Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 September 1938 — Page 17

age )ONC

From Indiana ==Ernie Pyle

Ernie Relays Some Information on The Late Jack' London, a Relaxing Dog and a Frustrated Bicyclist.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2.—Here are some pearls (artificial) of wisdom picked up in our wanderings around New York. It seems fairly unlikely that any of them will win the Pulitzer Prize. ,

JACK LONDON QUEST—Since that intensely interesting biography of Jack London. has been running in The Saturday Evening Post, I have had a hankering to read some more of London's

books. Figuring that millions of other people might be wanting to do the same, I tried to find out if there was a great new surge of Jack London reading. Apparently not. Es Macmillan’s, who have inore than 30 of his titles, aren’t excited. The Jack London orders for July were up over June, but less than May. So what? They still have the plates on all his books but two. They could * run off more if the orders came in. Mr. Pyle They say it might be possible the bookstores are selling them - but haven’t got low enough to start ordering new copies yet. Well, even if the rest of you aren’t interested, I am going to start a one-man wave of reading Jack London books. I've never even read “Call of the Wild,” and I'm ashamed of myself. But I have read “The Star Rover,” which you probably never have. A NEW YORKER'S VACATION—Harry Kerr, a friend of “ours, decided to ride a bicycle from New York to an uncle’s home in western New York State. Round trip—about 800 miles. Friends drove him out threugh the congested Jersey districts, then he started pedaling. e got along pretty well. He made 90 miles the t two days. And, although he hadn’t cycled for years, he didn’t even have sore muscles. ‘But the second evening he coasted for five solid miles down into a town without ever having to pedal. And then he found: that to get out of town in any direction he would have to go uphill for five miles. That was the end. He put the bicycle on a train that night. Did you know you can check a bicycle, just like a handbag, without paying anything extra? You can. Harry checked his bicycle clear through, rode it around his uncle’s town a little, and then checked it back to New York.

This Chow Knows His Stuff

~~ DOG ACT—Of course you have to be good even to get before a Broadway audience. But I saw a

. vaudeville act the other day that was not only good,

it was practically supernatural. It was a dog act.

First, there wasn’t a single stunt I'd ever seen in any other dog act. Second, the dog was a Chow, which I had always thought was a surly, stubborn breed. This dog had been taught absolute timpness. Have you ever tried to make your own self completely limp all over? You know how hard it is? Then imagine explaining to a dog that you wanted him to be limp. _ The dog’s trainer was a happy young man named Robert Williams. He would set the dog up on his haunches on a table, and tell him to sit there. The dog would just crumple down on the table, as though ou’d held up a string and then let go of ‘it. Then Williams would lay the dog flat on the table, pull him halfway off, and bend his body down over the edge at right angles, as though he had no backbone. The finale, instead of limpness, was absolute rigidity. Williams took the dog by its forepaws, gave it a big swing up above his head, and the dog then stood on his owner's hand, head down, like an acrobat. And, for the climax, the dog raised one paw and

‘ stood there on one foreleg, his body sticking straight

up. Which is something very few humans can do.

My Diary

By Mrs. Hleavor Roosevelt

First Lady te Receive Youth Who

Played in Picture ‘Elephant Boy.’

H™: PARK, Thursday—The young boy who acted in the moving picture “Elephant Boy,” is now coming to this country. He has asked to come to see me in Washington the latter part of this month and I am looking forward to this opportunity of talking with him. Last night I read a book about him called “Sabu,” by Frances Flaherty. It was written for children but I think grown people will also enjoy the charming, simple story and the interesting

pictures. It will take you less than an hour to read and it will give you a conception of the life of a little boy left alone in the world with no father or mother to protect him. He lived and played with the elephants. and gained an understanding and a feeling for them which no human being has for animals unless he really associates with them intimately as a child. I think the most charming part of this story is the little boy's feeling when his particular elephant is sick and he goes and sits beside him and talks to him. When I was a child, I always liked Kipling’s “Jungle Books” and I like them still. In fact, I think my affection for animals and my appreciation of their intelligence has grown with the years. One of the things I look forward to most in the future is having dogs of my own again. That is why I hope to spend a good part of my time in the country, for big dogs should not live in cities any more than they have to, they belohg to country life. I hope to have both big and little dogs again. I have heen promised two Snowden setters and a Scottie already, and some day I hope to see them running through our woods.

Gets M¥%nhuscripts of Spirituals

I have to go to New York today to see some . people, but I will be back again late in the afternoon.

Nj It seems a waste of a very beautiful day, for the sun

is shining again. But then, I am fortunate not to have to go very day of the week, as I see ‘50

., many people do When I take an early morning train.

The otifer day-I~was very much interested to re< ceive the manuscript of two old Negro spirituals which I was fold liad never been written down or published. My correspondent wrote them down as he heard them sung and sent them to me because he knew how interested I was im having these native songs of our country preserved. Most of us are familiar with only the very well-known spirituals. The other day, twc of my guests who heard the quintet from Tuskegee, had never heard the spiritual _which I call “The Walls of Jericho.” ‘It ds one I particularly like. We really ought to take more in{erest in the preservation of all the old songs, whather they are Negro Spiriuals or’the early white folk songs. id

Bob Burns Says—

OLLYWOOD, Sept. 2.—I was reading the other day where ‘the crooks of this country: cost the Government and its citizens several billion dollars every year. I couldn’t understand how this was pos-

> sible unt a wealthy lady explained it to me in a

round about way. She was ravin’ about a maid of hers that stole her diamond necklace 4 She said, “These crooks not c=2= Jl from honest people, but they beat our Goverfi ent out of the income tax on their crooked gain.” I says, “Well, if you're sure the maid stolé the necklace, why don't you tell the pclice?” and the: lady says, “Well, I can’t yp well do that hecalize 1 smuggled ihe the necklace

Prison

By Willis Thornton NEA Service Staff Writer

ACKSON; Mich., Sept. 2. ‘—The terrible “torture cell-block” of the State Prison of Southern Michigan has become an ice cream stand. The entrance to the block, through which men not long ago passed to the “torture cells,” is filled with the equipment of an ice cream - cigaret - and - candy store to which convicts come to trade their earnings in prison shops for little extra delicacies. Dusty and empty are the cells in which men were forced to stand bolt upright in an iron frame for as long as eight hours, often to be carried away, screaming and gibbering, to the state insane asylum. Gone is the lockstep, gone the striped uniforms, gone the: brutal days in the dark “hole” on bread

and water.

Abandonment of the traditional methods of prison punishment has become possible through new disciplinary methods which make the Michigan institution unique. ' Only a few years ago this prison was the target of bitter criticism in the Osborne Association survey of

penal conditions. Today it is the

largest modern penitentiary in the country, and the American Prison Association in October will hear at

“its St. Paul convention the story of

how the Jackson institution has turned from a reservoir of resentment into & house of hope. f t J # HE . abandoned where convicts now buy candy bars is no relic of a dark

past age. It was completed only °

about 10 years ago. Each cell has an ordinary steel door with a slide panel through which food may be pushed. Just inside this door is a second barred door, built on a curve. Between the two doors

there is barely room for.a man to -

stand erect. And between these two men were made to stand. They could not fall, no matter how agonizing became their weariness, for the narrow barred cage prevented it. If the man survived and returned’ to his mates in the general prison, he was an object of respect and awe to them —he was a sure-enough “tough guy.” : That is where the disciplinary system of Warden Joel R. Moore comes in. Warden Moore creates no heroes among his intractable prisoners. One form of his punishment is known at the prison as “toplock,” referring to a system of individual “Yocks at the top of cell doors so arranged that they do not open when the master lever is thrown to open all the doors in a row. In “toplocking,” a man is simply

kept in his own cell, and taken °

out only once a day to the dining room for a single meal, He gets no “yard privileges” at all. He just sits in his accustomed place to think while the othersjin the row tumble out for meals ahd walk past his cell to the shops, to play baseball in the “yard.” For the first few days it sounds like a “soft touch,” but it soon grows irksome. To the others the prisoner is just asap. / ® 8 8 HE refinement - of this discipline, for more severe cases, is removal to a solitary cell, where all ‘privileges, even.smoking, and all clothing but a jumper, are also deried. The cell is light gnd airy. The man gets three meals a day. But he stays there until he decides he is ready to obey the rules and submit to discipline. This is called “reduction to grade.” The dullest man soon gets bored with this. The longest any prisonor has been able to stand it is 104 ays “Onder ‘old-time systems of punishment ‘in the hole on bread and

cell-block

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2: 1938

ithout Torture

Science Displaces Whipping Stocks i in Michigan’ Ss Model 1 Penitentiary

to prisone with a administered in grim - earnest. 3

water’ a man soon grew numb, his: perceptions became dull. He

was really only half-conscious after the first couple of days,” explains Warden Moore. “Smouldering resentment and seething hatred kept his spirit up and enabled him to see the period through. : “But. our men get three squares

. a day. They are still able to think - and ponder. Instead of heroes to

the other men, théy just look foolish, having thrown away their privileges. And they just stay there, too, until they are ready to say ‘uncle.’ ”

N° 4997 sits sullen and silent

staring down at the edge of

a long table. The prison’s Behavior Clinjc, science’s most modern device for attaining justice even behind prison bars, is about to hear the case.

“I didn’t want to work in the

laundry,” the boy says simply. The members of the Behavior Clinic glance at one another around ‘the table, Dr. Sydney Moscowitz, psychologist; Samuel Wenger, chaplain; Clark Greenstreet and Dr. R. W. McLain, sociologists; George Francis, educational director; Dr. David P. Philips, director of classification; Richard Andree, vocational director, and Dr. W.'B. Huntley, chief surgeon. Their. problem. is not only. to discipline the prisoner, but to find out, if possible; why he stepped back from the mangle in the laundry ‘and refused. to work.

~ After the prisoner has told his

whole story, he is sent out of the room, and the committee goes to work. ; The surgeon notes that the man is physically fit for the work. The psychologists observe that past tests have shown the man to bea sentimental case. The ' sociologists: contribute the fact that he never had a real job before coming to the penitentiary. The educational director observes

The old way . . . Richard Andree, who now teaches useful trades at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, poses here

The Behavior: Clinic in action at the Michigan prison. Penal officials: who compose ‘the clinic go thoroughly into each breach of discipline.

that the man has no training

for any other work, not even the

tailor shop, to' which he wanted A deputy warden cuts

transfer. in with the. fact that six similar cases have come up in the laun-

dry, and: that it “looks like the:

boys had. gotten: together.” 8 8's

B= and forth goes ‘the dis’

cussion. At last a vote is taken, each man stating ‘what, in

his opinion, the punishment ought, to be. If there is disagreement, the

debate resumes, until all are won over to a single verdict. Then the

prisoner- is brought back: and told:

what it is. “You've Es to realize that you're

Snbireds as y Bcond:Class Matter , 8t Postotfice, Indianapolts, Ind.

~The new ‘way. « + + The prisoner in “toplock” is kept in his cell,

given his regular meals and gets no “yard privileges” at all. ner who need never fear that this punisnment will be touch” for ‘the first few ‘days, this punishment becomes i ol

A “soft

the recalcitrant convict soon becomes co-operative.

They of the table. -

in prison here,” admonishes the deputy warden. “You can’t: pick

. your job, ‘any more than can ‘a

man outside.”

‘There: are. only seven disci- :

plinary cases for the day. Each is taken up with: ‘the same. meticulous care. : ‘wo. » : ¢ EARLY -an hour is devoted to one man with a good seven-

‘year ‘record and. due for. parale,

who, ‘as a trusty, was given ‘a

prison truck to road-test after

repairs and failed to return at the

time specified. Instead he and:

- another man. bought a-botfle ' of * wine, which ‘was found ‘half-empty

in the truck ‘When they: did. Te-

: decide why the prisoner broke the rule, and what's to be done about it. The prisoner is at the far end

turn. Pleas for leniency in’ thls case with so long a clean record,

.and with parole so near, brought this comment

from Warden Moore: “Broken faith is ‘one thing we won’ tolerate. ‘We

trusted this man, and he broke

faith with us. Parole or no parole, he must be disciplined, even

_ though it postpones his parole.”

- “How,” asks Warden Moore, “are

you going to reform a man by just letting him sit idly in a cage? You

must try to find what is in’ his mind, so you will know what can be ‘done to help him, Then you can do it.” At Southern Mishigdn prison trying.

they are

the Administration but he’s been

was sentenced to the State Farm for 10 years.

Side Glances—By Clark :

Everyday Moyies—By Wortman

TEST YO Ui R KNOWLEDGE

1—Which. is ‘the second Inrgost: .city in population in Italy?

der of -the ‘Legion of’ Honor? ;

.'4~What is a cygnet? ' 5—In Greek chronology, what

. was an olympiad?

| - 6—Do male mosquitoes bite? ' " 7—In which counfry is: the

Province of Ontario?

'8—Which two signers of the

. Constitution - dents?

Aware lar; re of all the colors:

A ay the spectrum, from red to.

violet inclusive.

: NG leon Bonspanta; 3-Napo

: young swan : 5—A period of tour - years:

le he Ef Hare washington ‘and James Madison. :

os = 8

ASK THE TIMES Suclone a 3-cent stamp. Jor . when addressing of fact or Inte uation e Indiana, Times

. By Raymond Clipper

Those Happy Over Roosevelt t Purgs | Losses Had Better Take Heed off "THis Ineredeing ‘Gimme’ Campaigns. VV ASHINGTON, Sept. 2.—Opponents of

President Roosevelt will have their fun now building air castles over the defeat

| which he took in South Carolina.

Although Mr. Roosevelt: did not step | in against “Cotton Ed” Smith in South Carolina as forcéfully as he did against Senator George in Georgia nor as forcefully as he intends to against the handsome Senator Tydings in Maryland over the coming week-end, he made it plain where he stood. Voters in South Carolina knew Mr. Roosevelt hoped that “Cotton Ed” Smith would be defeated, but’ a majority wanted their old Senator to stay in Washington and fight for white supremacy. So he stays. Friends of Mr. Roosevelt can concoct alibis to explain away the defeat but the . plain fact is that Mr. Roosevelt's advice was rejected. “Cotton Ed” is no great help to

here for 30 years and his re-elec- ~~ My. Clapper tion for another term is no overwhelming calamity. Mr. Roosevelt has lost a nume

| ber of battles before this. He has made mistakes,

stuck out his neck, taken unnecessary beatings, but he continues fighting for -the- kind of government that he thinks is necessary to save democracy from dry rot and there is no indication in our past history nor in the history of this Administration that any such fight has been in vain. Defeats along the way have been but passing incidents.

Thuhder in California

‘You can hear the thunder in California, where they have just nominated for the Senate a man who ran on a platform to give every person over 50 years old $30 every Thursday. Sheridan Downey, who has defended this wild-eyed scheme, is a former "brain truster for Dr. Townsend, He beat Senator McAdoo for the Democratic nomination. Mr. Roosevelt ine dorsed: Senator McAdoo, so you can write it down if you want to as a defeat for Mr. Roosevelt. But more than that it was a victory for the so-called “lunatic fringe.” Along with Mr. Downey for the Senate, Cali« fornia Democrats nominated for Governor Culbert Ol= son, former manager for Upton Sinclair who had the grandiose EPIC plan. Pressure is growing again for. these short cuts to Utopia. Even the conservative D. Worth Clark, in winning the Democratic Senatorial nomination with Republican help in. the recent Idaho primary, save the Townsend scheme his blessing. Piling up strength for the coming session of Gon= gress is a twin sister of the Townsend scheme, the “General Welfare Act.” A powerful old-folks organe ization is lobbying for it. You'll hear much about it this winter. The “gimme” drive, which lapsed when Mr. Townsend was spilled, has pulled itself together again. Mr. Roosevelt’s social-security plan took much of the wind out of the Townsend movement. His share the-wealth program pulled some of Huey Long's teeth. Apparentiy Mr. Roosevelt is going to have to buck the crackpots again, because the air is full of dreamy schemes that get. votes for politicians who.

will promise anything to be elected. It will take a

popular. politician, who has the confidence of the bulk of the people, who knows -how to do the job, to hold the crackpots down. If it comes to: that, the Tories won't be complaining

about Roosevelt “invading” the states to help save

them from the long-haired crowd, will they?

3 Jane Jordan— Girl Is Likely to Express Love For Defeated Boy Out of Sympathy.

EAR JANE -JORDAN—I - have been -going with a girl for several months and we fell in love

with each other. Several days ago I was looking over her dresser and found a letter:from a fellow she had gone with before she knew ‘me. This fellow has been in jail for about 90 days and just recently In his letter he wrote that he loved and missed her and never would forget her. In her letter to him she wrote the same but still she says she loves me and even wants to marry me. Do you think she could love me after what she has said in these letters? A GROCERY BOY.

Answer—What right had ye you to read the girl's lete ters? If you had not read: the letters you would have been none the wiser and the whole thing would have blown over without causing you distress. Surely you aren’t optimistic enough to believe that this affair will outlast 10 years. .I have no faith in the vows of love exchanged in these letters. The man was lonely and defeated when he wrote and the girl felt sorry for him, but she isn’t going to wait 10 years ' for his release, never fear. ” 2 2

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I am 17 years old and have a child six months old. The child’s father knows nothing about it. I do not want to get married, but I do want the child with me. She is now in an insti tution as I haven't any means of caring for her. One boy of my age whom I lgve has asked me to marry m but I don’t know how he would act if h Fney my past life. Should I tell him and, if everyt all right, marry, or should I live alone and try fo a care of the child some way. Or would it be: better leave the chil in ‘an institution? WONDERING MOTHER.

Asweis Barely. you wouldn't consider Erving 4 % 17-year-old boy, but if you do you have no choice ex= cept to tell him the facts. Your past mistakes are your own: business, but when you have a heavy res SPOS your future husband has a right to know about it : Whatever you do, protect the child from knowledge of the fact that you are not married. The best solu« tion would be for you to marry a good man willing to adopt the baby. If you can’t support it, the next best thing would be to let a responsible family adopt it. Family life is better for a child than institutional life, I am sure you would fare better if you went to work and learned to earn your own living hefore you try to settle the love problem. If you had even -g little

‘money ‘coming in yon could afford to hoard the child

with some kindly family who would guard yous, secret. . JANE JORDAN.

in letter ‘Jan Jordan. who will 5 ——— Jour Sroblems in Llette aan Jpn o y

New Books Today Public Library Presents— 3

“The Sisters” Myron. Brinig told a gripping story life. His latest novel, May: FLAVIN, (Farrar) introduces a different type of one a trifie rough and entirely uncultured but. ‘mirable. May, daughter of Officer Hogan of

the country—“her own little place .

| ihe from porch, a ees and a peta To

garden.”