Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 February 1938 — Page 14

PAGE 12 The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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THURSDAY, FEB. 10, 1938

INSTABILITY IN STEEL

UNCERTAINTIES recently besetting the steel industry are continued as a result of the manner in which the contract between U. S. Steel and the C. I. O. Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee was renewed yesterday. There is only one modification in the agreement—but it is vital. It provides that the agreement may be reopened by either party on 10 days’ notice, and that if a new agreement is not reached within 20 days thereafter the ‘entire contract will terminate. This means virtually a 80-day contract. More than 400 other contracts modeled after the original Carnegie-Illinois agreement undoubtedly will take the same form. The possibility of slashes in prices or wages or both will thus apparently continue to hang over the industry. Various factors contributed to the unsatisfactory set{lement. The business recession, with its sharp drop in production, was the major one. The defeat suffered by the S. W. 0. C. in the little steel strike weakened the union's hand in negotiating. And the slashing of some steel prices: only a few hours before the contract was renewed created so much uncertainty that big steel was unwilling to freeze wages for a full year. One of the essentials to encourage steel buying, and thus increase production and employment, is a stabilized price schedule, which can by no means be assured without stable wage policies. This is the most important wage contract in the United States, affecting a basic industry and more than 250,000 workers. Therefore it is cause for regret that the uncertainties which already beset the country are intensified by the short-term nature of the new agreement.

HOMES FOR WORKINGMEN

SINCE President Roosevelt signed the new National Housing Act it is going to be easier for workingmen to own their own homes. : The National Lumber Manufacturers Association and 35 other materials, equipment and utility groups propose to show them how it can be done. They have arranged for the building of thousands of small demonstration homes this summer. Comfortable, modern and sightly little houses, that can be bought for under $5000 and paid for at from $12 to $20 a month over 25 years, will dot the land this year to encourage men with incomes of around $1200 to become home-owners. The Federal Housing Administration not only will encourage individual small-home construction, but will stress mass production. Big contractors can undertake such developments with the knowledge that they can build good home units more cheaply and stabilize their labor more easily under “wholesale” than under “retail” construction. The interest in this field is shown by the fact that FHA has approved the financing of $50,000,000 worth of large-scale projects now awaiting the steam shovel. Whether these inducements will result in the longawaited home-building boom this spring and summer depends on more than home hunger among the mass of renters. It depends on the hearty co-operation of the lending agencies, materials men, builders and labor. The Government is doing its part. It is making homebuilding money cheaper and safer. It has doomed that frightful bugaboo, the second mortgage. And it is assuming a role as guide, so that builders, big and little, will avoid undue risks and escape some of the calamities that have at-

tended this industry in the past.

WHAT ISN'T IN IT OMPREHENDING the language of legislation is not one of the things we do best. "And after four readings of the revised and amended measure to be known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act ‘of 1938, we beg leave to be excused for a while longer from interpreting for our readers the multitude of provisions set forth in those 121 pages. But we are ready to comment on certain provisions which the bill does not contain-— 1. Tt contains mo limit as to the amount of money which can be spent to carry out the farm program, and 2. It provides no method for raising whatever money is spent. Theoretically the spending limit will be set each year when Congress appropriates funds to finance the activities of the Agriculture Department. We say “theoretically” because it is the general practice of an executive department when administering such a law to spend all that one Congress appropriates and then to present the mext Congress with a deficit, to be covered in a “deficiency appropriation bill.” And, in theory, it is the duty of the taxing committees of Congress to recommend the ways and means of raising revenue to finance all of the Government’s expenditures. But we are now entering the ninth year in which that theory has proved to be a fiction. Of course it is no more wrong to finance a farm proeram with borrowed money than it is to subsidize the merchant marine or build a big Navy with borrowed money. But with our public debt now nearly 20 billion dollars larger than it was when the depression started, we can’t help thinking that the time is near when either the taxing committees will have to speed up or the spending committees will have to slow down.

INVENTION OF THE MONTH

A LL hail to David 0. Wilson of Santa Monica, Cal., who |

hhs just patented the invention we've been waiting for. It is a mask-like mechanical face, with a rubber tongue and electrically lighted eves, to be fastened on the rear of an automobile. Say you are in a traffic jam and the idiot behind you

starts tooting his horn. You push a button. The eyes in

the face on the back of your car light up. Mouth flies open. Tongue sticks out and waggles. And an apparatus delivers a rousing Bronx cheer,

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No

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End in Sight

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By Westbrook Pegler

Jimmy Petrillo Is a Dictator, but He Is Respected for His Devotion To the Interests of His Musicians.

HICAGO, Feb. 10.—“Thief,” “grafter,” burglar” and “hoodlum” are among the family pet names by which Chicago describes some of her public servants and certain other leaders. There is a hearty tolerance, however, and a man who is called a thief, for example, is not necessarily hated. On the conirary, he may be the people’s choice at election time. Chicago seems to be a frame of mind as well as a great

city, and it takes a little time to develop an understanding of local thought on the subject of politics and government. Granted that one faction is bad, it would seem to a stranger that the opposing faction, or at least certain of its leaders, must be reasonably honest, if only by comparison, but that is not conceded. All this makes one a little selfconscious in reporting that the Te Su exception noted NRE n more than a week of guarded inquiry in ‘Chicago is a litte labor Mr Pegler dictator named Jimmy Petrillo, Chicago Federation of Musicians’ president, But inquiry even among those who have had to do business with Mr. Petrillo’s hardshell monopoly ‘of the music business has revealed only respect for Mr. Petrillo's single-minded devotion to the interests of his fiddlers, trumpeters and all, and for his word given in a bargain. In a city where labor has been the victim of many rackets such praise is a strange note, but it sounds loud and clear, the verdict being that Jimmy will play ball with an employer to let him make a dollar and thus keep him in business and musicians in jobs, but that he never throws down his men. ” = =

R. PETRILLO'S union has bought a downtown building for its headquarters, and he sits in a rather flashy office. He is said to keep a gun in a desk drawer and to reveal it casually to visitors who need to be impressed, but if so he wasn't in character one afternoon last week. He sat back of his desk admitting that the same absolute powers that he holds, if passed on to some successor of less noble principles,

might lead to grievous abuses. He boasted also that he had just rounded up and taken into his union, waiving the initiation fee, 2500 members of two small unions which were on the loose and which Mr. Lewis’ C. I. O. was about to grab for competitive purposes, thus closing the town to the C. 1. O. as far as music is concerned. on ” ” R. PETRILLO welcomes applicants for membership, puts them through an examination to determine their qualifications and lets them in if they pass. In this way undoubtedly some terrible musicians are admitted to the Chicago union, but, on the other hand, some excellent handicraftsmen are kept out of the job-trust unions of other crafts. Mr. Petrillo is & politician, too, and, as a member of the Park District Board, »btained $63.000 out of public taxes last year and $80,000 this year for concerts in Grant Park, the money being paid to the musicians as wages. It would be no less reasonable, perhaps, to appropriate like amounts to the janitors and teamsters, but Jimmy argues that the city is payng enormous sthounts to buy hay for elephants and nanas for monkeys in the parks and that it is much more humane to buy spaghetti and hamburger for his musicians. I have heard nobody call Mr. Petrillo a hoodlum. A dictator, yes, who levies fines and will not let a musician fiddle a squeak or horn a bleat for hire in his territory unless the job is cleared through his office.

Yor

The Hoosier Forum

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

DECLARES BUSINESS CANNOT WORK WITHOUT PAY By James R. Meitzler, Attica When the depression started in 1029 President Hoover pleaded with industry not to cut wages. They did not at first reduce wages per hour. That kept labor cost and prices up. Instead they cut labor's time. That curtailed production and purchasing power. The price of the things labor made remained the same. The laborer’s ability to buy was diminished exactly as his time was reduced. The farmer kept on producing as usual, piling up a surplus, while his selling price went down. Farm income slipped from $11,941,000,000 to $5,337,000,000—almost 60 per cent. The farmer could not buy goods made by high-cost-per-hour labor. Out-of-work labor could not buy the farmers’ cheap food. Benjamin Stolberg says: C. I. O. boasts truly that it has raised wages in its organized industries $1,000,000 a year and cut hours 2,000,000 per week. Its members’ purchasing power and the cost and price of the goods they make has been increased. Their gain has been made at the expense of other labor whose wage has remained stationary or shrunk through reduction of working hours, and of the farmer whose selling price has been falling. And this lost purchasing power means C. I. O. products, unsold because of higher prices through higher cost, pile up in factories, and factories are closed. And with no pay check C. I. O. purchasing power evaporates. And now comes President Roosevelt and John Lewis crying ‘no wage cut; let the employer take the cut.” Alfred P, Sloan Jr. of General Motors highest on last vear's Federal income tax list, out of a salary of $561,311 has $165,341.98 left after State and Federal tax collectors have gone through his pockets. If there is another cut for C. I. O, will there be anything left? And if labor will not work for nothing, can you expect business to work without pay and risk loss of its capital as well?

* * ® CAPITALISM MUST SAVE ITSELF, READER SAYS

By a Regular Times Reader

Bertrand Snell's remark that full responsibility for the present business recession can be placed on President Roosevelt is another demonstration of ignorance. To President Roosevelt can be attributed the temporary arrest of the depression through Government spending far beyond Government income from taxation. The depression was not caused by any Government policy, neither wili it be cured by Government policy. ons come as a result of unbalancing the economic accounting of industry. Excess capital claims in the form of interest and dividends extracted from the total volume of production destroy purchasing power progressively. Consumers’ ability to buy goods deter-

mines the value of capital invest-

Business—By John T. Flynn

Senator Bulkley's Road Building Proposal Is Seen as Sound One; Program Should Be Directed by Ablest Man President Could Find.

No such roads should be built without at the same time establishing a toll system to carry the interest load and maintenance charges and to pay off the principal over a moder-

N= YORK, Feb. 10.—Senator Bulkley of Ohio has made a proposal which is certainly worth considering. : It is as clear as daylight that, to bring about any sort of recovery, somebody must start some new sort of business or some hew extension of an old business. It is also clear that nobody is in sight right now who has any notion of doing that—at least not in time to do this country any good as a depression cure, There is one business which is a public business but is also & private one. This is the road-building business. The Government pays for the roads and hires the contractors. But the roads are built usually by private contractors and with materials furnished by private manufacturers. $ ® = ®

there is one thing needed in this country now, in view of the development of the automobile, it is express highwiys running east and west and north and south. Why, therefore, cannot the Government go into the businéss of building these highways? They would cost a great deal of money. Tt would probably be possible vo spend a billion dollars in a year on such a project, perhaps more. :

Blan SL Tha Se

be self-liquidating bonds.

ately short period of years.

for years.

guards would have to be observed.

essentially vicious. to pay-as-you-go basis,

President could find, whose ability

T= would at one stroke accomplish the object of putting large numbers of men to work, of providing contracts for materials makers and without imposing on the Government's debt structure a vast load of debt which would hang over the Government

But if such a project were started a few safe-

First, the suggestion of Senator Bulkley that old age pension taxes be used to finance the projects is These taxes should be reduced The financing of the proj. ects would be the simplest part of the program. Second, the enterprise should be put under the dirdetion of the biggest, ablest, strongest man the

and business corruption is known-—a than like Bob

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

ment. As this ability to buy declines due to rigid prices or limitation of production the capital claims to dividends or interest evaporate. Mr. Snell as leader of the minority must know that capitalism cannot be saved by Government fiat in Italy, Germany or the United States. Capitalism can only save itself when it meets consumers’ needs in ever increasing abundance. Heavy unemployment such as we have experienced since 1929 spells disaster to capitalism. The temporary injection of Government spending will not cure capitalism's failure to write off its excess capital claims. Government spending only adds to the final write-off. Mr. Roosevelt has made a breathing spell possible for business ta get down to the consumer's buying power level. Government spending gave business a period to make reductions in capital demands upon production, so it could increase consumption power and eliminate unemployment. This has not vet been done. It will not be done until consumption power collapses. There is nothing Roosevelt can do to force the capital claims write-off. That will come regardless of President Roose= velt or Mr. Snell. >» 9%»

DEFENDS CAPITAL GAINS AND PROFIT TAXES By Hiram Lackey

The Times once more has declared in substance: “It is a fact that the undistributed profit tax is a tax without a friend.” Time and again The Times has made that assertion about the capital gains and undistributed profit taxes. Yet about two months ago a Times Washington column intelli-

MOONLIGHT By KEN HUGHES

She would go Where shadows black Are over the narrow, footprint track, With her dreams beyond the bars, Bright her golden lantern And sequin stars; Yet in her luminous way She brings A tremulous love to quiet wings.

DAILY THOUGHT

Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen .—Deuteronomy 27:25.

URDER itself is past all expia-. tion the greatest crime, which nature doth abhor.—Goffe. .

again.

to resist political may be easily

has Ca aa Busan |

gently and honestly discussing the laws, gave the names of the law’s staunch supporters. . . . Could laws with so many bitter, determined and powerful enemies remain laws so long if they had mo friends? You might have reasoned that someone must have sponsored the laws. Even if the laws are imperfect, their sponsors, being human, would not have wished to admit their mistakes. Having expressed their opinion on the subject, they naturally feel inclined to maintain their position. Regarding these laws as timid, faltering steps in the right direction, I stand as their friend. Hesitatingly they gripped the nettle and were stuck. They should have crushed it. Laws to

get money or credit out of hiding

should be made confiscatory. If the 18 billion dollars that Roosevelt put into circulation is kept moving, he would not have recession. Where is this credit or money? The workers did not hoard. it. To the millions of Americans who wish to see dead dollars transferred inte live ones, it is unfair for a few thousand editors to claim that they represent the opinion of all the people. The reason that Roosevelt can't make such laws a success is because of the conservative pressure of highly organized minority. We want it known that we want that money taken out of hoarding. «- ” ” ”

CLEAN STREETCARS ASKED BY READER By W. Weiland

The civic organizations and others interested in the welfare of our city should do something to keep our streetcars clean and attractive. Perhaps if it requires more than pressure it can be considered a health measure. It is known that dust and dirt harbor disease germs. It is not consistent to have posters advertising their use and permit months of dirt to accumulate, making them very unattractive on the outside,

Editor's Note—Indianapolis Railways officials said work of the streetcar maintenance department has been curtailed somewhat during the transfer of the company’s shops to the new W. Washington St. location.

» tg ” CLAIMS CONGRESS, NOT F. D. R, SHOULD BE BLAMED " By Scrutiny The Times. is seemingly drifting from liberal by listening to its master's voice, big business and big advertisers, by criticizing the Presiden’, the man, even in his family life by inference sich as: “Was said to have remarked,” ‘as the story goes,” “is supposed to have said,” “js said to have replied,” Why not criticize the real clog in the machinery, the do-nothing Congress. Or, if something may be improved. help in the President's conferences to have representation of the consumer basides labor, big business and little business. '

Se

Gen. Johnson Says—

Government Is Not Obliged to

Pay Pensions to the Widows of Men Who Were Uninjured in the War,

EW YORK, Feb. 10.—If the bereaved families of men who wore uniforms in 1918 are to be pensioned, this country will be saddled with a charge that will run into billions and could continue well into the next

century. The proposed pension bill makes a few exceptions but among them is not the requirement that the loss of the husband or father should have been in any way related to his service or that his family needs the money. It is enough that he served and that his family wants the dough, If a man was in any way weaks= ened or hurt in military or naval service it is incontestable that society has a duty to save him and his dependents harmless from the results of his wounding. But what possible argument can there be for a public obligation to a man’s family, merely because he has per= formed the frst, the oldest and the most essential obligation of citizenship? When Og, the first caveman who dimly saw the advantage of ganging-up, began Ug-glubbing to Ug about it, the conversation, translated from UgZ-glub, may have been something like this: “Hey, what's the idea of letting that big bum in the next valley come over the hill and carry away our women, our dogs and our pelts just because he is strong and can lick any one of us in a twosome? Together we can clean him like a fish, » » » We get old lame Andy (short for Neanders thal) to watch for him and the next time ha comes messing around here you and me and Trinil and Pilty (nickname for Piltown) will gang-bust him. After that we can live in peace.” When something like that happened, the earliest “social compact” was made and men progressed from the family to the tribe on the way to the mation. It kept the peace but it did something else. It raised an essential obligation for any able-bodied man who had enjoyed that peace, to make good on the promise that made peace possible at any time it was ever threatened. . Ug had given a hostage to fortune. When wars were small and George was willing, he could say, “Let George do it,” and we had volunteers. They were a special class entitled to special favors. But that day is gone forever.

Hugh Johnson

” ” » N the World War, we selected men to march with the flags and other men to stay at the machines each in the place where the nation needed him most. After Dee. 1, 1917, we didn't even permit men to

volunteer. We took four million men from civil life and had

seven million more ready. Two million got to France, but not # million were ever exposed to danger. Far from injuring most of these men, less than 200,000 were casualties of any kind and the records clearly show that an overwhelming majority were bettered both physically and mentally. The argument is always: “They took the risk.” The answer is: “Yes and so under the system of selective service,’ did the whole male population bes tween the ages of 18 and 45. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.” It would be nice to take care of these widows— and all widows. But there is fo obligation. It's a political racket and the public official who doesn’t condemn it as such isn't doing his job.

According to Heywood Broun—

Horse Folk Refuse to Toss Superlatives Around Like Leaves in a Wind; To Them War Admiral Is ‘Real Good,’ but He Can't Be Called ‘Great.’

TAMI, Fa. Feb. 10.~Tt is my present, although wavering, intention never to bet on anything Wisdom came to me shortly after dawn at aleah Racetrack. I got up early in order to meet War Admiral, and while waiting around for the discussed racing and other games of chance.

much,” said Frank Stevens,

UT at the track, shortly after sunup, an inquiring remarked incautiously, “That Mr.

War t horse.” And on the instant

ary reviewers, but old horsemen treasure it. y OH Ee a a i et oem § [ jact given

Man O’ War. In spite of War Admiral’s very conside erable achievements the most which should be said of him, in the judgment of the true track fans, is “He seems to be a real good horse.” The graduates of the rocky road to greatness are drawn with a high degree of precision. If a 2-year-old wins three or four important stakes he becomes a “nice colt.” When he gets on to be a 3-year-old and captures something like the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness he is graduated into being “a good horse.” ® & =

HEN with five or six other stake victories under T his belt he may be hailed by two or three of the experts as “a real good horse.” But each and every one of them will fight you tooth and nail before they will lower the bars and allow the word “great” to be admitted. All right, then, War Admiral is a real good horse, But to this I must commit myself: Having seen him jog against the morning sun, I will contend that no animal in creation can be more beautiful than a race horse in motion. I am afraid that these finely bred creatures are both beautiful and dumb. Some assert ivhat the Shorgughbred is smart enough to distinguish between the Gaficp which he does for practice and the real trial under h Admirers of War Admiral say that his fractious can be explained on the ground igence. They argue he knows that a wants it to come to a victorious consible. It be true.