Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 262, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 January 1936 — Page 15

It Seems to Me HEM BROUN KNOXVILLE. Tenn., Jan. 10.—“ There’s Norris” said my friend the engineer. “I don’t know whether she's constitutional or not, but she sure is one sweet dam.” There lay below us a broad green lake, a red clay wall, the rocky side of a mountain neatly knifed in half to furnish concrete and the dam itself. The sluice gates were open, and the streams of water came leaping through like porpoises at play. Indeed, I asked about fish, and my guide said, "Lots

of them. They get the surprise of the their lives when they strike the sluiceways and come tumb ing down. Yes, lots of fish—mostly trout and some wall-eyed pike.” And so, quite nautrally, my next question was, "but what do you think the Supreme Court will do about TVA?” "I told you,” said my friend, that I’m an engineer. How do I know? I don’t suppose they’re going to tell us to shovel the dirt back in again, but they might stop us at the switch and say that no power is to go out until

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Heywood Broun

we get the nod from the utilities. They’re not technicians, and so there’s no telling what they may do. I do wish one thing though. I wish the old gentlemen would come down here and look at it before they make up their minds." 'that seems to me a sensible suggestion. Last week-end could have furnished an ideal outing for the cloistered nine. The sun smiled down on Norris and all its works. The great dam rose almost sheer from the spume of the Clinch River as impressive as a cathedral wall. Gov. Talmadge has said that Norris is a godless town because there is no church and religious services are held in the schoolhOuse. The Governor is one of the many who may have glanced at the Constitution but have failed to see the valley. tt tt tt The Word Is Awaited IF he is truly a religious man Gov. Talmadge ought to br able to find an exultation by standing at the foot Ci Norris on a Sunday morning and lifting up his eyes to tile hills from whence can come a light to shine in darkness. Here man, through co-operation and organization, has found that the earth and the wate.rs under the earth are good and can be harnessed for the glorification of creation. That is, if the Supreme Court will assent. More than two years ago the first shovel bit into the sod on the bank of a meager creek. A mighty fortress has been reared against flood in two great valleys. The transmission of power waits for the word, and in a week or a month or a year nine judges in a smallish room will say whether this thing, which they have never seen, is good 6r evil. At the end of two years the engineers and the concrete mixers and the masons and the structural iron workers and the truckmen will be told whether they have contributed to the march of progress or have been moving bricks across a road and back again. To be sure, the nine justices of the Supreme Court may not blow a full blast on their ram’s horn trumpets and decree that all the walls must come tumbling down. They may say both "Yes” and “No.” an Maybe Yes, and Maybe No THE court could say that the improvement of navigation and flood control were purposes within the power of Congress, but that the government may not transmit power except by dickering with private corporations. That would be stoppage at the switch. There is, of course, a political problem involved in TVA, and a legal problem. But there is also an engineering problem. And that’s the pity of it. Some of the members of the Supreme Court have had political experience, although, naturally, all that is forgotten when they ascend the high bench. And some have had legal experience. But not one of the old gentlemen is an engineer. Legally it may be possible to divorce navigation, flood control and power. From an engineering point of view that is hardly feasible. The job must be tackled whole. So if any vital part of TVA is knocked out the court will be not only reversing Congress but invalidating the work and the thought of some of the greatest technicians in the world. The nine old men really should have come to look at Norris, and on Monday night they could have gone in a body see Sally Rand in person in her own show at the • vric Theater, Knoxville. But perhaps it is just as well they remained in Washington. They might have decided by a five-to-four vote along strict party lines that her fan dance usurps powers reserved to the individual states. (Copyright. 1936)

Gen. Johnson Says—

TULSA, Okla., Jan. 10—The state of the Union report to Congress was a rabble rouser. It was staged as a campaign curtain-raiser, with the whodps and yells of an overwhelming Democratic Congressional majority in about the decorum of the French Revolutionary convention before the tribunes of the Terror. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a natural retort of an Administration that wants to be re-elected, to a brazen challenge to’no quarter combat. Referring to “financial and industrial groups” who are “politically dominant” but who do not speak the sentiments of “real American business,” the President said that they propose to spread fear and “gang up” against the people’s liberties. That is the par tof the speech that clicks. The most blatant Hooverite of 1928 did recently propose that big business “gang up” to restore Hooverism. There is no doubt at all that the consistent actions of some big shots in business have given color to every passionate word in this deliberate appeal to passion. Those actions are salt on the lips of old wounds out here. The proposed “ganging up” was Itself a challenge to class passion. A great leader has elected to accept that challenge, to the joy of every advocate of class hatred here and in Russia. It is true that these powerful reactionaries do not represent the views of our people, but neither does such a speech as this. It may have seemed inevitable, but it deposes a leader of our whole people and makes him chief of the factions of discontent. Our best hope of getting out of our deep distress is by united action and not by division, hatred and factional war. The great mass of our people want no such thing. It was not “worthy of their generation” for the Tories to-make such a challenge, and it was no more worthy in this fashion to accept it. (Copyright. 1936, by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.). | 1 j Times Books THE new year’s publishing season is bringing us some highly acceptable mystery stories. Here are three that might easily prove worth your while. “The String Glove Mastery,” by Harriette R. Campbell (Knopf: $2), shows us a shy, mousy little Englishman delving into the case of a nobleman who falls off his horse into a stone quarry during a fox hunt. It develops, presently, that somebody helped him fall, and our retiring sleuth has to find out who. He does so, with the help of a busvbody psychiatrist, and the result is a workmanlike yarn. Then there’s “The Corpse in the Crimson Slippers,” by R. A. J. Walling (Morrow: $2). Murder is dressed as suicide, this time; man is found shot to death in his bedroom, gun in hand, apparently no chance for any one to have come near him. But Mr. Tolefree, the eminent insurance investigator, takes a hand, and catches the culprit. Last but not least is "The Fifth Tumbler," by Clyde B. Ciason (Crime Club- $2). A highly unpleasant man is taken off by hydrocyanic gas in a Chicago hotel room, and the gent across th.> hall is a retired college professor who appoints himself a one-man brain trust to get to the bottom of things. This he does very ingeniously, and the story is one with which the most persnickety detective story fan can. find, little, fault. (By. Bruce Catton.)

Fall Leased Wira Service of the United Preaa Association

The World hhh TOMOfiMmm iyPAv/p phetz mmMLmm

(Fifth of a series by the Scripps-Howard Science Editor) gO rapidly is the nation emerging from the depression that experts anticipate it will be facing a shortage of electric power in another year. The wheels of industry are turning faster. Plants are reopening, modernizing, expanding. Home owners are installing new appliances—better lamps, washing machines, dishwashers and the like. All of these things mean a bigger demand for electric power. The biggest jump in the demand for electric power will come when air-conditioning goes into general use in

the homes of America. Nobody knows when that day will arrive, although many think it is not far off. But even without that additional demand, all signs point to a coming shortage of power. Most significant of all is the consumption of current at the present time. The first 10 months of 1935 saw the consumption of 77,193,216,000 kilowatt-hours, a figure about equal to the consumption for the entire year of 1932. . Power consumption for the week ending Dec. 21 was 2,002,005,000 kilowatt-hours, the first time in history that any week exceeded the two billion mark according to the Edison Electric Institute. This represented anew record high for the nation and was the eighth record to be made in nine weeks. Each of the preceding eight weeks showed a total higher than the previous one with the exception of Thanksgiving week. tt n NEW generating equipment, capable of meeting the situation is being designed, Dr. S. M. Kintner, vice president in charge of engineering of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Cos., told me when I made a recent visit to the company’s headquarteis in East Pittsburgh. Only a few months ago, anew turbine generator, built by Westinghouse, went into service in the Richmond station of the Philadelphia Electric Cos. This new generator gives Philadelphia the distinction of possessing the world’s most efficient machine of great power. It is a 165,000 kilowatt turbinegenerator unit which develops enough power to furnish light for 250,000 homes. It is so well designed, and represents so great an advance in electrical engineering, that it occupies no more space than was needed several years ago for a unit only one-third as powerful. The contract for this mammoth machine, involving millions of dollars, was placed in July, 1932. The completed unit was ready for service in August, 1935. More than 1,000,000 man-hours of work had gone into the preliminary research, the design, the actual manufacture and the installation. tt tt u THE turbine and generator form one unit which is 96 feet long, 28 feet wide and 26 feet high. It is one of the four largest singleshaft units ever built. The rotating element weighs 237 V* tons, and yet it is balanced so accurately that when rotating at 1800 revolutions per minute, the vertical or lateral movement in its bearings is only a fraction of a thousandth of an inch. Steam, admitted at a pressure of 450 pounds per square inch, acts upon a series of 15,000 blades along the shaft of the turbine. When the turbine is operating at normal speed, the tips of these blades are traveling around at a speed of 14 miles per minute, a speed which approaches that of a projectile. . The condenser, in which the steam is condensed after passing through the turbine, is the largest ever built. Its 17,000 tubes, if laid end to end, would reach from Philadelphia to New Yrok. While such gigantic machines as this one in Philadelphia, and the gigantic generators at the Boulder Dam and other government dams, are being built, Dr. Kintner thinks that the general trend is more likely to be toward the addition of smaller units, so located as to hold down distribution costs. tt it a A GENERATING plant now operating at a given steam pressure will install another turbine unit operating at a much higher pressure, he says. Steam will then be generated at higher pressure, passed into the new turbine first at a pressure of 825 to 850 pounds and then from there will go to the present equipment at a pressure of 250 to 300 pounds. This method will ihcrease the

BENNY

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The Indianapolis Times

efficiency of the entire plant, he says. Among the important accomplishments of 1935 which Dr. Kintner believes will have tremendous influence upon life in 1936 and the years to come, he lists the following: DEVELOPMENT of anew type of lightning protector, the De-ion flashover. Tests on a 25-mile line leading out of Milwaukee showed that they rendered the line light-ning-proof during severe electrical storms. ELECTRIFICATION of the Pennsylvania Railroad from New York to Washington. CONSTRUCTION of new rapid transit electric cars capable of higher speeds and improvements in the electric trolley coaches. ADVANCES in the construction of Diesel-electric streamlined trains. Westinghouse provided the equipment for the streamlined Comet of the New Haven road, which is now making the 44 miles between Boston and Providence in 44 minutes. A super-charged Diesel engine of the 12-cylinder V type was installed in anew rail car of the new Boston & Maine road that develops power considerably in excess of the normal rating of the engine. DEVELOPMENT of electricpowered mills for the steel industry. tt a tt LOOKING ahead to the future, Dr. Kintner sees reason for thinking that progress will be forthcoming in many important directions. "A year ago,” he says, “television, though feasible for short distances, had the very serious handicap of no suitable means of chaining stations for national hookups. Today, this handicap, as a result of cable developments, appears very much less important and we can confidently expect, in the not distant future, a television service similar to broadcasting. "That vest field or air conditioning which is just in the beginning is sure to take a much more important part in improving living conditions. "This improvement will give us a completely conditioned air, resembling the best attainable at seaside or mountain resorts. It will be balanced in chemical composition, temperature, humidity, cleanliness and ion content. "Those who now find it necessary to seek comfort in remote localities <?n account of unfavorable climatic and other conditions at home, can, by means of such air conditioning, enjoy all of these during all times of the year. "New chemical compounds with the introduction of the new electrical influences on recombinations will certainly be found. The electrical forces that tear apart the atoms must certainly exert an influence on rebuilding molecules. "The number of possibilities is legion. The number of compounds that will result from the use of these new electrical research tools can not be predicted, but most certainly will be large. tt tt tt "TVR. KINTNER calls attention to the facts that one of the largest and important fields in the world, namely that of agriculture, has scarcely been touched by the electrical industry. "It seems strange that a field of such tremendous importance to all should have been passed by so lightly,” he says. “The possibilities appear almost limitless. In addition to the usual aplications of power and light, much can be expected from the control of the insects that now infest grains and plants. The seeds that are now carrying these vicioius enemies will be freed and given better opportunities for their start in life. “What will be the effect on plant growth, as they are given treatments with the new electrical radiations? No one can tell without extended trials. Plants grown under various colors of light h£ve shown unmistakable evidence of the effects of such differences. “Treatments by some kinds of radiations like X-rays are known to influence the plant’s character-

INDIANAPOLIS, FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1936

■■Hi ■ | a ,Mjm EVMffli <<' a k b 1 VIM'S J S r ML. & 111 ffURUv is t®! II F f 'tJ'w 1 / V ' \ I®. f:;; ' f ( Jr tSBUI Wa top. ■* In. ■ Jit sill fl?wPt?*- IMU? Hf m M ics to such an extent that new M||||§ rieties are created thereby. One needs to go out but one -p more to imagine conditions of g ection by such means, that W mid permit of destroymg the desired weeds and thus render ailable for the favored plants, of the wasted plant food used the w-eeds.” Dr. Kintner thinks it also likely _____ at some process may be develed by which the soil could be adered free of the seeds of eds by electrical means before e crops were planted. He also foresees important adnces in the use of electricity in ‘*’ v rimic HinlAoriooT fiialHc rkarfion_

istics to such an extent that new varieties are created thereby. “One needs to go out but one step more to imagine conditions of selection by such means, that would permit of destroying the undesired weeds and thus render available for the favored plants, all of the wasted plant food used by the weeds.” Dr. Kintner thinks it also likely that some process may be developed by which the soil could be rendered free of the seeds of weeds by electrical means before the crops were planted. He also foresees important advances in the use of electricity in various biological fields, particularly that of medicine. Tomorrow—Machines that make machines.

Washington Merry-Go-Round

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10.—At 11:30 a. m. of the day the AAA decision was handed down, President Roosevelt was holding a conference regarding the Farm Tenant Bill. Simultaneously the Nine Old Men who knocked the foundation out from under his New Deal legislation were about to put on their black robes and go on the bench. Sitting with Roosevelt" in the White House were Secretary Wallace, Will Alexander, who is Tugwell’s right hand man on tenant farming: Marvin Jones, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, and Lee Pressman, legal adviser to Tugwell. Plans were being laid for pushing the farm tenant bill through the House as soon as possible. Passed by the Senate last session, the bill provides for a billiondollar corporation by which the government buys land for tenant farmers and helps them get started on it. The President explained that for political reasons he wanted this bill passed as soon as possible. Turning to Rep. Jones of the agriculture committee, he said: “Marvin, what about getting hearings started by your committee within the next three weeks?” “But, Mr. President,” replied Jones, “don’t you think we had better not hurry? Remember we may have to pass some legislation for the AAA after the Supreme Court hands down its decision.” “I doubt it,” replied the President. “I don’t think we’ll have anything serious to worry about.” Twenty minutes later, Justice Roberts began reading the momentous AAA decision. And shortly after the tenant conference adjourned, news of the decision was placed on the President’s desk. * u a AAA Parents NOW that the AAA is dead, it is interesting to recall who wrote it. It was a composite child, spawned by Henry Wallate v an exRepublican; together with Prof. M. L. Wilson of Montana State College, now Assistant Secretary

The electric arc, powerful tool .of industry , is but one of the ways in which electricity is helping to make the world of tomorrow.

of Agriculture, and Mordicai Ezekiel, a Harding appointee to the Department of Agriculture and a Hoover appointee as economist to the Federal Farm Board. It was drafted chiefly by Fred Lee, a Democrat, who served as legisative draftsman of the Senate during two Republican Administrations. u n Justice Roberts JUSTICE OWEN JOSEPHUS ROBERTS, who delivered the AAA decision, has spent his latter years torn between liberal and conservative viewpoints. The son of moderately well-to-do parents, Roberts was reared in a conservative Republican environment, practiced law for 30 years with one of Philadelphia’s most conservative law firms, and represented t.wo of the state’s largest corporations—the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Cos. and the Pennsylvania Railroad. During those years, Roberts was thoroughly inculcated with the big business point of view. At the zenith of his legal career, however, he was appointed special government prosecutor in the Harry F. Sinclair-Albert B. Ball oil scandals, during which he became a fervent government crusader. Roberts not only did practically all of' the prosecution work, but advanced money out of his own pocket to pay for the expenses of the prosecution. It was diligence in uncovering evidence, plus his masterful court presentation, which finally sent Fall and Sinclair to jail. Shortly after this, Roberts was appointed to the Supreme Court. Perhaps still imbued with the fervor acquired in the oil scandal cases, he immediately sided with the liberal wing of the court. / In recent years, however, Roberts has swung back to the views of his early days as a Philadelphia corporation lawyer. * u Photo Memory WHATEVER side of the case Roberts may take, he makes the most forceful presentation of any member of the court. During the 40 minutes required

for reading the historic AAA decision, Roberts did not once refer to the text. This amazing memory has won Roberts many a case. He tells one story brought against the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Cos. by a German baker who claimed to have been injured by a street car, but refused to show his leg. Despite the baker’s refusal, the jury sustained the claim, and Roberts lost the case. Many years later, Roberts had a similar case for Philadelphia Rapid Transit in which a woman claimed damages to a leg when a street car started suddenly, but would not show her leg. Roberts had before him a strike list of jurors who had been in accident cases, and among them he recognized the German baker, who, years before, had refused to show his leg. Acting on* the theory that jurors will never let others get away with what they have done themselves, Roberts let the old German remain on the jury. He won his case. u u u Wallace Forecast TTTHEN news of the Supreme * * Court's AAA decision reaches Secretary Wallace, he continued talking unconcernedly to a caller. But 18 months ago he wrote in his book the following statement, which sounds as if it had been written this week: “I would not mind seeing the processing tax and acreage control abolished in 1936, if we have something better to take its place. “But unless we have built up greatly increased purchasing power by reducing tariffs, or unless we start loaning money outside the United States to enable foreign nations to buy our surplus, I am afraid that dropping the processing tax and acreage control in 1936 would result, with the average run of weather, in a repetition within a few years of the 1932 situation.” (Copyright. 1935, by United Feature Syndicate, . T nc.).

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

filtered s Setond-CUns Matter at Postoffice. Indianapolis, Ind.

Fair Enough HMPEGIfR PARIS, Jan. 10.—The grand old man of the American colony in Paris is Laurence Vincent Benet, manufacturer of machine guns, who has been in the machine gtm business here for 50 years. He wa born at W T est Point, N. Y.. 72 years ago. received his education at Yale, emerging in 1884, and came to France the next year to join the Societe Hotchkiss et Compagnie, which produces the Hotchkiss guns. He is covered with honors bestowed by various nations, including the Military Order of Christ, a

Portuguese distinction, and all of the French decorations, with the single exception of the Order of Barflies, which is not really French, anyway, but Scotch, “with headquarters at Harry’s New York Bar, in the Rue Daunou. Mr. Benet is believed to be the only American in France who is not a member of the Order of Barflies, and this is a distinction in itself. In 1893 Mr. Benet served briefly as an ensign in the United States Navy in the w'ar with Spain. He served with the American ambulance and hospital services in the war to end war, succoring

among others many soldiers who had been shot by machine guns manufactured by his rivals. Mr. Benet wears white whiskers which impart a benevolent appearance. He is always interested in the affairs of his native land. He went home for a visit a couple of years ago and on his return uttered some profound opinions of the state of affairs in America. tt tt a Commands Respect THE American press of Paris always treats Mr. Benet with the deference due a man who has manufactured more machine guns than any other single individual. “The working class in the United States are showing a fine spirit,” Mr. Benet said, “and are turning a deaf ear to Communist propaganda which comes from only the small foreign element in America.” From this it will be seen that although Mr. Benet has found it preferable to live abroad for 50 years, his heart still beats true for the Red, White and Blue and the home of the brave and free. lt is not all a mere matter of making hand-across-the-sea speeches to Chambers of Commerce and accepting de6orations from grateful governments, this business of manufacturing better machine guns and more of them. It takes constant research and invention and constant hustling in a highly competitive commercial market. There is a clew to Mr. Benet’s ability in the French book on the munitions industry which states that his net profits in 1931 were more than 20 million francs, or about $1,320,000 on an amortized capital of only 16 million francs. tt tt tt Future Rosy Indeed QUOTING from the company reports of Mr. Benet’s firm for 1932, this book says that, thank3 to the superiority of Hotchkiss guns, two factories were working at full capacity and order books were sufficiently filled to promise a continuance of this satisfactory situation for a considerable time, moreover, new outlets were foreseen. Mrs. Benet is interested in the Colonial Union for Wounded Men and holds a medal of reconnaisance of the Duchess of Vendome. The machine gun firm was founded in France in 1867 by Benjamin Beakley Hotchkiss, a native of Sharon, Conn., who found himself without a market when our own Civil War closed. The war of 1870 gave Mr. Hotchkiss his real start in France with a factory devoted to the production of cartridges. He died in 1885, the year that young Mr. Benet arrived to start his long and valuable career in the service of his fellow men. The climax occurred on his fiftieth anniversary, when the employes of the machine gun factory presented him with a life-sized portrait of himself.

Strange Are Ways of Our Politicians BY RAYMOND CLAPPER WASHINGTON, Jan. 10. —Sometimes you are supposed to take a politician seriously. And sometimes you are supposed to accept his remarks as having been intended only in a Pickwickian sense, as a member of the historic Pickwick Club once explained when challenged for an insult which he had leveled at a fellow member. Politics would be much more easily digested by the ultimate consumer if its practitioners would label their remarks so that the average citizen would know

Clapper

forces and was leader of the Stop Roosevelt movement. Hague issued a statement that Roosevelt was certain to be defeated if nominated, that he couldn’t carry anything east of the Mississippi and little west of it. He said Roosevelt was weak, unpopular, and a political mistake. Four years pass. The Democratic National Committee meets in Washington. A tall gentleman rises in the meeting and offers a resolution “heartily indorsing” Roosevelt with “admiration” for his “matchless courage” and many other things, including “genius in statesmanship.” mum YOUR eyes pop as you look again at the gentleman who offers the resolution. Sure enough it is the same Frank Hague, high collar and all. But which time, it is important to know, was he speaking in the Pickwickian sense? v It is curious that politicians, whose typical campaign promises could be fulfilled only by the revival of miracles, should attempt to make an issue against Roosevelt on broken promises. Others might feel justified in complaining, but surely not a politician. Didn’t Hoover promise us grass in the city streets if Roosevelt was elected? Political campaigns always are notorious for their loose talk. In 1928 we heard that if A1 Smith was elected the Pope would move to Washington and live in the cathedral that was being built for him under the gpise of an Episcopal edifice. m m m DEMOCRATIC Chairman Farley tells the Democratic National Committee that opponents of Roosevelt plan a campaign of “defamation." Then he proceeds to undertake some high-powered defaming of them by talking about the “dirtiest political struggle” . . . “outright lies” . . . “foul whisperings” . . . “largest slush fund on record” . . . “neither public conscience nor private scruple” . . . “hitting below the belt.” It looks as if political reporters had better look up the libel laws before they go to work in this campaign. m m m One newspaper correspondent wired his newspaper the following comment on the AAA decision: “Three members of the court would have been ineligible lor jury duty on the case because of prejuto*” J

Westbrook Pegler

when they were speaking only in a Pickwickian sense. For instance it is very confusing to follow the utterances of that great statesman of Jersey City, Mayor Frank Hague. He is the Democratic boss of New Jersey, and pulls a good deal of horsepower in the party organization generally, or did before Roosevelt. On June 23, 1932, Mayor Hague arrived at Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. He was manager of the A1 Smith