Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 April 1937 — Page 22

N,

‘the human race has treated itself.

PAGE 22

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President i Business Manager Owned and published Price in Marion County, daily (except Sunday) by 3 cents a copy; delivered The Indianapolis Times . by carrier, 12 cents a Publishing Co, 214 WwW. week. Maryland St. 2 = = Mail subscription rates Member of United Press, E Z in Indiana, $3 a year; Scripps - Howard News- : outside of Indiana, 65 Paper Alliance, NEA cents a month.

Service, and Audit Bu-

reau of Circulations. RlIley 5551 Give Light and the People Will i'ind Their Own Way

FRIDAY, APRIL 2. 1937

NOT THE ANSWER OW that state minimum wazre laws for women and children are constitutional, ieveral legislatures. have started work on such measures. In some 17 states laws of this character already are in existence, and with the constitut onal cloud lifted, a real effort to enforce them may now bz attempted. Such activity should be pusiaed as fast as possible. These laws can ‘be helpful in raising wage standards in intrastate industries. But nothing could be more obvious than that this movement, even though extended te include minimum wages for men workers, cannot get very far in industries which sell their products in the national markets —and that includes practically_every line of manufacturing and agriculture. In the Washington State law, which the Court upheld, we have a very good example of the limitations of state minimum-wage legislation. That law fixes a bottom of $13.20 weekly for employment in hotels, restaurants, stores and public utilities—establishments which cater only to local customers. But in manufacturing plants, the minimum is $9 a week—and the very simple reason is that Ww ashington's factories have to compete with factories in states that have no minimum wage. : New York's employers and workers are helpless against the cutthroat competition of goods produced in such states as Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, where unions are weak and wage standards and living costs much lower. When wages get out of line in one section, factories gravitate tc lower-wage areas. ~ These are reasons why the New Deal Administration, while gratified. is not jubilant over the Court's latest decision. One of the principal econoniic objectives of the New Deal is to build up mass purchasing power by boosting wages. ; boost must be nation-wide, which is : 1 it may experiment with other methony we e always “find the Administration coming back to.its insistence that we must somehow recapture what was lost when the NRA was outlawed. .&nd that is a method of fixing a wage bottom, below which industrics that sell in interstate commerce cannot sink, regardless of the state in which the factory is situated. The old NRA had its faults. But even its critics do not publicly deny that it had this one great virtue.

WANTED: AN INDUSTRIAL POLICY HE story of the steel industry's wage and price increases is one of many warnir gs that the United States has failed to adopt an industrial policy aimed at forestalling another runaway boom. | Steel has done the nation a service inj. oosting wages and increasing mass buying pov'er. But evidence appears to be available that the size of its simultaneous price rise is less in line with the best publ ¢ policy. From Pittsburgh come estimates that the wage boost will cost $180,000,000 annually, while the price boost is likely ito yield around $200,000,000 on the basis of present operating rates. A Government estimate plac:s the increased wage cost at $125,000,000 and the higher steel drives at $375,000,000. The public should know jus’ how much, if any, prices should be raised to pay the incieased wage bill. The impression is widespread that the iigher wage bill in the in-

dustry as a whole could be met 1/ith profits from the exist-

ing volume of production. And everything points to 1937 as steel’'s banner production year.

What steel has done, other’ industries are doing. It just happens that steel's perforriance has been more in the limelight. | With a yawning shortage cf durable goods figured by Brookings Institution as requiring approximately 33 billion dollars in annual production for the next five years, we are faced with the same dangers of price inflation that brought us disaster in 1920 and in 1929. The old familiar spiral— higher prices, wages, costs and again prices, with the inevitable nose dive from the tcp—is more than a specter today. The “balanced abundance” that Secretary Wallace envisions for a successful capitalism can be reached through various steps. “The drift in the direction of higher prices of manufactured goods,” says Brookings Institution, “isthe gravest danger which we face today.” Do we need to go Saeust) J Andihe) boom- and-crash to teach us to avoid such dangers

PEACE ON THE SEX FRONT?

THE old war of the sexes {iat broke out in the Garden of Eden has outlasted all the periods of peace to which We figured that here was a running fight that woiilld baffle the pacifists. And among the combatants on wiom we counted to the last ditch were the fair Lupe Vilez of San Luis Potosi and Johnny WeissimmuHer of the Hollywood jungles. Lupe and Johnny were lovers, woman and mate, wife and husband. Raven-locked L ipe had been raised on paprika and chile con carne under the ardent moonbeams of old Mexico and the border. Johnny was “Tarzan of the Apes,” blond, muscular and masculine. What a perfect mating, according to the psychologists’ formula! These, of all twains, should have fought happily ever after. They started out well. Once Lupe swung a haymaker on Johnny and gave him a bruised lip. They fought here, there and everywhere and came to be knowr as the battling Weissmullers. But: now they have parted. And not in anger, but in SOrTow. “We don’t fight no more,” explained the alluring Lupe. “That ees the trouble.” * . Can it be that Asaliiment is coming ‘on he sex

\ . front before it comes io the nations? . So

x}

“hand,

_ THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES The Sheltered Ones—By Kirby

____ FRIDAY, APRIL 2,

| Old Troj an Horse Ain’t What She Used to Be! —By Taiburt

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Under Compulsion of His Ego to Make Favorable Impression on Hearers, Orator Will Sacrifice Truth.

ASHINGTON, April 2.-—I contend that oratory is a phony form of expression because the orator on the platform is selfconscious and not the same man he is in private conversation with a few friends. He may not think he is self-conscious on the platform after he has opened his pores and shaken

down his bangs but he is, just the same, because he

knows that the audience is out there and he is under great pressure from his vanity to make good. If he didn't have abnormal vanity, he wouldn't be up there in the first place, running off at the mouth and clouting the table

that way.

In private conversation, however, it doesn’t make much difference if one man doesn’t convinee another. Under these conditions, the other man may say, “Well, that is the craziest nonserise I ever heard,” and they change the subject and buy another drink. The orator doesn't think it is any skin off his hide if the other fellow breaks through his service to offer a few cracks of his own. And he behaves himself because he knows the other man would bust right out laughing if he should suddenly go bouncing around the room, sweating like a lemonade pitcher and. howling, “Oh, my countryman, beware the peril in our midst!” Under the compulsion of his ego to make a successful impression in a public address, on the other the orator will sacrifice truth, fairness and

: Hid Mr. Pegler.

reason. The two greatest hams in.the world just now are Mussolini and Hitler, of ‘whom Mussolini is absolutely pure ham with no discount, so imperious that he even salutes himself. tator and he stood up on a corner in Rome in that silly suit of his with his head thrown back and his cheeks full of marbles, they would say he was crazy and lock him up. n ” un ITLER is hammy only on formal occasions, but it would be a great thing for the entire civilized world if God should somehow provide that the Fuehrer's and il Duce’s pants fall off on some occasion of great pomp. That would make them ridiculous even to their own people, the spell would be broken, and the human race could get back:to work. We seem not to have many’ old-fashioned spreadeagle courtroom orators these days, but they still teach the standard tricks in the law schools. These have nothing to do with law or: justice, of course. On the contrary, they are used .in lieu of evidence to defeat the law and justice, and any time you see an attorney blinking his eyes and honking his nose to a jury : may put it down that his client iy guilty. ” 2 2

oO" of the saddest sights you ever saw is the spectacle of the freshman Congressmen when school takes up in Washington and they learn that they are allowed only three minutes at a time to sound off. So they write long speeches and rattle off as/ much as they can in their three minutes and then publish the rest in the record under their privilege to revise and extend. In the record they insert parenthetical remarks such as “laughter” and “loud and prolonged applause,” and it is very pathetic in a way, but a good thing on the whole that they can’t get up and consume the time of the House indulging their passion for oratory.

» nervous.

The Hoosier Forum

I wholly disagree with

defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

what you say, but will

NEAR-VICTIMS TELL OF CROSSING ESCAFES By H. W. 8.

I think Times readers will be interested in two letters received some time ago by E. J. Andrews,

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

his fireside chatter about sit-down strikes, . ER { ”n n

LAUDS INTEGRITY OF SUPREME COURT By John W. O'Connor, Crawfordsville

Letters

the engineman who was Killed, along with Fireman M. H. Noggle, when an automobile ran in front of their train in New Augusta on March 15 and derailed it. It is indeed too bad that the automobile public is so careless. There is not a day that no automobiles are struck somewhere. It is a daily occurrence to have some automobile driver get hit, or nearly so, causing the enginemen to be on edge all the time. It would not do for an engineman to be If he was, . he would have a nervous | breakdown due to the earelessness of dtivers. The letters to Mr. Andrews follow: Ohio Man Apologizes

loose cinders. chine.

wrecker. myself, 30 years machine. (Signed) “L.

was as good as hone. the emergency brake. “All in all, it was a lucky day for me. This is the second time I came very near getting it at the same crossing. I saw you waving your hand after you passed me. saved me from’ getting it was the They came up to the running board and steadied the ma-

iI had to be hoisted out with a I am a steam engine man

" s

| ROOSEVELT AND LEWIS

It is not abolition or curtailment of the Supreme Court, nor making the Court into a political machine that is needed in this country. Today we need statesmanship and good husiness sense in Congress. The founders of our nation wekre wise men and knew that there should be a getting-off place, so they established;the Supreme Court as a terminal. Turn the President or Congress into a Court ‘and any group of industries or professionals can at any one election pack the court for any kind of constitution they want. The producing classes of America | can thank heaven for the Supreme = Court which has saved them from virtual slavery at the hands of a stupid and incompetent Congress, a

I had to use

All that

on a thrashing

M., Otterbein.”

“You will no doubt be surprised | POLICY COMPARED to receive this letter from someone ! whom you undoukltedly thought was trying to beat your engine across the railroad crossing at Cleves, O,, on the morning of April 11, 1934.

By Mabel German We would take issue

proposal “inspired.” As an enemy

| misguided Chief Executive and his | coterie of brain trusters. : with = the | writer who terms Roosevelt's Court |

Every major act of Congress since President Roosevelt took office is a monument to the stupidity and in-

If Mussolini weren't dic- 4; 0a thay you missed me about |

| 10 feet and. I would like to know | por.

“For your information, the lights at this crossing were working and I slowed up my car and actually looked to see if there were any trains in sight, and thought I was taking no chance; because I did not see you coming, and proceeded leisurely across the tracks.

“You can imagine my surprise when I looked up when in the middle of the tracks and saw you coming at a high rate of speed and what great efforts I made to get out of the way.” My own impres-

term should have

spiration.

the fireside chat spending. Neither method

back from you just how far you did miss me. “I also want to express my sin-' cere regrets for, causing any scare you might have had on this occasion, and regardless of what you said to me out of the cab window—!| which of course I did not hear, but

product?

dustry. Industry

of this inspiration, we would say the

John L. Lewis has the same in- | Both of them want to] gain the same purpose. that is to control industry. They each take a different method to gain this end. Lewis steps forward toward anarchy ‘down strike method and Roosevelt uses the more ‘“‘charming” method,

the labor problems. dustry the laborer is without laWhy be foolish enough to assume that industry will raise wages without raising the price of the The raise will come from the consumer, as usual, and not.in-

or move out of the country. Roosevelt had nothing to say in

competence of Congress. The sincerity, honesty and integrity of the Supreme Court can-

been “desire.”

not, be questioned. It has stood as a stone wall between constitutional | government and erroneous and im- | practical’ legislative ideas. It has | been a stone wall between the Constitution and fanatical ideas of legislators. Shackle the Court and you plunge a dagger into the heart of Uncle Sam. will ever der #. 07. Without in- | HE'S AGAINST BORROWING BY GOVERNMENT, By Whosit

That © part of the Constitution which empowers the Government to borrow money upon its obligations to pay should be stricken out. The power to create money is a sovereign act not to be delegated if the state is to remain sovereign. That

In effect, |

by the sit-

and Gover Hment

can “sit down”

took for granted it was not a real pleasant flow of words — I am thankful for both of us that no actual accident happened. “Horace, who I understand is in charge of the engines and under whose supervision you undoubtedly work, is a close friend of mine, and he will vouch far the fact that I am not one of those who like to tease engineeis ‘at railroad crossings just for the fun of it. (Signed) “J. B. B., Cleves, O.”

“Did Not See Engine”

“Well, Andrews, I am glad that I am able to write you. I am the bird that you came very near getting west of Otterbein, April 27, “If I had got it, it would have been all my fault, as I did not see. the engine until it passed the high telephone pole, My car was missing and my mind was on that and the service brake on the machine

“Hand over: that please.”

—Shakespeare.

General Hugh Johnson Sa

Minimum Wage Decision Fished Supreme Cour Out of Intolerable Hole, But Didn't Aid New Deal Stand for National Wage-Hour Laws.

EW YORK, April 2—The Supreme Court's recent labor decision didn’t do much of anything except to fish the Court itself part way out of an intolerable hole. It certainly did not advance by so much as a foot the Administration’s contentions that present economic conditions require maximum hour and minimum wage regulation of national application.

The Court in the NRA and Guffey decisions maintained its 50-year-old heresy that labor contracts in mining, manufacture, construction and agriculture cannot possibly be ‘commerce between man and man within a state which affects or concerns more states than one,” and so, under the far more ancient doctrine of Gibbons vs. Ogden, be subject to Federal regulation. They may result in vast migrations of industry to areas of degraded labor and so degrade the labor and paralyze the commerce of many states. They may result in strikes in national industries such as automobiles and steel.and so throw millions out of employment in all the states.

2 #” ”

Br I te ae ay ‘“ i tutional, ‘merce, and the ¢

- | day necessity. If anything, the

tion deprives the worker of his Tibe erty of contract— his liberty to sell his labor at any price he will.” What general result did that leave? Neither the state nor Federal Government has any fundamental power to regulate labor relations,

It was a complete stultification. Tt deprived our dual form of government of an essential element of. sovereignty. ; Yet it has never heen disputed that, among the states, the nation and the people, there is no attribute of sovereignty that is not found somewhere. The Court was in an impossible position. It had to find that regulatory power somewhere.

Ed n tJ

i could have chosen, in the undecided Wagner labor cases, to find it'in the Federal Government. It could, as it did in shadowy part, find it in the states by the Washington minimum wage decision. It could, as it may yet do, find it on some realistic rule of division in par} in the nation and in part in the states. It has as yet done none of those things. The rails way labor decision hinges on the old reactionary theory that interstate commerce is only something on wheels.

The minimum wage case turned on the police power of a state to preserve thé health of women and only women---not on any “forthright” acknowledgment that econoniic, as distinguished from sanitary, regulations of labor conditions, are a matter of present slant was away from § Wl i SY, 1

INNOCENCE

By VIRGINIA KIDWELL He tossed his cap into the air, He threw his jacket on a chair, His books, kerslam! upon a shelf And whistled shrilly to himself, “Any work for me to do? “Or errands I can run for you?” He queried, innocent enough, But I was wise and called his bluff, | of “Come on, give up, how many D’s?

‘DAILY THOUGHT If ‘we essay to commune with Thee, wilt Thou be grieved? who can withhold himself from speaking ?—Job 4:2. il

~ Give sorrow words.—The that does not speak, whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.

power is the supreme function of all government. and is the twin of the power to tax. Taxing power cannot be delegated to any group but the state if it is to remain sovereign. The power to tax and the power to create a medium of exchange make it absolutely unnecessary for a government to borrow money. What chance has any manufacturor farmer to create wealth in products when he must compete

report card, with wealth created ‘by the mere

. truck garden north of Stamford, Conn.

process of acceptance of a bond from the Government and its redeposit | with the Government to permit a corporation to issue the medium | which ‘represents wealth and the | medium by which real wealth is exchanged? Why all this fire-bell ringing | about the Supreme Court when this | condition exists? | Democracy abdicated long ago. | Will it: ever’return? Fa

But

grief

{| Frank?

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Writer Upset © Because His Attitude on Court Plan Seems Not to Be Known to Everyone.

EW YORK, April 2.—There was a Green-

wich Village poet who did a verse which

created universal delight for at least a week,

It ran:

“I sing and sigh and also curse; Thus only can I give expression To that which will not brook repression, I am alive, I have a voice, And so I sing and sigh and curse.”

It would be presumptuous for me to compare myself to the poet, for I seldom sigh

and never sing, but I have a voice, and it has seemed to me that I was doing

considerable cursing down one parBut this morning a |

ticular alley. feeling of futility overwhelms me, I have not been heeded, and, _ worse than than, I have not been heard. The first and only letter I received yesterday bore the letterhead “The Gannett Newspapers,” and it read: “Dear Mr. Broun: “Will you join me in helping defeat the President's preposal to pack the Supreme Court? “Beginning -the day after the President's startling ment, this committee has stirred to action leaders of the country ‘and through them their groups—reaching 70,000 farm and rural leaders, 115,000 business men, 138,000 doctors, 151,000 lawyers and. 146,000 clergymen. “Now the issue must be carried to 6,000,000 farm homes and into the ranks of labor... “Already 3800 individuals have contributed $36,000 in aniounts ranging from $5 to $500. To win, hows ever, more money is needed now to finance mailings, radio broadcasts, printing and meetings. . . “Your immediate help is needed. Will you give, as an American, according to your means? “Sincerely, “National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government,

Mr. Broun

“Frank E. Gannett, Chairman.” ! 7 2» WISH I ceuld give an answer one-half as apt as that made by an Italian friend of mine who runs a I happened to be visiting him last Sunday. He was working on a wall which surrounds his little farm, and I was sitting on a rock near by, helping him by carrying on a running fire of conversation. We talked about the Supreme Court fight and the great value of the President's proposals for the Congress to pass laws of aid to agriculture. We were in complete agreement, and so we didn’t particularly mind when a young man rode up on a bicycle and began a sales talk to my friend. The young man wanted him to take a six-months sub= scription to a certain New York morning paper, » » z ON'T you realize,” he said, “that this paper, through Walter Lippmann, Mark Sullivan and even. little Dorothy Thompson, is carrying on the fight to. preserve the status quo, the rights of big business ‘and the rule of the Supreme Court? ' You ought to subscribe.” At this point the face of my Italian friend clouded. Pointing to the rough wall of field stone which he was constructing, he replied in-his curious patois, “Millions for de fence, but not one cent for Tribune.” It must be that I have not raised my voice sufficiently or declared myself in clear enough terms. And so I cup my hands to shout. Are you listening,

You old reactionary, let me tell you once and for all that I am for the President's proposals.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Minority Opinion of Court in Minimum Wage Case May Be Swan

Song of Justices

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, April 2—It took 103 days for the Supreme Court to reverse itself and hand down its history-making decision upholding the Washington Minimum Wage Law last Monday.

This was close to a record delay. It took only 35 ‘days to declare’ unconstitutional the District of CoJumbia Minimum Wage Law in 1923, 31 days to outlaw the New York Minimum Wage Law last June, siX J to void the Arkansas law, and 11 to veto Arizona's.

Some of ‘the inner factors which caused this long delay have now‘leaked out through one source or another, and are extremely significant. There were two causes for delay: First, was getting Justice Roberts to make up his mind. It was his switch which swung the Court in favor of the act. To find excuses for reversing himself within four months was no easy job. Second, was the drafting of Justice Sutherland's dissenting opinion. He did not start writing it until after he had received a copy of Chief Justice Hughes’ majority opinion, and after that he took his time,

” #" 2

HIS Sutherland dissent is important. Justice Sutherland himself was 75 years old last week. So void of color is he that in its way this is almost Spectacular, And even as he is colorless, sO

Known

.also is: he 4 § nay as Sutherland should have write

| Constitution does not change with of nn 1ts.” the

of Reaction.

ten a dissent so caustically forthright, and indirectly so critical of two colleagues, is highly significant. Its vitriol was inspired first because Sutherland was defending his own position, taken 14 years ago, in which he knocked out the first minimum wage act. It was as if he were defending his child. :

as the Four Horsemen

Second, Sutherland did not write the opinion en-

tirely himself. Butler, who is more blunt and vigorous, helped him. Van Devanter and McReynolds were consulted. The dissent; therefore, represents the compact, completely unanimous opinion of the conservative group. . In fact, it may be the swan-song of those who have come to be known as the Four Horsemen of Reaction.

a ” " #

Tre blast was aimed chiefly at Roberts, who had deserted them, and at the Chief Justice, who put changing ‘economic conditions” ahead of the Constitution. The names of these two were not meptioned, but it wasn't necessary.

Most vehement blast was aimed at Roberts. Remember that Roberts had stood with the Four Horse-

men last June when—by one vote—they threw out the

New York Minimum Wage Act. Mr. Sutherland also had some caustic comments

to make about Chief Justice Hughes’ reference to “the

economic conditions which have supervened.” “But,” shot back Sutherland, “the m

announce-

of the

q

1937 £