Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 39, Indianapolis, Marion County, 25 April 1935 — Page 18

PAGE 18

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351515 (Hr Light nnd the p/ople Vf/I Efnd Their Oten Way

THURSDAY. APRIL 55. 1935. free the farm tenant SENT back to the Senate Agriculture Committee for further study, the Bankhead farm tenant bill should emerge a stronger measure. Few persons will object to what this prospective law seeks to accomplish—the conversion of tenants and sharecroppers mto farm freeholders. But it can not succeed unless it is wisely drawn and wisely administered. Opponents of the bill argue that it can not accomplish its purpose, that it merely will transfer destitute farm families from the bondage of landlordism to the slavery of mortgage indebtedness. They also argue that it will be used to bail out large landowners; but this argument presupposes a dishonest or inefficient administration of the law. In the tenancy problem, both human conservation and land conservation are involved. Nearly half of the families who live on and off the soil have no permanent interest in the land they till. They are largely a migratory class, without roots and with little hope of lifting themselves out of poverty. They do not live under conditions that breed good citizens. Seeking desperately each year to make a cash crop to pay off their debts to the landlord, they care little whether the land is left poorer. The landlord’s primary interest also is a cash return. Thus, each year, one-crop farming and erosion waste away the nation’s most valuable resource. Senator Bankhead’s proposal is frankly experimental. It may not succeed, even surrounded by every conceivable safeguard. But the conditions it seeks to correct are so bad that immediate effort to right them is imperative. DEPRESSION DEATHS A FORMOSAN or Persian earthquake, a Mono Castle disaster, a war brings the kind of sudden death which shocks the public. We Jo not comprehend so quickly the horror of disasters which carry slow death for even larger numbers of victims. Such has been the depression. Yet it has taken us five years to discover the ravages of hunger and what has happened to the health of millions of unemployed Americans. Not so long ago government officials were even assuring us that the depression had improved the physical condition of the population. Such figures, of course, were taken from full-time workers and other favored groups. Now comes Josephine Roche, the new and able assistant secretary of the Treasury, telling the unpleasant truth which has been evaded hitherto. Speaking as the sub-Cabinet official in charge of the United States Public Health Service, she says that a recent survey covering the period 1929-1933 shows that mortality in families of unemployed and part-time workers increased 20 per cent. The sickness rate was 50 per cent greater in the groups hardest hit by the depression than in families whose income had not been materially reduced. Apart from the human suffering and injustice involved in these figures, the economic waste and financial loss to the nation is incalculable. Still there are well-fed citizens and members of Congress who object to the proposed public health appropriation of $8,000,000 in the Roosevelt social security bill which is being held up in a Senate committee. Probably the day will come, as forecast by Secretary Roche, when the Federal government will invest in public health not $8,000,000, but $125,000.000, or $1 a person.

CONDITION OF STREETS MOTORISTS from other cities and states are complaining that the condition of Indianapolis streets make driving not only uncomfortable, but unsafe. When such complaints are registered then it is time for the city to act. With spring weather here the time has come to put the streets in shape and give work to numerous laborers. Local residents are so accustomed to the street conditions that they merely swear at the many bumps and drive on. But when complaints come from outside the city, then conditions must be serious. The question of the safety of motorists and pedestrians is paramount in Indianapolis and if accidents can be reduced by street repairs, then there should be no delay. A REAL AWARD npHE Indianapolis Times takes pleasure in announcing that in the next few months some lucky Indianapolis boy, who now is a sophomore in an Indianapolis public or parochial high school, will be awarded „ scholarship to the Staunton Military Academy, Staunton. Va. Good moral character, scholastic standing and the youth’s future hope and possibilities will be used as a basis for judging the winner. Staunton Military Academy is 75 years old and is one of the outstanding academies of its type in the nation. Two years in this institution, with expenses paid, will be of great value to the boy who wins. Parents of high school youths whose age would make them eligible for this honor, will do well to urge their sons to make every effort to achieve this award. POLICY WITHOUT POLICY 'T'O many, the fact that 15,000 Indianapolis Negroes are being filched of SIOOO to *ISOO daily seems inconsequential, but when it is realized that this policy racket is only one of the many gambling outlets in the city, then the fact is alarming. It is estimated by persons who are in close touch with the gambling racket that policy

games, slct machines, marble games, baseball pools and other variations of these activities take more than a million annually out of the pockets of Indianapolis residents. The sad part about the million dollars is that it is not taken from the pockets of the wealthy. They have their own and exclusive means of losing their money. The funds that are poured into the rackets are supplied, the majority, by laborers, office workers and others who can not afford the losses. In horse-betting the man who places his money on the line realizes his risk. He has some chance to win, when he is guessing against only a few horses on a limited length track. But when you buy a baseball pool ticket your chances to win are hundreds to one. The same applies to slot machines. When it is said a player can not w'in in the horse-bet-ting racket then it would be foolish to consider the slim chances of ever trying to win in any of the others. The policy games being foisted on the city Negroes are worse than most of the rackets. Many times the Negroes are not given an even chance at losing because their tickets are thrown out. The police department is attempting to crash gambling here as in other cities of the nation. To make this attempt worthwhile no manner or form of racket should be overlooked. RACIAL WELFARE that Germany has unsexed 189,677 unfits as part of the Nazi drive for ‘ racial welfare” will bring a bitterly ironic smile to the face of the world. To sterilize feeble-minded and epileptics in the name of eugenics while glorifyir war is straining at gnats. In the Great War Germany lost nearly 2,000,000 of her finest males. That war cost the world 8,500,000 of its best young men and blighted the lives of three times that many. Just as the Napoleonic wars cut inches from the stature of European men, so has this greater folly left a wake of stunted, diseased and generally inferior humans. Modern war is eugenics' greatest foe. In glorifying war Herr Hitler becomes the great enemy of the racial welfare he professes to worship. LEADERSHIP 'T'HAT the United States has only one leadA er—and only one—to lead this country sanely to better days is conceded by all thinking persons. Indianapolis men and women prominent in all walks of life recently joined in approving whole-heartedly the appeal made in the editorial columns of this newspaper for leadership by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the naming of men and organizations who are attempting to obstruct the President’s program. Indiana has one United States Senator—a brilliant and able man—who is NOT doing his level best to pull shoulder-to-shoulder with President Roosevelt. The Senator is Frederick VanNuys, who has been doing splendid and efficient work in behalf of the anti-lynching bill, but who, on I gislation vital to the Roosevelt program, is seeming to side with those Senators intent on ‘‘playing politics.” Sena or VanNuys is too fine a man, too able a legislator, to ally himself with the Huey Longs of the United States Senate. He was elected in the New Deal landslide that placed Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. His work in behalf of the Administration was given an overwhelming indorsement when the people of Indiana sent Sherman Minton to the Senate in the place of Arthur R. Robinson. The people of Indiana have not yet taken back that indorsement. It is up to you, Senator VanNuys, to live up to the pledges you made of sticking side by side with President Roosevelt.

ANOTHER CLASSIC ACING automobiles are beginning to arrive in the city and already Deacon Litz and Tony Gulotta, two popular drivers, have run a mount 500 miles on a test schedule. In other w r ords the time is approaching for the 500-mile race that annually attracts thousands of Hocsiers and visitors from other states and nations. Each year the interest in the Speedway race increases, as innovations in race creations are placed on the track for the tough grind and new ideas in the automotive industry are born and put into practice. Last year’s race was ideal. It was a race battled at anew average speed for the entire distance and was marked by keen competition and. above all, no losses of life. The Times wishes the Speedway as much and more luck this year. The annual race is a great affair for the city and its glamour should not be dimmed. DOUBLE CARE REQUIRED np\VO children were roller skating in a residential street in Cleveland recently. A motorist came driving alorg. He saw one of the youngsters and swerved to avoid an accident; but he did not see the second child, who skated into the auto's path and was killed. Common as grass, that tragic little story —and filled, likewise with warning for all people who drive automobiles. The warning is self-evident; when driving along a residential street, it is up to the motorist to use infinitely more care than he needs to use on an open road, a through boulevard, or even on a downtown street. For children will play in the streets. They will dart out suddenly from behind parked cars or clups of shrubbery. They will run right in front of approaching cars. It’s up to the motorist to govern himself accordingly. A speed which is perfectly safe on a main traffic artery can be criminally dangerous on a street lined with homes. It is believed, according to a tsburgh dispatch, that the Irish discoverea this country six centuries before Columbus. Think how close it came to being O'Merica, land of the Free State. You’d think vivid personalities were plentiful in Congress the way statesmen go around hurling them. Spring is definitely here. Tire Indians have won the local opener and the first car of the 1935 race season has run 500 miles on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. *

I Cover the World BY WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS WASHINGTON, April 25.—According to sources which first revealed Germany’s secret armament, the neutral zone of the Rhineland is now being actively fortified from end to end and the Hitlerian militia secretly transformed into a permanent army along the French and Belgian frontiers. Articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles forbid fortification of the left bank of the Rhine altogether and of a strip 31 miles wide down the right bank. Neither military forces nor army maneuvers of any kind whatsoever are permitted in that area. Undercover and continued violations of these articles, the wriier is informed, are the chief reason for France maintaining heavy forces along her eastern border, and are partly responsible for Premier Mussolini’s heavily increased contingents remaining under the colors. Great Britain is understood to have warned all signatories to the Locarno treaties, including Germany, that should the ban against rearming the Rhineland be seriously violated, Britain would feel herself bound to side against the violator. a a a ACCORDING to the sources referred to above, immense quantities of war material are pouring into Trier, Coblenz, Mayence, Landau, Kreuznach, Kaiserlautem and other important centers in the forbidden area. From Cologne to Switzerland, it is further asserted, steel and concrete casemates, heavy gun emplacements and other preparations are being feverishly pushed tc completion along the Rhine. Heavily armored trains of anew type are said to have been delivered for keeping at the principal railway centers of the region. Between the Rhine and the Meuse, militarized labor battalions are reported to be excavating for extensive fortifications under pretext of carrying out vast drainage systems. The same authority reports that not only have the 30,000 authorized Rhineland police been augmented by almost as many more, but that at least 36,000 well-trained forces occupy the barracks, and have been assigned the old traditional numbers of former proud German regiments. This is considered important, foreign military opinion being that Chancellor Hitler may plan suddenly to expand the skeleton organizations now in the Rhineland into divisions, corps and armies of full strength, then announce it as a fait accompli.

A REAL FIGHT THERE was nothing especially exciting about the news that seven fat English hedgehogs were landed in New York City the other day. But that bit of news may be the prelude to victory in one of the most amazing fights the human race has ever waged. It is to be the fate of these hedgehogs to suffer and die of yellow fever, somewhere in the aseptic rooms of the Rockefeller Institute. If things go as the scientists hope, the little animals will make possible the cheap propagation of yellow fever vaccine, and man’s conquest of this plague will finally be complete. It is more than 30 years since the first great battle against yellow fever was won. Dr. Walter Reed and his colleagues in Cuba discovered that the plague is transmitted by the female stegomyia mosquito. They got no nearer to a cure or a vaccine for the disease than they had been before, but they at least made it possible for the plague to be abolished wherever conditions were such that the mosquito could be abolished. Asa result, such plague spots as Havana and Panama were cleaned up, and yellow fever was driven out. But the victory was oply partly won. There are many places in the tropics where it is utterly impossible to destroy all mosquitos. In such places yellow fever is as great a curse as ever. So the scientists next turned their attention to the quest for a vaccine which would provide immunity against the disease in the same way that/immunity against typhoid or smallpox is provided by existing vaccines. The search has been long, difficult, and dangerous. Many scientists themselves contracted the plague and died of it during the quest. For a time it looked as if no living creatures on earth except man and the stegomyia mosquito were susceptible to yellow fever. Then, in 1928, Drs. Stokes, Bauer and Hudson succeeded in giving the disease to the rhesus monkey of India. This was a great advance, but it still did not make possible the production of a cheap vaccine in large quantities. At last, less than a year ago, Drs. Findlay and Clarke of England discovered that the common English hedgehog can also be inoculated with the disease. This brought a cheap vaccine within sight, the supply of hedgehogs being more abundant than that of rhesus monkeys. Now the Rockefeller Institute workers are to put the matter to the test, using these luckless little creatures from England in experiments which may finally banish yellow fever from the earth. It is a long and heroic story. Men of all nations have co-operated in the fight. The whole thing is something to restore one’s faith in the human race. FACTS ON UNEMPLOYMENT TT is interesting to notice that one of the -*■ big jobs to be done under the $4,880,000,000 work-relief program is to be the taking of a nation-wide census of unemployment. Formerly jobless “white collar’’ workers will be put to work on the task. Here is something that should have been started years ago. We have known ever since 1930 that we had a great number of unemployed people, but not until now have we gone to the trouble of counting them and finding out exactly how many there are or what circumstances they are in. Our refusal to take such an obviously necessary step Is a shining example of governmental folly. The job is long overdue; It is good to know that it will at last be done, and it would be even better to know that It would be done at regular intervals hereafter, so that we could have a constant check on the size of our greatest internal problem. Carrying out an old tradition, 70 purses were recently distributed to the English poor, the king being 70 years old. You'd imagine the pleasant custom would appeal to Siam and Yugoslavia. Until we collect that war debt, Gertrude Stein can keep on punishing the English. There’s method in the Japanese war games. The last time they fought a mythical enemy they came away with Manchoukuo.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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 250 words or less. Your letter must he signed, hut names will be withheld at request of the letter writer.) a B ft THEY’LL DRIVE TO ANOTHER STATE TO BET HORSES By A. B. C. I can not refrain from commenting on Chief Morrissey’s article asking any good citizen to report cases of bookie shop operations in the city. He. should just go around the corner and ask our officials where they place their bets. My husband and I both play. We look forward to being off Saturday afternoons so as to go hear races and mutuels over the wire and we never bet only what others would spend for shows or other pastimes. No one drags you in. Very few people are that weak. Any one surely don’t enjoy clean sport if they wouldn’t thrill to the horses coming down the stretch. There used to be about 100 persons go in one place. They closed it. There never was any disturbance, every one enjoyed his afternoon. But since you have to bet out on the street we have decided to get in cars and spend a week-end where you can bet and have a nice drive to other states. u b u PRESENTS PROPOSAL TO AID EMPLOYMENT IN U. S. By Times Booster. The President’s work relief program is designed to put the unemployed to work on public work projects. This, of course, would be a sensible idea if every one on relief were already absorbing all the normal requirements of life, such as are produced on the farm or in factories. Just why these millions should not be put to work in the normal production channels, to produce the goods they want, but do not have, is still a mystery. Why go around Robin Hood’s barn to pay these unemployed wages at SSO or less a month on public work instead of having the orders for the goods these people want sent direct to the producers, so that they might employ these people to create them? Those orders ought not to be for SSO worth of goods for each family each month or less, but for $l5O for all on relief, so that every one would find employment creating these goods. Why stabilize poverty and unemployment when we ought to abolish both? The work relief program does not do that. Any one who expects to prime the pump cf business by sprinkling SSO a 1 month or less as purchasing power for a family, does not want to really start the wheels of industry. This dribble of consuming power will be burned up without soaking the business soil. No manufacturer of goods would refuse production orders from the government. Th unemployed are not in financial position to place the orders for the goods they want. And the relief wage to be “sprinkled” over the year, will only place greater debt burdens on the future, unless the industries get the orders, with which they may return unemployed to work. Why permit cotton textiles to slow down while all those on relief don’t have one-third enough textile products for their own use, or shoes and every other item for an American living standard? Why make relief a permanent institution? A 10-billion-dollar order for goods to the producers would stop the necessity for relief. A government order for SSOO worth of goods for each family on relief would start every wheel turning and abolish ilhemployment now.

ALL IN THE SAME BOAT

Honesty in Politics

By George Gould Hine. The situation in Marion County politics is very confusing to everybody. It prevents the voters getting what they vote for. It can only be cleared up by a certain local newspaper coming out boldly, honestly and loyally to discharge its just political obligations. Our local Republican newspaper owes a very great obligation to Rep. Louis Ludlow. It is a great one because Mr. Ludlow has devoted himself with singleness of purpose to the particular interests of business men, upon whose approval and support the newspaper depends for its existence. This paper is in a position to insure either re-election or defeat of Mr. Ludlow. If it remains silent, the result will be a wideopen split in the Republican vote, because Mr. Ludlow will be forced to run as an independent candidate and there is no man in Marion County who could split the Republican vote quite so wide open as Mr. Ludlow. There can be only one result from that—the election of a Democrat pledged to support the New Deal. The normal Republican majority is not sufficient to overcome such a handicap. What is the obligation this newspaper owes to our Democratic Congressman Louis Ludlow? He has supplied it exclusively with column after column of the most effective anti-New Deal material —the more effective because it came from a Democrat. The subject matter has always justified the most violent anti-Administia-tion headlines. The newspaper has eagerly accepted Mr. Ludlow’s offerings and it should be'just as eager to support him loyally as the nominee on the Republican ticket for Congress. PERJURY MAY CAUSE NUMEROUS TROUBLES By Frank Sutherlin. In an article in The Times concerning perjury, you only scratched the surface of one of the most hideous crimes there is in existence today in the whole world. Just stop and think—what is it that a lie told under oath on the witness stand can not produce? It can finish the act of fraud, release a murderer, commit or cause to be committed murder, put an honest person in penal servitude, break a million dollar man or bank, and the court or jury is the goat, for they must decide according to law and evidence, give the doubt to the defendant, so all in all, what is law? It can’t be any more than a tool for what it is used. B B B STATE SHOULD HANDLE ASSETS IN BANKS. By Eank Depositor. I would like to ask if there are any assets for former depositors? Does the expense of receivership continue indefinitely? How often does the receiver report to the court? Are the stockholders liable to assessment? I believe depositors are more interested in getting dollars than in prosecuting the officers. The state appoints examiners to safeguard depositors. Should not the state be obliged to pay these depositors that their employes failed in safeguarding by not reporting the condition of these banks? It doesn’t seem possible that a bank could lose all its assets between examinations. What would help more than to pay depositors in full? Let the state take over the

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

In doing this it would be more than simply loyal to Mr. Ludlow —it would be politically astute. It would give the normal Republican majority an opportunity to assert itself in a two-party battle. Such a course would demonstrate the newspaper’s unswerving allegiance to the conservative principles of its readers. Any other course would be not only disloyal, but stupid. If the newspaper will now come out squarely for Mr. Ludlow as the Republican candidate for Congress, then the next election will be a fair fight for and against the New Deal. And everybody will know what they are voting so get it when they win. The Republicans, if they win, will get a Congressman who is a far better Republican than most so-called Republicans now in Congress—one who voted with the most conservative of the Republicans to recommit the President’s relief bill, curtail the amount and change jobs to doles. They will get a Congressman so entirely sincere and courageous that he will include in his victory statement after election the strongest phrases contained in the official statement of the Republican National Committee. Conservative principles will be strengthened by Mr. Ludlow’s election as a Republican. They car. be only weakened by the election of a Democrat pledged to unqualified support of the New Deal. The voters of Marion County look to the newspaper to clear up this present confusing situation, in order that justice may be done to Mr. Ludlow, to its conservative readers and to the general principles of out-and-out honesty in politics.

assets and don’t let the depositors wait any longer. The state is morally obligated to do this now. B B B NEW DEAL IS NOT FOR MASSES, HE CLAIMS By Arthur Jones. We hear a lot about the New Deal, both pro and con. Whose New Deal is it? If it is a New Deal for the great masses of the people, why did sixty-five million of them get only $75 each, barring relief money, out of our forty-seven billion dollars national income in 1934? If it is a New Deal for the people, why is the national business and advisory council composed of such names as Winthrop W. Aldrich, of Wall-st., Pierre S. du Pont; Walter S. Gifford of the American Telephone and Telegraph; Henry Harriman of the United States Chamber of Commerce; Fred Kent of the Bankers Trust Company of New York; E. T. Stannard, of Kennecott Copper; Myron C. Taylor, of U. S. Steel, and Walter C. Teagle of Standard Oil? How can we expect such a group to cope with the depression? They Daily Thought And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.—St. Luke, 21:34. THE temperate are the most truly luxurious. By abstaining from mo6t things, it is surprising how many things we enjoy.—Si*ms.

.APRIL 25, 1935

don’t even know why there is a depression- These are the kind of men who meet with the board of directors when business begins to slacken and then make a report to the stockholders something like this: “Gentlemen: We have in- ; stalled new machines that will : enable us to lay off about GO men. We have also doubled up many jobs and cut wages. So we think this i will tide us over until things pick ; up. Oh, I beg your pardon. I I should have mentioned that we also raised the price of our product 10, ; per cent. So I think you will agree | with me that we have been very j proficient in working out our difficulties.” They certainly have been very proficient in making paupers with about twenty-two million on relief. It is up to the rich to buy the bonds to enable the government to feed these paupers.

So They Say

We have sold our farm business for a mess of pottage or one or two or three years of benefit favors.— Senator George of Georgia. They ought not to try to call themselves the Democratic party. The Roosevelt Admimstraton should be properly named the St. Vitus dance party.—Huey Long. It’s cheaper to build boys’ clubs than jails. If I were to start again, I would never waste my time in politics, but would devote it to boys. —John Hays Hammond, famous mining engineer. In no part of the world do workers want-war, but dictatorships have made it impossible for them to bring their force to bear to prevent it.—Wiliam Green, president of American Federation of Labor. I have never been in love with anybody or anything except my work—Evangeline Booth, Salvation Army head. I think it is the effort of a person who feels superior to make some one else feel inferior. First, though, you have to find someone who can be made to feel inferior.—Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, defining a “snub.”

APRIL

BY MARY R. WHITE Soft fleecy clouds— In a sky of blue Now in—now out— The sun comes through With old mother earth— Plays peek-a-boo, That’s April. Warm April showers Green things agrowing— Up from their earth bed Fuzzy heads showing. A gift for summer. Their bright colors glowing. That's April. Little go-between Os sun and showers Hanging new drapery Os vine and flowers To give new beauty To bright summer hours That’s April. Tearful and sorrowful Or sunny and gay You’re so temperamental But we’d still have you stay Sunshine and rain Blue skies or gray— That’s April.