Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 May 1939 — Page 11
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 1939
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Hoosier Vagabond
NEW YORK, May 24 —Well of all things is New York. It seems mighty queer to me when a man is in San Francisco one day and in New York the next. And it is mighty queer.
Here it
I've just taken this little hop in order to haul off and swing at the New York Fair, right on the heels of the San Francisco Exposition. But I doubt that I'll find anything in the World of Tomorrow more remarkable than this overnight flight across the continent. I've known for years that you could be in San Francisco one day and New York the next. That is, I thought I knew it. But I've found I never really knew it —never really got the full jolt of ft—until I did it myself. You can’t just read about it. You've got to see with your own eves the Golden Gate bridge fade behind you. And feel the heat of Sacramento Valley in midafternoon. And then the sudden cold over beautiful Lake Tahoe. And the thick snow on the Sierra Nevadas. And you've got to look down on the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake when the sun is low, And dodge vicious-looking thunderheads over the horrible lands of Wyoming in the eerie dusk. And come down to see friends at Denver for just a minute after dark. And you've got to feel the wheels hit the runway at Omaha around midnight. And wake up at dawn to look down on Lake Michigan. And eat breakfast over the furrowed mountains of Pennsylvania. And come gliding into Newark before the folks are even up back there in California. You've gol to do all that yourself, and then sit here in a hotel room on Times Square and think back, and think how far away you were just a few hours ago—ever to realize the magic of these dozens of flights across this continent every day of the year It's preposterous.
Off for New York
We took off from Oakland Airport from San Francisco. The pilot took off toward the north, and he kept on going right up the bay till he gave us a circling seat in the sky from where we looked smack down on Treasure Island. : And from that same seat you could see all of San Francisco, and Alcatraz Prison, and the two
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across the bay
Our Town
Today's piece is written in fond and grateful memory of Patroclus Wheeler, an imaginative citizen of the old Eighth Ward, who gave everything he had to make the Bookwalter-Taggart campaign of 40 years ago the colorful thing it was. Mr. Wheeler inherited his imagination by way of his father. It was his father, for instance, who gave him his handle name of Patroclus, in the doing of which he not only displayed his classical learning, but honored the memory of the renowned heathen who was the most intimate friend of Achilles with whose ashes, if you'll recall your history, his own were mixed as a testimonial of their inseparable friendship As near as I recall, Patroclus Wheeler was a copyist in a downtown law office with a scanty salary and plenty of leisure to exercise his imagination. In his spare time he wrote poetry. painted in water colors, played the guitar, and frequently attended Police Court, the best place at the time to hear oratory of a high order. Besides that, Patroclus was an ardent Republican.
» » » I'he Bicycle in Politics To tell the truth, I doubt very much whether Mr Wheeler's imagination could have reached the dizzy heights it did except for the fact that he was an ardent Republican. Anyway, it was during the Book-walter-Taggart campaign that Mr. Wheeler flirted with the idea of using the bicycle for political purposes. The bicvele, he thought, should be used by the speakers, galloping around the crowds like Flying Dutchmen, and addressing them from different locations, thus obviating the necessity of the orators con-
Washington
WASHINGTON, May 24-—The Republican National Committee has designated this as “National Debt Week.” The fact that under Mr. Roosevelt the public debt rose from $22,000,000,000 to $40,000,000,000 is being branded as the crime of the century. To illustrate the magnitude of SR this spending—which the Republicans would like to have you think injured the country rather than helped it—the Republican National Committee set up an attractive little exhibit in a downtown show-window. This exhibit includes a minjature model of the Empire State Building. Beside the model is the explanation that had the money which the New Deal has spent been devoted to constructicn of Empire State Buildings 940 such could have been built, one for practically every smaller city in the country. That was a very happy illustration, not for the Republican National Committee, but for the New Deal's case. First, the Empire State Building was constructed by private initiative and therefore is supposed to have been a highly efficient undertaking, not like Government spending which is supposed to be wasteful and useless. Well, I'll let anyone check on the amount of office space that has been empty through the years in that white elephant of private enterprise and set it against some of the badly needed school buildings, hospitals, bridges, roads, playgrounds, ves and even the much belabored WPA writers’ projects which have produced a set of guide books that has just won the praise of a committee of book publishers for excellence of workmanship. ” x »
Not a Good Hlustration
I wouldn't try to stretch the point, but would merely suggest that, just as private spending is not always efficient, so government spending is not always wasteful.
My Day
NEW YORK CITY, Tuesday.—So many young people have been coming to the White House to sing and to play, that in going back through my columns, I find that I forgot to mention a delightful group from Atlanta, Ga. who came here with their director, Mrs. Mary Griffith Dobbs. They are very young ladies and they are called the Dobbs Miniature Harp Ensemble. They play charmingly and have a great deal of poise for their age. All the groups of young people staying with me, who visited the Federal Bureau of Investigation the other day, were fingerprinted and later on this brought up an interesting discussion. I believe that for our own pro- { BEER tection, it would be well if ail of us were fingerprinted. We do it now to babies when they arrive in this world by taking an imprint of the tiny feet. However, it seems to me altogether wrong that we should demand the registration and finger-printing of aliens in this country, when we do not insist on living up to the same regulations ourselves.
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great bridges. and Oakland and all the other little
And then we headed for New York. Sacramento. Down just a minute, to take on a passenger. Reno and not a divorcee in sight, Over Elko at 13,000 feet, doing 212 miles an hour, | the pilot says. The air outside the cabin is 38 degrees. | On the ground at Salt Lake, an hour away, it is 80. We changed to a sleeper plane at Salt Lake. We ate dinner out of Salt Lake. Then we were over Wyoming, and the earth grew hideous in the ghostlike dusk, { Black clouds took hold of the sky, and torrents poured down beneath them. The sun was an inhuman, eclipse-like red. Then it was completely dark, all around us, everywhere, I could hardly wait for our wheels to touch at Denver. For That Girl was there, to say a transient hello. It was a funny meeting. Down out of the | night like something that had been lost-——a nervous, | fleeting few words—then up into the limitless night again.
» ” 2 Another Thrill in a Taxi After Denver, we passengers went to bed. I dozed just before we came to Omaha. We were on the ground in Chicago before I opened my eyes again. The stewardess called me, in broad daylight, just after we left Cleveland. The night had gone fast. The last part of a trip usually seems the longest. But those last two hours over Ohio and Pennsylvania went like a few seconds. The United Airlines bus took us into New York. At 34th St. I got into a taxi. driven by none other than one Irving Welednigen, He aw me get out of the airline bus, and he] thought I was in a hurry. For 16 blocks he whirled that skv-lighted old cab through traffic like a bank- | robher getting away, He clipped trucks, brushed an old woman, cussed push-cart men, and fanned the fronts off a whole bunch of corner pedestrians in his way. And then, enraged almost bevond endurance by this outlandish New York traffic of which he is unconsciously a dominant part, Irving turned full around to me without ever slowing up, and shouted: “They dare you to hit 'em, they just dare you to hit 'em!” Righto, Irving. They do. But this is New York, you know. You are New York. "Irving, we are glad to see you looking so well,
von te Facine ocean. wat » senaoni Airport Dedication Recalls City’s Early
By Anton Scherrer
stantly changing their positions on the platform in order to make themselves understood on the outer fringes of the crowd. The novelty of this arrangement, argued Mr. Wheeler, would attract more people, the first requisite of a mass meeting, and an open vigorous discussion could not fail to secure conversions to the Republican faith. The idea took hold of Patroclus and he commu- | nicated it to three of his principal admirers—a blacksmith on Ft. Wayne Ave, a carpenter, and a retired G. A. R. veteran. It was the pariotic veteran who most strenuously urged Patroclus to go ahead and pep up the Bookwalter campaign which, goodness knows, needed it,
Meant Well, Anyway
Patroclus, just like his noble namesake, yielded! with the solemn pledge to do his part, never once] thinking that he didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. | Nor had he ever made a speech in public. He learned | to do both, however, and in due course a meeting was| scheduled near Woodruff Place at which Patroclus| was billed to appear on a wheel. While crossing Pogues Run that night, and repeat- | ing his speech to himself preparatory to his debut, Patroclus entirely forgot the warning of the blacksmith and gave his second-hand bicycle a violent kick | with his right foot, whereupcn the wheel got even, made a big jump over the curbstone near the Arsenal Grounds and discharged poor Patroclus into the middle of Pogues Run. With the result that the meet- | ing scheduled for that night wasn't held at all. As a] matter of fact, everybody around Woodruff Place left the meeting to help rescue Patroclus from the turbulent waves of Pogues Run. Sure, Mr. Bookwalter lost the election.
By Raymond Clapper
Second, the Empire State Building illustration is not | a happy one for the reason that it was because private enterprise was unable to continue erecting Empire State Buildings that the Government continued spending for construction even though its tax revenues were falling and the money had to be porrowed. | Henry Dennison, president of the Dennison Manufacturing Co. of Framingham, Mass, offered some revealing information on this subject to the O'Mahoney | Temporary National Economic Committee.
Using figures of the National Resources Committee, | of which he is a member, Mr. Dennison said that, taking total public and private construction solehnen| we are spending no more today than we did 18 years ago, in 1920 The difference between 1920 and now is not in the total outlay, but in who is doing the work. In the] 1920s. Government construction (Federal and local) | amounted to 20 to 25 per cent of the total Prive industiy was carrying three-fourths of the load. Now the Government is carrving 40 to 50 per cent—about
half of the total load.
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Public Construction Restored
Mr. Dennison makes another point about Gov-| ernment construction spending. In the 1920s, states and cities carried the major share of the public con- | struction on a steadily increasing scale. The depression found them unable to bear the load and state and municipal construction declined sharply. The Federal Government moved in and by | 1936 had brought total public construction volume back to the level of the late Twenties. Perhaps it would have been better had private) industry continued to erect Empire State Buildings. But since that couldn't be, would it have been better if the Federal Government also had quit building, and thus have escaped adding to its debl? Opinions differ violently but, in spite of National Debt Week and that income tax pavment which is due next month, I think it was milk well spilt and not to be cried over too much.
By Eleanor Roosevelt
So much that is good has come to us through our| foreign immigration, and yet so often we hear people who seem to be entirely ignorant of the contribution which other lands have made to civilization in the United States. I think there is much to be said, however, in favor of deporting alien criminals who are not citizens. Secondly, I would like to see all people who live here and earn their living here, make up their minds after a given period of time either to go home, or to become American citizens. The exact period when they should be asked to make this final decision is, of course, debatable, but it should be at some point and not too long after they have had an opportunity of | knowing this country. This seems to me entirely fair and desirable for the good of the nation. Mrs. Morgenthau and I left Washington yesterday afternoon to come to New York City for Rural Women's Day at the New York Fair. We went without dinner in order to see Katharine | Cornell in “No Time for Comedy.” This is the first| time I have seen her in comedy and she is charming as always. We came home after the play and had a bite of | supper all by ourselves, Today we start out early for the Fair,
(First of a Series)
By Sam Tyndall NDIANAPOLIS will be the center of interest next Monday not only because of the excitement attending the eve of the Speedway race. The attention of aviation experts all over the nation will be focused on Municipal Airport. This city, whose aviation histor) is as colorful as it was hectic, will announce with dedication ceremonies the establishment of the
country's first complete Federal
radio aircraft experimental station. The building is a consolidation of three related but formerly separated testing stations. There will be great doings over the week-end to mark the occasion. An air show with racing planes roaring through the skies,
| stunting and parachute jumping
will entertain thousands. But only the members of that still relatively small clan of real “aeronauts” — pilots, airplane builders, military air experts— those whose lives are devoted to the advancement of aviation will fully understand the significance of the new station. Its establishment means the science of flying since the Wright brothers “towed” their flimsy flying machine into the air 35 vears ago, has developed to a point where research can be specialized in the improvement of radio beams, instrument landing devices, fog penetration lights, and to other amazing instruments designed to guide pilots safely to their destinations. Aviation pioneers dreamed of the “impossible” in developing the airplane, but never that radio instruments would play any part in what they looked on as the “lighter-than-air” science. Many of these aviation pioneers belong to Indianapolis, which can boast a 47-year aviation background. At one point Indianapolis
that
| was the undisputed “lighter-than-
air’ center of the country-—per-haps better known as the “batty balloon days.” During this period Indianapolis boasted many “firsts” in aviation and the first of these was the Brightwood Aerial Navi-
| gation Co. in 1892, the first such | company in the world!
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ORTY-SEVEN vears before brothers flew, aerial navigation was a business right here at home! There wasn't even automobile navigation then! The Brightwood company was incorporated to build a flying machine. The machine was built, The facts are supported by documentary evidence and one of the incorporators is now a well-known citizen. He is Boyd M. Ralston, local real estate dealer, who will drop his duties at any time to tell of the early days of aviation here. A 19-year-old Brightwood youth was the inventor of the machine. He needed financing. Mr. Ralston heard about him nd talked to him. The boy, Walter Mercer, told him very little about the flying machine except that it would have propellers in front and in back, one a pusher and one a puller and “fans” on the top to lift it. Mr. Ralston contacted his close friends in the greatest of secrecy. After all, there was some “shame” connected with being interested in such a ridiculous thing as flying through the air. Harry Negley, who died about 10 years ago, was one who agreed to contribute money to the scheme. Another was Thomas McKee, now believed living in Hollywood, Cal. They incorporated for $5000. They held secret meetings. Mercer said he needed metal. They bought some in Cincinnati. Without telling his backers any further details, Mercer went to work in a shed in Brightwood. His mother knew he was up to something but she thought he was a genius and kept his secret. She also guarded the blueprints as if they were of fabulous value.
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URING the months which followed, Mercer would ask for more metal or other materials.
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
the
years ago, 11 the Wright
1—In what month does vernal equinox occur? 2—Name the principal river in Nebraska. 3—How soon after it is rendered does a decision of the U. S. Supreme Court become effective? 4—To which race do the Hawaiians belong? 5—What instrument, used in navigation, utilizes the directive force of the earth's magnetism? 6—Name the Foreign Minister of Poland. 7T—What is the correct pronounciation of the word carnivorous? = ~ »
Answers 1—March. 2—The Platte. 3—Immediately. 4—Polynesian. 5—The magnetic compass. 6—Co!l. Josef Beck. T—Car-niv’-o-rous; ni-vo -rous. 8 ” »
ASK THE TIMES
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not car-
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Mr. Ralston would call another
secret meeting. “1 would have them meet me at a certain place,” relates Mr Ralston. “being careful not to mention the purpose. They all understood. We would then talk over finances in a vacant barn
somewhere, News of Mercer's secret experiment finally leaked out. Directors had to confirm the story. One headline of the day read: “AIRSHIP RUN WITH STEAM. COMPANY TO MANUFACTURE YOUNG WALTER MERCER'S INVENTION." The subheading said further: “Raised and Lowered by Revolving Fans—Balloon Idea Done Away With—NModel Under Lock and Key Until Money Is In.” The Brightwood Aerial Navigation Co. functioned, but it can not be said that it “navigated.” Mr. Ralston says the machine actually flew. None of the directors saw it but anyway this is what is supposed to have happened, says Mr. Ralston, “Unexpectedly one day Mercer brought his machine out of the shed. Workers in the Brightwood train shops were going to iunch. They stopped to see the weird contraption “It was cigar shaped with puller propellers in front, pushers behind and revolving lifting fans on the top. Mercer got up a full head of steam and let it go. “It went 60 feet in the air, hovered like a hawk and then came crashing to earth. Unhurt but disappointed, believing his invention a complete failure, Mercer ran into his house and committed suicide. That ended the Brightwood Aerial Navigation Co.” During the late Nineties, sons here and elsewhere credited and to some extent ignored as “outlandish” the scat-
+ was Carl G. Fisher's idea.
perdis=-
® napolis ‘Air-Mindedness’
tered reports about “lighter-than-air machines, The bicycle was in its heyday, the telephone still a novelty, streetcars were horsedrawn and interest was turning to the horseless carriage, particularly in Indianapolis where some of the au-
tomobile pioneering was being carried on. On Dec. 15, 1903, the Wright Brothers amazed the world with their successful airplane flight. Balloons were a novelty, but were being piloted in scattered spots in the East. Indianapolis, during the late Nineties and at the turn of the century, was not bothered with any reports of aircraft adventures. There wasn't even a balloon here when the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk.
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UT one summer day in 1908 a near-oval shaped balloon appeared over the Monument. It bobbed low in the air currents. People stopped in their tracks and craned their necks. There was a man suspended by a wooden rigging from the hottom. He was pedaling something. It was the city’s first balloon and the beginning of the balloon era here —an era marked by balloon stunts with some of the wildest promotional schemes ever r«oncocted. The man in the balloon was Capt. George L. Bumbaugh from Illinois. The fact that he was in Indianapolis in his hot-air bag Mr. Fisher, whose youthful exploits with racing bicycles, racing cars and automobiles, were as daring as they were publicized, had laid the groundwork for the Speedway.
He wanted a “real show” to
Side Glances—By Galbraith
launch the racing enterprise in 1909 and Capt. Bumbaugh., who had done + a little parachute jumping from balloons, was the man, » » ” R. FISHER brought him here in 1908. That started more than the Speedway. After the Indianapolis citizens got used to the cigar-shaped balloon, it was announced that an auto would be transported by balloon. That was almost enough to shake the citizenry's faith in mankind. Capt. Bumbaugh was known as “Professor,” but since the Government was beginning to get interested in balloons for military purposes, “Capt.” Bumbaugh sounded better. Anyway, Mr, Fisher and Capt. Bumbaugh tied a 1500-pound new
Stoddard-Dayton to the first gasfilled balloon here. Coal gas was the main ingredient with a little hydrogen when they could get hold of it. Amid pomp and ceremony Fisher and Bumbaugh sailed away with the auto and landed in Richmond. Friends donned their “dusters” and followed by motor. But the two pilots had packed the balloon on the back of the car and met the vanguard on the way back to Indianapolis. Capt. Bumbaugh said he and Mr. Fisher “hit the front page on 16 dailies, 30 feature stories and other press notices.” They had a clipping service. “We figured it was worth $1,000,000 in publicity,” he said. But this was only the beginning for this intrepid pair.
1. The first ‘“dirigible-airship,” or balloon, to appear over Indian apolis. It happened in 1908. 2. This early balloon, filled with hot air, launched the “batty balloon days” in Indianapolis. It was operated by Carl G. Fisher and “Capt.” George Bumbaugh. 3. The “Indiana,” first racing balloon built in the city. 4. “Capt.” Bumbaugh, “Aeronaut & Instructor” in 1913. 5. Draft of the steam airship built by the world’s first airplane company, the Brightwood Aerial Navigation Co, incorporated in 1892. Walter Mercer, the inventor, committed suicide when his experiment “failed.”
“gn, GG.” as Mr. Fisher was Conon in those days, de= cided to promote a national bal= loon race in 1909 to coincide with the opening of the Speedway. Invitations were sent to all the known balloon experts. Mr. Fisher offered a huge silver trophy for the winner and set the race for the Saturday before Memorial
Day. Five responses were not enough to make the race, Mr. Fisher
thought, so he had Capt. Bume baugh build four gas balloons. They were known as the Indiana, Indianapolis, Hoosier and the Chicago. About nine months before the race, Capt. Bumbaugh gave Mr. Fisher a course of instruction along with Dr. Goethe Link and Russell Irwin. When the balloons were inflated at the Speedway there were the four built by Bumbaugh, one from New York, two from St. Louis. one from Canton, O. and another from some place in the East. Mr. Fisher and Bumbaugh piloted the Indiana, Maj. Thomas Baldwin, “lighter-than-air” eXpert for the Government, took controls of the Hoosier, Dr. Link and Mr. Erwin were in the Indianapolis, and two men from Chicago in the fourth local balloon. Well-known balloonists took over the other entries. It was the first national balloon race. There was a stiff northwest wind and with a crowd of several thousand cheering the balloons sailed away Mr. Fisher and Capt. Bumbaugh said they could have won it if they had wanted to, but ruined their chance when *“C. G.” “got hungry for a smoke.” “We came down on the other side of Nashville for a smoke, and went aloft again. At that we set a world endurance record of 49 hours and 25 minutes,” said Capt. Bumbaugh. John Berry, piloting one of the St. Louis balloons, won the dis« tance race, landing in Alabama, more than two days after the start.
NEXT-The airplane comes t{o Indianapolis.
Jane Jordan's Regular Column
Appears today on Page 8
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"Why, it's Aunt Emma! And she complained that my dress showed too much back and shoulders!"
| Everyday Movies—By Wortman
Dolly and Dolores
"We've got a dollar and ninety cents left so make up your mind, Dolores. Shall we go to the Fair once or the movies twice?"
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