Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 May 1937 — Page 12

PAGE 12

The Indianapolis Times

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. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, MAY 10, 1937

STABINSKY, ZILCH AND 0’DOWD

IF you are Mr. John Stabinsky and run a shoe-shine parlor in the Bronx and manage to wring out an annual income of, say, $3000, you pay taxes on that income both to the Federal Government and to New York State. A Mr. Joe Zilch, a New Dealer who has a $5000 whitecollar Federal job and who gets his shoes shined in your parlor, pays a Federal income tax on his salary, but no state income tax. : And a Mr. Justice Mike O'Dowd, a $20,000-a-year-state magistrate who likewise patronizes your humble emporium, pays no tax on his salary either to the State or to the Federal Government. Columnist Westbrook Pegler started telling that story over and over and over, with many variations. Others joined in the crusade. And New York began to get mad about income-tax payers and income-tax spenders living on opposite sides of the tracks. Public indignation finally forced a showdown. A few hours before it adjourned, the State Assembly approved a law making the salaries of all of its so-called constitutional officers subject to state income taxes on the same basis that the incomes of private individuals are taxed. Under New York’s new law, Mr. Justice O'Dowd and others of like status who hitherto have enjoyed complete immunity from income taxation will hereafter enjoy only half immunity. They will pay income taxes to help support the State, but they remain free of any obligation to contribute to the support of the Federal Government. Likewise, Mr. Zilch and others on the Federal payroll residing in New York State and elsewhere continue to enjoy incomes exempt from state taxation. But that is an inequity which a state legislature apparently cannot correct. #2 & cla OTHING less than a new constitutional amendment, it seems, will remove these discriminations and subject public payrollers to the income taxes which oxdinary citizens pay. The 16th Amendment says clearly that “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” But the U. S. Supreme Court has held repeatedly that this language does not mean what it says. It has held that Congress cannot tax the salaries of state, county or municipal employees, because such a tax would invade state sovereignty. Similarly it has ruled that state taxation of Federal salaries would be an invasion of Federal sovereignty. It even stretched this fantastic sovereignty theory so far that in one case it ruled that a state could not tax oil produced on the land of an Indian because Indians are wards of the Federal Government. In view of these decisions, apparently the only way by which all citizens can be made equal before tax laws is by the adoption of another constitutional amendment. Such an amendment has been introduced by Rep. John J. Cochran of Missouri. Congressmen, whose salaries are exempt from state taxation, have not been very enthusiastic for this amendment. But if the doubly taxed common people of the country get mad enough they can make Congress pull that proposal out of its dusty pigeonhole and submit it for ratification by the states. They can get action the same way that the people of New York State. got action.

SYMBOL WEEK

AS coronation week comes upon us a lot of Americans are inclined to scoff at the fuss and the formality, the color and the pomp of it all. But let us bear in mind that we, too, go in for pageantry; that our own President rode bareheaded in the rain during his own reinauguration just a few months ago; and that old men of the Supreme Court likewise defied pneumonia to do honor to their enemy, in the name of form and conventionality. Somehow or other you can't take symbolism out of life and hold nations together. Hence inaugural parades: hence coronations. Britain's affair is just swankier and more expensive, noisier and more crowded than ours— that’s all. For she leans heavier on the symbol idea than we do, And this time she has had symbol trouble aplenty —such as never before in her history—one symbol having walked-out on her, calling for the quick build-up of another, to whom all the adulation now goes while the first symbol listens over the radio to what might have been, but isn’t.

GRANNY'’S OLD CLOTHES

LARGE collet¢tion of royal robes and state gowns once worn by the late Queen Alexandra of England has been sold at auction in New York for $2667.50. "A black tulle dress, specially embroidered in silver and gold by the wives of India’s ruling princes, brought $50; a driving coat of white Danish lamb, part of the young

Princess Alexandra’s trousseau of 70 years ago, $60. So |

through a long list of faded fineries. One of Alexandra’s grandsons is about to be crowned in London. Another is about to be married in France, And Alexandra’s old clothes, once the admiration of an empire, are peddled to American museums to be stared at by the curious and the irreverent. Sic transit gloria mundi, as they say. So passes earthly glory. But we still think, if genuine museum pieces are desired, someone ought to auction off- Queen Mary's hats. :

NOTE ON BARBARISM N AN article called “The Scepter of Freedom,” the Berlin Schwarze Korps, organ of the Nazi secret political police, derides America for-arming its policemen with clubs. Thanks to the Nazis, the paper boasts, .Germany has abandoned “this barbaric custom,” and instead arms its police with pistols. Now, we're not inlined to spin fine didtinetions on barbarism or anything else, but we sort of feel we'd rather take our chancés with an oaken billy, even in the hands of the rougher sort of cop, than with the barking end of a Nazi repeater. The billy-club may be barbaric, but it's a heap less lethal. “pr

_of 24 times 60 times 60.

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

2 1 i

MONDAY, MAY 10, 1937 |

>

Trouble With a ‘T hree-Horse’ Team-—By Herblock

4 < |

v

YOU CAWN'T DO

Fair Enough By Westbrook aon

Humane Parole Board Member Must Feel Tug at Heart Strings When Prisoner Asks for Release

EW YORK, May 10.—I have been thinking of the personal equation between a member of a parole board in any of our large states and the man who comes before the board in prison uniform as a candidate

for clemency. The member of the board is a

free man, himself, and I am assuming that he is-a fairly decent human being with sufficient imagination to realize what his decisions mean to hundreds of supplicants. The member has the power of God, almost, for thousands of years of the lives of the prisoners are at his disposal. At a nod of his head, a prisoner may walk out of prison and go back to his family if he has one and the happiness of several innocent people, including the man’s children, is in his hands. If he turns down the application, the man goes hack to his cell and the smells and routine of prison to watch his step for another year or two when he may try again. His family, if any, do not appear at the hearing but the member of the parole board, if he is a human being, must feel their presence, and visualize several soiled little kids off in some city or country slum who have two strikes on them at the start .of life because their father has been “away.”

Mr. Pegler

7 # 2

HEN the hearings are over and the member gathers up his papers to leave, nobody questions his right to walk out through the iron gate. He is a power and the guards, who usually are political appointees, defer to him with a fawning courtesy never shown the prisoners. He may walk over to the warden’s house to eat fried chicken cooked by a prisoner and served by another prisoner and he may carry off as souvenirs a few trinkets carved out’ of wood or peach-stones or woven from horse-hair by prisoners in their spare time. I understand that in some states the prisoners are not allowed to make a sales talk before the poard but only appear and answer questions. That may be a good rule because a con-man, for example, is an expert in this line. Yet, there the man stands, having served, let us say, five years already, and the man on the board knbws that the years are long and monotonous and that prisoners count time by the day, the hour, the minute and even by the second. At night, or bending over their work in the day, they do problems on mental arithmetic.

” # ”

WENTY-FOUR times 365 is 8760 hours, times 60 is 525.600 minues, times 60 is 31,563,000 seconds in

| a. year, minus so many days for good behavior—until

the man’s mind learns to reckon all things in terms The parole board can give him a break or turn him back for 365 times 24 times 60 times 60 and a humane man must feel a great pull in his heart and a temptation to take a chance contrary to his suspicions. I wonder how many who say that prison serves them right could interview a man five years in prison—with 10 years yet to serve—and vote to keep him there 40 times 365 times 24 times 60 times 60.

; - ® ’ The Hoosier Forum 1 wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

URGES PURIFICATION OF G. 0. P. TACTICS By Bull Mooser, Crawfordsville The Republicans are getting ready for the election of 1940 in the same manner they got ready for the election of 1896. What newspapers they don’t already control, they are subsidizing. They are even stooping so

low as to establish a special bureau for the purpose of propagandizing college and. university publications. The . historian, James Truslow Adams, describes the defeat of Bryan in 1896 by quoting a letter from Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge to Cecil Spring-Rice: “The great fight is won. It was a fight conducted by trained and experienced and organized forces, with both hands full of money, with the power. of the press—and of prestige —on one side; on the other, a disorganized mob at first, out of which burst into sight, hearing and force —one man, but what a man! Alone, penniless, without backing, without money, with scarce a paper, without speakers, that man fought such a fight that even those in the East called him a crusader, an inspired fanatic—a prophet. It has been marvelous. . We had during the last week of the campaign 18,000 speakers on the stump. He alone spoke for his party. . . . It is over now, but the vote is seven millions to six millions and a half.” Are the Republicans going to allow the party to be disgraced again by the tactics of 1896 and 1936? Why not get back of Senator Minton in his effort to purify the press and other avenues -of public information? ; 2 2 2 SEES PEOPLE LOSER IN COURT BATTLE By L. L. P. The pitiful thing about this Su-

preme Court controversy is that

either way it comes out, the Ameri-:

can people will lose. If the President wins, the precedent of the President tinkering with the Court will be re-established and strengthened. If the Court wins, the even

more dangerous precedent will be established that the Court is free to ignore the will and mandate of the

people. We will have moved another

notch away from representative government and a notch closer to oligarchical government. Out of all this argument about the Court, it seems to me that the American people should be able to see that it is unsafe to delegate to the “nine old men,” or anyone else,

the power of absolute veto of laws

passed by the people. It is prac=

tically the same thing as giving that |.

power to a king. We just can’t do it and retain a democratic and representative government. °

Right of People

The power to declare laws unconstitutional ‘belongs to the people. Why do Americans keep bickering around trying to find some potentate to give that power to? Why don't they do the only practical and logical thing, retain that power for the peoplg? Let the Court pass on the constitutionality of the laws, but make

General Hugh Johnson Says—

San Francisco Doctor Who Believes That Gigantic Airplanes Are

Just Too Big for Two Men

NOXVILLE, Tenn., May 10.—Example of pitiless publicity and searching investigation by Uncle Danny Roper’s “Show Boat,” clipped from the lower right-hand corner of Page 3 of the Washington News: ICE BLAMED

The Bureau of Air Commerce reported yesterday that the possible cause of the TWA airplane crash near Pittsburgh in March, resulting in the death of 13 persons, was heavy accumulation of ice on the wing tips and ailerons ‘which rendered the airplane uncontrollable.’ I couldn’t find this item 'in any other Washington or in two New York dailies. There was ice on the wings all right, but experienced aviators tell me that it is most unlikely the ice caused that crash, that another ship coming through exactly the same conditions, with the same ice formation, at the same time, didn’t have any trouble, and, finally, that millions of miles of flying under similar conditions

Dr. Harry A. Tuckey, chairman of the aviation section of San TE s Commonwealth Club, Where

nave produced no such accident.

| That might mean that the President

(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.)

1

their declaration of unconstitution= ality of a law subject to the approval of the people expressed by vote in the election following the decision. That is the only way that we will ever settle the Court controversy, for it is the only way we can preserve the principle or representative government. ” ” o

HITS METHOD OF PICKING FEDERAL JUDGES By E. A. E.

Federal judges who linger too long on the bench may constitute a problem. But the process by which Federal judges get cn the bench in the first place is the root of even more trouble. As it works, especially in Federal District Court appointments, it produces many politically minded judges, some very bad ones, a large number of mediocre ones. The wonder is that it produces any good judges. The President — any President — appoints a Federal judge, as the Constitution says, “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

would receive help from the Senators in seeking the best possible appointee — the man of highest standing, greatest ability and truest judicial temperament—when he has to fill one of these important lifetime positions. It too often does mean nothing of the sort. What actually happens is that the Senator or Senators of the President’s party from the state where the appointment is to be made, select the judge. They do it by political devices, sometimes pretty sordid. They are besieged by applicants for the place, often as many as 25 or §0 or more for a single appointment. Each applicant lines up all the support he can among politicians and lawyers, thereby incurring obligations from which a Federal judge should be free. Each applicant puts on the Senators all the pressure he and his backers can exert. The Senator or the two Senators —as the case may be—choose one or more candidates, and so advise the U. S. Attorney General. The Department of Justice then investigates the recommended can-

A POET—AH, ME oe 0

—

By DANIEL FRANCIS CLANCY If I could tell all I see In that stone—ah, me— A great poet I would be.

DAILY THOUGHT

And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord ‘thy God.—Luke 4:12. :

EARN to say “No”; it will be of 4 more use to you than to be able | to read Latin.—Spurgeon.

didates, chiefly to make certain that

their records are free from any too scandalous blots. Finally the Attorney General proposes to the President one of the candidates with senatorial backing—and the President makes the appointment. Now the appointment must be confirmed by the Senate. Sometimes, though not often, the Senate balks. Usually, “senatorial courtesy” insures that Senators from other states won’t block an appointment upon which the Senators from the state chiefly affected have agreed. Some Senators, of course, take more seriously than others their judge-making responsibility, And this political method of putting judges on the Federal bench didn’t originate under President Roosevelt. It is very old. It must be said, however, that Mr. Roosevelt has done little to- improve the method. His judicial appointments, in general, are nothing to brag about. His greatest opportunity to improve the Federal bench is at the beginning of judicial careers, and it is unfortunate that he has taken so little advantage of that opportunity.

” ” ” OBJECTS TO CRITICISM AGAINST TOWNSEND By LeRoy Moore, Bedford In her diatribe of May 1, Mabel German said, “. anything against Townsend, as yet.” Which was the same as saying, “But just give me time. Then in the next paragraph she says, “However, let me say at this time that Townsend is not what we thought he was, he has all the earmarks of the Minton type of politician ., . .” Governor Townsend, as the clearthinking people of our State know, is a. Governor who has efficiently handled an administration fraught with perplexing problems. Clifford Townsend is a Governor “of the people, for the people and by the people” in the true sense of the word because he is truly and sincerely one of the people. He proved this when he traveled the flood area and studied the problem first-hand.

Visited Stricken People

He visited the stricken people in person, talked to them face to face and did not mumble meaningless messages full of trite phrases. He

made his appearance upon the flood scene without the fanfare of trumpets to herald his coming. Many of the stricken people did not know that the Governor of Indiana had madg them a personal visit until he had Bone, and many will never know that the sympathetic and helpful gentleman who visited them was the Governor. Had Mabel German ever worked in a sweat shop and realized the benefit of the NRA which was done away with by the Suprene Court, she would cheer to the house-tops the fine efforts of Senator Minton to help our President repair the Supreme Court. This writer would suggest that the lady be content with her niche and not try to be envious of the admirable efforts of our new Governor and junior Senator to improve the lot of the common man,

. . Nor have I said’

It Seems | fo Me By Heywood Broun

On a Fine Spring Night in the Country City-Bred Columnist Recovers His Long-Lost Sense of Smell

GTAMFORD, Conn, May 10.—Whenever 1 get smart-alecky about nature, that old lady, a most powerful Katinka rocks me

with a right. Often I have disparaged country nights and celebrated the twilights of

of the town. I used to wish I could find rus. in urbe as the shepherd in [Central Park, so that it would be possible to quit, the sylvan scene for a night club by the simple Process of dropping my ierook and hailing a taxi driver.- | Bub on Wednesday night the Ridge put on a show which knocked me clear of my cockney notions. Coming home from the plant a little after dusk, I found a night which was lumi=nous, strangely still and fragrant. Indeed, I found my nose. Twice broken and a million times citified, it has served me for years only in hay fever season. In night clubs I suppose there are many scents and perfumes. n advertisements I read of Kiss Me Quick and Nuit de Sacre Bleu, but even when the tables stand close together I can detect Tn but ‘a faint aroma of burnt bacon.

But now most palpably I Knew I walked by fields where grass had been fresh cut and there were apple

blossoms and cherry trees. The blooms upon the pear trees. which had once seemed as dead as a speech by Chairman Hamilton had leaped out in the night like highwaymen to block | my progress down the silver thread which served hy day as a dirt road.

There was no moon, but the householder of the heavens, like a prudent New Englander, set all his candles out when the fuses failed him. And this was a more kindly light, for the moon in any quarter sets.on edge the teeth of an old Calvinistic frog who lives at the bottom of the lake, To him Luna is just another Gypsy Rose Lee, and|as she strips he sets up a raucous repetition of “Deep damnation! Deep damnation!” But this night no frogs chatted and no birds sang. Even the katydids waived their fecling of inferiority and ceased to trouble.

Mr. Broun

| # ” ”

P at the top of the hill a farmer friend was burn= ing wood for no apparent reason, and in the val= ley I caught the faint dissonance of a distant skunk. But even that was acceptable and had its piace in the symphony of fragrance.

I followed my new-found nose, and by daybreak it might have led me clear across the border into Maine, where curious folk walk with their heads in the crook of the elbow. But just beyond the blacksmith shop an Airedale shattered the silence and broke the enchantment.

I knew then that I had been, remiss in failing to bring a glass jar to preserve some portion of the night against the onset of more bitter weather. Stahding upon the pantry shelf amid the alien corn and canned salmon, it might serve to remind me that God is good and that for a little while I had been permit« ted to recapture and [to revel in my fifth sense.

|” ” ¥. OOD .dog,” I said, “shut your mouth.” But he would not be comforted,| for he, too, had a nose, and while:I was intent upon apple blossoms, he was only conscious of the disturbing presence of a foreign mutton eater from over the top of the hill.

“Bow wow!” continued the Airedale, and since Henry, my police and fire dog, was not present to protect me, I turned upon my heel and trundled home. But before I went to bed I wandered into the kitchen and found Henry, asleep and whimpering, I believe it was his Dalmatian unconscious which troubled him and that he was dreaming of the engine

house and possibly seeking to make an identification through emulation. :

The Washington Merry-Go- Roand

Everyone Talks Economy but No One Does Anything About It and

| of examination:

to Handle Is Believed at Least Partly Right

President Roosevelt in 1932 made one of the greatest speeches of his life, writes me: “There are several factors that seem to me worthy First—The present D. C. 3 Douglas transport is just too much airplane to entrust to one pilot and assistant pilot. The airlines are asking these two men to be fliers, blind fliers, engineers, mechanics, navigators, radio men, and to be responsible for the lives of 21 people. It just doesn’t make sense to expect to find all these requirements capable of skilled performance by two men in the pilot’s cabin. Second—

The transition stage between the ‘contact’ flier and the instrument flier in bad weather. Third—The

-eive the larger ships with increasing landing speeds and great weight of ships, if the pilots overshoot the fields. “Pan-American Airways ‘has proved this with five men in the crew, dividing the responsibilities, and unlimited landing facilities on water. Their record is almost perfect.” I don’t know what all the trouble is, but this column thinks that what Dr. Tuckey writes is part of it. That was why it was indignant at so many y reports blaming

crashes on “pilot’s error.”

ground facilities at airports are not sufficient to re-

Appropriation Bills Continue to Click Merrily Through Congress

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, May 10.—Everybody in Washington is for economy: The President, Congress, Treasury, Federal Reserve Board, Republicans, everybody. But no one is doing a thing about it—except talk. Appropriation bills continue to click through with regularity, with but inconsequential savings or none at all. To date the only economizing worthy of the name that has been achieved is the lopping off of a $37,000,000 construction item from the $526,000,000 Navy bill. On the $415,000,000 Army measure the only pruning that Congress seemed to find possible was the excision of $700,000 in pay increases. Next to relief, the expenditures of these two departments are the greatest in the Government. The failure to do any appreciable budget-trimming so far does not mean that an economy program will not be enacted this session. Such action is both possible and likely. P 2 ® HIS chaotic situation is due to a jumble within the Administration and in Congress. The President, torn by conflicting counsel among his advisers, has not made up his mind what to do, And J r .

Congress, lacking White House leadership, is in an even worse stew. On the Senate side there is donsiiratie sentiment and agitation for a flat 10 per cent reduction of all appropriations. On the House side most of the leaders lean to a proposition [that would give the’ President power to impound up to 15 per cent of appropriations after they have been voted. r z” ” =

THe turmoil in the inner circle is dominated by two schools of thought on the economy question. elief Administrator Hopkins, Secre- ; and Secretary Wallace, is strongly opposed to any drastic curtailment of Government expenditures. They contend that slashing the budget is deflationary and in direct dontradiction to the fundamental theory of New Deal economics—to ree distribute wealth by spending, raising the money through taxation on the profits and dividends accrue ing from the resulting recovery. The second school, recovery. thau, Reserve Board Chairman Eccles, and RFC boss Jesse Jones, insists that the time has arrived to clamp down on free spending and to balance the budget. . Personally, the President inclines to the Hopking= Ickes-Walldee vewpeigle | S

One, tary Ic

g Secretary Morgen=