Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 February 1937 — Page 14

Page PDF (10.59 MB)

Back to issue view

PAGE 14

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE Editor Business Manager

ROY W. HOWARD President

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

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

eT 0

Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year, outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month,

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard News= paper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Rlley 5551

AN 3 SCRIPPS — HOWARD

Give Light and the People Will Find

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1937

Their Own Way

POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENT JOBS HE Merit Commission appointed by Mayor Kern to administer the Indianapolis police and firemen’s “merit law” has done a good job under difficult circumstances. There have been training schools, rigid examinations and a weeding out of candidates for police and fire department jobs. In less than two years of operation, the Commission has chosen more than 40 high-grade employees

for the two departments. But it is not a meet law. The reference is a misnomer. The provision limiting competition to handpicked candidates. none of whom may be particularly qualified, amounts almost to complete negation of the merit principle. The setup is political at the beginning. An unscrupulous administration could so stack the lists that only the political favorites would stand a chance. And the system is political at the end, because the present pension laws permit a job veto even after a candidate passes the merit tests. Thanks to the integrity of the men who have operated the present system, the results have justified the law. Despite this partial success, the law does not stand up under scrutiny as a merit plan. Authority is scattered, responsibility divided. Instead of examining applicants to choose the best qualified, before conducting the merit school, this process is reversed. No eligible list is kept from which to draw new blood for the departments. No standard wage scales are fixed. person who makes dismissals. didates already nominated by the Mayor and Board of Safety and makes a selection from this very limited group. As one national authority on civil service, who studied the Indianapolis plan, commented: “It seems that the whole program with its departmentally constituted trial and promotion boards will be personalized rather than ‘personnelized’.”

® n 2 = ” ”

A BILL (S. B. 110) now is before the Legislature to place police and fire departments of all Indiana cities under [t would extend the merit principle to the Training schools for rea continuing

civil service. original selection of applicants. cruits, preliminary physical examinations, eligible list and public hearings on demotions are provided. The bill seeks to do what public personnel experience 1as demonstrated is essential if complex, modern government is to be efficient and economical. The bill would replace the wholly inadequate Indianapolis law and serve as a beginning for municipal merit systems throughout the state. full hearings and close examination. It may need revision. But this is one proposal that should not be sidetracked in the busy closing weeks of the session.

CLOSE TO HOME! YEAR ago the floods that rolled down the Allegheny

vania. Today the receding flood has left desolation in the valley of the Ohio. Southern Indiana has felt the full force of disaster. Unchecked, future floods might strike Indianapolis and other cities on tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It is time for all to realize that our own security and the security of other districts depend on controlling floods at the source. The Ohio River flood has revived interest in plans for protecting Indianapolis. This interest should not be permitted to wane as the program for dealing with the problem nationally goes forward.

A step in this direction is the inspection of flood control |

plans in the Indianapolis area ordered by the Board of Army Engineers. gress two years ago at a cost of about $2,600,000, include levees, bridge reconstructions, channel improvements and other works. program is adequate and, if not, what more is needed.

The idea of “catching raindrops where they fall” is not

For years the Army engineers shrugged off as | | dustry, also hold against taxation upon taxation. Yet

new, “crackpot theorists” men who prophesied floods such as the one Indiana has just seen. the vaunted billion-dollar levee system some day would take an unmerciful beating—and that has happened. They said flood control should start in the headwaters, and the flow regulated down the many tributary streams that feed the main rivers. The people along the lower reaches of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers now know the inadequacy of levees. They would feel safer today if some of the millions spent on higher and wider and longer levees had been spent holding the water where it came from. They are beginning to understand how thousands of little dams in the hills of Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia would hold that water in check. And the Government at last is getting around to that point of view. Engineers are planning a comprehensive system of upstream reservoirs. The National Resources Committee report, just made to Congress, emphasizes source-control. The way the Indianapolis watershed fits into this picture should receive closest public attention.

TENDER TENNESSEE . OVERNOR GORDON BROWNING of Tennessee is opposing ratification of the Federal child-labor amendment by the Legislature of his State. The Governor fears, he says, that the amendment would empower Congress to deprive parents of the right to let their children help them in work on the farms and in the homes. Tennessee, you remember, is the State where parental rights are so tenderly respected that «the parents of a 9-year-old girl have just been permitted to marry her off to a 22-year-old man, %

The trial board is chosen by the same | The Commission ranks can- |

The measure should be given |

| was derigned to affect ali income

The purpose is to see if this uncompleted |

These men warned that |

| investment of

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

The Card Goes With the Bottle

=) J

ILL TAKE OUR Lien

ww National Satety Couneil

TUESDAY, FEB. 9, 1937

Where a Little

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler Thousands Are Exempt From Either State Or Federal Income Tax Payments.

(CHICAGO, Ill, Feb. 9.—According to my

reckoning, anyone who doesn’t pay his share of the cost of running the country is a parasite. And if that is an ugly word it is no more ugly than the practice of exempting from the income tax millions of public employees whose earnings are well within the zone of eligibility. I discovered great resentment among drawing salaries from eity, county and state at the very suggestion that they should pay the Federal income tax on exactly the same basis as other people earning that same amount. One woman, a schoolteacher, points out that she hus sometimes paid as much as 15 per cent of her gross wages into the pension fund and seems to think of this as a tax. The fact is, of course, that. this is no tax, but an unusually sound system of providing against old age. Another teacher, drawing $1450, has waited some years for stated increases in salary which have been defaulted, how-

persons

Mr. Pegler

ever, owing to the depression, and perhaps, in part, |

to the overloading of the public service with deserving politicians who pay no tax, either. This income of $1450, if the teacher is unmarried and not the head of a household, would be subject to a small tax, both Federal and state, if she were privately employed.

It is unfortunate that her salary did not improve

| according to her expectations during the years of the

and x a River ay re seemed to some of | and Monongahela Rivers may have seemed t | employment whose wages have failed to advance, but

us the concern chiefly of Pittsburgh and western Pennsyl- |

great panic, but there are many people in private

are compelled to shower down, nevertheless, their share of the cost of citizenship. n n n

T= Federal income tax specifically applies to all income from whatever source derived, and the exemption which protects city, county and state employees in vast number is the remote result of a very fastidious interpretation of the United States Constitution in cases which were not based on the income tax law at all.

Some individuals seem to have confused the case 0 it may be repeated that state, county and city employees are exempt from the Federal income tax, that Federal employees are exempt from the state tax. and that certain officials of state, county and city are exempt from both. Schoolteachers, policemen and firemen seem especially sensitive to the proposal that they should pay the same dues to the Government as other people who draw the same income. I see no reason for this

with

| indignation, however, even though I readily grant The projects here, authorized by Con- |

that the income tax return from their salaries would be comparatively small. The point is that the tax from whatever source within the brackets established by law. They have no more moral right to exemption than any other person earning the same wages.

" ” ” HE Supreme Court decisions which are held to establish this exemption to the great detriment of those who work in private but unprotected in-

the state income tax laws airily dismiss that phase of these decisions. The states levy income tax on the money which is paid to the Federal Government as income tax. In other words, you pay the Federal Government a tax and then pay a tax on that to the State. The Federal Government, however, has a slightly more active conscience in the same circumstances and exempts the money paid as state income tax. There is an important inconsistency there.

of Public Employees |

$3 Noa, sh AAA

Reform Is Needed! —By Talburt

The Hoosier Forum

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

SOCIALISM SEEN IN WAKE OF FLOOD, WRITER SAYS By Martin Everts In answer to E. F. Maddox: Recently we have looked upon and heard about the greatest display of socialism this nation has

ever known, in the wholesale giving of food and clothing to help fellow human beings who were in trouble. Of course it was forced on us, but we did it just the same. We have never had socialism, under that name, in this country and if you can show me a nation where there's more hate, murder, persecution and war than there is { in this one, let me see it. We are torn and upset in every section of the country with labor | troubles, unrest, hatred, murder | and kidnaping. We have made saloons out of drug stores, groceries, restaurants and any other places that want to sell the most destructive stuff that ever poisoned the mind of man—booze! We burn food and clothing by the tons, boost prices far above the average man’s wages with the result

Still, we haven't socialism. we get it. Was the Ohio flood an accident or a freak of nature? Nothing has ever happened to shake this nation like that flood. Be yourself, don’t blame the common American folks, because they're only human and their | comes from the heart.

{ ee # SUPREME COURT NOT SO SACRED, SAYS WRITER By R.

When I read the editorials and contributed articles in some newspapers, I cannot help wondering if the writers believe the Supreme Court is as sacred as they would have us believe. One would think, from what they say, that the Court was divinely instituted. . . . The idea that some persons advance that because the men are appointed for life, instead of elected, removes them from the realm of politics, is absurd. They receive their appointments because of their political views, and because the man who appoints them wants his policies carried on long after he is out of office. The very fact that they receive their office in this way makes them indifferent to the needs of the people. Our last two Chief Justices were defeated candidates for the Presidency. Our present Chief Justice | was a member of the Court. resigned to become a candidate against Woodrow Wilson, was de- | feated and reappointed at the ear- | liest opportunity. Another was campaign manager for a Presidential candidate. If they are infallible, why do they differ so much in their decisions? Why the five-to-four opinions so | often handed down these days? . . . The fact that John Marshall ar-

Ss. Ss

EW YORK, Feb. 9—I was at Yale Univer sity the other day for a seminar with the boys of Saybrook College. It was one of those ordeals where you are not asked to make a speech. Oh no, you are only invited to stand up like the African dodger at a country fair—a target for questions on the state of the nation. Most of this particular torture had to do with the labor-management problem but, before it began, and while I was seeing the sights with Headmaster Smith of Saybrook, I stumbled over one aspect of the question “Whither are we drifting?” that I am glad no inquisitive young Yale asked me to answer. A gentleman named Mason has given the university library his collection of what we high-brows call Frankliniana—everything he could buy that has anything to do with the life of Benjamin Franklin.

The collection is so voluminous that it requires |

three large rooms of the beautiful Yale Library to house it—an outstanding example of the collector's art, A great fortune in precious American relics.

LJ un »

UT here the difficulties begin. Such a treasure needs a curator with at lease two assistants. It is uncatalogued. It needs a thorough indexing. Without that it is of little practical use. Yet Yale has no money to do this. Why? All these great old institutions depend in greater or less degree on money left to them by wealthy men as endowment funds. They live on the income from thes funds—traditio ! from bonds.

| that his children are sent to school | { hungry and cold. We | can't outlaw and suppress it until |

socialism |

(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.)

rogated unto himself the power and established the precedent of passing on the constitutionality of laws made by Congress doesn't prove that it was or is constitutional for the Supreme Court to do this. The people are sovereign and by the overwhelming majorities in the 1934-36 elections have shown that they are tired of the old order, They want a policy that fits their needs today. ... Nine men are not competent to solve our problems for us, especially when they are men who never mingle with the masses. ” ” ” MILITIAMAN ASKS RETURN OF EVANSVILLE TROOPS By an Indianapolis Naval Reservist in Evansville On behalf of myself and the rest of the men who were called away from their homes and jobs for relief duty here in the flood district, we respectfully request assistance in getting us back to Indianapolis. We came down here in the emergency and each of us did his job well. For the last three days we have done nothing but sit around in these crowded quarters, eating hurriedly prepared canned food and

{ awaiting orders that do not come.

Not only is this a great burden to the taxpayers of Indiana but it is also costing us hardships longer necessary. We have 220 en-

WITH YOUTH PLOWED UNDER

By GEORGE SANFORD HOLMES

Neutrality-——too long a buttress vain, When Congress writes anew your definition May it engrave the legal brand of Cain On traffickers in arms and ammunition.

No man-made mandate can outlaw the greed That gluttons on incendiary cargoes, No civil statute can drive man to heed The conscience and its whispered self-embargoes.

"'Twixt Peace and Profits business must choose, "Twixt Law and Loot that breeds but blood and blunder; Ere itching palms ignite the fatal fuse That harrows No Man's Land with Youth plowed under,

SAID, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me.—Psalms 39:1.

Silence is the understanding of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise.—Boileau.

no |

| people spend millions of doliars try

listed men with Indianapolis factory and office jobs, each of which pays an average of $35 per week. Here, we make an average of $2 a day, paid by the State. You can see

that we are handicapped in meeting |

our bills at home,

NAVAL COMMANDER REPLIES TO RESERVISTS PROTEST By Commander O. F. Heslar, Naval Militia, Indianapolis We have contacted the employers of all our men who are on duty in the flood area and have been assured that the men are in no danger of losing their positions because of absence in this emergency. This department is as interested in demobilizing the local unit in the zone and bringing the men back to their homes as the men are in returning, We are planning to bring our men back as soon as we are sure it is advisable. on

oy CITY PRAISED FOR FLOOD RELIEF AID

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun Passing of Dr. Stanley High as President's Close Adviser Is Probably Just as Well for Him,

| EW YORK, Feb. 9.—I guess it's just as well that Dr. High got slapped. I have nothing against the good doctor, and much of what he wrote in the Saturday Evening Post probably is true. At least, I've read it before a good many times. The point of view of Dr. Stanley High appeals to me, and I hope he is correct in predicting the lively possibility of a split between the sheep and the goats of the Democratic party. But a larger journalistic probe blem than the prestige of this pars ticular prohibitionist is involved in the President's decision to announce the passing of “close ade visers.” Perhaps they would have expired even without a gentle tap from the White House blackjack. For some time they have heen in danger of death from overcrowd=

ing. The White House is quite an extensive mansion, but if all the

By Walter 0. Ulrey, Kentucky State Commander, Volunteers of America ! The City of Indianapolis, through | Col. Hites, America, has sent the flood refugees of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley

of the Volunteers of |

“close advisers” were laid end to end (not a bad idea, by the way) their estate would be about as parlous as that of prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In all fairness to Dr. High it must be admitted

Mr. Broun

" ”

READER DISLIKES SPEEDY MODERN TEMPO By A. Warren Jacobson We, the people of the United States, are supposed to be benefiting | from the age of civilization. Yet, I wonder. True, we are not living | under witchcraft, religious hatred or | rabbit’'s-foot doctoring. and we are | living under the influence of schools, | free speech, science and a hundred other assets. Still, I wonder. We have millions of people living in clouds of smoke and soot. These

”

ing to cure filth-filled, sick respiratory systems. Millions of workers receive for their toil barely enough to exist, Look at our sharecroppers and children working in mines and factories under a rotten volitical system. Look at our laborers being worked to nervous breakdowns by demands for speed and more speed. Jangling telephones, flat-wheeled street cars, carbon monoxide, rushing, speeding automobiles, slums and organized thievery are all around us. We eat, work, play and rest all under speed. If we do not stop, we will become a nation of nervous, insane old folk at 35 years of age. We also have wooden coaches, wooden stairways, towns with open sewers, children brought into the world in dirt and filth, there to remain for their lives. Civilization? I wonder!

that at one time he seemed to know the President pretty well. But that was during a political cam= paign. And almost every candidate becomes a little friend of all the world when he is running for office, The friendships formed upon the firing line are properly fragile, and no campaign adviser should be Sure prised if his particular champion greets him a little later with a hazy look and the remark, “Your face is familiar, but I can’t seem to place you.” Dr. High has now been placed. He is back in the ranks of the tea-leaf readers rather than an authentic prophet straight from the center of the sanctuary. I think he may find that the life of a rough and ready guesser is just as full and far more comfortable than the role of a semiofficial spokesman,

” EJ ” Arno every President of the United States myths have gathered as to the status of some peculiarly close confidant. Woodrow Wilson had his Col. House and Herbert Hoover an entire coterie of medicine-ball tossers.

But no man in the White House has ever ac= cumulated as large a collection of Warwicks 28 Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His life and policies have been run successively, according to rumor, by Moley, Tugwell, Howe, Farley, Creel and High, not te mention a whole set of subsidiary solons.

u "

GREAT deal of the news in Washington is made up out of conversations. I mean between the newspaper correspondents. One reporter will voice a theory about some political development to another. The second will mention it to a third or fourth cone frere. By this time it is accepted as a tip straight from the feed box. There is no race track in the world where touts multiply as rapidly as on the hill in the nation’s capital. The only trouble is that after a rumor has been chasing its own tail for a month or more some maga= zine man comes along and hears about it for the first time. The men who write for weekly or monthly periodicals in many cases are forced fo set down in September matter which will appear in May. In order to make their articles stand up against the test of time they become pontifical, and little yesterday's old rumor is changed into something they have seen on a mountain top graven upon the surface of the stone.

General Hugh Johnson Says —

Administration's Fiscal and Financial Policies Bring Threat of Reduced Inceme to All Endowed Institutions—Schools, Hospitals, etc.—In Country.

Four Supreme Court Ju Roosevelt Judicial

Reform Bill,

Under the present fiscal and financial policies of this Administration, money can earn only a fractional part of the earning rate through the years since such places were founded. It is as though these accumulations of the wealth of generations had been in large part destroyed. In addition to that, the threat of inflation hangs over them like the shadow of doom. Inflation cuts the buying power of such fixed incomes—sometimes completely wipes it out. That double danger—reduced income and reduced buying power of what is left—hangs over every endowed institution in this country—colleges, hospitals, libraries, research foundations and charitable institutions generally,

on ” ” Bo: there is another lesson here. I didn’t know whether Mr. Mason donated his Franklin treasure because he literally couldn't afford to be caught dead with it, but it is very likely that something of that sort actuated Mr. Mellon in his magnificent gift of art. If they die owning these things, the Government must appraise them and tax their value to the estate at confiscatory rates. They can’t be sold like wheat to pay the tax. Their market is only occasional. Either the rest of the estate must go to save them or they must be given away to save it. The latter is the usual conclusion. Most rich men learned their lesson. There will be no more great collections. Taken Ror co these two ces tend toward a

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, Feb. 9—If the Roosevelt proposal for increasing the size of the Supreme Court passes Congress, here is the best inside estimate—based upon the opinions of their associaics— as to which of the Nine Old Men will resign. Chief Justice Hughes will resign immediately. He reaches the age of 75 on April 11, and he already has put himself on record in his own book that it is highly doubtful whether a Supreme Court Justice should serve after that age. Justice Brandeis also will resign. Brandeis is 80 years old and has been in failing health for some time. More important, however, is Brandeis’ conviction that he should not be a controversial issue. Justice Van Devanter also will retire. He will be 78 years old on April 17 and he has been rather fed up on the whole court controversy for some time. He planned to resign during the last days of the Hoover Administration, but determined to stick it out after Roosevelt was elected. Van Devanter once was a member of the Republican National Committee, and sat in on Republican conferences affecting Wyoming, his home state, even after his appointment to the Supreme Court, ' 8

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

stices May Resign if Congress Enacts Washington Observers Report,

medicine, and like Van Devanter planned to retire at the end of the Hoover Administration. He was a member of the Republican National Committee from Utah. Justice McReynolds probably will remain, although celebrating his 75th birthday last week. He remains grim and determined in all his opposition to New Deal

legislation. McReynolds has considered retiring, but those around him think he will remain. Justice Butler also is almost certain to remain unless all of the conservative Justices decide upon a mutual withdrawal as a rebuff to the President. Butler will be 71 on St. Patrick's Day, is almost as stanchly opposed to New Deal legislation as Mce Reynolds, and has a determination which is hard to shake. ” » ”

USTICE ROBERTS is an unknown quantity, but those who know him best think he will resign, make an issue of the President’s action and keep hime self free, if events break right, to run for the Repub= lican Presidential nomination in 1940. Justice Stone, also a relatively young member of the Court—he is 65—is expected to remain, He is in sympathy with the President's policies. Justice Cardozo, also in sympathy with the New eal, is expegied to remain, although he may have to je of ill health, He has been suffering ‘some time. He is 7 years old.