Indianapolis Times, Volume 47, Number 303, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 February 1936 — Page 13

It Seems to Me HEM.M 'TTIE President's speech at Temple University was among his best. It seems to me he set a happy precedent In not quoting from the writings of Washington. And he did well to announce an abstention from sentences beginning, “If George Washington had been alive today ” We stand on the brink of a long political campaign whirh may turn very dull and boresome if the rival forces are going to swat each other continually with rival texts from the founding fathers.

It is already evident that anybody can prove anything he pleases by snatching stray sentences from Jefferson, and even Hamilton may be used on both sides of the street. It it not simply that the gentlemen in question wrote voluminously and sometimes reversed themselves, as wise men should, but rather that phrases snatched out of their context can be used to riddle the fundamental philosophy of even the most dogmatic and unswerving. However, it seems to me that Franklin Roosevelt was much too

Heywood Broun

optimistic in stressing the educational gains in recent years. It is not altogether a salutary gain that today more than 1.000,000 students are seeking degrees in our colleges and that another 700,000 are taking extension courses or studying in summer schools. The truth of the matter is that a certain number of Americans are marking time in cloistered halls because they have nothing else to do. Some of the unemployed go to the movies and others ;ake extension courses. O tt u TV/m/ Faces Them? I’VE been around a little recently talking at colleges, and I never face a senior class without certain misgivings. As I look down at the bright young faces—or, at any rate, the faces —I wonder just what it is for which they are preparing. Undergraduates come up at the end of the evening and say, “How does one go about getting a job on a newspaper?” What can I say except that as far as I know almost all the papers in the country are already fully staffed and that I don’t think there is any way for them to get a job. The editor of a large, metropolitan newspaper recently announced that from now on he would hire only college, graduates as office boys and that the salary would be sls a week. And he added that he was not inviting applications at present because all the jobs were filled. Getting started as an office boy is by no means a bad way of entering newspaper work, but if it is the or.iy loophole left, then what on earth becomes of the thousands of young men and women studying in schools ol journalism? The plain answer is that they are attempting to learn a craft which, in all probability, they will never have a chance to practice. And, naturally, the same thing is true of embryo mining and mechanical and civil engineers, while it is notorious that there is no end of the making of doctors and lawyers in fields which are already glutted. a u u Saved for No Purpose COLLEGE education will not avail the 700,000 very much unless it serves to inculcate in them a sharp interest in the economics and the politics of the world in which we live. In other words, the young man who wants to study medicine is less than acute if he sticks wholly to his test tubes and takes no account of any of the various schemes for the socialization of the profession. He must not only learn his subject, but he must become effective in finding some way in which he and his fellows can use and transmit their knowledge once they have obtained it. Surely any mute Pasteur or undergraduate Ehrlich must pause at times and say to himself, “What is the point of preventive medicine if it is merely to keep millions alive for the dole and for the breadline?” (Copyright, 1936)

Ezekiel Would Pay All $2500 Annually BY RAYMOND CLAPPER WASHINGTON, Feb. 27.—How every one can have $2500 a year is described by Dr. Mordecai Ezekiel, economic adviser to the Secretary of Agriculture. in a book out today entitled “$2500 a Year.” The Ezekiel plan is significant because it comes from one of the most innermost brain cells of the New Deal. Dr Ezekiel is a 37-year-old economist, who has been in the government many years. He was assistant economist for the Hoover Farm Board. Wallace snatched him up as his chief economist.

His present plan, Dr. Ezekiel says, is his own. but he has been aided by the inspiration of Secretary Wallace. In a nutshell. Dr. Ezekiel's idea is that the AAA benefit payment plan could be applied to industry. He is driving at the situation which all economists know exists—namely, that there is productive capacity in this country which, if intelligently co-ordinated. could produce enough goods to enable every one to live on a $2500-a-year scale provided the advantages of

low-priced mass production were employed. Even at the 1929 peak. 71 per cent of the families of the country were living on less than $2500 a year. Push up their purchasing power to that level and every one would be employed producing goods. There would still be plenty of profit for management. tt a a BUT when Dr. Ezekiel begins drawing blue-prints of the machinery by which he would do this, he branches off into an elaborate bureaucratic structure which he describes as a “pratical” means for changing over from an economy of scarcity to one of abundance. How any one who has lived through the* New Deal's experience with NRA and AAA could say such a plan would be practical is a mystery. Dr. Ezekiel, following the pattern of AAA. would pay government benefits to industries which enlarged their proauction quotas in conformity with the national production blue-print. This would enable cooperating industries to compete with chisellers. He thinks business concerns might be persuaded to follow the plan as the farmers were persuaded by benefit checks to follow AAA. That's one reason why the plan is impractical. The other reason appears in a postscript to the author's preface. Just as the book was going to press, the Supreme Court knocked out AAA. which was his model. Dr. Ezekiel explains that his book will have to be read in the light of that unfortunate incident. ana WITH business activity 90 per cent of normal and yet 10.000.000 or more still unemployed, the problem is far broader than that faced by a board of directors trying to decide how high its price list can be held. We have the industrial plant, the manpower and the prospective capacity. All are partly idle. Until those three resources are brought into full play the matter will continue to bp the public's business. Certainly it is the business of every taxpayer who is yelling about the large deficit and the expense of relief. a a a Industry can escape the blue print of Dr. Ezekiel or someone else at Washington only by beating Washington to it. In a rich and highly developed country like this, one-fourth of the able-bodied workers will not remain unemployed indefinitely. Not even to please the Supreme Court.

WHAT’S WRONG IN OUR SCHOOLS?

H 're is the fcorth of a series of articles by Arch Steinel, following a comprehensive study of the Indianapolis schools system. BY ARCH STEINEL “^RAND3Jbf\! What school did you go to?” The spectacles are taken off and carefully folded. A handkerchief wipes them and Grandma’s answer is one that can be given by hundreds of grandmothers and grandfathers in Indianapolis tonight. “Benjamin Harrison, dear!” is the proud reply. Sedate in age, the Benjamin Harrison School, No. 2, at Delaware and Walnut-sts, stands today with some of the same fire hazards it had in Grandmother’s day. It is one of 10 to 12 schools in this city upon which

school boards are chary of spending money. For the elimination of fire hazards with fire towers, ramps and other safety devices would cost more than the worth of the building. The Indiana Inspection Bureau, investigation agency for fire insurance companies, passes the following criticism of the structure: “One of the oldest of city schools of three stories. Quick wood burning interior, open wooden stairways, and deficient exits. Exterior improvements are required to make this building safe. From life and fire viewpoints the following recommendations are made: First, provide two means rs egress, either with smoke-proof towers or fire ramps; second, replace wood joist floor over boiler-room with fireproof floor and protect all openings to boiler-rooms with approved metal doors.” non BUILT in 1854 at an original cost of SBI,OOO. and with an addition to it in later years, the building typifies the wooden era of construction with a brick exterior. The school has an enrollment of 550 children. Because of its downtown location the enrollment fluctuates but it is higher this year than last. Excellent fire drills —which empty the building within one to one and one-half minutes—are held constantly and minimize the hazards of a possible blaze. As far back as 1870 William A. Bell, a high school principal and school board member, proposed abandonment of three-story school buildings. Benjamin Harrison School is three stories. The third floor is used for assembly meetings, physical education, with the only classroom instruction that of sewing one semester and shop training the next semester. School supervisors meet in the third-floor auditorium. • m MR. BELL, back in 1870, in speaking of No. 2 school as one of three structures of threestory height, said: “Out of our 26 school buildings

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27.—The President has issued quiet orders for a drastic curtailment of Prof. Tugwell’s Resettlement Administration. The move was made because Tugwell was not getting results. The money saved is to be turned over to Harry Hopkins’ WorksProgress Administration for unemployment relief. The decision is important because it indicates an abandonment of the Tugwell policy of long-term planning, in favor of concentration upon immediate expenditures. Tugwell pointed out to the President when he first undertook t.ie j n b of readjusting the farm population of the United States that it would take several years, that he could not produce effects immediately. Now, however, WPA funds are running short. And the President has passed out the word that only those agencies showing actual results shall be favored with funds. This will affect other agencies as well, particularly slum clearance under the Public Works Administration. Trouble Spot NEW DEAL economists, poring over the unemployment problem, have singled out a modest little factory in Memphis, Tenn., as the greatest possible trouble spot in the entire country. It is the plant where the Rust brothers are putting together their new cotton picking machinery. The machine is supposed to pick 2200 pounds of cotton in 90 minutes. This means that it would do the work of 100 men. The effect of this upon hard labor in the South, upon the entire system of tenant farming, is something which economists do not like to contemplate. Strangest twist of fate is that the machine's inventors were humble cotton workers, have always sympathized with labor, are now professed Socialists. Amazed by the thought of what their brain-child might do to labor. they offered to turn ever marketing control to the Southern

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School No. 2 Is Termed Unsafe by Inspection Agency

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

BENNY

The Indianapolis Times

but three are more than two stories high, and one of these will be abandoned soon. This arrangement saves the climbing of stairs and lessens the danger in case of fire.” Mr. Bell did not say which school was to be abandoned It was not No. 2. Forty-six years later—on April 21, 1916—newspaper files disclose Fnat No. 2 school was termed by Jacob Hilkene, city building commissioner, as being one of nine Indianapolis schools unsafe in the event of fire. Mr. Hilkene said in part: “Ceiling in boiler room of wood construction ... no fire escapes.” Five fire escapes, two each on the north and south sides of the structure, and one on the west side, were erected at No. 2 following Mr. Hilkene’s outburst. I found one escape on the south side of the building in rickety condition with one frame parted from the joist. Building mainte-nance-men said the escapes w r ere unsafe for use in regular fire drills. n n n T ALSO found one balcony, in disuse in the structure's interior between the second and third floors. A door from a cloakroom opens on to the balcony. Fire marshals require that the door be kept open. If any one walked on to the balcony and attempted to climb to a stairway above that leads to a fire escape it is possible that the balcony would become a fire-trap if the stairs leading upward were ablaze. A person on the balcony would be forced to jump to the stairway below or climb over the head-high rail to the fire escape exit if cut off from returning into the cloak and schoolrooms. Pupils in the schoolroom adjoining the balcony are not permitted on it. In drills they are trained that if the stairway beneath the balcony is afire they must leave by another stairway. Added protection against any one being left in a room to wander excitedly in a direction opposite from the customary fire drill routine is offered by each room' having a ‘‘searcher” who

Tenant Farmers Union. .The union would have liked to take control as a matter of protection for its workers, but lacked the necessary capital. However, the question still is open. The Rust brothers have indicated they will make the deal any time the union can swing it. But the sore spot is this: No matter who handles the machine's marketing, any successful and widespread use of it will create an economic change comparable to the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. tt a tt Lonely Eagle APRIL 1 will ring down the curtain on the New Deal’s most spectacular tragedy. On that day what little remains of the National Industrial Recovery Act expires. The remnant of 1200 officials, clerks and other employes still on the pay roll will receive their last pay checks, and finis will be written on the New Deal's most sensational experiment. The President will seek no new extension of the shattered statute. But he may ask for an authorization to continue a small sKeleton research organization to study the numerous and complex problems which the NRA attempted to handle. Such a plan is being strongly urged by Maj. George Berry, Co-ordinator for Industrial Cooperation. Berry is the promoter of the Industry-Labor Congiess that came to such a stormy and abrupt end within an hour after it convened early in January. Since then he has organized a Council for Industrial Progress, made up of representatives of management and labor. The council is divided into seven committees, each studying a separate phase of industry-labor relations. Reports on their findings will be completed in a few weeks and sent to the President for his perusal and publication. (Copyright. 1936. bv United Feature Syndicate. Inc. i

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1936

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Tech students who study modern languages on the third floor of this Barracks building on the campus would be forced to jump from the porch roof of the building to safety if fire cut off both stairways and the fire escape in the rear. Four rooms on the third floor each lead into the other.

hunts cloakrooms and under desks for any one left behind. The “searcher,” however, does not open the door from the cloakroom to the balcony during his search. Fire drills are required monthly in all city schools and pupils do not know the day or the hour or the stairway to be used in the drill. tt tt tt INSTRUCTIONS given principals by the School Board’s fire drill bulletin are that: “Outside fire escapes should not be used in fire drill until approved by the State Industrial Board and the Fire Prevention Department. These escapes, if approved, may be used occasionally in ',he dismissal of the school.” A. H. Sielken, superintendent of maintenance and buildings, said that the Indiana Inspection Bureau has recommended fire towers or ramps for five schools, in addition to fire-proof floors over boiler rooms. He said that the bureau urged floors over boiler rooms for eight other schools and towers or ramps for two others. Schools needing fire towers, ramps and floors are: Nos. 2, 16, 7, 4 and 25. Schools needing boiler flooring only are: Nos. 12, 14, 18, 24, 28, 32, 36 and 40. Buildings needing only fire towers or are: Nos. 20 and 22. Ten concrete floors above the boilers at a cost of SIOOO a floor would ban the major hazard in 10 buildings, says Mr. Sielken. Construction of fire towers, what with some of the schools already having outlived their usefulness, would be a wasteful expenditure of the taxpayers' money, says Mr. Sielken. tt tt a A. B. GOOD, school business director, estimates that between $1,250,000 and $1,500,000 in new buildings would be needed to correct faulty housing among the older schools similar to No. 2. School No. 16, built in 1873; No. 7, built in 1872; No. 12 erected in 1874, No. 4, built in 1867, are four of the older schools falling under the inspection bureau’s critical eye. These four might be considered in line for new structures if the Board of School Commissioners decides on further expansion. Consideration of the community needs of the future, however, and the constant shifting of the population in various sections of the city must be weighed by the board before plans for new buildings can be outlined. An illustratiOxi of these shifts in population and the resultant closing of a school can be seen in the case of School No. 11, at 1255 N. Capitol-av. This district now is almost wholly a business one and the school is closed. School No. 29 at 2101 Collegeav, and No. 27 at 1702 Park-av, are examples of school districts suffering from depopulation because families with children have moved to newer residential sections. tt it tt ARSENAL TECHNICAL is the only Indianapolis h’gh school with any major degree of fire hazards. One Tech structure, the Barracks, has only two stairways and a single fire escape. If, in the event of fire, both stairways were cut off and th<* single fire escape barred, students in four classrooms on the third floor of the building would be forced to leap the three stories to the ground to reach safety. The classrooms open into each other with the two classes in the center of the third floor forced to

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If fire comes!—then it would be up to Morris Nichols. 12. to search the cloakroom adjoining his room on the second floor of School No. 2, Delaware and Walnut-sis, to be sure all pupils answer the fire drill. But Morris does not open the door and search the balcony shown bdow.

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The balcony (above) is over one stairway and alongside a stairway which leads to a fire escape. If the stairway was in flames the balcony might prove a fire-trap. The door seen in the photo leads to the cloakroom which young Morris is shown searching in the picture just above it. It was ordered left unlocked by fire marshals.

go through another classroom to reach the winding stairways. Tech officials point out that if one stairway was afire pupils in all four classes would be forced to use the other stairway or the fire escape. Three of the four classes, they say, would be compelled to file' through narrow doors of at least one classroom and the students in the room nearest the blazing stairway would be compelled to traverse three rooms to reach the single stairway open to escape. Wooden partitions in a studyhall known as the “barn” are another fire hazard at Tech. The two buildings are scheduled to be razed under plans laid down by the building committee of the Board of School Commissioners to construct an SBOO,OOO building to house the students now attending classes in the two buildings and portable structures cn the school campus.

FIRE insurance premiums paid by the School City on all public buildings total an estimated $20,000 yearly. Insurance men say premiums would be reduced appreciably if fireproof schools were constructed to supplant aged structures. Mr. Good however, does not believe the amount of savings in the premium rate would be large. Discussing the School City’s proposed razing of old buildings at Tech. William F. Hurd, city building commissioner, says: “It will do an unlimited amount of good to the building industry as well as benefit school patrons and their children. Elimination of buildings which they consider fire hazards also will be beneficial. The School City has always co-operat-ed to the fullest extent with the city building department.” Next—How the School City Will Pav-as-You-Go to Build Schools.

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

Entered as Semnd-Clas Matter at Postoffiee. Indianapolis. Ind.

Fair En ough PRAGUE. Feb. 27.—1 t was a good thing, after all. that the American team came over to the Nazi winter Olympic games, because the show served two useful purposes. It prevented, for the time being at least, a brutal raid on the Gerrr an Jews and perhaps even scattered massacres by Hitler's Brown Shirts in reprisal for the assassination of Herr Gustloff, the Nazi organizer in Switzerland, who was shot a short time before the athletes assembled in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It

also vindicated the contention of those who opposed American participation that the Nazis could not be trusted to refrain from political and military propaganda. But for the presence of the players and a couple of hundred foreign journalists in Garmisch the Nazis undoubtedly would have swooped down on the Jews to avenge the killing of their organizer. Hitler had delivered an oration at the bier of the dead conspirator, in which he charged not only this killing but 40,003 others to Jewish terrorists, and in ordinary circumstances the

order undoubtedly would have been given to take a terrible revenge. nun Hitler on the Spot BUT Hitler found himself on the spot. For he had taken elaborate measures to pretend for the benefit of the visitors that the plight of the Jew was exaggerated. He had taken down thousands of vigorous signs which had hung in public places, such as the railroad stations and postoffices. and had ordered the removal of anti-Semitic posters from billboards, restaurants and stores for many miles around. Thus the visiting athletes and the tourist reporters saw no outward evidence of the campaign of persecution unless they happened to come upon chance copies of The Stunner, the official anti-Semitic publication. In view of the Nazis' insistent claim that Jews had not been molested in the course of the slow massacre it would have been bad propaganda to turn loose the Brown Shirts to club and kick Jews wherever found in reprisal for the death of Gustloff. So a tempting incident was wasted and Hitler's oratory at the grave, of course, was not audible in gay and distant Garmisch. # Not many of the athletes were reading newspapers during the games, so few of them saw Hitler's ambiguous tribute to the intelligence of the German race delivered at the tomb of the dead spy. In this remarkable oration Der Fuehrer led off with the customary exaltation of German character but wound up saying that in 40,000 other assassinations of German patriots the Jews always contrived to persuade misguided Germans to do the dirty work. It seemed a fine acknowledgment of the superior mentality of the Jews. nun It's a Lively Paper THE STURMER reappeared after the foreigners had left town and was plastered on the walls of the government office in Milnich a few days later. It is a lively publication, with a monopoly on pornography in the Nazi state, which was started as the private racket of Julius Streicher* and brought him more than SBOO,OOO when he sold it to the Nazi Party a short while ago. The party apparently intends to let the paper die before the summer Olympics. The political and military character of the Nazi Olympics thoroughly obscured the sporting significance on three days, and the flags of other nations seldom were seen at any time amid the thousands of swastikas, as the moving pictures should prove if they are shown unedited in the United States. Three times Hitler converted the show into a political gala day, and those Americans who were punched and pushed around by the aptly named Black Guards will assert that the spirit of fraternity through sport emerged from the party with contusions, abrasions and probable internal injuries. I would like to offer the affidavit of the wife of an American who got a punch on the nose from a Black Guard while trying to penetrate the military spectacle in order to reach the sport. But the lady prefers to say nothing for publication, because her husband works in Germany at present and might be kicked out or locked out. In view of the bold perversion of the games at Garmisch, however, there may be renewed opposition to participation in the summer games. But the Nazis were entirely blameworthy, for they simply do not know what the Olympic spirit is and decency is foreign to their nature.

Gen. Johnson Says—

NEW YORK, Feb. 27. —Ritchie and Roosevelt, two important public servants, snuffed out without warning like candles in a sudden gust. It is the increasing peril of “the late fifties” in these parlous times; of the burden put on overworked hearts by men so devoted to their jobs that they drive themselves unmercifully, to a pace they would not dream of demanding from others. Both men had been warned, but the insidiousness of this weakness is that it is hard to appreciate the caveat of a jagged little break in the line on your electrocardiograph, when you feel “as young as you ever were” and there is work to do, and a need that it be done quickly. Sometimes even the best clinical examination shows nothing awry, but wise doctors will tell you that a heart that is only ♦’tired” may rebel against such driving and simply cease without warning. b tt n EACH in his own way, these men were both of the cream of the current crop of our most important officials. Due to the illness of his chief, Henry Roosevelt ran the Navy. He did it with so much modesty and so little noise that the public has not realized the Navy has never been in better shape than it is today. That alone is epitaph enough for any man. Bert Ritchie's career is better known. I like to think of his quiet legal piloting of the War Industries Board. We had no unconstitutional legislation. Indeed we had no legislation at all, but we managed to mobilize the whole of American industry much mor£ compactly than NRA ever did—and there was not one lawsuit and very little complaint, although there was extreme action. The men who did that job are nearly all gone— Goethels, Fletcher, Parker, Legge and now Ritchie—all drivers, and all went as Ritchie and Roosevelt went—dropping in harness. After all, it is a good way to go. 'Copyright. 3936. by United Feature Syndicate, Xnc.)

Times Books

JOHN GIBBONS, author of “Roll On, Next War!” (Dutton), enlisted and remained a private soldier in the British array throughout the World War. He says he wrote this book to advise his son on how best to get along in the next war. He remained a private throughout the years of fighting in France and he hopes his son will likewise have too much sense to be a sergeant. From his years of service. Private Gibbons concludes that the worst thing about war is not the enemy but the army—your own army, whatever countrv you ar** fighting for. “It seems an unfortunate result of a great national struggle for civilization that the men should hate their army far more than they hate the enemy, but there the thing is,” the author declares, and adds: ”1 take it that probably all armies will be much the same. They will be quite all right until the war begins. “If. you want to have a really good army, then you should be careful not to have a war.” (By DanieL k. Kidney J,

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