Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 November 1937 — Page 9

. Vagabond

From Indiana — Ernie Pyle

All Those Folks on Reno Streets Getting Divorces; | Six-Week Law Irks the Merchants. |

Aren't Really

ENO. Nev.. Nov. 27.—The first time you | everybody |

visit Hollywood you think vou see on the streets is in the movies. Yet, vou find out later, probably not one person out of hundreds walking on Hollywood

Blvd. has ever been inside a studio. It’s just like that in Reno. Everybody you see on the street is obviously out here getting a divorce. You feel like stopping each one and asking, “Why couldn't you get along with him?” And yet, when you check up. you find that the divorce business is only a small part of Reno's life. There is a fairly constant yearround population of around 300 people putting in their six-week residence here. But many of these stay at dude ranches outside of town. So we'll say there are actually 200 living in Reno at a given time. Reno's population is 20,000. That would make one divorce-seeker for every 100 inhabitants. The local newspapers pay almost no attention to the divorce hubbub. They do run the names of all people given decrees, but these are in the “vital statistics” column along with births and deaths. They don't even tell where the people are from.

Mr. Pyle

Divorces have been running about 3000 a vear In

Reno. The number seems to follow almost exactly the nation’s business trend. You could draw a chart, with one line showing business activity and the other Reno divorces. and thev'd be almost parallel lines. In 1931, before the depression had got up full steam «t was also the first year of the six-week law). 4745 divorces were issued in Reno. In 1933 thev dropped to a record low of By 1935 they were up to 3088. Last vear they were 3001. Up to Nov. 1 of this vear there have been 2238. Figured on a 12-month basis, that would be only 2685 for 1937.

Reno Doesn’t Get All Business

Most of us think of all Nevada divorces being obtained in Reno. are. Last vear there were 4386 for the whole state, with 3001 in Reno.

Many people go to smaller towns over the state. ! But if they do this with the idea of escaping publicity |

they go in vain. for the press associations have correspondents watching the court records in smallest towns.

If you actually lived in Nevada, vou could decide |

at breakfast you wanted a divorce and by noon you could have it. Yet the local people hardly ever get divorcees. 5 actual Nevada residents. Nevada years ago became a sort of divorce haven. and hundreds were getting split here every vear. Then in the middle 20s Nevada's Legislature put

through a three-month divorce law. and in 1931 the |

six weeks’ law. There was much criticism of the Legislature. but the law stuck. Today, the businessmen of Reno are not keen about the six weeks’ law. They say they made more money under the six months’ law. For then people had to be here so long they usually rented a house, sometimes bought a car, and had to stay through changes of seascn, which required new clothes. Now. they just come and camp for a short time in anything from a hotel room to a tourist cabin, do little buying, just wait it out.

My Diary

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

Rural Arts Exhibition Symbol of

Our Defense Against Machine Age.

WJ 2Snoron, Friday—I started the morning in L a most delightful manner by going to the rural

art exhibit in the patio of the Agriculture Depart. ment building with Mrs. Wallace. Mr.

knows more than anvbody else about rural art. accompanied us. represented by a very charming roadside stand. and I could have spent hours enjoying the little carved scene of a round-up done by a cowboy. It gave me a thrill to see what delightful pottery and glass and even jewelry we are making in different rural districts, to say nothing of the real artistry shown in foods, sewing and weaving. It was pieasant to find a number of young people wandering around. an inspiration that will spur them to trying to express themselves in a variety of mediums. After all, these arts are our best defense against the machine age. If we must work with a machine eight hours a day, we may still have avocations which some of us may choose to turn into vocations.

Housing Project Now Occupied

At noon I spent a very interesting hour visiting a housing project which has been done by private

capital in conjunction with the FHA. It is a delight- |

ful development just back of Ft. Meyer and will soon be easily accessible to Washington. A part of it already is finished and 100 per cent occupied. built not for the lowest income group, but for an intermediate group. Many people in this group. with

incomes ranging from $1500 to $3000 a year, can be | ! | volves right-of-way from 150 to

found here.

I watched the playground for a minute and won- |

dered if all the families with little children could not combine and find a trained person to supervise

the children for at least a few hours during the day. | It would be beneficial for the children and one more

person wculd be employed. A little shopping merning and afternoon, a few friends to lunch and I snatched a few minutes in between to read some of the criticisms and letters which have come in on “This Is My Story.”

though it didn’t belong to you. I have a feeling I am reading about somebody else's book, but I suppose

that is only because the work on it is over and there is other work to be done.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

RAXINET on the shores of the Mediterranean was |

at once a hill town and a harbor, and above them

2438. |

Actually. only about three-fourths |

even the |

Only about 5 per cent of the divorces are by

Allen Eaton. | who has supervised this coliection and who probably

I was glad to see New York Stats |

I have a feeling they will get |

It was |

| their

It is funny how, | when you have finished a thing, you almost feel as |

Side Glances—By Clark

The Indianapolis

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1937

(Third of a Series) By William Crabb JNPIANAPOLIS is lucky. Most large cities, in the process of development, lined their main thoroughfares with expensive factory buildings. Those streets never can be widened to handle increased traffic. Other cities find themselves completely blocked they only can lay their streets with extra levels in subways and elevateds. This situation handicap development of the “limited motorway,” prescribed by Dr. Miller McClintock, Harvard, and Thomas MacDonald, U. S. Bureau of Public Roads chief, as solution to a national traffic problem which counts 37,000 dead each year. Indianapolis’ 11 intersecting state and national highways are more easily adaptable to the modern safety-engineering plans than those in many American cities. How does the “limited highway” work ? The reckless, the drunk, the fatigued and the moronic who threaten the lives of 85 per cent of us daily are stopped from the head-on collisions and violent

side-swipes by the 10 to 30 feet of intervening center island.

” n » HOSE who ignore or fail to traffic lights, boule-

SO

tends to

notice

| vards stop signs and such cannot | ram us in the side, because they

cross above or below us at the intersections. Pedestrians who walk on the edges of highways (16,000 were killed last year), stray cattle, cars backing out of driveways, autos

| stopping for hot dogs or roadside | marketing, or entering from side roads are engineered out of the

picture by the limited “across prevention” of marginal friction. Pedestrians, parked cars, stray cattle all become “fixed objects” like culverts, soft shoulders, telephone poles in the dynamics of marginal friction. Elimination of this friction in-

500 feet wide in order to isolate the highway from abutting property and give the engineers room to keep all “fixed objects” off the pavement and away from the curhs. Pedestrians get a path of own. And, incidentally, this wide right-of-way banishes all billboards and allows planting to screen out every distraction.

T™ decelerating and accelerating lanes keep to one side all trucks, the autos slowing for exit. those just entering and picking up speed. The rear-end collisions. side-swipes and skids of internal stream friction are eliminated. The states have made numerous attempts to build “superhighways” without accounting for all the safety features the researches prescribe. As recently as 1932, New Jersey built its “miracle” of super-high-ways, 54 miles from Trenton to the Holland tunnel. Instead of two-car crashes, it got three, four and five-car crashes. During the first two years, 168 were killed and 1800 more injured. That “safety” highway invited more autos, more speed on a wide free-for-all with few controls engineered into it. “Suicide Pike” they called it, and on busy days ambulances cruised up and down, waiting for business. » ” 8

N 1935, the state split that 54 miles down the middle, created a 12-foot dividing island, and by just one of the four features of the limited motorway, slashed the slaughter sharply

* last year.

Less than 100 miles of limited highway now in operation contain all four basic safety features. Frank T. Sheets, American Association of State Highway Officials past president, lists eight ingredients which must be incorporated in future highways. First, Mr. Sheets says, the systems must inciude terminal facili ties. In metropolitan centers,

| |

| of the fair sex, strengthened by |

| softhearted for

there must be provided elevated

or depressed limited ways to pick 4

Indiana Professor Analyzes

up traffic delivered at the edges of congested areas and from other thoroughfares within the areas themselves. These traffic arteries must have adequate traffic and safe speed capacity, must have opposing traffic lanes separated. must be free from grade crossings either with railways or other highways, and must have suitable ramps for picking up and discharging traffic at strategic points.

” =” ” ECOND. according to Mr, Sheets. transcontinental and | intersectional travel will demand | the development of a limited | mileage of super-highways, per- | mitting high speed, safe travel between important population | centers and between major sections of the United States. These highways ultimately will provide from four to eight traffic lanes, each 12 feet wide, will have no grade crossings with highways or railways, will eliminate all pedestrian and horse-tirawn traffic, and will provide for egress and ingress of vehicular traffic at only fixed points several miles apart. Speed will be limited only by the capacity of driver and vehicle. Trucks and slower moving vehicles will be segregated into special lanes, Opposing traffic lanes will be separated. Alignment, grade, slight distance and superelevation should be predicated on top speeds of 100 miles per hour. Free movement and discharge capacity should be encouraged rather than discouraged by arbitrary speed limitations and unwise po-

‘A WOMAN'S VIEW

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HOSE people who have been |

women are too jury service will have to revise their opinion since 11

saying that

stern male, recently

verdict of

only one brought in a against mother in Cincinnati.

guilty | a 31-year-old wife and |

Second-Class Matter at “Postofh *Chdiananolis Ind.

at Postoffice.

Backing out of a blind

Germany is

driveway often spells death. Limited access to main highways would prevent such accidents as that in the making above. building the highway system in the world, shown in the middle. These roads lace the nation from frontier to frontier, avoiding towns, limiting access, separating grades.

most efficient

The New Jersey approach

/ /

licing. These highways will avoid all cities and towns. n n n HIRD in importance in Mr. Sheet’'s “highway of tomorrow” are main trunk highways.

Supplementing the main superhighways will be a larger system of main trunk highways. These will feed traffic into the main superhighways and will serve other intercity. interstate and intersectional traffic. Another requirement of the perfect highway system is installation of intermediate highways, Mr. Sheets says. These highways will include those which serve mainly the traffic between local communities but carry also some interstate and intersectional travel. They will include the main

to the George Washington Bridge, below, is real highway engineering, eliminating those twins of traffic—murder and congestion.

county roads. -They must have stable surfaces, two traffic lanes of at least nine feet each, adequate shoulders, and standards of alignment, grade, sight-distance and superelevation compatible with maximum operating speeds of 50 or 60 miles an hour. Other points mentioned in Mr. Sheets “highway of tomorrow” exposition, which he first delivered at the Greater New York Safety Council's annual meeting last spring, included land service roads, by-passes and belt lines, arterial streets and land service streets. : Researches have shown highway engineers the solution. Meanwhile, the slaughter continues.

NEXT — What Part Does the Auto Play?

Technique of Thievery

Times Special LOOMINGTON, Nov. “Never grift on the way out”"— meaning “Don’t steal anything more on the way back trom another theft "—is one of the business rules of the profession of thievery, according to the book “The Profes-

| sional Thief,” written by Dr. Edwin

H. Sutherland, head of the Indiana University department of sociology. Published this month by the University of Chicago Press, the new book on thievery is based on revelations of a professional thief of 20 years’ experience made to Dr. Sutherland, who annotated and interpreted the material. Chic Conwell, the thief whom Dr. Sutherland interviewed seven hours a week for three months, was an attractive person, the author relates. “He could have passed readily as a lawyer, a banker, or a merchant,” Dr. Sutherland says. Dr. Sutherland's book describes the

life of his subject and examines pro-

fessional thievery as a way of life. He discusses the “mob,” or the group of thieves who work together in shoplifting, pocket picking and other illegal work, the various “rackets,” the personal and social life of the thief. » ” n

N a chapter on the personal life of the thief, Dr. Sutherland points out that the professional thief travels alongside of society, but separate from it. The thief is suspicious of, but does not hate, those

27.— |

{ a theater usher. professional |

in legitimate jobs. which persons he calls “suckers.” The professional thief enjoys movies, night clubs, summers at the lakes and winters at the springs. He may have a wife; if so, she is generally loyal to him, both for business and sentimental reasons. The theif avoids crowds when not “working” because it does him no good to be recognized. That the professional thief is carefully schooled by his superiors before starting out on a life of crime for himself is brought out by the book. Chic Conwell, for ample, was from a well-to-do Philadelphia family and started in life as Married to a chorus girl, Chic left home, became an occasional user of drugs, and drifted into the underworld. He worked as a pickpocket, a shoplifter and confidence man in all the principal American cities and maintained his headquarters in Chicago.

LJ A » D*® SUTHERLAND also relates that a professional thief will help one of the same vocation to

“beat the rap,” regardless of his personal feeling for the arrested man. Incidentally. Chic Conwell was sentenced to state or Federal prisons, but three times for a period of about, five years in his 20-year career, ana at the expiration of his last sentence until his death in 1933, this profssional thief held legitimate jobs, one of which was telling his

| experiences to Dr. Sutherland.

| Jasper—By Frank Owen

ex- |

| |

| Life Insurance people asking him

Second Section

PAGE 9

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

Snow on Benjamin Franklin Statue Recalls How Indianapolis Boy of 1872 Started Career as Sculptor,

NOTHER thing I like about this old town is the way the snow settles on the statue of Benjamin Franklin in front of the Typographical Union's baronial home on N. Meridian St.

I don’t know what it is, but the snow does something to the statue and lends it a beauty that, somehow, isn’t apparent in the summer time. Maybe it’s because the snow in its beneficence seeks to hide

the defects of an 18-year-old boy’s work. That's how old John Mahoney was when he carved the statue. Mr. Mahoney came to Indianapolis by way of North Vernon. Jennings County, and got a job as a stone cutter in the marble shop which stood at the northwest corner of Meridian and Ohio Sts. That was back in 1872. That was the vear, too, of the first art exposition in Indianapolis. Included in the art exposition was a collection of Rogers statuary. the first of its kind around here. I don’t know whether anv of you remember it, but more than half a century ago every Indianapolis home with a bay window had a brown-stained, plaster cast piece of sculpture, depicting, as a rule, some homely scene or contemporary event. It was always referred to as the “Rogers Group.” A house with two bay windows had two Rogers Groups. To have the entire Rogers collection would have required a house with 87 bay windows. No Indianapolis home ever attained that distinction. but some came pretty close to it. A bay window was necessary because every Rogers Group, unlike most modern work, had its back finished as smoothly as front, and it needed room to point out the fact. Besides, a bay window was the best way of showing off the piece to passersby in the street.

Then He Got the Job

Well, as I was saying, the first art exposition around here had a collection of Rogers Groups and, as luck would have it, the 18-year-old Johnny Ma-= honey saw it. As he looked on the miniature groups

Mr. Scherrer

| and sensed their simple beauty, the thought struck

him that he could do the same thing. He got some clay and, without any instructions, went to work, The figures he made attracted the attention of his employer. It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to John Mahoney, because as soon as his boss saw what the kid had done he felt for a letter in his coat pocket. The letter was from the Franklin to recommend

| somebody to do a statue for their new building on | the circle.

Sure, the kid got the job. As you probe ably know, that's where the statue stood until the Tower Building people got ready to put up their building. After that Mr. Mahoney went right up the ladder,

| He made the statue of Martin Michael in Fairmount

Park, Philadelphia; the Statue of Charles West in

| Eden Park, Cincinnati; the colossal figures of Liberty

and Law for the Pilgrims’ Monument at Plymouth, Mass.; the state of Henry Bergh for the public fountain at Milwaukee, and finally the statues of George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison and James Whitcomb for our Monument Place. They're good, too, but for some reason the snow doesn’t caress them the way it does his first statue on Meridian St.

Jane Jordan—

Mother Warned Against Upholding

Older Brother Against Younger,

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I have three children in the family, two boys and a girl. The two boys are devoted to the girl but not to each other. The older boy is a model son, industrious, reliable and self-sufficient. Next year he will enter college with the highest marks. His brother who is three years younger has not done so well in school He is always at odds with his teachers and blames his bad marks on them. I must say they have not been as friendly toward him as toward the older boy. Some even have rebuked him for not equaling his brother's record in school. The big brother has tried in every way to help the younger boy, tutoring him in the evening at home, but the younger boy feels no gratitude and we have many emotional scenes. This quarreling between the boys is the only disharmony we have in our home and I would appreciate it if you have any suggestions which may help me correct it. MOTHER.

on ” "”

Answer—The tension will no doubt ease up after the older brother goes to college and the younger brother has no rival left at home. It is very hard on a boy to have a pace-setter in his older brother who is held up to him as a model which he is exe pected to duplicate. Unless carefully handled the younger child will either lose his own individuality in the attempt to aps the older, or will try to dife ferentiate himself by becoming the opposite. I regard any school teacher as stupid who tries to prod a younger child to achievement by mentioning the virtues of any older child in the family. I believe it is a mistake for the older boy to tutor his brother as it tends to make the younger one feel more inferior than ever. It is a failing of parents that they often place too much responsibility on the oldest child in the family, permitting him to teach and discipline the younger children, thereby arousing their jealousy of the parents’ regard for the first-born. As a rule brothers and sisters are not so jealous of each other as children of the same sex, though there are exceptions, of course. If you seek the co-operation of the boy's teachers you must take care not to show favoritism yourself, Your child will be very sensitive to any comparison between himself and his brother. You would be wise to place more responsibility on the younger boy and show more confidence in his ability to perform. A hobby of his own, completely removed from his brother’s interests, would help him. In building up the ego of the ycunger boy you must

both rose Haut Fraxinet, a mountain peak lonely in | its beauty until the miracle occurred which made it a | shrine for pilgrims from afar. A. Tennyson Jesse tells in ACT OF GOD (Greystone Press) a whimsical story of how the Blessed | Virgin appeared to Sylvestre and Simone, two children | who were tending their sheep on the mountain top. | The village Cure listened to their story, weighed it | carefully and came to believe in the apparition as implicitly as did the children themseives. When Toby Erskine, a friend of the Cure’s, found an explanation

Now if it's vengeance we want; if | we believe justice can be served only by use of the hangman's noose, | the electric chair or the lethal] chamber, then women have indeed | displayed brave qualifications for | citizenship. I doubt very much whether a jury | of men would have voted to Kill | this woman. In the masculine mind |

be careful not to offend the big brother. Even a model child is not above jealousy of the parents. It may be that you could get the older boy to co-operate with you by treating his brother more like an equal than an inferior. This is treading on dangerous ground, but a great deal can be accomplished with children through love. If the big brother feels that he is your ally in a project, he will work hard to help you, whereas if his jealousy is aroused he would uncone

of the miracle he succeeded for only a short time in

keeping secret his discovery. Shocked at first by the

reveiation, the truth-loving Cure found that his deep |

faith was not dependent on the authenticity of a

miracle. and the reader. too, feels that the beauty of |

the story is not lost. 5 = ” ERHAPS it is a little early for family famous in the annals of American finance. Has the author been able in THE GUGGENHEIMS (Covici-Friede) to attain the cool abstraction necessarv to the writing of a biography when he must be conscious of the many prosperous third and fourth generation descendants of that Meyer Guggenheim, who. leaving Switzerland in 1847 to seek his fortunes

in America left behind him “the hated heritage of six |

generations of oppression”? On the whole, Harvey O'Connor has done his difficult task well. The earlier part of the especially interesting and especially well-told. Here is the favorite American success story, the steady progress from peddler to wealthy merchant, from merchant to silver mines at Leadville, on to new mining ventures in Mexico, concessions in the Congo, and a vast fortune from Alaskan copper.

5 ee AS a

this story of a |

book is |

’-29

"Will you look in the want ads and see if anyone wants a good cook?"

|

the destructionists,

there is something repellent in oe : cabs \ & sciously try to defeat your aims,

|

thought of murdering one who, by the nature of her being, symbolizes motherhood. Ages of tradition are behind that reluctance, and although men en masse can be persuaded (or should wé say ordered?) to kill women who are far enough

away so that the bombs and not |

the hands casting them seem to be the individual

male is strongly opposed to murder-

ing the female with his own hands. | this |

It goes back simply to

—that men love their mothers and | a great many of them love a wife |

or a sweetheart. : On the other hand, women, being the mothers of men, have an In-

stinct to protect men and to forgive

their transgressions. This being true, why should we not reconstruct our whole jury system so that women only will try pen, and men only will try women? 2

NN NN

\ AN Oopr. 1937 by United Feature Syndicate, Ine.

"You complained about your back till Jasper lent you his skates—

now it sgyour elbows!"

JANE JORDAN.

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

Walter O'Keefe—

ARIS, Nov. 27.—The Paris papers are making a lot of the story from Los Angeles that a mountain out there is moving. Geologists say it's caused by the caving of tunnels where the Spaniards buried gold, so Washington had better look hard at Ft. Knox and see whether it’s active or whether it’s like the stock market. You don’t need a scientist to explain the phenoms« enon at all; the mountain is simply going over to the Paramount lot for a closeup. If the act is any good the chances are that Sam Goldwyn will have it in his Follies. It just shows how free our country is under Demo= cratic rule. An Italian mountain wouldn't dare move with Mussolini watching it. Vesuvius quit 15 years agojishe hated to play second fiddle. <