Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 30, Indianapolis, Marion County, 15 April 1935 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times <a *riurr-HOWARD sEwsPArr.Ri RAT Tv HOWARD rre*l<l<‘nt TAI.COTT POWELL Editor EARL D. RAKER Batin*** Manager Phone RMej 5581

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MONDAY. APRIL 15. 1955. CLEAN-UP, PAINT-UP TNDIANAPOLIS is being called upon by the ■*- Indianapolis Junior Chamber of Commerce to stage spring cleaning in a big way. The plea for a cleaner Indianapolis comes a? an ideal time. The opportunities for home and \ard repairs are unlimited. A step in this direction will add that much to lifting the pall of depression. The city should be proud of the campaign which now is under way. There should be no great need for advertising or pushing this campaign to the limit, because every Indianapolis householder should take the war cry *'Clran-Up. Paint-Up. Fix-Up” to heart without urging. ANOTHER NAME ANOTHER name was added to the automomobile death toll over the week-end. To date 44 persons have been killed in traffic accidents in Marion County in three and onehalf months. The police department and the courts are doing their best to halt this ever-moi ntlng toll. Tlie results of the campaign have been gratifying and there is no reason why the drive should not be made a permanent institution in this city. And while the motorists are bearing the heat of the anti-accident program it would be well if the thousands of pedestrians would take to heart the horrible lesson which is taught in the numerals “44.”

HC’L ANI) AAA According to the aaa's Consumers’ Guide, a month's supply of 10 of the more Important foods cost a typical American family $15.42 in February, 1933. In February, 1935, the cost was $21.41. a rise of about 39 per cent. But for the products used in these same items the farmers in February, 1933. received $5, and in February, 1935. they received $9.77, or an increase of 95 per cent. Thus an advance of 39 per cent in consumer prices made possible an advance of 95 per cent in farm receipts. The farmers’ gains were in addition to benefit payments under the wheat and hog programs. Painful as it is, the higher cost of food will hurt city dwellers less if they can be assured that the farmers, not the middlemen, get some of the benefits. MICHIGAN’S FOLLY SIX HUNDRED desperate, weary Michigan coal miners slept in the corridors of the State Capitol until they got legislative action on a bill requiring state institutions to burn Michigan coal. It was a pitiful mass demonstration of economic ignorance. Another labor group sold itself a gold brick, an article no more and no less phoney than the protective tariff, which misguided labor groups have long embraced as a treasure. Michigan workers and manufacturers now should not be offended if Pennsylvania, Indiana. West Virginia, Illinois and other coalproducing states pass laws prohibiting their state agencies to purchase Michigan-made automobiles. On an international scale, other nations have so retaliated against our Snioot-Hawley law, cutting down our trade abroad and multiplying our unemployment at home. Trade reprisals travel in a vicious and ever-narrow-ing circle.

WORLD STABILITY A SENSIBLE approach to the problem of world peace is produced by Secretary of State Hull in his recent warning that the nations must imite in an economic program to restore economic stability before the threat of war can be averted. We do not often stop to remember that back of almost every war scare there is some profound maladjustment which exerts an unendurable pressure on a people or a group of peoples. Our disarmament and security conferences almost uniformly ignore that fact, and for that reason get nowhere. Secretary Hull's notion is that, if the tangled economic situation can be unscrambled first, the attempt to build an enduring peace will be a great deal simpler. "The necessity was never more apparent,” he says, "for the various countries of the world to give immediate attention to the matter of adopting a sound and comprehensive economic program, both domestic and international, and carrying it forward, to the end that the normal processes of domestic and international finance and commerce may be restored and tens of millions of unemployed wage earners may be re-employed. "This would afford a solid foundation on which to rebuild stable peace and political structures.” Too often we seem to take it for granted that this or that nation adopts a warlike course out of pure human cussedness. We have been very vocal in condemning Japan's course in Manchuria and China, for instance, and wo have blamed it largely on the militarism of an army and navy clique which has managed to take control of the government. What we forget is the simple fact that Japan has faced the prospect of a trade depression and a wave of unemployment far more severe than the one through which we have been passing. The Japanese people became convinced that only by gaming access to fresh territories that would provide expanding markets and new sources of raw material cotlld they avert economic disaster. Tluit is what explains Japan's waflike

The President Must Lead An Editorial

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT today faces the largest and most vocal lot of calamity howlers and chbelers that have let themselves loose since he came into office. With tne work-relief law passed, many members of Congress are ready to sidetrack the rest of the President's program. Hostile interests by direct and indirect opposition see a chance to block that program once and for all. They are willing to undermine public confidence in the President as a leader. That their success would play directly and inevitably into the hands of the Longs. Coughlins and self-appointed usurpers of the presidential function bothers them not at all. But it would bother the nation plenty. In normal times the question of whether a President loses prestige or power is not a grave national issue, but something merely for himself and his party to worry about. These, however, are not normal times. The emergency created by the depression still exists. The fate of more than a hundred million individuals is almost completely in the hands of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Any political enemy who would tie his hands imperils the economic lives of the entire American people. We may like him, or we may not like him. 'Ve may think him all-wise, or w-e may think him blundering. Anyway, he is at the wheelput there by the greatest national vote ever given an American President. He is going to be at the wheel for the next two years. These two years will see us well on the way out of danger, or much deeper in. To try to wreck Roosevelt now is insanity. He can not be wrecked without wrecking the nation. Run him into the ditch and American industry and labor go with him. Then we are all through—for a longer time than is pleasant to contemplate. • * * is the alternative to co-operation with Roosevelt? It is to let the reactionaries have their way, though what that way is no advocate of the old deal has had the courage or the imagination to state publicly. The alternative Is to howl with the Longs and Coughhns—and the net result would be to compound the chaos. The result would be to block the only leadership backed by public indorsement and possessed of sufficient governmental powers to lead; to halt the only recovery program with even a chance of being put into operation within the next two years. Even if the Roosevelt recovery program were weak, it would be better than the only alternative which is no functioning program at all. But the Roosevelt program is not weak. It is immeasurably stronger than any American dared hope lor two years ago. We do not agree with all of it, any more than any one else. We think parts of it will fail and should fail. All of it needs closer co-ordination. But :ts faults are few compared with the rich benefits it can bring to our harassed people, if it can be saved from the reactionaries of both old parties, the selfish interests of both capital and labor and the radio propagandists. The next step in that unfolding program is the legislative outline by the President before Congress. He has requested Congress to extend the NRA and protec f labor’s rights, to pass the social security bill for unemployment insurance and old-age pensions, to extend the Home Owners’ Loan Corp., to legislate on bank reform, railroads, utility holding companies, pure food and drugs and the munitions racket. The time has come to put the spotlight of publicity on the destructive agents, regardless of party, and upon the Democratic congressional leaders who are running out on both the President and their party’s pledges. Committees which should be working to improve muchneeded, but in some instances poorly drawn,

course in recent years; and something similar is behind almost every resurgence of the martial spirit. Back of the armies and the navies there are economic inequalities that drive nations to the Verge of desperation. This being true, is there not a good deal of sense in Secretary Hull's suggestion? If the nations of the world devoted to the job of regaining international economic stability one-half of the effort they devote to preparations to settle the instability by force of arms, they ought to be able to go a long way toward working out an equitable solution. The effort would at least seem to be well worth making. DROUGHT IS OF THE PAST /'ANE of the best bits of news this spring is the report that the great region of the Dakotas, famou.-, for generations as the “nations bread-basket,” is not going to enter this agricultural season handicapped by dry weather. Since Jan. 1, the area east of the Missouri River has received more than normal rain and snow. Creeks and rivers brim their banks once more; there is more surface moisture than at any time since 1927. The impatience of Dakotans with those gloomy prognostications, often heard last summer, to the effect that much of this land would never again be rich and productive, is amply justified. A prosperous summer seems to be in sight for the Dakotas. And prosperity there will help materially to produce prosperity in the rest of the country. PAYING FOR THE CIVIL WAR TF you have ever doubted that wars are almost unimaginably expensive, consider this fact; today, 70 full years after the close of the Civil War, the Federal government is still paying out $5,000,000 a month to settle the cost of that conflict. Seventy years add up to a long, long time. Since the last shot was fired in the war between the states, children have been born, grown to old and died—and all that while the nation's purse has been steadily and heavily drained to pay the bills. Most of the $5,000,000 paid out each month goes to veterans and veterans’ dependents in the form of pensions. This expenditure grows progressively less each year, of course, and it will vanish entirely before so very long. But it is appalling, even so, to reflect on the length of tune war costs can hang on. Our grandfathers fought that war; were still paying for it.

bills are loafing or sulking on the Job. These men should be called out and bawled out, in a fashion to wake them up and get them back on the job. • • • 'T'HE time has arrived for the President to crack down. The people need and want aggressive personal leadership. It must and will come from someone. Our people will not run in group circles Indefinitely. We have respected the President’s patience and his tolerance with those in high places whom he knows to be putting personal, political and financial interests ahead of the public good. We have understood the necessity for some resort to political strategy. But we believe the time has arrived to lay aside the fly-swatter and use a club. The first job is to unmask the wreckers, and let the people know them by name and by their acts. Constructive criticism and honest debate are always in order, but now it is time to give the gate to the economic buccaneers, whether they wail in the citadels of big business or whine in the President's own party councils. It is time to call the roll on the wreckers who offer no constructive plans of their own, but who ruthlessly seek to scuttle the President’s plan because It frankly refuses to lead us back to the reactionary conditions to which we owe our present plight. Now is the time to turn the heat on the demagogs advocating revolution under the guise of plans they know wfil hold no more water than a sieve. The propaganda to undermine the President’s popular support has been ruthless and persistent. So far It has made little headway. But the President can not remain on the defensive. Inaction will be interpreted as indecision. The people are impatient, it is true, not with the President, but with those who would scuttle his program, whether they be politicians, labor leaders, or plutocrats. Without action, this impatience, in time, will seek some leader—and possibly with less wisdom than was shown in 1932. The voters are not such fools as to turn for help to the financial riggers and business racketeers who betrayed them before. They are still looking to the President as their hope, still ready to back him. But the President must resume the initiative. If the depression is to be licked this year, a quick and crushing blow must be struck at the would-be wueckers of the Administration program.

Tiyi'E AN WHILE across the country believers -*-*-*- in the New' Deal and those who still vest their hopes of economic recovery and a better social order in the man they elected as their leader owe it to the President and to themselves, to the present and to the future, to stand up and speak out with the voice of an outraged people. On platforms and through the press; by letter and wire to Washington, to the President, to Senators and Congressmen, to political leaders at home; on the air and in public gatherings, let people shout their demands. That will get action. Official Washington has its ear to the ground and after all it has heard from crackpots and demagogs in recent months wdll heed a shouted derr .nd for a return to presidential leadership. In 1917 our leaders in every walk of life dropped partisanship and petty differences to unite in an epoch-making coalition to help save Europe. The hour and the moment offer a similar opportunity for national co-operation to help save ourselves. * * * T\>TR. PRESIDENT, the people today are look- ■*•*■*■ ing to you for leadership and direction. State clearly and simply what popular support j’ou desire, and point out the men or the interests w'ho are blocking action necessary to recovery. You will not be disappointed by the response.

SIGN OF OPTIMISM WHEN we first realized that we had a depression in this country, sor* j wise old commentator, asked when it would end, replied, “About six months before we discover that it has ended.” One is reminded of that prophecy by recent reports from the Treasury Department which show that income tax collections for the last March show a decided jump over collections for the same period last year. Total collected in March, 1935, was more than $321,000,000 as compared with only $230,000.000 for March, 1934; In 30 of the 64 collection districts, the increase over last year ran to 50 per cent or better; in 13 agricultural districts the increase was as high as 70 per cent. For the country as a whole, it was a gain of nearly 40 per cent. We still may have an enormous army of unemployed—but there is undeniably a good deal more money afloat in the country than there was a year ago, and it unquestionably indicates some progress, at least, in the direction of prosperity. THE AIR BECOMES SAFER /COMMERCIAL aviation in the United States is steadily becoming safer. Accidents to commercial planes caused by weather conditions, decreased last year to a point where 3.400,000 miles were flown between each accident as compared with 1,600.000 miles in 1931. W. R. Gregg, chief of the United States Weather Bureau, says that this gain is due to “the well co-ordinated efforts of air transport companies and government agencies concerned with the weather services.” Commercial air lines, he adds, now employ more trained meteorologists and, as a result, are better able to decide when it is safe to fly and when it is not. It is through steady, methodical effort of this kind that we draw nearer to the day when airplane travel will be as safe as any other kind. Wiley Post's motto seems to be. “If you don't succeed at first, fly, fly again." Add people who can dish it out, but can’t take it—the politicians handling work-relief billions. We never object to relatives dropping in for an overnight visit provided they haven't in mind an Arctic night! Public enemy, facing chair, threatens to haunt his foes. There's no need for worry, however; on our side we have the spirit of the law. *

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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The Message Center

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Limit them to Zoo words or less. Your letter must be sioned, but names will be withheld at request of the letter writer.) u tt a ’’REGULAR SOLDIER” TAKES ANOTHER RAP By Fred C. Miller. I was indeed grieved to learn of the “hardships” that you home guards enjoyed in the United States camps; of the untold “agonies” and “exposures”; agonies of regular meals from good cooks, regular sleep in good beds, with every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon off and all day off every Sunday, and exposures of riding from camp to camp in a nasty old Pullman with only cushions to sit on and very common steam heat, and only a roof over your head. How you must have suffered; you should have a pension, but you probably do draw one. Too bad about your embairassment of having to put up with the drafted “children,” ahd how they cried, I don’t see why they should have been afraid with a big strong man like you in camp to do all the hazardous work of walking post and latrine guard duty. Why didn’t you come on over and get in on the real stuff? Don't tell me that you tried to get across ana couldn’t; that is old stuff, we have heard it since the war was over and we don’t believe it yet. And tell us “children” how you got your wounds, in mess line maybe, or in the lineup for passes to spend the week-end at home with your folks, and parade around with whip cord clothes and russet shoes on. We “children” who were drafted and went acrcss are not as prone to talk about the war as you big brave boys are, but I dare say that we could answer any of your questions if you were really interested. About all that you know' about it is what you have had read to you, and what you have seen in pictures. I was drafted and was overseas.

ASSERTS CAN NOT ENFORCE LAW WHEN CASES FIXED By an Interested Observer. I am attaching the most appropriate cartoon which appeared in a recent edition of The Times. There is a question I want to ask but I am afraid there is no answer. How can the police be expected to enforce the law's when a mart who has been arrested seven times and had each case fixed is arrested later traveling 60 miles an hour on a boulevard in Indianapolis and then has the case fixed in court Saturday morning? Is there any proof of a willingness of officials in the courts to uphold the police in enforcing the laws? 000 ROAD ADS ARE REALLY IMPROVING By J. c. There was a time when the motorist who wended his singular course about our meandering highways saw nothing but Gargantuan monstrosities advertising a certain hotel or a particular loaf of bread or a type of plumbing. At that time the rage seemed to be blot out as much as possible of the hillside scenery or pasture land. Children taken into the country to see a bit of scenery came back with different

PUBLIC ENEMIES 1 AND 2

‘Baruch and Johnson ’ —A Farce

By William Murphy. Your recent editorial placing a halo upon the benign head of the one and only Barney Baruch due to his appearance V>efore the Senate investigating committee and blowing off a lot of magnanimous bunk for the benefit of the gullible populace and also an article printed in your paper bearing the initials “L. L.” call for closer scrutiny than usual. This latter article lauds the venerable Barney and his marionette, Gen. Hugh Johnson, to the skies and calls Father Coughlin everything but a gentleman. A little delving into the truth of the matter reveals this: Barney Baruch is the most polished farce that ever walked the earth. This even excludes the best that ancient history could produce. If tangible proof of this statement is desired reference may be had to the Plain Talk Magazine. April issue, in the article pertaining to “Dollar-A-Year Men.” This article was written by a man whose integrity is unquestionable. You people, of course, are aware of all this and it u’ould seem that you are also in the game of trying to hand the people a package. Now for the “general.” He is the most colossal joke that has appeared on the horizion in many a moon. For him, with his Luke McGluke vocabulary, to even attempt a verbal combat with an educated man is funny but when he goes so far as to use the radio and the newspapers to carry on the sideshow the situation becomes ridiculous. The funniest part of the “general's” career, and he will have to admit this himself, was the placing of his august person in the official position of administering •the anesthetic to American business as generalissimo of the NR A. If he has a sense of humor, which no doubt he has, he must have guffawed

slants on malt, wall paper cleaner and clothes for men. led ay it is evident that a healthy reaction has taken place. Billboards are far smaller, are placed in more reasonable spots, and can be read just as easily. There is a lot of room for originality though in this field of advertising. If they want the people to look at these things than it is only logical that they . should be worth their salt. Advertising companies can do much to beautify our highways. Until recently they have cluttered them with hash, trash and mixed type. 000 POOR MAN IS PAYING PRICE FOR OTHERS, HE SAYS By H. S. Ossood. There never has been a time in the memory of people now living when so many questions of national and vital importance have been up for consideration. It would seem as though the present civilization was faced with problems upon the solution of which depended the existence and the continuance of our national life and future welfare. The writer wishes to refer to the 16 points enunciated as the fundamentals of the National Union for Social Justice, the discussion of which in detail recently was concluded after weeks of national broadcast on the air by Father Coughlin in his clear, irrefutable

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

out loud when he cast his thoughts back to the time when he was in business himself. In 1919 the venerable Barney launched the “general” and George N. Peek b.v securing backers for them, of course, as com-manders-in-chief of the Moline Plow Works at Moline, 111. Then the fun started for everybody but the backers of the "general” and George. The company had made money all during the war but had shown a decline immediately after the conflict and the two abovenamed satellites were supposed to be the guiding spirits of the outfit on the road to bigger and greater profits. When the smoke cleared away the backers of the reorganizers extraordinary were out and the “general” and George had accumulated a lot of business experience. This fiasco ran from the years of 1921 to 1927, a time and period W’hen even street-cleaners boasted of a safety deposit box. That much for the “general's” business ability, and he was supposed to be the guiding spirit in leading the country out of the worst depression the nation has ever experienced. While the American soldier was sweltering in gore on the fields of France for the munificent sum of $6.30 a month, Barney and his patriotic dollar-a-year men were sweltering in profits extracted from the people and the government. This is the clique that is bending every effort to prevent the passage of the soldier bonus or, as it should be called, the soldier just-due-payment. Is it any wonder that Father Coughlin has such a following and that the people of all denominations are looking to him. If his program fails the worker will also fall under the cognomen of $1 a year men—only it will be a stark reality.

style that carries conviction and confidence of his perfect knowledge of every detail of his wonderful plan to equalize all elements composing national autonomy. The wealth of our country which has been amassed by every known crooked or nefarious means into the gigantic financial organizations in the great centers of business east and west, now seriously threatens the independence of the farmer, the continuation of the small business man, and is slowly but surely sqheezing the profits of all business to the ultimate end of universal peasantry' and poverty. The process has proceeded unchecked thus far because the Congressional body at Washington is controlled by ti.. element so that even the President of the United States stands aghast at the mighty problems facing him with the destinies of millions of citizens hanging in the balance. This is a real menace and must

Daily Thought

Then said He unto them. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.—St. Luke xxi, 10. A GREAT war ieaves the country with three armies—an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. —German proverb. v

APRIL 15, 1935

be met in the halls of Congress and at the polls, which is the poor man's last resort and only hope. The poor man who has earned and created all this wealth and i3 getting nothing in return, is waking up and getting wise to his pait in this government and th<\,e men and women in Legislature* and, the halls of Congress, by virtue of election. by virtue of solemn promi to enact just laws, had better member such promises and con-' sider the just claims of the millions who expect the protection guaranteed them before acceding to the demands of unscrupulous millionaires who cover up and operate under laws that have no teeth and have enough emergency clauses (claws) to justify the duplicity enacted for their benefit.

So They Say

I can not believe that by preparing for war we insure peace. It seems that instead we are simply opening a way for the use of implements of war.—Mary E. Woolley, president of Mt. Holyoke Cohere. Out of the present social crisis a larger measure of economic equally will come to the children of man.— Rabbi A. H. Silver of Cleveland, O. I have tried hard to laugh at some of these jokes about New York re-, lief work, but I just can not laugrf at human misery.—Mayor La Guardia of New York. I want three fights this year, and I am willing to fight any one if I can be shown there will be money in it. —Max Baer. Only through the complete renunciation of Christianity will the German people achieve the unity it needs and which would have saved it from the trying days of 1918— • Qen. Erich Ludendorff. j The law of continuity and the general scientific vew of the ur. - verse tends to strengthen our beli> f that the soul goes on existing ana | developing after death.—The la T e ' Prof. Michael Ivorsky Pupin, inventor. In is a commonplace fact that physical ability, mental aiertne. s and co-operativeness tend to fail a man after 65.—Attorney H. M. Stephens, addressing U. S. Supreme Court justices, who average 69 years of age.

HOSPITAL

BY G. F. Bring white curtains. White curtains to hide A white face: a white bed. Other white faces In other white beds Must not see the one white face . That twists and twitches and twista*. Let the one white face See vhite curtains and white ceilings. Whitt ceilings and white curtains Until it sees no more. Bring a white wagon, Tales down the white curtains. Unfold the white sheet. Cover the white face. Take away wagon, and sheet, and face. Ever forever away, V Away forever.