Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 July 1937 — Page 10

Ee

A ton ates St abd ———

Vo

PAGE 10 The Indianapolis Times

NEWSPAPER)

MARK FERREE Business Manager

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY President Editor

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co. 214 W. Maryland St. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

ro

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

Member of United Press, Scripps = Howard News= paper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu-

reau of Circulations. RIley 5551

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1937

ATTENTION, GOVERNOR! ICK HELLER, executive secretary to Governor Townsend, is quoted as saying that elected Democratic officials must “obey the mandate of the people” to follow the lead of President Roosevelt. Mr. Heller was attacking Senator VanNuys for oppos-

ing the Court-packing plan. Many good Democrats, in and out of Congress, could find no mandate for the Court plan. | But there was a “mandate of the people”—one written into the State and national Democratic platforms—for the | The Governor and the |

merit system in public personnel. have not followed the

Democratic Indiana Legislature President's lead on this issue. | If men are to be read out of the party for “disloyalty to the President” on questionable “mandates,” how about these pledges about which there can be no question?

THE TRAFFIC DRIVE HE one-a-minute rate at which traffic offenders were fined yesterday doesn’t mean that more persons than ever are violating the law. It simply means that more are being brought to book for their violations. : Indianapolis is learning that enforcement not only is possible but is essential if the slaughter on the streets is to be checked. To be effective, the enforcement spurt which the police and courts have staged the last few weeks must become year-round routine. Other important phases of the problem are yet to be attacked, but the groundwork for a scientific safety program has Been laid. One of these tasks is education, the goal of the newly projected School Boys Traffic Officers’ Training Camp. From Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, 185 boys will take special training at the Boy Scout Reservation as leaders of 2300 school patrol boys. This program, which means the saving of | lives of school children during the coming year, is one of the finest of the entire campaign.

NOT PAINLESS | HE building and supply contractors who had hoped to | make money out of the projects, doubtless are not | pleased with President Roosevelt's decision to postpone | construction of the new War Department Building in the | nation’s capital, and the Jefferson Memorial. Nor are the | building-trades craftsmen who had hoped to get jobs on those projects. Neither were employees of the Securities and Ex- | change Commission. pleased with Chairman Landis’ order forbidding general pay raises, abolishing all vacancies, and | directing a general retrenchment to reduce the expenditures | 10 per cent below the SEC's appropriation. | But things like this are what the Administration has | to do if the President and Secretary Morgenthau are going to make good on their promise to spend 400 million dollars less than the total appropriated, and thereby balance this fiscal year’s budget. And the people who do business with, as well as those who work for, the Government will be much better off in the long run if that budget is balanced.

BAD TIMING

IMING is very important in statecraft. Shortly after President Roosevelt sprang his surprise Court-packing bill, when many Congressional leaders were searching for a compromise, Senator O'Mahoney advanced the idea of requiring a two-thirds vote of the Supreme Court to rule a law unconstitutional. : : Senator Wheeler agreed to drop a different plan which he was sponsoring and support the O'Mahoney plan. Several other influential Senators, including Senator Norris, indicated their desire to seek this solution to the Court controversy. Had the Administration been willing then to accept this compromise, probably an amendment to the Constitution embodying that provision would have been approved long ago by Congress and ratified by several State Legislatures. But the Administration’s “strategists” refused to accept that or any other compromise. They demanded passage of the six-judge packing bill intact, and sought to brand as Tories all who refused to go along. They undertook political reprisals, wielding the patronage club and otherwise threatened to drive all opponents out of political life. As a result of these high-handed tactics, bitterness and resentment developed and the opposition grew in strength until it was able to command a complete surrender of the Administration’s Court-packing forces. Under the terms of that surrender it was agreed that no legislation affecting the Supreme Court should be considered, and that the sulstitute bill should contain only reforms in the procedure of the lower courts. bill was drafted. Now, Senator Minton of Indiana, a Court-packing diehard, has brought forward a proposed amendment to that substitute bill. And what he proposes is the very same two-thirds idea that the opponents of Court packing wanted the Administration to accept several months ago. It is very bad timing indeed. The Administration apparently wants to salvage now a proposition which it spurned with contempt a few months ago. But obviously the Administration was all too late in getting around to a compromising mood. So much bitterness, resentment and distrust have been injected into the controversy that there is not a chance in the world that “re two-thirds proposition could even be considered now on ics merits. Instead, charges of double-cross and resumption of the 1 bitter fight would result from pressure to force’ anything

And such a

hevond what was stipulated in the compromise that ended the packing fight. And that compromise specifically left | out action that would touch the Supreme Court. | Opportunity knocked once and passed on, its forelock unseized., :

| HS” do I know this?

— THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Living in a Suitcase—By Herblock

PARDON Me, BUT DO YOU THINK YOU CAN DO YOUR VERY BEST WORK IN THAT OFFICE?

ny BIRT

By Westbrook Pegler

America's Cup Yacht Race Recalls 1920 Event, When Sir Thomas Was At His Best as a Tea Publicity Man.

EW YORK, July 31.—The only yacht race. that I ever covered was the 1920 number between an American sailboat called the Ranger and Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock IV. This one was sailed off Sandy Hook and took 12 days from first to last, and though it was

| ‘by no means the best of the series, it was by all | odds the funniest. | two days the sea was so smooth

One day a sail fell down and for

that the skippers couldn't get the boats around the course within the time limit of six hours. Old Sir Thomas was an absentee yachtsman in this case at least, his relations to his boat being the same as that of a millionaire horseman with an incorporated stable to a steed in the Kentucky Derby. He spent his

| time aboard an old steam yacht

called the Victoria, surrounded by

| a strange company of old friends | and gate-crashers, and at least

Mr. Pegler once an hour something would ’

remind him of the time he landed at Castle Garden with all his possessions wrapped up in a handkerchief on a stick. He also told a story of another Irish immigrant boy, a pal of his, who saw a diver coming up New York harbor, and exclaimed “Look Tommy, that one walked across; we could ha’ done the same and saved our passage money.” ow HE day the race ended and the ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate were trying to get a few words out of him, according to his old, “Try, try again” formula, Sir Thomas said: “Did I ever tell ye about my little friend who saw the diver coming up out of New York harbor?” And someone in the group patiently said, “Yes, Sir Thomas, you told us.” At this, Sir John Ferguson, the London banker, a perfect example of the overbearing rudeness of the well-bred Englishman, remarked, “A gentleman never hears a story twice,” and Gene Fowler, a young reporter who afterward became famous as Gene Fowler, said, “A gentleman never tells a story twice,” and picked up the marbles. There was considerable doubt as to whether Sir Thomas continued to build and finance the races of his boats out of pure sportsmanship or pure advertising genius or an equal mixture of both. Cup sailboats are expensive, but the name of Lipton meant tea wherever tea is drunk. When you consider the millions spent by manufacturers of cigarets and automobiles to advertise their goods, the cost of a race to Sir Thomas was small by comparison with publicity which he kicked up. ” ” o

MoRuONER although he knew his way around socially, he always maintained his rough-dia-mond character which made for popularity with the masses who drank his tea. One day when a newsreel man was making a shot of him drinking tea on deck he purposely left his spoon in his cup and almost stabbed himself in the eye with the handle.

At this, his fine-feathered pal, Sir John, reached |

over and removed the spoon and Sir Thomas promptly put it back again saying, “I know what I am doing.” It was a terrible boat race, too rough one day and too smooth two other days, and star journalists of Park Row had a sad time aboard a destroyer which bounced horribly every time the sea kicked up. That day Mr. Joseph Jefferson O'Neill, on the Old World, saw a sailor flip a penny into the sea, and was told that this was intended to propituate Neptune, so Mr. O'Neill went to the skipper’s quarters and staggered to the side with a check for a million dollars.

| or not, as he sees fit, for whom, at

{ how he shall use his own, whether

The Hoosier Forum

I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

WELFARE OF WHOLE MUST GUIDE LABOR, CLAIM By R. F. Paine, San Francisco

A chancery court in New Jersey, in holding that the closed shop and picketing are illegal, bases its de- | cision upon the following from a | Supreme Court decision of 45 years | ago. “Whatever enthusiasts may hope | for, in this country every owner of property may work it as he will, | by whom he pleases at such wages | and upon such terms as he can make; and every laborer may work

such wages, as he pleases; and neither can dictate to the other |

property, time or skill.” Great and beneficial have been the changes since that decision of | 1892, changes in the public view of | rights and in the view thereof of the Supreme Court itself. I may no longer manage my property regardless of the property and the interests of my fellows. I may no | longer make the harshest terms that | suit me with my hired help.

We have made considerable prog- | ress in accord with .the doctrine that the rights of the individual or of the special element stop where the welfare of the whole hegins, and we will have no fascism, no communism to seriously endanger our form of government until we abandon that doctrine.

The present great labor movement surely is aimed at that 45-year-old Supreme Court obsession that “every laborer may work as he sees fit, at such wages as he pleases”; and, I make a great mistake in understanding of human nature if, finally, that movement does not manhandle the alleged and assumed right of alien Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans and Filipinos to work at such wages and under such

conditions as pleases them, regard-/ less of the effects upon American labor. The thus far practically peaceful industrial revolution is due exactly -to the old-time popular acceptance of the Supreme Court's declaration that every man, every element had the constitutional right to do as he or it pleased. Voluntarily or under compulsion, organized property and organized labor will wholly abandon the doctrine of “The Public Be | Damned,” or else—,

££ 4 #8 | LAUDS MEN WHO FOUGHT | COURT BILL

By Mabel German Now that the Roosevelt court- | packing bill has been put in the | | waste basket where it so justly be- | longs, the American people should | be thankful for the courageous dem- | ocratic statesmen, who, thrbugh public opinion, have saved our Supreme Court and our Constitution for a free people, The “mandate of the people” of last November has completely reversed itself. It all proves that it pays to stop and

(Don’t life seem

(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.)

—— er —— ————

“think before and not after” a mistake is made. History is now being made, and our children and grandchildren will

read of the courage of such statesmen as VanNuys and Pettengill of our beloved Hoosier state, who (in spite of New-Deal Townsend, Minton, and “In-the-Bag” Farley) have remained true Democrats and Americans. Right-thinking Democrats and Republicans will give these most worthy gentlemen their support at the polls no matter what ticket they represent. Now that Congress is waking up to the true colors of the New Deal, we think the Ameri-

SUMMER NIGHT

By JOSEPHINE MOTLEY

And now comes the do-nothing time of year When you sit in the old porch swing With your dreams or your sweetheart by your side; While your heart sings a ting-a-ling.

The summer sky harbors mythical lore Where stars, like a shower of gold, Envelop the earth with their strange, weird tales Like the dragon and Hercules bold.

And Arcturus, bears, Who illumines the evening sky. Or Cygnus, the Swan, the lyre, and the snake, Or eagle, or winged horse on high.

famous keeper of

And then in event, you think you are slow, Look at Vega so bright, yet so blue. In twelve thousand years, she will be the North Star, So there may yet be hopes for you.

Add to this star lore the scent of a rose Or a lily close by the swing; Between sky and flowers, dreams, and the night, a marvelous thing? |

DAILY THOUGHT

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in yhom I am well pleased.—Matthew

your |

As the print of the seal on the wax is the express image of the seal itself, so Christ is the express image—the perfect representation of God.—Ambrose. .

can people can look for some real statesmanship from this body. The next bill to go along with the court-packing bill is the socalled wage-and-hour bill. This bill should be studied carefully by every adult and the same protest given this socialistic legislation” It is only a scheme to sap the people of more of their rights and freedom. Let's go to the polls in 1940 and { put this New Deal along with the | court-packing bill—in the discard. | Stay awake, Democrats and Repub- | licans.

> 5 a

| CLAIMS LOYALISTS WOULD INSTALL COMMUNISM

By Frederick W, Fries I trust that our latest Loyalist | sympathizer (from Frankfort) is | sincere. With regard to the writer's | statement that a poll among the people of United States, France and | England would reveal an over-| whelming sentiment for the Loyalists, let him remember that foreign | newspapers have so disclosed and

distorted the facts about the Spanish war, that such a poll would be meaningless. His opinion that the Spanish war is a struggle between democracy and fascism is shared by thousands of well-meaning, but misinformed, Americans. The fact is that the struggle is not between democracy and fascism, but between communism and anticommunism. That a Rebel victory would result in fascism is problematical at best, but a Loyalist victory would certainly mean communism, If Spain did not fare so well under the old privileged orders, that is no reason to condemn her to such a pitiful extremity as cornmunism. It might be news to our Frankfort critic and to Agapito Rey as well that even 18 years ago Russia planned to dig the fangs of communism into Spain. If the Loyalists are victorious, the whole scheme will be ‘realized. I repeat: The Spanish war is a struggle between communism (represented by the Loyalists) and real, liberty-loving Spaniards. Shall we condemn those who are fighting to keep Red Russia out of Spain? God forbid!

» » ”n CONTENTION MARK OF DEMOCRACY, CLAIM

By Reader

-

Where there is democracy there is | always the contention that comes! from difference of opinions and | ideals. Only where the dictator rules is there absence of such | contention. The present contention within | the ranks of the Democratic and Republican Parties seems to me to indicate that democracy is returning to American politics. Surely, all Americans will prefer the present outbursts of contention to the oppressive placidity ‘of the Mark Hanna type of dictatorship.

S.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Russian Aviators Prove to Be Good Sports at Party and Indicate to Writer That Reds Have Their Points.

VW ASHIN GTON, July 31.—The Soviet Embassy throws the best parties. It is the only Washington embassy in which 1 have ever sung “Hinky ‘Dinky Parlay Voo.” Naturally this was late in the evening, and I

did not volunteer until a Representative had done a couple of arias and a well-known Washington commentator had rendered “The Cloakmakers’ Union” with its immortal couplet, “Oh, they make broken

promises and vote = Norman Thomases.” This informal part of the entertainment took place when most of the economic royalists, Cabinet members and newspaper editors had gone home. But, for that matter, the set program of the evening had all the ease and charm of a completé impromptu. It was a party for the three fliers who crossed the Pole and continued on to make a new record for a non stop flight. There is a kind of universality © among the men who go up to the sky in ships. It may be that the first effective brotherhood of man will be achieved by those who are able to climb above the clouds. The first young man, the tall one, the chief pilot, had in his aspect that look of the eagle which struck me when I saw Lindbergh ride in triumph through the streets of New York. And the woman who sat next to me said with a gasp of astonishment, “It is Guynemer to the life.”

Mr. Broun

» » ” NE touch of altitude makes the whole world kin, And so it was that I could understand the three strangers, even though I did not know a single word they said. Nothing about them seemed alien, but the mere barrier of language. I thought to myself, “Why, that one could be Joe Brocks. The next most cer= tainly is a sort of Soviet Swope, and the fat one with

the roving eyes clearly seems a Moscow Quentin Reynolds.” Mr. Omansky, the acting Ambassador, translated the speeches sentence by sentence, and either he is a great play doctor or each one of the three crack fliers by happy chance is a most engaging humorist. These were men of resolution, but also lads imbued with gaiety. Theirs was a dangerous crossing, for they drove straight through those mazes of the Arctic air where the magnetic compass is no friend to the navigator. They hitched their sky-wagon to the stars and flew straight up to the face of the sun.

» » ” HAD assumed that some one of the fliers would end up on some note of tribute to the particular political and economic complexion of their homeland, No such word was spoken. And, accordingly, it seemed to me that the propagandic effect of their appearances

| was heightened. The obvious implications were more

eloquent than anything that could have been uttered, Naturally I am not contending that the success or failure of any political or economic experiment should be settled beyond debate by the fact that one, two or even three representatives from the land in question seem to be pretty swell people. Possibly there are some Nazis who are personally pleasant, although I have not run across any such specimen, But I would say that when you find gaiety, wit, cour= age and resolution in any small group from a distant land it is not unreasonable to have a very friendly curiosity as to just how many more there are at home like them.

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Wages and Hours Bill Methods, Tested by NRA, Were Proved Unworkable; Labor-Standard Setting by Areas, Tried by 'PRA,' Brought Good Results.

Beiuany BEACH, Del, July 81.—The Wages-and-Hours Bill is no good for another reason—it won't work. It puts it up to a board to hold hearings and consider “industry by industry, craft by craft and locality by locality” what wages and hours should be in

hundreds of thousands of separate cases. If it could"

do that intelligently at all—which it can’t—it would take from 20 years to a century, For that reason it won't work. Industries and localities are themselves all competitive. You can’t hoist the wage scale of locality or industry “A” and leave locality or industry “B” until you can get around to it without upsetting or even ruining locality or industry “A.” You must move the standards of all competing units up and down together and not piecemeal. The practical way is for the law itself to set the standards over wide areas, with due regard to existing differentials, and then leave to your board only the duty of dealing with the relatively few exceptions to the general rule in cases of unusual hardship—in-

stead of having it invent its own rule for each of an infinite variety of cases, :

es = : » . Because .I tried both methods. One worked, the other failed. In all the mudslinging at the Blue Eagle, people forget that the principal trouble came under the codes when we

tried to do what the Black Bill proposes—handle the

Job “industry by industry.” Before

the codes, was

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Tom Corcoran, Brains and Arm of President Roosevelt, Under Attack: Big Business and Senate Reactionaries Declared His Bitter Enemies.

PRA—the President's Re-employment Agreement. In that earliest effort the President simply requested all employers in the country to agree with him voluntarily to put in a 40-hour week wtih a minimum weekly wage and between 96 and 97 per cent of all employers did so instantly and everywhere, They were given the right to apply, to have modification made to prevent unfairness or hardship. We set up a board to hear the cases for exceptions and modifications to ‘the general rule and, within 60 days, the whole national structure had been adjusted—far from perfectly, but well enough to work. There were very few complaints. i » ” s HEN we began the battles over the codes—and attempt to do what the Black Bill proposes—fix wages and hours, industry by industry and loeality by locality and—there went the old ball game! Here were two perfect laboratory tests of method on a national scale and the secret authors of the original Black Bill chose the one that had failed. “Why? Because they were too cocky and secretive to consult anyone who had lived through the intense educating experience of those earlier NRA days—no one at all. The Sullivan plan by states is still bétter, I wish we had thought of it in NRA. But as between the

Black Bill and the suggestion in this column, one will

fail and the other will work. il. and ‘

ASHINGTON, July 31.—During the winter of 1931, Tom Corcoran, now a close adviser to President Roosevelt and one of the most spot-lighted men in America, was an obscure young lawyer, once pointing to the windows of the bankers and brokers of Wall Street, he voiced to companions his desire to “stop them from bleeding the country!” Mr, Corcoran was then 30. And in the six years which followed, he has come very near the fulfillment of his toast, He helped put through the Securities Act regulating the sale of stocks and bonds to the public. He helped draft the Stock Exchange Act which attempted to protect the public from the raiders of Wall Street. He was the brains behind the Holding Company Act, is helping to plug up the holes in the income tax law, and now is waging a campaign for passage of the Wages and Hours Act. All of which explains why, next to the President himself, he is the man most hated by Big Business and most unpopular with conservative Senators of any man in the Roosevelt Administration. » ” n “OM has studied under three remarkable teachers. At Harvard Law School he was a disciple of Felix Frankfurter, After graduation, he became the secretary to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Simultaneously he also became the friend of Justice Brandeis, After leaving Justice Holmes, Mr. Corcoran joined the law firm of Cotton & Franklin, where he worked with Joseph R. Cotton, later Undersecre-

k ;

tary of State, and got to know all the tricks of Wall Street. Eugene Meyer, then RFC chairman, brought Tom to Washington. He was the RFC’s key man in reorganizing banks and putting across a hundred and one jobs similar to what he is doing today. One thing he accomplished was getting RFO money for the schoolteachers of Chicago, whose pay was months overdue. It was a praiseworthy job, and he managed it very quietly. - Tom Corcoran has a “passion for anonymity,” In fact, he is the man who devised that phrase, once used by the President in describing the quality of a good White House secretary. as

" » #

HERE has been a vigorous drive to oust Mr. Corcoran recently. This has come from two sources., One source has attempted to coax rather than oust him. For, recognizing the skill with whic Mr. Corcoran handled the holding corporation fights one law firm offered him and his associate, Ben Cohen, a minimum retainer of $100,000 annually. The other drive against Mr. Corcoran has come from his enemies on Capitol Hill—-the Burt Wheelers, the reactionary Democrats, the Liberty Leaguers, who realize that Tom is the brains and the right arm cf the President in most of his important fights in Congress. If they can oust him, they know that a part of their battle against Mr. Roosevelt is won, and so they have used the weapon which Mr, Corcoran hates most—publicity, mixed, incidentally, with a lot of duplicity, i A

it

“~

v

~

fins

GR Li

I a

SRE i TR ’ Spl cn aR EB