Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 185, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 October 1935 — Page 7

OCT. 12, 1035

It Seems to Me HEYWOD BROUN f^ 1 VERY oilier month or so the Daughters used to meet at r,ur house. I'm not sure it was the authentic D. A R. As I remember, my mother belonged to a bootleg branch simply called the Daughters of the Revolution. It was easier to get into. One organization demanded that you present an ancestor on both male and female sides, while with u just one revolutionist was sufficient to make you eligible. We could find only one of our clan who had fought in the Continental army,

but he was a general. Years later I looked up his military record, and now I never mention him. But about a half a century ago. when we lived in a brownstone house in W. 87th-st, I was taught to say: "My great-great-grandfather fought in the American Revolution.” I didn't pull it very much, and only under provocation. My chum, Vinnie Frank, down the block, used to tell me that his people were specially chosen by God. And at such times I used to trot out Gen. Stirling. I regarded it then, as I re-

Heywood Broun

gard it now, as a pretty feeble sort of comeback, although in those days I did not know that the general led one of the most pell-mell retreats in the entire war, galloping like mad at the head of his troops until bawled out by George Washington. an tt Hy Courtesy of the General STILL the general was good enough to keep us in the Daughters of the Revolution. We couldn't dig up anybody through the male line because my father was English. He didn't seem to take the Daughters very seriously. When they held their meeting at our house in the afternoon he often refrained from coming home for dinner. But if he did he never failed to pull a long-standing wheeze. "Were there many killed?” he would ask politely. My brother and I thought that was very funny, hut in the course of years my mother got a little bored with it. In all fairness to her and to the rest of the Daughters I must admit that they didn’t raise much hell around the house. And even if they had I would have been in no position to complain, because my mother never refused when I asked, "Can I have the Silent Nine meet here next Thursday night?” However, my brother and myself did have a grudge against the Daughters. We would be told to play outside or, at any rate, not to make much noise during their sessions. They met in the dining room, and from behind the pantry door you could get a pretty good view of what was going on and also swipe the ice cream which people left upon their plates. a a tt Cakes and Conversation IRVING and I got bored with the proceedings pretty early. The activities seemed to be almost entirely cultural. People read poems and papers, and I believe one of the ladies played the piano and several sang. But you could hear much better songs at Percy G. Williams' Circle Theater any Monday afternoon for a quarter. It was exciting only when they were electing a second vice president or something. Then some of them would raise their voices and wave their arms. Still my father was only joking when he used to ask, "Were there many killed?” At the age of 10 I did not take the Daughters of the Revolution very seriously. If they had undertaken to discuss politics and hand out ukases as to how the country should be saved I would have be r m just about as shocked as if they had told dirty stories. May I add hastily that the Daughters did neither? And I still think that it would be an excellent idea for the D. A. R. to go back to poems, soprano solos and lady fingers.

Your Health BY DR. MORRIS FISIIBEIN

''■''HE liver is the largest organ in the body. It A weighs three of four pounds and is really the factory in which a good deal of the most important chemistry of the body is carried out. Blood vessels come into the liver bringing materials from the bowels, which the liver then works over into useful substances. One of the main purposes of the liver is to remove from the body a good deal of poisonous material. It also develops sugar materials. Your gallbladder is situated just under cover of the lower border of your liver. The gallbladder is not a very big organ. It holds one or two ounces of bile. The liver forms the bile and passes a good deal of it into the intestines, but some of it is stored in the gallbladder. a a a ONE of the most serious diseases that can affect the liver is cirrhosis, or hardening. This comes from various types of poisoning, including alcoholic poisoning. The most serious acute disease that can occur in the liver is development of an abscess either from ordinary bacteria or from such organisms as cause dysentery. The amebic abscess of the liver is associated with amebic dysentery. Once it was thought that most of the common illnesses of mankind were due to deficient functioning of the liver. Liver pills were consumed in great amounts, the difficulty being, however, not with the liver, but with action of the intestines. Most liver pills were merely laxative or cathartic pills which speeded up the bowel action. Fortunately the human body is built with factors of safety. We have about seven times as much liver as is needed to carry on the work of the body. Therefore, damage to the liver may go on for some time without loss of life. It is well, however, to take care of such conditions promptly because progressive damage of the liver is certain to result in death.

Today s Science BY DAVID DIETZ

DESPITE the rapid strides which American scientists have made since the turn of the century. Professor Roger Adams of the University of Illinois, president of the American Chemical Society, says that the European scientist is still surpassing his American colleague in the quality and output of experimental research. Peculiarly favorable conditions favor the European savant, Professor Rogers says, adding that the handicaps attending scientific achievement in an American university can be surmounted only by “thesa individuals who have a genuine love lor science, originality and profound ambition to succeed in research.” This will come as a surprising statement to many persons who have taken it for granted that opportunities for research now are superior in this country. "The young foreign scientist has a distinct advantage over the young American in his opportunity to demonstrate his ability and to accomplish results with the aid of assistants.” Professor Adams continues. "He is not hampered by an overload of teaching and other educational university duties.” tt X tt , ' r TT'HE young American, with his doctorate comA pleted, may or may not continue for one or two years as a National Research Council fellow. His first employment, if he is fortunate, is that of instructor in a large university." His duties, Professor Adams continues, “are generally to teach elementary courses, frequently not in his field of specialization, to supervise laboratory work, and, in addition, if he has the initiative, to undertake independent research. "The task of preparing lectures and delivering them properly is time and energy consuming, and iiis research must be a side issue, but a very important one. ns It will affect his later promotion. “In most Instances no assistants are available to him. and his research must be accomplished entirely alone. On the evidence that he is a successful teacher, and that he has demonstrated his ability in research, he is promoted in rank, and is then often relieved of part of his teaching duties.”

Benito Mussolini

picture of himself. The city is a city of smells. Until a few years ago, it had no drainage—the new system in there now being one of the results of Selassie’s travels into the outside world. Public health is waging an uphill battle. The public baths of Addis Ababa would bring consternation to those bright custodians of America’s public morals on nudism and nudists camps, if they were to suddenly bob up in

Ethiopia. For in the pool, maybe at noontime, maybe in the late afternoon, half a hundred or more men and women—all as naked as the day they were born —splash about, and wash to the accompaniment of yowls and shrieks. And the nudists in the United States claim that there is never the slightest indication of selfconsciousness in their back-to-nature-and-mosquitoes camps but they ought to go to Addis Ababa to see how it’s really done. That woman’s a woman and man's a man, when without clothes, doesn't seem to penetrate the Ethiopian mind while bathing in the public pool. tt tt tt TF ihe European stays out after 8 o’clock, then let him keep his eyes peeled for robbers. For they are plentiful. Also lepers walk about creating as much general concern as a fly. Ethiopia is not a land of prohibition. The drinks have the dynamite of a mule’s hind leg, and there is no shortage. Drunks are common sights. Selassie doesn't like it. So one of his new rules is that all drinking emporiums are to shut down at 8 o'clock. This was patterned after the English rule, where bars close up at a certain hour at night—reopen in the morning, close again around noon, and then open up again a short time before evening. So the wily ones who like their liquor in Addis Ababa get around the law neatly and effectively. When the doors are locked at 8 o'clock—they just simply stay inside and imbibe to their heart's content all night. Clever, these Ethiopians! a a a r I ''HE sight of three or four men chained to another 'man, coming down the street leads the uninitiated to believe that here comes a cop and his three prisoners. Not so. It is a creditor, leading his three debtors. If the creditor in Ethiopia believes that his debtor is likely to beat a sudden retreat before he pays his bill, he has the debtor chained up to him, so as to make certain he won't get away. Domestic and debt slavery is the rule in Ethiopia. Court proceedings, before Selassie made an effort to establish an orderly system of justice were of the impromptu variety. In fact, outside of Addis Ababa, they are still as simple, direct and elemental as ever. Court, may be held suddenly on the street corner, in the gutter or

Weather and War Help Keep Status Quo for Cotton, But Dixieland Sees Its Future as a Question Mark

This Is (he last of three articles on cotton. BY DANIEL M. KIDNEY Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON, Oct. 12. War may not solve any economic problems, but it often postpone sthem. King Cotton's throne was saved by the World War, which pulled the South from the “Buy a Bale of Cotton’’ slump to boom times. With war again at hand overseas, history may repeat. But such a price is, indeed, great. The most ardent champion of King Cotton's rule in the South would be unwilling to say that periodic warfare is preferable to crop diversification as a means of solving an economic problem. Southern editors long have preached abandonment of the one-crop program as the only permanent solution for the problems of Dixie agriculture. One of the most outstanding said: "In my opinion, the South must learn to live without cotton, the same as the livery stable owners had to learn to live when the automobile came forth.” a a a THE magazine Fortune holds that Japan's entrance into the cotton textile field will finally force the South to this position. In Texas a return to cattle-rais-ing is urged in places now plowed ipto cotton fields. Unless tariff barriers can be removed and world trade restored, cotton will continue to pile up and even the government will not be able to hold back a price slump and complete disaster. such advocates contend. Writing in the Magazine of Wall Street. C. S. Burton urges the growing of flax as an escape from the cotton dilemma. He declares that flax may be spun in a cotton mill with “minor technical adaptations.” Flax production requires crop rotation and this also would be a good thing for the South, he points out. a a a HERE are some figures showing what has happened to our cotton export trade: Average annual consumption of American cotton throughout the world from 1919 to 1929 was 13,161.000 bales, while that of foreign grown cotton was 8,842,-

+ The Story Behind the Ethiopian War

BLACK SHIRT ■— BLACK SKIN

(Continued From Page One) though the British stamp the head of their king on seals, official documents and postage stamps, Selassie prefers the lion, rather than a

in the very middle of the road. A j man pleads his own case, with the help of whatever friends he may be able to rally round —and a passerby may be roped in to act as judge. As to art, the Abyssinian is indifferent. Most of the art is confined to church frescoes, of the crudest kind. A bad man is drawn in profile, while a good man is shown full face! o a a AGAIN, even though Selassie "has established schools to which all classes may send their children—these do not extend beyond the immediate vicinity of the three largest cities of the country—and hence, taken as a whole, the education of the people is at the zero point. Fingerprints are used, for instance, to sign contracts. Not a bad idea, at that. The mountains of Ethiopia are high, but the morals are low, when it comes to standards and ethics. Ethiopians marry and divorce and marry again with a rapidity which would put Tommy Manville or Peggy Joyce in the deep dark shade of conservatism. A boy marries his first lady friend at 14 and he keeps up the pace until he is buried. Some of the leading chiefs have had 50 wives and think nothing of it. The upper class women do not cook. Neither do they do household chores or such menial tasks as mending their husbands’ clothes. They slick down their hair until it looks like a bright and shiny wig. The slicking is done with rancid butter. And when spring days lend zip to the season and all mankind goes courting the female of the species the 25,000 miles round the globe irrespective of national labels, the Ethiopian girls thrust flower petals into their noses, or vary this with green leaves and cotton in their ears. a a a abound in prolific numbers. They scavenge and their great competitors are hyenas. The hyenas and the town dogs converge on the refuse dumps of each little village—and the quiet of the night is made hideous by the howls, growls and shrill laughs of these animals as they fight to the death for scraps with monotonous regularity. It is not an uncommon sight to see dogs, mules, goats and chickens, plus the family, all in one big mud-and-thatch room. Beggars greet one almost everywhere. The Arabs have called Abyssinia Bilad-Wa-Issi —“Land of Give Me Something.” Some Ethiopians are anxious to

-000 bales. In short, 60 per cent American and 40 per cent foreign. In 1929-30, Federal Farm Board

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

With war drums beating for general mobilization, these wild Moslem irregulars from the interior of Ethiopia marched with tireless stride toward the frontier to meet the Italian invaders. Barefoot and armed with a variety of weapons, they streamed through the streets of Addis Ababa, a strange sight beneath the modern signs which adorned the fronts of the buildings they passed.

modernize the country. The majority are not. They don't understand. Some American farm implements lay for weeks in Addis Ababa without being used. No one knew how to use them for one thing, and secondly no one wanted to. They were afraid to. They feared some evil spirit would seize them if they tried to learn. The first time an airplane ever appeared in Addis Ababa it was considered a devil sent to spy out upon the natives —and an evil spirit for daring to insult God by using His sky and His air for its gyrations. tt a a T IKE a great many ignorant people, the natives of Abyssinia believe in witchcraft. They think, for instance, that blacksmiths are purveyors of black magic, and that a blacksmith can change himself instantly into a hyena. If a young girl should be so foolhardy and reckless as to turn thumbs down on a handsome young blacksmith, he will gain his revenge by bewitching the lady; He changes himself into a hyena, serenades the girl outside her front door with blood curdling howls and flesh-creeping laughs. The girl will, unless restrained physically by her relatives or friends, creep out of the house on all fours to her demon lover, who is supposed to seize her, carry her off into the forest and devour her! The cure is an amulet of hyena hair worn against the neck. This is a devil’s spirit and goes under the name of Bouda. a a tt OR again, Abyssinians are scared of such harmless animals as rabbits, in the southwest of Abyssinia, there is a trading station at Gambelia. An Englishman, living there, wrote home asking for some rabbits to be shipped out from England, so that he might raise them, both for eating and for what perhaps he might make out of the sale of their fur. He, in company with his men, went to collect the bunnies when

! years, American cotton dropped j to 52 per cent and a year later { below 50 per cent. Thus forcign-

SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

By BOAKE CARTER

they arrived by steamer. The bexes were stowed on the Englishman's river boat and the return journey began. Alive with curiosity, some of the natives opened one of the boxes. Out jumped a rabbit. And. with a wild shriek of terror, overboard went the Ethiopians! Only with the greatest of difficulty did the Englishman ever entice his men back on deck. They listened to his explanation of the rabbits and their harmless qualities. But the Ethiopians were unconvinced. They claimed the rabbit was bewitched and therefore dangerous. For any animal that twitched its nose like a tarantula, had ears like a donkey and a tail like a goat was certainly bewitched! a tt r T'HE aristocracy dress in white. They are completely covered to all intents and purposes, in great contrast to their fellow natives. Their costumes are of cotton or of silk—the silk denoting usually either a rich man or a noble. The tunic is tight, the sleeves long. The trousers look not unlike Indian jodhpurs. Over all this comes a long mantle, wrapped around the shoulders and throat and extending down to knee level. It makes the wearers look as though they have kilts. When you see a lean, athletic looking upper class Amharic wearing these pure white clothes, you see a worthwhile picture of a splendid human specimen. When the clothes are dirty—and that’s often—they look awful. Differences in caste are recorded by the number of colored bands round the throat and the colors themselves. At other times, the way the mantle is worn conveys the indication of what type of individual is the wearer. The ignorant—the ordinary Johnnie Q. Publics as it were—are not allowed to ape the higher-ups. They are bareheaded, barefooted and often bare in a lot of other places, too! Still, when the upper-class Ethi-

[ grown cotton exceeded American 1 in world consumption for the first ! time since the Civil War.

opians instituted the use of imported umbrellas for themselves, they were kind enough to allow the hoi-polloi to ape them to the extent of straw sunshades. a a a THE European who thinks he is going to get any special deference because ha is white will get a rude awakening. The Amharics adjudge themselves just as good as any one else in the world. And the only time they will pay homage is when they find out that homage is actually due and warranted. Perhaps this may be the reason for such hauteur. They have seen many white men come into their midst in their time down through the ages. There were the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century. There were the renegades of all races. There were the Armenians and the Greeks, who fled from their countries to escape death from the hands of revolutionists or religious persecutors, and settled in Ethiopia. They mixed freely with the Amharics, intermarried, and so infused their Caucasian blood with all the other types of blood running through the veins of these ancient people. And so Ethiopia is a strange mixture of goodness and badness, of rules and lawlessness, of mediaevalism and modernism—a land of startling contrasts. Side by side in Addis Ababa stand squat mud huts and modern stone buildings. Side by side in Addis Ababa move mules, cattle, sheep, rickety carts and rakish, streamlined American automobiles, consuming gasoline at $lO a gallon! This is the strange city of contrasts that has become the focal point of the world’s interest. It may be here that Fate may decide whether or not the youth of the world will be able to finish out the days of his youth in the pursuits of peace or stretched out, a corpse, on some bloody battlefield. Tomorrow—The Actors, Past and Present. (Copyright. 1935. Telegraph Press, Harrisburg. Pa l.

Meanwhile the depression also brought a drop in the home market. It was then that the AAA and other governmental agencies entered the picture under the New Deal, bent on curtailing production, reducing surpluses and raising prices. Enemies of the program said it amounted to a high tariff for the protection of foreign production. They cited acreage increases in other countries to support their point. a a a E'GYPT had reversed a some- / what similar governmental control program and was bending every effort toward increased quantity. India, China and Mexico all w T ere increasing acreage. But the chief scare came from Brazil, where coffee surpluses had brought economic disaster and coffee planters were turning to cotton. AAA “interference with the law of supply and demand” was merely aiding the Brazilians, the critics contended. It turns out that the Brazilian program, at least for this season, has gone the way of other plans of mice and men. Just as the drought upset AAA pork production, so a deluge has prevented Brazil from dumping a million bales on the export market, according to Agriculture Department reports. The South American season being the reverse of ours, Brazilian cotton was ready for picking last March. That ordinarily is the end of the rainy season. But this year the rain played a return engagement. It poured right through April and May and on into June. Cotton was ripe and waiting in the fields, with weeds growing up around it. June is the time to pick coffee. So when the rain finally stopped the cotton pickers were out in the coffee fields and the newer crop was further neglected. When finally harvested it was reported to be about half what was expected. So with war and weather, men and governments, all entering into the picture. King Cotton still holds the scepter in the South, but he is watching the future with a wary eye. THE END

The Way 1 See It (MHSIOHW NEW YORK Oct. 12.—The American Federation of Labor seems divided against itself on the question of "industrial'’ or “craft” unions. A typical "industrial” union is the United Mine Workers. Ail union men who work in coal mines

belong to a “mine workers’ ” union. Every union bricklayer belongs to that craft union—whatever his particular industry. Where an industry is national and highly integrated like the automobile or steel or textile industries, there is not the slightest question that the industrial union is best for labor, management and the public. Working conditions and wages have to be fairly uniform throughout an industry, for the low cnoditions tend always to pull down the high. Competition for costs between companies does this. If labor pressure can only be exerted against a single company, its competition limits the increases or bet-

terments it can make. But where a whole industry deals with uniform rates for all companies, it can be far more liberal without ruining any particular company. Asa matter of fact, in this case, the industrial form of union is not merely the better form—it is the only logical from. e a a Fields Sometimes Overlap BUT there remain many important fields where the industrial type of union is inappropriate and unworkable. This is so whenever there is no organized national industry with which to deal, as in the building trades (except in citiesi. and in all the service industries—cleaning and dyeing, barbers, etc. The tw r o fields sometimes overlap as in the case of bricklayers in the mining industry who might not belong to the bricklayers' craft union. To a layman, at least, the solution seems too simple to quarrel about —use both types, each where it fits best. With industry rapidly forming into great organized groups, labor hasn't got a Chinamans chance unless it organizes on the same pattern. (Copyright, 1935, by United Feature Syndicate, Inch

Liberal Viewpoint BY HARRY ELMER BARNES

OUR schools now are running full blast, grinding out their grist of traditional information. Except in the better schools, particularly private and progressive schools, there is little attempt to classify students to their abilities or to provide instruction based upon the probable future career of the pupil. The intellectually brighter ones go to college if they are capable financially of paying their way. The others, certainly the vast majority, never get beyond high school. Their education program and their future careers are sacrificed to the silly curriculum rendered necessary by archaic college entrance examination requirements. Asa consequence, the majority of our boys and girls leave school with no real practical preparation for life or a lawful occupation. They go to swell our already too extensive ranks of floating and hopeless youth. They are a natural recruiting ground for crime and rackets. At the best, a few of the more fortunate may pick up trivial and unskilled jobs or drift into CCC camps. In any case, their morale is bad and there is little possibility for them to become, either economically or politically, intelligent and constructive citizens of our country. a a a EVERY consideration of common sense and educational logic emphasizes the desirability of classifying our school children fairly early in their educational career. Those who possess the intellectual attainments and equipment to justify the expectation of success in college well may be given a literary education, but by no means the present cramped and out-of-date offering rendered necessary by the dictatorship of college entrance boards. Those who quite obviously are not likely to do well in purely intellectual pursuits should be given an altogether different type of educational opportunity, in large part manual training and other industrial education which would enable the recipient to qualify for some skilled work at the end of high school training. The necessity for some such revolutionary innovation was set forth recently by President Dixon Ryan Fox of Union College in an address before the New York State Council of School Superintendents: “It means we shall classify American youth at the age of 14 into prospective headworkers and handworkers, that we shall admit the latter are bound to be vastly more numerous than the former and that we shall suit education to destiny. “Europeans always have done this, but we have prided ourselves that the Declaration of Independence vetoed all classification of society for America and believed that we would lead the world to adopt our benevolent doctrine.” a a a "SEGREGATION among young intellects is called .J cruel. Yet no one speaks of the cruelty of putting the head-minded boy and hand-minded boy in the same high school class, and the incidental cruelty to society, which in paying for their education with school taxes and for a time foregoing their productive labor, is entitled at the end to have each at his trained best.” President Fox recognizes that in the training of hand workers we must provide also for due and proper education in the fieW of citizenship and world affairs. In a democracy, whether we work with our brains or our hands, all of us must vote and help to determine public policy: “It is proper, indeed essential, to give every young Americana view of the world outside his own trade or profession. Each is a person and a citizen as well as an artisan or an artist. We need to give each the best and broadest view that he can actually understand and enjoy.” President Fox made his suggestions as a contribution to educational theory and practice. But they are relevant equally to another major contemporary problem, namely that of crime prevention. It was borne in on us again and again at the Albany Crime Conference that the greatest number of convicts received in the penal institutions Oi the state fall between the ages of 16 and 20. No single innovation would do more to remedy this state of affairs than realistic and comprehensive industrial education —that is, provided we make it possible for those ready to enter upon an industrial career to obtain work.

Times Books

ANEW edition of the “Modern Medical Home Adviser’’ (Doubleday. Doran; $0.50) by Dr. Morris Fishbein, Indianapolis Times medical writer and American Medical Association Journal editor, has just been published Among the 23 prominent physicians who elaborated with Dr. Fishbein in preparing the book, are Dr. William W. Duke. St. Mary’s Hospital. Kansas City. Mo.; Dr. Newell C. Gilbert, Northwestern University Medical School; Dr. Elliott P. Joslin, Harvard Medical School; Dr. Walter T.mme, Columbia University, and Drs. Dwight L. Wilbur and Russell W. Wilder of the Mayo Clinic. The publishers state that the book is not meant to supplement or replace the work or personal advice of tthe family physician bit is published merely to contribute to the knowledge of the general laity in regard to scientific medicine and hygiene. A wide range of subjects is covered by the “Adviser.” including child and prenatal care, diets and diseases, anatomy and physiology. Dr. Fishbein, in writing on “The Choice of a Physician,” in the book, advises readers to choose carefully their family doctor and then rely completely on him not on’;, as a medical ai iser but also as a friend and counselor. t

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Gen. Hugh S. Johnson