Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 258, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 January 1936 — Page 10

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Whole AAA Structure Is Outlawed by Supreme Court in One of Most Important Decisions Handed Down Since Days of Civil War

At/Ini ted Print WASHINGTON. Jan. 6.—The derision invalidating the AAA was delivered by Mr. Justice Roberts: In this case wc must determine whether certain provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act. 1933, conflict with the Federal Constitution. Title I of the statute is captioned "Agricultural Adjustment." Section 1 recites that an economic emergency has arisen, due to disparity between the prices of agricultural and other commodities, with consequent destruction of farmers’ purchasing power and breakdown in orderly exchange, which, in turn, have a fleeted transactions in agricultural commodities with a national public interest and burdened and obstructed the normal currents of commerce, calling for the enactment of legislation. Section 2 declares it to be the policy of Congress: ‘ To establish and maintain such balance between the production and consumption of agricultural commodities, and such marketing conditions therefor, as will re-establish prices to farmers at a level that will give agricultural commodities a purchasing power with respect to articles that farmers buy, equivalent to the purchasing power of agricultural commodities in the base period." The base period, in the case of cotton, and all other commodities except tobacco, is designated as that between August, 1919, and July, 1914.

FURTHER POUICIES

The further policies announced are an approach to the desired equality by gradual correction of present inequalities ‘‘at as rapid a rate as is deemed feasible in view of the current consumptive demand in domestic and foreign markets,” and the protection of consumers’ interest by readjusting farm production at such levels as will not increase the percentage of the consumers' retail expenditures for agricultural commodities or products derived therefrom, which is returned to the farmer, above the percentage returned to him in the base period. Section 8 provides amongst ether things, that "in order to effectuate the declared policy," the Secretary of Agriculture shall have power. "d)_To provide for reduction in the acreage or reduction in the production for market, or both, of anj basic agricultural commodity, through agreements with producers or by other voluntary methods, and to provide for rental or benefit payments in connection therewith or upon that part if the production ol any basic agricultural commodity required for domestic consumption, in such amounts as the Secretary deems fair and reasonable, to be paid out ot any moneys available for such payments.” ... "(2)—To enter into marketing agreements with processors, associations of producers and others engaged in the handling, in the current of interstate or foreign commerce of any agricultural commodity or product thereof, after due notice and opportunity for hearing to interested parties. . . . “(St—To issue* licenses permitting processors, associations of producers and others to engage in the handling, in the current of interstate or foreign commerce, of any agricultural commodity or product thereof, or any competing commodity or product thereof.

CONTRACTS WITH FARMERS

It- will be observed that the Secretary is not required, but it permitted. if, in his uncontrolled judgment. the policy of the act will so be promoted, to make agreements with individual rarmers for a reduction of acreage or production upon such terms as he may think fair and reasonable. Section 9A enacts: “To obtain revenue for extraordinary expenses incurred by reason of the national economic emergency, there shall be levied processing taxes as hereinafter provided. When the Secretary of Agriculture determines that rental or benefit payments are to be made with respect to any basic agricultural commodity, he shall proclaim such determination, and a processing tax shall be in effect with respect to such commodity from the beginning of the marketing year therefor next following the date of such proclamation. The processing tax shall be levied, assessed and collected upon the first domestic processing of the commodity, whether of domestic production or imported, and shall be paid by the processor.” The Secretary may from time to time, if he finds it necessary for the effectuation of the policy of the Act. readjust the amount of the exaction to meet the requirements of subsection tß'. The tax is to terminate at the end of any marketing yeai if the rental or benefit, payments are discontinued by the Secretary with the expiration of that year. Section 9tß> fixes the tax “at such rate as equals the difference between the current average farm price for the commodity and the fair exchange value, with power in the Secretary, after investigation, notice, and hearing, to readjust the tax so as to prevent the accumulation of surplus stocks and depression of farm prices. Section 9(C) directs that the fair exchange value of a commodity shall be such a price as will give that commodity the same purchasing power with respect to articles farmers buy as it had during the base period and that the fair exchange value and the current average farm price of a commodity shall be ascertained by the Secretary from available statistics in his department.

MEANS OF FINANCING

Section 12(A) appropriates SIOO,000,000 “to be available to the Secretary of Agriculture far administrative expenses under this title and for rental and benefit payments . . . and Section 12(3) appropriates the proceeds derived from all taxes imposed under the act "to be available to the Secretary of Agricultur# for expansion of markets and removal of surplus agricultural product* administrative exlienses, rental and benefit payments, and refunds on taxes." Section 15(Dt permits the Secretary upon certain conditions, to im-

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pose compensating taxes on commodities in competition with those subject to the processing tax. By section 16, a floor tax is imposed upon the sale or other disposition of any article processed wholly or in chief value from any commodity with respect to which a processing tt x is to be levied in amount equivalent to that of the processing tax which would be payable with respect t.o the commodity from which the article is processed if the processing had occurred on the date when the processing tax becomes effective. On July 14, 1933. the Secretary of Agriculture with the approval of the President, proclaimed that he had determined rental and benefit payments should be made with respect to cotton; that the marketing year for that commodity was to begin Aug. 1, 1933; and calculated and fixed the rates of processing and floor taxes on cotton in accordance with the terms of the act.

CASE REVIEWED

The United States presented a claim to the respondents as receivers of the Hoosac Mills Corp. for processing and floor taxes on cotton levied under Sections 9 and 16 of the act. The receivers recommended that the claim be disallowed. The District Court found the taxes valid and ordered them paid. Upon appeal the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the order. The judgment under review was entered prior to the adoption of the amending act of Aug. 24. 1935, and we are therefore concerned only with the original act. First. At the outset the United States contends that the respondents have no standing to question the validity of the tax. The position is that the act is merely a revenue measure levying an excise upon the activity of processing cotton—a proper subject for the imposition of such a tax —the proceeds of which go into the Federal treasury and thus become available for appropriation for any purpose. It is said that what the respondents are endeavoring to do is to challenge the intended use of the money pursuant to congressional appropriation when, by confession, that money will have become the p'operty of the government and the taxpayer will no longer have any interest in it. Massachusetts vs. Mellon. 262 U. S. 447. is claimed to foreclose litigation by the respondents or other taxpayers, as such, looking to restraint of the expenditure of government funds. That case might be an authority in the petitioner's favor if we were here concerned merely with a suit by a taxpayer to restrain the expenditure of the public moneys. It was there held that a taxpayer of the United States may not question expenditures from its treasury on the ground that the alleged unlawful diversion will deplete the public funds and thus increase the burden of future taxation. Obviously the asserted interest of a taxpayer in the Federal government’s funds and the supposed increase of the future burden of taxation is minute and indeterminable. But here the respondents who are called upon to pay moneys as taxes, resist the exaction as a step in an unauthorised plan. This circumstance clearly distinguishes the case. The government in substance and effect asks us to saparate the Agricultural Adjustment Act into two statues, the one levying an excise on processors of certain commodities, the other appropriating the public moneys independently of the first. Passing the novel suggestion that two statutes enacted as parts of a single scheme should be tested as if they were distinct and unrelated, we think the legislation now before us

VITAL FARM LAW VERDICT IS R ETURNED BY NATION’S HIGHEST BENCH

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is not susceptible of such separation and treatment. The tax can only be sustained by ignoring the avowed purpose and operation of the act, and holding it a measure merely laying an excise upon processors to raise revenue for the support of government. Beyond cavil the sole object of the legislation is to restore the purchasing powder of agricultural products to a parity with that prevailing in an earlier day; to take money from the processor and bestow it upon farmers who will reduce their acreage for the accomplishment of the proposed end, and, meanwhile, to aid these farmers during the period required to bring the prices of their crops to the desired level.

TAX INDISPENSABLE

The tax plays an indispensable part in the plan of regulation As stated by the Agricultural Adjustment Administrator, it is “the heart of the law;’’ a means of “accomplishing one or both of two things intended to help farmers attain parity prices and purchasing power.” A tax automatically goes into effect for a commodity when the Secretary of Agriculture determines that rental or benefit payments are to be made for reduction or production of that commodity. The tax is to cease when rental or benefit payments cease. The late is fixed with the purpose of bringing about crop-reduction and price-raising. It is to equal the difference between the “current aveiage farm price and “fair exchange value.” It may be altered to such amount as will prevent accumulation of surplus stocks. If the Secretary finds the policy of the act will not be promoted by the levy of the tax for a given commodity, he may exempt it (Section 11). The whole revenue from the levy is appiopiiated in aid of crop control; none of it is made available for general governmental use. The entire agi icultural adjustment program embodied in Title 1 of the act is to become inoperative when, in the judgment of the President, the national economic emergency ends; and as to any commodity he may terminate the provisions of the law-, if he finds them no longer requisite to carrying out the declared policy with respect to such commodity (Section 13). The statue not onlj avows an aim foreign to the procurement of revenue for the support of government, but by its operation shows the exaction laid upon processors to oe the necessary means for the intended control of agricultural production. In these aspects the tax, so-called, closely resembles that laid by the act of Aug. 3, 1882. entitled “An Act to Regulate Immigration." which came before this court in the Head money cases, 112 United States. 580. Tlie statute directed that there should be levied, collected and paid a duty of 50 cents for each alien passenger who should come by vessel from a foreign port to one in the United States. Payment was to be made to the collector of one port by the master, owner, consignee or agent of the ship: the money w r as to be paid into the Treasury, was to be called the immigrant fund, and to bp used by the Secretary of the Treasury to defray the expenses of regulating immigration, for the care of immigrants and relieving those in distress, and for the expenses of effectuating the act.

COURT’S ANSWER

Various objections to the act were presented. In answering them the court said (P. 595): "But the true answer to all these objections is that the power exercised in this instance is not the taxing power. The burden imposed on ship owner by this statute is the mere incident of the regulation of commerce—of that branch of foreign commerce which is involved in immigration." . . . “It is true not much is said about protecting the ship owner. But lie is the man who reaps the profit from the transaction. . . . The sum demanded of him is not. therefore, strictly speaking, a tax or duty within the meaning of the Constitution. The money thus raised, though paid into the Treasury, is

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appropriated in advance to the uses of the statute, and does not go to the general support of the government.” * While there the exaction was sustained as an appropriate element in a plan within the power of Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations," no question was made of the standing of the shipowner to raise the question of the validity of the scheme and consequently of the exaction which was an incident of it. It is inaccurate and misleading lo speak of the exaction from processors prescribed by the challenged act as a tax, or to say that as a tax it is subject to no infirmity. A tax, in the genaral understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the government. The word has never been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another We may concede that the latter sort of imposition is constitutional when imposed to effectuate .regulation of a matter in which both groups are interested and in respect of which there is a power of legislative regulation.

TAX IS INCIDENT

But manifestly no justification for it can be found unless as an integral part of such regulation. The action can not be wrested out of its setting, denominated an excise for raising revenue and legalized by ignoring the purpose as a mere instrumentality for bringing about a desired end. To do this would be to shut our eyes to what all others than we can see and understand. Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 37. We conclude that the act is one regulating agricultural production;

‘Ballots’ By United Press WASHINGTON, Jan. 6.—The dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court decision on the AAA was as asharp a challenge of the majority view as Justice Owen J. Roberts’ opinion was of the government's action. Justice Harlan F. Stone, who wrote the dissenting opinion, said flatly that the appeal of a disenter to an act of Congress should be “to the ballot” rather than to the court. Justices Benjamin N. Cardozo and Louis D. Brandeis joined Stone. "Interpretation of our great charter of government." Justice Stone said in stern tones, "w-hich proceeds on any assumption that the responsibility for vhe preservation of our institutions is the exclusive concern of any one of the three branches of government, or that it alone can save them from destruction is far more likely, in the long run. ‘to obliterate the constituent members’ of ‘an indestructable union of indestructable states' than the frang recognition that language, even of a constitution. may mean what it says: “That the power to tax and spend includes the powder to relieve a nation-wide maladjustment by conditional gifts of money.” Justice Stone made clear his opinion that “a tortured construction of the Constitution is not to be justified by to extreme examples of reckless congressional spending which might occur if courts could not prevent.” ‘ Courts," he emphasized, “are not the only agency of government that must be assumed to have capacity to govern." Justice Stone dismissed with scant consideration the contention of the majority that the processing tax-benefit system was coercive. “Os the assertion that che payments to farmers are coercise.” he said, "It is enough to say that no such contention is pressed by the taxpayer and no such consequtneies were to be anticipated or appear to have resulted from the administration of the act.”

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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that the tax is a mere incident of such regulation and that the respondents have standing to challenge the legality of the exaction. It does not follow that as the act is not an exertion of the taxing power and the exaction not a true tax, the statute is void or the exaction uncollectible. For, to paraphrase what was said in the Head money cases (supra, p. 596), if this is an expedient regulation by Congress, of a subject within one of its granted powers, “and the end to be attained is one falling within that power, the act is not void, because, within a loose and more extended sense than was used in the Constitution,” the exaction is called a tax.' Second. The Government asserts that even if the respondents may question the propriety of the appropriation embodied in the statute their attack must fail because Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution authorizes the contemplated expenditure of the funds raised by the tax. This contention presents the great and the controlling question in the case. We approach its decision with a sense of our grave responsibility to render judgment in accordance wit hthe principles established for the governance of all three branches of the Government. There should be no misunderstanding as to the function of this court in such a case. It is sometimes said the court assumes a power to overrule or control the action of the people’s representatives. This is a misconception. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land ordained and established by the people. Ail legislation must conform to the principles it lays down. When an act of Congress is appropriately challenged in the courts as not conforming to the constitutional mandate the judicial branch of the government has only one duty—to lay the article of the Constitution which is invoked beside the statute which is challenged and to decide whether the latter squares with the former. All the court does, or can do. is to announce its considered judgment upon the question. The only power it has, if such it may be called, is the power of judgment. This court neither approves nor condemns any legislative policy. Its delicate and difficult office is to ascertain and declare whether the legislation is in accordance with, or in contravention of the provisions of the Constitution; and, having dene that, its duty ends.

QUESTION OUTLINED

The question is not what power the Federal government ought to have but what powers in fact have been given by the people. It hardly seems necessary to reiterate that ours is a dual form of government; that in every state there are two governments the state and the nUited States. Each state has all governmental powers save such as the people, by their Constitution, have conferred upon the United States, denied to the states, or reserved to themselves. The Federal union is a government of delegated powers. It has only surh as are expressly ronferred upon it and surh as are reasonably to be implied from those granted. In this respert we differ radically from nations where all legislative power, without restrirtion or limitation, is vested in a parliament or other legislative body subject to no restrictions except the niscretion of its members. Article I. Section 8. of the Constitution vests sundry powers in the Congress. Bht two of its clahses have any bearing upon the validity of the statute under review'. The third clause endows the Congress with power “to regulate commerce ~ . among the several states.” Despite a reference in its first section to a burden upon, and an obstruction of the normal currents of commerce, the act under review does not purport to regulate transactions in interstate or foreign commerce. Its state purpose is the control of agricultural production, a pureh local, activity, in an effort to raise the prices paid the farmer. Indeed, the government does not attempt to uphold the validity of the act on the basis of the commerce clause, which, for the purpose of the present case, may be put aside as irrelevant. (Incomplete)

INTERNES APPOINTED FOR SERVICE HERE Indianapolis Students on I. U. Hospital List. Timet .Special BLOOMINGTON. Ind., Jan. 6. Twenty-one young doctors are to serve as internes in the Indiana University hospitals at Indianapolis next year, according to an announcement made today by Dean of Medicine W. D. Gatch. Eighteen of these students are to receive their M. D. degrees in June, while three are to be graduated from out-of-state medical schools. All are to begin their duties July 1. Indianapolis graduates named as internes are Homer L. Life, Herbert Egbert. 2601 Roosevelt-av, and Albert Ratcliffe, 702 Wilson-st. Other Indiana students include James Kirtley, Crawfordsville; Winfield Scott, Shelbyville; Max Gantz, Marion; Frank B. Bard. Crothersville; Douglas F. Barkley, Odon; Charles M. Bowman, Albion. John L. Ferry, Akron; Richard E. Gery, Lafayette; Ralph Gettelfinger. Ramsey; Orlando L. Meyer, Bluff - ton; Louis Spolyar and Donald Rendel, Gary, and Elmer S. Zweig. Fort Wayne. Those from outside Indiana are Charles S. Campbell, Oregon University; William C. Keetel, Nebraska College of Medicine, and Hanry S. Tanner, Northwestern University. REALTOR DIRECTORS TO PICK COMMITTEES Board Members to Consider Appointments Wednesday. Directors of the Indianapolis Real Estate Board are to meet Wednesday to consider committee appointments, M. L. Hall, president, announced today. Frank J. Viehmann has been named chairman of the appraisal committee, and George T. Whelden, Ralph E. Hueber and Thomas F. Carson are to serve three-year terms on his committee. Herman W. Kothe, attorney, is to present an illustrated lecture on a recent trip through Germany at the luncheon meeting. ICELAND SCHOOL CHIEF TO ADDRESS ROTARY Asgeir Asgeirsson, Former Premier, Speaks Here Tomorrow. Speaker at the luncheon tomorrow of the Rotary Club in the Claypool is to be Asgeir Asgeirsson, Iceland’s minister of education, who also served as premier, finance minister and president of parliament. Mr. Asgeirsson is to speak on “Iceland’s New Deal.” He is said to have received more honors than other contemporary statesmen, including decorations from France, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland and his own country. MURDER TRIAL STARTED City Man Is Accused of Slaying Cincinnati Laundryman. By United Prctt CINCINNATI. 0., Jan. 6.—Trial of Richard Keller, Indianapolis, charged with the murder of Adolph Woest, head of a Cincinnati laundry, two years ago was opened today in Criminal Court. The state asked the death penalty. Keller pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Highlights of Decision By United Press WASHINGTON, Jan. 6. Highlights of the Supreme Court decision on AAA: “It will be observed that the Secretary (of Agriculture) is not required, but its permitted, if, in his uncontrolled judgment, the policy of the act will so be promoted, to make agreements with individual farmers for a reduction of acreage or production upon such terms as he may think fair and reasonable. “At the outset the United States contends that the respondents have no standing to question the validity of the tax. “The position is that the act is merely a revenue measure levying an excise upon the activity of processing cotton—a proper subject for the imposition of such a tax—the proceeds of which go into the Federal treasury and thus become available for appropriation for any purpose. “It is said that what the respondents are endeavoring to do is to challenge the intended use of the money pursuant to congressional appropriation when, by concession, that money will have become the property of the government and the taxpayer will no longer have any interest in it. “Massachusetts versus Mellon. 262 U. S. 447. is claimed to foreclose litigation by the respondents or other taxpayers, as such, looking to restraint of the expenditure of government funds. That case might be an authority in the petitioner s favor if we were here concrned merely with a suit by a taxpayer to restrain the expenditure of the public monies. “It was there held that a taxpayer of the United States may not question expenditures from its treasury on the ground that the alleged unlawful diversion will deplete the public funds and thus increase the burden of future taxation. "Obviously the asserted interest of a taxpayer in the Federal government’s funds and the supposed increase of the future burden of taxation is minute and interminable. But here the respondents who are called upon to pay monies as taxes resist the exaction as a step in an unauthorized plan. “This circumstance clearly distinguishes the case. “The government in substance and effect asks us to separate the agricultural adjustment act in two statutes, the one levying an excise on processors of certain commodities, the other appropriating the public moneys independently of the first. “Passing the novel suggestion that two statutes enacted as parts of a single scheme should be tested as if they were distinct and unrelated, we think the legislation now before us is not susceptible of such separation and treatment.” “The tax can only be sustained by ignoring the avowed purpose and operation of the act, and holding it a measure merely laying an excise upon processors to raise revenue for the support of the government .... “The statute not only avows an aim foreign to the procurement of revenue for the support of government, but by its operation shows the exaction laid upon processors to be the necessary means for the intended control of agricultural production. “It is inaccurate and misleading to speak of the exaction from processors prescribed by the challanged act as a tax. ... A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the government.” “The word has never been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of the other. We may concede that the latter sort of imposition is constitutional when imposed to effectuate regulation of a matter in which both groups are interested and in respect of which there is a power of legislative regulation. But manifestly no justification for it. can be found unless as an integral part of such regulation.'*

POLITICAL DISCUSSION IS SCHEDULED AT I. U. Howard G. Williams to Be Speaker at Open Forum. Timet .Special BLOOMINGTON. Ind.. Jan. 6 Discussion of the question. "Do We Need a New Political Party in America?" is to be held at Indiana University's next open forum Tuesday, Jan. 14, under auspices of the Indiana Union. Chief speaker is to be Howard Y. Williams, traveller, lecturer, national director of the League for Independent Political Action and a national organizer of the FaimerLabor Political Federation. Dr. Frank O. Beck is to be in charge. The forum is to be fifth in a series which has brought before students and faculty members discussions on controversial subjects. Speakers for next semester are to include Rabbi Elias Cherry, Indianapolis; Dr. Thurman B. Rice, I. U. Medical School, and Brig. Gen. William K. Naylor, post commandant at Fort Benjamin Harrison. ROAD DEPARTMENT TO OPEN BIDS TOMORROW 14 Highway Projects in 12 Counties Included in List. Bids on 14 highway improvement projects costing nearly $1,000,000 and located in Noble, Lake, Fulton, Gibson, Wells, Montgomery, Hendricks, Boone, Steuben, Pike, Pulaski and Huntington Counties, will be opened tomorrow by tne highway department. Included are improvement of Fed-eral-aid streets in Gary and Ligonier and feeder roads and state highways in the other counties. The letting is the first of the new year and one of the last to be held under the 1936 construction program. FEDERAL RELEASED TO RELATIVES William Roberts May Be Placed in Mental Hospital. Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell today released William H. Roberts, 32, Chandler, Ind., to a relative. Roberts was held on charges of impersonating a Federal officer. The relative promised Judge Baltzell that action to commit the man to an institution for the mentally defective would be taken. Several days ago Roberts was severely beaten in the Marion County Jail, where his fellow-prisoners conceived the notion that he was a Federal stoolpigeon. NEIGHBOR FINDS BODY James Elward, 83, Dies While Wife Buries Sister in Fort Wayne. Mrs. Nellie Elward, 960 Englishav. sped home today to arrange funeral services for her 83-year-old husband, James Elward, who died yesterday while she was attending funeral rites for her sister in Fort Wayne. The body was discovered by Glenn Garden, who lives at the rear of 960 English-av. A daughter, Betty Elward, 28, is with her mother. Vayhinger W. C. T. U. to Meet Vayhinger w. C. T. U. is to meet Thursday afternoon at the home of Mrs. Beatrice Dittrick, 4921 Orionst, Mrs. Epha Johnson is to speak on “Alcohol Education." Mrs. Lucile Sahakian is to play the accordion and Mrs. Beatrice Dittrick is to give devotions.

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CONSERVATION WORK PRAISED BY M'NUTT Department's Accomplishments Outlined in Talk. W’ork of the State Conservation Department was praised yesterday by Gov. McNutt in his weekly radio address. The department has made rapid strides in the last few years in protecting and extending our natural resources, the Governor said. "A total of 514 conservation clubs, with a membership of 87.009, has provided the necessary momentum jto create a state-wide enthusiasm which will prevent destruction cf our forests, extermination of our wild life, despoiling of our streams and the loss of areas of scenic or historic value.” Gov. McNutt said. He said the state owes a debt of lasting gratitude toward members of the Civilian Conservation Corps I ana the leader who envisioned the j movement. PINCHOT REITERATES WPA GRAFT CHARGES Claims Agency Aids in Collection of Funds From Needy. By United Pres* WASHINGTON. Jan. 6—Pennsylvania’s former Republican Governor. Gifford Pinchot, charged today in his second letter to President Roosevelt that the Works Progress Administration “actually assists in the systematic collection of graft from the needy" in Philadelphia. Mr. Pinchot said: “I have in my possession - ’ receipts from a Philadelphia employment agency "that it took irom one needy low-paid WPA worker the sum of S2O as the price of ;securing employment under the government of the United States as mat-administered by WPA. From another it took $22.50. "How the proceeds of this unspeakable infamy were divided with the Democratic organization which was guilty of it, I have not yet oeen informed." HANNAH NOONE SEEKS COUNTY TREASURERSHIP Center Township Trustee to Enter May Democratic Primary. Miss Hannah Noone, Center Township trustee, is seeking the Democratic nomination for Marion County treasurer in the May 5 primary. She now is serving her second term as trustee. Long active in Democratic politics in Marion County and Indianapolis, Miss Noone organized the first Women’s Democratic Club of the South Side and served as vice ward and precinct chairman of the organization in the old Twelfth and Ninth Wards. In addition to her public duties, active connection with a number of social and civic organizations. She is a sister of Michael J. Noone, who was known familiarly as “Sky” Noone and who, until his death, was active in South Side politics with the late Thomas Taggart. DEATH DRIVER LOSES FIGHT ON CONVICTION Clarence St. Clair Sentenced for Fatal Accident in 1931. After nearly five years effort to escape punishment for failing to stop after a fatal traffic accident, Clarence G. St. Clair today was sentenced by Criminal Judge Frank P. Baker to the penal farm for 60 days and fined $25. An automobile driven by St. Clair struck and fatally injured Steven Pollock on March 26, 1931. Convicted in Criminal Court, St. Clair appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court, which recently affirmed the sentence. WEISS AND EDGERTON RETAIN ELECTION JOBS Commissioners Reappointed for On* Year by Judge Cox. Theodore M. Weiss, Democrat, and Ralph H. Edgerton. Republican, today resume their duties as Marion County election commissioners, having been reappointed for one-year terms Saturday by Circuit Court Judge Earl R. Cox. Glenn B. Ralston. county clerk, is third member of the board. Judge Cox also reappointed Mrs. Emma Lou Williams Garrett and Msgr. William E. Keeke to threeyear terms on the Marion County Board of Charities. GRANT WOOD TO SPEAK Artist to Lecture at Town Hall Here Saturday. Art and its trend toward the soil and regional development is to feature the Town Hall lecture of Grant Wood, lowa artist, when he speaks here Saturday at 11 a. m. in the Columbia Club. > Wood created a furor some time ago when he introduced regional art with three oils which were declared to be outstanding in sympathetic realism. CLUB NAMES OFFICERS Nelson Trusler Heads Radio Group for Year. New officers of the Indianapolis Radio Club are Nelson B. Trusler, president; Eugene Van Sickle, vice president; Charles W. Soltau, treasurer; Eugene Howard, secretary, and W. E. Davis, chief operator.” New directors are D. J. Angus and William Leuth Jr. M. C. Bartlett is retiring president. YOUTH HERE ON LEAVE James Edward Schmidt Ends Training at Naval Station. James Edward Schmidt. 712 E. 63rd-st. is home on a 12? day leave from Great Lakes Naval Training Station, where he completed training following enlistment at the local Navy Recruiting Station. On completion of leave, he is to be assigned to a ship at San Pedro, Cal.