Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 203, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 November 1935 — Page 7

NOV. 2, 1935

It Seems to Me Hffloi) BROUN /~\N A TRAIN GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL. Nov. 2—Every now and then I Ret into a jam promising to do more things than I possibly can perform. There come to be evenings upon which I have agreed to speak in Greenpoint, Flushing and Hartford. Conn. The thing gets to be physically impossible. It might almost be said of these illconsidered acceptances that my “ayes” are bigger than my stomach.

And so I take the craven's way and buy myself a railroad ticket. This is not shrerlv self-indul-gence. One needs to get, upon occasion, some freshening of I .is point of view. The City of New Ycrk can not be written about properly except by those who come upon it suddenly and from a distance. Asa commuting farmer I was not sufficiently far away. On clear nights I could still see the glow of Manhattan's lights lrom the top of the hill where I ought to be growing

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Heywood Broun

corn. It was even possible to dash into town upon occasion and miss the last train home. But now I am putting a thousand miles between ♦he magical city and myself. Perhaps I shall gain perspective. And. if not that, at least I may lose some weight. Already I have had a chance to catch up on my reading, and I have plowed under one of the two current novels which are in the news. If it had not been a train journey I could not have finished “Butterfield 8," by John O'Hara. tt a tt A Mi nor ilg Report T? VEN the book reviewers who considered it less than a masterpiece testified that they found it engrossing and could not put it down until they were done. But my minority report must run, in all honesty, that I was completely bogged in the middle and that I would never have finished the story had it been possible to find a fourth for bridge—or even a third, for that matter. It would he silly not to admit o’Hara’%great skill as a writer, but even if his portable rested on the golden bar of heaven he could not weave much of a tale around the stodgy speakeasy folk who form his cast of characters. The beginning of the book I found exciting, but presently I got an uneasy sense that all the speeches were delivered by the same person. The lady of not very difficult virtue spoke exactly like the newspaper reporter, and for the life of me I could not distinguished the idiom of the illustrator from California and that of the business •man who row T ed on the crew at Yale. Possibly this is part of Mr. O'Hara’s intent. Maybe he means to say that the colonel and Mr. O’Grady are vocally kin after the fifth round of drinks. Asa partially reformed pioneer of the trails which the author follows in his book it may be that I speak with the bitterness of one whose teeth have soured upon the grapes which once were sweet enough. tt B B Dull People AND yet in my present compromise of living upon .whitebait and locusts I still remember the spots of 52nd-st as somew’hat gayer than in the depiction of “Butterfield B.’’ Even among the fiddling I have frequently heard the voices of those who said, “Don’t I smell smoke?’’ There are, to be sure, certain pages of lively dialogue or, more properly, monologue. But, on the whole, to my car the people are not only dull, but unrecognizable. Quite frequently their actions are as puzzling to me as their words. Even the major premise of Gloria's many affairs found me dubious. It seemed to me that the lady did protest her lack of virtue far too much. So much of her time *as spent in talking about sinning that I wondered how she ever managed to catch up with her homework. It is possible that I may be accused of having completely missed O’Hara’s intention. I will grant that it is just as mystifying to me as his title. I have an uneasy feeling that I recently made a speech in which I argued that there was such a thing as a school of semi-proletarian literature. These writers would be the first trumpet blowers in the march around Jericho, and the burden of their song was simply, “How ill-begotten is this town behind its towering walls!” Before the walls came tumbling down three themes were sounded on the brasses. I assume that in the second and third flights the blare was harsher and more specific. But even in the first wave there were tumult and emotion. Without seeking to separate those famouf twins called Art and Propaganda I see no point from any angle in playing tinkling dirges upon a speakeasy piano while all the seven hills are in flame. (Copyright, 1935)

Your Health -BY DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN-

NO mother wants to give her baby toys that are unsafe or unhealthful. As the Christmas season approaches, we find inventive genius has almost surpassed itself, and that the matarials now available for the child are more ingenious than ever before. Toys have a great effect on the life of a child. Many a boy has become an engineer, an electrician, a printer or an aviator enthusiast because of childhood interests. Children may become so attached to toys that they give them actual personality. tt B B FROM the point of view' of health, toys interest us because they may occasionally be unsafe or harmful, or because they may be useful in developing the child's physique and mind. The toys interesting to health from the point of view of physical development include sleds, scooters, bicycles, pull toys and health apparatus, such as rings, bars, slides, ladders and swings. For safety these toys should be strongly made, and free from protruding edges of steel or sharp corners that will cut the flesh. A defective pole used in vaulting, a pair of stilts that break underneath the feet, or a wagon which easily comes apart under stress may result in physical damage to the child and many hours of invalidism. For little babies, toys ought to be washable.

Today's Science BY DAVID DIETZ

NEW YORK. Nov. 2.—Scientists of the nation are being urged by the National Research Council to join forces i>i an attack upon the unsolved problems regarding the formation of petroleum deposits, ore deposits, and varied types of soils. These problems, of major significance to the automotive and metallurgical industries and agriculture, are ‘ borderland problems" requiring the co-op-eration of scientists in many fields for their solution. Basically, the problems involve co-operation of the chemist and geologist, for they are problems in geochemistry, the chemistry of the earth. There is particular treed, in the opinion of Dr. F. K Richtmver. dean of the Cornell University Graduate School, for experiments which will duplicate the ways in which minerals which are chemical compounds formed when the earth s crust was taking shape. a a a IN the formative days of the earth’s crust there was a complex mixture of many compounds, all at high temperatures and mixed with many dissolved gases. It is particularly important. Dr. Richtmver believes try experiments which would duplicate the processes under which ore deposits came into existence. Such information would be of more than academic value. It would be of direct interest to the mining and metallurgical engineer. Solution of the problem of the formation of oil will require the help of bacteriologists as will also the study of the formation of various types of soils. Much important research upon the fundamentals of the chemistry of the earth has also been done by Carnegie Institute of Washington. ir

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„ J* rnnrludint; InMallment of Jr*".? farter'* hook. Black Shirt. Black M*in. which The Time* has presented serially. COMMERCIAL doors are gradually closing, one by one, all over the world, and as each one closes the race for survival grows hotter and more bitter. It means that the undeveloped territories are becoming more and more scarce. These territories are themselves in the throes of industrialization. And where this is happening, you will find mostly yellow or black people. They are at the threshold of the kind of civilization at w'hich the Occidental norld stood 100 or 150 years ago. They are beginning; we are close to the ending. Most of us of the Occident refuse to believe it and that is because of the super-ego of infallibility with which we have imbued our outlook. b b n T)UT, nevertheless, foreign trade 1J is dwindling. The British empire. famous for a century for its free trade policies, has been forced by the tightness of the race, into erecting barriers and fences against the exchange of goods, produced by its own machine, and dei ived from the very sources which now threaten its supremacy. America is no different. We continually harp on exports. As long as the balance of the trade scales is tipped well to the export side, we are satisfied. But the inclination ir, that direction is growin <r steadily less and less. In the old days, it was a case of empire building for profit. The Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds and the Sassoons founded great family dynasties. But no more. It is now a case of empire hunting for the sake of self-preserva-tion. It. is a race for the survival of the fittest and the yellows and blacks are just awakening and are the freshest of the racers. We have to step up the speed, so as to keep the factories and business running, so as to keep men employed and consuming. And when we do that we create more money and more surpluses. B B npHE surpluses have to be sold -*■ to the undeveloped nations, and on these they are building their new era. The money we create, we reinvest abroad into producing more materials to provide more supplies for the factories of our civilization, which in turn, create more surpluses, and more wealth to be invested all over again. It is an endless merry-go-round that we have built, and the more it whirls around, the faster and faster it travels. And we ride with it—blinded by that feeling that we can not be wrong and supposing that the way out is sheer speed. We have this clearly written today in every quarter of the globe. Egypt is nominally and on the record a free country—but the British actually possess it because of the millions of pounds, shillings and pence they poured into Egypt. Peisia, like Ethiopia, is to all interests and purposes an independent nation—but who has first cal! on the Persian market? Great Britain, because of the huge investments in Persian oil and other commodities. Who has had possession of China for so long? The Western World—England, France, Germany, and the United States. tt B B JAPAN also has been a partner but now Japan has decided the time is ripe to announce to the Occidental that from now on, Japanese money will provide the only investments which will finance the awakening of the Chinese industrial era. m this manner alone will Japan Possess China, and not with troops, bayonets and bombs. And so it is now with Italy and Abyssinia. If Mussolini builds bi idges. lavs roads, builds towns, sets up electrification in Abyssinia, the Ethiopians will buy Italian products needed to create these things, and relieve the pressure in Italy. But then what happens when all these markets are glutted? Where do we go from there to find fresh markets for reinvestment of the surplus goods and capital that the new markets have created for our system of living? A time will come when there simply won’t be any place—and so the strongest empires will then take from the weak—and the weak will be swallowed up and disappear. B B tt THE World War broke out because of this obvious fact. When that ended, through sheer exhaustion of mankind, more than anything ejse, another kind of war broke out. We have called the period of 1919 to 1935 an era of peace. So it has been a per ; -u of peace, as opposed to actual physical combat. But it has been an era of trade wars of the most vicious kind. And these have led the world again to the brink of actual physical combat. Tliere was the period of tariff raising, trade quotas and special customs, which began in the 20s, to be climaxed by our own SmootHawley monstrosity. Then came the second phase—the period when currencies were devalued, gold standards were abandoned, and everybody who tried this panacea felt for a while the bonanza effects. Japan led the way with the depressed yen. which gave her more advantage over her fellow traders than all her starvation wages lumped together ever could have done. And immediately she began cutting into British trade in India. B B tt DESPERATE, the British negotiated trade treaties with the Japanese, and then Britain herself abandoned the gold standard and allowed the pound to sink. For a while British home trade fairly boomed.

I*l Shirt k I 11 I I-% I .. HQ9 9, finJ*!'T " .'alued dollar, and the temporary | preventing capital surpluses fron leady effects were like a glass of | J N. financing great industrial project) vine on an empty stomach. | v Above The abroad. It means, in a way. a reBut this phase has also reached ; J ; British fleet in distribution of wealth withir its eiffl. The next step is the rj- - America. movement of navies, and the 1 nean. a constant It means the changing of th< ouilding of new ones. We are in 1 threat to Italy. operating manner of the samt the midst of this now. 'v * ) Left — Map show- machinery. The economy itsel: Coupled with it is the jockev- \ / inff , the relative does n °t have to be changed ing for position, the job of mak- \ - . M / ? e " s,t > r Merely the direction of its outing friends and lining up those ’'N . a . a ' P ut ; who will be the most useful to us. too . aSSfr an p • ,_ t mea , ns a greater return tc The stage then becomes set—and . Scale of Miles a or an d a greater developmen

America followed with a devalued dollar, and the temporary heady effects were like a glass of wine on an empty stomach. But this phase has also reached its erffl. The next step is the movement of navies, and the building of new ones. We are in the midst of this now. Coupled with it is the jockeying for position, the job of making friends and lining up those who will be the most useful to us. The stage then becomes set—and a spark is all that is needed to blow the whole caboodle sky high. The spark is always what the diplomats call “an incident.” Maybe the slaughter of Italians and Ethiopians round the water wells in Ual-Ual, will go down in future history as the “incident” that started the current war, B tt tt THE Italians were willing to talk about the “incident,” with fellow powers, but they were not willing to discuss boundaries. UalUal is some 70 to 80 miles inside the Ethiopian frontier from Italian Somaliland. Plainly Italian frontier patrols were on the wrong side of the fence. But the Ethiopian frontier line has been famous for its haziness in certain European chancellories. Discussion of frontier lines around Ual-Ual might have proven embarrassing to II Duce—so the talk was of “incidents,” not frontiers. No nation wants war, much less the people populating it. From the United Anti-Fascist Committee in Paris, we find these observations, as reported by the committee’s own field agents: “A large part of the population of Olgiate attempted to storm the city hall in protest against general mobilization orders, and the police were forced to make many arrests. In the barracks at Guglielmo Obercau, a company of young Fascists revolted against African . service. They went, just the

Cordell Hull Calls a Spade by Nicer Names, But the Reporters Know Just What He Means

BY ERNIE PYLE 'ITTASHINGTON, Nov. 2.—'The ’ ’ big door of his office opens, and out walks Secretary of State Cordell Hull, into the big anteroom, with its fireplace and paintings of former secretaries. He walks about five paces over to a big table in the center of the room. He stops behind a great high-backed chair at the end of the table, takes off his glasses and hooks them over the thumb of his right hand, then crosses his arms over the top of the chair back, and starts talking. He does it exactly this way every day. At present he talks mostly about the war situation in Africa. The average American wouldn’t get very much out of what he is saying. for he talks in the devious, padded language of the international diplomat, in which you never, under any circumstances, call a spade a spade. Fortunate for the public, he talks to about 30 newspapermen tvho know how to interpret what Hull says, or just as often what he doesn't say. into reading matter that can be understood. I went to Secretary Hull's dailv press conference. He talk/d, and answered questions, for some 15 minutes. All I could get out of the conference was that “we are watching the situation.’’ And yet the State Department reporters, long trained in background and innuendo and omission, were able to write a whole column of war news from it. o n tt SECRETARY HULL is a handsome man. He is tall and straight. His thin hair is white and parted on the side. He was 64 just the day before I saw him, yet he does not look old. He is dignified, but human looking. He wore a gray suit, with a wide pin-stripe: white shirt and blue tie. He speaks in a low, distinct, calm voice. There is no informality about the conference, he calls none of the reporters by name, they are respectful in their questions, and yet, even though all language is couched in generalities. there somehow seems to be no artificiality about the get-to-gether. Also there was no drama about it, no war-tension atmosphere. Secretary Hull is the only Cabinet member who talks to the

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

same, and w’ere listed as “volunteers”! At Galleria, a group of World War reservists saw a group of 20-year-old recruits marching with flaming banners inscribed, “Long Live the Class of 1914—the Iron Class.” The old reservists £ mocked them, shouted “Down with w r ar!” and tore up the banners. The reservists were locked up.” B tt tt NOBODY W'ants war—no ordinary, little Johnnie Q. Public, who runs to catch the surburban train in the morning, slogs in an office all day, catches the train home again at night and falls asleep reading the papers after dinner. He never does. But the seeds of propaganda are sown. If they don’t grow, a little fertilizer is applied—and, before long, Johnnie Q., w'hq. in his soul has no more reason to go off and shoot some other poor devil 5000 miles away who never even knew he existed before, will be climbing up the gangplank of a transport! Just why is something that no man has ever been able to answer, or ever will. It is one of those things. And so there is only on way for the Occidental world to get off its self-made merry-go-round and clamber to safety. The empire owners r?nust agree to a division of territory between them, and then, together with the non-empire holders of

newspapermen every day. And sometimes, when things are hot, he sees them twice a day. He always stands up throughout the conference. The reporters stand up too, grouped around the table. At Hull’s right stands Michael McDermott, white-haired veteran press chief of the State Department. Hull frequently hands a report of some kind to McDermott, and says to the reporters, “Mr. McBride will give you this after the conference.” Hull’s assistant is named Mcßride, and he is always getting him confused with McDermott. Hull gives no indication of knowing any of the reporters personally, and yet he does know them all, and occasionally makes some remark when they come back from vacations.

Visitors in Rome Look in Vain for Resentment at Imperialism; Man in Street 'Sold' on Duce

BY RICHARD HOLLANDER (Who Recently Returned From Rome) TT7ASHINGTON, Nov. 2.—Ob- ’ * servers who have visited Italy recently for an uncensored count of the pulse of public opinion have one by one agreed, some of them reluctantly, that there remains an amazing solidarity in support of Mussolini and his invasion of Ethiopia. Actually, they admit, when an Italian in the street says that to die for Italia is to find true living, he seems to mean it. The old worry about government agents disguised as lamp-posts or watering troughs doesn't appear to enter in. And when 100.000 Romans converge on Venice palace to hear Mussolini, they seem to do it because they want to. Their applause sounds authentic. An exiled German editor, sitting in the sun at Montreux. Switzerland, at the other end of Lac Leman from Geneva, watching the progress of the two Fascist dictatorships, north and south, explained the phenomenon of Mussolini to me in this fashion: Mussolini (he said) has pursued his course as dictator to its logical climax. Where Hitler's regime is too new and based too much on a nationalism gone haywire, II Duce has managed to hang on, to work more slowly and so, in 13 years, to solidify his position to the extent that he has become a habit.

the Occident, like ourselves in America, divert the course of our own economy and civilization. If the empire owners can not or will not agree—there is no reason why America should be dragged down with them. Let us not be fooled by treaties. Peace pacts and non-aggression treaties are so much eyewash. tt B tt IN 3000 years of history, there have been something like 8000 peace treaties signed, and less than 250 of them observed. Tabulate from any schoolboy’s American history book and you will find that in 150 years of American independence, we have had six major conflicts, or one on an average of every 25 years. Our participation in the last one, began in 1917. It is now 1935. Figure the law of averages for yourself. But if there is no hope in treaty making, there is hope in changing one’s economy. At least one can divert the reinvestment of surplus capital and disposition of surplus goods from their present direction. The capital can be reinvested in America. And the national economy can be rearranged so that we will not have the surplus of goods, which must be disposed of in foreign territory, to create more capital to put into the production of more goods and round the merry-go-round again. It means control of the investment of surplus capital. It means

f 1 ’'HOUGH some of the State Department reporters get a little annoyed now and then with Hull’s diplomatic generalities, nearly all of them like him and consider him a good Secretary of State. And even though vague, they consider him honest with newspaper men, which is more than they could say for some of his predecessors. They say one thing about him, that he never refuses to say something in reply to a question, as many Cabinet officers do. He may not give you the answer, but he talks in reply just the same. It is only occasionally that a reporter gets “tough” and shoots insistent questions at Hull. And then the secretary seems to enjoy it. He is, of course, a veteran of

what 13 years of one personality means. It means that the young men who do his fighting, who are in their physical prime, have grown up under him. Most of their schooling they received under the banner of Fascism. They were children when the new spirit of Italia was born. The only government they know is Mussolini and, as he tells them continually, theirs will be the honor and glory when Italy regains her place in the sun. Hearing nothing else, it is easy for them to believe this without question. Then, there Is the middle-aged group, the men who fought in the World War and lived to know the degradation of Italy in the chaotic years that followed. II Duce appears to them as a savior of their national self-respect and, since the beginning of the w r ar fever, the originator of an apparent boom-time prosperity. That this prosperity is doomed to collapse when the boom is over doesn't seem to be considered. But how, foreigners ask, can one man make an entire nation believe that things which have been proved false elsewhere can be true, that war is good for humanity, that manhood is enriched by fighting, that swollen prosperity can linger?

preventing capital surpluses from financing great industrial projects abroad. It means, in a way, a redistribution of wealth ' within America. It means the changing of the operating manner of the same machinery. The economy itself does not have to be changed. Merely the direction of its output. . It means a greater return to labor and a greater development of social life of Americans—so that they will be the ones to absorb that which is now disposed of abroad. B B tt ON the other hand, let us continue sending capital abroad for investment in productive enterprise and w T e will join the rest of the white world in an everlasting series of wars, trade and physical, to gain control of markets for the dumping of w'hat we produce. That is all that Italy is doing in Ethiopia at present. But whether the western world will realize, before it is too late, that by doing so it will sign its ow’n death warrant, depends entirely on the intelligence of the leaders of the Occident. For people depend for knowledge and understanding of the world upon their leaders. And it is the latter w'ho have the appalling responsibility of deciding w'hether the occidental civilization of the last 150 years shall continue into the future—or w'hether it will decay like the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman dynasties, before the onslaught of anew era of different color, stamina and virility—awakened to the realization of its giant pow-er by the industrial secrets revealed by a dying order. When Black Shirt meets Black Skin in the wild of an African plateau, it is the Frankenstein Occident demanding the Orient save it from its own self-created monster. THE END

the more rough-and-tumble journalism of the House and Senate, where reporters often say to Senators just what they think. And it is probable that the softgloved, smooth-tongued conversation of the State Department sometimes wearies him, and he welcomes a verbal joust with a reporter who talks straight. One day, right in the middle of a sentence during his press conference, Hull happened to glance over at a bust on a pedestal along the wall. He stopped and, looking at it. said half to himself, “Who’s that?” One of the reporters told him it was Brand Whitlock. Hull said, “Oh,” and went right ahead talking where he had left off.

'T'HE answer again is habit. Thirteen years of hearing nothing but Mussolini, 3 years, of reading of nothing but a giorious future under Fascism is a mighty weight. The eloquent minorities of the early years were steam-rolled more or less quietly, and after a while, in the heat of world resentment against Hitler, the bitterness of Mussolini's fight for complete control was forgotten. Foreign tourists in Italy today seem to admire rather than hate Mussolini. “He’s a strong man." they say, “and just see what he’s done for Italy.” The years passed and Italy more serene. She found herself growing to dignity and power. Roads were built, cities modernized, standards of living improved. Mussolini's appeal was not all emotional. Through it all there remained that propaganda, by press and radio and by the power of II Duce s personality. In 13 years Fascism, dictatorship. Mussolini all became second nature to Italians. These last years it has been easy, even for those who a decade ago might have stood by their anti-Fasctst principles, to fall in with the hay-foot-straw-foot of the advancing Italy.

Fair Enough WESTBROOK PEGLER C GENEVA. Nov. 2—This is the county seat ot the f world established in a post-card citv. County supervisors are about to meet to take steps against Mussolini and Italy, who have repudiated the agreement to refrain from stealing territory which wasn’t stolen before 1918. Other great powers—Britain. France and the United States—like tne Rockefellers and the Carnegies of old. got in their rough work early, got rich and turned severe Whereupon they disavowed

methods by which they became rich and established high moral rules for the conduct of nations. These rules are not retroactive, how'ever. permitting them to keep theirs but forbidding nations to steal enough after the deadline to break even. Mussolini’s sole complaint is that inferior Italian statesmen, in that international whackup following the end of the war, permitted themselves to be gypped of a fair share of the loot. So the problem which Mussolini raises and which may cause world war. but probably won t for

some time to come, is not a moral problem but a strict question of justice. Italy signed the contract, but its representatives who signed have since been repudiated, and Mussolini's position is that Italy should have had a more generous share of the territory which Italy’s pals stole from Woodrow Wilson's decorative war model of “no annexations, no indemnities.” Mussolini hasn't claimed that Italy has a moral right to Abyssinia. He is honest enough to say merely that Italy's former partners in crime held out in division. B B B IPs All So Enthralling THE League of Nations is housed in a series of buildings resembling emergency war-time structures in Washington, with great staffs of clerks, sedentary experts and political parasites assured of an existence amid scenic beauty comparable to a Methodist’s dream of Heaven. They’re just finishing the great permanent Palace of Peace on the big toe of one of the Alpine foothills, on which the architects of five nations miraculously collaborated without resort to anything more warlike than personal disrespect. Workmen of several European nations participated m the employment which the $10,000,000 edifice afforded, and disagreements were trivial compared with the Tow'er of Babel, although the Germans nearly caused a blowoff when they thought it would be nice to identify the idea of co-operation in a monument to world peace with the decorative design revolving around the w'idcly detested swastika. tt B B Ah, Those Grand Old Whiskers memorial to Woodrow Wilson is temporarily held up pending a decision on the acceptance of an allegorical frieze depicting the peace gift of the Italian nation. It’s just barely possible that impending events might make the Italian frieze too ironic and mocking even for the idealists of Geneva. However, they will have a pretty strong resistance to irony and mockery considering that Britain is the greatest single contributor to the maintenance of the county seat of the w'orld and the greatest individual contribution is the gift of $2,000,000 which came from the fortune of the Rockefellers, who within the professional memory of your correspondent called out Colorado State Militia under command of a political general w'ho was a dentist in private life to defend the holdings of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Cos. Like Britain and the United States, however, the Rockefellers are inclined to let bygones be bygones, which is nice of them. Probably relatives of the ragged men, women and children who were shot and burned in tents at Ludlow’, Colo., live who will agree to let bygones be bygones, too. in regard to their martyred kinfolk as contributors toward the marble edifice of peace on the shores of Lake Geneva. Whiskers are arriving at the rate of ten bushels a car as the best minds of the world assemble to rebuke Italy's foul intentions toward barefoot Abyssinians.

The Cabinet -BY GEN. HUGH S. JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON. Nov. 2.—Labor needs leadership as never before. There is a theory that a government bureau such as the Labor Department is not a pressure unit. Anybody with a grain of sense and experience knows the exact reverse to be the case. It is a pressure bureau. It ought to be a pressure bureau, and only pussyfooting deception can call it anything else. It is not there to take the part of any particular union, but it is there to see that the Federal labor policy is carried into effect. That policy favors the unrestricted right of labor to organize and bargain collectively. It favors the peaceful settlement of all labor disputes, whether by the industry or jurisdictionally within itself. It recognizes the outstanding truth that a strong organization of labor is an absolute necessity to the balanced economy toward which it strives. One glance at the labor situation is enough to show that this policy has largely failed of execution. The labor movement itself Is almost ripped apart by internal strife. The intensifying hostility between government and business has alienated the co-opera-tion and support of far-seeing liberal leaders in business. who could have done much and, early in NRA, were doing much to advance the labor movtment in great leaps. tt tt B THE Secretary of Labor is a very great woman. But Miss Perkins is a social worker—not a labor expert—and the two words are not synonymous by any means. The former sees the cultural disadvantage of the poor—the latter, the economic disadvantage of workers. The former busies himself with improvements in ways of life—the latter in a bargaining and political struggle for a better deal in wages, hours and working conditions. The one is an ideal task for the tenderness and sympathy of a woman—the latter needs a man's equipment foi lusty strife. The stress of this period has discovered, in a Democrat, an ideal Minister of Labor—honest, loyal, fearless, able—a veteran of the economic wars, a man who retains the respect of both adversaries and friends, a doer of deeds—Edward F. McGrady. It may be the fault of nobody, but the labor movement in this country is a mess. (Copyright, 1935, bv United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Times Books

IF. BEING an unscientific person, you nevertheless feel an irresistible desire coming over you to read about natural sciences, about soil and forests and crops and weather and minerals and earthquakes, you might examine Men and Mountains” (Lippincott) by M. Ilin, who wrote “New Russia's Primer.” ‘ Men and Mountains” is also a primer. It is embellished with little sketches that show ;ou just how the uprooted tree looked when peasants in the Urals discovered emeralds at its roots, and just how much bigger than man stalks of wheat and cattle may some day be induced to grow. Os course you must be prepared to take a little doctrine with your nature. As part of a “fantastic” picture of how things are mismanaged outside of Russia, M. Ilin reports that actually, in America, the government is pacing farmers to leave their land uncultivated so that “people are deliberately turning their fertile farms into barren wastes, into deserts, and the desert is beginning to appear again where one would least expect it.” You may be astonished as you go along at the accomplishments which are singled out for prideful pointing, but before you finish you will enlarge your acquaintance among the flora and fauna of eastern Europe and your perception of how other nations are thAhking. (By Ruth Finney.)

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Westbrook Pegler