Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 December 1937 — Page 22

PAGE 22

The Indianapolis Times

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ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

FRIDAY, DEC. 3, 1937

FORGET THE GROUCH. HELP! NE of the greatest drags on the efforts being made to turn the slump is showing up in the glee that some of the hate-Roosevelters are displaying. To them we commend this thought—that we're all in the same boat, and that getting joy out of a bad storm which might turn into a hurricane is a poor way to pursue happiness. If there ever was a time when the mad should be wiped out and calm substituted, this is it. We are in a situation that calls for thinking, not feeling. The biggest, fattest bourbon that ever grew red in the face over a demitasse wouldn't be safe in another depression. And if he'll stop emoting long enough to ponder a bit he will know that. The President has given evidence that he wants to help business come back—and it's altogether to his selfish interest | that he should. It is equally to the selfish interest of business, small and great, to join in with everything they've got. Sulking and sneering and I-told-you-soing are perilous at a time like this. What the country needs more of —now—is the spirit displayed by Wendell Willkie, head of Commonwealth & Southern, the big utility in the TVA region, who has had plenty of differences with Mr. Roosevelt but who displays vision enough to rise to the occasion, admit that business hasn't always been simon-pure, and to point out, as he did in an interview, that nothing can be accomplished “by leaning back in the chair and calling President Roosevelt names.” The extent to which business realizes or fails to realize the truth of that may be the determining factor in whether or not we are able to “snap out of it.”

MEAGER GAINS THE head-in-the-sand attitude is disappearing in the State’s present attack on the traffic accident problem. Nationally known safety experts have been called in to help develop a program. Governor Townsend hopes to have this work under way Jan. 1. And it is high time. Latest figures show 155 persons | killed in Indiana traffic during October. This was an in- | |

crease of 11 over October, 1936, and it boosted the statewide auto fatality rate to 11.3 per cent ahead of the same 10-month period last year. The National Safety Council reports the nation’s traffic cost 31.950 lives during this period, of which 1148 were in | Indiana. This national figure was 8 per cent over the | 29 560 deaths for the corresponding months of 1936. While this is offset hy a 9 per cent increase in auto traffic, the safety gain is pathetically small. Unless scientific safety methods make the improvement vastly greater, it will be 50 years before the gains are noticeable.

THE UTILITIES AND PUMP PRIMING

E have discussed in these columns the prosperitymaking potentials of a housing boom and revival of the railroads. Today let's look at the electric utilities. This industry is not sick—except, maybe, its state of | mind. For it is selling more kilowatt-hours and taking in more revenue than in any year in its history, 1929 included. Here is a business which should look to the future with rosy confidence. Three billion six hundred million dollars—that is the amount which it is estimated this industry could profitably invest in the next year, modernizing and expanding its generation and transmission system—=$2,600,000,000 to catch up on the five-year construction lag, and $1,000,000,000 for next year’s normal construction: “ Then why doesn’t it go ahead and build for its future? The managers of the industry have said ‘that they

would like to, but that the “punitive” tactics of the Roose- | | into flame while reading the program by the light

velt Administration are scaring away investors. The Administration, harking back to the Insull era, has said that the investors are not so much afraid of the Government as they are of the financiers of the utility industry. There was an argument which, until a few days ago, seemed to be without end. But recently Administration and industry spokesmen have been conferring, and as usually happens when reasonable men talk across the table

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

| NEW YORK, Dec. 8.—This smart city is

of the customers appear absolutely

| false arrest or kick up a row with some well-known

| fireman, who is assigned to the theater on full pay

| firemen, however, have been so tolerant or indolent

| ignited in a lobby one night, being saved when well | ablaze by some resourceful escort who wrapped his

Sov very bad has happened to the theater

i crawl over their betters to reach their seats, carry

with each other, they seem to be ironing out their differ- |

ences. It is reported that the Administration is willing to abandon its “yardstick” competition and otherwise encourage private enterprise to go ahead and electrify America, providing the industry managers in turn will eliminate “write-up,” accept the “prudent investment” wvaluation theory and otherwise modify their policies. Let us hope they complete the peace. For the country badly needs the pump-priming which such a vast power-

expansion could provide.

5 8 ” ” u un

OPPER, lead, aluminum, steel, rubber, glass, poles, lum-

ber, bricks, cement—those are some of the commodities that would go into a utility building program. An estimated 45 per cent of utility construction expenditures is used in the purchase of materials. Forty-five per cent of $3,600,000,000 is $1,620,000,000. Use your imagination on what that would mean in employment in the mines, the steel mills, the rubber and glass plants, the timber camps, the electrical equipment factories, and on the railroads. The other 55 per cent—or $1,980,000,000—would go for labor in actual construction and installation. HOUSING—$3,200,000,000—that is the amount which the President says could be spent each year for the next five years, just to catch up with the housing shortage. RAILROADS—82,400,000,000-—that is the amount which it is estimated the railroads could profitably spend each year for many years to come, if returned to a prosperity basis. UTILITIES—$3,600,000,000—just to catch up on the construction lag and for one year’s normal expansion. TOTAL—$9,600,000,000. Compared to that WPA is an eye-dropper. i A

| | |

| |

aster one of these gala evenings, to be followed, no doubt, by a triple probe and more

who strike matches and fire up cigaret lighters during the show and smoke cigarets all over the place | during the intermissions.

Showhouse Firebugs Are Menace on Great White Way, Columnist Warns, Foreseeing Big Theater Bonfire.

fixing to solemnize a great theater dis-

stringent regulations of the conduct of those gay, irresponsible drunks, male and female,

The wonder is that the

panic hasn't happened already. For the city firemen assigned to enforce regulations for the safety

indifferent to the risk which combined with the nuisance of smelly, chattering alcoholics, undoubtedly has driven trade away from the box office. The firemen are supposed to be present in their official capacity, not as guests. They have authority to call the cops and prosecute. The regulations are based on disasters of the past and on the knowledge that a little flame, a whiff of smoke from a burning carpet or a cry of “fire!” may start a stampede. The old admonition to look about for the exit, lichts and, in case of commotion, to walk, not run, to the nearest door is still on the program. But it is only a perfunctory. nod to tragic experience in view of the fact that firemen on duty permit the customers to strike lights to read the lineup. The man who is running the show does nothing, out of respect for the absurd dictum that the customer is always right, even though he burn down the house.

Mr. Pegler

” i= boss, if he feels tough enough about it, may call a cop and make the complaint himself, but no showman wants to be a martyr in a suit for

”

town inebriate while his show is going on. So the responsibility is passed along to the City to enforce certain plain, simple ordinances. The for years that small liberties have grown into confirmed customs, and little fires blink among the audiences to the horror of all who have not had the foresight to get drunk and regardless, too. The risk is Worst when the show is on. Women wear flimsy costumes and one unfortunate one was

dinner Jacket about her. You go ahead and imagine what might have happened, though, if she had burst

of a gasoline torch in the midst of the audience with the lights out.

Ld » n

audience in New York, anyway. It is, say, 80 per cent decent. But the peace, comfort and safety of the majority are violated by an element of rum pots of both sexes who come staggering in late,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES A Chance to Better His Living Conditions !—By Talburt

FRIDAY, DEC. 3, 1987 _

e Mountain—By Herblock

The Hoosier Forum

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

CALLS DICTATORSHIPS RECEIVERS OF CAPITALISM By Louis S. Farmer, Anderson Capitalism properly defined is a system of society wherein industry, commerce and finance being operated upon a basis of private gain rather than social well being, culminates in a condition whereby a vast | majority receives such a small per- | centage of purchasing power or in- | come that industry, commerce and | finance are no longer able to op- | erate in conformity with social well being. Back in 1917 when the Russian Government collapsed, a minority Rolshevik group determined to reorganize society upon a basis of social well being rather than private gain, succeeded in stealing a march on their adversaries, seized political power, and used it not only to establish laws beneficial to the

re-establish a system of private gaiil. Hence communism provided the first successful receivership capable of taking over a bankrupt capi-

interest of the previously exploited masses. Since the Bolshevik national and international bankers _. have devised new forms of receivership for bankrupt capitalist nations, namely, Nazi and Fascist dictatorships. Every capitalist nation on earth is rapidly approaching a point of

creasingly harder for them to function satisfactorily for social well being, hence the frantic efforts to align all the nations into one of these two forms of dictatorship devised to take over and operate bankrupt capitalist nations. Being neither a Communist, Fascist nor capitalist, the writer is free to state facts as he sees them.

CENSURES CORPORATIONS ON NEW DEAL ATTITUDE

By Rebecca S. Stewart, Brazil

The howl which is being raised by the editors of most of the newspapers, the professional politicians, the economic nabobs, and the Wall Street gamblers over the undistrib-uted-profits tax is in no way surprising. They belong to the class which thinks the best of evervthing is theirs, and are utterly devoid of gratitude. Five years ago when millions of people were desperate, when hunger and want were on every side, when banks and factories were closed, and the country on the verge of chaos, if not revolution, they were not so

on their alcoholic babble, and play with fire when in such a state that their own breath would burn like a blow torch. The theater has searched its conscience earnestly for faults and found many in the writing, casting, acting and scenery, but one of these nights some smart showman will become a public hero by gouging a firebug out of the audience. There seems to be no hope of any preventive work by the firemen. Their job is to visit with the ushers and to dig out the bodies after the panic.

critical of that strong, courageous | leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose

| policies just as surely saved their | | millions as they fed the hungry and

| clothed the half-clad. But when the worst of the crisis was passed, the special privileged class recognized the fact they were | losing some of their special privileges. . . . Now that we have a | President who is fair to

disorganize and thwart all efforts to)

bankruptcy whereby it becomes in- |

| spoiled children who if the game is | not entirely to their liking, won't | play, but go home and whine and | ery, “no fair.”

| |

(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.)

For many years the

corporations have held undisputed If these

determined not fo of the upkeep of the Government. In other words instead of a government for the people, they are banding together for the purpose of discrediting the New Deal. which saved the country, and

Big business is

talist nation and operating it in the having a government of corpora-

tions, for corporations and by corporations instead of a government of

revolution | the people.

y Ww Ww TAX SUGGESTED ON OWNERS OF MACHINES

By Disappointed Laborer I worked for a foundry for 14 years. 1 am 49 years old and one of the oldest laboring men in the cleaning department. I've been laid off. and I'm just as able to work now as 14 years ago, but I can’t get another job because I'm over 40. I'm too young for old-age pension and too old for a job in factories. I can’t get a job on a WPA project,

WINTER DAY By RUTH SHELTON

A wild wind shrills from the north today, And snow flies, stinging and white and cold; The smoke blows southward and melts away, : The stock stands hunched in the sheltered fold.

{But the front lawn knows no un-

. pleasant thing, There laughter and red-blooded warmth prevail, For feet have trampled a cross-trail ring And fox pants close at the goose’s

tail!

DAILY THOUGHT

all the peo- |laboreth

For it seemeth to me unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes laid | against him.—Acts 25:27.

| ——— Is judging of others a man laboreth in vain, offen erreth,

and easily sinneth; but in judging |

and examining himself, he always fruitfully, — Thomas a

| ple, they can't take it, but are like 'Kempis.

|- ASHINGTON, Dec. 3.—This is the last of three

articles tracing the progress of the split between Government and business. In March, 1934, NRA called a conference of all code authorities to criticize performance in Governmentbusiness co-operation, and consider ways to improve it. The President opened it hopefully with all official Washington present. It hadn’t been in session an hour before it disclosed a “gangin-up” of some of the most important industrial forces. The Blue Eagle was as dead as the dodo—right then. The law had depended wholly on co-operation and there was only antagonism. From that moment on, the battle lines formed. In the curious alliance of the First New Deal, there were two opposed schools, One had insisted to the President that business would go to all reasonable lengths with him toward social objectives. A radical group believed business was antisocial and not to be trusted. : That March conference, and what followed, put the pink business baiters in the advisory saddle. This palace revolution was slow. It culminated in 1935 when the Supreme Court killed NRA,

N the meantime, one aggravation after another occurred. A lawyer's onslaught on every New Deal measure developed. The country's foremost corporation counsel began offering services “free” to defiant violators of NRA and AAA. Disobedience and frustration of every New Deal law were encouraged from

sources close to some of the greatest industrialists, |

‘General Hugh Johnson Says—

Anger Blocked Effort to Harmonize Administration and Business; President Roosevelt Now Points Way Toward Belated Reconciliation.

According to He

Our Younger Generation Is Youth Now Finds New Values in Social

because the Government hasn't enough money. What am I to do? Machines are ruining the working condition of good honest laborers who would work if they could get a job. Machinery makes machines. Fourteen years ago I worked in a four-man group which cleaned 80 motor blocks in nine hours, Three weeks ago the same-sized group cleaned 170 motor blocks in eight hours. Four men today do the work of nine men. We didn’t work harder, but we put five men out of work. | I believe in the next 10 years five | men with machinery, will do the | work of 400 men today and 1200 men

{15 years ago. What will happen if this keeps on? Why could not the

| Government tax the owners of the |

| machines, who are saving money, |

| and help the man put out of work? If machines were out of the factories there would be no relief prob[1ems and much less crime.

” ” ” ress TO FARM OWNERS | TAKING FACTORY JOBS By a Ridgeville Wife Every day we hear | tion “when will the depression lend?” Answer: When married | women stop working out and leave the jobs to the girls and boys who

asked the ques-

have no means of support, and when |

men with good farms stay at home and work their land as they should and not let it grow in weeds while they hold jobs in the factories and | quarries. | I often wonder if they realize they are taking the bread away from | families that are in need of it, or is it just greed for money?

| |

| Right here in the town where 1|

| live there are men with 40 and 60acre farms who don’t even keep a cow or hog, and some not even a few hens. And they are holding good jobs while men with families to support, who have not even a home are paying rent. Jeed I say men like that should | be made either to give up their jobs or give up the farm to someone who | can use it to make a living?

” un ”

LET DOG OWNERS PAY, WOMAN URGES

By Mrs. S. E. R. I wish to second the recent letter of Mrs. L. A. A. and say I, too, 0 not think we should spend so much on a dog pound. Why not make all owners of footloose dogs pay heavily for one, and not other taxpayers who do not own dogs, much less care for them in the city where they are such nuisances?

” ” »

POEM CONTRIBUTOR WINS PRAISE

By S. TL. V. An orchid to Lee Burns for his poem on Anton Scherrer voicing my sentiments . . . and to Jane Jordan for her fine restraint and insight in <hedding light on problems without | smugly drawing arbitrary lines bhe- | tween right and wrong, good and ad.

The mid-term elections were approaching and even the President expected to lose 60 seats in Congress. A conference of leading industrialists met and drafted a defiant ultimatum to the President. The President's overwhelming 1934 election further increased the tension, and the acid language of the Supreme Court in the sick chicken case snapped it. The President at last was convinced that business was his implacable enemy-—entrenched by the Supreme Court. There was born a smouldering anger, and a determination to ride roughshod over those who had obstructed and, as he felt, betrayed him.

T= opportunity would depend on the 1936 election —he must have overwhelming support The election answered the prescription of the prophets who never vet had failed—and they were at his elbow with the disastrous legislative program of January, 1937. He tucked it under his arm and charged like a berserker. The charge failed. Then came the slump. The President has turned away from his radical advisors to middle ground. Where do we go from here? Julius Ferens says, “Right now, the prospect (depends) . . . on the angers and prejudices of the President and his business enemies.” Isn't it clear from this history that everything has depended on that for at least two years—with blame about equally divided? What this serious situation needs is an adjournment of “prejudice and anger”—

show the way. i v

on both sides—and the President recently has tried to |

EW YORK, Dec. 3.—During the Thanksgiving recess I came into brief contact with a young relative of mine who is a sophomore at one of the minor Quaker colleges near Philadelphia. I believe their football slogan is “Beat Elder's Ridge Normal School.”

This year, I understand, my friend’s potential alma mater failed in its objective, and so I expected to find him sunk in that pessimism which has so long been associated with the younger generation. Indeed, I found him chipper and unabashed. It is my impression the younger generation is not what it used to be but infinitely better. In foreign lands the students often are the most active force in all political fermentation. That is not true here as yet, but the undergraduate practice of sitting out each social change is rapidly diminishing. By now I have seen a good many younger generations come and go. We neither knew nor cared what went on outside the border of the Ivy League.

” » »

T= coming of the war changed the undergraduate roster, but not much for the better. This was & more way-wise generation, but it fell into the depths of eynicism and despair. Scott Fitzgerald was perhaps the most articulate and eloquent spokesman for the

young pessimists. 1 was looking over his extraordi-

Just the other day nary undergraduate novel, “This Side of Paradise,”

and found:

a A 2

Na — RN ~~

Merry-Go-Roun

By Pearson & Allen

Halifax's Visit to Hitler Draws Fourth Rebuff for England When

Fuehrer Renews Three Demands.

ASHINGTON, Dec. 3.—The inside story of Viscount Halifax's conversations with Hitler has been cabled here in official reports and makes another chapter in the long series of rebuffs the Nazis have handed the British. The other chapters in the story should be kept in mind. They make significant history. Chapter I took place in April, 1935, when Hitler tore up the disarmament sections of the Versailles Treaty by declaring universal conscription, This convinced the British il was time to get friendly with Gers many, so Sir John Simon and Capt. Anthony Eden flew to Bers lin, Hitler had been persuaded hy his advisers to receive the Brit= ish visitors in a friendly manner, Hitler went even further, and sent his personal bodyguard of Brown Shirts to the airport. But when the two Englishmen stepped from their plane, they walked by without even giving the guard a nod, let alone returning the Nazi salute. This snub was immediately reported to Der Fuehrer, who, instead of receiving Simon and Eden as he had promised and letting them do the talking, launched into one of his usual lectures lasting three hours. The two Britishers returned to London with not one concilia=tory pebble turned in their search for friendship with Ger=many. Chapter 2 was written in the Hitler had sent his troops goose=

Drew Pearson

Robert Allen

spring of 1936 after stepping into the Rhineland, thus tearing up the last

military vestige of Versailles.

The British immediately asked the Nazis to state their future intentions. The note was an opener for a Western European conference. But the Nazis never answered it. Once against the British were rebuffed,

u u td

HAPTER 3 was penned last summer when the British invited Foreign Minister von Neurath to London. The Nazis kept the British in suspense for several weeks, then just before von Neurath was to arrive, telegraphed that he was indisposed. Premier Chamberlain, convinced that Britain must co-operate with Germany until tae British rearmas ment program is finished, was the one who spurred Halifax to Berlin. The conference boiled down to three things. Hite ler demanded: 1. Return of Germany’s prewar colonies, 92. A free hand in Austria if Germany won #&-

plebescite. 3. Freedom for minorities in Czechoslovakia.

” ” ”

N return for this he was willing to give Great Britain I a nonaggression pact respecting the borders of Western Europe. The British took up the German proposal with the French who have replied to this effect: The only time the Germans and Ttalians have listened was at the Nyon piracy conference when the British and French fleets were pooled in the Medi="' terranean. The only thing the Germans and Italians understand is force, and the fewer olive branches they get the better.

rr.

ywood Broun—

Throwing Off Pessimism of Preceding One}

«Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds through a reverie of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty, gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last 10 the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grow up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in maf

shaken . . .”

ost is not the mood of the young men and women of today. If all the sad young men of Scott Fitzgerald's day were destined to go out into a

brighter. But the undergraduate of today, as I have, seen him, is going to win and not lose or draw. : Nor is he thinking of the coming struggle as a purely individual effort. To a greater extent than ever before he is willing and eager to throw in his lot

with his fellows. tention of punting on the first down. If this younge

generation finds itself backed against its own goal

a forward pass. And a long one at that! . Its faith in mankind isn’t shaken. It has just bes gun to fight. The secondaries of an inept civilization hold no terrors. To these eager recruits the safely man of tradition is a pushover. You can hear the | Tit Tay 3 section shout, “We want a touchdown!”

I'll lay 10 to one they get it.

as Well as Individual Goals.:

line, it will have the courage and the audacity to throwy

gray turmoil, the outlook of the moment is hardly’

He and his teammates have no in,

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