Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 April 1938 — Page 10
PAGE 10 a The Indianapolis Times
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ROY W. HOWARD : LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Business Manager
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‘
TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 1938
BLUNDERS—A CONTINUED STORY
IT was an election year. "So, when early in 1936 the Supreme Court killed the AAA processing taxes, Congress passed the bonus over the President’s veto and the Government was suddenly in need of new revenues. Mr. Roosevelt began looking for a tax plan that wouldn't alienate votes. Along came Prof. Oliphant of the Treasury Depart- » ment with a brand-new scheme, and so.on March 3, 1936, the President sent a message to Congress asking passage of the undistributed profits tax. Thus began a fantastic and tragic story, on which “finis” is yet to be written. Every businessman who examined the scheme said it would not work. Every tax expert, excepting only Prof. Oliphant’s subscholars, found fault with it. They said it would produce business depressions and then prevent the country from climbing out. : Congress didn’t like it, but after a few weeks of wrangling and amending finally passed it, under party pressure. The Presidential campaign swung along. After the election, corporations paid out big dividends to escape a portion of the tax, using earnings which should have been set aside in reserve for a rainy day. It began to be apparent that what the businessmen and experts had said was true—that the tax killed off expansion, prevented the creation of new jobs and was especially burdensome to little business. Even Administration spokesmen began to criticize it. Chairman Jesse Jones of the RFC was the first. In December, 1936, the ICC publicly declared the tax was ruinous to the weaker railroads. In March, 1937, the Internal Revenué Bureau began reaping what had been predicted would be a lush harvest. But collections fell some $300,000,000 short of estimates. : In April, 1937, the Twentieth Century Fund’s independent committee of tax experts and economists, including many New Dg&alers, published a report branding the undistributed profits tax so vicious and destructive as to be impossible of modification into a satisfactory measure. $ ” # 2 ” ” 8 AME the summer and fall of 1937, with business indices nosing down, down, down—with plenty of evidence everywhere that the undistributed profits tax was a primary cause of the slide and a primary reason why business couldn’t stop the. slide. Demands for its repeal became almost unanimous. Jesse Jones again spoke out against it. So did Chairman Kennedy of the Maritime Commission. Even Chairman Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board, who favored its theory, said it should be modified quickly. State tax»gommissioners ‘condemned it. The National Industrial Con- _ ference Board polled 360 typical corporations, all but two of which reported the tax had worked damaging results. It became known as “the tax without a friend.” Congress met in special session, in a mood to do something for business—and do it in a hurry. . The House Ways and Means Subcommittee started work on a new tax bill Nov. 4, and stayed behind closed doors through the rest of the special session and through the first few weeks of the regular session. The full committee held prolonged hearings in February. The bill finally reached the floor of the House the first of March. Meanwhile business conditions had gone from bad to worse, and President Roosevelt had broken his silence to the extent of saying that tax revision was a job for Congress. 8 ” » 3 = # o HOUSE members took the President at his word. They voted to kill off the most important remnant of the undistributed-profits tax. The bill moved on to the Senate which voted complete repeal. : Then the bill went to conference, to be shaped up for final passage. At last depression-weary business began to gain hope. Congress was about to correct a two-year-old disaster-working blunder. a At this point Mr. Roosevelt came galumphing in with a surprise letter to the House and Senate conferees telling them they must not repeal the tax. His letter was construed by some as a threat to veto the bill, and thereby undo a reform on which Congress had worked many months and for which distressed business had pleaded even more months. He deadlocked the conference. And indications are now that the conference will be deadlocked for many weeks —all because the President of the United States seems to think saving his political face is more important thap getting the country out of the depression. ¥ Yet, it should be said, he thinks getting out of the depression is important, too—if he can plan it his way. So, leaving business in the ditch, hogtied with tax laws, he
asks Congress to permit him to funnel in another four and:
a half billions of borrowed dollars. Apparently he thinks the way to get business out of the ditch is to flush it out. That'll teach business to float—or drown.
IT'S UNANIMOUS IT must be a relief to President Roosevelt to find some- : thing that nobody criticizes him for doing. We're not sure that Dr. Townsend was altogether pleased, but we think practically everybody else was when the President pardoned the old-age plan leader without letting him serve even one minute of his®80-day sentence for contempt of a committee of Congress. . ‘And even Dr. Townsend, who had planned to be a martyr and write a book while in jail, says he considers the pardon a “complete vindication” and an “act of contrition.” - Well, after all, Dr. Townsend was convicted by a Federal ‘Court. The Supreme Court did refuse to review the case. That, as the President said, did fully sustain “the authority, the dignity and the rights of the House of Representatives.” We wouldn't advise anyone else to walk ‘out on a Cong
Fair Enough — By Westbrook Pegler
Administration Has Been Guilty
little Joe Goebbels speaking the other night in that portion of the fireside chat where Mr. Roosevelt said: : “Every patriotic citizen must say to himself or hersblf that immoderate statement, appeals to prejudice and the creation of unkindness are offenses not against an individual or individuals, but offenses against the whole population of the United States.
. . . Self-restraint implies restraint by articulate public opinion, trained to distinguish. fact from false-
useful instrument in public affairs.” Mr. Goebbels is the Nazi Minister of Propaganda and public enlightenment who prevents imm erate statements, appeals to prejudices and the creation of unkindness in Germany except by Hitler, Juliys Streicher, himself and other privileged members of the Administration, and justifies this suppression on the ground of patriotism and national unity. In our country in the last few years the most influential appeals of prejudice in the general clamor raised by an excited and confused people have come from the ‘man who now condemns all this and from members of his Administration, notably Harold Ickes. 2 8 8 ’ GREED that immoderate and exciting utterances create that bitterness which is never a useful ‘instrument in public affairs, it must be asked now whether this passage was intended to convey an administration of past guilt and "a promise of reform as a sedative for others. - If so, there is less cause for concern than if Mr. Roosevelt. holds himself and Ickes, with his inflammatory remarks about the 60 families, to have been innocent of language which offends against the whole population of the United States. If the President believes that the Administration has been innocent of immoderate
and Italy, violent and provocative utterances may be used by the Government to create patriotic resentment against legitimate criticism of the Govern=ment and its personages. Nobody can attempt to deny that the last five years have evoked some of the most absurd proposals that ever jangled the air.
2 # s
OUGHLIN, Townsend, Huey Long, Pepper of Florida, and a hundred other political and economic wild men have whooped the multitudes up with their dream pictures. 3 Some publishers have been viciously and untruthfully -partisan against the President, just as others have betrayed their trust in return for needless improvements bought with Treasury money. But to say that moderation must now commence and must be enforced is to borrow a paragraph from the book of Goebbels if it is intended to set suspicion against critics of the Administration without similar scrutiny of é Government’s own utterances. agree that it is just too bad that this nation, with so many external enemies, is twisting its own foot with excruciating toe-hold and think we ought to let go. But Mr. Roosevelt should have dropped it at least one clarifying phrase to assure us that
down, if that is what he meant.
Business
By John T. Flynn
Americans Should | Clarify Those Things for Which They Would Fight.
EW YORK, April 19.—~The American ambassador to Germany told an audience of Americans in Berlin, though he was really speaking to the rulers of Germany, that there are some things for which Americans will fight. : That was indeed a proper thing to say. But it would be an excellent thing: if- we could get clarified in our own minds what the things are for which we will fight. :
I heard Gen. Butler say to a Senate committee that the American people were practically a unit in favor of “national defense.” But he said they were very badly confused on the meaning of national defense.
There is not the slightest doubt that Americans would rise to a man to resist any attack upon the shores of the continental United Stites, But how far beyond that would they go? : There are things for which Americans will fight. But is one of them the oil wells of American investors in Mexico? Would they fight to protect the trade of American shippers along the Yangtze River in China? Would they fight’ Germany if Germany confiscated American factories in the Reich? I do not think that these are things which Americans are willing to go to war for. Would they fight to hold the Philippine Islands? Would they fight to hold Hawaii?
What Are ‘National Interests’?
Does national defense mean assuming the offensive and establishing an imaginary line a thousand or two or three thousand miles out in either ocean and saying we must not be thwarted anywhere within that line or we will consider that an attack upon us? , Everyone says that we do not want to build a navy for aggression... We want to build a navy merely to protect our “national interests.” But what do they mean by our national interests? Saying that “there are things for which Americans will fight,” is one of those oratorical utterances which mesn very little. Will they fight for “collecfive security”? ‘Will they fight to preserve so-called democracy in European countries? Or will they permit other countries to manage their own affairs no matter how differently or badly they do it and content themselves with insisting on preserving their own de= mocracy and fighting for that when it is attacked? The question might well-be clarified and settled.
A Woman's Viewpoint By Mis. Walter Ferguson
HE University of Oklahoma Press announces a new book, “Sequoyah,” by Grant Foreman. : Whenever I become discouraged about mankind or feel embittered over the limitations of the human mind, I like to think about Sequoyah, an illiterate Indian genius who, without any resources save those
Within himself, brought learning and culture to his e.
Alone, he invented a new alphabet. He did so, his biographers guess, in order to get the sound of his own language, the Cherokee tongue, upon the printed
leat,” which was the Indian description for newspapers, and resolved to give his people one of their Without having gone to school for a knowing how to speak or write i . Say. Wiiho the woods and from his own brain conjured up a method of conveying ideas to paper. Thus by the genius of one man a whole people became literary. Soon after the adoption of his method, thousands of
since, the Cherokees have maintained a reputs for being the most intelligent ofall Indian re Dutation Between 1835 and 1859 more than 13 million printed pages, most of them written in Cherokee, were issued from the Park Hill Press of the old
circulation in the nation. s
found he had nearly 200 characters, she helped him reduce them to 86, the number now comprising the Cherokee alphabet. ~ Fei ~The old loghouse where Sequoyah lived and worked has lately ) man
perfecting her father’s new languages. . When he
promoted cuture and.
Does the President Believe the |
Or Innocent of Immoderate Speech? NTEW YORK, April 19.—Am I nuts or did I hear |
hood, trained to believe that bitterness is never a
speech, then that suggests that here, as in Germany
moderation is expected of us all from the President
page. He wondered about the white man’s “talking |
his once ignorant race could read and write. Ever.
Indian Territory. Excellent newspapers had a wide A woman, Sequoyah's daughter, played a part mn
‘become & state shrine in memory of a
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES . * When a Feller Needs a Friend !—By Talburt
55 : ER NC va,
ef |
The Hoosier Forum I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it—Voltaire.
SHAKEUP BILL FIGHT TERMED BACK-KNIFING By N. G. The Reorganization Bill has been killed and buried in the graveyard of lost hopes. After this backknifing act is over—let some one tell us who really won, - Since the very organization of our
tinual struggle by the unorganized masses to wrest ‘from a selfish minority a just share in the produced wealth of the nation. Generally it was a losing fight, except at times when great leaders came forth to lead them. What is the story that
| lies back of the fights of Jefferson
in 1800, Jackson in 1828, Bryan in the Nineties and Theodore Roosevelt in 1902? : Possibly the greatest leader ‘in this struggle of American humanity was Theodore Roosevelt: He fought to a finish the same enemies that plague the present Administration and they, too, accused him of wishing to become a “king” just as the present gang accuses the modern Roosevelt of wishing to become a “dictator.” +: But this “gang” knows this is not true, that it is really just backknifing another great leader who fights for human betterment. Notice how our great subsidized dailies gloat over the defeat of Rooseveli, not the death of the bill. I wonder how The Times, a once liberal daily, feels over this great “victory.” I rather think they should go into a silent chamber and meditate upon Caesar's dying words, “Et Tu, Brute.” So who won, and who lost? " esl no. 8 HOPES FOR VICTORY FOR JACKIE COOGAN By W. T. Jackie Coogan is a big boy, 23
| years old and married, and all the
hard times he used to endure so bravely in the films are as nothing compared with the ironic, baffling trouble he says he is up against now.
Since Jackie’s father was killed in an automobile accident three years ago his mother has married his former business manager. This couple, according to Jackie's complaint, have possession of the money he earned as a child actor, some $4,000,00%, and won’t give him any of it. Few stories could be more of a shock to the millions of Coogan fans who paid their quarters to build up that fortune. A greater shock, it seems to me, is the remark of the mother, who, apparently, intends to keep her grip on the money, “no promises ever were made lo give him anything.” :
Government there has been a con-|
Yes, deeply rooted in the common
(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.)
law, with precedents going back to the dark ages, is the idea that a parent gets the earnings of the child. Jackie, as an industrious little laborer, earned it, his parents got it, and there the matter stands. In the old days on the films it would have been simple. The Kid, his tearful little dirty face register-
have melted the heart even of a business-manager stepfather. But this is life, and the Kid has grown older. Even so, if his facts are straight and with the millions of oid worshippers back of him, I hope he crashes through to an old-time Coogan happy ending. 8.8" REPUBLICANS’ CHOICE OF CANDIDATES RAPPED By A Disgusted Republican It seems the Republican Party has not yet learned its lesson. When the bosses can get together in a back room and nominate the Republican ticket, there isn’t much chance for a Republican to go to
the polls and vote for his chaice. Apparently, there has been a lot of
SLEEP By ROBERT O: LEVELL When the eyes have grown tired, From routine of all the day; Then there is demand inside For rest in the usual way.
When we can forget and find Joy of sleep sq rich and grand, Soothing to the busy mind : ‘When at ease in slumberland.
DAILY THOUGHT
The sun. shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.—~Isaiah 60:19.
"HE glory of a people, and of an age, is always the work of a small number of great men, and disappears with them.—Grimm.
ing all the emotions at once, would
coercion used by the bosses to keep candidates from filing.
a Democratic boss—at least they
| give the voters a chance to vote for
a candidate at the primary. " 2 ” ASKS PUBLIC TO CONSIDER MUNICIPAL LIGHT PLANT By C. J. Johnson
more efficient than a municipally owned light plant? The exhibits of a chief accountant of a public service commission at a recent public hearing seems to raise the following questions: Would a municipally owned plant charge to expenses for income taxes over $18,000 more than it paid the Government? Would a municipally owned plant charge to expenses for income tax $5000 for an energy tax that was not assessed against it? Is it not time for the public to consider seriously a municipal light plant? 8 2 ® p SAYS LIGHTS HINDER TRAFFIC AT FOUNTAIN SQUARE By George Weishaar 3 I appreciate very much the picture of the confusing traffic signals at Fountain Square in The Times recently. However, that is only the half of it. The signals at Fountain Square not only confuse, but hinder trafic. This has been called to the attention of the Police Traffic Department repeatedly without
results, : At Shelby St. and Fletcher Ave. is another joker. At this point Grove St. traffic moves out into Shelby St. in front of the fast moving Shelby St. traffic, as Grove St. has the green light with Shelby St., which is a through street. 2 #2 8 PROTESTS THROWING OF JUNK IN ALLEY By a Taxpayer 2 Why are persons in the vicinity of W. New York St. and Beauty Ave. permitted to throw junk in the alley and on the vacant lot facing Beauty Ave.? We are poor folks, here, but taxpayers, and feel that we should have ga little consideration and protection from these things. . : As it is, we get bolts, nails, wire and pieces of tin in our tires constantly. Isn't there a law to protect car owners against such things, as well as a Board of Health to clean up our city? Just what can be done about such things?
Bo eocs oT RE
’
-
ONE, AM PLA or womens nro op RUSHES Susy NOT BOA TRUE OF MENS ae
. LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND
‘By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM ;
ERS USE THEIR EYE- f MORE THAN POOR READER USE THEIRS? YES ORNO ee
ie
MIE TOXING, ANTISEPTICS, ZED MILK BT!
§
and probably in reading comprehension. J » Fi 3» ANY ONE brought up from the cradle on science, as I was, is bound to believe so. Many sincere people believe these discoveries and inventions of science are not only of no value, but are harmful, even sihful. With all respect, I am unable to sympathize with this point of view. Any one who saw our soldier boys dying like flies in the Spanish-American War from typhoid and dysentery and has seen
free from these curses needs no other demonstration.’ And while vivisection does cause pain—both to the animal and the experimenter—
‘|yet it has saved thousands, even
mililons, of lives and immense suffering both of man—and animals. - : s 8 =» i ~ WE COULD hardly find a higher authority to answer this
{question than-“Kenneth Collins, one _|of the ablest advertising men in the
world. At ‘a luncheon speech before the “Fashion Group” in New York he knocked a lot of the “foolish prejudices against women in buslness” into a cocked hat, and this Collins stated
| Gen. Johnson [Says—
is the only soun
1 currencies.
ary gestures.
Well, I would just as soon vote for
Is a privately owned light plant.
the armies since then practically.
for perfuming
| TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 1938
You Can't Turn on a Litfle Fear To Bring Recovery, Then Regulate i It to Prevent a Runaway Market,
tx 7ASHINGTON, April 19.—Comment on the President’s spending message has been deliber-
| ately reserved from this column to allow time to cool
off and observe the horrendous thing with at least a moderate temperature. : Of course, the purpose is to purchase the election. If what had been proposed were only spending—ine crease in debt—this might not have been so clear. But it did not stand alone, Every single known pressure leading to inflation was applied—except, perhaps, the outright expedient of printing money. There are two intangibles that lead to active markets and increasing business. They are diametrical
’
opposites... One js confidence. The other is fear. .
When people think that prices and business are going to be better, they begin to buy things, through confidence. Because they have faith in the immediate future, prices and business improve. Their thinking makes it so. That iS a slow steady normal process and ; way in which business can be activated. a . : % : 8 8 8 $ PPUT there is anothér way. When people begin ’ to be afraid of the money and credit of their government, they recall such incidents as the French assignats, the depreciation of the Russian ruble, the German mark, and our Continental and Confederate In those cases, wealth in the form of money became as worthless as second-hand wall paper. : : When people fear this, they want to get rid of their money and turn it into wealth in the form of goods or common stocks as quickly as possible. A ‘panic buyers’ market results. All prices go through
the ceiling. , People who do not turn their money .
into things are ruinéd. People who depend on wages, salaries, pensions or life insurance policies see the buying power of their incomes cut to fractions. This is “inflation” in its most sinister sense,
Mr. Roosevelt had two choices. He could have relied on a sound recovery through confidence. He elected to rely on recovery through fear. There are advisers at-his elbow who insist that we can turn on Just a litle fear—and then regulate that to prevent any panic or runaway market. It is to those people he has listened in making these menacing inflation
s.8 8 HE fault in that philosophy is that any such fear is necessarily mass fear. Exactly that has been incited. But mass fear is mass madness— mob madness. Man, as someone has said, acting alone has reasonable intelligence, but as one of a
' crowd, man is a blockhead.
You can’t turn on “just a little panic” and then regulate it, any more than you can fire off a gun gradually. ,And if you could in this purely fiscal problem, where would it get you? When people buy through confidence, they buy to have and use and consume. When they buy through fear of the value of money, they buy to hoard. Some day they must sell and when they do—the deluge.
Yes, it is quite possible that Mr. Roosevelt's measures will make a hump in all ecoriomic indexes broad enough to get him by the elections, but after ward, as sure as sunrise, will come a worse deprese sion than we yet have known.
It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun
It Is onthe Wage-Hour Bill That F. D.R. Will Meet Tough Opposition.
EW YORK, April 19.—We turned the radio down very low because there is a sick lady across the hall. And so it may be that President Roosevelt seemed even more gentle than he had intended.
On the surface it was not a fighting fireside chat.’
Instead he offered an olive branch.
And yet I suspect that Franklin Roosevelt must
: be well aware that many who were invited to- clasp
hands and co-operate for recovery are most unlikely to accept the remedies he suggested. As far as a spending policy goes, I doubt that the opposition will be successful in putting over much curtailment. It seems to me that the pump-priming is absolutely
~ necessary as an emergency: measure. But I am ready
to string along with the most severe critics of bootstrap benevolence in admitting that such publio grants of funds do not get down to fundamentals. Mr. Roosevelt, in all fairness, did couple his spendeing program with a plea for a wage and hour bill, But he pasted it on to his main discourse like a postage stamp. And it is on the wage and hour bill that he will really encounter tough opposition.
Hoover Never Said ‘Boo’ :
No matter how thinly sliced any such measu may becorhe, there are still those in the House and Senate who will not even accept the shadow of the principle. They actually are against any ceiling for hours or any floor for wages. Even a feeble step will be better than none at all, and unless some fundamental approach is made to bojster purchasing power all the public work projects in the world will be in vain. . As yet IT have never heard anybody give a satisfac tory answer to the theory that when the worker makes more than he can take back a surfeit mush follow. It is well to.remember that recessions, de
‘pressions and crises have been known in the United.
States before the days of Franklin Roosevelt or Herbert Hoover. It is held now that we are in bad times because President Roosevelt has frightened business. But Herbert Hoover never said “Boo” to business, and he had quite a boss-sized depression on his hands. Neither Mr. Hoover nor Mr. Roosevelt can be properly called a radical by any stretch of the imagination,
but ¥. D. R. has made some steps in the direction
of trying to do away with the kind of pay and the kind of hours by which men/and women not only live and die from hand to mouth, but carry down whole communities with them. :
Watching Your Health
By Dr. Morris Fishbein
Ss
is recorded that ‘the ancient ‘Egyptian women"
T 1 wound their hair on sticks, formed a mud pack around the hair and sat in the sun. After some inconvenience, they had curly hair. Nowadays the woman who wants « permanently curly hair goes into a beauty ; hitched up to an electrical apparatus, from which she emerges eventually with what is called a permanent wave. : ns In addition to the electric apparatus, a number of chemical substances are used. Inasmuch as people may be sensitive to any of these substances, there are occasional reactions of the skin and of the tissues generally which may give a good deal of distress to the person concerned. Stan : Other side effects of permanent waving may involve burning, sometimes the development of severe brittle= ness of the hair so that it cracks and breaks off, sometimes discoloration.’ x
shop where she is.
( .
*
In cases when there are eruptions after the pers BE 3 tr
manent wave, it is necessary fo determine or not thé person is sensitive to some of the ingredi-
ents. \ : ; : It must be remembered also that after a permanent wave, substances are sometimes used for shampoo or which may be involved in the sensi=
doubt that excessive heat will injure gray hair of
tivity. There is no the hair. This is shown particularly in white hair which may turn yellowish ai manent wave. ~ a Nowadays most beauty shops have perm ing machines which are autom: are avoided. They have Shs off the current