Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 October 1937 — Page 9

Vagabond

From Indiana — Ernie Pyle

North Platte, Neb., Is Surveyed la Fort to Get Cross-Section View of Nation's Relief Problem.

ORTH PLATTE, Neb., Oct. 30.—This

little city is the metropolis of western Nebraska. It claims 15,000 residents. North Platte is on the edge of the West, but it is no longer the West. It is Midwest.

Farming and working on the railroad are the staples of its life. North Platte has big Union Pacific Railroad shops, a Swift packing plant and a Montgomery Ward store.

It has a modern eight-story hotel and a theater. North Platte runs out about 10 blocks in each direction from the business section. It has a lot of nice homes and a shantytown on the southwest edge where people live in old boxcars and cardboard shacks. North Platte is in the belt where, after seven years of drought, they still look forward with hope to next vear. North Platte is neither booming nor broke. It is typical of America—if there is such a town. I have come to North Platte to do a job of crystal gazing into the relief question. I doubt if I could have picked a town in America that is more nearly an “average” of small towns throughout the country. What's true here isn’t true every-

Mr. Pyle

where, but what's true here makes a mighty fine level. |

I am trying to find out, using North Platte as a yardstick, just whether or not a new “national consciousness” has grown up among our people, an attitude of permanently “workin’ for the Guvment.”

The administration of relief in this country is a |

complicated affair. It is handled under 12 different headings, all of them criss-crossing, blocking, duplicating to the point where it is almost impossible to make an intelligent analysis.

Relief Well-Administered

And yet I find relief well-administered here. The one person who comes nearest to being the titular head of relief in this country is Mrs. Fern Jones. She works under the title of County Assistant Director, and is paid by the county and state. She works with, and partly under, the County Commissioners. I asked County Commissioner Virgil Thayer: “Do you see any way that relief can be cut down here?” He shook his head and said, “It just couldn't be done.” Then I asked him, “Could the taxpayers stand any increase in relief?” He shook his head again, sadly, and said, “They can't stand what they're paying now.” Se I said, “It seems to go around in a circle without getting anywhere, doesn't it?” And he said, “It certainly does.”

My Diary

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

Problem of Unemployed Youth

Not Peculiar to United States. YDE PARK, N. Y., Friday—It was raining when we arrived yesterday afternoon. This morning the sky showed signs of clearing. Some guests who had spent the night left us soon after breakfast and I went out for a short ride, but the ground was so muddy that it was not much fun. Perhaps it was just as well, for I might have been tempted to stay out longer. As it was, I reached the cottage just before two bus-loads of people arrived. They were the state directors of the National Youth Administration. The majority of them were men, but we had a sprinkling of women among them. When they gathered in the living room, I thought as I looked around, what a remarkably interesting group of people they were, Each state has it special problems and each state hess met these problems in its own way. Meeting the people working on these problems is extremely exhilarating. It gives one so much food for thought, for it reveals different conditions and the ingenuity with which those conditions have been met. I left the group at 12:45 and drove over to the big house to talk for a few minutes with the Prime Minister of Norway, the Norwegian Minister and his wife. They were lunching with the President and his mother, The Prime Minister told me that when he had been in municipal positions before he had been in the national government he had come in close contact with the questions of unemployed youth. He had found, just as we have, young people who had never had an opportunity to find out what work was like, They finally had to do much as we have done in creating work projects, so that these young people might get their work experience and form habits of industry. Sometimes I wish our country was as small and as homogeneous as Norway or Denmark, but then again I realize how much we would lose that is really valuable to our civilization.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

OUTHERN France with its sun and wind, old terraced gardens crowded with vines and flowers, glimpses of blue Mediterranean and warm hearted, simple minded peasants comes magically to us in PERFUME FROM PROVENCE (Houghton), by the Honorable Lady Fortescue, a book recently given the Library in memory of Mrs. Ovid Butler Jameson. Once begun, the book is read as much for the story between the lines as what is spread upon the pages. Lady Fortescue and her husband, of a famous old English family, left England at the fall of the pound sterling and went to live quietly in a little place in Provence near Grasse. The gallant, kindly, humorous spirit of Lady Fortescue shines through her descriptions of struggles with the French and Italian-speak-ing workmen, the harvests of grapes and olives from their own land, the gathering of flowers for the perfume industry, hair-raising adventures on their moun=tain roads, the pressing of themselves and their automobile into service at a native wedding, and many other delicious bits told with a genius for the descriptive word. The reader pays tribute to the gay, invincible spirit of the writer all the more at the end when she discloses that the warm southland had not been enough to keep her husband alive, and one guesses that the writing of the book has been an offering to his memory. ” ” n OUBTLESS there is no churchgoer who has not burned sometime to speak a word of friendly counsel to the minister to whom he must listen Sunday after Sunday. And just as surely there is no minjster who has not longed at some time in his career for encouragement and advice about holding and inspiring the congregation to which he strives to bring a vital message every week. Both groups will welcome John Edgar Park’s MIRACLE OF PREACHING (Macmillan), 1936 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, as filling their needs. In its six brief chapters entitled: Miracles of Preaching; Inspiration; Church-going Tradition in English Literature: Tools; Revision and Preparation; Preaching, Delivery and Results, the minister's problems and dilemmas are considered with a kindly and humorous wisdem which has for background years of experience, study, and contact with the most inspiring men and institutions in the theological and educational world. Free from pietistic language, rich in allusion and illustration, based on sound psychology and reality, the little volume can be heartily recommended to all to whom the subject in any way appeals. ©

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labor unions.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1937

‘Central City’ Reflects Nation's Life

Labor Unions Make Scant Headway in Small Midwest Community

When organizers attempted to unionize one plant, the

factory was closed and an election held in the manner shown above, although the photo was not taken in that town, of course.

This is the fifth of seven articles in which Mr. Stokes is reporting on economic, social and political conditions in a Midwestern small town, here dise

guised as ‘Central City.”

By Thomas L. Stokes

Times Special Writer

(CENTRAL CITY, U. S. A,, Oct. 30.—This small town, like most small towns in the Middle West and in the South, is still alien territory for labor unions. Echoes of the conflict over unionization in the big cities sift in here through newspapers and over the radio, like a battle far away, but with enough rumble to disturb factory owners who have enjoyed the paternalistic system common to the small town with its surplus of “good na-

tive, white labor.” The Chamber of Commerce prospectus for this town, like those of other towns inspected at the State Chamber headquarters, says under the heading “Labor Conditions”: Unions: None. Closed Shops: Strikes: None. This says a good deal.

Appended is a note: “The surrounding and intervening rural communities are thickly populated and afford an additional source of good, native white labor, both male and female.” In their struggle for existence, the small towns hold out inducements to industry, a condition more pronounced in the South than in the Middle West. An example occurred in this town when a big corporation, with a branch here, decided a few years ago to move its local plant to Buffalo and merge it with the plant there. The Chamber of Commerce got busy, raised $50,000 among the citizens and turned this fund over to the company to move the Buffalo plant here, which was gone. The company keeps the $50,000 as a gift if it makes a stated payroll. If it moves away before this payroll total is reached, the $50,000 is to be returned.

Open or Open.

n ” ” NIONS have pecked at the strongholds here in the last three years, but feebly and to no avail. Companies here are favored by factors nearly always found in the small town, among them a closer relationship of the owner or operator with the worker than is possible in the big city industry, the faci that many workers own their own homes and some of them were carried by local building and loan associations during the depth of the depression, and the natural conservatism of the worker who lives long in the small town and has established a stake of some sort. Also, there is an antipathy to outsiders coming in to organize unions, and attempts thus far have originated from outside. The more progressive and ambitious type of worker who would be active in union organization has left the small town. One branch of ag national cor=poration here has instituted a

bonus system whereby profits above a certain level are distributed among workers. In its first year of operation, recently ended, this bonus amounted to 12 per cent of wages for the year, according to one of the managers. The plant, he said, is now working out an old-age benefit-system.

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HE most recent union activity was the picketing this spring of a moving picture show which was being remodeled, and the attempt to keep nonunion carpenters from going through the lines into the theater. “We just gathered about 300 deputies and made them stop,” a local citizen said. “Did you run them out of town?” “No, because some of them were

& from town—but we just told them

Repercussions Over F. D. R.'s Neutrality Policy Expected When Congress Meets

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| aggressors

The Chamber of Commerce describes “Central City” labor as *“good, native white, both male and In general, they are contented with their

female.” jobs and working conditions, as

Strike scenes, such as the one above, although taken elsewhere, are not unknown “Central City’s” technique in handling labor trouble is to gather a few hundred deputies and put an end

we didn’t want that going on. We don't want anybody trying to keep people from working. We don’t care if people who work out at the plants want to join a labor union

however).

are the happy munity.

PoE

to picketing. in the town.

—we won't use any duress—but we don't want people coming in here from outside.” A union was organized at a canning factory three years ago,

drift away to larger cities. prevalent antiunion attitude is the close relation between the boss and his employees.

By E. R. R. ASHINGTON, Oct. 30.—President Roosevelt's failure to invoke the Neutrality Act in the Chino-Japanese war and his appeal at Chicago for concerted action by peace-loving nations to quarantine have provoked sharp criticism from advocates of manda-

tory neutrality and demonstrated that there is still a wide divergence between Congress and the Administration on foreign policy. The temporary Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 and the permanent law of 1937 laid down a policy of strict impartiality toward foreign belligerents and called for declaration of an arms embargo against all participants in a foreign war. Two years ago the President had no difficulty in finding that a state of war existed between Italy and Ethiopia. An arms embargo was imposed against both countries. Now, on the contrary, although China and Japan have been locked in combat for more than three months, the Neutrality Act has been ignored. Furthermore, the State Department has issued a statement tantamount to branding Japan the aggressor. That the Administration's course will bring repercussions in Congress when the special session convenes Nov. 15 is a foregone conclusion.

HE current situation represents another stage in a struggle over foreign policy that has divided legislative and executive branches of the Government for years. The neutrality legislation was enacted in an attempt to safeguard the United States against involvement

in such conflict. Opponents of the isolationist policy which it embodies insist, on the other hand, that this country cannot protect itself against an eventuality of that sort by adopting an attitude of aloofness from foreign problems. They hold that the only safe course lies in co-operation with other peace-loving nations for the maintenance of world order and, if necessary, the penalizing of lawless nations. The Roosevelt Administration, at the outset in 1933, took an advanced position in behalf of international co-operation. In May of that year Norman H. Davis told the Disarmament Conference that, if a general arms limitation agreement were concluded, the United States would consult other nations in case of a threat to peace and, if measures were imposed against an aggressor and this country agreed as to the aggressor, then we would refrain from any action tending to defeat such a collective effort to restore peace.

HE Senate Foreign Relations Committee almost immediately indicated its disagreement with this pronouncement by inserting in a pending arms-embargo

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resolution |

an amendment requiring its appli- |

cation equally to all parties to a dispute. The Senate approved the measure in that form, but it did not become law because of Administration opposition.

When neutrality legislation was first under consideration in 1935, the Administration again proposed a bill which would have permitted the President to impose an arms embargo against only one of the belligerents th a foreign war. In the law finally enacted, however, Congress made it mandatory upon the President to ban arms exports to both sides. The Neutrality Resolution of 1935, enacted on a temporary basis, was extended in 1936 for a further period expiring May 1, 1937. The present law took effect that day. $ 8 =» T requires the President, whenever he finds “that there exists a state of war between, or among, two or more foreign states,” to proclaim tha’ fact, Thereafter it shall be unlawful to export arms or implements of war to the belligerents, unlawful for the belligerents to float loans in the United States, and unlawful for American citizens to travel on ships of the belligerents.

The Indianapolis Times

Entered

workers above (this photo was not taken in the town, Activities of outside union organizers is resented in this conservative Middle Western com-

a a a ih Was AA di

Enthusiastic union workers usually

One reason for the

but it died out. Workers employed seasonally for only six or seven weeks lost interest in paying dues for a year to a union. About the same time an attempt was made to organize another factory.

“We closed down the plant for three or four days,” explained one of the managers. “We held an election with the Sheriff in charge. The workers voted against a union. The election was by secret’ ballot.” ” ” ”

E said there are in the plant some members of an A. F. of L. craft union with membership in a nearby city. “We don't know who they are. We don’t classify them. “We run no sweatshop here. The men are satisfied. We pay our people a living wage and more. We pay them enough so they can lay aside money to buy a home.” Another part-owner of a locally owned concern expressed this view: “It’s mighty hard to organize in a plant like mine where the boys call me by my first name and know if they don't like something they can sit down and talk about it” He said he had told union officials at the nearby city that they could come in any time and try to organize but he thought they would have trouble to get workers into a union because of the seasonal nature of the business. He said he paid 35 and 40 cents an hour, with higher rates for a few specialized workers. This is higher than the prevailing rate in adjacent states, he said. He expects unions will come into the small towns at some future date.

NEXT — Exodus of the youngsters.

as Second-Class at Postoffice. Indianapolis.

Side Glances—By Clark

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"Well, doctor, | guess that about settles my bill with you, doesn't it2"

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A WOMAN'S VIEW

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

T is to be feared that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor will go

in for housing investigations exactly | as do a good many other fortunate |

people who are troubled with a social conscience.

That is to say they will reside

in the mansions of wealth while]

they “inspect” the hovels of the poor. Moreover, they will be escorted on these tours by certain of American aristocracy who spend more for Scotch and cigarets in a month than the unskilled earns in a year. Trailed by social sycophants, harassed by curious mobs and beset

by publicity seekers, it is unlikely |’

the Windsors will obtain much more than a surface glimpse of conditions among the poor in the United States. This method of finding out how the other half lives is the main drawback to most reforms. Infor-

mation is gleaned from afar, so that |.

the rigors of poverty seldom pene-

trate the imaginations of those who regard them from a position of com- |,

fort and luxury. And ' unless the imagination is moved, the heart is never touched.

Jasper—By Frank Owen

3 a o =] 2 —— gw LA bo 1

Somehow we can’t help wishing | |%s

the Windsors were not coming. This may sound boorishly rude, but is only the expression of a sincere desire to remain in their good graces. For a year they have symbolized Romance, and for this reason, if for no other, it seems a pity they should be disillusioned about us, or we about them. Probably we shall survive the ordeal, but it's an almost sure bet

they'll think less of us before they |

get away, although our common heritage with the Duchess may have prepased her for the worst, |

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Copr. 1937 by United Feature Syndicate, Lae.

"I think you keep missing that tub just so you won't have to take

your bath!"

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Second Section

PAGE 9

Matte Ina.

Washington

By Rodney Dutcher

(Substituting for Anton Scherrer)

Psychology of War Grows Upon Capital, With Both Experts and Novices Mapping Nation's Strategy.

ASHINGTON, Oct. 30.—It is intereste ing to watch the growth of an incipient war psychology in Washington. In fact, it is so interesting to some persons who are especially sensitive on the subject of war

that it gives them cold chills. No one thinks we are really going to war, of course. But so many of both the best and most in= different minds here are talking about what it would

be like if we did, that it would be holding out on the reader not to mention it, In no time at all, Washington— high and low—has come to be teeming with people who turn out to be military-naval strategists of the most articulate order. Senator Logan of Kentucky, who ranks well up on the Senate Military Affairs Committee, proposes a naval blockade of Japan which he thinks would make Japanese behave. For one such : suggestion made publicly a Wash- . ington correspondent can hear a Mr. Dutcher hundred in private. Mr. Roosevelt, with his warning “let no one imagine that America will escape,” and his advocacy of collective “quarantine” against aggressor nations, started all this, Military and naval men naturally, in view of their function, speak in terms of action. But they're far from the only ones who can tell you how long it would take to develop an effective bombing base in Alaska. (About a year if you want to know.) And of course the pacifist groups are indulging in more war talk than anyone, since they consider it their job to warn everybody that ditching the Neutrality Act is our first step toward international conflict. Mr. Roosevelt, a peaceful man, has reminded the country that he learned a lot as Assistant Secretary of the Navy before, during and after the World War. The most definite thing he ever wrote about Japan, following this period in which he was “fairly close to world events,” was in a magazine article in 1923. In this article he sought to discourage what he said was rather a common idea among both Japanese and Americans—that their two countries inevitably some day would go to war.

Holding Philippines Difficult

Mr. Roosevelt then made no bones about the fact that the Navy and Army agreed that the United States couldn't even hold the Philippines against Ja= pan without a navy twice as large as hers. Technical improvements in navies, he said, made it progressively harder to operate them far from home shores. Mr. Roosevelt asked his readers to imagine war as a case of “Japan and United States, four or five thou= sand miles apart, making faces at each other across a no-man’s water as broad as the Pacific.” The Nine-Power Treaty and Japan's promise there in to respect Chinese sovereignty were then hailed by the future President as one of the most excellent reasons for scouting the “inevitability” theory. All of which, although proving nothing, makes interest= ing reading today when, as Senator Logan says, ‘deale ing with foreign nations at war is a matter of ime provisation from day to day.”

Jane Jordan—

Avoid Irking Husband in Seeking To Inspire Ambition, Wife Advised.

DF: JANE JORDAN—I am 18, my husband is 21 and we've been married two years. My husband has a steady job, but with little chance for advance ment. The pay is $18 a week. I also work and my salary is $15 a week but this is just the prelude to something much better if I work hard enough. I do so want my husband to get a little farther up the ladder, but he lacks the initiative and ambition. I've heen talking night school to him for a long time, but he is not interested. He has the attitude that he should receive everything without working for it. That certainly isn’t my view. I intend to start into night school next spring and I'm going to take everything I can afford. I'm going to work hard and grasp every bit of knowledge within reach and make use of it. In the meantime, my huse band will be working at the same old job for the rest of his life. What can I do to arouse him? If my husepand had more get-up to him I wouldn't even cone sider going to school for a business career, but one of us has to do something! Somev..cre I read that ame bition couldn't be created; that a person is born withe t it; but surely this isn’t true. ou y A READER.

ANSWER—I do not think it is true that a person is born with or without ambition and that nothing can be done about it. A more reasonable theory is that we are born with certain mental and physical capacities and that the circumstances of our lives help to determine what we do with them. It is not easy to awaken ambition in a person with a passive attie tude toward life. Try to understand what happened to your husband early in life to make him dread competition, for that, I believe, is his trouble. Sometimes a boy is discouraged by an aggressive and successful father. We expect the son of a famous man to make his mark in the world but more often than not he feels too keenly that it is impossible for him to equal his father. : Competition is particularly fierce in our times, with many applicants for each job. We cannot succeed today without displacing others, a fact which weighs heavily on those who have been reared in fear. These conditions have caused many people to inhibit their own ambitions not from unselfish motives but from fear of trampling others. Some, like your husband, prefer to remain in a safe, little groove where they escape the notice and hence the envy of their come petitors in life. Try not to duplicate the conditions of your hus band’s early life in his marriage. You are an ambitious young woman and I admire you. Your approach to life is an attack whereas your husband's approach is a retreat. About all you can do is to encourage him and try not to feel contempt for his passive attitude. There are professions in which an unaggressive person can succeed. I do know that you must avoid antagoneizing him for he might fail in order to punish you for pushing him. In old-fashioned parlance, do not wear the pants of the family even though you think they do not become your husband. JANE JORDAN,

Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily.

Walter O'Keefe —

HE annual automobile show in New York is 8 smash hit. Customers are examining the cars and buying new models and the big favorite of the present show is one that guarantees to give you 15 employment agencies on a gallon of gas. The glib salesmen are still talking about those “easy payments” that are always so hard to make. They've got all the latest improvements. Believe it; or not, they actually have a parking space on display. It's the only one in New York. Die Jeaglets are selling like hot cakes, so the e r hurry up or there won't be housing 4o study, p aay

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