Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 January 1938 — Page 13
Vagabond
From Indiana =Ernie Pyle
Boarding Steamer From Launch Heavy Swell at Night Is Unusual Experience, but Ernie Survives It.
WW AILUKU, Island of Maui, Hawaii, Jan. 20.—If I'd waited till this morning I could have come over here by plane from Molokai in 15 minutes. But somebody said it would be fun to take
the interisland boat instead, so I did, and it was. ’ The boat stops at Molokai, on its way from Honolulu to Maui, at 1 a. m. It can’t come up to the pier because of shallow water. It anchors outside, and fast little boats run passengers and freight back and forth. I left the movie at 10 p. m. A friend had lent me a car, and said Just to leave it on the dock and he'd pick it up next morning. So I drove down (o the pier, parked the car in a dark spot, stretched out in the | seat, and waited. The night was very dark, and a cool damp wind blew strongly from the sea. Not a cold wind, but a cool tropical wind. The waves | sloshed against the pier supports | I heard people say it would be a rough
| | ! |
Mr, Pyle
underneath. night for boarding. There must have been a hundred peovle on hand by the time the ship's lights came around the end of the island, sometime after midnight. he motor launch cut loose and went bouncing off into the darkness for the mile run out to where the ship was anchoring. In 20 minutes or so it was back, crowded with passengers and with brown-skinned ship's officers in uniform. Only one passenger was white—a rather beautiful girl. Then we saw other lights leave the ship. We could see them going up and down on the waves. But they were within 50 feet before they came into the arc of the nier lights. And that really gave me a thrill. For here came | three open whaleboats, tied together, one behind the other. All stacked high with boxes and mail sacks, and with Hawaiian and Filipino crewmen sprawled on top, hardly able to stick on. They called “all aboard” for the passenger launch. Two dozen of us piled on, and sat on benches under the canvas top. I was the only white one. Several women had tiny babies.
Stewards Take Babies
The swell was running high, and sometimes the | Jaunch would be left in space and then fell with a smack that cracked your head. Half a dozen Chinese stewards in white uniform were on board. As we neared the big ship they began taking the babies from their mothers. I wondered why, and soon found out. We boarded the ship via a landing stage about the size of a card table, and then up a long flight of port- |! able stairs swung along the ship's side. There was no holding the little launch steady. Dne second it would be 6 feet below the stage, the next second 6 feet above. You had to watch, gauge the swell. and make your jump on the fly. That's why the stewards took the babies. Each baby was completely enshrouded in a blanket. Each steward held a baby in one arm, like a sack of groceries, leaving the other arm free for balancing and grabbing. And then the leap. My own boarding wasn't too graceful, but boy it was efficient. I saw a big one coming just as I jumped, | and I jumped in two dimensions. I went obliquely, like a halfback, right through the assisting hands of | the landing stage officers. One foot hit the landing | stage and the other hit the sixth step up. The top of the swell drenched me to the knees. and as I looked back down the wave went clear over the heads of the | stage officers. It was 3 o'clock before I got to bed. When I woke | up we were in Maui, and the sun was shining.
My Diary
By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Beginning of Public Art Project
4 Years Ago Recalled at Luncheon. |
ASHINGTON. Wednesday.—The Congressional | reception last night was particularly pleasant. Everyone seemed to Know everyone else, or at least | seemed to be able to find their own friends. When I came back to walk around I thought everybody was having a good time. Rep. Robert L. Mouton had sent me a marvelous | bovquet of camellias. They were flown up from his place in New Orleans. Several people stopped me to say they grew similar flowers in their gardens, or that thev liked these so much they thought they must have | been chosen to go with my dress. As a matter of fact, I wore a dress to go with the camellias! Some time ago I visited the crippled children’s school here in the District of Columbia. It was a | gloomy building and in many ways inadequate. This morning I went to the new qudrters in a school in the | northeast of Washington. The rooms were bright ana airy. the children come in a bus and are taken home under the care of an attendant who helps them into their homes. They looked better physically, and brighter and happier. I don’t wonder that Commissioner Hazen is pleased with the new quarters and wanted me to have pictures taken there to encourage public interest in the National Founcation for infantile paralyss.
Representative Group Present
From this school, Mrs. Scheider and I went to lunch with the officials of the Public Works of Art project in the Treasury Department. The luncheon | was given to allow us to see the sculpture Which | has been sent from all over the country in a competition now being held for stone sculpture to be placed in front of the Apex Building on Constitution Avenue. There was a representative group of Washington official life present, including Mrs. | Stone and a group of Senators, besides the people actually interested in the project. Many of us recalled the meeting four years ago which Mr. Edward Bruce held in his house to consider the plight of the artists and what the Government could do, not only to encourage art, but to improve the quality of decoration in public buildings. Ir. Frederic A. Lelanc presided at this first meeting and the enthusiasm of the group waich Mr. Bruce gathered around him has, With the help of Secretary and Mrs. Morgenthau, carried this project to heights of undreamed success.
New Books Today
Public Library Presents—
E have another war diary in Thomas Suthren Hope's THE WINDING ROAD UNFOLDS (Putram). But this one is different. since the boy was only 16 when he served six months in 1917, and the notes which accompany the diary entries were written during rest periods and while he was in hospital. , This young Scotsman’s dream of adventure and glory soon was shattered by the actualities of death and agony, mud and filth, and all the horrors of the front line. It is the extreme simplicity of his account which makes it effective as another indictment of war. | = ® = ADAME ROSIKA STOREY, that well-known, | clever, lady detective of fiction, is at work again. Hulbert Footner gives us in THE CASUAL MURDERER (Lippincott), the accounts of her latest deductions in crime. Madame Storey, famous the world over, in this collection of stories is called upon to lend her aid in solving crimes which puzzle the police of far off China and Monte Carlo, as well as the police of this country and of her own | city of New York. THe Dict of an SN is vay ted; no tricks are used %o solve the
certainly |
|
Wa
‘Inside the C. l O' ~ eo eo eo eo eo byBenjamin Stolberg
| turn everything over | and limit himself to a local union | of machinists under the jurisdic-
| mothers
€
Indianapolis
Times
Second Section
| |
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1938
Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,
at Postoffice,
Charges Stalinists, for Reasons of Diplomacy, Seek United Front With Church
EDITOR'S NOTE—Mr. Stolberg, student and historian of labor affairs, in the 10th of his 12 articles tells today about the activity of Communists in such C. I. O. units as the tmansport, fur and cannery
unions. of The Times.
Of course Mr. Stolberg’s interpretations are his own, not those
HE Communists do not have the same record of disruption in all the unions in which they gain a foothold. In some organizations, for reasons of diplomacy, they are satisfied to play a more or less quiescent role. Thus in the Transport Workers Union, which has a large number of Irish-Catholic workers in the New York subways, the Communists do not dare to antagonize the
rank and file.
In fact, there they are striving for a “united front” with the Catholic Church.
And among
Catholic workers they are distributing a vast literature which quotes approvingly Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI. They appeal to these workers in behalf of “good
Catholic doctrine” and in
dition.”
the
name of “Catholic tra-
The Transport Workers Union has probably the most brilliant record of achievement among the new C. 1. O.
unions.
Its leader 1s Michael J. Quill, who was elected a
Councilman from Queens in the recent New York City
campaign.
Quill is a militant fellow in a most desultory fashion.
who follows the “party line” He began organizing the
subway workers in New York some three years ago.
When he had about 500 of them he approached William D. Mahon, president since 1893 of the Amalgamated Streetcar and Electric Railway Employees, of the A. F. of L.
“Impossible to have that many,” said Mahon, who refused to take them in. A few months later Quill informed him that he had some 2000 workers. “Impossible,” said Mahon.
" ” n
HIS went on a number of times until the A. F. of L. woke up to the fact that Quill had more than 60,000 workers organized in the nonrailway transport industry throughout the country. Whereupon in the spring of 1937 William Green ordered Quill to to Mahon
tion of the Internatonal Association of Machinists. Quill refused, and on May 10, 1937, the Trans-
| port Workers joined the C. I. O.
Today the union has 90,000 members. Since it joined the C. I. O. the union has achieved closed-shop agreements with the Interborough Rapid Transit Co., the BrooklynManhattan Transit Co., the Third Avenue Railway Co., the New York City Omnibus Co., the Fifth Avenue Coach Co. and various taxi companies, all in New York City. Outside of New York it has some 25.000 members. Everywhere it
| signs sound agreements.
n ” = HE Fur Workers International Union, on the other hand, led by Ben Gold, is the classic and horrible example of how antidemocratic a union becomes un-
der open Communist leadership, and how slavishly it may be made to follow every turn of the Communist party line. Anybody who fails to jump at the crack of the party whip is immediately crushed. Fortunately, being one of the old and established needletrades unions, it has today, with a membership of 30,000, practically the entire industry organized.
Its contracts are mainly re-
newals, and it gets along with the employers—partly because some of the biggest firms, which influence the labor policy of the smaller ones, have large Russian fur contracts and hence prefer to deal with a Communist-led union which does as Moscow wants. Such peace in the market gives Comrade Gold plenty of time to administer the union as a subdivision of the Communist Party. At its last convention, in May, 1937, the delegates were told to vote for the C. I. O,, after having been told for years that their only salvation lay in the A. F. of L.
” ” »
HE two other unions which are under the sway of the “party line’ are the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. The very names of these unions are an index to their confusions in a welter of more or less unrelated fields.
The union of the cannery workers is probably the most fantastic of ali Communist-con-trolled unions, judged either in relation to its tasks or in the character of its leadership. The union was organized at a conference in Denver in July 1937 under the chairmanship of Donald Henderson, a former instructor at Columbia. Henderson's university contract was not renewed by Prof. Tugwell, . who asserted that he neglected his classes. This made him a great hero in the Communist Party on the ground that “academic freedom” had been violated. The man has no real idea of the problems of American labor. His expertness is confined to toeing the “party line.”
HE Denver conference claimed to represent a hundred thousands workers fiom 56 organizations. Among these organizations the really significant ones were the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, which the Socialists had organized in the Southwest, and the Sharecroppers Union of Alabama. The rest of the organizations represented weak local groups of farm laborers, mainly from California and New Jersey, and or-
Aon
National Guardsmen in the Auburn-Lewiston, Maine, shoe strike arrested Powers Hapgood, native of Indianapolis and new president of the United Shoe Workers.
dinary “radical” farmers’ organizations, whose radicalism falls and rises with the price of wheat. In the great meat packing and canning industries the union has next to nothing. It turned in a membership of a hundred thousand to the C. I. O,, which can be safely reduced to 30,000 dispersed and disorganized members in 56 paper organizations, if we except the Southern Tenant Farmers.
un o »
HE United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers has increased manyfold since it joined the C. I. O. in November 1936. The workers both in the radio manufacturing and in the utility fields have been restless for years, and they began to flock into the union by the thousands every week. Yet this union is all torn by factional struggles. The union today consists of three branches. One is the radio appliance manufacturing field, one in the utility field, and one in the light metal industry quite unrelated to the other two. The president is the youthful James P. Carey, an able trade-unionist. The union has had its greatest success in the radio manufacturing industry. Through 1937 it conducted a series of strikes at the Everson Electrical Manufacturing Co. in St. Louis, at the Philadelphia Storage Battery Co. (Philco), and at the Radio Corp. of America in Camden. It was able to reduce hours considerably, to Increase wages from 5 to 10 per cent, and to win the National Labor Relations
Board elections. il the public utility field the . union is far weaker, particularly because the Communists maneuvered the gas section in this industry into joining the United Mine Workers. The sole purpose of this splitting maneuver was to attempt to gain a foothold among the miners, where Lewis has kept the Communists out for years. The third wing of the union in the light metal trades was tacked on, after much propaganda by the Communist Party, on the ground that some of the workers in radio manufacturing were skilled mechanics, who were to furnish the nucleus for organizing the machinists in the whole light metal
” n z
Powers Hapgood
industry, including the small machine shops. This campaign soon collapsed. But in spite of all this confusion the union has established itself in the radio manufacturing industry, and to some degree in the public utility field. Today it has a membership of about 137,000 workers. ” ” EJ N this group of unions*we niust include the International Wood Workers of America, who claim approximately 100,000 members out of a possible million. These are mostly lumberjacks in the Far West. At present they are fighting desperately the A. F. of L., which has declared a boycott against their products. Harold Pritchett, president of the union, is a devout follower of Harry Bridges personally, rather than of the Communist party line. To the shoe workers the C. I. O. has been a blessing long awaited. The industry was always plagued with a number of competing unions, many of them backward and ineffective, and some of them almost rackats for selling the union label! to the employer, who, behind the label could do with labor as he pleased.
William D. Mahon.
When the Shoe Workers Organizing Committee of the C. 1. O. was established in January 1937, the most important of these unions were brought together. Struggling against the most reactionary combination of employers and local governments, especially in New England, the union has since done wonders. Today more than 51,000 workers are covered by closed-shop agreements in about one-sixth of the industry. In November, 1937, the United Shoe Workers held their first convention. Powers Hapgood of Indianapolis, a Harvard graduate and a former miner, was elected president. He is absolutely fearless and sincere, and generously confused. When he was in the United Mine Workers during the 1920s, Hapgood was John Brophy’s! chief lieutenant against the Lewis administration. He and other leading officers are members of the Socialist Party. But the New York locals, where the Communists are very strong, are already beginning to exercise a disproportionate influence. in union affairs.
NEXT—The Newspaper Guild.
By Science Service ASHINGTON, Jan. Nearly two-thirds who died
of
the University of Conference on Better Care
Mothers and Babies held here.
Blood poisoning, following ,abor- that three forces are necessary tion or after the birth of w child,
the | in childbirth |
for |
jcauses about 40 out of every 100 deaths of mothers 20. — maternal deaths. The condition is|First of these, he said, is more known medically as sepsis of septi-
might have been saved by more | ceémia and is due to infection with ticing physicians. | adequate and efficient care before, [a germ or micro-organism. Hemjduring and after the births of their |orrhage causes 12 out of every 100 | infants, Dr. Philip F. Williams of [of the maternal deatl.s. Pennsylvania | these deaths | School of Medicine declared at the
|than in cities.
Cites Ways to Reduce Maternal Deaths
in childbirth.
thorough education of medical students, nurses, midwives and pracSecond is pro-
j vision by the State both of greater
facilities for education of doctors,
; More of | nurses and public and of means for occur in rural regions | providing adequate care to mothers
who cannot get it by themselves.
These facts. brought out in vari- | Third, he said, “the public must in-
| ous surveys, show, Dr. Williams said, | sist on proper education so that ig-
to | norance and lack of co-operation
eliminate the avoidable causes of 'may be eliminated.”
HEARD IN CONGRESS— .
Rep. Ditter (R. Pa.): The present Administration seems bent on im-
pressing upon the American people the value of spending money. Thrift
has been tabooed; in fact, thrift has been penalized and profligacy has
been placed upon a pedestal.
The old sayings and axioms of the value of thrift have been thrown into the wastebasket.
“A penny saved is a
penny earned” has been branded as a bit of foolishness coming out of the
horse-and-buggy days.
Instead of the old copybcok in which the chil-
dren wrote and rewrote on the value of saving, there has been substituted a radio in the classroom which dins into their ears the advisability of spending. A hysteria for spending prevails. It has taken on the fervor
of a religion.
It is part and parcel of the New Deal.
Side Glances—By Clark
A WOMAN'S VIEW
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson ITH the payment of the Lind-
bergh money the last chapter has been written in the ugliest
story ever recorded in America. And the question arises: Is the custom of offering rewards for criminals one that the public conscience can be proud of? There is something repellent in the thought that good citizens must be coaxed with cash to help enforce
| their own laws. Although it is not
generally so regarded, such rewards are in fact a form of bribery, with the state or the Federal Government buying information which patriots should be glad to give for nothing. The individuals themselves are not to be criticized, for it is the sys«m which is at fault. Probably the
, custom started when the courts felt [that in competing with the under- | world money was the only thing
that could get the best of the arguent. I dare say a great many outlaws have been persuaded by rewards to give up guilty secrets and companions. Good citizens pay taxes to maintain state and Federal police protection, but they should not expect to get paid themselves for any accidental assistance they might give their officers. When you contend otherwise, it’s as if you argued that the housewife who saw her dinner burning to a crisp on the kitchen stove should do nothing to rescue
| it because she had a maid hired to | look after the cooking.
Crime menaces every citizen. It dips its slimy fingers into your purse and mine. It can never be licked i NeO! with
DIT [} Sh
Jasper—By Frank Owen
CITY AQUARIUM
VILL REA [LF RL]
LL NEE
=
|
| to get her own way with her mother.
|
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PAGE 13
Ind.
Our Town
By Anton Scherrer
Bruce Rogers’ Passion for Ships Was Responsible for an Essay and Confession by Christopher Morley.
HE mention of Christopher Morley in this column the other day reminds me that I’ve never said a word about Mr. Mor= ley’s charming, little essay, “B. R.’s Secret Passion,” first published in his ‘“‘Barnacles
From Many Bottoms.” The cryptic letters “B. R.” refer, of course, to Bruce Rogers, who started his career in Indianapolis and who has now reached the point where many
people, including authorities like Alfred Pollard, declare him the most vital force in modern typography. Bruce Rogers came to Indianapolis in 1890 by way of Latayette (and Purdue) to be an illustrator on the News. The News people pul him in a little low-partitioned room next to that ot Meredith Nicholson, but he didn’t stay long. It was too noisy, he said. He stayed long enough, however, to meet J. W. Bowles who ran a little art store at the time. Then one day, without telling anybody, he returned to Latayette He was back in 1893, however. I don’t know what prought him back, but I have a hunch that he had an inkling of what Mr. Bowles was up to. Anyway, during Mr. Rogers’ absence, Mr. Bowles had conceived the idea ot starting a quarterly, “Modern Art,” and itt was something right up B. R.’s alley. Together they got out the first number. Today it's a collec= tor’s item. Well, that brings me to the point of saying that Christopher Morley 1s an ardent collector ot Bruce Rogers’ books. He has set number 103 of the famous Montaigne, or rather he has two-thirds ot it. “I bid for it,” he says, “in great excitement at the R. B. Adam sale years ago. I was too inflamed with auction fever to examine the catalog note; not until the magnificent folios were delivered did I realize that Volume 3 was missing. What so scrupulous and prudent a collector as Mr. Adam can have done with his third volume I still cannot conjecture. It is one
of the mysteries.”
He's Apparently Satisfied
Apparently Mr. Morley is satisfied to have only two-thirds of the set, because in another place in his essay he says: “Let the great collectors breathe hot and fast over the massy shoulders of his Montaignes and his Bibles; I choose for sentimental mention ‘The Joseph Conrad: Prospectus of a voyage in a sailing ship.” ” pd then Mr. Morley lets the cat out of the bag, and confesses that he, too, shares B. R.’s secret pas= sion, his love of the sailing ship. “His passion for the bonor and fidelity of old ships is a symptom of his soul. He is, in both senses, a lover of craft. I know his feeling about ships by intuition, not by observation,” says Mr. Morley, “but I've seen his eye brighten, his face rubricate with solemn joy, when he speaks of a vessel under sail.” My only reason for letting you in on all this today is to show what secret passions can be nursed by a boy born and bred on the banks of the Wabash River. As for Mr. Morley, I'll bet his birthplace hadn't even the benefit of a creek.
Jane Jordan—
Advises 13-Year-Old Girl She ls
Little Young to Expect Escorts.
EAR JANE JORDAN-—In answering a letter to the youngest child in a family of 10 you said that it was natural for a mother to box the nearest of her children’s ears when they were fighting, but you didn’t answer the girl's (or boy's—I don’t remember which) question about the mother’s allowing the older one to go out all the time while the younger one stayed in. Anv woman with common sense would know that this isn’t fair. At least I don't think so and I am old enough to understand. Please answer the little girl's question about going out at night. Don’t you see, X know this little girl and she has no advantages. : I am a girl of 13, the baby in a family of four children. Other girls in my classes have boy friends who take them to the show on Sunday or to skating parties. I feel funny going by myself. One of the boys I like lives too far away and the other never has asked me. Please advise me. ANXIOUS.
Mr. Scherrer
” ” n Answer—May I point out an inconsistency in your letter? First you say you don't remember whether or not it was a boy or girl whom I didn’t answer directly and then you say you know the little girl and she has few advantages. I don't believe you read my answer carefully. I didn’t defend ear-boxing by saying it was natural for a mother to resort to it. I believe that blows of any kind are an indignity to which no child should be subjected. It is true that I did not say definitely that it was right or wrong for the 15-year-old sister to 80 out at night during the week when the 14-year-old sister stayed at home. The reason I did not answer is that I have not heard the mother’s side. No one can form a just judgment without hearing both sides of the question. It may be that the mother has more confidence in the 15-year-old girl because she is older. It may be that the older girl is better in her school work than the younger and is entitled to more time off from study. Perhaps the sister had a legitimate reason for going out at some time or other and the younger sister demanded the same concession with no better reason than that she wants to do everything big sister does. I know how unreasonable children can be where there is strong rivalry in the family and can come to no decision without knowing all the circumstances. I did give the young lady rather sly advice on how I told her what methods work best with parents, who are just peovle after all, with a weakness for the sweet smile, the - loving pat, and the sympathetic understanding cf their children. It is easy to refuse the requests of the
rebellious, impatient, troublesome child, but hard, if
not impossible, to refuse the kindly, reasonable re= quests of a helpful daughter. Your personal problem will solve itself as you grow older. Thirteen is a little young to expect escorts for shows and skating parties. Most boys of your age do not have enough spending money to invite girls to go with them. All you can do is make yourself as agreeable and attractive as possible so that when there is a party, you will be among those chosen by the boys who can afford to take a guest. JANE JORDAN.
Put vour problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily.
Walter O'Keefe—
OLLYWOOD, Jan. 20.—At a time when the coune try is torn into warring factions economically
and politically, it's a pleasant thing to realize that
Americans are agreed on one thing—Charlie Mc-
Carthy.
slide that even includes Maine and Vermont.
The radio popularity polls are giving him a lands n deservedly so. : He's probably the most valuable piece of wood since the charter oak in Connecticut. So The only thing wrong with Charlie's job is that he
has to work Sundays.
past, it's
Unlike the cases of Gallagher and Shean and Weber and Fields, famous theatrical teams of the improbable that there will be a fight and his partner, Edgar Bergen, for tem: ns. Mr. Bergen knows which side his
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