Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 July 1939 — Page 16

»~

© PAGE 16 The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

RALPH BURKHOLDER MARK FERREE Editor Business Manager

eC

~~

~~ ROY W. HOWARD . President

Owned and published daily (except Sunday) by .- The Indianapolis Times _ Publishing Co, 212 W. _ Maryland St.

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy; delivered by carries, 12 cents a week.

Mail subscription rates in Indiana, $3 a year; outside of Indiana, €5 cents a month.

«fio RILEY 5551

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

- Member of United Press, Seripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu- « teau of Circulation.

THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1939

THEY SPEND, BUT WON'T TAX

X HE Senate voted yesterday to be more generous in providing pensions for needy old people. It adopted an amendment offered by Senator Connally (D. Tex.), whereby the Federal Government would put up $2 for each $1 donated by a state toward the first $15 per pensioner—and _ then match dollar for dollar with the state in boosting .- pensions above the $15 level. Or, to explain it in another way, if a state puts up $5 per pensioner, the Federal Government will contribute $10 —and the average oldster on the rolls gets $15. If the . state puts up $10 more, the Federal Government will match * that addition—and the average pensioner gets $35. If this amendment is finally approved it will mean "abandonment of the dollar-for-dollar equal matching basis * on which the Federal-State social security program has ~ been built. Good argument can be made in favor of the Connally plan. That is true of almost any plan to be more generous to the needy. But the stronger arguments, in our opinion, are those in opposition. The Federal Government has gone <a long way in matching dollar for dollar to care for the states’ needy. And any plan which enables a state government to put up less than an equal share, yet still leaves with the state the power to spend the money, violates the first rule of self-government—that spending power and taxing responsibility should rest in the same hands. Incidentally, on the general subject of tying ‘spending power and taxing responsibility together, there is some food for thought in comparing yesterday’s spending roll call with another recent roll call in the Senate where the issue was to tax. Here are the names of Senators who voted “yea” on the Connally amendment to spend an estimated $80,000,000 in additional money on old-age grants, and who also, a few days ago, voted “no” on the La Follette amendment to raise a slightly larger amount in additional revenue by income taxation: Andrews of Florida, Barkley of Kentucky, Ellender of Louisiana, George of Georgia, Guffey of Pennsylvania, Harrison of Mississippi, Hughes of Delaware, McKellar of Tennessee, Miller of Arkansas, Murray of Montana, O’Mahoney of Wyoming, Pittman of Nevada, Reynolds of North Carolina, Slattery of INinois and our own VanNuys of Indiana. When a Government, which has been operating on borrowed money for 10 years, is in the hands of lawmakers

who will vote to spend more and more money but won't |

vote to tax for more revenue, it is time for all of us to worry about how our children’s children are going to pay the bills.

~ SMALL FRY POLITICS

ERTAIN Republican members of Congress, led by Rep. Ham Fish of New York, are engaged in an almost incredibly petty attempt to defeat the bill to establish a “Franklin D. Roosevelt Library” at Hyde Park. They blocked the bill by parliamentary maneuvering in the House last month, and now are trying to Kill it outright, Mr. Fish charging that “it is an attempt to erect a monument to a living man.” President Roosevelt has offered to give the Government all his vast collection of papers, books and correspondence bearing on his Administration, together with 12 acres of his Hyde Park estate. Money to build the library would be raised by private subscription. The Government would be responsible only for maintaining the library, a storehouse of invaluable material concerning one of the most interesting periods in American history. But Mr. Fish, who “represents” the Hyde Park district, objects, and other Republicans are unwise enough to swim along behind him on a current of partisan enmnity for the President. Chairman Kent Keller (D. Ill.) of the House Library Committee, says that these Republicans “are making fools of themselves.” And, indeed, they are.

-STATE HOSPITAL INSURANCE

~ YT seems incredible that nonprofit hospital insurance serv- . vices can operate in cities like New York, Washington, * Cleveland, Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pitts- ~ burgh, Buffalo, Minneapolis and St. Paul and that a law permitting similar services be declared invalid in Indiana. The measure providing for voluntary hospital insur- +. ance passed by the last Legislature was pocket-vetoed by * Governor Townsend after Attorney General Omer Stokes Jackson had decided that the act violated the State Constitu- + tion since it was “silent upon the subject of insurance.” “= “It doesn’t sound reasonable,” said Dr. Karl Ruddell, ~ president-elect of the Indiana Medical Association, after Mr. Jackson's ruling, “that it could be unconstitutional since the bill was drawn by American Hospital Association lawyers from laws now in effect in other states.” Just what in Indiana law is different from the laws in other states? That is just one of the questions which might be put to Governor Townsend by the committee he has named to formulate a plan for submission to the next Legislature.

HOCKEY AND ICE SHOWS

T is pleasant to reflect on such a topic as ice hockey on a near 90-degree day even though we won't be able to see any for some months. But this coming winter lovers of skating not only will see high-class hockey but a variety of ice shows that ought to make the new Coliseum at the Fair Grounds one of the most popular gathering places in Indianapolis. We are certain that hockey—even the finest big league hockey—will never displace basketball in the affections of Hoosiers. But hockey, and the new ice shows that are sweeping the country today, have something that spectators like. For our part, we await their arrival with illconcealed impatience. _ 1t looks like an interesting winter.

Ie

Fair Enough

By Westbrook Pegler

C. I. O, in Barring Nonstrikers From Plant, Guilty of Same Denial Of Civil Rights Laid to Hague.

EW YORK, July 13.—An incident in the C. I. O. strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Pontiac, Mich. seems to violate the pet contention of that organization in the long and recently victorious struggle with Mayor Hague of Jersey City. In Pontiac 400 workers in certain departments struck and 1100 in other departments did not, but the strikers placed a picket line before the gates and turned aside nonstrikers who wanted to go to their obs. After a conference, Roy Reuther, the international representative of the union, agreed to open the line wide enough to admit the workers one at a time, but when one man tried to go through the pickets closed up and he was driven off. In Jersey City, Mr. Hague prevented representatives of the C.I. O. from assempling, distributing pams= phlets and making public speeches. He invoked local ordinances to justify this conduct, but they were illegal ordinances, and at the insistence of the C. I. O. and the Civil Liberties Union he was rebuked and compelled to respects the rights of the C. I. O. and others. 2 =» = OW it is the fashion for unioneers and New Deal extremists to argue that the right to work is not subversive when they are advocating larger appropriations for relief projects and to insist that a man has a property right in his job when they are demanding protection against layoffs and discharges in private industry. But the right to work becomes a subject for sneers and is worse than subversive when it is asserted on behalf of the nonstriker in a plant which has been struck or partly struck and the nonstriker’s property right in his job somehow is deemed to be revocable at the pleasure of a union or the political leader of the union. Hague used force to compel obedience to orders which had at least, in a phrase of President Roosevelt, the color of legality. He was technically a responsible public official, having received at the polls something which the New Deal calls, in its own case, an overwhelming mandate from the people.

Reuther is not a public official. He is an executive of a private organization which has no more right to bar men from their jobs than it has to bar them from their homes or public meetings or from their chosen places of worship.

” * »

N PRINCIPLE, when his picket line closed up and made it impossible or unsafe for men to enjoy the property right which has so often been asserted by the C. I. O's most passionate partisans, he was guilty of the very conduct which the C. I. O. protested all the way to the Supreme Court in the case of Frank Hague. In a recent exchange of words with a New England woman who advocates legislation to bar married women from public jobs Mrs. Roosevelt asked, “Do you want us to become a Fascist nation which tells one when to work and how?” If that be fascism—and I believe it is—the C. I. O. has been owing the country an answer since long, long before the New England proposition was thought of.

Business By John T. Flynn

Trouble Will . Recur Until Relief

Is Viewed as Permanent Problem.

EW YORK, July 13.—The quarrel between WPA and the building trades over the change in the wage scale and working time is the result of the failure of the Government to face the problem of rationalizing the whole business of relief. This thing has been going on for six full years and still we persist in treating it as if it were some sort of transient, fleeting embarrassment The trouble can be traced back to one of the very first difficulties encountered even while Hoover was President. That was the distinction between the manual worker and the white collar worker. It was manifestly impossible to put the white collar men, particularly in middle years, to work with pick and shovel. They simply could not stand up under the work. Hence the search for jobs they could do. This was difficult because it was found that the work done by white collar workers was chiefly keeping track of the work done by manual workers, and there were simply not enough such jobs. This led to the invention of projects at which men could work in the fields to which they had devoted themselves or wished to devote themselves—the theater, music, dancing, writing, etc. This led to a similar development among manual workers. In some of the projects developed, skilled workers were necessary—and this brought up the question of the wage paid them—paying them a higher wage than the unskilled laborers. This was done.

Cost Out of Proportion

The next step was the assumption that the Government must find work for reiief groups which would give them employment in their respective trades. And it is at this impossible point we are today. The cost of WPA projects is aitogether out of proportion to their cost in ordinary business. I was told by WPA officials in connection with a school project that in estimating the cost of a WPA project I must figure on the ordinary cost and then multiply that by two or even three, Obviously the worker is not returning a fair value in work for the money being paid him. This must have a very important bearing on the wage paid. The skilled worker is not giving the same volume and measure of work on a WPA project he gives on an ordinary business project. We will, however, never get rid of this problem until! we have come to recognize this business of Government projects for unemployment as a permanent problem. Then we must employ men at their several trades only as they are needed in such trades. The projects must be organized upon strictly business bases and handled by expert groups with the view to having the workers return a full day in work and value for every dollar paid.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

KNOW a house where living has become a fine art. It is not new and it has not been done over in the modern manner. Nor can it be called old. Thirty years would about cover its span, but it has taken on the dignity and beauty of age because only one family has ever lived in it. They belong to it; it belongs to them. Three daughters were born there, and two have walked as brides down its wide, curved staircase. In winter, wood fires crackle cheerily, and all summer long the bright sunlight makes golden patterns on its walls and carpets. On the hottest days its rooms are cool and, when storm clouds lower, they seem bright and warm. To everyone who has been there, the house symbolizes something gracious and steadfast that is disappearing from our American scene—a fixed, permanent home where people are more important than things. It is not to be described in words. The quality of its charm is too intangible and elusive. But the past lives on inside those walls and in some strange way mingles and becomes a part of the present. Love, become loveliness, lingers there. The people who live in it are not wealthy, according to modern standards. But they are rich, indeed, in those qualities which count most in making happiness and good citizenship; in ingenuity, in laughter and, above all, in their determination to put down their roots in one place so that forever after their children might have the memory of a home-—shelter-ing and secure, like those promised mansions in God's Heaven that are not built with hands. Every time I go into this home a little voice shouts inside of me, “Oh fortunate family! Oh lucky, lucky Louse! Oh life, how generous you are!” tl ‘

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES Phe Stumbling “Bloc”—By Talburt

The Hoosier Forum

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

DOUBTS INFLATION ANGLE IS UNDERSTOOD

By A Reader You requested the editorial readers to discuss inflation and water rates in the Hoosier Forum. I am almost positive in my humble opinion that if Indianapolis has a population near 375,000 that less than one-tenth of 1 per cent of the peo-

ple in the city can give you an intelligent answer to the subject of whether we citizens should or should not accept the present offer based on monetary devaluation.

Probably you are making an insidious survey in the I. Q. league of your editorial readers. You certainly will find that the batting average in the I. Q. league has slumped to a scratch hit while the pitchers are having a field meet,

Senator Thomas of Oklahoma, as you know, talked for two days on the question of inflation in the Senate and could not hold a quorum because his colleagues did not understand the subject.

” ” ” SEES UNEMPLOYMENT AS ONLY REAL PROBLEM By Voice in the Crowd As one of the “long-winded” offenders in the Forum, I take M. B.'s contribution seriously enough to comment on some of its problems. First, we have only one major problem in America, and that is employment for those who wish to work and are not working. Everything else is secondary, and M. B. does not mention it. In a material way I have continually aided employment, and therefore I believe that I have the right to defend the American system of initiative,

Now about “adult education”—if that is a problem, it is a new one. Education is something that the politicians cannot feed you with a tin cup, but there certainly is nothing in any man’s way if he wishes to educate himself. Lincoln found a way to “adult education” and that way is still open. If you want to learn, all you have to do is to dig in. If you study something practical it will also be profitable. And then the “child labor” problem. Aside from newsboys and drug clerks where is it? A boy starts shaving now before he has the right to learn a trade. There was a time when such a boy had a trade learned before other. boys of

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

views

a competitive age came out of college, and the boy with experience had a fair chance to hold his own. Now he is in direct competition with those who have labored as children in college.

And “they have no siums in Scandinavia.” Let me say that they have no building racket there either. Nor will you find a man with a small income using two weeks’ earnings every month to keep the finance company away from his automobile. . . . I have heard it said, and I believe that it is 75 per cent correct, that the reason we have slums is because we have people who want to live in them.

There is no one more sympathetic for the “down-and-outer” than I am. I have been one more than once, and may be one again. I'll worry about that later.

I claim that there is only one way to help men and that is to help them find jobs. This can best be done by encouraging the private spending and investment of money. People will do it when they know that the political aspect is more clarified. I hope that everyone understands that I love America and can put up with some of the things that may be temporarily and humanly wrong with it.

LINCOLN QUOTED ON LABOR RIGHTS By H. W. Daacke In the July 7 Hoosier Forum a list of 10 questions by a contributor signing as “Curious” gives me the impression that a gross error has been made. I feel that he should have signed as “Lazy.” But in order to give the contributor a starting point to work from, let. me quote from the annual message to Congress in 1863. President Lincoln said “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is but the fruit of labor and could never have existed had labor not first existed. Labor is superior to capital and deserves much the higher consideration.” With this quotation for a starter, a public library, bulging with information, both pro and con, covering every angle of his 10 questions, he can, if he is really “curious,” get all the answers he is asking for.

” ” 2 CLAIMS POLICE PICK ON TAXI DRIVERS By A Cab Driver

I would like to express my opinion about why so many cab drivers get arrested so often. The courtroom is filled with them all the time. I have been arrested three times this year. It seems as if every time a cab driver turns around he is getting arrested. Why are there so many smartaleck policemen? They will not give us a chance to explain ourselves. Some policemen stationed at the downtown corners have a way of treating you like a dog, not a human being. . . .

New Books at the Library

HE theory of America’s national defense, as set forth by Livingston Hartley in “Our Maginot Line” (Carrick) is based upon the assumption that not only does Hitler mean what he says when he speaks of making Germany a world power, but that also he will be able to carry out these ambitions. Believing

that last September Britain and France lost their opportunity to stop Germany, he sees as a very probable possibility a complete Germanized Europe which would

constitute a powerful and almost

Galbraith

Side Glances—By

COPR. 1939 BY NEA SERVICE, INC. ¥. M. REC. U. 8. PAT. OFF.

"I've been watching you and you haven't put out your hand eat a single turn!”

221 by Niue, SN

i AN

hed Res

irresistible threat against the peace, security, and integrity of America. Starting from this point, he asks, what, then, can America do to keep this rising tide of Fascism from inundating this country—which will be, he says, the sole remaining stronghold of democracy. East across the Atlantic he sees Germany, strengthened by the resources and the subjugated populations of Europe and Africa. On the west is Japan, awaiting an opportunity to move into the islands of the Pacific and to use them as a base from which to advance upon America. Mr. Hartley discusses at some length what measures America may take, before it is too late, to keep Japan and a hostile Europe from occupying these islands as the first step toward South America, Central America, and Mexico. These islands he envisages as our Maginot Line, and as such, he believes, should be made impregnable by every conceivable means—through diplomacy, through purchase of some of them, and through building up our naval power. Primarily, however, this book is an argument for co-operation with France and Britain before it is too late to save them from defeat by Germany. Isolation, he claims, is a policy we cannot follow if we would;

| | therefore, he argues, let us act be-

fore we are put on the defensive and no longer able to choose our

'T weapons or our destiny.

LOOK OUT By ALBERT L. CHILL

[The King and Queen have come

and gone, Yes, we are mighty glad they came, We did our best to treat them right, And we hope they feel the same.

Yet the more I think about it, I'll bet somehow we’ll find, That through their visit to shores, Old England has an ax to grind.

DAILY THOUGHT

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.—John 15:12,

HE heart of him who truly loves is a paradise on earth; he

our

4 has God in himself, for God is love. ‘| —Lamennais.

i YAR. TULY 18, = Gen. Johnson Says—

Roosevelt Accepted Poor Advice And Muffed Chance to Lead U. S. To Period of Great Prosperity.

ASHINCTON, July 13.—It is worth nothing how new verbal gadgets are given little rides by Administration spokesmen in the inner-circle and then dropped. The rise, decline and fall of the sixty families in Administration speeches is an example. Now the story, brought by repetition to a point of absurdity by Senator Guffey, is that Mr. Roosevelt has had no terms because his first was frustrated by the courts ahd his second by the Tories.

That is about as silly as it can be because, except for a few slight hindrances, Mr. Roosevelt has been permitted to dose this sick country just about as he desired for going on seven years—and now look at the darned thing. Yet, there is no doubt that Mr. Roosevelt has been frustrated. I have never wavered in my opinion that he is potentially one of our greatest leaders. Re=calling his first “hundred days,” I doubt if there is a similar period of so short duration in ail history, where so much was accomplished so brilliantly. As Raymond Moley has pretty well established in his recent memoirs, the so-called “Brain Trust” of those early days, was no steering committee of Governinent —no palace janisariat in the later sense. Mr. Roose= velt was rolling his own as far as fundamental policy was concerned. I know, because I was there. o ” = T NEVER occurred to me to suggest political polie cies. I vividly recall hearing him say to B. M. Baruch, “Now, Bernie, I take your judgment in economics and need it badly, but I think that, both on experience and record, I am better on the political side—that’s my profession.” So it always seemed to me. I regard him still as a political genius—as long as he paddles his own canoe. But Mr. Roosevelt who spoke so bitterly and bluse teringly at Madison Square Garden after the election was overwhelmingly in the bag, or in his second inaugural, was a very different Roosevelt from the one I talked to when I decided to go out and support him in 1936 with everything I had. Later it was very clear that someone had sold him the foolish idea that he “had a mandate” and that the election proved it to be better politics to revolutionize this Government on &n extreme formula of “reform before recovery’—that he hadn't yet gone half far enough. ” ” ” $ I think, it was one of the greatest of human tragedies—like Napoleon's march on Moscow. In January, 1937, Mr. Roosevelt, using the political methods of personal leadership, charm and compro= mise which are native to him—which he had practiced all his life and had put him in his high place —could have had anything within reason that he wanted. . Of far greater importance, he could have rallied this country and restored its cohesion and confidence to go forward to the greatest prosperity of our gen=eration. But no—he surrendered his professional judgment to political amateurs. He was persuaded to try to dragoon Congress, the courts and the great middle strata of our country by purges, attacks and reprisals and by appealing to class hatred, prejudice and resentment—to become a President of fierce factions rather than a President of all people. The resulting chaos has ruined his second term and threatened to rob him of everything he and the country could have had.

Aviation By Maj. Al Williams Airline Pilot Training Is Costly

But ¥'s Proving a Fine Insurance.

ASHINGTON, July 13.—I dropped into Atlanta and, while waiting for my Eastern Air Lines plane to take me to New Orleans, had a fine flying chat with my old friend Pat Higgins, operations manager of Delta Air Lines. “Airline pilot training is costing the airlines a lot of money, but it is the best insurance I can discover—and it’s here to stay,” said the genial flying boss of the up-and-coming Delta outfit. This comment is typical of Higgins, an ex-Marine Corps pilot, and it’s also typical of the long-range thinkers who are directing the destinies of airline transportation in this country. “Yes, airline pilot training is with us for keeps, and in George Cushing, Delta’s chief pilot, we have just the type of man to keep the plan working brightly and vigorously,” Pat added. I have been following the airline pilot training program of the big airlines with the keenest interest. Contrary to the layman's impression, it is not designed to train new flying transport captains, but to improve the lads who are, and have been, piloting big ships up and down the airways of the country. This flying business is moving so fast, and new safety devices are being developed so rapidly, that the transport captain who hopes to hold his job must devote a considerable portion of his time on the ground to studying innovations in piloting technique. Flying Technique Changing I don’t mean merely reading aviation technical reports and magazines, but rather the intensive study of what each change in mechanical development means to his actual handling of a ship. It's not enough to check over a new gadget until one is familiar with its operation, then leave for the golf links. New appliances are being fitted to wings to enable ships to fly at lower speeds and to improve their controllability at those lower speeds. In turn, these developments necessitate changes in the methods of approaching a field under varying weathe* and visibility conditions. Just about the time a transport pilot becomes familiar with a two-position controllable pitch propeller, along comes the constant speed prop which automatically holds to a given blade angle. Air navigation technique also is constantly chang= ing. In addition to radio beam flying, the boys are now working on celestial navigation and developing the knack of solving radio triangulation problems, The new flying engines cannot be handled like the type they have superseded, and they -can well be regarded as more mechanically complicated—but not to the pilot who studies the newer designs.

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

NE of the miseries that may spoil a summer holi= day is the chigger, also known as the red harvest mite. Centrary to popular belief, and unlike the itch mite, the chigger does not burrow under the skin but merely pierces it as deeply as possible with its pointed mandibular claws. Once anchored, it hangs on quietly and begins a process of liquefying the skin, If it is not removed, it finally drops off filled up, not with blood, but with fatty, predigested tissue juice. It does not usually remain on the human more than from two to four days. It is the brick-red, six-legged larva of the chigger that causes the trouble to mankind. The nymphs and adults are scavengers and do not infest man or other animals. ' Chiggers may get at you on the skin of yeur neck and shoulders, but usually they start their #mvasion from the feet and ankles and work up. They do not, as a rule, fasten themselves and feed immediately but run rapidly until they meet with an obstacle such as a garter or belt and then attach themselves to the skin at nearby points. The actual bite is seldom noticed'and the first sign the patient observes is the skin irritation and blister. Treatment consists in removing the mites, which can best be accomplished, according to medical authorities, by applying benzene, kerosene ore,a copper compound, followed by bathing with plenty of soap for half an hour and a complete change of clothing. To relieve itching and prevent infection, a brief application of rubbing alcohol (70 per cent) is advised. This is to be followed with a mild antiseptic and anti-itching ointment. The U. S. Public Health Service suggests boric acid ointment U. S. P. to which may be gdded from one to two per cent of phenol and 2 per cent menthol,

Y