Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 February 1937 — Page 12

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The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Business Manager

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

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Cid Riley 5551 QSCRIPPS ~ HOWARD |

Give Light and the Peoples Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1937

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

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

“TO THE PUBLIC GOOD” MERICANS, torn between the clamors of the alarmists, the perfectionists and the opportunists on the Federal court issue, can learn wisdom from the man whose birthday they celebrate today. Washington was chairman of the group of 55 young men who framed the Constitution in Philadelphia 150 years ago this summer. His one address to the convention, made when they had finished their four months’ labors, was an exhortation to faith, humbleness of spirit and unity of purpose. “I confess,” he said, “that there are several parts to this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure that I shall never approve them; for, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information, or fuller consideration, to

change opinions, even on important subjects, which 1 once |

thought to be right, but found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older 1 grow, the more apt 1 am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. . . . “I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall have become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other. “l doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views. “Thus, 1 consent to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because 1 am not sure that it is not the best. The opinions 1 have had of its errors are sacrificed to the public good. . . . “Much of the strength and efficiency of any government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends on opinion—on the general opinion of the goodness of the government as well as the wisdom and integrity of its governors.”

GET TO THE ROOT

INCE our ideal is a government of three branches, coordinate and equal, let's ask ourselves: Do we have it? And since that ideal calis for checks and balances to maintain the equal and co-ordinate plan, let's ask: Do we have them? The answer to the first question is no, flat. To the second—we have checks and balances as two of the three branches relate to each other, but not as those two relate to the third. The Supreme Court is not equal; it is supreme— literally, and not merely in the judicial sense. The issue is not the simple one involving independence of the judiciary. It is one of the supremacy of the judiciary. The basic problem is, therefore, how to devise a way by which balance—actual equality of power—may be attained. President Roosevelt's plan does not solve that problem. Temporarily it would create another form of inequality, this time reposing not in the judiciary but in the executive and legislative. But obviously it would not arrive at balance. The Supreme Court, though for the time being changed by the use of the appointive power, would still be in the driver’s seat so far as continuing authority through the years to come is concerned; would still have the last say. That is, unless the Rooseveltian precedent were seized upon by other Presidents later on; in which case there would still be unbalance of power. As for checks and balances, the executive by his veto is a check on Congress; and Congress by its right to pass laws over the President’s veto is a check on the executive. Since John Marshall so deftly set his precedent, and took for the Supreme Court the right to declare laws unconstitutional, there has been no corresponding check against the judiciary. Absolute balance probably never can be obtained. But in this democracy there is a final power. Perfection would call for a system of plebiscite by which great questions could be submitted to the people. If such a plan could be the outgrowth of the issue that has been so dramatized by the President’s proposal, the greatest contribution of all time to democracy would be made. For we then would have the capstone that has been lacking all the time. We would have the Constitution and its guaranties. We would have the court of last resort where it belongs —not in the judiciary, but in the voter. And we wouid have eliminated the unbalance that now exists. There are difficulties within the Constitution itself to be overcome before that can be worked out. But we don't think the idea is hopeless. A modified form would be to provide Congress with the same kind of check over the Court as Congress and the President have over each other—the power to override a Court veto as it does a Presidential veto. To inject the plebiscite idea, such power, if it limited Congress to overriding after a general election had intervened, would give the people a chance to express themselves on the issue before the vote to override was taken. That is one proposal. Another is to override by a twothirds vote directly, as Congress can now override the President’s veto. Many other proposals have been offered to accomplish a lasting carrection of the condition which periodically in our history has caused so much trouble, and, in the case of the Dred Scott decision, bloodshed. Any of them in our opinion would be better than the plan the President offers, which does not get to the root of the question: How can this Government actually be made

{ one of three branches—of power equal and co-ordinate ?

tl iJ

| business was C. C. Pyle,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

co m RHEE ao) vod

Thing and Some Say

Ass 272%,

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Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

When Last Heard of, C. C. Pyle, Promoter of Sports and Freaks, Was on Trail of Pig-Headed Boy.

EW YORK, Feb. 22.—The most interest- |

ing man I met in 15 years in the sport the small-time

| nickelodeon operator who threw a halter

over Red Grange, or anyway, handled a couple of million dollars in a goofy career which was interrupted a couple of years by a stroke of paralysis. The last time I heard from Mr. Pyle he was back in action with an aggregation of human monstrosities who seem to be his own true love in the show business. Always an optimist, he said he was getting well again and claimed to he on the trail of a boy with the head of a pig. Mr. Pyle’s freak show at the Chicago World's Fair was a dreadful collection of unfortunates, some of them so hideous that at almost every show, and he held one every 30 minutes, some customer with a weak heart would emit a faint squawk and flop to the floor with a soft skush, dead to the world. One of the freaks was a weazened old man from around Scranton who had been a coal miner until he ossified. There was no deception at all. The little old man was as solid as concrete, and Charlie used to stop by the perch where he lay like a seashell on a parlor whatnot and introduce people, saying “This is Eddie the ossified man. Eddie is a little stiff from La Crosse.” “Scranton,” the old man would screech.

“Oh yes, Scranton,” Charlie would say. anyway, Eddie is a little stiff.”

He also had a man who could sew buttons on his

Mr. Pegler

“Well,

hide, a rice writer who could print the Ten Com-

mandments on a grain of rice and a Hindu policeman with mustaches nine feet long. There was a terrible tragedy in the freak show one night when the Hindu policeman got into a fight with another artist over the affections of a lady colleague in the cast and came out of it with one of his long, ropy tentacles snipped off. o 8 8

Coase wanted to get a sailor to do a splice, but the Hindu put the severed strand in his trunk and sailed for home desperately humiliated. About 10 days later, there came a newspaper cable from France saying he had jumped into the ocean and drowned. He developed his taste for freaks while nosing around a terrible little canvas carnival show which accompanied the whiskered and incredibly lame and bedraggled troupe of runners across the continent from west to east in the first of his bunion derbies.

u un n

NE night in New York Charlie Pyle chartered the

grand dining salon of the steamship France and served caviar, duck a la orange and wine to about 200 monetary big shots of the era of wonderful nonsense, using the gold dinner service. At the climax Vincent Richards and his bride walked down the grand staircase amid cheers, signalizing Vinnie's surrender to professionalism, He got $5000 for a cigaret testimonial by Grange who never smoked, and his range has extended from millions down to nickels, from the grand salon to the greasy spoon, from a dress suite at the Garden to pit-shows on rainy nights in little mudwallow towns in the Ozarks, but he loved his freaks best. He would write letters home for the armless and the crippled and load them gently into the bus at closing time. I hope he found his pig-headed boy.

ah 4 va u a BE pues pe A ST os % RR rn - Se, | | |

The Hoosier Forum

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

1 wholly

STATEHOOD TO HAWAII

By V. 8S. McClatchy, Executive Secretary, California Joint Immigration Committee, San Francisco, The Times recently published a | statement from Samuel W. King,

OPPOSES GRANTING OF |

cluded.

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies exMake your letter short, so all can have a chance.

withheld on request.)

duction become deadly germs in the organism,” Prices must fall continually to reach more consumers or wages must rise to provide more buying power. If the Supreme Court blocks legis« lation which is intended to give a

Letters

,| delegate to Congress from Hawaii,

must be signed, but names will be

more equitable distribution of buy-

| favoring statehood for that

terri- |

| tory. He failed to answer, however, |

| the arguments offered by the V. F. { W., the Native Sons of the Golden | West, a number of

California |

| Chamber of Commerce organiza- | { tions and others for refusing inde- | | pendent, powers of statehood to the |

‘nation’s western outpost, miles from the mainland. | these arguments are the following:

2000 | Among | ocean and the American people are

| Two-thirds of the territory's total |

| population are Asiatic, and included | therein are about 90,000 ineligible | aliens now barred from the main-

| land but who, if Hawaii is granted |

| statehood, would be free to enter | the sister state.

| tricity made from coal | water power continues its work of

Government has no right to make or sell eiectricity. Of course, without making or selling electricity, the Government cannot afford to build dams and reservoirs to establish flood and erosion control It seems the South is doomed to be drowned by water from the North. The North is doomed to lose its rich top soil to the rivers and

doomed to pay a high price for elec~ while the

destruction. The rights of the utility companies must be respected.

” o ”®

lapse than we found on March 4,

| though free to renounce it, and are

| (statistics June 30, 1934). More thah | By H. L. Seeger two-thirds thereof, 69,678, still re-| pr. Sullivan and Walter Lipp-

tain their Japanese citizenship, | : P > | mann are excited about the proposal

‘subject to the orders of Japan in |!l0 bring the Supreme Court into line peace and in war. The number | With the will of the ma jority of votof Japanese registered voters in|ers who overwhelmingly indorsed 1920 was 658, in 1932-—11,253, and in | the proposals of the New Deal. 1934—15,317, of which latter number all but 5,768 retain Japanese | citizenship. The Japanese now are the largest

| views regarding the ought to frighten them. If the five | quota of racial voters in the conservatives were liberal and the | territory and that quota is increas- | liberals more conservative, according ing at a rate (about 2000 a year) | to their view, we would be near the | much in excess of any other racial [end of the Republic. aroup. | What is being attempted by New | Controlling influences in Hawaii | Deal legislation is to provide our do not encourage expression of | privately owned industries with in- | opinion antagonistic to statehood, | telligent laws so that they may prenor a disclosure of facts which vent their own destruction because | justify that opinion, | of failure to meet human needs. P vv w Over and over again this lack of in-

| |

ing power, and businessmen are not intelligent enough to provide increased consumption power we shall be faced with an even greater col-

1033.» vo n » ” WRITER PREFERS ROOSEVELT TO SUPREME COURT By William Lemon Mabel German has advised me through the Forum to refresh my memory on the Constitution. As I understand it, this Constitu- | tion was created to protect all the people and is subject to change by | amendment if necessary.

For 12 years under Republican | misrule it either failed or was a forgotten document together with the Forgotten Man, who did not for- | get in the elections of 1932 and 1936. | The Supreme Court has made it | as flexible as rubber and interprels | it to protect special privilege. To remedy this, President Roose-

The fact that four of the nine | Velt has suggested a cure, but his judges have been liberal in their | Medicine is as gall to the sponsors Constitution | ©f the Liberty League.

Since his judgment in the past has taken us around his predecessor's corner, eliminated breadlines | and given us gainful employment instead of a basket, we are with him 100 per cent, We expect his enemies to criticize | all of his progressive ideas, but thus | far his successful record speaks for | itself. His heart has always been with | the exploited and downtrodden and |

| As a matter of fact, | make a contract through the simple expedient of ex=

Red

| ASKS WHY WATER POWER IS NOT HARNESSED By 1. Army engineers tell us that in one | lized. | week enou down the Ohio Valley to have fur- |

| telligent operation has caused pri- | vate industry to collapse.

| Private industry has not provided | a balance wheel to keep itself stabiProfits withdrawn from ch water power plunged | total production which do not in- | crease capacity and volume of pro- » % BP

he has served all of the people, not | a select few. | His legislation to help the average man was junked by a hostile Supreme Court, and he intends to protect his future legislation to give all classes a square deal.

the

I nished electricity for the entire na- | tion for one year. Why wasn't it | harnessed and made to do work?

The answer is politics and big | New moon, swing my fancy high | In the crook of your arm

1. Nature has given us flood con- | That I may commune with right; | trol, erosion control and water power And let my reason lie

business. Here is the situation:

Surely

wringing of

forth blood: so

Proverbs 30:33.

that the |

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Secretary Wallace's Suggestion of a Political Alliance Between the

Agricultural South and the

WY Samaron Feb. 22.—Secretary Wallace's suggestion of a political alliance between the agricultural South and the agricultural West is cogent, but it isn’t new. So far as their essential economic interests are the same, and both are different from the WA area of the Northeast, the suggestion is “a natural.”

For practical purposes such an alliance did frequently sweep the country before the Civil War. The wedge that split these natural allies for three generations was first slavery and then war. The wounds of that terrible conflict are mostly healed, but it will not always be easy to keep the congenital Republicans of the Middle West from answering the old incitations of the Bob Ingersoll-bloody shirt line of approach—the Constitution, the tariff, mother, home and flag—all oratorical symbols of the G. O. P.

” » Ld

T= tariff was always just as great a burden on the wheat farmer as it was on the cotton planter, but there never was any free trade sentiment in the Middle West. The row-crop and small-grain boys might get all heated up in the off-seasons about the money-changers and plutocracy. But when national election time drew near, a handful of bloody shirt spellbinders could always herd them back to the elephants. The agricultural deflation of 1921, from which the farmers have Qever recovered, finally woke West. Al 8 tried to put over the

- wil

the y for

Agricultural West Is Potent But Not New.

agriculture” idea with which Mr. Roosevelt ‘won. But Al didn’t understand it himself well enough to talk about it. No sale. By the time Mr. Roosevelt came along, debate had ripened the fruit of the promised farm relief from tariff-created inequality, and he won the whole region. The great question is, did he win it for the Democratic Party? Did he marry it to the South? I doubt it. The farmers were getting economic help from a political party for the first time and they voted for their pocketbooks. Mr. Landon didn’t do much ‘better in peddling his brand of farm relief than Al Smith did. But the farmers knew from experience that the President was in their corner.

u un »

Whe the Democrats no longer have the spell of Mr. Roosevelt's personal popularity to make magic with, and the Republicans offer agriculture as attractive a bill of fare as their competitors, the odds all seem to me to be on a parade of the prodigals back to the house of their fathers.

In many ways it may be well. Too heavy an unbalance in favor of agriculture would be just as bad as too heavy a tilting in favor of industry and finance. The fact that there is a real inherent conflict of interest also suggests that there is such a possibility as that a country can be too big. The way to compensate for that is to maintain a fair balance of advantage among all its parts, and maybe a combined Democratic South and 'West#wouldn't permit that,

NEW MOON | By JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY

{ Remote for earth's alarm, | A crystal for the broad daylight.

DAILY THOUGHT

the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, the nose

{ wrath bringeth

[ HEN ‘anger rises, think of the consequences.—Confucius.

URGES ABOLITION OF DOWNTOWN PARKING By a Citizen I am surprised that the police are | considering installing traffic meters for Indianapolis. We have the worst traffic problems of any city in America, especially in our downtown area, The four avenues leading from the business district make condition hazardous, and, as in Chicago, no park- | ing should be permitted at all, day | or night. No truck should be per- | mitted to stop and unload without | a driver at the wheel. This should | be established at once because of | fire hazards downtown. 1 have traveled thousands of miles and find that the worst dill ditions exist in this city.

and the bringeth the forcing of forth strife.—

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun Lawyers Are Fighting President's

Court Plan Partly Because Layman Might Be One of the New Justices.

NEW YORK, Feb. 22.—One of the reasons why lawyers in all their various groups from the Bar Association, up and down, are fighting President Roosevelt's proposals lies in the rumor that one of the additional jus tices may be a layman. Such a procedure would be within the Constitution, but as far as I know there has been no official indication of the possibility of such a step. It remains a rumor. But even a hint is enough to drive all barristers into the tight« est sort of solidarity. Lawyers live —and most of them not too well, I must admit—by maintaining the fallacy that there is something mysterious about their craft which nobody but one of the initiate can possibly understand. To a high degree the lawyers rather than the doctors are the spiritual descendants of the Afri can medicine men. Of late a good deal of lay medicine has crept into the magazines, and I have known a good many doctors who were frank enough to say, “I haven't any charm for your complaint, Why waste your money in calling me into consultation? You'll just have to cure yourself.” Lawyers in the main have encouraged the notion that not even the simplest agreement is valid unless it has been passed upon by some member of the bar. if Mr. A and Mr. B want to

Mr. Broun

changing letters specifying their mutual obligatigns, that document will have just as much weight in any court, as any more formally worded instrument. Again, persons who want to change some awkward

| or noneuphonious name go to all the trouble of hiring

a lawyer and applying to a judge for permission to switch from Rosengussen to Rose. The truth is that if T want to call myself Howard Brown tomorrow I have a perfect right to do so without committing my self to any legal machinery whatsoever. ” n ” N larger scope the balance in our theoretical diI vision of powers has been disturbed by the fact {hat there are too many lawyers in the House and Senate. And that goes for most state legislatures. The founding fathers thought of the process of law= making as something distinct from the judiciary, and even if fhe Supreme Court is stripped of some of its present powers we will still have members of a co-ordinate branch of the Government leaping up to sav. “I have nothing against the purposes of this bill, but it is plainly unconstitutional.” n n ” AM not proposing any amendment or direct piece of legislation which might bar all lawyers out of

| Congress, hut since there are so many legal-minded

gentlemen in the legislative branch of the Govern ment, one of the most logical bits of balancing wotild be to put a layman on the high bench. It has been suggested that a student of economics might have something interesting to say to colleagues who have divorced themselves from such material considerations. My own notion would be that the nonlawyer on the bench might well be a newspaper reporter, . I don't ‘mean a columnist. Such folk are already too dogmatic. Mr. Roosevelt would be wise to appoint a rewrite man. Then when one of the justices is

| about to hand down a decision for weal or woe tha

new associate might step up and say, “Just a minute, Charlie. Would you mind very much if 1 took that and turned it into plain and simple English?”

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Merry-Go-Rounders Predict European War Before Christmas Unless Secret Conversations Now Under Way Result in Colonies for Germany.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, Feb. 22.—The undercover conversations now going on about colonies for Germany probably hold the key to immediate war or

peace in Europe. If Germany gets colonies, war will be postponed for two or three years. If she doesn't get colonies— war will come before next Christmas. This may seem a rash prediction, but it is made with care and is based upon circumstances to be set forth below. The British consider the present discussions with Germany so crucial that Prime Minister Baldwin sent mercurial Capt. Anthony Eden on a month's vacation in Switzerland and had Hitler's envoy, von Ribbentrop, sit down opposite the coolest, calmest negotiator in the Bmpire, Lord Halifax. un ” ” DEN, who lost two brothers in ‘the war, is stronglv anti-German, also is nervous, high-strung, sometimes causing trouble during delicate diplomatic deals. Lord Halifax, on the other hand, came through a critical period as Viceroy of India, not only without losing his head, but with the genuine esteem of the Indian people. Once when Mahatma Gandhi threatened a hunger strike in protest against British methods, Halifax (then Lord Erwin) threatened a

jugs | Fees

Lord of the Privy Seal and No. 2 man in the Foreign Office. Ambassador von Ribbentrop told Halifax that Ger« many demands a strip of West Africa running from the French Congo up to Portuguese Guinea. Although von Ribbentrop was careful not to say anything to the British about it, this would includes Liberia, settled by American Negroes and under vire tual American protection, Liberia is a member of the League of Nations and cannot bes bartered away by the French or British—at least not officially—so it probably would go the way of another League meme ber—Ethiopia——and fall to German conquest. » ” = I ORD HALIFAX listened to Ribbentrop without ! batting an eye. He gave no more commitment than a polite thank you. : Von Ribbentrop, in turn, told Halifax that the British could take their time, consult their French friends and then let him know the answer, But most important of Von Ribbentrop’s remarks was his parting shot, which was something like this: “You can give us this strip of Africa with its raw materials-—or the alternative is the Ukraine. We haven't the navy to take colonies, but we have ‘thes army to march into Russia.” The big question-mark now in the minds of tha British is to what extent ‘the Cer