Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 January 1938 — Page 22
PAGE 22 The Indianapolis Times
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Give Lioht and the Peonle OITill Find Their Own Way
FRIDAY, JAN. 7, 1938
LET IT PASS! HERE are more than enough votes in the U. S. Senate to pass the Wagner-VanNuys antilynching bill, which the House passed last spring, 277 to 119. There also are enough Southern Senators to conduct a long and bitter filibuster against the bill, which comes up this week. But why start the new session with a filibuster which, in the end, could accomplish nothing more than a temporary delay for the majority will of Congress and the country? Here is a fine opportunity for that “national outlook” which, as President Roosevelt has said, is so greatly needed in Congress. Let the antilynching bill become law, as it is sure to sooner or later anyway, and clear the track for the other business that demands attention.
NEW DEAL POWER VICTORY
HILE President Roosevelt was urging industry, agri- |
culture, business and politics to co-operate, the Su-
preme Court was co-operating with the New Deal through |
a notable unanimous decision upholding the right of PWA to make loans and grants for municipal power projects. That means that 61 such projects in 23 states, involving about $147,000,000 of Federal and local money, can go ahead. From the private utilities’ viewpoint it means, according to Wendell L. Willkie of the Commonwealth & Southern Corp., that the Federal Administration is free to follow to any length, a policy of financing municipal competition on terms the private companies cannot afford to meet. Mr. Willkie intimates broadly that the Administration, itself, ought now to change that policy. Possibly so. But only, we believe, if the private companies will sell their power at fair rates without being clubbed by the weapon the Supreme Court has said the Government has a right to use. And only if the utilities stop litigating obstruetively, and start electrifying.
ONLY CUPID—AGAIN (GREAT excitement reigned at Ypsilanti, Mich. Gertrude, the 17-year-old daughter of Harry Bennett, had disappeared from her father's palatial home. “Trudie” had not been heard from in 20 hours. And 1000 police, even the GMen, were set on the trail. What made it a mystery fit for the pen of a Dashiell Hammett was its setting. Not only is Mr. Bennett chief of personnel of the great Ford Motor Co. He appeared to be beset by sinister forces. Former chief of the Ford “Service Department,” he claimed many powerful enemies. He had been a student of police work and had aided Michigan cities in solving the Jackie Thompson kidnaping and the torch murder. He told police that attacks had been made on his life, his auto riddled with gangster bullets. His castlelike home is heavily guarded. Great dogs roam the lawns. Floodlights illuminate it at night. What a perfect setting for the Great Bennett Kidnap Mystery! But keep your seat. For the villain turned out to be only Cupid, who laughs at locksmiths, personnel directors and mystery-lovers. Trudie had eloped with a college classmate and married him in Indiana.
WORTHY THE AGE NEARLY 70 years ago at a point 53 miles west of Ogden, Utah, Leland Stanford drove a golden spike that tied the Central and Union Pacific lines and marked completion of the first transcontinental railroad between New York and. San Francisco. Thereupon trains began lumbering across the mountains and plains, taking a week to make the journey and offering few comforts. This week a far different kind of train began speeding across the continent. It is the Union Pacific's “City of Los Angeles,” the latest of a flock of streamlined speedsters that are eating up time and space—the railroads’ answer to airplane competition. This amazing train, the largest of its kind, has 17 cars articulated so that it appears to be jointless, its length stretching for nearly a quarter-mile, The train gets you from Chicago to Los Angeles in less than 40 hours. This is progress. When all the railways of the country offer such service we will hear less of financial difficulties, less of the inroads into rail revenue being made by air, bus and water competition. How to modernize their equipment and meet the challenge of a streamlined age is the railroads’ next problem. The engineers have done their part. The financiers must do theirs.
POLICY OF SUICIDE bi E refuse to believe that the labor movement will accept the status of permanent civil war within its midst. We refuse to believe that the living organism of the trade-union movement will endure such a policy of suicide for long.”
The paragraph quoted above is notable because of its .
source, It was taken from an editorial in the current issue of Justice, official organ of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, third in size among the unions affiliated with the C. I. 0. Of all the many expressions of regret for the failure of the C. I. O.-A. F. of L. peace negotiations, this editorial in Justice seems to us the most significant. The editorial asserts that disappointment over the failure is felt the more keenly because it came after “all basic barriers” to peace appeared to have been removed and when, “given the will and an unbiased handling,” it seemed that the remaining problems “could be settled by diligent application within a reasonable time. . 4. “Our members had a right to hope and to expect that when peace appeared realizable or possible it should and would be consummated.” A will to peace, as Justice observes, appears to have been lacking among the leaders at the conference. But the trade-union movement, which is greater than its leaders, \ wants peace and is beginning to make its wishes known,
Bd SAD apg ey Se
MARK FERREE
able economic adven in the h of | than those of Joseph Smith snd Brigham Young,
4
_ THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Co-Operation at Last—By Kirby
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FRIDAY, JAN. 7, 1938
€ Basket—By Talburt
- HADN'T You BETTER TELL THE BOYS TO STOP KICKING (T
AROUND
.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Those Who Shared the Press Box With Eddie Neil Back in the Golden Decade Mourn His Untimely Death.
NEW YORK, Jan. 7.——Eddie Neil, the Associated Press reporter who was killed by a shell in Spain, was a member of that laughing, skylarking company of sports writers who campaigned with the ball clubs and football troupes and covered the big fights in the era that Paul Gallico called the golden decade. He was a tall, smiling kid, but prematurely gray, and it took him no time at all to become a first-
string man in an unbelievably pleasant and widely envied line of work. The sports writer led the life of Riley, and hundreds of other newspapermen naturally wished to break away from the city side and other departments and go clattering around the country with a little toy typewriter and a satchel in the company of the athletes and the fascinating char- 8 acters of the prize fight trade. a SX 5 The sports side still is the free , TERNS and easy branch of journalism, and I cannot imagine that it will Mr Pegler ever again be as attractive as it was in Eddie Neil's time in the press section. There is no Ruth, no Bobby Jones, no Rickard, and the fizzling out of Joe Louis, the colored boy, leaves the heavyweight class of fighters without a writable character, for Max Schmeling is a dull and oft-told tale and Tommy Farr, though picturesque, seems unimportant.
” ” » DDIE broke away a couple of years ago. He never seemed particularly adventurous in the sports business, but when he started going to the wars we began to hear of his taking risks which to those who
tooled along behind the war in France in good cars were beyond the line of duty. That was a well-regu-lated war but these new ones seem to be very loosely conducted. Eddie flew with his Italian friends in Abyssinia and was injured in a crash. He exposed his life in Pales= tine, and finally, in Spain, a long distance and a long time away from his wife and little boy, he was killed. The big war produced some really fine writing by Phil Simms, Phillip Gibbs, Wythe Williams and others, but these new wars are adventure assignments, and it is my impression that there is a sacrifice of art or vanity in the writing in favor of facts obtained by brave initiative under hard and dangerous conditions. Webb Miller, after his experiences in Abyssinia and Spain, was taut and trembling when he was last in this country, and the reporter who now probably can claim to have covered more wars than any other active reporter and to have covered them the hard way, intimately and to a large extent on foot, seemed to need a year in the quiet routine of night police. ” » ”
T is hard to write of the character of a good friend who has gone without slopping over, but anyone who knew Eddie Neil on the sports side will agree that there was something in his nature which always made people happier when he came onto an assignment.” The men who worked with Eddie in the war business will say that of him, although undoubtedly they will say it better. Those who had the luck to work on the same pine benches with him at sports shows from Cambridge to Los Angeles will share the loss of Helen Nolan Neil, the little girl reporter who used to wait in the background for him to fold up his box after the big fights. He was just whooping along on his new career as a war correspondent, and nothing could have stopped him less than a shell.
Absolutism in Financial
HICAGO, Jan. 7.—Maybe it is true that what the country needed after the 1929 debacle was a complete repeopling of our fiscal control, But did we need people like Mr. Eccles and Mr. Oliphant to come in and paralyze our economy by a lot of monetary experiments accepted nowhere else on the face of the earth? What their theories would do was accurately pr dicted by very responsible authority. They would do just what they have done. They would destroy any possibility of business expansion, make a new invest ment market impossible, and retard or prevent repayment of debt. They have done all these things exactly in accord with these predictions. Yet Mr. Eccles testified before the Byrnes Committee this week “the most deflationary thing that could be done would be repeal of the profits tax. It would reduce debt and pile up funds that we want distributed to stockholders.” Reduce debts; and that is deflationary; in other words business must not be allowed to pay its debts. If it cannot pay them how can it contract them? If it cannot contract them how can credit be used?
” n ” T is part of a plan for Government to control industrial operation on thie same totalitarian theory which permeates all recent third New Deal utterances and actions. Most of this is stolen from the heresies of Europe, but Mr. Eccles comes by his more honestly. He has a record of succes$ as a banker-—but under the iron-bound doctrines and performances of the Mormon hierarchy. There has been no more admir-
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The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
REPLIES TO ATTACK ON TWO PER CENT CLUB
By Michael Strus, Francesville In reply to Mrs. G. A. King of Brazil, who wrote that she had been dunned for $35 by the Two Per Cent Club: ' According to figures, to make $35 at 2 per cent a person would have to make $1750 for the year. At that rate, Mr. King would make about $33 a week. That is a good wage, especially for these last few years. It seems to me he could pay that 2 per cent and still not starve. I know I could. Now Mrs. King stated her husband supported three persons including himself. That makes it harder yet to see why they should have starved if they paid $35. It doesn’t take much to feed and clothe three persons, especially if two of them are elders. A person with that salary could save an average of $200 a year, making $7600 for 38 years, on which he could retire and not starve. (The $7600 should have been saved unless it was lost in banks during the
vestments.) » » » THINKS LANDON'S ATTITUDE IS SPORTSMANLIKE By Landonite Of Alf Landon it might almost be said, as was said of the Thane of Cawdor, that “nothing in his (political) life became him like the leaving of it.” His altogether manly statement that he will not again be a candidate for the Presidential nomination, hoping by that very renunciation to better advance his political views, does him entire credit. So does his cordial offer to the President of his entire support in the ticklish foreign situation now faced by the country. None of the nearly 17 million Americans who voted for Landon in 1936 need be ashamed of their man today, no matter how disappointed they may have felt during his rather ineffective campaign and his bad licking. His political attitude since that time has been sportsmanlike and admirable.
» » » UNABLE TO LIVE ON VISIONS AND CHARTS, READER SAYS By Z. B. Cutler, Lafayette Two plus two in the United States equals any number from one to 99, any number but four, it seems. The press the other morning contained about 48 varieties of demon-
strations of this bit of perverse truth—all the way from Assistant Attorney General Jackson to Colonel Ayers and Doctor Potter of Purdue. A trivial item of who is to pay for all the nice things advocated and how he is to pay is left to the
| They prove | that America is the happiest, freest, biggest
depression or through unsound in- |
| and
(Times readers are invited to express their 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.)
views in
| make it possible for those able to buy things to buy and pay for more,
lis lost in his shuffling the blame for
1 | deficit onto monopoly and big busi-
ness. His first investigations should be against the President, the econ- | omists, Congress, and those whose | initial philosophy and activities promulgated the doctrine that high | prices increase buying and paying ability in the consumers. Economist scientists vision every [man with a machine producing [more than he himself can consume. by statistical charts
consuming and spending land the world has known, due to science and machine. But history shows a land and unlimited resources given us, a profitable world market for its products, an amazing wastage and gambling on the future, and a debt exceeding the total of active and profitable assets. If we could only live on visions charts! But unfortunately, civilization rests on the average dollar in the average pocket. The boomerangs somehow don't co-op-erate with enthusiasts and text books.
” » » WRITER CHEERS FOR THE ELEPHANT By Mabel German
The circus barker failed to convince 17,000,000 voters that he could perform miracles if he could get them inside the big tent. On the inside he was the ring-master. He
WINTER'S TREE By MAUD COURTNEY WADDELL
The lone lombardy tree stands tall and slim Stripped of her shielding leaves o'er every limb. Clear diamond stars entwine and close embrace waving arms and calmly upturned face, And high above a bright moon's golden glow Places a halo ’'round dark hair draped with snow.
DAILY THOUGHT
If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.—Deuteronomy 25:1.
Her
r judges would make their decisions just, they should behold
mythical future.
that prices should be kept low to
General Hugh Johnson Says—
and
Industrial Control
As a boy, I saw the development frontiers in Oklahoma from little or ically to something important and
I remember riding over miles of with green fields, a village of red
trim and poplar lined avenues. It New England. It was Colonia Diaz.
Lawyer Jackson's correct analysis, | \
Proved Successful In Mormon Colonies, but It's a Bad Approach to America's Problems.
proud of it. But it was poor in comparison to what I saw in later years in pure Mormon colonies in Mexico.
hua and suddenly encountering in a valley, checkered
It seemed a miracle—but a miracle of personalized government, under the local bishop.
neither plaintiff, defendant, nor pleader, but only the cause itself.— B. Livingston.
of one of our last nothing econom1 was always tainly this is no seems to me that desolate Chihua- | Jectives. brick with white
might have been the New Deal.
smiled and cracked his whip. The trick animals all jumped through. Clown Wallace paraded the little pig with an empty nursing hottle (the pig was cotton). Clown Farley gathered up scattered votes and stuffed them in a bag. Popcorn vender Minton assured everyone there was a prize in every package. There was a tin whistle or an American flag made in Japan. It was planned that way. The donkey hee-hawed and kicked up his heels, east, west, north and south in the big ring. Now the circus is almost over. The trick animals are tired and refuse to perform. Clown Wallace
wants corn to fatten his pig. The bottom fell out of Clown Farley's | vote-getting bag. Clown Minton is out of popcorn (big business is to blame) and so is a student of Indiana History. . The elephant, after a good rest waiting for the show to be over, is now using his head and will proceed, as usual, to load the circus and clear the lot.
# 8%.» URGES ECONOMIC BOYCOTT AGAINST JAPAN
By William Lemon Through the diplomacy of President Roosevelt the Panay sinking is a closed chapter. He probably considered that labor always was in the first-line trenches, that labor had nothing to gain but a life to lose. Capital fights labor in times of peace but expects labor to protect its foreign investments even at the price of life in time of war.
We can give our moral support to China by refusing to buy Japanese goods at any price. Japan must buy from us as long as her credit is good, to continue her war, but if we as individuals refuse to buy her wares the war can't last long, for we are her best customers. This also cannot embarrass our Government, for we are a free people, and this is not a Government boycott, but a boycott of a peaceful people desiring peace.
” » ” CLAIMS FASCISM IS WORKING IN AMERICA UNDER DISGUISE By J. W. Howard, Anderson
Fascism has come to Brazil to save the people from communism. Fascism is a government of classes, where a few rule and the rest do as they are forced to do. Privileges are denied and the people have no choice. Fascism Is working in America under a disguise as a protector of democracy. Its supporters are the ones making the howl about communism in America to draw the people’s attention away from the works of its own organization until the time affords them the opportunity to strike, as they have done elsewhere. Communism, fascism and all other isms are very destructive and will suffer total destruction. Those responsible will be paid for the suffering they have heaped upon the
“How did you like Roosevelt?” I asked him, thought,” he replied, a little grimly, “that the President was in excellent voice.” But essentially this was a compliment instead of a crack. The vigor with which F. D. R. intends to press
people in Spain, China and Ethiopia.
EW YORK, Jan. 7.—I think it is quite unfair to the President to call his message conciliatory. It seems to one listener an excellent address, and cer-
time for conciliation. At least it our domestic difficulties are not go-
ing to be solved by any curtailment of progressive ob-
It may be that the message was milder in the reading than in its delivery. Shortly after the broadcast I saw a gentleman who is less than enthusiastic about
wy
T= don’t go that far in Utah, but they go far enough. The Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints is not only a magnificent organization for the preservation of sturdy pioneer’s virtues, it is also a magnificent economic control of the hard prin ciples of David Harum. That was proved a wonderful thing in an hierarchic frontier community, but it is a terrible approach to the problem of modern America. Particularly it is a fearsome addition to a third New Deal approach to a totalitarian government, which would utilize it not at all on its basis of high religious idealism but rather on a communistic or Fascist approach. It is necessary here to reject both slants toward absolutism especially in financial and industrial con-
LE) Jia nok uit ous Forms of politival ana eeonomie
i S —
:
a measure can often be more accurately determined by a sort of sound ranging than by his precise phraseology. I took away a conviction that he intends to go to bat on a wages and hours bill,
» » "
HEN that measure was sent back to committee in the special session its foes announced triumphantly that any legislation of the sort had been killed for all time. In his message Mr. Roosevelt made such a law a vital part of his program. He said that a wages and hours bill must be the business of the present Congress. In that I see no hint of conciliation, if conciliation means retreat, and what else can it mean when the word is used by reactionary
forces? Of course, I do not think-the
§
Merry-Go-Round
By Pearson & Allen
Jackson Is Definitely Roosevelt's Candidate for New York Governor; Crackdown on TVA Chairman Seen,
ASHINGTON, Jan. 7.—It is now an open secret that Robert H. Jackson, fighting Assistant Attorney General who has so aroused the ire of big business, is the President's candidate to be Governor of New
York next November. This was taken up in an inner council meeting last week and definitely decided. That meeting, however, took a long time and quite a little maneuvering before it came to pass. Reason was the Presi dent’s loyalty to Jim Farley, his big, bald, go-down-the-line Poste master General, Jim long has nursed private ambitions to be Governor of New York. Unfortunately, Jim has certain political handicaps, one of them being his former association with Tammany-—an organization which of late does not sit so well with New York voters. All of this deterred the President from throwing his influence one wav or the other in the New York situation. Meanwhile his New York friends, especially the La Guardia« ites, were urging him to take a stand. They pointed out that Governor Lehman's banker broth« er-in-law had his eye on Al« bany, that Tammany was trying to rise up out of its ashes, and that if he acted quickly Roosevelt had a chance to build up a new, progressive Democratic organiza= tion in New York. But the President delayed, out of deference to Jim Farley. The issue finally came to a head last week with Bob Jackson's two fighting speeches and the publication of an editorial in The Washington Times urging the President to come out in the open fegarding the governorship. At a meeting of two or three Roosevelt advisers immediately afterward, this editorial was brought up, Turning to Farley, the President said: “What do you think about it, Jim?” : “Bob Jackson's our best candidate,” was the ims mediate reply from the man who had wanted to be Governor,
Drew Pearson
a
Robert Allen
n ” » EHIND Senator Norris’ resolution for an investlgation of TVA and the utilities which have been fighting it is a Norris and Administration move to crack down on TVA Chairman Arthur E, Morgan. The inner circle is irked at Mr. Morgan for his persistent feuding with the other two board members and particularly for his recent series of articles ate tacking key features of New Deal power policy. Possi= ble courses of action against him were discussed re= cently with the Senator from Nebraska. At first Mr. Norris felt that an investigation of TVA was unnecessary. However, he, too, is so angry with Mr. Morgan that he finally agreed to this drastic action, : Last summer Senator Norris went so far as to ade vise the President to ask for Mr. Morgan's resignas tion. Mr. Morgan had threatened to quit if Mr. Roose= velt reappointed Director David Lilienthal, but had backed down when the President ignored his ulti matum,
According to Heywood Broun—
President Roosevelt's Message Cannot Fairly Be Called Conciliatory; He Indicated He Would Not Retreat in His Wage-Hour Bill Fight.
Franklin D. Roosevelt identified, but could not obliterate those who are all for the principle of a floor for wages and a ceiling for hours as long as they are permitted to balk any specific legislation on the sub-
ject. I do not trust the conservative Congressmen When they come bearing gifts or crying out “Concilig«tion!” What they really mean is, “You can make the speeches, Mr. President, as long as we can keep the sweatshop.” . : . 5 = HEN Mr. Davis, the fabulous producer of “The Ladder,” maintained his play for months and months by the simple process of letting everybody in free, he was constantly approached by those who had ideas about rewriting the opus. As a matter of fact, the show was altered almost once a week by Mr. Davis himself. But when outsiders made their volunteer sugges tions he would always Smile most cordially and say, “That's fine. That's a wonderful idea. We won't do that.” He was, you see, conciliatory. I am even more enthusiastic than I was before about the speeches by Mr. Ickes and Mr, Jacksofi, They laid down the barrage and broke the concrete pill boxes. Perhaps there can be conciliation now, byt it should be based upon a necessary gesture on the part of those who have fought for the maintenance of a sweatshop system, Conciliation? Why, yes, indeed! Just as soon as he, low-wage bloc put up their hang
a