Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 April 1937 — Page 14

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _

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Give Light and the People Wilt Find Their Own Way

Rlley 5551

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1937

IT DOESN'T ADD UP HE President’s message on relief and economy is a disappointment and a delusion. The $1,500,000,000 he asks for work relief in the next fiscal year seems to be just a round figure pulled out of a hat—a lump sum which he asks Congress to turn over to him to be spent on a program which certainly there is no reason to believe will be better planned or better executed than past programs. ° : He infers that a billion and a half will pay the bill for all of next fiscal year—that he will not ask Congress next winter, as he did last, for more relief money. Yet at the same time he indicates that what he has in mind is merely more projects of the present WPA type, tending increasingly toward made work; becoming increasingly more wasteful of nioney, providing ‘security wages” for only part of the jobless employable and leaving the rest to the mercy of local direct relief or to no relief at all. Mr. Roosevelt told his press conference yesterday that the appropriation asked will mean no cut in work relief rolls. How is that possible? IHow can a program now costing more than two billions a year be continued on the same scale for a billion and a half? The President does not say, but the conclusion is inescapable. Either he is deluding the taxpayers, or he is deluding the people now on relief, or he is deluding himself. Either the work relief rolls will have to be cut, and deeply cut, or the appropriation now asked will be spent long before the fiscal year ends and the budget will be thrown still further out of balance by another big deficiency appropriation. If $1,500,000,0060 were used in grants to help the states maintain direct érelief- at decent levels, instead of being used wastefully on work relief for only part of the unemployed, it might cover actual needs. That, it seems to us, is the only way it could be made to cover these needs. : ” t= " ” 8 ” Now as to the general budgetary content of the message. “l am firmly convinced,” says the President, “that the success of our whole program and the permanent security of our people demand that we adjust all expenditures within the limit of my budget estimates.” The tone of that is fine, and the warning is wellfounded. But what are “my budget estimates?”

His revenue estimates seem to be based on somewhat °

the same wishful guessing that caused him to be too optimistic in his January budget message. ‘In his spending estimates for nonrelief purposes, the President, in effect, tells Congress to go ahead and appropriate according to the original schedule—prophesying a paper deficit of approximately $400,000,000 (about the same as the amount by which he now admits his original revenue guesses were exaggerated). All he asks of Congress is that it refrain from legislating any additional outlays. And he promises, after the appropriations are made, not to spend all the money but to do everything in his power to erase that deficit. : The Constitution gives control of the nation’s purse strings to Congress, not to the President. Congress is still in session and the next fiscal year hasn't started yet. So it would seem that the logical place to start erasing that deficit is in Congress, not in the executive departments. And the logical time is now, not after all appropriations are voted. There are two ways to eliminate the deficit. By economies and by a new tax program. Both probably will have to be employed before a budget seven years unbalanced can be set right again. The President doesn’t want a new tax bill this session, but he cautiously hints that one may be necessary next session. Congress will be well advised to do the necessary now. If Congress doesn’t, the members are apt to find out at the next session that the President has placed them on the spot, right in the teeth of an election. :

DRIVERS’ LICENSE LAW UPHELD UTHORITY of the State Bureau of Motor Vehicles to suspend a driver's license has been upheld here in the first court test of the new Indiana Drivers’ License Law. Basis of the suspension was a reckless driving charge growing out of an accident. Validation of this law is a step forward in the campaign to reduce our senseless traffic toll. The law strikes at one of the main roots of the problem—the careless or incompetent driver.

“TAKE ME OUT TO THE ...” : ECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE WALLACE'S informative press service announces the distressing news that China and Manchuria have gone peanut-minded this past season to such an extent that they’ve overproduced their goober crop by 312,900 short tons. We were just sitting ‘here wondering what we could do to help the little yellow and brown brothers solve their peanut crisis, when our thoughts wandered out to the ball park, and suddenly this idea came: Why don’t they give up mah jong, fan tan and Chinese puzzles and go in for baseball and circuses? We're likely to have a lot of problems over here in the next few months. But one of them will not be the underconsumption of peanuts.

STRANGE PEOPLE, THESE ENGLISH ERE’S Lord Marley, for instance, in San Francisco advising Americans to stop at home rather than attend the coronation of King George V1 on May 12 unless they want to be overcharged for hotel and other accommodations and ‘generally exploited.” The whole show, warns this peerless peer of the realm, has become commercialized, and geared to the profit motive. Lord }arley’s gracious admonition will relieve the minds of us stay-at-homes. Now we can righteously boycott the coronation instead of pitying ourselves for not having the cash to go. But evidently Lord Marley doesn’t understand tourist Americans. They not only expect to be exploited abroad; they like it. In fact, most of them would feel terribly cheated if they got their money’s worth.

And Who'll Be the First One In?—By Herblock

NOTHING LIKE A GOOD, COLD PLUNGE IL ALWAYS SAY!

vuP! GOOD COLD PLUNGE! YES SIR!

VERY INVIGORATING |

YEAH = GREAT STUFF!

}

. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1937

Still Holding Everything Up—By Talburt-

‘of the State Legislatures.

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Writer Explains Temptations Which Beset State Legislators And Especially Florida Lawmakers.

IAMI, April 21.—Never let it be said that I cast doubt on the honor of our statesmen even in the humble $6-a-day brackets But I have been thinking over some of the temptations which beset these patriots by reason of their power to punish or favor big financial interests and I think we should include them in our prayers. According to my information, which comes from

rather cynical old-time State House reporters, the railroads and streetcar people and the power corporations often resorted to bribery to obtain right-of-way and franchises so that they could serve the nation. But the cynical, old-time State House men tell me that these soulless corporations were not half as eager to pay bribes as the statesmen were to take them and that, sometimes, if things were a little dull and the mortgage on the farm -was causing trouble, a statesman might introduce a bill to impose a special tax on a soulless corporation or heave it bodily out of the state. :

He would then explain his case to a group of

Mr. Pegler

fellow patriots and pledge them to support his great’

reform promising to do as much for them in case of need. And then he would go back to his boarding house, take off his shoes and sit down to wait for the legislative agent of the soulless corporation. Very often meeting informally, the statesman and the legislative agent would come to a beautiful understanding. : The agent would sympathize with the patriot in his troubles over the mortgage and the statesman, on his side, would fold away a little goodwill token in his pant’s pocket and decide not to press his bill, as he had been mistaken all along. :

u o " HIS might not happen in Florida, but there is a serious movement in the Legislature to toss

all chain stores out of Florida and regulate all retail business, even to the extent of forbidding a Florida

company to operate a branch; a manufacturer, even

though a resident, would not be allowed to sell at retail and business permits would be available only

to persofis residing at least nine months of the year

within the state.

There are also proposals to establish a state income tax and a tax on estates, two laws which, if adopted, would cause great anguish among the idle rich tax dodgers of the North who have established refugee colonies on the pleasure coasts, east and west. Obviously, ‘these proposals are well worth defeating, and, obviously, the statesmen are in duty bound to listen to any argument bearing on meacures of such solemn importance to the state they love

so well. : I SINCERELY believe the boys listened faithfully to all the arguments in favor of horse and dog racing, and I am sure they gave profound attention to the arguments in favor of the slot machine, or one-armed bandit. The same irresolution has ‘occurred again in tHe current session in regard to the slot machines, for the statesmen are now talking of voting them out on the ground that they are immoral. I have my duty, too, and therefore must resist an impulse to wonder how much argument it will require to defeat the chain store law, the income tax and the estate tax, and whether the argument will be generally the same as those which legalized horsetrack gambling and the incalculable boon of the onearmed bandit from Chicago.

” n =

The Hoosier Forum

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

THINKS LCW-PAID LABOR IS EXPENSIVE LABJR By H. L. S. The low income of many, in states having low averages as shown in the National Industrial Conference Board’s report, is not altogether due

to the fault of employers. Low capability as producers makes many laborers liabilities to enterprise. The job of making labor more efficient is the real problem for management. Moving plants into cheap labor territory does not really lower the cost of labor. Some of the most expensive labor is that which is willing to work for low pay. Usually the low pay is too high for what is delivered in service. This is not a matter of low wages, but low ability. Can we get these low-income men to increase their ability: so we can pay them more from the’ larger pile of goods they produce? : If these low-income earners would use some brains along with brawn it would require less supervision and speed up production to cut cost and prices.

£ 8 2 ATTACKS DECISIONS INVALIDATING AAA By E. B. Bueder, Zionsvile.

I fail to follow the logic by which The Times feels that a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision is unendurable, but a 6-to-3 decision would be satisfactory in every respect. The least defensible decision of the present Court—the AAA decision—was a 6-to-3 decision. I certainly see no point in going to the trouble of amending the Constitution unless we get an amendment to do away with AAA decisions. ? f The farmers were so . swift getting around the Court decision in their case that perhaps the general public does not realize’ how absurd the judges were in that instance. But the 48 states solemnly pronounced agriculture a local concern and the troubles of wheat farmers not the business of the country as a whole. That decision, from the commonsense standpoint, is on a par with the famous Massachusetts antisufirage decision, in which the Supreme Court in that State said the women were not people. Legally, too, the decision must have been pretty bad. If you read the minority opinion, you will remember that the three justices openly accused the other six of disregarding the law and deciding on the basis of their personal economic prejudices. Presumably they knew what they were talking about. All laws coming up for decisions on constitutionality are supposed to be discussed thoroughly by all nine justices. The three must have known that the six were deciding on the basis of prejudice and not law from those discussions. It is well to remember that the AAA had been amended, after the present Court made known its peculiar legal theories in the NRA decision, by the legal staffs of the three leading

General Hugh Johnson Says—

South Carolina Has Long Been a Desolate Land, but Northern Wealth Is Restoring Prosperity, and Charleston Soon May Lose Its Romantic Aura.

G EORGETOWN, S. C. April 21.—This Carolina ¥ coast country has long been a sad and weeping land. The great live oaks, drooping long streamers of

moss into the swampy gloom of their own dark coverage, are beautiful, but far from joyous. The soil has been worn out by two centuries of slavery to careless and cruel croppage. Once it was the richest province in the colonies. It glew quantities of rice in the sea-marshes. Its tobacco, still its best cash crop, was tops in England. But 1t had more glamorous crops—hemp, tea and indigo. ; The passing of the slave labor and hemp. . = = ”

IRATES lurked in these estuaries to ravish the rich argosies of Charleston, where they are to celebrate this week the capture of Stede Bonnet— the most notorious and cowardly sea robber of these coasts. Here is the beautiful Huger house, where Lafayette, disembarking with one companion unannounced and in the dark, was first fired upon for a chicken thief and then entertained as a prince. : But to all this came the bitterest days that ever blighted a countryside. Sherman marched through

destroyed the rice

here dramatizing himself as an avenging angel of

death and destruction. It did not end there.

in; head of the boss before he will give

South Carolina was sold in

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

farm organizations of the nation | and the legal staff of the American Federation of Labor, which offered its services to the farmers on that occasion. While farmers and union labor do not afford as eminent lawyers as the Liberty League, it occurs to me that if their lawyers can't write a law to conform to the Constitution there are many millions that do not stand much chance of getting good enough lawyers to ‘be constitutionally protected. What we need is a legal presumption in favor of the constitutionality of laws passed by either Congress or the state legislatures. Unless they are constitutional enough that their unconstitutionality is apparent to all nine judges, they should not be voided. There might arise situations in which a hard and fast law requiring a unanimous decision might be bad but most decisions should be unanimous to be convincing.

8:8 FJ DEFENDS FORD'S STAND ON UNION ORGANIZERS By James R. Meitzler, Attica.

Raymond Clapper asserts that if the C. I. O. closes the Ford plants, it’s nobody’s fault but Henry’s. Mr. Clapper claims that the workmen in the Ford plants have no equity in the business. To realize on that equity they may use the sit-down. In Clapper’s words; “The practical defense of the sit-down is that employees have to put a gun to the

them collective bargaining.” This is the logic and procedure of the racketeer, kidnaper and highwayman. Give up your money or your home will be bombed, your child stolen or your life taken. When you refuse to bargain it’s your own fault if these things happen. Mr. Clapper admits that the mechanical and financial genius of Henry Ford made the business. He shows how the Ford retailer has

- APRIL RAIN

By KEN HUGHES It is not strange To hate the April rain; Because, I think, The spearing points Brought pain To earth and Christ.

DAILY THOUGHT

Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his labors.— I Corinthians 3:8.

T is the amends of a short and troublesome life, that doing good and suffering ill entitles man to a long and better life.—Penn,

claims for consideration, but the retailer is not striking for collective bargaining. He bargains individually. Mr. Clapper advanced not one iota of evidence to show how any or all workmen at the Ford plants owned or could claim any equity in the business. Nor is there a member of the C. I. O. who would permit any hired helper to claim an equity in any of that C. 1. O. member’s individual possessions. They have no more right in Ford's plants than Ford has in their property. The factories are Ford's. If he does not want to bargain with labor unions, that's his business. If union laborers will not stand that, let them quit and get out. If the business closes up it will be the quitters that closed it.

2 #8 FINDS ‘SOFTIE’ WEST

HAS REAL BANDITS

By M. S. :

Just when I'd thought the West |:

had gone softie with dude ranches,

movie sets and auto camps, a story |

comes to raise the hair and gooseflesh as in the days of yore. It’s a tale fit for the pulps and Western thrillers even to its setting, Deadwood, S. D. There, where the blood-curdling yells of rebel redskins and the cracks from Buffalo Bill Cody's and Wild Bill Hickok's shootin’ irons used to echo through the Black Hills, five authentic bandits are discovered to have tunneled under the Homestake mine, richest gold mine in the world, and carted off to a mountain cache $1,000,000 in bullion. Yes, that’s right, $1,000,000. The chief villain of the “high-graders,” Park Dupont, is being hunted on the West Coast. As if that weren't enough, Uncle Sam’s Secret Service men tracked down and sent to Federal penitentiary the Denver gangster who allegedly discovered the buried gold and planned to hijack it from the original thieves. run it into Mexico and then bring it baek as Mexican gold. I'm at loss to know why the Secret Service men got in on this play, but I suppose that was only to make the story better. Anyway, we hope the owners recover their stolen gold, the bandits are tracked down to some lonely hideout in the hills and the T-man who leads the posse finds a beautiful girl being held

| hostage and marries her in the last

act.

* 2 un =»

WANTS JUDGE TO UPHOLD PEDESTRIAN’S CASE By A. E.

A recent news. item reports that a Washington, D C., judge fined a motorist $50 for failure to give a pedestrian the right of way at a street intersection. It would be pleasing to many of us if an Indianapolis judge would establish such a precedent. The local pedestrian, it seems, has no right whatever if he ventures from the sidewalk

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

Baby Le Roy Is to Attempt Film Comeback at Ripe Age of Five and Writer Fears He May Be Too Old.

EW YORK, April 21.—According to a dispatch from Hollywood, Baby Le Roy is going to attempt a comeback. Naturally his pals will be rooting for him, but he has been out of the industry for two years. Still, if he has led a clean life and kept himself in trim there is a chance that he may reverse the usual motion picture rule and achieve a second blooming. He was 3 when he retired, and now he has

turned 5. Obviously Le Roy can hardly hope to be cast again in the same

sort of straight roles in which he’

originally achieved success. His days as a Hollywood juvenile are definitely over, but there may be a future for him as a character actor. After all, his retirement was wholly voluntary, and the general explanation of his decision to step back into private life was that the

scenarists were not furnishing him.

‘Mr. Broun with sufficient mature material. It is understood that toward the end of his career, he complained bitterly that he could not find an efficient gag man. c

There is nothing in the rumor that Will Hays

prevailed upon him to take a long vacation in order.

to allow an ugly scandal to blow over. It has now

been established Le Roy can match his private Mfe |

with that of any other player in the studios of Cali=« fornia. = The flimsy charges which circulated a couple of years ago were the product of an unscrupulous blackmail ring: Le Roy comes back to the silver screen with an untarnished record. As a matter of fact, the success or failure of his

comeback will depend largely upon circumstances °

largely outside his own control. He has aged two years since his last appearance, and I understand that he looks even older on account of income tax worries. The real problem, which only time can solve, is the question of the speed with’ which the motion picture art is evoluting. : ” E- n F late there has been a great amount of boasting among the magnates, directors and supervisors that the cinema is well on its way to furnish more adult entertainment than was known in the past. This effort to raise the intelligence quotient of both actors and patrons is known as the five-year-old plan. Will Hays, in all his speeches, has attempted to exemplify and exploit the idea, but there remains some fear that the distributors may find the notion too radical for their purposes. Again, practically all the publishers of fan magas= zines are united in believing that the time is not yet ripe to establish a five-year-old standard of screen entertainment. They do not think that the day of

the modern ingenue is done.

" = ” NE unfortunate feature of the situation is that Le Roy has not been idle during his two years of retirement. The kindergarten which he attends undertakes to teach the pupils not only how to play ring-around a rosie but also how to read, spell and pronounce thrge letter words. Le Roy can now recognize ‘r-a-t” when he sees one, which may be embarrassing all around if he returns to the lot. Moreover, he has matriculated into one of the school’s advanced courses— ‘Funnies 28B—appraisal and appreciation of the comic strip.” I am very much afraid that if he returns to Hollywood as an actor he wi e scoffed at as a highbrow. I believe he will ope he abandons that ambition, ‘and,

instead, offers himself as a scenario editor.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Jones-Laughlin, Whose Case Butler Favored, Is His Family's Customer; Justices Have No Curb Except Own Discretion in Sitting on Such Cases.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

}y unoion, April 21.—Not many people knew it, but when Justice Pierce Butler sided with

bondage to vengeance for half a hundred years.

o " 3 B- the day of deliverance is at last at hand. AtJ tracted by the splendid shooting of the mellow winter days, new northern wealth is routing desolation under the magic millions of the inventor of a headache powder. The Huger house and gardens are more magnificent than ever. All the old Charleston mansions are eagerly sought and many have been restored by feudalists of this modern day—economic raiders in comparison with whom Stede Bonnet was a piker. A new process for chewing trees up into pulp paper is invading this country with mammoth mills which will gnaw away the sombre coverage of this weeping land and leave it as bare as a billiard ball. All this and the southward migration of many northern industries to take advantage of the bare subsistence wages of this lackadaisical labor, have precuesd the first stirring of a magnificent regional m. “Weep no more, my lady” Charleston, you will soon be as prosperous as Kalamazoo, Mich. and as romantic as Rahway, J.

the Supreme Court minority in favor of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. in the Wagner act case last week, he was favoring one of his family’s iron ore customers. The Butler family made its millions in Minnesota by mining iron ore, and they have had a contract for some years with the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co., although the latter produces much ore itself. One shipment of Butler ore is arriving this week at Ashtabula, O,, for transshipment to the Jones & Laughlin plant. The Butler ore mines are estimated to have made about $10,000,000 for the Butler brothers. Originally there were six brothers. A fair gauge of their wealth is the will of John Butler, who died in 1926. He left an estate of $2,731,733, of which $700,000 went to Justice Butler and his children.

® 8 td

HETHER or not a Justice of the Supreme Court steps aside on 2 case in which he is personally interested depends entirely on him. Justice Stone stepped aside last year when his old firm represented the Sugar Institute, even though he had not been with the firm for many years. Justice Brandeis has stepped

aside several times because his daughter was intere ested in child labor or minimum wage matters. On the other hand, Justice Butler wrote the mae jority decision in the Great Northern Railway case, scaling $10,000,000 from its taxes, despite the fact that for years he was an attorney for the road. Also, Justice Roberts handed down the majority opinion in favor of the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. In 1933, ignoring nis former position as a director of the Bell Telephone Co., an affiliate.

2 # 2

{ONGRESSMAN PALMISANO, ex-Baltsimore bare tender who happens to be Chairman of the House Education Committee, is sitting on one of the most worthwhile educational projects in goverment. It is a bill introduced by Congressman Disney of Oklahoma, to do for the civilian branches of the Government what is done for the Navy at Annapolis and for the Army at West Point—a Governmentservant university. ° “Politics,” argues Rep. Disney, “can be the cleanest, most laudatory profession in the country. It all depends on the men in it. The first step is to train men. We've got to make the civilian ranks of government as attractive to youngsters as the Army and

Navy. For ‘this a Government-servant university is