Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 12 January 1938 — Page 11

Vagabond

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From Indiana==Ernie Pyle Educated Leper Gives Wanderer Insight Inte Mis Mental Processes And Pays Him Poignant Compliment.

KK ALAUPAPA, Island of Molokai, Hawaii, Jan. 12.—We talked in the forenoon, and we weren't through, so we talked again in the afternoon. Shizuo Harada and I. A reporter and a leprous patient. I said to Harada: “I had always thought

of Kalaupapa as being a place of great gloom and delection. But they tell me it is really a happy community, and it seems so to me.”

Harada said: “Well, I guess it de= pends on the individual. Most of the patients are Hawaiians, you know, and they are by nature a happy people. They take things as they came.

“As for me, sometimes I feel in good spirits and sometimes I get way down in the dumps. We get down in the mouth, and then see somebody in worse shape than ourselves, and then pick up a little and say ‘it could be worse.’ “And with me, I feel so often that if I could just sit down and talk about it—just get it off my chest as they say, like me talking to you here—then I'd feel better.” Harada says Kalaupapa isn't a normal community. Couldn't be. He says some want to be left alone, and almost go into seclusion.

Mr. Pyle

“It does something to you after a few years here.” |

he said. “I can tell it has done something to me, but I fight against it. I find myself getting like the oldtimers who have been here a long time. You lose the spirit of —I don't know what you'd call it—the spirit of fraternity, I guess.” Sometimes he hasn't felt very well, and couldn't sleep, but he is proud of the fact that he hasn't missed a day's work since he took over the store four years ago. He is also glad of the opportunity to manage the store, for it gives him some slight way to use the knowledge he acquired in the university. He majored in economics, and has read widely on political science and commerce. I imagine he would have been an outstanding man if he could have had a career, “Do you do much reading now?” I asked Harada. His answer was one of the really sad notes in our long conversation.

Sees Little Point in Reading

“I used to,” he said. “For a long time I kept on reading in economics and agriculture, which is a sort of hobby of mine. But now I've got so I just read light stuff whenever I get hold of a magazine, There isn't much point in trying to keep on learning . . .” He was as interested in talking of the psychology and philosophy of lepers as I was. He was eager, and kind. He said several times that if there were anything personal about the patients I could think of to ack. he would try his best to give me the answer. But I ran out of questions, and then we talked about general things. When I got ready to go, Harada asked for my address, so he could write to me sometime. And as I handed him the paper, and told him how grateful I was for the talk with him, he paid me the most touching compliment I have ever received, a compliment of such poignancy that I had barely the facility to acknowledge it. He said, with eagerness and deep feeling: “You have given me the happiest day I have ever had since I came to Kalaupapa. Thank you, Thank you.

My Dia ry

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

White House Guests Are Impressed By Paintings in Executive Offices.

ASHINGTON, Tuesday.—I have been getting appeals lately from a number of states where traveling libraries have been started by the WPA. Some of these libraries are transported from place to place on pack horses, some of them carried on the backs of individual workers, some of them by automobile. The universal cry is for books and more books. I wonder if it would not be possible for the departments of education of every state to arrange for individuals and libraries having books they can spare, to send them to a central place from which they could be distributed to these traveling libraries? A house cleaning of books, magazines and papers should be undertaken in every home, school and library every six months. I am sure far more books could be put into circulation with a little good organization work. Both the President and I had to work last night, and so. after dinner, I suggested that our guests who were staying in the house, might like to take a sightseeing trip through the White House and the executive offices. However, I must confess when they had not returned by 10:30 I began to wonder if they had been locked in somewhere by mistake and I asked the usher to ascertain where they were. They came back full of interest and especially appreciative of the WPA paintings which hang in the executive offices,

Book on Marie Curie Presented

This morning there was a mixture of rain and snow Md I was glad I did not have to go out until I was to start for the French Embassy. There I met a representative group from the Federation of Women's Ciubg, headed by Mrs, Roberta Lawson, Congressman Edith Nourse Rogers and Miss Katharine Lenroot, representing the Children’s Bureau. We were there for presentation by Miss Marjorie B. 1lig, head of the Women's Field Army for the Control of Cancer. of a specially bound volume of Eve Curie’s life of her mother, Marie Curie. The ceremony was brief, but the short speeches were spoken from the heart. for every woman there recognized the greatness of Marie Curie the woman, as well as Marie Curie, the scientist.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

HE California gold rush of '49 gave birth to many stories—heroic, tragic, amusing, dramatic _—.and none that had more of all these qualities than that of RALSTON’'S RING (Scribner). William Chapman Ralston went to California in the wake of the forty-niners. George D. Lyman, in telling of his dizay rise to power, depicts an era of speculation, ruthless exploitation of resources, desperate and titantic struggles for monopoly. It is a story of success and failure sharply contrasted, gsnerosity and greed, victory and despair, loyalty and treachery. And at the center of the picture are Ralston and his allies; the Bank of California which, in its battle for monopoly finally brought its own ruin: the Comstock Lode, and Adolphe Sutro, who in defying the Bank of California, found himself the spokesman for those who sweat in the torrid mines to produce the gold which fed the vast appetite of the Bank of California.

” » ¥

OWN of South Taniscot, Maine.” So reads the sign at the city limits of the ambitious fishing village that harbors mild hopes of becoming a summer resort. This typical down East town is the background of Kenneth Payson Kempton'’s novel MONDAY GO TO MEETING (Farrar). The narrative is composed of seven chapters, each of which is a complete story in itself, yet all are so closely connected with one another that they make an interesting and entertaining novel. There is the story of the garruious self-pitying old housekeeper the love stories of Cass and Allie, and the Widow Marcella and Cobb; the stories of the two outsiders who could not conform to ways of South Taniscot and were lost as members of that community, and the story of the banker with a human heart. These are interlaced and held together by the final chapter, a description of the annual Taniscot town meeting, held on Monday and enlivened with its neighborliness, extraordinary shrewdness and crusty humor, 4

e Indiana

Second Section

(Continued from Page One)

and realistic trade-union adviser. They have influence in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, especially in the powerful dressmakers Local 22. One of the vice presidents of the I. L. G. W,, Alexander Zimmerman, a Lovestonite, is manager of this local of 30,000 members.

LJ ” o HESE Lovestonites are supposedly close to Homer Martin, president of the United Automobile Workers, in his struggle against the Communists. Indeed his assistant, Francis A. Henson, and the managing editor of The United Automobile Worker, William Munger, are political followers of Lovestone. But they do not control the Martin administration. Martin often listens to them. And often

he disregards them. The Socialists play no independent political part in the C. I. O. Since the war, and especially since the split between the left wing under Norman Thomas and the right wing under Louis Waldman in 1036, the Socialist Party has had no real policy on tradeunionism, Norman Thomas’ authority is largely nominal. For a leader he is far too vague, qualifying his every opinion into a haze of good intentions, But one small section of Socialists, composed of young enthusiasts, has become the kite to the Communist Party “line.” ” ® " HE Communist Party today is neither red nor communist nor revolutionary. It is, in every country, a branch of the Stalinist dictatorship. The force of the Communists derives from their totalitarian source in Moscow. They are interested in American labor only in so far as they can use it for the political purposes of Stalinist world policy. Hence, they must rule or ruin. Their radical or progressive opponents they call “Trotskyites,” “assassins,” “Fascist spies,” and other such nice things. Their campaign of slander against Homer Martin among the auto workers is both incredible and unprintable. And the only reason is that Martin wants to build an American union without reference to the needs of the Stalinist bureaucracy. During its so-called “Third Period,” which lasted until 1935, the Communist International had all its branches, in every country, form their own “dual” unions which were forbidden to have anything to do with the dominant organizations of the workers in that country. These dominant organizations, such as the A. F. of L,, were supposed to be under ‘social Fascist” leadership. the then favorite term of Stalinist abuse. ” ” ” CCORDINGLY the American Communist Party in those years built unions of its own, mere paper organizations, all federated

‘Inside the C. l oO. ® ¢ oo oo eo by Benjamin stotbers (OU I Town:

Communist Infiltrators Have Turned From A. F. L. to C. I. O., Says Writer

-

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1938

Three American Communist leaders at 1936 national convention of their party.

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Entered as Second-Class Matter PAGE 11

at Postoffice, Indianapolis,

Times-Acme Photo.

Left to right: William Z. Foster,

national chairman: Earl Browder, Presidential nominee, and James W. Ford, Vice Presidential nominee.

Norman Thomas, Socialist Party Presidential nominee in action on the stump at Terre Haute.

in the Trade Union Unity League. With one or two exceptions, as in the fur trade, they were merely agitational clubs without any base in labor. But at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935 this whole policy of isolation was turned around. Orders went out to disband the Trade Union Unity League unions and to try to capture such mass organizations as the A. F, of L. Chairman

Dimitroff of the Communist International called it the Trojan Horse policy. This order to infiltrate into the "A. F. of L. unions, and if possible to capture them, held good until

April, 1937. The Communist International did not really wake up to the C. I. O. until then. » ” » N the meantime the C. I. O. was doing wonders in the name of industrial unionism, in which the Communists theoretically also believed. Accordingly their press more or less indorsed the C. I. O. But in fact they used all their influence to push the workers into the A. F. of L. Wherever the Communists had some influence—as among the Radio Telegraphers, the Fur Workers, the Retail Workers, the Office Workers, the Federation of

Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians—they tried desperately either to keep these unions in the A. F. of L. or to push them into it. Finally, by April, 1937, this polfcy no longer worked. The A. F. of L. would not have the Communists, while the C. I. O. was getting tired of their tactics. Accordingly the Communists reversed themselves. And today they are trying their best to capture the C. I. O. unions. on ” »

HEY are behaving themselves with some decorum in those powerful unions which are directly under the control of such strong leaders as Lewis, Dubinsky

Times Photo.

and Hillman. But in the new C. I. O. unions they are playing a desperate game for power to the point of endangering the very existence of these unions.

In the United Automobile Workers, where they are in opposition, they cry for “unity and democracy.” In the maritime, whitecollar and professional workers’ unions, where the “party line” is usually on top, they call all opposition “disruptive,” riding over it in the best totalitarian fashion. Moreover, all opposition to them is handicapped by never daring to imitate their own ruthless and reactionary game for fear of breaking up the union.

‘Next—Feudists in the Auto Union.

By Science Service ETROIT, Jan. 12—There is hardly a motorist who has not had the experience of virtually crawling up a hill behind some laboring truck which has found a grade that it can just about manage to top. Motorists behind these highway “snails” have two choices; to stay in line or take a chance, pull around and try to pass on the hill. Motorists will be glad tc learn that studies now under way are seeking a solution of the serious problem of what to do about high-

way traffic that moves too slowly for safety. At the Society of Automotive Engineers’ meeting here yesterday, J. Trueman Thompson, Johns Hopkins University civil engineer professor, described tests on the hill-climbing ability of trucks which the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads has conducted in co-operation with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the automotive industry.

Prof. Thompson's research group used a hill near Baltimore having

Side Glances—By

Clark:

Seve <

one

this store, but | don’

ie i, As Si ey \ conch a IF. Nh om.

1-12

"My identification? What about yours? I've had an account with t remember

ever meeting you:beforel" toatl dea TR Sn i ayn

Tests Conducted in Effort to Rid Highways of ‘Snails’

a 6 per cent grade and a length of | “We may separate fast and slow

nearly 2000 feet.

traffic either by multilane construc-

Nearly a fifth of giant trailer |tion, or by building two separate

trucks and semitrailers tested, it was found, averaged only seven miles an hour speed up the hill About 16 per cent averaged 12 miles per hour and less than 1 per cent. were able to go up the hill at 21 miles an hour, The studies, Prof. Thompson pointed out, as yet permit no conclusions to be drawn as to a solution. Four ways of solving the problem can “We may reduce gradients,” he said.

be considered, he suggested. | doubt it.

routes; we may hold power plants

at their present level and reduce legal loads or we may retain present load restrictions and increase engine power.”

Heard in Congress—

Rep. Wadsworth (R. N. Y.): Ido

not mean to be unkind, but I am wondering if the present occupant of the White House has ever known or ever will know actually himself how a dollar is earned. I very much He is not alone in that

with the same shortcoming, but as we read and note the conflicting suggestions. that come one upon another in this present time of stress, one begins to reach the conclusion that the Administration is flounder-

regard. Many of us may be charged ing in the economic field.

A WOMAN'S VIEW

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

UARRELS plus gin plus a gun

precipitate our major domestic tragedies. Almost daily papers carry stories of homes that are broken up because one member has murdered another member. A drunk-maddened man with a gun handy shoots his wife and several children; or a jealous woman finds a revolver accessible and pumps lead into her sweetheart, spending the remainder of her life companioned by remorse. As a general .thing, quarrelsome people keep guns in the house. Now I do not mean by this that all people who own guns are quarrelsome or ill-intentioned or have a subconscious desire to murder somebody, but I have never known a contentious man who did not have a weapon of some kind on his premises. Being always sure that his rights will be trampled upon, he uses the most primitive way of protecting them. The method doesn't work any better for individuals than it does for nations. Those who are quick

on the trigger often find they have

shot the wrong person—a loved one, an innocent bystander or a police-

man. The idea that the intangible things of life can be guarded with guns is obviously vicious, and I also find pernicious the theory that we can

always beat the burglar with his |

own weapons by shooting it out with him. To all the other good advice we give the newlyweds, we might add the solemn warning that when contentions are supplemented with cocktails, the gun had better be

out, of the window, : ; ;

| Jasper—By Frank Owen

the |

4 Copr. 1938 by United reature Syndicate, Inc.

"We've finally solved the problem of finding him when he gets in

dors

snowdrifts ov

hig head!’

By Anton Scherrer Architect Perry's Collection of Old Locks Earned Him the Job of Restoring Town of Williamsburg.

OON as I heard that the architects of Indianapolis were going to treat William Graves Perry of Boston to a luncheon, I made it my business, you bet, to get in on the affair, too. It isn’t every day that a fellow gets to meet an architect who has Mr, Rockefeller for a client. You may recall that Architect Perry, of the firm of Perry, Shaw & Hepburn, was commissioned by

Mr. Rockefeller to restore Williamsburg, Va. and make it look like it did when it was the seat of a Royal Governor. Maybe you know what a good job they did, but maybe you don’t know how Mr. Rockefeller happened to pick them as his architects. I didn't, either, until I wormed it out of Mr. Perry. Seems that years ago, Mr. Perry, in company with some friends, went to Aiken, S. C.,, to do some shooting. On the way they stopped off at Williamsburg, and while there, one of the party had to go to bed, Mr. Perry diagnosed it immediately as appendicitis, because once upon a time, he too, had the same exe perience. Well, they rushed the patient to a hospital in Richmond, and while he was recuperating, the rest of the party stuck around Williamsburg. To kill time, Mr. Perry had a look at some of the old buildings, ine cluding the Wythe House. He couldn't have picked a better house, because it was there he met a nice little lady who went out of her way to show him around. It was in that house, too, that Mr. Perry discovered that most of the doors wouldn't close because of worn-out hardware. As soon as Mr. Perry saw the condition of the doors, he remembered that he had a couple of barrels full of old hardware at home. Seems that while other boys were collecting stamps and cigaret pictures, Mr, Perry was spending all his time collecting old locks and the like. He had some that were duplicates of those in the old Wythe House. Sure, he sent them to Williams= burg (no charge), and the next time he went shoot= ing, he learned that the lady had made good use of them. Fact is, she had the Wythe House under control without a draft stirring.

Sponsor Not Mentioned

Well, years after that, Mr. Perry got a letter from the Rev. W. A. R. Goodwin of Bruton Parish, Wil= liamsburg, asking whether he would entertain a proposition to restore the old town—nci one building, mind you, but the whole town. The letter didn't say a word about a sponsor or an “angel,” but Mr. Perry didn’t care. He said he was Willing to take a chance, anyway, by that time it was 1927, and the depression: had set in. Mr. Perry went to work preparing a plan of the town, and it wasn’t until it was time to enter into a contract that he learned that Mr. Rockefeller and his millions were backing the enterprising parson. Still later, Mr. Perry learned that the little lady of the Wythe House to whom he had sent his harde ware was a cousin of the Rev. Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Perry was in Indianapolis to help the Home Show people get a Williamsburg house started for their next show (April 1-10). Which is what a good reporter would have said in the first place.

Mr. Scherrer

Jane Jordan—

Little Brothers Have to Overcome Attitude of Inferiority, Jane Says,

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I have several problems I would like answered, but I refuse to have you answer all of them because I am afraid you won't answer them the way I want you to. Here's my main prcblem: I have an older brother staying where I do. At present he is out of work and borrows money from me. He promises to pay me back, but when he goes back to work he spends his money on drinks and

women until he gets fired again. I don’t have any more money than I need and don’t feel tht he should borrow from me, yet I haven't the nerve to refuse him. He is almost twice my age and likes to show me so, not in so many words but in his attitude toward me. Should I demand that he pay me back? Don’t think I'm just a spoiled brat for I am one of 13 children and have been on my own since I was 16. I am 17 now. Does the fact that I keep on lending my brother money make me a weakling?

” " ”

Answer—I imagine you want me to tell you not to give your big brother money and this I can do with= out the slightest hesitation. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Is that satisfactory? The fact that you haven't the nerve to refuse the selfish fellow who takes your money and never pays you back does not mean that you are a weakling—at least not a permanent one. What it means is that you have not outgrown your status of little brother, dominated and exploited by big brother. It is important for you to gain the strength -of character to hold out against him without anger and fury, but with cold determination. If you do not learn to do this, you may carry the little brother attitude over into later life and allow yourself to be exploited and imposed upon by other older men whom you un= consciously identify with your older brother. Anyone in business who takes the trouble to do so can separate the big brothers from the little brothers (I speak symbolically), and observe the one group’ exploit the other. Sometimes the little brothers band together against the big brothers and lick their tormentors by the strength of their numbers. Life is hard on its little brothers. They are worsted at every turn, imposed upon, cheated, hindered and kept in inferior positions. Some of them never will find the strength, energy or gumption to be anything else but little brothers, but you have a chance. You have taken care of yourself for a year. Fine, Most little brothers want to be taken care of by some= body else. We find them leaning on fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, charity, the Government or whatever source of supply is available, It you can strengthen your decision not to give your older brother money by moving away out of his reach, do so. This may seem like dodging the issue, but if it makes you more independent, it is worth trying. I am sorry that I cannot give personal interviews, but I will be glad to answer your other questions in this column, although I cannot promise to say what you want me to say. Be comforted by the fact that ycu can do as you please, no matter what I say. JANE JORDAN.

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

Walter O'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, Jan. 12.—Joseph P. Kennedy has left Hollywood and within a few weeks will be on the job as Ambassador to the Court of St. James. After the length of time he’s been serving in Wash ington politics Joe won't mind that London fog at all, The papers say he was here to wind up that shipping job, but I suspect the real reason for his trip was to see Marlene Dietrich. Now that he’s going to be Ambassador he wanted some expert advice on how to take care of those runs in his silk stockings. I hope he’s never wearing them when he meets his old gang from the Navy yard. Horatio Alger never wrote a greater story than Joe's own life and it's a pity hg has to leave us right now. He's one fellow who might have put the country on a