Indianapolis Times, Volume 48, Number 5, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 March 1936 — Page 9

It Seems to Me HEYM BROUN NEW YORK, March 17.—1 think it was George M. Cohan who said, during the Equity strike of a good many years ago, that if the closed shop ever came to the theater he would run an elevator. Well, the closed shop did come to the theater and Mr. Cohan changed his mind, which was a good thing for Aim Jnd the theatergoing public. Asa matter of fact, the theater is about the tightest closed shop in America, for in addition to the actors, the stage hands, the electricians and the

musicians, even the dramatists are organized. And yet the theater seems to me to function rather more smoothly for all concerned than do the elevators in apartments and business buildings. I think there was some slip of hand or brain when the realty group put out advertisements saying that they could not possibly arbitrate the closed shop because “it is un-American.” This is a somewhat belated discovery, since the closed shop has existed in this country for almost half a century in certain industries, and they have been the very businesses in

Heywood Broun

which there have been very few strikes and lockouts. Railroading is surely an essential industry, and no one can fairly say that the closed shop maintained by the brotherhoods has kept service in a perfect turmoil. a a a An Unfortunate Phrase THE phrase itself is, unfortunately, a punishing one. The “union shop" would fall less harshly upon the ear. Nevertheless, any organization which undertakes to advertise that the closed shop is unAmerican is simply trading on the economic illiteracy of a large part of the community. I was sitting the other afternoon in a case with a gentleman who was buying a drink. This didn’t really happen, but let's imagine it did. “I've only got time for one more cocktail,” he said. “My wife and I are going to the symphony tonight.” He looked at the evening paper he had in his hands to see what time the performance began, and as he saw the headlines about the elevator strike he began to talk in violent terms. “I'm all for the owners,” he said. “I’ve made it a rule myself never to have anything to do with anything run as a closed shop." I reached over and grabbed his cocktail. “I'll drink this for you,” I explained, "because to you it is forbidden. If you will observe the sign on the wall you will note that the man who mixed your drink belongs to the Bartenders’ Union—a closed shop. It seems to run pretty well. I can’t remember any bartenders’ strike in New York during my lifetime, and if there had been one I am quite certain I would have remembered. . a a a Unions, Unions Everywhere “'~pHE newspaper in which you looked up the X time of the symphony performance has a closed shop in its mechanical departments, and there are newspapers in which the editorial staff is organized along similiar lines. The concert to which you are going will be played by union musicians, and if you go to the restaurant you usually frequent your supper will be cooked by union cooks and served by union waiters. Asa matter of fact, you have been dealing with the closed shop all vour life, only you never noticed it.” I may say, also, that it is a little extreme to call the closed shop un-American, since members of both political parties have voted for measures to insure the right of organization and collective bargaining. To be sure, this is not precisely an indorsement of the closed shop, but it does tend in that direction. The Realty Advisory Board is endeavoring to create anew right wing far, far to the right of the Liberty League, and it has logically chosen Walter Gordon Merritt as its leader. It was Mr. Merritt who punished the Danbury hatters. It was Mr. Merritt who found a law by which the homes of more than 700 workers could be taken away from them in payment of punitive damages: That was Mr. Merritt's way, but let it not be said without challenge that it is the American way. Soybean May Solve Baffling Problem BY RAYMOND CLAPPER WASHINGTON, March 17.—The versatile little soybean, which has been introduced into the presidential campaign by Col. Frank Knox, may yet do its part toward solving problems which have baffled statesmen, politicians and economic planners at Washington. Earlier hopes in the Roosevelt Administration that farm exports might be revived have not materialized. As foreign nations have become more self-sustaining, the prospects of regaining pre-

war farm exports have declined. Even the chance of another European war does not hold out the promise to farmers that the previous one did because of strong neutrality sentiment now. Americans are not as gullible as they were in 1914. They see now that pressure to sell wheat, cotton and pork to belligerents builds up a false market which not only can’t pay for its goods but which makes us run the risk of getting into war to serve it. Hence the struggle, first through AAA

and now through “soil conservation,” to curtail our so-called excess production. Meantime the soybean • has'' pushed its bright sprouts up in this seedy patch to offer some hope, small now. but significant. Last year 5.000,000 acres were planted in soybeans. The yield was 40.000.000 bushels, double that of 1934. The reason is that m nufacturers are finding new uses for soybeans. For H is using tons of them now. Soybeans are used to make paint, enamel, varnish, glue, printing ink, rubber substitutes, linoleum, insecticides, plastics—your automobile steering wheel like as not once was a bushel of soybeans—glycerin, flour, sauce! breakfast food, and cattle feed. Any bean that can fit into all of those things is bound to get along. Department of Agriculture experts expect a rapid growth in soybean acreage because there's money in these beans. a a a ILLINOIS leads in soybean production, which is also well established in lowa. Indiana, North Carolina. Louisiana. Missouri and Ohio. Fifty factories are turning out products made from soybeans. The Department of Agriculture is opening a soybean industrial research laboratory at the University of Illinois in co-operation with 12 North Central states. All of which sounds like hot-house stuff. But such an economic conservative as Col. Frank Knox has been sold on it and he is advocating industrial utilization of farm products, particularly the soybean, as a means of diverting acreage out of surplus crops. Other candidates, who may not wish to adopt the soybean since Col. Knox is sponsoring it, may, by sending self-addressed, stamped envelopes to the Department of Agriculture, learn the names of other potential proteges. Spies report the Jerusalem artichoke has it all over the gentile artichokes in money-making possibilities. a a a NEW YORK’S unemployment insurance and minimum wage laws have been thrown out by state Judges. The same old complaint, unconstitutional. The. Supreme Court says Congress can't regulate wages. The state courts say the Legislatures can't either. Some day a legislative body is going to declare a court unconstitutional. That will be news. Also there’s a dust storm out West. It is operating in four states. That's unconstitutional, too! Control of agricultural production is a matter reserved for the individual slates under Un; Supreme Court’s AAA decision,

INDIANAPOLIS, THE CITY OF SMOKE

This is the second of a series of art Icle* br Arch Steinel on smoke conditions in India napo'is. BY ARCH STEINEL may get in your eyes in dance halls as well as on thoroughfares bu; when it s. : fts into the pocketbooks in Indianapolis it takes 4 cents a day from every person in the city. Mr. Soot presents a monthly bill of sl.lO to each city resident, or $13.24 a year, whether you’re in the senile eighties or the cooing stage. Conservative estimates, based on increased use of coal

in the last year, show that in burning 700,000 tons of fuel the city wastes in extra cleaning, fuel, loss of combustion, sickness, and any number of other factors an estimated $5,000,000 because of the smoke nuisance. Itemized, the yearly bill may be presented as follows: Extra laundry cleaning .$ “50,000 Extra dry cleaning 375,000 Exterior painting 165,000 Curtain cleaning 130,000 Cleaning wholesale and retail store* 582,500 Cleaning store* in business center 375,000 Cleaning and damage to good* in department stores 87,500 Cleaning office building* 25,000 Extra expense hotel operation . 11,000 Extra expense for hospitals ... 27,500 Precautions to avoid loss of good* iy stores 225,000 Extra lighting of office* 325,000 Extra lighting of office building* 20,000 Eos* in fuel and combustion.. 1,000.000 Cost in sickness, metal replacement and other factors 851,500 Total J ,300,000 a a a THIS smoke bill is estimated to be half of that of Pittsburgh, based on records of three years ago. New York City has a soot monster that devours 20 times more than Indianapolis., while Cincinnati’s is estimated at almost twice the Indianapolis figure and St. Louis triples the $5,000,000 wasted in extra expense on soot. Indianapolis is appreciably smaller than the above cities in population and industrial activity. While housewives suffer from extra laundering and cleaning due to soot-fall, an examination of the city’s hotels reveals the extra cost in conducting a hostelry in a smog-laden municipality. P. E. Rupprecht, Lincoln Hotel manager, traces in scot-dust an annual cleaning cost for drapes and curtains at between SSOOO and S6OOO. “About half of that amount would be necessary if we had a clean city,” Mr. Rupprecht estimates. a a a THE $2500 to S3OOO saving on two items in this hotel in a year is exclusive of the extra personnel needed on the Lincoln’s housekeeping staff to keep rooms clean. Mr. Rupprecht estimates that his housekeeping staff is possibly four to five persohs larger than it would be with a cleaner city. One man is kept busy by the Lincoln washing windows. His job never ends. By the time he reaches his last window the first window is begrimed again. Filtering through weatherstripped windows the soot serves as a city’s greeting card to out-of-town guests if they sit down to dine, have a highball, or a vuiet smoke in the lobby. One hotel-keeper reported that traveling men would go out of their way to hunt clean cities for

WASHINGTON, March 17. Chester Davis, diminutive AAA administrator, sails for Europe this week, promising that he will return to Washington if he is needed. And he probably will be. For, behind the scenes, those in charge of the new AAA substitute farm program are worried. They now have the kind of farm bill they wanted, but the job of putting it into operation looks bigger than when the bill was first put on paper. Chief problem is cotton. First planting already has begun in the South and prospects are for a bumper crop. This year, the Agriculture Department has no power to compel reduction of acreage. The program is wholly voluntary. Last year it was not. Any planter who grew a surplus of cotton could not market it without paying a tax. The same was true of tobacco—but not of wheat, corn and hogs. Private opinion among those advising Secretary of Agriculture Wallace is that the most they can expect to eliminate from cotton production this coming year is 11,000,000 acres. This is about one-fourth of the total acreage. Total eliminated last year was 14.000.000 acres. They are not mentioning it above a whisper, but they fear

Clapper

Soot Costs Each Resident of City $13.24 a Year, Survey Shows

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

BENNY

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The Indianapolis Times

overnight stays rather than sleep in Indianapolis. “Scratch a soot-flake and you’ll find a laundryman,” hazarded one hotel proprietor, but the laundries are quick to urge abatement of the smoke-nuisance. a a a J. T. CANNON, Best-Grand Laundry manager, told how his company was affected by a smoky city and how film from the air drifted in through windows and forced the necessity of washing clothing twiceIn an effort to reduce their own smoke the Best-Grand company turned from firing boilers to purchased steam heat for power operation only to find that small plants and larger industries in the company’s viicnity poured their own chimney offal into the laundry. Handkerchiefs and other apparel in Indianapolis come to the laundry in a dirtier condition than in other cities, Mr. Cannon says. E. B. Cracraft, vice president and general manager of the Progress Laundry, estimates that 580,000 pounds of laundry with an average bundle placed at $1 is sent to the city's 13 largest laundries. City residents, about a third of them, send their laundry out at a weekly average of 580,000 pounds. The estimated weekly, bill for laundering clothing is $50,000, Mr. Cracraft says. a a a THE housewife loses about 10 cents weekly on each $1 bundle of extra washing necessary for garments that become soiled quicker in this “No Mean City” than in the West, Southwest and Pacific Coast, it is estimated by smoke abatement experts. “We do not guarantee against damage a curtain which is laundered by our organization. This is impossible because ol the condition of the atmosphere. Tars and acids from the sooty air reduce the wearing quality of curtains and drapes and they can not be washed as often as in a cleaner city,” Mr. Cracraft explains. “A drapery that appears to the eye,” he-continued, “to be in good condition will be torn by washing because of the destruction in the goods caused by acids and tars.” Mr. Cracraft says that where curtains could hang for one year without danger in cleaner cities, in Indianapolis they should be cleaned every 30 days or even less to protect fabrics from grime. His firm, on one occasion, laundered an unworn shirt 152 times and the shirt, he says, “looked as good as new.” “That same shirt after being worn and exposed to this city's atmosphere would fray at the cuffs and collars and become an old shirt in 50 weekly washings,” Mr. Cracraft believes. STATISTICS from Pittsburgh show that an average laundry bill is $5 a month, or $1.25 weekly,

that as a result, cotton will slump below 10 cents a pound. tt n a CHIEF stumbling block in the Senate to making ships safer at sea happens to be Young Bob La Follette, one of the ablest legislators on Capitol Hill. But Young Bob has a blind spot. It is his mania for blocking shipping legislation. One thing he has blocked is the Geneva Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. This is an international treaty requiring certain standards for life preservers, lifeboats, water-tight compartments, etc. It was written, strangely enough, by the American delegation, which had to exert considerable salesmanship to force it on the other countries. Signing it materially improved the safety of life at sea—but not for the United States. Seven years have passed and the Senate has refused to ratify. Young Bob has constantly blocked the treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Young Bob has been a consistent blocker of other shipping legislation. a tt it ONE bill introduced at the last session of Congress was for the improvement of the Steamboat Inspection Sendee. It was aimed to eliminate tragedies like the Morro Castle. Another bill aimed at raising the standard of crews, require-

TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1936

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Illegal smoke, under the Indianapolis Smoke Code, is smoke of such density that the sky can not be seen 10 to 12 inches above the stack top. Factories are given six minutes out of each hour to discharge illegal smoke before they become violators. The smoke from this stack in the lower photo is of illegal density. The upper photo shows the city administration violating its own code with a small stack at the City Asphalt plant, 900 block E. New York-st. The stack is responsible, according to neighbors, with resulting in much repainting of exteriors.

against Indianapolis and its bill of $1 a week, or $4 a month. Indianapolis laundry costs are lower than many Midwestern cities—Detroit, Toiedo, Chicago and Louisville —but increased washing is declared to keep the bills equal to, if not over, those of other cities. Klein & Kuhn, building managers, report that 13 office buildings under their direction cost $65 a month for window washing in each building. George Kuhn, member of the firm, estimates that window-shade cleaning alone averages $125 for each building during spring. The terracotta faces of the Kahn and Roosevelt Buildings are cleaned every four or five years at a cost of SSOO for each building. Mr. Kuhn says that if Indianapolis had cleaner air office building maids could cover 6000 square feet of office space a day instead of 4000 square feet. a a a CLEANING costs per - square foot are higher in Indianapolis than in many areas outside the soft-coal belt. Where Atlanta, Ga., and Seattle, Wash., clean buildings at 9 to 10 cents a square foot, the average in Indianapolis is 15 cents. Yearly cleaning of the building face of the William H. Block Cos. is necessary to keep the store’s front presentable. The cost, it is estimated, ranges between SSOO and SIOOO. Acids are placed in water to cut the soot and grime that cling to window-ledges and the building’s face. Washing of walls in office buildings ranges between $50,000 and $60,000 yearly at an average of 3 cents a square foot. One hotel keeps a painter busy the entire year redecorating guest rooms. Officials of the Indianapolis Postoffice sought bids on cleaning the structure’s exterior and found that the contract could not be let for less than $12,000. The project was dropped with the approval of

ments for lifeboat certificates and discipline aboard ships. During the closing days oi' the last session, unanimous consent was asked for passage of these bills in the Senate. They had already passed the House. But Senator La Follette objected. Mystery behind this paradox on the part of one of the most enlightened members of the Senate was the elder Senator La Follette. He fathered the La Follette-Jones Act, now regarded as the Magna Charta of American seamen. Young Bob is resolved also to be a friend of American seamen. But in doing so he is guided solely by Andy Faruseth, gnarled head of the Seamen’s Union. If Andy O. K.s a bill, Young Bob votes for it. Otherwise not. And Andy Faruseth, for some reason, has opposed recent attempts to clean up shipping conditions. tt tt o HEINRICH BRUENING, preHitler chancellor of Germany and now an exile with a price on his head, gave a series of lectures at Harvard last week for the Godkin Foundation, confining his remarks to very conservative observations on government. Asked by a friend if he had recognized anybody in the audience he said: “Only the men who w T ere taking down the lectures in shorthand for the German consulate.” (Copyright. 1936. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

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the construction of anew addition for the postoffice. The cleaning bids, however, were one-fifth of the cost of cleaning the Statehouse. a a a /CHARLES E. CLIFT, assistant custodian of the postoffice, is confident that the building could be kept cleaner if the soot storms did not clutter courtrooms and offices. He says 100 gallons of paint are used for redecorating the postoffice yearly. Sandblasting of buildings to clean their faces is frowned upon by some building managers. One building manager termed the job “criminal” for it Hs questionable

HAND SHOWS KEEN MIND

Today’s Contract Problem South’s opening bid was one heart. What bid should West make? How should the rest of the bidding go? A6 3 2 V 6 3 ASS 4 2 ADB 5 3 A K J 10 4 Tj A Q !> 8 *54 w [- VQJ92 ♦A K 7 w b 4 10 36 AAQIO2 S A J 6 4 Dealer AA 7 5 *AK 10 S 7 ♦Q J 3 A K 7 None vul. Opener—* 8. Solution in next issue. 10 Solution to Previous Contract Problem, BY W. E. M’KENNEY Secretary American Bridge League OF all my daily articles, this is the most difficult I have ever written. It always gives me great pleasure to announce the winners of various important tournaments throughout the country. Among these winners you have often seen the name of Louis Watson of New York. Mr. Watson died suddenly, the result of heart disease. He was a very close friend of mine and was perhaps the most loved bridge player in the United States. He played with a great variety of people, and his success was due to the way he handled his partners, never criticising, but always quick to commend them on a good play. He was the author of several books on contract. His latest work was the Culbertson System Self-Teacher, published by Contract Bridge Publications, a book

that it does not injure the building.” “I would rather take my buildings age and all than to sandblast them. Age and its action on limestone gives a building character,” he says. Executives of one new structure in the city, who declined to be quoted, are worried about their mosaic and marble for they see in the beauty wrought an almost insurmountable job of keeping their building free from the soilage of a city’s upturned chimney wastebasket. NEXT—Smoke in Industry and Railroads.

AQ 7 5 3 VA 8 4 ♦K 4 3 AA 5 3 A A2 N * 9 4 -VQIO 3 w c VJ952 4 Q J 10 9 w t 4 6 8 2 S 10 9 8 A Q 2 Dealer g A K J 10 S 6 \ VK 7 6 4A 7 5 A K 4 Duplicate—E. and W. vul. Soutfi W est North East 1 A 2 4 3 A Pass 4 A Pass Pass Pass Opening lead —4 Q. 10 which he was well qualified to write, having been chief technical adviser for the Culbertson organization for three years. We were discussing bridge problems in my office when he w r as taken ill. Today’s hand incorporates one of these problems. West’s opening was the queen of diamonds. The play which confronted the declarer was in which hand the diamond trick should be won. It must be won in dummy. Why? Because West has bid diamonds and it is now probable that East holds a singleton. If East does hold one diamond, the king will win the first trick. When West wins the second trick with the ace of trump he will lead another diamond and, even though East ruffs, this ruff, will cost declarer nothing, since he had the diamond trick to lose and he still has the ace. If, however, the ace is played on the first trick, West wall be able to lead through dummy’s king, thereby defeating the contract one trick. (Copyright. 1936, by NEA Service, Inc.)

By J. Carver Pusey

Second Section

Entered a* Swnnd-CU** Matter at i’ostoffice, Indianapolis. Jnd.

Fair Enough WESItiMHEt PARIS. March 17.—N0 doubt I will miss my .swing and fall flat on my face in my first attempt to deal with this idea, for it's a very elusive subject. It is my notion that the United States and Great Britain will presently, if they do not already, find themselves drawn together in a great bond nf mutual admiration, with a mutual feeling of superiority over the ocher nations and races

of the world. The sameness of language is a factor in the ripening crush,* but the democratic feelings of the peoples and their common instincts to resent tyranny, even when the tyranny is none of their particular business, as in Germany, Italy and Russia, are important, too. We also she re a strong mistrust for the whiskered tribes of the earth, feeling that any man w'ho is a man should face the world without a disguise, and we regard our bathtub and tooth-

brush civilization as something pretty close to perlection. tt u tt Ruffled Feelings qnRUE, we both like the French, but only as A people, and the real sentiments of the famous amis De France among the British and American nations, if they could be put to scientific analvsis would prove to be 99 99-100 per cent pure condescension. That explains why our feelings were so badly ruffled when we found ourselves out of money and the French began to deal with our tourists on terms. The French, moreover, are the most self-centered people on earth and are devoted to themselves and France and like friends only for what they can out of them. The British were their friends, for example, until it came time for France to help the British suppress the windy and rather sad ambitions of the Italians under Mussolini where they conflicted with British interests. But when Sir Samuel Hoare invi’ed France to help out with a little military pressure on the Italians, French public opinion simply would not make good. Italy was not attacking France and the French saw no reason to help their friends the British, whose interests were, in effect, under attack. But when the Germans moved into the Rhine, France yelled to Great Britain for help in parallel circumstances and there has been no small indignation here against the British for hesitancy. After all, the massacre of people and ideas in Germany is strictly a private German household matter and if it should please them to go in for paganism, palmistry or pig worship, that should be their affair, not ours, if we were as broadminded as we pretend to be. The most ardent defenders of personal, intellectual and religious freedom among the British and American races are among the most passionate and bigoted meddlers in Germany’s internal affairs, refusing to accord to this nation that privacy and independence of conduct which they bespeak for individual persons. Because we believe in freedom, there are those among us who denounce, despise and would like to fight the Germans for their violent disbelief in our beliefs. a a a Two Against the World have these thoughts and principles in com- ' , mon with the British and we also share their love of gaudy uniforms, parades, titles and ceremonies, but much more important than Everything else, we are both strong, rich nations with a feeling that if we don’t like one another we will be friendless against the whole world. I hope I do not seem to be negotiating an AngloAmerican treaty of mutual defense on my own responsibility. I am just trying to put on paper something which is blowing in the wind over here and wondering whether the same faint odor has been noticed on our side of the water since we found ourselves suddenly haywire with emotion over the death of George V and the grandeur of the British nation and the crown.

Gen-. Johnson Says—

March 17.—Since writing an ▼ T article for this column on the possibility of a vast low-cost housing program, based on cutting construction costs in two by quantity production and other devices, several important authorities on this and related subjects have talked about it to me in terms of some enthusiasm. The Administration has made several efforts along this line, in no less than four departments, but as the President was quoted recently, the net result is a mess. The government alone could not do this job—if it can be done at all. It would take a united push by labor, four or five great industries, and a lot of capital on a wide front. But it is a project exactly suited to that kind of combined effort under government leadership. The country needs a great deal more of that kind of co-operation in all ranks, such as it did have in 1932, and it might get it on this kind of plan. The present atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between nearly all business and government is bad for everybody. nan /CAPTAINS of industry are going to have to live V>< with this Administration for four years more and it would be a whole lot better to be pulling in harness with it than kicking over the traces and as the most natural thing in the world—getting kicked in return. Some important people are beginning to see this quite clearly. It would need some such medium and purpose as is suggested here to make it quickly effective. There has been some effort within the Administration to co-ordinate the purely governmental attempts, but this is a job of co-ordination on a much greater scale than that. Maybe it is quite impossible. It boils down to a single query. Can housing costs be cut in two by quantity production on a vast scale? That is an undetermined, but a determinable question. (Copyright. 1936. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)

Times Books

TF you want some new light on the Communist A experiment in Russia today, you might begin by finding out about the career of Peter the Great, who was czar some two and a quarter centuries ago. Peter's story will help you to understand Russia, its wildly barbaric background, and the strains o * violence and cruelty that mingle in its historv. when you have read it. you wKI have a better appreciation of the remarkable transrormation that is going on there now. A lurid story of this old-time monarch done in the fictionized-biogrdphy style, is at hand in “Peter: Called the Great,” by Maurice Bethel Jones (Stokes; $3.) The first thing that will strike you is the fact that Russia culturally is-or at least was-about 500 years behind the rest of Europe. The court and the people of Peter's day simply don’t sound European. Their intrigues; the sickening cruelty with which palace rebellions were squelched; the great brawling orgies of monarch and favorites, sound like things from some semi-savage oriental realm. Peter was the man who put Russia in Europe. He made the sprawling land an empire, broke the Baltic hegemony of the Swedes, Europeanized his people’* dress and manners (partly, anyhow), and awoke ?ne sleeping giant. (By Bruce Catton.)

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Westbrook Pegler