Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 June 1937 — Page 10
CH
ci
ec
Wi re
D
1
th | In the old lawless days there might have been some
AGE 10
Owned and published
In blishing Co, 214 W. aryland St.
Member of United Press,
Zu of Circulations.
among the notables who used the old hostelry.
[he Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)
Y W. HOWARD
: LUDWELL DENNY President. .
Editor
MARK FERREE Business Manager
Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.
ily (except Sunday) by Indianapolis Times
Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a | month.
Lane g oS Rlley 5551
Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way
tipps - Howard Newsber Alliance, NEA ivice, and Audit Bu-
MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937
AND HOTEL , NOTHER link with the glamorous past of Indianapolis— the old Grand Hotel—is to go. The old landmark at ©» southeast corner of Maryland and Illinois Sts. will be ved, and in its place will rise—a parking lot!
—
wn of large buildings to make way for parking lots, has ¢ome rather commonplace the past few years in American es. The unsolved parking problem, taxes, and the diffiity of making a less-than-modern building pay, are ‘nomic factors in the trend. | i Built in 1873, the Grand Hotel was in its prime in the iy Nineties, when it was a center of social and political
ifd. Gen. Grant, William Jennings Bryan, Thomas Mar-
211, James Whitcomb Riley and Samuel Gompers were | Mingled fh pride in the modernization of the city, many older sidents may feel a sentimental loss in the change. i i
ARK AGE BUSINESS
THAT which has happened in Chicago recalls Ludlow, ‘Homestead and all the other bloody labor riots that we “ught belonged to our industrial dark ages.
§
un: voidable cause for such an affair. Today there is none,
‘sa ti is "ba
| now we have law in labor-management relations. : The Wagner act, now upheld by the Supreme Court, i's workers have a right to organize and bargain collecoly through their chosen spokesmen. Under that act it én “unfair labor practice” for an employer “to refuse to lgain collectively with the representatives of his em-
: plovees.” If these strikers do not represent a majority of
th TH
co -ca Te to
0 workers there is a legal way now to find that out, too. 2» strikers ask for a Labor Board election.
| Today, while Republic Steel still refuses its workers a tract, orderly picketing and conferences mark the Chi20 scene. But why, in the names of law and decent human \ations, weren't those conferences before this tragic riot
ik place?
T
S
IE TWEEDLES
UPERFICIALLY there is little resemblance between re:
I tiring Prime Minister Stanley ‘Baldwin and the man wh fay rules Britannia, Neville Chamberlain.
But politically they resemble another famous English ce of characters, Tweedledum and -Tweedledee. Both | Conservatives. Both are men of peace, who will avoid
7 Ir even at the cost of pride, yet who cannot be driven too
. Mr. Chamberlain may be a little more to the right ‘n Mr. Baldwin, but probably not so much more as to vite a rebellion from the quiescent forces of labor.
i Well, as T'weedledum said to Alice, the first thing is to
be
:
ont
He
0
“How d’ye do?” and shake hands. But since we've
irned to know them both so well we seem to have got ond that somehow. We'll just wish Mr. Chamberlain a
1 of the same good luck that helped Mr. Baldwin muddle jough.
ISATH OF A PIONEER [HE command of nature, said Sir Alfred Ewing, has been
I put into man’s hand before he knows how to command hitnself. Perhaps to historians of the dim future, the
sinning of the 20th Century will be remembered chiefly the time when man began to understand his own instincts
anid urges, his own drives and motivations,
From Scotland last week came news of the death of of the pioneers in that enterprise, Dr. Alfred Adler. and Freud and Jung constituted the great triumvirate
i i
psychoanalysis.
§ i
Dr. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis,
“li ves quietly in Vienna today, 81 years of age.
ta
th! boly with ear trouble a great musician. phrase “inferiority complex.”
td
th, of
y S ZCRETARY of State Cordell Hull may not win the Nobel
f
Adler, who began his career as a physician and eye
specialist, sought to explain human conduct as a striving .
overcome defects. This leads to “‘over-compensation” so at the boy with poor eyes became a great painter, and the Adler coined the
Psychoanalysis has enriched mankind by providing a
01 to explore the human mind. Its influence has already been mighty upon all literature.
Adler was a Jew, as is Freud, and so the teachings of 2se men are no longer taught in Germany. But it is one life’s ironies that the rest of the world turns to their .chings to find its explanation of the Hitler regime,
ANKEE TRADING
Prize for the greatest single contribution in the year ward the world’s peace but we know of no greater going ject in war prevention than his patient rebuilding of i shattered trade routes under the New Deal's Reciprocal ade Act. | On June 12 this act will have been in force three years. lay a virtual network of new trade routes reaches out ¢r the globe. Signed and in effect are 15 reciprocal aties. Two more—with Ecuador and Czechoslovakia— under study. Negotiations have been begun with 12 der countries. When the Imperial Conference in London concluded negotiations will be started that may result ithe most important agreement of all, that with Great ‘tain. By the time the act expires three years hence we 'y have reciprocal agreements with all of our important ighbors and customers. : | ‘When Secretary Hull asked Congress for this act in
164 America’s foreign trade had sunk to one-third of its
19 level. Now our trade is recovering. ; Trade, being a friendly and civilizing business, is jus
the opposite of war. Indeed high tariffs, embargoes and
lier barriers are only economic phases of international ir.. And foreign trade being a substitute for war, our et but dogged Mr. Hull is one of the world’s chief iice-makers, ° A i
| This phenomenon of the automobile age, the tearing
i War Industries Bqg
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
‘Come on, Big Boy’—By Herblock
ER
- en EE LEGA Hindi ir
Knee Deep
i
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Columnist Figures Out That Winner of $150,000 in Lottery Would Pay $67,000 Income Tax
ASHINGTON, June 7.—Letter to Mr. Pat Blank, stock clerk at $22 a week, with a wife and four children, living at 0000 Beach Ave., Bronx, New York: Dear Mr. Blank—So you won $150,000 on
the Irish hospital lottery on the English Derby, did you? Feel pretty good about it, do you? Well, wake up, brother. You are just dreaming. Because by the time the Federal and State income tax
departments get through with you, 3a won't have $150,000 but $83,You can deduct $2500 for yourself and Mrs. Blank and $400 each for the kids, which is $4100. After that you begin to shower down to New York State. You will pay $380 on the first $9000, and 7 per cent on your net income above that figure, and when you have
- done that and think you are all
square, they will put you through the wringer again just for luck, extracting a special 1 per cent tax on the whole net amount. You will pay New York State $11,422 out of your $150,000: and then you will settle down to real serious business with the Federals, The Federals will clip you for $55,364, but they are decent about one thing, at least. They won't tax you on the money you have already surrenedered to. the State. You can’t say the same thing for the State. They make you pay 9 per cent on the amount you will pay the U. S| Government or approximately $4082 tax on money which you really never will receive, as it will be earmarked for the national Treasury.
So you come up with $83,000, not $150,000, even though lotteries are illegal in this country and the deal whereby you won the $150,000 was one of questionable legality. |If you got your ticket through the mail is certainly wasn’t kosher with the postal laws. But, although Mr. Big has sounded off with great official piety about the immorality of persons who take advantage of all the breaks under the income tax laws, there aren’t any prigs in the Internal Revenue Department. :
Ir
Mr. Pegler
” s ”
a man—not you—but some hypothetical vicious character sets up a chain-store system of
“brothels the Government and the State are entitled
io and on precedent, would be likely to demand their ue. :
We think any man’ who would make a dollar this way is about as low as they make them, but the income tax laws regard such money as clean revenue, and would take | the wage of infamy without the slightest twinge. [If a man deals in stolen goods and the Government can prove that he made a profit, he can be plosecited for defrauding the Treasury if
he doesn’t make out a correct return and pay off.
[ #2 a =
OU know something. Mr. Blank? Far be it from me to suggest a loophole for a tax-dodger, but that which I am about to mention is not a loophole. It's a door. It says in the paper that you are an Irishman, naturalized American,
At $22 a week with a wife and four kids after 12 years in this country you are not doing any too well in the land of promise, are you? go back to Ireland, and stay there, the whole $150,000 is yours. |
(Signed)
Sincerely yours, WESTBROOK PEGLER.
Well, if you just
he Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
GOVERNOR'S TALK DISAPPOINTS WRITER By Bull Mooser, Crawfordsville
There is something about school teaching that ordinarily leaves .a man a little more honest and hu-
mane for having had the experience. That is why many of us had great hopes for the Administration of Governor Townsend, a former schoolteacher. But now we are beginning to remember there is another characteristic of the schoolteacher—the characteristic of bowing meekly to political practices and taking the easy way out to hold the job. That is the impression one got after listening to the Governor's welfare dinner address. We who elected Governor Townsend are just as much advocates of the principle of “party responsibility” as he. But who are these fellows, Dick Heller, Al Feeney, etc. whom he is placing “on a mountain top” of authority, to interpret “party responsibility”? There is only one conclusion to be drawn from the address and that is that Governor Townsend is for reither the “merit system” nor
| “party responsibility.” He is willing
to let the reign of Neroism continue in Indiana. How he ever hopes to be re-elected on a policy as this, I do not know. s 2 2 ; READER FEARS LIVING COST RISE DANGEROUS By Price Control
The American Federation of Labor urges a Presidential commission to work out a program to control rising prices and prevent another boom-bust. The workers, says the Hederation’s Monthly Survey of Business, are having their pockets looted of new wage gains ing prices of the things they “must buy. That old pickpurse, High Cost of Living, who started a wave of buyer strikes after the war, isn’t here yet but he appears to be right around the corner. . The federation warns of this lurking fellow’s approach with some disquieting figures. For instance: Workers’ income is back within 19 per cent of the 1929 level. ' That's fine, considering that the depression battered it down 45 per cent. But the cost of living is back within 13 per cent, from a low of 25 per cent under the 1929 level. Since wholesale prices have started on a rapid rise, forecasts are for increases in living costs in the current vear. The tendency for living costs to run away from wage costs is shown by a federation study of 1600 manufacturing companies. Between January, 1935, and January, 1937, their average wage costs rose 1.8 per cent, their prices rose 7.2 per cent. Out of 14 major industries only four— cement, farm implements, autos and tobacco—raised wages and increased profits without materially raising nrices. These figures of course are the federation’s and at best are only
General Hugh Johnson Says—
| Post of Assistant Secretary of War Who Now Has Authority Over Army Supplies Should Be Abolished.
Independent of Secretary
ASHINGTON. June 7.—~Why doesn’t the Administration appoint an Assistant Secretary of War? That question is being asked but a more appropriate one would be: Why doesn’t it abolish the office of Assistant Secretary of War as now constituted? | By the law | creating the office, the Assistant Secretary has authority over plans for industrial mobilization in case of war and also over procurement policies in time of peace and war. This authority, direct from Congress, is independent of the Secretary and, to an extent at least, independent of the President, : The Secretary of War is responsible for the results obtained by the Army, but a subordinate has independent authority over this large segment of those results. . | : How did Sue a thing ever happen? It is a leftover from an ancient row and its stop-gap solution. At the beginning of the World War. There were five
(later nine) independent statutory purchasing bureaus Confronted with a sudden
in the War Department. vast demand for supplies, they rushed pell-mell into all markets competing with each other and the Allies. It is no exaggeration to say that the Army supply program broke down completely. :
n » " : T= heads of the statutory Army purchase bureaus didn’t want to co-operate. They insisted on gxercising their independent authority even after the d was organized and authorized
to make everyhod
(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.)
approximations, but they indicate a decided trend. . Another commission to devise a price-control program may not be
necessary. But the formulation of a Government policy to seek more effective brakes on runaway prices is necessary. Obviously monetary measures are not sufficient. Should we also.improve our antitrust laws and apply them against price-fixing monopolies? Or invoke tariff reductions where needed? Or the taxing power to prevent excess profits? Or encourage consumer co-operatives and public-ownership yardsticks, as certain European countries have done? If prices run away from mass buying power, production will slow down, more men will be thrown inte the ranks of the jobless and another tlepression will result. It is significant that labor, heretofore concerned chiefly with organization for higher wages, now concerns itself with living costs. And it is wise, for the wage and hour gains they have won by long and bitter struggles. on the union fronts can be wiped out 9y a price boom and a new depression. - ” n ” THINKS BEAVER-CONTROL PAMPHLET HELPFUL By E. A E.
From Washington comes word that a Department of Agriculture
TRANSITORY BLOOM By MAIDA LEAH STECKELMAN You used to tell me I was beautiful , ... But now you're gone . . . and beauty too has flown: - = You did not know that love had made me beautiful . . . It’s ectoplasm clinging, all of loveliness I owned: 4 :
You used to tell me that I fairly bloomed . . . “A rose, full blown” ofttimes you used to say . .. Not then remembering that roses blown, soon perish . . . Their petals = falling slowly = to decay. ;
DAILY THOUGHT O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever. I Chronicles 16:34.
MONG the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more -brilliancy than justice.—Cervantes.
vamphlet entitled “Trapping and Transplanting Live Beavers” may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents at five cents a
copy. It was news to me that beavers,
once threatened with extinction, are again well established in half the states; that in some farm communities they are so numerous as to be a nuisance; that Pennsylvania, where beavers disappeared about 1847, imported 96 of the busy little beasts, male and female, between 1917 and 1924, and by 1934 had a beaver population estimated at 15,000, and that trapping of beavers for their pelts has once more become quite a lively industry in that and other states. : If you are still wondering why the Department , of Agriculture offers to teach farmers how to trap and transplant live beavers, consider these facts: Beavers cannot be happy unless they are building dams. When they build dams in farm districts they ruin irrigation ditches and flood crops. But when they build dams on mountain streanis they help to prevent floods and conserve water. Without ever thinking of asking for an appropriation from Congress, beavers trapped alive in the wrong places and transplanted to the right ones will help to control our rivers and save our soil. I hope that pamphlet will enjoy a lively sale. . » ”» ” ROLITICIANS STUPID,
WRITER BELIEVES By a Reader The stupidity of our politicians is appalling. One declared that “unemployment in the United States is permanent.” Is it possible that he really believes that? Does he not realize that a reduction of working hours would absorb the army of unemployed? While we are about it, let's cease paying bankers interest on the money printed by the Government. That is another absurd custom. What we need is about 10 men of the same great caliber as Eugene V. Debs.
2. nn » RAPS INSTALLMENT
PLAN OF BUYING By del Mundo ; : Recently a judge in Buenos Aires, Argentine, made a ruling to the effect that “a radio is a household necessity and a dealer who sells one on time cannot seize it for nonpayment of installments.” If we were to adopt this same principle of law with reference to “household necessities” I believe that it would be advantageous in that it would tend to abolish one of the greatest evils of American merchandising — the installment plan of payment.
It Seems to Me
By Heywood Broun
Labor Cartoon Symbol Has Hurt Movement Because It Aids Fallacy Violence Chiefly Due to Workers.
EW YORK, June 7.—An undergraduate from Swarthmore, which is a small coeducational college near Philadelphia, was home recently resting tip from his examinations and informed me casually that he had
received three A’s and a C. Since the lad
is a relative of mine I ‘was embarrassed, and I hepe he will never know that his father at the end of the same semester a good many years ago scored B minus,
C, E and F. That last rattling mark was in a course called Social Ethics, and it was a little startling because a fellow student tipped me off quite accurately as to what the questions would be a full 24 hours hefore the quiz. It may bs, of course, that things are different now, for I could never remember a date even though its fact might be familiar, And I was pleased to hear that the final test in Economics 1 at Swarthmore consisted of six newspaper cartoons and the requirement that the pupil should comment on the implication of each from an ecohomic point of view. That sounds to me like an excellent idea, and it recognizes the fact that the convictions of many Americans are very largely swayed by pictorial stimulus.. Somebody draws a picture of Uncle Sam slapping Theodore Roosevelt on the back and saying, “He’s good enough for me” and although that was something less than an argument about the issues, it served to put thousands into the Republican columns. Certainly. Rollin’ Kirby did as much as any other man to defeat prohibition by the character which he created as representative of the drys. But in spite of Kirby's success in that particular instance I do not think it is always fortunate that we should be ruled by line rather than logic. It seems to me that the cause of labor has been hurt by cartoonists and I am not referring only to such pictures as are intended to be hostile to trade unionism. Zz on 2 UCH artists as favor the cause of the employee are sometimes a little less than helpful in always drawing the toiler as a huge fellow with bulging muscles while Big ! Business is represented as a man with a launch who would quite obviously be a sucker for a left hook to the body. This familiar pattern is soc imbedded in the publie mind that there is ready acceptance of the fallacy that strikers are chiefly responsible for violence in labor disputes. The facts, of course, are otherwise. If you want a simple test just read the casualty lists after any riot and you will find that practically all the wounded are drawn from the ranks of the workers, How could it be otherwise? It certainly is not the labor unions which buy the tommy guns and tear gas,
Mr. Broun
S 2 I» 2 OR can the casualties in most cases. be assessed against that arch crime of trespass. In the recent Chicago massacre men and women were shot down on the open prairie blocks away from the plant. Violence, of course, is an easier game for management than it is for union leaders. : Moreover, the sweep of C. I. O. into the white col lar groups makes the old-fashioned symbol of labor wholly inappropriate. I have at hand a letter describing the dismissal of the librarian of Montana University—Wheeler’s State—because he undertook to organize a teachers’ union. Librarians seldom bulge or battle.” The drive for organization is an appeal to reason. The fight against it is the resort to force,
—
The Washington Merry-Go-Round
Tax Evasion Investigation
Promises Plenty “of Fireworks With
Nationally Known Figures Due to Go Before Joint Committee.
On the collapse of the Army supply system, the War Department, with a great fanfare of reform on the “tsar” plan, appointed the late Edward Stettinius, who had done all the purchasing for the Allies since 1914. They called him “Surveyor of Contracts.” The Chief of Staff regarded that office as a nuisance and supported the bureaus in their continued resistance to any effective co-ordination.
Mr. Stettinius inquired what authority he had and was told by Gen. Crowder, “None at all.” His
office was not statutory. A bill was rushed through Congress creating a new “Assistant Secretary of War”
and Mr. Stettinius was. appointed. It didn’t work, because Mr. Stettinius had been given no specific authority in ‘the law.
” = ”
TRE War Industries Board finally succeeded in
bringing the bureaus around but the wound had been inflicted and the scar remained. Accordingly, the law governing the authorities and duties of the Assistant Secretary of War was amended to give him this unique and curious authority.
It certainly was necessary to make it clear that statutory War Department bureaus are not independent. of the Secretary of War, but the way to do that was not to set up a new authority also independent of him. The way to do that was to clarify
the Secretary of War's powers and restrict those of
the bureau chiefs. ‘
The War Department is still full of similar old:
errors and anachronisms. No department of Goy-
By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, June 7.—There are going to be Y'V fireworks in the tax evasion investigation that
gets under way shortly. ; * Nationally known bankers, industrialists, publishers, and particularly lawyers, will be haled before the joint Congressional committee and confronted with charges that will make smashing headlines—but not the kind to bring them any cheers. One revelation that will definitely and forcibly be
some of the harshest critics of the New Deal, and most zealous clamorers for economy are among the worst offenders in evading the tax laws.
2 s ”
CTUALLY, the forthcoming probe is only the latest! phase of the Administration’s offensive against wealthy taxpayers. It has been quietly gunning for them with considerable success for several years. In fact, only 24 hours before the President sent his blistering message to Congress, calling for an investigation, Secretary Henry Morgenthau laid a $20,000,000 scalp on his desk —one of the juiciest tax recovery prizes on record. | The case involved the estate of the late William Waldorf Astor, who left the United States and became a British Viscount. When he died in 1919 the Internal Revenue Bureau slapped a ‘$10,000,000 assessment on $46,000,000 worth of New York real estate, which three
months before, he had deeded over to his two sol | Waldorf Jr. and John Jacob,
brought out by the investigation is the fact that
The Government contended that the transfer was made “in anticipation of death to escape inheritance taxes.” The Astors paid the tax under protest, and then threw the matter into the courts. It was battled for 10 years, until finally, in 1930, a judge in the District of Columbia Federal Court decided in their favor and ordered the Government to repay the tax.
» ” 2 , “HE obvious next step for the Government was to appeal the case. But for some mysterious reason
this was not done. Secretary of the Treasury at the time was Andrew W. Mellon, who now has a $3,000,000 tax evasion suit pending against him. Nothing further happened until Morgenthau was . installed in the Treasury. With the active backing of Internal Revenue Collector Guy Helvering, he began a vigorous drive to clean up the tax rolls. To the Astors’ demand for repayment of the $10,000,000 plus 6 per cent interest—a total of $20,000,000—he countered with a suit charging tax evasion. The Astors employed John W. Davis, one-time Democratic presidential nominee and leading Liberty Leaguer, to handle their case. In the ensuing battle the Government won in the Circuit Court. Mr. Davis then appealed to the Supreme Court, which ordered the controversy back for a new trial. ; Because it had lost the first test before a judge, the Govern ‘this time insisted on a jury trial,
¥
