Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 March 1937 — Page 12

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The Indianapolis Times

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ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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F SCRIPPS ~ NOWARD

@Qive Lioht and the People Will Find

Riley 5551

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 1037

THE 40-HOUR WEEK Y adopting the basic 40-hour work week the steel industry has done something quite as important to our economy as adding several hundred millions annually to labor's buying power in wage raises. The 40-hour week has been orthodox to American union labor demands since 1928. It became governmental policy under NRA and the Walsh-Healey act. But now that steel, the big bellwether of industry, has accepted its principle, we must begin to look upon it as the American standard and ask ourselves what its general application will mean. First, the general 40-hour week should take up a lot of slack in unemployment, providing mass purchasing power is maintained. It is estimated that in steel manufacture alone 40,000 more men will be needed. In manufacturing a general 40-hour week would absorb an estimated 750,000 family breadwinners. If applied to all factories, mines, service and transportation industries, WPA economist Leon Henderson thinks that 2,200,000 jobless would be put onto private payrolls. Next, it should give move leisure time to the workers on the job. How much it is difficult to estimate, so great is the variation of work hours in each industry, But millions of men would have more time for reading, thinking, playing, working at their hobbies and developing new desires and wants for new industries to fulfill, Samuel Gompers used to say that shorter hours were more important than higher wages. Union labor, including both the A. F. of L. and the C. 1. O,, is now demanding the universal 30-hour week. Nat urally that cannot be universally applied any more than the 40-hour week can. general goal is a realistic one. Shorter work weeks will help absorb the jobless and develop new cultural wants for an expanding industrial gvstem to supply.

LOCAL TRAFFIC SURVEY NDIANAPOLIS weicomes the news that Lieut. F.

Kreml is coming here this week to plan a traffic survey | Lieut. Kreml won national acclaim as a |

and safety course.

traffic expert conducting safety programs at Evanston, 1ll., |

and other cities. Morrissey. : Forty traflic deaths in 1937—more than twice the number at this time last year—are tragic testimony that Indianapolis needs an intelligent and co-ordinated safety campaign. The National Safety Council explains how such programs have cut the death toll in many cities, including the six winners in the fifth National Traffic Safety Contest.

Ie comes here at the invitation of Chief

Enforcement, engineering and education are keynotes | These include accident report- |

of the successful formulas. ing and careful analysis of all reports, training schools for officers, trained accident investigators, scientific research, co-operation of courts in the conviction of offenders, revoking licenses and otherwise clamping down on drunken driv-

ers, speeders and other offenders; widespread safety educa- | tion, modern trailic engineering to eliminate traffic hazards |

and provide warnings. Indianapolis needs the type of expert safety advice that Lieut. Kreml can give,

GOOD ADVICE, HARD TO TAKE JN the bleak days of the earlier part of his Administration, President Roosevelt and Congress acted enthusiastically oun the advice of Chairman Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board. The way to speed recovery and lift prostrate industry back to its feet, Mr. Eccles counseled then, was to hold down on taxes and press boldly forward a Government policy of borrow and spend, to put purchasing power in the hands of the masses. The results, we believe, prove that Mr. Roosevelt and Congress made no mistake in acting on Mr. Eccles’ advice. Now, with recovery at an advanced stage, Mr. Eccles comes forward again in the role of adviser. Private industry, he points out, with returning confidence has embraced the borrow-and-spend policy for itself, and is reemploying the jobless and spreading purchasing power. So the wise thing for the Government to do now, he says, is to balance its budget and start paying off the public debt, in order to counter-balance the expansion of private debts and thereby to head off a threatened inflationary boom.

Recovery has brought back profits and incomes, and

it is time, he says, to tax those profits and incomes to |

whatever extent is necessary to stop increasing and start decreasing the Government's debt, to stave off another

boom and crash and to get the last depression paid for, |

before the next one overtakes us. The President's reaction to Mr. Eccles’ suggestion is not yet known, but Congressional leaders apparently look upon it as politically expedient. Does Congress accept good advice only when it is politically popular to do so?

MRS. HENRY SCHURMANN

USIC is one of the community’s most valuable cultural activities because it can be enjoyed by all. Music in Indianapolis lost one of its most active supporters with the death of Mrs. Henry Schurmann. Her work in the National Federation of Music Clubs, of which she was a life member, made Mrs. Schurmann nationally known, and there were few musical activities here in which she did not have a part. She was an honorary life member of the Indiana Federation of Music Clubs and of the Indianapolis Matinee Musicale.

She has been president of the Indiana College of Music | and Fine Arts and was president of the Arthur Jordan | Conservatory of Music from 1928 until ill health forced her |

retirement. © Her death has left a gap in the musical ‘apolis which will be difficult to fill, r

But in a machine civilization their |

life of Indian-

Price in Marion County, |

3 cents a copy: delivered | 12 cents a

Mail subscription rates |

65 |

eat WET at

Fair Enough

‘By Westbrook Pegler

Finds Supreme Court Building to Be Lavish, but No More So Than Edifices of Other U. S. Agencies.

ASHINGTON, March 17.——Your corre- |

spondent took a look around the Supreme Court today, and for a fact, it is a lavish mausoleum in which the old men sit, and

the more extravagant in its cold and stately |

. vanity considering that they do most of their cerebrating at home, where they can kick the cat. There are solid marble pillars as big as the stacks | on an ocean boat, and white marble benches like those in a stylish graveyard, where no one ever sits because it wouldn't | seem right. | There is plush enough for an | old-fashioned Keith-Orpheum, and | even in the big, marble lobby the | tourists speak instinctively in | whispers. | It does give a man a feeling | that justice speaks out of a cloud, | and an almost irresistible impulse | to purse the lips and blow a rude | and impudent raspberry. And yet, looking about some of the other splendors of the American capital, one must allow that

Mr. Pegler

of the plunder, for there is no seat of government on

earth fit to compare with the luxury and extravagance !

of Washington. If they have private shower baths.

so have the secretaries of the great departments, and |

private elevators, too, and limousines thrown in for prestige, and you could hold a royal coronation in the reception room of Mr. Farley's plant, The building program began long before the New Deal, and Mr. Farley himself is always careful to explain that the great sweep of his quarters and the

seeluded bath and all were not his doing, but his in- |

heritance from the rascal Republicans. ” ” ”

ND now, whether from the force of

{ and all nice things, the building program goes on and | on. IL may yet stretch to Baltimore or down to Richmond. To be sure, the nine old men do have their particular own retiring rooms, but there is no rude cabin in the backyard of the edifice where their opponent, Homer Cummings, presides over the Department of Justice and the GPU. Ferd Pecora came to town in the days of the great purge, and combed enough wool off the economic royalists of the great boom to make prison suits for some of them, but somehow, in the hands of Mr. Cummings this material tailored up into stylish business suits, and the scoundrels are still on the prowl for widows and orphans with a little insurance. $ ou =» ND, lo, it was Mr. Cummings who had charge of the constitutional cases in which the New Deal was repulsed by the nine old men. His offices are big and luxurious, and he has access to any books that any private practitioner can consult, but somehow old Homer can’t win for losing in this field of justice. Ordinarily, when a man hires a lawyer and the lawver drops a succession of close decisions in the courts, the man just gets another and, if possible, better lawyer. however, Mr. Roosevelt seems to think that he is stuck

instead. Perhaps Mr. Roosevelt does this out of ad-

| a change of atmosphere in the income tax cases

| against Huey Long's boys.

General Hugh

ASHINGTON, March 17.—For once this column is in agreement with the Brookings Institution, the New York Herald-Tribune and Henry Wallace— a rapid upward spiral of prices of essential commodities is well along its way. In all these commodity price booms it is almost invariable history that wages lag far behind the skyrocketing upward trajectory of prices. But whether wages lag or not, it is a certainty that all fixed incomes—interest, pensions, salaries, rates for freight and public service and the like—do not rise at all, or rise very slowly. The result of all these lags is that the buying power of the greater part of the population is decreased in almost the same proportion as prices increase. One of two things happens or both things in part: (1) Millions of people suffer deprivation; (2) consumption slows up, jobs are lost, and finally this dislocation and inability to consume of itself re- | sults in a buyers’ strike and a new collapse of prices.

HIS interplay of prices and wages when the changes are natural, slow and moderate is a kind of balance that keeps the whole economic structure on an even keel. But when, due to some outside influence, prices continue to skyrocket, regardless of the reduced buying power of the stationary in-

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Times P?._By Herblock

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 1937

The Hoosier Forum

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

THEATER UNAFFECTED BY CANCILLA-BAKER CASE

the nine old men received no more than a fair share |

inherited | commitments or merely for the love of symmetry |

In the case of the Department of Justice, | with Mr. Cummings and prefers to change justices, |

miration for Cummings’ sense of smell which detected |

| By Joseph Cantor, President, Brookside | Enterprises, Ine. In all the newspaper accounts con-

| the Cancilla-Baker-Coy

| cerning

| affair, reference is generally made |

| to the receivership of the Rivoli

| Theater Building property. from friends and patrons as to how this matter affects the operation of the Rivoli Theater. Since, from all newspaper accounts there seems to be some reason for confusion, we would appreciate your stating that the present ownership and manage-

affected.

the receivership, Dearborn-Tenth Realty Co. leased the Rivoli Theater Building property to Brookside Enterprises, Inc., for a minimum of 10 years. The Eten Theater Corp. operates the theater itself for

Brookside Enterprises, Inc.

# # "

| BELIEVES MINTON IS OUT OF

STEP WITH CONSTITUTION ' By A, J. McKinnon Sherman Minton is out of step | with the Constitution and Washington’s farewell address: “But let there be no change by

instance, may be the

| of good, it is the customary weapon |

by which governments | troyed. The precedent must | ways greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.” It seems to me that this wise advice ought to be sufficient to all true Americans. There are men in fall ages who mean to exercise power usefully, but who mean to

uce it; who mean to be kind mas- |

ters, but mean to be masters. In the words of wise Ben Franklin, “Who gives up liberty for security will in the end find he has neither liberty nor security.” I feel that this bombshell in the Supreme Court has something back of it that the majority of our people are not aware of. Every person in Indiana knows that bombshells explode. We are sitting right on a bombshell now and the fuse is about to be lit by the Federal Reserve bankers. Here is word direct from Washington: “The Federal Reserve Board officials have asked Congress to continue for two years the Board's pow- | er to issue currency backed by Gov- | ernment bonds.” Their present power expired | March 3. What have you done | about this? Have you communicated | with your Representative, telling him you do not want Congress to | contive the Board's power? Or are vou one of the indifferent Americans | who don’t care what becomes of our

| taxes?

ment of the theater is in no way | By

the | | almost over.

usurption, for though this, in one | instrument |

are des- | al-

country but everlastingly yells about |

(Times readers are inviled {fo express their views in these columns, religious controversies ex- | cluded. Make your letter short, | se all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

| |

{ bunk of paving interest on bonds to

We have received many inquiries | bankers, Why not handle our own |

| FAR FROM EXTINCT

Daniel Francis Clancy

In May, 1036, some time prior to Mrs. Bertita Harding, I read in

The Times society section, recently delivered a lecture entitled “The Twilight of Royalty.” I judge that Mrs. Harding wished to convince her audience that the day of kings is

I do not know Mrs. Harding and I was unable to hear her lecture, but the title in enlightening. The fact that the D. A. R. was mentioned strengthens my belief that the general tone of her oration was not devoid of praise for democracy and | warm denunciation of royalism. All lin all, I imagine that many were reassured as to the progress of de- | moeracy and the decline of mon-

| archism. All of which, to use an Americanism, is a lot of hooey. There are | more than 25 monarchies in the world today. Furthermore, all of them aren't about to fall. The Al- | banian monarchy is very new, the

| first King of Albania—Zog I—being |

| ST. PATRICK'S DAY, 1937 | By DANIEL FRANCIS CLANCY

| From Mizen Head to Marlin Head, From Erris Head to Dublin Bay, Irishmen all raise your head — O’er the earth this is Erin's day!

Dublin's streets are no more Broken by bomb nor blotted with blood, The Black and Tans of the con-

queror Through our streets no longer

scud.

We need not duck when passes a lorry Loaded with “Tans” neath wire net— Ireland today is free, “Begorra!” Ah, Saint Patrick, we have a debt.

DAILY THOUGHT

And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all. ~—St. Luke 21:3.

IVE according to your means, or God will make your means to your giving.—John

| according

i Let us stop this unconstitutional Hull.

Johnson Says —

Prices of Essential Commodities Are Going Up Rapidly, and, If Not Controlled, This Rise Probably Will Result in Another Economic Collapse.

crowned in 1925. Only last year King George II was restored to the throne of Greece by a vote of the people.

There is also the 20th Century |

| king, the dictator, who is king as

[long as he can outwit the people. | | And who can tell me of a king who {remained on his throne for long! | after he lost the power to outwit his | always be |

subjects? There will | kings under one name or another. { Royalists may be having a tough [time of it, but I wouldn't say that [this is quite the heyday of the hoi | polloi. ” un ” HOPES WORKERS WAKE UP ON COURT ISSUE By Carl Benz As I see it, there is no question on the President's packing or unpacking the Supreme Court. It boils down to whether the laboring class gets what it has been waiting for 100 or more years and to find out if the fight has been in vain. Your most fluent feature writer of “Trends,” John T. Flynn, says, “we cannot answer the question of what the President will do with the power he will get if he recasts the Court,” but that was answered in all the speeches Roosevelt made on the subject, and also in the last four years of rebuilding.

ing to wake up and find out who is fighting for him. If it's nothing but writing a letter to his Senator it will help. I hope the laborer doesn't sleep too long. o o n TAX SYSTEM UNFAIR, | HE DECLARES : | By Max C. Van Dolan, Redkey The churches and private schools in their fight to keep their incomes and huge holdings of income-pro-ducing property exempt from taxes, make the claim that they render service to the state at least equal in value to the taxes they might be required to pay. : In the case of denominational and privately maintained schools at least the reverse probably is true. All higher schools of the state should undergo a rigid examination as to faculties and standards of achievement. Schools which do not measure up should be closed or forced to reform. Our educational system has become top-heavy and is badly in need of pruning, anyway. Our state-maintained schools can take care of all the good students our high schools can send them and the others should stay home and seek employment on a level with their ability. The exempting of fraternal and labor organizations from taxes is class legislation and unjust, for it virtually forces nonmembers to contribute to these organizations.

What we don’t know is how soon | the laboring man in this city is go- |

Speaking of Hot Water !—By Talburt

PRES | DENT 15 VACATIONING AT”

WARM

It Seems ‘By Heywood Broun

Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Lover Of Lost Causes, Is Now Battling Against New Deal of the Indians.

'W ASHINGTON, March 17.—Senator Burton K. Wheeler, of Montana, has found a second string for his bow. And that is just as well for the great reformer has almost broken his back of late in shooting at the same target. Whenever President Roosevelt goes on the radio Wheeler follows with three or four addresses on the same night. The ratio is not unfair, since the gentle= man from Montana is rather meagerly priced at four to one. Although few remember it now, Burton K. Wheeler once ran for the Vice Presidency of the United States. He was the tail of the La Follette ticket. Although in no grave danger of election, that particular race has altered the entire course and character of Burton K. Wheeler. I don't know what the Freudians call his particular complex, but it consists of an obsession against ever winning anything. To Wheeler a cause is no longer good “the minute it has a chance. Like many another racer I could mention, Bounding Burton will stop to a walk the minute he finds himself in front. His only joy comes from galloping furiously 20 to 30 lengths behind the leaders. There was a horse named Saintlite at Tropical Park this winter who behaved in exactly the same way. His trainer explained that Saintlite had once been stepped upon, and so he felt more comfortable in running last than in any other spot. Well, Senator Wheeler was stepped upon himself in the campaign of 1924, and it is likely that he has not forgotten. It would be unfair to suggest that Bounding Burton has already put his ears back and begun to slow up on the Supreme Court fight, but he has taken up another battle, He is going to oppose the New Deal of Indians.

Mr. Broun

un u ” T is true that the bill which the Senator wishes to repeal was introduced by himself less than three years ago. It marred Mr. Wheeler's record because it was adopted, and that mishap has preyed upon his mind ever since. In explaining his present attack upon his own measure Burton K. Wheeler says that he had not read the bill very thoroughly at the time he introduced it and spoke for it. One of Senator Wheeler's pet arguments against the President's proposals is that

if they succeed Congress will become merely a rubber stamp. The gentleman from Montana is acting specifically on a request from the Flathead Indians, who have sent a petition here bearing 500 signatures, including crosses and starfish. un » ” S advocate of the Flatheads, Burton K. Wheeler complains that one of the provisions of the law which he once sponsored requires three separate votes of the tribes before it becomes operative. He says that this principle is much too difficult and complicated. Before he became spokesman of the Flatheads, Senator Wheeler was devoting his days and nights to the argument that the only way to liberalize the judiciary was through a constitutional amendment. This { method requires a sustaining vote by both legislative | branches in 36 states. And it can be stopped by the | opposition of 1 per cent of the voters of the United States. Seemingly the Senator keeps his Flathead | philosophy and his theories of the rights of other un- | derprivileged groups in separate mental compartments.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

McNutt, Woodring and Gen. Craig Were Invited, but Failed to Attend Dinner of Philippine Veterans Although President Quezon Was Present.

There is little normal or natural about many of these price increases. In the metals, steel, tin, copper, lead and zine, they are unquestionably almost en-

tirely due to massive preparations for war in Europe. Buying and counter-bidding resulting in rocketing prices is very active, not only for these metals for immediate conversion into munitions, but also for storage and reserve by governments, and perhaps even more effective by private individuals who fear that money is soon to become worthless and who would rather have their fortunes in those nondeteriorable and easily stored products.

Sone products in such great quantities are not permanently off the market. They are simply hanging over it. If peace were rendered more secure, they would crash down and destroy it. War alone could make that speculation successful and save an early crash in the price structure. War would rocket

just the same at the end. Furthermore, this is the true and veritable inflation so long feared. If it becomes a buyer's panic and goes to fantastic figures it could make a new hoom and bust like 1929. If it can be controlled before it is too late, it might be only a major recession. We are almost as helpless against this war-boom as in 1917. Just now, we have

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these prices much higher, but the crash would come |

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, March 17.—The Carabao Dinner, annual reunion of veterans of the Philippine wars, was noted this year for the presence of Manuel Quezon, new President of the Philippines, and of Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who in the Philippines has been given the grandiloquent title of “Field Marshal.” One of the speakers at the dinner was acidSongued George Moses, ex-Senator from New Hampshire. “I see,” said Moses, in rising to speak, “that we have the ‘Field Marshal’ with us. “Which reminds me,” he continued, “of a captain in the U. S. Marines who went down to help train the Guatemalan army. Down there he became a brigadier general in the Guatemalan army and was very proud of his uniform. “One day, while visiting up here, he was invited out to dinner with various American Army and Navy officers. He consulted a colonel of the Marines as to whether he should come in his uniform as a brigadier general or as captain of Marines. “ ‘Up here,’ replied the colonel, ‘a brigadier general of the Guatemalan army eats in the kitchen.'”

” ” ” HE Carabao Dinner is one of the most important

son.

military functions of the Washington social sea-

But this year there were thrge stran i ous absences. ¥ E3 Ed mysterte

Secretary of War Woodring was invi : not come. g ited, but did

Gen. Malin Craig, able Chief of Staff, and an old Philippine veteran, was invited, but did not come. ° Former Governor McNutt, newly appointed High Commissioner of the Philippines, was invited but did’

not come, even though President Quezon was one of’

the honor guests.

Note—The Carabao Club was formed by American

Army officers in the Philippines after their comrades came back from the Boxer Rebellion sporting the Order of the Dragon given them by the Chinese Government. The name, Carabao, is taken from a water buffalo, considered a lowly creature,

» ” n

N=on D. BAKER, ex-War Secretary, is heading a series of broadcasts on Americanism and neighborly tolerance. A lot of big business moguls, educators, lawyers will participate. . Argentina purchased more military airplanes and military equipment from the United States last February than any other country, totaling $703,800. This, despite the Roosevelt-inspired Buenos Aires Peace Conference. Mr. Hull, however, is pointing to reciprocity, since Argentina, in turn, is selling us more corn than ever before. During the first week of March 2,774,000 bushels arrived. U, 8, farmers don't feel quite. the me way about it. eh

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