Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 January 1938 — Page 19
Vagabond
From Indiana = Ernie Pyle
Wanderer Happens Across Teacher |
\ . ’ | | Inside the C. l. O. © © o eo o eo byBenjamin Stolberg O u I T O WwW Nn Newspaper Guild, Led by Heywood Broun, Switches From A. F. of L. to Lewis By Anton Scherrer
He Met Last Spring on Journey to Alaska and Spends Hour in School.
(See “A Woman's View,” This Page)
AlA, Island of Maui, Hawaii, Jan. 21.— On a cold and wet evening last spring, when our ship was sliding along between snow-banked mountainsides and glaciers that straggled down into the sea, a woman came into the lounge, sat down in the next chair, anc offered me a cigaret. That started a traveling companionship that lasted for three weeks, and carried us on a hilarious
paddle-wheel journey down the Yukon River. The woman's name was Clara B. Snyder, she said she was a schoolteacher, and when she laughed you could hear her clear the other side of the Arctic Circle.
That was last spring, in Alaska,
and when I said goodby to her in Fairbanks I didn't suppose I'd ever hear of her again in this life. But today I sat in Clara Snyder's schoolroom here in the little sugarplantation town of Paia and listened to her teaching two dozen little Mr. Pyle Orientals how to count 10 bananas in a row. Clara Snyder is an Ohio girl. She taught around Cleveland, ang never had much of a desire to travel until suddenly it popped into her head one day that she wanted to go West. So she just up and went to Denver-—and got a job right off the bat. Why not go on to Hawaii, she thought? to Hawaii asking for a job, and the answer came back -—come ahead.
That really put ideas in her head. | So she wrote |
It, is 12 years now since Clara Snyder came out the
first time. She has taught in Hawaii nine of those 12 years. The other three she has traveled. One year she went around the world. Another year she returned to the Orient. She thought maybe she should go somewhere new, was afraid the Orient might not be sc wonderful the second time. But it was. The third year off, she went to Alaska as an exchange teacher, Imagine going from Hawaii to Alaska for the winter. But she gets along anywhere, and was crazy about Alaska. It was at the end of her year in Alaska that I met her. I knew at the time that she had taught in Hawaii, but I didn’t realize she was coming back. So —it was a little surprise when a letter came to Honolulu saying that if I should happen to hit Maui, and soon... . .
Only Five Teachers Are White
Miss Snyder teaches in the biggest grade school on Maui. There are 1200 pupils and 45 teachers. Only five of the 45 are white. The rest are Hawaiian, Japanese, cross-bloods and so on. Miss Snyder has second-grade repeaters, which means they're sort of slow. But slow or not, they sure are cute. Some were handsome and some were ugly, just as we used to be (and still are). They seemed to have no trouble understanding. In fact, I could detect no accent in their speech. I sat through an hour of the afternoon's teaching. sal in the window, and could literally reach out and touch the canestalks in one of the big plantation fields. Miss Snyder would call on one at a time. Somebody else always held up his hand and wanted to read. They didn't seem embarrassed by a stranger being there. Most of them paid no attention, but three or four kept sneaking a glance around, and would smile at me when I smiled, and I think they tried to show off a little. After school Miss Snyder got out her Arctic pictures of last spring, and we laughed and reminisced over some of our Alaskan incidents, and then drove down to Wailuku in a banana-wagon and had dinner. When 1 left I didn’t even say goodby, for we'll probavly cross trails again some day in Cleveland or Thursday Island or some place.
My Diary
By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
Walking, Which Once Was Everyday |
Exercise, Today Is an Adventure.
ASHINGTON, Thursday-—The members of the Cause and Cure of War Conference who are meeting here had tea with me yesterday afternoon and I attended their banquet last night. I wish I had Mrs. Catt’s ability to think up something really amusing and original tg say on a subject which I have talked over with the same group a number of times! Mrs. Ruth Bryan Rohde also gave us something original to think about in her talk. It began by
pointing out that we had much to learn from a little |
country like Denmark and that it would be easy for us to understand our lessons in co-operatives if we studied those in Denmark. They would not be scattered over such a wide area and we could employ their experience as laboratory tests. In one of the morning papers there was a lovely picture of the entrance to the White House buried in snow. This morning I decided to walk for the first time in many weeks and discovered this perfectly ordinary exercise, which for many years I took every day of my life, had become rather an adventure. How strangely our habits change and what creatures of habit we are! I used to sally forth every morning and go to market before I went up to teach in the Todhunter School. Now I find it an adventure to go out at 11 o'clock and walk four blocks.
Lunches With Mrs. Swanson
I lunched with Mrs. Swanson, the wife of the Secretary of the Navy, who gave a delightful luncheon at the Women’s National Democratic Club. This club is very homelike, I think the women here in Washington who started it have been very wise, for they have tried to draw in memberships from
all over the country. ;
I came across an article by John Palmer Gavit in one of the February magazines, which I wanted
to applaud in various places.
He points out, in a |
general way, that we parents are responsible when |
our children grow up With racial or religious
prejudices.
New Books Today
Public Library Presents—
IKOLAI PETROVICH REZANOV, a vital but little-known figure in Russian history, had a vision of empire. Promoting a scheme to form a Rus-sian-American company that would rival the great Fast India and Hudson Bay organizations which were so important in the development of America, he resolved to carry the Russian flag to the American continent, down into California, for his own gain as well as his country’s glory. In LOST EMPIRE (Macmillan) Hector Chevigny has told the fascinating story of this man’s career, against a background ranging from Russia and Siberia to the California oi the Spanish occupation, " n 8 WENTY years of residence in Hawaii has not dulled its exotic splendor for Antoinette Withington. In HAWATIAN TAPESTRY (Harper) her discoveries and impressions of Honolulu people, history and legends are recorded. In that city of many
nationalities, East and West, new ways and old, min- |
gle in colorful juxtaposition. American business places
and a Y. M. C. A. building flourish short distances |
from Buddhist temples, Chinese cemeteries and shrines of stone gods. Ancient Eastern pageantry accompanies Oriental marriages and funerals. While the younger generation is strongly influenced by American education and ideals, many of the older folk ponder the legends of ghostly drums and processions of the dead by moonlight. Laborers on the suga# and pineapple plantations are among the happiest on earth; fishermen brave the foaming surf of the ocean " in little blue sampans. And everyone wears the lei, ' traditional symbol of Hawaiian friendlinefs,
ner 3
I LN MUON AP ss Pcs ah Fog PE A
The Indianapolis
EDITOR'S NOTE—In this next-to-last of 12 articles, Mr. Stolberg describes the American Newspaper Guild and other whitecollar €. I. O. unions. Of course Mr. Stolberg’s interpretations are his own, not those of The Times.
OR years newspaper work, from cub to editor, was a romantic “game.” There is no need of analyzing the psychology of that conception. We all know it. Part of that attitude was that wages, hours and conditions did not really matter. What mattered was the high adventure. Unfortunately this high adventure, until the Newspaper Guild came on the scene, paid an average of $38 and called for a 48 to 50-hour week; for 25 per cent of the newspapermen it meant less than $20 a week. And no job was less secure than a reporter's. In time, however, the “game” became too obviously a business, and on the big papers a mass-produc-tion industry. Even before Section 7a of the NIRA there were sporadic efforts to organize the editorial workers. The A. F. of L. assigned them to the International Typographical Union. And for vears the I. T. U. used to raise its own wages by threatening to organize the city room. Finally in 1933 the American Newspaper Guild was born.
The man who had most to do with it was Heywood Broun. For years Broun has been a sort of left-wing man about town. He knew Broadway, the publishing world, including the publishers; and after the war he became an amateur weathervane for all the winds of liberal doctrine. Successively, he drank toasts for Farmer-Laborism, for Socialism; he was always for civil liberties until Stalinism became the most fashionable form of radicalism among the New York intelligentsia. Felicitous, but naive in everything he writes, given to periodic crushes on strong men and movements, mellow without being wise, and charming without being strong, Broun fell head over heels for John L. Lewis and the C. 1. 0. That's splendid, though the C. 1. O. is not a college play but our most important social movement since the Civil War. At the same time Broun was intrigued by the cocktail communism of our literary and pseudo-literary world these last three years. These two passions made him feel good and hard, which is his great ambition, though what really happened was that he merely became unfair to opponents in the best style of our literary “proletarians.” td n » N 1933 Broun, with the help of several] friends, organized the Guild. At the beginning the publishers were under the vague impression that the Guild was a sort of newspaper club, where they
might be almost honorary members. But in time a great many real rank-and-file editorial workers joined in all seriousness. The Guild obviously meant to be a union. When the National Association of Newspaper Publishers woke up to the fact it got all excited shout this new danger to the “freedom of the press.” Col. R. R. McCormick of The Chicago Tribune became violently worried about that issue. So did other conservative publishers, who confused their privi-
oT
FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1938
i — —-— A AI I SOSA
Imes
Entered
lege of hiring and firing with freedom of the press. But the Guild was getting on. Strikes were followed by agreements with The Newark Ledger, in 1934; with The Amsterdam News and The Jewish Daily Bulletin, in 1935; with The Seattle Post-Intel-ligencer, in 1936; with The Long Island Daily Press and The Brooklyn Eagle, in 1937. Everywhere the Guild signed comparatively good agreements. And the losses it experienced were only natural.
on n un UT during the same period the emergence of the “party
line” became ever more visible in the national leadership. Broun himself, Jonathan Eddy, the executive vice-president, and Carl Randau, president of the New York Guild, followed this “party line” in a desultory way, being primarily influenced by the fashionableness of Stalinism in literary circles. Part of their tactics was to laugh at the idea that there was
a “party line.” The Broun clique and claque displayed toward every bit of radical non-Communist opposition the characteristic undemocratic and totalitarian impudence of the Communist “fellow travelers.” Abuse took the place of argument and snobbery he place of union democracy. Needless to say, the atmosphere at the national office was no more “subversive” or “revolutionary” than at the Astor Bar. But it was shaking the union. In the smaller towns and on the country papers, where the majority of newspapermen work, it frightened away members. In the metropolitan centers most critical opposition was simply beaten down. And many good union men quietly resigned. = » ” INALLY, the factional issue broke out in the Guild convention last July in St. Louis. The national officers came to the convention with a c¢ut-and-dried program. Quite rightly, they wanted the Guild to shift from its recent membership in the A. F. of L. into the progressive C. I. O. But as part of this shift. they demanded, in the name of “industrial unionism,” that the Guild take in the commercial departments, not as a separate division but in a lump. Of course, Broun did not follow
"1
HELPING M
, REACTIONAR v/
a)
Heywood Broun
out his logic and demand that the Guild also take in the printing crafts. They wouldn't go in. The opposition, under Robert M. Buck of the Washington chapter, was not against organizing the business offices. It was for helping them to organize in some associated manner with the Guild. For the opposition justly feared that the editorial workers would be swamped by the very different problems of the workers in the business office if they were in the same union. But the Broun group insisted that the two resolutions—in favor of joining the C. I. O. and of taking in the commercial workers— could be no more separated than “corned beef and cabbage.” And Broun backed himself up with a statement by John Brophy of the C. I. O. When John L. Lewis was later asked about this by a member of the opposition, he said he felt the two issues should really have been .dea't with separately. ” ”n ” TS steamroll the issue through the convention, the Guild Administration introduced the usual “debating society” resolutions so dear to the “party line.” It introduced resolutions against
(F THEY
£7”
WONDER
fascism in Spain, for independent political action, for greater support of WPA, and for the reformation of the Supreme Court. The great majority of the delegates were personally for all these things. Yet anyone who objected that these political issues had no place in a union convention was immediately labeled a reactionary, practically a buddy of Gen. Franco. The Randau-Eddy-Broun machine rejected all proposals for a referendum on these issues made by the delegates from Washington, Columbus, Minneapolis and St. Paul, and other chapters. But after the convention the opposition used its right under the Guild constitution to force a referendum. In the meantime The Guild Reporter at first was presenting almost entirely the administration's side of the case. When the referendum was finally held, the administration pronounced the result a great victory, But in view of the fact that an anti-Administration vote is always hard to get, because the members feel it might hurt the union, the referendum showed a distinct split in the organization. » =” » EVEN thousand members did not vote at all. Of the others 3392 as against 1691 voted for joining the C. I. O, while only 3013 as against 2054 voted for taking in the commercial departments. The resolution against fascism in Spain was lost by 2592 against 2409; 2774 voted for independent political action and 2202 against it: 2815 voted for greater support of WPA and 2178 against it, and 2685 as against 2271 voted for Roosevelt's court reform. Some members of the opposition were also against the “Guild shop” —a slightly modified form of closed shop. Most of them were not against it on principle. But they felt that since far more powerful C, I. O. unions could not comm~nd some form of closed shop, the Guild certainly couldn't. And it is always poor tactics to demand what you can’t get. The fact is that tue Guild has only a very few Guild-shop agreements. In the vast majority of cases it has to waive the Guild shop. Today the Guild has some 14,000
members, 3000 in the business departments. It has been amazingly successful. It has won the majority of its strikes. It has raised the scale of wages considerably, it has shortened hours to an average 40-hour week, it has secured a scale of severance pay when a man is fired. But it has achieved all this almost in spite of the tactics of its national officers. It has achieved all this because of the loyal aid of other unions, and because the newspapermen are probably the most, intelligent crowd in American labor, who know their pub=licity, and who behind their hardboiled attitude hide a great devotion to their ideals. ” o » N most of the other whitecollar and professional unions, the Communist “party line” has ample representation. The Pederation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians is an organization on which the party line registers. And so is the union of the United Office and Professional Workers. Any critic who dares to rise at their meetings is usually hooted down as a “faker,” “sellout,” or what not. Some of these unions seldom bother to pay their per capita tax to the C. I. O In this connection we may meciition three more white-collar unions whose administrations are not Communist, but which are in constant hot water from the disruptive tactics of large numbers of party “sympathizers.” One is the United Retail and
Wholesale Employees, who claim 40,000 members. And the two others are the State, County and Municipal Workers and the Pederal Workers of America, who have 20,000 and 10,000 members respectively. These unions of Government workers are small and interested mainly in legislation. The clerks’ union is far more important and
“has a splendid record since its suspension by the A. F. of L. in |
1937. It is doing especially well in the New York retail field and throughout New England.
Next—What of the future?
Side Glances—By Clark
7;
A ov ———
aad
SY ke
is lookin’ for Waldo A. Stuyvesant. I'm Waldo Q. Stuyvesant.” ay .
A WOMAN'S VIEW
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson OBODY looks less like a hero |
| than Ernie Pyle, He's a slight, !
| timid man and he pales at the | thought of having to stand up at a | banquet to say a few words. In a | crowd he just merges, although during the process he soaks up impres- | sions like a sponge taking in water. i And when you say all that you still haven't put your finger on the | real Ernie that hides beHind that | quiet face, inside that frail-looking body. He's smart—but with the sort of smartness that lacks the showiness of the average intellectual. “There's nothing unusual about
me,” he will say, yet I challenge the statement because I think there is nothing in our world so unusual as a completely sincere man. In | short, the thing that makes Ernie Pyle lovable is that bane of all | psychologists, that frightful buga- | boo of our generation—the inferi- | ority complex. He doesn't think | much of himself; that's why every- | one thinks so much of him. But what I started out to say is that he has done just about the swellest, piece of reporting ever published in his recent series about the leper settlement on Molokai Island, Hawaii. His readers have been given something more than a treat. They've enjoved a feast. The average newspaperman likes an gssignment which takes him into places where spectacular events can be reported. The rare one goes without advance publicity to the most isolated ‘spot in the world where the victims of leprosy drag out their days. Who wants heroes
when we've got men like Ernie Pyle 3 ; ;
. v4
Jasper—By Frank Owen
TAN
7
"Well, why did you slap a mortgage on your house, Jasper, if you couldn't keep up #he payments?" >
i
sd a: Second-Class Matter at Postoffice, Indianapolis, Ind.
| course,
| to live together
| trying to inspire an emotion which will not
Second Section
PAGE 19
Two Different Lines of Reasoning Fail to Give Columnist Basis for Men's Removing Hats in Elevators,
UTY comes before anything with me, and there is a little situation in the present elevator strike which I feel bound to bring to everyone's attention. It's the absurd, and wholly uncalled for, practice of taking off one’s hat in an elevator when there are iadies in it. For the life of me, I don’t see why we men don't take time off right now, and settle it along with our other elevator troubles. I don't know what there
is about an elevator that makes us men behave the way we do. We seem to have our wits about us all right when we go up (or down) a stairway with a lady, and as far as I can see we keep our hats on when we go up an escalator. For some reason, however, we go com-
| pletely haywire when we step into
an elevator and see a woman in it
| The sight of a couple of women just | about drives us panicky.
Mr. Scherrer
The truth of the matter is, of that we men aren't completely oriented in the presence of women. I doubt whether we ever will be, but that's no reason why an elevator should
| make such a fool of us,
Come to think of it, there isn't a bit of sense in the way we act. In the first place, an elevator is but a continuation of a corridor, just as a stairway is, or an escalator for that matter, All right, if that's the case, what in heaven's name requires us to stand bareheaded in the presence of a woman in an ele vator and not in a corridor? I am aware, of course, that women are subject to sudden and subtle changes, but you can’t make me believe that the mere act of a woman stepping from a corridor to an elevator changes her enough to merit a view of my bald head.
Invades Engineering Field
Let's look at it another way. Maybe you're sick of my architectural comparisons. In that case. let's invade the engineering field, and call an elevator a vehicle or a conveyance. Well, that brings us out at exactly the same place. We don't take off our hats in a streetcar or an automobile any more than we do in the corridor of a department store. So there, The fact of the matter is that the practice hasn't a leg to stand on, unless, perchance, it's one of those funny things we do to please the ladies. Well, if that's the case, we couldn't have picked a worse place to do it, because with everybody facing front in an elevator there isn't a Chinaman's chance of a woman ever seeing anything but the back of my head, which is the least and last part I want her to see. I don’t know what's to be done about it, unless we start all over again. I know this much about it, though: If the women will let me keep on my hat in an elevator, I'll never let out another peep about the women keeping on their hats in church—not even the funny ones they're wearing now,
Jane Jordan—
Divorce May Be No Accident When Woman Willingly Takes All Blame.
EAR JANE JORDAN-—I have been going with a diverced woman and have fallen in love with her,
| We are very congenial and have never had a dis- | agreement about anything except her former hus«
band. We see each other every day. At first she sele dom mentioned her husband except to tell me how he had mistreated her and that she had never had a happy moment with him. Now she talks about him every time I am with her, telling me that their di vorce was all her fault and that now she can see where she could have been a better wife. She says she still loves him, but has no respect for him, that she respects me in every way, but does not love me,
| She asks me if there is not some way that I can help | her kill this love she has for her former husband so
that she can love me. He will not take her back and all his friends tell me it is simply impossible for them This woman is ideal to me. My wife Is dead and my only daughter is married. Is there not some way I can win her? WORRIED,
Answer—The instinctive feeling called love is somes thing over which human beings have very little cone scious control. I do believe that anybody can get over
| an unhappy love by living a busy, useful life, but
it is not so easy to make the same feeling burn for
| somebody else.
A woman who clings so stubbornly to love for a
| man who has mistreated her must like punishment, | or at least feel the need of it. | cident that she finds herself on the losing end in | life.
It is perhaps no ac-
The very fact that she is willing to bear all the blame for her divorce indicates that her self-esteem is low and that she is convinced that she is getting
| what she deserves.
I suspect that your friend has a talent for suffering. It is hard for a healthy person to understand
| what satisfaction the martyr is able to wring from | his sad estate.
The sympathy of others is one of the chief rewards. Take care that you do not find yourself in the same boat, reconciled to your place on the losing end of love, accepting the punishment of unrequited affection. In my opinion it is better for a man to accept a woman's “no” without spending too much time in spring JANE JORDAN.
Note—Jane Jordan wishes to thank a reader in San Gabriel, Cal, for a letter of approval and criti= cism which was not intended for publication
into being by itself,
Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily.
‘Walter O'Keefe—
LYOLLYWOOD, Jan. 21.—They're making up the winter book on the Presidential Derby to be run off in 1940 and the field is crowded with a list of likely
| starters.
The entries are eyeing a few minor races in prep.
| aration for the big event, and you can look over the | nags during the Gubernatorial and Congressional races \
this year. The boys would rather be President than right. One of the most ambitious contenders is Jim Fare ley. James Aloysius used to run the fight industry in
| New York State before he undertook to regulate fight-
ing on a national scale, He's tired of designing postage stamps. Now he
| wants to be on one,
Heard In Congress Rep. Gray (D. Pa.): In the February issue of tha
| American Magazine, in an article entitled ‘Keystone
Joe,” there appears this statement: “He controls a solid block of 27 Pennsylvania Democrats in the House of Representatives, and knows how to use them when he needs them.” . .. Rep. O'Connor (D. N. Y.): Who is this “Keystone Joe?” Rep. Gray: “Keystone Joe,” 1 take it, because the article says so, and here is a picture, is Senator Guffey of Pennsylvania. Rep. O'Connor: Is he in the Senate still? Rep. Gray: He is still in the Senate, I understand,
| It might not be so bad to charge our delegation with
murder or treason, or stealing candy from a baby; or sneaking women’s handkerchiefs; but to charge us of legisl servility to g i.{ pha to in-
& Ail