Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 April 1938 — Page 10

PAGE 10 The Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Business Manager

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Give Light and the People Will Fina Their Own Way

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1938

30

TAX EXEMPTS AND BUSINESS

UR cockeyed tax exempt system is in part to blame for business conditions getting so bad that the President “now thinks he must prime the pump. We fear Mr. Roosevelt is making a serious mistake in obstructing efforts in Congress to repeal the undistributed profits tax and revise-the capital gains levy. Those two reforms, we think, would speed up trade, investment and business expansion, create many new jobs in private indus- - try and ease the Government's load. But Mr.” Roosevelt is plugging for one reform that should help business. - He is asking Congress to stop the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. That should help business by making it easier for business to borrow capital. When a businessman wants to start a new enterprise, or when a going concern wants to expand, buy new machinery, put on a sales campaign or _ stock up on materials, the first requisite is capital. The © best, quickest way to raise capital is from those who have

plenty of it. But in the capital market the private borrower runs up against Government competition of the worst kind.

The lender of capital seeking a pure investment, especially in times like these, turns a fishy eye on any business proposition. He knows he can get a small but sure return on his money, and without risk, by buying public bonds— Federal, state or local—and the return will be tax-free. The private borrower has to prove he has a better proposition. Say. the lender has income from other sources which requires him to pay income taxes in the $100,000 bracket. Say he has $100,000 of idle capital which he wants to invest. If he puts:it-into tax-exempt securities at 8 per cent his net annual return will be $3000. Suppose a private borrower offers him 6 per cent. That would give the lender a gross return of $6000. But if he ] lives.in a state like New York, the state income tax (8 per cent in his bracket) would take $480, leaving him $5520. Then the Federal income tax (62 per cent in his bracket) would take $2422.40 more, leaving him a net of only $2097.60. So this lender could net $902.40 more on a 3 per cent tax-exempt investment than on a 6 per cent private loan —and without risk. The fact is that to a lender who is paying income taxes in the $100,000 bracket a private borrower has to offer at least 10 per cent.in order to compete with a public borrower. To a lender in the $1,000,000 bracket a 3 per cent tax-exempt is more attractive than a 17 per cent loan to private business. : We think it will be a major boost to business enterprise if the President pushes through his reform to end the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. It will give the private borrower, except for the element of risk, an even break with the public borrower. > We hope that Mr. Roosevelt will also put through his companion reform, to make the salaries of people on the public payroll subject to the same taxes as the salaries of people on private payrolls. That would be another move toward tax equality—and of that we’ll say more later.

ITALY AND BRITAIN AGREE

OST appropriately, while Christendom was commemorating the resurrection of the Prince of Peace, the Eternal City witnessed another ceremony which brings hope to this war-cursed world. The importance of the Anglo-Italian accord, signed in Rome on ‘Easter even, can hardly be exaggerated. Future historians may see in it the turn of the tide which, in recent years, has threatened to drown mankind in blood. Since the World War the interests of Britain and Italy, like the interests of France and Italy, have seemed to clash at every turn. Several times in the last three years a war in the Mediterranean has appeared but a matter of days or even hours—first over Ethiopia, then over Spain. Such a conflict would have spread over Europe, perhaps around the globe. Increasing the peril, Italy was driven into the arms of Germany and into a bargain with Japan. : ‘Now Britain and Italy have come to a broad understanding covering all their interests, including those in the Mediterranean basin and around Suez, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the headwaters and valley of the Nile. Italian volunteers are to clear out of Spain, where special territorial and economic ambitions are forsworn. And Ethiopia is to be recognized as part of the Roman Empire. Moreover, the way has been cleared for a similar rapprochement betwéen Italy and France. ; “If the pact means anything, it means the beginning of the end of danger of a Nazi-Fascist-Japanese combination against Britain and France. For it take out whatever iron there may have been in the Rome-Berlin axis. : That axis may even serve a useful purpose. A triple entente between Britain, France and Italy would open the - oor for a general European appeasement under the sponsorship of the four or five leading powers. Germany is essential to any such arrangement. Mussolini's influence, therefore, may be just what is needed to bring Hitler into the play. This, to be sure, is hardly the kind of peace envisioned by Woodrow Wilson. It falls far short of the League of Nations ideal. It is not our ideal. It certainly is not what the war-weary world hoped for after 1918. But it's the most hopeful prospect the world has been offered in many a day.

THOSE FUNNY PEOPLE! HEY don’t always do things better in Uncle Sam’s land of ‘Rum and Romance, the Virgin Islands. But they do things differently. No For instance the three insular Legislatures meet once a year in a joint assembly to pass laws. : “The last joint meeting broke up when I tried to introduce legislation,” reported Governor Lawrence W. Cramer to his chief, Secretary of the Interior Ickes. “The assemblymen said I didn’t have power to introduce legislation. None of them wanted to introduce any, so they had a celebration and went home.” td :

Washington By Raymond Clapper Perhaps We Seek an Impossibility

In Wanting .an Economic Machine To Run All the Time at Full Speed.

ASHINGTON, April 18.—There is much skepticism whether Roosevelt’s proposed spending

program will prove to be more than a shot in the

arm, destined to wear off after a brief period of stimulation. Indeed, you could go further than that and question whether our system is so geared that it can run full pace continuously. Hoover suspected that, and as Secretary of Commerce had exhaustive studies made of the business cycle’s ups and downs. He proposed a permanent policy of public works, as a balance wheel, to be speeded up when business was declining and throttled down when business was rising. When you look at the chart of business activity extending back over many years, you find a succession of peaks and depressions. Average conditions have been largely imaginary. Business activity has been either on its way to the point far above average or else on its way down to a point far below it. In our economic thinking we are always picturing some high plateau on which business will move along at a given level, But it never stays level for long. One economist told me recently he thought we would do better to recognize that, in a free economy, business is bound to fluctuate constantly. We are seeking, he thinks, a stability that cannot be. : : La 2 2 F this constant fluctuation is normal and inherent in our system, then the chances are that the Government will have to be stepping in at intervals to give it a boost. . This country, we like to think, was built by private enterprise. Yet private enterprise has had a great deal of help from the Government throughout qur history. Time after time, when depressions hit the country, the unemployed moved west $0 build new homes on free land given them by the Government. That was the early substitute for relief. : In the 20 years after the Civil War, railroads became a gigantic public-works project. Millions of dollars were contributed by Federal, state and municipal governments, and the railroads were given . vast amounts of land, totaling according to one estimate four times the area of New England. ;

2 8 8

UT those forms of government aid have been eliminated. We have millions of unemployed people and billions of dollars of idle capital in plant and equipment. Until prices are brought down and the minimum incomes raised, the country cannot absorb the output of its industrial plant. On top of that the labor supply increases by 500,000 persons a year, through net natural population growth. That problem we have scarcely begun to solve. The Government—that is, the whole population—must lend a hand to cushion the individual victims in this surplus of manpower. It is the shot-in-the-arm treatment that any humanitarian government must give. Only a blind and foolish government will stop there. In a hospital, the hypodermic is only the first emergency treatment to ease the pain while surgeons go to work on the real difficulty. We will have to keep using the needle until we find devices which will break down monopoly prices and raise starvation wazes. Even then there will be times when somebody will break a leg and will need temporary help.

Business By John T. Flynn

U. S. Proposes to Aid Railroads By Adding to Their Debt Burden.

EW YORK, April 18.—The President’s plan to aid the railroads comprises three features—loans of 300 million to buy equipment, further investigations and a new attack upon the Interstate Commerce Commission. : . The loan feature ought to be looked at realistically. This country is certainly sold on the strange idea that the Government ought to give money—and sometimes give it under the guise of a loan—to everybody who needs money and is willing to take it. ? Men may honestly differ on the question of the Government going into the banking business. But men cannot differ on this point—that if the Government goes into the banking business it: ought to use banking principles at least as sound as those of private bankers. Private bankers made a pretty bad mess of the banking business before 1933. They did this because they violated the laws of sound credit. It is now proposed to put the Government in the banking business and to begin with the railroads. The proposal is to lend them 300 million dollars. The Government recognizes that the roads are not a good risk. At present no railroad is permitted to borrow money uniess it gets a certificate from the Interstate Commerce Commission that it can meet the fixed charges on its existing indebtedness. This plan proposes that this law be repealed, that railroads be permitted to borrow frem the Government without .getting such a certificate,

No Funds for Improvements

Of course this means that the Government is now going into the business of lending money to corporations which owe so much money now that they cannot pay the interest on their debts. That is a magnificent way to inaugurate an experiment in Government banking. or of the reasons the railroads are bankrupt now is because they are so heavily in debt. So much of the revenues they earn are needed to meet interest on their outstanding debts that they do not have any left for maintenance, improvements, new equipment or rofits. P The railroads, therefore, are crushed under the load of debt. The Government proposes to get the roads out of their troubles by adding to their debts and to their debt charges. Of course this will not only not get the railroads out put will push them deeper in. It will be a shot in the arm for them for a few months or a year maybe— and not much of a shot at that—and then they will collapse again. But when they collapse they will be worse off than ever because they will be still deeper in debt. ¢

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson,

ETTER than a thousand factual articles, one good novel can kindle the imagination so. that the. reader feels himself an actual participant in the life described. Such a novel is “The Mortal Storm,” by Phyllis Bottome. It is a significant book, I think, because it will bring to Americans of sluggish imagination some conception of what sensitive, intelligent persons in Germany have endured under Hitler. Freya, the young, ambitious daughter of a German-Jewish scientist, devoted to her half-brothers, is the central figure. In her experiences’ we watch the disintegration of freedom. We see also ihe gradual breaking up of a family whose young sons had come early under the baleful influence of the Nazi doctrine and, strangely enough, we are able also to understand their point of view because a compe-

tent novelist wishes us to do so. We see a wise old

man, their father, deprived of dignity, finally murdered in a concentration camp, and his daughter, now a woman, fleeing to America for refuge. Certainly no woman can read this book without

a cold fear clutching at her heart. I hope those who |

do will not believe that they are exempt from all such dangers. If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, then we women who have it should be alert in its: defense. Indeed, even in the United States, feminine independence is but half won. It may be that the men do not know this, but all women who work do. They know that marriage sometimes separates a worker from her job; they know that in any trade a woman is paid less than a man; they know that in any profession she has to work twice as hard to get half as much credit; they know from statistics, if not from experience, that women over 40 are barred from offices these days. We are told that the public

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| THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES ' The Promised Land!—By Talburt

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The Hoosier Forum lI wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

CONGRESSMEN ADVISED TO PAY ATTENTION TO PEOPLE By Sour Dough

It irks me that Congressmen who went into office hanging on the coat tails of our President should not appreciate the fact but betray him and the common, unforgotten men who elected them. They would do better to keep both ears close to the ground for the voice of the people and pay less attention to the B.B. (big business) shots. » 2 2

PATENT LAWS FAULTY,. READER DECLARES By Regular Reader

John T. Flynn thinks inventories have not supplied us with enough new investment possibilities and that they may not be able to provide us with the necessary outlet for aceumulating profits. It may be well to ask Congress to amend the patent laws which permit the withholding of an invention from the market for 17 years merely by buying the patent rights. Patents are supposed to protect the inventor against others who would use his invention, without paying him for his effort in perfecting his patent.

The patent laws are faulty in that the public which protects the inventor, is not protected by the inventor, who may withhold or sell his patent to another, to whose financial interest it is to prevent the invention from benefiting the public by its use and manufacture. The patent law should be amended so that anyone may produce the invention: by paying a fee, fixed by Congress to the inventor. Monopolies of patents are as bad as monopolies of natural resources.

2 8 = URGES COMPLETE CONTROL OF MONEY BY CONGRESS

By A. J. McKinnon

In regard fo the statement by W. S. T—to use the bayonet of fascism to kill monopolistic profits to save the middle class, small businessman and property owner—is one way in my estimation fo start a real revolution. I agree that concentrated economic power is the cause of failure of small businessmen, yet I cannot agree with him that the establishment of a concentrated political power, such as provided by the Reorganization Bill, would cure this situation. Therefore it is necessary to send telegrams and letters to politicalminded Congressmen who desire to turn our Govelnment over to the control of men who are not elected by, who are not responsible to, and who cannot be removed from power by the voters. - Sis There is a remedy which the New

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

Deal refuses to put over, and that is for Congress alone to coin, regulate and control our money. Which means they that control the money, control the law on ynonopoly. According to the Federal Depository Insurance Co. in 1928 there was 80 billion dollars in currency and credit money in circulation, while today there is less than 40 billion dollars. In January, 1938, one billion dollars was taken from circulation by private bankers. This week our Administration called for two to four billion dollars to be put into circulation at interest. What kind of juggling is this process between private bankers /and the Government. No wonder/we had a Reorganization Bill intfoduced to Congress which would place all power in a four-branch government.

2 8 = SUGGESTS USES FOR DISCARDED WHISKERS By B. O. : : Two barbers in Twin Falls, Idaho, have figured out that the average man grows about 7604 feet of hair a year. If the whole country’s crop were laid end to end, they say, it would reach around the world 1728 times. " Something, certainly, ought to be done about this. With the world

CIRCUS DAY By ROSE CRUZAN

Circus day has come to town, Lions, tigers, crazy clown; Bandwagons of red and gold, Oom-pah players, brave and bold.

Thrilling tunes of calliope, Wondrous sights, great menagerie. See the dancing pachyderm team, So impossible it would seem.

By. his head a man is carried; In the elephant’s trunk; we tarried. Zebras, camels, huge gray tent; Oh what fun! such merriment.

DAILY THOUGHT

To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.—Proverbs 21:3.

USTICE is to give to every man his own.—Aristotle. =

the trolley a break.

in the’state it’s now in, you can't just let a thing like this go. If nobody gets any good ideas, the sheared and razored hair henceforth can be stored away in the halls of Congress during the summer recess until a good use is found for it, but here are some suggestions that might help out: If the country just can’t get along without the customary quota of stuffed shirts, why not flood the market with shirts stuffed with the barber shop output and drive the other kind of stuffing out of business? Put a few of the unemployed to work weaving the hair into a net to keep the French Cabinet together, i These days there ought to be a big market among Europe's political leaders for an assortment of hair shirts, if there are any consciences left. The field of possibilities staggers the imagination. The chances are that right now the Germans, apparently the world’s ersatz champions, are making their old beards into barbed wire. After all, what's the point of gathering statistics if something worthwhile isn’t worked out with them? :

” a 8 REPLACE SAFETY ZONES, READER SUGGESTS By a Daily Rider How can the safety zones in downtown districts be replaced? I was waiting on a W. Indianapolis car this evening at Capitol Ave.

and Maryland St. and could not get out to board the trolley, as

the machines were passing it. The traffic officer there didn’t give the people who were waiting for

sa 2 & 8 GOVERNOR'S TELEGRAMS PUZZLE READER

By J. T. C. I wonder what President Roosevelt will say about the Governor trying to buy Congress with telegrams, or is that privilege reserved for certain class? ” 2 2 WANTS SAFETY ZONES

DOWNTOWN RESTORED

| By ‘A Rider of Busses

Why were the downtown safety zones done away with? I guess Indianapolis is still to be called a big hick town, especially when they cannot protect the pedestrians. I

hope The Times can give us a showdown and have them restored.

1 NEARLY always at least. There are a number of symptoms. A boy under 18 wants to turn hand springs,

ff high of

MAIDEN esis

~~ OR

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

. By DE. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM . —

'Y Do MARKIED WOMEN

WHO J

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El INDIVIDUALITY? Yeo ONS ue \

HE'S FINE AND WHAT ELSE

- Yr T™ a — 4 HAV 5. DO Dry POLO RUN THE SIRE R Gots AS IN ANIMALS YOUR OPINION ein COPYRIGHT 19D EP JONM 0164 § CO: . : finds her heart stopping and her face turning white for fear he will break his fool neck with his antics. Between 18 and 28 a man wants

BN | or DA VY SALON I MARRY GECRSE ne 10 THERE TO

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§ him.”

thrilled to hear all this and finds herself wanting to take care of him, especially when he claims she is the “only one who understands But, seriously, I. think the highest, deepest, most permanent

proof of real love is a feeling of

deep affection and congeniality coupled with a supreme although unconscious desire to keep each

_ | other chaste.

NO. It is because keeping their ‘maiden names makes them feel

| younger and seem younger to other

people. I think that about explains

~ | all the fuss on this subject.

8 8 & YES it does: only in man the environment plays a larger

| role. . Man can control his environ-

ment much more than animals can and vastly more than can plants. On the other hand man’s traits— ‘especially his emotional and temperamental traits—are greatly influenced in their expression by his environment and education. But all evidence indicates that the underlying principles of heredity are everywhere the same, and that man inherits his mind by the same general laws as plants, animals or hu-

mans inherit their bodies. forever tends to beget almost like.

Like

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1938 |

Gen. Johnson Says—

Neither Congress Nor the Peopls

_ Are Rebelling Against Roosevelt, But Argument With Him Is Useless.

ASHINGTON, April 18.—In his column pube lished in the New York Herald-Tribune of April 14, Mr. Walter Lippmann has one of the most im« portant observations that have recently been made upon faults in the American science of government. He emphasizes that in every other democracy in

the world, when an administration is defeated in a representative parliament on a major matter of policy, the question automatically goes to the people who then have a chance to reject or support that policy. But under our system, we have to wait for a Presie dential election—sometimes four years, more often two. He insists that, unless we are to be stultified by an opposing executive and Congress, as Hoover and Taft were for two years and Wilson after 1919, the President should follow Democratic sentiment instead of trying to force it into a procrustean bed.

8 8 8 “M= LIPPMANN is right. On the same day his piece appeared, the new Department of Justice trust-buster, Prof. Thurman Arnold, scorned the dee mocracy of France as ineffectual and warned of the alternative of dictatorship of Hitler as necessary to make democracy work. : :

For any man to sit in the seat of personal pride and subject this country to two years of distress for his vindication is unthinkable. There is danger of that. Mr. Roosevelt is a prideful ‘person. . The “Dear Sam” letter to Mr. Rayburn; coupled with his wells known attitude ‘about that incident was typical, Denying a tilt with Jack Garner who, as all Wash ington knows, eats his own smoke in such circume stances, was typical. -His aside remark, after his reorganization defeat, that the Interstate Commerce Commission js unconstitutional, is typical. Mr. Roosevelt seems determined that business shall not function to reduce employment. There has been no constructive development to let the profits system work that he has not capped it with some destructive move. Instead of realizing that whatever coterie or cock-eyed advisers incited him to throw away his place in history as ‘one of our greatest Presidents and his place in humanity for leading a bewildered country out of a whHderness, he prefers to stick by pis Sneed efying a Congress representing popular

2 = 2 “y JIS Dutch is up,” Louis Howe used to say, mean« ing that argument was useless. : As Arthur Krock has pointed out, one or two as« sertions by the Congress of its Constitutional function does not argue a general revolt. There is no rebellion

against the President either in Congress or the country. Most of our people love him. Business would like to go along with him. So would most of the Congressional leaders. As far as this column, as an humble example, is concerned, it has eagerly sought something he does to applaud. It would much rather be with him than against him. That, I think, goes for almost everybody I have seen or talked with—e and I have tried to see and talk with as many peos ple in as many parts of the country as I can reach, But “his Dutch is up” and 130,000,000 suffer.

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

The Whole British Cabinet Appears To Be Out Locking for a Mermaid.

EW YORK, April 18.—A news dispatch from London does much to explain the present policy of the English Cabinet. It seems that Leslie Horee Belisha, the Secretary of War, believes in mermaids. This has just been revealed by an article appearing in a London magazine called Lilliput. The story of the meeting between Little Leslie and the lovely lady from the sea was first set down by the

mother of the distinguished statesman, but he hime self has added a foreword in his own hand. According to the story, which I assume occurred some few years ago, Little Leslie put out to sea in a rowboat. It toppled over and bashed him in the water. He was beyond his depth even in those days, but “a most lovely apparition with streaming hair glided toward him.” Hore-Belisha testified in his foreword that all this really happened. “The lgvely lady took Little Leslie into her home beneath the waves. She confided to him that the name of her estate was the Palace of -Truth.” ; : I think Little Leslie was a fool to come up. He could have remained in the Palace of Truth instead of ambling off to Rome. However, the whole incident gives a clue to the nature of British foreign policy. : The entire Cabinet appears to have set out to sea in a skiff buoyed by the hope that in the hour of crisis they may be able to catch some lovely mermaid by the fin and be towed to security. :

You Might Meet a Whale

Neville Chamberlain has not yet taken the country into his confidence; but it is fair to assume that he cries himself to sleep each night with the works of Hans Christian Andersen. Unfortunately in negotie

ating with Mussolini and Hitler, Neville ‘is dealing with the brothers Grimm, neither of whom seems to pelieve everything which may be read in the story 00Kks, : However, England is not the only land which knows statesmen who run pell-mell to get away from reality, Many a political leader at home and abroad has vene tured out to sea without! either chart or plan in the dim hope that some magical creature from the floor of the ocean will turn up in time to save him. Such adventurers should remember that maybe there are not enough mermaids to go around. After all, there are so many Little Leslies sitting in places of power. And the wishful thinkers who cannot keep their feet on the ground should also be reminded that the Sen | has whales as well as apparitions with streame ing hair.

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

HENEVER an invalid has been for a long time confined to: bed, there is danger of the occurrence of what are commonly called bed sores. These result from a variety of causes, the most common being pressure on the skin where the bones are near the surface and where the tissues come in contact with the bed. These cases occur particularly after prolonged ‘and severe infections or when patients have lain unconscious for a long time without suitable care. Persons who have suffered with fractures which required long continued rest in bed for ree covery sometimes develop bed sores. : Once the tissues are severely damaged, they become ‘susceptible to secondary -infection; the result of this infection is an ulcer. Before the ulcer occurs, however, there is a warning in the development of an area of whiteness at the point where the ulcer is going to occur. This whiteness represents an in‘terference with the circulation as a result of long continued pressure. : cr - Obviously it is exceedingly important to prevent the occurrence of such ulcers. The skin must ale ways be suitably cleaned, properly stimulated and protected. The sheets upon which the patient lies should always be kept as free from wrinkles as possible and should be changed sufficiently often to give assurance that they are clean. The skin of a patient who is long in bed must be suitably stimulated by rubbing with various rubbing solutions or with oil." There after, powder may be applied. Moreover, the position of the patient should be changed frequently irf‘order to prevent long .con tinued pressure at anyone point. If it seems likely that there is

ing of the skin or a sore, the septic_soluti ns is ed. in I