Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 May 1939 — Page 24

PAGE 22

The Indianapolis Times

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ROY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE President Editor Business Manager

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CSCRIPPS - NOWARD) Give Light and the People Wili Find Their Own Way FRIDAY, MAY 5, 1939

POWER POLITICS IN COAL

HIS distressed country now faces the possibility, if not

the certainty, of a stoppage of coal mining involving |

550,000 men—more workers than were involved in the

Chrysler, General Motors and Little Steel strikes combined. | Consider the consequence of a war of attrition to deter- | mine whether the C. I. O. miners’ union, the mine owners |

or the public will erack first. And then consider the issues. In the anthracite industry, where 100,000 miners will walk out Monday unless a new contract has been signed, the owners are demanding lower hourly wages and a longer

work week. Such a controversy is easy to understand, if |

not to settle. But in the vastly more important soft-coal industry, where 110,000 miners in Indiana, lllinois, Ohio, Kentucky and Iowa have been ordered to join the 338,000 in the Appalachian region who have been out of work for a month, there is no dispute over wages, hours or working conditions. The deadlock between the operators and John L. Lewis’ United Mine Workers is over the union's alternative demand —either a closed shop or a revocation of penalties on strikes called in violation of a contract. Mr. Lewis might have had a closed shop with little disgent from the operators if he had asked for it two, four or six years ago. He didn’t want it then. Why now? Because he is seeking a method by which he can block efforts of the A. F. of L. Progressive Miners to win memsbers away from the U. M. W. If he can get a closed shop, the A. F. of L. will be stopped in its tracks. Failing that, he wantg freedom to call out his men at any time, at any | mine, if the Progressive organizers get too active. Many mine owners already operate under what amounts | to a closed shop. They employ U. M. W. members 100 per cent. Their refusal to sign a closed-shop contract gives some support to the charge that they are under pressure from the managements of allied industries—steel, utilities, | railroads, and other mass purchasers of coal-—which are eager to aid the A. F. of L. raid on the Lewis union, But there are other vital considerations. How about | the civil rights of the men who dig the coal, duespayers and nonduespayers alike? low about their rights under the | law—incidentally the Wagner law, of which Mr. Lewis is the No. 1 champion? These rights are to join unions of | their own choosing, to select their own representatives for bargaining with their employers, and, by inevitable implication, to quit any union which they believe is not run in their best interests and to join any other union which they believe will better promote their welfare. A closed shop, by freezing the union membership, would foreclose these human and legal rights. These are considerations important for the public to keep in mind as paralysis of the coal industry spreads to other industries which are denied the fuel they need to keep their wheels turning.

PRE-TRIAL HEARINGS

E are glad to see the Indianapolis Bar Association take the initiative in proposing that pre-trial conferences be instituted in Marion County courts. Here, as in many other cities, there has been widespread complaints about congested court dockets. Lawyers who are frank about the matter point out the congestion is due in no small measure to cumbersome rules of procedure, and the opportunity open to attorneys to delay justice by a host of purely technical moves. Pre-trial sessions furnish a way out by (1) narrowing the issues before the trial date, (2) shortening and speeding trials, and (3) by frequently eliminating the trial altogether. Such hearings to expedite court calendars have been adopted in Detroit, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco. Wherever tried, the process has been enthusiastically endorsed by most litigants and lawyers, A typical experience is that reported by the Suffolk | County (Boston) Superior Court. Of 2195 cases on the pre-trial list, 530 were settled around a conference table and of those ordered to trial 315 more were settled before | getting on the trial list. Similar experiences are reported | in Detroit and Los Angeles. With that background of success, it is hard to see why pre-trial procedure should not expedite court hearings | in Marion County, clear up clogged court dockets and speed | up court procedure generally. We hope it is given a prompt | and thorough trial.

MYSTERY MAN STALIN T has been clear for some time that Soviet Russia was approaching a crossroads. Soon she must make up her mind which way to go—whether with the Anglo-French coalition or with Germany and perhaps Japan. Moscow's policy is and always has been distinctly opportunist. She speaks often and eloquently of her devotion to the cause of democracy. But with a singleness of purpose unmatched anywhere else in the world, her policy has been to look out solely for herself, while seeking to spread communism throughout the globe. Just where Dictator Josef Stalin will go from here has got the whole world wondering. Ever since he began to get rid of the old Bolsheviks by means of his purge, there have been rumors that he was paving the way for an understanding with Hitler. One of the rules of power politics is: If you can’t lick ‘em, join 'em. It is to be hoped that Russia will take the other road. Meantime the world will have something to worry over until it finds out which is which.

HAIRY CHESTS

E hold no brief for males with hairy chests. They are not especially lovely to behold. They get pretty hot in the summer. And they sometimes look a little like gorillas loose from a zoo. But we want the Park Board to be fair to the sensitive onlookers around our city pools. If hairy chests are so objectionable that swimmers must wear tops on their suits, then we also propose that the board compel men with hairy arms to wear shirts when swimming. And if, perchance, they also have hairy legs i ake them wear tights or long underwear. Nothing less, by gosh!

ETON

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Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Capone's Henchmen Control Florida Racing Racket and Gang Leader Should Have It Easy When Freed.

IAMI, May 5.-A light burns in the window of the home of Al Capone to guide the master back when he has cleaned up the odds and ends of his sen= tence, and there are indications that he will resume his career in the Miami sector of Florida. His old chief of staff, the man who used to pass sentence on the enemies of the regime in Chicago, is solidly estab« lished in the horse and dog racing rackets. Several other criminals of the prohibition era are prominent in the affairs of a licensed vice which handles about 55 million dollars a year in Florida and this year paid the state treasury almost two million dollars. There is an element of the Miami population, made up of home owners and other town<proud Americans, who would like to keep Capone out and drive off the other Chicago criminals who have dug in, but that is a futile hope. These criminals are leading citizens. With so much money at their command racketeers can buy local officials, state legislators and other politicians, and | the community is spread so thin over such a great | stretch of beach and palmetio that there is no civie unity or workable publie spirit or political responsi« bility.

a ERE are strange elements thrown together-rich respectables from Northern cities, with beautiful homes, who are practically strangers in the commus | nity; gamblers from Broadway and Chicago; Southern carpetbaggers who are Ku-Kluxers under the skin, | engaged in commerce, building and real estate trade

| ing, and Florida Crackers from the backwoods—a hard breed whose politicians are active and influential but | notoriously erooked. The town fades off into country where peonage exists and the Negroes’ rights to life and liberty do | not exist and, although menials in Miami, are subject to a fingerprint regulation with which notorious racketeers, handling literally millions of dollars of public cash, need not comply. This year, by some strange quirk of local politics having nothing to do with public policy or morals, table gambling was severely restricted and the slot machine racket was suspended. But next year always is another year, and when Capone comes home the slots and the tables may come back. And, anyway, Capone’s mob is doing very well in the racing business. os ” ”

Roce track Tobbyists openly haunt the legislature, and men who make and enforce the laws place

themselves under obligations to racketeers by solicits | ing race track jobs for themselvey and their kin and |

for their political workers. Efforts were made to run Capone and his mob out of town before he was sentenced to prison, but he fought back, and if he hadn't been interrupted he might have been absolute political boss of the Miamis by now. Still there would seem to be no big individual graft. It appears, on the contrary, to be a case of every grafter for himself, with no boss to regulate privileges and payments, and this would account for the periodic petty reforms and the confident effront-

[ ery of Al Capone in planning to return to resume op-

erations in a city whieh is actually a frontier station for all its “glammer” and metropolitan fixings.

Business By John T. Flynn Hitler Justified in Claiming Danzig,

But Wrong on Corridor Demands.

EW YORK, May 5-—An effort is being made in the propaganda to make it appear that an important economie issue is involved in the latest claim of Germany upon Poland. That claim is for cession of the city of Danzig and a highway across the Polish Corridor from Germany proper to Bast Prussia—a corridor across the Corridor. It would be well to keep the issue straight, as this is one of the three spots which Germany may select for her next drive—the other two being Lithuania and Jugoslavia.

First of all, and considered historically, the Ger man claim to Danzig is one of the best she has had in all the claiming she has done lately. Dansig is a German city. It is overwhelmingly pro-Nazi. The Corridor was an integral part of Germany before the war. The Sudeten country, Austria were not.

However the present state of this land has altered. Danzig itself remains German. But the Corridor has greatly altered its racial content. The Poles have pursued a constant pressure upon the German population there and have carried on a persistent infiltration of Poles until today the population of the Corridor is overwhelmingly Polish while the Gere man population is not very large.

Pacts Are Worthless

That being so, the future peace of the world, certainly’ ite present peace, calls for the recognition of the Polish character of the Corridor as an accomplished fact. It is essential to the economic life of Poland, being its only outlet to the sea. and it the new port which Poland has built, Gydnia, which now is more important as a port than Danzig. A wise solution would be for the cession of

| Danzig to Germany and the definitive recognition of

the Corridor as Poland's.

But Germany will never be satisfied with this. whatever Herr Hitler may say. Nonaggression pacts with him are utterly meaningless.

Hitler's demand is for a roadway across the Corri-

| dor connecting Germany and East Prussin—a roadway | which will be literally German territory,

This sounds plausibie. After all, Germany should own the road by which she reaches this severed province of Bast Prussia, But Hitler does not want a roadway. He wants a strip of territory 15';: miles wide. Moreover Hitler does not need a roadway to East Prussia. There are at present several railroads—probe ably three—and three or more excellent motor roads from Germany to East Prussia which Germany can use without custom barriers or annoyances in going to East Prussia. What Hitler wants is to get his nose into the tent of the Corridor. Then he will take it all.

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HAT funny beings we are! A retired Army major's recent suggestion that all Americans over 75 who are not able to support themselves should be subjected to mercy killings, brought forth enraged protests, “The very idea,” we say, “is repulsive. What! Take all our fine old people and murder them, just because we're in an economic muddle—just because a few millions of our citizens are out of jobs? It would put us on a level with barbarians and brutes. God gave life; let only God take life” It's a pretty theory—too bad we can't stick to it right down to the last shrapnel shell. If we did, we wouldn't tolerate war. I don't know a single soul in a sizable group of my acquaintance, who would lend his active support to mercy Killings for the old. But I do have a large number who insist that murdering young men, wholesale, is permissible when it becomes a matter of economic and trade expediency. “It's a way of getting rid of the surplus population” A man made that remark in my hearing last week, He was bland about it, too—expected us to accept it without protest and to agree with him. Here we are, supposedly civilized people, reasonably intelligent, or so we think. And humane? Why, of course we're humane. In fact, we are often accused of being sentimental and are much given to tears when we observe touching or tragic sights. In spite of that, however, we accept war as if it were a kind of Sunday School picnic. Half our wealth is spent promoting it. Periodically we Kill off our finest young men to feed its insatiable hunger. And still we prate: “God gave life; let only God take life.” Where war is concerned, we seem always to be either etons or hypocrites, :

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES The Doctor’s Dilemma !—

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The Hoosier Forum

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

URGES BETTER SUPPORT IN ‘MEN OVER 40’ DRIVE By A. ©. Dixon “Clean' Up and Paint Up Week." (“Drink More Milk Week.” “Eat More | Candy Week.” The foregoing have been publicized in the press annually for years. Of course, advertising results therefrom.

But when the President proclaims “Give-a-Job-to-a-Man-40 - or - Over Week,” the co-operation of the press is a dud. The press is plainly indifferent to the fellows who did not cause the depression but who are

the goats. ® =

RESENTS ATTACK ON ‘AGED PARASITES By R. Sprunger | Commenting on a letter by James 'R. Meitzler in the Forum, I advise him to awaken and discover what made paupers of the “aged parasites” of which he complains, Many of these so-called paupers worked hard all their lives so that humanity might progress and made many things possible. They also paid taxes the same as we do today and still do, if they are able to buy anything with their “charity” money as he calls it. He failed to condemn the | capitalistic parasites who live off the sweat and labor of others.

tive work and was paid by taxes from the “paupers.” He is now get(ting a fat pension from the people. 'If he is entitled to a good pension, |so are the workers who produced the | wealth of this country and are now too advanced in years to work, If it were not for the past labor of older people, just where would we be? Mr. Meitzler's letter and the

Maj. Dyer was doing nonproduc-|

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious con troversies excluded. Make your letter short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)

and when the fighting is over to use our economic power to further sanity and liberalism and to restore civilization temporarily destroyed. America cannot save Europe. By no method known to us now can we solve European problems and make Europe prosperous, happy and decent. It may be very expensive to keep the peace. It may cost us much in

(dollars and trade, yet world trade is hardly worth fighting for. Our foreign trade is only 82 of our total business. The cost of a war would be much more than the profits on world trade for many centuries to come, to say nothing of the dead. © & » LIKENS DICTATORS

TO GANG LEADERS | By Kendall Cooper | The only difference between a [money-crazy gang leader and a

| power-crazy dictator is: | leader hires gangsters—not men in juniform—to commit their murders fand to seize other people's property, while the dictator uses soldiers to perform these same atrocious deeds.

THE SILENT PARTNER By MAIDA LEAH STECKELMAN |Good morning, God.

The gang

sal o . Dyer show a com-| biete. Inck of thinking and under. | This lovely dawn I pray standing of the problems facing|That no unkind thought or word of humanity, mine Mars this, the beauty of Thy day: Give me wisdom to deal wisely ON WAR DANGER | With the dole Thou givest me By Nicholas Kiein Making use of every talent I do not often find myself in ac- In the way 'twas meant to be. cord, with Herbert Hoover, but his| Reaching as my soul grows taller, recent prediction that if the United |Liiting to its vibrancy, States Is drawn into the next war until when the evening cometh we shall have in effect if not in pv hearts at ease—my spirit free!

name, a Fascist government, is true. DAILY THOUGHT

Judging by the last war to “make Dearly beloved, avenge not

the world safe for democracy,” it is conceivable that after the next | yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written,

war, we will find ourselves a semi- | military, semifinancial autocracy. In| Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.--Romans 12:19,

any event if we have war, we will have the suppression of the demo- | - cratic values for the sake of which | we professedly went to war. even with his Our best bet if Europe again goes | passing over it, he crazy, is to keep out of the mess, | Bacon.

g 4 8 AGREES WITH HOOVER

enemy;

Y taking revenge, a man is but but in is superior.--

POINTS TO OPPORTUNITIES UNDER OUR GOVERNMENT By Voice in the Crowd It is evidently impossible to debate against the “isms” in the small space of the Forum. Especially is this true when the opposition de=liberately evades the issue when given the opportunity of expressing the meaning of his belief, and distorts and ridicules practical statements that are true and proved by experience. When anyone states that there is a social order that exceeds in liberality the democracy established by our fathers, he does not understand | the first principle of a system of [living that provides a share of this world's comforts to those who are willing to do things for themselves. The Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights compel us to a life in the most liberal democracy ever established by man. And it is so until by the will of the people the Constitution is so amended as to make us other than a liberal democracy. It is a liberal democ= racy because it protects every individual in the living of a life of his own choice, so long as the moral code is followed and no other individuals are harmed.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights guarantee equal rights and equal opportunity, They do not |guarantee that every man can have an automobile and a yacht. It is not [guaranteed that if one boy applies himself to school and another boy does not, that they will grow up with the same advantages in life. It is not guaranteed that if one man applies himself to his work and to self-betterment and another man shirks his work and wastes his time, that these men are entitled to the same reward. \WWhy should it be?

There are natural differences in men that make such a guarantee impossible. For instance, all men cannot fight like Joe Louis nor run like Don Lash, or play ball like Lou Gehrig, especially if they are too lazy to train for it, although they are free to do so.

I don't have to study “social democracy” because I live in end understand and love the greatest democracy of all. I practice democracy and have never envied any man what he has built up, and I know that it all remains when the builder has gone.

I was born in poverty in America. At 35 I was economically independent; at 49 I was a pauper. I have an honest job of my own making. I have never begged for nor missed a meal. America abounds with opportunities for those who will sacrifice as opportunity demands. I have never heard anyone who was willing to make that sacrifice complain of our democracy.

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LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

greatly increases or decreases the tendency. But love for any particular child seems to be almost

NOT necessarily. There are probably five reasons for this fact: First, women enter business younger than professional women and youth is the chief age of marriage; second, professional women have higher education on the average and therefore have either higher or more specialized ideals; third, by the time a woman is ready to enter her profession all sorts of other women have picked off the best prospects; fourth, professional women tend somewhat more toward masculine mental and emotional interests than business women; fifth, professional women have fewer opportunities to meet suitable men of their own age. y wn» NO sounder social advice could be given. Crime costs each man, woman, child and baby in the | United States $100 a year and if for no other reason than this he should say to himself when he reads of a crime, “Was I an accessory before the fact?” He should ask himself what he has done to promote child welfare, see that “reform schools” are not crime schools, to promote parent-teacher co-opera-

| all its regular officers to train troops.

tion,

to co-operate the police)

Gen. Johnson

Says—

U. S. Making Serious Mistake of Training Army and Navy Officers To Direct Industry in Wartime.

ASHINGTON, May 5.—The executive assistant to the Secretary of War is quoted as having said to the U. 8, Chamber of Commerce: “An Army industrial college is now training about 60 Army and Navy officers each year to direct the mobilization of industry.” This refers to the vast regimentation of business that would come if we got into a new world

war. The significant fact revealed by this testimony

is that when that gigantic task of industrial mane agement suddenly becomes necessary, it is to be di« rected by Army and Navy officers now being trained by the War Department in an “industrial college.” This “training” consists in a few months’ get-rich-quick course in the mechanics ‘of industry given to soldiers in the War Department. The instructors are professional soldiers, too, except that there are a few lectures by industrialists. About the most pathetic spectacle in business life is an Army officer resigning to go into industry. I know just how sad it is because I did it and I have observed others who did it. It took me seven buffeted years to begin to suspect what it was all about and some of my Army service was along lines far better adapted to that field than that of most officers. # 8 #%

AKE a kid and wall him up in West Point for four years like a cloistered monk. Turn him loose to Army life where it is a little less insulated and his business transactions consist Jargely in drawing and spending his pay check every month. Teach him that his future security is in his retirement pay and that the service expects him to live up to his position. Grind into him that the way to get things done is to give and obey arbitrary orders. Surround him with comrades with whom he has little competi= tion since promotion comes by seniority, everybody of equal rank lives on the same scale and there are no sharp trading and clever little schemes. Repeat for 20 years and then spill him into the totally different and far more wolfish world and life of industry, He is a babe in the woods. It is impossible to dee scribe the extent and infinite variety of his ignorance and bewilderment. He just doesn't know what makes the machine tick. But you can't convince an Army officer of this, His argument is that he is by profession, an expert executive and therefore can administer anything. ” " n

O cramming course in “industry” and nothing he can read out of any books can make the average officer fit for business administration—much less to “direct the mobilization of industry.” The War Department itself ‘has no business whate ever “directing” industry in war. That is a mammoth and vital task—as great and vital as fighting a war. The Army already has the latter task. It should not Jimmy up the works by taking on another just as big at the moment the guns begin to roar. It will need It would be just as absurd and disastrous to use them on this job as it would be to elbow all the generals aside and put industrial leaders in command of the armies. Pus armies under soldiers and industrial mobilization under industrialists and let all shoemakers stick to their lasts.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

Peeved at the Pulitzer Committee; Gave Him Nothing to Criticize.

EW YORK, May 5—The Pulitzer Prize Commite tee has double-crossed me. Until now I have ree garded the night of the annual award almost as a legal holiday, since in previous years it has been so easy to bat out the required number of impassioned words in bitter protest against the selection. Even the most indolent of commentators could roll off a log and indite the verdicts before he scrambled to his feet again. It was but the work of 10 or 20 minutes to show how misguided, chuckle-headed and inept the experts were,

And so I'm sore this year because I have nothing about which I can holler, Columnists, like members of the United States Supreme Court, must make a reputation, if any, on the basis of dissents rather than affirmations, Robert E. Sherwood’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” had a good press, but nobody threw his hat in the air any higher than I did. It seemed to me on the first night that here was something deserving of a permanent place in the repertory of our national theater. I thought so then, and I am still of the same opinion. And so when Bob is officially crowned with laurel by the heavy men of a respectable foundation there is nothing left for me to say except to state that they are a bunch of Daniels come to judgment.

On Second Thought

The same holds true of Van Doren’s “Benjamin Franklin” and “The Yearling,” by Mrs. Rawlings, for here, too, I was on record as an ardent admirer of the works in question.

In the field of journalism I think that Matthews should have the prize for the dispatches which he sent from Spain, and my judgment is based wholly on the quality of his writing and the accuracy of his mae terial without regard to any suspicions which some leveled against his sympathies.

To me there is some slight satisfaction in the palpable fact that the boys who turned handsprings for “The American Way” cooled off rather quickly when they had a chance to think it over. I raise the point because it seems to me that no one can possibly be enthusiastic about both the Sherwood play and the Hart-Kaufman opus. They represent two divergent points of view in regard to our national philosophy. “The American Way” is a tribute laid in the lap of Herbert Hoover. Sherwood’s “Lincoln plumps solidly for progressive action and is actually the most eloquent argument yet made for the fundae~ mentals of the New Deal. Lincoln, aided by the em phasis of Sherwood, said the democracy is either a flowering plant or a dead shrub. What could be fairer than that?

Watching Your Health By Dr. Morris Fishbein

Se widespread in all the world is the use of bread as food that the word “bread” is frequently cone sidered synonymous with food. When people are hungry, they ask for bread. In the United States we use about 80 pounds of wheat bread a person a year and about 10 pounds a person a year of other kinds of bread. Although it has been proved by experiments that a human being can live for a long time on bread and water and perhaps almost indefinitely on bread and milk, the facts are that bread is not a complete food, Obviously, bread made with white flour is not as complete a food as bread made with whole wheat. The removal of wheat bran and wheat germ in the prepa ration of white flour cuts down the mineral content one-half for calcium, one-half for potassium, one-fifth for phosphorous, and one-fifth for iron. The reduction in calcium and phosphorous is nog important because wheat has not a correct ratio of calcium to phosphorous. Moreover, we get extra cale cium in considerable amounts by the milk and milk products which are taken in our diets. The iron lost in the preparation of white flour ig important because iron is necessary for the building of blood. Ordinary wheat flour does not contain vita min D or vitamin C and the amount of vitamin A which it contains is insignificant. ‘We obtain these vitamins from eggs, liver, cod liver

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