Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 28, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 April 1935 — Page 26

PAGE 26

The Indianapolis Times t\ • mrr howakd ROT W. HOWARD TALCOTT POH'F.LIi ... Editor CARL I>. BAKER . Bairn*** Vn*s*r * r*hon Rll*r MSI

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A fjt’ ' l.iott nrol th Ptopu W.u / ■) Thrir Own n~nv

FRIDAY APRIL 12 193S A REBUFF FOR HITLER FTpHE vote in Danzig at the election of rep* ■L rodent a tivrs to the Vo.kstag ought to be a salutary "heck on the vaulting ambitions of the German Nazis. This vote wa' hailed in advance as another great Hitler triumph like that of the Saar. A pro-Nazi majority as heavy as that rolled up in the Saar would have been indubitable evidence that, the overwhelming mass of Germans everywhere wanted to accept Hitler as their leader and looked to him to guide them out of their troubles. But Danzig. 95 per cent German, gives the Nazis only 60 per cent of its votes —an in-cres-e of only some 8 p"r cent over the last elect ion. The moral is obvious. The Danzig Germans want reunion with the fatherland, clearly—out a very sizable minority thinks tnat to embrace Hitlerism would be to pay too high a price for it. CIRIX'S IS COMING epHE circus has come out of winter quarters *- and soon the painted wagons will begin their parades along streets lined with gaping adults and palpitating children. Bands will play. Clowns will cavort. Restless big cats will pace their cells. A red-coated equestrian astride a beautiful steed will shout to any and all who may be old-fashioned enough to cling to Dobbindrawn vehicles: -Look out fah yoah hawses. The elephants arc coming!" The thrill of it! Hearts beating with the rapidity of Tommy guns! Breaths held in suspense as a trainer inside a cage tears a stool from the bars to protect himself against a magnificent lion which has begun to show signs of "getting bad.” The beast crouches as though for a spring, Inches along on its belly—‘BOOM!” The trainer has fired a blank cartridge. The animal backs into a comer, its eyes red with hate, its tail lashing back and forth. But the lion wagon has moved on. There's the calliope: "Teet, toot, tcet. toot.” And the end of the parade. Next to the lot and the big top where, you are assured, "he glides through the air with the greatest of ease, this daring young man on the flying trapeze.” But that can wait until we have seen the menagerie. In this cpgp, la-dies and gentlemen, is a huge pachydermatous aquatic animal of Africa. In other words, a hippopotamus, or liver horse. He sweats blood! He sweats blood! See the black leopard, good people, the mast dan-ger-ous member of the whole cat family. You may tame the lion. You may tame the tiger, but here, la-dies and gentlemen. is the beast whose soul cries out for the blood of his captors. He was caught at the cast of 19 lives, four horses and a missionary who happened along at the wrong time. "G-r-r-r," says the black leopard, by way of making the story sound good. The band is playing now. None of your quiet symphonies, none of your funeral dirges. This band steps on it. Trumpets. Little drums. Big drums. Cymbals. Brass at its best. The grand entree! A million-dollar beauty on a camel s back. Horses, elephants, cages, color, flash, dash, rat. tat, tat, boom. BOOM! No, sir. Mister, there isn't anything new about it. Same old hokum. But, Mister, when you get so you no longer like your hokum, better make your will, because you're just about dead. Tdo bad, we feel sorry for you. Maybe you've just been steera-heated too much this winter. If so. we offer this question to bring you back to life! When circus comes, can spring be far away? THAT WAR FEVER evidently is in the mood to do something pretty drastic about the profits which are made in wartime. The House of Representatives seems to be going down the Lne for the McSwain bill, far milder than the one presented to the Senate by Senator Nye. But it has added to it a provision for 100 per cent taxes on excess profits, and it seems likely that in the end we shall get a compromise between Senate and House bills —a compromise bill far stronger than would have seemed possible a year ago. And whatever may be said about the military value, or otherwise, of such a bill, there is one way in which it ought to be exceedingly useful. When the war fever begins to sweep the land, a law of this kind ought to act very much like a sponge dipped in ice water and applied to a fevered forehead. For what it aims to do is simply to make war as unattractive to all the people as it is to the lads who have to go out into the frontline trenches and offer themselves as targets. A member of the Senate Munitions Committee expressed it thus: "Our bill is drastic because war is a drastic thing. Tue tax collector who comes for one man's money is not nearly so solemn and forbidding a visitor as the draft officer who knocks upon another man's door for his young •on. "It is our intent clearly and honestly to let every person in the country know that he will be expected to bear a large share of the burden of any war.” We talk a great deal about the horrors of war. but we don't really mean all of it. We never can forget that when war comes business will boom. Wages will be higher, profits will be higher, •verybody will be busy, and those of us who k.

The Labor Board Bill An Editorial

r T'HE country needs industrial peace now more than ever. Srnfe between capital and labor is one of the great menaces to rerovery. Continued unemployment, rising costs of living, and failure to enforce Section 7-A •rproad bitterness and suspicion among labor. Continued uncertainty as to what labor legislation J s in the offirg is making employers Jittery. To meet this situation the bill of Senator Wagner proposes anew and better implemented Federal Labor Board to enforce the legal right of collective bargaining. We believe there should be such a board. Without collective bargaining there can be no Just balancing of the power of the worker with that of the employer. There have been, and there will be. abuses. Nevertheless, we know of no other or better economic substitute for suicidal industrial warfare. Since the public interest is completely involved, a law to protect that right of collective bargaining is imperative. Its enforcement is a major duty of the government. lit While entirely in sympathy with the purof the Wagner bill, we doubt if it is wisely drawn in all particulars. The board functions should be limited, In our judgment, solely to collective bargaining rights. All parts of the bill giving arbitration and other powers to the board should be eliminated. There are gbod reasons for this. A board which tries to settle a dispute as mediator or arbitrator can not then effectively take over the functions of a quasi-judicial body of review'. Besides, many industries already have old and tested arbitration machinery. And there are plenty of conciliation bodies without setting up another duplicating agency. But the best reason for keeping the board out of arbitration is that hours and wage demands should be separated from collective bargaining disputes. Labor s right to organize is one thing. What labor achieves or fails to achieve in exercising that right is another matter. • • • A second defect of the bill is its failure to protect the organization rights of the worker from violation by union officials. It properly provides for government-supervised elections, free from employer control, to determine whether workers desire collective bargaining

don’t have to do any fighting will, really, be better off than in peacetime. And because that is true, it is very easy for war fever to sweep is off our feet. Arranging things in this new way ought to help us to keep cool in a time of crisis. If we knew in advance that profits, salaries and wages would be subject to very strict limitations, and that income and other taxes would immediately shoot to dizzy heights, so that all of us would feel the war burden in a direct and unmistakable way, it is likely that we shouldn't agree to go to war at all—unless the reason for doing so was clear and overwhelming. And that, in turn, would be a boon immeasurable. To find a way to check the warmadness—that is what people everywhere have been seeking ever since 1918. Wouldn't a bill of this kind coine close to doing it? EXCUSABLE ‘DUMBNESS’ IT is always comforting, somehow, to see a professor stub his toe. So there is something perversely pleasing about the knowledge that when 25 Princeton professors met at a tea party the other day and decided to give themselves a general intelligence test, very few of them came even close to passing. They asked themselves 41 questions. One man managed to answer 19 of them correctly. None of the rest did even that well. But before we crow too much over professorial frailty, we might remember that those questions were really tough. For instance: Did Naevius orginiate the fabulae praetextatae? Has the four-dimensional anazogue of a cube 12 corners? Are the roots of a general polynomial of degree higher than four, complex numbers? Let’s not be too hard on the professors. You could miss on a lot of questions like those and still be a pretty smart sort of person. SOCIALIZED SCIENCE A NEW non-profit organization, known as Research Associates. Inc., has been set up in Washington to conduct and encourage research in technical, scientific and economic fields and to translate results into immediate social action. The names of such men as Dr. William C. White of the National Tuberculosis Association. Watson Davis of Science Service. Dr. R. R. Sayers of the Bureau of Mines, and others, give assurance that devotion to the public welfare will guide this new organization's endeavors. "Our primary concern,” say Research Associates in their announcement, “is to administer results so as to enhance social values. We believe invention, scientific discoveries and all creative achievements of individual members of society should not be restricted in their use for the common good bj; practices and customs which may in the past have seemed necessary in the evolving of American life. We hold that these achievements should be brought as freely and directly as passible into the main currents of human experience.” Unless this is done science can destroy the race instead of save and liberate It. Bodies buried about 300 B. C. in Rome were found to have gold teeth and bridegwork. Isn’t it impressive to think that we and they have scanned the same magazines? Pretty girl teaches Supreme Court justices how to mend a stocking run. Which isn’t out of place: they’d naturally be interested in studying runs on the nation's banks. The problem of traffic casualties becomes increasingly grave with Paris’ announcement of an impending short skirt vogue. That New York relief investigation has cleared up one thing that has always bothered us. It seems that thingumabob that fits into the hoetnanr y is called a boon doggie.

and If so to choose their representatives. It restricts the majority rule to apply only to a proper inudustrial unit, which is to be determined by the board in each case according to th* nature of the industry. That should assure fair representation at the start. But it does not curb the labor racketeers, or the labor leaders who control unions by dishonest elections, by expulsion of minorities, and by racial and political discrimination. It is indisputable that considerable labor racketeering exists. Honest labor leaders have a stake in legislation which will eliminate or minimize such tactics. Racketeering unions are no more representative of workers than are the employer-controlled unions. Neither type of fake collective bargaining organization should have the protection of law. This does not mean that the board should take sides in the disputes between independent and A. F. of L. unions, or left and right unions, or craft and industrial unions. Nor should the board aid unionization as such. It shoyld. when required, provide machinery for the workers to register their will. But if there is no majority recorded for collective bargaining, or for any one representative organization, then the board should do nothing. The proposed board should have no power, as it clearly has no right, to favor one union versus another union. It will be effective to the degree that it is aloof. * * * The third serious threat co wise legislation comes from such friends of the Wagner bill as the A. F. of L. and Labor Secretary Perkins. Instead ot Wagner’s proposed independent board, they would have one under the labor department. That, in our judgment, would be worse than no board. The effectiveness of any board will depend upon public confidence. It must be above suspicion of partisanship or political control. To place a political official, a Cabinet officer, over the board would destroy its judicial character and value. It should be independent as the Interstate Commerce and Federal Trade Commissions are independent. Even an independent labor board, limited to fact finding and enforcement of the collective bargaining law, can not solve the problem easily. It will require both time and wise performance to win the effectiveness of judicial prestige. But such a Federal board, free from politics and partisanship, can become the best barrier against industrial strife that has yet been proposed.

Liberal Viewpoint BY DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES

THE utility holding companies continue their propaganda against the Wheeler-Reyburn bill designed to terminate useless and parasitic holding companies in the electric utility industry. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has handed in a report on the eastern dairy industry which indicates the urgent desirability of extending this anti-holding company legislation beyond the realm of electric utilities. The evils and exploitation revealed by this report of the Federal Trade Commission are of a type which I have been able to observe personally. I have seen my neighbors in Central New York sell milk for less than 2 cents a quart and at the same time have witnessed my friends in New York City pay from 12 to 15 cents a quart for this same milk. Not only are the consumers gouged outrageously and unnecessarily, but the dairy farmers are either ruined or brought to the verge of ruin, thus undermining the purchasing power of a large group of consumers to whom our manufacturers would like to sell their goods. The great holding companies in the eastern dairy industry imported enough milk from outside to create a fictitious surplus. This gave them an ostensible reason for paying the farmers the low milk prices which could be justified only by an actual milk surplus. Then they soaked the metropolitan consumers ‘‘the highest prices” which could be logically justified only by a relative shortage of milk. tt tt tt THE most indefensible element in the situation lies in the fact that those who handle the actual distribution of the milk from the farmer to the city consumer did not get all the profits from this outrageous differential between the producers’ prices for milk and what the consumers have to pay. A good deal of these profits went to the great dairy holding companies which, so far as I have ever been able to learn, play no essential function in actually distributing milk. For example, this report of the Federal Trade Commission points out that the National Dairy Products Corp., the largest of the dairy holding companies, raked off no less than $27,500,000 in dividends from two subsidiaries in the Philadelphia area alone from 1929 to 1934. This represented “more than 70 per cent of its investment in the Philadelphia companies acquired.’’ In the light of their tenuous and very indirect relationship of these dairy holding companies to the actual marketing of milk, the salaries paid to the officers of the National Dairy Products Corp. seem indefensible to the outsider. For example, the President of this corporation received in 1931 salary and other compensation amounting to $187,947. Eleven other officers in the corporation received salaries and other compensations in 1931 ranging beI tween $83,120 and $30,000. The officers of o'her great dairy holding j companies did not do so badly either. For ini stance, the president of the Borden Company is | said to have received in 1931 salary and other compensation amounting to $180,030. In the meantime, what was happening to the farmers? The report answers this question: "The investigation has disclased that a serious condition exists among many producers. Many farmers, who depend largeiy on their dairy business for a livelihood, have been reduced to financial distress, due at least in large part to the low average price received for their milk. Many have mortgages on their farms on which interest payments are in default. Others have abandoned dairy farming and disposed of their herds.” a a a PERSONALLY. I have nothing against the National Dairy Products Corp. Indeed, I hold some of its stock and my own selfish interests would indicate a desire to have it prosper by continuing to rake off the cream from the earnings of its subsidiaries which actually distribute our milk. But as an economic commentator. I would like to see it justify its existence. I would like to know if milk could not be distributed as effectively to the American consuming nublic if both it and the Borden Cos. went out of existence. Indeed, would not the prices to farmers be higher and those to consumers lower? Milk is certainly as important a product to the American public as electricity, and the American public needs protectoin from the dairy holding companies as much as from those in the electric industry. The farmers are patently unable to solve their problem themselves. There are enough double-crossers and chiselers to sabotage any local protective organization. And the Dairv’mens League has been repeatedly accused of having sold out the farmers to the great dairy holding companies.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

4 >v J ... * - )- r i • v, •* * * ‘t-- _ g-O.BtUt-

The Message Center

(Times renders are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your tetters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to 250 words or less, l our letter must be sinned, but names will be withheld at request o / the letter writer.) tt n a NEW RELIEF PROGRAM AWARDED SUPPORT By a Roosevelt Follower. Another letter to R. R. G.: No doubt you read the headline, “Roosevelt Voted $4,880,000,000 Relief.” I don't suppose that means anything whatsoever to a hotheaded Republican. I suppose you think that had Herbert Hoover been elected in 1932, the depression would have been all over overnight and every American citizen employed the next day. Speaking of ignorance, I hardly think your article is to be looked up to in any way. Your article sounds as though you were a Republican politician and who is, of course, now out of office. I have more confidence in President Roosevelt every day and I do not need to be dictated to by any sore Republican. an tt BANKERS AND MONEY SITUATION DISCUSSED By a Reader. Many causes have been assigned for the present depression and many remedies proposed. All have struck one fairly uniform note, namely, a shortage of money in circulation. But just how this was brought about none of us on the outside seems to have had a very clear or definite idea. We have felt vaguely that perhaps the banks were in some way responsible for the shortage of money, but when the banks denied the charge and insisted that the real offenders were the people themselves who were hiding their money in tin cans, mattresses, safety deposit boxes, etc., we were more confused than ever. To prove their innocence the banks began waging a campaign to bring this money out of hiding and many newspaper articles were published quoting bankers all over the country, urging hoarders to deposit their money in banks so it would get back in circulation and thus aid the return of prosperity. But in a little while this campaign was dropped and the people generally felt that hoarding was practically over. But notwithstanding this fact, the money shortage continued unabated and banks were loaning no more money than they were before they set out to persuade people to bring their money out of hiding. Here was a situation calling for some explanation from the bankers but no such explanation was forthcoming. Now the whole secret is out of the bag, and it appears that instead of trying to aid the return of prosperity by discouraging hoarding, these bankers actually were using this anti-hoarding campaign as a subterfuge to further their plans to prevent the return of prosperity. But to understand how they were doing this it will be necessary to explain how they were responsible for the money shortage in the first place. Every one who is the least bit observing will remember that during prosperous times most of our paper money, in denominations of fives tens and twenties, was bank notes. By bank notes I mean paper money prated by the Treasury Departmt..t for banks that put up the required collateral with the treasurer. Government bonds are considered good collateral for the issuance of these bank nates by banks, because

KEEP IT UP

Strachey and His Warning

By a Times Booster. The United States Department of Labor made a serious blunder under pressure from the “paytrioteers” when it arrested John Strachey, who entered the country as a British citizen to deliver a series of lectures on economics. The charge was advocating the overthrow of government by violence, which was not pressed, but left dormant in spite of the defendant's desire to have it proved. The animus behind the blunder was engendered by Mr. Strachey's analysis of current world economic disorder. He declared that the natural law of motion of modern society produced th<T cycles of prosperity and depression with intermittent wars that would become world-wide. That under capitalism competition would give way to monopoly; that profits would destroy consumer purchasing power and as a consequence the earning power of capital in large blocks, bringing wholesale unemployment and distress. Also, that the Federal recovery measures and security program were but duplications of European practices that had failed to avert

the entire credit of the government is back of the bonds, and when this credit is used by banks to enable them to get these bank notes for issuance as money, that is considered sound finance. But when the government talks about issuing money on its own credit without the bank system being able to “put in its thumb and pull out a plum,” that is inflation and dangerous finance. Do you, Mr. Reader, think there would be any shortage of money or credit in this country today if all the banks were to put up their collateral again with the Treasury Department and get bank notes issued against them for loaning to manufacturers, merchants, farmers and business men. and would then loan that money to them? I leave you to answer the question for yourself. a a a HE TERMS JOHNSON “GRANDMA” By Emmet J. Foley. It seems to me that when a paper like The Times finds itself so scarce of copy that it must employ men like Gen. Johnson to act as “Times Special Writer,” it is near the eve of its usefulness. The Times has. in my opinion, always been the best paper in Indiana. It has fearlessly exposed graft and corruption and it has not been chained to any special interests, financial or political. But why it should stultify this glorious record by giving space to the gibbering of a man whose services are obviously not desired elsewhere is too profound for my mental observation. You can hardly find Justification in the ancient alibi—"lts news!”—because what the ex-gen-eral is writing is not news. What he wrote from Washington April 9 gives unmistakable evidence of rapidly approaching dotage. The ex-general enviously attempts to counterfeit a charge against Father Coughlin, then deservedly gets tangled in his own mesh of fabrications. At thus point he resorts to the vacillating, cowardly subterfuge of appealing to religious prejudice. But somehow his vaunted patriotism falls flat when exposed to the light of reason and intelligence. Among other things, the exgeneral implies *hat 95 per cent of the Catholic clergy and mo6t of the Catholic laity are hfe agreement

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

the effects of the natural law of modern society' in a capitalistic economy. The question of deportation had no bearing whatever on the solution of the problem brought out for discussion by Mr. Strachey. Ignoring the law of nature always meets with certain consequences. It <oes not set the law aside. If the law as pointed out by Mr. Strachey produces these world tragedies, it would be of great benefit to have the Department of Labor apologize to Mr. Strachey and ask him to return to instruct the public on the subject. However, if we enjoy international war and wholesale unemployment, misery, distress and untold financial losses, then Mr. Strachey would be wasting time on the public. How free is free speech, when it affects vested interests? If history verifies Mr. Srachey’s thesis as he says it does, then kicking the fellow who warns of danger ahead, with deportation charges, is the height of stupidity. Why not learn how to comply with the natural law and thus avoid the penalties of its violation?

with him. That is their privilege, if they choose to agree wuth him. But if the above is true, then Father Coughlin is being supported mostly by non-Catholics. These supporters are unquestionably the millions who listen-in every Sunday to Father Coughlin’s discourses, and for this reason they are in a better position to judge as to the merits of the National Union for Social Justice than is a man who probably has never had the honesty to inform himself accurately as to what the Union really stands for. If there was the least taint of religious prejudice or "praselyting” in Fath Coughlin's program doesn't it seem reasonable to believe that some of his non-Catholic followers would have discovered it after all these broadcasts? I can't believe that stupidity and ignorance are as rampant in our beloved country as “Grandma” Johnson would have us believe. Nor do I believe that he has a monopoly or. American patriotism. The membe’-s of the National Union for Social Justice would be the first to protest were there any reason for alarm. a a a MOTOR CAR BUILDERS SHOULD TRY THIS By J. C. There will always be accidents But theft is no reason why there should always be so many accidents. Here is a challenge to the engineers of America: If the brakes of motor cars were somehow related to the accelerator so that no car could operate at a faster rate of speed than could be instantly stopped by the brakes a long step would have been taken in the direction of avoiding accidents. It really sounds very simple. And it is simple. It remains but for the engineers to make it practical. A car with poor brakes would have a miserable speed. A car with fine brakes would have a much better speed. A car with perfect brakes would have great speed. A car with hardly any brakes would do well to move. Harder things have been done. During the war, for instance, the pilots of the flimsy crates that dogfought in the air found it muen handier to keep the enemy# in

APRIL 12, 1033

front of them. But they couldn't fire through the prop. Or could they? That was easily remedied. Fokker, now an American, but then a German, did that very thing. So why be stumped by such a simple bit of engineering as tacking together the accelerator and the brakes. This will not eliminate accidents but it will cut them down tremendously. Most accidents happen not because the drivers can't stop their cars but ra‘her because they don't know that they should stop their cars. They’re not looking.

So They Say

Cats and mice sketched into papyI rus manuscripts reveal the existence in Egypt of comic cartoons and fables. —Jean Capart, Belgian museum director. Most parents don't spank right. They let their emotions run away with them. The parent w'ho tells me spanking hurts him more than the child, I always tell to stop spanking. That parent doesn't know how.—Dr. Miles Murphy, Uni? versity of Pennsylvania psychologist* Dizzy’s had a swell career, but it won’t go on much longer. He's got ing to hang up his uniform after two more seasons of play.—Mrs* I “Dizzy” Dean. I never did take any interest in ; computations of figures. I never ; believed in doing something that | someone else could do better than I.—Andrew Mellon. In the world as it is today no nation can prosper on another's ! ruin. We are too intimately connected for that.—Capt. Anthony Eden, British lord privy seal. In 1914 there was one nation whose ambition to expand served to create war. In 1935 there are two, one in the west, the other in the east.—Joseph Stalin, Sonet tor. The United States is fecund, heart-warming, uncritical—like a mother. Sordid things there always are there; it is necessary to look about for a bit of beauty.—Author Louis Paul.

Daily Thought

The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord St. Matthew, 10:24. PRIDE is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in *vnself. —Johnson.

ALONE

BY AARON M. GOLDMAN Never to see your fair face again No more to hear the echo of your soft voice: Your lips will never kiss mine again. Forever gone is your arms that held me tight. I walk and ride but you are gone from mine side; Your chair across the table is vacant. You have found someone elsa. But dear Rose, I am forever Alone.