Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 August 1937 — Page 12

PAGE 12 The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD. NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, AUG. 2, 1937

TEETH IN THE TRAFFIC CAMPAIGN

TIMES survey a month ago showing the court disposition of June traffic cases indicated that traffic law enforcement in Indianapolis had almost collapsed. During June, 889 persons guilty of serious violations were fined an average of only $2.72. Even more significant was the fact that more than one-third of all those convicted escaped punishment through judgments suspended or withheld. The survey made one thing clear: Indianapolis could not even hope to reduce its shameful auto accident death rate until enforcement became a reality. Since those revelatory figures were published the courts have been putting teeth into the safety drive. July convictions jumped to 1381. Fines averaged $7.61, an increase of nearly $5. Fewer persons escaped punishment after conviction. A month ago, court costs were suspended in all but 51 cases. During July, most of those convicted paid court costs. Judge Karabell tried 1336 of the July cases. This record should convince drivers that it would be better to co-operate voluntarily in this life-saving campaign. A scientific accident-reduction program is about to be started here. The public, alarmed by the growing list of nearly 100 already killed in Marion County traffic this year, will support and demand continued strict enforcement.

OLD DEALING NE of President Roosevelt's greatest political assets has been a public feeling that with him there came into the national scene a spiritual quality to replace the materialism which had prevailed through long years of republican rule. The stufl’ of which politics was made in those years would be absent, it was thought. There would be no Bal-

linger case, no Ohio Gang, no Little Green House on K | Street, no off-coior efforts to swell the party’s campaign | fund, no shakedown of corporations in return for tariffs. | Two recent developments have thrown a blot on the |

escutcheon. One is the campaign-book affair—the $250 Presidentially autographed volume peddled in bulk to corporations which obviously were about as paying that good round sum for such a book as for an almanac. The other, the employment of the publicity direc-

tor of the Democratic National Committee to do side-work | while he still occupies his high position in Democratic |

councils. Those incidents are far from that nonmaterialistic quality of which we spoke; they are anything eise but spiritual. The Mugbook racket is an old one. It has been worked across the country years without end and by this and that promoter and in this and that disguise. The scheme is first cousin to the Bohemian oat and to every slick setup that ever beguiled a sucker at a county fair. It is reminiscent of J. Rufus Wallingford, has all the odor of the kerosene torch, all the sound of “come one, come all’; you only have to shut your eyes to see the long black mustache and the long-tailed coat and the waving arms at the end of the wagon. Maybe a little more refined, this, than some of the arts invented by Jeff Peters; probably more lucrative, for O. Henry's famous character never dared a $250 price. But all of the same piece. ; As for the Michelson affair, it is a case of a man of great political influence being put on a private payroll while still continuing in his influential spot, the industry involved operating a radio station licensed by the Government through an Administratively appointed Commission. Both of these affairs should be cleaned up and cleaned out by the President himself. He should act now as he did early in his first term when he chased some national committeemen from the temple.

HEALTH GOAL

sw LATE and local health officials and the Indiana State Medical Association have opened a statewide campaign against venereal diseases. Their announced objective is, “No child born with syphilis in Indiana by 1940.” The first step in an intelligent fight has been taken. That was to bring this once taboo subject out in the open for discussion. In medieval times, smallpox and cholera carried the same stigma of shame and impropriety, but they have been conquered. Venereal diseases also can be controlled, once the blighting effect of ignoring the plagues 1S removed, The City Health Board proposes an isolation ward at City Hospital. The state program calls for a systematic recording of cases, adequate treatment, quarantine if the afflicted person refuses treatment, hospital facilities, care of indigents, and education. The medical association says “education of the public is one of the principal needs in the campaign.” We should face this problem as it exists, not continue to dodge it. Syphilis is both curable and preventable.

HOT APPLESAUCE

N a dozen closely written pages of decision the National Labor Relations Board ordered a hotel manager in Washington, D. C,, to reinstate a waiter and waitress discharged last New Year's Day for alleged union activities. The manager said he fired the waiter for serving him hot applesauce in the wrong dish, ham that was cut too thin, and no butter; the waitress for spreading discord in the coffee shop. The hearings took six days of the Government's time. Now to most of us this long trial and long decision— that under the law could go up to the Supreme Court—will appear at first glance as a lot of applesauce and not too hot at that. - But it has a weighty meaning just the same. It is a foretaste of what the Government will be putting its time and energies into unless employers and employees . settle their differences out of court. :

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The Crazy Quult l_By Talburt

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| ® Westbrook Pegler

Telegraph Operators Are Praised For Their Cheerful Devotion to Job As Columnist Tries Change of Pace.

NEW YORK, Aug. 2.—If anyone should ask me to select the most courteous, effi- | cient and conscientious class of workers that I have ever met I would have to name the telegraph operators, with whom I have had much traffic here and there in the last 25 Years. It is my but I have seen them working in the rain and sleet,

and I have often kept them overtime far into the night waiting for my documents, and do not recall ever hearing a grumble. There was a man in New York who used to work at the games and fights—a sick-looking man with hollow, thin features, who collapsed at the ringside in the Yankee Stadium one night. There is always great tension along the working press rows at those big championship fights, and probably my friend shouldn't have been there at all. But he was there, jiggling his bug beside me on the shelf until, suddenly, he passed the word to the head man that he was about to cave in. So the head man quietly moved another operator into his place and we let him out. The first I knew of his being ill was when it was all over and I was boxing up my typewriter along toward midnight. I had thought it was just a routine switch, but the relief man told me our friend was an invalid and had passed out in the aisle. I didn’t see him again until one of those miserably cold Army-Notre Dame days in the fall, when he bobbed up, skinnier than ever, to sit four or five hours, shivering like a homeless dog, and rattling his bug with fingers blue from the cold. » ® =» HOSE were terrible days in the open, and, worst of all, in Boston in Harvard-Yale years, because the dark comes down early up there and winter has set in by the time of the big game, as they still call it. The telegraph operators burned matches to warm their fingers and see the copy and sometimes they wouid set fire to newspapers, The chief operator used to bring a couple of quarts of bootleg Medford rum, home-made from molasses, and it tasted like liquid soap, but it was very warming. But after the work was over and you moved into the hot, close atmosphere of the hotel dining room or the train for home the rum would hit you like a falling gargovie and sometimes all would go blank. =" =» ” NEVER have understood the marvelous efficiency of the operators and the wire chiefs in maintaining the service in the open air in bad weather, or even indoors in the great halls where the national political conventions are running and hundreds of newspaper men are pounding out thousands of words. You just ask for a wire and pretty soon there it is beside you and a man to shove the copy through. Come floods. tornado or earthquake, they still manage somehow to shake together some kind of service, and if you phone some country operator at his home after hours in an emergency he will come down and open up shop and give you paper and a machine and wait around patiently until you have done your stuff. I am not very good at singing praises, having very little practice, and I hardly know what has prompted me to this extraordinary outburst of sweetness toward my fellow man. Just call it a change of pace.

Mr. Pegler

ETHANY BEACH, Del, Aug. 2—The Wages-and-Hours Bill was shot through the Senate in a bum’s rush that limited debate to about the quality and quantity commonly used by a crap-shooter in persuading Big Liz to bring home the bacon or buy a shirt for baby.

It is supposed to regulate the most complex and difficult condition in our economic life, yet the research upon which it was passed was just a tele-

phe scurry to find out whether Bill Green would let pass. It's no good. The Administration knows it’s no good. The Senate knows it's no good. Bill Green knows it’s no good and said so. John Lewis didn’t speak. The metal and label trades of the A. F. of L. opposed it. Mr. Green said that, bad as it is, maybe he can fix it in the House. If he can't he will blast it later. » » »

OW isn’t that something? If Bill Green hadn't given that two-way reversible permissi pass a bad bill, it wouldn't have passed wy nw Until he had spoken, nobody was willing to act. After he had spoken, the Senate acted accordingly. I Ba heat i-sivkenios incident—too obvious and too ar down the scale of political morality to warrant waste of adjectives to characterize it. y a

impression that they are not overpaid, |

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

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MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 1937

Not Exactly

The Hoosier Forum

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

| VANNUYS DEFENDED BY | WAR VETERAN | By John L. Niblack

| hides behind his initials. In his ar-

| ticle “J. E.” roundly takes Senator |

| VanNuys to task for opposing the | Court-Packing Bill. In the first place he says the | Democratic Party will not nominate Senator VanNuys again. I say more ‘shame to the Democratic Party, if | that should happen. However, I have no doubt that “J. E.” is cor-

| rect, because the Democratic state convention will be composed of dele-

members of the New Deal wing of the party: Postmasters, State House | employees, publicity agents, WPA

with the Government. And Tammany Jim Farley, the ex-boxing commissioner of the great State of New York, has spoken. Fred is to

| get the ax. So Fred will get the ax.

Great is the name of Farley, the familiar of Boss Pendergast of Kansas City, whose bipartisan henchmen are being convicted in droves in Federal Court for elec tion frauds; the familiar of the Kelley-Nash bipartisan machine in Chicago, and the boss of the New Deal Townsend-McHale-Elder-Mc-Nutt machine in Indiana. He has spoken. As for me, an independent in politics, a believer in and worker for the city-manager plan of government, I wore the uniform of Uncle Sam in the World War to defend the flag against foreign aggression. And I say more power to Fred VanNuys for defending our inherited institutions from the attack from within that was—and deadly than any German guns to our liberty. We need no one-man | rule yet.

» » ALL PROGRESS IS HELD SOCIAL By W. L. Ballard, Syracuse All progress is social. No individual contributes very importantly. Steam pressure was known in old Egypt but waited until metallurgy produced huge castings for engine parts. The masters painted after oils appeared, not be-

| fore; composers followed the piano. Edison invented the light bulb, but

‘The Wright brothers fiew first, thanks. to gasoline and engines. Marconi (age 21) “inadvertently” found radio—the last step in a so0cial process, not the first. Many discoveries were made by two or more men, indicating time

it breaks the party in two.

gates of whom 80 per cent will be |

dynamos were ready to help him |

| was ripe.

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious confroversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must bs signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

Much of the honor ac-

| corded “firsts” is hero worship ob-

| | | | | | |

scuring the real facts. If every individual in this generation did a “first,” we would have over two billion individual heroes, yet uno worthwhile social heritage! We should honor pioneers not less but

| social factors more.

is—more | | tive

bosses and others who have a job! he

” n MADRID CHILDREN STUDY UNDER FIRE By

Bruce Catton Incidental to the major news of battle for Madrid comes an item to the effect that children in

Spanish Government territory are going to start to school again. In Madrid alone, about 100,000

voungsters of school age who remained in the city because their parents would not consent to their evacuation were not able to attend classes because their schools were within range of Rebel guns. Since Madrid is still a target for Rebel missiles, it is interesting to see just how the minister of education solved the problem of reopening the schools. Here's just how simple it was: “Madrid children will have their schools even if we have to open them under fire from enemy batteries,” he said. Thus, despite great obstacles, the

| nobility and dignity of learning is Spanish children |

re-established. may proceed in their quest of a higher existence, studying history while it’s made, with daily object lessons in the latest, most destrucmethods of “perpetuating”

| civilization.

EIGHT LINES By DANIEL F. CLANCY

| In one theater a cloth sky hangs.

| | | | | | | | } | | | | |

| |

{

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Senate and House Might Just as Well Play Hand of Stud on Each Piece Of New Deal Legislation as to Push Them Through in Black Bill Manner.

of traditional Democrats to shut off this session before

Many commentators have spoken against con-

Tonight, as I sit in my chair, It seems that God, as thunder— bangs! Thé cloth of His sky doth tear. And as one might in mind construe, The theater's walls would crack— So now one fears that He will strue The earth with Heaven—crack!

AILY THOUGHT

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.—Genesis 2:24.

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well. —Goldsmith.

CLAIMS RADICALS INSPIRED COURT PLAN | By E. F. Maddox The Times’ editorial, “The Referee Takes Sides,” shows what might have come to pass if the New Deal- | ers’ Judiciary Reform Bill had be- | come a law and six “biased” New | Dealers had been appointed to the | Supreme Court.

| The real fight in the Supreme | Court controversy was for control | of the Constitution by a bunch of | radicals who know that the pro|gram they wish to write into the [law of the land is expressly forbid{den by our national Constitution. | So what could be simpler than to pack the Court with their own par-

change the whole meaning of our national charter.

tutions of their countries this year. One is in exile, the other is recovering from the shock of a very bad defeat. The whole New Deal program seems to be a scheme to obtain power through legislation and give that power to wild-eyed radicals who will use it to destroy our I present system. The evidence is plain that the National Labor Relations Board is prejudiced against employers and biased in favor of radical labor according to reports. The La Follette Civil Liberties

“biased” institutions set up to intimidate both employers and civil authorities into submission to radicalism, according to my opinion.

» ” » RAPS EXPENDITURES | FOR GUNS, BOMBS

By “A Subscriber”

| Today the U. S. is spending 13 | cents of every tax dollar, not for | bombs and battleships. This is four times the sum spent for furniture, men’s clothing and boots and shoes. Thousands of WPA workers are fired from relief work, and then Congress spends $50,000,000 for additional battleships. The White House ordered all executive departments to cut 10 per cent off their budgets in an effort to save $400,000 | and balance the budget. As a re- | sult several hundred civil service | clerks were fired. It looks as if | we have our own guns-before-but-ter policy. | War is a creature of capitalism and sends workers out to murder one another while the capitalistic leeches sit safely at home and seize all the wealth for their own selfish use. It is because of the economic and political stupidity of the working class that the present unjust economic system is allowed to exist.

tisans and by giving decisions in | line with their own political views |

Two men have defied the consti- |

Committee is another one of those |

Herblock

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It Seems to Me

‘By Heywood Broun

| Why Is U. S. Senator Like a Jug of Cider? Answer to Riddle Is Seen in Attitude on Amendment Proposal,

NEW YORK, Aug. 2.—Why is a U. S. Sens ator like a jug of cider? It will speed things along if you just say, “I give up.” Well, then, a U. S. Senator is like a jug of cider because once he begins to turn sour there is no stopping him this side of pure vinegar. Many persons, although I was not among them, have said that it was monstrously unfair to question

the liberalism of men in Congress who opposed the President in his Supreme Court proposals. It was urged repeatedly that certain Democrats were being their own fine progressive selves in opposing a move which some felt to be in the direction of dictatorship. InEa @. deed, one of the chief points in | oR 3 this line of reasoning was the plea rd : { that while there was much sound= . ness in Mr. Roosevelt's objectives, ' he had chosen a technique which i was dangerous and un-American Specifically, several of his chief foes in the recent battle put themselves on record as being opposed to the Court's having a legislative veto, particularly on the slim margin of a five-to-four decision. And there were those who openly asserted that they opposed Mr, Roosevelt only because they felt that any effort to restore legislative rights to Congress should come through the democratic method of amendment laid down in the Constitution. » N fact, such specific suggestions as the requirement of a seven-to-two decision or the overriding of a Court decision on the basis of a two-thirds vote by both branches of Congress were put upon the record. There was also a great deal of plain talk about an amendment to make retirement at the age of 75 mane aatory. Now, may I ask in a mild and noncontentious voice what has become of the ardor of all these proponents of amendment as opposed to the direct leg= islative action suggested by Mr. Roosevelt?

Mr. Broun

constructive progress, but for guns, |

Now that the President has been defeated those who said that they were in favor of certain modifications in the organic law, if only these changes wers submitted to the people in the time-honored way, seem to have forgotten the proposal. At the moment I cannot think of any member of Congress who is seriously pressing for change by an appeal to the nec essary 36 states. » » OREOVER, it seems to me that those who dove into battle during the late unpleasantness under the banner “We were never more progressive in our lives” are having a little difficulty in getting again into forward motion. I am informed that Senator Nye has always been a strong fighter for liberal causes and that it is bitterly unfair to challenge this record on the basis of the fact that he opposed President Roosevelt in the Court fight. All right, but how about Senator Nye's record on the National Labor Relations Board? His co-opera-tion with a friend of Republic's Tom Girdler has ale ready been proved. And beyond that the genfleman from North Dakota seems eager to pick up any charge against the NLRB, even if it rests on nothing more than some rumor which was circulated on the basis of a cousin of Mr. Doe’s having informed a brother-in-law of Mr. Roe’s that his aunt’s sister had a brother who said so forth and so on. I still insist that a U. S. Senator is like a jug of cider.

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Roosevelt, Senator Black and John Lewis Poison-Pen Writers' Targets; New Coal Commission Faces Rough Going if Internal Rift Isn't Smoothed.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, Aug. 2.—Postal and Secret Serv-

tinuing the present Congressional cat-fight in the heat of a Washington summer. The demagogic response is, “the laborer has to work through the heat at $12 a week, why shouldn't Congressmen work through it at $10,000 a year?”

» # »

OBODY cares how hard any Congressman has - to work. . However, everybody ought to care for his own sake whether laws that may send him to jail or ruin him are conscientiously and cerefully made, or whether they are pulled out in a panic with about as much judgment as a man uses in saving his pillow from a burning house and leaving his pants, watch and pocketbook on the dresser. Here was a bill to revolutionize the whole wage structure. It was so bad that nobody could sponsor it. Senator Black had to stay home from a ball game to rehash it hastily. The rehash got no hearing, and was still so bad that everybody admits it.

Yet it was strong-armed through and the talk is of five similar political jujutsus on other far-reaching measures and then adjournment. It would be more decent for the House and Senate just to play a hand of stud on each piece of this program. They could get the whole thing over ir an hour and, with Roose=

velt luck, at least four of the six bills would become statutes, . > :

ice officials are investigating the source of several poison-pen documents which recently have been attacking the President and other prominent Washington figures. They are mailed first-class, well-printed and apparently are a continuation of the covert campaign of slander carried on during the election campaign. This time he is sharing the abuse with others, notably Senator Black of Alabama and John L. Lewis. One anonymous picture being circulated through the mails, especially to Alabama voters, is an enlarged flashlight of Mr. Lewis talking to Senator Black, with a brief caption giving the impression that they are intimate friends. ' Actually the photo was taken at a Senate hearing, and several other Senators and Congressmen who were in the picture were blocked out. Mr, Black is up for re-election next year and already there is a fierce campaign against him. Another photo shows Mr. Lewis ed by his wife walking down the stairway of the Soviet Embassy. It was taken while they attended a reception of 500 Washington notables to honor the Russian North Pole fliers, but the intimation is given that Mr. Lewis is & habitue of the embassy.

third document is an unsigned pamphlet, entiled “A Message : to the ican People.”

| Slanderous and obscene, this piece of literature is a clear violation of postal laws. It opens with this sentence, “I am what was Senator Joe Robinson,” and then putting words in the mouth of the late Senator, it declares that “Roosevelt will soon die or become insane,” and that “Hughes today is behind the ‘Liberty’ movement, but not visibly so.” ? ; : - The Catholic Church also is vituperated, and many Senators who voted for the Court Bill, some of them in unprintable language. It concludes with a rabid tirade against Mrs. Roosevelt.

# =” o.

\HINGS are not going so smoothly behind the scenes in the new Bituminous Coal Commission, There is a sharp rift over a major policy issue, in addition to which some members complain privately - that Chairman Charles E. Hosford, former Pennsylvania coal operator of dynamic personality, is too

bossy. - The policy dispute is over an old issue. In the original Commission the chief bone of contention was the price of coal to be charged the taiflroads.” One group favored the traditional operator view of selling to the carriérs at a low price because of the large quontities they use. A second group vigorously opposed giving special concessions to any consumer," ptember, and from present indications it looks as if