Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 August 1939 — Page 10

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«p> RILEY 5551 Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1939

BUSINESS HAS ITS CUE | THOSE who have spoken critically of the recent session in Washington as a “do nothing” Congress might better have labeled it the “Let Business Do Something” Congress. For when the legislators boarded their home-bound trains, they had unmistakably given a cue for business to do its stuff. Five months will intervene—barring a special session—before Congress meets again. Its conduct next year will likely be guided to a considerable extent by the conduct of business in the interim. Business has argued long ‘and persuasively that it could ‘deliver the goods if only Washington stopped harassing it and competing with it. Now it can hardly be said ' that Congress gave business everything it asked, but certainly it went a long way in that direction. The tide of pump-priming and of innovation was definitely, € even rudely, checked. If business misses its cue, the Lord only knows what " the next session may bring. But if business responds to the challenge of a friendly Congress, if it begins taking advantage of the immense opportunities for investment and employment that undeniably exist, it will have justified the new attitude of Congress and earned more of the same kind of treatment. True, Congress voted more money than any / pancetints session had ever voted before. of millions more than President Roosevelt favored, especially for the farmers. It gave the President all the money he asked for the national defense, and even more. It raised the silver subsidy for the West. It ladled out, altogether, some 13 billion dollars. But in the end it drew a line and made a stand. It turned down the too-slick spending-lending program and its corollary, the housing program, with a resounding decisiveness. It lifted from business hundreds of millions of dollars in social security costs. It excised the Tast vestige of the undistributed-profits tax, an especially irritating thorn in the side of business. relief. It voted down the Townsend Plan. It placed public salaries on the same taxable basis as private salaries, and, in the Hatch Act, ordered public servants to concentrate on public service and stop ward-heeling. It kept the Labor Board in an endless stew of criticism and investigation. Its refusal to amend the Neutrality Act seemed to symbolize ‘the fact that Congress, not,the White House, is in the driver’s seat in Wostingolly Nearly all those things business has applauded. The question remains, will business be content, after hie to sit on ts hands?

\ The future of orthodox capitalism in America Seems to depend on business’ answer to that question.

SET THE LABOR ACT RIGHT

T E regular labor committees of Congress did not do the job the country wanted done, and so a special five-man House committee has been named to investigate the National Labor Relations Board and to submit answers to ~such questions as: | Whether the Board has been fair and impartial; what effect the Labor Relations Act has had on increasing or decreasing labor disputes and employment and on economic conditions in general, and what amendments, if any, the law needs.

Neither the| extreme critcis nor the extreme partisans of the Board and the act seem ta be completely pleased vith the Committee | appointed by Speaker Bankhead. That indicates, we think, that it’s a pretty good committee, likely to be fair and to produce a valuable report. The Chairman, Smith of Virginia, named because he sponsored the resolution for a special investigation, certainly can’t be regarded as open-minded. He's a thorough conservative with a record of opposition to labor legislation. But the four other members—Healey of Massachusetts, Murdock of Utah, Routzohn of Ohio and Halleck of Indiana —are either friendly to labor or not rabidly unfriendly. We hope and believe that they will go after facts and nothing else. _ Our own opinion, of course, is that the Labor Board has made a bad record which was only partly redeemed by its grudging retreat under fire when it modified its own rules, and by the appointment of the temperate and able William Leiserson tothe Board. ‘We helieve that power to misinterpret the law should have heen taken away from the Board by amendments clarifying the Labor Act, and that the Administration and the regular labor committees of Congress made a great mistake in resisting and delaying amendments. If, now, the special investigation should result in emasculating amendments, those “friends” of the law who stalled off action through the recent session of Congress can blame themselves.

But we hope the investigation will have no such result. The purpose of the Labor Act is good. The need is to make its administration equally good—to make the law, as it was intended to be, an instrument for encouraging peaceable and mutually profitable relations between workers and employers. By directing its efforts to that end, the special committee can help this country solve one of the most important problems of recovery.

MEN’S DRESS REFORM

: ree current reform in men’s dress, like many reforms, seems to be bringing in new evils as it sweeps out old. “Slacks” are too frequently sloppies. The blouse, which “may be worn either in or out,” is usually worn out, and often makes the wearer look like a Chinese laundryman after a hard Saturday night. It is but a step from an old to a new slavery. Ties are discarded, but immediatély many a man knots a hose” around his sweaty neck. Let’s reform the reform. There is no reason wii men’s hould not be comfortable, but there is also no reason it should be slovenly.

ianapolis Times]

It appropriated hundreds

It reduced and reconstituted.

air Enough By Westbrook Pegler

Tactics of Bolshevists and Their ‘Pals Likened to Those of Too Ardent Reformers in Dry Era. EW YORK, Aug. 7.—If our bolsheviks and their accessories who disavow communism, but regard

Soviet Russia as the greatest experiment of human betterment, would back off and take a look at them-

selves, they would be obliged to admit, inwardly at |

least, they present bad testimonials for the cure which they are trying to sell. During prohibition most Americans regarded the clerical and political propgnents of the 18th Amend-

ment as the most bigoted and cruel band of fanatics that plagued this country since the reconstruction days. They, too, regarded their law as the greatest experiment ever made for human betterment, but they were ridiculed and fought in print, on the platform and in a million speakeasies, and among those who hated them most were men and women who now reveal the same characteristics in their fight to inflict communism on the United States. Temperance and abstinence have their merits, which were not questioned even then, but the indecent zeal and abusiveness of people who represented prohibition alienated all ¥ho believed in freedom. 2 #8 HE amendment was not worth the loss which the churches and the clergy suffered by reason of the activities of a comparatively few terrorists and the indorsement of all this by religious groups. Similarly, at the present hour, there is much in the labor movement and in New Deal measures which are socialistic which appeals to the conscience of honest people who realize that this country is, in some respects, backward. This. backwardness, incidentally, is due in large part to the separateness of the states which hitherto has been preserved at the expense of progress and human betterment. Only recently, and grudgingly, have the states been induced to yield some of their separateness, largely

through’ bribery and a mutually predatory eagerness

to grab something from a Federal Government which never can be any richer than the sum of the riches of the states. Up to now the states, unable to co-operate for their common good, have viewed with suspicion all proposals for human betterment which would benefit all the states fairly evenly through the Federal Government. 2 » ” UT today, just as the cause of temperance was discredited and made hateful by the brutality of a few conspicuous zealots, labor and reform are embarrassed by similar qualities in the Communists and those who lack the character to embrace the Russian experiment but promise not to say a word against it. Just as every man and woman who took a drink in defiance of an amendment which never was popularly accepted as law was abused as a traitor, a Tory and a bribe-taker. One hears of a self-seeking labor racketeer rising up in a union meeting to question other men’s sincerity who himself, by his own words, has been convicted of lying, fraud and violation of the picket line of his own union for personal gain. One observes that this is only one instance of the systematic hypocritical exploitation of the labor movement and Je New Deal for personal ambition and an easy ving. All this would be merely amusing if such influences did not tend to alienate and force unwillingly into the opposition men and women who earnestly believe in progress and reform but will nét submit to manipulation or abuse by enemies of freedom and decency.

Business By John T. Flynn

Lending Bill Idea Sound, but It Was Not Carefully Worked Out.

EW YORK, Aug. 7.—The House. in killing the President’s lending bill did the only proper

thing. An immense outcry against the Government's

supposedly new lending policy, as distinguished from spending, had gone up from conservative critics. Gov=ernment lending was a prelude, they said, to Government entry first into one and then another business.

It should be scotched at the outset as an attack on our present economic system. With this view the writer had no sympathy. Nothing is imperiling the present economic system more terribly than the prolonged depression, the presence of 10 million unemployed as a chronic, indigestible mass of citizens. A wise Government investment policy may be the only ans of combating this. Therefore the bill wa founded on a sound idea. That idea was that the depression is due to the collapse of private investment and that, pending the resumption of private investment, the Government must be the investor. It is wiser for the Government to invest than to spend. To spend is to add continually to the great burden of taxes and the national debt. To invest is to introduce the element of self-support and self-liquidation into the Government's expenditures. This is the idea which was supposed to be at the bottom of that bill. But the bill was never an honest one. The idea was used not as its foundation, but as a mask.

Liberals Need Not Mourn

You have but to look af the various objectives in the bill. All of them were’ for activities which up to now have been included in the general recovery appropriations or in the ordinary government appropriations—foads, farm tenancy, housing, railroads. The bill was an attempt to provide funds for these activities so as to leave the Government free to use all the other recovery money in some other way. It was a deliberate scheme to equip the Administration with another three billion dollars in an election year. As for liberals, they will bemoan the killing of the bill as the work of Tories. In the end no one and no cause would suffer so much from this kind of legislation as liberals and the liberal cause. Liberals cannot advance the cause of liberalism by making fools of themselves. And this was an indefensible and foolish bill. An. honest, carefully worked out policy of Gov-

ernment investment in socially useful projects, planned,

with intelligence and without politics and carried out under wise administration, is an altogether desirable thing. But this bill not only did not guarantee that, it’ practically made certain that no such policy would be followed.

A Woma os Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

HE best way to get a husband is to announce yourself uninterested in marriage. America’s No. 1 Spinster has proved it in When Marjorie Hillis authored the book, “Live: Alone

and Like It,” which was practically a feminine decla- |

ration of independence against matrimony, we might have guessed what would happen. For the next thing we know, she’s married.

And mind you, girls, to a man with a couple of |

estates and the spondulix to keep both going, as well as the price of a honeymoon on’ the continent. It’s exactly like 'a Hollywood romance and Miss

.Hillis—pardon us, Mrs. Thomas H. Roulston—will no

doubt get a lot of nice publicity for her next book, which probably will deal with the advantages of wedded life over single bliss. Anyway, we wish her luck. She’s done a world of good for the modern spinster and, no matter how

‘often she may get married, we shan’t forget that she

clanged the cymbals for the Old Maids—thus making them conscious of their many blessings. For that she deserves exactly what she got—a husband. She did more. She took some wind out of the sails of our Bachelor Brethren by reminding them, in a gentle and ladylike way, of course, that the Spinster cansiders herself lucky, too, only she never had got. up the nerve to say so out loud before. ‘One of the dearest delusions of the male mind is

The Hoosier Forum 1 wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

HOUSEWIFE URGES FOOD GRADING LAW

By Housewife I read with interest the story by Earl Hoff about government meat checkers in Indianapolis grading meats for large buyers of this commodity. The writer of the article says the housewives of the city haven't heard about him yet.

Not only have we heard of him long ago and demanded the services of these meat grading experts whenever we buy meats, but we're thinking of making our demands a little louder. Some of our butchers don’t seem to know what I'm talking about when I ask that meats be government graded, or else they oppose such standardizing. This would include those who sell Grade C cow meats for grade A prices. Mr. Mueller, furthermore, isn’t puncturing our pride when he says we don’t know. as much about meat as we should. We readily admit it. Moreover we know there isn’t any way for us to become experts, either. I've been fooled so many times I feel like storming the Capitol in person to demand a State law that all meats be government graded before being sold to the consumer. And I feel the same way about eggs. There are months when I don’t believe there’s a fresh egg left in the State. I pay for Grade A eggs and get stale and bloodspotted ones just the same. All Indiana eggs, it seems, go to New York which has a grading law for eggs. We have none, and so we get what's left. It seems awful to have a law for a little thing like a fresh egg, but that seems to be the only way of getting one now. - s ” 5 ANSWERS QUESTIONS ON AMERICANISM By 100 Per Cent American What say you 100 per cent Americans, you believers in democracy? You don't practice what you say you believe. Search yourself and ask these questions: Do I believe in the freedom of the press? Do I believe all creeds and nationalities who are citizens under our flag should be treated the same? Do I believe a man should not be deprived of life or property without due process of the law? Do 1 believe that all men were created equal? Do I believe that every man should have a right to work at the trade he is best qualified to do re-

| ters”

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

gardless of race or creed to earn an honest living? Then, if you believe those things, you can bet your life you are 100 per cent American. But we can’t kid ourselves and be good citizens. This should be our motto: We associate selves together to defend and intain our Constitution and country and help make our country a better place in which to live. ® 2 ®

SEES BUSINESS PUT ON SPOT BY ECONOMY By Cynic Talk is- cheap. Let's see what kind of a white rabbit business will now pull from the hat since Congress pulled the pump sucker from|I the pump priming

roads, or proceed with slum clearance on a nation-wide scale? Will the farmers rehabilitate the rundown farm buligmes and equipment? There was no “spending” in 1929 when our master minds produced

‘the new era. Why did not business

take up the slack when Government slowed up the public spending in 1937? Will business now. raise wages to provide buying power? If business fails to create jobs this year it may become subject to more rigid control than ever before. : ” t 4 ”

RAISES SOME QUESTIONS CONCERNING FREEDOM

By C. W. “I am free when I can do what I please.”—Voltaire. Suppose my feet are on the ground. It is my pleasure to purchase a pair of shoes. But I have no money. Am I free? Or I see in the window of a book store a one-volume edition of the works of Thomas Paine at 85 cents. All I have is a streetcar token. Am I free? Or I have planned for two years to marry the girl of my choice. But I've just lost my job (the first I've had for a year. It lasted just six

spending. Will business rehabilitate the rail-

weeks.) Am I free?

New Books at t

he Library

is a startling condition to which Georges Duhamel, member of the French Academy calls attention in his new book, “In Defense of Let(Greystone Press). We in America, who have our libraries and bookshops, who enjoy them at will, with pleasure and in leisure, who

purchase casually and without sacri-

fice when book and contents impel us, -have no idea of the fate which threatens our most cultural pleasure, reading.

With the lightning-like logic of the French, Duhamel presents his thesis and in the directness and light of the presentation, conviction and perturbation assail the reader. our generation is in danger of becoming a generation of listeners and spectators, who are growing less and less willing to distinguish between entertainment and knowledge. If the world complacently accepts the cultural visual and auditory apparatus can bring instead of the

Side Glances—By Galbraith

the idea that women can’t live contentedly without. E; 4k

wedding ring, although proof of the contrary is offered in every locality. Some of the merriest and happiest creatures youll find are women who live Dear men, but not with them,

EA | cope. 1930 oY NEA seRvicE we. T. M. REC. U. 8 PAT. OFF.

"Now me, |. wouldn' t Joo what

and got one,"

to do with a vacation if 1 was.

creative individualism which has its wellspring in the book, then the book is facing an’ ever diminishing role in the enlightenment and recreation of the multitude. The author presents some cold economic facts. Many countries can no longer buy books because they cannot export the capital to pay for them. “In Germany, that omnivorous reader, the financial situation is such that French publishers have given up business altogether. Austria and Hungary can hardly afford anything, and Russia is closed for more complex reasons. Greece, Rumania, Portugal and Italy are for the time distracted from the ex-

tion of readers, is in distress.” He points out the possibilities in South America but adds that here again, the cost of transportation intervenes to the point of disaster. Duhamel declares that after the reader, those most concerned with the survival of the book are pub-

|lishers, steamship companies, rail-

roads and the state. So clearly has he pointed out salvaging procedures to these - agencies that already

ff | steamship companies of France have

reduced to the minimum the price of the transport of books. ‘Doubtless lines of all countries will follow suit.

BOAST ‘By CHRISTINE GRANT CURLESS I've heard men boast and say they never hated, And if tis so they must be paltry

And = of which have been quite under-rated; ove d doubt if what they

is true.

Lives ee: because he has it in control. ose Learns patience by the act of so

For :enses keen, have hated very

i strong : To love so much . . . to love the very most. wooder . . . wonder if I fudge him

wrongly. The man who proudly makes this idle boast!

DAILY THOUGHT

And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father’s household, with bread, according to their families— Genesis 47:12. 5 :

» + Stael,

change of books and Belgium, a na-.

good services; sweet re-| retail

|Gen.. Johnson

Says— Sn

~ Putting heii on Record Is New Type of Double-Action Strategy But It Is Politics at lis Worst.

ASHINGTON, Aug. 7—Washington is witness ing a new stunt of pre-campaign jockeying. When’ Congressional rebels vote against an Administration measure and it fails, a prediction is made that the failure will prevent recovery or bring a business recession. The dissenting culprits must be publicized so that they may not escape the people's wrath in the coming elections. It is a quaint but clever conceit. It i surefire and double-action. If recovery does not come or recession does, there are the scape-goats, tagged and. indicted in advance. This is supposed to be big medicine politically. If recovery does come, we shall be too happy to think about these dire forebodings and the foreboders will get the benefit of a rising market for the elections. They will say, as always, “we planned it that way.” ' Mr. Roosevelt used this nifty first when Congress refused to lift the arms embargo. He suggested that this action had killed a nice little market boom. It did him no harm when the market promptly spurted. People felt too good about the rise. 2 ” ® 'E used it again after his pending defeat. That time he made some rernarkable assertions—that the money would have begun activating ‘business within a couple of months, and would eventually di=rectly or indirectly employ several million men—lost benefits for which the economy boys must take the

"blame in 1940.

Then Mr. Wallace cracked down more bitterly than his boss. Failure to give him one hundred-odd million dollars to lend farmers against crops, would cost the farmers the difference. between 55 cents and 25 cents a bushel for corn, for example. Crop prices would drop to depression record lews. Our whole economic structure would feel the terrific impact of the loss of literally millions of purchasing power—and who would be to blame? Members of Congress who’ did not vote these millions to save billions. Let their names be bared and blazoned to the anger of the voters—unless they see the light and reconsider their action. There isn’t any doubt that farmers are in a fix be-

at a point so high that it is destroying their markets

where a few score millions of spending money can save them. a 8 8 8 UT who got them in that fix? Not the rebel economy-minded legislators—except as they may

| previously have permitted Mr. Wallace, by similar

ghost-raising, to bulldoze their votes for ruinous proposals. The policies of tlie Department of Agricule ture hitherto rubber-stamped by Congress got them there. Mr. Wallace has become the. most prodigal spendér of all that reckless crew and has produced the worst result. This whole double-action strategy of predicting catastrophe and dramatizing the culprits is possibly legitimate politics, but it is politics at its worst. It is combined alibi-hunting, blame-shifting, buck-passing, possible mijsrepresentation, attempted coercion, and pressure-block strong-arming. If recovery comes to refute these breast-beating prophets of disaster, we can forget them and their works as just a few more unlovely phantoms of this long and hideous nightmare of depression.

Aviation By Maj. Al Williams

Amazing Progress Made Since Anny

Bought First Plane 30 Years Ago.

ASHINGTON, Aug. 7—On Aug. 2, 1909, the “United States Army purchased its first airplane, and on Aug. 2, 1939, the United States Army Air Corps celebrated its 30th birthday with appropriate ceremonies. - The contract for this first ship was with the Wright Brothers. It called for a heavier-than-air’ machine capable of carrying two persons, combined weight 350 pounds, sufficient fuel for a flight of 125 miles, and. able to remain in ‘the air for an hour. ‘Other significant specifications: The plane must lend itself to being transported in an Army wagon; it must be capable of being steered in all directions and of returning to its starting point ready for another immediate flight; it must be capable of a speed

| of 40 miles an hour, with a minimum of 36.

On its acceptance flight tests, the Wright machine established a‘ world’s speed record for air vehicles of 47 miles an hour. Read those specifications over carefully, and then let’s check the airplane performance record of today —30 years later. The world’s long distance, non-stop record is 7158 miles. The world’s lop su straightaway speed record is 469 miles an hour, and 13,000 pounds bomb load has already been carried to 30,000 feet. But the performance angle is only one;feature of what has really happened during these momentous 30 years. A fragile affair of wood sticks, fabrics, piano wire, and a 25-horse power engine was that little Wright machine. Today our planes are made of metal, and are strong enough to be dived and danced around the sky.

Bitter Prejudices Overcome

A modern fighting plane is not even in the rune ning without a 1000-horse power motor. The landing speed of my Grumman Navy fighter is about one ana one-half times the top speed of that Wright plane. Think of the burning zeal of men like Col. Frank P. Lahm and his colleagues, who risked careers to foster this gnat-like contraption which had to be built so it could be hauled around in an Army wagon. Think of the men who scoffed at the possibility of ever being able to do anything with such an affair in actual warfare. Think of the bitter prejudices these men had to overcome against these who believed all wars would always be fought on the ground and on the sea. Think of the evenings they dreamed, after struggling through dreadful days with brass heads and hats: who jested at their dreams. Think of the two Wright brothers, who saw something they could hardly out - line in words, and fought for that something. Then think of Munich, when airpower, born of that fragile Wright plane, defiled the might of land armies and steel-sided battleships. Think—because 30 years from now the best planes of this day will look funny and absurd. The. world moves on!

Watching Your Health

By Jane Stafford

NE of the most difficult and certainly one of the most important jobs for the housewife is that of fitting a nourishing diet for the family into its budget. To help with this problem, Rowena Schmidt Carpenter and Hazel K. Stiebeling, of the u. Ss. Bureau of Home Economics, have devised four diet plans. One of them is for families with yearly incomes from $3000 up, although the $3000-a-year families will have to spend about one-fourth of their income on food to follow this liberal diet plan, which feeds four people, two of them growing children, for about $16.25 a week. Families of four can follow the moderate ‘cost diet plan, calling for a weekly expendi of $1225, on yearly incomes from up. This Duy 2k take almost one-third of the -a-year family income, so for those who prefer not to spend so large a proportion for food, or who cannot afford to follow the $12.25 weekly food budget, there is a minimum cost plan which, for $9.15 weekly will furnish a nourishment for the family of four. For eme: ; use, when the food budget will not stretch tha the Government scientists have devised a restricted diet plas on "which the weskly Joa” Gaeta for the. family of four will be about $6.15. . With a yearly income of $1000, the family of four can follow the minimum cost adequate diet

come to do so. : Too prices, Sut those. Wil vey

tin, ete, dn ss of on Whe te Ta

11s done,

tween growing surplus and prices artificially pegged and accumulating their disaster far beyond the point °

although it will’ take nearly one-half ne, family: Ee