Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 271, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 January 1936 — Page 13
It Seem to Me HEYWOOD BROUN IN the I was disposed to take the RepubA lican broadcast "Liberty at the Crossroads’ as nothing more than a piece of political folly. I had not realized its sinister significance or its subtlety. But now that there may be a congressional investigation of all the circumstances I wish to present formal charges that, Chairman Fletcher is attempting to undermine the American home and spread the noxious doctrine of free love. These arc serious accusations, but, fortunately. I
believe that I can prove them. First of all, it is well to point out that the author of this menacing entertainment is one Henry Fisk Carlton, who studied at Harvard in Prof. Baker's experimental theater, the Workshop I need hardly point out to Republicans that anything experimental is inevitably communistic and subversive. But to make it more binding Mr. Carlton later became a college professor, and it is generally agreed that all the members of this profession are part of a Red army which is boring from within. To be precise. Mr. Carlton was an
■ 'f ft
Hey wood Broun
instructor and not a professor, but the principle is the same. u n a Here's Documentary Proof AND if anybody wants documentary proof as to the subversive potentialities of “Liberty at the Crossroads” he can have it. Consider, then, the sketch about Mary and John. In the G. O P.'s Grand Guignol effort they are described as “two typical young Americans.” They love each other, and in the typical way sanctioned ever since the founding of the republic they go to the marriage bureau. Here they are questioned by a minor official who makes much of the fact that each gives the same address. This is innocent enough, for, as John points out. it happens to be a large apartment house containing many families and at the moment their domiciles are different. But before this explanation can be made the clerk says. “What!” just like that. Now. his vile insinuation that two typical young Americans are living in sin, shall we say. is bad pnough. and remember that there are all kinds of implications in the manner in which the line may be read. A simple “What” can say, “And why shouldn’t, you abandon conventional morality and live without benefit of clergy?’’ ana He's a Schemer, This Clerk THE scheming clerk preys upon the fears of John and Mary. He points out that taxes are heavy ar.d asks, in the most insidious way. whether they can afford to get married. So skillful is his propaganda that they decide not to and go out downhearted. The clerk has already insinuated a belief that they are living together out of wedlock. He has planted a thought, and it will burgeon and blast them. For them 13 Elm-st fdo you catch the symbolism?) will prove an unlucky number. And it will be an unlucky day for young manhood and young womanhood in America when the noxious radical notions of Chairman Fletcher are carried by the radio to every fireside in the land. Come out from behind those bolshevist whiskers, Comrade Fletcher, and if you wish to challenge American moralities and American institutions do so frankly. Give your revolutionary radio program its right and proper name. You are not talking about liberty. What you really mean is “License at the Crossroads." (Copyright. 1936 > A Medal, Please! for Vandenberg BY RAYMOND CLAPI*£R WASHINGTON. Jan. 21.—The political Croix de Guerre with palm for recent acts of courage should be. awarded to Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. He is not afraid to stand up in a minority. Last winter he voted for the World Court when it was the unpopular thing to do. His own eminent constituent. Father Coughlin, and many thousand others were warning him with a deluge of telegrams that It would be suicide for him to vote for the court. He took the chance.
Last spring he was one of the few, among Republicans who profess to want the budget balanced, to come to the support of Senator La Follettc in an attempt to boost taxes on moderate incomes. Roosevelt had proposed his demagogic tax on top incomes but had sidestepped the touchy issue of going after middle bracket taxes where the real volume is. Republicans for the most part didn't have the nerve to go after them either. Vandenborg did.
an;y a handful of Senators dared to vote against thre Wagner labor bill. Vandenberg was one of the handful. Asa member of the Nye munitions investigating committee, he didn't lose his nerve and run out on the committee when it got into the Morgan records. Neither did he Join in the attempt to make either Morgan or Woodrow Wilson the scapegoat for our getting into the war. He just tried to get what information he could on how we might be saved from being sucked into another foreign war. ft tt tt AFTER all of the bellowing from Republicans about balancing the budget, just seven of them had the nerve to be consistent and vote against the bonus. One of them was Vandenberg. The circumstance which makes all of this remarkable is that Vandenberg has a good chance at the Republican presidential nomination. But it depends chiefly upon his making as few enemies as possible. „ tt a tt And can you imagine a man who is angling for the nomination saying, as Vandenberg did this week. that he doesn't know enough about the farm problem to have a plan? He broke two rules right there. First, never admit you don’t know all about anything. And second. never be caught in daylight without having a plan. a a a Senator Carter Glass is the onlv Democratic Senator up for re-election who voted against the bonus. Rep George Tinkham. Massachusetts. Republican, is laboring valiantly to have the present Italo-Ethiopiar. war exempted from the new neutrality legislation. Almost any one else would, too. if they had to go back this summer and face as many Italian constituents as he does in Boston. a u a COME government lawyers have been looking into Y this idea of overcoming hostile Supreme Court decisions: Let Congress pass a law requiring that the Supreme Court—in the event of a divided opinion wnich indicates reasonable doubt as to the constitutionalitj of a law—refer the act back to Congress and if then Congress by three-fourths tor “tvtothiros* vote shall re-enact the law, it shall stand Congress is empowered to puss such a law. it is argued, by the Constitution—Article 111, Section 2 giving the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction “with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." This, without an amendment, would give the Supreme Courts veto, which is now supreme about the same weight as the President's. m m n Style Note—There is some commotion here over whether, when the American Liberty Leaguers gather this week to rescue our liberties, the uniform of the evening shall be olack ties or white ties and tails. We have been tipped that Gov. A1 Smith the keynoter, is expected to discard his brown derbv for white tie and tails.
THE TOWN OF THE WALKING DEAD
Parade of Doomed May Be Enacted Again—This Time in Capital
BY GILBERT LOVE pAYETTEVILLE, W. Va., Jan. 21.—The parade of the doomed may be enacted again. Two years ago, nearly 100 alleged victims of silicosis, an industrial disease for which no cure is known, were paraded before a jury in Circuit Court here. They were walked up a flight of steps, and came into the courtroom gasping for breath. This was to show the jury how silicosis gradually solidifies the lung tissues, making breathing more and more difficult. Some of them were stripped to the waist, revealing bodies that were little more than skeletons covered with tightly drawn skin. Such a display may be put on in Washington if advocates of the congressional inquiry into the silicosis plague at Gauley Bridge, W. Va., carry out their plan to take a group of the victims to the capital.
They won’t be the same men who were paraded here, however. Many of those are dead, and others are too weak to get out of bed. Death hovered near the Fayette County courthouse while that trial was in progress. It was a test case, designed to determine the legal right of several hundred workmen who had filed damage suits against a contracting firm and a power company because, the workmen alleged, they contracted silicosis while tunneling through a mountain near Gauley Bridge to divert part of New’ river for hydro-electric use. a it a '“P'HE plaintiff. Raymond Johny son, is dead today. So are four other members of his household—three brothers-in-law and a young boarder—all of whom worked in the tunnel. Most of the foremen on the job —who came back from their homes in Virginia to testify that their company had done everything possible to protect the men in the tunnel—are dead also. Some of the foremen couched constantly while testifying—en indication, doctors said, that they were suffering from silicosis even then. The trial lasted six weeks. Outstanding silicosis experts were brought here to testify. Nearly a score of law’yers, from Charleston and Fayetteville, w’ere arrayed against each other. Autopsy records, X-ray plates, solidified lungs from the bodies of silicosis victims, and pneumatic drills from the tunnel, were on display in the courtroom. a tt n A. A. LILLY, attorney for the . plaintiff, threw into the air a handful of silica dust from the tunnel. It hung in a cloud over the courtroom, showing the jury the nature of the material that had penetrated the lungs of workers. He testified that a dozen penumatic drills would be pounding it off to loosen the rock, the. tunnel, wdth little or no water being used to keep down the re-
WASHINGTON. Jan. 21.—Appointment of Prof. William O. Douglas, Yale, as newest member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is expected to put backbone into an organization ■which recently has been coasting on its previous momentum. Chairman Jim Landis, the savage liberal whose shadow once sent jitters down the spine of Wall Street, now- is suspect of eating caviar a little too frequently with the boys whom once he frightened. Other members of the commission have been leaning in the same direction. Douglas has been leaning directly opposite. Although he was once associated with one of Wall Street’s most prosperous law firms. Douglas has been SEC's most active crusading investigator. His investigations of the bondholders’ protective committees for the Frisco and Missouri Pacific Railways were sensational. Douglas worked his way through the University of Washington in Seattle by living in a tent and washing his own clothes in an adjacent stream. After graduation, he arrived in New York via the freight car route with 36 cents in his pocket, and applied for a loan to enter the Columbia Law School. His record at Washington was so good that he got a small loan, and sold papers in Manhattan in order to meet the rest of his expenses. Graduating near the top of his Gass. Douglas was immediatelysnapped up by the law firm of Paul Cravath. Later he became the highest paid law professor in the country, drawing aovn SIB,OOO a year from Yale. a a a Touch of Irony A FTER all the effort exerted by Henry P. Fletcher to get his Republican National Commit-
Clapper
Fnll Leased Wire Service of the United Press Association
Washington Merry-Go-Round “BY DREW PEARSON and ROBERT S. ALLEN
BENNY
... 1" i | s&. £, fr >,, #' —l_____________________ — __ _ l> __ < _ *•*H“ r wa -nAT< ■
The Indianapolis Times
suiting dust. They said they were not provided with protective masks. After a blast of dynamite was set off to loosen the rock, the workers would be hurried back to the “heading” before the smoke had cleared aw’ay, they testified. The contracting company maintained that it had used the most modern methods available in boring the tunnel, and brought tunnel experts here to testify on this point. It contended, further, that it did not know such a disease as silicosis existed. > b tt tt THE ’trial ended with a hung jury. Another case, tried a short time later, ended the same w’ay. Then the lawyers got together and decided to compromise the cases. Experts were appointed to examine those who had sued. A few hundred dollars was given to each litigant who had a well developed case of silicosis. The amount varied with the size of his family and the severity of his affliction. Widows got about twice as much as men still living. A few suits are still pending in the local courts and in Federal court at Charleston, but most of the cases have been settled by compromise or thrown out of court because they were filed more than a year after the plaintiffs left the company's employ. Emaciated men still come into lawyers’ offices in Fayetteville and Charleston and ask them to sue the tunnel people. They want something on which their wives and children may live for a time after the disease has finished them, they explain. nun SOME of the lawyers will take the cases and some w’ill not. It takes a lot of money to put on a trial like that at which the doomed men were paraded, and the outcome is most uncertain. Lawyers here believe that if national attention is focused on the silicosis tragedy, legislation may result that will at least clarify the rights of workmen affected by such occupational diseases. It should be decided, they say.
tee radio skit on the air, Henry couldn't hear it when finally it was put on by a Chicago station. He sat at home and turned the dials, but nothing happened. The Columbia Broadcasting Cos. had been adamant in barring the G. O. P. skit from the air. But the vision of Chairman Fletcher sitting at home unable to listen in on his cherished skit was more than even Columbia could bear. It sent Clyde Hunt, radio engineer who handles Roosevelt’s broadcasts, around to the Fletcher home. He fixed the radio—gratis. tt tt tt Disfranchised Farmers WHEN Henry Wallace called farm leaders to advise him regarding a substitute AAA, he included almost every farm organization in the country except the one which represents the largest number of farmers. Representatives of the tenant farmers, applying for entry to the Wallace-farm leader conferences at the last minute, were turned down. As the reason for this veto Wallace gave the. lack of a large enough room in which to meet. However, the auditorium where his 100 delegates sat has a capacity of 1000. Wallace’s delegates represented approximately 3.000.000i farmers who own their own land and produce about 86 per cent of the country’s farm products. Unrepresented were about 3.000.000 farm tenants who produce only 14 per cent of the country’s farm goods; also about 3.000,000 agricultural workers. These two groups have benefited little from the AAA; many tenant farmers have been evicted as a result of the crop curtailment program.
TUESDAY.. JANUARY 21, 1936
*
A village of “walking dead men” is Gauley Bridge, W. Va., shown above, where, scores of tunnel drillers await death from silicosis, contracted when they drove a four-mile tube through a nearby mountain for a power project.
- -*~- —~r:~
Entrance to Hawk’s Nest tunnel, in which death struck repeatedly among the toilers, is shown left above. Beside it flows New River, waters of which were diverted through the bore. At right above is the powerhouse. terminus of the tunnel, with air vent towerin g at rear.
whether or not the statute of limitations will keep a man from suing if he dees not discover that he has an occupational disease until he has been out of a company’s employ a year or longer. The status of such diseases under workmen's compensation should also be fixed, they maintain. tt tt tt LOCAL residents familiar with the situation doubt that the Federal probers can find any individual, or group of individuals, on whom to lay the whole blame for the tragedy. The committee, it is thought, will probably find that the cause
Coal Fight Brewing A BIG blowup is brewing behind the scenes in the six-month-old Bituminous Coal Commission, which may rend it from stem to stern even before the expected Supreme Court’s ax descends. Cause of the undercover churning is Commissioner George Edward Acret of California. So bitter has feeling become that several important executives are threatening to resign and issue public statements denouncing Acret. Acret’s special province is the legal work of the commission. To assist him in this he has a large staff of lawyers. Acret has been at loggerheads with fellow commissioners from the start. One of his first acts was to elect himself vice chairman when most of the other commissioners were out of town. He has repeatedly clashed with his colleagues on policy, particularly the question of price-fixing, which he favors, while most of the others believe it should be handled cautiously. The commissioner owes his job to Senator Wiiliam Gibbs McAdoo, who took him into his law firm last year after patching up a peace with Upton Sinclair. Acret, a Sinclair lieutenant, was the EPIC candidate for the California Supreme Court. In addition to these qualifications, Acret’s background fitting him for a place on the coal commission includes wartime service in the aviation corps, a term as city attorney of Venice. Cal., and an inconspicuous part in the prosecution of the famous Centralia • Wash.) I. W. W. eases a decade ago. Until he came to Washington he was unknown outside of California. (Copyright. 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)
was much more complex, and that sweeping legislation will be needed to prevent such things from happening in the future. Here is the employers’ side of the matter: > The Union Carbide & Carbon Cos., of New York, in commissioning its subsidiary, the New-Kan-awha Power Cos., to build the tunnel, was actuated by a legitimate desire to produce cheap electricity for its own plants in the Kanawha Valley, and possibly for others, by harnessing the wild waters of the New River. At the point where the New River comes down out of the mountains to enter the Kanawha, it races through a canyon shaped something like a horseshoe. The loop is nearly 10 miles long. BY boring a tunnel three and one-eighth miles long through a mountain, part of the water could be forced to ‘‘cut across lots” and a fall of 168 feet could be created, engineers estimated. This hidden Niagara could be forced to drive dynamos in a geneiating plant and produce 120,000 horsepower of electricity. The current would be used in the electric furnaces of the carbon company’s subsidiaries, making steel alloys. A dam on the Kanawha, and anew steam generating plant, were being worked to capacity to supply the electric furnaces already in operation. With the additional power available. the company could move to West Virginia part of its plant at Niagara Falls. The scheme involved about $16,000,000. A big contracting firm of Charlottesville, Va. —Rinehart & Dennis—was engaged to do the work. The tunnel was to be one of the largest ever built. To speed construction, the engineers not only started at both ends, but drove a shaft down into the center of the surveyed route of the tube and began digging both ways from this spot. The sinking of this mid-way shaft was made possible by the fact that the tunnel route approached the surface in a valley. n tt WORK began June 13, 1930. Mountain folk predicted calamity because the job was started on the 13th, but jobs were scarce and they went to work in the tunnel. Other laborers were imported from the South. Fortune seemed to favor the tunnel builders at first. Only a little way into the mountain they found that it was composed of silica of 99.40 per cent purity. So valuable was this material for glass and metallurgical work that the companies enlarged the tunnel in order to get out more
silica and, of course, to produce more power. Originally, the diameter was to have been 30 feet—a little larger than New York's Holland Tubes. The diameter was increased to 48 feet. Then the workmen began to sicken, and a number of them died. The trouble was apparently pneumonia and tuberculosis. Negroes seemed to be hit hardest, and physicians suggested that the northern climate was responsible. New men replaced those who dropped out. They worked in two 10-hour shifts, with a two-hour pause between each shift to let the smoke and dust clear out of the tunnel. n tt WHEN doctors began diagnosing the lung trouble as silicosis, and suits were filed, the contractor contested them. Company lawyers contended at first that there was no such disease, then pointed out that no one had ever heard of so many men contracting the disease on a single job. Hundreds of workmen were demanding damages. Finally most of the damage suits were compromised. Most of the settlements ranged from SSOO to SIOOO, but the total amount distributed by the contractor was reported to be near the million mark. The tunnel is now completed; with a few finishing touches the big project can be put into operation. Whether the contractor took sufficient precautions to keep down the dust in the tunnel, and provide proper ventilation, is a matter that even the courts have been unable to decide. The state might be blamed for not protecting the men in the tunnel. For various reasons neither the mine, health or labor departments assumed complete supervision of the project. a a a THE obvious explanation for tragedy is that the danger from the glass-like silica dust was not realized until the damage had b;en done and about 2000 workmen had become either victims or potential victims of silicosis. Even during the celebration on the mountain top in .931, when a gala crowd was rejoicing that two of the crews had met under the mountain, with their sections “not an inch out of line.” the tragedy that had occurred was not realized. Otherwise, the Governor of West Virginia might not have been there, praising the engineering feat, and the company official who told how one heading had been driven forward 120 feet in six days might have been less proud.
By J. Carver Pusey
Second Section
Filtered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffiee. Indianapolis. Ind.
Fair Enough WESIMHIR PARIS. Jan. 21.—1 tis impossible to understand the moves in French politics without first memorizing the names of the parties and the principles for which they stand. This being done, the rest is easy. The old left wing is not actually left nowadavs. but is situated to the right of the center. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that several additional left wings have been added since the original left wing was established. The furthermost left wing is not known as the left wing because the members do not wish to be con-
fused with the old. original left. Therefore, the actual leftist group prefers to call itself the right. The old original right has been compelled to yield the wing position to a radical conservative group calling itself the moderate extremists and has shifted over to a place roughly corresponding to left tackle. The French center, by the same process, has abandoned its position in the middle and, with the introduction of the new, open game has become a roving center with leanings toward the prin-
ciples of that growing element of malcontents who advocate the restoration of the King on a straight Communist platform. This group is divided into thiee elements A. B and Z. The Z group selected that letter to show how widely it disagrees with groups A and B. These elements demand the devaluation of the franc, the non-devaluation of the franc and a compromise policy of letting the franc alone awhile for Gods sake. a tt a Holds Balance of Power, if Any A LTHOUGH not in general agreement, this party TV. may be said to hold the balance of power because Premier Laval is firmly opposed to all three propositions and looks to the small, but influential. Socialist-Bourbon coalition for support. From this it will be seen that France has adopted the double wing-back and the,unbalanced line, employing the shift on defense especially for left-field hitters. The reverse is also true, but on the other hand the Labor Party, composed of rich industrialists and the survivors of the old aristocracy, often is found in the center. The Labor Party was organized by a group of oldfashioned kiver-to-kiver anarchists on a straight piecework basis of so many francs a head. These organizers recruited 300,000 members to their rolls and delivered the party, whole, to a group of capitalists in the munitions and automobile industries for a price roughly estimated at 300,000 francs. They also built up an anarchist newspaper with a blackmail department second to none. This, too, was sold to the capitalists as a mouthpiece for their principles. The same group of anarchists is now engaged in organizing a religious party with an ambitious group of atheists. It will be known as the religious alliance. This Should Be Handy EVERY party has its own newspaper, and there are about a hundred papers in Paris. Labor is divided into many blocs, all of them opposed to the Labor Party and all adhering to the anti-Labor Party, the official organization of the workingman. With the francs quoted at 14 for a dollar, the quotation for a prime political leader is 100,000 francs asked, 65,000 bid, closing at 70,750%. Deputies are 50 francs each in lots of a dozen. Extreme Socialists have been pegged at the nominal price of one franc, with no demand. Patriotic publicity is a matter of individual bargaining. A Communist article may be inserted on page one of a royalist publication, one column deep, oucside column, for 50 francs to the owner, plus 10 per cent to the editor. A pacifist organ will print a eulogy to a machine gun manufacturer in the same position for 10 francs a thousand of circulation. p’us the usual commission to the copy desk. Clip this outline of the French political situation and put it away. The next time they have a crisis or creeze in the Chamber of Deputies, followed, perhaps, by shooting in the Place de la Concorde, it w’ill give you a perfect understanding of the dispute.
Gen. Johnson Says—
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21.—Let’s have the facts. Two big Boeings crashed at Cheyenne. But the public was never given an intelligible report of causes. Another Boeing, a government bomber, smashed up at Dayton and tl\e only explanation was far from satisfactory. Now. a Douglas liner cracks up in an obscure swamp in Arkansas and no better report is available. The cold, hard truth is that the modern transport liner is no safer than her engines. If they fail, except over a well-conditioned landing field, it is ‘ Kitty, bar the door.’’ Henry Ford once chided me for flying so much and said: ‘‘l stopped building airplanes because the engines aren’t good enough.’’ On the subject of practical mechanics the world has not seen that man's equal. n a A NO-BETTER-THAN--AVERAGE pilot can take tV a two-seater in trouble and set her down in q tree top, if necessary, without killing anybody. But these majestic air-liners need hundreds, if not thousands, of feet of level hard space in which to land. No matter what may be said about the Army’s record in the air mail, the Army system of training, which teaches a man to get his ship out of any difficulty by “stunt flying,” is worth consideration. I have talked to lots of transport pilots and I never heard one advance any attractive ideas about bringing a big liner down in rough country in an emergency. The truth is that there aren't any such ideas. Air transport is a modern necessity. We have not as yet scratched the surface of its possibilities. But public confidence is being shaken and it can t be restored in an atmosphere of mystery or deceit. (Copyright. 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)
Times Books
ONE of the best bits of news from the winter publishing season is the fact that Phil Stong seems to have decided to forget about the movies for a while and go back to writing novels. His new book. “Career,” iHarcourt, Brace & Cos.; $2), does not bear the Hollywood stamp. It is a return to the level of “State Fair.” and to this reviewer’s notion it is fully as good as that book—if not, indeed, a little better. Once more, Mr. Strong simply sits down in a small lowa town, looks about him, and writes. This time he shows us a village storekeeper and his son—the storekeeper a grizzled old crossroads veteran who has been father-confessor and leading citizen to his town for a whole lifetime, the son a serious and talented lad about to embark on a medical career. a a a THE son clearly is headed for great things. The father, just as clearly, is headed no place at all and never will be. But as you follow the story you discover, presently, that this old storekeeper is having a career as rich and significant in its own way as anything for which the son can hope. In his undistinguished life the father has somehow fulfilled himself. Mr. Stong is up to his old game of confusing the critics. One of their dearest traditions has been that life in rural lowa, or rural anywhere else, is of necessity barren, bleak, and dull. Mr. Stong knows better, and he tells of men like this village merchant who can meet, life on its own terms, forego the luxury of a broad horizon, and still pack richness and significance into their lives. “Career." in short, is an excellent book. (By Bruce Catton.J
p ''vjMßn
Westbrook Pegler