Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 25 April 1940 — Page 17
PAGE 16
The Indianapolis Times
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THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1940
TOUGH TALK IN ITALY
IT begins to look as if the venerable Gen. Weygand, who tells all interviewers he is “just a fireman,” may soon have a Mediterranean fire to put out with his Army of the Levant. For warlike sounds are coming out of Italy. And recent speeches and statements in London and Paris show that the Allies have Mussolini very much on their minds these days. Perhaps the tough talk in Italy is only a form of whistling-past-the-graveyard, or a sop to the importunate ally in Berlin. We hope so—for the sake of the peaceloving Italian people, among others. If Italy does go into the war, impatient souls whose boredom with the “sitzkrieg” has survived even the Finnish and Norwegian events will have no further cause for yawning. The lid will be off —in the Mediterranean, in the Balkans, in Africa, in the Levant, in the Alpine passes, perhaps even on the Western Front. But until the thing happens, there is always a possi- | bility that the inscrutable Mussolini really has his mind | set on peace rather than on the dreadful risk that war | would bring to his new Roman Empire,
IS $12.60 TOO MUCH?
HE right of labor to bargain collectively has gained al- | most universal recognition in this country, even though many people would like to see the Wagner Labor Act amended on certain points. But the labor unions devote most of their attention to the upper-bracket and middle-bracket wage earner. They have made relatively little progress among the unskilled hands who toil for 20, and 10, and even 5 cents an hour. Most of these people have no unions to bargain for them. So, in 1938, Congress passed the Wage-Hour Act, under which it is now illegal to pay industrial workers less | than 30 cents an hour or work them longer than 42 hours | a week without paying overtime rates. Congress, in effect, became the labor union for these low-paid people. Today, in the House of Representatives, an attempt will be made to remove the protection of the wage-hour act from more than a million of these miserably paid workers— | principally in such industries as canning, dairy products, logging, tobacco-stemming, pecan-shelling. Under the Barden amendments, workers in such industries would be | thrown back upon their own devices—which means upon | the mercies of employers who in many cases seem to regard $12.60 a week as a step toward communism. There is one item in the Barden amendments that we | can indorse—the proposal to exempt from the Wage-Hour | Act employees paid more than $150 a month. As it stands, | the maximum-hour provisions of the law apply even to the $10,000-a-year white-collar man, which is silly. But the principal provisions of Barden amendments strike at the heart of the Wage-Hour Act. They strike at the American standard of living—which surely requires | more than the $12.60-a-week minimum. They strike at the well-known fact that if purchasing power is spread too thin the whole economy must suffer. |
WAR ON THE HIGHWAYS | LEVEN young people were killed when two automobiles, | each said to have been traveling nearly 80 miles an hour, collided head-on near Slayton, Minn. This was, says the National Safety Council, “the greatest toll of human lives ever taken in this country in an automobile crash in- | volving two pleasure cars.” But, as John Stilwell, president of the Safety Council, points out: “What we are likely to overlook is that conditions | which contributed to the Minnesota accident probably were |
duplicated at the same time in hundreds of other places |
throughout the United States. Only a split second or a few inches may have saved many other youngsters from a | similar fate.” In nearly 19 months of the World War, 37,451 Amer- | jcan soldiers and sailors were killed in action. Last year, | traffic accidents killed 32,100 persons in the United States. | Let's stay out of war. Yes. But let's redouble our efforts to halt the “War on the Highways,” every year killing Americans more rapidly than did the World War.
A LOT OF MONEY, BUT— HE Navy, our first line of defense, depends to an extraordinary degree on the Panama Canal. Without the canal, the fleet would have to go some 7000 | miles out of the way, around Cape Horn, to get from San | Diego to New York. The canal is powerfully guarded by coast artillery, sub- | marines, planes, anti-aircraft guns, mine-laying forces—and | by the fleet itself. Still, there remains the outside chance | of a successful “suicide raid” by bombers, or a self-sunk | merchantman jamming a lock. | As a precaution against such possibilities, the War De- | partment wants to build a third set of locks—a half-mile or | so distant from the two existing sets. The new locks would ! cost nearly $300,000,000—roughly half the cost of the exist- | ing canal. They are not needed for commercial traffic; the | present facilities are expected to suffice until at least 1960. | The expenditure would be entirely for the national defense. | The new lock chambers would be 200 feet longer, 25 | feet wider and five feet deeper than the old ones—which are | too small for the biggest ocean liners and barely four feet |
A few weeks ago the House threw out of an appro-
priation bill the $15,000,000 item for commencing the work. |
It ought to stay there.
With the price of battleships creeping toward $100,- |
000,000 a copy, a $300,000,000 investment to insure their mobility is hardly out of proportion. But—Congress ought to levy new taxes enough to cover the canal expense—at least enough to amortize it.
Y
| calling Harry Kinney “Bear” these days. .
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Expressing Hope Scalise Gets a Fair Trial, Mr. Green Should Say as Much for Those Tried in His Courts.
EW YORK, April 25. —Willlam Green is quoted 2s having said regarding the arrest of George Scalise, the president of the Building Service Workers’ International Union, that he hoped Mr. Scalise would have a fair trial. Mr. Scalise, for the benefit of those who came in late, has been charged with extortion in a prosecution initiated by Tom Dewey and has suggested that he is being martyrized for Dewey's political ambitions. These dispatches, which from time to time recently have discussed Mr. Scalise’s fitness for the office of president of an international union of the A. F. of L., the manner in which he reached that eminence and the salary and cther income which he enjoys out of the aggregate contributions of many ill-paid workers, naturally indorse Mr. Green's hope. Mr. Scalise should have a fair trial, and this seems an opportune time to remark to Mr. Green that almost any public court in the United States would be likely to give him a fairer trial than defendants usually receive in his courts.
1° put it another way, if the New York courts should treat Scalise no better than the little people of the labor unions are treated when they are haled before their superiors to defend themselves for impolite remarks about those individuals, he would have a fine case of persecution with which to go before the people, and public opinion would rally to his defense—not for his own individual sake but for the good of the republic and the vindication of justice. In these labor union courts the judges often double in brass as the complaining parties, and the defendants, although they cannot be sent to prison upon conviction, nevertheless are exposed to the most grievous punishment. They may be fined money which they need for the support of their families, and
| if they get too fresh they may be kicked out of the | unions,
temporarily of permanently—which means temporary or perpetual annulment of the right to earn a living. Expulsion from a union is an economic death sentence, because a man expelled from one union is an enemy of labor and ineligibile for membership in another. He may be a good union man, too, but the victim of a criminal racketeer or of an arro-
gant bulldozer.
| S° while Mr. Green is on the subject of fair trials
it would sound real nice if he would express the same solicitude for the little defendants in the union
| courts and set some inquiry going into the actual per- | formances of such courts.
The stock answer that each member of a union
| has the right to appeal to the public courts for re- | dress after he has exhausted the means provided by
the union constitutions doesn’t carry much weight.
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
There is too much risk that a defendant will develop |
| a broken leg or lose some of his teeth by force and | violence while his appeal is pending, and, anyway, the | | little individuai doesn’t have the money to take his | troubles to the public courts in civil actions. It seems almost unbelievable that a man of Mr. | | Green's position and experience continues to stall in
|
the face of an obvious uprising of rank and file indig= |
lowed to develop in the A. F. of L. It took the self-
| less services of many real martyrs and fighters to | make the A. F. of L., and Mr. Green, by his stubborn- | ness and political clumsiness in labor affairs, is per- | mittine a situation to develop which may destroy | everything.
Inside Indianapolis
The Trials of a Cookie Saleslady; And the Awful Betting on Hogs.
OU might think that the annual cookie sale is just a lark for the 200 little Girl Scouts who
| peddle the cookies, but it’s really a hard job. Many |
a little lass has to walk away from a door fighting
| back the tears.
The average Scout makes a sale at half the houses they try. It’s surprising but a lot of people don’t
| merely say “No, I'm sorry,” but put up an argument, | They'll tell the Scouts that, in the first place, they | don’t approve of girls out selling things; second, that | they give enough to charity anyway: and, third, that
thev make their own cookies—so there.
| nation .against bad conditions which have been al- |
‘boom is not high labor rates, nor is| Hon. Paul V. McNutt: Iam one | fix 31 now? I give the traction line it chiseling dealers. It is high in- among many small business opera- tWo more years and then they can
The little girls keep their chins up high and keep |
on trying. The result is quite obvious. Camp Dellwood has grown from a small farm with a log cabin
| and sheep barn to a big park-like reserve, with shel-
ters. lodge, swimming pool, running water, electric lights, ete. All done with cookie money. Some of the lassies are grand salespeople. One of them a couple of vears ago approached a man in
| Brightwood. She put on a big sales talk, winding up
with how good they were. “Yes, I know,” said the man, them.” She sold him a dozen anyway. » » n
“I helped bake
THERE IS A GOOD DEAL of betting (tsk! tsk!) |
going on at the Stockyards over, of all things, hogs. Hog prices, we'll have you know, have been climbing steeply for the last couple of weeks. At an almost startling rate, it might be said.
| close was $6.75. Anyway, one commission house man |
offered to bet $100 that hogs would be selling at $7.50 by the end of the year. It was taken pronto. Then somebody else wagered they'd hit $7 by the end of this month. Cattle men aren’t taking part in this | scandalous speculation but they're watching it, you | betcha. You see, when pork prices are low, pork is a Sharp competitor with beef. When they're high, well—.,
= ”
THE BOYS AT FIRE
”
bought a shiny new car the other day and all the gadgets carefully to see what they were. , . . One said “Choke-Pull’ and Harry pulled. came right off the dashboard
in his hand.
his crack pupils, young Jchnny Wolf of the Butler links team , . . “I'd just as soon be beaten by Johnny as anybody else.” laughs George. .
ENGINE HOUSE 13 are |
|
Yesterday's | show you will cost you about $5000.
the American public) pay 6 per cent yNTO the Georgian milieu of|some hideous—which Rita Wellman
| |
| 1
‘to ever pay anything on the prin- bodied coffee house joke” stepped picturing the massive buffets, the
|
{ |
+ + Harty | would-be-home-owner at 1 per cent, went over | the same as it does to the big bank- |t
|
+ + Yesterday was | | Park Board meeting day at City Hall, but not a |
ripple of controversy disturbed the pastoral serenity | of the Park Department. . . . The Board didn't meet. |
A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
OTHING is more fun than to sit down comfortably with a long book and sink yourself into a tale of other lives. “Come Spring,” by Ben Ames Williams (Houghton-Mifflin), is that kind of good escape literature. Back, back, back you go, away back
| into the wilderness where America was born.
It's heroine, Mima, wouldn't last two hours on Main Street or Broadway, but she’s grand company in a book. Leaving her was like saying goodby to a trustworthy friend. She is sweet and sound as an apple-—not one of your soft mealy apples, either, but round, red, juicy, tart and tasty apple whose flavor lingers a long time in the throat. Besides, Mima has some fine philosophy. good for our time as for hers, too. Listen: “But, Mima, you never care what's happening in the rest of the world. It makes you happy thinking that maybe a hundred years from now a man and a woman like you and me, or some one, will come down and dig out this spring, the way we did it. But you don’t care a hoot if all over the world right now, to-
Just as
wider than the aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga. | day, ther PEORIE sre quiging oul other springs.
| "I know it,” she admitted. “Where I am and the | people I love is all the world I want. It's the only world any one can live in, Joel. his own world. | tries to live in a lot of other lives in a lot of other | worlds, he doesn’t really live anywhere.” Doesn't it scare you a little, Dear Reader, when you | think of how many of us don’t really live anywhere | these days? We are so pressed upon by happenings, near and far; so anxiously looking at the lives of other people, and so fascinated with their worlds, we do not really live in our own. How many thousands of women and
girls never find out what it means to live at all?
Pa So Ni 85
If he |
THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1940
A Chance to Finish the Job!
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say,
defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
but will
URGES ABOLITION OF COUNTY FEE SYSTEM By Citizen Reports from the chief county | auditor reveal that the bonded in- | debtedness of Marion County will soon be an all-time high of $8,389,630. Yet our county officials re-
fuse to campaign for the elimination of the outrageous treasurer fee |
(Times readers are invited to express their these colymns, religious con. troversies excluded. Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)
views in
an er ariary pa man could pay $4 a month interest, getting is good, the taxpayer always and in addition he could pay some- | thing on the principal—he could |
foots the bill?” FF 5» ‘build a home and some day own it. ”
BLAMES HIGH INTEREST s FOR BUILDING SLUMP PROTESTS SUMMER By Bull Mposer | REPAIRS TO ROAD 40
The great nemesis of the building By Herb Campbell
”
terest rates. |tors located on National Road, U. S.| Stop and consider how many times 40, west, who sincerely hopes to] the 6 per cent plus interest rate is have found a grain of hope in| added to the price of your home. your latest public announcement Fhe suan who buses Whe Wools pays about small business published in| st. » y tracts | to cut the timber pays interest. The The Times. We struggle against railroads which haul the timber pay heavy odds through the entire win- | interest. The sawmill pays interest. ter months, planning to break even The storage houses and wholesalers 0f make a profit with the benefit pay interest. The dealers pay in- of the summer tourist trade. Now| terest. The contractor you give the We are confronted with the annual contract for your house pays inter- Pleak prospect of the highway being
est. You pay interest for the money Closed all summer. you turn over to the contractor, | We appreciate the progress in’
ON ROAD 31
safety which will result in the completion of the road program, but we also crave a chance to share in that same progress. We can't understand why Indiana is one of few states that adopt this idea. We are | sure that you have enough influence in your home state to exert enough pressure to keep our Road 40 open and win our gratitude by enabling us to keep our doors open. ” 2 »
SEEKS INFORMATION
By a Know-Nothing Would like to know something about this new Road 31. Why are they building it? Why don’t they
have plenty of room. We wonder how so many irs get | started, and here is one reason. We let a few men talk among themselves and a black top representative and a new road is started, and they don't care who it hurts Most of us moved out here where it 1s safe to raise children and not to have a home close to a race course. I know that will be it. Let's open all streets up to trucks. The trolley busses do more damage than the trucks. Please tell me how we can stop this road.
Half the price you pay for your house, unless it is a log cabin, is for | pyramided interest. Hence, the cheapest decent house FHA can
How can a man making $20 a!
New Books at the Library
week (and that's the great bulk of]
for $5000 with which to buy a home.| A “well - proportioned rectilinear That's $25 a month alone for in-form and the forceful curve, the reterest. If he does succeed in meet-| strained motifs of shell, lion, dog, ing the interest, how can he hope| eagle and shield .. . and the full-|
cipal? In short, how can he ever!the young Queen Victoria “with her | hope to own a home? | demure walk which carried her If our great benevolent Govern-| gracefully and lightly among the| ment would loan money to the poor | solid shapes.” And with her came, establishing hemselves gradually—but oh, so] ers, then the $20 a week man could | surely—the miscellany of archi-|
It ‘hope to own a home. One per cent |tectural designs, furniture, wall- slums in the cities and at the same George Soutar, Broadmoor’s genial p iS boasting on $5000 is only $50 a year. : 's ; ro, is boasting |apout $4 a month. The $20 ee | about his beating Sunday at the hands of one of b $20 a week
That is! papers, draperies, rugs, pictures,
Side Glances—By Galbraith
8. PAT, UFr.
1840 SERVICE, INC. T. WM.
and objects d'art—some good and |
"Just look at me! Ant | came downtown to buy an apron!”
characterizes under the title “Victoria Royal” (Scribner), Miss Wellman does not devote the pages of her book merely to
ornate chandeliers, the pseudoGreek sculptures, the “opulent overstuffed” furniture, and the untamed fantasies of the “American Gothic.” She is resurrecting an age of change and paradox—an age when the new factories were creating
time bringing comforts hitherto unknown and “art” hitherto rare to the middle-classes — an era in which the submerged classes of France and England were beginning to demand a lightening of their burden—a period when America was awkwardly trying to hide her growing pains under the veneer of| 19th century “culture.” She enjoys her subject, whether she writes in appreciation or ridicule. She feels an affection for Victoria and her “dearest Albert”—an
affection mingled with an amused | pity when she thinks of the many sacrifices which human nature was| forced to make during this epoch upon the altars of “good taste” and | “respectability.” And needless to] say, we enjoy it with her,
APRIL By MAUD COURTNEY WADDELL
This quiet night Has moon-dreams in her eyes. Young April gazes on new apple flowers, While softly humming She twines pale blossoms in her hair.
Another night She gazed with haunted eyes, While wild and cold winds hurried her away. And as she passed me by I heard swift tear-drops softly fall.
DAILY THOUGHT
Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. —Proverbs 9:17,
EVERY GROSS ACT OF SIN is much the same thing to the conscience that a great blow is to the head; it stuns and bereaves it of all Suge of its senses for a time.—
Gen. Johnson Says—
Military Secrecy Termed Bunk; Free Discussion Needed to Point Way for Definite Foreign Policy.
HICAGO, April 25.—A retired naval officer has been ordered by the Navy Department to cease giving lectures on the war. An officer on the retired list is in a peculiar status. Having been disabled in service he is removed from active duty and not subject to orders in the usual sense. He gets, for life, what looks like three-quarters pay. Actually counting lost allowances it is about half-pay. Whether the Navy Department can legally muzzle him is a doubtful question. Practically, the threat is that it can somehow take his pay away if it doesn’t like the way he talks. I doubt that, but the danger is great enough to convince a disabled man not to risk it. Yet the Navy doesn’t shush up some retired offi. cers who do not say acceptable things. The outstande ing case is Smedley Butler, The difference is that an obscure little lieutenant« commander (retired) could be sunk without a trace while a double medal of honor major-general super showman with a national reputation couldn’t be sunk at all without a splash that would raise the tides on all the seven seas. In times of peace, I can't see why there should be any shushing at all.
» ” n
INE-TENTHS of this military secrecy business is the bunk. I was glad to read of Admiral Taussig's testimony, that the reason for the Navy's insistence on fortifying Guam and increasing naval estimates at a cost of more than a billion is that we've got to fight Japan. For this purpose, he wants to establish an “impregnable base in the Philippines” (which is not possible) “fortify the island of Guam to make its capture impossible” (which is equally absurd) and make an alliance with Great Britain, France and the Netherlands that will insure co-opera«-tion in the maintenance of the status quo in the area to the southward of Formosa.” The Navy didn’t attempt to shush Admiral Taus« sig. It merely said that his opinion was his own and contrary to its views. But the Navy is asking for exactly what Taussig is defending. It concedes that it wants to fortfy Guam to “stabilize the political situation in the Far East.” Admiral Taussig was simply more explicit, He wants to check Japanese expansion in Asia and Malaysia which he says is “underway at present with the subjugation of China.”
” ” » I DON'T agree with Admiral Taussig. If we are ta engage our strength and effort on distant and indefensible objectives half way across the world, we shall be duck soup for enemies much closer to our shores. We have no bone buried in Asia. But it is a wonderful thing to know that he could speak and did speak his mind. It is unfair to the Army, the Navy and the country
| to tell them to prepare for war and not tell them
what war—how, when and where. What is the foreign political, military and naval policy of the United States? That is our most important question, If needs to be debated and explored and, as to its military and naval aspects, professional military and naval men know the limitations. For the present af least, let's not shush any of them.
Business
By John T. Flynn
Labor Rackets as Practiced in Chicago Help Explain Building Lull.
EW YORK, April 25.—Chicago seems to be an almost inexhaustible source of labor rackets. The United States authorities there are now having a look at the glaziers. At the bottom of all these rackets—which are mostly found in the building trades unions of the A. F. of L.—is one controlling principle. The workman has a trade. He is subject therefore to two hazards. One is the seasonal character of his work. The other is the changes which are always possible in the use of materials and of methods of doing work. The carpenter does not want to see some new synthetic material substituted for wood. The plasterer does not want to see new plastic boards used instead of plaster. In every industry in the country new machines, new methods, new materials, new in=ventions have found their way. But the building in=dustry resolutely and ruthlessly keeps them out. Maybe new methods do tend to create unemploy= ment. But certainly nothing could be deader than the building industry where new methods have been stubbornly resisted. In the modern home, built-in features are important. Bookcases, kitchen cabinets, cabinets of various sorts with glass doors are found. These built-in features are manufactured in factories. And there the glass panels are put in as part of the job. But not in Chicago. There the glaziers’ union declares that the cabinets must be shipped to the job site minus the glass so that the glass can be ine stalled by Chicago workmen.
Drumming Up Business
It is as if you bought an automobile, but subject to the regulation that the glass would be put in by Chicago glaziers, the wiring by Umbrella Mike Boyle's electrical union, the upholstery by the proper Chicago union and so on. You would then be able to buy a nice $800 car for about $1500. And of course you wouldn’t buy it. But this is what the glaziers have done to building. However, more serious charges are considered. One of the big features of the glaziers’ union is the in=stallation of large showwindow glass. And in Chicago the business ageiit of one local of the glaziers’ union has been charged with drumming up business by systematically heaving rocks through the costly show windows of large stores. In fact it is said that, a store window having been selected for destruction, the glass for replacing it was loaded on the truck with the crew all ready to go out and replace the broken glass without delay. These people who are interested in what they like to call “free enterprise” might do well to consider whether enterprise is free that is subject to this sort of thing. And they might also reflect that this kind of restraint does not come from the Government. When the Government tries to break up this prace tice, it is said to be interfering in business, when what it is doing is attempting to put an end to inter fering in business by labor and employers.
Watching Your Health
By Jane Stafford
HE “Big Four” causes of heart disease, officially. Number One Killer of diseases in the United Sates, are given as 1. rheumatic fever; 2. syphilis; 3. high blood pressure, and 4. arteriosclerosis or hard« ening of the arteries. About one-fourth of all heart disease at all ages is due to rheumatic fever and about one-tenth of all cases are due to syphilis, according to a statement from the Indiana State Medical Society. The fight to save lives threatened by heart disease caused by rheumatic fever must be made by seeing that children, who are the chief victims, get prompt and proper treatment. No single specific remedy has been discovered for rheumatic fever, but much can be accomplished by rest, proper diet and other hygienic measures. By these means many children can. be saved from repeated attacks of rheumatic fever and po from increased heart damage and early death. Heart disease due to syphilis can be prevented by prompt and thorough treatment of syphilis in its early stages. . Recent medical developments give hope that the long course of treatment now required to cure syphilis permanently may be shortened to a mere five days of intensive treatment. It will probably be a year or two before this quick-cure has had sufficient trial to show whether it should be advised generally, Meanwhile there is a proved method of curing syphilis, Patients who delay starting this treatment or wha stop it before completing the entire course are flirting with grave danger of heart disease, crippling or inVe : =