Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 June 1936 — Page 15

beral Side

HARRY ELMER BARNES ——————————————————

Mothers Know Where to Find Youngsters Now in Hoosier City

Batting for Heywood Broun the commencement season upon us we are sure to be treated to a larger than usual dose of rhetorical “baloney” with respect to the state of American schools and universities. We will be told in numerous quarters that the schools must be kept free in order to stimulate intellectual inquiry and to promote the spirit of progress. We shall doubtless be informed even by reactionary college presidents that the schools and colleges must take the lead in creating a new social order. Hence it is well to get down to earth and discover the facts as to how our schools and colleges are faring right now with regard to academic freedom and social leadership. For the purpose of in‘forming ourselves along this line nothing else is equal to the recent and elaborate pamphlet published by the American Civil Liberties Union 6n “The Gag on Teaching.” This gives us an abysmally depressing picture of intellectual oppression and administrative censorship. Among the charges made, and amply supported by documentary evidence, are the following: More laws have beerr passed in the years since the World War interferring with teaching in the public schools than in all our previous history.

” ” i History Text Books Revised ORE college professors have been dismissed or disciplined because of their views than in any other similar period in our history. Meaningless, formal “patriotic exercises,” flag saluting and conventional instruction in the Constitution in public schools are required by law. Special oaths of loyalty to the Constitution, not required of other public servants, are exacted from teachers in 20 states—and in many of them from .teachers in private schools as well. History textbooks have been revised to make past history square with today’s prejudices. Teachers’ unions are often opposed and in some cases outlawed. More student papers and liberal clubs in colleges have been censored than in any other similar period. Fundamentalists in three states have outlawed the teaching of evolution in all state-supported schools— and have secured that result by regulation in many others, This raid on the freedom of teaching has not abated. It is no post-war hangover which is now fadingo ut. On the contrary, it has taken on an unprecedented virulence in the last year.

” ” 8

Takes Alma Mater to Task T is with special regret that I note that my own alma mater stands at the bottom of the list with respect to tolerance of progressive ideas: “At Syracuse University, New York, a policy of suppression of liberal student activities has continued, unmatched, so far as we know by any other university. Students must sign ‘yellow-dog’ contracts agreeing to their dismissal any time without hearing and without stated cause. Student criticism of compulsory ‘military training is suppressed; the student paper is censored; even a private forum for students off the college grounds was closed. Protests by leading mempers of the alumni have brought no change.” I have only called attention to the highlights in tnis campaign of bulldozing intelligent students and teachers, Those who are interested in American education should write in and obtain this pamphlet and read it thoroughly.

My Day

BY MRS. FRANKLIN D. RCUSEVELT , Ill, Monday—We had a parade of

Dr. Barnes

RA G high school bands pass the house about 9:30

this morning, and then visited a sewing project and a National Youth Administration exhibit at the Carnegie “Library building. An Illinois farmers’ picnic, sponsored by four counties, Wayne, Wabash, White and Edwards, took up several hours of our day and was a most novel

and interesting experience for a lady from the East. I have been to county fairs and all sorts of organization picnics at home, but there were contests today * which I had never seen before. : I am afraid we can not start hog calling in Duchess County, but I think some of our horse shoe throwers could compete with Illinois. I would love to hold a husband calling to see if the voices of our New York women carry farther than they do in Illinois. The winner had a delightful call which ended with: “Come_in and do this washing, I'm going to see Mrs. Roosevelt.” The man of straw, set up for the ladies to throw rolling-pins at, was quite a joy. The wood chopping contest required Hore skill perhaps than any other. It was interesting fo see how well the older men could “chop a log. The contest was won by a modest young Negro boy who was questioned by the forester as to his ability and responsed he was “pretty fair.” And then he chopped the log through in one minute and "20 seconds. ‘ I am serving notice now that at the next picnic we have at Valkill cottage, we are going to have some new contests never tried before in our county. During the picnic a WPA band and a chorus of 40 Negro voices furnished really good music. ~The picnic was held on a farm belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Forst. They came down and joined forces with Mrs. Helm and we all sat together on the platform and shared our lunches. There was more food , than any ong could possibly eat—very good ham, chicken, stuffed eggs, salad, apple pie, cheese and every kind of cake. ; + When we left the picnic grounds we went for a . short drive in order that we might see some of the soil conservation and forestry work done by the CCC boys. The terracing is very interesting. It was significant to discover how comparatively little electrification, or . even running water in the house, there is in. this _ section of Illinois. (Copyright, 1936, by United Features Syndicate, Inc.)

New Books

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS—

. wrong if you have discarded play. 2 out of his experience as physician and psychi- ; , Writes feelingly of PLAY: RECREATION IN

* —

Second Section

TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 1936,

Indianapolis, Ind.

.

DISCOV

E - v

¥ BY ARCH STEINEL Times Staff’ Writer

(COLUMBUS, Ind., June 16.—A bare-footed boy, knee flashing through a tear in his overalls, stood near a desk in an abandoned

school building. Behind the desk, important as a hotel clerk, sat a second boy with pencil poised. The desk phone rang. The clerk answered:

“Yes—yes—yes he’s here now. He’s just checking out. You want him to come home to go to the grocery for you? I'll tell him. Okay, Mrs. Blank,” and the receiver banged. The desk clerk, as hard to get by as a “night-man” in a school dormitory, eyed the overalled boy and said, “Johnnie, your mother wants you to go to the store. You've already stayed longer at the club than you should, she said. What's that number on your card—256. Okay, you're marked out.” The bare-footed youth reached. high into a rack of cards and replaced his badge of membership in the Boys’ Club of Columbus and ran from the building. This scene is repeated in the Girls’ Club of Columbus. as well as the Boys’ Club of the town from 50 to 200 times a day in variations and with and without telephone calls from anxious parents. ” 2 2 !

HE abandoned “school buildings are the clubrooms sponsored by the Columbus Foundation for Youth, Inc. The “time-cards” in the rack are used as a method of checking the Columbus youngsters in and out of the clubrooms. : When Mary and Sammy say “Mama I'm going down to the club,” they mean it or else—and’ the “else” follows the reply of the club clerk ‘who reports: “No, he isn’t here.” The “time-cards”—or membership certificates—give the boy and girl members, about 80 per cent of the adolescent population between 8 and 21 years, the right to clubroom recreation after school hours and in the evenings. : Boys pay from 7 to 15 cents monthly for club memberships and girls 5 cents monthly.

But if the small change isn’t |

available in the youth’s home’ then work around the club pays for his games of snooker, the right to read in the club's library, or to Play forward on the basketball am. :

” ” ” EHAVIORISM around the clubrooms is keyed to “don't do what you wouldn’t do at home.” Rules do not clutter the walls. “And you'd be surprised what a few days of being expelled from the club does for a mischievous boy who goes off on a tangent,” explained Carl Schowe, assistant director of the Boys’ Club. Playing recreational parent to 1500 boys and girls, the leaders of the two clubs find that in some instances thre parents of children use the club as a parking place for their children when they wish to go shopping or- take -a ‘short trip out of town. “We haven't had much of it, but of course it does happen,” said Mrs. Eloise McGinnis, Girls’ Club supervisor. Neat curtains and furnishings adorn! the Girls’ Club. Where the boys go to woodwork classes the girls study cooking, sewing, handwork and art. - But nothing is compulsory. “If the girls want to attend a

1. The “checker-inner” at the Girls’ Club, Columbus, Ind., is Miss' Joann Neal, 10, desk clerk. She is shown putting down the name of Ruth Martin 11, reporting for'a recreational period at the club. i 2. A cozy home? Nope! This photo shows one of the cabins in the hills of Bartholomew County being built to house the vacationing youth of Columbus by the city’s Foundation for Youth. 3. Dean Williams, 16, is putting an eagle eye on the billiard ball in the Boys’ Club of Columbus. He says, “It’s swell now that we can ‘play pool for almost nothing when we used to have to pay for our

games in pool-halls.”

class, they can. We do not urge them. It is their clubroom-to do as they wish, within reason,” explained McGinnis. / :

Throughout the year special parties are given by the club members for their parents and friends.

» » t J HE close co-operation between citizens of Columbus, police and juvenile authorities, in shifting children from activities bordering on or, embracing delinquencies to the healthful atmosphere ‘of club membership is reflected in these incidents. She was 9 years old. She liftgd. things from stores. Pretty rings, cheap but bright bracelets, fascinated her. She ‘took them. A neighbor ‘woman heard of her

. petty thefts. She called Donald

Dushane, Columbus school superintendent. “Let Mrs. McGinnis of the Girls’ Club handle it, replied the kindly school executive. . Mrs. McGinnis handled it. The

girl received a free membership

in the club. Her hands sew pretty things instead of taking them from others—now. * —And ‘then there’s the muchreiterated story of the “Chain Gang” of Columbus and how they struck the prefix “under” from the word ‘“under-privileged.” The “Chain Gang” was a group of nine boys, ranging in age from 8 to 17. They wore small chains on their wrist. The chains enslaved them in: the secret—oh! so secret—order of smoking, swear-

ing, destroying property, with a .

final degree of membership that called for robbing of gum machines and merchandise. The “Chain Gang” was broken up. Several boys were arrested. They were placed on probation to

the Boys’ Club. Today records

LET'S EXPLORE

BY DR, ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

CAN

i

A LUNCHEON Raw I PROVE NOUR AFTERNOON § MEMORY AND POWER OF ATTENTION? YES ORNO §

EEE

i : Ww ; 3

YOUR MIND

g

fiz

fis

of 2 $s ah

i 7

show three of the nine boys graduated from high school, three are now in high school, two are in grade school. : One, the oldest of the nine, was found too late. He is in a correctional institution.

ESPITE purveyors of mottos that “one bad apple will spoil the barrel,” the leaders of the. clubs in Columbus do not see eye to eye with that philosophy. “You limit an ex-convict to his friends of his prison days and you get a return to crime. He is loyal to his group. You limit a delinquent child to other delinquent children and it has the same ef-

fect: He learns new ways from |

mischief,” Mr. Dushane declared. The lack of class distinction and sectarianism ‘in the clubs, he said,

- has done much to lift possible de-

linquents into activities far afield from street-corner loafing and petty thievery. And the cost of keeping youth on the '“straight-and-narrow” in Columbus—what is it? ; It is estimated at between $8000

GOV. LANDON SETS

BY MARK SULLIVAN

When Gov. Landon, by telegram, before letting the Republican convention vote on him, notified the convention of his own interpretation of parts of the platform, the incident had more si cance than the mere novelty of the action and the courage of the candidate. It was a development in a chain, and it is likely to be a precedent for a development which may lead to a new feature in the mechanism of American popular government. Gov. :Landon’s action arose out of something that began four years ago. In 1932, the Democrats wrote the best platform ever written by either party. The draftsmen of that

1932 Democratic platform included |

some of the ablest minds in the party, among them Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, ex-Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, the late Mitchell Palmer, former attorney general, and Mr. Swagar Sherley, former Congressman from Kentucky. The Democrats at the time knew the platform was good and properly

proceeded to call conspicuous at-|

tention to it. The presidential nominee, plane from Hyde Park to Chicago: to tell the convention that “that ad-

mirable document, the platform

which you have adopted,: is. clear; |

I accept it 100 per cent.” 8B 2h YY/ ZEN the Repuliiioah Sonven : tion met last week, they ; Immediately

Mr. Roosevelt, flew by{.

and $10,000 yearly for 1500 children or an average of less than 10 cents weekly for each chil member. . 2 ” ” OLUMBUS does noi wrangle over: who pays the bills. for the youth uplift movement. The school board furnishes*the“exec= utive in charge of the program, the city council provides tax funds of between $2000 and $3000 a year for recreational grounds; and the Columbus Foundation for Youth raises $5000 to $6000 in public sub= ‘scription yearly. . As Roster of ‘the directorate of the

a perusal of the town’s “Four Hundred” and its best business element. * . Whether Columbus business men have a lean year or the cash register rings heartily the annual drive for funds for the city’s youth is always :over-subscribed. Columb

heart an ription over the door

“of ‘its. high school building which

says, “The Hope of Our. Coun

try,” and is trying to make that

inscription mean something with

two. clubs—and ‘now a summer

camp—for the “privileged” chil-

dren of ‘Columbus.

Boys’ and Girls’ clubs reads: like

8 8.8 : : T telegram, the whole incident, was unique. Persons who pay attention to important documents, about Gov. Landon or American. history, may safely emphasize this one. I suspect it may turn out to be the landmark of a new development in our mechanism of ‘democratic government.’ Platforms are going to be written more carefully, as real pledges, and are going to be more watchfully scrutinized by the public. Presidents and parties are going to be held to more scrupulous performance, with odium as the punishment for non-compli-ance. : The situation which caused Gov. Landon’s action, the story of the writing of the platform, is told in part by Mr. Frank Kent. . In advance. of the convention an original draft was written by a group com-

Ce

T "DAN A GERMAN DOG.

(THE END)

PRECEDENT

posed mainly of liberals. According to the story, the group included, among others, Prof. Neil Carothers of Lehigh University, ‘Prof. E. W. Kemmerer of Princeton and Charles and Robert Taft. This first draft is sfid to have been satisfactory to Gov. Landon and his advisers. The draft was taken to Chicago. At Chicago the draft was necessarily turned over to. the official resolutions committtee of the convention.

Within the resolutions committee

the draft in turn was given to a

sub-committee of 11.

On this sub-

committee were several long-time Republican leaders, including exSenators Mr. Bingham of Connecticut, Mr. Edge of New Jersy, Mr. Reed of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Moses of New Hampshire. These made changes. The changes were not at all in the direction of conservation but rather in the direction of political palatability. Certain provocative phrases were taken out, some vote-getting phrases inserted.

THIS CURIOUS WORLD +

By William Ferguson

Ee"

| §seems to take’ -to -

PAGE 15

NEW YORK, June 16.—Of all the maudlin: notes sounded during the Cleveland convention of the Republicans, the worst, my opinion, was that the other day by Wes brook Pegler in a piece telling how his heart bled for the Republican party in its present; lack of gumption, character and political know-how, That was terrible and I told him so and he tried te pass it off by saying that it was only a figure of speech. He insisted, however, that a strong, clamorous opposition to the noisy arrogance of the racketeers of the Roosevelt Administration was necessary to stand off the development of a Fascist system of government or some other despotism of similar kind with a patriotic name. It seems that every time he goes to Washington he discovers more and more expensive house-guests of the taxpayers, sitting in sumptuous offices with their feet up, chewing cigars, draw- | ing from $1600 to $10,000 a year : : and deman what you are go- Pegler: ng to 0 do about it. yo 50" Westhrouk . ed him if he honestly thought that # event of Landon’s election this fellow Baie Kansas as master of the patronage, would be likely to abolish the useless jobs created by Jim Farley and _ the other bureaucrats of the New Deal to take care of personal friends and other deserving Democrats, He said, “No,” that he supposed Jim was no worse in principle than any Republican job-mastef under the spolis ExStent, bu Dosisted that Jim had just run hoge e 't know, however, but that Hamilton would run hog-wild, himself. & 3 toll ® = &

. Government Gets the Flops 1

1 was in an office in Washington not long ago,” he said; “calling on a house-guest of the tax-payers who gets $7500 or $10,000 a year. He is just & mediocre ex-newspaper man who never ran a very high score in the business and the job which he holds in the government never existed before and need not exist now. If he had the character which deserves $7500 or $10,000 a year he would not be

found in his present job because his self-respect wouldn’t stand for it and anyway he wouldn't have to go to the government for a guest job. The gove - ernment doesn’t get the good ones. The government gets the flops and mediocrites, the Jazies and the trade-marked old soaks who are up against it for grocery money. “I was in the city room of the Cleveland Press during the convention,” he said, “and I offered to bet that the salary of just one guest of the taxe payers in Washington under Farley’s administration whom I could name was consuming more money than the government received in income taxes from all the reporters, rewrite men, copy-readers and telegraphers on all three of Cleveland's daily news= papers. He retires from newspaper work and they support him. What kind of a system is that?” he inquired. © i “Well,” I asked “would it give you any more pleasure to support a Republican ex-newspaper man . in the same job at the same pay?” x Sg : 2 2 =» 33 3a A Kill ‘Bleeding Heart’ : 5 ’ 0,” he said: “Of course not, but I don’t wang to support any guests on such pay.” 2 “Wait a minute; hold still a minute,” I said. “Yo wrote that your heart bled for the Republican Party, Let us get back to the subject, No kidding, does your heart really bleed for the Republican Party and such humble patriots as Ogden Mills and Andy Mellon and the likes of George Moses and Jim Watson and this fellow Hamilton of the Landon crowd?” : 3 At that he just curled up and died. . 5 His last words were, “Kill bleeding heart story,® but it was too late. % 3

| Merry-Go-Round

BY DREW PEARSON AND ROBERT S. ALLEN : ASHINGTON, June 16.—Only one impasse is : likely to prevent Congress from going home this week, and that is a last-minute jam on the tax bill, : : The tax and relief bills are the only items on the entire legislative program for which the Administra« ‘tion and its leaders on Capitol Hill give a snap of their fingers when they’ whiff the green grass back ‘home and the sawdust of the Philadelphia convention; Also—and this is not to be sneezed at—a lot of the boys on both sides of the chamber are not at all anxs ious to put themselves on record certairni controversial questions, while so close to the Novembes deadline when they have to face their constituents; Result of all this is a long list of important bills almost sure to be left high and dry in the headlong ‘rush for adjournment. Among these are: “ Guffey Coal Bill—This is the substitute m for the law wiped out by the Supreme Court. I permits coal operators to fix prices in order to pay union wages. This bill is more likely than the others