Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 August 1937 — Page 16

CTTTRSDAY. AUG. 81.1987,

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PAGE 16 \ The Indianapolis Times

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MONDAY, AUG. 30, 1937

HOW COSTLY?

HERE is a surprising amount of quibbling over the pro-

posal to spend $30,000 to reduce traffic deaths and |

accidents in Indianapolis, one of America’s most dangerous cities. Surprising because many times that amount can be saved by a rounded safety program. Not even considering the dead and maimed and injured, the cash loss from avoidable accidents is an appalling waste. The National Safety Council estimates that traffic accidents last year cost $12.75 per capita. On this basis, the total for Indianapolis alone would run into millions. Dr. Charles W. Myers, City Hospital superintendent, says taxpayers here last year paid a hospital bill of $50,000 to treat accident victims who had no money.

a year in unpaid accident bills. The Safety Council estimates that 37 per cent of the cost of the average 100-mile motor trip last year was charged to accidents, the breakdown showing: Gasoline, $1.50; oil, 20 cents; tires, 19 cents; accidents, 71 cents. And the City Council haggles over spending 20 cents per capita to turn a battleground into a city of safe streets!

“WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY ...”

VER the week-end, press dispatches tell us, 16 giant | Japanese planes “rained tons of explosives into the | Said one |

humanity-packed Nantao quarter” of Shanghai. story:

“The attackers, divided into squadrons of four ships |

each, swept over the sector several times, leaving death and destruction in a half-mile area. “Widespread fires quickly licked the debris spread by the bombs and many of those who escaped the hurtling projectiles were burned to death.

“Shrieks of the fear-maddened populace rushing wildly in every direction mingled with the groans of the dying and the roar of the spreading flames. Nantao became a veritable inferno. “The raid was another of Japan's remorseless campaigns to terrorize noncombatant acreas. Chinese authorities said the airmen had no particular target, but were only trying to terrify and intimidate helpless citizens.” Nantao is part of the old Chinese city of Shanghai. is well-known to many Americans. It has no commercial, industrial or military importance. It is not fortified. Chiefly it is one of the “sights” tourists like to see. The complete destruction of Nantao would not affect the ultimate course of the war one iota. Nor, for that matter, would the destruction of all Shanghai. Shanghai itself is not vital to the defense of Chinas Sincere friends of Japan, among whom we class ourselves, feel like weeping when they read such news as the above. Japan is the wonder-nation of our modern world.

ism and become one of the greatest powers on earth. Oct. 14, 1867, which marked the Shogunate’s fall and the birth of modern Japan, unquestionably was one of the great turn-ing-points of history. A virile, admirable and courageous people, able to contribute enormously to civilization, then took its place in the international community. No nation ever made swifter progress.

Then after the World War, Japan signed the Covenant

of the League of Nations, the Washington Naval and Far | Eastern peace treaties, and the Kellogg Pact outlawing ag- |

gressive war.

But suddenly something seemed to “let go” in her Her ad- |

national mind. Japan scrapped all her pledges. vance toward collective peace seemed to go into reverse.

In 12 months she slipped back 50 years, to a time when | And this reversion to the old | 20th century | hombers, machine guns and dreadnaughts, made a frightful |

force was all that counted. code of take-what-you-can, coupled with

combination.

Ancient China, huge but weak, apparently has become | her victim, with no holds barred. With reckless abandon her | soldiery appears to be creating horror just for horror’s sake. |

Japan is fast becoming her own worst enemy. A sort of mass madness seems to have taken complete possession of her—a madness which may yet lead to her own undoing.

MAY HER TRIBE INCREASE HURRAH for Hungary! She is going to start paying a little on her debt to the United States. It is not much, to be sure, but oh how badly our Treasury needs every penny it can get! Hungary has agreed voluntarily to pay us $19,656 a year for the next three years, just to let us know that she hasn't forgotten us but instead really has taken seriously those semiannual duns our State Department has been sending out since the Hoover moratorium. That is less than a fourth of the amount she is supposed to be paying every year, and will hardly make a dent in the $416,000 which she is in arrears let alone the $1,965,632 balance due. And it is a many-decimaled fraction—about .000,001,787th—of the 11-billion dollar total still due from all our European war debtors. Nevertheless we can use that $19,656. And how! Let us not, in our preoccupation with arithmetic, forget to do honor to Finland—good old Finland, who resumed her payments right after the moratorium and has kept right on without missing an installment. And let us hope that the contagion of her good example and Hungary's partial emulation will spread over the whole of Europe. For in the time it has taken you to read this, the breathing spell of one minute and 23 seconds has expired and we taxpayers are back again digging in the ditch to support our Government in the style to which it has become accustomed. “

National figures | show a loss to hospitals of from $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 |

It |

In | much less than a century she has emerged from medieval- |

CRESS RY

III TRS AID FB PSST 7 7 A aH LE ry & go 4 Lf 2 gs

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Embarrassing Moments—By

Herblock

MAYBE YOU DON'T PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES WELL ENOUGH = MAYBE SOMETHING THE MATTER WITH WORKING CONDITIONS = PERHAPS THE LABOR BOARD OR SOMEBODY OUGHT TO

LOOK INTO THIS

MONDAY, aud 30, 1937

By Golly, the Old Goose Can Still Produce !—By Talburt,

Fair Enough

Ry Westbrook Pegler

Now That Mysterious Has Lost Incognito, a Public Test Of His Prowess Is Held in Order.

EW YORK, Aug. 30.—The saga of mys- |

| Honorable Mayor of our city? When | our

terious John Montague, the Paul Bunyan of the golf course, the locker room and the motor highways, continues in the same goofy tenor even in the honorable courts of New York State. His incognito destroyed by publicity, the mighty man who is said to have hit a golf ball more than a quarter of a mile not only once but often and to have picked sparrows off a wire with a niblick at 50 yards was returned to Elizabethtown, N. Y., to answer a seven-year-old charge

{ of robbery.

There he was described by Supreme Court Justice Brewer as a modern Jean Valjean, perhaps to his own surprise, for he never revealed his occupation to his friends in California, and heard the judge refer to him as a useful RR citizen of the far-away land of A RY 3 Hollywood, Cal. PAE Perhaps his prowess was exaggerated slightly in the telling. He wouldn’t play tournament golf, which would have revealed just how good he was by ‘comparison with the best, because he just didn't want to. He might have become

Mr. Pegler

heavyweight champion

of the world considering the quality of some of the |

bums who were winning-—and losing—the title during some of his years in Hollywood, but he didn’t care to be heavyweight champion of the world. n un un EVERTHELESS and in spite of a firm determination never to let anyone take his picture for publication, he did become famous, and his admiring friends in Hollywood were astonished one day when a New York trooper dropped off a train and picked him up under the name of La Verne Moore. Thus in one unhappy hour the modesty of the mighty Montague, his distaste for high competitive title in sport and his disdain for the rewards thereof as well as his aversion to personal publicity all were explained away.

The New York judge, however, would seem to have information which is not shared even now by some

Montague | | CHARGES GAS

| |

The Hoosier Forum

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

UTILITY IS ANTIUNION By Luther Horton What is the matter

with the |

President and our Governor |

| are bending every effort to establish

| better

relationship between labor

| and capital and backing the Wagner | act, here in our fair city we have

| using every tactic conceivable to |neise occasioned by police escorts, |

a city-owned gas company that is

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

| defeat legitimate organization of its | marriage merry-go-rounds on the

| | { | | | |

| |

| National Labor Relations Board and | state board charging the Citizens

employees. It is sponsoring independent unions, which in reality are being organized by foremen and key men and are nothing more or less than company unions. There are charges filed with the

Gas & Coke Utility with discharging five men for union activity, some of whom gave 14 years satisfactory service until they joined the United Mine Workers of America. Then they were discharged immediately for inefficiency. In fairness to our President and | our citizens of Indianapolis, are we | going to permit our city government to foster or sponsor such a policy? Officials of the Citizens Gas Co. repeatedly have posted notices to the employees to the effect that they did ‘not come under the Wagner act.

Is our Mayor going

to permit

| such men to impose on the citizens |

| and

| | | | | | | | |

| managed by a Board of Directors

of the famous men and women who knew him best

in Hollywood. To them his source of wealth during seven years of luxurious ease in Hollywood :is still a mystery, for he was not know as a toiler or artist.

And yet the learned judge said, in admitting Jean

have made your life over and have been a useful and respected, and, I think it may be added, a distinguished citizen of a far-away land.” n un "

I was a swell speech that the judge delivered and fitter for the nomination of a county chairman than a lecture to one accused of felonious doing, but it still leaves the friends of the defendant in the dark as to where he got his money. He was known as one who would bet adult chunks on impromptu issues either in golf or cards and was said to carry his funds in travelers’ checks by some peculiar preference. It would be unwise to speculate on the mighty Montacue’s fate at the hands of the court, but now that the wraps are off the man it is worth hoping that he will be allowed to enter the tournaments and the ring to demonstrate whether he is all that legend

| death or resignation, the remaining | members of the Board of Trustees {nominate someone to fill : : | cancy and the Mayor must appoint Yor « " iy na por: | y 3, : Valjean to bail, “For upward of six or seven years you | from names nominated in such a | fashion.

| {

| declined to comment.

| | | |

said of him. That could almost be called the public's |

due.

{ unit, distinct and apart from the

| Board

workers of our city in that | fashion? If so, the voters of Indi- | anapolis will remember it.

MAYOR EXPLAINS TOSITION IN GAS CASE By Mayor John W. Kern The management of the Citizens | Gas & Coke Utility is vested in | the Indianapolis Utilities District, which functions as a governmental | Civil City of Indianapolis. It is chosen annually by a perpetuated Board of Trustees. When vacancy occurs of Trustees by

the of

on reason

the va-

The Mayor of Indianapolis is not

(Thomas L. Kemp, general manager of Citizens Gas & Coke Utility, | Editor's

Note).

” n EJ TERMS INDIANAPOLIS “LARGEST HICK-TOWN” | By W. E. D.

| Circle and the small-town stunts of | this populace.

unlike other progressive cities is

noise. We Hoosiers are noted every-

where for our habit of noise-making. | Other communities have legislated |

the strip-tease out bingo and “respectable” gambling, and the bank nights, but they run

full-blast here in the largest hick- |

town in America.

liberties, why cannot it be

here? n ” 2

DEFENDS VANNUYS FOR COURT STAND By S. D. D. In the past few months numerous articles have appeared in the Forum

criticizing Senator VanNuys for his | | stand on the Supreme Court Bill.

Some have said they would repudi-

| ate the entire ticket if he is a can- |

didate.

We do not elect our representa- | | tives | ly say ves to whatever is put before |

to sit in Washington and mere-

them. We want men with the cour-

AUGUST JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY Then the sun is ever shining And the sky is turquoise blue; Then the flowers along the wayside "Run to gold and purple hue.

There's a glow to every apple, And each peach's cheek turns rose; While the breeze through wax like cornfields Whispers music as it blows.

Then the fishes bite most likely; Then a tent seems just to meet The demands of all our dreaming, And our life is most complete.

August is a bit of heaven When the world is at its best. Give a man this month to live in, He can suffer through the rest.

DAILY THOUGHT Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart.—Psalms 97, 11.

OTHING but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which

making no attempt to ban blatant | nei weed out errors.

| officials think the election was a | mandate to do anything they so de-

| sire and say it has public support. | If such measures as Senator Van- |

| age to vote their convictions. Some |

| World Court Bills, have merit, why

| not put them before the electorate |

in amendment form.

The Supreme Court Bill is equiva- | lent to an amendment to abolish the | Court, and its attempt to make it |

| a Court of yesmen is so unethical it | { will be thrown at the party for gen-

: i | erations, just the attempt. | Indianapolis is the only city that | J |

| has not banned the police escort and | average, but he is overambitious and |

Our President has a good batting | needs men like Senator VanNuys oo

Senator VanNuys is liberal and |

| Nuys refused to be told how to vote | on, notably the Supreme Court and |

‘Washington

By Raymond Clapper

Secretary Hull, Whose Efforts for Peace Seem to Be Futile, Declared Most Tragic Public Figure Today.

(Heywood Broun Is on Vacation)

ASHINGTON, Aug. 30.——When Secretary of State Cordell Hull appeared at his press conference, he had just received word that the British Ambassador to China had been critically wounded by machine-gun fire from a Japanese airplane, while driving by automobile along a country road to Shanghai, Secretary Hull was asked to comment. He expressed his great regret, of course, but what could he really say?

What could anybody say, not only about this unfortunate neue

of town, also |

| on

has gone down the line on most of {the program. You find practically | all his opposition among party job | holders and officials, pressure being on them from the organization;

| they can’t speak their own mind. supporting Senator VanNuys.

| rope we would hang ourselves is | proving to be true. For the sake {of party harmony, and we need it, | Senator VanNuys should be unop-

| posed. Looking to future elections, | the Democrats in Indiana cannot |

afford internal friction. un n

n | U. 8. HISTORY BOOK | ASKED FOR MINTON

By A. M. McKinnon

son's statement that when the | Workers Alliance unemployed march Washington that President | Roosevelt may do the same as

| Hoover—call out the troops. Not

| on your life, Hon. Hugh. This march |

does not contain all unemployed and | is well financed, and the object of | the march has another angle to it | besides unemployment. I wonder what Mr. Johnson would think if the President would invite

them in to Potomac Park to fill the | tents left by the Boy Scouts Jam- |

I fully agree with “Tired Office | would sacrifice a greater good t0|is much strife yet to come in this | Worker” in his protest against the a less—Whately.

' fight,

| There is a much larger group of | citizens, making less noise, however, |

The statement of the opposition five years ago that if given enough |

I do not agree with Hugh John- |

tral diplomat, an innocent victim | BB : of modern barbarism, but also ! Sa about the hundreds upon hun i dreds of innocent men, women and children who have been slaugh=Goi tered helplessly from the air in i Shanghai as they have been through the months in Spain? Words are not adequate, Lane guage has not kept pace with ine ventive genius for mass destruce tion. Of all public men today, Sece retary Hull is the most tragic fig ure. He is a tragic figure because he sees so clearly what the world needs, and he has striven with such competent persistence to convince the world that there will be more for all through peaceful and freely flow= ing commerce than through mutual destruction, But his common sense strikes like a fragile wand against the steeled determination of those who choose war. There is nothing more tragic in this world than a noble spirit who finds himself helpless in the midst of encircling folly.

Mr. Clapper

" ”n ” HANGHAI and Madrid are giving us a ghastly demonstration of what Col. Charles Lindbergh warned against when he spoke to the German Air Ministry in Berlin two years ago. He saw then that with the airplane a new kind of warfare was about to be born. “It is no longer possible,” Col. Lindbergh said, “to shield the heart of a country with its army. Armies can no more stop an air attack than a suit of mail can stop a rifle bullet. “We can no longer protect our families with an army. Our libraries, our museums—every institution which we value most is laid bare to bombardment. “When I see that within a day or two damage can be done which no time can replace, I begin to realize we must look for a new type of securily—security which rests in intelligence, not in forts.” n

un n N Shanghai as in Spain, we are witnessing for the first time what air war can be. You can only retaliate by killing an equal number of helpless women and children in some other country. These raids don’t decide wars. They only add new horror to them. It is civilized man’s substitute for the torture of prisoners, practiced in primitive warfare. This is the machine-age barbarism. When Carlyle said that nine meals were all that stood between civilization and barbarism, he didn't know that we would soon invent strange machines so that we could still have our meals and barbarism too. I saw a quotation a few days ago which must exe press what Secretary Hull is thinking as he sees the world he hoped for being crushed irresistibly unde the world that is— “Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny.” Tt wouldn't be so bad if there was anything that could be done about it.

General Hugh Johnson Says—

You Can't Get Much Rise Out of Average Man on Public Spending Question; but Wait Until Wife Learns How Her Budget Is Being Hit.

ETHANY BEACH, Del, Aug. 30.—You can't get any rise out of the average man by telling him that the combined public debt is almost 57 billions, or that all government costs us about 18!: billions and we collect only 127: billions in taxes—piling up more debt at about six billions a year. It's like the news that he has several million red cells in every teaspoonful of his blood. He just says: “So what?” If you say the spending is $580 per year per family or nearly 30 per cent of the average family income— the greatest per-family spending by any Government on earth—he is apt to tell you that he doesn’t pay it. It is true that only 70 per cent of it is paid in taxes. We go in debt for the rest. But the 70 per cent is more than $400 a family and he is going to pay the other $180 some day—with interest. Still you can’t make Joe Zilch, whe is grubbing along on say $1800 a year, get excited about this. He never sees a tax collector. Furthermore, if he has swallowed the Hopkins brand of economics, he will hand you this: ” n a

HAT do I care if Roosevelt takes it away from you and gives it to me in the more abundant life? It's the rich that pay for this spending in taxes—not me.” All this is a perfect portrait of a sucker selling himself a box of candy-coated poison. Out of that 12% billions of yearly taxes, personal income tax, which is the only tax levied on “ability

The Washington Merry-Go-Round

Grain Farmers in Revolt Against Collections by Farm Credit Agency:

Uncle Sam Wants Old Loa

to pay,” brings in about one billion, and gift and death taxes, which the rich also pay, about 2 bil-

per cent of all taxes, is largely passed on to the consumer and paid by rich and poor alike.

to 43 billions. ceipt, but they pay in increased rents, fares and prices to cover the tax element of cost. But Spivins at $2000 a year actually pays about $400 of it for taxes. ” Ww Ww F we spend say 500 millions for TVA, resettlement and the more balmy boondoggling in WPA, it is almost exactly what we take in Federal taxes on tobacco—6 cents for every package of cigarets smoked by anybody. We will never get our spending down until we find some way of letting every man know exactly what we are nicking him in taxes. Who cares what the spending is if he thinks the other fellow pays for it? But boy, wait till Mrs. Spivins finds out that she has lost, in hidden taxes, from Bill's $2000 salary, $400 a year—or as much as the grocery bill—to pay for building rabbit refuges for resettlement on Assowman Creek. She will be ready to go out and balance

the budget with a meat ax?

lion. All the rest—11 billion dollars a year, nearly 90 |

The preperty tax—on railroads, buildings, real |

estate and, in small part, on personal property, comes | The poor may hever see a tax re- | | arms over the demand that they fork over the first

| strikes and other tactics against foreclosures, has |

Government

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen |

ASHINGTON, Aug. 30.—Grain belt farmers are | staging a new revolt against the mortgage | collector—this time none other than Uncle Sam, in the person of the Farm Credit Administration. The FCA is trying to collect old seed and feed loans made during the drought and depression years. The growers, many of them harvesting good crops at high prices for the first time in years, are up in

real money they have seen in a long time. : The farmers bitterly accuse the FCA of being “heartless” and “banker minded,” and are bomparding their Senators and Congressmen with demands that they do something about the matter. " Ww u HE National Farm Holiday Association, which in 1932 and 1933 made national news with its milk

leaped into the fray and is urging growers to refuse to pay their loans. “No jury this side of heaven,” it declared in a recent issue of its official publication, “would conviet a farmer if he provides for his family even out of mortgaged crops.” The association urges the FCA to forego its loan-payment demands on the ground that most of the debtor farmers are too impoverished to pay their accounts and still have enough left over

| a total of $151,000,000 in seed and feed loans.

ns Paid With Their First Real Cash in Years,

to meet living expenses and plant a new crop. It

| claims that if the FCA persists in its policy many

farmers will be forced back on relief rolls. ” ” n HE FCA contends it has no choice, but must act to comply with the law. It points out that a large number of the debts are of several years’ stande ing, that leniency repeatedly has been granted, and that Congress, which passed the act requiring repay= ment, alone has the power to give relief. As Congress adjourned without doing anything about the matter, the FCA holds there is nothing it can do but to try to collect. Illustrative of the difficulty it has encountered in obtaining repayments are the following figures: Since 1933 approximately 1,383,000 farmers have received To date 1,256,000 farmers still owe $130,000,000 in unpaid bal ances. n ” ” NE of the second-hand book-stores on Washinge ton’s 9th St. is selling copies of the famous 1038 Democratic campaign book for 10 cents apiece, The Democratic National Committee peddled the volume to corporations for $250 and up. The store owner reports that his stock of the

‘books is moving very slowly despite their low price,

He says he is considering cutting it to 5 cents a copy.

“