Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 May 1939 — Page 12

PAGE 12 | The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; deliv ered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co., 214 W. Maryland St. Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, 65 cents a month.

Member of United Press, Scripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu-

reau of Circulation. Bay: : ! SCRIPPS =~ NOWARD |

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1939

JUST A REMINDER HE Hatch bill, to take politics out of relief and require Federal officials generally to devote their energies to their jobs rather than to electioneering, was passed by the U. S. Senate April 13—without a dissenting vote. Since April 13 the Hatch bill has been gathering cobwebs in a pigeonhole of the House Judiciary Committee. Why ?

KEY TO INDUSTRIAL PEACE HIS country can really begin to move toward that industrial peace for which it yearns if Congress will follow the advice given by Dr. William M. Leiserson. A Federal mediation system large and strong enough to serve all who work and all who hire—that’s Dr. Leiser-

RILEY 5551

son’s prescription. And this man, soon to become a mem- | ber of the National Labor Relations Board, speaks with | the authority of successful experience. For five years he | has been a member of the National Mediation Board which functions with the railways and air lines. Even when the Wagner act is corrected and its administration improved, it will consist of negative commands to employers—not to interfere with employees’ right to organize, not to refuse to bargain collectively. Beyond that, as Dr. Leiserson says, there should be an affirmative command to employers and employees alike, stating their | duty to make and maintain agreements; there should be mediation machinery to make collective bargaining work. Because the Labor Department's present conciliation | service is inadequate and lacking in authority, many col-lective-bargaining disputes find their way before the Labor | Board, where they do not belong. The Labor Board has | no legal mediation powers, and its Wagner act enforce- | ment duties conflict with the idea that it can mediate | impartially. Dr. Leiserson would expand the conciliation service, keep it entirely separate from the Labor Board, give it | adequate staff and authority to intervene in any labor dispute, in any industry anywhere in the country, when | either party certifies that peace negotiations have failed. | This would be the same system of mediation now available to the railroad and air-transport industries. The best evidence that it would work for all industries is the fact that it does work, with almost 100 per cent success, to preserve peace, maintain good relations between employers and employees, and prevent stoppages of work on the railways and the air lines. |

TIMES CHANGE IN HARLAN ATIONAL GUARDSMEN are old stuff to Harlan! County, Kentucky. So are picket lines, gunplay, and | denials of civil liberties. But the tense situation in Harlan | today differs in some important ways from the ugly crises of the past. For one thing, murderous jailbirds hired by coal com- | panies can no longer legalize their thuggery by being | sworn in as deputy sheriffs. Private employment of depu- | ties, and employment of men with criminal records as | deputies, was outlawed by the Kentucky Legislature a! year ago. For another, members of the Harlan County Coal | Operators Association have had a series of painful but instructive lessons in the Constitution and laws of the United States, at the hands of the La Follette Committee, the Labor Board and the Justice Department. And in the same process the miners have become more confident of their rights. The dispatching of troops to preserve order may be justified by Harlan’s reputation for violence, although the Guardsmen appear to be going to needless lengths in the absence of actual disturbances. In any event, it seems doubtful that the military occupation of the mine areas will do the operators any good in the long run. For the feudal power which they once wielded has been slowly | whittled down, while the United Mine Workers have strengthened their position not only in Harlan but nationally. The scales that were once heavily overbalanced in the employers’ favor are tipping the other way.

LET HIM HAVE IT | ENNESSEE'S patronage-minded Senator McKellar de- | mands a Senate investigation of J. Ross Eakin, superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We second the motion. Let the investigation be thorough. Let it go into the McKellar charge that Superintendent Eakin is dishonest and inefficient. Like Interior Secretary | Ickes, we believe that this charge is a phony, trumped up by the Senator to support his political attack against a faithful public servant. But find the facts. | And then find the facts about Senator McKellar's | other charge—that Superintendent Eakin voted for Landon in 1936. Mr. Eakin swears he voted for Roosevelt. How does Senator McKellar know otherwise? Why, he says he | has affidavits from three election officials at Gatlinsburg, | Tenn. And how do the election officials know? Secretary | Ickes says he has their admission that they conspired to smear ink on Mr. Eakins ballot so that it could be identified when the votes were counted. Affidavits by men like that may not be worth much. But get them into the record. And then get into the record the story of how these affidavits reached Senator McKellar. Let him explain why he has connected himself with a con- | spiracy to violate one of the most sacred rights of Amer- | ican democracy—a citizen's right to secrecy of the ballot. | In Senator McKellar’s place, we think we would not want this investigation. But he asks for it. Let him have it.

REPEAL RIDDLES IVE and a half years after prohibition there do seem, after all, to be a few unsolved problems here and there. | The U. S. Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether whisky imported as “Scotch” must originate, every drop of it, in Scotland. The New York City Council is attempting to decree by ordinance that all whisky glasses must be of at least 1!5-ounce capacity. And Ohio legislators, debating a bill to bar bea that “no woman = mig good cocktails, anywe-¥=

|

| | 1 { |

»,

™,

ra

| We should trade only for cash.

| Weil, we ought to be very careful.

| tures.

| entirely on the fear that we may need them here

| the frenzy has a more personal flavor. | the coming of driving age to my last

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

SEC, Charged With the Duty of Guarding Suckers, Should Take a Good Look at Horse Race Betting.

EW YORK, May 17.—The volume of betting on horse racing in this country is so large—more than $1,000,000 a day—and the opportunities for larcenous practice and political corruption through bribery are so obvious that this member of the financial community invites the official attention of the Securities & Exchange Commission. The business is interstate, and while there is some doubt that a bookmaker’s slip or his nod on the tele-

phone constitutes a security transaction, the system, |

nevertheless, exists and is a very substantial condition, not a theory.

If race betting were a penny-ante vice, like the

numbers racket, it could be ignored by the Federal Government, except in the zone of the income tax and its policing left to the local cops.

roughly speaking, blankets the whole country. And the figures are such as to command the respectful attention of a Government agency charged with the duty of protecting suckers, =» n N 16 of the 19 states in which racing is permitted by law the volume of betting through the mutuel machines in 1938 was $276,333,000. If the turnover in three others—New York, Louisiana and Maine—be conjectured and added to the known figure the total will be about a third of a billion. In addition to this business an unknown but large amount was gambled on the races by habitual and occasional players through a chain of books. Some of this betting always finds its way to the tracks, however, where it is wagered through the machines for the purpose of regulating the odds against the interests of those who originally put up the money. Theoretically, the operators of a track are mere brokers, deducting from 4 to 10 per cent of every dollar wagered through their machines. They can’t

| lose unless the volume of plays falls so low that their

commissions are unequal to their expenses, and, theoretically, they have no interest in the result of a race. That disinterest loses its fine, impartial purity, however, when race track stock falls into the ownership of professional bookmakers handling millions of public money away from the track.

” ND certainly no huge, interstate financial business

o »

based on public trust and confidence should be |

permitted to operate under the ownership, whether open or covert, of notorious racketeers and other underworld characters It might be argued that because wagers are not legally sound the SEC can have nothing te do with this enormous gambling traffic, which, in its interstate phase, is plainly illegal. Yet within the respective states gambling on the races at the tracks is

legal and the claim represented in a winning mutuel | | ticket is collectable, and the interstate traffic is so

great that the SEC, in the line of its general purpose of protecting the public against swindles, should attempt either to police or suppress it. From a practical standpoint the SEC might acknowledge that the traffic does exist and stifle it by inquiry, for the slightest show of official curiosity

would arouse local interest evervwhere in corrupt arrangements whereby local authorities permit the bookmakers to operate against the law.

Business By John T. Flynn

Peace Sentiment Much Stronger In Middle West Than in the East.

HICAGO. May 17.—Moving about this part of the country I have been trying to find out what people think about our present war scares and America’s part in them. Polls hased on asking two or three questions may be quite effective when the questions are about persons. When they deal with issues, I am not sure they are to be trusted too implicitly. For instance, in asking a man what he thinks our stand should be in the event of war, you do not get

| the same answer after a little probing as you get off-

hand to the first question. The man who tells you we

{ : ought to aid the democracies in the event of war . { whittles that aid down so thin after a little question-

ing that it means very little The first thing one notices in the Middle West is

| that the feeling about the war is far less keen than |

it is in the East, particularly New York. The papers whip up the war news hut the people themselves are very obviously not nearly so interested as they are in New York. Second, people are a unit, as far as I can find, on the proposition that under no circumstances must America be drawn into an European war. Third, the willingness to help France and England is a very confused kind of willingness. It would be hard to say that a majority favor helping them. Their sympathies are against Germany,

Situation Like That of 1917

But if you ask what help the sc-called democracies should have, you find it is pretty weak. Should we ship them arms? Well, we ought to be careful—no arms on our ships. Should we give them credit? No. Should we quarantine aggressors? No. Should ve condemn Germany? The one thing which seems evident is that somebody, somehow has sold these people a fear of some

sort of attack on this continent. Thev do not know

| who will do the attacking or why. It is obviously

the kind of opinion which is the product of propaganda. One resuit of it has been to make a good many people willing to approve armament expendiBut it is as clear that this approval is based

This is the way it was in 1917—the East had al-

| ready been sold the idea of going into the war, but | the Middle West lagged back and the Far West was | even more opposed. | war movement is still in the West.

The fertile field for the anti-

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

O others, 1939 may be remembered as the vear of general jitters and jitterbugging, but for me It marks born child, and for every parent that ultimate in fearful apprehension.

Even though the others came through unscathed or with a few minor scars, you can never be certain this one will. So, when the family baby gets his driver's license and is endowed with the full legal

spells the

| right to take the car out alone—if that isn't a mile

stone, I don’t know what vou'd call it. And it is one of those crises you must meet with fortitude, I suppose. You'll get used to it by and by, just as you get used to paying income tax or managing a wooden leg. Conferences, warnings, maternal ultimatums are $0 many wasted words. If you happen to be keeping up an automobile, you can only adjust the budget to meet extra gasoline and extra repairs. redouble the fervor of your prayers and hope always for the best. When you happen. as I do, to he the role parent

of the stripling, vou'll lie awake nights, hearkening ! to the ambulance sirens with more dreadful conster- | | nation and accept the added gray hairs upon the old

cranium as gracefully as possible. There's consolation, of course. You have millions of companions in misery. The land is chock full of fathers and mothers enduring the same spprehensions and, I suppose, we have to accept this form of mental torture as a hazard of new fortune. And parents are far from exempt. Youth is sete tled at the wheel and when the milestone fixed by the state has passed, the jurisdiction of the home practically ceases. :

But race | betting as the Treasury and Department of Justice | have been learning, is a tremendous business, which, |

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES | ‘Pm in the Stamp Business’—Farley—By Herblock

|

The Hoosier Forum

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

SAYS ONLY VALUABLE DOGS ARE SEIZED By a Reader, Franklin

I feel the urge to issue a warning | to all owners of valued and valuable pet dogs in your fair city. If you have a common cur of no resale value, you may let it run wild all over town, bothering other people and getting in their flower beds {and gardens. You do not have to] | worry about the expense of a tag as| our profit-minded dog catcher will| not jeopardize his job by putting] the “snatch” on a dog that cannot be sold for a little profit. But if your pet is of the blooded | type, take this warning: Put all the | tags you can afford on him. Make| him sound like the chimes of the] cathedral when he runs so the; “pick em up man” will know with-| out looking; just sit in his little yel-| low wagon and listen. It was my misfortune to drive] several miles to purchase a pet dog | from a deserving widow who did not have the money to pay the tax on such an expensive a luxury as a, companion for her two children, only to learn that a few days before the dog had been snatched out of a gang of other dogs, which to| their good fortunes were the com{mon cur type. It was noticed the | big, brave dog catcher did not want |to see the missing tags on the cursi {of no value. In fact, it was noticed | he even had to Kick them from un-| der his feet before he could walk. | Now two little orphans’ hearts are broken because their mother was trying to sell the dog she could not | | meet her obligation to the city on. | ” 5 2

CLAIMS GALLUP QUIZ ON 'RELIEFERS MISLEADING | By Sig Simonsen, Workers’ Alliance, Gary

It seems to me that the public, or] | that portion of it which agrees with | {the 69 per cent of those interviewed | by the American Institute of Public Opinion, on the question of whether | they thought people on the relief {rolls could get jobs if they tried, are | (not in the habit of analyzing things | [and are subject to wishful thinking. | First of all, the question is misleading. Possibly a majority of the | {people on relief could get work if they tried hard enough. By begging! for jobs, and agreeing to work for {lower wages than those now em-| | ployed, possibly a couple of million now on relief could take away the jobs of a couple of million now employed. Another large group could (possibly get sales jobs on a straight | {commission basis. The question if it were phrased honestly should have been, “Do you think people on relief could get. jobs at wages which would enable them to support their families, and without taking a job away from someone now employed, if they tried?”

{offered them,” simply showed their |

. . . As to the opinions given by deepest teachings.—Robertson.

who is on the relief rolls. . . . Let me say that the surveys conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion are always as unreliable as the Literary Digest “samples” conducted to show the trend of public opinion previous to the 1936 Presidential elections. n ” 2 CLAIMS MONEY WASTED IN PRIVATE BUSINESS, TOO By H. L. Seeger Giving Congress the green light jon tax reductions is hailed as a {panacea for business expansion. | Public business now collects and

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

those interviewed: Those in the first category who said, “Some reliefers are ‘lazy’ and won't take jobs : , {circulates more than 15 billion dolAPTI and unfiiness to render lars annually as purchasing power. The people interviewed who ex- | Private business gets all of this pressed the opinion when asked for |TOney back over the counters in one a reason, “that some managed to form or another. It is an investget more on relief than they could | MOY O70 Iignes ChArasler, hick

And were

The Of

in private employment” are un- are our ; q f : fortunately correct, at least on the |2'® Our means of paying for things | we use publicly. Of course we see relief standards, but the utter self-| Waste committed with tax money. ishness of some employers . who | We complain of this rightfully. But employers, while they may belong to |Our money in private business, the swankiest clubs, and while they Which costs vs much more than cent Americans” are more of a Neither is excusable. We never deliability to this country than anyone Mand co-ordination of business enwaste of our buying power, We are funny that way. By CHRISTINE GRANT CURLESS : Li . |for the billions of idle money, no ife touched the strings upon apne could hoid investors back with And from them came the music, | Money is not scared if there is a sweet and clear . |dollar to be made. It will fight to mighty art! that is sound that cannot now get Sweet laughter came, and beauty any amount of money it could use. Life struck another heart, but came | where more men are not needed to discord, produce the necessary volume of Jha! it could sing, ._.__|cannot and shouid not be re-em-So Life, the artist, took a shining ployed within the framework of the And cut in two the most impor-|ganiged to produce for themselves, tant string. without profit in the business sense. Who puts his heart in tune with ould have saved us billions of dolHarps, divine, [lars of tax money if we had recogThe rain, |yvears ago. We ignored it and paid singing of the birds, the through the nose. We cannot supwinds, so much that even profit economy and survive, hurt and pain " 8 un A saddened note and sweeter oF BOTH PARTIES clarity. By W. F. Weiland published in the May 11 Forum, exHe that believeth in the Son cept that I would rather let the Rehath everlasting life: and he that |" "Fon 00" dead. > he i of life: but the wrath of God abideth |,, Ve can prove the ineptitude on him.—John 3:36. ing that faction of the Democratic Party instead. They are the same with you. Obey God, and He; I doubt whether they will last will reveal to you the truth of His much longer than half of the next

surface. The reason is not high| refuse to pay a living wage. Such |We never complain of the waste of may consider themselves “200 per public waste of our tax money. terprise to eliminate this private CHORDS If good investment were available human heart, machine gun or a battleship. The chords of Life; versed in a go to work. Name any investment of a tear. Business has reached a point rasping sounds all goods for sale. These unemployed sword profit economy. They must be orThe EPIC plan of Upton Sinclair Replies to every perfect chord: njzed the inevitability of it several minor whine port the unemployed within the Will only put into his harmony |RAPS CONSERVATIVES I agree with H. L. Seeger’s letter DAILY THOUGHT publican Party finish dying since believeth not the Son shall not see the standpat conservatives by electOVE God, and He will dwell at heart as the Republicans. term of office.

LOIRE Eas ANY

YES, not only of preventing an [Then you are in for an endless ar-

“The Yankees haven't a ghost of a chance,” and you reply “ off, just look at their pat aly

hi)

5

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

2

argument but of winning it if |gument. But suppose you one arises. Suppose someone says, antly, “I've been wonde

wow »

. only keep out of any of the fistip i

{cuff type of argument but win your fown point of view. n ” n | OF COURSE any answer is a personal opinion, but women | ‘are made out of the same stuff their |grandmothers were and, while they do not have the call upon their

courage that their grandmothers had on the Western trails, yet when the call comes they always seem equal to it. Amelia Earhart, Jacqueline Cochrane and other women fliers indicate that women still have nerve at least. Their grandmothers had to have one thing more—endurance. The war, however, showed that women working in offices, stores, and as housewives, had both nerve and endurance when called upon.

50 H EAS YASON % 2 8 YOUR OPINION

YES, if he will simply wear himself out being egotistical. This is what Knight Dunlap, psychologist, calls “negative practice.” 8it down and just concentrate on what a grand fellow you are, write out every day for a week all the wonderful

WAY ORAO oe

ww Sgt ev a I

WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 1939

In Washington

By Raymond Clapper

Efficiency of Capitalist System Brought Into Serious Question At Economic Committee Hearings.

YA \stoTon, May 17.—We are entering, without fanfare, a new phase of the New Deal, one in which our system of capitalism will be probed to its deepest roots. Our system has been chronically sick for the last decade. Scme within the Adminis tration feel that fundamental changes have taken place to alter completely the nature of our system. Nothing spectacular will emerge, for the present at least, from the activity now going on, but you may be

sure that a period of the most profound questioning of our system and its failure to function more efiec-

| tively has been entered.

In their franker moments, the most loyal New Dealers will confess that in the six years of this Ad-

| ministration the answers to the paradox of want in { the midst of plenty have not been found. Mrs. Roose~ | velt said recently that the New Deal had bought time

in which to study and think. She thus echoed the

| intermost feelings of the thoughtful people in the

Administration. ” n ”n

R. ROOSEVELT has done much tinkering with the capitalist system. There have been regue

| latory measures, such as stock market anc securities | control, and wages-and-hours legislation, both essen« | tially protective measures for the public,

Otherwise the Administration has operated in its broader economics on the pump-priming theory. It hoped that if Government funds were pumped in at the boitom of the social structure, through relief pay=ments, farm benefits and public works, then private initiative would be stimulated. Then the system, by this priming, would catch on and run on its own steam. But after six years the unemployment figures show that pump-priming has not worked. Has the expansion of American economy stopped ? Have we witnessed the end of our dynamic massproduction, lower-price, more-employment policy? Is our system in for stagnation or decline? Those are questions asked by Leon Henderson, new member of SEC and one of the Administration economists. # oss are the questions which are being examined in the new set of hearings just begun before the Temporary National Economic Committee. The purpose of these hearings is to assemble the evidence and lay the groundwork for a new phase of the New Deal. Frankly, the opinion is general among New Deal economists that American capitalism faces a major readjustment. Until recently we thrived on rapidly expanding population. The rate of population growth was at its height from 1900 to 1930. The rate of increase has slowed down sharply and will continue to fall. This is an all-controlling fact in an economy which to be prosperous must continue to expand. Also we are without any new revolutionary industry come parable in industrial effect to the railroads in the poste Civil War period and the automobile in the 1920s. : Those two facts, the decline in the rate of popula~ tion growth and the maturity of the automobile ine dustry, mean that something fundamental has oc curred which defies confidence, hard work by individuals, balanced budgets and the natural curative forces such as were effective in the past when the country was growing so rapidly that mistakes and maladjustments were quickly wiped out in successive floods of expansionist prosperity,

» Ld

It Seems to Me ‘By Heywood Broun

In Calling Out Troops Happy Tags Himself an Industrial Isolationist.

EW YORK, May 17.—There are industrial isola« tionists in America. Happy Chandler, the Govaernor of Kentucky, seems to be one of them. After long negotiations peace is promised in the coal industry. Eighty per cent of those engaged in the business are already signed up on a basis which appears to be mutually satisfactory to both operators and employees. Indeed, it is now revealed that for many weeks a large number of the employers were not only willing but even eager to work in concert with the United Mine Workers of America. Better and more comprehensive organization of the workers has made not for strife but for increas Ing stability. Many leading operators have admitted as much. It is true that two of the operators, who would not permit their names to be used, were shocked at the fact that the President pressed for a peaceful settlement. It seems to me that amazement should come from quite a different quarter, Are there really intelligent people who still feel that the best way to settle a labor dispute is to fight it out with gas and guns and clubs? One might think that such queries were really rhetorical, and that every sane man would promptly say, “Why, of course, not.” But that leaves Happy Chandler, Governor of Kentucky, out of the reckoning. Happy has mobilized the militia in protest against the agreement reached by more than three-quarters of those involved among both the employees and employers.

Still Within the Union

“Nobody can come into this State and cause trouble,” declared the Governor. He seems to forget that even during the long period of negotiations nobody denied that the problem of coal was of national im portance and significance, No question was raised . against the palpable fact that a Federal problem was concerned. Kentucky may be a border State, but it is well within the boundaries of the Union. What goes on in Harlan, Kentucky, is felt in vital ways in other commonwealths of the country. Most distincily coal is not a local issue. Every single American has an acute personal interest in the matter of industrial peace. And that interest goes to the extent of a strike in a settlement which shall promote stability, good wages and decent working conditions. Happy Chandler was not elected to play the role of a Hill-Billy Hitler or a Mountaineer Mussolini. He follows bad precedent in his insistence that the Presi dent of the United States is an outsider who has no right to try and produce peace within the confines of Kentucky as well as elsewhere. It is not the temper of America to permit troops to bayonet miners back into the pits and turn blue grass to purple,

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

“Y¥'M dead tired tonight, John. I've been running up and down stairs all day long.”

Many are the times that you, John Husband, have heard that from your wife at the dinner table. Mrs, Wife had a justifiable grumble, but she probably didn’t know what was happening to her blood pressure every time she climbed those stairs.

For one thing, the faster and oftener you climbed those stairs, the higher went your blood pressure. Recent experiments were tried on women who ran up three flights in 45 seconds. Their blood pressure rose an average of from 30 to 40 points. Although it may remain at a definite level for a long period of time during your life, it gradually mounts from childhood up to old age. Average pres sures are: Five years, 90; 10 years, 100; 20 years and up, 110 to 120. These pressures are for the heart contracted. Exercise of strength, such as weight lifting, will raise the blood pressure. In exercises of speed, such as a fast game of tennis or a dash the length of the pool, your blood pressure rises somewhat less rapidly and returns to normal more slowly. In exercises of endurance, such as 36 holes of golf, a long hike across country or a deliberate but extensive bicycle tour, the pressure will not rise as high as it does in speed exercises and at the end of the endurance grind, may actually be below normal. Exercises of maximum strength subject the heart and blood vessels to great and sudden strain. And for this reason I sound a warning to industrial work.

say pleas- you can think of | about | abou it yourself—and I warrant nt by

oS 8

w, come | think d, ete.”

ers whose jobs require them to do a great amount of