Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 January 1938 — Page 13

Vagabond

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From Indiana = Ernie Pyle Molokai Justice Who Administers Law With Good Humor Calls

Court Into Session for Wanderers.

K AUNAKAKAI, Molokai, Hawaii, Jan. 18. —His official title, I guess, is Judge. But on Molokai he is known as “Chief Justice” Eddie McCorriston. I never could figure out whether you should smile when you say it or not. The Chief Justice is friendship all over. He's tickled to death to see a friend, or a stranger either. He'll dismiss court any time to talk. Or call court into session if a visitor wants to listen. The Judge is Irish, and full of tales and loud laughing. He's what vou could call a “character.” Sometimes he acts as attorney for one side, in a case being tried before himself. He doesn’t rule with any iron hand. He just decides things in a good-humored way. 2 “Let's have court right now, so { we can see it,” said my friend from % Honolulu. “All right,” said the Chief Jus-

Mr. Pyle tice. He went to the window, leaned out and yelled: “Bob. Hey Bob. Bring over the prisoners. We're gonna have court.”

In a wink the courthouse (which is like a one-room country schoolhouse) was filled with brown-skinned onlookers. And pretty soon in came Sheriff Bob Lindsay (a Hawaiian in khaki uniform) and the four defendants, Filipinos and Portuguese. Everybody got settled. and then the Chief Justice disappeared out the back door. There were a few moments of tense waiting. And then through the back door came a tall Hawaiian policeman in uniforin, and behind him scampered Chief Justice McCorriston. Sheriff Bob Lindsay lined up his four prisoners, read the disorderly-conduct charge, and then recommended the minimum fine of $10 each. Then Chief Justice McCorriston asked each one if he had anything to say. The first one didn’t. Nor the second. Nor the third. But the fourth one said, “Yes, Your Honor, I have.” Judge McCorriston looked surprised. But he got himself together and said, “All right, what do you have to say?” And the prisoner replied, “I haven't got no money.”

Prisoner Even Laughs

Everybody laughed. We laughed. The judge laughed. The prisoner decided it was funny, and he laughed too. Then the judge sobered to great dignity and said, “We'll go into that later.” He then pronounced formal sentence on each one, individually. “Now how about you,” he said to the first one. “Have you got $10?” That defendant, by some miracle, had $10 and forked it over. Then to the second one, “have you got $10?” The culprit said, “No sir, but T've got $5.” and he pulled it out and gave it to the judge. “I can make a down payment.” The judge told him he couldn't legally take it as a down payment, but would take it personally for safekeeping, so the boy wouldn't spend it before he could raise the other $5. (Later the judge said he didn't like to do it that way, because he might spend it himself.) The third and fourth defendants didn’t have $10, didn’t know that they ever would have $10, and didn’t think anybody would lend them $10.

“Well you go out and look around,” said the

judge, “and if you can raise it come back and give |

it to me, and if you can't, come back Friday and |

we'll talk it over. Court dismissed!”

My Diary

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

Selection of Bach Does Not Fit |

Into Everyday Mood of First Lady.

ASHINGTON, Monday.—I sat up until all hours last night reading the manuscript of a serial py Margaret Culkin Banning which is now running in one of our magazines. The story is called, “Too Young to Be Married” and there is much that is valuable in it for young people today.

She has caught so well the hurry and impatience of youth and ite tendency not to think things through to the end. One of the charms of youth is that hopeful spirit which always seems to feel that some solution for every situation will be found around the corner, It is one of the great strengths of youth, for it gives it the courage to face difficulties and finally overcome them. But in certain situations it can be a great danger, for it may also lead youth to a point which it had not visualized at the start.

I held my press conference rather early this morning so that I could go to Mrs. Townsend's musical. Mr, Lauritz Melchior sang and Mr. Pierre Luboshutz and Miss Genia Nemenoff gave a two-piano recital. It was a beautiful concert.

Visits Weaving Exhibition

One of my guests at the concert remarked that she found the selection of Bach which was played, most restful. I think I agree with her but somehow Bach doe: not fit into my everyday mood. I always feel as though he belonged to a life very different from the .ne we lead now, and therefore he leaves me rather dissatisfied.

An exhibition of weaving dene by the blind in Italy was being held today at the Mayflower Hotel and at the end of the concert I went to see it. They make linen and beautiful silk materials. The blind in this country do lovely work also, but some of these designs and materials have added interest to their beauty because they have such interesting stories connected with them and are inspired by Italian works of art.

New Books Today

PRESENT-DAY analysis of the European situa- : tion is given by Vera Micheles Dean in EUROPE IN CRISIS, first of a new series of World Affairs Pamphlets published by the Foreign Policy Associa-

tion. Portraying the current economic struggle in Germany and Italy, Mrs. Dean declares that, “if it is true that happy ‘mations have no history, the headline space monopolized by Fascist dictatorships in 1937 might be regarded as an indication of inner trouble. . . . Fascist dictatorships, no less than the democracies they denounce as obsolete, appear to be on trial.” On the other hand, the author finds that the democratic countries of Europe, without resort to force, have demonstrated that democracy has unsuspected reserves of vitality. The author concludes that the best guarantee against the possibility of a German thrust to the East would be a pledge by Britain and France to heip the small states of Eastern Europe, not only in case of direct German attack, but of German intervention in their internal affairs.

s ” ”

Public Library Presents—

ITH pygmy porters and his wife, who had no experience in expedition life, Attilio Gatti in 1933 went into the Belgian Congo for the fourth time. Operating from a base camp in the dense Ituri forest, a region marked “unknown” on maps, they searched for the rare Okwapi and Bongo, animals almost extinct, few of which have found their way into the modern zoos. GREAT MOTHER FOREST (Scribner) is a record of two years’ adventure. Native kings, forest storms, elephants, leopard men and Belgian officials all are gathered into a narrative of present-day life in the famous Congo. The pages are crowded with searcely believable facts of human and animal life in the impenetrable African forest. The book is illustrated with full page photographs which gives credence to these tales, £

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Editor’s Note:

The Times.

The National Maritime Union, of which he is president, is particularly infested with all sorts of Communist Party members and sympathizers, many of whom have never been to sea.

And Curran is becoming a bit restless of their perennial *“debating society” resolutions, such as those in favor of a FarmerLabor Party, in defense of China, for Loyalist Spain, for peace and democracy, and so on. No union member can possibly be against these resolutions in principle. But the Communist Party has welded these resolutions into a factional weapon in the labor movement. For any non-Communist worker who feels that union meetings should transact union business, rather than be turned into conventions on international politics, can be abused as an opponent of Loyalist Spain, of a free China, of peace and democracy, as a friend of fascism and what have you,

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HEN Curran began rank-and-file agitation among East Coast sailors and other maritime workers, he ran into the bitter opposition of old-line A. F. of L. unions. In March 1936 some 2400 seamen engaged in a fugitive strike, really against the A. F. of L. International Seamen's Union, to enforce union contracts. Finally, toward the end of 1936, a group of insurgent sailors in the old I. S. U. organized a Seamen’s Defense Council and called a strike on Nov. 6, 1936. On Nov. 23 they were joined by the mates and pilots and on Nov. 30 by the radio operators. On Jan. 24, 1937, the strike was called off. Its great gain for the men was a real sense of solidarity in industrial unionism. More men began breaking away, finally in a rout, from the old-line craft unions. And they joined the N. M. U,, which includes all seafaring crafts: sailors, engineers, firemen, cooks and stewards. Toward the end of 1937 the N. M. U. was able to report the following membership on the Atlantic seacoast and on the Gulf: 15,200 men on deck (sailors), 15,100 in the engine rooms (engineers and firemen), and 17,200 cooks and stewards. The union also has more than 4000 men on the Great Lakes in the subsidiary Inland Boatmen’s Union. Forty-nine thousand of these 51,400 workers are paid up on their dues. The radio telegraphers and the licensed personnel on the ships are practically all in the C. 1. O.

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ONSIDERABLE trouble broke out between these new C. I. O. unions and the old A. F. of L. crafts when the National Labor Relations Board began to supervise elections on the docks and ships. David Grange. of the Cooks and Stewards—the gentleman who lives on a fancy Long Island estate—had his strongarm men on the boats, and Joe Ryan's “goons” had their baling hooks on the docks. But these tactics could not stop the overwhelming sentiment of the men for the C. I. O. : And violence was kept at a minimum by the courageous im-

TUESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1938

de the Cc 1. O.) e « o os os eo byBenjamin Stolberg

Joe Curran Challenges the East’s Old-Line Seaboard Unions and Employers

This is the eighth of Mr. Stolberg’s 12 articles on the C. I. O. Today he concludes his report on unionism in the maritime industry, to which the preceding article also was devoted. Of course Mr. Stolberg’s interpretations are his own, not those of

N July 1937 John L. Lewis appointed a committee of seven to organize the maritime workers. of this committee he appointed John Brophy, who has gradually come under the influence of the Communist “party line” in a sort of somnambulistic fashion. The other three important figures are Harry Bridges; Mervyn Rathborne of the American Communications Association (mostly radio telegraphers), a Bridges lieutenant and a Stalinist sympathizer, and Joe Curran, of the sailors. Curran is a typical sailor, simple, direct, a rank-and-filer through and through, a union man first and last. He does not follow the “party line” in any rule-or-ruin sense. But he is surrounded by Communists and Communist sympathizers. Of late, however, he is showing some signs of dawning criticism of the “party line.”

As chairman

partiality of Mrs. Elinore Herrick, regional director of the NLRB. She would appear on the docks, or aboard a boat, in the middle of the night to see that the elections were held fairly. She also prevented collusions between the companies and the old unions, some of whom would sign contracts before the vote was taken. It has been charged that Mrs. Herrick favors the C. I. O. It is my observation that she favors only the law.

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Y Dec. 22, 1937, the votes of 26 companies on the East Coast were in. Of these 8963 were for the N. M. U. (C. I. 0), and 1326 for the I. S. U. (A. F. of L.). That tells the story.

The more recent agreements which the N. M. U. has been able to sign are, on the whole, excellent. Wages were increased, hours shortened, but above all Curran has been able to better the conditions of the seafaring crafts, whose standards of living in bunks and messrooms are still barbarous.

The dangers which face the N. M. U. are not so much in its relations with the various companies. The union is growing and getting stronger. The danger it faces comes rather from the national situation as a whole. The fight of the C. I. O. maritime unions with Lundeberg’s Sailors Union of the Pacific prevents a truly national fusion of all seafaring crafts. And then, the influence of the Stalinists in the unicn, who try to crush democratic expression, may change the picture at any moment. For they are not guided by the needs of the union as such, but by the foreign policy and the internal fortunes of the Stalin regime. Russia's reiations in the Far East, her position in the international wheat market, anything at all, may affect the compass of the “party line.”

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HE other danger which faces the union is the U. S. Maritime Commission. In its strenuous efforts to build a strong merchant marine by subsidizing private enterprise, the Commission 1s apt to see too much the side of the ship owners.

In spite of all the liberal acclaim he has received, the glib, charming, vital, but fundamentally reactionary Joseph P. Kennedy

was a terror to organized labor

when he was chairman of the Maritime Commission. He wanted the sailors under a sort of Coast Guard discipline and was toying with the idea of a National Labor Board within the Maritime Commission. This the men do not want, because a Federal Maritime Commission tends to assume military aspects. This tendency is illustrated by the recent conviction of 14 seamen on the Governmentowned Algic. "They were found guilty of “mutiny” under a statute of 1790 for a sitdown strike in a port outside the United States. It is to be hoped that the new chairman of the Maritime Commission will be a true liberal, even though he be less charming than our new Ame-

CoPR.193 NEA SERVE INC REG U.S PAT ORE

Side Glances—By Clark

"Oh, come in! |'m just listening to my favorite program. Ted's

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sitting out in the car listening to his."

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| {

| can

~The Indianapolis

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were convicted of “mutiny” for a sitdown

Imes

Second Section

PAGE 13

Entered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffice. Indianapolis. Ind.

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

There's No Comment on Mona Lisa

Fourteen striking seamen on the Government-owned freighter Algic, shown here, strike in a port outside the United States.

Mrs. Elinore Herrick (above) and Joe Curran.

Talking to the

bassador to the Court of St. James. On the whole, C. I. O. maritime labor is factionally less torn than are the United Automobile Workers, in which the “party line” is not on top but in opposition. But this comparative peace in the N. M. U. under “party line” pressure makes it even more the victim of policies which have nothing to do with American labor.

Next—Steel, Textiles, Rubber

and Some Others.

No Floods Seen By Science Service ASHINGTON, Jan. 18.— Just a year ago, the weather setup that brought about the disastrous floods of the Ohio Valley and elsewhere in the Midwest and the East was beginning to brew its evil. Today, the situation is wholly different, with no flood menace in sight, Merrill Bernard, chief of the river and flood division,

U. 8S. Weather Bureau, informed Science Service. None of the major rivers is at all high, Mr. Bernard stated, and the Ohio especially is low.

policeman is John Green, president of the Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, “The men who build ships.”

Salads, Barefoot Boy Ice Cream Sodas or Typographical Errors,

ASES without comment: The Ayres people are featuring a Mona Lisa salad. ... And over at Blocks, if you want a hot chocolate with whipped cream, you have to ask for a “Man in the Moon.” . .. It's even more exciting. A plain chocolate ice cream soda is a “Barefoot Boy”; a bittersweet chocolate is “The Old Haymow,” and “Little Orpnant Annie” is a 20-cent (velvet) parfait. It turns out, loo, that Mrs. Margaret

Segur calls her bedroom clock “Oliver Cromwell.” . . . As unrelenting, see? . . . And Alex Vonnegut

(what again?) won't drink ice-cold beer. He gets around it by holding the glass in his warm hand anywhere from three to five minutes before attacking it. Some people, who don’t know any better, think he is caressing the glass. It may surprise you, too, to learn that if you thumb your nose at the traffic cop at the corner of Meridian and Washington Sts. (the dignified one, I mean), he'll forget himself, unbend, and thumb his nose back at you. It turns out, too, that Mr. and Mrs. Leo Rappae port had herring salad for their New Year's celebration. . . . Mrs. Rappaport made it herself, and it moved her husband to announce that it is not entirely a lost art, but merely a neglected one. ., .. “I want to go on record,” said Mr. Rappaport, “that herring salad still can be made as artistically as ever and as good as our mothers used to make. It's scarcity is probably due to the amount of labor and time ree quired in its production. To make a quantity sufficient for 20 to 25 people requires about 10 hours of steady labor. Perhaps our mothers had fewer divere sions to take their minds off their food responsibilie ties.” . . . I thought you ought to know how Mr. R. feels about it.

Charters Airplane for Fish

It was only last week, too, that Charles E. Waaner, one of the Home Show people, chartered an airplene to bring a consignment of Back Bay cod fish to the Athletic Club in order that his guest, William Graves Perry of Boston, might feel at home in Indianapolis. And finally I am willing to report, but not come ment, on the way some of our newspapers treated Anna Hasselman last week. Miss Hasselman prepared a paper for Portfolio entitled “Gamming,” and some of our newspapers were so sure that it was a typographical error that they had Miss Hasselman reading a paper on “Gaming.” Well, it turns out that Miss Hasselman knew what she was doing. ‘“Gamming,” it appears, is what sail« ors do when they get together and spin their yarns, Miss Hasselman used it as a title for an elaborate treatise on “Whales.” It surprised me, too. I thought whales went the way of dodo birds when corsets turned into foundation garments.

Scherrer

Mr.

Jane Jordan—

Cites Ways to Soften Fatiier's Strict Attitude Toward Daughter.

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I am the mother of a 14-year-old girl but she is taken to be 16 years old and is just ready to enter high school. Do you think she is too young to have boy friends? Her father thinks she is tco young and does not want her to have her friends, either boys or girls, come to the house. He says her girl friends aren't the right kind, I haven't seen anything out of the way with them.

"Holds "Yardstick’ Threat Saved TVA 2 Million

Times Special

ASHINGTON, Jan. 18. — The story of how TVA, alone

| among Government agencies, made

a $2,000,000 saving in its cement bill

| by threatening to build a plant of

its own has been made a part of the record in a Federal Trade Commission hearing of a suit against 74 cement companies, in which collusion to maintain prices is charged. TVA Chairman A. E. Morgan was the witness. His story, told by direct testimony and letters, was this: When TVA began building Norris Dam it advertised for bids for cement. When the bids came in, prices at the mill were given, and they were different, but when the freight was added from the mili to the dam it was found they all added up the same. “It seemed to me,” said Mr. Morgan, “that to enter into a large contract on identical prices was not in the public that it was my duty to find out if

| of concerns picked at random in an

They are full of life and like to dance and have a good time. None of them smoke or drink. I think she should be encouraged to bring her friends home and entertain them. The latest she has been out without one of us with her is 11:30 p. m. Generally the children go to a show or to church or, maybe, just ride around. I tell my husband he should trust her more than he does, but he thinks everything she does is wrong and says I am going to ruin her life, 1 woud rather die than cause anything to happen to . art 7 er, but I think every child should mingle with both cost us to make our own cement. sexes. Am I wrong or is my husband right? As a result, TVA entered into an ANXIOUS MOTHER.

arrangement with the cement in- Te dustry whereby a cement expert employed by the Authority would have access to the books and the plants

| the prices were fair. The only way to do that was to see what it would

Answer—You are a lot nearer right than your husband, but for mercy’s sake don’t tell him so; you will make him obstinate. It is better to agree wih him as much as you can and ask for exceptions to his rules rather than make it necessary for him to de= fend his position with illogical prohibitions. In your effort to encourage your daughter in de= veloping social ease, be careful not to swing to the opposite extreme. A girl of 14 should be allowed to have her friends and plenty of both sexes, but there may be real grounds for the father's fears when the children are “just riding around,” if a very young person is driving. Put him in the right as often as you can to encourage a more generous attitude when he is wrong. Sometimes when a mother and her daughter side against the father too often, he feels left out in the cold. The only way he can get attention trom his women is to exert hus authorivy. Can't you aaa your daughter find other ways of making him feel big and strong and important to you both? Can't you praise

effort to determine what it cost to manufacture cement. TVA kept the Interior Department and the War Department informed as to its investigation. After the TVA expert had submitted his findings, the TVA board decided to ask for bids on the understanding that, if the prices were below a certain figure, TVA would buy from the existing companies, and if not, it would build its own plant. The bids were below the top figure agreed on, and TVA contracted tor enough cement to build all the dams at a saving of approximately

interest and therefore!

the living he earns, his political opinions, his sagacity or whatever he prides himself on? If he is accustomed to and dependent upon your admiration and approval

$2,000,000, Chairman Morgan testified.

A WOMAN'S VIEW

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HOPE the charm teachers will not take it amiss if this column

warns them of the dangers of exA good many of us|

cessive zeal. remember when the word “sweet” covered a multitude of feminine stupidities. The time finally came when any woman with an ounce of spunk counted it a major insult to hear herself called “a sweet person,” and no wonder. The adjective “good-hearted” was then substituted and became the vogue for use against social enemies. Instead of saying “She's a colorless nonentity without a spark of personality,” we said “She's so good-hearted” and let it go at that. It won't be long now until “charm” will mee! the same fate, or I'm not a good guesser. The time is ripe for reaction. If this business of winning friends and influencing people goes on, we'll drown in gushers of the milk of human kindness. I don’t know how the men swallow this personality salesmanship stuff, but it's certainly working havoc among women. You will find that hordes of us are confusing the word agreeable with agreement. So we go around agreeing with everybody and everything, since it is a gross drawing-room error to say what you think. Life is tiresome enough and society sufficiently dull to call a halt to a vogue which forbids the expression of honest opinion. If we're not careful, the word charm will become the synonym for dissembler, and these master salesmen we're rearing will turn out to be super-

Jasper—By Frank Owen

he will not want to lose it by offending either of you. It is more effective to mix your rebukes with praise by saying, “Such an attitude is surprising in one who is usually so fair-minded.”

It may be that he is a trifle jealous of his daughter and doesn't want her to grow up. If this is true the girl can help a lot by showing her father more affection and respect, thus making it hard for him to refuse her requests. Perhaps he had a deprived childhood and was policed by stern parents himself, Such parents react toward tucir chiloren in two ways: Either they indulge them too much because they remember their own anguish, or they avenge theme selves by depriving the children. Your cue here is to sympathize with him and to point out how much wiser he is than his own father, how much more progressive and how much more amenable to new ideas. Human beings are hungry for reassurance as to their own worth, hungry for praise and adulation. Sometimes they hide this gnawing hunger under a forbidding exterior. For all I know the only chance your husband has to feel powertul is when he is dominating his daughter, Perhaps if you satisfy his need to be boss by other methods he will be more lenient with her. JANE JORDAN.

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

Walter O’'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, Jan. 18.—This looks like a bumper year for the domestic crop of abuse. Namecalling is the latest fad to grip these more or less United States. The Administration has accused business of “sitting down,” but the longest sit-down in history was the performance of Congress in 1937, and it looks as if it is going to top it this year. One of the Senators is sore because Secretary of the Interior Ickes has a very fine bathroom. This public-spirited statesman, fighting passionately for | the rights of his constituents back home, objects to

"Now | see why you brought along that hacksaw—you were tired going around in circles."

marble plumbing; but Mr. Ickes needs the best fixtures possible to clean off the mud that is being thrown at him—not to mention the red ink he gets

on hisgngers signing those checks.