Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 February 1937 — Page 14
PAGE 14
The Indianapolis Times
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4 cg RIley 5551 Give Lioht and the People Will Pind Their Own Way MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1937
Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co, 214 W, Maryland St.
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THE MOSCOW VERDICT ROM start to finish, the whole Moscow trial was fantastic. But no part of it was more surprising than the verdict. The famous Radek and three others were let off with light sentences—some eight, some 10 years in prison. Yet, according to their own almost unbelievable confessions, they were as guilty as the 13 others sentenced to be shot. We shall not attempt to rationalize either the trial or the court's findings. In Anglo-Saxon countries the whole procedure is different. Our court procedure requires the production of substantial evidence proving the commission of a crime. Mere confession is not enough. The Moscow trial did not provide such evidence. Seventeen accused men were put on the stand, then told to confess. Which they did with what seemed cager abandon. But confessions—any policeman will tell you—are not proof, Every famous murder trial brings a block of crack-pot confessions. Elsewhere in today’s paper will be found Leon Trotsky's explanation of the Moscow performance, It may or may not be the true one. We admit we do not know, We do believe, however, that it would be found interesting. Jut there is this to be said of the strange events in Moscow. Dictators everlastingly have to be on guard. Whereas a democracy rests upon too broad a base to be toppled easily, a dictatorship may be destroyed by destroying one man. Hence that individual must make certain his enemies are not permitted to accumulate. That is not true merely of Russia. dictatorship.
It is true of every
RAINY DAY RESERVES WO THINGS are about to happen. They will bear watching as they relate one to the other, They are: 1. As the floodwaters recede, corporations will send their employees back into the plants to clean up the mess, rebuild, and repair machinery not completely ruined. Equipment damaged beyond repair will have to be replaced with new. The cost will run into many millions. 2. Because some half a billion dollars in sales and nuisance taxes are due to expire, and because the Government has to have that revenue, Congress soon must take up the question of taxes. Congressional leaders have not decided yet whether to limit the tax bill to a renewal of the expiring excises, or open up the whole tax structure for a general overhauling. What is the relation of those two situations, one to the other? Simply this: Our present tax laws include what is known as a corporate surplus tax, enacted hastily last year. This is a steeply graduated tax on undistributed corporate income. It forced many corporations last year to pay out in dividends income which otherwise would have been held in reserve for just such an emergency as this flood. One very good test of the wisdom—or lack thereof—of this law will come when we learn to what extent the taxforced disgorging of dividends has interfered with the ability of the corporations to re-employ and rebuild in the flood areas.
HITLER—AND EUROPE’'S PEACE S was feared, Adolf Hitler did not rise to the opportunity which Premier Blum and Foreign Minister Eden had presented to him by their bid for Germany’s collaboration in assuring the peace of Europe. True, in respect to France and Britain and the other nations of Western Europe, Der Fuehrer protested the friendliest of feelings and the best of intentions. Of them, he said, Germany asks only the return of colonies taken from her by force, and recognition of Germany’s solemn renunciation of the World War guilt clause in the Treaty of Versailles. But the condition of the French-British proffer of aid to Germany was something more than Hitler's promise not to attack them. They had bid for his co-operation in a collective security program for the whole of Europe. And
to this petition, Hitler replied: “It is unthinkable that |
German soldiers should serve to protect Bolshevist Russia or accept aid from Russia.” So it seems that while Hitler is quite willing to join in an alliance with the rest of Furope against Russia, he is not, for the time being, interested in joining with the whole of Europe in an alliance against war. And that is disappointing, for Europe is so constituted that to have peace anywhere on the continent it must have peace everywhere on the continent.
THE MOVIES’ NEWEST ROLE N Jacksonville, Fla., citizens recently were shown a film in which a “cast” was made up of known pickpockets and shoplifters. The idea was to warn against such crimes during the holiday season. In Indianapolis and many other cities, safety films have been used to show adults and children how to avoid accidents.
Instead of relying upon memory and the testimony of the arresting officer, the Los Angeles Police Department has been taking movies of auto drivers arrested on intoxication charges, and making a sound track of their statements. The interview, flashed on a screen in the courtroom, settles most arguments. Police training films, showing the right and wrong way of making an arrest, how to give first aid in an accident and other information for officers, are being used in many cities, says the Police Chief News Letter. The camera long has been useful in combating crime. The movies now enlarge the field, giving valuable aid in getting and presenting evidence, in identification, police training and in warning against traffic and other hazards.
r
| companion | dropped the lifeboats and reserves
An Appeal to Reas
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GT eee
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
alburt
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Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Concentration of Coast Guard at Louisville Seems to Indicate That The Worst Still Is to Be Found.
TELL CITY, Ind., Feb. 1.—Picket Boat 2318 of the U. S. Coast Guard tied up to a telephone pole in Tell City today after a difficult run up the Ohio River from Evansville, Ind., on the way to Louisville for rescue work or any other service she may be able to give. She is one of five pickets which left Evansville Saturday afternoon. The five made only 14 miles against the flood to Newburgh, Ind. in the remaining three hours of daylight Saturday. Both the 2318, which comes from Cape Charles, Md.,, and another boat from the same station were towing a 20-foot motoriess lifeboat lent by Culver Military Academy and carrying in their cramped cockpits a detail of 14 immature Naval Reserves from Indianapolis.
Yesterday the 2318 and her from Cape Charles
at Rockport, Ind., where they will try to carry feed to livestock marooned on an island. The other three pickets, which spent the night at Newburgh, ran away from the Cape Charles boats yesterday, being unhandicapped by the drag of lifeboats, and were further along toward Louisville by evening, The helmsmen, all but one of them salt water sailors who never saw the Ohio before, merely tried to keep between indistinct lines of willows and svcamores, but much of erstwhile cornfields and possibly submerged buildings. The river was full of trees, railroad ties, barn doors, farm gates and fence posts and the boats frequently bent aside to avoid the carcasses of horses and cows. " " "
Mr. Pegler
UCH of Tell City is under water, of course. |
Troops patrol the streets which are still high and dry with rifles and there is a pile of coffins on the porch of a dwelling house on the main street although the city fathers insist that there has been no local loss of life. people, most of them aged; and refugees are sleeping in the City Hall and receiving meals from the Red Cross in a church, a situation which is typical of towns all the way along the Ohio. And though the discomfort of the dispossessed is not to be minimized they are being cared for at least, which is more than may be said for dozens of gaunt and wretched dogs which have lost their families.
In Newburgh, Clem Levinduski, a boatswain’s mate from Cape Charles, bought a pound of neck bones from a butcher and fed them to a scrawny mongrel which dropped them in the mud and gnawed ravenously as the Coast Guards gathered round to watch. " n n
HE boats simply walked over dams in the river,
but there were bends where even the power that |
asks no favors from Atlantic gales was unable to drive the boats faster than a slow walk.
Just what service the Coast Guards can give in Louisville remains to be seen for ships of this type have wooden hulls without false bottoms and will sink if stove in by submerged automobiles or other obstructions. Nevertheless a considerable fleet is gathering there and in Jeffersonville and New Albany, Ind., indicating that the worst of the troubles still is to be found in Louisville even though the flood is falling there and rising down below :
the time were cruising over |
The little hospital is full of sick |
The Bitter [Lesson—By Kirby
MONDAY, FEB. 1, 1937)
A » jor’
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will | | defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire. |
FAVORS LEGISLATION | FOR WORKERS | By William Lemon | President Roosevelt has tried to give both capital and labor a break. After the NRA was abolished, capital cut wages and lengthened hours. The President knows it will take
| legislation to stop these chiselers, | the same as other laws make it a
{crime to bootleg, hi-jack, rob and | And you can’t deny it.
| steal. | Greed and excessive profits would | soon have us embroiled in another | European war to be fought by labor { with the swivel chair artists reaping | the profits paid for with blood. { They say it can’t happen here as [it did in Russia, but it will happen { here in less than a decade if things | continue as they are. . ..
| If capital could muzzle the press,
[the free speech would be as dead as | [the G. O. P. and the only alterna- | | tive would be to follow in the foot- |
| steps of Russia.
$ ras ad under {tl} | ; : | Free speech was dead under the | been fooled by Socialist hypocrisy
| late Russian monarch and his se- | cret police, like our factory spies | and hired gunmen. At the present time it looks like {the grafters will have hard sledding | when Congress gets through with them. ” " ” ' BILL. REGULATING GAS | SALE OPPOSED | By R. R. Some intellectual giant of the | Indiana Legislature has introduced la bill in the Legislature which would punish a filling station operator for selling gasoline to a man [under the influence of liquor. | A magnificent gesture, truly! Who is to determine whether or | not the automobile driver is drunk? | Must the filling station attendant | assume the duties of judge and jury | in addition to his job of dispensing | gasoline? The gasoline dispenser will have {an unenviable position. He will as|sume the responsibility for all { drunken drivers’ actions. This is not | ridiculous. It is a piteous example of attempting to control drunks by making nursemaids out of gasoline and oil men to save the votes of an enlarging class of drunkards to the party. It is a shifting of the responsibility of law enforcement from the lawful authorities whose duty lit is to enforce all laws to private individuals. { It is unconstitutional because the [bill does not lay down absolute | rules as to determining intoxication
| to guide this private law enforce- |
| ment officer—the filling station man. Why must drunks be coddled so bv the law? Why not be more rig- | orous with the drunk? Fg 8 § | TOLERATION OF SOCTALISTS | OPPOSED BY WRITER By E. F. Maddox « . There is one fact which | we all ought to recognize and that | is, if we tolerate socialism or communism we must also give the same
General Hugh Johnson Says—
Let Employers Do as They Please About Hours and Wages, but Tax Them for Benefit of Unemployed on Departure From Standards.
yy A nivoreh Feb. 1.—This column has no dope
about what the President is going to propose about maximum hours, minimum wages and fair trade practices—the revival of NRA. As to the President's recent announcement that NRA attempted too much—that the enforcement of labor provisions and trade practices should not have been administered by the same unit, I agree with that idea. In the planning of NRA we proposed to create an independent board “of the very highest standing for the formulation of labor policies and the settlement of labor disputes and place them in a purely neutral forum.” The new NRA will follow that rule of separation and may put “fair trade practices” in the care of the Federal Trade Commission—which would be just like putting a litter of mice in the care of a couple of cats. 8 8 ” R. TURNER CATLEDGE says that we are to nS pave a [Ela iively simple statute dictating maxiours and minimum wages—pe the old NRA scale. ¥ VIET virus Of course, that is pitching the Supreme Court a whisker-scorcher squarely splitting the plate, It can’t approve without & complete reversal of itself. But—in view of the automobile strike in Michigan threatening
commerce in a dozen states, To Drakes : ing the interstate industrial effect ocalized Tow
(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)
privileges to fascism, naziism and all other alien political movements, and the result of such foolishness will land us in a bloody civil war.
I am convinced that The Times is very tolerant, not to say sympathetic with the Socialists, and I consider socialism of all kinds as
| the chief enemy of peace and order { the werld over.
So it doesn't make much of an impression on me when a Socialist or Communist talks of peace and good will among men when I can see all around the world the hate; murder, persecution and war brought on by the evil deeds of socialism. “The truth will out.” And another thing you might as well learn is that the people have
and propaganda long enough.
I say that this nation must cither | will
outlaw and suppress all alien political organizations or prepare for a bloody civil war. If we tolerate socialism, we must tolerate faseism
and the end of such a policy is a |
clash, a war and national disaster. We cannot nurse a den of vipers and not get bitten. What this nation needs is a littie common sense.
n n n DOUBTS EFFORTS TOWARD BETTER GOVERNMENT By Lowell Rees, Rushville Recently I read with a smile, “Clapper Sees Awakening of Inter-
est in Government.” Now, if I had read such a statement 150 years ago
A HOME
By VIRGINIA POTTER
A house may show good workmanship, And quell desire to roam— But it takes more than a carpenter, To make a perfect home.
A home must have a “Mother”— And faces that are bright, A home must have a happy man, To welcome in each night,
A home must be a haven, A refuge from all strife— A maid can wash the dishes, But she cannot be a wife.
And friends may come and visit— And stay awhile with you, A home must have a faithful pal, To cheer vou when you're blue!
DAILY THOUGHT For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth— Psalm 37:9,
F there be a divine providence, no good man need be afraid to do right; he will only fear to do wrong.—Haygood.
| ments will come and go. | be adopted by the people as the |
| antee of security and the gratifica-
| overthrown for the sake of an up- | | start assuring anew the illusory cer- |
I'd have thought the efforts would amount to something. Today, I have my doubts.
We have at present a system of |
vicious circles interlocking, overlap- |
ping and so intertwined that i would be economic suicide for a few individuals to attempt to put into | governmental practice their desires | for justice, truth and sympathy. | Every individual is dependent on | the public. When one makes a |
| | | |
change in the order of things he |
invariably hurts someone else. As for the broad reorganization | plan, or any other plan, it won't | be anything to write home about. | Someone once said that when a | government reaches farther than: five miles from the town pump it | becomes unwieldy. With all our modern inventions of play-pretties we have not proved this statement to be far from wrong. As long as worldly, ambitious persons try to run things, governPlans will | revelation of certainty, the guartion of desire, but each, in its turn, be denounced as the spring and engine of the oppressor and
tainties and securities of old salvations.
§ # # LEGISLATION AGAINST SPANISH ENLISTMENT FAVORED By T. E.
Though Civil War in Spain finds American sympathies rather sharply divided, few Americans feel strongly enough to want to go over and get into the fighting on either side. Some do, however, and they constitute a disturbing problem. Members of the United States Senate are talking of legislation to cancel the citizenship of Americans who volunteer to fight in foreign wars. What brings the proposal up is the announced plan of the Socialist Party of New York to enlist 500 volunteer soldiers to fight for the Spanish loyalists’ cause. The law would apply equally, of course, to volunteers on the other side. Whether the problem requires laws so drastic as to cancel citizenship may be debatable. Perhaps application of the same “at your own risk” rule as now applies to Americans traveling in war zones would be sufficient. But certain it is that neutrality is hard enough to preserve without our Government assuming responsibility for our adventurous nationals in foreign war {erritory, whether they be there as soldiers or missionaries. It may be admirable to feel so | strongly about a foreign cause as | to be willing to die for it, but no | one has a right to make other | people die for his beliefs. Those who are impelled to fight for such causes should do it on their >wn. And, it seems to me, they should not object if the United States Government takes every possible step to make it plain that it is not re-|
| sponbile for their actions.
The Washington Merry-Go-Round
It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun
Joe Louis Punches Sparring Partners With Indifference as
He Used to Punch Time Clock. NEW YORK, Feb. 1.-—~“Please keep out of the ring,” said the painted sign which hung upon the ropes. It seemed good advice, for this was the training camp of Joe Louis at Pompton Lakes, N. J. Indeed, I wonder whether there might not be something in the warning pertinent for the principal himself, I remem= ber a piece by Paul Gallico quite a while ago called “Mean Man.” It was a brilliant essay, but I have my
doubts as to whether it was valid at the time, and it certainly seems to me to be a misconception now, Mr. Gallico pictured Joe Louis as a man animated by a sort of jungle ferocity as he moved in to the attack. I have seen Louis in several flights, and this time I was practically under his heels as he went through his stint of sparring, And the impression I took away was that he had precious little fun in his occupation. Most distinctly prize fighting is a sport designed for the spectator, although, speaking as one of them, I can add my own complaint of finding too little joy in the proceedings. Somehow I am oppressed with the notion of men being set against each other by outside forces over which they have no control. ;
I don’t mean to say that fights are without excitement, but there is more gusto in the exchange when the contestants actually have something to quarrel about. That is the factor which makes bar= room brawls so attractive, and, indeed, promoters real« ize this and sometimes hold out as a lure the proms ise that some particular bout is a grudge fight, This is generally just a piece of propaganda, but so is the oft-repeated emphasis put upon the so-called killer instinct in Joe Louis.
The character of the Negro heavyweight was pretty well formed before he took up the trade of fighting, He was one of the workers in a Ford automobile plant, Just which role he filled in that organism I do not know, but whatever his task along the assembly line or near it may have been, it would of necessity induce mechanical ‘behavior,
Mr. Broun
» ” us
N° that he is working along the disassembling line it still seems to me that Louis moves and
functions according to a formula. He hits a sparring partner with the same precision and lack of enthusiasm with which he punched a time clock. And his working life is divided into shifts of three minutes each.
In surmising that the “Brown Bomber” gets no great elation out of his job I am not in any way marking him down as peculiar. Probably it has ale ways been a romantic notion which pictures the prize fighter as glowing with a fierce joy and pride beneat! the barrage. That conception would come from the same source as the one which created the myth that a sparring partner does not feel the hook and that $15 a round is good pay for getting your block knocked off. ” ” ” OUIS lifted Irish Tommy Glynn high in the air by the power of a punch, and the sparring partner hit the ring floor with a thump. It jarred me, too. Somehow the phrase “sparring partner” seemed ine adequate and ironic. Particularly the word “partner.” Joe Louis paid no attention to the man stretched out but turned and walked to his corner. It was at this point that I walked out of the small stuffy barn to take a look at one of winter's prettiest days. I wonder whether prize fighting would flourish in a world of warmer fellowship.
New Deal's Cavernous Maw Turns Swanky Bathrooms Into Offices;
Famous Mansions, Theaters, Bakery Among Buildings Taken
Over.
wages and of almost every recorded fact of recent economic trends—it can’t repeat its old stuff about labor regulation being a local and not a national affair without making itself ridiculous. In my unsought opinion, no flat hours-and-wages schedule with penalties for departure will work. Here is this writer's uninvited suggestion:
= ” =
ET employers do as they please about hours and wages—but determine the hours per week that are desired—say 40—and the minimum hourly wage— say 40 cents. As a revenue measure to provide funds for Federal unemployment relief, assess three excise taxes: First, a tax of 20 cents per man-hour for all manhours worked over 40 per worker per week: second, a tax ver man-hour equal to the difference between any man-hour rate actually paid which was less than the statutory rate and 120 per cent of the statutory rate; third—to offset and provide unemployment relief for too rapid displacement of men by mechanization or otherwise—take as the normal yearly per-man output in dollars for any particular employer, the value of this gross production divided by the number of workers (man-hours) he had that year. That was his output per worker. For every subséquent year assess as an excise tax 10 per cent (or some other per cent) of any increase in this figure of dollars’ worth of
i
a”
By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen
ASHINGTON, Feb. 1.—One of the things which used to be held against Herbert Hoover, in the days when he was getting the blame for everything, was the pretentious array of Government buildings lining Constitution Ave. which he erected. But now the New Deal blesses Herbert for constructing these giant structures and wishes he had put up more. For the Roosevelt Administration has grown, expanded and opened its cavernous maw for more and more office space until it now has gathered into it a total of 119 new buildings since 1933. & & 8 HERE was a time when smart career service dipT lomats of the State Department called the day incomplete that did not find them lufiching at a fa= mous hashery called “Rauscher’s.” But now the ovens have been pulled out and the Resettlement Administration has moved in. Rental $6900 annually. Fred Haskins, of new fame, once built a large apartment house over. the Lincoln Memo= rial, For a time it thrived, for a it did not. But now he has sold it to the Go Housing Division of PWA. Purche The Wash um, f
Galli-Curel trilled,
offices on the orchestra floor, in the orchestra pit, on the stage, in the boxes, in the balcony, in the dressing rooms, and even in the men’s and women’s retiring rooms. They are all offices of the WPA, Rental, $50,« 000 a year. 2 ” ” ITHIN a stone's throw of each other on Massae chusetts Ave. are two swanky mansions, Were the footman used to stand under the porte-cochere to open the doors of landaulets, Both of these—Number 2020, the Walsh mansion; and Number 2000, the Blaine mansion-==have suffered interior decoration of a sort never dreamed when they sheltered the champagne-sipping socialites of Republican days. Their ball-rooms have been partitioned into office cubicles, their gilt framed mirrors have been boarded up to discourage gay young stenographers. Bathtubs and toilets have been boxed over and desks now ree even in the spacious bathrooms where James G, laine and Tom Walsh once did their daily dozen, A higher figure is paid for the mansion once fae mous for Ned McLean's New Year's balls, now house ing WPA’s white collar projects. Its downtown locas tion commands $25,000 a year. There is a joker in the lease of all three of these elegant offices. Should the owner see fit to repossess his property, he could give 30 days notice and eject the