Indianapolis Times, Volume 48, Number 47, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 May 1936 — Page 13

It Seems to Me NMMJN YORK, May s.—The Republicans have been too modest in the past. During the heat of several congressional debates G. O. P. spokesmen admitted that they had no planned economy or any Brain Trust. Evidently they were holding back in order to surprise the voters in November, tor Thomas Nixon Carver is out with a book called “What Must We Do to Save Our Economic System?”

and Prof. Carver also is the dean of the new board of economic advisers gathered together by Chairman Fletcher. Thomas Nixon Carver’s snake oil is not offered as a cure-all. The good gray sage is a specialist who can be seen only by appointment. He limits his practice to "the substantial people cf America.” And he describes his patients as "the real forgotten men.” Some newspaper readers may be inclined to believe that the professor is only spoofing when he advocates "the limitation of mar-

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riage to those who can afford to buy and maintain an automobile." But Prof. Carver never was more serious in his life. I studied economics under Carver, and there never was a chuckle in a carload of his lectures. When I elected his course, which was called "The Fallacy of Radicrl Panaceas.” or words to that effect, my faculty advi, er said, "You'll find Carver a good, sound man.” To my undergraduate eyes he seemed ever more doddering than that. nun That Harvard Smokehouse r I meeting of the minds occurred precisely 27 A years ago, but Thomas Nixon Carver was not yet ripe enough in reputation to assume the economic leadership of the Republican Party. He had to hang in the smokehouse up at Harvard for another quarter of a century to become sufficiently high in his profession to suit the requirements of the substantial people to whom he now offers sustenance. I got C minus in his course, which was pretty nearly bogey for me, but T might have done much better if it were not for the brilliant outfielding of Tris Speaker and an unusually warm spring in Cambridge. Carver’s course came in two sections. The first half was devoted to the radical panaceas— Socialism, the single tax and syndicalism. Often spokesmen for the heresies were allowed to state their views before the class. I remember James Mac Kaye converted me to Socialism. Carver let his adversaries have their fling because he was a man of great self-confidence, and in the second half of the course he took all the aberrant economists and crushed them under his Iron heel. At least that was the intention. But spring was soft and balmy, and every day Tris Speaker, the rookie outfielder of the Red Sox, performed new miracles at Fenway Park. Why, I saw Tris slide at least 20 feet upon his stomach and come up with the ball before it touched the sod. That was the very afternoon that Thomas Nixon Carver was demolishing the theory of Socialism. Being absent, I retained my faith in Tris and Karl. nun I Have A o Regrets NOR do I regret that I cut that particular lecture and many others in the Carverian summation for the status quo. Speaker could go back for a ball as far as any outfielder I ever saw, with the possible exception of Dode Packert or Harry Bay. Prof. Carver played his position upon a thin and shiny $5 gold piece. He couldn’t gp to his right, because to the right of Carver there was nothing but the end of the earth and the back of a giant turtle. He wouldn’t go to his left, although there was not the slightest danger of his crashing into the stands, and I gravely doubt that Thomas Nixon Carver then or now had the capacity to slide upon his stomach even to save the capitalistic system. Although the years have gone over his head, Thomas Nixon Carver is showing extraordinary agility as chief counselor to the Republican Party. He still can't slide on his stomach, but the old gentleman is making a very gallant effort to stand on his head. I think he’ll make it. His was always a massive forehead. Oil Plays Big Part in Landon's Career BY RAYMOND CLAPPER OKLAHOMA CITY, May s.—For weeks mysterious rumors have been going around Washington that “something is about to break” that will blow Gov. Landon out of the water. Something about oil. Senator Borah is supposed to have something up his sleeve to shoot before the Republican national convention. The Democrats are supposed to be waiting to let go if Landon is nominated. If the Landon people are worried about any of this talk, they do a smooth job of concealing it. The fact is that there probably isn’t much to worry them. The indictment seems to boil down to the fact, which it is understood the Laildon people admit, that Landon has been in the oil business most of his life and is a Republican and that a lot of other fellows also have been in the oil business and some of them are Republicans. Os course, you can smear up that set of facts until it looks like something coming out of the graveyard at 3 a. m. and that has been done. But when you go around the next morning to see what is wrong, you get lost in a vague fog and come out with nothing. The Oklahoma Republican organization is controlled by the oil crowd. Most of them have known Landon for years and are for his nomination, as are a good many other Republicans in Oklahoma. The Republican national committeeman is William G. Skelly, a big oil man. He was originally opposed to a Landon-instructed delegation although favoring Landon's candidacy. At the Tulsa County Republican convention in February another oil man entered the picture, James A. Veasey. He is general counsel for the Carter Oil Cos., a Standard of New Jersey company. He is generally regarded as spokesman in Oklahoma for Standard of New Jersey and Walter Teagle. Veasey is an old friend of Landon's, and at the Tulsa County convention he moved that the delegation be instructed for Landon. Os the 350 delegates, 250 were for Landon. The criticism is that a Standard Oil man would be so bold as to act in the open. • * * TTEASEY also is supposed to have been influential V in advancing Landon s candidacy in New Jersey, where Teagle’s brother-in-law, former Senator Walter Edge, is active in Republican affairs. Veasey claims that he is active for Landon in his own personal right and that it has nothing to do with his oil connections. Obviously, if he wants Landon to be nominated, he is going to work among all of his friends and associates just as any one else would. Out of it all comes a Landon-instructed delegation of 21, of whom four are oil millionaires, including Wirt Franklin and Lew Wentz, so-called independents. Landon’s feuds with Sam Fitzpatrick, of the Prairie Pipe Line Cos., a Standard of Indiana subsidiary, and with Stahdard of Indiana in the stripper oil fight are history in Kansas politics. But it is enough ‘to state that in two Kansas campaigns for Governor the Democrats have tried to beat Landon. Instead of them "blowing him out of the water” he carried the state. That is perhaps the beat testimonial as to his conduct and character. The Standard of Indiana crowd beat Lanaon for precinct committeeman in Independence, Kan., la 1930. the purpose being to knock him out of the state chairmanship.

LIVING IN A HOUSE ON WHEELS

Experimental Stage Passed, Now You'll See More on the Roads

H err. is the second of a series of articles on house trailers hr a former member of The Times staff, who now is on tour living in one. BY GEORGE H. DENNY '"JVHE modern house trailer, that neat, sturdy, inexpensive home on wheels which has attracted so many thousands to a free, exciting life, is a development of the last few years. But the beginnings of life on wheels are lost in prehistoric mists. Every civilization has had its transients, its wandering traders, its fugitives from natural catastrophe, political tyranny and religious intolerance. The wheel has been called the great ist invention and the first rolling residence must have followed close on the efforts of the man who inserted the first axle into cross sections sawed from a log. Skip a few thousand years. Wasn't it your granddad who stacked his family and possessions into a covered wagon, crossed the Alleghenies, built a raft for the wagon and ox team on the upper reaches of the Ohio River, floated down to the Mississippi, drove ashore and joined the surge to the new West? Grandad was seeking fat land, gold, timber, fur and freedom. Maybe the tax assessor had marked him too heavily back East, Maybe things just got too crowded when the new family moved in a mile up the "crick.” nun TTIS grandson, roaming the country today in a house trailer, has many of the same sturdy, pioneer qualities. He is an individualist. His foot itches. The grass ahead is greener. He seeks a better climate. He is tired of coal and utility bills. Taxes on the farm or store were mounting. Politicians had stolen everything but the hottest stoves and when last seen were buying asbestos gloves. These are a few of the reasons I have heard in the months I have lived with tne trailerites. There are other motives, of course. Retired farmers and merchants, business affairs settled for good, are looking for the best fishing, hunting or scenery. Health seekers are following tfie sun. Traveling salesmen and itinerant laborers mingle with schoolboys on vacation in the trailer camps. nun / T'HOUSANDS live on pensions from employers or the government. Traveling entertainers find this the best way to make the tank towns. Tournament golfers go the rounds of the winter meets. More than a few are just plain lazy, tired of the hurry and hustle of the cities and lucky enough to have the means to see the nation from a trailer window. Thousands are on the road only during vacation weeks. There are farmers whose Northern acres are frozen from November to March and who leave the care of the stock to the hired man. The covered wagon housed many wanderers long after the last claim was staked and the best of the public lands were settled. The next half century saw families on the move behind horse and ox teams; discontented, hoping for the perfect farm or job or climate. Southern sharecroppers are continually hitching up the mule in the search for a softhearted landlord. Only in the last 15 or 20 years have the transients who pick our fruit and berries acquired autos. Then about 1915 the auto campers were becoming commonplace. With guns, tents and tackle they were getting stuck in the mud of all the wilderness trails in their search for virgin lakes and forests.

THIS CURIOUS WORLD + By William Ferguson

• M'\ THE argiope SPi DER. NT M~ \ THREECOLORS- '' WHITER VEULOW f o j/jh HEM (SPHERE. HAS SUMMER. WHEN THE SUN IS NEAREST * THE EARTH, WHILE THE .NORTHERN HEMISPHERE HAS SUAAMER WHEN THE SUN IS FROM THE EARTH. , I "FOG BOWS" |~l SOMETIMES ARE VISIBLE DURINGaFOGS./ BUT, DUE TO THE SAAALL* lif|§wM|PS NESS OF THE WATER DROPS, ( these bows are \ VH/TEI, raWnl INSTEAD OF BRILLIANTLY COLORED. L&JS^OfyU f> 1M Y U Stuvict, IWC. s!^ Our seasons are not due to the varying distances of the sun. The northern hemisphere has winter when the sun is about 3,000,000 miles closer than it is in July. The heat of summer results from the fact that the sun's t ys strike us from a position almost overhead at that time, and the nights are so short that one day’s heat is held over into the next. --** r - '4.- : 0 A

The Indianapolis Times

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'T'HE first true trailer probA ably was hitched behind a covered wagon as a carry-all for excess tools, chickens or children. The first trailers hitched to autos served a like purpose. It was a simple step to stretch a tarpaulin over a rigid frame and spread the blankets inside. Then stoves and sinks and closets were added and the tent was traded for tires. The English were years ahead of us. They were exploring their moors and mountains in horsedrawn caravans, purely for the sport of it, while the covered wagon still was competing with the railroads here. They made the switch to the auto caravan as a vacation accessory long before we realized that possibility. But we have forgotten anocher form of mobile home, the house car, with living quarters in a sort of truck body. Many thousands

WASHINGTON, May s.—Senator Arthur Vandenberg insists that he is not a candidate for the Republican nomination. His close friends say his eyes are fixed on 1940. Friends who are not so close tell the story of Senator McNary of Oregon meeting Senator Jim Couzens of Michigan in the Republican cloak room last winter and remarking, “Jim, Vandenberg tells me he is not in the nomination race.” "Hummph,” they say Couzens replied, "no one else does either.” But despite these denials and disparagements, Vandenberg is a very definite and important factor in the G. O. P. scramble. He is Dark Horse No. 1. Should the onrushing Landon steam-roller slip a cog in the home stretch, should Borah and Knox roll enough rocks in its path, then the big pouter-pigeon-shaped editor from Michigan is the first on the list as compromise candidate. nan AND no one knows this better than Vandenberg. Which explains why, despite his persistent denials, Arthur is displaying all the symptoms of that most contagious of all political diseases, Presidentitis. The three most virulent sympI toms in Vandenberg’s case are:

TUESDAY, MAY 5,1936

The comforts of home!

are still in use, though the trend is to the true trailer. The house car-trailer controversy is sure to flare up where tin can tourists gather. The trailer fan points out that he doesn’t have to take his living quarters along when he drives to town for shopping and a movie. He can unhitch his trailer and park it or store it for a day or a year and still have the use of his auto. n n n r H ''HE house car owner replies A that he can negotiate roads and turns that would stump a trailer. He can back his house out of a dead-end trail with little trouble. He has fewer tires to buy. And so on. These are just a few of the arguments on each side. Small factories began to develop the commercial possibilities of the trailer home. A favorite

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

1. Sudden and dauntless bravery in attacking the New Deal. 2. Extreme cautiousness in sticking to the middle of the road on everything except the New Deal. 3. Buttering up all the other Republican candidates. No other candidate in the field is on such good terms with all the rest, and Vandenberg is determined that they remain so. Borah and Hoover, who don't like each other, like him. Knox was associated with him in the newspaper game. Landon doesn’t know him, but at least has nothing against him. In fact, Vandenberg is the one man whom, in a dramatic deadlock, they can all turn to. a a THE present role of ardent enemy of the Administration is anew one for Arthur. There was a day when he spoke sweetly and gently aoout Mr. Roosevelt and those around him. So much so, in fact, that G. O. P. diehards threw up their hands in disgust. That was during the dark days of 1934, when Arthur was up for re-election, and when few could speak ill of the New Deal in Michigan and live politically to tell the story. The campaign was one of the hottest in Michigan history, with the Senator conducting himself as more of a gentleman than most candidates have found advisable. In the end, he squeaked through to victory chiefly because of Mr. Roosevelt—though Mr. Roosevelt certainly didn’t mean to help him squeak. What Roosevelt did was to renew the NRA automobile code just three days before election. One of the most reactionary of all Blue Eagle creations, its renewal aroused anti-New Deal bitterness among Michigan’s great group of automobile workers. In retaliation against Roosevelt, thousands of them stayed away from the polls. This saved Vandenberg. On election morning he told friends that he was licked. That night, as he sat at home, gloom overspread the household. There was no doubt in their minds that the Senator was defeated. Then, at 10 p. m. the tide turned. When the votes were counted he had wriggled through by the skin of his teeth. a a a THE middle-of-the-road game which the Senator now is •playing is not anew one for him. Most of his senatorial career has been a 50-50 preposition. Vandenberg still was a Senate rookie when, during the early days of Mr. Hoover, he led a revolt of other junior G. O. P. Senators against their veteran floor leaders. The move sounded imposing and important, but when pressed for explicit idea, they had none to offer. Finally, it leaked out that Mr. Hoover had planted the housecleaning germ. He suspected (with sound reason) the loyalty of Senate Republican leaders and wanted to shelve them. When the old-timers ferreted out the “putsch.” they raked it fore and aft, dubbed the revolters “Young Turks,” and Arthur the “Kemal Pasha.” The rebels retired to their back seats, and that was the end of that. * * B ARTHUR has gcae a bit social since he left the furniture factories of Grand Rapids and

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All locked up, ready for travel.

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for several years was a canvascovered model that folded to small dimensions for the road and cranked up into a glorified tent with a rigid frame when in camp. Mr. and Mrs. Charles A.

came to the seductive salons of Washington. One of the triumphs of his social career was a recent dinner given by the Vandenbergs to Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair Lewis. Next afternoon Mrs. Lewis (Dorothy Thompson) was receiving a committee of Southern tenant farmers evicted from the cotton plantations of Arkansas. They were explaining the acuteness of their suffering, when in burst Senator and Mrs. Vandenberg from their adjacent apartment. Clutched in one hand was an account of their dinner, written by Martha Biair in the social columns of the Washington Herald. Woes of the tenant farmers were swept aside. The Senator from Michigan began reading the story aloud: “ ‘A tearing success,’ is what she calls the party. Just listen to this: ‘Mrs. Vandenberg, like a Roman general, handled 28 people in her apartment. She said the Senator always called her "O. D.” for Officer of the Day.’ ” "Oh, Martha is always so nice,” glowed Mrs. Vandenberg. At this jjoint Mrs. Lewis herself intervened. "You know, Senator, we have been talking about the sad plight of the share-croppers, and I thought their problem might interest you.” “Share-croppers?” replied the Senator from Michigan. “Sharecroppers? Oh, yes, I think Joe Robinson (Senator from Arkansas) has some of them down in his district.” And he turned back to society. Mrs. Lewis then suggested that the share-croppers talk to Gov. Landon of Kansas. She said he was looking for good "Left” causes with which to dispel the idea that he was pro-Big Business. (Copyright. 1938. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.i

GRIN AND BEAR IT + + by Lichiy

“Before the committee awards you the contract—have you any sample* we could seel”

A modern trailer.

Lindbergh took a Western trip in a similar outfit. Five years ago the factorymade trailer was rare. Homemade jobs outnumbered them 10 or 20 to 1. Last March, at the Clearwater (Fla.) camp, more than 60 per cent of the 300 outfits were factory models. The products of more than *SO factories were represented. Last fall I asked the man who built our trailer if he expected the large auto and body manufacturers to sense the trend, hop in with their capital and hugescale production methods and make it tough for the relatively small factories that have monopolized the business so far. n n n “r\F course they will,” he said. “If they were on their toes they would have run a lot of us out of business before this. Next year will see at least one of the big companies in the field.” If he is correct, it will mean the real beginning of the trailer boom. It will mean that the finest engineers will turn their talents to the job of producing the soundest, safest, most practical and beautiful house trailers ever imagined. Modern production methods will slash prices. Huge advertising appropriations will speed sales. The experimental stage has been passed. The principles are simple and easily applied. The market is huge, the buyer eager. Might not trailer building be a large factor in healing the last wounds of depression? So if all this crystal gazing should materialize, ycu may drive into a trailer showroom in a couple of years and ask how much they will allow on the old ’36 model toward one of the new, airconditioned jobs. The deal made, you may hitch up and roll away on roads where modern trailer camps are as numerous as tourist cabins today. Or, scorning camps and crowds, you may head for the national forests or the miles of unpopulated beaches and lake banks; independent, carefree as granddad in his covered wagon back in ’49. Tomorrow—What put the trailer tourist on the road.

Second Section

Entered ns Seeond-Cls* Matter at Postofflc*. Indianapolis. Ind.

ICmrtheWirld WM PHILIP SIMMS (Batting for Westbrook Pegler.) May s.—Revamping' of the League of Nations eventually to permit not only the return of Germany and Japan but the adhesion of the United States now is a distinct possibility. Reorganization would be based primarily on two factors which experience of a decade and a half at Geneva has proved absolutely fundamental, namely the factor of national interest and the factor

of regional responsibility. The United States would find In the reformed League, it is believed, an actual aid to the growing American demand for neutrality, rather than the peril of entanglement which so many profess to see. in the existing organization. Latin America is increasingly dissatisfied with the workings oif Geneva. Unless reforms are inaugurated important withdrawals are likely. The plans of President Roosevelt and Secretary Cordell Hull for anew Pan-American understanding would fit, hand-in-

glove, into the proposed arrangement. The present tendency to draw away from the "European League” might even be turned toward a more practical cooperation. Before that can happen, however, it is admitted here the League first must make up its mind to face world conditions as they are instead of continuing to pretend they are as it would like them to be. Until it does that, it never can be universal, and until it is universal it never can be effective. n n u National Interests Control Conduct THE League no longer can afford to ignore two things: First, that national interest controls the conduct of its members, not a high, detached, unselfish ideal of pure justice in the abstract. Second, the corollary of the above: that nations are influenced by geographical considerations. Japan, by way of illustration, invaded Manchuria. Britain remained indifferent. Had Japan seized Egypt or Arabia, Britain would have sprung to arms at once. Italy is swallowing Ethiopia. France doesn't much care. But Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland and Europe has been on the verge of war ever since. Should Nippon seize Outer Mongolia, Soviet Russia likely would join in on the side of the victim of the aggression. But by the wildest stretch of the imagination one can not conceive of France or Britain doing so. Yet both would fight at the drop of a hat were Germany to invade Belgium. The United States is doing everything it can to make sure ol keeping out of the next foreign war. Nevertheless, should an overseas power invade Canada or Mexico or most any of the Latin American republics, Un;!e Sam would most likely take up the cudgel. The present League of Nations is in peril. It is in peril because its Covenant ignores these facts. Under it, Mexico has the same obligations, should Germany annex Austria, as France or Italy. This leads the League to attempt the impossible, and, failing, to incur the jibes and distrust of a watching world. nut* Regional Understandings Needed r ■ ''HE kind of league which experience shows would A be most effective is one within the framework of which regional understandings and mutual assistance pacts clear around the globe might function more or less automatically, founded on national interest and geographical propinquity. In the event of war, or the danger of war, in any particular region, the interested nations would naturally do all in their power to check it. As for the others—those far removed geographically or otherwise—they merely would be pledged not to hamper the work of the peace-makers. Regional obligations and limited liabilty under a universal league would, it is felt, help solve the neutrality problem. America, for instance, wants to stay out of Europe and she wants Europe to stay out of the Americas. Instead of incurring enmities as she does now by her policy, the essence of her policy—her Monroe Doctrine, her efforts at neutrality, and so forth—would have behind it the force of international law.

Liberal Viewpoint

BY HARRY ELMER BARNES THIS is the season in which we commemorate the start of the good old American Revolution of 1775-1783 at Lexington and Concord. Even Mr, Hearst and the Daughters of the American Revolution pretend to find great joy in the deeds of our ancestors in those glorious days. Perhaps there are certain lessons which the red-baiters and antirevolutionaries of our day might learn from this dramatic era in American history. Prof. Goodwin Watson suggests such a lesson In his article on “Revolt on the Campus—l 774” in the “Social Frontier.” On the eve of the American Revolution, King's College (now Columbia University) was presided over by a brilliant young president, Dr. Myles Cooper. When the rumblings of revolution appeared on the horizon Dr. Cooper published in 1774 a vigorous warning against radicalism, which reminds one of some of the conservative hysteria of our day against the New Deal. Not even Mr. Hearst nor Herbert Hoover could give us a more glowing portrayal of the "old system” than Dr. Cooper set forth with respect to colonial life under the British government: “Our frame of government, for the admirable wisdom of its structure, has always been the wonder of the world, and under its protection and mild influence, the subjects of Great Britain are the happiest people on earth.” There are some direct lessons from this experience for the present day. Prof. Watson suggests one of them: "Was it not Thucydides who wrote in his ‘Historia’ that events ‘are very likely, in accordance with human nature, to repeat themselves at some future time—if not exactly the same, yet very similar’?”

Times Books

RECENT murder mysteries that are worth your inspection include the following: “The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece,” by Erie Stanley Gardner (Morrow: $2). Here we have Perry Mason retained by a young woman who fears that her uncle, given to roaming about thg house in his sleep with a carving knife in his hand, is going to exterminate somebody some night before anybody thinks to awaken him. Sure enough, a stabbing follows, and Mason has to go through all his delightfully illegal shenanigans to keep his client from being hanged. This yam may be a shade below Mr. Gardner's usual level, but it will do until the next one comes out. ‘The Dear Old Gentleman,*’ by George Goodchild and Bechhofer Roberts (Harper's: $2). This tale, somewhat unorthodox, but neatly written, tells of a Scottish servant girl who is tried for the murder of a pal. The jury hands in one of those Scotch “not proven’’ verdicts, and the star reporter for a local paper goes out to find out who did do it. The book introduces a nice, eccentric old gentleman who slowly becomes a pretty sinister sort of person before -the last chapter rolls around. All In all, it * a g<rd book. LB. Cj.

Wm, Philip Simms