Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 February 1937 — Page 12

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The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

LUDWELL DENNY MARX FERREE

ROY W. HOWARD Editor Business Manager

President

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{SCRIPPS ~ HOWARD |

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1937

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co.,, 214 W, Maryland St.

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu-

reau of Circulations. Riley 5551

LABOR: WHERE, FROM HERE? (2) N injunction is ordered by a Flint, Mich., judge against the sit-down strikers, and on the same day the United States Supreme Court grants the longest time in recent record for the hearings of arguments on the Wagner Labor

Act. Important events these, relating to the critical problem of collective bargaining, perhaps the most critical for us all. in a time when vital problems are no novelty. And whether General Motors wins in the present battle, or C. 1. O., the problem will continue. On this issue of whether collective bargaining is to be accepted as a matter of course will hinge the question of whether warfare between industry and labor indefinitely shall retard prosperity. As we said vesterday, we believe “collective bargaining” should be an accepted state of mind. Until it is accepted as a matter of course by industry, as industry deals in other matters, the damage will pile up. For industry itself, as it relates to labor, is organized, and labor in the larger sense, despite its unified position in some quarters, is still about 75 per cent nonunionized. And as for industry, that great section which includes mass production, such as automobiles, it as yet adopts the die-hard attitude toward unionization. Why? There are many reasons, but we think the primary one is the human equation, which we mentioned yesterday.

= u = " ®

TP to now, though industry more and more has been giv- ~ ing lip service to collective bargaining, the same old underlying and antagonistic attitude is there. It is that we, the management, will bargain with everyone with whom we do business, without getting mad, except that when it comes to wages and hours and working conditions something glandular sets in. For example, Mr. X, dealer in waffle irons, doesn’t get red in the face when the salesman for the waffle-iron manufacturer tells him the price of waffle irons will have to be more in 1937. He doesn’t go out and hire a detective agency to engage a lot of agents provocateur to stir up trouble within the waffle-iron company in order that its selling position may be weakened. into the innermost affairs of the waflle-iron outfit so that he may bargain more aggressively, He doesn’t set up armed guards to intimidate the waffle-iron salesman. He doesn’t go into court to enjoin waffle-iron representatives from

He doesn’t employ spies to get |

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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WEDNESDAY, FEB. 3, 1937

Tidal W ave—By Herblock

OPPOSITION

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler Writer Discovers There Has Been More Excitement About the Flood In New York Than in Tell City.

JFRENCH LICK, Ind, Feb. 3.—This cer- |

| betting on racehorses has been a |

tainly is no attempt to debunk a disaster or to deal flippantly with the tragedy of the great flood. But there is a large dis-

crepancy between the demeanor of the peo-

ple in the flood country and the emotional mind’s-eye portrait of them formed by the rest of the nation. Though their fellow-Americans elsewhere sympa-

| thize with them they are innocent | of self-pity, and when the water

picketing his offices with sandwich men bearing devices | which declare that Mr. X is unfair to organized waffle irons. | Nor does the waffle-iron maker on his part look upon his |

negotiations with Mr. X as something to be “class-angled.” Instead, as one corporation deals with another it does so realistically. It takes its advantages when it's a buyers’ market and its punishment when it’s a sellers’, and goes its way, without anger or rioting or bloodshed; goes to lunch, one with the other, when the deal is over. But industry, dealing with the human element, which is labor, and which, after all, is more primary than materials, is motivated by a curious resentment that it should have to deal at all when it comes to the help. That resentment runs away back—into the time when slavery was the custom, and then serfdom, and indenture, and all that. Bargaining was accepted as it velated to material things, centuries before it was dreamed that the same method might be only fair to human labor. And it is because of that background that modern labor seeks to justify such tactics as are now so much to the fore in Flint —mass picketing and the sit-down strike. And because of such a background we find ultra-conservative writers

like Frank Ke:t advocating acceptance of the principle of | the worker having a property right in his job, that conten-

tion now being interpreted in Flint as a right to sit at the bench where he has been earning his living, in defiance of the sheriff and the eviction order. What to do about it? (To Be Continued.)

RIP VAN WINKLE N 1887 Grover Cleveland vetoed a $10,000 appropriation for free seeds to drought-stricken counties of Texas, because he did “not believe that the power and duty of the general Governfnent ought to be extended to the relief of individual sutfering.” The other day Senator Carter Glass of Virginia cited this veto message as authority for his own opposition to a $50,000,000 seed loan bill. At first this picture of two great Democrats shaking hands across the stretch of a half-century gave us the idea that Senator Glass, like Rip Van Winkle, had been off on a long doze in his Blue Ridge Mountains. Then we happened to remember that Senator Glass really doesn’t agree with Grover Cleveland at all. For he was the one who, only a few days previously, sponsored a measure extending the life of the Reconstruction Finance Corp. And the RFC’s

latest report reveals a grand total in disbursements of more |

than nine billion dollars, two-thirds of which was in loans to banks, railroads, insurance companies and other suffering corporations.

SAVING FACE :

O one is surprised that E. A. Shaw, referee for California’s Supreme Court, should declare Tom Mooney was given a “fair and impartial trial” in 1916, and hence is not entitled to the habeas corpus writ he is asking on the ground that he was denied due process under the Constitution. The San Francisco proceedings that dragged through a year before the elderly and bewildered Mr. Shaw gave no promise of anything but another acquittal for the

State courts that are themselves, in effect, on trial because |

of this outrage on justice, Mr. Shaw is playing the familiar game of “saving face” for the Court he represented, a practice almost as common in our country as in the Orient. When this writ application reaches the U. S. Supreme Court faces will not be saved so easily. For whatever is said of this august body, its \. devotion to civil rights for individuals has been amply demonstrated. wd

| as the Ohio crept up the last re- | maining

| reading from a script prepared by

| ! |

goes down they will follow it back inch by inch to save what they can from the wreckage, which will be very little, and start all over. There has been more excitement in New York than in Tell City, Ind, which 1s mostly under water. A few nights ago in Evansville

€/ Aw

Pegler

slight rise of ground there was a little disgust because some radio announcer, apparently an old-school rewrite man, re- Mr. marked in ominous tones that grim-faced men with muskets were patrolling the streets. The grim-faced men were highly civilized Militia boys, many of them high school students, and their relations with the citizens were entirely neighborly, In fact, although many poor people had been wiped out and the local aristocracy had lost heavily in household stuff and factory equipment, there was nevertheless a sort of county fair spirit abroad, comparable to the excitement in the capital of a country which has just declared war but hasn't yet been shelled or bombed.

® " o INCE then I have been in Newburgh, Rockport, Tell City and Alton, Ind, and in Owensboro and in Cloverport, on the Kentucky side, and the manner of the people makes it almost possible to understand the reports of censorship in Louisville where the Mayor seems to resent as dramatics the descriptions of the flood sent out of his town. The loss of life has been comparatively small to date, considering the large population of the flood country, and the danger of disease was cried up so loud and so early and met so vigorously that in all probability there will be very little sickness. There were no drownings in any of the points

which I touched in three days on the Coast Guard |

picket boat 2318, and of the 10 patients in the little hospital at Tell City most were elderly people down with colds or heart failure. The money to cure the damage will come straight from Washington, be-

cause a large proportion of the victims are included i | In that one-third of the American population whom

Myr. Roosevelt in his inaugural address described as il-fed, ill-housed and ul-clothed. He was planning to get around to them pretty soon anyway,

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F the people have such a thing as an attitude toward the troops and the Coast Guards I would say that it ranges between indifference and mild resentment. Certainly they do not regard them as deliverers, and they are Just the least bit impatient of the restrictions imposed by martial law,

tastic foolishness that the world has ever known on | the subject of flood control but no spread of forests | or grass would have dunked up this one. A sheet | of toast will absorb only so much hot milk or pot- | licker and this was just one hell of a lot of water Which would have run down to the river even in | the days of the Indians.

The Hoosier Forum

I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

| BELIEVES STATE SHOULD PERMIT PARI-MUTUELS By R. F. Jr. | The legalizing of pari-mutuel revenue to many And within illegal,

{ vast source of | states—but not to Indiana. | why? Bookmakers flourish [the state, where betting is | accepting wagers on racing

lat tracks from the Atlantic to the

ts fair and unfair in the way of political propaganda. They contend that the broadcasting concerns should determine what is fair to put on the air and that employers should determine what is fair to put in the pay envelopes.

(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.)

It should be remembered that this | Sufficiently serious-minded. |tax spenders having free hands, a |is the same line of argument used |

| reappraisement is just another hold- | &gainst the Better Business Bureai |

Lup results | | taxpayers of the state are delinquent

| Pacific, a state lawmaking body con- $25,289,003.

tinues increasing tax rates on land. | legitimate business and individuals. |

| Pari-mutuel betting is a system of | emergency clause in the $1 and $1.50

the odds and is paid accordingly. Tax Law,

| wagering where the public makes

| It is a system from which the state | might derive astonishing revenue, | which might ease the general tax | burden,

IS ADVOCATED It would not work a hard- |

| ship on anyone but the bookmakers, |

| who now are profiting while the | Indiana State Treasury is not. | Racing gives employment to .officials of associations, the persons required to run the tracks, trainers.

grooms, jockeys, exercise boys, mu- |

| tual tellers and it benefits | businesses such as rants, theaters and public carriers. To those who believe that the tax levied on this industry is not due consideration, I quote from “Blood Horse Magazine,” March 7, 1936, what other states collected through legalized betting: Ohio, $98,981; Michigan, $216,598; Illinois, $553,397; Kentucky, $185,000; Arkansas, $114,000; California, $1,005,103; Florida, $809,721; Maryland, $036,378; Massachusetts, $910,825; New Hampshire, $395,806; New York, $443,336; Rhode Island, $1,042,681; South Dakota, $5439; Texas, $519,V91; Washington, $130,531, and West Virp ia, $33,821. : ; The New York figure is low, as the pari-mutuel system is not used in that state, The Legislature has endeavored to make such wagering possible. Why should Indiana money go tc the support of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and the others? | Our representatives should know , and understand this source.

‘ment can be made unless petitioned

for by resident real estate owners. |

| No demand for reappraisement has |

{ | | developed, but the Legislature is | passing a law requiring an appraise-

| ment this year. There will now be heard some of the most fan- |

Any appraisement made will be

local | hotels, restau- |

when it started its battle to protect arrangement | the public against false advertising. After all, political propaganda is only a form of advertising. There iS no reason to believe that we could not have a Better Politics Bureau to protect us from false solitical advertising in the same nanner the business bureau protects us from false business advertising. The problems to be met and the end to be gained are exactly the same,

¥ Ne BLAMES SOBER DRIVERS FOR AUTO ACCIDENTS

By a Highway Worker

Under the present

If they cannot pay on the present appraisement how could tivey pay a higher one? There is only one way to stop the greediness of the tax eaters. Knock out the

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BETTER POLITICS BUREAU

By L. P. The flame and prejudice of the past election has pretty well died | down, but a smoldering bitterness | still remains to be quenched. The | ] public demands that something be | W2¥S a great deal has been said done to make impossible another | 20 drunken drivers causing campaign of false propaganda, | MUmerous accident and deaths. Let through radio, press and pay en- Me say from experience on a state velopes. highway road repair crew that it Sis Snie fii she YY JrIRsS | isn’t the drunken drivers that give hat ha a, hai id Vg the “creeps.” vis the sober, professional business man and

cf public opinion. Their argument is unbiased tribunal to determine what | Woman—not so much the woman as the man. People trying to drive

through “Slow,” “Caution,” “Sharp

Curve,” and “Dangerous” signs at 45 to 70 miles an hour worry us. We've had them run over signs and flagmen, The drivers were perfectly sober. They are garagemen, auto salesmen, auto demonstrators, grocerymen, tank truck drivers, school teachers, salesmen, lawyers, dairymen, newspaper reporters and a few high school pupils. Not so many women, because they don’t like to get tangled up in court proceedings. If we cannot stop them or slow them down with signs, red flags and flagmen they will not pay any attention to small towns and suburbs. Watch accident reports and see what percentage the drunken drivers take. I'll tell you what the people of

In discussing accidents on high-

IN TIME OF FLOOD By WALTER N. VANSCOYOC

Crawfordsville In times like these, midst storm and flood, With “milk of kindness” in the blood, We will not pause or spare a pain To aid the victims of the rain In times like these.

We know the misery and woe While flooded streams they onward go And sweep the country in their way. We will not hesitate a day In times like these.

We know what sorrow it will cost When house and home by flood are lost. We know the flood won't always last But we must aid ’ere time is past, In times like these,

afraid of traffic They do their trading on one side of the road and they don't stay on the sidewalks any longer than is necessary. There is cone way this situation could be | handled. Let a flagman, or some level-headed individual on a road repair crew, hand each reckless driver a traffic ticket from the local court. Another thing that should be done is put more State Police on the highways. We can further help the law by reporting such cases. You might see your best friend

Whatsoeyer of aid you lend To save a life God will commend; And in His Book will write, I say, Of all good deeds you do today In times like these.

DAILY THOUGHT

He that is void of wisdom de-

small towns do because they are |

[raise the appraisement when real

spiseth his neighbor; but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.—Proverbs 11:12.

higher than the present one. Now, if our rates were priced at the reasonable limits of the $1 and $1.50 Law it would be justifiable to OU read of but one wise man,

coming down the highway at a high rate of speed and grin about it, but he is liable to be the cause of someone being injured or killed farther down the street. Let us con-

estate increased in value. But with no limits on the rates and with

and all

General Hugh Johnson Says—

U.S. Army Chiefs, Grayson and Hopkins Are Co-operating 100 Per Cent In Performing History's Greatest Piece of Rescue Work in Ohio Valley.

ASHINGTON, Feb. 3.—When the whole story of this fight against flood and pestilence is told, it won't do any harm to Admiral Cary Grayson, Gen, Malin Craig, Harry L. Hopkins and Gen. Edward Markham. It has been a beautiful piece of teamwork without any such hifalutin prima donna nonsense as s0 often mars the result when several departments of Government attempt to work together. Beside the splendid co-operation is, of course, the tremendous size of the job. Never in our history have one-tenth so many people been affected by a greater disaster and certainly never before have affected people been so skillfully relieved. It should give our Army-both regulars and National Guard—a |

great boost.

already has reflected much credit on the President for his choice, long before this emergency arose, of four such able administrators as Malin

Craig for chief of staff of the Army, Cary Grayson for head of the American Red Food iy Edward Mark. ham for chief of Engineers and Harry Hopkins in A. .

After all, it is men, rather than regulations or

| undeniable qualities as a super go-getter.

organization charts, that make operate

Army and Navy, you at least have a pool of men schooled almost from boyhood in administrative duties, especially educated for that work, and imbued with the idea of public service—not as a stepping stone to some other and better paid job, but for itself alone,

® »

TH applies particularly to Gen. Craig, Admiral Grayson and Gen Markham, Mr. Hopkins’ training also has been largely in public service and, while this column doesn't agree with several of his WPA policies, it has frequently called attention to his It is al-

most an ideal four-line team. With no prearranged plan at all they are doing excellently well one of the greatest emergency administrative jobs in the world.

One remarkable aspect of this disaster is that it seems to suggest that the very stars in their courses fight for the permanence of Mr. Hopkins. Every time his works have seemed to be petering out, some act of God dramatically has occurred to give him a new lease on life. Alternating devastations of flood and drought—and other ver three years have provided an undeniable excusefor more and more money and work for Harry,

i ~~

that he knew was— that he knew nothing.—Congreve.

sider the fast and reckless drivers along with the drunken ones. |

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun Literary Censors Likely to Confuse Candid Writings With Pornography; James T. Farrell Case One in Point

EW YORK, Feb. 3.—The chief trouble with book censors is that they are not Or if they are serious, as Anthony Comstock was, there is an insufficient mind to make their efforts

worthy of debate. The result is that many of the cases which come to court are based upon shock words rather than shocking ideas. In the case of Comstock there was obviously a peculiar sensitivity to stimulation. Anthony Comstock’s boiling point was very low. He could see obscenity in the rocks and running brooks and evil in everything. Be= ing himself repressed and behav= ing under the strain of a curb bit, very little was required to make him shy into a tantrum of court action. I have never had much oppor= tunity to study John S. Sumner, We met once at luncheon and took an instinctive dislike to each other, but that was based rather more upon sound intuition than upon any words which were uttered. I don't want to be unfair to Mr. Sumner, but I gravely suspect that he is no fanatic as Comstock was. The cld gentleman was perfectly terrible, of course, but once I wrote a biography of him in collaboration with Margaret Leech, and I think that both of us came to have a sneaking admiration for the roundsman of the Lord. ” ” td

ISS Leech did most of the work on the book, ine cluding all the research, and I think she liked Comstock better than I did, We were rather shy in admitting any admiration, but there was no getting away from the realization that here was a kind of perfection. There ought not to be any possible confusion between that flimsy kind of fiction designed for pornographic readers and the candor of the serious-minded author. The clash in such cases comes between the mind of the reformer and the mind of the revolutionary writer. In these instances the real complaint seems to be not that the writer is out to arouse lascivious desire but that he is too intent upon showing life whole, It is a little as if King David in a singing mood objected to the loud lamentations of some irate prophet. Censorship attempts to defend the frivolous against unpleasant facts.

” n u HAVE specifically in mind a current action against James T. Farrell, author of “Studs Lonigan,” who has been haled into court for his latest novel, “A World I Never Made.” It would be difficult to think of the issue as one arising between a Puritan and a reckless writer of a salacious story. Quite obviously, Farrell is a man with a deep concern about poverty, misery and. squalor. If anything is disturbed by the book it is complacency. Mr. Farrell's attitude is far more moral than that of Mr. Sumner, because the author is intent upon saying that much is wrong in the world and that something ought to be done about it. The censor, as far as I know, is not challenging the accuracy of the author's observation. He is merely saying that readers should not be brought into contact with facts which may disturb them. This, it seems to me, is a thoroughly immoral point of view. To be sure, Farrell uses a good many shock words, but the book deals with the household of a Chicago truck driver. and it is difficult to see how any persua=sive atmosphere could be created with namby-pamby participles.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Daughter Edda Planning Visit to U. S., Dares Talk Back to Mussolini:

She Is Eager for Trip, but

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, Feb. 3.—There is only one person in Italy who dares talk back to Mussolini and that is his daughter Edda, now Countess Ciano, who plans to visit the United States this spring. She is the wife of the 33-year-old Minister of Foreign Affairs. Edda is II Duce’s eldest, has his fiery eyes, his bold, nervous temperament, doesn't care what she says or does, and her father adores her. Her mother was Russian, the woman who taught and cared for Mussolini during his early days as a turbulent young Socialist exiled in Switzerland. It was she who taught him much of his socialism. Mussolini is a genuine family man, and there are no theatrics in the interest he has in his children, even though he did take his youngest for a personally piloted airplane jaunt at the age of 4. There are five Mussolini children, three boys and one very young daughter, but Edda, the eldest, is the apple of Il Duce’s eye. Her projected visit to the United States this spring, depends somewhat on whether the Italian Embassy in Washington feels that there is not too much antiFascist sentiment in Harlem and other quarters, (Once, during the Hoover Administration, Mussolini himself considered a trip to the United States, but | ruled it out for fear of anti-Fascist ripe tomatoes.)

Fear of Anti-Fascist Riots May Stop Her,

(ouNTESS CIANO is sure to electrify the United States. She speaks English with a sprinkling of American slang, which she picked up from the wives of Marine Corps officers in Shanghai when her husband served as Italian consul there. Once, while seated at dinner beside British Ame bassador Sir Eric Drummond, crustiest and most dignified envoy in Rome, she nearly knocked that gentleman off his chair by saying: “Okey dokey, Sir Eric!”

OUNTESS CIANO has wanted to visit the United States ever since she got to know Americans in Shanghai, and once cherished the ambition of make ing her husband Ambassador to the United States. “You see,” she explains, “when one's husband is only 33 and already Foreign Minister of Italy, and when one has a father who likes to see new faces around him, then you have to keep an eye out for new jobs for your husband.” Count Ciano is getting along so weil as Foreign Minister with his father-in-law that it doesn’t look as if Edda’s ambition will be realized. Note—If Countess Ciano comes to the United States she will be accompanied by Count Leonardo Vitetti, former secretary of the Italian Embassy in Ww: , and his wife, the former Natalie Coo of New York.