Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 August 1937 — Page 15

Vagabond

From Indiana — Ernie Pyle Forced Landing in Alaska No Jage, But Scheduled Stops Are Fun and Traveler Meets Another Hoosier.

BETHEL, Alaska, Aug. 19.—It was mar-

velous flving down the Kuskokwim. toward the Bering Sea.

We took off from McGrath into the late » I sat be- |

Sun and droned to the westward. side the pilot and felt very big. We left the

river and scooted over wooded mountains. " In an hour we came back to the river and landed. Two men in mosquito nets stood on the sank. The pilot threw out a mail sack to them. “Anybody going down he velled. “No, I guess not, Ralph,” one man on the bank said. “0. K.," said the pilot. “See vou next trip.” We were off with- . in 60 seconds. The place was called Sleitmut. It isn’t ‘on the map, but it has a niche in Alaskan history because the postoffice was held up last winter, and the robbers got away. It's almost impossible for robbers to get away in this country. We in the States have an idea that the interior wilds of Alaska would be a perfect place for a criminal to hide. But it’s just the opposite. “A man couldn't camp anywhere in Alaska without being seen very shortly by someone. A stranger in Alaska sticks ont like a red flag. Bverybody knows evervbhody. That's what makes it so remarkable thai the Sleitmut robbers got away. But. as vou sez, they weren't The people know who did 11, but just can't

river?”

. Pyle

stranaers

prove it

Accommodating Mailman we sat down on bank again, a place called We threw out a mail sack. We stayed just Half an hour or so. and we landed once more This was a tiny village called Napiamute. A man came out and asked if we'd wait while he wrote important letter. He came back in 10 minutes, carryine 8 mail sack I presume his one letter was in it We took off agein. It was land, throw out mail, and take off Land, throw out mail, and take off. Now we came suddenly into the tundra of western Alaska As

Ness

minutes out of Sleitmut

this

Twenty

the river time at Crooked

a few minutes

as vou can see there is flatness, but a flatun at least 30 par cent of water. There Mlhons of puddles and little lakes. The land ibiten a untraveled, extept along the rivers Pilot Savory about these emergency Kits rry —if any of the pilots had ever had to use You het they have. One of Savory's fellow pilots was down four days in Rainey Pass, the pass we crossed a couple of days ago. He spelled out the word “help” with green spruce boughs on the white Snow, but the searching pilots flew right over it for four days without seeing it. And another one cracked up and was down nine days before they found him. The pilot and his passenger were both delirious when finally rescued.

Crossroads for Aviation

At last came Bethel. Two other planes rode the water. spending the night there, too. Bethel is a sort of aviation crossroads of the western coast. We went up to the roadhouse, kept by Mr. and Mrs. W. D. McVeigh, sat around the kitchen table at midnight and talked. “Where are vou from?” Mrs. McVeigh asked me. 1 said I didn't know for sure. but I guessed it Was Indiana and Washington, D. C. And of course Mrs. McVeigh is from Indiana, too. Her name was Bertha Wolf, and her father is principal of a church school in Ft. Wayne. So it's even a small world way out on the coast of the Bering Sea. After all. Almost forgot to put on that “after all.”

Mrs.

fai made must be 1s uninh nad I asked they ca

them

YDE PARK, N. Y, of turning this column into a wanted column” and in each case teiling the story of the applicant as told me. My own imagination, as well as the powers of investigation of all my friends, is becoming somewhat taxed. And vet, of all the letters I get, these are perhaps the most interesting

“positions

to me. There are two groups. On the whole the larger croup comes from young people, sometimes definitely asking for help in finding a job, sometimes asking for help in deciding what training they should iake in order to make this business of finding a job easier. Very often they show quite unconsciously that neither their family nor the community in which thev live has made any attempt to meet their needs and prepare for this period in their life. One of the chief cries is: “How can we get experience when nobody will take us on until we have experience?” Another one is: “How can we live on the wages offered us as beginners?” My other group is that of older men and women, primarily women, of course. Some of them quite angrily demand to know whether I think women over 40 are unable to hold a job. Of course, not knowing them, I can only answer that is a question of personality. That the experience gained up to 40 should make you a valuable person, but if you have become rigid and cannot adapt yourself to new wavs of work, your usefulness may be over at any age. It is not a question of years but of temperament and the development of personality. * There is a young girl whose letter is before me. She has trained as a teacher, but not in this state. Now she wants to teach in this state, either In a public or private school. She has tried unsuveccessfally for a year to find & position, so: “Mrs. Roosevelt, please find me one.” I can’t help wondering if one's training should not make it possible to shift to some other occupation if one simply cannot find an opening in the first one chosen. " 1f we had oracles these days to whom one could go to ask for wise answers to perplexing questions, I think I'd take a trip right now to Delphi and I might be more useful to my correspondents. A hot night and a cloudy sky this morning, but we are starting off to visit our friends in Westbrook, Conn. It ought to be a lovely drive if only it does not rain. In the meantime I have had word that Mr. and Mrs. Robert Baker (she is Col. Howe's daughter) would like to spend a hight with me here, so I am leaving all instructions for their welcome if they arrive before our return and am looking forward to finding them here when we get back.

HEARD IN CONGRESS—

EP. BRADLEY (D. Pa)—Unfortunately a mem- |

ber of this House, the gentleman from Michigan (Rep. Hoffman), journeyed to my state of Pennsyl-

vania and addressed this gathering (of companyunion delegates). While there he engaged in the most vituperative attacks upon practically everyone

who at any time had evidenced a desire to be of | The President of the United States, |

help to labor.

the Governor of Peunsylvania, everyone identified

with the labor movement, and not even the wife |! of the President was immune from his vituperative |

remarks. REP. MARTIN (R. Mass.)—A point of order, Mr.

Speaker. . . . The gentleman is using language about a member of the House that is not permitted.

REP. BRADLEY—I will strike out “vituperative.” |

(Laughter.

Roosevelt's Day

By Eleanor Roosevelt Applications for Job-Finding Aid | Suggest 'Positions-Wanted' Column.

Wednesday—I am thinking

e Indianapolis Tim

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1987

Hugo L. Black: The New Justice

Times-Acme Photo

Mr. Black relaxes in the company of his 4-year-o]d daughter, Martha Josephine.

(Third of a Series)

By Ruth Finney

Times Special Writer

ASHINGTON, Aug. 19.—Hugo L. Black spoke twice in defense of civil liberties in his early days in the

Senate.

The first occasion was in March, 1930, when a bitter ficht was raging over censorship of imported hooks. The

then Senator Black said:

“In the case of a book which may or may not be had | do object strenuously to having any customs inspector

determine for the public what shall be distributed. it be determined by a court. that bad books should not be circulated; but IT have an in-

herent opposition—I presume it comes from reading a great deal of Thomas Jefferson's philosophy—I have an inherent, well-grounded opposition against vesting in the

Let

I agree with Senator Smoot

hands of an individual, judicial powers on matters of su-

human knowledge.” A month later he denounced the attitude of this country toward Haiti “They had for 100 years provided that no foreigner | should come in there and own land,” he said, “and this great Government of ours went down there to change the constitution in order that Americans might own land in Haiti, and thev changed it not by » bona fide vote of the people but at the point of the bayonet.” About the same time Senator Black was discussing the possi- | bility of a Federal limitation on

profits—long before the New Deal. He was speaking of the danger of modification of the packers’ consent decree and “giant trusts.”

| |

Side Glances

° “ COPR. 1937 BY

vr ree

NEA SERV)

“This quilt is for that terrible sister-in-law of mine.

preme importance with reference to the dissemination of

E said: “There are one or two or three remedies that can be worked out. One is a remedy which I do not want, to see applied. It is the fixing by the United States Government of a limitation on profits, of the general business of the nation; but if this system of concentration of wealth and power continues, the concentration of the sale of food, of clothing, of everything we eat and use, of everything we drink and wear, just as certainly as we live the time is coming when the people will not stand for it and the Congress of the country will be compelled to limit profits in husiness.” When the Smoot-Hawley Will was pending Mr. Black bitterly resented a charge by Republican Floor Leader Watson that he had put in high-tariff amendments and should therefore vote for the bill. Mr. Black said he had supported just four tariff increases, on casein, cattle, dates and cotton, out of 234 submitted. “Pig iron is one of the major industries of Alabama and I voted

By Clark

Cw pl

A ais CE, INC. Y.M. REG, U.S, PAT, OFF,

I'd

like to leave some needles sticking in it.”

to decrease the rate,” he said. “Alabama is one of the big ce-ment-producing states in the Union and I voted for free trade in cement. I did not cast a single vote for a single increase on a single manufactured article produced in Alabama or elsewhere. . . » I have stated on the floor of the Senate that I do not favor an embargo tariff.”

” » »

E was bitter, in March, 1931, about Herbert Hoover's veto of the Muscle Shoals Bill “Thousands of people in the South voted for Mr. Hoover as the Presidential candidate,” said Mr. Black, “because he came into their midst and made statements which would have led any reasonable man to believe that he would sigh a measure such as he today vetoed. . . . Those who oppose this measure belong on the side of special privilege and greed.” Earlier he had gotten through the Senate a resolution advising the Secretary of War not to discriminate against munieipalities in selling power at Wilson Dam. In January, 1931, Mr. Black put into the record an editorial denouncing a “carpetbag election” in Jackson County, Alabama, and

Long -Range

{ struction,

|gate the effects of future droughts, |

| “dust bowl” of the Southwest by the |

| |

In Southwest

By E. R. R. ASHINGTON, Aug. 19. A long-range program of recondesigned to check the spread of dust storms and to miti-

fs now being undertaken in the

Department of Agriculture, Separate activities of four differ-

(ent agencies in the department—the

{ left

[ Committee in a report made public |

| Roosevelt the problems of the: region | and draft a comprehensive program |

Soil Conservation Service, the Agri- |

cultural Adjustment Administration, the Extension Service, and the Resettlement Administration-—-are being co-ordinated in order to make possible a concerted attack on the problems of the region. Regional headquarters have been set up at Amarillo, Tex., and Roy I. Kimmel, who had been in charge of

the Resettlement Administration's was

program in the Southwest, named by Secretary Wallace, early

in June, as field co-ordinator of the | | program, Creation of such a regional agency |

was advocated by the Great Plains

last December. The

had been appointed by President in September, 1936, io study

for reconstruction. n ”

HE region included in the new program consists of about 105 counties in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, with a total area of 140,000 square miles, or more than three times the size of New York state: Since 1930, dust storms which have accompanied the severe droughts in this region have caused great human suffering, done incalculable damage to the soil, and ruined crops, buildings and farm machinery. Their farms literally having been blown away, many thousands of families have the region in search of less hazardous living conditions. In spite of the disastrous drought of 1936, the area seeded to wheat in some sections of the dust bowl this year is reported to be the largest on record. Mean. while, the “blow area” is rapidly

Committee | composed of eight Federal officials, | with Morris L. Cooke as chairman |

Herbert Hoover

show the antagonism of the people to having Federal officers come into any county in the state fo attempt to force the re-

sult of an election.”

he polls

” Mn ”n UT he broke with Tom Heflin when Mr, Heflin charged that had been defeated at the the November before by fraud and sought to have the Senate set aside the result, Mr, Black said he did not believe the election had been stolen He continued through his early years in the Senate his fight to have all immigration shut off and insisted that “one of the methods of relief for unemployment is to stop bringing in more mouths to be fed with jobs that are not now sufficient to go around for the people who are in this country.” He voted against the Wagner bill to establish national unemployment exchanges,

Program to Fi

ls Launched

the further spread of wind erosion. Writing last January, Arthur H. Joel, of the Soil Conservation Service, declared that:

“During periods when plentiful moisture supplies temporarily check the scourges of drought and wind erosion, many farmers seem to forget past disasters quickly and revert to systems of farming poorly adapted to wind-erosion control. As a result, when the adverse conditions again return, wind-erosion damage {is usually more intense than ever before, This is but one | of the many reasons why a broad, well-balanced program . Is ex- | sential to prevent wind erosion | [ from becoming master of a large area of semiarid United States.”

| | |

n n RS NE a erosion damage in | 25 counties in the heart of the | dust bowl, Mr. Joel founc that 43 | [per cent of the total area had been | affected by serious wind erosion and | most of the remainder by moderate | | erosion. The most severe damage was found in Morton County, Kansas, where 784 per cent of the land area was eroded seriously. Mr. Joel expressea the belief that 4,160,000 acres of crop land-52 per cent of the total amount of cultivated and idle land in the area he studied—should be returned to a permanent cover of vegetation. “Far too few people realize the present gravity of the situation,” Mr. Joel said, “and probably no one appreciates the full significance of the threat to future generations.” Present difficulties in the dust bowl are the result of human modification of natural conditions. Settlers generally have failed to ad- | Just their agricultural practices to | the hazardous climatic conditions. | | Dointing out that “nature has es- | tablished a balance in the region,” | the Great Plains Committee as- |

ra i

THe i RAS

Entered at Postoffice,

Muscle Shoals Veto and Watson's Charges Roused Alabaman’s Ire

Reed Smoot

FTER a bitter fight he got an amendment into the SenDrought, Reliel Act of 1931 available without or coumly lines, Discussing the proposed Federal appropriation to the Red Cross for human relief, he said that if the Red Cross was not able to increase the 34 a week {t was then paying to families with four and six dependents, "I expect to introduce a bill which wili provide a contribution from this Government to be taken fairly and equitably from the taxpayers who are able to bear it in sufficient amount to make certain that American citizens are no longer left starving, helpless and destitute.” On Jan. 19, 1931, he voted for the Robinson resolution appropriating $25,000,000 for the Red Cross to spend for human relief,

NEXT-Mr, Black's carly views on relief,

ate's making loans regard to state

ght Drought by U. S.

sorted that “The white man

disturbed this balance; he niust re. | I store it or devise a new one of his

own.’

” ”

ETTLEMENT of the dust began after the Civil Wai

Prior

{to that time, buffalo had migrated

freely throughout the region In search of better pasture, thus insuring the maintenance of the short grass which covered the range and anchored the soil. The first settlers were ranchers who brought in great herds of cattle to take the place of the disappearing buffalo,

Ry National Safety Council

THINK MY BRAKES WILL HOLD, UNCLE . « « JUST THES I'M GILAD WE'VE |S fot Gor

)

aN INSURANCE

DANGEROUS DELAY ON'T put off until tomorrow what should be done today —-agpecially if it's a matter of fixing wenk brakes. It's so easy to promise yourself that you will have those brakes repaired to-morrow-or next week-and then to forget all about the promise, Procrastination is the thief of time--and also the indirect cause of many of our highway deaths and injuries. You are flirting with tragedy every minute at the wheel when you drive with defective brakes, ‘Test them frequently, repair them promptly,

| | |

| | | |

as Second-Class Indianapolis,

ann NTN vero ww PAGE 17

Second Section

PAGE 15

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer Mr. Wehr Realizes Dream of Bike Track, but Now Won't Be Content Until Some Boy Turns It in 2:10.

Matter Ind.

RECISELY at 4 o'clock the other after

| self.

noon, Charles E. Wehr and I started out te see the boys’ bicycle track in the new addition of Brookside Park at 21st St. and Sherman Drive. Mr. Wehr was all steamed up over the adventure, and no wonder, because if you've watched Mr, Wehr the last 25 years the way 1 have, you'll know that next to eating (preferably a German pot roast) he likes nothing better than a boy on a bicycle. Anyway, 25 years ago Mr, Wehr got it into his head that the boys of Indianapolis ought to have a bicycle track of their own, and so he went around to see the Mayor about it. It's so long ago that Mr. Wehr has forgotten whether it was Charlie Jewett or Lew Shank. He remembers, though, that he didn't get what he went after. But that didn’t stop him. He tackled all the Mavors after that, with the Mr. result that after hanging around the City Hall for a quarter of a century, things finally came his way. As a matter of fact, Mr the depression came around

Scherrer

Wehr had to wait until and with it the WPA,

| pecause the wav things worked out the new bicycle

track came as a result of a Federal grant, which doesn't mean, of course, that the Park Board didn't do its part, too

He Can Ride 'Em Himself, Too

Well, Mr. Wehr's bicycle track is as pretty as ib can be. It ought to be because he designed it hime It's 880 feet in circumference, which is the same as saving it's a sixth of a mile around. Mr. Wehr says he decided on this figure to give the spectators a run for their money, too, Mr. Wehr knows a lot about such things because, once upon a time, he was a bicvele racer himself. Tor that matter, ha «till does a mile in three minutes without half trys ing. Besides circumference, the new feet al the

heing 880 track 30 feet wide, and banked four turns. Mr. Wehr figured that out, too. This ought to give it a speed of about a mile in 2:10. Anyway, that's what Mr. Wehr expects Indianapolis boys to do, and he’ll he disappointed if they don't, he says. He says there are plenty of boys here right now

feet in

| who can ride 25 miles an hour, and with a little prac

tice they ought to do better on a clay and cinder track. Sure, that's what Mr. Wehr's track is made of. When it gets its final rolling next week, it's go= ing to be faster than a horse track, he says.

He Expects Speed of 2:10

Mr. Wehr is going to give the boys practice all right, because he's got it all fixed to run off Sunday races. He's going to divide the boys into three classes: A (16 years and over), B (14 to 156 years), and C (13 to 14 years). He expects the Class A boys to do a mile in 2:40 or better; the B boys, a mile in 3:25 and the C boys, a mile in four minutes. He won't be satise fied, though, until some kid does it in 2:10, because that's what the track is good for, he says Mr. Wehr says Lic met ex-Mayor Jewett the other

| day, and that he was tickled pink to learn that Mr,

A Woman's

has |

| track in every quarter of the town,

Wehr had stayed with his scheme, Mr, Wehr says he isn't going to stop until Indianapolis has a bicyele It's the only way to keep the automobiles from running over the Kids, he says. The funny part is that Mr. Wehr has noth= ing to do with the selling of bicyeles.

View By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

Traveler Finds Spirit of Courage

And Beauty in Salt Lake City,

ACATION NOTES: Salt Lake City sits in one of the loveliest valleys on earth and is circled by glorious mountains, The width of its streets is proverbial, One has a sense of lightness and freedom there, feeling akin to the gulls, to whom the Mormon fathers have built a monument. The incredible fact about Salt Lake City is that men ever were able to reach its site. As the miles speed by, the motorist is impressed once again with the undaunted spirit of the pioneers, What dreams must have possessed them that they were given strength to cover such a limitless expanse of country, Four thousand men, women and children walked from the Mississippi River to the Great Salt Lake, drageing their household goods in two-wheeled carts behind them, Think that over, Softies. Utah has the third most expensive capital builds ing in the nation, Its silvery dome decorates a high hill and dominates the whole city. The friendliness of the isolated lingers in the Mormon stronghold gracious and kind. They do not

community stil Its people are practice polygamy

| and are less inclined to multiple marriages than the

| inhabitants of most howl |

American cities The patriarchs who took several wives—-in order to populate the state quickly with Mormons, so they sald--set, up some pretty wise regulations for matrie mony just the same. The man who couldn't supe port them was not permitted additional wives, and he didn't even get the first one if he indulged in liquor, profanity or tobacco, Built of courage, with morality as a cornerstone, its ideals the ideals of upright men, whatever may have been their creed, Salt Lake City remains today one of the few cities with character in the United States. It stands for something beside money get. ting and bigness, It possesses a soul. The ghosts of the grave who endured for their faith still walk there in the starlit night.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents

NPORTUNATELY for its reputation, alchemy has too often heen thought of only as the search

| after a way of changing baser metals into gold, a

profession followed mainly hy charlatans practising

[ their arts at the expense of the eredulous

PRELUDE TO CHEMISTRY (Macmillan), hows ever, elevates this science—or pseudo-science-tn its true dignity. Here John Read, himself a professor of chemistry, goes back to the earliest records of alchemic practice, and traces it up to the time when chemistry became an established science, Dr. Read treats the subject with the respect and affection of a scholar and a chemist, He sees in the history of alchemy the history of mankind's groping after a philosophy of life, a union of spirit and mate ter, the perfection of the universe, He interprets the involved and luxuriant symbolism of the alchemia treatises, and in so doing reveals the poetry and the mysticism of this long and devout quest for truth,

\d ” ”

ERIODICALLY Waldo Frank feels called upon te expose Americans and all their idiosyncrasies, IN THE AMERICAN JUNGLE (Farrar) is a collection of critical essays in which the author again gives America and her natives the once-over, The book will be best enjoyed by those who do not object to being thus exposed, Included in the contents are: Boom Year Sketches; Murder as Bad Art; Ennobling Our Crimfinals; In Defense of Our Vulgarity; Movies and the Masses: Pseudo-literature, “A Terre Haute Hotel" is of local interest as il was written while the author was jailed in Terre Haute with Earl Browder,

St A

OR Ce DR ee Dey will