies’ claims of losses were “poppycock.” “I don’t think they’ve lost anything.” he said. “If they have it’s not much. It's the way they calculate.” Scientific Basis Studied Eventually Mr. Mead favors basing rates on all factors involved. Including revenues received for freight and passengers, cost of operation, etc.—in brief, on a permanent, scientific basis similar to that used by the ICC in the case of railroads. There would be no bids or contracts. But this, he explained, is a problem that will require much study. Mr. Mead has decided to drop from his bill a provision to whicn the companies object. This was the authority granted the Postmaster General to designate so-called primary routes —which now are limited to one for each company. Aviation officials complained this would give the Postmaster General power to deprive a company of a secondary line by arbitrarily labeling it “primary.” NORVAL JASPER AGAIN HEADS CLUB AT TECH Re-elected President of Social Science Group at High School. Re-election of Norval Jasper as president of the Social Science Club at Technical High School for the spring term was announced today. Other officers for the semester are Arthur Chesterfield, vice-president; John Goddard, secretary, and Lawrence Sweeney, sergeant-at-arms.

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Mufc ißfjr J Jr ABB ipr ' \ mlf Arnold Gingerich Arnold Gingerich, editor of Esquire, is the author of “Cast Down the Laurel,” a novel just published by Knopf. a u BY WALTER D. HICKMAN A NEW Dr. Jekyll has made his appearance in “John Lillibud,” w’ritten by F. G. Hurrell and published by Claude Kendall. Lillibud, unlike Dr. Jekyll, did not resort to a drug or a mysterious compound to change his appearance and his nature, but used a synthetic nose which he placed over his own crooked proboscis. / This synthetic nose not only completely changed Lillibud's appearance, but it actually took on life and assumed the color of Lillibud's own face. With the new nose on, Lillibud was a poor and struggling author writing bitter stories about the rich. As Lillibud with the crooked nose, he was a millionaire and the genius in the firm of Novelties, Ltd., a powerful concern in London which made and sold handy things for homes and apartments. Lillibud was respected as a wealthy citizen in his fine home where his wife Clarissa enjoyed her life of luxury. When Lillibud suddenly disappeared to become his second self in poor clothes under the name of Dick Whittington, she noticed that his expressions of love to her were more infrequent. n tt u JOHN LILLIBUD detested his own crooked nose, but took a great delight in his synthetic one and with the strange people with whom he came in contact in a cheap boarding house. Twenty men he met there secretly, all members of a secret band bent upon destroying wealthy men and their businesses. When Dick Whittington published his novel attacking the great financeer Lillibud, this gang knew they had as their leader a man who could direct them perfectly in their own plan to ruin John Lillibud. From then on is related the strange tale of a man with a synthetic nose trying to ruin his othw self with a crooked nose. John Lillibud's synthetic nose brought ruin and death both to Lillibud and to Whittington. This strange story has been masterfully written by Mr. Hurrell: He has put many weird situations and experiences into this novel. You will have a grand time reading this book. If you read it at night, be sure and see that all the doors are locked as well as the windows ... and keep the lights burning brightly in every room. It sells for $2.50. 9 YEARS IN •SOLITARY,’ GET REGULAR CELLS Two Convicts Finaily Ordered Released from “Hole.” By United Press LINCOLN, Neb., Feb. 22.—Two prisoners, who for nine years languished in solitary confinement in the state penitentiary, were ordered returned to regular cells when N. L. Harmon assumed charge of the prison today. The convicts are Roy Smith and Joe Dunn, both of Omaha. They were given life sentences for their part in an abortive prison break in 1925 and assigned to the loneliness of “solitary” in a cell called the “hole.” The action was the first task performed by the new warden.

SOLE HOPE OF 1 SHARECROPPERS RESTS ON 11. S.— Believe Only Salvation From Peonage Rests in Aid From Government. This is ihe last of three stories on the increasingly acute sharecropper situation in the South, where 8,000,000 ! Americans are living in a condition approaching peonage. Mr. Fraser is a well-known newspaper and magazine writer who ifas been investigating that situation with help of members of the Memphis Press-Scimitar staff. BY HUGH R. FRASER (Written for XEA Service. Inc.) Behind the smoke of the battle between the Southern sharecropper and the planter can be distinguished certain fundamental questions. They are: 1. How can the government benefits for the cotton planter be extended to the sharecropper? 2. How can the sharecropper, evicted from plantations for any cause, be provided for other than by direct relief? 3. What must be done to combat the greatest menace of all the sharecropper’s utter lack of education? All these questions must be answered in some way, and by some responsible agency, if nearly 8.000,000 people in the South are to i emerge from what economists say is a condition of economic peonage. | Bankhead Comes to Aid So far only one voice of farreaching power has been heard in answer to these questions. That is the voice of Senator John H. Bankhead of Alabama, a wealthy man, beholden to certainly not to the great interests. For his own initiative he has taken up a plan for the benefit of the man at the bottom of the Sonth’s ecenomic strata —the sharecropper. The sharecropper, Senator Bankhead admits, is without rights of any kind. Owning nothing but his own labor, he can enforce nothing. First, he would extend Federal aid. He would extend government loans to worthy sharecroppers and tenants to enable them to emerge from their status by ownership of small plots of land. J The loans would be amortized ever a long period—say, 30 years. Would Set Up Agency A great loan agency, similar to the Home Loan Corp. would be set up to handle the loans, and careful investigation would be made of the financial responsibility and character of the thousands of sharecroppers and small tenants to whom the loans would be made. Such plan, the senator believes, would do more than any other one project to revitalize the cotton production outlook in the South. The reaction of the union leaders to Senator Bankhead’s proposal is not enthusiastic. “We do not believe that ‘forty acres and a mule' is a thing to suplant the present slave system,” says H. L. Mitchell, executive secretary of the Farmer's Union. Urges Community Farms Mr. Mitchell believes that the answer is community farms rather than individual ownership. The attitude of the great planters—those who own thousands of acres—is equally critical. Hira*n Norcross, one of the largest plantation owners in the South, who has 270 families on his property. says: "There is not one sharecropper in ten who, if given a farm tomorrow, free of indebtedness? could make a go of it. In five years he would no longer own it.” Vernon Paul of Parkin, Ark., another great landowner, said that since many of the sharecroppers can not even write, few of them could ever manage a farm. Government Only Hope The one hope of the sharecropper, | whether still on the land eking out nothing but the barest of living or evicted and homeless, is the govern- ■ ment of the United States. Recently an ace government in- 1 vestigator. Mrs. Mary Connor Myers of the legal department of the AAA, visited the Arkansas district, seeing the situation at first hand. Red-haired, quiet mannered, she wit nessed evictions taking place with | under her own eyes. She talked with planters and business men and lawyers. Two days after she returned to Washington to submit her report, her superior, Jerome A. .Frank general counsel of the AAA, was I fired. Mr. Frank was known as a liberal, and a close friend of Secretary Wallace. (Ousted with him. I and also reputed to be a member of j the Brain Trust group in the AAA. I was Fred Howe, Consumers’counsel.) j The cotton interests immediately j sent out the report that the ousting : of Mr. Frank was due ter his reputed | readiness to defend the share- | croppers and to prosecute the I planters for any violation of their contract with the government. Hoover More Radical The truth is that “Jerry” Frank | and Fred Howe had long been out j [of sympathy with Secretary Wali lace’s ideas, and the fact that Mr. | Howe was replaced by a man known | to be far more radical than he was i convinced the best Washington ob- j I servers that the arrival of Mrs. j Myers in Washington the day they were oisted was only coincidence. Certainly Mr. Howe’s successor, Calvin B. Hoover, a professor at Duke University, has written more books of a radical tendency than | either Mr. Frank or Mr. Howe ever dreamed of. Mr. Hoover is the author of a study made for Wallace | on the effect of the crop reduction program on the sharecropper. The sharecropper, knowing nothing, of the meaning of the incident, cares less. He believes, and believes deeply, that sooner or later the government will come to the aid of j the union. And his leaders never forget for : one moment that the only hand that can some day lift the sharecropper out of his status of economic peonage is the hand of the United States government. THE END Church Sponsors Penny Supper J The Calendar Society of Centenary Christian Church, 11th and Ox-ford-sts. will sponsor a penny supper at the church from 5 to 7 Saturday.

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FEB. 22. 1933