Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 March 1937 — Page 16

Page PDF (11.20 MB)

Back to issue view

PAGE 16

a a

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W, HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY President

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

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

+ Mary yvland St. Mail subscription rates

in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month, x

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

reau of Circulations. RIley 5551

Give Lioht and the Peopls Will Find Their Own Way

THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1937

WILL THE WELFARE BOARD RESIGN? TATE officials in the midst of the Baker-Cancilla investigation understood that the Marion County Welfare Board would resign. The Board has not resigned. But it is perhaps safe to assume that a body so thoroughly discredited by an official investigation will not want to remain in office long. According to the testimony, Judge L. Ert Slack, chairman, virtually forced the Board to name his political henchman, Joel Baker, as director without investigation. Then the Board was induced, over the protest of F. O. Belzer, to transfer to Baker the Board's control over the hiring and firing of Welfare Department employees. With that patronage power, Baker was dictator—until the State last week ousted him. To prevent another similar setup, the Legislature by almost unanimous vote considered it necessary to take from the Marion County Welfare Board the power to name the director. The boards in all other counties retain this power, The testimony of two Board members—the Rev. Linn A. Tripp of the Church Federation and Mr, Belzer of the Boy Scouts—makes clear that a political ring picked Baker “for the job even before the original law was passed, and S¢hat the Board never has been anything more than a rubber “stamp.

MARK FERREE |

{

Business Manager |

On such important matters as the fight against the |

Welfare Merit Bill, the Board was not even allowed to be a |

By Westbrook Pegler

rubber stamp. It was completely ignoved. The public is indebted to the Rev. Mr. Tripp and to

Mr. Belzer for their honesty and courage in belatedly brav-

ing ing the setup. To regain public confidence these two gentlemen and

the two women members of the Board must either resign

the wrath of the political intimidation ring and expos- |

or immediately take over responsibility for further con- | | prehensive people if Mr. Roosevelt would

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 1937

Another Spring Holdout?—By Talburt

DON'T a BE A SUCKERYOU CANGEY

. Rt PT REIN ENE a Ce ROR TO AL VE

S. O: S.By Talburt

\ © y

ISN'T IT ABOUT

TIME WE PUT ATRAFFIC COP

ON THIS

CORNER !

— aR \

Fair Enough

Situation Might Be Clarified if Roosevelt Were to Declare That States Have Outlived Usefulness.

NEW YORK, March 11.—It might clarify |

matters and soothe a great many ap-

The Hoosier Forum

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

LEGISLATORS FAIL | CONSTITUENTS, CLAIM | By a Baffled Voter As a close observer of political trends during the past session of the Indiana Legislature, nothing has

cluded.

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies exMake your letter short, so all can have a chance, must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

Letters {

We do not care what you write. |

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun Suggests Cottage on Times Square For Duke and Mrs. Simpson if They Actually Want Privacy. NEW YORK, March 11.—The report is out

that the Duke of Windsor is planning to live in a 20-room castle near Baltimore.

duct of the Board hitherto under political gang dictatorship.

| impressed me quite as much as the | | fact that nearly a third of the! | elected representatives make no]

tumor also has it that the second and third options are on another Maryland estate and one Long Island place, the location of which

have so many leaders in the New | We envy your opportunity to give | Deal refused to sanction this un- currency and effectiveness to truth. |

American move? They were with | We cannot forget that in building |

| hurry up and say that the states have out- | lived their usefulness, and declare for a

THE O'MAHONEY AMENDMENT

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT said in his fireside talk that | many opposing his court plan “are trying to give the |

impression that they really do want a constitutional amend-

ment,” but, if an amendment were proposed, would be the |

first to exclaim: * ‘Oh! amendment that you have proposed is not the kind of an amendment that I was thinking about.’ ”

that charge. who protest that they favor curbing the abuses of the

I was for an amendment all right, but this |

| straight national government, divided into

a number of large sectional departments.

Because, as matters stand, the national govern- |

ment is wiping out state rights and state responsibilities without abating the cost of running state governments, and the states themselves are daily more inclined to pass their problems along to Washington. Not many states have decent,

| let alone efficient governments, | and since the nation began to act | as Dutch uncle to the worst of

An opportunity is now offered to test the validity of |

To test the sincerity of the motives of those |

courts, but insist that it should be done by submitting a |

definite proposition to the people.

an amendment which reads:

“No law of the United States or of any state shall be | ST ssumption,

Roosevelt had to say in his victory dinner oration |

held to be unconstitutional by an inferior court nor by the Supreme Court unless two-thirds of the members thereof

them, even the best have come to the wise conclusion that the only way to break even is to grab all they can out of the national Kitty. If this goes on indefinitely they are bound to destroy cne another eventually, so it might

Mr. Pegler

4 lel ‘3 wo. i be Swart S Or er telly & Senator O'Mahoney of Wyoming today is introducing | Pe Smart to toss out the idea pretty soon and let

them snarl over it a couple of years preliminary to the third term. I know that reference to the third term is an but I listened closely to all Mr.

| and didn't hear him say “No.”

-. . . | shall specifically and by separate opinion find it so beyond

a reasonable doubt.” The Senator proposes that this specific limitation on the courts be submitted to the people, and be decided in separate elections in the various states, the voters choos-

| away in the county and city governments.

ing delegates to conventions to reject or ratify the amend- |

ment.

Of all the suggested alternatives, we think this two-

thirds idea is best and that its very simplicity and reason- | ableness would command greater Congressional and popular |

support than any other court reform proposed including the President's. It has been contended the same reform might be accomplished by a simple act of Congress.

But |

. . . | rather than get into a legalistic argument, we should

prefer to proceed by either route, or both.

And while we like this two-thirds rule best, we cer- | tainly do not intend to freeze upon it to the exclusion of |

all other possible alternatives.

There is, for example, the |

Wheeler-Bone proposal to give Congress the power to over- |

ride court decisions by a two-thirds vote of the two houses, measures involving the Rill of Rights excepted. our preference for the O'Mahoney plan, if a majority of

espite | i D pite | who put them in, which means that the state gov-

These state governments are pretty bad as all of us have known for a long time. They are not really governments in the true sense, but political organiza-

{ tions which use the public money for the pay-off

and load up with all the no-account uncles and brothers-in-law of the party workers, and stick them Under a nationalist government the counties could be abolished almost altogether.

n rE the counties exist almost exclusively as political perquisites and the cost of preserving these sentimental relics of an earlier day is waste.

” ”

It is even possible that under a real national |

government, if it were any good, the municipal authority would be subject to Washington supervision

| pretense, by their votes, of express- |

the President before, but this attack | public works, such as dams, levees,

ing the will of their constituents.

| on the Court was too much for them | roads and decent homes, your pen |

|is mightier than thousands of men |

has not been divulged. I don’t want to spoil anybody's real estate deal or

| welfare and { efficient and better

| will “do what the Administration |

When asked to support measures | to_swallow. ident! t Firesid esipned i ; y e esident’s recent Fireside designe fnpove Lhe to en | Chat was designed to pull the wool r administered | Over the eyes that the landslide ; . Focen.. | didn’t fill too full of dust. > TIME . AYP’ Von government, these same represen- | There are many who were de-

tatives reply shingly tha | , tives reply unblushingly that they | ceived before the election, but they

the big cities and the more populous rural areas | | always follows the opinion of one |

| says.”

With such an attitude expressed by an alarming number I have come to the conclusion that representative | government, as practised in Indiana, {is an abysmal failure. { Is not politics a moral enterprise? | Surely, the character to carry it on | is no gift of the gods, but a by- | product of the process of getting {and using skill. The prevailing | attitude causes me to wonder why | we go tc the expense of a legis- | lative session, when no piece of

| legislation has a chance unless it | MRS. ROOSEVELT'S WORK

| bears that illusive symbol, the “go-

| sign.”

| have a chance, surely it must come | about by an | sponsibility on the part of the voter | as far back as the primary.

increased sense of re- |

It must |

| come about because we choose men |

| and women to make our laws, who will genuinely consider the greatest | | good for the greatest number. An analysis of the legislation just passed is convincing proof

that |

‘men with such an ideal could not |

' have made these laws.

In the words of Seneca, “If a man |

| group, his place is not in the Sen- |

| ate, but in a faction.” = ” ” | COURT PROPOSAL CALLED | PRELUDE TO DICTATORSHIP

as to efficiency and cost, and that the price of being |

governed would decline to the victims’ ability to pay. but they are never able to come up with the amount

that is spent ostensibly on their behalf.

If state governments were any good I would dislike the idea of wiping them out, but we get terribie political clowns and dummies for Governors in most of them at any given time,

some figure near

” u »

A ND, anyway, most of them are not in office to govern but to run the show for the politicians

| ernments are simply holding companies for the boys.

the progressives in Congress decide in favor of the Wheeler- |

Bone proposal, we shall be willing to ride along. other plans, better than the President's, doubtless will come out of the Congressional hearings and debates. No progressive, in or out of Congress, we believe, should permit himself to get in the untenable position of insisting—as Mr. Roosevelt unfortunately does—that his way is the only way. Pride of opinion should not be permitted to divide the ranks of those who sincerely seek a solution of our all-important and very pressing court problem.

Many |

| government and multiplying fast or that strong-arm now being |

Maybe there are some exceptions, and you are at liberty to name yours, but not more than two. Possibly things wouldn't be any better under a national administration, because nobody needs telling that the cooties are cozy in the seams of the big

methods learned from Huey Long are applied to the nation as a whole. But it will be that way anyhow as things are going

| today under a government which is nationalist in

thought, purpose and effect.

As it is now, the people pay, | | ing the will of the people for Roose- | { walked in darkened marble halls,

| By Mabel German What's this we hear about it be-

| velt to ditch our Supreme Court? It certainly is not the will of the | people and no one knows it better than Roosevelt.

| the election. That's the reason he | had only smiles in place of answers to vital questions.

He knew Americans were not all | The lamp was God — the path a

nit-wits. He can’t fool the people all the time, just some of them some of the time. We all know he controls the legislative branch of | the Government and that if he gets

| control of the Court, we will have | faith, we have peace with God

| no republic.

Presidents and approved by Con- | gress, according

in appointing them for life.

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Appointment of Joseph P. Kennedy as Chairman of New Federal

| caustic unfairness of some Repub-

| And lamp-lit path across the floor.

He knew it before | { saw a room with treasures filled,

| | |

The justices were appointed by| Romans 5:1.

| { |

to constitutional |

| law. There was a definite purpose | Purp | silent, but nothing which they deny.

If it is the will of the people, why Pascal.

{ licans.

see clearly now and along with the | 17 million who saw what was ahead, | refuse to be fooled any longer. { There will be a grand awakening | of the American people when we have a one-man Government. Some never appreciate a good thing until they've lost it. The issue is not the number of Supreme Court judges or their ages, but “shall we permit Roosevelt to usurp the three branches of our Government?” on

® o

COMMENDED ’

If representative government is to | By Hiram Lackey

A Times reader is displeased with | Mrs. Roosevelt's role as a champion | of political common sense. May I urge our First Lady to con- | tinue her good work of teaching the religion of Roosevelt — all that | makes Democrats superior to Re- | publicans. We want your viewpoint | on economics and politics. Many Republicans, Mrs. Roose- | velt, enjoy your political comments | and love you for your good work. | You need never worry over the

You could not please them, regardless of what you write. I heard one Times reader, prob-

LAMP-LIT PATH By LORRAINE FREE LAWSON

Where life no vibrant answer calls, Until I came upon a door

The beatings of heart were

stilled; For then I knew where e'er I'd look,

book! DAILY THOUGHT Therefore being justified by through our Lord Jesus Christ.—

AITH affirms many things respecting which the senses are

| FAMILY

[and acres of modern machinery. | Holding fast to your realization of the definite relationship between | silence and knowledge, we hope you | shall allow nothing to interfere with

[ your periods of meditation, essential |

to good writing. We hope that a pencil and pad may ever be within your reach, so that your millions of readers shall never lose a single gem,

#4 2 WANTS SOUTH SIDE

THEFTS STOPPED By E. S. As everyone probably has read, the police have been doing a good job cleaning out crooks and house- | breakers on the North Side. That's | fine. Now they can march down to | the South Side and clean up. There | has been a number of strers | committed on the South Side and | reported to the police but few of |

| these have reached the papers.

I am one of the unfortunate vic- | tims of a clothes-thirsty bandit and there are several in our neighbor- | hood who have had their homes |! broken into and burglarized.

w » » WIPED OUT BY DISEASE AFTER FLOOD

| By B. C.

From a Detroit fire house comes | an intensely tragic story. Recently one of the city's firemen learned | that his brother had died as a re- | sult of the Ohio River flood, and left for Kentucky to bury his dead. Several days later a secretary at Detroit fire headquarters got a telegram stating that another of the fireman’s brothers had died. Then another wire revealed that their mother had followed her two boys in death. From the fireman’s wife came another message to the secretary that her husband was critically ill; then one, that he had died. A final wire revealed that the fireman's sister had passed away. The entire family, it seems, had | been wiped out by pneumonia, the | result of living in a house left wa- | terlogged, dank, and chill by flood | waters. Since deaths from illness rarely reach news columns, tragedies such | as this may not be unusual in the | wake of the great flood—just an- | other reason why authorities should | not relax efforts to stave off other | such catastrophes.

| to seem inhospitable, but if the young people want my advice I would say, “Stay away from the Cloisters.” One of the attractive features of this estate as mentioned in the prospectus is the fact that a railroad station of the Pennsylvania is only 400 feet from the house, Now, the Pennsy is among my favorite roads and the dining car service is excellent, particularly the salad bowl which, as I re=member, costs 45 cents, and if David Windsor is going to come mute back and forth to some job this easy access to transportation may have a real value. On the other hand, if he is disposed to do most of his work at home he may find the sound of the freight cars distracting. Moreover, I think the former monarch ought to be told that one of the ways in which this nation is likely to show its friendliness will be in a disposition to shower him and his wife with attention, On the Fourth of July, other legal holidays and practically every week-end excursion trains will go past the Cloisters. Worse than that for David Windsor's peace of mind, some of them will stop still upon a siding in order to give the passengers a chance to debark and leave their eggshells upon the front lawn, If Mrs. Simpson has advised him to seek sanctuary near Baltimore on the ground that it is not as other cities of the United States, then she has most grossly deceived him. Quite unintentionally, I have no doubt, The romantic memories of her youth still linger, and she recalls the days before she was the favorite queen of flashlights.

Mr. Broun

” ” FJ O her it may be that Baltimore remains the city of terrapin and H. L. Mencken. She may sub=scribe to the fictional portrait which Mr. Mencken has created of the free city. But Henry isn't what he used to be, and neither is Baltimore. If Mr. and Mrs. Windsor really want to move into

| a community where they can attract the minimum of

attention they should choose the Long Island estate or some spot near New York City. This is the port of missing men. For a day, perhaps for a month, New Yorkers would gape at the visiting couple, but then their name and their fame would be lost in the maze of city traffic. ” ” NCE on Fifth Ave. I remember seeing a very pretty woman who wore most conspicuously in her nose a large gold ring. Practically nobody turned to stare at her. I was a little surprised, but I did not

look back. It has been said that New York is aloof and une friendly. That may be true. If so it is a grievous fault, but it has its compensations. One may starve to death in New York without much outside interference. But, on the other hand, one may laugh or love or wear a hair shirt without rebuke or comment. If David Windsor and his wife actually want privacy I suggest that they set up a little cottage in the middle of Times Square.

”

—

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Women and Consumer Organizations Back Drastic Food and Drug

Movement,

Bills in State Legislatures; Mrs. Roosevelt Supports

Maritime Commission Is as Good Selection as Could Have Been Made.

CENTENARIAN DEPAUW

ITH the induction of Dr, Clyde E. Wildman into the presidency yesterday, DePauw University continued the celebration of its 100th anniversary. In a state noted for the number of its colleges, DePauw, although neither the oldest nor the largest, has always occupied a special place. It 1s safe to say that outside Indiana none of the State's institutions of higher learning is better known. At DePauw now will be found students from all over ‘the United States and her territories. Students from foreign countries ave not strangers to the Greencastle campus. Every school has its traditions, but DePauw seems to have a special hold on the imagination of its graduates, for, in proportion to its size, it has a large number of “DePauw families.” school there. Three or four generations of DePauw graduates in the same family are not uncommon.

Alumni send their children back to !

| an appointment as could have been made.

The Methodists who founded DePauw in 1837 as In- !

adiana Asbury University built well. May her second 100

a be as successful as her first,

EW YORK, March 11.—As this column once remarked, the new Mercantile Marine Act is a charter to the commission to restore the American merchant flag to its former place of supremacy on the seven seas. If it can’t be done by aids and persuasion to private operators there is authority in the act from the Government to do it under its own steam. The act baldly provides for the Government to pay the difference between American costs and wages for

ships and their operation and those of their cheapest |

competition. A sea-dog who couldn't do business on that kind of formula would be pretty poor. Chairmanship of that commission is just about the most important administrative job in the Government, With the plenary powers given the com-

mission by the act, the chairman is singularly on |

the spot. His authority is so great and the means

placed at his disposal so ample that there is no room | He has either to hand in a turn- | key job of go-getting or acknowledge that, as ad- |

left for alibis.

ministrator, he is a blue-faced monkey. The selection of Mr. Joseph P. Kennedy is as good He did an outstanding job as chief of SEC and he is of a temperament and ability to get things done.

" ” n N taking a couple of pokes at the Nazis. this column doesn’t intend to shoot its “arrow o'er the house and hurt my brother.” Adolf Hitler and his gang

i hots ri an Ea A SANE

are one thing. The harassed, regimented, bewildered German people are quite a different thing. The Armistice was agreed on the basis of the 14 | points. The Germans rendered themselves militarily | impotent on that basis. The Treaty of Versailles | threw that basis out the window. It's impossible

| terms undertook economically to enslave a nation of

| 60 million people for an indefinite time.

You just can’t do that. Something had to pop. ' What popped was universal and progressive repudia- | tion, the failure of every German government which Was not ruthless enough to take any means that would let the people live and, from one compulsion of cir- | cumstance to another, to the unspeakable Hitler and absurd and bloody Nazidom.

” ” »

WE must distinguish all that from the German people from whom we got the blessing of | Christmas, the beauty of Easter, fairy tales, cuckoo | clocks, canary birds, crullers and kraut, most of our language including our word for “home” and the melting, haunting sweetness and beauty of Swabian songs. With all that goodness, it seems to be their misfortune to be too docile to authority. They apparently | enjoy being regimented. About the only real differ-

ence between Hitler and the Kaiser is the direction

pointed by the ends of their mustaches, : bikie AA a Ri Li PA

Ji : Nak TT

roa,

Sri

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, March 11.—Women and consumer organizations are putting the heat on the food and drug industries to force them to accept enactment of a new Federal regulation act. The movement is quiet, but very aggressive. The issue has been pending since 1933, when, at the instigation of the White House, Rex Tugwell wrote a drastic measure. The furor that arose over the bill in business circles caused it to be shelved that year. It was revived in more moderate form in the next session and has continued as an acrimonious issue ever since. This year its proponents have resorted to a new line of attack, concentrating their fire on state legis-

Jatures. As a result of their efforts, bills modeled closely after the original Tugwell proposal have been offered and are being militantly pushed in a number of states. Such measures are pending before legisla=~ tures in New York, Washington, Montana, California, Texas, North Dakota and Virginia,

» » ”

HE inside angle of this new strategy is the fact that it is warmly backed by Mrs. Roosevelt, long

an advocate of stringent food and drug legislation,

$ Bay # TR :

Fos i { SR

It was Mrs. Roosevelt who inspired the recent White House comment that the pending Copeland bill is not satisfactory and will have to be strengthened before it would be acceptable to the Administration. The attack in the states is worrying drug and food interests. They are particularly disturbed by a fea=ture of the propdésed state measures calling for a heavy registration fee. The inside word is that in order to smother these state bills and put a quietus on agitation for a drastic law, they are considering the advisability of swallow ing the bitter pill of a moderate Federal act. 0» » un VERHEARD as the throng of $100-a-plate guests milled slowly out of the Victory Dinner banquet hall, after the President's slashing attack on the courts: Voice: “What did you think of it, Senator?” Senator Clyde Herring (D. Iowa), and one of the “on-the-fence” group: “I don't see how I can vote against the President now.” Another voice: “Well, that's one speech that will appeal to the mob.” ; Third voice: “Well, why not? The mob’s ruling the country now, isn't it?” :