Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 December 1939 — Page 8

PAGE 8

The Indianapolis Times

(A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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

Price in Marion County, 3 cents a copy: deliv ered by carrier, 12 cents a week.

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> RILEY 5551

Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1939

IF YOU MUST— | S the glad holiday season approaches we feel the impulse to sound a solemn warning against the dangerous practice of drinking and driving. But we have felt that same impulse in other years, and we have editorialized as impressively as we knew how, and in spite of all that a number of people did drink and drive, - with results fatal to themselves, to others, or to both. So, while repeating the usual warning—don’t drink and drive, “at Christmas, at New Years, or any day or night!—we want this time to ask a favor of those who will drink and drive: Before you start out, send our city editor a good recent photograph of yourself and a brief biographical sketch. That will spare us the necessity of bothering your surviving relatives for information on the morning after, and —although you will never read it—it will assure you of an adequate obituary notice in the paper.

THE DIES COMMITTEE IRE has been directed against the Dies Committee from many directions this week. Mrs. Roosevelt took a shot at it. So did the President. Sixty-two professors, writers, artists and actors signed a statement accusing the committee of planning, with the “support of influential newspapers,” to suppress the civil rights of Communists and other “dissident groups.” Even Leon Trotsky, from his Mexican retreat, blazed away at Chairman Dies. Yet out came the Gallup Poll with a report that 75 per cent of the voters believe the Dies Committee should continue its work for another year; that 12 per cent think Congress should name some other committee to do the same work: that only 13 per cent oppose any further investigation of un-American activities. Our own observation convinces us that Dr. Gallup's figures are about right. This newspaper, for one, is emphatically against depriving the Communist or any other group of the liberties guaranteed to all by the Bill of Rights. The Moscow party- | line tactics of the Communists are a sore trial to American patience. The sheer impudence of their cry that they are being persecuted when they are prosecuted for breaking American laws makes us pretty sick. But we defend their

[g Seid: Leiserson

By Bruce Catton

Testimony in NLRB Probe Shows He Took Job as 'Cleanup Man’; He's Another Man From Antioch.

ASHINGTON, Dec. 16. —Current wisecrack here is that there must be something special about Antioch College. in Yellow Springs, O., because both Dr. William M. Leiserson and Dr. A. E. Morgan came from its faculty. Dr. Morgan, ex-member of TVA, took the witness stand before a Senate committee a little over a year ago and talked at great length about the shortcomings of his TVA colleagues and the group's mistakes in

policy. Barb on the jest is that Dr. Leiserson has just been on the stand before the Smith committee, and his criticisms of fellow NLRB members and the Board's policies have been spread on the record. As a matter of fact, Dr. Leiserson couldn't help himself. Agents of the Smith committee subpenaed correspendence files at the Labor Board more than two months ago. When the committee got the doctor on the stand it merely laid his own writings before him and asked, “How about it?” He has volunteered nothing that the files didn't reveal. = ” 2

R. LEISERSON'S testimony and the contents of his inter-office notes indicate that there must have been a good deal to the talk, current when he was appointed last spring, that the President put him on the board to rearrange things generally. Dr. Leiserson went on NLRB in May. By the letter part of July he was writing memos to his fellowmembers speaking of “usual irregularities of procedure” in the secretary’s office and saying that such-and-such a case “smelled.” He was also moving to dismiss the Board's secretary, Nathan Witt, All of this, it is argued, indicates pretty clearly that Dr. Leiserson had been given reason to feel, when he took his appointment, that his job was to do something in the way of a clean up.

The doctor, incidentally, is about the mildestmannered witness a Congressional committee has had since J. P. Morgan held the midget in his lap. He speaks softly, smiles pleasantly, and pufis at a pipe which has not yet stayed lit longer than 30 seconds. A few weeks ago this correspondent spent an hour talking with him. During that hour Dr. Leiserson used an entire clip of matches to light his pipe. s 2 »

NTI-TRUST division is about to probe the alleged monopoly of a big industrial concern. A few days ago a top official of the company notified Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold that the division could have free access to all of the company’s most private records.

“Now that you people have had the nerve to go after the labor unions,” he remarked, “I've come to the conclusion that you're really sincere.” = ” ” Keep your eve on the Department of Justice's building costs investigation in St. Louis. Some of the most sensational news of the entire drive is apt to come out of that sector before so very long.

Inside Indianapolis

About the Man So Many People Admire and Know So Little About.

right to speak and print their opinions, the same as we defend our own. And most Americans, we think, agree with that. But most Americans also are convinced that there is great need for someone to expose what Communists and others are

doing, beneath the protection of the Bill of Rights, to]

undermine our democracy. They believe that the Dies Committee, with all its faults and mistakes, is doing an essential job. That it does have faults, and has made mistakes, is

DD PROFILES: The man who is regarded by many as the town’s outstanding “businessman” is probably the one about whom least is known. . . . He is Guy Wainwright, president of Diamond Chain. . . . He has two outstanding characteristics. . . . One is his modesty . . . the other his bushy eyebrows. If you asked his friends about him, they'd simply say he was “unassuming” and then look sort of perplexed. . . . Then they say he's “swell” and look even more puzzled. . . . Seriously, though, one of the nice things about him is that he never says anything un-

certainly true. A serious mistake was made this week | when the chairman published a report charging that prac- | tically all consumers’ organizations are linked to communism —a report which was not the result of any public hearings, | which other committee members say they had never seen, | but which seems to have represented the personal opinions | of the committee's research director. That was unfair and |

President and Mrs. Roosevelt and other liberals.

less he has something to say. Guy Wainwright is the sort of chap who built a

| remarkable record in the Army and yet never says

anything about it. . . . He rose from private to lieu-tenant-colonel. . . . In 1916 he was a sergeant on the Mexican border. . . . And when the World War ended in 18, he was a lieutenant-colonel of artillery under

Col. (now General) Tyndall in the Rainbow Division. |

.. . His outfit was under fire a good part of the time. dr Why ownership should not ex-| One goes up without any propa-

unwise, and it laid the committee open to criticism by the [

. . And while nobody knows much about it, he has several decorations for valor from foreign nations. Typical is the fact that he is perhaps the town's

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

| THINKS BARBER PRICES

{in order to be of the most benefit

[family does the work on others or

| SEES THRIFT AT BOTTOM

#

LISSENPVE GOT ~ DATE WIT DESTINY AND | WANNA GIVE TRE OLD GIRL A

SOME BODY OR EXPECTING Aa CALL HIMSELF

AW NUTSGIMME MY NICKEL BACK AN' LL WRITE THE FOLKS!

The Hoosier Forum

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

(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.)

SHOULD BE FLEXIBLE By G. 0. Davis, Brazil, Ind. I have read the pros and cons re-

garding the new Barber Regulations Law. It has its good points. But I think it should be a flexible law

views

to all. It should permit any barber who is personally acquainted with the financial standing of any of his cus-

tomers to use his judgment in doing| : : the job for what the customers can) os business so far as the com

afford to pay. Many customers are Mon good is concerned, is the sysnow ferced to stay away from the tem of capitalistic management. This barber shop. Some member of the

{management become efficient and at they may shave themselves. low cost through the competition The non-flexible price drives | that attends the system. Managemany customers away. If the barber ment which cannot meet the.paycan’t get a chicken dinner from all/rolls, pay the bills, carry the tax customers, a sandwich is better| load, satisfy the customers, and rethan nothing. turn some little profit to the share- » holders, automatically ceases to become management. No election day . for them, no increasing the tax OF CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM budget to cover their costly errors, By Voice in the Crowd no merit system that makes their I am indebted to Claude Braddick jobs secure if they answer all the

” ”

{for his comments on my assertion questions on form umpty-six-four-

that the righteousness of capitalistic teen. Their job is to carry the eco-

‘ownership is not altered if the stock- nomical ball. If they fail, either the

holders are numerous. | sheriff or the shareholders bump For the benefit of the social-|them off the team. And then a man minded who may, as he states, won-| goes down in the ranks and a better

‘tend to 120 million stockholders, I| ganda. That is the system for a free

wish to state that if the 120 million | people.

people qualified first by thrift to be- 8 o 8

We hope the investigation of un-American activities No. 1 student of international affairs. . . . And then will be continued. But we hope it will be conducted in a

| other persons expound. . . . As a matter of fact he

| when the subject arises, he sits around and listens to |

come stockholders in a single large corporation the system would re{main unaltered. The shareholders in American business became share-

BLAMES G. O. P. FOR HUNGER IN CLEVELAND

By William Lemon

wholly American way, removing all basis for charges that | it is an assault on the Bill of Rights. We think Congress | should lay down, for all its investigating committees, defi- | nite rules of procedure guaranteeing protection for the

rights of all witnesses and others who may be involved. |

Investigations are most useful when conducted fairly, and in that connection we want to say a word about— » = 2

THE SMITH COMMITTEE HIS one, headed by Rep. Howard W. Smith of Virginia, |

is investigating enforcement of the Wagner Act by the | National Labor Relations Board, and doing it with a mini- | mum of waste motion and publicity froth. Its able attor- | ney, Edmund Toland, has put on a steady procession of witnesses, all testifying from actual knowledge of NLRB | operations. bo Having done his preliminary spade work well, Mr. Toland doesn’t have to fall back on hearsay testimony to | make headlines. He is getting at immediate and pertinent facts. Some of the evidence so far points to need for moderate | revisions in the Wagner Act to restrict the powers of the | Labor Board. More of it points to imperative need for a| drastic shake-up of the Board's personnel. Already there | is plenty to substantiate board member Smith's characterization of some NLRB activities as a “hangover” of the old | NRA—and that term, it seems to us, is more literal than | figurative.

» = =

ONE BIG—FAMILY WE now know that Joe Kennedy would like a second term | as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, that Joe | Davies would like another round as Ambassador to Belgium, | that Harold Ickes and Henry Wallace would not be averse to third terms as Secretaries, respectively, of Interior and | Agriculture. Moreover—though it has not been officially proclaimed —it has been rumored about, it has been whispered around, it has been bruited abroad, indeed, it has leaked out, that Tommy Corcoran and Ben Cohen are at least receptive to suggestions that they continue on a few years longer. But before we bet any money on what is going to happen at the Democratic National Convention next summer we'd like to hear whether James Aloysius Farley, that matchless field marshal of delegates, is interested in third terms as Postmaster General and chairman of the National |

Committee. | The two Joes, Harold, Henry, Tommy and Ben are

hoping. ? &

never says anything in crowds, but does speak freely among friends. He speaks distinctly in a rather high-pitched voice. . . . His hobby is the yard at his home, . . . Where he putters around and tries to find more native Indiana trees to plant. . . . That's the chap who is looked on as a human “powerhouse” able to take care of himself in any kind of situation.

CHRISTMAS TRAVEL is certainly rushing. . . . The airlines, for instance, are having trouble filling reservations for next week. . . . We've got reason to be ashamed. . . . We told you all about the Polar Bear Club and then forgot to mention the Dolphins. ... It seems the women-folk at the I. A. C. got jealous and formed their own organization one Wednesday morning after their swim. . tineau was elected president. . . . The grownup boys who are “helping” their young sons with their electric trains will be happy to know that the model train club at Union Station has launched an ambitious project that will take a few months to complete. . ., It will end up with a full-size miniature railroad. . . . Just to make you jealous, boys, that’s all.

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

MERICANS possess one marvelous gift. They are easily diverted. It's been rather funny to watch our anger switch from Hitler to Stalin, our sympathies slide from Poland to Finland—and, hy the way, has anybody heard anything lately from the Chinese? Soon we shall forget the whole kit and caboodle of them. A Presidential campaign is just around the. corner and I hope it will be a rambunctious one. For Presidential campaigns invariably focus attention on

the one spot where it ought to be most of the time —the home field. Keeping our eyes on the political ball isn't going to do us any harm in 1940. I can hardly wait. Maybe the columnists and dopesters in New York and Washington will start writing good old United States stuff again and the

| radios are sure to bring us more news from the

domestic front. They may even start investigating the mind of the citizen living in the interior of the country—which would undoubtedly be excellent educational experience for them. That fellow has endured so many grave crises with

| Europeans he’s beginning to wonder what they're up | lo over there, and where they'll be headed after Hit-

lerism and Stalinism are squelched. The American voter knows he’s living in the United States of course, ilthough he often has to pinch himself to believe it. And he’s pretty much sold on this country. So no matter what the issues are, or who runs, he’s going to wecome the next Presidential campaign, for it will be such a pleasant change to find himself arguing about home matters instead of foreign affairs. And who can tell, perhaps by the time we've

| inished more crises will have occurred on the other

side of the world where events move so swiftly we

| can’t keep track of yesterday's heroes or villains or

follow our own reaction to those events without the " of Bhother Galivp poll. . I wouldn't mind watching a few torch light prosessions for a change. he

holders by saving a part of their earnings and buying stocks that they thought were good investments. They did not, as socialism would require, confiscate these stocks. They

Sixteen thousand American citizens are on the verge of starvation in Cleveland, a Republican city in la Republican state—a facsimile of

our own past under a former Republican President, That situation was not caused by a Roosevelt, but by a Governor with his economic Presidential ideas. But Governor Bricker's chances of becoming President are about as good as mine. They register zero. And Ohio's State Treasury has a large surplus of cash, yet Republican principles put money above human misery. That is the Christian spirit of capitalistic parasites, forgetting that as St. Paul said, “Charity is the greatest virtue of them

all.” » EJ ”

URGES PREPARATION FOR SUDDEN PEACE By S. L.

Are we going to ape Hitler? We had better look before we leap into a huge additional military program. We may well dread a sudden peace in Europe, even more than a continuance of war. The World War was prolonged two years by the shipment of British arms to Germany during the war. Fear of peace already grips the British industrialist who has geared his production to war requirements. Already he seeks insurance against a sudden peace. The rates are now 10 per cent, with each month thereafter increasing another 10 per cent until June 1940, and no insurance thereafter. We propose more guns jor ourselves and Minton and his crowd are joyriding over the military reservation now to get us more warminded and to pick our pockets for more guns. Peace will cost us plenty. It will give us time to sober cur minds and to correct ou. problems, Our enemy is depression.

added to but took away from no one. I believe, however if it were possible for 120 million people to be so thrifty as to be able to qualify as shareholders, they would all have their own investment plans and

New Books at the Library

| sarily | ‘gimme” type, and people who bY|member among its 150 men—but

.«» Mrs. Frank M. Gas- |

there would not be a socialist] among them. Socialism is neceswishful thinking of the |

HE famous “5 and 10 Club” for ex-hoboes has only one woman

their own efforts acquire anything] ‘ resist the idea of someone who has |J2Ck Dempsey and Jim Tulley knew

not shared in the sacrifice to share| What they were doing when they in the ownership. That is natural | invited Maud Parrish to join. Her to say the least, and if everyone ac- adventures through and around the quired some wealth by his own | world began in 1895, when as an efforts, socialism would not even be | unhappy 17-year-old wife in San discussed. | Francisco she ran away to the Fully as important as to whol!Klondyke. As a banjo-playing en-

LEP b ethic SOPR. 133 BY NEA SERVICE, INC. YM. REQ. U. 8 PAT, OFF.

"Mother is working up to the point of your famil what she reallys means how much money do

background, but you make?"

Ri =, 5 i aa . 2. PRE

I

tertainer she could earn her living wherever she went. Maud Parrish tells the story of her 44 vagabonding years in “Nine Pounds of Luggage” (Lippincott). She has circled the globe 16 times, penetrated far into forbidden cities and jungles, crossed equatorial South America, was a gambling house hostess in the Orient, has visited the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and most of the world’s islands, including Devil's Island— and all these are but a few of her cosmic jumping off places. She once toured the U. S. in vaudeville, in the days when “to tread the boards was to ride the rods.” Miss Parrish’s impression of far lands and people, the contrast between their yesterdays and todays, her love of the exotic beauty of strange places, her adventures and several hair-raising escapes from death—all make a story stranger than fiction, and far more exciting. Her sense of humor, robustly unconventional as Mae West's, brightens her most depressing experiences. Although past 60, she’s no “ex” traveler; as soon as this book was written she dashed off to Labrador with an old beau; her future plans include a visit “to those haunting stan sisters, Afghan and Turk.”

DECEMBER SHINES By MARY P. DENNY December shines in mistletoe, Holly wreath and evergreen. In the light of star-lit gold, In the shining flake of snow. And -the crystal of the cold, In the silver line of light And the stars in shining flight. In the light of winter air, Shining out so crisp and fair. In the glory of time's way, All the joy of Christmas day.

DAILY THOUGHT The Lord shall reward the doer

of evil according to his wickedness.—II Samuel 3:39,

OD is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week, or month, or year, but

remember He pays in the end.—

A

Anne. of Austria.

SATURDAY, DEC. 16, 1939

Gen. Johnson Says—

Roosevelt of 1933 Proved Himself A Budget Balancer and He Could Do It Again if He Wanted to.

EW YORK, Dec. 16.—The President's offer of a prize to Senator Taft for a plan to balance the

‘budget is probably not open to all comers. But he

might call in at least one other authority. As -the most experienced of all, I suggest to him the Franklin Roosevelt of late 1932 and early 1933. As a candidate, Mr. Roosevelt's principal plank and promise was a balance of the Federal budget. Ha sald there was only one way to do it—to reduce Federal extravagance in the regular services of Government by one billion dollars, or 25 per cent—from around four billions to around three. That is what he said and that is what he did more fearlessly, promptly and effectively than any other President. He acted on the axiom that the way to reduce is to reduce. He took an axe and hacked approximately one billion dollars out of regular governmental outlay—with no notable reduction in Federal efficiency. And it worked exactly as he ‘had predicted. In the first four months of his Administration, business and re-employment made the greatest advance in the shortest space of time in all our history, n ” 3 T is true that the Recovery Act appropriated billions —but it was understood and generally approved that this was to go only for genuinely self-liquidating or recoverable loans to help create employment, which was rising like a tide. Outright expenditures from that fund were to be for Federal capital investment in vitally necessary non-recurring expense. Ironically, the principal prophetic proposal in this field was for modernizing, mechanizing and motorizing our armed services. In the sequel Harry Hopkins spent it for raking leaves. And so our Army is now relatively about as well equipped for modern war as a tribe of headhunters with devil wands. Four glorious months—and then the British Mr, Keynes and other new-era economic medicine men put Mr. Roosevelt into a trance, extracted the backe bone of his campaign philosophy and replaced if with an injection of voodoo wizard oil. Spend as little as possible? Nonsense! Recovery depends on spending as much as possible. You spend it on new things or on doing.old things more extravagantly. That makes no difference. The trick is to get as much of other peoples’ money as possible into circulation quickly. # » T is needless to say that it hasn't worked—except to paralyze business, perpetuate unemployment and cloud every future prospect. Mr. Roosevelt doesn’t help it any by scoffing at Mr. Taft, even though the Senator is probably talking about something he doesn’t understand. . The President could balance the budget if he want« ed to. To make that start he wouldn't have to scrap many of his favorite playthings. He would need only to change the pump-priming principle of Federal spending. In other words, change from the idea of doing everything as extravagantly as possible tg a rule of doing everything as cheaply as possible. With that demonstration and the present tax net, upsurge ing business would balance the budget in a year— say at seven billions.

It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun

'l Have No Squawk Coming,’ He Says In Contributing His Final Column,

EW YORK, Dec. 15—I was cleaning some old scraps out of my desk—notes from the editor and so on—when I was reminded of the great pungency

of the editorial “but” in our office. Roy Howard frequently employed it as a right-hand swing to the jaw to follow up a light stabbing left on the back. Never did I see the “ah” and “ouch” school em ployed more cleverly for a lateral than in the specie men which I discovered in my own possession. Unfortunately the rats had-somewhat muffled the orig inal intention by the editorial indignities which they. committed against the latter paragraphs. : The message was scribbled impulsively upon the back of a galley proof of a column of mine now long defunct. “Your piece in the paper,” wrote Mr. Howard, “about the Japanese leaving the League and the tides which will bring them back is, in my opinion, one of the best things we have ever printed in the World-Telegram., But I must say that for the last two and a half months your column has been”— Here the mice really had gone to work, and I could make out nothing more convincing than “dead weight on an otherwise lively page.” That didn’t seem to me to make much sense, but a small committee of handwriting experts and native research men agreed on it. . That, then, was the thing which stood between Roy Howard and me. It was palpable as the flaming sword at the eastern end of the Garden. Now, I don’t want you to understand that I'm picturing Roy W. Howard as a reactionary who was forever saye ing “No.” On the contrary, he was a “Yea” sayer, Or, to be more exact, “Yes, but,” and that, I'm quite ready to grant, is the mark of a liberal,

‘We Had a Few Quarrels’

Any notion that Roy Howard and I fought up and down the stairs of the city room and all the way up to the editorial offices in Park Ave. is completely erroneous. We had a few quarrels, but there was no major column of mine which got held up on edie torial policy. One did have the feeling at times that it was away out of step with the policy of the paper. And yet nobody drove up in a hack to inform ‘you of the fact. The Guild created some friction, -but, honestly, rather less than I had expected. Roy himself handled that adequately at the very beginning of the organization when he said that he thought the union would be unsuccessful and would do more harm than good, He added, “I'm not going to get mad at anybody, yourself included. I should have known what kind of a person you were when I hired you—a man who's always going to be interested in any blame thing. but his job.” And so after some 12 years of columning in the same spot “It Seems to Me” moves on. There were fights, frenzies, some praise and a lot of dough and a good deal of fun in my relationship with Roy, As far as the editor goes, I have no squawk coming, and he tells me that he feels the same. And so, naturally, when I go elsewhere I think it only polite. to wish the World-Telegram all the luck in the future which it has known in the past.

Mr. Howard Replies

With the above Heywood Broun concludes his column in the World-Telegram, Henceforth his “If Seems to Me” will appear: daily in. the New York Post. The change may prove a bit of a shock to the shade of Alexander Hamilton, but time will adjust the situation, and both the Post and its readers will profit. Despite the uninformed and unimportant busybodies who have long whispered and rumored of a feud which never existed, the editor, like Heywood, has not now, and never has had, a squawk coming, Mr. Broun was hired to be himself. In 12 years no column, paragraph or phrase of his was killed or censored by the editor because of disagreeing viewe point or conflict with the World-Telegram’s editorial policy. In the note accompanying his farewell column Heywood says, “The jokes—if any—aren’t meant to be taken seriously. But if you don’t want this and. want another piece, let me know.” The sentence is in keeping with his 12 years of service. Not because of anything he wrote but sometimes because he was a little overworked from extra-cure ricular activities, such as producing a Broadway show, running for Congress or directing a picket line, Heys wood was occasionally a bit of a headache. But, like many another headache, he was worth the price. On his leaving, ours is not merely a polite wish—it; is a sincere one—that his luck in the future may be even better than he has known in the ew ; x / » be : BR.) .B. i