Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 August 1938 — Page 10

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1938

CHALLENGE OF THE SOUTH HEN President Roosevelt termed the South “the nation’s No. 1 economic problem,” a Southerner rejoined that “the nation is the South’s No. 1 economic problem,” Both were right, and both the nation and the South should read the report to ‘the President on the South's economic conditions, made public today by the National Emergency Council.

Lowell Mellett, council executive director, points out.

that the report was wholly the work of Southerners. Southerners today are willing to face the facts about their situation without apology and without recrimination—but with resolve to do something themselves and have the nation do something about them. The report, in small words and large type, is easy reading. But the problems it states are not easy, though, as Mr. Mellett says, “not beyond the power of men to solve.” 2 2 ” ® # o LET us set forth a few of the report's striking state ments: The South has more people deriving from early American stock than any other region. Its population is 71 per cent white, 29 per cent Negroes. With less-than a third of the nation’s area, the South contains more than a third of the nation’s good farming acreage. It has two-thirds of all the land in America . receiving a 40-inch or more annual rainfall. It has nearly _ half of the land on which crops can grow for six months without danger of frost. It has 40 per cent of the nation’s forests. It has more than 300 different minerals. But with 28 per cent of the nation’s population it has only 16 per cent of the tangible assets including factories, machines and tools. The South loses $300,000,000 worth of fertile soil in erosion each year—and in one year bought $161,000,000 worth of fertilizer. : Even in prosperous 1929 Southern farm people received an average gross income of only $186 a year compared with $528 for farmers elsewhere. On cotton plantations studied, the average tenant received an income of only $73 per

person; earnings of Shue croppers were from $38 to $87.

per person. Common labor in 20 important industries got 16 cents an hour less than laborers elsewhere. The average annual wage in industry is $865 as 8 compared with $1219 in remaining states. Education and public health suffer because of low piiblic income. Two million people annually are sick with malaria. From 60 to 88 per cent of Southern families spend for food less than enough to purchase an adequate diet. Twenty-six per cent of Southern city and town households are without indoor flush toilets, as against 13 per gent for the city and town households of the country as a whole. Four million Southern families, or half, should be rehoused. More than a third of Southern farmhouses have no screens to keep out disease-bearing mosquitoes and flies. The farming South depends on cotton and tobacco for two-thirds of its cash income. The cotton market is a sheer gamble. The landlord’s credit difficulties are little less than the

tenants. He must often pay 20 per cent, making the ten- |

ant’s rate still higher. Because of the high cost of credit, a large proportion of the South’s resources are owned elsewhere. Such is the reports What can be done about it? ” 8 8 ” f J 8 THE first thing the nation can do for the South i is to “get off its back.” . For years the South has suffered from the insuperable handicap of selling its cotton in a free world market, while buying its supplies in a tariff-protected domestic market. The first steps to free the South from this handicap are being undertaken in the Hull reciprdeal trade treaties. This work should be continued and carried further. : The nation can remove the freight rate differentials whereby a Southeastern manufacturer who wishes to ship goods into the nation’s best market, the Northeastern territory, must pay 39 per cent more than similar shipments within Northeastern territory; the Southwestern

manufacturer, a 75 per cent disadvantage. As the report

points out, the two chief reasons for higher freight rates have disappeared. Physical difficulties which once made * railroading expenses in the South greater have been minimized by’ modern engineering. There is no longer any thin- - ness of traffic. The operating costs of Southern lines today are lower than those in the Eastern territory. The nation should do more than get off the South’s back. It should lend a helping hand, as it is doing through many agencies of the New Deal, such as the Farm Security Administration which is helping tenant farmers to become owners, and setting up patterns of rural communities; the U. S. Public Health Service which is fighting to eliminate malaria and syphilis; the Soil Conservation Service, which is. stopping the loss of irreplaceable soil.

So helped, the South can be trusted to help itself—by

passing state laws which aim for secure tenancy, in the place of the present demoralizing annual midwinter move; by spreading education; by establishing civil liberties and the right of labor to organize; by keeping its youth and its capital at home, where, despite difficulties, the greatest op-

portunity lies.

~ AND NOW, IN UTAH T W. Lee O’Daniel started in Texas, with such spectacularly successful results, was bound to spread. Now Dr. Arthur C. Wherry, former president of the Amer- ~ jcan Dental Association, is touring Utah with a cowboy orchestra, seeking the Republican nomination for U. S.

Senator. Well, this much at least can be said for hillbilly bands

and cowboy orchestras in politics: At their worst, which is pretty bad, they're easier to listen to than the average

candidate’s s

And, by the o way, we su

_ Price in Marion Coun- |

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

~ Our’ Columnist Detects in Statue

By Sculptor Bufano Something More | |

Than a Striving for Simplicity.

EW YORK, Aug. 13 ~—Preliminary studies. in the art of sculpture have encouraged your cor=respondent in his belief that it will be no trick at all to make a better statue than the Bufano smokestack with which it is proposed to deface the natural beauty of Christmas Tree Point in San Francisco. It turns out that professional sculptors have some rather clever methods of avoiding difficult problems, and it would seem from the sketch of Mr. Bufano’s

statue of St. Francis of Assisi that he is highly professional in one sense at least. His figure is barrelshaped up to a point just north of the hips and rises from there with the arms upraised in a plain, tubular Y, similar to the brass hose-couplings piaced on the fronts of modern office buildings for the convenience of the fire departments. Now, feet, legs and the folds of garments present artistic difficulties, and Mr. Bufano has avoided all of them with his tubular effect.

8 #8 8 AVING been ‘an apprentice comic artist many years ago, your correspondent detects in this’ something other than a mere striving for simplicity.

Comic artists who cannot draw very well have a |

practice of drawing their people standing behind a fence. There is a horizontal line, slightly jagged at intervals, and a few nailheads and knotholes are suggested by little O's. The faces of the figures are then drawn above this line, with or without hats, depending on the artist's facility with hats, and a few little sprigs of grass at the base indicate the bottogr of the fence. This spates the artist the difficulty of drawing the figures and feet, and even the hands, unless he feels sufficiently confident of his handiwork to suggest hands by sketching several sets of little sausages along the top line of the fence. Mr. Rube Goldberg is a literal realist who has al-

‘ ways made hands in close detail, including the nail

on each finger and thumb and the hairs on the backs of the hands. Your correspondent has tried to follow the Goldberg. style as being more honest than that of Mr. Bud Fisher, a rival master of the same period. Mr. Fisher's Mutt and Jeff always wore gloves, even in bed, in swimming and at the table. 8 ® 8 R. FISHER also had a habit of drawing Mr. Mutt vanishing from the panel with a cry of “Awk,” with just his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers legs showing. Clever it may have been, but was it sincere? Like the fence and the gloves, it was not sincere, and that is another reason for decrying Bufano’s St. Francis in a barrel. Anybody can sculp a barrel. Moreover, the newspaper photos of Mr. Bufano’s study give St, Francis the appearance of Wearing mittens—not ‘even gloves, which at least call for rough outlines of the fingers. Plagiarism is a grave charge to bring againit an artist, and your correspondent offers the following accusation only after the most serious consideration: Bufano’s St. Francis is a shameless steal from a. famous old standard art’ work familiar to millions at home and abroad and instinctively associated with Christmas. The rigid posture, the outstretched arms and the full skirt are unmistakable, and Mr. Bufano is hereby charged with plagiarizing the old baker’s design of the wife of the gingerbread man, =~

Business By John T. Flynn

National Income Can Be Increased One Way—By Producing. More.

"EW YORK, Aug. 13.—Out of Washington floats at intervals the echoes of President Roosevelt's ambition and implied promise to give the American people an income “of a hundred billion dollars a year, This is one of those types of political promises which is easily gotten over to the gullible multitude.

It is the type of campaign plank which is playing such havoc in the West gnd Southwest now where messiahs of various kinds are promising the old People all sorts of sums from $30 to $60 a month. The simple truth is that what our national income is worth in dollars is a detail—a very important detail, but still a detail. The national income, primarily, is the sum total of what all of us produce in the course of a year. It is the sums of the food, the clothes, the shelter, the luxuries and so on which we ] create. This is our national income as distinguished from our money income. We can increase our national income only by increasing our natural income—only by producing more, not by increasing our money income. Increase the money income of the nation but cut down the amount which we produce and we actually decrease our national income. This was the profound mistake which the President made in his first administration when he set out to establish the NRA and AAA. The great idea was to raise prices To do this all were to be permitted to limit production. By this means it was believed that what was produced would be worth more in money/ Whether that is true or not it is true that if this succeeded we would have produced less and thus reduced the national income.

A Problem of Distribution

If the national income is to be increased, therefore, there is but one way to do it—and that is to produce more, to create more wealth. There is no other way. But how is this to be done? The answer is easy, The means of producing more wealth is known and has been known for some time. The mystery of abundant . production is no longer a mystery.- That part of the problem has been solved. The reason we do not produce more is because we do not know how to distribute it. What the President, therefore, has to do is to solve this problem of distribution. Stated differently, | that means solving the problem of the production of money purchasing power. Up to now I have heard from Washington no peep on how that detail is to be worked out. ‘

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

ERHAPS the most charming quality of men is their inconsistency. I was reminded of that the other day, when a local Big Shot, going after Roosevelt and the Ne Deal with hammer and tongs, expressed a special dislike for “yes men” in official circles. He preached at length about the danger to the individual in high political place, when he is foolish enough to sur-

round himself by satellites with the mental ‘resistance

of a Charlie McCarthy. | The “yes man” habit, he insisted, was most deplorable and deadly, not only to the progress of the

“hation but to the individual who encouraged it. ,

At first that struck me as good sense. We are all agreed that the man who listens only to his sycophants and never to his critics is liable to become a

cropper, no matter what position in life he occupies. This being true, isn’t it strange that so many men insist upon yes women in the home? Yet one of the traditions hardest to down is that which says the good wife must be an expert in the art of flattery and should constantly remind her husband that he is truly a wonderful man. It often seems that the hardest job wished on women by the Eden debacle is the task of keeping up the male morale. Ever since Eve, we have had te work like slaves to perpetuate the “How wonderful

you are” legend..

Dont you suppose it has helped to create the

3 werld we live in? For surely, if it’ to boss to have “yes. ge

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

PRONUNCIATION OF VANNUYXS

INSPIRES POEM By W. Scott Taylor Indiana politicians who are still hesitating about using hillbilly music in their campaigns should look at its success in Texas. If they are baffled by the necessity of com-

posing lyrics for voice, banjo and guitar, any student fresh out of a high school class is only too eager to help them. - Anything sounds good with music. . Crooners get rich out of simple rhymes—“love, above, melodee, my hah-art, etc.” Take a simple topic like the proper pronunciation of the name “VanNuys.” The magazine Time says it should be pronounced to rhyme with “geese.” On a topic like that, any student, given free rein, would be glad to dash. off something like this in no time:

Why mention “geese”? They don’t meander. They stick behind the leading gander. A goose won't waddle off and quack Of how the flock acquired its jack.

A goose is one who loudly dares The world to tell how they got theirs. A goose won't squawk, accuse and slander, Just because it can’t be a gander. And whether “Neece” or whether “Nize’ The name will never harmonize, And gets no better, sounds no grander Whether goose or whether gander.

$8 8 TRIBUTE TO MORGAN SEEN IN FARLEY’'S ARTICLE | By E. 3. M.

In the current American Magazihe, Postmaster General Farley tells how Dr. Arthur E. Morgan, having been appointed a director of the ‘Tennessee Valley Authority, came to see him “at the suggestion of the White House” to talk over his plans for making appointments. Says Mr. Farley: = “Although I suggested no one for appointment, I hinted that it would be wise to avoid appointing people unacceptable to the Senators and Representatives from that area, pointing out that it is a smart practice in government to avoid antagonizing the men who vote the appropriations. “Dr. Morgan promptly replied, in

what seemed to me a discourteous

fashion, that he would appoint whom he liked and that he had no o interest whatever in politics. I remarked that President Roosevelt would never have landed in the White House if someone hadn't thought about politics, and that Dr.

(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.)

Morgan himself was a politieal appointee. . . . “However, when he ooh in trouble later it was perfectly apparent that

Dr. Morgan simply didn’t under-

stand how to get along with other people, and that’s an indispensable quality in public life. Moreover, he never consulted Democratic Senators, and they were not inclined to go to his defense or to give him a lift in presenting his side of the case to the public.” I wonder whether Mr. Farley has ever read the TVA law, especially the section which provides that in making appointments “no political test or qualification shall be permitted or given consideration,” with dismissal from office as the penalty for any director who violates this section. Or perhaps that would have made no difference to him. At any rate, the inference is plain. If Dr. Morgan had understood “how

to get along with other people,” if

he had taken his oath to obey the law less seriously, had accepted recommendations from Senators and Congressmen and filled the TVA with political hacks, he might have had help from Mr. Farley and support from “the men who vote the appropriations.” And so, instead of losing his job as TVA chairman, he might have kept it. It seems that Mr. Farley, without intending it, has paid a high tribute to Dr. Arthur E. Morgan,

NIGHT PATTERN

By MAUD COURTNEY WADDELL Out from street noise and the hovering dark, Above the city’s jeweled lights— The phantom form of the Capitol ] dome Stands shadowed, ghostlike and alone!

DAILY THOUGHT

Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.—Lamentations 3:41.

Y words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.—

Shakespeare.

CITES EXPORT DROP DUE TO MEXICAN ACTION By Gardner Harding The first blow to the general American pogketbook arising out of the Mexican situation is a $21,500,

000 loss in our export trade to Mex-|

ico sustained over the first six months of 1938, which is off by more. than 37 per cent. This slump in our export business with Mexico is sharply against the trend of the world situation, which

showed the best export business for the United States for any half year since 1931. As Secretary Hull works on an answer to -the Mexican note of Aug. 3, which refused in effect either to return American properties or to make compensation for them, he faces the following tangible facts that stand out of the Mexican situation like a sore thumb: . 1. Mexico’s national debt is more than a billion dollars. Interest on most of it has not been paid since 1928. Further promises to pay are, therefore, relatively irredeemable paper. : 2. No important sum has been paid in the past for United States claims, land or otherwise, dating from the Mexican revolution. 3. In contrast with this record Mexican official revenues are today’ four times as great as in pre-rev-olutionary days when Mexican credit was.good. 4. Agreements to pay, as well as settlements of the oil question which have now been broken, did not originate in the “bad'days” under Diag, but were made with the widely accredited good faith of Presidents Obregon and Calles. The record which Secretary Hull now has before him also shows that the Warren-Payne agreement of 1927 and the Morrow-Calles un-

derstanding subsequently, -both ex- |

plicitly validated by the Mexican Supreme Court, have been torn up as scraps of paper by President Cardenas. : In these circumstances feeling is hardening in Washington toward insisting on a general policy of restitution of American property, at least until such time as Mexico can make a much more substantial showing toward paying for it. Since most of - Mexico's debt arises from

| property seized and not paid for,

this kind of economic reorganization wculd not only restore Mexican credit but would enable the country to reassert its natural productivity. Under the present high-powered effort to drive out all foreign capital, it is acknowledged here by friends of Mexico that the country is scarcely three months from bankruptey.

LP IN MAKING »

pera OF A PERN

&T HIM? VES ORO

MOTHER, IN > ANE CHILDREN SEEM ATO GOOD AND IN

Eke NATORALLY I5C HaRACY ER INHER TED AN GEA

OH, J PEOPLE ARE JUST ABOUT WHAT NATURE MAKES THEM. 1S MOTHER RIGHT NOUR OPINION omy Lt

Brinn Gob

IT DOES if you get over it, al- ~ though don’t take this as blan“advice for yo get opping

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM—

oath got fo and then yo

inherited but the drives and trends—including the general bodily hemistry-—out

able degree inherited. Dot goes

far i spenking of an inpenfed fale being “un able” Al oye Jives |

‘with bayonets have moved upon the workers. ‘has been sprayed in countless cities and towns upon

CHARACTER, as such, is not |

" when a great deal of | ticular method of self-destruction, that method may ‘actually become for a while the vogue.

‘have given special study it 8 impossible $0 speak With any. fuality abou. 8 _ single casual factor for suicide.

Jen. Johnson

| Says—

Our Problem Is Hew fo. Keep the Higher Officers Needed in Time - Of War Occupied in Time of Peace. ETHANY BEACH, Del., Aug. 13.—Recently widely

publicized criticisms of our Army make it seem absurd. It is charged that in prewar days a colonel,

an adjutant and a quartermaster were all the staff ' needed to'run a regimental garrison. Now some posts

of even smaller size are all dressed up-as a brigade or division headquarters and with no more enlisted men © ‘have one or two generals and a glittering staff of fleld officers (majors and higher grades)... .. It is true as charged that the Army-is scattered out in little posts that require s6 much work to keep the . grass cut: there isn’t enough for training. That doesn’t . happen to:be the Army’s fault, . That is old pork-bar-rel politics, It is like pulling .the teeth of a whole i stewional delegation to abandon a post in its state There is no doubt that most: of the garrisons are grotesquely over-staffed with high-priced overhead. As a matter of fact, the old colonel-adjutant-quarter= master skeleton set-up was about three times -too many men and 10 times .too expensive for the purely janitorial job of keeping the post painted, clean and : sanitary. Worse still, with all this excess of brasshats, .it is true that there is a shortage of captains and Heutenants to train the troops.

8 =» 8 B= the. critic didn’t know the problem. We - *¥ learned in the World War that getting and traine ing all the needed soldiers is easy. But we also learned that we have to have trained professional

1 staff and command officers. That takes years.

The greatly increased number of field officers are not needed and are not there merely to administer and command the 170,000 odd men in the regular’ Army. Under our National Defense Law the U, S, Army is also the National Guard, the Organized. Reserves and all new formations drafted in war. The , officers of the Regular Army are the trained material | for staff and command for brigades, divisions, Army corps and field armies not now in existence, There are far too many of them for the needs of the standing Army, in the grade of field officer, and not enough. in the lower grades. While it is grotesque, nobody has suggested a gen, sible solution of how to keep the higher officers for an army of more than a million men appropriately - oc.cupied in an army of less than 200,000. : Le es HERE is another trouble. In order to reward civilian World War officers who wanted to cone tinue in the peacetime Hpeulats, a great lump of them were taken in at about the same rank right after the. war. This stagnated promotion. The only way . around that was legislation to promote them whether there were commands for them or not. The result is a lot more majors than battalions. Inventing a job where there is none can’t fool anybody. That is where _ ‘the absurdity enters. : Finally, this great blanket of supernumerary ‘majors again smothers promotion above the grade of captain. The moment hope of advancement dies, dry rot sets in, The country can’t afford that. sg

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

ls Necessary to Organize for Peace Just as It Is for Conflict.

Nv YORK, Aug 13.—People who believe that Americans should commit themselves toa pelicy - of complete isolation from: the rest of the world deny - indignantly that they are callous to injustice and cruelty beyond our borders. Indeed, I heard ‘some .manifest sympathy in subdued tones for the demos: cratic cause in China and Spain. The hatred of war is in itself a numsnitafian ime pulse, and I have not the slightest doubt: of the sincerity of those who contend that peace can be secured -only by stopping our ears and mouths and pretending that we are cut off from the rest of the world. To. be sure, I do not share this point of view. Lt . The fact that we can be self-supporting, even though we build a wall against all the world outside, is not enough. Already there are forces inside our - borders that are eager to swing us from democracy: to: . fascism, which is in itself the most pitiless kind of war. Peace cannot be won without struggle. It is necessary to organize for peace Just as it is necessary to erganize for war. ‘Life has a way of catching up with those who would secede from the hard facts of existence. But it seems to me that of late the isolationists are depart ing from their own program of complete neutrality in word and thought and deed. They bégan to choose their side. And, tragically enough, the men and measures which they serve, by indirection at least, are hardly tHose which should enlist the- support of humanitarians. Those who believe that peace can be’ secured only by co-operation are severe in criticizing the Fascist forces. In rebuttal the isolationists.are rapidly taking over the role of apologists for Germany, Japan and Italy.

Hitler Indicts Himself

' We are reminded that: there was much lying and hysteria about German atrocities in. Belgium in 1914, That is quite true, but it does not mitigate in- any way the persecutions brought upon dissenters by Adolf ‘Hitler. It must be remembered that the very things to which Hitler points with pride constitute the indictment against him. Der Fuehrer himself does not deny the persecution of religious and racial minorities, No margin of error such as that which existed in Bel gium during battle is now present. - Other isolationists have been moved to say that possibly Japan is not an aggressor nation. They hold ‘to the comforting thought that ‘maybe it was China - which jumped the gun. Does it ever occur to pacifists of this particular point of view that even under isolation we have. been

beset with: wars? Along the front of Little ‘Steel en 788

men and women who dared to atk for a living: wage. Indeed, out of complete isolation can come that kind of superheated nationalism which is the very breeding ground for fascism.

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein UMPING from high places is not a popular choice

for self-destruction. The imitation factor §s, however, very strong, and blicity is given to any par

Frequently the question is raised as to whether or not business conditions seriously affect the suicide rate. The statisticians of large insurance companies to this point. They feel that

of | gona om ot rege pop uns 4 hunger, ill health, ‘mental