Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 25 November 1937 — Page 12

PAGE 12

The Indianapolis Time

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

THURSDAY, NOV. 25, 1937

WE GIVE THANKS MERICA today could be likened to the man of the Chinese fable who was riding astride a donkey. On the road ahead was another man on a fine horse. Behind him a third wayfarer was walking. When the man on the donkey locked ahead he envied the horseback rider, but when he looked back he felt sorry for the pedestrian. So he decided to give thanks for his humble mount. Ahead of us is a better country. A country without depressions or “recessions,” without burdensome public and private debts, without unemployment, insecurity, want, labor wars and sitdowns, slums, crime and preventable disease, without the brainless waste of natural wealth and the heartless waste of human lives. But behind us are the great war and the great depression, two calamities that now seem like nightmares. We are so much better off now than we were in those tragic times that we can truly give thanks on this day set apart for that purpose. Not in a negative way, like the man who was grateful because he didn’t have a broken leg, but for positive national blessings and achievements. = = = 5 = = E have the two fundamentals for contentment—peace and wheat, the good will of neighbor nations and the greatest harvest in years. Our national income this year will be 68 billions compared with 38 billions in 1932. Our banks are solvent and our deposits insured. We have borrowed too heavily, but our spending has saved natural resources, preserved national morale and enriched our culture. There are good prospects for a balanced budget. We have laid backlogs against future depressions in better banking and stock-market regulations, in unemployment insurance and old-age security reserves, and a new labor law that will help the workers organize to get more of the national income. We have done these things within the framework of democratic institutions and at the cost of none of our civil liberties. And we have won that greatest of all victories. We have conquered the kind of fear that leads to panic. Again, as the Chinese say, “great things can be turned into small things, and small things can be turned into jothing.” America has turned great evils into smaller ones and is trying to turn smaller ones into nothing.

CUT-RATE CITIZENSHIP

CHECK reveals that Indiana goes as far as any state in providing a tax loophole for certain public employees. The National Association of Attorneys-General reports that employees of the HOLC, FHA and some other Federal agencies in many states must pay the state income tax. In Indiana all regular Federal Government employees are exempt from the State gross income tax.

At the same time, employees of state and local governments are exempt from Federal income tax on their salaries. This large class of privileged jobholders was created by a U. S. Supreme Court decision in 1919, which held that the 16th Amendment, giving Congress power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived,” didn’t mean what it said.

If Congressmen and other favored jobholders won't take the initiative in correcting this injustice, taxpayers should make their protest heard. Why should thousands of persons be exempt from Federal taxes because they are State employees? They benefit from all the services the Government gives its citizens. And why should thousands of Federal employees in Indiana be able to send their children to Indiana schools without helping equally to support those schools? ” The Federal Government taxes salaries of its own employees ; many states tax their employees’ salaries. Neither can tax salaries of the other's employees. But the Supreme Court doesn’t object to both Governments taxing the incomes of private citizens. This unfair special privilege, permitting certain groups to enjoy their citizenship at a cut rate, should be revoked.

SO THIS IS ISOLATION!

MANY of us like to think of the United States as splendidly isolated. To the east lies the Atlantic. To the west the Pacific. Yes, sir, we're as snug as a bug in a rug. Nobody can harm us.

Well, yesterday the Hawaii Clipper left San Francisco on the 163d scheduled flight across the Pacific. The event ushers in the third year of America’s first transoceanic air service. And there has not been an accident or even an incident.

The Clipper air lane across the Pacific is 9000 miles long—the longest over-water route in the world. The first year the ships carried 954,730 letters. The second year, 2,608,246 letters. And while the line has been carrying passengers but little more than a year, 1986 men, women and children crossed the sea in its ships. While as for cargo, it carried 505,944 pounds. All of which should mean something to us. For one thing, we have lost whatever isolation we ever had. Airships which shuttle to and fro across oceans can carry bombs as easily as passengers, mail and freight. Isolated? Anybody who thinks we can be, in this day and time, said Rep. Lewis of Maryland, must be either a neanderthal man or a pithecanthropus erectus. It is only too obvious that the globe we live on is steadily shrinking from year to year, and shrinking fast. Small wonder that Lord Cecil, this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said: ’ “Of one thing we may be certain: We must eradicate war or war will eradicate us.”

: The Chinese have resolved to hold out as long as there is a city left to which they can ve the : :

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES If a Pilgrim Father Should Drop in Today—By Herblock

THURSDAY, NOV. 25, 1937

Guess Who’ll Adopt This Little Rascal?—By Rodger

Wa,

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

‘Right to Work' Slogan Takes on Phony Sound as Employed by Many Union Dictators, Pegler Argues.

EW YORK, Nov. 25.—1t is the defensive practice of the professional labor unioneer and the amateur unioneer with political ambitions to smell up with the name of “labor baiter” or Girdlerite anyone who objects to the coercion and extortion practiced by some types of labor unions. Nevertheless, in calmer moments, members of both major labor groups will admit the existence of cer-

tain abuses and of wide-open opportunities for worse abuses in the present forms of organization. There is no denying the autonomy enjoved by the A. F. of L. unions permits those who obtain control to impose prohibitive initiation fees sometimes which exclude able workmen from union membership in occupations in which a union card is compulsory. One such union now de=mands an initiation fee of $1000, annual dues of $60, a varying amount in special assessment and a flat 3 per cent income tax on the gross earnings of members. Moreover, as if all this were not sufficient to exclude new talent and preserve the job trust thus created for those who got in on the ground floor, the union reserves the right to turn down applicants even if they should manage to borrow the $1000. There are some union members who would have preferred not to join themselves, but were scared into line by the threat that if they held out they would be placed under a boycott by union men in other organized trades working in the same business. = u =

THE effort to maintain a job trust at the expense of younger men and other outsiders often is too apparent to be denied. In fact, it is not denied but excused, though not justified, on the ground that the admission of great numbers of new members would spread the work so thin that nobody would be satisfied. Yet this merely argues that the man willing to scrape up the money for a working license has a special privilege. The fight between the A. F. of L. and the C. I. O. for possession of certain unions and the consequent strikes and loss of work are not denied, either. They are merely excused as unavoidable disorder in a general rough-house between two groups each accusing the other. But in this process a man joins one union under pressure and presently discovers he is barred from his job because he joined the wrong union. At this point and at other points in the controversy the unioneer’s solemn assertion of & man’s right to work subject to no denial by Tom Girdler or Henry Ford takes on the hollow, phony sound of mere oratory. = = = HERE are unions which could find appropriate praise for the stalwarts of Dave Beck's A. F. of L. dictatorship in Seattle until they quit the A. F. of L. and went C. I. O. Thereafter Mr. Beck's stalwarts regarded them as scabs. At this point Mr. Beck's men became sluggers and hoodlums in the opinion of their late comrades. But Mr. Beck and his stalwarts had not changed. The only change was in the apostates’ point of view. Intimidation, extortion, irresponsibility and dictatorship must be eliminated if labor is to be any better off under the rule of the unioneer than under the oppression of bad employers.

The Hoosier Forum

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

FEARS PLAGUE BECAUSE OF WARS RAGING By M. Kelley, Beech Grove From some source a very selfish, and to my mind a silly attitude has sprung into being within this country. Let me recall the days of 1917. There was an epidemic of disease that claimed the lives of old and young and even the beasts of the forest were not immune from it. Doctors and scientists laid that directly to the slaughter in Europe Is there not reason to suppose that one of a greater magnitude will be sent upon us this next year because of a similar volume of slaughtering upon both sides of us? It is a Christian and progressive policy to help those that are in no position to help or defend themselves. It was such a policy that brought this nation out of the mire and despair of 1930. Just why should not all Christian nations get together and put a speedy stop to international lawlessness. A developing era will replace the destruction of today. There is vast room for expansion and development in this large, old world and

there is no reason for fighting and |

snarling like a pack of wolves and vultures over the cause of past deeds and developments.

I am no advocate of war, but T

firmly believe in stamping out lawlessness and gangsterism before it has grown so vast as to stamp out all respect and decency for established customs. This “turn the other cheek business” has no sympathy or threat for the criminal. It is the G-Men and sudden and certain punishment that put a stop to it. » ” ” LAWYERS URGE PUBLIC

DEFENDERS FOR POOR

By Mayer C. Goldman, Chairman of Committees on Public Defenders of New York State Bar Association and National Lawvers’ Guild, New York. At the September, 1937, session of the Judicial Conference between the Chief Justice of the United States and the Senior U. 8. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges, Attorney General Cummings brought to its attention “the subject of proper respresentation for indigent defendants in criminal cases” and the following resolution was adopted by the conference. “We approve in principle the appointment of a public defender where the amount of criminal business of a district court justifies the appointment. In other districts the district judge before whom a criminal case is pending should appoint counsel for indigent defendants unless such assistance is declined by

General Hugh Johnson Says—

In Our Quest for Better Life Our Greatest Enemy Today Is Fear; But With Our National Resources We Still Have Cause for Thanks.

ASHINGTON, Nov. 25.—The productiveness of this country both in industry and agriculture is potentially at its highest point. There is plenty of money. There is a starved need for almost everything that we seek and wish we had. Our fields are just as green as they ever have been. The skies are just as blue, the birds as happy. The whole compact of misery and uncertainty is merely in the minds of men.

Perhaps in 1929 there was some reason for that kind of thing. Prices were too high for stocks and consumers goods, if not for commodities. People were gambling on a new miracle of the “abolition of poverty” based on lending our money to “backward and crippled nations” as a basis of maintaining activity in our own markets. There were many things that a carping critic could have criticized in our socalled prosperity. But not now. There is absolutely nothing of a fundamental nature that can be so criticized today. ® nw =

HEN the first Thanksgiving was ordained, a people strange to new environment had learned how to adapt old laws and customs to new uses, and for the first time after a long winter of discontent they were reasonably happy.

At seasons such as these, it would be well to reNic dle )

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nr. Sehiiet geet taal

(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.)

the defendant. In exceptional cases | involving a great amount of time and effort on the part of counsel so assigned, suitable provision should be made for compensation for such service, to be fixed by the court and to be a charge against the United States.” This forward-looking and highly important resolution by that distinguished conference is perhaps the most significant step which has thus far been taken to extend the publicdefender system generally, for accused poor persons, except possibly the actual creation of the office in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Tulsa, Omaha and other American communities. This

action by that conference will not only tend to minimize much of the bar opposition to this fundamentally | sound and human proposal for jus- | tice to the poor in the criminal courts, but it probably will facilitate favorable action by Congress on the pending bills introduced by Senator Capper and Rep. Byron N. Scott to provide public defenders in the Federal district courts.

The National Lawyers’ Guild already has gone on record as favoring the extension of the official public defender system and many bar and civic groups are now giving sympathetic study to the proposal. The due administration of crimi-

THANKSGIVING

By JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY

Thank God for peace And war’s surcease. May this nation never know The human hells Of calcium shells From an aviator foe.

And may we stand, Faith, heart and hand Pledged forever and alway To right and good And brotherhood As on this Thanksgiving Day.

DAILY THOUGHT

He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. —Luke 3:11.

IVE what you have. To some it may be better than you dare

to think.—-Longfellow.

nal justice—as well as the proper attitude of the public toward the law and the courts—requires that there should not be one kind of justice for the rich and one for the poor. The present evil of the rich defendant getting too much defense and the poor defendant not getting enough must be abolished, if our concept of a fair trial to all accused persons is to be realized.

® ® w THANKS THE TIMES IN METERS AND RIMES By Lee Burns Here for all Hoosiers is cause for Thanksgiving. Call for the carollers! Ring out the chimes! Again we may share in his gay joy of living,

For now Anton Scherrer is back in The Times!

All other news may be tinged with depression War and disaster, the day's grist of crimes, Stock market gloom and a business recession, But now Anton Scherrer is back in The Times!

the clamor of charlatans threatens our sanity, We turn to his column and confidence climbs, Cheered anew by his wisdom and love of humanity, For now Anton Scherrer is back in The Times!

" ww Ww FAVORS PETERS FOR SENATE POST

By G. R. I am a life-long Democrat, believ= ing in the principles of the Democratic Party, and I have watched our party, long in the minority, become the majority party in state and nation. With this in mind I am interested in our party leadership, and the question which arises in my mind is how long we can stay in power and still violate what we have been taught to believe are the first principles of practical politics.

And that is the question I hear as I travel up and down the state, Most certainly the Democratic organization for the past t've years has opened the throttle, traveled a broad highway, regardless of who

When

or what was ground beneath its

flying wheels.

or bruises, or to heal party sores, Since those first victorious days of 1930 and 1932, stalwart Democrats have walked the plank of ruthless political discipline. The latest mark for the political (Turn to Page 16)

It has not stopped to | pick up the debris, to mend hurts

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Merry-Go-Round

By Pearson & Allen

U. S. Foreign Policy Problem Grows Acute as Dictator Countries Plant Unofficial Latin American Colonies,

VW ASHINGTON, Nov, 25.~It is now a truism of history that the Germans never would have started the World War had they known for certain in 1914 that Great Britain would enter the conflict,

At that time Britain pursued a mythical policy of aloofness toward the squabbles on the Cone tinent, The English Channel to her was what the At lantic Ocean was to us.

But today, modern invention, pare ticularly aviation, has narrowed the English Channel to a mere rivulet, and contracted the Atlantic Ocean so that the United States in effect, holds the balance for peace or war,

Whether we have a Neutrality Act or not, it is probably true that today the United States occupies a position equivalent to the British in 1914, and that if Germany and Italy knew definitely in advance that the United States would enter a war they would not precipitate it. 80 whether the Senate likes it or not, this is the biggest foreign affairs problem--possibly the biggest of all problems—before the Roosevelt Administration. Where fascism hits the United States full in the face is South Ameris ca. We woke up to this only with res cont events in Brazil, but for some time the Fascist states, deprived of actual colonies, have found substis tutes by building up unofficial colonies in South Amer fea.

Drew Pearson

Robert Allen

HOULD these Nazi-Fascist forces be threatensd by socialist or liberal groups in South America, Gers

many and Italy probably would do as they did in Spain

—gend “volunteers.” The repercussions in the United States can be

imagined. This country would not go to war to protect her economic velations with Latin America, but when those relations are included as part of a more tangi= ble policy, such as the Monroe Doctrine, then it might be impossible to stop public indignation and war. Some important details regarding the French IndoChinese embargo on arms to China which have not leaked out indicate it was one of the most significant of all events during the Far Eastern imbroglio. China has been receiving munitions via the rails road which crosses the French Indo-China border ints South China. The Japanese threatened to bomb this line unless shipments were stopped, and to seize the island of Hainan off the Indo-China coast, » ~ »

AINAN is not French, but Chinese. Moreover, the Japanes( threatened to bomb only that part of the railway of Chinese soil. The part on French soil was to remain unscathed. But French francs are ine vested in the Chinese section of the railway, so the French capitulated. Before they did so, however, they secretly asked the State Department whether France could have the protection of the U. 8. fleet in case of a serious brush with the Japanese. Mr. Roosevelt figured American public opinion would not stand for this and said “No.” So for a few francs in a Chinese railroad, the French threw overboard their traditional policy of aide ing a victimized nation against an aggressor,

According to Heywood Broun—

Now What Was the Trick to That Cigaret Box Which Windsor Bought? And, After All, Why Did Duchess Purchase Those Two Pairs of Scissors?

many people are satisfied with that today? Our country of 130 million people, extending across an entire continent, demands much more—and properly. We have new problems involving the wider distribution of all the goods of life. We would like to make our condition better than it is. It is amazing that, looking at all the facilities for doing this, we find them paralyzed. Just one reason. We are afraid of our own system. It was not first said by Mr. Roosevelt that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—but that doesn’t detract from its truth. We have only fear to deal with today. » » » LITTLE over five years ago, the fear we had was of the workability of the system that our forefathers had created. To correct that we have substituted another system in which many of these individuals are ordained to move in a collective path. But the difference is so slight that no individual feels it. Does it make a great deal of difference what artificial system is imposed on so many scores of millions of people located in the midst of resources so rich, imbued with a tradition of activity and productiveness? Can anything stop or repress that potential activity? What we have to be thankful for is boundless natural resources and a people of boundless re- - No governmental combination under

4

EW YORK, Nov. 25.—~When the Duke and Duchess of Windsor decided to postpone or cancel their visit to America there was much wailing by the merchants of New York and other cities. In certain quarters it was felt that the expedition might be a fillip toward recovery, like repeal or an American Legion convention or a fight for the heavyweight championship. After all it had been announced that the Windsors were bringing 80 trunks. The hairdressers of the nation implored the Duchess to adopt varying styles of coiffure in order to relieve unemployment, and tailors felt that the Duke might send every well-dressed man in to be measured, if only he appeared in public with some slight innovation, such as wearing his dinner trousers turned up at the bottom, But I suspect the merchants might have been doomed to be disappointed had the Windsors arrived. In the days of his princehood the Duke was known as one of the finest salesmen for the Empire, but there is no record that he maintained a balance of trade. ” - . T my elbow lies a press association story of the Duke's most recent spending spree at a church bazaar in Paris, The rector made up for certain Anglican discourtesies and welcomed the couple warms= ly. Indeed, he invited the Duchess to make a speech, And she did.

t "

.

on to state, “After open-

the guests chatting gaily. They spent many francs, doled out by the Duke's equerry, Lieut. Dudley Fore wood, The purchases of the Duchess included a dish of English marmalade, a jar of current jelly, chocolate cake, a tin of tea, two boxes of biscuits, three cans of tomato juice, two pairs of scissors, a penknife, Christe mas cards, calendars and several knitted baby jackets to be given to the poor.” The lady quite obviously was on a spending spree, and it would have been interesting to see the lieutens ant in full regimentals coming out of the church with the knitted jackets and the tomato juice under one arm and the marmalade and current jelly under the other, ¥

CIE UT what about the Duke? He seems to have kept his head about him during the orgy of extravaegance. The press association dispatch notes his pure chases in a single laconic line. “The Duke bought a trick cigaret box and a tube of tooth paste.” Up to this point I was inclined to be amazed by the skill of the’ correspondent in reportorial detail, But for all that he muffed his big chance. A trick cigaret box indeed! As avid reader of all the doings of the Duke I am curious to know-indeed, I demand an answer to the legitimate question—"What was the trick?” And for that matter I wouldn't mind being ine BT EE Boshi Sha BL

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