Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 15 June 1939 — Page 17

pen 16 The Indianapolis Times

(A BCRIPPE.HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

POY W. HOWARD RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE resident Editor Business Manager

Owned and published Price Ih Mation Coun daily (except Sunday) by ty, 8 cents a copy; deliv The Indianapolis Times ered By carrier, 12 eents Publishing Co, 214 W, a week. Maryland St.

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Give Light end the People Will Find Ther Own Way THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1939

Member of United Press, Scripps « Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu. reau of Circulation.

GOOD RIDDANCE AE are glad to gee that Sheriff Feeney has taken the initiative in cleaning up loosely operated ‘night spots” that contribute to the delinquency of juveniles. A comparatively small number of such resorts are the principal offenders. They welcome juvenile trade in open defiance of the law and good sense. Reputable operators ought to be among the very first in encouraging such cleanup efforts as Sheriff Feeney hag undertaken.

A GOOD RELIEF BILL HE 81.717,000,000 relief bill submitted to Congress yesterday by the House Appropriations Committee repre. sents a careful, thoughtful attempt to put more order, fairness and good sense into the administration of relief. The committee had a tough job—one long neglected while Congress hag been signing blank checks and letting other people decide how the money should be spent. We're pleased to see go many good proposals, and not surprised to find that a few others are questionable, * ® * ® ® # For instance, we don't agree that a three-man board (two Democrats, one Republican) would run WPA better than a single administrator. The net effect of that change would be three £10,000 jobg in place of one. And we're not gold on the idea of limiting WPA building projects to those costing less than $25,000, turning those costing more over to the Public Works Administra. tion, and “earmarking” 125 million dollars of WPA’s money to be spent by PWA, President Roosevelt hag not asked more money for PWA, and we think WPA’s full appropriation ought to be available for the work-relief program. It's true that many of WPA's larger building projects have involved excessive costs. But we believe those costs can be reduced without relegating the WPA workers to miner construction and leaf-raking., One way to reduce them ig through the committee's proposal, indorsed by Administrator Harrington, to abolish the present system of paying “prevailing wages” to WPA workers, Under that system, skilled workers get higher hourly wages than unskilled but work fewer hours per month. Plumbers in Pittsburgh, for example, work 350 hours a month, bricklayers 4814 hours, carpenters 80 hours, une | skilled laborers 120 hours, Obviously, a scrambled employ | ment schedule like that makes efficient operation of con struction of projects impossible. The committee's plan is to require 130 hours of work a month from each WPA wage-earner, individuals getting a monthly wage equal to what they receive now, At first glance, it seems heartless to propose that people who have been on WPA for 18 months or more—ag 30 | per cent of the total number have—ghould be taken off the payroll and kept off for at least 60 days. But there are a

million needy and eligible people who haven't been able to | n

get on WPA payrolls at all. This enforced furlongh plan | will give some of them a chance, and at the same time it will | discourage the evident tendency of many workers to make | WPA a career and stop looking for private jobs. ® » » » ® We're heartily in favor of the requirement for a thor | ough check of WPA roils each six months, to take chiselers off; and of the drastic prohibitions against politics in relief | —Which do not, however, remove the need for permanent | legislation in the form of the Hatch bill. The new relief | bill isn't perfect, and we hope Congress will improve it, but | in general it is the best measure on this subject since the | depression began,

»

SECURITY FOR SOLONS ON'T laugh, and don’t get mad, but Congress is thinking | of passing a law to provide pensions for its own | members. | Now and then some statesman sounds off about the | terrible hardships suffered by the men and women who | represent their states in Washington, and such complaints | leave us cold. Sure, we know that frequent campaigning, | and staying half or more of each year in the city that | boasts the country’s highest cost of living, raise cain with | many a Congressman’s £10,000 salary, Rut we also know how avidly the Senators and Representatives seek their jobs: how glad they are to collect 20 cents a mile for travel that costs only a fraction as much: | how alert some of them are to get relatives on the publie payroll and to go junketing at the taxpayers’ expense, So it isn't out of sympathy that we bespeak consideration for the plan proposed by Rep. Ramspeck of Georgia. Under it, 5 per cent of each member's salary would be applied toward purchase of an annuity. Upon leaving | Congress a member would begin to draw his annuity plus an equal amount contributed by the Government. The Congressmen thus would pay about half the cost of their pensions. Federal judges, who contribute noth. ing toward their pensions, can retire at 70, after 10 years or more on the bench, at full pay for life. The theory is that judges, with their latter vears secure, can afford to be completely independent. And where is independence needed more than in Congress?

THE FAIRBANKS PLAN

AN intriguing idea is put forward by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He wants the Presidential candidates in 1940 to present themselves to the public through the movies, in feature-length biographical films with such actors as Spencer Tracy and Paul Muni playing the title parts. Such films, as Mr. Fairbanks save, would cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars each, or more. But at that. he argues, it would be a comparatively cheap method of campaigning, it would dramatize the candidates and their records and issues better than ever before. and it Now “prevent elections being won simply by oratorical Skull. Maybe so, but we have a hunch that the result of a campaign conducted via the movies, with the voters expressing their real preferences, would be the election of either

TE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES oe. Holding the Ladder !—By Talburt Hy CC A

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

How About Honoring Some of the Baseball Writers Whe Alse Helped Build Up the National Pastime?

EW YORK, June 15-<The obrervance of the centennial of baseball is incomplete and a little unsporting without some acknowledgment to the corps of journalists who have clattered over the tiee with the players and written stuff that made them famous and some of the magnates rich. True, the press hag covered baseball for box office reasons of its own, but the writers rarely have pers mitted such thoughts to soil their work, and it is fof the writer in the press coop, not for the business manager in his lair, that I bespeak honorable mention. If Babe Ruth's bat and the nte of John MeGraw be relice worth treasuring under glass in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, then Bill MeGeehan's portable typewriter which made MeGraw the master mind fe not less sacred. Detracting nothing from the gloty that was Cobb, I propose that the trustees of Cooperstown score an assist for the man who named him the Georgia Peach, and in the case of Ruth, equal recognition for the writer—a Mr. Runyan, I believe—who called him firet the Great Bambino, then the Bam. Certain individual writers ih some communities have been baseball men in print longer than any individual star and have done baseball on paper as well as any athlete ever played it on the field.

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MONG these Ring Lardner must be cited first A and Hugh & Fullerton somewhere in the frst divicion along with Grantland Rice, the originator of the dream-souff style and still ehampion of that gohool of writers who hear only cheers and hever the gnashing of the turnstile cogs. Roy Stockton of the 8t. Louis Post-Dispatch, wits ing of the Gas House Gang and Pepper Martin's Mud Cate, made even better entertainment than he saw. He and Sid Keener, of the Star-Times were doing baseball when George Sisler broke in and are still at it. Bill Hanna of the New York Herald Tribune, who covered baseball 40 years, a wizened, sickly little man fn hig last days and always quaintly queruious, was noted around the league for his pills and draughts and his refusal to occupy hotel rooms above the second floor, $ # @ N Brooklyn Uncle Wilbert Robinson, as manager of the clowns ealled the Daffiness Boys, was dee voted to Garry Schumacher, the spirit of Flatbush, and was unhappy without him on tour. Surely among SUeh men as these and Harry Salsinger of Detroit, Bozeman Bulger, Paul Shannon of Boston, Charlie Dryden, Charles BE. Van Loan, Dan Daniel, Rud Rennie. Fred G. Lieb, Gunner Hudson and Harty Neely, the trustees of the museum must discover something that can be ignored only at a sacrifice of sportsman ship and comradeship. Dryden wag an artist who often concealed vulgar mischief in the sly arrangement of blameless wordage. At lagt he collapsed, and a group of comrades who broke their Southern trip a few years later to vieit him at Biloxi found him paralyzed in a wheel chair watching the approach of hig last spring. Hig speech was impaired, but the old man managed to stutter, with tears in his eyes, “Happy days! Happy days!® Mr. Dryden, for one, would not look out of place in the baseball hall of fame,

Business By John T. Flynn

False Doctrine Being Preached

Against Producing Luxury Goods.

NEY YORK, June 15.-—Many ideas are foating around as to how the nation can get well. One of the strangest I have heard came from a prominent

| trangporting and marketing and

| their fustian and so on, then the first signs of the

‘A Woman's Viewpoint

Shirley femple or Donald Duck, *

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pulpit orator last week. I have heard it from other places before, It iz that we should spend less of our national energy on the production of luxury goods and more on producing what the mass of the people

This idea, which is popular with people who mix their economics with religion, used to be popular vears ago. It ix based on a complete ignorance of our economic system, We produce all the wheat the nation needs. But | there are millions who cannot afford to buy it. Sup- | pose we shifted over to producing more clothes, move | shoes. There would be millions who could not buy them just ag there are millions who eannot buy all the clothes and shoes we are capable of producing now. It it a fact not generally known that the rise of economic well-being in the capitalist system is almost completely parallel with the rise and growth of the luxury industries. There is a pious idea that a dollar spent on some luxury by a rich man is a dollar taken out of the mouth of a poor man. But obviously thig is not true The rich man does not find his luxuries growing on trees. Before he can enjoy them or buy them someone must produce them.

Lesson of the Middle Ages

One of the surest ways in which to enable more people to buy more bread and more shoes would be |

WHATCHA S00 NERVOULS AROUT = THEY'LL GO BACK TO SLEEP BEFORE 1940!

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To TAKE POLIT\CHRE QUT oF

REWER

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THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1989"

I wholly

The Hoosier Forum

defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

disagree with what you say, but will

PLEADS FOR GREATER SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY By K. V. €

In your Hoosier Forum Voice in the Crowd has a long speech about the American System and states that Rugged Individualism will bring us out of the complicated economic mess we are in when in fact that is the cause of our economie grief today. V. 1. C. is turning back to the past and dreaming of a country with ample opportunity for all, a land witli no barriers o

class of permanent privilege, a land in which every man may rise as fast and far as ability or luck may carry him--but he fails to visualize the social results of these private] initiative actg of the past, Natur. | ally under the capitalistic system | the ones that arrive at the top|

standards of living, wealth and promise to those who have the will and ability to. get it. Could it be that the capitalistic system is responsible for this? To be sure there hag been no political system devised that is perfect in every respect, but at the same time the aforementioned facts seem to indicate that the much cussed and discussed capitalistic system is v the best. , , We have examples abroad of major parties and we are justly Paseist and Communistiec governs proud of our happy co-ordination ments, They are mueh the same in and achievements under Democratic (hat a select few rule the masses by Administrations. We ask any eiti= |foree, Certainly this is not wanted zen to come to our City Market and here, We have seen the results of make his own observations and absolute monarchies both present draw his own conclusions, and past, We want none of that, While we are on the subject, Mr, Why not concentrate on improving and Mrs, Citizen of Indianapolis, do guy own svstem instead of demand you Know that the City Market 8 ling a new and untried system? re

(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)

cease to bother about privilege be-|self supporting and the difference cause privilege is to their advantage. between what the City collects tor | Bo America has got to recognizs a rents and the cost of operation [CRITICIZES FIGURES greater social responsibility than leaves a neat balance in the General | OF EMPLOYMENT OFFICE

changing conditions the Govern | ment will be forced to take over! more and more private enterprises. | And this will be the fate of which. | ever class is unable to adjust he!

to changing social conditions,

$$. 8 § DENY RENT INCREASED | AT PUBLIC MARKET

By Frank A. Reinkman, Chairman Ade! visory Board, Delaware and Market Sts |

Rise at Public Market” we, the Advigory Board of the Standholders of | the City Market, feel that it is quite necessary to answer thig letter with | some real facts and truths, and to]

“Citizen” that the only thing core rect in the article was the 10 per cent. First of all, let this be eclear:| There positively is no rent increase. | There is however a talked of and

planned levy of 10 per cent—based | upon the annual rental of each) stand — as a means of ereating a|

| called

Indianapolis almost one-half cent? Well, that is a faet—and the advertising fund planned won't change that either, We can't help but feel that no one need have any fear that the so“Laws of Reonomies” will cause any part of this levy to be passed on to the eonsumer,

in

» PREFERS CAPITALIST

In answer to the Forum article in SYSTEM TO OTHERS your paper headed “Protests Rent?

By Bruce R. MeFadden

I notice a contribution by H. W. Daacke blaming the capitalistic sys= tem for the present slump. . .. It is needless for me to say that this na-

ever before. If we fail to meet Fund sufficient to lower the taxes my x. v. ©.

The Indiana State Employment office makes public statistics for the (month of May, claiming to have placed 7656 persons in some kind of work, These jobs were given by

14472 employers,

According to the number of emplovers, these jobs did not amount to muenh and two-thirds of them were temporary, ranging from ono day to a week, This agency puts out statisties, but it fails to point out how many |Jobs were of one day or a few days duration. Most of them were maid and service jobs, restaurant jobs, lete. ‘This employment agency's sta-

: > tion is far in advance of all the tistics are no reliable bar t f inform a very much mis ‘med | | Hsties u rometer o An 3 ith misinformed | oiiq bowers in working conditions, ‘business conditions,

New Books at the Library

to enable more people to buy luxuries, because this | fund to be used in behalf of the JN a former literary collaboration,

would set factories ahd trucks and producers and | shopkeepers to work producing and distributing the | luxuries, which would mean more people at work, The first little signs of the rise of greater economic | activity in the Middle Ages came as the means of | buying simple luxuries hike perfumes, better foods, hard woods, and more expensive luxuries like jewelry were expanded. When merchants began to buy the spices and ointments and ungents and handiwork, the silks and brocades and jewelry of the East and sell them to the | people in the feudal manors of Europe in exchange for their foods, their game, their brass and iron work,

coming expansion of trade and living standards commenced. What we need in this country is not the shifting of industry from luxury groups to necessities, but the expansions and development of the luxury industries as the surest prelude to expansion of the necessity industries.

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

IBERALS are always patting themselves on the backs. Sometimes their conceit it as noisy as their elamor, for it has become fashionable of late to declare that onlv the fool never changes his mind. The implications behind that statement are uncom Sortable to one who has a principle and wants to stick 0 it. As a matter of facts, fools change their minds much more frequently than wise men, because it has always been easier to follow the crowd than remain faithful to an unpopular idea. Americans are by far too facile at this point. What's more, a good many of us bear sur mental instability as proudly as a banner, as we declare ourselves to be open-minded, tolerant, liberal beings, Actually, most of those who make the boast are nothing in the world but sheep following harebrained leaders. Opinions cherished for a lifetime or for centuries ought not to he discarded like last season's hat. Is it not time for us to ask our chameleons a few pointed questions? Are you quite sure the new opinion is better than the old? Ix open-mindedness oniy another way of avoiding the burden of possessing your own convictions? How much suffering did you under. go during the process known as thinking—a process necessary every time an intelligent person gives up a long cherished belief? I think we could do with a bit more intolerance, for some of the compromises we make with the devil in or efforts to be tolerant are obnoxisus and dangerous. There's much to be said about the value of altering our codes of life and of government after we've wres-

standholders by advertising the City | Market. But, remember. not one cent of money thus derived would |

“You Have Seen Their Faces,” Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke - White called attention

{ through picture and story to the

vakia, and Bohemia, this American man and wife talked with the peasant ag he tilled his fields, listened to the Czechoslovak freeman as he stated simply and earnestly his will-

go for rent. This fund is to be cre. ingness to die if necessary for his

country's freedom, ate and drank with the landlord and his wife, mingled with peasant and householder, German and Jew in the

ated by the standholders, to be blight of the Southern ‘sharespent by the Advisory Board for the|cropper. Again they have combined standholder, to advertise and pro-| their respective abilities as writer mote the business in the City Mar. and photographer, and the result is ket, the cost being about 19 cents NORTH OF THE DANUBE (Vik-

per week per average stand. As regards the “Smashing Vie-| tory” we of the Advisory Board resent that statement inasmuch as!

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2 + : aN SY Va AW . 4 PAL,

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tied with every issue involved, but what we need now are is too often an

alibi

wagk-sas

"Sh! A couple more

our Board members represent both!

Side Glances—By Galbraith

cn SER an i adie N81

and out

ing), another contribution to the growing literature of Czechoslovakia “before Munich.” Walking or riding leisurely through Moravia, Ruthenia, Slo-

curb-market overflowing with the riches of the land, and rode on a speeding train through endless fields of wheat stretching from the Low Tatras in the south to the High Tatras in the north. They visited families working at home making toys for the American 10-cent store and fine lace and sei bags for the markets of the world,

They observed that there were no children working—that most of them were playing in the fields or along the brooks which ran beside them, and among other adventures secured an interview with the owner of a newspaper only to discover that he was the Nazi agent for the district and that his nonexistent newspaper was merely a disguise for his real activities. What they saw they have allowed to speak through the candid eye of the camera or the pen of the journalist, The resulting impression upon the reader is in agreement with that of Maurice Hindus when he says of this late European republic, ‘They Shall Live Again.”

NATURE'S ORCHESTRA By HAZEL TROUTMAN HORICK A little yellow bird sat in a tree

And sang a melody of spring to me; He sweetly warbled, singing on and on— Until the buds and leaves joined in his song, And soon the sound of nature's w re one unding as reso! symphony.

Gen. Johnson Says—

If Able Prosecutors Are to Be Rated Presidential Timber, Ace Sleuths Also Deserve Attention.

RK 7ASHINGTON, June 18.—~The current purge of racketeering judges and crooked political bosses

has cut some cancers which were dangerous in themselves, It also cannot fail to have an even wider effect by example, It serves notice on a good many others who either are doing or would be willing to do likewise, that they can't come too big and powerful for the wringer of our system of*justice to squeeze

them out, A lot of eredit has gone to prosecuting attorneys like Tom Dewey for bringing official punks to book. They deserve it. The example of Mr, Dewey has borne a lot of fruit. Even the new Attorney General of the United States, Mr, Frank Murphy, seems to be determined that no mere Republican in a local bailiwick can give the Department of Justice any lessons in law enforcement. That, too, is all to the good. Beginning when they were forced by the “great experiment noble in motive,” to act in a capacity similar to that of police magistrates, our Federal] Courts have lost much of the awesome dignity that they used to hold. Mr. Murphy has more power and a much wider field, If he proves as good ag Mr, Dewey we may have a new birth of judicial decency. " OBODY would think, therefore, of taking any credit away from the lawyers whose job it is to carry these cases to the courts. It does not do that to call attention to another group of public servants without whose equally difficult work there wouldn't be anything to earry, They are the investigators who get the evidence-—often at the risk of their lives and always under great difficulties, By the very nature of their jobs, most of them can’t step into the limelight to take a hand. One of them is in a little different position in that regard and, because he is, he gets as many brickbats as bouquets. It seems to me that the country owes as much to G-Man Hoover as to any prosecuting ate torney in the country, Take the blight of kidnaping alone, which at one time threatened (0 become epidemic, The ex= ample of promptly catehing and punishing 152 out of 154 of these eriminals has something of the effect we can expect of convicting political big-shots, judges and high-finaneiers, It has become unfashionable to the point of extinction, ” ” ” LL this doesn't mean that crime has heen cone quered. According to some of Mr, Hoover's re ports it is increasing faster than population. But it does mean that law enforcement everywhere is far more effective and intelligent and I think that Mr, Hoover's FBI has done more than its fair share in making it so. As he has repeatedly insisted, by far the bulk of law-enforcement is entirely outside the hands of the Federal Government, It is a matter for local authorities, There is really no place in our sy:tem for a national police force, But police personnel and methods in every locality have been greatly improved and for that also the FBI deserves much credit, There is glory enough for everybody in these ace complishments and so it doesn't detract from anye body to ask if excellence along these lines alone is enough to qualify a man for Presidential candidate —which I emphatically don't think it is—Why isn't Mr, Hoover as good a bet as Mr. Dewey?

It Seems to Me

By Heywood Broun

Red Caps Have Troubles, Too;

Draft Rules to Better Conditions. NEW YORK, June 15.—I was talking with four Red

Caps of New York, They were explaining the problems and difficulties which confront all new labor

| unions and their drive for fair and equitable con-

ditions, Recently T saw somewhere a picture of a Fair tourist to New York who was consulting her guide hook to find out what is said about tipping, while the Red Cap waited in trepidation, The four men with whom I talked drew up a set of rules for the travels ing public which I shall attempt to interpret. First of all, the word “tip” is less than exact as a description of the quarter or more which you give in the station, It ig not a tip; it is part of a wage. There is a general delusion that Red Caps get some basic salary; they do not, Under the Wage and Hour Law the Red Cap who earns less than $2 in any given day may put in a claim upon the company to make good the deficiency. But experience has taught most of the workers that it is not a very good idea to stand upon this right. Those who state that they have fallen below the minimum find that their testimony is taken with salt and suspicion, and in the days to come their steps are dogged by spotters,

Question of Time

Accordingly, the passenger should bear in mind that he is handing no gratuity, but that in actual fact he is one of the employers of those he calls upon to take him to a train or taxi. And establishing a fair return, the member of the traveling public should use the same logical appraisement that he takes into mind in paying the taxi driver. It is a question of time and distance. The bane of the Red Cap is the man or woman who gets to the station 30 or 40 minutes early and immediately hails a porter, If this occurs during the middle of a rush period, the man assigned to a bag may lose two or three potential jobs, So if you hold a Red Cap up remember that part of your tip ought to include his waiting time, Twenty-five cents should be the standard payment, although you can get under the wire with 15 on a short, swift haul. But remember that 25 cents is not enough if you are requiring extra time or extra servjce.. And extra bags, of course, ought to mean extra payment. Pay no attention to the popular delusion that Red Caps roll in wealth, There are only three good months in the year, and three or four dollars a day is par. Anything beyond that is an eagle, On the whole, men tip more generously than women tip better than pretty ones, who seem to be of dowagers. Old ladies are the best of all. Homely women tip better than pretty ones, who seem to be accustomed to accepting favors. College boys are a dead loss.

Watching Your Health

By Dr. Morris Fishbein

O much has been published and so much has been said over the radio and in other ways about the care of the mouth and teeth that it would seem hardly likely that anyone could have missed the necessary information. Nevertheless, it is still important to emphasize that the mouth and the teeth are important for health and that their proper care means that they will remain useful longer than they would otherwise. Brushing of the teeth should begin just as soon as a child is given a mixed diet, and even before this if there is any sign that material is collecting on and around the teeth, If the brush is so large that it will not fit between the lips and the cheek and the surfaces of the teeth, it is not a good toothbrush. If the bristles are so hard that they out the gums, it is not a good toothbrush. If the bristles are so soft that they will not remove the little particles that are between the teeth or on the edges, it is not a good toothbrush. If the bristles are set so close together that debris accumulates ine side the brush, it cannot be recommended. If the bristles are not firmly set in the handle so that they constantly come out or get caught between the teeth or under the gums, the toothbrush may do more harm than good. Much has also been written about the motion to be used in brushing the teeth. The person who is using the toothbrush with a reabl ot of intelligence can soon find out for

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