Indianapolis Times, Volume 48, Number 61, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 May 1936 — Page 17

it Seems to Me HEVM.M CTAMFORD, Conn., May 21.—We were playing contract the other night with a cranky neighbor and his wife, who is not quite bright. They serve to make up a most unpleasant game, but is is the best the Ridge affords during the week. Os course, on Sundays wrten the New York immigrants come In nobody would go around to the Z’s even to borrow money, but they serve their purpose on rainy

Wednesdays and dull Tuesdays. And it was of a Tuesday, as I remember, that Mr. Z began with an opening bid of two clubs. "I pass,” said Cora, his helpmate, and Chauncey Z threw his cards all the way across the room and shouted, "How could you do a thing like that, you—you Communist?” I gravely fear that both "Red” and "Communist” are words which will have to be defined or discarded in favor of terms of nicer meaning. Unfortunately, the present loose usages to which I refer are not confined to the

Hejrwood Broun

parlor or the gaming table. Legislators toss them about as if they were biscuits and all the rest of the world composed of passengers on a nearby ship. For Instance, Mr. Hearst’s New York American quotes with approbation a speech made by Assemblyman George Parsons of Syracuse. Mr. Parsons was speaking in favor of the McNaboe bill which would appropriate some thousands of dollars to ‘‘investigate Communism in the public schools and colleges of the state.” But what are the boys going to look for? a a a Feet Off the Ground "T HAVE seen college students,” said the legislator 1 solemnly, "parading through my city carrying banners attacking the government, state institutions and newspapers.” Here is a poor, unfortunate lawmaker who has heard so much about the freedom of the press that he has gone slightly daft on the subject and has come to believe that it is some sort of crime for a free-born American to proclaim, "I think the Daily Bugle is a terrible paper.” Come, now, Mr. Parsons; get your feet on the ground. When did it ever become a crime to attack state Institutions? I wiil make a side bet that if I carry a sign through the streets of Syracuse saying "One of the assemblymen from your fair city is a lunkhead,” no jury in the world will convict. And as for the Federal government itself, I challenge the conception of Mr. Parsons that a college student, or anybody else, is not within his rights in flaunting signs derogatory of the actions of the Administration. a a a Complete Disagreement AS to the wisdom or propriety of Mr. Hoover’s attempt or Senator Dickinson’s attempt "to undermine the wrole structure of government,” I might be in complete agreement with Mr. Parsons, but I can not join him in this belief that "there ought to be a law.” In fact, I would like to remind Assemblyman George Parsons of Syracuse that his words serve to give aid and comfort to those who would nullify the Constitution of the United States and rip its Bill of Rights to tatters. I do not know which newspapers the college students of Syracuse were attacking in their banners, but in certain parts of the country ooth professors and students have felt it their duty to defend the American system of education against the attacks which are being made upon it by Mr. William Randolph Hearst. I can assure Mr. Parsons that there is nothing whatsoever in the state or Federal Constitution which says that Mr. Hearst or any other newspaper proprietor is immune from public criticism. I might even add for the assemblyman’s peace of mind that it is by no means impossible for a college student to be against Hearst and the revolution at one and the same time. (Copyright, 1936)

Labor Now Is Left to Wage Own Fight BY RAYMOND CLAPPER WASHINGTON, May 21.—The New Guffey coai bill seeks to salvage from the old measure, knocked out by the Supreme Court, the price-fixing provisions. If these can be m.<\e to stick, the plan is to then leave it to John L. Lewis and his mine workers union to enforce the invalidated labor provisions by the old anarchic method of labor warfare—pulling a strike wherever an operator tries to ut wages. There is little doubt among informed persons but that Lewis and his labor union are powerful enough to look out for themselves. The regret among some who stop to think about it is that the Supreme Court's action forces a retrogression by killing an attempt to adjust industrial disputes peaceably through public agencies and thereby leaving labor to look out for itself with a club. Ths public is privileged in this industrial warfare to stand back and take the consequences. Even this effort to salvage part of the Guffey Act Is a gamble. Nobody knows what the Supreme Court would do with the re-enacted price-fixing provisions. The court did not specifically throw them out on their merits. Chief Justice Hughes and the three dissenters 6aid this part of the law should have been upheld. The five majority justices said that since the labor provisions were unconstitutional, the price-fixing provisions logically go out also, the tail with the hide. If Congress sends back just the tail, and makes no irritating references to the hide, perhaps the Justices will be more lenient. But nobody knows. It all depends upon how the court may happen to interpret the commerce clause. This clause has been a football of judicial interpretation for years. The court's interpretation has varied from time to time, depending upon the judges. a a a IN general, up to the advent of the New Deal, the tendency had been to broaden the scope of the commerce clause. Since 1933, the tendency has been to narrow it until now unless you actually catch it on wheels, rolling across a state line, it is apt not to be considered interstate commerce. At first, under the anti-trust laws, the court held that operations of stockyards were local. Thirty years later it upheld Federal regulation of stockyards because of their effect upon interstate commerce. From 1910 on. Federal regulation broadened rapidly, with Supreme Court approval, reaching into food and drugs, white slavery, theft of motor vehicles, inspection of food animals, and many other activities not in themselves commerce. Regulation of stockyards and grain exchanges, although local activities, was upheld because these activities, in their effects, extended into other states. Interstate movement involved in come of the cases was very slight or incidental. Generally, it was not the effect upon movement of goods which was important but the effect of the practices upon business in other states—upon price, supply or competitors. In the boycott cases, such as the Bedford stone case, the court held that refusal of union workers in other states to handle nonunion goods was an undue restraint on interstate commerce. A comer on the New York Cotton Exchange was held to be an unreasonable restraint of interstate commerce. Vandevanter wrote that opinion. He said the effect of the cotton corner on the nationwide price of cotton—price mind you, not transportation—would burden the due course of trade and commerce among the states. Regulation of grain exchanges was upheld although grain exchanges affected movement only through effect on price. Taft, as chief Justice, held that "sales of an article which directly affect the country-wide price of any article directly affect the country-wide commeroe to It."

America Goes Electric Pioneer Broadcasting Station and BillionDollar Industry Grew Out of Dr. Frank Conrad’s War-Time Experiments. The habit* of the whole nation were changed by the development of the radio In the day* following the World War. David Dietz, Science Editor of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers, tell* today how the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Cos. pioneered in radio. This year the company Is celebrating its golden Jubilee, the fiftieth anniversary of its founding by George Westinghouse. a a a BY DAVID DIETZ Seripps-Boward Science Editor JT looked for awhile as if the nation would be faced with a shortage of oatmeal boxes. The situation was more serious then—the year was 1921—than it sounds to you 15 years later. For in the year 1921 a cylindrical cardboard oatmeal box possessed an importance which far transcended its original purpose as a container for oatmeal. It was an introduction to the esoteric circle of those who understood the newest miracle of the world of science. With an oatmeal box, a few hundred feet of copper wire, a bit of mineral crystal and a telephone receiver, you could fashion a device that would pick music and voices out of

the air. The younger gs iteration, which has grown up in an atmosphere of nine-tube radio sets equipped for long, intermediate and short waves, will never kno v the thrill of hearing the first faint sounds from the earphone of a crystal detector radio set which you constructed with your own hands. The oatmeal box was the foundation for the tuning coil. You wound this copper wire around it, making a little twisted loop every five turns. Later you scraped the insulation from these loops and soldered other pieces of wire to them which in turn were soldered to the contacts of a switch. Before the World War, radio was known as “wireless,” and it was chiefly wireless telegraphy. There had been some experimenting with wireless telephony but no one saw much of a future for it. a a a THE world had been mildly thrilled when in 1903 Marconi sent the first wireless telegraph message across the Atlantic. It was genuinely excited when on Jan. 23, 1909, Jack Binns sent the famous "CQD” which brought other ships to the aid of the sinking Republic and made possible the saving of passengers and crew. But until the World War, public interest in wireless was confined to a small handful of amateurs. The other day at the Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh, I sat in the office of the man who led the revolution in radio, Dr. Frank Conrad, assistant chief engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Cos. Medium in height and stocky in build,

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND —BY DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

a' we pecn£^w afferent ivpe 2 rXtSf I -r,r; tr- nes or. wo

1 ACCORDING to the “Keeping Up with the World” department of Collier’s Weekly (noted also in Reader’s Digest), a personal letter is a legal form of manuscript and therefore not the property of the recipient but that of the person who wrote it. Even excerpts can not be published without the permission of the writer, his heirs or his executors. a a a 2 ON THE average they are. Prof. Lewis M. Ter man, Stanford psychologist, and his associates gave tests of 545 portraits of personality to 100 divorced men, 100 divorced women and to 100 happily married and 100 unhappily married couples. The divorced persons were on the average the most aggressive, most likely to bawl out the waiter for poor service, most likely to bluff their way past a doorman, more selfsufficient and quicker in making decisions; but, strangely enough, they were more tolerant toward other people’s opinions, less mercenary and easier to borrow money from

The Indianapolis Times

Dr. Conrad impresses you most by the easy simplicity of his manner and the warm geniality of his smile. A movie director would pick him as the type to play the proprietor of a small-town store on Main-st. He has no outward characteristics that a movie director would associate with a great scientist or a great engineer. But the fact remains that this mild-mannered, pleasant-faced gentleman laid the foundations of a billion-dollar industry and changed the habits of a nation. a * a THE story begins in the early days of the World War. The nations soon saw the value of wireless on the battlefield and the British government engaged Westinghouse to carry on certain researches. Dr. Conrad, already famous in engineering circles for his work upon automobile ignition systems, was one of the men assigned to the task. In 1917, America entered the war and Westinghouse—and Dr. Conrad—continued their radio activities for Uncle Sam. The U. S. government gave Westinghouse licenses to erect two experimental radio stations as part of the research. One was located in the Westinghouse plant, the other a few miles away in the home of Dr. Conrad. By the end of the war, Dr. Conrad had worked out the fundamental practices upon which radio broadcasting is based. During the war, Uncle Sam had created a patent pool in the radio field so that development work might be carried on at full speed. Dr. Conrad went ahead with his experiments. He depended in large part on reports from the operators of amateur stations in various parts of the country for information upon the success of his efforts, and so he took to playing phonograph records over his station, announcing baseball results, news dispatches and the like.

(especially true o' divorced women) and good people to go to for advice. Os course this was only the general picture; necessarily some divorced persons did not fit the general picture. a a a 3 THIS is the biggest wad of bunk with which nations deceive themselves and their people into going to war. As Nathaniel Peffer says in Harper's Magazine (abridged)— modem nations do not use conquered territory for their surplus populations even when they conquer it. There are 5 times as many Germans in New York State as were in the 900.000 square miles of German colonies in 1914; as many Italians in one square mile in New’ York City as were in all Italy’s African colonies in 1914 and 50 times as many in New York State; only 200.000 Japanese have moved into Manchuria, although Japan sacrificed 300,000 men in 1905 to conquer it! NEXT—Are women more emotional than men?

THURSDAY, MAY 21,1936

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In a million American homes, coils of copper wire were being wound on empty oatmeal boxes—the Radio Age had dawned.

■Jk/TE AN WHILE Westinghouse of■l*-*- ficials were gazing upon the size of the funds they had sunk into radio research and beginning to wonder how they were going to realize a return on their investment. It was suggested that the facilities of the International Radio Telegraph Cos. might be used to furnish a news service to ships at sea but the necessary arrangements could not be made at the time. It was obvious that the lack of secrecy made the radio telephone unsuited for direct communication. Ore day in 1920, H. P. Davis, vice president of the Westinghouse company, picked up a copy of a Pittsburgh newspaper. Mr. Davis was in charge of the company’s radio activities. In the advertisement of a Pittsburgh department store he found a consignment of war-time radio receiving sets offered for sale. With one of these sets, said the advertisement, you can listen to Dr. Conrad’s radio station and hear music, baseball scores and the like. In that instant, radio broadcasting was born. The ad gave Mr.

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

WASHINGTON, May 21.—0n the surface, the Tennessee Valley Authority has been as serene as the hills which tower behind Norris Dam. Underneath, however, a bitter feud has been raging between two members of the three-man Authority. They are Dr. Arthur E. Morgan, chairman, and Davis E. Lilienthal, his associate. Policies are not involved. The two men just can’t get along together. Dr. Morgan, an engineer, and president-on-leave from Antioch College, has charge of the socialwelfare phases of the great power project. He is trying to build up a new kind of power-minded community in the South. Lilienthal, a lawyer, and former member of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, has directed TVA’s distribution of power and the numerous legal battles which have attended it. a a a YOUNG and dynamic, Lilienthal has many strong admirers in the Administration and Congress. Also he is the most publicized of the three Authority members. Friends of Morgan say that Lilienthal is “aggressive and pushing,” has been secretly trying to “undermine” the chairman, and wants the place for himself. Lillienthal’s friends, on the other hand, accuse Morgan of jealousy, say he is a difficult man to get along with, Is at loggerheads with other TVA’s officials. This undercover vendetta came to a head some weeks ago, when a communication from the White House addressed to Authority was turned over to Lilienthal by a TVA clerk. Morgan deeply resented this, considered it complete confirmation of his charge that Lilienthal was trying to usurp the chairmanship. a a a WHEREUPON he went to the President, asked him not to reappoint Lilienthal. Morgan actually intimated that if Lilienthal were renamed, he would quit. (His term still has six years to run.) Morgan also suggested several men as successors to Lilienthal, among them John L. Neeley, a TVA engineer. The President, in turn, called in Senator Norris of Nebraska, as he does on all TVA problems. Norris urged the reappointment of Lilienthal regardless of anything Morgan said or did. If it were a choice between the two men, he told the President, he considered Lilienthal the more desirable. The President informed Norris he would reappoint Lilienthal, but that he did not want to lose Morgan. He suggested that an effort be made to bring the two men together. Mutual friends of the two have been working on them to this end.

Davis the clew he had been seeking. Instead of attempting to limit the radio telephone to direct communication, the idea was to make its voice available to all listeners. And the way to make radio pay dividends was to operate a broadcasting station so that people would buy receiving sets. a a a A CCORDINGLY arrangements were made to open the station on the night of Nov. 2 by broadcasting the returns of the Harding-Cox election. Thus did Radio Station KDKA make its bow to the world with a historic broadcast. At the start there was no studio attacr ed to the broadcasting station. The microphone was in the same room with the broadcasting apparatus. Before long it appeared wise to give up phonograph records for a real orchestra and so the KDKA Little Symphony was organized. Old-time radio fans will remember it! The orchestra was crowded for room and so when warm weather arrived, the orchestra moved to the

Last week, with the expiration of Lilienthal’s term only three days away, Norris urged the Senate Agriculture Committee to approve his reappointment, even though the President had not sent it to the Senate. This is completely unprecedented. Traditionally the Senate waits for the President to act first. Nevertheless the Committee in this case approved David Lilienthal unanimously. a a a SENATOR M’ADOO wears a happy grin these days as he flits from place to place with his girl-bride. The Senator, now 74 years old, affects nobby, youthful clothes, tosses his hat half way across hotel lobbies to checkroom girls, kids waitresses, and mingles with cocktail sippers as capriciously as a college boy. U tt tt THIRTEEN has been a lucky number for the National Labor Relations Board. Early efforts of that body to referee industrial disputes were frustrated by injunctions, one after another, up to 13. District Courts restrained NLRB evt n. from holding hearings to learn the pros and cons of each dispute. With 13 restraining orders

GRIN AND BEAR IT + + by Lichty

“ An’ when they ask what salary you want, tell 'em ‘plenty — they'll think you're somebody then.”

roof of the building. A tent was erected to keep the wind from blowing the music sheets away. Immediately it was noticed that the quality of the concert was improved. The reverberations which had previously been noticed were absent. And so, when cold weather arrived and the orchestra moved indoors, it brought the tent indoors also. It was then realized that the same effect could be obtained by draping the walls of the room with burlap and thus the modern radio studio was bom. A way was wanted for relaying programs from station to station—the connecting network of telephone wires was not then looked upon with favor—and Dr. Conrad turned his attention to shortwave radio. Two short-wave relay stations were built, KDPM in Cleveland, 0., and KFKX in Hastings, Neb. The rapid rise of radio to a billion-dollar industry and the growth of the great broadcasting networks is contemporary history. NEXT—Electrifying the railroads.

against it, the Board finally got a break. Three Circuit Courts of Appeal reversed lower courts, and held for the NLRB. District judges immediately changed their tune and sided with the NLRB in 39 other injunction suits. Publicly, Senator Arthur Vandenberg is still maintaining an attitude of good will toward rival Republican presidential candidates. But privately it is a different matter. Following Gov. Alf Landon’s recent radio interview, Vandenberg told friends he thought the views expressed by Landon “were terrible.” . . . The six-weeks’ delay in getting approval for the Resettlement Administration’s widely acclaimed movie, “The Plow That Broke the Plains,” was not the fault of Comptroller General J. R. McCarl, but one of Resettlement’s own lawyers, who tried to place the film in the hands of professional friends in Hollywood. . . . When sixth-grader Jack Greenway, student at a Washington private school, goes to commencement exercises next month, he will listen to an address given by his mother, Mrs. Isabella Greenway, Arizona Congresswoman. (Copyright, 1936, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

Second Section

Entered a Second-Cla** Mutter at PostofTiee, Indianapolis, In3.

Liberal Side by HARRY ELMER BARNES (Westbrook Pegler Is on Vacation.) r £''HE Chamber of Commerce of the United States has recently held its annual meeting. It brought together what it believed to be “the sound economic principles’’ which it demanded, during its meeting, should be restored in this country. These are cogently commented upon in the “American Observer.” They may be -regarded as the authoritative expression of the opinion of the leaders of American industry. Among the more important principles enunciated are the following: The government must not "impose upon business

rules of conduct pertaining to such matters as wages, hours, conditions and terms of employment.” These matters should be left entirely to industry. The Chamber maintains that business must provide for economic security and opposes Federal and state social security legislation. Any attempt of the government directly or Indirectly to control production, is sweepingly condemned. a a a Profit Welcomed

TT Is maintained further that the government should not in any way compete with industry. This declaration is aimed particularly at the production of electricity under government authority. The Chamber holds that the distribution of income among the people and classes of the country is a major problem facing business, but it refuses to specify just how this problem is to be handled. The proposal of the government to provide on a large scale for the rehousing of America is denounced. It is contended that housing is a local problem to be kept in private hands. As might be expected, there is a sweeping attack upon the rise in governmental expenditures for relief and other social purposes. In the addresses during the recent convention it was urged that relief be turned back to local authorities and government public works projects abandoned. a a a "Y'ET there seems to be no objection to holding out the tin cup to the government In case industry may profit directly therefrom. For example, government subsidies to private American shipping interests are urged so that we may maintain a merchant marine under the American flag. The Chamber rallies heartily behind the Supreme Court and its recent reactionary decisions. It contends that the power of the court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional should not in any way be curtailed. Without exception, these are the policies and principles which led us into disaster in 1929. To follow them once more would most certainly involve us in another great collapse. Major defects of the era which closed in 1929 were either cut-throat competition or the crushing of the small business man by the great concerns which could undersell him. a a a Inviting Anarchy Again TN the dark days of the depression business cried out for some sort of economic planning. In fact, one of its major leaders, Gerard Swope, drew up a plan which suggested the later NRA. Now it turns its back upon such proposals and invites the anarchy which helped us into the abyss. Business had an ample opportunity before 1929 to consider the problem of the redistribution of income. But it failed to recognize or to tackle it resolutely. The proportion of the national income going to the very rich was greater in 1929 than in 1921. If the government has now stepped in to deal with this problem, it is only because business defaulted the opportunity. The same may be said with respect to the problem of security for the workers and salaried classes.

New Books THE PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—TT is a story full of warmth, human sympathy burning indignation, humor and bitterness which Mary Heaton Vorse tells in A FOOTNOTE TO FOLLY (Farrar & Rhinehart; $3). Here is the account of the long fight for social reform waged during the last 30 years, and of her own part in it as a writer and, sometimes, labor organizer. In these pages are the figures associated with that battle—Big Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Flynn, Mabel Dodge, William Z. Foster, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Mother Jones, the militant little woman with white hair, lace collar and black silk basque. Above all, here are the under-privileged children; for amid the strikes and strike-breaking it is of the children that Mrs. Vorse is ultimately thinking. And here is Mary Heaton Vorse herself, the generous heart of a generous tale. a a a IN I MET A GYPSY (Knopf, $2.50), Nora Lofts tells stories of the descendants of a gypsy girl who in the sixteenth century led the other Sisters from a pillaged convent to safety by sacrificing herself. Each tale is separate and yet in each one is mirrored the qualities inherited from the gypsy ancestor. There is a colorful picture of a smugglers' hangout on the English seacoast, a thrilling tale of a devastating fire on an African slave ship, and a stirring "Finale” played in modem war-ravaged China. Here are weaknesses of all kinds, but also here are underlying strength and fineness that grip the heart. Distinctive prose and a fine feeling for a a story make this an outstanding book. a a a MOSCOW EXCURSION (Reynal and Hitchcock; $1.50) is a humorous book about a country and a people which are very definitely not funny. Pamela L. Travers is Irish. She likes to laugh, so she jokes about the eternal statistics, the collective farms, the factories and the babies, shown and so carefully explained in Russia’s organized system of mass sightseeing. Miss Travers, with- her intelligence and wit manages to convey to us in these letters, something of the amazing temper of this enigmatic country. But the thoughtful reader senses underneath the banter a kind of fear. Something, some quality that lives and flourishes in Green Ireland, is missing in thess people. You can't get past their eyes. a a a GAUDY NIGHT (Harcourt; $2.50), by DorothySayers, is an unusual detective story which is at once intelligent, amusing and mystifying. The scene is a mythical woman’s college in Oxford, and the mystery concerns the identity of a “poltergeist” who makes its ghostly clatter by destroying precious antiques and wrreking various rooms sacred to the college. These disorders are accompanied by anonymous letters which soon menace the fine reputation of the school and the lives of the residents. The solution of the mystery brings about a happy ending to a love story, straightens out some feminine psychological kinks and provides the reader with a novel of interesting background, keen characterization, and caustic humor. Very deservedly a best seller.

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Dr. Barnes