Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 September 1937 — Page 12

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WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 8, 1937

CITY PROGRESS . ROWLAND ALLEN’S explanation of the City Merit Commission and its work on Page 11 is the story of a significant chapter in our municipal government. “The right man for the right job is definitely the goal _...in selection of policemen and firemen,” says the Commission chairman. A nonpolitical system for selecting, training and promoting men is now in force. Wirepulling is out and a person’s ability to get or hold a job doesn’t depend on gaining favor with the patronage bosses. That kind of unfair competition is ruled out. Theoretically these departments have had the merit system for the past two years, under the 1935 law. Actually, however, the law was so faulty that the plan had the taint of spoils despite the Merit Commission's’ efforts. The 1937 revision makes possible the present program. The law needs further tightening to simplify medical examinations and to close the loophole permitting the Safety Board to select classes of applicants. The latter weakness has been remedied voluntarily but it should be corrected by law. Most important is the fact that Mr. Allen speaks with Administration approval when he says: “It is the definite intention of the City Administration and the Merit Commission to rigidly comply with its (the new law’s) letter and spirit. They urge the understanding and encouragement of all citizens as this new law is carried out.” Of the City’s 3273 employees, 1152, or more than onethird, are under the merit system today. That is a fine start. It is: a tribute to the present City Administration that it has taken seriously the nations) trend toward merit-

chosen public personnel. The law should be strengthened and broadened to take

in other departments. An efficient personnel program reaches its maximum efficiency when applied to the entire service. And as this career service grows Indianapolis will get more for its tax dollars under a better manned city government.

THE PRESIDENTS TOUR RANKLIN ROOSEVELT soon will travel to the Pacific

Northwest to have a look at the great public works which his Administration has built, to learn about economic conditions, and to appraise the trend of public opinion.

Whenever he steps onto the rear platform, micro-

phones will be shoved at him and cameras will click in his face. -At every stop political leaders and regional Government chieftains will board his train, to impress the local

citizens with their own importance, and will ride on to the |

next stop, seated if possible in the President’s private car, trying to earn the free ride by telling him what they think he wants to hear. . The political yes-men who surround Franklin Roosevelt* are perhaps as numerous as any President has been blessed with. But far better than most men in high office Frankiin | ‘Roosevelt has kept the common touch. The Institute of ‘Public Opinion, which accurately forecast his overwhelming re-election in 1936, now reports—just as accurately, we believe—that a large majority of the people are still for the President and his New Deal objectives. (Incidentally, the same Institute, by the same polling methods, has disclosed that a majority at the same time disapprove some of Mr. Roosevelt's policies, including his borrowing-spending program and his abortive court plan.) : No small part of the President’s success in gaining and holding public support has been his ability, as a realistic politician and statesman, to overcome mistakes, abandon methods that fail, and to go over the heads of political hitch-hikers in his search for information and advice. Because of his record we give little credence to published reports .that on his tour through the country Mr. Roosevelt intends to spread political poison against those Senators who opposed his court plan. Mr. Roosevelt is not a small and spiteful man. If he were he would never have achieved all that he has. And he must know that to accomplish the remainder of what the majority of the people trust him to accomplish he will have no time for cheap political revenge.

HIZZONER ON WAR DAY'S TEXT: Statement made by Hizzoner, the eminent Judge Mattingly of the District of. Columbia Police Court. Hizzoner told a soldier arrested for drunkenness to straighten himself out, for he’d soon be needed to fight “the Japanese war.” Hizzoner, further combining judicial re-

straint with good taste and good sense, said he hoped the

young soldier would wipe the Japanese off the face of the earth. : : The young soldier said “yessir.” ' Now Judge Mattingly will be 66 on Sept. 14. He is— and this is no slur—too old to fight. But he’s not too old to make war. ; Such talk as his is the stuff of which the war spirit has been made ever since the prognathous Dawn Man learned to mutter.

INDIANA APPLE CROP a

OU may expect to see, eat and hear more about baked apples and deep-dish cobblers this winter than for many a year. Indiana has a bumper apple crop—about 3,390,000 bushels, or double the 1936 yield. Probably half the crop will be sold commercially. When apple growers checked up this sunmmer and found that the U. S. crop was going to total 202 million ‘bushels, they didn’t sit back and wait for a glutted market to ruin prices. They organized a campaign. They formed co-operative groups and stabilization committees. They £ raised $500,000 for an advertising drive. The World’s hig- : gest apple producers, they sought new export markets. Some more apple pie, please, and a cider toast to such enterprise! '

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By Westbrook Pegler

Change in 'Status' of Newspaper Copy Boys Recalls to Mind Tale Of. ‘Gallagher’ of United Press.

EW YORK, Sept. 8.—There has been a -

strange development in the newspaper shops of this country in the last few years. The office boy has become a class conscious man, measuring his time by the clock, storing up his overtime and voting “strike” or. “no strike” on an equal footing with the star rewrite man. It was not always thus.

Richard Harding Davis wrote in his story called “Gallagher,” the greatest fiction pieces about an office boy that was ever put to paper.. Gallagher helped the star reporter scoop the town on the story of a bootleg prize fight that was produced in a barn out in the suburbs. ' An incorrigible little devil he was, but heart and soul a newspaper reporter of the old school. We had a ‘Gallagher in the United Press shop in New York by the name of Harold Manning, he was an Irish kid about 15 years old. known to one and all as Red. Red Manning was’ very fresh. His principal duty was to make “books,” as they were called in the press association shops, and keep a large supply on hand for emergencies. A “book” was a combination of flimsy paper and on sheets, and it took skill and industry to keep enough of them hidden away in odd corners to meet such terrible trials as a Triangle factory fire or a Titanic disaster.

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Mr. Pegler

= = un N those crises, an operator would type off only a couple of words or a couple of lines per book, then rip it out of the typewriter and toss it over to the man who was feeding outgoing wires. The kid was expected to produce a new pile of books from some: inexhaustible source to meet these demands. Meantime, he also had to rip off the flimsy sheets

and stab them onto spikes around the shop for the writers and wire editors, and he was expected to say “Bulletin!” if the news on the sheet was urgent or “Flash!” if it was extra urgent. Red Manning did all this, and he was a fine office boy except that he was inclined to be fresh beyond the tolerance of older men. So once, after the patience of his elders was exhausted, he was fired. After that, for several months in our little shop, we had a dreadful succession of indifferent, lazy stupid little misfits. They came and went day by day. They would lay off and leave us in a bad fix when they felt that way, and they never had any books stuck Away in secret places for emergencies, as Red always had. Finally, on election night in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson was beating Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, things were in a terrible jam. . 2 ” 4 N this crisis the boss heard a familiar voice at his ear, crying “Bulletin!” and looked up to see our

old friend Red Manning. He wanted to kiss Red. Hs

looked over at the office boy’s desk, where two little

Sicilians had been doing the work of one Irishman for several weeks and doing it badly. “I threw them bums out,” Red said. “You need a newspaper man on a. night like tonight. ‘Bulletin!’ ” Red wasn't exactly rehired. He just came back to Jor. and he stayed on until he died, a couple of years ater One of the last memories of Red Manning was an office bulletin—

“Notice—Hereafter you are requested to call me - | gether and make some sort of com-

Harold and stop calling me Red.”

ETHANY BEACH, Del, Sept. 8—“There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea four which I know not.” That’s the way Solomon put it, but he was only talking about an eagle, a snake, & ship and a man with a maid. I don’t know four things also. Why Mr. McGrady wasn’t jnade Secretary of Labor; why ... puddled along for four years without finding out all about the jobless; why we don’t make a single effective move to decrease our deficits in Federal finance, and why, since we are committed to wages-and-hours and farm

legislation, we don’t draft bills for it that have a chance of working.

All but one of Solomon’s brain-twisters have been

worked out, but they were easy to begin with, as com pared with these perplexities. Here are four things of vital national importance about the doing of which there is hardly any room for argument.

os 2 #

AKE the McGrady business. The almost universal chant of mewspapers’ and commentators’ praise ‘of hint when he left was a better send-off than any other retiring official has had. It indicated clearly the stature to which he has grown in public recognition, confidence and respect. This unusual standing comes after four years of

the most ‘intense dousing into the hottest stews and

controversial messes in recent history. It would have

- ; ® | The Hoosier Forum I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

BOTH SIDES PRESENTED ON TROLLEY SPEED By Trolley and Bus Driver

I want to congratulate, the officials of the City of Indianapolis on conducting the safety campaign and also give our honorable judges, Mr. Karabell and Mr. Myers, all the praise that can be given them for their part in cutting down the recklessness that has been on our streets for a long time. But first I want to tell them that they have us trolley and bus drivers all wrong when they condemn us as not wanting to do our part in the safety campaign. We are more than willing to do eur share. At present, Indianapolis has the finest streetcar and bus equipment in the United States. But nowhere else can be found any faster schedules than those the drivers have to maintain. It ‘is impossible to maintain these schedules under the existing speed laws. If we can’t run according to our time-card, younger men replace us. All we agk is that we be given credit for what we do and not be condemned. We hope Judges Karabell and Myers will see our side of the question, because as a member of our local union here, I know we are behind them 100 per cent.

By James P. Tretton Indianapolis Street Railway €o. Vice President and General Manager In answer to charges of the trolley driver that “it is impossible to maintain bus schedules under the existing speed laws,” I wish to repeat a statement made several days ago that all trackless trolley and bus schedules have been examined and corrected to conform with the speed laws. Our examinations revealed one maladjustment in schedule. This one, on N, Pennsylvania St, was corrected and we now are sure that no bus or trackless trolley operator is forced to exceed any speed law to maintain his operating schedule. As for statements that drivers were told not to sign affidavits in court on traffic charges, these are entirely untrue. In the particular incident which opened the controversy in Municipal Court several days ago, the bus driver failed to sign an affidavit because he said he did not see the defendant actually commit any offense. ” = ” SEES C. IL O. and A. F. of L. ENGAGED IN DOG FIGHT

By William Murphy, Workers Alliance of America : This is addressed to workers: You are being approached by members of the American Federation of Labor and the Committee for Industrial Organization in regard to identifying with a labor organization to represent you in a movement to better your working conditions and to secure a living | | wage. Eventually they will come to-

General Hugh Johnson Says—

Resignation of McGrady From His Federal Job Raises Four Questions, ‘Foremost of Which Is 'Why Wasn't He Made U. S. Secretary of Labor?’

(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.)

promise with the ultimate end that one organization or the other will absorb the other and you will be left out in the cold with membership in a unit that will leave you at sea as to what it is all about, with nothing but a receipt to show that you ever belonged to anything that ever functioned.

As a concrete example we respectTully call your attention to the various places where the one outfit signed contracts only to have the other come in and organize the same unit with the same members and present a condition of chaos that would take a Philadelphia lawyer to untangle. All that you have to do is to follow your newspapers each day and you will learn the truth as an agreeable surprise. The Workers’ Alliance of America presents you with the only method of organizing that you can depend on and spares you the ignominy of presenting you with nothing better than a cat and dog fight over who shall be boss. ” » ” PRAISES CARTOON OF

‘UNINVITED GUESTS’ By Ivan R. Farr, Edinburg

The cartoon “The Onward-and-Upward Hikers Club” by Herblock in The Times was indeed amusing and at the same time tragic in its implications. The hitch-hikers were having a roadside banquet. Just four of them seemed to have any right to be there, but when the basket was ready to be enjoyed, two uninvited guests were “hogging” the basket. What a pity! What a tragedy! The two uninvited guests were High

THE CALL OF FAME

By VIRGINIA POTTER

When you've-traveled far from home ~ and friends, When you fame and money regard, Won’t you measure the cost and try to see, What you've left in your own back yard? Silver is fine, and means a lot, I know— But can it bring you real content? Can’t you see, the things that are free, : Are still yours when your money is spent?

DAILY THOUGHT

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed lead me to the rock that is higher than I.— Psalms 61, 2.

1s not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him ‘after.—Shakespeare.

Cost of Living and High Cost of Government. Business and Labor were represented as sitting together,

| as also were Farm Income and the

Salary Man. Natural pairing, isn't it? Business and Labor are dependent upon each other, and so the Salaried Man, the professional and business man, is dependent on farm income.

Co-operation Needed

What could: one do without the other? Yet, because of their inability to co-operate, they have encouraged two uninvited: guests at their own banquet. Farm income has been content to receive subsidies in all forms from a Government which has earned the title “Santa Claus’ and has allowed lands and other productive means to languish, subside, and die. Men who train to be farmers by attending the State Agricultural Colleges learn that production is the keynote of good farming and then after graduation learn an easier applied theory—‘“let your ground lie idle, the Government will give you a subsidy.” The salaried man is getting his thousands. of dollars because the company for which he works is content to write checks for dividends rather than pay salaries to its workers. not corrected yet. » Where Blame Rests

Labor, in the cartoon, is complaining - while seemingly innocent of the great conspiracy of which he is a party. “Shovei- leaners,” “sewing parties,” “public works improvements,” “flag-wavers,”’--all receiving wages regardless of the work done. Business certainly is to blame for the two uninvited guests by coercive tactics, “swinging the big stick,” instigating strikes and riots, and dividing factories and plants’ into opposing forces. Herblock is right in portraying the ‘uninvited guests as principals of the banquet, and they will continue so as long as the situation remains as it is. You cannot get something worthwhile for nothing. ca ele VIEWS COLISEUM PRCJECT AS TAX BOOSTER By H. Seeger : The creation of a coliseum taxing district of City and County areas is another . addition fp the existing multiples which are in conflict with the Constitution of the State, which forbids bond issues or debt beyond 2 per cent of the value of taxable property within the taxable area. There are a dozen tax-levying units existing now, created to sidestep the constitutional prohibition of 3 per cent limitation.” Now comes another to create.another tax to support a white elephant coliseum. The boys who own the property and propose to erect the building to lease to the city know that the taxpayer will foot the bill in taxes to make up the lossos from deficient revenue for coliseura rentals.” If it were a sound finar¢ial proposition private capital would operate it.

New Deal Leaders, Concerned Over Ra

Here is one evil America has |

‘thing or other.

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

Prehistoric Sluggers Close Their Soft Ball Season and Reynolds: Struggles Into Shape for Arena:

NEW YORK, Sept. 8.—All the members of the Prehistoric Sluggers have been notified that the soft ball baseball season is over and that we should disperse quietly, There was a little talk of getting up a soft

player football eleven, but nothing came of it, and so I have gone back to training my heavyeweight, Quentin Reynolds, who will fight under the name of Larruping Lennie. Experienced trainers have told me that when a fighter approaches the peak of condition he grows very cross and surly. Len« nie must be practically at razof edge. He hasn't had a civil word for any man in a month. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to get him out of bed at noon for his road work. Yesterday I had to use stratagem. As I opened the door I shouted that J. Edgar Hoover was downstairs and that the place was raided. I wonder who it was I saw sliding down the rainspout. Lennie is a great one for practical jokes. There is only one part of the training regime to which my heavyweight takes kindly. He always looks forward to the evening hour when he is allowed to practice the short radio speech which he is to make at the end of the fight. In fact, I have written three for him. One is based on the assumption that: he has been awarded the victory by a crooked decision, the second is founded on the contingency of his be= ing knocked out, and the third assumes that he is still on his feet at the final bell, although cut: to ribbons. I have advised him to eoncentrate on the second and third orations. 8 # 2 ah i the beginning his handlers suggested that it might be a good idea to teach him a little Welsh, which always goes well under such circumstances, but at the last war council we decided that it might ba better for him to learn English. One novelty in Lennie’s after-the-bell speerh; is that it will be addressed to his uncle, a Jerry somes Lennie says that Uncle Jerry is rune ning for office against a Republican doctor named Copeland and that if Uncle Jerry wins he, Lennie, can get a low license number for his automobile—if he can get an automobile. He suggested another innovation, but the board of strategy has discarded it. It was Larruping Lene nie’s notion that at the end of the fight he would turn a somersault just to show the crowd that he was still in good condition. We have vetoed that on the ground that it might be an anticlimax to the somersaults he will turn all through the fight. pe

2 n,n

UT there is only one factor about Lennie’s cone # dition which has me worried. Being afraid that he might go stale, we decided to take him into the village proper last night to see a Shirley Temple pic= ture. As luck would have it the cinema palace pub on a double bill, with Shirley Temple and the Louis~ Farr film as an extra added attraction for the kiddies. In the middle of the seventh round Lennie slumpe in his seat, and we had to carry him to the neares grill, We took turns in pouring brandy down his throat, and finally he came to. “What's the matter?” I asked my prospective heavyweight champion. “1 guess I forgot to tell you when you signed me ap,” he answered, “I can’t stand crowds or the sight‘-of blood.”

Mr. Broun

The Washington Merry-Go- Round

idly Ascending Cost of Living,

Launch a Survey of Monopoly as Prepara ry Move in Meeting Crisis,

been easier in any one of them to lose a reputation than to make one. Yet he came through them all. This ‘resignation comes when all organized labor is splitting into two hostile camps, while the struggle between management and labor intensified and, most unfortunately, when the principal leadership in the labor department, except Mr. McGrady’s, had slipped to the lowest level. s ” ”

O far as I know, Mr. McGrady is the only competent labor-minded expert in this country of sufficient stature to be of help, who is not colored with actual or suspected partisanship for one side or the other in the unfortunate Green-Lewis row. Partisanship there is a disqualification for any job in the Department of Labor. Respected nonpartisanship there is an indispensible for the future. That scrap simply must be settled. The threatened rift between C. I. O. and the Administration, this civil war in labor itself, the growing uncertainty as to legal rights and economic futures, the probability“ of further industrial strife— all these things combine to make a nasty situation ir» which the whole public is vitally interested. Mr. McGrady was the one man who seemed specially designed by training, experience and the circumstances themselves to deal with this major national problem. Just as the combined development of situation and personality became perfectly Clete Mr. McGrady is “deared” out.

By Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen ASHINGTON, Sept. 8—0ld Man High-Cost-of-Living is scheduled to stage a return engagement this fall, and New Deal big shots privately are much concerned. They have good reason to be. Soaring food, clothing and rental costs can wreak more havoc with<the popularity of an Administration than 8 dozen Supreme Court battles. When the pay envelope begins ‘to dwindle in buying power, the housewife starts storming—and that is bad medicine for the government in power. A confidential study by Government economists, recently laid before the President, showed a pronounced upward trend in living costs generally. The report attributed the rise to three chief factors: (1) greater demand for goods as a resuli of improving economic conditions; (2) profiteering, and (3) the huge world expenditures for armament, Particularly alarming to the Whitz House is the skyrocketing of rents. According to figures submitted to the President, rentals in some industrial centers have jumped 50 per cent in recent months. The rethis development are workers In the lower salary brackets, : 2 2 » 8 a preparatory move to meet & possible cost-of-Jvioe crisis, the President quietly has launched ; iy. Headed cistant Attorney

, port disclosed further that the group hit hardest by:

General Robert Jhihs , brilliant young head of the Antitrust Division, a up of Government aces 18 making a careful analysis of the subject. Their report may become>the basis for legislative recommendations; also may p. an important role in the battle over the Wage-Ho bill when it is. resumed next session. There is a very strong undercover. movement in certain quarters to enlarge the Wage-Hour measure . to include trade practices; that is, to transform it into a new NRA bill. Important business interests would like to see this done, and behind the scenes they are busily pulling wires and agitating. The President, and his advisers who wrote the Wage-Hour bill, are vigorously opposed to this and are counting on the monopoly report to furnish hem with ammunition in the fight. 2 5 » OMMERCE Department trade experts are cone vinced that there are 100 million people in the United States who do not brush their teeth. This is the way they arrive at this conclusion: Unpublished figures obtained from the toothbrush industry show an annual sale of 60 million. Since toothbrush users buy an average of two: brushes a year, this means there are only 30 million ‘who rub their: teeth. This number, deducted from 130 million, the pop= ulation of the couniey, leaves 100 million who disdain toothbrushes.