Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 May 1939 — Page 16

PAGE 16 The Indianapolis Times

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Give Light and the People Will Find Ther Own Way

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1939

GET BUSINESS BACK TO BUSINESS ENATOR HARRISON and Rep. Doughton, chairmen of | the taxing committees of Congress, apparently have assumed the leadership in the revision of taxes on business. | At a conference with Congressional and Treasury tax leaders, it is reported, Mr. Roosevelt failed to give his bless- | ing to any of the various revision programs. That, it seems to us, is not especially significant. The President will have plenty of opportuntiy to express his views when the new tax bill is placed on his desk. He can then veto the bill if he doesn't like it. But we do not expect that to happen, if the new meas- | ure meets the President's two entirely reasonable stipula- | tions—that it not diminish the Government's revenues, and | that it open no loophole for the wealthy to avoid taxes. Considering some of the recent sniping by certain ele- | ments of business—notably the U. S. Chamber of Com- | merce—we think Mr. Roosevelt has leaned backward to be fair toward business on the subject of taxation. The principal complaint of business has against the total Federal burden so much as with the multi- | plicity and complexity of the taxes. It is one thing to pay | a higher rate on corporation income, a tax with which busi- | nessmen are familiar, and which is relatively easy to compute. But it is a different story when, on top of the cor- | poration income tax, businessmen are required to file re- | turns on an undistributed-profit tax, a capital-stock tax, an | excess-profits tax, an unemployment-compensation tax, an | old-age insurance tax, not to mention various nuisance excises and other levies, Federal, state and local, | Because of the ramifications of these taxes in the inti- | mate affairs of management, heads of large corporations are required to keep lawyers and accountants at their elbows, | and consult them on nearly every decision. Many medium- | sized corporations spend more money on tax accountants, | legal advice and extra bookkeeping than they pay in taxes. As for the real “little fellows” in the business world, they can't afford all the extra high-priced help. They have to do their own wrestling with the multitude of tax problems and returns—and they don’t have much time left to attend to their business either. Of all the advantages to be derived from simplifying | business taxation, not the least will be getting businessmen back to business. And that is a first essential in promoting | recovery, re-employment, and a larger volume of industry | and commerce from which larger revenues flow.

LIVES DEPEND ON THIS

UCH has been written here and elsewhere about the! necessity of reducing the city’s and state’s ghastly automobile accident death toll. We wish that we could | point to tangible accomplishments. There was a ray of hope two months ago when it was learned that Indianapolis’ accident rate had dropped under that of a year ago. Many seemed to think we had found | at least part of the answer. But the maiming and the! killing of the last two months has swept the figures | upward. It now seems likely that with the advent of warm | weather and the accompanying increase in traffic that this | city’s rate will soon be equal to that of last year and, | perhaps, bevond that. The answer is not simple. We cannot forever preach to | drivers that they must do this and must do that and that | they must not do this. We cannot forever say that it is | the drunken driver or the careless driver. We have to formulate a fully rounded program. We have to have traffic engineering, traffic education, proper | patrolling of roads, law enforcement and punishment for | law violators, all wrapped up into a co-ordinated plan of | attack. We cannot do it quickly but the sooner we start | the more lives we will save. | What, for instance, has happened to the WPA’s traffic survey? What, to carry it on a step further, has happened to the Police Department's study of the so-called Detroit | Plan? We cannot drop the matter once it seems that people | are being a little more careful. The attitude of the courts, too, is of paramount importance. The judges of traffic | cases have to recognize that strict enforcement is one of | the prime factors in any safety program. One court alone | cannot turn the tide. Nor two courts. We must have all | our judges working in unison in a planned program. Soon we must realize that all these factors add into | one. We must hook up all our machinery—engineering, | driving, policing, judging—and then we will be saving lives | instead of ending them.

THE RIGHT MAN

HAT this city needs, before finally making up its mind | as to the wisdom of buying the Indianapolis Water Co. for around $22,825,000, is the advice of the most competent utility expert that can be found. And we believe the city administration has found precisely the right man in Judson E. Dickerman, a utility expert associated with the Federal Trade Commission. Not only is Mr. Dickerman a man of wide experience in these fields but he has a special knowledge of Indianapolis that ought to be invaluable in the present instance. No one is more respected by his friends or foes, and no one less likely to be influenced by any consideration other than the | merits of the case. If Mr. Dickerman’s final judgment is that the Water Company would be a good buy for the City at approximately the amount suggested, we, for one, are willing to stand on that opinion. We don’t know anyone more qualified to judge.

CHAMPAGNE FOR THE COMRADES

NOTE on the progress of equality in Soviet Russia: The Food Industry has ordered Russian vintners to produce 4,000,000 magnums of champagne this year and increase that to 12,000,000 in 1942. Its cost, 12 rubles a bottle, is beyond the ordinary worker's pocketbook. The Soviet regime is eager to increase champagne production in order that big money-makers—the “Stakhanoffists” and upper-bracket engineers—may have a “cultural drink” on which to spend their surplus earnings.

not been

| |

| in Oklahoma.

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Wealth May Tend to Concentrate But Shabby Mansions Indicate the 'Haves' Do Not Hold It for Long.

N= YORK.“May 18.—Everywhere I roam in the United States there is evidence in the dilapidation of old homes that, if wealth does tend to concentrate in the possession of a small group of people, then that group itself is like a golf club in that the membership is always changing.

The old ones die off or go broke and quietly vanish, |

and the heirs of those who did not go broke, on coming into the money, take second or third cut after the taxes have been collected and, dividing it among them, find that individually they are unable

| to maintain the old mansions of the best families.

Some of the heirs are fools to lose their money

| in silly investments, a good many are drunkards and | given to marrying frequenily and on slight provoca-

tion and some are just average persons who stretch

| out their money until they die, when it is taxed again, | and that remainder, in turn, is divided among several

in diminishing portions. ” » ” LL American cities-and a hundred years will cover the age of many of them-—have overwhelmed and obliterated in their physical growth

| whole rows of old mansions where once abode the rich { men of an earlier

day, and many buildings now masked and jazzed up with hotel fronts or store fronts were palaces not so long ago in which the banker or the streetcar magnate lived on rich meats and heavy gravies. . Anyone who is rising 40 years, on revisiting a city after an absence of 20 years or 25, will notice the total disappearance of blocks which in his youth gave him an impression of impregnable riches and permanence and the transformation of others into tire stores,

| kitchenette apartments and palmists’ studios.

It is true, of course, that some of the rich and well-

| to-do have moved into the suburbs to occupy imitation

English or awful Spanish dwellings with plate-glass shower stalls, but very little room for books. But a majority of those families are lately come into money and many of them are house poor even so. 2 5 ”n N New York in 20 years, Fifth Ave. which once meant society and riches, has been transformed into a street of shops and business below the park, and to the north of 59th St. has become a mixture

of old homes.

has its miscellany of joined the polo club and flew his criminal action and tossed his cuff links and his wife's pearls into the blanket to stand off the creditors. The story can be read in the names of those who constitute that which is known as society or cafe society in any city, for the names of the old rich fam-

| ilies are rarely represented and the names which do | appear were found only in the births, marriages and | deaths and in the humbler brackets of the payrolls | 40 years ago.

Business By John T. Flynn

New Deal at Last Discovers the Consumer and Will Try to Help Him.

EW YORK, May 18.—A most astonishing thing has occurred in Washington. After six years

the Administration has finally discovered the consumer. Harry Hopkins {§ planning to spend as much as $150,000 on him.

This, for reasons which are more or less obvious,

is a producer's world. And this has been a pro-

ducer's Administration from the beginning. One of the first things it did was to suspend the Sherman antitrust law which was a sort of Magna Charta of the consumer to protect him from producers ganging up on him. Promptly the producers proceeded to do that under the auspices and sponsorship of the Government. Countless millions—even billions—are expended to enable producers to get higher prices out of the consumers. The lobbies of Congress swarm with the lobbyists of various kinds of producers getting all sorts of legislation adopted for producers. During the NRA consumers’ representatives were pushed aside and around and spent most of their time in futile protest. Of course it is true, after a fashion, that producers are also consumers. And therefore it may be insisted that what is done for the producer is also done for the consumer. But this is one of those half-truths which is far more plausible than true

The Real Forgotten Man

Every man who works is in a sense a producer of something or other. And as a producer he is as well protected as possible. But after he gets his wages as a producer he goes out into the market as a consumer to spend them. And there he is one of the most helpless human things in this world. The market is eorganized against him and he, as a consumer, is completely unorganized. There are producers who are also consumers in a different way. For instance a large corporation must buy raw materials before it can process them into its own special product. Such a corporation, because it

buys on a large scale, can hire chemists, physicists, |

engineers, experts of all sorts to examine and test its purchases. ordinary housewife. But her purchases are too small to enable her to hire anvone to do any testing for her, Mr. Hopkins is now meditating setting up some sort of bureau to aid this befuddled housewife purchaser in her problems of selection. How it is to be done of course I do not know or how far it will get I do not know. It will not get very far on $150,000. Fifteen million would make a beginning. But at least it is a recognition of the existence of the real forgotten man —the consumer.

A Woman's Viewpoint

| By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HE American Women’s Committee for Spanish Refugees appeals by letter for help in raising one million dollars to send abroad to the aid of the war stricken. The list of its sponsors is impressive: Mary E. Woolley, Mrs. Vincent Sheean, Mrs. Raymond Clapper, Mrs. George Seldes, Lena Madesin Phillips, Katherine Lenroot, Dorcthy Thompson and scores of other notables. We wish them well in their noble enterprise, even while we resist their plea. Our charity pittance stays In spite of our boasted wealth, there are some mighty pitiful looking children here. With their share-cropper parents, they live in subhuman conditions and are not much better off than the waifs in southern France. In every part of the United States, multitudes of men, women and children are hungry, cold and sick. These eyes have seen them. Money is needed—and desperately, so long as we won't give them something better—that justice which in every land should put the welfare of little children above the greed of politicians and warlords. The notice of millions of American citizens is focused these days upon foreign lands: loud attention is called to the mote in the European eye. Perhaps the great beam in our own shuts out a view of the overwhelming amount of needless poverty and pain in our own country. And, although all of us realize that what goes on abroad is bound to affect our future welfare, is it not equally true that what goes on here may affect also the future of Europe? Americanism is a form of humanitarianism which encircles the globe. But it still seems to me that our first job is to build a healthy, safe and happy country for our own, before we take on the care of more multitudes than Wg can ever hope to save,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES That’s What We’re

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1939

The Hoosier Forum

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

PLEADS FOR ADMISSION OF REFUGEE CHILDREN | By Maria Burkett

I am shocked that the American | exists, who, because we have sharecroppers, opposes the placement here of children from good, intelligeng, liberty-loving German families who cannot bear to see their youngsters grow up, intellectually crippled and corrupted by Nazi philosophy or persecuted by its fanaticism.

All sentiment aside, the fact that these children come of good, sound stock and have a background of culture and education should be of vi{tal interest to anyone concerned {with the future of America. Population experts are alarmed because our better types of citizens {are not reproducing themselves while the underprivileged, the weak land incompetent multiply themselves and our social problems, (blindly, relentlessly, What a her|itage for the future! {| On the other hand, entry of {these youngsters (for whose care | many interested, responsible Ameri|cans have already filed applications) would in no way burden the gen- | eral public and enrich the nation with potentially high-type citizens. Need one good deed exclude fanothier? Let's not confuse issues.

| “Methinks the lady doth protest |

too much.” Those who bewail the {poor share-cropper seldom sym-

(Times readers are invited to express their 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.)

views

|scribes for the taxpayer by offering (to personally support one aged |parasite. He says Dyer’s plan is 'bolshevik and urges respect for the old people who built this country and their customs, using these self[respecting old folks to bolster up |his latest love, pauper pensions, a plank in every Communist platform. | That gentleman is the bolshevik. The traditional American way is for children to care for their par|ents. Maj. Dyer is not speaking of his own parents. Cold-blooded as this plan seems it is humane compared to those who dump their own parents on the public like dogs |kicked out by their owners at tax- | paying time. > © ® EMBARGO FAVORED ON | AGGRESSOR NATIONS

By Mrs. Elisabeth Hylbert Murphy, Chairman Indianapolis Clerics Aid Committee

tion of articles advocating embargo on war materials sent to Japan and legislation granting discretionary power to the President to name the aggressor in time of war. This would speed up the use of the em- | bargo and of economic sanctions, | I would like to point out the un- | fortunate position in which China | would be placed under a cash and carry system as she has no ships and little money. Therefore I would urge the elimination of such | a system.

2 ” ” | INSISTS BUSINESS IS EAGER FOR RECOVERY By Voice in the Crowd Most of the people who claim to know all about raising children |

never had any. And thus it is] about “business.” The people who | blame everything on business have never experienced the responsibility that is assumed by business. Re-| sponsibility to employees, to customers, to the community and to] the nation is the gauntlet of business. When a gentleman writes in the Forum that “business is not ready to recover,” and that “there is question that business will ever be come civilized,” he is simply talking right through the top of a stovepipe hat. He doesn’t know a thing about | it. There is no group in the nation | today that is as anxious to recover |

| pathize deeply enough to open their |

| any {Struck’s sympathy is genuine I can (put her in touch with several poor | Southern families who would wel(come her help.

{sympathy but industrial

|it can be done, and that the doing | { will not be hampered by the ad{dition of these fresh young hope- | fuls from abroad!

"DENIES INDORSEMENT

Theoretically this right is also open to the |

{merit in some cases at least.

: . | I wish to congratulate The Inown homes to the oariap-clad, pel" | gianapolis “Times on the splendid Miss | Statistical information given in the articles written by Henry Lee on (“We Arm the Dictators.” I would

| like to encourage further publica-

DAY DREAMING However, aid even 20000 share-

croppers, and the basic problem By FLORENCE SUMPTER would still remain. Not maudlin!If I were a bird, oh! How I could fly develop- |Over the houses and into the sky, ment, intensive education and en-| Up in the clouds or on to the stars,

child, but if

lagra-pale croppers’ other child,

lightened agricultural methods, will [Drop in on Jupiter and maybe on. {ever pull | economic quicksands.

the South out of the Mars.

We who believe in America think | What a queer feeling it gives one | inside, Dreaming, pretending you're a lark S50 divine, Just then you wake up—it’s all been a fake, But please believe it, just for your own sake, y

5 un »

OF MAJ. DYER'S PLAN By James R. Meitzler, Attica DAILY THOUGHT

When I wrote that Maj. Dyer's| For whosoever will save his life critics censured the wrong party,| shall lose it: and whosoever will I did not indorse his plan. His at-| lose his life for my sake shall find tackers have almost convinced me! it.—Matthew 16:25. that Maj. Dyer's suggestion has eee TER blood is shed in confirOne Forum contributor should | mation of the noblest claim— take his own medicine. But this! the claim to feed upon immortal gentleman has not swallowed even truth, to walk with God and be one of those pauper pills he pre- | divinely free. —Cowper,

las that group classified as “busi- | ness.”

| During the time that it took {the present Administration to pile up its first nine billion dollars of | deficit, “business” had spent 27 bil(lion dollars to keep the ship afloat. Do you think they would have done | that if they did not want to recover? Or if they had no confidence that | [recovery was possible? “Business” is the method that {men have adopted by which they |can serve each other, It is civilized |and without it there is no civiliza- | tion. When there is no longer civilization it will be because the serv- | ing of each other through “busi-| ness” has failed. There are some men who are un- | ethical in business, just as there are |some quack doctors and shyster | lawyers, and as there are some poli|ticians who are not statesmen. These exceptions, however, eliminate themselves. When a man states that we will have to return the Republicans to | power to prove their “ineptitude,” he is selling America short. When the people wake up to the fact that we still have a people’s government and that each of us must assume a share of its responsibility, it won't make a dime’s worth of difference whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House as the guest of the taxpayers.

AN You TELL NTROVE ] PRES STORY? YES QRNO eee

3 'C A PEYCHOLOGIST Sh

NAME YOUR OPINION

YOU CAN often gain quite a bit nose, drop his countenance, give a of light if you watch closely. weak sort of grin and try to change An extrovert will usually laugh out- the subject. This does not necesright and unabashed while an in-|sarily mean that one has any trovert will likely look down his|“cleaner mind” than the other—it

LET'S EXPLORE YOUR MIND

By DR. ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM

be acknowledged

[is just the difference in their frank‘ness about such things. | 2 NOT very clearly. If you really know a thing clearly and analytically you have thought it out in some kind of words. They are almost our only means of express- | ing our thoughts. True, the scientists, artists, and poets have hunches, intuitions and imaginings that often lead to great discoveries or poetic and artistic achievements which can't be expressed in words —but they can hardly be said to! in the strictest | sense until organized in words. Pos- | sibly those psychologists known as| Gestalters will not agree with this. , ” ” 8

THIS is pretty close to the truth. An electrician works with wires without the slightest fear because he knows which to touch. You or I would be terribly frightened to touch a single one. A surgeon cuts into the living flesh calmly but it would terrify you or me if we had to do it. He is not afraid because he has knowledge. Knowledge is the surest road to self-con-fidence. When you fear you won't make good on your job, it is chiefly from lack ot knowledge either of

» n »

yqurself or your job,

Gen. Johnson Says—

New Deal Jibes at Industry for Ignoring Men Over 50, but Its Own Policies Are Just as Harsh,

ASHINGTON, May 18—If an economic fact can be described as pathetic, the saddest one is the increasing inability of a man past 30 to hold a job and the near-impossibility of his getting one. If he works with his hands, the door isn’t open an inch. If he directly superintends others who work with their hands, the opening is a little wider. It is only in professional and higher executive fields, where ex« perience outweighs umph, that the old boys get a chance. Many in this Administration have panned industry for this tendency and many in industry have denied it. Truth is that a good shop foreman, for example, who has been on the job for 20 years isn't likely to be displaced by a bright young thing vibrant with education, vitality and pep. The old bull of the woods knows the ropes too well. » UT if that shop closes down and he has to apply to a new one in competition with a young collegiate mechanical engineer, he hasn't a Chinaman's chance. WPA is crammed with hopeless examples of valuable, able men in this class. They, not youth, are the lost generation. No old man can keep up with the pace of modern mechanical production. “The company” usually sets veteran rejects up on pittance as watchmen or eleva« tor men, but that doesn't care for 5 per cent of the scrap heap. With some brilliant exceptions of honest= to-God pension and retirement plans, industry, on this count, is guilty as charged. But when this Administration begins to belly-ache about industry in that, it is the plainest example of the pot calling the kettle black. The most soulless corporation can’t compare with our Government in freezing out maturity and experience. ” ” ” T the threshhold is Civil Service. Try to get a rating there if you are over 45. If there is any place where accumulated knowledge and experience ought to count, it is in the most decisive tribunal in the world—the Supreme Court of the United States. The greatest ornaments of that bench have been men who had already challenged the Administration of the country for wisdom, justice and learning before their elevation. That, as distinguished from all others, is no place for the hot blood, impulsiveness and partisan« ship of youth. The “youngest judge” before W. O. Douglas, ine spired the Dred Scott decision which precipitated the Civil War, This Administration is on record not only as advocating “reforming” partisanship on that bench but insisting that it should not be dry behind the ears—to the despair of men of the type of Marshall, Bradley, Taft, Brandeis, Cardozo, Hughes and Holmes. All this leads up to the Tommy Corcoran plan to make the Army over by forcing out officers in certain grades over 50 regardless of ability or merit. If a man over 50 is fit only for the scrap heap, maybe we had better get a Tom Dewey for President. I would favor a George Washington, but I would much prefer a tyro under 40 to a man nearing 60 whose ideas are steered by a man under 40.

It Seems to Me

on ou

By Heywood Broun

Could Welles' Martians Have Had A Hand in That Putnam Kidnaping?

EW YORK, May 18.—I am beginning to wonder whether the two masked men who kidnaped George Palmer Putnam may not have been a couple of Martians stranded after the late raid led by Orson Welles. Mr. Putnam has said definitely that he was not a party to any hoax. Having known him for vears. I am quite ready to accept that. But, of course, it is still possible that he was hoaxed against, although not personally hoaxing. The West Coast is great growing country for prac= tical jokers. Newspaper editors, I believe, should be suspicious about news from any community which includes four Marx Brothers and one Ben Hecht. Frankly, I believe that George Palmer Putnam was taken in as well as kidnaped. He is the publisher of a book, the name of which escapes me, which might potentially be disliked by Hitler sympathizers. But so much is printed hereabouts which is even more punishing to the Nazi cause that I am a little sure prised that alien agents should have picked on Pute nam. Without wishing to put ideas in anybody's head, I wonder why they didn’t kidnap Winchell. At any rate, I am strongly of the opinion that George Palmer Putnam was fooled against his will and that many American newspapers overplaved a story which may not be wholly authentic in spite of the undoubted sincerity of the man who supplied the details to his rescuers. '

Too Quick on the Trigger

And I think that such readiness to accept incidents which are something less than completely nailed down is peculiarly dangerous in a jittery world. It isn’t even good journalism in piping times of peace. I have no disposition to protect any particulan school of aberrant political thought, and least of all that of the Nazis, But in recent months even the

most faintly tinted rose petals have been trodden down as “red.” The word “Fascist” has at times been stretched to such an extent that some of us commentators have been no better than candy pullers, and the noun “Trotskyite” has been accepted in some quar= ters as the complete equivalent for the epithet which moved the Virginian to say, “When you call me that smile.” ' I'm for a nice use of English and smaller headline$ concerning happenings which are still in the haze or, even if crystal clear, a little less than epochal. I trust that Mr. Putnam is none the worse for his experience and that he will not be discouraged from promoting the sales of that hook, even though he was rudely interrupted in that task by Nazis, Martians or fellow Californians with a perverted sense of humor,

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

HETHER it be a 100-meter dash in the Olympie’ games or a potato race at the lodge picnie, at some time during your life you have been or will be called upon to perform as a runner. And when that time comes you will realize if you haven't already—the importance of breathing in athletic competition and exercise, The man or woman with the best trained breathing often wing by a margin attributable to that alone.

Athletes change their style of breathing accorde ing to the event. In the short dashes the racer breathes normally through the time when thes starter says “On your mark!” At “Get set!” the. sprinter will take a breath and hold it until the: gun fires the start. He retains the breath until, he is under way, Better sprinters hold the breaths much longer than those who are untrained. : Swimmers differ in their style of breathing. Most} however, shorten the time when the breath is taken’ in and given out and increase the rate of breathing: with the rate of the stroke. . Golf experts take a deep breath before the drive and hold it during the swing of the club. This serves to stiffen the chest muscles and aids in cone trol of the arms. After the drive, they let ouf the air and breathe normally. During putting ther breathing should be quiet and shallow. \ The manner in which you breathe as you exer cise has much to do with your efficiency. Trainin four or five weeks will increase the amount of carbo dioxide that you give out and the amount o oxygen you absorb during breathing. You should reach the peak after about four to six weeks of tr