Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 January 1938 — Page 20

Eshr i " ga Re a on Ti MO ers

PAGE 20 The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Business Manager

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@Qive Light and the Pcople Will Find Their Own Way

FRIDAY, JAN, 21, 1938

SHOOT THE GILLIGALOOBIRD HE essence of the matter was as follows: “The great body of investors, large and small, need reassurance as to the direction reform is to take ... that the public know what forms of business organization meet with the approval of the Administration and are to be encouraged, and what are to be affected by reform.” That is from the statement read to the President by W. Averell Harriman, chairman of the Business Advisory Council, in the White House meeting to which more than 50 industrialists had heen invited. The President was reported by his secretary, Stephen T. Early, to have expressed general approval of the document. And a reading of it causes no surprise at that. For on every issue—monopolies, wages and hours, collective bargaining, holding companies, housing, agriculture, social security, and the like—there appeared no dispute as to principle and very little as to method. One is impressed bv how far we have moved from the Liberty League days and is left wondering what all the shooting is about and why can’t we go from here. " Nn ” n ” » HE concluding paragraph expresses a thought that a lot of us have been thinking in this “poor little rich country” of ours—that if we go to ruin it is our own fault: “We have the production machinery, private capital and technique. The leadership of Government, business, labor and agriculture can properly be condemned by posterity if we fail to work out sound and permanent principles for insuring the continuance of our economic life on a basis that promises the highest possible standard of living for the people of this country. Uncertainties that exist in the hearts of men today must be eradicated.” And to that we would add this from testimony yesterday by Colby M. Chester, head of General Foods and of the National Association of Manufacturers, before the Byrnes Committee on Relief and Unemployment: Mr. Chester—“The public is pretty well fed up with the fact that business, Government and labor can’t get together and agree. In the first place we have to clear the atmosphere. slinging contest and call it off.” Senator Byrnes—"So you feel that all parties have engaged in the mudslinging?” Mr. Chester—"Absolutely. ness.”

I am not absolving busi-

Senator Byrnes—*“You want an armistice?” Mr. Chester—"Certainly. The President has pointed out that our goal is an income of 90 billion dollars. It is time that we all get together and start toward that goal.” un ”n n n n n

BUT back to that point which we believe is the essence

“direction,” and the Government what forms meet approval and what should be altered; Much, yes most, of the trouble today is covered by one word-—uncertainty, It doesn’t therefore seem unreasonable to request of the Government a chart; to inquire about the house rules before the game begins, much gilligaloobirding. In the old-time Western gambling hall the house rules were the law. any game. They were posted near the tables. One night at poker a newcomer to town drew four queens and, quite naturally, bet them strong. On the showdown he started to take the copious pot from his adversary, who had bet two deuces in an apparently insane way. “Wait a minute,” said the two-deuce holder, “it's mine.” “How come?” “Read the house rules.” The stranger arose, walked to the wall, and, sure enough rule number one said: “The gilligaloobird consists oi two deuces and beats any hand in the deck.” Having read that, the newcomer, being a good sport, eturned and resumed play. Pretty soon he got two deuces and bet them for all he had. His opponent showed four kinas, Reaching for the chips the stranger announced a giiigaloobird. Whereupon he was admonished to read the rose of the rules. Down toward the bottom of the list this appeared: “Only one gilligaloobird good in an evening.” We think it not unfair to ask the President to hang up a set of house rules. And then, in turn, it would be only fair that he demand that the players read all the rules before they sit in.

GREAT DAY I" was, no doubt, a touching gesture that New Jersey's new Governor, A. Harry Moore, made when he offered as a “birthday present” to Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City the U. S. Senate seat which he, himself, was just vacating. But we are relieved that Mayor Hague declined the honor, And we think he was wise. The man who can say that “I am the law” in Jersey City ought to stay there, where people don't dare to laugh at him. What we started out to say, however, 1s that Jan. 17 should be made some sort of national holiday, Jersey City could celebrate it as Mayor Hague's birthday, and the rest of us could celebrate it as the anniversary of the day when we escaped having I'rank Hague in the Senate,

ALMOST HUMAN

HAT new robot bank teller in a New York bank seems to us to have great time-saving possibilities. The depositor makes out his deposit slip, as usual, then puts it into a slot in the machine together with his checks, and the thing records them photographically at the rate of 100 a minute. We haven't heard whether the robot teller is equipped with a pair of cold, unblinking glass eyes. But it ought to be. We may learn to put our checks into a slot; but we'll never really feel that we're in the right bank unless v We meet those searching, suspicious, eyes. . » {

Someone should distribute the prizes in this mud- |

oS CA 5, SL AT ER

A re er — 7

Swing Music! —By. Talburt

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

CAAT WWE PR

» DOES TRAT HAVE | FOREVER!

France—By Herblock

FRIDAY, JAN. 21, 1938 )

AH! THAT was THE BEST CRISIS WE'VE HAD IN

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Columnist Doubts Administration

Of Jersey City Under C. |. O. Would Be Improvement Over Hague's.

| NEW YORK, Jan, 21.—Conceding the truth of all that has been said and written about the Hague dictatorship in Jersey City, IT would like to speculate on the state | of affairs that would exist there if the C. I. O. were to win a complete victory, organize the town as thoroughly as Frank Hague has organized it and elect a complete ticket of C. 1. O. candidates, including all judges. Would the C. I. O.

be any more tolerant than Mayor Hague has been or would Jersey City find that she has merely traded one coercive Government for another? We know that some C. 1. O. leaders like judges who believe as they do and lean as far to their side as some Hague judges lean toward the other side. They call that obedience to the mandates of the people and an expression of democracy. They frankly demand

| appoint to . : | enouzh men pledged to his proso far as the from-here-on is concerned, the one about |

letting business know |

There has been too |

They could change the ordinary routine of |

Xforce alone.

that Mr. Roosevelt be allowed to the Supreme Court Mr. Pegler gram to insure the confirmation of any measure he might propose. In the present state of affairs the people elected Mayor Hague and his judges knowing what they stood for, and the judges ran true to form. But in this case the C. I. O. people hold that the election returns were no mandate, ” n » UT it seems idle td argue that the people did not know what Mayor Hague and his candidates stood for. They knew from long experience and still they voted for him and his. It is true that the voie was organized by political job pressure and so was not entirely free. But we know that this sort of thing is common in our politics, and we know also that in the internal affairs of the C. I. O. the union politicians sometimes organize the vote. We also have seen that intimidation is sometimes a weapon of the C. I. O. Some of its members boast of having brought economic pressure to bear on business firms which disagreed with them, This seems to parallel the intimidation charged against Frank Hague. It is complained that he has dissuaded property owners from renting halls to the C. I. O. by an implied threat to raise their taxes and slap “violations” on their property. » » o

OULD the C. I. O. take steps to deter property owners from renting halls to an outright Fascist organization if it had Frank Hague's control of Jersey City? 1 go by the declared position of a prominent C. I. O. leader that this is not a game but a fight, that those who are not with the C. I. O. in the fight are its enemies, and presumably to be treated as such, and that freedom of expression can be carried to extremes. And, judging by certain C. I. O. actions elsewhere, I am led to exnect that if the hall owner rented his place to a Fascist group the C. I. O. administration of Jersey City would destroy him with a boycott just as effectively as Frank Hague might do it with a tax increase or a ‘‘violation.” Altogether the row is reminiscent of two dips who ran up to the policeman, one velling, “He glommed my stickpin!” and the other, “He's got my watch!”

The Hoosier Forum

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

| DISCUSSES DISCOVERY OF NEW SUN By W. L. Ballard, Syracuse, Ind, Many papers have featured the | discovery of the largest sun yet de- | tected whirling in space; a vast | cloud of gas so6 thin we can see |

other suns right through it all. The | astronomers said, “It has a radius | of 3000 times that of our sun.” So

to express

troversies

(Times readers are invited their these columns, religious conexcluded. your letter short, so all can have a chance. be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

| inators of the message to Congress | | was to create the impression that | Congress was failing to represent | the will of the voters who elected | | Mr. Roosevelt. But the plain facts | | are that the majority of voters don't | know what all the racket is about. | There may be a small per cent who | think that everything Roosevelt | | does is right, but there are not {enough of them to put the heat on! Congress. And it is pretty certain

Views in

Make

Letters must

in papers blithely resounded the refrain: “Science discovers a sun 3000 | times larger than our sun.” Maybe some did not know difference between “3000 times

the | tribution of

to say it this way: “It is 3000 times rent for

papers reported.

human eyes and telescopes in the past, from which it follows that |

May there not be twice or many | we find that we thought, requiring important readjustment of our ideas of celestial space, matter and energy? The proof of the presence of a certain gas on the new giant will influence not only radio signals, but theology. For it has been argued that human life can exist only on planets that contain all the elements the earth does. That gas never had been detected elsewhere than on earth; ergo, life could exist only on earth. But the new lighttechnique may soon prove that | human life possibly is common in | stellar space after all.

| » » READER URGES ALL TAXES | BE PLACED ON LAND By Chalmer Fisher

Political economy is the mount topic of the day.

lis taxed,

[labor is now

or society. | »

» Democrats. The strategy

If our |

we would have no depressions. World conditions became so acute |

ference was held at Geneva in 1027. resentatives from 50 nations, arrived | might at the conclusion that: “The main trouble now is neither any material shortage of nature nor | any inadequacy in man's power to| exploit them, It is...a maladjust-|

Behold, pleasant it is

capacity, but a series of impedi- | ments to the full utilization of that | capacity. The main obstacles to economic revival have been the hindrances opposed to the free flow | Napoleon. . . . of labor, capital and goods.”

1331.

{ the productive capacity, that the | capital and land produce wealth. | been so complicated and volumi-! radius” and “3000 times the size” of | Wealth is distributed thus: wages ncus, according to commentators, our sun. It would have been closer | for labor exerted, interest for the | that even the Congressmen could to the opinion of the astronomers | replacement and use of capital, and | hardly understand them. the use of land. longer and 3000 times wider and | shows that distributioh is a con- | ers of government by merely being 3000 times thicker; so it is 27 billion | tinuation of production. times the size of our sun.” That is | paid such high wages that wages | nine million times larger than the | become an obstacle? { Also capital does not receive such on his The main point is that the new, high interest that interest becomes | Court knocked it off the first thing. infra-red sun had been invisible to an obstacle. We are narrowed down Since then Congress has stiffened to rent for the use of land. Society creates land value. There- | 4€nt fights, the less he will accomthere is more matter in space than fore rent belongs to society. , , .| Plish. we had thought, many other such | Taxes on products of labor are a| suns to be revealed by adventurous | burden to society. As taxes advance, CITES CHESTERFIELD'S infra-red and other light-technique. | all products advance in price, but taxes times as much matter in space as | the opposite effect. The higher land | °F DAnel Francis Clancy, Logansport the cheaper it By removing taxes from products of ja letter to his son regarding the | labor we remove carrying. Place all the tax on land and it will give us| | more revenue than we collecting and be no burden to labor | and modern history and languages. | | 'o know perfectly the Constitution | " land form of Government of every | | nation; the growth and the decline | | of ancient and modern empires: and | upon the |

CLAIMS F. D. R. WILL DO LITTLE BY FIGHTING | By Edward F. Maddox

used by the orig-| :jan to know; and which, therefore, | | A REAL, TRUE FRIEND By ROBERT O. LEVELL para-| There is a care concerned so great, Enthusiastic power of man;

present economic sygfem were right, A word of cheer the highest rate, To be uplifting as you can.

that in 1927 a World Economic Con- | For’ joy and gladness day and night, Doing good so willing and free;

This conference, composed of rep-| With all your heart and all your

For all a friend can prove to be.

——————

DAILY THOUGHT

how good and how for ment; not an insufficient productive | dwell together in unity. Psalm

MADE courtiers; TI never pretended to make On a | island he fretted These representatives do not deny | years of his life—alone.—Barton,

that the voters in the Southern but dis- | States do not share this view,

capacity. Labor,| Some of the bills proposed have

This| NO man can control all the powelected by a large majority of votes. Roosevelt has made too many Decidedly not. enemies. He started out with a chip shoulder. The

Is labor

| its attitude. The more the Presi-

» » »

LETTER TO SON

on land have

becomes. | Says the Earl of Chesterfield in

all the

burden office of Secretary of State: “Be

fit for it, and then, in order to be

are now | 50 make yourself master of ancient

to trace out and reflect

[causes of both; to know the

The battle in Washington Waxes strength, the riches, and the com- | | hot. Roosevelt has further alienated | | | Congress, and especially Southern | things, trifling as they may seem, |

merce of every country; these little |

ire yet very necessary for a politi- |

some consideration in your

I presume, you will condescend to |

leisure | moments; such as an absolute command of your temper. so as not to | be provoked to passion upon any | account; patience, to hear frivo- | lous, impertinent and unreasonable applications, with address enough to refuse without offending or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation; dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling «» lie; sagacity enough to read other peo- | ple’s countenances; serenity enough [not to let them discover anything I’ by yours; a seeming frankness with |a real reserve. These are the rudi- | ments of a politician; the world said | must be your grammar.” little| How many American politicians last | are even aware of the rudiments of | | their science?

brethren to

friends, rocky the

away

Only War Psychology Has

treasuries of all of the great European nations.

a financial policy indefensible in peace time, them, save England, would’ have gone into national bankruptcy ere this were it not for one force and one These nations have been able to keep up their weird financial vagaries because of war psychology. What no man can say now is how long it is possible to continue this with a war psychology and in the absence of war, One thing is certain—there is a limit to the time

public borrowings. beginning that this kind of fiscal practice could be

war and the stimulations of patriotism. But even with these aids it can be continued only for a limited period. ” » »

HEN Ttaly cracks and Germany cracks—as they

crack will come this year. It is certainly due—assume ing that war does not come.

war will be p the dictator,

EW YORK, Jan. 21.—Among the most important

Every European nation is at present operating on All of |

a nation can live on confiscatory taxes and stupendous But it has been obvious from the

carried on for a much longer period while the population is kept at fever heat by the alarms of imminent

will—there will be the grandest opportunity for an economic autopsy ever presented. Perhaps that

And of course there are those who believe that when the internal crack is due ipitated as the last desperate card of

Business—By John T. Flynn

Kept Most of Europe From Going Bankrupt; A Limit to These Inflationary Deficits, However, Is Due Any Time.

One reason it is so difficult to form a sound judgthings in the world to watch this year are the | ment on the durability of the present Italian and

| German economies under the pressure of taxation and debt is that reliable data are not available. In Italy, for instance, the deficit for the year which began June 1 was estimated at more than three billion Jire. Since then, however, new expenditures have added something between 500 and 700 million lire to the deficit. This of course is the ordinary budget deficit. There was also a three-billion-lire deficit for the colonization and pacification of Ethiopia. » » = HERE is more, but how much we do not know.

The appropriations in the ordinary budget for

for the immense efforts Italy is making, These moneys are being provided probably by some new legerdemain, such as these Fascist states continue to develop. In financial circles it is believed the actual deficit is not less than seven billion lire. And now we hear that Ttaly is planning to build two new battleships. As long as a country is not actually at war and is not compelled to make continual replacements of munitions, guns, vessels; as long as its people are willing to submit to being drained mercilessly by taxes— drained of their incomes, and even their principal— because they think the motherland in danger, a coun-

try can keep gine on these inflationary deficits for a good while, there is a limit, Will it come this

ears:

war and naval departments, of course, are inadequate -

| I was an ‘executive having a stafl of 10 persons to

Supreme |

MONTHS!

Gar, Johnson Says—

"Public Interest’ Warning of FCC

Is Bold and Outright Prelude to Censorship of All Radio Programs,

(CHICAGO, Jan, 21.—<All 1 know about Mae West's famous broadcast—Adam and Eve—is what I have read in the papers. The sponsors heard publie protests and a great radio chain was hauled on the carpet by the

Federal Communications Commission. The broadcast itself over the dam. It was a boner so big that the bad public reaction was discipline enough for all concerned. It would never

have happened again whether the Commission had dipped in its oar or not. On that we can let the dead past bury its dead. But the Commission's pontifical ponder= osity is quite a different matter It commended the broadcasting company for its prompt apology but refused to accept as an exs= planation of the incident that it was a blunder, No—oh no! With ail the facilities the broadcasting coms panies have for a fine-tooth cens sorsnip of everything that goes over the air according to the Coms= mission they are to be held to a rule of absolute re= sponsibility for any utterance that is not “in the punlic interest.”

The broadcasting companies are reminded that they don't pay anything to use the air. Their prod= uct enters homes, nurseries, schools, automobiles and clubs, not to mention poolrooms and penitentiaries —and they are reminded of that. Yes, as Heywood Broun observes—if the listener doesn't turn it off,

is water

Hugh Johnson

” ” ” OR these reasons they are told they must censor everything “in the public interest.” The Come mission, it is said, rather Mgretfully has no power of censorship—but even substations (which couldn't possibly have known what Mae was going to say) are going to hear abou! it when their licenses come up for renewal—because they didn't cut her off. 1t is not hard for any moron to perceive what is lewd. Nobody wants that kind of stuff on tha air and nobody has a right to put it there. But this “public interest’ business is another matter. The Democratic Party doesn't regard the Republicans as in the public interest, The Republicans think Mr. Roosevelt is not and Mr. Roosevelt says large chunks of American business are not. Some of his followers think tne whole capitalist system is not, Mr. MeNinch of the FCC is a favorite of this group and was put where he is partly for that reason. ¥ % Ww ANY members of the third New Deal regard radio as their own particilar baby. They already have broadcasting managers jitiery., If the job of every subordinate in the program depart= ments depends on whether he permits on the air something that somebody on the Commission later thinks was not “in the public interest,” pretty soon all we will have will be “fireside chats,’ selections from the Rollo books, and the speeches of Secretary Ickes and Assistant Attorney General Jackson This is a bold and outright prelude to censorship, The effect of it is a threat clearly against free exs pression of opinion.

According to Heywood Broun—

‘Always Be Sure to Watch the Clock’ Is Mis Theory for Success; A Man Must Have Interests Outside His Job to Be Useful to Anyone,

EW YORK, Jan. 21.—I like the book by Lin Yu- | tang called “The Importance of Living," because it has nothing to do with success. I hope it will be taken as a chaser by all the vast number of readers who have perused Dale Carnegie. : One of the best chapters in Lin's collection of philosophic essays ‘deals with the art of loafing. This is a practice not well understood in America. Indeed, the word “loafer” is libelous. In current usage one who loafs is a parasitic person who sits around all day doing precisely nothing. But this definition defames an ancient and a necessary art. The technique of true loafing is not as simple as all that. Long before Lin Yutang, the Chinese columnist, began to write pieces for American readers the greatest of our native poets celebrated the art of relaxation as a form of celebration. Walt Whitman in loafing used to “invite” his soul, and this is the trick which marks the loafer from the idler. 5 n »

HAVE no intention of endeavoring to do a book in competition with Dale Carnegie, because I have only one theory for success which I would recommend to the younger generation, and it can be stated in a sentence— "Always be sure to watch the clock.” Possibly a postscript in the same spirit might be added “Try and be the first one out of the shop when the whistle blows.” Such statement may be taken by some as an effort to be antic or whimsical, but I was never more serious in my life. The man who has no lively interest outside his job will never be particularly useful to any-

y. ’ I have never met a payroll, but for almost a year

BARES Sh EE a Se ———

whom TI could give orders, although they never paid much attention, The job was that of sports editor, and I thought I was pretty good, although the man who ran the paper did not agree with this estitnate, Indeed, he disagréed so violently that he eased me out of the job on a snowy night just before Christmas, There is no evidence even yet that he regrets his rash action. And yet he should. I got for my employer—and it was wholly my own idea-—the best sports writer tha paper ever had before or since. I refer to Bill McGeehan, » » 5 KNEW that Bill was good before the first week was out because he never showed up on time, and if I ever bent over the mass of detail which cluttered my executive desk he took occasion to beat it out of the office without bothering to say, “Good night, boss.” That was the form I suggested to the members of the staff. I explained that 1 felt self-conscious if anybody called me “mister.” Tt all ended up with my being called “Uncle Heywood.” There wasn't any discipline in that office. Sometimes I still wonder how we ever got the page out. But we always did. I kept a four-column cut of Christy Mathewson in one of the drawers of the desk, and if there was a hole in the page and 1 could remember which drawer, we fished out the picture and went to press. here have been better-looking sport pages, but nov no very many which were better written. When you wanted Bill he wasn't there. He would be around the corner, but when he came back he always had a little masterpiece read: to thump out on his types writer, He knew the trick.,

_-)