Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 25 August 1938 — Page 14

' ROY W. HOWARD President

~ daily (except Sunday) by Z The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co, 214 W, ~_ Maryland St.

~~ Scripps - Howard News- - paper Alliance, NEA : Service, and Audit Bu- . vreau of Circulations.

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

LUDWELL DENNY Editor

MARK FERREE Business Manager

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered ‘by carrier, 12 cents a week.

Owned and published

‘Mail subscription rates in Indiana. $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

Rlley 5551

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

—

Member of United Press,

THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1938

* HOPKINS, JONES AND SHEPPARD : HE plight of the poor politician, trying to raise an “bh-

TP

is getting worse by leaps and bounds.

‘est dollar by putting the bee on Government employees,

~ First Harry Hopkins cracked down on politics-in-relief

> by ordering a couple of WPA straw bosses in: Kentucky to “be given nine lashes each with a powderpuff.

Then Jesse Jones’ RFC, suddenly holier-than-thou, bounced its Atlanta counsel for supporting Senator George,

“who is balking .at the Presidential castor oil even though

it hurts Mr. Roosevelt more than it does the Senator. But the RFC’s straight face was marred by a tongue in its cheek, for it continued to pay $8000 or so a year to Tom Corcoran, the President’s favorite political axman. (If

. anybody in Washington were so naive as to suggest that

% ;

‘ Tommy the Cork confines his activities to giving the RFC

legal advice, he would be laughed out of town.)

Now, however, comes Chairman Sheppard of the Senate Committee on Campaign Expenditures and serves notice

* that persons on the Federal payroll must steer clear of

politics (at least the money end of politics) on pain of fine

© and imprisonment. And Senator Sheppard gives every in-

dication of meaning what he says. | He points out that the U. S. Criminal Code makes it a crime for any Congressional candidate or Federal officeholder to have anything to do (directly or fnoireriiy) ih raising political funds from any other persenon the Federa payroll. / : He interprets the law as meaning/ that no candidate for the Senate or House can accept money from even a WPA . worker or a pensioned war veteran, let alone a postmaster or an RFC lawyer. And that goes, he says, even if the candidate himself never sees the money, but lets somebody - who isn’t directly at the public trough—Dave Lasser of the Workers Alliance, for instance—collect from the hired hands and spend the money in the candidate’s behalf. * Mr. Sheppard thus goes a long, long way farther than did Messrs. Hopkins and Jones. Indeed, he has bitten off a mighty big chew. It will be interesting to see how far he can get in turning words into action.

DISORGANIZED LABOR - GROUP appointed by the President to study industrial labor relations in Great Britain and Sweden is drafting its report. A hint of what the report will say was given by William Green following his visit to Hyde Park, where Mr. Roosevelt for the first time conceded that the Wagner Labor Relations Act is in need of revision. fp

“The President fold me a very interesting story,” said : Mr. Green, “in connection with the study. He talked yes- ]

terday with Marion Dickerman, a member of the group, and’/inquired of her what outstanding experience she had

. where the survey was concerned.”

The net of that experience, as reported by Mr. Green, was that in Great Britain and Sweden “they behave, while here in America we are still at war.”

How much that war has cost us, and is costing, is incal-

culable. But it is understatement to say that it has been

Ks “== one of the greatest contributing causes to turning the up-

5

swing into a downswing and the second depression. In Great Britain and Sweden collective bargaining is accepted as‘a matter of course. In this country there are still employers who believe unionism can be stopped. In those European countries labor is really organized. In

_ America it is engaged in a civil war, in which are involved © communism, the party line, fellow travelers, the situation

in Spain, -and all manner of issues extraneous to what

- unionism is all about. the general public, including labor, pays and pays.

The victory will be one in which

As witness—says Mr. Green about the A. F. of L. campaign to lick Harry Bridges and the C. I. O. in the mari- - time field: : “If our teamsters refuse to bring goods to be loaded by C. I. O. longshoremen, and if our sailors refuse to take out ships that are loaded by C. I. O. longshoremen, Mr. Bridges will be in a very embarrassing position.” So he will be. But so will be the rest of us. Port activities halted, shippers idle, crops rotting for lack of “transportation, industrial products “frozen,” farm hands, clerks, everyone dependent on the free flow of commerce—let your imagination play on the expensive by-product of such a paralysis. - The fussing and fuming and general disruption which have been the fruit to date of the Wagner act, which was to have brought peace in industry; the innumerable tieups resultant from die-hard employers too stubborn to realize that the world do move; jurisdictional disputes— those give vivid testimony that we are far from the much-to-be-desired state of mind which prevails in Great Britain and Sweden. There collective-bargaining relations between employers and employees are accepted as routine. And labor is actually organized. Here it is disorganized. :

POETIC JUSTICE :

EMEMBER what happened when D. J. Driscoll, Pennsylvania Congressman, exposed the fake telegrams sent to Washington in an effort to defeat the Utility Holding Co. Act? In the next election, the utility boys in Pennsylvania “got” Driscoll. But no sooner was Driscoll defeated than Governor Earle appointed him a member of the Pennsylvania Utility Commission—thereby . giving him considerably more power over utilities than he had ever had as a mere Congressman. Comes now a parallel case. Some time ago Alexander

x3 ; Speer was ousted as president of the Virginia Public Serv-

ice Co: He was fired because he resisted the efforts of the Associated Gas & Electric Co.—the Howard Hopson holding company—to milk the Virginia company. (Incidentally, it was the Hopson crowd which originated the fake-telegram fiasco.) Then Mr. Speer was appointed chief engineer of PWA’s power division, and as such now has supervision over PWA loans to municipal power projects. = ; + -- Mr. Hopson apparently is a glutton for punishm

‘which: may continue producing

facts

Fair Encigh "©

By Westbrook Pegler

Mailbag Provides Our Columnist | With Some Fuel for’ Argument on’ The Issue of Socialized ‘Medicine. |

EW YORK, Aug. 25.—It is coming on toward the | deadline; so-there is not enough time today to settle the socialized medicine issue. However, there . are some letters at hand which will do for fuel for argument, one contending that a doctor is overpaid at $200 for doing an appendectomy and saving a life. “we could not do without water for a month,” says this one, and adds that we would starve for lack of food, proceeding then to challenge, “Is a

month’s supply of water necessarily worth $200? And one who charged a starving man $200 for a single meal wouldn't he be regarded as devoid of humanity?” Well, & drink of water has been known to sell high

in certain frontier places, and in such cases if a man |

lacked a dollar or whatever the price, the price might as well have been $200 as far as he was concerned. The same argument goes for the single meal to save a life. Many a bum with a thin dime in his

pocket has been turned back into the snow because |

the price of a flop was 15 cents, and there is just no reckoning the number of hungry men who have gazed in at the windows of restaurants, and continued to starve because they couldn't buy a cup of coffee and a roll, much less a meal. 2 = = ; Jeet after prohibition began the Salvation Army placed in charge of one of its down-and-out clubs one of the great big clean-living gentlemen of the ¥Y. M. C. A. type, who would strut his muscularity and his particular interpretation of Christianity by heaving out all the sick and snaggle-toothed and busted bums. He wanted only God-fearing respectables, and he used to boast of the number of his permanent lodgers who had steady jobs, forgetting that his place was nominally a charitable institution and that these dead-beats were able to pay reasonable rates for pri=vate quarters. *h The same dead-beat temperament takes advantage of free or nominal fee medical and surgical service intended for the truly poor. I doubt that even in frontier desét places any man ever perished for lack of the price of a glass of water, but there are thousands of doctors who give away free the same service that would be unavailable to desperately sick people if they insisted on their full fees. But a little lower specimen of insect life than the doctor who won’t treat the sick poor free is that type of person who can pay a reasonable amount but imposes on the doctor’s charity. * = 8 ‘DOCTOR writes, “I spend half my time in charity ‘wards and clinics,” and tells of a midnight call to a suicide case which required daily service for 10 days. When the patient got well he sent a bill, and finally sued. But on the very day the court gave judgment for his fee the patient jumped to another state. Another doctor says that his British friends say the British panel doctor is less careful, considerate and conscientious than others. , And here is a man-charged $2000 for an abdominal operation who thinks the doctor robbed him to ‘equalize his service to the poor. “Why shouldn't the free patients be told that I, not the doctor, donated the operation,” he says. A fair suggestion, but listen to him. He gets $10,000 a year, he says, after his income taxes are paid, and He Ininks $2000 is too much to pay for the saving of his life.

Business By John T. Flynn

Weekly Business Charts Don't Give ‘ Complete Picture, Economist Says.

EW YORK, Aug. 25.—Almost daily one can see in ,N\ . varieus: publications reports—frequently in chart form or at least contained in index numbers— describing the weekly course of business. : It would be well for the reader to be warned about such charts. First of all it is impossible to chart the course of business activity weekly. The factors which measure business activify are not available quickly enough, a : It is the practice. of such -chart makers to get

| around this difficulty by using such data as is avail-

able weekly, But as such data is incomplete the picture of business activity presented by the chart is incomplete. I am prompted to call attention to this by a report that business activity has increased in the last week by 2 per cent. No human being can possibly make such an assertion with any authentic facts to support it. After all, what is meant by business activity? There are two types of charts dealing with this. One is an outright business activity chart which attempts to measure the state of activity in American business as a whole at the moment. The other is a char: which isolates certain special activities which, while not picturing business as it exists at the moment, do contain: premonitory values, tending to indicate whether business will rise or fall.

Retail Sales Important

In a business activity chart it is a profound mistake to base its movements on only those factors which are available weekly because so many of them are limited to a very small area of business. It is, for instance, wrong to take the production of automobiles and steel and call that a measure of production. It happens that there are industries which use steel after steel has begun to taper. off. . : : It is also a mistake to leave retail sales out of a business index chart. There are times when production is active, but retail sales not so much so and other times when production drops off while retail sales stay up. A good business activity chart should contain the about: banking movements—preferably bank: debits—general production, not just production of, autos and steel, capital construction, retail trade, possibly wholesale trade. But the facts about these trade movements are simply not available. : This is said merely to encourage thie reader not to be too much taken in by charts showing these violent . upward and downward swings and supposed to reflect

. the movements of business almost as soon as they

take place.

A Women's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

1 IKE most women, I enjoy a good cry at the movies. 4 The preview of “Marie Antoinette” offered a swell opportunity, and it pleased me to see that everyone else in the audience was also dripping tears. After we had been released from the clutches of the past, we left the theater with our emotions in a state of turmoil and our noses red, but a new respect for the moving picture art. :

It has been predicted that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will lose money on “Marie Antoinette.” If they do it will be to the everlasting shame of American movie

audiences, for it is one of the greatest pictures ever |

made. The production is well cast, expertly directed, enhanced with lavish sets and yet never affronts the

history student by wandering too far from the facts. |

: it would be a shame for any movie fan to miss this picture. : : : : "It is also to be ho ‘that those to whom “Marie Antoinette” is only the story of a madcap girl who becomes a great woman and a great queen, moving inevitably to her tragic end, will go a second time in

order to obtain the social implications behind the

tale. ;

For out of the revolt against all that Marie An- |

toirette and her kind represented, democracy was born. Out of that purge of tears and blood, freedom

“and likerty appeared, and that faint, frail dream of

the brotherhood iof man flickered once again within the {msginntion of the people. EAE ‘Today democracy, so-hardly won, is threatened on every side. Over the earth dn the black shadow of tyranny. That's why “Marie Antoinette” is a sig-

« nificant and heartening picture. It reminds us that

what men have done, men can do again. To have-

five ml lie mpeg

/ eaken !—By Talburt i.

5 ad SP ae a ERPS S 0

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

NEW DEAL ERRS IN COTTON POLICY, IS VIEW By James R. Meitaler Before protective tariff days, the South shipped the bulk of its cotton, its money crop, to England, recelving in exchange cheap British goods. The tariff shut these goods out. Cotton ships returned empty, and a two-way freight came out of the price ofj the cotton. When the South bought Ameri-

can-made goods, it paid the English price plus the tariff. Through protection, the South received less money for its cotton, fewer goods for its money. That is the fundamental cause of the South's eco-

“| nomic position—selling at a world

price and buying at an American price. The same is true of all agricultural products when we produce a surplus above .our home market's demand. : ? 5 n The error in the New Deal's cot‘ton policylis in trying to obtain for the cotton plantér an American price for his whole crop, when that price should apply only to the cotton consumed at home. The protective tariff protects industrial goods only when they are sold at home. Abroad, foreign demand and competition set the price. But, while the manufacturer can set the price for home consumed goods, when the farmer raises a surplus he is unable to do so. The surplus sets a world price for the whole crop. ' Yet, if the farmer must pay to industry an American price, higher than the world price, and through that an American wage to labor, higher than the world wage, who can deny that in equal justice the farmer is entitled to the same American price and wage for the produce of his farm which American consumes?

- 8-8 RFC AID URGED FOR SOUTH

By Times Reader In our Southern States, cotton economy, which the President calls “the nation’s No. 1 problem,” is as much due to high interest rates as to high freight rates. Southern sharecroppers pay as much as 20 per cent for crop loans from private sources. : : The RFC should set up a small loan division in the Southern States to provide small producers with

loans at not more than 4 per cent interest. Of course Jesse Jones may

serve and happy money lending ground. ' The important thing, however, is to spread buying power to our Southern customers for North-

(Times readers ars 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.)

ern factory products. Business is business—let RFC do the banking for small business. : 8-8 8 SUGGESTS NEW PHRASE— ‘CORRIGAN MISTAKE By R. M. L. ’ That spalpeen of a Douglas Corrigan not only gave us a laugh, a half-holiday, tickled us pink with his wit, and pleased us with his level-headedness, but .may.. have converted his name into an adjective and contributed it to our vocabulary. Henceforth there may be two kinds of mistake; the orthodox kind, and a “Corrigan mistake,” which is no mistake at all. If Sonny, after eating the forbidden green apples, should say “It’s all a mistake.” Mom could well reply, “Yes, indeed, a ‘Corrigan mistake.’” If Hines should plead, “It's all a mistake,” Judge Pecora might reply, “Yes, I believe it is—a ‘Corrigan mistake.’ ” : If the ‘boy friend should steal a kiss’and say it’s a mistake — well, that’s obviously a “Corrigan mistake.” : Even this contribution is a mis-

kick about invasion on his own pre- |

IN A GARDEN

By DOROTHY JEFFERS COYLE

A row of flowers along the fence In rainbow colors bright

“| will make the coldest heart beat

fast, : "Tis such a glorious sight.

Oriental poppies, flaming red - Against delphiniunts lovely blue, ‘With hollyhocks tall along. the fence \ * : In every shade and hue.

O let the doubter linger here In nature’s fairy bower, And he will feel the beauty Projected by a flower.

DAILY THOUGHTS

Blessed are the pure in heart: ; for they shall see God.—Matthew 5:8. A

¥

s the flower is before the fruit, so faith is before good works. —Whately. : :

take—the Corrigan kind. Perhaps our laughing Irish flier is filling a long-felt want in that respect. : t J » 8. DIES COMMITTEE TACTICS SCORED By E. C. Carlson The Dies Committee appointed by the last Congress to investigate unAmerican activities apparently has deteriorated into something even more un-American than the various activities it was supposedly created to investigate. J It would seem that before any investigation was attempted the American public should have been given a bill of particulars as to what constitutes un-American activities. Then it would certainly have been helpful to the various committee members if a few days had been spent in studying the Constitution, in particular the Bill of . Rights, so that each and every one of them would have had some elementary guidance as to what our

organic law proclaims in regard to |

freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition the Government for redress of grievances. : A list of definitions would have also been helpful, since one person’s liberty may mean someone else’s death warrant.

After having seriously considered

the above, thé committee would have been somewhat prepared for their delicate task of discreetly delving into their fellow citizen's private and public files, trying to ascertain

whether, in theif enthusiasm for a |

cause, someone had overstepped his Constitutional rights. : Instead of such a procedure, we are dreated to a public spectacle where any and everyone who can qualify as having a grudge against someone else, may be allowed to air his grievances, accuse his fellow citizens, defame their characters, and all without’ presenting any evidence, except so-called hearsay, without the accused man having his day in court; If this is to be called American justice, then,®indeed, we are hitting an all-time low in jurisdictional procedure. Mr. Bronhy, of the C. I. O,, was accused by Mr. Frey, of the A. F. of L., of being sympathetic with the Communists, since he had once visited Russia, and spoke highly of their achievements. By the same line of reesoning, Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh, who are ncw visiting the annual air show in Moscow, and have announced their iitentions of touring the country, may be accused of subversive. tactics, should they admit at a later date that all governments have many things in common, and that the Russian people have made measurable progress in their standard of living during the past 10 years. .

——

[ore aumHoR ats; Wome

Fal

en don't know how to when to smoke or 2 to . He.says a: woman taps CB

‘meaning, freedom must be rewon in every generation. Liberty may languish for a time, but the peo-

®

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

£40ULD CHILDREN. BE GIVEN TEMPORARY

50 THEY-EAN CHANGE ‘| THEM LATER ON IF THEY. DO NOT LIKE | THEM? i

Cmmna—

on one, end usually without know-' ing why, just as a dog turns Ix

quit smoking overnight while men would go right on smoking—both. in this world and the next.

» 2 » PRINCESS KROPOTKIN stated recently that this is a Chi-

I nese custom. Some children’s hames

indicate the parents could not have

‘| been in their right minds—if they

had any—when they christened their children. will occur to you. Most

of our

English names sound so pleasing to a oi] F ts should be parents si as

child a new one invented by the allowed—indeed

Gen, Johnson

| gumnawy BEACH, Del,

Painful examples

4¢t. I know one

| He wants to know whether the true and fancied evils | of undernutrition, particularly for sedentary workers,

msg

Ke Tig we

Says—

"Heavy Taxes, Not Violations of Antitrust Laws, Are Responsible For Inflexible Element in Prices.

‘Aug. 25~Thurman Arnold, the Government's new high-powered trust-buster, says that it is the aim of this Administration to raise prices that are too low, like wages and crop prices, and lower prices that are too high, like—but he doesn’t say precisely. He merely says ‘“high inflexible” prices, which he thinks are unlawfully “fixed” by great industrial corporations or combinations. af

With the main idea, nobody can disagree. It is not a low general price level or a high one that makes bad times. It is an unbalanced price level. When farm prices slump to 50 cent wheat and 30 cent corn and 5 cent: cotton, and steel and textiles and other things

- farmers buy don’t slump at all, industry loses a large

part of a market composed of more than 40 per cent of our people. That is why Mr. Wallace is bending

every effort to hold farm prices up from destructive

levels. Exactly the same considerations affect wages too low to be in balance. That is why this Administration has tried to put a “floor” under wages at least high enough to keep them from “starvation” levels. 2 8 = F course, when you get the prices of commodities, like farm products and of all human effort too high, you raise the cost of production and hence all prices, and that could leave you just where you started from. But as Mr. Arnold puts it, you only raise the unduly depressed prices, not all prices. He also wants to lower unduly high prices ‘which would probably result in a slight elevation of the whole price structure but, according to the theory, leave it in better balance among all groups of the population. I have never been able to see much the matter with that theory but, except here and there for relatively short periods of time, I don’t know where Mr, Arnold is going to find enough prices unlawfully “too high” to make much of a dent in his part of the averaging process. : ‘He thinks that industry errs in not lowering its prices and producing overtime when slumps come. There is ohly one way that the average industry can do that and that is to take colossal losses. The profit element for the manufacturer in the average consumer’s price is so small a percentage that mere “hreak-even” operations would not move many goods. The Government's theoty is that increased volume due to low price would reduce the percentage of overhead and so restore profits at the lower price. 2 2 »

BY that is precisely the theory of mass-production as invented by American industry and practiced by it to the full extent that will produce the result for which the Government is asking. There may be a few spots in industry where prices are kept stiffly jacked up by some violation of the antitrust laws, but not enough to make any marked improvement in our economy by softening them. There is an inflexible element in industrial prices but that isn’t it. The cast-iron backbone of the price structure that can’t be cut is high inflexible taxes. It hurts everybody—farmers, workers and ine dustrialists alike. :

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Your Columnist Is Not Amused by

Testimony Before Dies Committee.

EW YORK, Aug. 25—This is written on the anniversary of ‘the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, “The good Shoemaker and the Poor Fish Peddler” were sentenced 11 years ago. : In an old column I found this: “A woman in the

courtroom said with terror, ‘It is death condemning life,” and for 11 years I have not written about Sacco and Vanzetti. It seemed to me that there was small point in turning back the page. Now I know that I was wrong, for in Washington I saw the shadow of the dead hand dance upon the wall, And the fingers wrote in air, “They shall not pass.” J. B. Matthews exorcised demons for a House committee. His voice became shrill and fervent, as he attacked the Youth Congress. And then upon a note of almost sheer hysteria he thrust out a thin arm and screamed that Shirley Temple was a “stooge” of the “reds.” The chairmair leaned forward eagerly and said, “Go on, professor.” The nanie of the chairman is Martin Dies, and it is pronounced as if it rhymed with cries or tries, or whatever else comes to your imagination. It might have been very funny, but I can assure you that it was not. Mr. Matthews is not a conscious humorist. Even in a modern age there are fair rewards for

‘those who preach and peach. But I Was not amused. ‘It was death condemning life,

And in the Southland—

”

And before I came to the witch hunt in the caucus room of the old House Office Building I had stopped at the National Press Club to compose a statement. There I met a newspaper reporter who had been covering the primary battles in Georgia and South Carolina. He reports that Ft. Sumter is being heavily shelled and that the Civil War is raging furiously along the entire front, : Cotton Ed Smith, of South Carolina, did not list his natal year in the Congressional Directory; however, it is generally believed he is in his 70s. And yet he has never been more active along the hustings. “It is quite remarkable to watch him,” said my informant. “He keeps his hands high over his head for more than an hour at a time, and he calls upon the name of God in almost every other sentence.” The “scholarly” Walter Franklin George is putting up a bitter resistance against Sherman's march to the sea. Gene Talmadge is telling the up-country farmers that the WPA is teaching toe dancing to boys and girls “who come from good Christian homes.” But it isn’t funny. Fingers of bone clutch at the bridle of progress. It is death condemning life. :

‘Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

SOME questions which are constantly in mind concerning disturbances of the heart have recently occupied the attention of the specialists in the diag-

‘nosis and treatment of heart disease.

Dr. Paul D. White has asked the question, “Is it simply socalled ‘wear and tear’ that is responsible for the increasing mortality among our young and mid-dle-aged men from coronary disease, or are there not other causes at present that in some manner result from our modern way of life?” He asks also “Why is it that under the age of 40 the incidence of coronary disease is 24 times greater among males than among females?” ; Dr. White wants to know if it really harms the arteries to eat diets rich in cream, butter and eggs.

‘more | have been responsible for bringing about an intrease

‘ a

.