Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 294, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 February 1936 — Page 9

It Seems to Me HEMM BROUN JT is Just barely possible that I picked up a bad habit in Washington, although my friends hereabouts assure me that I had it when I went In. My notion was to blame Congress. It is very difficult to sit in the press gallery of the House without feeling a terrific urge to precipitate yourself into the proceedings. Strategically, a man in the gallery is ideally spotted if he wishes to be seen

and heard. He looks down upon the Representatives, and out of his new geographical location there grows in him a Gunga Dinish feeling that he is a better man than the fellow from Massachusetts who is making the speech. Particularly when some longwinded and perfectly familiar anecdote was being retailed I could hardly resist the temptation of speeding things up and giving the catchword in advance. But my long training as a dramatic critic came in handy. I managed to preserve a look of

Hey wood Broun

aloof and utter boredom during the debates in which I was most passionately interested. a a tt Congress Complex BUT all the time I was boiling inside with a fierce eagerness to add my 2 cents’ w T orth. Just what happens to the spectator who interrupts the proceedings of the House Ido not know. Os course, even in my wildest fantasies I never even dreamed of butting in on the Senate. Presumably the penalties are prodigious. And so I fought the good fight entirely within myself and maintained, outwardly at least, perfect decorum. But that’s the way you get inhibitions and complexes. I am suffering acutely from a suppressed desire to be a congressman, and, unfortunately, I am beginning to act, to talk and even to look like a congressman. tt tt tt Anyway, He Spoke ZOOMING out of the sacred precinct of the House of Representatives, I can hardly wait to find a circle of listeners where conversation is permissible. I have even tried to make speeches to tb n working press and interrupt the blackjack game which goes on in the back room while statesmen discuss the fate of the nation. But the House gallery correspondents are, for the most part, more mature than the congressmen. They are the elder statesmen and know all the answers. They gave me short shrift and went on with their blackjack. And so I have taken a terrible revenge upon Washington hostesses and might do the same here in New York, except that I don’t get asked out much. There was a party last week at which indications were given that free debate was expected and allowed. I took that liberty for license. Even on the way home I had a slight foreboding that maybe I had talked too much. Indeed, I asked the young lady who went with me, and she replied in kindly fashion, “I think you had a swell spot to get off after you finished your sixth speech.” (Copyright, 1936) ft Democrats in Ohio Can't Remain Pals BY RAYMOND CLAPPER CLEVELAND, Feb. 11 —Ohio’s major boondoggling project centers around a hatchet. Democratic leaders meet and bury it one week. Then the next week they dig it up. One week they are all pals. The next week every one carries his own bodyguard. Whether Roosevelt wins Ohio next November may depend somewhat upon whether or not the hatchet happens to be buried that week, making the Democrats one big happy family over

election day. For the last few days the Democrats have been fighting among themselves again. The main center of trouble is Gov. Martin Davey, the tree surgeon. Only God can make a tree, but Davey’s tree surgeons take over the job where God leaves off. This noble work, however, does not seme to have endeared the surgical Governor to his fellow men. They complain a great

deal about him, and about some of the men around him, and argue ever the definition in Ohio politics of legal, or honest, graft. Democratic job-holders think he is a great Governor, but outside of that circle you find much difference of opinion. , a a a SEVERAL attempts have been made to induce Stephen M. Young of Cleveland, Representative-at-large in Congress, to try to take the nomination for Governor away from Davey. He has been hesitant because he feels sure of re-election to Congress. But the call is becoming louder and Mr. Young is reconsidering. If he goes in it will be a fight. Feeling about Gov. Davey is such that if he is renominated, many Democrats will vote for the unopposed Republican candidate, John W. Bricker, who has been elected state attorney general in face of the last two Democratic landslides. Among the local feuds which are adding to the Democratic confusion is the one involving the Democratic bass of Cleveland, W. Burr Gongwer, a former newspaper political reporter who found the insurance and bonding business more lucrative, at least during the times when his crowd was m power. Senator Bulkley is leading a fight to keep him off the Ohio delegation to the Democratic natioivil convention. Postmaster General Farley and Undersecretary of the Interior Varies west, the Administration’s Ohio political ontact man, are sunnosed to be cold toward Mr. Gongwer and to be sympathetic with Senator Bulkley s effort to bounce him P Mr. Gongwer wasn’t quick enoughi on the jump at the 1932 convention when the Roosetelt ag Davev‘s state chairman. Francis Poulson, also may have trouble getting on the delegation. a a a All of which is a big help, as can be imagined. to Roosevelt, who has enough to worry about in Ohio. He carried the state in 193- b> onlj 75,000 out of a total vote of 2,500.000. But it isn’t all bad news. In the Youngstown area, which Hoover carried four years ago, polls show Roosevelt ahead. Some 7500 home owners in the district are still home owners, thanks to having been saved from foreclosure bv HOLC. Work relief is accomplishing some useful local improvements. Southern and central Ohio, except in the coal mining sections, are hostile. Northern Ohio, especially here around Cleveland, Akron and Joledo, seems favorable to Roosevelt. Cleveland, which voted for La Foltette in 1924. may hold the balance of power and Roosevelt is strong here. One astute Republican leader says Roosevelt is stronger in the state than he was a few weeks ago. He attributes this in part to sympathy resulting from the extreme attacks on Roosevelt by the very business leaden who have found profits again under the New Deal. Here in Cleveland there is much dissatisfaction with the WPA program, chiefly because of local administrative difficulties which officials are trying to oorrect in response to widespread complaint. a a a “Asa Governor,” one politician said, “Davey is still a great *-ee surgeon. He tries to climb out on every limb in s^ht.”

Hrn-with is thr third of a srrirs of articles on the administration of relief in Indiana, written by Arch Steinel, Times staff writer, who has made a broad study of the relief setup in the state. BY ARCH STEINEL a list of 11 persons that you know in Indianapolis and Marion County and if you’re a cosmopolite then, in theory, two of the 11 should depend on work or grocery relief to eke out an existence. Seer? No—but all that is necessary to check that fact is to go up to the first 5.5 persons that you meet and hail them and they should say, according to Marion County Works Progress Administration records and those of the township trustees, “Yes, we are on relief.” The county’s relief rolls, both WPA and those of town-

ship trustee offices, total 78,614 persons who receive wages or grocery orders from the Federal government and township taxpayers. Thirty-five per cent of the city's relief load, or 27,205, are on direct relief, and 65 per cent, or 51,439 persons, receive wage relief from the county’s WPA office, 110 S. Meridian-st. The relief population load was 18.6 per cent during January. A year ago the load was 18.7 per cent, or 484 persons more than in January, 1936. A pay roll of $707,245 was written in January for wage relief for 13,208 men and who supported 51,439 persons with their wages. Township trustees of the county gave food, milk, fuel and shelter to 8371 families during the month for an estimated total of $145,000 for 27,205 persons. On the other hand in November, 1934, relief rolls showed 74,000 persons with 10,000 of 4 hat number working on FERA at a monthly pay roll of $392,000, against the $707,000 pay roll of WPA today. tt tt u ADVENT of WPA in August, 1935, reduced the tax burden in the county's townships with the caseload dropping in escalator fashion within a six months’ period. The pay roll march from the direct relief rolls is vividly drawn in the following monthly ' comparison: August, 18,116 cases; September, 15,082 cases; October, 13.775 cases; November, 10,929 cases; December, 10,447 cases; January, 1936, 8371 cases (estimated). The transplanting of direct relief workers to county PWA paywindows is shown in the increased load of WPA as follows: August 5061; Septemer, 7992; October, November, 10,998; December, 12,170; January, 12,601. (Non-relief employes totaling 607 in January are not included in the wage-earners.) Delving into January's wage relief in Marion County finds 10,676 men and 1155 women taken from the relief rolls of township trustees and given a twice monthly pay check. Five hundred and nineteen men and fifty-four women were hired as non-relief workers. Relief women can be generally classed as widows, deserted wives, waves of husbands unable to work, or those who are heads of families due to illness of other members of of their families. In addition to the foregoing workers the National Youth Administration employed 776 youths at one-third time on one-third of the security wage. Center Township in bearing nine-tenths of the direct relief load in Marion County found that when the Federal government abandoned all unemployables to its care that it had in its grasp an efficient set-up for caring for the direct relief clients. tt tt tt RELIEF prior to the government’s role in Indiana was wholly in the hands of the township trustee. Miss Hf.nnah Noone, Center trustee, has been acclaimed by Community Fund welfare agencies and other social workers as one of the most competent of the trustees in the state to re-assume control of direct relief. Miss Noone found at hand that state control, under the Governor’s Unemployment Relief Commission, had improved systemization of direct relief and social work and she converted the best phases, coupled with her own experience, to perfecting anew agency under reduced personnel. Leo X. Smith, township attorney, says of the state control system which guided the expenditure of Federal funds for direct relief, "We learned some good things from them, but they w T ent too strong on their system.” He points out where under state control 110 investigators were hired that now his office has but 35. Critics of trustee control declare that a larger caseload, due to FERA wage relief, and perfecting records of relief clients caused the larger staff and tfiat the trustee now is benefitting from the social and clerical work done under GURC. Politics play no part in the selections of relief clients in Cen-

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Full Leaded Wire Service of the United Press Association.

SALVAGING 475,000 HOOSIERS m a a u tt a a a a a it tt a tt a 2 Out of Every 11 in County Are on Direct Aid or Work Rolls

BENNY

The Indianapolis Times

ter Township. One of Miss Noone’s most competent social workers is a former head of a children’s bureau of a private relief agency. She w-as hired, it is said, without regard to her politics, but stress was placed on her qualifications as a social worker. tt tt a 'T'HE direct relief dollar has A taken a cuffing in Center Township due to increased coal prices and the sub-zero weather which caused an unprecedented demand for coal. Catering to all of the direct relief clients of Indianapolis or 7610 cases, a total of 24.732 persons, the Center Township trustee spent $139,251 for direct relief in January, 1936, against $191,000 spent on a combined FERA and direct relief load of 17,029 cases in January, 1935. The comparative relief dollars for food and household necessities for the unemployables shows an increase in costs with fuel up 6 per cent over January, 1935. The two monthly dollars for direct relief in the township in 1935 and 1936, and what each dollar bought is shown in this table: January, 1935. Food and household necessities... $0,568 Fuel 0.225 Salaries 0.103 Housing: 0.052 Clothing 0.04 Other costs—medical aid—burials 0.012 Total SI.OO January, 1936 Food and household necessities .. $0,562 Fuel 0.284 Salaries 0.068 Housing 0.052 Clothing 0.02 Other costs 0.014 Total 51.0(0 tt tt tt INCREASE in coal prices from $4.61 a ton of one year ago to $4.73 a ton today has increased the township taxpayers’ bill. “Then too,” adds Mr. Smith, “the severe cold weather increased the demand for coal. We know We were imposed upon by some relief clients, but w r e would rather deliver an extra ton of coal than

WASHINGTON. Feb. 17.—The number of state and Federal laws whose constitutionality it has been asked to review is not the only record being hung up this term by the Supreme Court. In handing down these judgments the great tribunal is also setting anew high water mark in the frequency of dissents—some of them extremely bitter—among the nine justices. In no other term in the history of the court have its members split so often and with such sharpness. Os the 19 important rulings rendered up to Feb. 10, the last decision day, the record is as follows: Eight 6 to 3 Five 1 to 4 One 7 to 2 One 8 to 1 Four Unanimous The four unanimous opinions were: (1) rejection of Huey Long’s discriminatory tax against certain Louisiana newspapers; (2) invalidating that section of the Home Loan Corporation Act permitting the Federalizing of building and loan associations over the protests of state authorities; (3) up*.aiding the Maryland law taxing RFC stock in state banks; (4) sustaining the Oregon statute fixing standard containers for raspberries and strawberries. a a a About Those Dissents IN the 15 cases on which there were dissents the three liberal justices Stone, Cardozo and Brandeis were on the winning side only five tmies. Justice McReynolds was the lone dissenter in the 8-to-l case, involving rights to certain Los Angeles tidal water lands. Chief Justice Hughes and Justice Roberts, the so-called “balance of power” on the court, sided with the four conservative members eight and 11 times, respectively. Each also has handed down one dissenting opinion this term.

The pick thuds on the tough earth . . . shovels are wielded . . . and each stroke of pick or shovel adds up toward a $55 monthly wage on a WPA project in Indianapolis for the men in the above photo. Pay day is near and that’s the reason for the genial expression on this work relief laborer in the photo at the right. take a chance of someone freezing to death.” “I wouldn’t be surprised but that some peddled extra orders of coal which they received from us,” he asserted. A woodyard operated by the trustee reduces the fuel costs. Nine thousand garments sewn by 600 women, on Marion County WPA dressmaking project have done much to alleviate clothing needs. The average relief case—families not persons—in Center Township, which constitutes Indianapolis relief clients, receives $18.30 monthly or $4.58 weekly at the trustee’s office, .214 N. Senate-av. The above average is $3.76 higher than the state’s average for direct relief in January. The state average is $14.54 a month in grocery orders or $3.64 a week. ff tt tt DIRECT relifcf for each person on the trustee’s rolls is lower due to the larger number of single persons receiving food aid. January relief was given at the rate of $5.62 monthly or $1.65 a week for each person on relief, while the state average per person is $4.58 a month and $1.15 a week.

Washington Merry-Go-Round BY DREW PEARSON and ROBERT S. ALLEN

For Chief Justice Hughes the court’s pronounced disharmony this term has been a severe trial. Throughout his six years as Chief Justice he has exerted great efforts to act as a conciliator among his colleagues and to avoid dissenting opinions. In past sessions of the court he succeeded to a remarkable degree. But this term the number of issues presented, their importance and the depth of feeling of the viewpoints involved were too much for him. a a a FHA Quandary LOCAL Federal Housing Administration speakers, long on oratory but short on humor, have been placed in a quandary. It happened this way: Ace speaker of the agency is Arthur Walsh, assistant administrator. His talks are enlivened with sparkling witticisms and amusing anecdotes. But in an address to an audience of business men in a Southern city, which he had never visited before, none of Mr. Walsh's sallies went over. Stories that evoked hearty laughter eisewhere get only a faint ripple of .fitters. Mr. Walsh was much puzzled. After the meeting he asked a friend what was wrong. “Nothing,” was the reply, “only we heard all those jokes a w’eek or so ago from one of your local officials.” When he returned to his office in Washington, Mr. Walsh learned that his speeches had been mimeographed and distributed to FHA officials as models of good sales talks. “I appreciate the compliment,” said Mr. Walsh, “but let them dig up their own jokes”—and forthwith issued an order putting a halt to the distribution of his speeches. aa a ' Prophet’s Honor Prophet Herbert hoover is not without honor, save in his own country.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1936

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Surplus food commodities, and a portion of the housing and clothing costs are not included and can not be estimated in the

The morning after Mr. Hoover’s slashing attack on the Administration’s spending policies, a letter was received at the White House from the city authorities of Palo Alto, Cal., the home town of the former President. The city fathers complained bitterly about an order, issued by Secretary Ickes, reducing a PWA grant for a municipal power plant from $218,000 to $164,000. They petitioned the President to direct Mr. Ickes to restore the $54,000 cut. Note—Mr. Ickes slashed the allocation as an economy move when he learned that the city authorities had quietly reduced the sum they had pledged to put up as their share of the project. a a a Patronage Battler nnHE youngest member of the Senate’s liberal bloc, West Virginia’s Rush Holt, is causing some private headshaking among his crusading colleagues. Reason for the concern is Mr. Holt’s excessive devotion recently to petty political and patronage matters. In the six weeks that the present Congress has been in session young Holt has spent a good part of his time scurrying about government departments and agencies demanding jobs for henchmen. Asa result of this activity Mr. Holt has become embroiled in several bitter clashes with other West Virginia members, one with Rep. Andrew Edmiston over the naming of a postmaster of a hamlet (population 500) in his district, and another with Senator M. M. Neely over the appointment of an internal revenue collector. On Senator Neely’s recommendation the President named W T alter Thurman. Senator Holt is hotly fighting the appointment because Mr. Thurman opposed him in the primaries. (Copyright, 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

average monthly aid to direct relief families and persons. But walk into a home of a direct relief client and ask the housewife to divide her weekly relief budget. If she has four persons in her family and receives all relief benefits the budget should look like this: Groceries $2.75 . Bread 50 Coal $1.83 Surplus foods 50 (Federal aid) Rent $1.50 Clothing 25 Other items 25 Total one week $7.58 Total one month ....$30.32 The above does not include a quart of milk daily for families with a child under 6 years of age. The Federal surplus foods vary from week to week, and the distribution and its variety in Marion County for December )s shown as follows: 44,308 cans of beef, 4913 pounds of butter, 11,211 pounds of prunes and 10,389 tins of evaporated milk. tt tt tt COMFORTS, pillow cases, towels also were furnished direct relief clients. Revamping the poor relief laws at the 1935 session of the General Assembly and making it possible for counties to issue relief bonds to back the credit of townships has done much to aid townships in bad straits due to financial troubles. The law insures speedy payment of poor relief bills to merchants. Under the former law the township issued bonds but relief creditors were compelled to go into courts and obtain judgments before they could collect. Instances have been frequent where a merchant waited from a year to a year and a half before he could collect a township bill. The Center Township tax rate was hiked 16 cents for the fiscal year of 1935-1936 to place poor relief on a “pay-as-you-go” basis and take care of direct relief yearly instead of piling up obligations. The tax rate in 1934-1935 was 9 cents for the township but the current year it is 25 cents. “Payment for current relief,” says Mr. Smith, “with current tax levies is the ultimate Utopia we hope to reach.” (Next: The Unemployables—Who They Are! How Cared For.)

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

Entered ss seeond-Clas Matter at Pr.stofTiee. Indianapolis. Ind.

Fair Enough MM* PIER ARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN. Feb. 17.—Pery haps it's just as well the United States did not boycott the winter Olympic games conducted m the Bavarian Alps under the sign of the Swastika. If the trip had been called off the firm-jawed, clean-limbed, clear-eyed American athletes would have felt that they had been denied a great honor and privilege, to say nothing of a free trip to Europe, and might have blamed the Jews for that. Now, however, at most they demonstrated that

they did not deserve so much as a nickel ride on a street car, much less a voyage de luxe to the Old World, and the showing of the team in competition with athletes of other nations probably will result in a drive to improve American proficiency in winter sports. This, then, should result in the manufacture and sale in large quantities of skates, skis, boots, costumes, and certainly a large proportion of the apparel, which is expensive and governed by changing moods of style, will be provided by our Jewish neighbors

in the garment trade. Moreover, the impending conversion of a large element of the American tribe to the sports which are discoursed in the ice and snow will be a boon to the hotel trade in the mountains, where customarily mine host throws himself into his underwear when last summer’s boarders have departed and settles down to a long period of profitless hibernation. tt tt tt Hotel Boom Is Foreseen THERE are thousands of these hotels within two hours’ run of New York and other thousands elsewhere West and East, and there may be a note of consolation for those who advocated the boycott in the fact that the majority of the inns which occupy, but do not necessarily adorn, the slopes of the Catskill Mountains are owned by Jewish citizens. Os course, abandonment of a principle could not be compensated by a few dollars of profit, but as one who fttged the boycott several months ago I will have to admit the principle was a weak and ailing child and choked on its own arguments. It is nonsense to believe that the Olympic competitions promote brotherhood, for the athletes bicker and snarl even with their own compatriots, but it can do no harm to continue them until the next war interrupts the series again, and it might hasten that war to break off athletic relations in the grim and formal manner of diplomacy. Garmisch has received world-wide publicity through the holding of these games, but, more important than that, sports themselves have been brought to public notice, and this can do no harm at home. The year of the great blizzard may not be the most opportune time to suggest the pleasures of life amid the drifts and icicles, but the truth is that for many years American sporting life has been existing indoors in winter or following the soft enticement of the tropics. The result is seen in the inferiority of American athletes. tt tt a Business Is Business PEOPLE here have the general appearance of strength and health which comes from personal participation in the various sliding and skating games on the Olympic program. Unlike the American visitors to the winter Olympics at Lake Placid, the majority of them go up into the mountains for the championship contests under their own power on skis. At Lake Placid they used taxicabs almost exclusively. And pertaining to the activities of the favorite American winter sport of wrestling with Tom Collinses by the hour in the shade of a striped umbrella on the brink of a tropic sea, I believe that the doctor would recommend the former. Ar.d to return to the sordid subject of commerce, it is a good outlet, for a man or woman taking up winter sports in a big way will run up a bill of $75 or SIOO. After all, business is business, and it suggests another drop of water for the priming of that pump.

Gen. Johnson Says—

GEORGETOWN, S. C., Feb. 17.—The hardest stunt in horse-training is the “gallop in place”—a canter without forward movement, one powerful effort canceling another to complete frustration. We propose to decrease farm production by anew AAA, which will increase farm production through checking erosion and fertilizing fields by subsidizing the use of vegetable nitrifiers. We retire arid acres by purchase, and yet spend more millions to reclaim arid acres by Federal financing of irrigation projects. We say we will increase the farmer’s tariff protection to the equivalent of that of industry—yet we so administer the tariff and other laws as to decrease his portection by a growing influx of agricultural imports, and by reciprocal treaties decreasing it still further. We set up NRA to encourage industrial co-opera-tion, and then prosecuted co-operation through the Federal Trade Commission. a tt tt WE propose lower prices through reduced tariffs and enforcement of anti-trust laws, and then use AAA, the Guffey Act, the devalued dollar, and every form of inflation to induce higher prices. We invite private capital to create employment by investing itself—yet we prevent investment by confiscatory taxes on individual profits and inflationary threats to any form of fixed investment. We propose to maintain our defensive strength and avoid the warfare of the world —yet we meditate neutrality and munitions laws which instantly would paralyze our powers of defense and embroil us with one of any two world powers engaged in major conflicts. We demanded payment of foreign debts, and we devalued the dollar to maintain our world position in finance and trade—yer"devaluation insidiously forgave 40 per cent of all foreign debt and threatens the complete extinction of our creditor position and our favorable balance of trade. The perfect “gallop in place” is almost impossible, but w’e can do it. 'Copyright. 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Times Books

A FAST-MOVING tale of a rough-and-ready detective is what Kurt Steel produces in “Murder for What?” (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis; $2). Mr. Steel’s private operative, Henry (Hank) Hyer, is not a gardenia-wearing connoisseur of ceramics, but a singularly modem young American who takes good care of himself in rough company. “Murder for What?" involves an upstate New York murder with gangsters, gamblers and counterfeiters and builds up to the point where one of the central figures in the mystery drama is slain in our detective’s own department. And whose fingerprints are on the pistol but those of Detective Hyer? Author Steel, having taken the reader through any number of breathless episodes, then hits his stride. The ensuing chapters move so swiftly, what with Duesenbergs racing over the highways at 102 mlies an hour, that Mr. Steel deserves some sort of award for raciness. The characters are marked by a lack of indecorum in their use of the King's College English, but the book itself is literate enough. If you like excitemen in your mysteries, “Murder for What?” is just (By N. E. Isaacs.)

Westbrook Pegler