Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 June 1939 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times

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

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€€o RILEY 5551

Give Light and the People Will Find Thetr Own Way

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MONDAY, JUNE 26, 1939

SEISACHTHEIA

ON’T accuse the printer of sneezing into the linotype when you read that word. Seisachtheia is the first term ever employed to describe inflation—at least the first we can find recorded. That was quite a while ago—594 before Christ, to be exact. Solon was Poo-Bah of Athens. Plutarch tells about it: “He raised the pound of silver, being before but threescore and seven drachmas, full up to 100; so they which were to pay great sums of money paid as much as they ought but with less number of pieces than the debt could have been paid: when it was borrowed.” Today, silver dominates the Senate of the United States, which has been tied up for a week with a filibuster | on the subject that is as old as history. Solon staged the first inflation and “solons” ever since have been trying the | same thing. Their efforts always thrive in times of stress and unbalanced budgets. If they succeed, a big fiscal spree ends in delirium tremens. From Solon and Seisachtheia to the Chinese Shan Mukung in the Chou dynasty, to Henry VIII who salted coins | with copper and busted England, on through the days of | John Law and the Mississippi Bubble, and to now, coinage | debasements and paper money binges have told the same | exciting and tragic tale. And the same sorry force is | working powerfully today. The current price of silver on the world market is 433} | cents per ounce. But our Treasury, under statute, buys at | as high at 64 plus. What the world market price would be | if we quit this subsidy, nobody can say, but it certainly would be a lot less than 4334. But the powerful silver-and-greenback bloc is yelling for $1.27. The Administration is | willing to compromise on what the Treasury is now pay- | ing. But no dice says the inflationists. So all other Senatorial business is jammed while the holdup proceeds. Probably there will be a compromise. The kind of a compromise where you disgorge your wallet but keep your | jackknife. The affair may net, say 77 cents, being 35 cents | more than the world price, instead of the mere 22 now | operating. The thing for the citizen to remember is that he as a taxpayer is putting up for this pressure-group party; that | it makes no more economic sense than did Solon’s party | 2533 years ago; and that our nation, after all the centuries, hasn’t been able to learn, and is seriously flirting with the same old ghastly swindle.

CENSUS JOBS FOR WPA WORKERS

HE chairman of the Texas Democratic Executive Committee—Mr. E. B. Germany, the self-appointed sponsor of the Garner-for-President boom—wrote to his state's Congressmen, the other day, suggesting that the 1940 census will present a great political opportunity. He wanted them to use their influence to have jobs on the census distributed as patronage through the Democratic county and precinct chairmen in Texas. Thus, he pointed | out, they could help him to elect Democrats to all offices, to raise campaign funds, and to select national convention delegates “who are truly representative of Texas democracy’ ’—meaning, it is assumed, who favor John N. Garner. Most of the Texas Congressmen, quite properly, ! frowned on this crude proposal.to use the coming Federal census for the purpose of strengthening a political machine. Yet it is evident that politicians all over the country are busily scheming to get census jobs, as supervisors and enumerators, for themselves and their henchmen. The Government will spend some $45,000,000 on this count of population, and the politicians want their share. Why shouldn’t the census takers be selected from the WPA rolls? There are plenty of men and women on WPA in every state who are competent to do the work. Next year’s relief appropriation is going to be reduced. The relief money can be made te go further, and do more good to more people, if thousands of those now on WPA are detached temporarily for employment on the census. And the census money will be kept out of the hands of politicians and paid to deserving citizens whose need for it is great.

PROBLEM IN RED TAPE

N April of last year Commissioner Paul A. Walker of the |

Federal Communications Commission, having concluded | a two-year investigation of the telephone industry, pre-| pared a “proposed report,” and awaited action. This week the full FCC, having concluded 14 months of perusing Mr. Walker's findings, transmitted to Congress the | finished report—incidentally indorsing most of the recommendations originally suggested by Commissioner Walker— and there the report awaits action. Is there a mathematician in the house—one versed in the theory of relativity as it applies to space, time and governmental red tape? If so, let him step forward and give the answer to this problem: If six FCC members require more than one year to digest the findings of the seventh FCC member and take action, how many years will be required for 531 members of Congress to digest the report of seven FCC members and take action? Pending the computation, and the taking of action by Congress, we shall remain thankful—as we have through the first 14 months of waiting—that it is still possible to take the receiver off the hook and find that “central” is on duty at the swichboard.

STAND ASIDE, GALENTO!

E invite your attention today to our columnists, particularly Raymond Clapper, Gen. Johnson, John T. Flynn and Westbrook Pegler, among whom a first class family row seems to be in the making over President Roosevelt’s new recovery program. Flynn and Clapper are finding a few kind things to say about the program; Pegler and Johnson are in a skunkskinning mood over it. Before it is all over some column rules and some type may be bent by these gentlemen in try"ing to reach each other. Well, if wide open discussion can bring light on a con-

| political | resisting. This may be the only way out now, but if so this will be fascism, American style, and the nature of the substitute for the American form of government and |

| URGES DEMOCRATS

| should not be—then there

| 80 to Wall Street for such brains.

troversial topic of this kind, this one ought to be bathed in 2

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler F. D. R's Proposal Would Commit

Government to Type of Economy Practiced in Germany and Italy.

EW YORK, June 26—A month ago Raymond Clapper wrote from Washington a quiet observation that this country was now entering without fanfare “a new phase of the New Deal, in which our system of capitalism will be probed to its deepest roots.” The President's proposal to spend another three billion dollars “outside the budget” proves that Mr. Clapper called the turn, for this program would not only buy the Administration four more years of life in which to “readjust” American capitalism, but would commit the Government almost irrevocably to the type of economy employed in Germany and Italy. Private enterprise might not quite throw up the sponge but, at best, would operate almost wholly under the control and at the mercy of New Deal agencies, and the regulations to enforce this control and protect the Administration's venture from failure would be vastly greater and tighter than those now in effect. ” » ” . HE Government has built schools, bridges, golf courses and sewers for local governments whose local political leaders have thought, or pretended to think, that Federal funds are simply manufactured in Washington and that these gifts need not be paid back by those communities in the form of Federal taxes. Actually, no state or city has received as much as a dime for nothing from the Federal Treasury, and none of them ever will, because the Federal Government lives on what it can collect from the minor divisions and can’t give away any more than it can collect from them, sometime, somehow. The fact may be that centralization must come in this country. but it is not reassuring to see it come by stealth, and if it is true that New Deal economists generally believe that “American capitalism faces a major readjustment,” then that belief should be

| stated in the political papers and addresses of the

Administration, not disguised in proposals which would have the effect without admitting the purpose. In neither of Mr. Roosevelt's campaigns did he or anyone else have the candor to express a belief that the system was outmoded and should be scrapped and that the New Deal would proceed to do just that if elected. x

” 2

T is certain, though, that as the states and cities continue to default their duties and accept favors

| from the Federal Government at the same rate they

will tend to become nominal units of Government under national supervision.

but will throw in with the Government and accept management rather than go to smash

capitalism should be stated openly by those who are trying to create it so that the people may make the decision. The Communists of the country, including those

ill-concealed in the Administration in the guise of | New Dealers, all favor the destruction of American |

capitalism and the trend toward fascism, but that could cause no puzzlement to anyone who bears in mind that fascism, naziism and communism. in their practical effects, are identical in all but minor variations to suit the temperaments of those who exist under those systems.

Business

By John T. Flynn

President on Right Road With His Spending-Investment Program.

EW YORK, June 26—The President, in his newly announced plan of government “investment,” begins, in principle at least, to get around to a sound idea of government participation in re-

| covery.

Critics of his spending policv—I mean critics who

| believe in Government money aids to recovery and | who belong to the liberal groups—have insisted that | Government “spending” should be made wholly out

of tax money and that no government borrowing should be indulged in save for Government “inVestment” instead of spending.

Now the President has. partially at least, come |

around to that view. He declares that he proposes a program of Government loans for various selfliquidating operations. That is. he now looks toward a policy of fertilizing the investment egg by pumping Government funds into loans to enterprises which will be able to repay the loans. It now remains to be seen whether he is prepared to go the rest of the way and take a stand on the proposition that expenditures whether for relief or recovery which are not investments shall be made out of tax moneys rather than borrowed funds. But while approving the idea of investment of borrowed funds, there still remains the necessity of a clear definition of the meaning of the word “investment.”

Financing Should Be Sound

The essence of this whole operation must be that the funds shall be loaned in accordance with the principles of sound finance. It is not an investment to lend a million doilars to a railroad which cannot repay it; or to lend a million dollars for resettlement purposes to farmers who can never be expected to make good on the loan. I do not object to the Government aiding such farmers or even taking a long chance on advancing them money, but this ought not to be called an investment. It is not an investment to lend money to cities which are already so overburdened with debt that they can no longer borrow from private sources. If the Government is going to embark in this enterprise—and, managed wisely in accordance with wise principles of finance, there is no reason. why it ; is the most pressing need to divorce it with ruthless severity from politics. The ablest financial, administrative abilities should be selected to operate it—and it is not necessary to } The people who work for it should be chosen by the most drastic civil Service requirements,

A Woman's Viewpoint

By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

I neither a prophet nor the daughter of a prophet, but one doesn't have to qualify as either to guess what the fashion trends are to be this summer. Peaches and cream complexions will replace sun-

tanned skins; the lady will succeed the hoyden in public favor; nudity will fall in popular esteem, and parasols may stage a comeback. The Queen carried one, and how cute she was peeking out from under! She was the essence of good breeding, poise and daintiness. So far as my personal feelings are concerned, a parasol is as much of a nuisance as a hooped skirt or a bustle, and I hope at my age I shall be bothered with none of them. But I joyfully welcome anything that can stop the fad which for years has subjected tender white feminine skins to the heat which is usually applied to overdone steaks. I'm tired of seeing females of all ages working so hard in an effort to look like broiled lobsters. Any event that ends the summer epidemic ot peeled noses, parboiled backs, red necks and sun-coarsened pores, is a blessing. During the royal stay, didn't the thought of Wally pop into your mind now and then? It is interesting to speculate upon what fashion changes would have come about if the Duchess of Windsor, noteed of Her Majesty, had made the American our. No doubt the Duchess would have been as beautifully behaved and groomed—but sophistication, rather than feminity, would have set the keynote for tomorrow’s styles. Maybe having a royal wife and mother come visiting will be good for us. We could easily profit by the examples she sets in dress, decorum and dignity. To be first a good woman and then a lady should be the chief ambition of every modern Queen, whether she sits a throne or washes dishes in a work-

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Oops! Here We Go Again—or Do We ?—By Talburt

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 1939 ,

COME ON =

AIM BE ThER THREE OR FOUR BILLION ® IT'S GOT ToBE UNDER TRIS

ONE!

It is certain, also, that | private business will quit trying to operate as such, |

The Hoosier Forum

I wholly defend to

disagree with whet you say, but will the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

NOMINATE STARK By Subscriber

This game of looking around to] find suitable Presidential candidates who will capture the fancy of the voting public seems to be demoralizing our public officials. Nothing is said or done without an eye to 1940. Roosevelt is a sphinx on the subject, saying only “go stand in a corner” if asked. The McNutt campaigners can’t even be themselves for fear they'll say something that might forever ruin the ex-High Commissioner’s chances. Perhaps our politicians would pay more attention to the work in hand if this puzzling question of the next Chief Executive were settled. So in my wee small public voice I'll make the suggestion of whom to let us

vote for. Out in Missouri they have a] courageous Governor, with a back-| ground as unimpeachable as F. D.! R.’s and a gift for using uncommon sense; who conducts a fair, honest, and efficient adminfstration; who acts more than he talks and talks] without slathering himself with praises of his own doings. He's the man who put a period to the corrupt bossing career of Tom Pendergast, and the man I want to vote for as! President. So gentlemen of the political arena, give us Governor (Molly) | Stark as the Democratic Presidential candidate. on » » ‘DEBITS AND CREDITS’ OF CAPITALIST SYSTEM By H. W. Daacke In a June 15 Forum article Bruce R. McFadden questions my assignment of responsibility for the present slump to the controlling capitalist system. In summing up, there is always a credit and a debit side to all controversies. On his credit side he offers working conditions, standards of living, wealth and promise to those who have the will and ability to get it. What I like mostly about his credit side is that last phrase: “Will and ability to get it,” which I have seen, on many occasions, so ably demonstrated by a trough, a pail of swill and a bunch of hungry hogs. On the debit side of this question, let me offer: Hunger, unemployment, want, domestic insecurity, trade stagnation, low wages, unjust taxes, ruinous tariffs, war-breeding diplomacy, child labor, neglect of the aged, slums (both city and rural), oppressive laws, racketeering,

By

special privilege and pauperism, What he writes about Fascist and

more than six years, prosperity is still just around the corner. As for promises, who has made more promises which never materialized than did the New Dealers? We still have millions unemployed and on relief. “American” also charges the Republicans with the fact that business is not better. That is a laugh since it is very evident that, until very recently, Mr. Roosevelt has persecuted business all during his Administration. Now “American,” if I live to vote in 1940, I shall vote for the good of my country against the New Deal and all its candidates and I will still consider myself just as 100 per cent super American as you.

% 9 = HIS TOPIC: ‘SLICKERS' AND CONGRESSMEN

By Daniel Francis Clancy, Logansport, Ind.

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

Communist governments not being wanted here, I can heartily agree with—but I do not agree with him that the present system is preferable to trying out something new and untried. If the human family had adopted that theory, it never would have progressed out of the savage state.

” # =

HOPES TO VOTE AGAINST NEW DEAL Former Democrat In your June 21 issue a letter signed by “An American” charges that the depression was due to the misrule of Mf. Hoover and the Republican Party. Anybody who uses a little plain horse-sense knows that is not true. If it be true, why did the countries of Europe suffer the same consequences as we? I have no love for Mr. Hoover but neither have I any for the New Dealers who have committed blunder after blunder and made of the White House an experimental laboratory while trying to spend the nation into pros-| manifestations of boorishness as perity, a policy which is against the| that milking contest that explain law of good economics. And, after|the existence of America’s Menckens.

recent royal garden party in Washington, Lady Lindsay, wife of the British ambassador, ruled that if it did rain it would be all right for guests to employ capes, umbrellas | and slickers. Rain or shine, with | Congress there there was bound to

be alot of slickers present, . .. The next time Governor Townsend milks a cow in the State House to please the dairymen I'm going to publicly resolve never to drink another glass of milk. Incidentally, it is such naive

New Books at the Library

of treasure hidden from the sight of man for centuries. Through long years prospectors sought these lost mines. Some throughout their lives led expedition after expedition in search of the fabled wealth. Almost they found it. Almost. But never quite. Hostile Indians, burning with resentment against the white men who hed taken their lands, set themselves against this further invasion of their secret places. The panther, the javelina hog, found their victims among the unwary. Suspicious and superstitious natives, fearing the curse of God and

HE gold rush days of California are a thing of the past. But still, even in these bustling times, tales of hidden treasure, legends of gold and silver mines, lure men into the mesa, the lava beds, the canyons, the mountains of the Southwest and of Mexico. J. Frank Dobie has told the stories of some of these men and treasures in “Coronado’s Children” and “Tongues of the Monte.” In “Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver” (Little) he brings together, from innumerable sources, the lore which crystallizes into the histories of the Lost Adams Diggings and the Lost Tayopa Mine,

] prying stranger, or, if he persisted, as well as several shorter narratives

tortured and killed him. Nature

herself, through landslide and earthquake, conspired to confuse the explorer and, if he reached his goal, to break his heart by chang-

f

Side Glances—By Galbraith

ing the face of the country. Mr. Dobie has traveled these trails. He has talked to the men who have gone far on lonely paths, lured by fabulous visions of jewels and gold and silver. He has seen maps, has read faded old documents, penned by hands long since quiet in death, which should lead a man straight to his destination. And they did—almost. But still the treasures are lying somewhere in the earth, protected by nature and by time, which makes men’s memories dim.

BEAUTY FOR ALL By JAMES D. ROTH Someone owns the flowers woods, But are they not mine, too? Can I not view their lovely moods? Yes, they're for me and you.

and

None can hold the river's flow. Its water runneth on. The waves are singing as they go. They're mine till they are gone.

Verily none can hold to earth And claim it for all time. The beauty of all nature’s mirth Is really yours and mine.

DAILY THOUGHT

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass | away.—Matthew 24:35.

T= shifting Sy Sterns > false jo on are continually chang

When rain was forecast for the]

of their ancestors, turned away the

Gen. Johnson Says—

The New Roosevelt Program Is The Worst of All White Rabbits Yet Exposed by Master Magician. .

ST LOUIS, Mo, June 26.—As predicted frequently in this column, the newest and biggest white rabbit of all has been pulled from the hat of the great Magician. Spend billions more. Spend without seeming to spend. Borrow without going into debt. Double the Federal outlay without new taxes and yet balance the budget. This new magic has been proposed many times . before. It boils down to simplicity itself. If I want to build a house and have neither money nor credit, I can still go to the nearest bank. Of course, withe out credit no bank would loan without an absolutely responsible indorser. Ordinarily, having no credit, I couldn’t get anybody to agree ‘o pay my debts if I didn’t. But now I can, Uncle Sam will do it for anybody. My note may not be worth the paper on which it is written. But with his indorsement it is a Government bond. I% is better than a Government bond in some respects because the guaranteed rate of interest is higher.

2 »

N Texas, I heard of a case in which a very young man with a very small job was urged to build in this manner. He had no money at all. “Can't you raise $22.50?” the tempter pleaded: “That's all that is needed and you can rent the house at more than the interest rate and make at least 3000 per cent profit on your investment.” It is now proposed to extend this plan far beyond housing—to bankrupt foreign nations, to municipali= ties and even to private industry. This is not called “spending.” It is called “Government investment in self-liquidating properties.” The outlay isn't accounted to increase deficit. Uncle Sam's mounting liability is not accounted to increase the debt. If it isn't downright crooked, it is very deceitful and it is the most reckless, headlong imprudence in the whole industry of Government financial management. Mr. Ar and his associates are proved to he willing to hock the whole country to cover their years of tragic failure and to save themselves at the next election. What is proposed here is plainly revolutionary. It is revolutionary not only in its management of Federal finances but also in our whole system of pri= vate property and standards of prudence and honesty,

” s

QrraLy such an explosive and dangerous invene tion ought to be examined and debated. But Mr, Ar does not will it so. He waits until the feverish heat of a session’s end and then proposes to tack it to a relief bill that must be passed within 10 days. - Surely responsible legislators cannot permit that. If Senators would filibuster through the summer on a hair-splitting argument about neutrality, they can't

=

»

| rubber-stamp such a fiscal revolution as this—ob=

viously designed to be bum'’s-rushed for political pur=poses in the 1940 election. Surely the Democratic Party is not so desperate and degraded as that. Even if, lashed by its socialistic steering committee in the Administration, it has so far declined, vet thers must, remain Senators and Representatives with sufficient conscience, courage and patriotism to halt this monstrous measure at least long enough to examine and debate it.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

i

Poetry Popular With Rank and File, But This Excludes the Congress.

EW YORK, June 26.—The publisher of Pocket Books, a new issue of the works of well-known authors in cheap and compact form, is having some interesting results with his titles. At the moment Wuthering Heights leads all the rest, but there is room for speculation as to whether this constitutes a tribute to Emily Bronte or to Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. However, next in the running comes Enough Rope, ° by Dorothy Parker, and this book of poems has no motion picture tieup to arouse the reading public. 1t is encouraging to find that poetry has not lost its appeal to mass circulation because it is an art invariably suspect in the world of government and politics.

isan ail

Indeed, as far as I can gather, the only opposition --

in the Senate to Archibald MacLeish lies in the fact that he has written serious verse. Limerick composie tion is about all that Congress cares to condone. I may be forgetting some famous name, but right now I think I can think of no native poet of consequence who has held high office in America. A few have served as ambassadors, but that is hardly worth counting. Warren Harding and a few other Chief Executives have been professional writers, but I will risk the assertion that no Presidential poet is represented in any of our anthologies, however humble, Poetic license permits a man to move sedately and yet bring trailing clouds of implications which are subversive. Indeed, the Congress of the United States is even more opposed to rhyme than reason.

Tradition Worth Reviving

The rule is not universal. a gentleman from Texas was touched by the muses while in the middle of an acrid debate upon the tariff, The question at issue had something to do with duties on wool and mohair. A certain Mr. Moore from Pennsylvania was somewhat forgetful and thought that these ‘by-products both grew upon the same animal. In fact, he was incautious enough to introduce into the record some sonnet to the sheep. Whether this was something of his own composition or a little thing he picked up in a high school reader I cannot remember. But the Texan who quelled him was wholly impromptu. in his reply. The muses, mostly absent from the Senate chamber, suddenly rushed in to aid the spokesman for the mohair interests. He said his all very simply. Here are hig deathless lines: . “Hampy Moore is a hell of a poet. He can’t tell the difference between a sheep and a goat.” Buf since that day poetry has all but dropped out of the national picture. And F. D. R., it seems to me, has revived a sound tradition in maintaining that a man may be both patriotic and poet.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

RUSH up on your first aid knowledge, because the Fourth of July with its many hazards to life and health is almost here. Even if you escape injury yourself, you may be called on to help someone whose clothes have been set on fire by a firecracker carelessly handled, or who suffers sunstroke or heat prostration after a long parade in the heat of the day, or who has received injuries in an automobile accident resulting from reckless holiday driving. Lockjaw or tetanus is one of the dangers that may follow fireworks injuries. At one time it was the chief cause of death from Fourth of July injuries. The condition is caused by a germ that grows only where oxygen or air is not present. Puncture wounds, such as may be made by an exploding firecracker or blank pistols, give the lockjaw germ a very favore able place to grow, because air cannot get into such wounds. When bits of burned powder from a fire cracker go through the skin they are likely to carry with them the tetanus germs from. street dirt which may have blown on the skin or clothing. Fortunately there is an antitoxin which prevents the development of tetanus or lockjaw, but it must be given promptly, so don't delay about having a physician see the injury. Burns are another Fourth of July danger. The old advice to wrap blankets or a rug around a pere son whose clothing is on fire still holds good. You can even roll yourself up in a rug, leaving your head out. Don’t run around looking for a rug or blanket, however. Running fans the flames, and you will also be wasting precious time. If no blanket, coat or rug is available, lie down and roll over slowly, using your hands to help beat out the flames. Salves, ointments and oils may be used on small minor burns, but should not be used on big burns. These require other treatment which should be given

JX

Si Sea

A good many years age

Ga SO o—s