Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 June 1938 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE Editor Business Manager

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy, delivered by carrier, 12 cents

a week. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year;

outside of Indiana, $5 cents a month.

a RIley 5551

Give Light and the People Wilt Fina Their wn Way

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1938

ROY W. HOWARD President

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Ce. 214 W. Maryland St.

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bureau of Circulations.

NEEDED—A CANCER CURE E think the most vicious doctrine ever uttered in our Government was—“To the victor belong the spoils.” That was in 1832. Then the political stakes were small. How they have grown is being dramatically evidenced today. Chickenfeed then. Billions now. And only six years over a century to get there. Read as a sample the Thomas L. Stokes dispatches on what's going on in Kentucky, now running in this paper. A person obscure in history except for the phrase he coined first put the spoils philosophy into words. He was William L. Marcy, U. S. Senator from New York. Andrew Jackson vitalized the idea. That blemish on his halo is not dealt with openly by Jackson Day speakers. But those same speakers employ the doctrine, aplenty. And so does their opposition when it gets a chance. Likewise politicians on down the line, state, city and county. Witness the scene in Kentucky. Spoils fighting spoils. The New Deal has the biggest bankroll. But the state payroll is padded in an effort to win for Chandler. One side comes out of taxes. The other is off fhe cuff. And witness also the argument in behalf of such procedure expounded in the Senate of the United States by the leader of the deal which has talked so much about morality. Says Barkley, speaking as the Administration's representative, in opposition to an innocuous resolution which merely went on record against spending relief funds for political purposes: “We all know that there is not a state in which the political organization (in control of the state) does not prostitute for its own purposes the employment of men and women . ..’ Therefore, he declares, our employees should not be “tied with a rope to a tree” while the others “roam at will and play the political game to their heart's content.” Prostitution justified on the grounds that two wrongs | make a right. And no recognition of the other philosophy | that “the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one.” What this nation is seeing now is no new thing, but just a bigger thing. It is the spoils system brought to full | maturity, But the danger to our democracy is in ratio to the size and power—and a geometric ratio at that. The potentiality is what Lincoln described, speaking of the spoils system, as something that “would destroy the very | foundations of the Republic itself.” For if any Administration, Democratic, Republican, or what have you, can control enough money to perpetuate itself in power, then government by the people is gone. Perhaps the most disturbing phase of the situation is the apparent public apathy.

CART BEFORE HORSE

(OFFICIALS of various states are agitating for legislation to forestall “harsh” retroactive taxation by the Federal Government of the salaries of state and municipal employees. They have a reasonable case. The Supreme Court, in the Port of New York Authority decision, has opened the way for Congress to end. the old reciprocal arrangement under which state and local salaries have been exempt from Federal taxation and Federal salaries have been exempt from state taxation. For either the Federal Government or the states to demand taxes on salaries paid in years past—years during which the Supreme Court took an opposite position-—might involve great unfairness and cause endless lawsuits. So, we think, it should be possible to work out an agreement under which there will be no retroactive taxation. But the anxiety of the state officials for action on this matter contrasts with the reluctance of Congress to take the Supreme Court’s hint. Weeks ago, President Roosevelt asked for a “short and simple statute” to end taxexemption of public salaries and stop the issuance of taxexempt public securities. With the new Court decision as a guide, Congress could draft such a statute and pass it in the time remaining before adjournment. Congress, however, is disposed to move slowly, for the pressure would make Congressmen’s salaries subject to state income taxes. The salaries of public officials should be taxed on the same basis as the salaries of private citizens, but the prospect that they will be is still remote enough to make the drive against retroactive taxation look much like a case of putting the cart before the horse.

MR. PRESIDENT...

QECRETARY HULL, making one of the most eloquent pleas in behalf of world co-operation that this country has heard since the passing of Woodrow Wilson, said: “With the world groaning under the burden of mounting armaments, we are prepared to join with other nations in moving resolutely toward bringing about an effective agreement on limitation and progressive reduction of armaments.” Once war breaks out we can do little or nothing to stop it. By law, we must remain “neutral”’—even if our particular brand of neutrality aids the aggressor and tends to doom the victim. But we can make our great influence felt to prevent the explosion. We believe it is time for the major powers to heed Secretary Hull's warning and to move “resolutely” toward arms limitation and the outlawing of such barbarous forms of warfare as the bombing of open cities. Statesmen and economists warn that, unless something like this is done, the armament race will lead to world disaster. Mr. President, we agree with your Secretary of State.

America is ready to join others to end this peril. Why not |

take the initiative?

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

Communists Usually Have No One But Themselves to Blame for the Rise of Fascism and Dictatorships.

NEY YORK, June 7.—Judging by the sudden ‘NX getivity of the Communists in this country, they must think the American form of government is in its death throes. They pride themselves on their sense of timing and grow bold only when they feel that & nation is in agony. On the record they repeatedly have made in Europe, they are very bad judges of the strength of nations. The map shows that, except in Russia, they have failed wherever they made their move, and the net result is a loss of liberty for millions of people, a constant threat of angther world war and a series of crushing victories for the very forces which communism opposes or pretends to oppose. Most times it is impossible to perceive with the naked eye the difference to the ordinary human being between life under a Communist dictator and life under a Hitler or a Mussolini. The difference is too small to matter, anyway. And as for the period of confusion and massacre which intervenes between the death and the establishment of the dictator's discipline, it makes no difference what ism the mobs and their leaders claim to represent,

~ Stumbling On to the End—8y Kirby

HE recent Communist’ convention made much of | %

a quotation from Abraham Lincoln to the effect |

fhat when this people decides ‘to dismember this |. Government and establish an entirely different form ¢ i

it shall be their privilege to do so. If this utterance could be interpreted as a preference for communism

it would serve their purposes better. True, they try to interpret it so, but obviously Lincoln's words gave equal indorsement to a Fascist or Nationalistic revolution, and a movement of this kind, organized in resistance to disorder directed from Moscow, could, with equal right, flaunt the same phrase on its own banners. However, it will be futile for the Communists at this late date to attempt to convince the Americans that the Russian conspiracy against their country is an American, nationalistic movement. They are so long and thoroughly taught in conspiracy that they cannot put themselves in the mind of people who remember when they frankly proclaimed their allegiance and subservience to Moscow.

ICTATORSHIP of the nationalistic kind is ihe reaction to the disruptive conspiracies of the Moscow Internationalists. They select their time, make their play for power when patriotic nations are in deep trouble, and are repulsed and crushed by the fury of people driven mad by many provocations. Lincoln’s words should be emphasized, but more as a warning to both wings of extremism than as a lure to the mass of the American people. The Communists, preparing the Americans for the thought of dismemberment of their form of government, may see a day when their activities bring the retaliation which has become routine in European contests. Nor can they say then that fascism provoked the struggle. There is no fascism yet, but it will rise in due proportion to the activities of the Communists with their purpose of dismemberment.

Business By John T. Flynn

An Investment Trust Scheme Left The Stockholders Holding the Bag.

EW YORK, June 7.—People who hand over their hard-earned cash to salesmen who come to

| them with investment trust stocks of all sorts would

do well to ponder the interesting case which the Attorney General of New York and the District Attorney have just brought to light. Begin by remembering that an investment trust is a pool of money and securities which are good

for money at the bank or the money lenders. And one of the oldest rackets has been to get hold of such reservoirs of money and credit and exploit them for personal gain. With this in mind see how easy it is to get rich. A group of gentlemen organized a corporation in Canada. They called it a financial management company. They issued five shares of stock to themselves at $1 a share. Then they went around and contracted to buy up enough shares of an investment trust to control it. They didn’t have any money to buy the shares. But they had a scheme. When they had contracted for a sufficient number of shares to control the trust they arranged a meeting at which they were to take delivery of the shares and pay for them. But where would the money come from? They had arranged with a brokerage-banking house to borrow the money and to put up collateral— certain standard, stock exchange stocks. They didn't own any such stocks. But the investment trust they were going to buy did own them.

New Directors Elected

They had arranged with the owners of the controlling stock, who also controlled the board of directors of the trust, that the directors would resign so that they could elect their own directors. The new directors were elected, they held a meeting and promptly passed a resolution to sell most of their perfectly good stocks to the new buyers and to take in payment stock in the Canadian financial company which had been organized for the purpose. That stock was worthless, for the Canadian company had no assets. Then the new promoters handed the good securities to the bankers as collateral and the bankers handed them a cHeck large enough to pay for the investment trust stock which controlled the trust. Then the bankers sold the good stocks to repay to them the money they had advanced. The stocks fetched more than the loan by many thousands of dollars and this money the bankers turned over to the promoters. They then had control of the investment trust and a pocketful of money besides. The investment trust was looted and the stockholders who were not in on the deal were holding the bag.

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HE current Good Housekeeping has a splendid article by Prof. William Lyon Phelps on “Religion in the Home,” in which he gives the following excellent advice to young men: “The highest happiness known on earth is in marriage. Every mah who is happily married is a successful man, even if he has failed at everything else. And the man whose marriage is a failure is not a Si] man, even if he has succeeded in everything else.” There was a time when such candor would have been frowned upon or laughed at. Happily we are becoming more sensible on that question. There is encouraging evidence that men are taking their emotional life seriously. Boys attend lectures on marriage relations; men study the art of charming women, and this generation understands that girls are not incomprehensible, mysterious beings, but people. Dr. Phelps also points out that early marriage should be encouraged because when one is young pov=erty can be a lark. The difficulties that scare a 40-year-old into a nervous breakdown will seem trivial to a 20-year-old. This is undeniably true. The quality that distinguishes youth from age is not exactly courage—rather it is lack of fear. Those who are growing up now will know a great deal more about their own emotions, and will no longer believe that luck is & deciding factor in mar‘riage, which succeeds or fails

{| legislators for voting convictions,

TUESDAY, Jd Sy Gen. Johnson Says—

The Administration Might Uncover

Another Kingfish if It Interferes In the Oklahoma Senatorial Race,

ASHINGTON, June 7.-Formerly, in ordinary circumstances, there was no moral reason why a President shouldn't express his preference in a Congressional primary. It was a question of political strategy. The pressure of mere preference was not great. The danger was that the other fellow might win, That might double political enmities, rather than strengthen political friendship.

But recent interferences are not in ordinary eire cumstances, Neither are these personal Presidential preferences. They are impersonal punishments of Furthermore, it is

#| not party punishment for deserting to the enemy

| party and its doctrines contrary to their own party | principles and loyalty.

There was nothing in the

4 | Democratic platform or policy about packing the

Supreme Court or even about any such radical reor-

| ganization of Government as was proposed. These

things were devised by a small unofficial group, some of whom were not even Democrats, adopted by the

President and sprung as a surprise after the election,

INALLY, to distinguish from ordinary elircume stances, the present devices of the Corcoran Bene

| zine Board for the rubbing out of resisters to personal | rule, is the President's insistence on authority baldly | to use billions of taxpayers’ money appropriated

solely for the relief of human suffering--not primarily

The Hoosier Forum

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

READER SEES NEED FOR MORE MEN LIKE HAGUE By E. Ff. M.

The Constitution does not guar antee freedom of speech, nor of assembly, except peaceable assembly. 1t does not guarantee a free press, but merely says: “Congress shall inake no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It merely prohibits Congress from making laws along these lines. It does not prohibit the states, or the people, from hauling down dangerous agitators when their activities endanger the general welfare and peace of a community.

Article 10 says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” So, since the First Amendment does not prohibit the states nor the people from interfering with radical, revolutionary agitators, we conclude that Mayor Frank Hague has legal authority to prevent Communists and all other alien-inspired agitators from delivering inflammatory speeches in Jersey City. He has the right and the duty to keep peace and domestic tranquillity among the workers of that city. Socialists, Communists and Fascists’ main business is to create class hatred and civil war in this country, as well as to destroy our constitutional form of government and regiment us under a dictatorship. We need men like Mayor Hague in every city hall, state house, and one in the White: House, not to interfere with the constitutional rights of any patriotic American, but to protect real Americans from the poison propaganda of alien-inspired theorists.

” » Ld READER PRAISES FLYNN'S VIEWS By K. Vv. C. :

Mr. Flynn is the most intellectual writer on industrial recovery. His articles are not theoretical stuff but plain, and easily understood. I imagine his articles are poison to many of our large industrialists because they do not want to hear the truth. When you speak of new capital being invested by private enterprises it brings fear to the minds of our modern laissez faire capitalists. Mr. Flynn has the correct dope on the railroads. Someone is going to be forced to take a loss in the railroad business. The railroads’ debts will have to be wiped out. Mr. Flynn says nothing about a plan to distribute more equally the wealth of the country. He seems to leave it up to private capital. Private capital has had its chance to change ite policies, but has done nothing to equalize the national income. The pioneering days in America are gone and private capital today has not the ground for expansion that it had before the machine age.

(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.)

The profit system is the best system on earth, provided prosperity can be had by all the people. But there is where the capitalists fail. They don’t seem to want to arrange things so everybody can have a job at decent wages and therefore they are making the profit. They are shortening the life of the profit-system.

~ ” » ATTACKS DEFENSE MADE BY HAGUE By R. 8S. Mayor Hague of Jersey City in his letter to The Times failed to explain who the “we” is that opposes the granting of outdoor meeting

‘permits to those who oppose him.

He seems to wish for a way to

suppress all newspapers who oppose his policy.

He says he never has permitted rae poverty has reached

“labor violence” or disorder in his city. Now, Mayor Hague, just what do you call it when a Congressman

is manhandled by your police and |

a mob? No mob attacks unless it is incited to do so by some one or group. In short, Mayor Hague, you are one of those reactionaries who attack from behind an anticommunist smokescreen all organized labor and progressive groups who fight for social and industrial democracy. ” » ” FRANK TERMED NEW DEALER By Thomas D. McGee The Republican Party, by selecting Glenn Prank as chairman of its advisory board, is self-inhibited from attacking the New Deal philosophy of government, As disclosed by his recent publications, Glenn Frank is a pronounced New Dealer. He defends the brain trust idea in Government,

DREAM

By ROBERT O. LEVELL

Stay away dream, If T must weep, For you're so mean To ruin my sleep, If you are glad I hate to wake To find it sad— You're just a fake.

DAILY THOUGHT

If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.—Deuteronomy 25:1.

UDGMENT is forced upon us by experience. —-Johnson.

‘| saying justly that experts and tech-

nicians are necessary to help administer an economy as complicated as ours, He justifies, in certain circumstances, limited control by the state of business and finance. He advo-

costs and prices,

right disagreement with is the policy of curtailed production. He avers that unless the Government had intervened to guide, support and control business and industry at the time Roosevelt took hold, we would have had a complete breakdown with perhaps communism or fascism in its wake. He also is of the opinion that to

| Or

return to the obsolete, traditional laissez faire Republicanism of Coolidge and Harding would mean national disaster, » ” ou POEM IS WRITTEN TO UNEMPLOYED By Ruth Shelton TO AN UNEMPLOYED I read your letter and between each line, I saw a heart made bitter by despain; A heart that I believe innately fine, it would not know such an urgent care. inside your door

And scarred wee souls and taught |

wee minds distrust, And . . . with yours . . from it's deepest core Cries out resentfully, “It is unjust.” Some may say grandly, “though your heart break . .. smile.” But I, who know despair's despond-

ency, Say “fight self-pity all the hopeless while, Lest it destroy the real you that I see.” And maybe it would help to reach my hand, And say that I, a stranger, understand.

" Ww w THINKS FHA RECEIVED HIGH COMPLIMENT

By Edward Meeman The Federal National Mortgage Association was organized to buy and sell mortgages insured under the National Housing Act. It is under the supervision of the FHA. Recently it offered $25,000,000 of 2 per cent five-year notes. The notes, while not guaranteed by the Government, are backed by FHAinsured mortgages and are exempt from normal taxation. Applications for the issue totaled $1,300,000,000, or 52 times the amount of the notes offered. Investment money is conservative money. It isn't “invested” at race tracks. It usually is put into something that experienced and sound businessmen approve after careful investigation. The conservative investors of the country paid the FHA a high compliment when they offered to buy 52 FNMA notes for every note offered.

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

\ Now HAVE CURLY HAIR MOTHER, AND DAD'S NARS ETRAIGHT. CU Jacke he RADA

IN SERN AN 8IRLS DO."

"NO

to spare his own. Even when he lies about financial losses because he “doesn’t want to hurt the little woman,” he is usually protecting himself. ® = DOT I8 wrong in what she expects and Mother Smith is wrong in her explanation. No doubt the “detérmitter” or ‘‘gene” (jean) that gave Dick his curly hair came frotn his nother, but in the mixture of elements in the germ-cells

cates the fixing of hours, wages, | The only feature | of the New Deal that he is in out- |

| , my heart

| for that-—but primarily to punish or reward whole

districts in a campaign of personal revenge and regi= mentation,

Patronage was always used but no such ghoulish thing as this was ever before proposed. There are rumors, based upon the President's proposed visits to the contested states, that this cheka has marked opponents of Senators Barkley, Bulkley and Eimer Thomas for desruction. I know the states of Kene tucky and Ohio only from visits and observation, but my human clay was dug from the pits of Oklahoma, They won't get away with it there,

TS soll is no holier than the rest, but it is the state closest to the old restless, pioneer breed. They still take their politics seriously and sometimes tumultously. It has usually been fatal to lecture or talk-down to those voters. Senator Elmer Thomas is a nice, quiet, docile yes« gentleman, He has neither the heart nor the trappings of a typical Oklahoma representative. The state is tired of him. Gomer Smith, like Will Rogers, has Indian blood. He is a fountain of picturesque political eloquence, a two-fisted fighter and he is not particular about whom he fights, He has his own peculiar standing with old people, farmers and workors. The President cannot say that Gomer is no New Dealer. He is about two laps ahead of the New Deal. The Administration had better keep its fingers off that buzz-saw, It will certainly get cut and fit might uncover another Kingfish. Mr. Smith has many of the qualities of the late Huey Long.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

‘The Great American Novel' Is a Realistic Tale of a Newspaperman,

EW YORK, June 7.-Magazines, as a rule, don't like stories about ghosts, unsympathetic persons, newspapermen and unhappy individuals. For a long time it was held that people wouldn't go to see pic« tures about reporters, But the Hollywood producers succeeded in breaking down this tradition, and they did it in a most ingenious way. Several successes were scored with films concerning reporters. The only trick lay in the fact that all the scenes were laid in the city room of the Graustark Daily Groan or some other journal published in Never-Never Land. In other words, the fans doted on reporters just so long as they had no relation whatsoever to reality.

If this were a crime it would hardly be fair to blame it wholly on the moguls of California. Exnewspapermen wrote this balderdash by the simple expedient of keeping the tongue in the cheek. The fantasies were certainly curious. The city editor was always a sea lion, As a matter of fact, the average city editor is a lyric tenor, and some of the mistakes and many of the virtues of newspaper publication lie in the fact that nobody can hear what he is trying to say under any moment of stress, The star reporter doesn’t really look like Robert Taylor, nor did he ever carry the American Méeroury and a bottle of gin in his coat pocket. But after so much chow mein and ladyfingers I wonder whether the public is good enough to appreciate an honest-to-goodness plain mutton tale of a real newspaperman.

The Story of a Desk Man

Such a book has just been published, and it 1s called, rather forbiddingly, ‘The Great American Novel.” Of course, the title is satiric, for it is the story of a desk man who is always going to do a fictional masterpiece when he gets around to it. Nuttuirally, he never gets the time. Clyde Brion Davis, who wrote this book and another good one called “The Anointed,” worked on papers in Kansas City, Cleveland, Buffalo, Denver and San Francisco. I do not know his branch of the service,

but his book is the life story of a desk man who goes from the rim to the slot and back to the rim again, Possibly telegraph editors and copy readers are not glamorous. There can be no doubt that Homer Zeig~ ler, the creation of Clyde Brion Davis, is flesh and blood and throughout true human tissue. “The Great American Novel” is a book which made me weep, because I think it tells with honesty and eloquence the struggle of every little man.

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

N=: long ago it was the common understanding that at least 90 per cent of children had been infected with tuberculosis before they were 10 to 12 years old, so that practically all of them reacted to the tests with tuberculin when they reached the ‘teen ages. Now, by testing a great number of children, it has been found that the incidence of early childhood infection has been diminished. There are still, however, a good many possibilities for infection of children of the "teen ages Who have come through infancy and childhood without being infected. The only right attitude toward tuberculosis, therefore, is to endeavor to get the maximum protection for people of all ages against this disease, Fortunately we now have methods of diagnosing tuberculosis in the earliest stages, and we are able to bring about more rapid healing than was possible in a previous generation. In the protection of young people against tubercuimportant to realize that the chief source of is another person who has what is called . For this reason, pro-