Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 July 1937 — Page 13

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Vagabond

«up there, they caught an Indian robbing their trap

From Indiana— Ernie Pyle

Shooting Bears in Bedroom and

Dodging Moose Charges Are All in |

Hitler at the Crossroads

Day's Work for Feminine Trappers.

*

FT YUKON, Alaska, July 29.—Every mehber of the Berglund family of women trappers is a crack shot. Each one kills her moose every fall, and they get plenty of caribou. They don’t kill bear unless they have

to, for you can’t even get $5 for a bear skin. There are seven guns in their cabin. Big guns for bear and moose, little guns for killing trapped animals, shotguns for birds. They have a revolver too,

but never use it. “My daughter Evelyn has an infeciority complex about her shooting,” savs Mrs. Berglund. “She can shoot as well as any of them, but thinks she can’t.” Hazel, another daughter, is impetuous. “I can't hit a targe:” she said while we were blazing away at a tree down by the river. “I wouldn't even shoot at a target. But you get something running across there, and you bet I'll gt it.” The Berglund women never go out unarmed. Yet they have never been injured by a wild gnimal, other than little things like squirrel bites. olves have never bothered them, but they have had narrow escapes from charging moose. All four of them seem to be in awe of a moose's killing powers. “One jumped right over my sled and hit me with his hoof,” says Evelyn. “The gun was lashed to the sled and I couldn't get at it in time to stop him, so I just ducked. Believe me I had it out by the time he came back.”

Home from the trap line late one night, after 10 days’ absence, the Berglunds walked up to the cabin and found a bear inside.

He had upset things pretly badly, enjoyed a good meal, and flopped down to rest. They made a gasoline torch, and one of the girls held it while Mrs. Berglund shot Mr. Bear. He was lying on Mrs.

Berglueg’s bed when she put the bullet through im,

They Hate Wolves

The girls say bears will attack you if surprised; a moose will attack you any time; a wolverine will fight you in the wrap; wolves are cowards, and have never made any show at getting ferocious with them. They hate wolves anyhow.

The Berglund women wear men’s clothing all year except when they come down to Ft. Yukon. Then they dress in calico prints. They'd freeze to death up at camp in dresses.

Fortunately, they've never had any critical illnesses or injuries up there. If they did, it would take two weeks of hard sledding to get word out to a doctor. And Mrs. Berglund wouldn't have a doctor in the house anyhow. She knows all the home remedies; including castor oil. She says that even if one of them broke an arm or leg they could handle it all right. The Berglunds get mail only by chance. An Indian may be traveling north from Ft. Yukon. The postmaster will give him any mail for the Berglunds and eventually they'll get it.

Take Care of Themselves

It is two days by dog sled from their cabin to their mailbox. They have it on a tripod, stuck in the river ice. They get past there about every two weeks, but usually nothing's in the box. A letter received in Ft. Yukon in September may not reach them until April. But despite such jsolation the Berglund women can take care of themselves. The first year they were

line. Mrs. Berglund told him to get out of that country, and that if she ever saw him around there again she'd put a bullet through him. “and I would, too,” she says. It's hard to realize that so soft-spoken and refined a woman could stand alone in the deep snow, at 40 below, 280 miles from nowhere, holding a rifle in her arm, and tell a man she'd kill him—and mean it.

Mrs. Roosevelt's Day

By Eleanor Roosevelt

Tang of Autumn at the End of July

Doesn't Meet First Lady's Approval.

YDE PARK, N. Y.,, Wednesday.—The weather up here has a tang of autumn in it and it makes me quite unhanpy. I ought to be deeply grateful that we are not suffering from the heat. Instead of that. when we lit a fire and sat in front of it to work all last evening, I kept thinking, “before we know it, autumn will really be here and the summer will be over.” However, I love an open fire and even at the end of July I had to acknowledge it is a cozy feeling to sit curled up on a sofa and look into the leaping flames. During lunch yesterday I began to think the peace ana quiet of the couniry were something we talked about, but which really didn't exist. Mrs. Scheider and I had to get up three times to answer the telephone, and we are supposed tc have a private number! Each time it was some problem which required us to do something. Then, just as we were getting up from the tahle, we were told two ladies wished to see me. That proved to be the problem of a youngster who wants to go to work without adequate preparation. In our neighborhood today, employment has picked up so much that, for the skilled worker, or the ‘man with a trade, there seems to be plenty of work. For the man who is just a day laborer, with nothing to sell but his strength and a willingness to work eight hours, there is still nothing but uncertainty and uninteresting jobs with no future. To youngsters of 18, we must get across that this is no temporary condition, but will always be the case in a complicated world. It is not only important to acquire a skill, but to have the education and the training which allows you, if one skill proves to be unprofitable, to acquire another. That is the advantage of a general training for both the mind and hands. It seems to me there is something wrong in our schools if we do not succeed in getting this across to a boy or girl by the time ‘they are 18. Out of my window this morning, I look over a big piece of swamp land which, at the moment, is becoming more beautiful every day as the purple weed which flourishes there comes into bloom. Some of the people around here call it “fire-weed,” others “loose-strife.” The other day, in New England, I heard it called by another name. Fcr weeks I have been meaning to look it up in my book on wildflowers. No matter what its name, every time I look out of my window or drive down the lane past the swamp, my eyes rest on the riot of color and something within me is satisfied. The bunnies I found near a lonely road are growing larger. They are so tame they sit right in the middie of the road and look at the car even when I honk my horn at them. The horses do not frighten them at all. The only time they run is when the police dog dashés after them, then they skitter away into the bushes. The dog has never been able to catch one, but hope springs eternal in his breast and he tries again each day.

Walter O'Keefe —

HOSE Russian polar fliers are being entertained royally in America, and if they can’t sleep nights maybe they should get a room at Coney Island next to a shooting gallery and they'll feel right at home. That wasn’t a break in the heat wave you felt last week. It was only those three Russians shaking the ice and snow off their clothes. According to reports the boys dropped in on an air-cooled theater and the place was so cold that they planted their flag and claimed it for the Soviet. A bankers club is giving them a lunch. Who else but a banker could afford to feed them caviar? America is proud to play host to this gallant band and they've modified our ideas about Reds. Up until

The Iviirnapolis

Second Section

THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1937

Entered at Postoffice.

as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,

PAGE 13

Ind.

Nagi Economic Life Marches

. (Second of a Series) By WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS

Times Foreign Editor

BERLIN, July 29.—The Nazi regime today is being

forced relentlessly in the

direction of a planned econ-

omy almost as complete as, and not greatly unlike, that

of Soviet Russia.

Private initiative remains the boast of Nazi leaders. Private property retains all its ancient “right,” at least

nominally.

But capital in Germany is being more and

more regimented until it is subject to nearly as many restrictions as in the Soviet Union. This is indignantly denied by official spokesmen. The fact remains, however, that Berlin imposes penalties, up to and including death, for disregarding its edicts control-

ling the national economy. Farms and factories, imports and exports, private investments, international exchange, banking, merchandising, agricultural and industrial production, labor, wages, the food that people eat and the clothes they wear, are increasingly subject to Nazi dictatorship. The whole economic life of the nation is being made to goosestep and like it. » 8 "8 “QGC-CALLED free business,” Adolf Hitler has warned, must solve the problems assigned to it. If it doesn’t, “it will not be able to exist further as a free business.” The problems referred to have to do with the invention and production of ersatz, or synthetic, commodities to piece out, or take the place of, the raw materials which Germany lacks. If private initiative fails, the Government may take over the industry. Thus while private capital may pretend to “own” this industry and that, such enterprises are really run according to Nazi wishes. In short, private capital is being forced to shoulder many of the burdens of the Government. Krupps, for example, has gone into the production of synthetic gasoline. Sc have other big concerns. Others are producing “buna,” or artificial rubber. As the cost is considerably more

than the natural products, the synthetic brands are commercially unprofitable. But as they are vital in war, the Government has agreed to dispose of the entire output for a period of years at an agreed price.

= n n HIS amounts to a subsidy. And from the American point of view, subsidies are perfect picking for big business. Not so here. The big businessman in this country wears a long face. He says he has become just another Government functionary. He is told what to do and when to do it. His pay or profit is strictly regulated. And he can’t call even his profit his own. For instance when France, Holland and Switzerland devalued their currencies last year, many Germans cleaned up. Those with debts in those countries were able to settle at a considerable saving. But up stepped the Reich and said “gimme.” The Reich confiscated 75 per cent of this velvet. Moreover, big industries have been virtually ordered to reinvest their profits in the ersatz subsidiaries. The big steel, mining and chemical concerns have got together to form new companies to produce synthetic gas and rubber. But as additional funds are required, the parent concerns are permitted to issue bonds and sell them to German investors. Thus the cost of producing what in reality is war material is being widely distributed among the public. » ” = HE Nazi state is opposed to government in business, at least in theory. And there is now

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going on what is called the “re-

privatization” of business. That is to say, some of the concerns which the Reich took over in panic times, to keep them from closing down, are now being returned to private owners. But as

Legal Restrictions on Right to Strike May Follow Present Labor Unrest

By E. R. R.

Times Special Writer ASHINGTON, July 29.—Incidents connected with the strike engineered by the C. I. O. in its attempt to organize employees of the independent steel producers have served to intensify demands, first voiced during the wave of sit-down strikes last winter and spring, for imposition of greater responsibility on labor unions. Moreover, when at one point in the strike martial law was declared and plants were closed or kept from reopening, protests arose in various quarters over use of troops to keep men from working instead of to protest those who wanted to work.

Public Jeaction was so strong that this policy was soon reversed and the plants reopened, with troops retained on the spot to preserve order. Thus the right to work was given precedence over the right to strike.

A great upswing in strike activity began in March of this year and as yet has shown few signs of abating. There were more strikes in March than in any single month during the last 20 years. If the present trend continues, the year 1937 bids fair to be the greatest strike year in American history with the possible exception of 1919. The prevalence of strikes at that time was accompanied by numerous proposals for restrictive action. The present disorder has led to suggestions of a similar nature. While labor has been particularly favored by legislation enacted during the last four years, signs are not lacking that continuance of strikes and violence may bring curtailment of privileges previously granted, if not imposition of positive restrictions.

N the United States labor’s rights have been defined largely by the courts rather than by statute law. The right to strike was first clearly recognized by a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1842, which held iawful even a

strike for the closed shop. While certain types of strikes, both before and since the Massachusetts decision, have been held in one jurisdiction or another to be unlawful conspiracies either under the common law or under the antitrust laws, strikes directly involving wages and hours are now everywhere considered legal. In some jurisdictions strikes to gain a closed shop, symrathetic strikes, and strikes against nonunion material have been adjudged unlawful. Court condemna=> tion, however, has not been effective in preventing such strikes, and judgments against strikers and against unions have rarely been collected. The National Labor Relations Act contained an indirect but positive affirmation of the right of workers subject to its provisions to strike. Governmental >mployees are not subject to the provisions of the Wagner act. The Supren:e Court has stated that the right to strike of employees in a business charged with a public interest is necessarily subject to limitation. Strikes by public employees would probably be subject to the same or greater limitations, since a strike against public authority is generally deemed to constitute a challenge to the supremacy of the state. After the Boston police strike of 1919, the U. S. Senate approved a

‘ban on affiliation of unions of gov-

ernment workers with any outside

now I always thought a Communist was a guy who

"Whose turn is it to stay in by the phone in case some of those

en

organization using the strike, but the House dissented. Following formation of a C. 1. O. union of Federal workers last month, there were rumors that such a ban might be brought up for consideration again. Many states and cities require of their employees, particularly policemen, firemen and teachers, a pledge not to strike.

= = = T the time of the Boston police strike and of extensive steel and coal strikes, in the autumn of 1919, President Wilson made several vigorous public statements denying the right of individuals to engage in strikes menacing the public welfare. Shortly thereafter, the Senate included in the bill which became the Transportation Act of 1920 a provision forbidding strikes by railroad employees and requiring that their disputes be settled by arbitral tribunals to be set up under

the act. However, organized labor vehemently opposed this restriction of the right to strike, and it was deleted in conference. Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act introduced last month by Senator Vandenberg of Michigan would prohibit strikes not voted for by a majority of the employees, strikes for the purpose of inducing anyone to violate a contract or a State or Federal law, and any interference with the free exercise by any person of any right or privilege guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Most strikes were made illegal in New Zealand and Australia by laws passed in the decade 1894-1904. These statutes introduced systems of compulsory arbitration which amounted to fixing of minimum wages by the state. While they have worked reasonably well in periods of prosperity, when many of labor's demands could be granted, they have tended to break down in periods of depression. In no case have they assured complete elimination of strikes. Compulsory arbitration was virtually dropped in New Zealand in 1932, but it was restored by a labor government last year, along with a provision requiring union membership of all workers 18 years of age and over. France adopted compulsory arbitration at the end of 1936. During the limited time in which the law has been effective, it has failed to do away with strikes altogether. American labor has always opposed compulsory arbitration, holding that denial of the right to strike would deprive it of the most effective means of exercising its economic strength and that it would lead to domination by the state. The only actual law of this sort enacted in the United States was the Kansas statute of 1920 creating a Court of Industrial Relations and prohibiting strikes in a number of important industries. Application of the law to other than public utilities was’ declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1923, and the whole experiment was abandoned two years later. Since 1915 Colorado has required a 30-day “cooling-off” period for disputes in industries affected with a public interest. A similar plan exists in Canada for public mines, and in this

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indicated above, the State is retaining a very real control. This is called “voluntary discipline.” But if business knows which side its bread is buttered on-—and it

generally does—it won't make an ‘“request.” This is not socialization, of course, as in Russia. But the net result is almost the same. Certainly there can be no dispute over the increasing militarization of the nation’s economic life, Labor passports have been issued to 20 million workers in business and industry to facilitate the mobilization of labor in time of crisis. o ” ”

ARMERS are told to grow more of this and less of that. Marketing is regulated. Also prices. And wages. The people are told to eat cabbage, sugar and fish

HERRLOCK,

198, NEA

and go light on fats and meats. Bakers are forbidden to use more than so much flour in their bread mixtures, and there are rumors of bread cards. Never in modern peacetime history has a great nation been so regimented, save perhaps Russia. And this regimentation is tightening. Business, industry and the 68 million people march to the command of the central organization. What will happen in the next 24 months is anybody's guess. But one thing is certain. Herr Hitler will soon find himself forced to co-operate with his neighbors and the rest of the world, thus escaping from his economic and political isolation, or he must develop his planned economy still further—so far, in fact, that private initiative, as democracies know it, will virtually disappear.

NEXT-The German volcano.

Keeping Congress on Job Held F. D. Rs Big Task

By RAYMOND CLAPPER Times Special Writer ASHINGTON, July 29.—What bills go through in the remainder of this session of Congress and what ones lie over until next winter doesn’t matter a great deal. A few months sooner or later is not nearly so important as that care be taken with the legislation, whether it concern reorganization, housing, wages a.nd hours, or agriculture.

President Roosevelt feels that while progress has been made toward the Administration's objectives, much remains to be done. His task will be to keep this point continuously before Congress. Everyone is hot and tired and. wants to go home. In the interest, of workmanlike legislation it probably would be better if Congress took a rest. Tired men do not think straight. Fatigue distorts judgment. ” E ”

R. ROOSEVELT’'S problem is not to hold Congress here and drive it but to see that when it comes back, rested, it does not forget that there is work to do. Congressional campaigns will coming on. Senators and Representatives tend to become absorbed in re-election and usually little work is done in precampaign sessions. Or if things are done, they are likely to be dictated by campaign politics rather than long-range judgment. Therefore Mr. Roosevelt is apt to be looking ahead and to take opportunity during the late summer and fall to tone up public opinion and restore the morale of his following. It nas been badly shot by the Supreme Court fight and he needs to restore confidence in his program. Much confusion as to his purposes has grown up. The third-term specter is injecting itself

more deeply into the picture as time |

goes on without Mr. Roosevelt making any effort to take himself out of the 1940 race. Nothing will unify public opinion behind Mr. Roosevelt so much as a conviction on the part of the country that he intends to press firmly for completion of the New Deal program during the remainder of his term and then step out. If Mr. Roosevelt can succeed in establishing that intention securely in the public mind, reservations which many people now have will disappear and much of the resistance which he is encountering will ease off. =n ” ” HERE is not so much resistance in this country to change as there is a fear that we shall wake

American people like it. Look at the popularity of Mayor La Guardia in New York. Look at Mr. Roosevelt's popularity. Remember T. R. and Wilson, prohibition, Kansas and her anticigaret law. We will make changes even when we are not sure that they mean progress. Anything for a change. We always have been tinkerers at heart. It is in the American blood. " ” 2

MP HE New Deal, in part, is tlie attempt to adapt the Federal Government to new complexities of a grownup nation. It has been clearly demonstrated that the effort—apart from the methods involved—has met with predominant approval. Mr. Roosevelt's 1936 election majority showed that. Special groups which are adversely affected by various measures gain their strength not because of their numbers, but because of the mistakes and weaknesses in the Administration’s proposals and its efforts in behalf of them. These weaknesses open the Administration up to trouble in Congress. Mr. Roosevelt has some bitter and powerful enemies, but probably the most effective enemy he has had has been himself.

THE DEADLY PASS HAT peculiar mental processes go on in the minds of those c-r-r-razy motorists who pass other cars on hills or curves? What supreme optimists they must be! They seem to feel that a kindly Providence will protect them and that they will have time to swing back into line in case a car suddenly swerves

into view on top of the hill or comes

nging around the bend. Yet unthe stern law of averages death

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| black clothes in Eddy St. seemed

ur Town

By Anton Scherrer

Eddy St., the Ghetto of Indianapolis In the 90's, Was a Gloomy District Where Only an Irishwoman Smiled.

DDY St., or the Ghetto as it was called, was the most picturesque street in Indianapolis when 1 was a boy. Curiously enough, it was the least colorful. I can explain that, too.

For one thing, it was the shortest street I ever saw, leaving little room for color. Situated as it was just back of Otto Schopp’s drug store at Illinois and Merrill Sts., it ran south one block and stopped at Norwood St. It wasn't any wider than an alley, either. All in all, it had just about 30 houses, including the synagog. That wasn’t all, however. You didn’t see any color in Eddy St, because everybody down there wore black clothes. I'm not saying that the men didn’t wear colored

' neckties, but if they did, the effect

was lost behind their big, black beards. For some reason, too, the blacker than anywhere else in We, Schone town, and I think it was largely owing to the fact that I never saw anybody smile in Eddy St, The faces in Eddy St. seemed seared with the suffering of a thousand years, and it always struck me, young as I was at the time, that they knew more about the bitter side of life in Eddy St. than anywhere else in town.

Victim of Tsar

I remember, for instance, one old man who ran a grocery down there. He was every bit of 80 years old when I first saw him, and it was said that he was there at the beginning. That must have been sometime in the early Seventies, because as near as I can find out, Eddy St. got its start when the old factory was built for the construction of railway frogs, and most of the men in the neighborhood were employed at it. After that, it was just as natural for the Russian Jews to gravitate toward Eddy St. as it was for the Irish immigrants to look up the Hill, or the Germans to ask the way to Noble St. Well, as I was saying, the old Jew ran a pitiful little grocery, and to look at him and his place you wouldn't have guessed that, once upon a time, he had been a fabulously rich man. That was back in Russia, For some reason, he had to make his escape in a sled, and that's when he met the wolves. In the excitement that followed, he not only gave the wolves all the food he had, but his bags of gold as well. The story fascinated me so at the time that I remember asking the Jew for the name of the Tsar mean enough to get him into such a fix, but hs wouldn't talk. After that, I figured it out for myself, It couldn't have been anybody but Nicholas II—the one who was assassinated.

Marriage Broker a Help

I remember, too, that Eddy St. had a mar.iage broker and that he did a thriving business. He was a great help to likely looking young men. The professional match-maker, I recall, made it his business to go out and find the girl most suitable for the young man. After that, he interviewed both parties, and after the final arrangements were made, he collected at both ends—a commission from the bride’s dowry, and a fee from the bridegroom. The marriage broker was a fast worker, too, because I remember that once he brought about a marriage within two hours after the girl spied the boy. The quaintest character in Eddy St. however, was Mrs. Kavanaugh, the only gentile in the Ghetto, She had lived there so long that she had taken on all the ways of the Jews, including the ceremony of lighting two candles on Friday night. Mrs. Kavane augh didn't betray her Irish ancestry altogether, however, because she always wore a green ruching around her throat. She laughed, too, when there was anything to laugh about.

A Woman's View By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

War Trend Viewed Indication That

Women Will Have the Last Laugh.

VW OMEN, in the group, are not as cheerful as they might be. That's because they have to observe men, and the things men do are more tragic than funny. We are often charged with having no sense of humor. And the charge is true. But what have women had to laugh at since the early Stone Age? There have been several periods in history when we were in the mood to cultivate humor and when we considered making it a compulsory course of study for our daughters. All the signs were propitious, per= haps, when—bang!—off the men would start to ane other war. And once the slaying begins, it isn't likely that the mothers and wives of those murdering and mur= dered will regard with any great degree of seriousness the advice given them—to laugh it off. Things aren't very much better during the inter vals between wars which the history books optimisti= cally call years of peace. For if the males aren't engaged in shooting one another on some battlefield, they are cutting each other’s business throats on the economic front. The industrial setup they have cree ated saps their strength, happiness and moral re= sources as effectively as war maims or destroys their bodies. While the doctors strain every nerve to out wit disease and prolong life, the males commit suicide en masse, if not with armaments then by the senseless struggle to outdo the other in the matter of big bank accounts, political power or fame. They die in droves each time their economic system breaks down and another depression arrives. Few of them have rest or peace or a reasonable measure of cone tentment, yet they're always talking about their tree mendous sense of humor. With statistics showing a steady increase of femi« nine population everywhere and new war sentiment spreading, it looks as if women might have the last laugh, after all. When the remnants of surviving males are finally forced to patch up their differences, they'll be living under a new form of government— a matriarchy. It will not require much of a sense of humor to see the joke in that.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

HEN, soon after the turn of the century, Amerie can literature began to stir rebelliously under the traditional gentility of New England's dominae © tion and to pull away from England’s influence; when the West and Middle West became conscious of theme selves as entities, and not merely outposts of the Atlantic seaboard-—then came a time of burgeoning for our literature. Eugene O'Neill, Robinson Jeffers, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson —these are among the writers whose uprush of spirit enriched and vitalized the stream of American letters. Through the Twenties they were dominant, In AFTER THE GENTEEL TRADITION (Norton) Malcolm Cowley presents revaluations of these writers by such well-known critics as John Chamberlain, John Peale Bishop, Robert Cantwell, and Robert Morss Lovett. Readers who have watched with ine terest the rebellions of the Twenties, and those who covet a healthy and virile native literature, will wele come these sympathetic analyses of the postwar