Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 April 1937 — Page 11

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The Indianapolis Times

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Rlley 5551

Give Light and the People Wilt Find Their Own Way

SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1937

~ _ THE TIME IS RIPE ATTORN EY GENERAT, CUMMINGS’ long-threatened suit to dissolve the Aluminum Co. of America, and his reorganization of the Justice Department’s antitrust division under able young Robert H. Jackson, are heartening ‘signs that the Government proposes to do something about a situation against which economists have been crying alarm

for months.

We refer to the danger of unwarranted price

rises and a threatened boom-and-bust finale to recovery. The Mellon company, long under fire for alleged control of aluminum resources and prices, is charged with “oppressive and unreasonable price fixing” in having raised prices despite an increase in earnings from $9,571,000 in 1935

to $20,866,000 in 1936. aluminum consumers.

If that is true, it is important to But it is more important that in

acting now in this single case the Government act also against a tendency toward price-fixing. Too long the Government has looked upon the doings

of monopolists as acts of God. But the courts have bedeviled the Sher-

‘policy, to be sure.

We have had an antitrust

man act by confusing decisions for so long that a successful suit is a gamble, particularly since such suits are costly

affairs.

Now that the Supreme Court has broadened its

definition of interstate commerce and applied it to manufacturing, at least in labor relations, the chances for suc-

cess appear better.

But one or even a number of antitrust actions are not enough to protect our future against a runaway price boom. The Government’s drive should be both intensive and ex-

tensive.

invoked to curb profiteering.

Every available Government weapon should be

We have monetary, fiscal

and tariff as well as antifrust controls. If all of these are not powerful enough, then Congress should create new

JWers.

As the matter stands, certain monopolistic industries spreading across state and even national lines have within

themselves the power to set prices at will

It could be

said of them, as Justice Stone said of the Supreme Court, that the only check upon the exercise of power is their

“own sense of self-restraint.”

Today strong influences,

such as higher wage pressures and foreign buying, are

taxing that self-restraint.

Some have yielded to tempta-

tion. Unless the Government steps in, the yielding may

become epidemic.

There is only one power that can prevent another

calamitous 1929, and that is the Government.

_ STILL AT IT

: HENRY FOUNTAIN ASIHURST, Senator from Arizona and.chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announces “with reluctance and regret” that hearings on President . Roosevelt's Supreme Court plan are ended. - The Senator must stili be practicing his favorite virtue

of inconsistency.

As a champion of the court proposal,

he might have been expected to rejoice that the kicking around it has taken during those long and dreary hearings is over at last. Now if he could only be inconsistent enough to have that plan filed away in a committee pigeon-hole, the Senate would leave it there with practically no reluctance and elsewhere in the country:there would be mighty

little regret.

- LET'S HAVE A RULING PPROXIMATELY 27,000,000 American wage and salary earners who have Federal old-age benefit accounts and 13,000,000 workers insured under unemployment insurance laws in 44 states will cheer Attorney General Cummings’ determination to press for an early Supreme Court opinion on the constitutionality of the two chief features of the Social Security Act. aie Both questions are on their way to the High Court. The recent opinion of the First Circuit, while adverse, puts both old-age benefits and unemployment insurance in issue. And arguments aiready have taken place before the Supreme Court on Alabama, cases challenging the validity of jobless insurance taxes under the new act. It is highly important that the Supreme Court, for vetter or worse, ouickly pass on these features of the law. Should the Court adjourn for its summer vacation tieforel it . acts, confusion will result. The taxes from the two Circuit Court districts affected will be held up. Doubts will

prevail as to the act’s constitutionality, and the administration of the act, onerous enough as it is, will be or

harder.

e

|

ministrations vitally affects the lives of more Americans

than this one.

No single measure under the present or former a

rest mean needless inconvenience and worry.

Needless delays in putting their minds

MUCH ADO ABOUT PANTS OT since J. Pierpont Morgan held a midget on his lap in a Senate investigation chamber has this modest multimillionaire cone in for so much publicity as now. It’s al

about pants.

Will he wear regular ones when he goes to

London to visit ‘the King; or will he go native with the official coronation guests during the ceremonies at Westminster Abbey and don satin knee-breeches? | The State Department doesn’t know. Neither does the British Embassy. It’s probably all up to the Duke. of Norfolk, who is the earl marshal of the affair. All Mr. Morgan knows is he “won’t wear a nightgown” ; “I am going over as a private citizen and I shall wear

whatever is required of a private citizen,” he said. Doubtless if he wears ’em he will do so with honor and punctilio, for it is said that, like Sir Willoughby, he “hath a leg.” And doubtless, too, if he has to buy a pair he can pay cash, for a Morgan is a Morgan whether he's in jodh-

purs, overalls, shorts, rompers or scanties.

OVERSIGHT? : . HE President warns Congress that any new expenditures must he backed up with new taxes. He neglects to say what kind of tax it should enact to support those six new $20,000-a-year Supreme Court justices and their secretaries, clerks, doormen and quarters,

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Writer Finds That Murder and Justice Are Taken Rather Lightly In the Florida Cow Country.

SARASOTA, Fla., April 24.—Mrs. Mae Hall has been sentenced to prison for life for perjury in one of the most hilarious proceedings ‘ever enacted by the knockout comics of the American court system. She lives in a Florida cattle town called Arcadia. back near Lake Okeechobee where she runs a little sandwich joint and dance hall of a type locally known as a jook. 3 At present she is free on bail and nobody seems disturbed about her case, least of all Mrs. Hall. Glades County, where Mrs. Hall lives, is even more haphazard about justice than the rest of the State, for Glades is part of a great cattle range whose existence is known to very few people in the country at large and unsuspected by many old residents of Florida. The cattle are scrawny scrubs which roam over an area of hundreds of square miles and the cowboys, mostly descendants of tough pioneer crackers from Georgia and Alabama, affect all the regalia of the western or circus cowhand except the hair pants. - They wear 10-gallon hats, high heeled boots and overalls. They sleep under the stars and many of them go armed, for cattle rustling is a minor industry of the region and shooting is ® no means uncommon. It was a shooting which led to Mrs. Hall's little trouble with the law. ma = There had been considerable annoyance over cattle rustling back in the winter of 1933 and one day in February of that year three men were shot dead as they drove along a side road in a flivver. Two of the victims were reported to be cattle thieves but

the third was just a casual visitor froh Alabama. = ” ”

Four men were then indicted for the murders and one of them was arrested in the state prison where

Mr. Pegler

he was doing life for killing a man who had refused.

to give him a shove when the battery of his car died on thes road. Also in the meanwhile, Mae Hall's husband Obe. a cowboy who had retired from the range to run he Jjook, had been sentenced to life for killing Bill Dyas. The whole country had fixed opinions on the killing of the two rustlers and the innocent visitor from Alabama, so the trial was held in Sarasota. Parker Mansfield, the one who killed the man for refusing to shove his car, was acquitted on the triple killing and the jury hung up on the other three defendants. In this trial, Mae Hall testified that Squash Ford and Gus Harris, two of the defendants, came into her

Jock before the murders and said they were going to

kill some cattle thieves and came in afterward to say they had done as much. = ” 2 N the second trial, Mrs. Hall took it all back and denied that she had ever heard anyone threaten to do any killing or boast of having done so. And when challenged for changing her story she said the sheriff kept her drunk for weeks and threatened to send her to prison where her husband was doing life if she didn't testify against the boys. This change broke up the prosecution and Mrs. Hall was now indicted for perjury and, after an amusing trial, given life sentence which now hangs lightly over her head. : They are a light-hearted lot over in Glades County, much given to casual killing, and the idea of anyone's being sent away for telling a few lies one way or another seems preposterous even though the judge did say that Mrs. Hall did very wrong in jeopardizing the lives of four innocent men that way.

A Speaking of Crownings!—

By

Talbu

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BRITISH CORONATION

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The Hoosier Forum

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

CALLS TRAFFIC CASES “PINK TEAS” IN COURT By a Wondering Reader Policemen are working valiantly to curb the wild, reckless, drunken driving. In the late hours of Saturday nights these drivers kill people, crash into parked cars, etc., but for the most part our courts are making pink teas out of it.

I happened to be present in a Municipal Court recently. A judge pro tem, sat on the bench and a case was called. The charges included drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to have a driver’s license. The defendant, a young man, did not appear. The judge pro tem. said, “I don’t believe there is much to this

jcase,” and’ continued the case. A

little later we heard that the young man’s car had crashed into another, doing $100 damage. ; Do the judges call this nothing? Doesn’t the defendant have to ap-

pear in any kind of a case? Is this | why accidents are so numerous?

8 ¥ » APPLAUDS SELECTION OF MRS. HARRIMAN By M. S.

From Oslo comes word that Mrs. Borden Harriman has been appointed U. S. Minister to Narway. President Roosevelt’s recognition of Mrs. Harriman’s ability, loyalty and popularity will please everybody, but she will be missed in the political, social and literary life of New York and Washington. A New Deal Democrat, she has for years

contributed much more to American. .|life than party service.

Her home has. been a real salon, radiating spirited and brilliant discussion of vital questions of the day, and furnishing a leaven of tolerance in an irritated national capital. . The prime requisite of a diplomat is discretion.” Mrs. Harriman is known to her intimates as Daisy. And, as every horticulturalist knows, “daisies won't tell.”

# an = MOSCOW FORCES BLAMED FOR SPANISH STRIFE

By Rev. Pp. A. Deery, Bloomington

In the Hoosier Forum recently appeared a letter regarding the Spanish war. It said: “The revolt was planned and backed by Germany and Italy.” This explanation was presented by an Indiana University professor. He also is chairman of the Friends of Spanish Democracy. This organization held a meeting at the Y. M. C. A. in Indianapolis not long ago and raised $150 to assist the Communistic Government of Spain. There is no doubt as to the power

and strength of Moscow forces in

Spain. All the unbiased reports from Madrid have proved this. Here are some facts: G. Ward Price in the London Daily Mail declared “The Bolshevist Government has been flooding Spain with secret agents. The extreme Left supporters were headed by Cabellero, who

General Hugh Johnson Says

Six Out of Seven Members of Secretary Perkins’ Labor Conference Supposed to Represent the ‘Government-Public' Were Labor Partisans.

ITTSBURGH, April 24—For Secretary Perkins’ labor conference it ‘was announced that there would he representatives of (1) labor (2) industry and (3) the “public.” Of these three panels the one given out as representing ‘“Government-public” contained the following names: Miss Perkins, Mr. Edward McGrady, Maj. George L. Berry, the Rev. Francis J. Haas, Raymond Ingersoll, J. Warren Madden and H. A. Millis. Now I don’t know about Mr. Ingersoll, but of these other gentlemen, Mr. McGrady is a veteran union leader and so is George Berry. He and Father Haas were both members of the NRA Labor Advisory Board. J. Warren Madden is chairman of the Labor Relations Board which has demonstrated itself as the strongest partisan of union labor in the country, and Mr. Millis is a former member of that board. In other words, six out of seven “Governmentpublic” and supposedly “impartial” representatives in the conference were emphatically on the labor side of the argument. This is not said in criticism of any of them. The

‘point is that in so far as this conference was supposed

to be representative of labor-industry-public, it was loaded dice. : ” ” ”

1 is not very important because the conference itself was not very. important. The Supreme Court decision on the Wagner act makes the Na-

tional Labor Relations Board potentially the most powerful administrative tribunal in this country. It can say—by whatever means of determination

it chooses or by none at all—who shall be the exclusive collective bargaining agency for any group

of employees in the United States.

It can call practically anything it wants to .an unfair labor practice and thus automatically put an employer in contempt of the law if he does not

conform. :

But what can the Department of Labor do in all these matters? It can only kegp statistics—some of them worthless—and wring its hands.

» 2 td

Tu has been the phantom which has haunted the harrassed Secretary ever since the first

legally constituted Government.

(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.)

had served a prison sentence for his leadership in the bloody revolt of Oviedo.” Mr. Carney sent the following statement from Madrid: . “Cabellero is now ‘the head of the He outlined plans for unifying the Communists and Anarchists into one big party. The situation became progressively worse and finally the Government abdicated. to the Red minority. Resort to arms was the only way to preserve life and property against the ‘Red scourge of Moscow’ and thus the revolution.” The Friends of Spanish Democracy are assisting the Red Governmen of Spain. The chairman of this organization is a state university professor. Indiana citizens are paying his salary. A 2 nn x TU. S. FARM PAYMENTS DANGEROUS, CLAIM By H. V. Allison :

Will the managers of our agricultural setup see the danger of -paying the farmers not .to cultivate their land? Farm commodities are skyrocketing to prohibitive prices and the prospects are for -a poor wheat crop. ., The once fertile Western fields,

responsible for the surplus of grain

that broke down the prices, now are fields of dust and grasshoppers. It is time to apply the brakes and see if all are benefited. I believe the farmer should be paid well for what he has to sell and that he should cultivate more

WHAT EVERY WOMAN - KNOWS

By F. F. MACDONALD Some Providence divided things More fairly than we think— Enmeshed in infinity’s mystic chain Each soul may be a precious link.

The love a human heart may give Returns a hundred fold— "Tis only in sharing and loving much The heart reaps joy and ner grows old.

A loved and loving woman knows True love worth grief and pain, ‘To serve—is blest mission of womanhood; Her earned reward—her soul’s rich gain!

DAILY THOUGHT For the Father himself loveth

. you, because ye have loved me,

and have believed that I came out from God.—John 16:27.

7 OD'S thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments: are all man’s home.—George Macdonald.

the country.

Supreme Court.

land to increase his revenue. There is little danger of having surplus farm products if buying power rises to a normal level. Crying over the past will get us nothing, but clipping the ears of some of our political setups and eliminating others will help balance the budget. - » ” » PROTESTS HOURS IN STREET DEPARTMENT By L. W. ; Instead of giving the city employees an hourly wage raise, the City Council increased the work week from 32 to 40 hours. This was for all -departments, yet men in the Sewer Department, under the Street Commissioner's Department, are still working a 32-hour week, for a weekly wage of from $12.80 to $16. This department has some 50 men in it, waich means a payroll saving of more than $8600 annually, including time lost from sickness and holidays. The discrimination against this department, in which I am an employee, seems to me to be unjust.

EXPLAINS REASON FOR SCHEDULE OF HOURS

By Fred C. Grossart Street Commissioners Office - . The Street Commissioner's. Department asked for a 40-hour week. The Marion County Tax Adjustment Board decreased the hours tor street men because their salaries are paid out of the gasoline tax. This would not decrease the work week for Sewer Department men, because their salaries are paid from property tax revenues. This is the reason the weekly hour schedule was held at 32.

= » » F

DEFENDS ANONYMITY

1 OF FORUM WRITERS

By Bull Mooser, Crawfordsville Contributors to the Hoosier Forum have been criticized for asking that their names be withheld. It seems to me there is a great deal to be said in their defense. 1. Some writers’ employers would not tolerate their airing their liberal views. The only way they can exercise their freedom of thought and expression is by writing anonymously. : ; 2. School teachers, mailmen, and all public employees are afraid to write under their own names lest they be accused of playing politics. 3. Our Constitution guarantees us the right of freedom of expression and thought, but the modern economic system annuls this grant. Fifty per cent of our population is forced to live a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. It presents one face to the public and a different facg to its innermost self. Why shouldn’t this 50 per cent have the privilege of contributing to the Hoosier Forum?

«definite espousal of programs.

Carrying the “Good” News_s

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun |

No Writer Can Afford to Stand Apart From Issues of His Day,’ Taking No Sides on Urgent Problems.

NEY YORK, April 24.—The American © Guild for German Cultural Freedom gave a dinner for Thomas Mann at the Ritz, and it turned out to be duller than any banquet has a right to be. 1 am aware that

these rights are broad and well protected, and yet it seemed to me that under the most liberal construction they were infringed. All the speakers stressed Dr. Mann's eminence as

an artist, but the very fact that he isin exile from Nazi Germany should serve to prove that cul- - tural freedom cannot exist when economic and political freedom are gone. No man of letters can afford to call for a golden basin to wash his hands and say, “I am a writer and can afford to take no side in these passing struggles which swirl. around. me.” And it seems to me that the eminence of Thomas Mann has been enhanced by his articulate and eloquent expression of the belief that the artist must take ionate beliefs of his own day. I.do

Mr. Broun

sides in the pa

rkers on all the surface of the earth. And edicus to hear him hailed almost exclusively as a litefary genius or, at the most, some mystic kind of a dreamer intent upon a universal but, a vague good will. It seems to me, I say again, that the divinely gifted are the very ones who must, for the sake of soul and body, not only takes sides but enter into the

I was on a steamer once which had a fight with a submarine, and one of the passengers ran around: in short circles shouting, “Isn’t this terrible?” He contributed very little to the solution of the situation. ” 3 8 ’ AM not contending that every novel should cone tain a recommended list of candidates for the next election to the New York Assembly, but there must be straw in books as well as bricks, and I have scant respect for cobweb comedies or ectoplasmic tragedies. In the matter of form and mood and treatment the writing man should be wholly upon his own, but there is a universal element called “substance,” and without it no work of art can do anything more than tinkle. I trust that there is a strait gate for stylists and that a certain number of “prose masters” will be caught with the camels in the eye of the needle. For at the judgment seat, if the arrangements are well devised, I doubt that anyone will get by say= ing, “Lord, I set one little word after another with great artistry.” 1 ardently believe that a still, small voice will re=

ply, “Yes, but what did you say and which side were

you on?” : 2 ” ‘” THINK Thomas Mann deserves a good deal more than he got from Governor Cross of Connecticut or Dorothy Thompson of Vermont. The Governor has repeatedly said that he would tolerate no sit-down strikes in his dominion, but he went over a state line to sit most heavily upon a dinner while Miss Thompson made an address which seemed to be come pounded out of equal parts of Dale Carnegie and Glenn Fyank. "There ought to be a closed season on banquets, and it should extend through 48 weeks of the year. Ine deed, an after dinner speech is never good unless there

| happens to be a “2” in the month.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Justice Roberts Has Become the 'Swing Man' of Supreme Court; He Once Listened to Justice Butler, but Now Hughes Is His Counselor,

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

ASHINGTON, April 24.—There are just two reasons for the reversals by the Supreme Court. One is the President’s message to Congress and the clamor of Court criticism it touched off throughout

Second is Justice Owen Josephus Roberts, who, having sensitive ears and a sensitive disposition, be.came alarmed at the din and took lessons from th: acrobatic performances of the Chief Justice.

Justice Roberts has become the Swing Man of the

Two years ago, faced with the problem of making

(Wagner) labor board was set up under the Recovery

a choice between the two wings of the bench, he lis-

Act. No wonder she called a conference. But she will have to do something more than call conferences. The labor movement is going forward like a tornado

—a tornado which has completely short-circuited Madame Secretary.

action.

tened to the shrewd and convincing Irishman who sat on his left, Justice Butler. lief, he cast his lot with the Four Horsemen of Re-

Almost with a sigh of re-

- on ” o

UT now, as he realizes the direction in which they are dragging the country, and as he listens to the

It is largely her’ own fault. Organized labor bitterly opposed her appointment—even went to the length of saying it would never accept her. George Berry, Edward McGrady and one or two others came to her rescue and a precarious peace was made. Notwithstanding all this, she could not see the roughnecks who had salvaged her. A social worker shé had always been—a social worker she remained. The National Labor Relations Board made no such ‘error. They are in the saddle riding hell for leather. - It will take more than one picked Perkins conference to unhorse them. :

storm of abuse they have brought down upon their own heads, Roberts has swung back into another period of uncertainty. During this period it is Chief Justice Hughes rather than Butler who has become his friend and counselor. The Chief Justice also has been troubled— troubled about the prestige and future of his Court. And now he has coached his junior colleague in the art of swinging. : The chief influence in Justice Roberts’ life which

makes him Swing Man today is his experience as a

4

lawyer, which taught him to be an expert at justifying the position of his client. Mr. Roberts had a tremendous law practice. He was vigorous and extremely able. He won cases. He did it chiefly by his ability to justify his client, and to do it so convincingly that he convinced others. In doing so he usually convinced himself. Therefore Mr. Roberts came to the Supreme Cg with the ability to justify whichever side of was easiest for him to take. This does not he was looking for the easiest side. But it that he is more impressionable, more easil

" = ” OBERTS has known the Government’s poin

view as prosecutor in the Teapot Dome oil cases. For a much longer period he has known the big

. business point of view, as a highly successful corpora-

tion lawyer. Most of the time he sides with the latter, but on occasion he recognizes that all is not perfect in the present economic system. Once while talking with Arthur W. Rossiter, one of his neighbors at Phoenixville, Pa, who criticized in vigorous language the labor policies of a big Philadelphia manufacturer, Roberts observed: : “There’s no question that we must find some way more equitably to distribute the national income.” But on the Supreme Court, Roberts has adopted a policy of running to the fire only after he hears the alarm = He does not believe in fire prevention. And in recent years, he has had to hear the alarms ringing in his ears for many months before finally reversing himself,