Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 28 June 1937 — Page 12

PAGE12 The Indianapolis Times

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1937

TWO POLICIES GROW FROM STRIKES

EDITOR'S NOTE—The following is an editorial sizeup of the strike published by the Pittsburgh Press, a Scripps-Howard newspaper, situated in the heart of the steel territory. EN have been pouring back into the steel mills at - Youngstown, Johnstown and other points in such numbers that the strikes called there are obviously in danger of crumbling. The factors producing this situation are of vital interest to everybody—and to organized labor in particular—for they have brought about an apparent collapse of a strike which started with everything in its favor. There was little doubt of the initial advantage of the strikers. In the first place, more than 100 steel companies, headed by the gigantic U. S. Steel Corp., had signed labor contracts such as were sought in the struck mills. In the second place, the opposing operators, headed by belligerent Tom Girdler of Republic Steel, had a very flimsy excuse for “their position—an excuse that they were willing to bargain “collectively but not to sign any agreement growing out of such bargaining. Federal and State officials showed obvious sympathy for the strikers in numerous instances. And, above all, there was what looked like an irresistible national swing toward unionization. How, then, in spite of those advantages, was such a sharp change produced as to result in a rush back to work? The answer to that question is vital—particularly to or-

ganized labor. zn a 2 4 a 4

UBLIC opinion, we believe, is settling this strike—and public opinion seems to have been chiefly swayed by the charge that C. I. O. unions would not respect their contracts. So long as Tom Girdler—who has been talking incessantly at the top of his voice ever since the strike began — merely tried to emphasize a strained interpretation of the Wagner act he made little progress. But when he hit on the charge that signed contracts were without value he drew an immediate sympathetic response. For at that very moment a number of C. I. O. unions were actively support-

ing his words by violating signed agreements. Failure of C. 1. O. leaders to control their men and to

enforce agreements that had been signed in other industries—particularly automobiles—produced a vital effect on the steel strike. The constant sit-downs in General Motors, the labor holidays at Lansing and Warren, the power strike at Flint and numerous lesser examples of broken agreements suddenly brought a surge of public opinion in support of Mr. Girdler's charge. A second vital factor in changing sentiment has been violent picketing, particularly by bands of men who crossed state lines or were not actually involved in the strike they supported. The outstanding example of this was at Johnstown, where a threatened invasion of the town by 40,000 coal miners caused Governor Earle to declare martial law and close down a plant in which a majority of the employees were still working. When the plant had thus been closed, on the threat of mob law, John L. Lewis then called off the march of miners. Throughout the nation there was an adverse reaction. ” ” ” ” ” ” WO important policies are thus developing out of the hectic events of recent weeks—policies not yet written into law but apparently supported by majority public opinion. First of these is that a labor agreement must be observed by both-sides—union as well as employer. Second of these is that practices condemned as unfair and unlawful for the employer must also be considered unfair and unlawful when used by the union. If interstate transportation of strikebreakers is wrong, for example, then interstate movement of strike pickets is equally wrong. If it is wrong to use martial law to open a closed plant, then it is equally wrong to use it to close an open plant. If coercion of workers by the employer is unfair, then coefeion of workers by pickets is equally unfair. Violence by one side is just-as bad as violence by the other. Thoughtful labor leaders should study the events of recent weeks and give heed to this development of public sentiment. 1f they do not, the cause of organized labor will suffer great injury. Federal and State officials and legislators should also give heed. The American people seem to be speaking, and it is well to listen to them.

THE WAY TO BALANCE

"THE way to resumption is to resume,” said Salmon P. Chase in a letter to Horace Greeley in 1866, discussing proposals to put our monetary system back on a gold redemption basis. : But Congress and succeeding Administrations in that post-Civil War period fussed and fumed about when and how to do the resuming of specie payments. Meanwhile business conditions continued unsettled, largely because of the uncertainty as to the value of our currency. Today the nation is suffering another attack of the jitters, and diagnosis traces the source to the long-continued unbalance of the Federal budget. Through the hard years of the depression a balanced budget, if not economically impossible, was certainly economically undesirable. The Government's borrow-and-spend policy, to prime the pump of industry, was justified, and publicly applauded. But now that the pump has been primed (industrial production in March of this year was on the same level as in March, 1929), a borrow-and-spend policy is no longer justified, or publicly condoned. . FEAR is spreading that a balanced budget, now certainly economically possible, may prove to be politically impossible. Today we very much need someone to coin a paraphrase to Salmon Chase's slogan. The way to a balanced bu

- =

mor

a

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Now to Get Back to the Mainland!

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

John L. Lewis Lets Down His Hair at . Meeting With Columnist, Who Still

Says C. |. O. Contracts Worth Little. |

NEW YORK, June 28.—I have had a long interview with John L. Lewis in Hugh Johnson’s office in Washington. When the General called up Lewis to suggest the meeting Lewis: said, “I think he is crazy,” but agreed to come over and let down his hair. He was sore because I had written that an employer would be ‘a fool to sign a contract with the C. I. O. except under legal compulsion, if that exists, because the C. I. O. was irresponsible and its con-

tracts therefore were not worth a damn. 3 I think it might rock the baby to report parts of the conversation, because Mr. Lewis said the C. I. O., far from shirking responsibility, would be glad to accept respsonsibility, although he did not say in what form. I had been beefing about labor’s refusal to assume responsibility and here was the tough guy of the labor movement insisting that his outfit doesn’t refuse but, in due time, will demand it. I asked why he didn’t tell the world and thus allay some of the alarm the purposes of the C. I. O. and Mr. Lewis said he had been too busy fighting on a dozen fronts in the field. Matters that can wait will have to wait. : John Lewis was zensitive about the reliability of C. I. O. contracts, because he is proud of the record of the United Mine Workers who have never hroken an agreement in 30 some years, to hear him tell it. He said, of course, there had been some small disputes and trouble in spots where contracts existed, but that these had been quickly ironed out and settled strictly according to the bond.

2 ” ” S for the breaches of contract in the automobile plants in Michigan just lately, he explained that both the bosses and the men were operating in a new and, to them, strange, and rather strained relation, and that both sides were nagging, but would shake down into co-operation as soon as they adjusted themselves to the change. I didn't say this at the time, because I don’t think very fast, but it has since occurred to me that I was right in saying that a C. I. O. contract, isn't worth a damn, or, anyway, not much of a damn. Because, while the law now protects the union and gives the employer a firm pushing around if he utters just one peep against the union to the help. the law s*ili doesn’t penalize the union if it breaks an agreement and throw it for a terrible loss by retarding production to which he is financially committed, or by spoiling material in process of manufacture. ' i

2 Mr. Pegler

"” n ”

O, obviously in the present state of things, with terrible fights in progress over the employers’ contention that the C. I. O. is irresponsible, the acceptance of responsibility is as urgent as anything else. That having been done, the C.-I. O. would be in a position to talk business.

We didn't ‘discuss the closed shop. because I know what he thinks about that and I think he is just as crazy there as he thought I was about the value of C. I. O. agreements.

I predict that there will be more bloodshed for and against a free man’s constitutional right to stay out of a union and retain his right to earn a living than over all the other issues put together.

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

| | DOUBTS GAIN CLAIMED BY WPA EDUCATOR | By Skeptical An annual economic $100,000,000 has been made by WPA teaching . illiterate adults to read and write, according to Dr. L. R. Alderman, WPA education director. He bases this figure on his estimate that a literate person is worth 50 cents a day more than an illiterate one. It sounds like pretty rosy figuring, with the unemployed army still at several millions despite prosperity. And how many Negro: field workers in the South and how many alien-born housewives were included in Hopkins’ 700,000 converts from illiteracy to literacy? And how will they get 50 cents a day more? Let's get down to earth and say

lit is or is not a fine thing that

700,000 more Americans can read and write a bit, and that teachers were kept teaching during the depression, at a cost of $20,000,000 for this WPA function. i These fancy “economic seem a bit fine spun.

n ” ” MACFADDEN COMPARED TO DON QUIXOTE By H. A. Whenever I read Bernarr Macfadden’s’ editorial campaign in “Liberty,” directed against all “foreign” isms except one—capitalism—I must think of that ridiculous knight Don Quixote and his brave fight against the windmills. Macfadden, this peculiar man, seems to believe that America is in

imminent danger of becoming a Communist State. But where are all these Communist enemies and what are—-they fighting for? Last election proved their number to be a few hundred thousand, and if our friend Macfadden would take the trouble to investigate their policies he would discover that their only concern at present is to preserve the system of capitalist Democracy at all costs. - So scared were these Communists lest Macfadden’s Republican friends should win the 1936 election and establish the foreignism Known as fascism, that they gave the Democrats all the support they could, which, it must be admitted, did not amount to much because of their small number and still smaller influence. But nevertheless - this untiring toreador of the windmills, this noble knight of Physical Culture and True Love, is scared to death, not realizing that he and that handful of American Communists are fighting shoulder to shoulder for the preservation of capitalist democracy. The worst of all foreign isms is idiotism, and Mr. Macfadden must

gains”

think that there are millions of

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Tax Inquiry, Impending Antitrust Campaign and Recent Legislative Moves Fit Formula Taken Verbatim From the Doctrine of Communism.

MARION, O.,, En Route to Tulsa, Okla., June 28.— A business may be run either as a sole proprietorship, a partnership or a corporation. All are methods prescribed and provided for by law. Yet, as to each, the income tax rate may be different. The Government itself elected this legal condition for its own purposes. With such a state of facts and law, and after letting it be understood that it was going on a witchhunt after tax-dodgers, what is the purpose of picking “at random” certain names of people who elected one or the other forms of doing business and showing that, if they had elected another form, the taxes would have been higher? In some of these cases there was no concealment, no evasion, no short cuts or “clever little schemes” and no avoidance, unless failing voluntarily to donate a sum of money that Government has not asked for is avoidance. There can be but one purpose—somehow officially to bring into impliéd disrepute the names selected and published. Why? In some cases there is a strong un-

pleasant scent of a purpose of political reprisal for things said or published.

gain of

° (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.)

followers of that particular ism in America. : His editorial of June 26 is a peach. It is based upon an utterance of Harry Bridges, who is not at all a Communist. We should be rid of the capitalistic bosses, he tells the workers, and their property should be taken over for the benefit of the workers. ¥ Now, this is advocating the socialist state along democratic lines, and has nothing to do with Communist dictatorship. In spite of everything Mr. Macfadden. looks to Russia for the proof of his contention that the American workers would be worse off if they hire the bosses rather than letting the bosses hire them. He finds that the standard of living in Russia is not as good as the standard of living here, and so he has his proof. What he actually has proved is that a man who is on his way to Paris has not yet arrived in Paris. Russia does not have the kind of socialism which Harry Bridges favors, but even if she had, would that prove or disprove anything regarding America? That editorial is an Irish stew of misunderstandings. incorrect statements and meaningless utterances.

| Like all of Macfadden’s writings it

contains a vast amount of things, thoroughly mixed up and served with “Sauce Republican.” The only ingredient missing is that of logic.

STORMY BAY By JAMES D. ROTH

1 live by the mystic sea; Just wife, and Joan and me On a rocky cruel ledge In a lighthouse: This we pledge.

Our light will always burn, So that hearts that deeply yearn For home and peaceful shore May keep their distance from our door.

A safe and yet a lonely plan To follow for a fellow-man; . And as we long to meet our friends, They pdss us by: All danger ends.

DAILY THOUGHT

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:2).

ESUS CHRIST, the condescension of divinity, and the exaltalion of humanity.—Phillips Brooks.

{and city-bred farmers into bank-

LARGER PRODUCTION HELD NEED FOR U. S. By S. H. If the President wants the 40 million underfed, ill clad and ill housed to enjoy more wealth, we will have to start producing at least one-third more than we are now producing. That is not a matter that can be accomplished with collective bargaining for wages. Wages mean nothing while prices

over the counter rise faster than |

wages. Production schedules will have to be set up by the Government for every industry, and prices fixed so consumption of the goods will be possible. What business would not prefer assured consumption of its product rather than face uncer- | tainty? The present approach (0: an- abundance economy is a fake. In the event of war, production | will be mandatory. How can we distribute something we do not produce? . ” 2 ”

TAKES ISSUE WITH FARM ADVICE BY BABSON By Farmer From out of Wellesley Hills in Massachusetts the Delphic voice of Roger W. Babson has spoken again. This time to all of us it says: Buy a farm. : “We have never advised farming a money-making scheme,” he oracles. “We, however, do advise small farms as insurance. Every family should have a farm to which it may go ‘if it does happen here.” Now that cryptic “it” refers not to fascism but to another awesome specter, inflation. A few years of. that, and there will be a stampede ot city folks back to the land. There{ore, Mr. Babson counsels, buy now while land is cheap, and get 10 or 20 acres of good and improved land, preferably near a city. : Now if Mr. Babson expects us to (odge inflation through land speculation that’s one thing. If his idea is to give city folks a chance to invite their souls to God’s great out-of-doors and charge it up to recreation, that’s another. But if the argument is that we can make a living on a little farm, he should paint the other side of the picture. Has he, we wonder, ever supported a real farm? Or seen his land biow away in dust or wash away in cloudbursts? Or broken his back trying to hold his crops from the maws of potato bugs, bean beetles and middlemen? Or got up in the rain to milk and felt old Bess wrap a wet tail -around his neck and plant her. hind foot in a full milkpail? Or found his best layers on a sit-down strike? Or experienced any cne of a million little plagues that turn seasoned farmers into Bolsheviks

as

rupts? Well, I have.” And having had my fling at it, I think I'd rather let in-

material |

flation wipe me slowly out of sight.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Aspirations to Be a Good Reporter Conflict With Heywood's Emotions —Especially at Tom Girdler Hearing.

EW YORK, June 28.—When I was 14 1 decided that I would like to be a good newspaperman, but in spite of a fairly hard try over a considerable number of years I am afraid that I will never make it. There. are other failings, but one of the chief difficulties is connected with the circumstance that there are almost no situations in which I am neutral by the widest stretch of the imagination. : It has been said that the perfect reporter ought to be patterned more or less along the physical and chemical lines of a plate glass ° window. It is not his function fo take the light from the sun and’ shade into blue, green. yellow or even red. He is an associate member of the light brigade, and when cannon roar from the right -or left his mission is to keep precisely in the middle of the road in the hope that he will find the truth, which is always said to lie between the two. :

Mr. Broun » ” »

A LTHOUGH an inveterate joiner, my disability does not depend upon the fact that I am devoted to the Elks and Rotarians. Even in my youth

when I was a baseball reporter and attached to ne organization save the New York Giants I could not help taking sides. When Fred Merkle sent two runs home with a timely single to left field it was my want to stand up in the press box and holler, “Atta boy!” These peculiar performances embittered my colleagues.

Profanely they would implore me to remember my age and my assignment and to sit down and keep my yap shut. I tried. The old malady of partisan. enthusiasm still remains. As a visiting fireman I sat at the press table when the Postoffice Committee of the U. S. Senate undertook what was advertised as an examination of Tom Mercer Girdler. At the Girdler hearing in Washington I took an emotional commitment from fhe beginning. I didn't like Tom before he opened his mouth, and I liked him less when he did. As the hearing got hotter and hotter I suddenly had a sense that the ranks of the spectators were closing in tighter and tighter upon the devoted ranks of the working press. I began to feel as if I were in the same spot as General Custer just before the Sioux started to shoot it ouf in the Battle of the Little Big Horn... And so I turned _ to the stout lady who had her hand on the back

‘of my chair and expostulated.

SHE had laughed at Girdler’s road-company wisecracks, and applauded just behind my left ear when Tom Girdler wrapped himself in the American flag and did bugle calls. And so I said in the most icy tohes of purse pcliteness which I could muster, “May - I ask, Madam, whether you are connected with anynewspaper?” The ‘large “lady replied, ought to be.” “That.” I answer, “is an interesting technical point, but until it has been solved after due deliberation will you please move your chair away from this table, and if I hear another cackle after some second hand crack by this man now on the stand I'll call the cops.” : And Mhat's why I will never be a good reporter. I never feel minded to call for a bowl of water and ask, “What is truth?”

“I am not, although I:

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Floor Leaders Ask President to Shelve 'Musts' to Speed Adjournment: Van Zeeland Reported to Have Scheme to Obtain Loans Secured by U. S..

publicized as an exposure of ®clever little schemes” to cheat the Government—what is that? . Is it not an attempt to stir up class hatreds where the implication must be that if the rich do not pay even more than the law requires, they are somehow cheating not the Government alone, but also the poor?

flects the possibility of such a purpose. There is more than a hint that we are about to enter a greater ballyhoo trust-busting campaign than this country has ever seen—and this just at a time when labor unrest is at its fiercest heat. ale ” ” ”

THESE sudden furious forays come at exactly the same time as an obvious change of pace and policy on the legislature front. There is an effort to seize the powers of the Congress, the courts, the independent commissions and above all, of the states to concentrate them in the executive—an effort to control.

arm and appropriate capital wherever it is found—an effort to incite among all the have-nots hatred and suspicion toward all those who have. It is a formula taken Vi

AU DO

‘iad

There is more than just this ugly incident that re-

led by Maury Maverick, strenuously opposed this,

restrict and punish industry—an effort to discredit, dis- | | measures.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

WASHINGTON, June 28.—If the President follows the counsel pressed on him by Democratic floor leaders at the week-end Jefferson Island pow-wow, he will shelve all new major legislation except plugging up tax-evasion loopholes and allow Congress to adjourn immediately after the Supreme Court issue has been disposed of. Such a coyrse would wind up the session around. Aug. 15. Otherwise it is very likely to run until Oct. 1. The titular party chiefs were unanimous in urging a speedup of adjournment. The House left-wing bloc,

insisting that Congress be forced to act on the entire program. BE

OME of the Senate moguls have been privately dinning this idea into the President's ears for weeks. Their first proposal included shelving the court bill, but Roosevelt bristled at that so sharply that they dropped it and concentrated on the other

Vice President Garner twice gave Roosevelt long

spiels on the strategic value of cutting short the |

to go to Scotland to shoot grouse as the guest of Barney Baruch. -

IT IS known that the talks between Roosevelt and Belgian Minister Van Zeeland had to do with international finance. It is not generally known that Van Zeeland’s trump card was suggested to him by an American. That card was a plan whereby the United States. could invest its gold in Europe and still keep it in the vaults of Ft. Knox, Ky. The American was Norbert Bogden, young finan--cier associated with the international banking house of J. Henry Schroeder.

BOGDEN was in a hotel in Zurich during a tour of Europe. He felt he ought to tell somebody of an idea which that tour had produced. He wrote it to a friend in Paris. The friend knew Van Zeeland, and sent the letter to him. The plan calls for the United States to open a substantial deposit account with the Bank of International Settlements which in turn would lend funds to