Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 January 1938 — Page 10

io TR GR RL SRW

.

PAGE 10

CHEER AT RRS FE Shara i RE Tm PR SY

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy: delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co, 214 WwW, Maryland St. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

EE Rlley 5551

Give Lioht and the People Will Find Their Own Way

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bureau of Circulations.

SATURDAY, JAN. 8, 1938

WISH THINKING 'Tis a fragrant retrospection — for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfume, from the blossoms of the heart.

AMES WHITCOMB RILEY wouldn't ordinarily belong in a deep-sea discussion like economics. But he touches the speech that Robert Jackson, the brilliant and potent and much-publicized Assistant Attorney General made before the Town Hall meeting in New York. The speech had a nostalgic quality about it that may be very revealing as to the thought processes of this important man of the Administration. For we are all much influenced by our younger years and the life we knew then. Mr. Jackson dealt with business, bigness, smallness, and monopoly. “In professional life I was a lawyer chiefly for what we call small business,” he said. “My stake in that is far more permanent and.important to me than any stake in politics. And in government my particular job is to try and use the archaic antitrust laws to preserve this same kind of small and independent business.” Being not so far from Mr. Jackson in age, and of somewhat the same environment in youth, we can share sentimentally in that expression. We could conceive of no greater joy than to turn back the clock and dine at noonday in the general store—with the appetite we had then—on a nickels worth of crackers and cheese, and stop in on the way home to have Dobbin’s shoe fixed, under ti spreading chestnut tree. To dream the old dreams over is indeed a luxury divine, but it seems to us that what Mr. Jackson and we, and everybody, are dealing with is a condition, not a theory, and that smallness, as such, in those vast phases of our life today which call for mass-production, has about as much chance to serve the needs of 1938 as would a single peanut stand to feed the multitudes that mill at lunch hour through the streets of Manhattan. Or, in fiscal terms as much chance as our Government today would have, to live on the less than half-billion total Federal revenue of

1900. 8 = 8 y =»

N so far as the small business can be retained and still efficiently do its job in our economic and social scheme of things, we are for it, strong. And there is still great room for small business. But as for the Robert Jackson idea that all bigness can be broken up—and smallness, as Mr. Jackson knew it in his own home town, substituted—that looks to us like nothing more than wish-thinking. We believe Mr. Jackson, as the nation’s chief prosecutor of the antitrust laws, is suffering from the rather common confusion of assuming that bigness and monopoly are synonymous. Granting that bigness may tend toward monopoly, unless watched, nevertheless the two are by no means one and the same. In so far therefore as Mr. Jackson finds monopoly, he is correct in going after it with all he’s got. But in so far as he would try to break up business that is not monopolistic but is necessary to serve the needs of our complex mass-production era, we think his course would be dangerous. President Roosevelt made that pretty clear the other day. Like it or not, we are a “seven billion dollar country” in annual expense. We can't meet that bill with a scythe, a churn, and a spinning wheel.

INDIANA'S FIGHT ON SYPHILIS OOSIERS may well be proud of the tribute paid to the Indiana State Medical Society here this week by Dr. Thomas Parran Jr. The United States Surgeon General told the Council of Social Agencies and the Indianapolis Medical Society that “in no other State is co-operation of a State medical association in the fight against syphilis so complete as it is in Indiana.” Conquest of this dread disease depends a great deal on public support of such splendid medical efforts. Science has proved that the scourge of syphilis can be controlled. As Dr. Parran says: “Syphilis is one of the most urgent public problems today. But the weapons we now have to combat it are more potent and sure than for any other major disease. Only recently we have been able to talk about the disease, and 1 hope that soon we shall be able to move into concerted action against it.”

HURRAH FOR ALABAMA!

HE whole country ought to feel pretty happy over the fact that the Democrats of Alabama have voted overwhelmingly to promote Rep. Lister Hill to the United States Senate. This is not only because Mr. Hill is an able legislator ‘but also because his victory ended a comeback attempt by former Senator Tom Heflin, whose long career in Congress was remarkable chiefly for highly objectionable and frequently dangerous demagoguery. Mr. Hill, incidentally, is a New Dealer and a supporter of the wage-hour bill. The way Alabama went for him may provide other Southern Congressmen, who have fought President Roosevelt's proposal for a ceiling on "working hours and a floor under wages, with food for some rather serious thought.

THE MERIT SYSTEM OPERATES

HE fact that only 25 of the 129 original police school applicants were passed by the Merit Commission, still leaving six vacancies on the police force, indicates that police jobs no longer are being filled unless qualified men are found. Merit has replaced political pull. Over a period of time the merit system operation should grade up the personnel of the Police and Fire Departments. Mayor Boetcher and the Safety Board are to be commended for the free hand they apparently are giving the

Merit Commission in a personnel function that once was the |

Lewy + t

A

politics,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES That’s No Way to Peddle Your Fish—By Talburt

ANY LETTER

HAVE YOU EVER RECEIVED S MARKED PERSONAL’ OR CONFIDENTIAL? DID YOU EVER GET ONE THAT WASN'T ADVERTISING SOME" THING 7 WHAT WAS IN IT?

SATURDAY, JAN. 8, 1938

The Next Supreme Court Candidate—By Herblock

15 IT TRUE THAT YOU APPEARED IN PUBLIC IN A MASK

ON THE NIGHT OF OCTOBER MST ABOUT 40 YEARS AGO? AND DIP YOU CARRY A LIGHTED JACK-0'-LANTERNT

I You PRO

CAN DUCE Ps ( COPIES OF ALL ~ YOUR PAST " SPEECHES

AND LETTERS?

—

DO YOU Possess ANY CARDS OTHER THAN THE REP CROSS AND SOCIAL SECURITY VARIETIES?

AS A BOY Dip YOU NOY BELONG TO A CERTAIN ORGANIZATION? AND DID YOU NOT CARRY A KNIFE WITH AN INSIGNIA UPON \T?

Washington

By Raymond Clapper

Ludlow Proposal Has Little Chance Of Being Submitted, but Support If Got Served as Crude Referendum.

VW ASHINGTON, Jan. 8.—If the Adminis-

tration mouth-pieces in Congress Dbecome much more hysterical in their attacks on the Ludlow war referendum proposal, they are going to create the suspicion among a lot of people that perhaps after all Congress is a little too excitable to be trusted with the final say as to whether we should go into a foreign war. Speaker Bankhead, No. 1 man in the House,

sets out to smear the referendum plan by saying “it is reasonable to assume that alien influences are aiding and abetting the Ludlow proposal.” He does not offer proof. He does not even charge that alien influences are at work. He just says it is reasonable to assume that they are. That is a familiar rabble-rousing trick. Chairman O'Connor (D. N. Y.) of the House Rules Committee contributes his bit of hysteria. He says the referendum would so delay our getting into action that ‘the enemy could be sitting on all our doorsteps and possibly occupying our beds” while we were waiting to take our referendum. All that those frantic wigwaggings do is to make thinking people wonder if they want leaders like that to decide whether this country is to go into a foreign war, leaders who are' either jumpy or else knowingly are resorting to cheap demagoguery.

N fact the popular force which has developed behind the war referendum idea probably is due not to much knowledge of how it would operate but rather to a distrust of Washington, a fear that the Administration is maneuvering the country toward war, or at least toward involvements which might lead to war. Of course, nothing so irritates officials here as a suggestion that they do not know what is best for the country. They are very much irritated by the war referendum proposal because they take it as reflecting lack of confidence in them. Actually the strongest argument against the referendum is that it would be futile in a pinch—and it would operate only in a pinch. If conditions reach the point where Congress is impelled to ask the country whether it wishes to declare war on Blank Government, then it is too late for a calm referendum.

2 " ”

OV ousLy there would have been provocative situations or incidents to lash sentiment in Congress to the point of submitting the war question. If Congress were that much aroused, it can be taken for granted that the country also would be in a similar state. A referendum would be an invitation to terrorism. Every kind of coercion would be used. Weaknesses of the Ludlow proposal are so great that it stands little chance of being submitted as a proposed constitutional amendment. It is significant because the strong popular support which it has received makes the whole incident in itself serve as a kind of crude referendum on war. A large number of persons, lacking some better method of expressing themselves, by endorsing the Ludlow proposal have said in effect to Washington that as conditions stand today they don't see any need for the United States to go to wan .

Mr. Clapper

The Hoosier Forum

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

TIME WILL SETTLE WOES OF WORLD, READER SAYS By The Horn Book, Union City

Many have been the people and nations who have wrecked themselves upon the all powerful laws of the universe. We cannot break these laws; we merely illustrate them. If I jump out of a 10-story window, I do not break the law of gravitation; I merely illustrate it. The other laws of the universe are just as immutable and definite as gravitation. The better part is to be calm and let time work its marvelous wonders. There is Mussolini in Italy hurling out defiances like an angry child. Let him froth and fume. The grim reaper has a sharp scythe. Give him but a few more years and Mussolini will be no more, Dictatorship is but a breath on the cold pane of life. It will evaporate and the government of Italy will return to the people. Look at Lance Corporal Hitler. He thrust himself on the stage of life but a moment. Do not be impatient. Tomorrow he will be a bad dream and nothing more. The German people are intelligent and good people. They too will inherit the government of Germany in due time. Democracy is a truth; truth survives. A deep wound has been opened in the East by Japan. Time will heal it if we only keep ourselves calm and trust in the triumph of the right. A wrong deed contains a force which brings its own destruction upon the evil doer. Fear not. The world conditions today in Russia, Italy and Germany are such as may be turned almost over night into complete victory for democracy. Only a few puppets stand in the way. When the people want back in power to govern themselves, they will get that right. ” ” n SUGGESTS PLAN TO BETTER LABOR RELATIONS By J. C. L. I offer a plan which I believe would eliminate unemployment and labor trouble. Instead of paying wages to the employees and then the stockholders getting what is left, pay the stockholders a fixed rate of interest and then the employees would get the balance. Allowance would be made for depreciation and for all property to be kept in good repair. Each employee would invest a percentage of his income in company stock, which would be used for expansion. The employees would have a share in the management. There would be the advantage of each employee knowing that the harder he worked the more money he would make. Investors would know their money was safe and they would have a dependable income. If the employees’ income became

(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

lower at any time, he would know that the stockholders were not being enriched at his expense. I don’t say this plan is perfect, but I do believe that unless some plan of this kind is accepted by industry and labor, it will be only a short time till we have socialism, communism or something worse.

» n 8 READER HAS PRAISE FOR MISS BARTON'S ARTICLE By F. A. S. I wish to compliment Miss Olive

Roberts Barton on her timely article, “Views Vary on the Teaching

HE CAN'T PLAY By ZONA CHAPIN

Watching his pals from a high window, As they pull their sleds along in the snow. A little boy heaved a giant sigh, And silently brushed a tear from his eye.

Why? He'd been out there just last fall, And he'd been champion of them all. In all the games they loved to play, After school, at the close of day.

And then one day he broke a rule, On his way home after school. He dashed across a street too fast, And was caught by a car that was going past.

It was his fault, a careless thought. For after all he had been taught, To watch the red and green traffic light, And look both to the left and right.

But now he has to stay inside. His sled away ‘cause he can't ride. Perhaps next year he’ll go and play, With his pals, in the snow, at the close of day.

DAILY THOUGHT

So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified. —Esther 7:10.

USTICE is the great and simple principle which is the secret of success in all government, as essential to the training of an infant, as to the control of a mighty nation. —Simms,

of Biology,” in The Times recently. It was a journalistic touch worthy of the attention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Educators are too busy with socialized methods, group trends and mass output. They forget that many pieces of information are best taught privately; that every teachtr is virtually a tutor, adviser, and counsellor as well as a teacher. Furthermore, stark realism in methodology is always liable to cause unfavorable mental associations in impressionable years toward the topic taught. This is especially true on questions of sex and reproduction. We must not forget Freud. The U. S. Bureau of Education has some very interesting pamphlets on sex and reproduction, for teaching various ages. All parents, teachers and clergymen should read them. ” 5 ” CONTENDS HUMAN BUDGET IS OUT OF BALANCE By Rebecca S. Stewart, Brazil Alfred P. Sloan, president of the General Motors, an arch foe of the New Deal and a bitter critic of tax policies, whose stock argument is that money paid in taxes cannot be paid in wages, has given 10 million dollars in a lump sum to build a foundation. In the comparatively small city of Indianapolis, over 1600 poorly clad children, through the help of The Times, have been clothed. It is reasonably certain that the same number of neecy children, proportionately, are in other cities. They all make a good-sized group of underprivileged children, who are not only poorly clad but inadequately fed and housed. On the top rung of our financial ladder are concerns whose profits are so large that one individual can give away this immense sum. On the lowest rung are parents who cannot furnish even cheap clothing for their children. If this surplus 10 million dollars had been distributed to the workers who produced the excessive profits, wouldn't they have gladly provided for their own? Quite a contrast between the two groups of American citizens. Maybe Mr. Sloan's foundation may show him the futility of trying to balance the financial budget while the human budget is so out of plumb. We Americans trained and nurtured in true American humanitarian and business traditions are optimistic enough to believe that in spite of all opposition these wrongs will be righted in the democratic way, and the form of government given us by the Founding Fathers will endure.

Merry-Go-Round

By Pearson & Allen

Judge Parker, Rejected Once by Senate Liberals for Supreme Court Post, May Yet Win Highest Seat.

VV ASHINGTON, Jan. 8.—Probably none of the Nine Old Men appreciated the situation, but this week they handed the most sincere of all compliments to a lower court judge who came within a hair’s-breadth of sitting with them on the Supreme Court. He was John J. Parker of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case was that of the Duke and Alabama Power companies, in which the nine virtue ally reversed themselves to decides with Judge Parker. That same Judge Parker was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1630 by Herbert Hoover, but ree

jected by the Senate liberals. Ever since then they have regretted their mistake. For Judge Parker has turned out to be a better lib« eral than many of them, and the man appointed in his place—Justice Owen J. Roberts—has knifed some of the most important advances the Senate liberals stood for. If the Senate liberals had had more understanding of human nature, they would not have erred so grievously. W. S. Robinson, who represent« ed the power interests in the cases decided this week, had better ine sight. Talking to the opposition attorney during the hearings, he said: “Parker tries to be conservative, but he can’t. He just hasn't got it in him.” It was while running for Gove ernor of North Carolina on the Republican ticket that Parker made a statement destined to cost him his seat on the Supreme Court. “Participation of the Negro in politics is a source of evil and danger to both races,” he said, “and is not desired by the wise men of either race or by the Republican Party of North Carolina.” This statement, made in 1920, was dug up 10 years later by Walter White, head of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it hurt just enough to defeat Parker’s nomination for the highest bench. When the Duke Power case first came before him, Judge Parker decreed that PWA did have the power to lend money to municipalities for the erection of power plants.

Drew Pearson

Robert Allen

8 » Ld

HIS decision was sent on to his would-have-been colleagues late in 1936. They refused to make a decision, and sent the case back to Judge Parker's court on the basis of a technical or “harmless” error. Last August Judge Parker handed down a decision completely favorable to the New Deal. This prompt action permitted the Duke case to get to the Supreme Court this winter. This week's decision, unanimously upholding Judge Parker, has started speculation as to whether Roosee velt might send his name to the Senate once more, Note—The man to keep your eye on to fill the ime mediate vacancy, left by the retirement of Justice Sutherland of Utah, is Harold Stephens, also of Utah, He is a member of the Court of Appeals of the District

of Columbia.

General Hugh Johnson Says—

‘Little Fellows in Business' Tell of Their Troubles at Chicago Meeting; Columnist Concludes Gathering Wants No Part of ‘Third New Deal.’

HICAGO. Jan. 8.—I talked to about 1000 furniture men m Chicago this week. They came from all parts otf the Union. They included some big wholesalers but by tar the bulk of them are retailers—the “little fellow m business” of purest ray serene. The principal act of this kind of a show is for the speaker to assume the role of African dodger at a county fair and undertake to try to answer questions about business and government—or to say he doesn't know. I think it is the best gauge of group opinion that could possibly be devised. You can go to a town and call on five or six big shots and ask them how conditions are and what people are thinking. What you usually get are five or six dissertations on five or six individual hobbies, peeves or enthusiasms in thinking. Also, in all these cases where you ask the other fellow the question, you put him in a miniature spotlight. This doesn't always make for frankness. = = ” UT when you get a cross-section of the whole country, in a particular trade or calling, into a room and let them ask spontaneous questions without either rising or telling their names, you can tell far better from their questions in an hour, what is troubling their souls, than from all the interviews with them you could crowd into a week, Well, so what about this congress of little fellows? In st pla Bag Jae ot hi

oy P)

According to Heywood Broun—

Unfortunately, the Garment Workers’ Show Is Too Entertaining; Labor Groups Should Forget the Taunts That They Have No Humor.

EW YORK, Jan. 8.—I am disturbed to discover

interest in what is going on in Washington so intense. Why wouldn't it be? These people clearly believe that their fortunes and their livelihoods now depend on that more directly than on any other thing. Next, their knowledge of the principal issues 1s astonishing—much better than that of some Congressmen I know. They lap up every bit of news and comment that comes through the newspapers or over the air. The important and incontestable conclusion to me was that this crowd doesn’t want any part of the third New Deal in its recent aspects. ” " ” I the strategy of centering attacks only on big business or only on a few bad business men, was intended to retain and reassure the support of the lit-

tle fellow, it hasn't worked so far as this trade is

concerned. 1 The feeling is not merely adverse and apprehensive, it i hostile and bitter. That may he a little exaggerated just now because business is very bad, but it was too vivid and too nearly unanimous to leave any doubt that it was a conviction. In about 100 questions covering a range of nearly as many subjects—from war to agriculture—there was qnly one that indicated the slightest sympathy with recent deyo tate I amsion £ an ot oul nding of all was that pick outright. scofing at the sine

that the critics are right in saying that “Pins and Needles,” the show put on by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, is the best revue Broadway has seen in several seasons. This fact worries me. I wish it had less entertainment value and more bite as propaganda. “Pins and Needles” has attracted the carriage trade, but the carriage trade just eats it up. There ought to be one number, at any rate, which would send some dowager screaming into the night at every performance. It is true, of course, that the stuffed shirts of reaction are taken for a ride, but the vehicle is too much rickshaw and too little rail. Gravely do I fear that certain individuals who are pilloried may come out saying “How quaint!” and then call for a cab rather than a cop. Satire is a legitimate and a useful weapon, but you can catch nothing bigger than brook trout with barbless hooks. . 8 =

ATURALLY I had a grand time. That's precisely what I'm kicking about. I wanted to get steamed up and, save for the stirring finale, which is much too brief, that isn’t in the show. The only really savage satire is directed against the Federal Theater, a movement which worker ought to support in spite of its present limita ; he [ Ot , ti 5 }

AN Dan’

have paid too much attention recently to the taunt of the opposition that all radicals are wholly devoid of any sense of humor. The answer ought to be, “So what?” Perhaps there is some value in the fact that “Of Mice and Men,” the best serious play of the year, and “Pins and Needles,” the funniest, both come from proletarian sources. The American theater can live only by the vital source of the men and women who have hitherto been almost inarticulate in the drama.

o » ” I SAW “Hooray for What!” and “Pins and Needles” on alternate nights. Try the experiment for youre self and see if it isn’t time to ring out the old and ring in the new. I'm all for a united front in culture, politics and economics, but I'd like to see the entrance requre= ments raised. Some of my radical friends are around saying in effect, “Lulu isn’t so bad, after all. She isn’ really a stupid, reactionary, rich trick. She's just a little confused. We can bring her along.” My advice, which hasn't been asked for, is, “Don’t bring Lulu.” Of late good causes have been hurt more than helped by the use of window dressing. Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but labor's battles will not be materially aided

by cricket players. ~ Vk Soltiebody ought to sound a gong and shout

\ ashore!” I'd get rid of in t the voyage.