Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 February 1937 — Page 9

Vagabond

FROM INDIANA

ERNIE PYLE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20.—Sam the Microscope Man. He's a sort of Jekyll and Hyde. In the daytime he works as a secretary in a Washington office. But at home he is a scientist. He is a bear with a microscope. He has read deeply in astronomy and biology and physics. He has devoured every word Sir James Jeans ever wrote, and he understands the Einstein theory and agrees with it. He says he could explain it to me in 20 minutes, and we're going to try it some time, For many years Sam has been studying the stars. But recently Sam's observations have swung from big things, such as stars, to little things, such as one-celled animals. Cia Things you can't see with the € % naked eye. a Sam keeps his scientific equip- © < b ment in a pasteboard box under the Mr Pyle

is

bureau. His laboratory consists of a microscope about eight inches high, several plain glass slides, a blue light in a pasteboard box, a pair of tweezers, a stick with cotton on the end of it, a Mason jar of dirty water, and two bedbugs. Sam set up his equipment and we started peeking through the eyepiece. The first thing was some dried baking soda on a glass slide. I've never seen any real wallpaper that looked more like wallpaper than that dried soda. It was very pretty, Then we went after the bedbug. You'd think anything as ornery as a bedbug would be a regular ogre under the microscope. On the contrary, a bedbug is beautiful. He is as brightly colored as a Maxfield Parrish painting. The bedbug looked so fine that we got enthusiastic and started taking ourselves apart and having a look. Sam pulled a hair out of his head. It looked like the underwater end of a pier piling, with barnacles on it.

Went After Biology

FTER that we got serious again, and went right 4 \ down into biology. Sam got out his jar of dirtv water. “Now we'll really see the fundamental of all life,” he said. He dipped" his swizzle stick into the jar, and let a drop fall onto the glass slide. Then he started getting a focus. All of a sudden he yelled: “Ernie, here's a protozoa! Come quick and look.” I looked a long time and then I said, “Sam, are vou sure vou didn’t get some sewing machine oil mixed up in that jar?” Sam looked again, and that time he started velling louder than ever. It seems he was wrong about

it being a protozoa. It was an amoeba.

u n un

Lively Oil Bubble

Se I looked again, but it still looked to me just like a bubble of oil with little warts on it. But it was a pretty lively bubble. It swam all around that drop of water, and when anything got in its way it would change its shape and just slither around the obstruction. And it over now and then, like a fish. And two or three times it turned and dived straight ‘down clear out of range of the microscope—I dived at least a hundredth of an inch. We saw a lot of these things. were all one-celled animals. He said they were just like humans—that they had hair, and internal organs, and that they could think. I asked him what thev thought of the modern girl, but Sam said thev didn’t think about that, because there aren't any girls among the one-celled folks.

Mrs.Roosevelt's Day

By ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

TICA. N. Y., Friday.—The girls in the home economics course alwavs give us a tea after the speeches are all over, and then one can enjoy talking to one’s friends. These informal chats frequently seem to be more valuable to young and old than an) other contacts made during our stay at Cornell. The same bright-looking young girl who typed my column last vear was on hand this year. When we parted she said she was sorry she wouldn't be there to help me next year. I asked what she was going to do and she answered: “Teach home economics. unless 1 can find a journalistic job. That's what I really want to do, but I must earn a living and so I have to teach for a while.” That is one good thing about a home economics course. It is a definite training and leads to a number of skilled jobs. The liberal arts may turn a girl

out, in the world with her mind still at sea as to what |

she wants to do with no definite skill to sell. She often has more interests and is better equipped from the cultural standpoint to enjoy a variety of things. but it requires more ingenuity and initiative to find the place where her education may be of practical use in earning her living. We all attended the master farmers’ dinner last night. the presentation of awards by Governor Lehman.

farmers, but as citizens in their communities, Farm life requires teamwork to a greater degree than any other way of life, T magine. The wife is entitled to her share of the honors on these occasions and the husbands always make very graceful acknowledgment of their debt.

My greatest thrill, however, came with the reading |

of the 4-A awards. Two girls and six boys stood before the Governor and heard him read the reasons why they had been honored. Thev must be proposed, as are the master farmers, by their neighbors, and then the judges make a thorough investigation. I think a full-grown man or woman might well be proud of the achievements of these youngsters ranging in age from 13 to 17. Thay are starting life with a ereat advantage. They know how to work and they are willing to work for themselves and for others.

would flop clear |

suppose he must have |

Sam said they |

As usual, the high point of the evening was | The | master farmers have to be outstanding not only as |

a

"The Indianapolis Times

Second Section

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY

20, 1

ar

937

Entered as at Postoffice,

Second-Class Indianapolis,

Matter Ind,

PAGE 9

A battle of the Civil War, which the Dred Scott case “unquestionably hastened. Perhaps it made inevitable a war which otherwise may not have been

fought.”

(Third of a Series)

By WESTON BARCLAY

Times Special Writer RED SCOTT was a shiftless, unreliable and illiterate Negro. He was born of slave parents on a Virginia plantation and ended his life as a good-natured and lazy porter at Barnum’s Hotel in St. Louis. Scott was owned at one time by a family named Blow who sold him to Dr. John Emerson. While the physician owned Scott

Tribunal's Present Attitude on Local Legislation Is Aftermath of Politics That Trailed Dred Scott Ruling.

the Negro was taken as a servant on a trip to the upper part of Louisiana Territory, in which slavery was forbidden by Congress. Dr. Emerson died and Scott became the property of Mrs. Irene Emerson, the physician’s widow, She rented him out as a servant, but he was of so little account that

nobody kept him long. jobs he sometimes went to the home of the wealthy Henry Taylow Blow to get food.

Blow was a “Black Republican” and Free Soiler to whom it occurred one day that Scott could be used in an attack upon slavery. He brought a suit in Scott's name in the Missouri courts in 1846 in which he contended that Scott had become a free man when he visited free territory with Dr. Emerson. . The State courts threw out the suit, Blow arranged a fictitious sale of the Negro to Mrs. Emerson's brother, a New Yorker, so that it could be taken to the Federal judiciary. Eleven years after the case was started it was ruled upon by the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision was read by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, appointed to the Court as a progressive and liberal Democrat by Andrew Jackson to succeed the conservative John Marshall, Justice Taney had been a defender of State's rights, a skeptic in considering proposals to give men of property and corporations much protection by law, a man who believed that the happiness of the citizens demanded the faithful preservation of the rights of the individual, but a man who did not believe that black men were quite human. He had been brought up in a Southern agrarian atmosphere. He had freed his own slaves, but he thought that white men were so superior to black that they could not live together unless the black were kept in an inferior position. Despite this view Taney was anxfous in the Dred Scott case not to increase the violence of current attacks on the Court by abolitionists. When the case was first discussed he, and a majority of his associates, decided to rule, as they

Between &

| |

| senility.

had in an earlier case, that whatever the status of Dred Scott while in free territory, he was a slave under the laws of Missouri when he returned there. This would have created no great furore.

» u n

HE ruling would made had not Justice MecLean been a candidate for the 1856 presidential nomination of the Republicans. The other justices learned that Justice McLean intended to write a dissenting opinion which would be a stump speech denouncing slavery as an evil institution and upholiing the right of Congress to forbid it in the territories. This forced reconsideration and delay, during which Buchanan was elected President, Before

Buchanan was sworn in he brought pressure on Justice Grier to persuade the Court to declare invalid the Missouri Compromise, which divided slave territory from free, west of the Mississippi. Justice Grier was an elderly man who was later to refuse to quit the Court when his friends urged resignation because of his obvious He accepted Buchanan's This is one of the few in-

have been

view,

| stances in which a member of the

Court is known to have considered the desires of a member of another department of the Government in a political case.

Buchanan approached Justice Grier at the suggestion of Justice Catron, so at least two members of the Court were concerned with the political aspects of the case. Every justice wrote an opinion of his own on Dred Scott. Seven of the nine agreed with Justice Taney that Congress had no con-

| stitutional right to abolish slavery

in the territories. To justify their

NOTRE DAME'S GIANT ATOM GUN

|

invalidation of an act of the national Legislature they went back more than 50 years to the decision of the Federalist John Marshall in Marbury vs. Madison. Justice Marshall's decision was almost a dead letter at the time. It had been denounced often and bitterly by the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, who ruled in the first five decades of the century. Even state courts had ignored and condemned it. What evidence there was of the intent of the founding fathers seemed to support Justice Marshall, but no one ever had been certain that he had constitutional authority for his decision. Nevertheless a court made up of Democrats used the decision for its own purposes in the Dred Scott case and thereby firmly fixed Justice Marshall's theorem in American law, ” » y BRAHAM LINCOLN the Dred Scott “Somebody has to reverse that decision and we mean to reverse it.”

Horace Greeley said, “This usurpation must be met by revolt.” The Republican platform of 1860 was largely a denunciation of the ruling, whic unquestionably hastened the Civil War, Perhaps it made inevitable a war which otherwise might not have been fought. The war brought into being the Fourteenth , Amendment to the Constitution, which in conjunction with the Marshall doctrine made the Supreme Court an everpresent stumbling block for those who sought social legislation, This amendment did more than any other provision in the Constitution to bring about the present attacks upon the Supreme Court. It was one of three voted to abolish slavery and protect Negroes. The principal sponsor was Thaddeus Stevens. He was

said of

case that,

P

Br SI Ww

Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney

PSR RIS SE

3

SRE

? i y . * ‘ y Vv ais

not at all interested in putting obstacles in the way of social legis~lation. His only motive was a deto force the South to give Negroes a position of equality. The amendment was drawn with one clause which said that no State “shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Shrewd John A. Bingham, railroad lawyer and Representative from Ohio, took care to that the clause referred to persons rather than men or citizens. In legal teminology the word person refers to corporations as well as to individuals. Rep. Bingham designed the due process clause “word for word and syllable for syllable,” to use his own language, so that it would accomplish his desires. Thaddeus Stevens didn't realize what it meant. He thought he was doing holy work for the Negroes when he forced the amendment to ratification. The eventual result was that the whole field of social legislation was brought into the Supreme Court. The amendment brought to the Court for approval every law passed by any State which affected in the slightest degree the wealth or profits of any individual or corporation.

sire

see

o ” o INGHAM said that he drew it so that “the poorest man in his hovel may be as secure in his person and property as the prince in his palace.” He might have been more truthful if he had said that he drew it so that the richest corporation wculd be as secure in forcing down wage standards as if it were Emperor of Rome. Bingham's admission of his han=dicap was made on the floor of Congress a few years after the amendment was ratified and was

Famous

Decision Tragic Civil War Is

Consensus.

confirmed by Roscoe Conkling dur ing an argument on a case before the Supreme Court. Conkling was the New York politi= cal boss who never lived down James G. Blaine's description of “his haughty disdain, his grandilo=quent swell, his majestic, super= eminent turkey gobbler strut,” He told the Supreme Court that reasons for wording the amendment as it was worded included ‘“‘complaints of oppression in respect to property.” At the time the states were voting on the amendment only a few men realized its full significance. Ohio and New Jersey Democrats didn't begin to see its implications until after their states had ratified, Then they forced repeal of the resolutions approving the amendment. The Southern States were forced to ratify as the price of restoration to the Union. Even the Supreme Court did not at once give full effect to the due process clause. The early constructions of it were narrow. The first case to reach the Court under the amendment was brought bv New Orleans butchers who objected to a monopoly set up by a carpet bag Legislature. By a vote of five to four the Court ruled that the property of the butchers was not being taken without due process.

railroad

»” n ou 8 the vears went by the men on the bench died and the new justices were appointed by conservative Republican Presidents. Through a long series of gradually developing opinions, the Court reached the position that due process forbade such legisla~tion as minimum wages for women and children in industry. In the first 75 years of the republic only two laws were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Since the Civil War, largely as a result of due process, scores upon scores have been declared void. To this day no one is certain of all the things that the 14th Amendment forbids, Decisions depend not as much upon law as upon the minds of the judges, an shown in the innumerable dissenting opinions. A judge may approve laws regulating prostitution in New Orleans, but disapprove Sunday closing laws for barbers. No one can tell how far a judge will extend due process until he has heard the case and ren= dered his opinion. The trend in recent years has been to increase the strength of the clause as a de=fense of wealth. John A. Bingham accomplished all he set out to do and more. Even he might be surprised to know that his old clients, the railroads, used his due process clause to object when they were ordered to remove from their rights of way a weed known as Johnson grass, which is obnoxious to farmers.

NEXT — George Washington's High Court,

RESIDENT'S COURT PLAN LESS

RISKY THAN OTHERS—CLAPPER

| | |

Our Town

By ANTON SCHERRER

FEW weeks ago, in a casual allusion to the “Violet Lady,” 1 had occasion to tell everything 1 know about the Widow Finn who used to live on Union St. Well, as it turns

out, I didn’t know the half of it, thus prov

Hurried |

| There—the secret's out,

| Mary brought

| produced some of the nicest fruit ever

| honorable, but in | Turks the urge to cheat men.

ing again, if further proof is necessary, that a good many people around here know a lot more about running this playful column than I do. I heard from most of them, Mrs. Clemens Vonnegut, for instance, took the trouble to write all the way from Culver, and I'm going to tell you about it hecause, next to puffing a pipe, there isn't anything I like better than bragging about the letters I receive from ladies who let me in on their secrets, Mrs. Vonnegut goes way back and uacovers the delicious fact that Frau Finn did the laundry work for her mother-in-law, who, I don't mind telling you, was the mother of Franklin, George and, of course, Mrs, Vohe negut's husband. Anyway, that's the way the Almanach de Gotha works, and I think it's well to bear in mind, because if you have the same trouble I do keeping the rami fications of the Vonnegut dynasty straight, you have your hands more than full, Well, as T was saying, Frau Finn did the laundry for the senior Vonnegut family and as a result of this contact everybody around the house got to be very fond of her. Son Clemens went, to Fraa Finn's often says Mrs. Vonnegut, and puttered around her pardon.

Mr. Scherrer

Lels Out Secrel

OBODY knew just what he was up to Sunday

but one a bunch of violets to an 18-year-old girl. Sure. the very same girl who, later on, turned out to be Mrs. Clemens Vonnegut Jr, I really didn’ an t 1 - ~<honestly I didn't—but LY San Tian on our sharing them, :

And having gone that far. 1 might as well tell

morning he brought

everything I know and say that the violets the 18~ | year-old girl received that Sunday morning were the

sweet-scented kind. Mrs. Vonnegut is sure of that What 5 more, she's sure that Frau Finn was the first one in Indianapolis to cultivate that kind. J All of which leaves me room to acknowledge Vice toria Foxlow’'s reminiscent remarks. She remembers everybody on the South Side, including the Widow Finn, Indeed, she knew her well enough to call her 'ante Finn, which is something else that escaped me, ” n n

Little Girl Next Door

WW HICH of course, leaves Mary Hartman Messor= smith, who looms up pretty important because

| of the fact that to this very day she wears a pair of

earrings given her by the Violet Lady. Mary was the little girl who used to live next door to Frau Finn, and she's chockful of the subject, too. Fact is, she can't say enough nice things about her, out the fact that, besides raising the nicest flowers ever seen around here. Fran Finn also D grown on the South Side—apples, peaches, grapes and things like that, According to Mary, Frau Finn also handled the laundry for the Charlie Maver family. but whether it

| caused a romance, deponent knoweth not,

A Woman's View

By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON

EN can do nothing better for women than a Pittsburgh jury did some weeks ago when it awarded 50 cents to a woman who had asked $50,000 in a breach-of-promise case There are many evidences that leaal leniency will be denied to us in the future. or that instead of our having a monopoly on that commodity. we shall be asked to take our medicine from the courts as male citizens do When every woman stands upright beside man, receiving the same reward for het accomplishments and the same punishment for her evil deeds, then and not until then, will our sex be truly emancipated. Each time some member escapes justice because she Is a woman, the now loosened bonds that have held us so long in political, social and economic slavery are retightened a little. i. The modern girl must be taught to play fair with men. Out of the long darkness of the barbaric past when every woman got her bread by cringing before the lordly male, and gained her ends bv deceits and subterfuges, emerges a new woman who is still somewhat burdened with the weight of those tradi= tions. : From grandmother to granddaughter have dee scended the theories which today still hamper the development of the modern maid in her dealings with husbands and lovers. In all respects she may be the recesses of her subconscious

Man himself has created the deceitful woman It's the slave reflex which actuates us to demand $50,000 from a man who decides he doesn't want to marry us. That, or else plain greedy foolishness, And every time such a suit is brought, all womanhood is humiliated. On this question no one ever said more viuthful words than Eugene V. Debs when he wrote: “Man has not yet reached his best. He never will reach his best until he walks the upward way side by side with woman.” : And this sentiment expressed hv Alexander Walker is both pertinent and true: “Man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he

with the Child Labor Amendment still unratified after 13 years. Obviously, in such matters, the amendment process is liable to be slow. Walter Lippmann suggests a cateway amendment, an amend-

Whee CU bi : | By RAYMOND CLAPPER [the right Visit With ‘a : : : 3: ; | restore a law which the Supreme

{ r bh I) 8 X re’ 5s | YY 2SHINGTON, Feb, 0 Stvch {Court had thrown out. This is a | and horror over the Roosevell | modified form of proposals to strip caused | the Court of the power of review. It can be regarded as a short-cut | ns on OROENLS : . R wi | ‘method of amending the Constitu- | ment to help other ame “I | tional amendment. Numerous vari- tion by a two-thirds vote of Con- | along by making it easier to change | eties, mostly old ones, been | oress. The Constitution would then | the one section of the Constitution | suggested, be what two-thirds of Congress said | dealing with the powers of Con- | They raise suggestions or practi- | it was, instead of what six justices |eress, while leaving all other seccal difficulty ok {though not | said it was. tions still difficult to amend. After | culties ‘which, sith This would be plece-meal amend- | you have done all of that, you | necessarily fatal, nevertheless SCCM o.." sist as we now have piece- Still don't know whether the Su- | to make the Roosevelt plan appear | .a) amendment by the Court. Tt Dreme Court will say a tax is a |more conservative and less risky would place the Supreme Court veto | tax or an illegitimate “exaction | method to be employed during the on the same footing as the Presi- | What vk Cort ean Go ath the | present log jam while the funda-| dential veto, and make two-thirds | Englis anguage is appalling. mental constitutional changes in- of Congress supreme over both other | >» » | volved in the amendment proposals branches, and over we language of HATEVER the merits of these | are being considered deliberately. |the Constitution as well. : 1 . 1 Senator Norris strikes at 5-to-4 | Direct stripping of the Court's plans, obviously there will be decisions by proposing that the |power of review would be even more a long argument before the parlor Cou could not invalidate a law by | drastic. as Se Sigs of |jogicians, and those searchers for ess than a 7-to-2 majority. Most | Congress wou e supreme. Jus=- ‘ nih y authorities think a constitutional |tice Holmes said the United States [500 perfect scheme which es ho amendment would be necessary. probabiy would not come to an end |objections, settle upon a plan. Norris’ plan does not take away | should that happen. But it is a | Meanwhile, time flies. . the Court's fina] review, nor does it | decidedly fundamental change and | Roosevelt went through all of this. broaden the constitutional powers not to be made lightly. The Department of Justice studied | Of Congress. Therefore it solves NO " uw ® _ |every plan ever advanced. It pre- | Te Rol damental difficulties Hh THERS advocate clarifying pared an analysis of them haif*an the orig corn Bong Magli amendments, specifically en- Ca His, Town pale ye uh : : ‘hich © ’ : V . | dle was the scheme which Roosevelt, Jumps laws over into outer darkness. | larging Ihe COMMErS PIED, do ore eliminating the others, finally : New Dealers now complain Vvio-|stricting the Court's use of the | agopteq as the one which might : Len Yn, the Court Be due-process clause, and so on. meet the immediate situation and COTO Nees TO tives Here there would be serious dif- | Which if successful would eliminate, resign themselves to New Deal laws | ficulty in granting enough power as he sald in his message, “the IVES to Ive necessity of considering any fundabut not too much. President-emeri-tus A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard

which six Justices—a majority—de= nounced as Ta but wiewial Spite hoi powers Yi ve which, nevertheless, remained valid. tution==changes : ’ appears before the Massachusetts cups, and toys that likewi may have become ine Legislature this week and says he fected, should be or steamed, or soaked in some is against child labor but also suitable vids against the Child Labor Amend- 4 After ment because it gives Congress t00 irnit are much power, there you o

bv a two-thirds vote to cannot elevate her without elevating himself,”

Your Health

By DR. MORRIS FISHBEIN

Editor, American Medical Assn. Journal

1 ITTLE is gained by treating the throat with antie A. septics during an attack of scarlet fever. The initial soreness and swelling soon disappear. If, hows ever, the throat feels more comfortable following gargling with some mild antiseptic solution. this may he done. : The physician who attends the patient—and there should always be a physician in constant attendance —will determine the nature of the substances that are to be used. If possible, only people who already have had the disease should be in contact with the patient and help the doctor with these procedures The doctor will watch the patient's temperature carefully and determine from its changes whether secondary infections will occur. He will examine the ears for the first signs of spread of infection from the throat. He also will examine regularly the excretions from the kidneys, to determine whether there is any danger that these vital organs will be inflamed. He will help prevent this complication by making sure that the patient remains quiet and that the diet does not throw any undue burden on the kidneys. Remedies may be prescribed that will prevent headache and other pains, and various lotions may be recommended to soothe itching and irritated skin. It also is necessary for the doctor to advise the family as to the cleaning of linens, utensils, and other materials used by the patient in order to prevent the spread of the disease. The bed and body linen and other materials that may have been contaminated by discharges from the patient, and all objects such as thermometers, spoons,

PUBLIC LIBRARY PRESENTS — ASN'T it G. K. Chesterton who said, ‘Some boys run away to God like others run away to the sea”? Here is a book that resurrects the thought and brings conviction of its truth—Pearl Buck's biography of her father, FIGHTING ANGEL (Reynal). Andrew carly heard the call of God to labor in the mission field of China. In telling the story of his | work, his daughter portrays his soui. And it was the soul of a saint. Zeal, self-sacrifice, and a passion for winning souls to Christ animated it. Andrew exhibited patterns of life common to all the saints. Although a modern in thought, lacking the faith which made her father such a flame, the author brings to the traditional and logical qualities of her parent a mature and final understanding that is unusual and rare. From several standpoints the book is Pearl Buck's best work, and will probably have the longest life. It should attract all her old readers and make friends for her among those interested in religious experience, biography and psychology. 8 o un

ITH the little MOVERS AND SHAKERS, Mabel Dodge Luhan presents the third volume of her “Intimate Memories” (Harcourt). Following “Backgrounds” and ‘European Experiences,” the present volume affords a picture of New York before and during the war—Bohemian New York, at a time when sex, revolution, birth control, Isadora Duncan, and the “new art” formed a confusion of revolt. Mabel Dodge, talented but purposeless, drifted from one group to | another, only superficially interested in their ideas, but always vitally responsive to people. Emma Goldman, Gertrude Stein, Hutchins and Norman Hapgood, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Margaret Sanger, Mary Heaton Vorse, Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, and Maurice Stern are but a few of those who, at one time or another, passed through her orbit. Her own sense of humor furnishes a keen and amusing analysis of her friends and of

[Supreme Court proposal | many to recoil toward a constitu-

have

Science Service Photo.

An electrostatic type of high voltage generator with which scientists hope to create the tiny elemental particles known as positrons has now been installed at the physics laboratories of the University of Notre Dame. Under the direction of Prof. G. B. Collins, two graduate students, R. J. Schager and A. L. Vitter, have built the giant apparatus shown above. Voltage is conveyed up to the large 12-foot y & Ww diameter electrode on the belt in the foreground. The accelerating GENATORS WHEELER and Bone tube down which electrons will be driven by the 1,500,000-volt potential strike at the Court's power of is at the right. Size of the equipment is realized better when compared |review by proposing that Congress. to the scientist on top of tke 22-foot tower, ter. 8h intervening election, have

aie ¥

at has ed, the : permanent 0 ie cleaned