Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 June 1937 — Page 9

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From Indiana—tErnie Pyle Portland

Streamliner Is Cozy, But Ernie Loses Money Eating In Pullman Instead of Coach.

I STREAMLINING OVER THE ROCKIES, | June T7.—The station agent at Rawlins | told me just where to put my bags on the 1! station platform. He said the Portland streamliner stopped (only two minutes, and -if it was late it | stopped only 30 seconds. He gave nie the impres- | sion it might pull right out and leave a ‘suitcase in {| midair if I didn’t work fast. | The track curved around a hill half a mile from the station. And at 11:49 here came a yellow streak, leaning over on the banked curve, unwinding around the turn, projecting itself from behind the mountain like a swift yellow snake conjing out of a hole. I got everything aboard all right. Must have had five or six seconds to spare. But we were gone from Rawlins before I could get to my seat. . Immediately, I was conscious that this train was different. It Hi isn’t like the Zephyr; it isn’t like | The Challenger. This is more like something you | get on Christmas morning, and like to play with. I ike this train. i In Chicago. the. Union Pacific people were sOITY |! because I had to go to Portland, and hence had I! to ride the oldest and, they said, poorest of their || streamiiners. Too bac I couldn't have taken their {| newer streamliners to Denver, or Los Angeles, or San | Francisco, they said. ! The City of Portland (that's its official name) is || quite small. Only seven cars, including the power |! car. This is the same train that Averill Harriman || made the fast transcontinental run in a year or two |! ago. It's the Union Pacific’s| second streamliner. Hh But as I say. I like this one. There is a coziness \! about, it. Its sides slant in toward the top, like an if ai e cabin. Gives you a snug feeling. The wini! dows [are low, and it makes you feel close to the

Mr. Pyle

" ment! There are slat windows, like Venetian blinds, { so that you can close oif your seat from the aisle.

| Can Wash Face in Bed

In the wall there's a thing that becomes a little | wash bowl when you pull it out. You can wash \! your face even before you get out of bed. I7didn’t i try it, for it looked to me as though the thing might | squirt if you didn’t know how to work it. |" The City of Portland doesn’t ride as smoothly as | the Denver Zephyr. Of course it isn’t’ as heavy, or Ii as long, or as new. The wheels make more noise, |! and you shake around more. It’s’hard to write on '! the train, and a full glass slops over even if you i! aren’t on a curve. But even so, it’s ‘much smoother |! and quieter than the old-type trains.

i d. i ery Pullman space is a sort of semicompart- { i

The diner is a cozy affair. A third of it is a

|! lounge car, with easy chairs, ash-tray stands, |! magazines and card tables. The middle third is the | diner. The front third is the closed-off kitchen. fl The last car in the train is a day coach. You ll can't sit in the tail of the City of Portland and |! watch the track unreel behind you. Because there's | a kitchen right in the tail.” This is the one for the {| coach passengers. ~

|| Erred Eating in Fullman 3 I was riding in the Pullman (there are three on If the train), but being a sort of “special investi= l gator” I.could have eaten in the coach if I'd had |! sense enough. (Regular Pullman passengers can’t.) {| But I ate dinner in the regular diner. It cost $1.75, - |i and I could have had the very same dinner, minus il 8 or 10 superfluous doo-dads (such as stuffed {il olives. which I hate) back in the coach for exactly

i 65 cents. : They serve cocktails on the City of Portland |! when they're in wet states. But you cross into Idaho ‘! around 4 in the afternoon, just before the cocktail {# hour. However, they come around and warn you, ll and theyll sell you a drink in Wyoming and then {1 wait and serve it to vou in Idaho if you say so. I liked the City of Portland. But I didn't like

|| the passengers. Didn't see a soul speak to anyone

til else. . Hl One fellow lost his balance in the lounge car and 4 stepped on my foot, and he did say “Excuse me” || and I said “Certainly.” That was the only conversa- ! tion I had with any of the passengers in the 21 hours

|| I was on the train. ;

|Mrs.Roosevelt's Day

| By Eleanor Rocsevelt 1 Every Person Needs ‘Inner Tower Built of Delightful Memories.

YDE PARK. N. Y., Sunday—There was one point i made by Dr. Van Loon in his commencement | address to the graduating class of the Todhunter || school on Friday, that struck me as particularly good || for any graduating class to know. | He told them no || one could escape the vicissitudes of life. Ups and | downs are inevitable, but if you build an inner tower | where you gather all the memories you like to dwell | with, and into which you can retire when the world |i around you seems t00 overwhelming, it will smooth {ll your path in life. i In other words, if you remember James Hilton's | book, “Lost Horizon.” a “Shangri-la” or land of i| your own made up of the friends, the experiences, | the (contacts which make life worth living. One or {| two| of the older pecple came up to me afterward IH and) said: “The youngsters, no matter hcw young, || seemed to enjoy that talk today and yet there was | so much in it we want to remember as well.” |" 1 sat with my hands folded on the train to Hyde _ il Park on. Friday because everything I owned had | gone on ahead of me, | manuscripts of every Kind. It was rather a novel | experience not to have my hands busy so I looked ! out at the beauty of early summer on the Hudson || River and, on the whole, it was rather pleasant to | think and do nothing. . | It is very soothing to watch pictures pass you like |! a panorama. I kept thinking to myseif, if this were |ll Spain, would I be sitting so ‘calmly and with such || security watching the summer pageant go by? i We should count over our blessings now and then, | and not’ the least among them is that no shells are {Il dropping on our cities and villages, that no children \ll in great numbers are being separated from their || parents and being cared for in temporary asylums. | Some of this suffering can be alleviated, but it is Il only alleviation and some measure of harm remains | unallayed. i 1f reforms do noi come peacefully they have to ll come through violent upheavals. As I looked out | the window of the train, I thought, “Thank God, this | nation has had the courage to face the need of | changes before we reached the point where blood- '| shed was the only way to achieve a change.” . No wonder the peoples who have democratic forms | of government cling to them. If they realize what | they are spared, they will work unceasingly to make | democracy function properly.

Walter O'Keefe —

HEN War Admiral earned another $50,000 Saturday he moved right in with the other | economic royalists. The only other three-year-glds who are making such money are the Dionne quintuplets. i War Admiral won't run so fast when he has to run down to Washington and|give Uncle Sam his cut on the income tax. . . Although he can’t deduct anything for a wife | and children he can take something off for his old man, Man O’ War, who, like a lot of fathers, hasn't worked since 1920. Man O’ War must he the envy of a lot of fathers. All he has to do in life is hang around that Kenucky farm, drink mint juleps, and wire his sons for money. a : | I'm a lot like Ben Bernie. We've got the horses ust where they want us.

including my knitting and’

{ | 1 |

| |

The Indianapolis

imes

Second Section

MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937

Entered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffice, Indianapolis, Ind.

PAGE 9

America's Footloose First Lady

Mrs. Roosevelt Cast Off White House Traditions

(First of a Series)

By Ruth Finney

Times Special Writer VV ASHINGTON, June 7. —Someone should write a book about Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt's first four years in the White House, for in‘their way they have been as significant as her husband’s. Such a book, looking beyond the superficialities of those four years (the number of miles traveled, the number of speeches made), would show Mrs. Roosevelt probably has influenced the, thinking of the country more profoundly than any living American. She hasn't done this by precept. You will search her speeches and writings in vain for significant or memotable phrases. She has done it by example. As to her particular contribution, there are many answers. One person will value most the things she has done to make democracy work and to enhance the democratic idea. To another her demonstration that genuineness . and sincerity are possible for one

"in high place will assume more importance.

The things she has done for individual humans and tor women as a group have their claims. u 2 ”

“QHE'S swell,” said a girl from the Tennessee hills. “I'm not ashamed of being a girl any more.” “The best social agency the United States has known in many a decade,” Mrs. Larue Brown said of her at the Children’s Bureau anniversary dinner a few weeks ago. ye “She has served as an outlet for the American people—letting them know someone is really interested in them,” said Dr. Edward Safford Jones, psychologist at the University of Buffalo. “She is filling a sympathetic role in American public iife never before undertaken by the wife of a President.” “Gallant, courageous, intelligent and wise,” said Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins about her on another occasion. To think intelligently about Mrs. Roosevelt it 1s necessary first to project oneself back into the days before she moved to Washington. No one in public life was doing the kind of thing she does today. No one, man or woman, was going about discovering, first -hand, exactly how people live in all parts of the country and in all conditions of life. No one was receiving letters about the sore spots in America, answering them, doing somiething about them. ® "nn HE country focused an ardent attention on its First Ladies but expected nothing of them except figurehead qualities. It got nothing else and thought it wanted nothing else. The President’s wife, as a symbol of power, was the most written-of woman in the country, but she was expected to influence thinking only on fashions and the self-effacing wifely virtues. Mrs. Roosevelt was different, and at first she horrified us. We watched her, hawk-eyed, for improprieties or bad taste. We ex-

‘pected her to ruin her husband.

We thought she would try to run him and the country and us. We made fun of her and gossiped about her from morning until night. : Today she’s not a sensation. Much of the time she’s not even news, though she’s doing more than ever before. Cynics that we are, she has convinced most of us that she’s not a notoriety seeker. She has accustomed us to the spectacle of a prominent person doing simple, natural things for simple, natural reasons; grappling with serious problems and unafraid to state opinions about them. Mrs. Roosevelt thinks people don’t know enough about what

goes on around them. Many problems of citizenship and of government would resolve themselves, she thinks, if all of us had imagination enough and sufficient

first-hand knowledge of. condi- -

tions. She set herself the task, when she came to Washington, of learning about people everywhere, telling others, and trying to rouse their curiosity. : It was a simple, obvious thing

to do but it had never occurred °

to anyone before that the prestige of a President's wife might be turned to that account.

2 ® 2

O, breaking a thousand shackles of precedent, she went about the country learning, and then when. people asked her to address them she told them that there were people who had no mattresses to sleep on, and watched “their incredulous amazement; told them just what evictions are like and under exactly what circumstances they have caused the death of children; told them what tenements are like, ahd prisons and girls’ schools and poverty-stricken farms. To the extent that she has made better citizens of her listeners—

Mrs. Roosevelt Visi

and her audience is a vast one— she has improved democracy’s chance of survival. !

She has served the democratic idea in more humble ways—riding in day coaches, taking down the ropes that used to separate the chosen few from the many at White House receptions, entertaining workers as well as dignitaries in the executive mansion, driving her own car, cooking for her guests as any housewife would do, working for hire, joining a labor: union, tearing away the veil of almost regal formality that used to surround White House life.

ts Crippled Children

HE has taught many Americans to think outside of old ruts, to live by personal conviction rather than fear of criticism, to face family crises with dignity and honesty. She has set an example of industry and of untiring effort in behalf of the unfortunate, has caused a new appraisal of women’s part in the scheme of things, has kept before our minds certain fundamental human and social problems, and all in all has shown us a segment of sane and well-rounded living that can scarcely fail to affect many lives. The extent to which she has in-

—Times-Acme Photo,

fluenced + American thinking is most evident in the way we take her for granted today. And speaking of taking her for granted, here is her favorite story:

She was making a purchase in a New York department store and, because she wanted it sent, dictated to the salesgirl her name,

V-E-L-T, White House, Washing--ton, D. C. Without looking up, the girl asked: “Any room number?”

NEXT—Mrs. Roosevelt in 1933 and Mrs. Roosevelt today.

@®

By E. R. R. ASHINGTON, June 7.-—The . Supreme Court of the United States has brought to a close a term which was notable for reversals by the Court of .precedents it had previously established and for acceptance by the Court of many of the constitutional principles implicit in the New Deal philosophy

By Clark

Side Glances

a COPR. 1937 BY NEA SERVICE. INC. T. M. REG. U. 8. PAT. OFF.

"We'll just stop calling on them if they think so much more of their furniture than they do of their friends. .

of government. Decisions of Federal circuit courts which had been based upon earlier decisions of the Supreme Court itself were overthrown right and left and a whole new set of precedents was set up— greatly to the confusion of those versed in the old rules of constitutional interpretation. The most important reversal of the term was the reversal of the Court’s whole attitude toward the New Deal. The same Court which, during its two previous terms had ruled agains the Administration in cases involving such vital aspects of its program as NRA regulation of industry, AAA control of agriculture, and Federal regulation of the bituminous industry under the Guffey Coal Act, this year upheld every New Deal law brought before it as being well within the powers conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution. The most far-reaching New Deal enactments given the Court's approval were the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. The latter act passed judicial scrutiny both:as to its old-age pen-: sion provisions and its provisions for a Federal-state system of employment insurance. The Court upheld also an unemployment compensation law of Alabama, enacted as a complement to the Federal statute. 2 sz = HE Court’s decisions in the five cases under the Wagner Labor Relations Act will have far-reaching results and will be cited as precedents for many years to come. In these cases, the Court gave a new interpretation. to the commerce clause of the Constitution, and opened the way for a vast expansion Lo Federal regulation over industries

whose operations “affect” interstate A

commerce. It did not directly re‘verse its earlier rulings that pro‘duction is not interstate commerce, ‘but it did hold that where a manu-

facturing establishment brings a substantial part of its raw materials from other states or ships a substantial part of its finished products to other states its operations affect interstate commerce and are therefore subject to Federal regulation. Not only did the Court hold that labor relations of such establishments were subject to regulation by the Government, but also that the relations of the Associated Press with its editorial employees affected interstate commerce in such degree as to make them subject to the prohibitions against interference with trade union organization laid down in the Wagner Act. The Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of the press, the Court held, had nothing to do with the case. ; In a separate case under the Railway Labor Act, the Court ruled that collective bargaining was mandatory upon the railroads, that they must conduct such bargaining with the representative chosen by a majority of their employees, and that they must not deal with company unions. There was nothing in either this act or the Wagner act, the Court held, that compelled agreement, but the employer must meet and confer with the representative of his employees,

» = ”

N the Social Security Act cases, the Supreme Court: for the first time upheld Federal action uncer the general welfare clause not involving the exercise of one of the other powers specifically granted by the Constitution. The Social Security Act was held to be valid under the general welfare clause standing alone. It did not constitute an invasion of the powers of the states, nor did its unemployment insurance provisions bring undue coercion upon the states to enact unemploy-

Dr. Fishbain's Health col-

“umn is on Page 4 today.

Supreme Court Upset Many Precedents During Term Recently Ended

ment insurance laws of their--own. There was nothing in the act that deprived employers of due process of law or of the equal protection of the laws. | The due process of law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which heretofore has been so interpreted by the Supreme Court in cases brought by corporations as to invalidate much social and regulatory

legislation of the states, was employed this year to extend the guarantees of freedom of speech and assemblage contained in the First Amendment to two Communists who had been convicted under state laws. In 1923, the Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 decision, had invalidated the District of Columbia minimum wage law for women on the ground that the law deprived employers of due process of law. This year, in a flat reversal of that decision, the Court upheld the minimum wage law of the State of Washington in a 5-to-4 decision. s Ed ” HILE sanctioning a vast expansion of the regulatory powers of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court strengthened the regulatory powers of the states also in several cases in addition to the Washington minimum wage case. Resale price maintenance laws, now in force in some 36 states, were upheld in a number of cases which came to the Court from Illinois and California. - In another case of far-reaching importance the Court upheld the Ashurst-Sumners Act which employs the powers of the Federal Government over interstate commerce to prevent the importation of prison-made goods into states which prohibit: the sale of such goods in their own: markets. This decision opened the way for a new method of dealing with child labor, minimum wage, and other labor questions. The Roosevelt Admin-

| istration. has chosen not to avail

itself of this method, but to rely upon the expansion of Federal powers permitted under the Wagner act decisions as the basis for its new wages-and-hours bill.

Our Town By Anton Scherrer |

‘Breaking Home Ties Was a Painting” That Attracted Crowds And Brought Lump to. Throat,

I pretty sure that 1 saw a copy of the picture, “Breaking Home Ties,” before 1 saw the original painting at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. At any rate, 1 rememsber the crowds that used to gather in front

of Herman Lieber’s show-window to have a

good look at it. Mr. Lieber had his store on S, Meridian St. at the time and the crowds were sometimes so dense that you couldn't get into Fred Francke’s hardware store on account of them. I never saw a crowd quite like it unless, perchance, it was in a church. Come to think of it, it wasn’t quite ‘like a church crowd. To be sure, there was the same hush and stillness, but what made it different was the fact that the people standing in front of Lieber's didn’t have the calmness of those in church. > As a matter of fact, they were a bit agitated—even if they were . silent— and I think it was most noticeable in ths behavior of the men. For some reason, the men couldn't make their Adam’s apples behave. Of course, it was the picture that made them pehave like that. The picture, I recall, represented a boy saying- goodby to his parents. There was a fourth figure, too, standing in the doorway with a trunk and some satchels, and there was no mistaking the fact that the boy was leaving home for good, He seemed awfully young to be doing that. I haven't the least idea of what the boy was up to. Maybe he was going away to be a sailor, or maybe he was going to the city to be apprenticed to a great merchant or artist. I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was only too plain that he was leaving home for good. The expressions on the faces of his father and mother were proof of that.

Chicago People Behaved Similarly When I got to see the real picture at the World's Fair—in color, this time—I observed that everye body in Chicago behaved just the way the Ins dianapolis people did, and it made me feel pretty good to find so many people liking the picture as well as I did. : After that I lost track of the picture, but in 1893 it bobbed up again. That was the year the paper brought news that Thomas Hovenden, a painter, had been killed by a railway train while attempting to rescue a child near Philadelphia. It turned out to be the painter of “Breaking Home Ties.”

Claimed Picture Wasn't Art

Well, that got people to talking again, and then I learned for .the first time in my life that we had. a breed of people in Indianapolis who wouldn't have anything tc do with the picture. They said it was an awful example of Art, and when pressed for an explanation, said it. was because the picture told a story, and a pretty sticky story at that. A painter wasn’t supposed to tell a story, they said. 1 never believed these people and I still don’t. I'll let a painter tell all the stories he wants to, if they're as. good as “Breaking Home Ties.”

—— : A Woman's View By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

Modern Man Has Sold Out te

Mammon, - Columnist Declares.

EGARD Modern Man. Here is an idealistic blunderer who has sold out to Mammon. He has divine desires and talks about them a great deal. He day-dreams of peace and sé&urity. Above all he longs for his women to be virtuous, and submissive to his demands. Why can’t he realize these longings? For many generations before him men had shele tered their wives and daughters. It was one of their

sacred purposes. Then came the great age of development. The craze for gold seized Americans like a fever; they became a little: mad. With the vision of bigger profits always before their eyes, they set up their sweatshops, opened their factory doors to

Mr. Scherrer +

vertising. campaigns going full speed. Women and children streamed into industry. One by one great fortunes grew, as domestic trades’ were removed from the home to become Big Business. Somebody started a laundry, and soon hundreds of thousands of them were scattered over the country. Bit by bit, every simple task that had once occupied women in the home was commandeered to the service of organized business. It’s cheaper that way; so they tell us. We speak of this change as progress, yet everye where you hear men complaining of women. The young are dissatisfied and afraid; the old remember their youth and are sad. : It is natural for them to blame women for the domestic upset. We are meddling no-accounts, une faithful to our heritage, so the charges go. What does not seem to be understood is that man himself, the greedy, ruthless, venturesome male with his tree mendous get-rich-quick schemes, has destroyed the world his fathers made—and that it can never be built up again. | As the power of his machines increase, man bee comes the mest impotent unit in his steel-girded world. What a mess of pottage he has got in ex= change for his birthright!

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

YO author is more capable of writing a realistio N novel of theatrical life than William Somerset Maugham, himself a playwright and dramatic critic, As heroine of his latest novel, THEATRE (Doubleday) he chooses a leading star of the London stage, a woman so engrossed in the world of the theater that for her, real life acquires significance only when she hears her stage call. The round of her daily life seems make-believe. She dramatizes her every thought and act. Sparkling, superficial characters move swiftly through the story. True to his usual competent style, Maugham eliminates every unnecessary word. The finished effect is smooth and clean-cut like a play. Julia, the actress; Michael, her actor-manager huss

‘and self-satisfied. It is not the vanities, stupidities, and petty jealousies of the characters that fascinate the reader, but the skill with which the book is formed. EJ ” ” Fox the watch tower of a post in the Secretariat of the League of Nations, Geoffrey Dennis gives us in CORONATION COMMENTARY (Dodd-Mead) just such a book as this wide background would lead us to expect. Insular as England yet wide as the nations of the world are the sympathy and understands ing manifested in the comment. Rhetorical and dramatic, the book should be read while the events that evoked it are still on people's tongues and in their minds. Someday a second Shakespeare may make these happenings and their implications into an immortal drama that will be less alive if this book is not used as such material. As one would expect and as is suitable, the author's chapter, Republic vs. Monarchy, makes a better case

for the monarchy.

underpaid workers, and soon had their fantastic ade-

band, and Tom, her lover, are all second-rate, shallow -

ET MA SAORI ALS