Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 21 December 1938 — Page 18

* daily (except Sunday) by

The Indianapolis Times (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

ROY W. HOWARD | LUDWELL DENNY MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

Owned and published Price in Marion County, 3 cents a Copy; delivered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

{ i {

The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co. 214 W. Maryland St. i : I Member of United Press, Scripps = Howard DNewspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit! Bureau of Circulation.

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

RILEY 5551

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1938

~ “DOC” INDICTED RGANIZED Medicine Indicted as Trust,” says a headline. | | : Which gets into a big subject, very big indeed—one * that touches not only every doctor but every other son of ~ man who has been afflicted with any ill to which flesh is heir, from belly-ache to coronary thrombosis. : | This is an age of organization. And organization up to a point is essential in as intricate a civilization as ours. But organization can become too refined—whether it be organized business, organized art, organized labor, or or-

ganized professions.

So the real test in this suit against the American

© ization gone to seed—has the economic aspect been exalted © under the guise of professional ethics to a point where, as '_ the indictment alleges, the “peace and dignity of the United + States of America” are threatened? ! ; Without seeking to try the case or to restate all thie - issues set forth by the District of Columbia Grand Jury, ~ we do want to say this about “Doc”: : Whether he be on one side or the other in this contro- " versy between the American Medical Association and the “group health associations, we think that medicine, of all + occupations, is least motivated by the acquisitive impulse. ~ We've all needed Doc. We all have been willing to give our shirt and the fillings from our teeth if he would only come right now, and then we all have kicked about his bill if it was more than $2, after we got well. The very nature of his work—the strange ambition which makes one human being want to spend seven or eight years learning the anatomy of other human beings in order to keep their microbes straight—has always been a mystery to us. From the old country doctor to the most modern and steam-heated specialist, it’s a service that can’t, by its very nature, be essentially mercenary. But maybe this inherently noble vocation has become 'overorganized. Anyhow, that’s the question in this antitrust case.

THEY'RE NO HERMITS

RS. ROOSEVELT was thoroughly justified in asking the questions she asked this week. Taking notice that her appointment as a director of the Boston insurance firm of Roosevelt & Sargent has been criticized by some people, she inquired frankly— : : Does the American public want the President’s wife ~ and children to be White House hermits? Do voters want - the children of a President to be willing to go out and earn their own livings? Do they want a President’s wife who is willing to sacrifice all the interests she has built up and all her personal accomplishments? And what if some future President’s wife says she won't go to the White House at such a sacrifice? : The answers we think, are obvious. The American people—at least the great’ majority of them—want the ‘members of a President’s family to live their own lives in ‘their own way, as fully as that is possible. They don’t want ‘the members of a President’s family to take advantage of his official position for their private profit, and certainly there are mighty few people who would suspect Mrs. Roose‘velt of doing that. Her directorship of the insurance firm, for instance, ° is solely for the purpose. of protecting the interest of her son, James, who has a new job in the movies. | A President’s wife and children are more like goldfish ‘than hermits. They have precious little privacy, even if they; seek it diligently, and a family as active and unconventional as the Roosevelts is/ bound to be the constant subject of | public interest. Maybe this should not be so, but we don’t | know how it can be prevented. But the limelight Mrs. Roosevelt and her children share with her husband is, for the most part, friendly. She has at least the comfort of knowing that anything they might do would be criticized by somebody, and that most of their activities are viewed by most people with admiration —sometimes tinged with amazement.

THE RAILROADS LEARN

HE railroads seem to be growing a little more willing to learn by experience, which is a hopeful tendency. Last summer the Interstate Commerce Commission, against its better judgment, granted permission for coach fares to be raised from 2 cents a mile to 214 cents on the Eastern lines, and from 114 to 2 cents on the Southeastern lines. The increases have not resulted in more revenue ~ for the roads. Instead, they have resulted in fewer passengers and, consequently, less revenue. : Sa now the Southeastern lines are going back to 11/- . cent fares; and the Eastern lines, although they haven't retreated from their 214-cent basis, are making drastic reductions on holiday traffic and are preparing to offer extremely low round-trip fares for the World's Fair in New York. So long as they enjoyed a practical monopoly on the business of transportation, the railroads could boost their

revenues by boosting their fares. But now, obviously, every |

half-cent added to the cost of riding a mile by rail simply causes a great many people to use automobiles or busses instead, The law of diminishing returns clamps down.

FOUR DAYS TO HELP

EERE aren’t many days left in the Clothe-A-Child campaign, yin : Ls : Just, today, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Today, if all goes well, more than 1000 children will have been clothed for winter in this year’s campaign. But that 1000 mark, fine as it is, mears the job is only half done. As many more remain to be clothed. If you want to make a child genuinely happy, if you t to see the transition that occurs when you replace rn, shabby little garments with neat new

sh othe a needy c j g¥and, sa

Washington By Raymond Clapper

Editors' Example in Trying to Guard Integrity of the News Should Inspire Reform of Congressional Record.

(Batting for Westbrook Pegler)

ASHINGTON, Dec. 21—I have been reading the letter on freedom of the press which President Roosevelt sent to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the occasion of its 60th anniversary. ~ The President takes for his text some straight-for-ward shop talk which Grover C. Hall, editor of the

Montgomery (Ala) Advertiser, recently addressed to his fellow editors. Editor Hall, in a bulletin of the

his fellow editors to maintain the highest traditions of journalism and to be alert to protect the integrity of their news columns against the counting room.” : Mr. Roosevelt insists that there has been no infringement on the freedom of the press by his Administration, and he- says convincingly that one only has to read what the newspapers say bout his Administration to prove it. But he believes freedom of the press is endangered from within and cites the shop talk of Editor Hall to prove it.

ticians here think that an advertiser, duly equipped with horns and pitchfork, sits as censor in every newspaper office. Having been a Washington correspondent for 20 years, I wouldn’t know much about business office pressure on editorial departments. Editors and publishers vary, I suppose, as do politicians, in the extent to which they resist the pressure of special

interests. G°> publishers know that the value of the advertising space they sell increases. with the general confidence which readers have in the integrity of the newspaper. Short-sighted publishers, like shortsighted politicians, get caught up with in time, and lose both readers and advertisers. The example of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in actively discussing the importance of preserving the integrity of their news columns is one which Congress might well follow, particularly now when one of its conspicuous members is exposed as a front man using his position in the House of Representatives to lobby legislation sought by the illfated drug company controlled by the crook who just shot himself. Any newspaper that was as full of planted speeches and “payoff” puffs as the Congressional Record would be hooted into bankruptcy by its community.

® =n =»

CDENTALLY, politicians may be interested to know that one of the questions to which some editors are giving much attention now is the interlocking relations between machine politics and crime and corruption. = The prosecutions of Thomas E. Dewey in New York have aroused other communities and efforts of civic groups to break up these alliances are finding their leadership and chief support in the press. What politician, do you suppose, came down to Washington 30 years ago and wangled a Presidential pardon for Philip Musica and set him free to begin life all over as a de luxe crook? Who is it that, fixes things for crooks in every big city? The news-

» ” 2

| papers, or some politician?

The worst indictment of the American press is its futility—the fact that, after fighting public graft and corruption for 150 years, politics still is what it is.

Business By John T. Flynn

Reduction of Social Security Taxes Should Be First Concern of Congress.

EW YORK, Dec. 21.—The Social Security Advisory Couneil has made some recommendations about the old-age contributory pension system. The session of Congress nears, And when the lawmakers sit down with the nation’s troubles, old-age pensions are going to be among the first to be considered. It is a very serious moment for those genuinely concerned about the problem of the aged. How to care for those who become too old to be useful in our highly geared industrial system is a delicate and difficult problem. It calls for the utmost exertion of whatever informed, expert experience there is. This is an insurance problem. And there are men who know a good deal about that and about social security in this country. However, the whole subject has fallen into the hands of politicians. Men and women over: 65 have votes. And everywhere politicians are playing with this problem to get the votes of the aged. It must be conceded that to the Administration this is a difficult problem. It may be forced to make concessions that are not wise, This consideration would be easier for the Administration if it had not itself. been guilty of using the old-age pension system as a financial football and of introducing into it one of the most grotesque schemes in public finance ever known in the history of this country. ? This is the plan to create a reserve of 47 billion dollars “to relieve future generations of the great load of social security.” It was the attacks on this plan which led to the consideration of the subject by the Advisory Council.

Rate Change Urged

" One of its recommendations is that pensions in the earlier years of the system should be increased. Certainly the pensions which are to be paid to those who arrive at the retirement age before 1950 should be enlarged. The council also recommended a change in the exorbitant rates which are charged under the act to employers and employees. The tax at present is 1 per cent on each. In 1940 it will be 1%; per cent each. The first advisory council recommended before the act was passed a rate of 1 per cent from 1937 to 1941

{ and 134 per cent to 1945. That would have been more

than enough. If the rates are continued until 1942 at the present level, nearly five billion dollars will be collected in excess of the needs of the system. There seems to be no reason why the whole subject of the rates should not be re-examined and changed now to lighten the load of employers and workers.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HY little the most loving mother knows of what goes on in the lives and minds of her thildren! Truly they move and have their being in ‘another world from ours. As she watches her baby off to school for the first time, a woman invariably is moved to tears. Generally youll find, too, that she is embarrassed over what is often called sentimentalism, and ready to apologize

for an instinct: as deep-rooted and universal as the desire to seek a fire when one is cold. What she senses is that this is the first of a series of goodbys we must all say to our children during a lifetime. Brief little partings they may seem to an outsider, but they carry a hint of the anguish of real parting. : They are real partings in every sense of the word. For the minute a baby is swallowed up in the classroom he becomes the inhabitant of an alien land, working, playing, dreasming outside the | domestic sphere, where his mother waits for his returning. As the years pass, his activities broaden and in« crease. He moves farther and farther away from infancy and his need of her. Growing in sturdiness, he . develops self-reliance, gradually vidual on his own, so that by the time he is in high school she realizes that she must stand by and salute, while the little boy who once belonged entirely to her marches into manhood. Women, we often hear, cry over the silliest things. They are sentimental ninnies, dripping tears at gradu-

row where only joy is evident. Well, the more I think about it the nfore sure I am They are the result of some age-old f ‘which causes us to recognize the true

American Society of Newspaper Editors, was urging

“influence of the

Not only President Roosevelt but a good many poli-

becoming an indi-

ations, anniversaries and weddings, always seeing sor-

that those tears of ours are nothing to be ashamed of.

wns

PADS re

America and Engla

ANTHONY EDEN

HOW DO vou THE RECIPROCAL

HOW ABOUT A LITTLE POLITICAL OR FINANCIAL

nd 5

y Herblock

LIKE . -~

ice FOX

-« N72 — ‘

WHO DO WIN THE ROSE-BO0WL GAME?

St it A a

TREE Ager, Tenor,

ano

NIK WiLL ;

YOU THI

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

CHIDES REPUBLICANS ON CIVIL SERVICE

By a Voter

In the legislative program of the Republicans, I find a circumstance that seems a trifle strange in the light of their 1936 platform pledge and recently voiced admonitions of their leaders to put partisan politics and selfish ambitions aside. The program contains no provision for putting through a civil service system for Government employees. Their program provides for the repeal of the Reorganization Act which would give us the old spoilsridden state of affairs again without even the virtue of centralized responsibility. That, in my estimation, would be worse than the situation now obtaining, which puts too much power into the hands of one man to misuse purely for party benefit than is fair to the rest of the people of Indiana. Because of the Republican Party’s pledge to sponsor the merit system, its intention to repeal the Reorganization Act should also call for provisions that all Government employees (except the policy-making heads of departments) be thereafter appointed from lists of those passing civil service examinations, and that no partisan politics be allowed in Government service. Under such a system the most able would be attracted to careers

ment and the people would benefit tremendously. : So this segment of the public voice emphatically protests against a repeal of the Reorganization Act unless the Merit Plan is adopted to replace it. 2 = FAVORS STUDY OF OUR CAPACITY TO THINK By Analyst

What is our national I. Q.? We have had “Brookings” studies on America’s capacity to produce and consume. It would be interesting now to have 2 study on America’s capacity to think. A study of Europe’s capacity to think might also throw some light on the hectic performances now covering the front page. One lecturer is how making the rounds speaking on “stupidity.” What passes for thinking is often merely finding the path of least resistance. Wrong thinking is at the bottom of these European crises that come with such frightening frequency. It is much easier to resort to force than to reason. The Chinese proverb says that he who has lost supremacy of logic resorts to force for supremacy. There ought to be another proverb to cover the meek acceptance of relief and

in Government and both Govern-’

(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.)

poverty as a substitute for initiative to organize personal and collective action for the abolition of poverty.

® u ” FATHER BAFFLED BY BOY’S QUESTIONS By Common Sense The following is an imaginary conversation between a father and an inquisitive son: “Daddy, what is overproduction?” “Well, sonny, it means that the country’s got too much of things people live on.” “Daddy, who made all thosk things?” : “Well, farmers raise some in the

DREAMS

By JOSEPHINE DUKE MOTLEY

Now as the candles drip with their last burning, And night grows old in melancholy calm, There flashes o'er the scene of troubled yearning, From elysian fields, a clarifying balm,

The halcyon hour of sleep spreads wide its portals And beckons heart and soul with one accord To enter and commune, since living mortals The choicest bliss can easily afford.

|There is no price attached to

wholesome dreaming, It is 8 God-sent gift to one and all; And no night is so dark or so unseeming : : That it can bar our dreams beyond recall.

So let the eyelids close on life’s emotion, On every troubled avenue and

way, And still the heart with slumber’s magic potion Of dreams to guide it through another day.

DAILY THOUGHT Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.—Job 5:7.

=ouELEs are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.—H. W. Beecher.

ground and miners dig some of ‘em out of the ‘earth and working people of all kinds make ’em in factories and put them together in houses and so on.” “Say, daddy, are we suffering from overproduction, too?” “Certainly, boy.” “But, daddy, I heard ma say we're out of everything and that she can't get any more groceries and the milk man stopped bringing milk and unless we can get shoes us kids got to stay out of school and that you need a new overcoat the worst way and her clothes are getting so shabby she’s ashamed to be seen out of the house and . ..” “That's all true, sonny, but it’s only so because I'm not working.” “Daddy, supposin’ all of you people who turned out those things had got enough pay to buy them all back. Would their earnings buy all those goods?” “Sure. But there wouldn’t be any profit for anybody in that kind of a business.” “What's profit?” “Profit is what makes people carry on business.” “Daddy, where did all the profit go to that people made in business?” “I suppose most of it went back into bigger and better shops and factories for turning out more goods and some of it went into stocks of goods you see in the stores.” s. “Well, then why doesn’t business get that profit out of business if it’s only in business for profit? It’s because the goods don’t sell. And all because the people who turned out the goods didn’t get enough to pay for buying the goods.” “Say, ison, you talk like a Bolshevik, and now to bed before I lambast the stuffing out of you!” es = = SORRY PROFESSOR, BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW By B. C. | «1 regard the severance of the American colonies from the mother country as one of the most lamentable mistakes in human history.” Thus George McLean Harper, American ‘author and professor emeritus of English literature at Princeton University, writing in the British magazine, Quarterly Review, Well, fortunately, the separation took place a long time ago under a famous rebel named George ‘Washington and there isn’t much Prof. Harper or anyone else can do about it now. : : Can't we just be.good democratic friends with John Bull, and let it

go at that, professor?

ENOLY INSTEAD > a : >

S ~AUNNERSITY PR Roi ER ARREE) To WISE

mE co -

THIS is a leading professor of

which he has found from

Hs ia

a |

frtonks

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

| WL iT CHANGE OUR NATION'S FUTURE { IF More

IN ONE SECTION THAN IN ANOTHER? YES OR ND wus

Ny \ pun peopl WITH AVER-

INTELLIGENCE

YOUR OPINION wm

tions that lead to only friendly dif-

literature and in his wide read- | ferences. He has found they take the ing of the world’s literature he has selected those stories and essays

minds. of married people away from their petty problems and differences

YES, profoundly. Nearly twothirds of the nation’s future citizens are now being born in those states which are able to spend only about $30 per pupil per year for their education, whereas the richer states, with few children, spend over $100. The poorer states, to their great credit, are spending a greater proportion of their wealth on education than are the richer states. But these surplus children, with poorer education, must migrate to the richer states for jobs. This means the biological trend and educational trend of the United States are running absolutely counter to one another and this is bound to affect our future business, social and political life and leadership. » FJ ®

there are humerous exceptions. This is partly because all good quali ties tend to go together——intelligent people average better in every way, even in height, weight snd good looks, than "ull people; and partly because their greater intelligence gives them wider knowledge, and knowledge usually brings greater

question needs further study, but the above is the general frend. In-

toward public wrongs, bad govern- .,, ‘but seem to be more nt. toward

THEY tend to be, although

telligent people are more intolerant|

Gen. Johnson rs

~ Constant Change in Design Biggest

Into Production of Great Air Force.

EW YORK CITY, Dec. 21.—Maj. George Fielding Eliot writes as a military expert about the small likelihood that Germany has 10,000 first-line fighting

"planes. His words are equally eloquent of the folly

of the suggestion that we go out and get us 10,000, too. He says: “To maintain any such strength , , , merely assures a vast waste of precious material, . , . Unless a nation is deliberately building agains: a prearranged date at which it intends to begin war, it is

present state of aeronautical science; for planes are being improved so rapidly that today’s miracle is obso= lete tomorrow.” That seems to say it all well enough to close the argument. It needs no airplane engineer to convince any observing layman that the miracle of today in aircraft becomes the has-been of tomorrow. To make 10,000 fighting ships even in, say, three years, would

| take a vast expansion in new factories. When the

10,000th plane came off the production line the factory would have to start all over again,

8 8 8

UR problem is not, as we said in 1917, to “darken the sky with airplanes.” We spent hundreds of millions to do that—and didn’t get one satisfactory plane to France. The trouble then is the trouble now, constant change in design. In manufacture, especially in mass and line production, it is a continuing dilem= ma. One horn is the need to keep abreast of progress. The other is the absolute necessity to mass production of standardization of design.

radio sets or washing machines is a matter of+sales and dollars and profits. But keeping ahead of progress in national defense is surely a question of life and limb and possibly, in the prehistorically tbrutal state of Spe world today, of individual liberty and national existence.

Our greatest strength for national defense is our inventivehess and our superiority both in national resources and industrial efficiency. This is a problem of mobilizing them and meking them work.

® ® 8

BE should not shoot the works on any present Vv type of ship. We must keep ahead of airplane design. While we do that we must find some way promptly to gear up to mass production in the event of any war. It sounds like the old impossible problem of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. It is not quite that bad. The problem has been solved in one industfy. We see the result every day. : The automobile maker has to keep up with his competitors in constant improvement and, change of style and mechanical organization. Yet, he must also produce in mass .and line methods or be priced out of his markets. While the airplane industry has borrowed much of the art of automobile manufacture, its development did not lend itself to all and especially to highly organized line and quantity production.” It seems to me that here rests our present problem of national defense, providing not so much for a vast air fleet as for 'a vast production of airplanes when trouble comes. : I don’t know the answer but I know where to get it. The big aircraft makers? Surely. But working with them, the great motor makers—men like Walter Chrysler, Alvan MacAuley, Alfred Sloan and Bi Knudsen—to name only a few.

It Seems to Me Mr. Dies Appears Far Too Modest |

By Heywood Broun Should Make Committee Permanen N= YORK, Dec. 21.—When Congress conven N ¢ 25% the turn of the year Martin Dies intends demsuti 2 new appropriation to extend the life of his committee. To.-me it seems as if the gentleman fro Texas is far too modest. There would be more log and inspiration in a motion to make the Dies inquisitorial body a permanent institution. Ours is government of checks and balances; The Bill of Rights commits us: fo free speech, but this fine pr ciple has never been properly implemented. Inde individual communities have set up obstacles agai the flow of certain kinds of opinion. Legislators,

always helpful in such impasses, have come forward with the suggestion that the way out lies in aping London, and in setting up in each town and village a

wildest orator can loose his inflammatory utteranc I am for this notion, but as a believer in our orgar policy of balance I think some check should be four And so I suggest that every time we rope off ‘Hyde Park, we also set up a committee. Let us not deny to any man his sodpbox, but instead, match each subversive orator with one who’s orthodox. This would go along with a principle even more fundamental than that which actuated our founding fathers,

Cosmos Set Precedent

According to the theology which was taught to me the cosmos itself is established upon a theory| of checks and balances, and the universe runs on that power generated by the eternal friction befjween the Lord and Lucifer, ; 3 - And it seems fo me that Martin Dies himse the finest advertisement for the utility of his come mittee. He has acided a scofé of cubits to his stature since first the inquisitorial spyglass was placed wi his hand. Only last Saturday I heard him twice on

ond address, which was like the first, I could find no

Mr. Dies is too modest in many things. Inthe Congressional ‘Directory he has said no more al himself than simply, “Martin Dies, Democrat, was elected to the Seventy-second and each succ ing Congress.” Possibly it isn’t modesty so muc that rugged terseness which comes only to men are sure they're right. And there is no reason Martin Dies should not. go on investigating an vestigating, broadcasting and broadcasting, and [get= ting elected and elected. |

fo « g Watching Your Health By Dr. Morris Fishbein | INCE most of the deaths from carbon mon : oning occur: in garages or in factories : mines where numbers of men may be exposed the gas at one time, the health sections of the various labor departments and of various industries have worked out a series of recommendations to be lowed whenever one or more persons suddenly be= come unconscious as a result of exposure arbon monoxide gas. ER it vi 1t might be well in every factory where this bility exists, in. the gas industry, among f workers, in steel mills, celluloid manufacturers, ¢ lene welding, brass foundries, garages and servic tions, and indeed in every home where illuminating gas is used, that the following eight warnings be familiar: ’ 1. If there is a yellow flame heating your machine, report this fact at once. There should be a blue flame at all times, Yi Cay . 2. Never use a.gas-heated appliance which is nected by flexible rubber or metal tubing. 3. Do you suppose that you can find a leak in yc bing by. running a lighted match along it? It will ght only when there is a very large leak. 4, When you -are working over an open -flam

ped-

xide

too completely. : Ea : 5. Do not try to patch a leak or make any adjust ments yourself, Close off the gas till the repa

understanding and tolerance. The/| co

once. 17. If you find that work, carbon monoxide may be present in

(ne air, Look for leaks and poor connections. Jig

stimulating in

ment, etc

other people and

8 If you are not feeling well see a doc

national hookups, and when he had finished his sec-

Reason Why U. S. Shouldn't Rush

unwise to assemble any great number of planes in the

Keeping abreast of style and progress in making

| |

currents of unbridled opposition. Liberals, who are

words to express my sentiments save, ‘What a m: ni"?

not put any utensil on the fire which covers the flame

_you get a headache at your