Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 June 1939 — Page 9
TUESDAY, JUNE 20, 1939
The Indianapolis
Hoosier Vagabond
DENVER, Juhe 20.—A vear ago when I was in Albuquerque the Chamber of Commerce there showed me a letter from a man in Denver. The letter-writer wanted Albyquerque to air-condition itself.
The C. of C. let the maiter slide. But I decided to look this fellow up the next time I came to Denver. So today I had a pleasant visit with Joseph A. Shires, the outdoors air-con-ditioning idealist. Mr. Shires has no office, no stenographers, no telephone. He has only a room in a roominghouse and an old-fashioned typewriter. He is rather a small man, clean shaven and neatly dressed. When I went to his roominghouse, I found him walking up and down the stairs, carrying a leather bag. He didn't seem to be going anywhere. So we sat on a bench and ‘talked. Mr. Shires writes to mayors and city managers and town councils, telling them about his air-condi-tioning ideas. Once in a while he gets an answer. “Yes, IT had an answer from Hitler,” he says. “He wanted. me. ta send him a plan for air-conditioning Berlin.” “Did you send it?” T asked. “Well, no,” Mr. Shires said. “I'm preity hard up and it takes $10 to $12 to get a draftsman to draw up plans. So I just stalled Hitler off.” “But how about Albuquerque?” 1 said. “How big is Albuquerque?” he asked. “About 45,000.” 1 said “Well, hmmm. That would take some figuring. I hadn't gone into that. Yes, that would take some figuring.” x N
How Tt Would Work
Let me explain Mr. Shires’ general idea. We would put up ‘pipes along every curb. There would be four of them, one above the other. Mr. Shires would leave enough room between the second and third pipes for people to crawl through after parking their ears. Each square block would be a separate air-condition-
Our Town
The first woman T ever saw with blue blood coursing through her veins was right here in Indianapolis. She was the Baroness Blanc, headliner of Bryant & Watson's Australian Beauties which played at the Empire some 40 years ago. Other acts on the same bill, T remember, were Higgins and Leslie, trapeze artists; Winifred Stewart, a powerful contralto, and a team consisting of Mabel Hazelton and Lillie Vedders who put on a “tough girl” sketch in the course of which they worked in some fancy cakewalking and ragtime dancing. The Baroness Blanc was the chief attraction, however. She appeared three times at every performance—in the two burlesques at the ‘end of the first and second acts, and once all alone when she sang a group of songs one of which, I believe, was “The Moth and the Flame.” The reason I'm not absolutely sure is because the Baroness was better to look at than to listen to. Which brings me to a crisis in the affairs of J. Waldere Kirk, a gentleman who came all the way from New York to visit the beautiful Baroness during her stay in Indianapolis. : Chances are that Mr. Kirk's name doesn't mean a thing to vou youngsters. In that case, allow me to tell vou that, 40 vears ago, Mr. Kirk was known as the “King of Dudes” in America. And inasmuch as {he word is practically obsolete today let me clear up evervthing and say that, once upon a time, the word “dude” was a connotation for a man whose wardrobe consisted of more than two suits of clothes. n » x
The King of the Dudes
As near as I recall, Mr. Kirk had the luck to inherit & vast fortune. Soon as that happened. he made up his mind to chuck his job—that of a Chicago traveling salesman—go to New York and show the dudes there a thing or two. It was not unlike
Washington
WASHINGTON. June 20.--The economical life insurance offered by savings banks in Massachusetts, which in net cost to the policyholders is strikingly cheaper than that of regular insurance companies working on the expensive high-pressure selling agency basis, has attracted considerable attention in Administration quarters. Its possibilities of being set up on a national scale
By Ernie Pyle
|
jng unit, Mr. Shires would have a power plant, and | a big fan. Suppose it's wintertime, “The air would be red hot,” Mr. Shires said. I asked Mr, Shires: “Would you have openings where this red hot air could get out into the atmos- | phere?” “Say, now, that's a good point,” Mr. Shires said. | “You've grasped this idea quicker than anybody I've | talked to, That's a mighty good point. That's some- | thing we'll have to work out.” | “And also,” 1 said. “will you cover these pipes with | asbestos, or how will you keep people from getting burned on them?” . “Now that's a mighty fine point to bring out, t00,” | Mr. Shires said. “I just don't have that figured out | yet, but I think the public will learn from experience that these pipes are hot.” According 10 Mr. Shires these red hot pipes will so warm the outdoors that almost no heat will be | required inside the buildings. | u un n | Knew Douglas Fairbanks | |
In the summertime, instead of red hot air, you'd blow ice cold air through the pipes. Mr. Shirés has been inventing for a long time. | He says it was he who first had the idea for air-| conditioning trains. He was working inh the famous | old Brown Palace Hotel here when he thought of it.| He was working in the dining room. He says he) worked there at the same time Doug Fairbanks worked there as a bellboy. Mr. Shires calls him | “Douglas.” Mr. Shires came originally irom Tennessee. He | lost his wife in the flu epidemic of 1918, and he is | all alone now, During the days he goes from house | to house selling patent medicines and electro-mag- | netic belts. | “Do vou make a pretty good living?” 1 asked. “Well, no. T don't,” Mr. Shires said. “Just get bv. | You see, due to my circumstances I don't have entree to the richer sections of the city. And the trouble with the poor people is that they don't have any | money. Yes. I just get by.” Fifty years from how, 1 suppose, cities actually will be air conditioned outside. But nobody but me and a few other old dodoes around some rooming | house will ever remember that it was Joseph A. Shires | who thought of it first. That's the way things are. |
By Anton Scherrer
carrying coals into Newcastle for, at that time, New | York had Barry Wall, the prince of dudes whose | wardrobe, it was said, contained 50 pairs of gloves. | Mr. Kirk bought 60 pairs and with 30 trunks of | clothes invaded the metropolis. The New York papers tried to poke fun at Mr. | Kirk at first, but he had the clothes—the nerve of | a Chicago salesman to wear them, too—and the New | Yorkers found themselves licked at their own game. Right then and there he was acclaimed the “King of Dudes,” a title which as far as I know nobody ever challenged. To his everlasting credit, however, let it be said that Mr. Kirk didn't come to Indianapolis to paralyze us with his wardrobe. He came because he was in love with the beautiful Baroness Blanc. As a matter of fact, he persuaded her to be his wife right over | in the Hotel English. The Baroness stopped at Hotel | English because she loved to look at the fountains in| the Circle. “I have traveled over the greater part | of the world and never saw a fountain any place to | equal the ones you have here,” she said. { 2 % ]
The Fountains Cast Spell
It was while she was under the spell of the fountains that the Baroness told us something ‘of her future plans. Of her past, t00. She said there | wasn't a bit of truth in the rumor promoted by New | York papers that her marriage to Mr. Kirk was going to be her sixth one. She had been married | but twice and if anybody should know she certainly should, sche said. Well, the upshot of it was that Mr. Kirk followed Bryant and Watson's Australian Beauties to ‘Chicago. | I lost track after that, but T believe it was in that city the King of Dudes married the beautiful Baroness | Blanc. I hope so. anyway. After the Baroness Blanc left the Empire, Weber | and Fields moved in and put on “The Con-Curer.” a parody on Paul Potter's play. Tt was a 1ot better | show than Bryant and Watson's Australian Beauties, | even if it didn't have a leading lady with blue blood | coursing through her veins.
By Raymond Clzpper
|
| the policy holder for his insurance, after dividend re- | funds and cash surrender valle had been deducted. Judd Dewey, Massachusetts deputy Insurance com.- | missioner, thought the cost of selling insurance was! an obstacle in the way of cheaper insurance by regular | companies. “The largest single item of expense,” he said, “is commissions to agents, and you can never provide life Imsurance to people at what life insurance protection |
Says Investment Collapse—
Bogs Drive For Recovery
(First of a Series)
By John T. Flynn
(Written for NEA Service)
HE attention of the mation has become focused
in
recent months on a fact of tremendous importance —the ‘collapse of private investment in the United States. Very suddenly everywhere men have come to see what economists have been trying to tell them for some years—that the rise in business activity due to Govern-
ment borrowing is not recovery.
They see now, after this
has been attempted for six years while still 11,000,000 people are out of work, that some other way to recovery
has to be found.
They begin to see that there is something about our economic system which they did not understand before. And so here in this series 1 shall try to outline just how our ‘economic system works, what makes the wheels go around, what it is that has shut off the power and how that power again may be flooded into the machine. The business of our economic system is to produce goods and to get them distributed by means of a device
called money. shirts, the shirts are mine. 1 want to sell them. And others meed them. They will get them from me only by exchanging their money for my shirts. The people who want te obtain goods have to have money to exchange for those goods. That money is their money income. The material things which 1 make constitute my natural income. Money 1 receive for my work, or in any other way, constitutes my money income. I use my money income to buy the natural income produced by others. This is the first important fact to keep in mind. * ww 0% E know how goods are produced. But how is money income produced? Becau$e that is at the botton of all our trouble. We know how to produce plenty of goods, but apparently we do not know how to produce enough money income to enable us all to buy what is produced. The answer is simple. Just ask yourself where your money income comes from. It comes from your work. Some man or corporation running a business or factory pays you to work for him in producing goods. To produce g00ds he has to spend money in various ways—for rent, for interest, for raw materials, for wages, salaries, ete. These expenditures are called the costs of production. But these costs ‘of production which he spends are ready ‘money payvments which go out into the hands of ‘other people. These money payments are their money income. The money income of the nation is the sum total of &ll these money payments paid out as part of the cost of producing goods. Therefore money income is produced in precisely the same place as goods, The factory that produces goods also produces money income. The ‘money incomes produced in all the factories and other enterprises in the United
If T manufacture with my hands a dozen
States constitute the ‘purchasing power available to buy the goods produced in those factories. n » »
ERY often, when factories produce more than they can sell, the owner thinks he can correct things by suspending production. That will put an end to increasing the goods and s0, he thinks, the money income produced will catch up with the goods ; But what he overlooks is that when you close a factory vou not only stop producing goods but you also stop producing money income, So the great problem of the nation is to produce and keep on producing money income in sufficient quantities to buy the goods produced. And to keep the money income active. How is that to be done? Economists understand this. Tt is merely necessary to make administrators and politicians and businessmen understand it. The one way—and this is the central idea of our whole economy—is to keep all of our money income in flow by keeping private investment active. Why is this so? The reader will easily see how this works. When he gets his salary he spends most, if not all, of it. But he saves some. These savings are of two Kinds. First, there is the ‘money he puts aside for the time being, to buy something later on, or in a Christmas Club or to be used on a summer vacation or to get married. These are not true savings. They are merely delayed expenditures. y % % ECOND. there the money he has no intention of spending; the part of his income he puts aside for his old age, for the future. That money, he either keeps in his house or puts in a bank. He will never buy clothes or furniture or an automobile or a railroad ticket with that. That money is savings and he will never put it
is
Tt’s pay ‘day. . Mv,
in that wallet. .
hind vaults or whether it is poured
the nation.
wh
»
Ho
Average Anterican will bny the necexsities of life with mast of the greenbacks But upon what happens to the rest of his moncy—whether it becomes lndged be‘as life-blood inte the veins of industry—depends the huxiness state of \
Many attempts have been made to get the ‘economic machinery of the nation back inte high gear, The parley of ‘Little Business” in Washington a year ago was an fll-starved attempt to ascertain what is wrong. After 10 years of depression harassed businessmen and other groups ave still seeking the answer,
out save in an investment. That is. he will put it ‘out in some way in which he may hope to get it back and, in the meantime, bring him in an income, He may lend it té6 another, Or he may invest it directly himself, If ‘he lends it to another, that person will invest it. But until it is loaned out or invested directly it is inactive, it buys nothing, its life is suspended. But when it is invested, then it is used to buy things. But what? ‘Only one kind of goods. Tnvestment goods-— goods which can be used to produce income—a building, a house,
a store, a factory, machinery, etc. y % % OU will now see the part which there Bmavings play. They buy only one tvpe of goods. And ‘conversely there is a type of goods which are bought anly with savings. These goods are called investment goods because they are bought with funds which are being invested, that is, faid out to
produce further goods and income. rom thix it is clear that if
Kingan Old-Timers Set Outing Date;
9 With Company 50 Years or Move
| Times Npecinl
savings pile up and if they ard not invested, thers are certain in= dustriex which can never revive, And if they do nat revive, ain thix vast sum of our national in= come which ix saved, ean never be brought back inte the stream of spending The only way in which we can keep All of our money income active and make it all available to buy what we produce is (6 keep private investment active,
x % x
NEXT=What has shut off ths nation’s money power?
CULVER WILL ERECT VEGETABLE GROWERS FINE ARTS BUILDING
[spected the Tndianapolis vegetabl®
LOOK OVER MARKET
Members of the Indiana State
Vegetable Growers Association n=
& 4 Bk i nh | OE (sion, but isn't irked because they| CULVER, June 20.—Plans for A guowers wholesale market at New give away hams instead of beef be- 1475000 fine Arts building to be erect | user and Bouth Sts, this MORNE cause “a side ‘of beef is too big t0 ed on the Culver Military ACAdeMY | x the fist event on their summer
handle.”
[campus were announeed today fol- | picnic meeting program. The only reason he “wanted allowing the seventh annual meeting | They also were to tour the Real jece in Chie paper about the Picnic” Of the Board of Directors. |'Silk Hosiery Mills and the Kroger i in @ . 8 P on Be a al Imecluded in the new structure will Grocery & Baking Co. warehouse, WAS “So everyone Will come and jy, ‘jy wypecinl “listenig” 100m to|1011 E. ®t. Chir Bt. have a good time like we always house the $2000 electric phonograph | A basket Tunch in Columbia Park . , nN h [wet 1 ; ¥ he academy was to be followed by addresses by Mr. evs UL ; < i sore | do. set recently presented t VW fot i oN hp policies were Hf | The O14 Timers’ Association was by the Carnegie Foundation. Hariy J. Reed, newly-appointed holders In 1936 ‘the apse vi or - Insurance i 5 1 : {organized about 10 years ago. | Paculty promotions alse were an- director of the Purdue University pany. No definite ideas have was 2 per cent and And y? TE Rl “T think it was the idea of the noun~ed. Maj. L. R. Kellam was experimental xtation, and M KK. crystallized but it becomes more per cent I MS old timers as well as officials of the named Master Instructor, the Derrick, of the Indiana Farm evident daily that, in months 160 come, the life insur- ; > & 4% company,” Frank Tewis, association =chool's highest academic rank, and Bureau Federation. : ance business will be the subject of considerable v Y [president and a vice president of (Capt. H. A. Obenauf, Maj. W. BE. A. A. Irwin, assistant Marion thought. The Future Prospects the company, said. IR, Maj. ‘©. 'C. Mather were iY County S Mo, oe Va ti s isi is sibility ‘ti ly . The Tate John R. Kinghan was vanced to senior instructors. FE. B. association members probably wou A Ma obi Wg of SEALE IME ig PRE Sn of savings bank | [president of the Omptny When the | Benson, W. G. Roberts, M. 8. My- inspect truck farms near Indians . . : : > ! S t Ss ies haw y sur : oui : 3 ih » ie » k . nid > among state legislatures and evidence of rate-making value after six NY ow RNR ‘organization ‘was formed. Pdwin ers, Trving MeXee, A. J. Donnelly apolis before retaining home, al
for over-the-counter sale through banks are being considered. Testimony before the O’Mahonev Temporary National Economic Committee for several days has impressed members with the need of Providing cheaper life insurance than is now offered by the average com-
needs to cost if you ave going to pay 40 to 50 per cent | of the first premium tc somebody for selling the | policy.” f He explained, however, that the savings banks use! advertising to advise the public that the insurance is available.
combinations among large life insurance companies. IF. Burrows, its first and Mack Goode were named asgo- | theugh no formal trips were sehed=
Thirty years ago. through the activity of Justice Louis D. Brandeis. then a Boston lawyer, Massachusetts enacted legislation permitting savings banks to sell life insurance subject to state insurance department actuarial and reserve regulations... This system has stood up, giving safe and very cheap insurance. » »
Net Cost Is Cheaper
must pass in the ordinary insurance policy. The Government has ventured inte the field of old-age annuities because it was a field which private | business had not entered except 16 a limited degree. | We already have seen that this is 4 huge and complicated undertaking, difficult and subject to powerful group pressures. Hence there is every reason why the Government | should stay out of the regular life insurance business. | But there is great need for cheaper poor man's insur- |
retired, was president,
TEST YOUR
KNOWLEDGE
1—On which continent is French Guiana?
ciate instructors.
[aled,
a
Everyday Movies—By Wortman
C7 Na
5 x O/ we
ance and the Massachuseits system appears. on the | . Times Photo. surface at least, to point the way in which that can | Kingah & Co. Old Timers ave getting ready for thew annual be developed through private business channels on a pichic. Three of them look over the program. Left to right are | thoroughly sound, self-supporting, private-business | Clarence Keehn, executive vice president of the company; Frank Lewis, basis, : A ‘company vice president and association president, and Frank Bryan, | picnic committee chairman. |
By LEO DAUGHERTY are Thomas Killila, 56 years; Flur-| Old Timers’ time is rolling around ance McCarthy, 55 years; Thomas | B E l * again at Kingan & Co, with the an- O'Conner, 53 years; William Taylor, | y canon Roosevelt nual picnic of the Old Timers’ Asso- (George Kirkwood, and Clarence | ciation scheduled for June 28 at Keehn, executive vice president of | . | Riverside Park, the company, each 51 years; John proposed ending of the Federal Theater Projects. One has to have been in the serv-| Courtney, John Murphy and H. H.| pendence? There seems to be nothing I can do to help. Ap- | ice of the packing company for at Mecliey, 50 years each. | T—What are cattalos? parently the House of Representatives has decided Joost 20 VETS to be eligible for mem. ~The picnic is not only for the $6 % that it doesn’t matter What happens 6 boone Who Loup In this circle of 'Kingan's old timers, but all employees of the ARSWers : : ¢ ‘happens to people Who geliables.” That goes for the high- company and their families. | have definite talents of a particular kind. Only 5 est executive down to the common | It is one of the association's two, 1—South America. per cent of people on the Federal Theater Project |laborer at any of the company's major events of the year, the other| 2—University of Colorado. fre WONCHOE so WSpEeRly Ube 95 ier cont oun |PIBNG Or SUDERRS. [being a me Oe | Flcusaptr Enterprise A. \ -W i. Gay ; . ne ‘members ¢ services of a mner My : JT starve, gO on local relief, or dig ditches, if they CAN ait century or more. Tt ‘was they | ternational affair because it's at- 4 MCDXOIT. : find ditches to dig. who paused to do some statistical tended by Kenneth Sinclair, club| 5—Me'-di-o-ker ‘or me=di-o’= I know that this project is considered dangerous work. member and English director of the ker; not med -i-o-ker, because it may harbor some CoOmmunists, but 1 Tie TomNEnYS gid Tavs Shoes aa Gl Tobi animals resulting A " ides ied ih ‘meat production is 350 million Treland, aT ib Sn wonder if Communists occupied in producing plays 0 a year. That would bel “The picnic is just an old-fash- | from the crossbreeding of are not safer than Communists starving to death. | : ; . b ting.” Mr buffaloes and domestic cattle I have always felt that whatever your beliefs might |17.500.000000 pounds in 50 years, loned outing, Mr. : : ;
2—Which university did Byron (Whizzer) White, profession= al football player, attend? 3—For what news and feature syndicate do the initials N. B. A. siang? How is 1492 written in Ro= man numerals? 5—What is the correct pronun= ciation of the word mediocre? 6—Did ‘George Washington sign ‘the Declaration of Indes
Savings banks could sell a $1000 straight life poiicy, age 35 at a net cost of $2.74 a year as against regular insurance companies’ policies costing from $4.60 ta $8.73 a year. The net cost is the real price paid by
My Day
HYDE PARK, N. Y, Monday—I was overjoyed on Saturday to discover that my aunt, Mrs. David Gray, is at her own home in Tivoli, N. Y., with her husband. They came over that afternoon and we sat out in the sun catching up on all the months since we were together in Florida after Thanksgiving. There are comparatively few people in the world vou always are sure of findmg equally interested, ‘equally sympathetic, and equally as entertaining as when vou last ‘met them. When your ties go back to vour childhood, however, and you have always found that a given person came up tO your expectations, vou pick up the threads of relationship . just ‘where you dropped them last when vou were together. You feel a security of understanding which vou ‘dé not feel with many people, that is why it is always such a joy to me to have this particuiar aunt somewhere within reach. 1 am looking forward to the next week whep Maude and David ‘Gray will come to stay for a few days.
1 had an appoi with Mrs. Hallie St oon. I bin Just 8 concerned us she
Ix a
Bryan, who is a be. if vou could carn enough to keep body and soul FiRUring an ounce of meat to a 46-year employee, said. “Each fam. | Ny together and had to be pretty Piisy (oy that, you sandwich, ‘that means these old|ily brings its own i couse ASK THE TIMES would not be very apt to have time to plot the over. timers—at the present production all the meat is Kingan s. e have | throw of any existing government. [rate—have been on ‘the job while games for the children and the old- | : Inclose a S-cent stamp To However, the wisdom of Congress must never be 280 billion sandwiches have been timers, too. For the latter it's horse- reply when addressing any questioned and I can only hope that in the Senate produced, shoe pitching or something Which question of fact or information some changes may be deemed wise. Aside from the| Frank Bryan, a former president isn't so strenuous. ta The Indianapolis Times humanitarian aspect, there are a great many people of the association and chairman of | “The affair starts at noon and Washin Service Bureau, who feel that we are sacrificing something which | the picnic committee, conceded in a continues wmtil midnight. Starting| 1013 13th St, N. Ww, Washington, D. O. Legal and medical "Whadya mean, Sam, the business ain't goad for your health?”
has meant much to the development of culture in jiffy that that was considerably at § p. ™. Wwe Ee Tos and ‘ many parts Os un, If this is an era, rw vine than the 2000 Bi give Away a ham #& every 15 advice cannot be Srv noe oan is "\ oll if, | sell buth acedunts | can't sleep, and if | sell the cig TE SR II TI di nine vevaann 6% ‘votre Bi. Bien works Une eet ake | good nen they dont pay eiibugh fo Ist ya sat,’ ¢ : 3 3 Ei ¥ Jes Ng Re ie a ay 4 i RV, ipo Ss ey ’ 5 x i RN : 5 7 bi 5 5 Ri % y LAT oe : ’ Sila ot Rl %
In and Out of the Red With Sam
Une
SEE § x ;
WY NE ¥ AE CN a