Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 April 1940 — Page 18
PAGE 18
The Indianapolis Times
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TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1940
A PEST RETURNS
HE Kluxers are coming out from the moldy woodwork. It is a remarkable thing, a token of the tenacity of intolerance among certain primitive types of Americans, that this once utterly disgraced organization should have the strength to rise again. Thomas L. Stokes, in his current dispatches from Georgia and South Carolina, reveals that the Klan is once more, as in the early Twenties, using a bogus “Americanism” to mask a vicious criminality. Arrests and indictments, and in at least one case a conviction, have already been obtained in cases of Klan floggings. This time the Klan is putting its public emphasis on anti-Communism rather than racism. Of course the scholars of the Klan will define communism to suit themselves—and it can be anticipated that the word will be construed to cover everything from labor unionism to roadside petting. While the Imperial Wizard and his Grand Klokards and Dragons and Exalted Cyclopses will solemnly condemn illegal practices, the membership will privately enforce its prejudices with the whip and the rope. To expect anything else of an organization called the Ku-Klux Klan is to be naive. and brutality associated with that name cannot be shaken off by the pious protestations of the horse-doctor who bosses these nightshirted vigilantes. Georgia and South Carolina can be proud of those prosecutors who have acted promptly to prove that the law makes no exceptions for cross-burners.
AID FOR FIRST VOTERS
OMORROW night the League of Women Voters undertakes an unusual experiment in the interest of better government. It has invited all first voters (there are nearly 5000) to what amounts to a one-night school for those who will be eligible to cast their first ballots at next Tuesday's primary. The whole machinery of voting and election procedure will be explored in the course of the evening's program. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time a non-partisan group has attempted to aid new voters in this manner in Indianapolis. If any proof were needed that it has merit, it could be found in the wholehearted response that has come from organizations and public officials willing to lend their aid. We hope the general response is so good that the League will find it necessary to make it a permanent feature of its activities. It deserves to be successful.
STRAIGHT LINES BENT NATION
WW HEN the engineers surveyed this country at its inception they formed a pattern for our rural life, and it was not the best pattern, says P. G. Beck, Farm Security Administrator for the region centering in Indianapolis. The engineers laid out sections in rigid squares, regardless of land contours. This led farmers to divide their holdings into equally rigid rectangular plots. The straight furrow, following the fence line, resulted. The plow went straight over the hills and through the low places, causing erosion. Furrows curving around the hills would have held back the water and so protected the soil. Low places, left unplowed and sowed in grasses, would have caught clear rivulets unclouded by any stolen loam.
If farms had been laid out according to natural contours, the farm houses might not have been built in the middle of 160-acre squares, isolated from neighbors, to the unhappiness and sometimes the insanity of farm wives. They might have been grouped in friendly villages. It is not too late. We can make a new pattern of rural life, in which farmers work in harmony with nature and with each other, saving the land through thrifty plowing and getting the most value from its products through cooperation with each other,
SILVER AND TIN
HE Townsend bill, to stop the Treasury's endless buying of unneeded foreign silver at premium prices, is expected to come up in the Senate this week. It should be passed.
For some reason—possibly because Senator Townsend is a Republican—the Administration seems to be against the ll.
There is no sense in this continued purchasing of a metal with which we are already swamped, particularly when we are doing little or nothing toward accumulating metals that we could hardly get along without—tin, for instance, of which there is only about 10 weeks’ supply in this country.
THE UNSPANKED
DAY'S students, says President von Kleinsmid of the University of Southern California, probably are “the first unspanked generation the world has ever seen.” the good Doctor adds his opinion that the boys and girls have “missed something.” They have indeed. But whether they are any the worse for what they have missed is another question. Our elderly eyes may deceive us, but today’s students look very like earlier crops which had been cultivated by sterner parental discipline—no wilder, no less fitted to tackle a world which will spank them plentifully. We venture the hopeful prediction that this unspanked generation will prove the fallacy of the ancient maxim that the child is spoiled if the rod is spared. .
The traditions of outlawry
And |
| kind—nuns in convents and hospitals; workers in
Gadgets
By Bruce Catton
Such Things as Radio and Television Props Spell Only Trouble for the Men Behind the Convention Scenes
ASHINGTON, April 30.—The man who sets the stage for the Republican national convention is gray-haired Ralph Williams of Oregon, who has been hiring halls for the party so long he can do it now with his eyes shut—or could, if people would stop inventing new gadgets. Williams is head of the G. O. P.'s committee on arrangements. He went on that committee in 1912 and has been heading it ever since 1928. The Philadelphia convention in June will be his baby, and he has been working full time on it, with a staff of helpers, since April 10. Gadgets are his big headache. Back in the Taft Administration, when there was no radio and newsreels didn’t amount to much, fixing up a convention was simple. Now a good part of the job consists of rigging things up for the mikes and the cameras, plus arranging the program so it ‘will put the important events on the air at the right time, 5 » » his year, for the first time, Williams has to arrange for a television stand; that makes him shudder about the future, but not so very much because he's quitting after this convention. First step in the present job was to name a convention architect and figure out who was going to sit where. Temporary stands must be built on the stage for national committeemen, newspapermen (about a thousand), distinguished guests and so on. Other stands must be spotted for newsreel and still cameramen. Radio booths must be put where they'll do the most good. Back in the rear there must be a special stand for the pand. And, of course, the delegates’ seats must be charted. All of this is just the starter, Space must be found downstairs for 1000 telegraphers. There must be rooms for a dozen-odd committees, working rooms for the press, quarters for the official reporter, a dispensary—for which a medical staff must be arranged—a restaurant, a lot of temporary phone booths, 60 or 70 water coolers and a special postoffice. » ” » HE has to figure out how the hall is to be decorated, and see that it’s done. (He's going to have a big Democrat-baiting sign outside: “In this hall the next President of the U. S. will be named.” He must see that 13,000 tickets are printed, that there are flossy badges for all functionaries, that state signs are prepared for the delegations, that the hall amplifiers are okay, that messengers, ushers and guards are chosen and drilled. Then he must line up a few chaplains to open the sessions with prayer, see that the city has extra police on duty, arrange for sufficient taxi stands, get liability insurance so the G. O. P. won't get sued if some spectator falls downstairs, hire a band and tell it what to play, buy a couple of thousand gallons of distilled water, check with the local entertainment committee, find a restaurant concessionaire, say “no” to a few score ambitious hawkers of novelties, and see that the seating arrangements are okay with the fire warden. When all this has been done, they can go ahead with their convention,
(Mr. Pegler's column will appear tomorrow.)
Inside Indianapolis
Business As Usual at Court House; |
And a Pat on the Back for Police.
HIS is the week before the Primary Election and every little nook and corner is buzzing with activity. Take what was happening in one of the more important County offices yesterday afternoon. The important County official was dictating to his secretary: “This 12th of the 4th for . No response from Lawrence Township. The 2d of the 3d said they would vote by proxy and would not attend tonight's meeting. Have you got all that?” Just then in walked another aid. “The 5th of the 12th just called,” she said, “asking for more cards.” “Tell them to go on over to the printer,” snapped the important County official, “I'm as busy as I can be over here.” He picks up a sheaf of papers from his desk and riffles through them, talking out loud: ‘One, two, three—four, five—. Say, he's doing all right. You go on ahead and type that up. IT get on the phone and see what else I can find out.” And so it goes, east side, west side, all around the town. > » % IF YOU ARE GOING TO leave town for a short trip, call the Police Department and tell them nobody's going to be at home until such-and-such a time. They'll keep an eye on it and do whatever they can to keep it from being entered although, obviously, they can't stand a 24-hour guard on it. One chap we know was telling how the squad car passed by two or three times a week, paused a moment while one of the patrolmen went up on the porch to see if everything was all right. He said he hadn't been home half an hour, when the officer was there, asking if everything was okay. How's that for service?
» ” ”
AN ENERGETIC YOUNG RADIO executive was invited out to dinner recently and was called on to return the grace. . . . With aplomb, he said: “We will now pause a moment to express our thanks to the sponsor of our dinner tonight.”. . . For the information of all \those who have expressed interest in Mr. Anton Scherrer, it is our happy privilege to inform them that Mr, Scherrer is recovering from a severe case of the flu. . . . He'll be up and visiting the office in a day or two now, but he won't be able t6 do much work for about a week anyway,
A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
F we must select annually one woman to Yepresent the typical American mother, Mrs. Edith Graham Mayo is a happy choice for 1940. . The very name, Mayo, stands for something humane and beautiful in our modern world. Therefore the person who has supplied her nation with eight of the famous clan merits the recognition and gratitude of all citizens who hope to see their country lead in the arts of life rather than in those dedicated to death. The woman who has given a great doctor, scientist, teacher, preacher or inventor to life, carries within herself a fountain of secret joy. But her joy is no more deserved, I think, than that which dwells in the natures of many childless women who are mothers in the truest sense of the word. They do not bear babies, perhaps, but they nurture and protect, they guard and defend, they feed and clothe and tend other people's children. Some of them do better than this; they dedicate their lives to comforting and helping all who are helpless. Countless numbers of such women exist in our country. They are those who live only to serve man-
clinics and doctors’ offices; spinsters in stores and factories who toil that some relative’s child may not hunger; women who care for foster babies; social workers who rescue young boys and girls from ruin; Salvation Army members who succor the old and the broken: and multitudes of others who heal the sick, help the lame and halt and lead the blind. These women, quite as truly as those who are mothers in the physical sense, possess the maternal heart, and for that we ought all to give thanks. For the maternal heart is the greatest of all blessings in our sick and cranky old world. Tt is big and warm enough to brood over everyone who is ill and sorrowful, weak or unfortunate, How glad we should be that, besides our Mrs. Mayos, we have so many other women who, though childless, are mothers in spirit and in truth.
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
Shake Him Off!
asian cates: at
Th... -
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire,
TERMS SUIT AGAINST 2 P. C. CLUB “SILLY” By Wm, Lemon The suit filed in Circuit Court to test the legal aspects of the Democratic Two Per Cent Club sounds silly. This is not a compulsory contribuption—only a friendly organization of citizens and within their constitutional rights as long as they are law abiding.
The Republican party used the Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Saloon | League to promote their political |
|
welfare, and the “Statute of Limi-| tations” to escape the penalty of the law. They also collected from $10] up on their State, County and City | employees so if their national com- | mitteeman put them in the hands | of the receivers in the last Presi- | dential election, let some of their “Sweat Shop” constituents rescue
them.
Hanna when they crucified labor on the “Cross of Gold” with imprisonment as union organizers and | their campaign contributions from | organized industry reaching in the millions to promote wages. "> * ® SAYS WEBSTER'S IDEAS NOT APPLICABLE TODAY
By Voice from Labor
ist system by citing the capitalist | era of 100 years ago. The effects of the system today are different and the reactions of the people must be {different today than in the far dis- | [tant previous epochs of the sys-| tem. Yet a contributor has quoted | quite at length from a speech of | Daniel Webster made in 1838—os- | tensibly only te prove the beauty | of capitalism and that you should | (have no part in the “clamor” against it. It is both illogical and reactionary to attempt to apply the economic status of our forefathers to the present period. However, it is entirely another matter when it comes to the democratic and lib-erty-loving ideals of a Jefferson as expressed in the Declaration of In{dependence and later in the Bill of | Rights. Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty, we must never tire of revering and quoting our revolutionary forefathers. Thomas Jefferson, fearing the national government was developing into a tyranny, looked to the states |
|today analyzing the They forget the days of Mark Would have to analyze not the basis of energy conversion.
(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, 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.)
to protect the individual. Later Daniel Webster championed strong national government, union, more power to the Supreme Court, and high protective tariff. He was the pet political hero of the then young and rising capitalist class, because he ably defended it. But that was a time when the system really had something. . « « If Daniel Webster made & speech system, he
vouthful and free competitive stage of the system, but the decaying, dying, depression making, monopoly stage of the system. , , .
Who knows, perhaps the powerful
proclaiming in heated emotion the undying words: “Union and liberty, one and inseparable, now and forever,” today would resound as that of official coroner holding inquest before the jury of the American
an outworn economic system, . . . ———— ”» ” » SFES 1. 8 FACING GREATEST SOCIAL CRISIS By Curtis L. Lambert
America is using more and more extraneous (other than human) energy and as this progression con-
will be required. With man hours in productivity being a declining factor, the total wages and salaries paid also will decline. This means less mass purchasing power and the relief burden will therefore be greater. Within the next few years the American people will be faced with the greatest social crisis in history. The problems of America cannot be solved by deluding the masses with war propaganda. Our natural resources should not be sent to Europe |or Asia to destroy humanity, but be (kept here to build a “new America” for Americans. We have an abundance for each and every citizen, America can have the highest eivilization the {world has ever known. Distribution [can no longer be effected by man hours or by any price system, an {abundance can only be distributed |by a medium of distribution on the
Americans, wake up! Investigate technocracy before ruthless destruc= [tion and violence by hungry mobs become paramount.
starvation oratory of Daniel Webster, once | THINKS TOWNSEND PLAN
DESERVES A TRIAL |By A Reader
This country needs more buying | power flowing through the channels (of trade but what can be done?
It hardly seems consistent to try people, imploring timely speed to They have tried WPA, PWA CCC| to prove the beauty of the capital- her inevitahle verdict of death of and a lot of other political schemes
| but they have all failed. Mr, Brad [dick is always criticizing the Towhsend Plan, Why doesn’t he suggest a plan to get this country back to prosperity? Dr. Townsend criticized. bring us back to recovery.
should not be
It may
take some time but it will become law of this nation and when it|
| a
tinues less and less human labor does they will thank the Doctor,
New Books at the Library
HEREAS Herman Rauschning,
in his “Revolution of Nihilism,” discussed in an impersonal manner the nature of the aims and methods of Hitler and his followers, both within and without Germany, in his second book, “The Voice of Destruction,” (Putnam), he tells of his own experience with the leader and his top men, of his own observation, and of his own
Side Glances—By
Galbraith
"Drive easy, folks—Ilagies value a new spring hat more their lives,"
tha
impressions and interpretations. About that strange man whom 50 many have called mad, yet who has acted so shrewdly and who has attained the apparently impossible, anything that sheds light upon his devious mind and actions is necessarily of interes! to everyone. Herr Rauschning, for several years the president of the Nazi Senate of Danzig, had many meetings with him and the men and women who surround him. From notes which he made at the time, he records for us the variable moods, the wild denunciations, the tearful seilfpity, the contradictions and inconsistencies, the hypnotic power, the alternation of apathy and emotional frenzy, which characterize this man who has inspired in the hearts of others every conceivable feeling—excepting indifference. And Herr Rauschning's coneclusions? They are that Hitler, though gifted as he undoubtedly is in many ways, is himself a victim of his own past, of his associates, of the revolutionary machine which he has set going and which revolves relentlessly; that he may be deposed by his close associates; that his hysteria may develop into actual madness; that a thousand and one things may happen. But of one thing the author Is sure: “Hitler and his movement are the apocalyptic riders of world revolution.”
WAR'S YOUTH By MAUD COURTNEY WADDELL
They who were so briefly young Need not grow old. War hurried them to the ultimate adventure And when their souls ascend--Tired eyes sadly closed Upon the emptiness of death.
DAILY THOUGHT
The Son of man goeth ax it is written of him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man fis betrayed! Tt had been | for that man If he had not born Matthew 26:24,
I8 TIME TO FEAR when
i
His recovery plan will]
Gen. Johnson Says—
Ickes Recollection of "Rich Gifts" To States Emphasizes Once Again
TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1040, *
The Peril to Local Self-Government )
ASHINGTON, April 30.-Vox-popper calls the running row between Secretary Ickes and my= self a racket, saying “There's fees in them thar’ fe-uds.” This is only partly true, but the “fe-ud” is & bore to all hands, It never gets as hot as the blood= thirstier fans like, for two reasons, (1) I like the Secs retary, (2) while I abominate his oratorical and other outgivings, I think he is by so far the best Secretary: of the Interior that we have had that there isn’t any,
runner-up. Concessions like these, which in fairness, I must make, go in the stately sayonaras of the Sen= ate but not on the hustings. Accordingly, the debate to end all debates in this series has already occurred. That does not mean that I cannot comment on some of Donald Duck’s quacker utterances, He free quently goes to Chicago to tell that city wh . a boon he has been to it by “giving it a subway” and the “greatest sewage disposal plant in the world.”
REC he waddled out to California to quack peace into the newdealocrat situation there with extraordinarily disastrous results. Before that result was clear, he also went to Texas leaving an impression that this was a political third-term mission there also. The original Texas Garnerite, Amon Carter, called him a “carpet-bagger.” In the manner of his wooing of Chicago, Mr, Ickes replied: “I have come to Texas bearing gifts—rich gifts—-not a few of them . . . and you never thought of calling me a carpet-bagger.” He related also how he went into Texas and pulled the oil industry out of the mess “that you yourself had created.” This is pretty terrible, How did Honest but Hore rendous Harold “give” Chicago the subway and sewage plant and Texas its “rich gifts?” How did he save the oil industry? Not a nickel went into either locality as a Federal handout that a nickel-and-a-half wasn’s taken out of it in Federal taxes or obligated in Feds eral borrowing. ‘The oil industry’s overproduction was checked by the NRA oil code, which was the in= dustry’s own agreement with the Government, with the negotiations of which Mr, Ickes had nothing whatever to do. ” ” ”
HE Federal Government has no money that N T doesn’t take out of the states, If they were pers mitted to exercise their own taxing and spending. power, they could control both by their own votes. By permitting the Federal Government to do it for them, state officials escape their own responsibilities but they, surrender their own authorities. : They have to come kow-towing to unelected Feds eral and Ickensian pooh-bahs to get back their own, and then have to suffer the impertinence and polite ical whip cracking of those same political taskmasters, who remind them threateningly of the “rich gifts” the bureaucrats “come bearing’—which they do like the: Greeks.
’
’
This kind of thing is perilously close to being & . , 4
kind of personal political extortion, It reveals the - peril to local self-government from Federal assumption of local rights and responsibilities and from lump sum appropriations by billions to appointed officers without legislative allocation.
Business By John T. Flynn
Presidency Gives the Incumbent A Prestige Not Always Merited
Ny YORK, April 30. Every four years the search for the perfect Presidential candidate begins, Every four years the people make the mistake of supposing that a man to be “available” must be a gentleman of powerful intellectual equipment, great and solid virtues, profound qualities of far-seeing vision and leadership. The meaning attached to the word “Presidential timber” or “Presidential availability” is so excessively
exaggerated and overwrought that we almost ine
variably tend to reject any name when it is first pros posed. One reason for this is the bad picture any can= didate makes compared with the man in the White House, whoever he may be. Even though the occu= . pant of the White House be a failure and be actually ed by the people, the masses of the people have in their minds a vision which is the product of four (© eight years of building up. As soon as a man becomes President—however small his calibre (and we have had some pretty small bore men in the joh)—he becomes a figure of power. He is greeted by bands and trumpets and he moves through the streets preceded by roaring motorcycles and standards flying—until finally the mass of the people comes to look upon him as a being of excep= tional and extraordinary power. All newcomer candisdates arriving on the scene without this pageantry and heraldry seem below the stature of Presidents. As a matter of fact, “Presidential timber” means a collection of attributes among which great ability and intellectual and personal power are by no means first. The first requisite is to come from the right state,
The Geographical Factor
In the last 56 years there have been 14 Presi dential elections. In that time the Democratic cans didates have hailed from only four states—New York, Ohio, New Jersey and Nebraska. In that time the candidates of both major parties have come from only eight states. The next qualification is to have made as few enemies as possible. Only a few men (Bryan, Cleves land, Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt) have been named despite strong, forceful, assertive natures. The very nature of our elective system excludes the ablest, most highly intellectual, most brillians leaders. Yet, despite this, as soon as we name a man as a candidate we proceed with the building-up and as soon as we elect him we complete it. The day after he is elected he becomes a great philosopher, great orator, great economist, great financial authors ity, great commander and diplomat. When President Roosevelt was nominated in 1932 most of the liberal magazines and papers grave fears because of his vacillations, his weakness: feared he was not up to standard. That did not pres vent the country, as soon as he was elected, h him as a giant, philosopher, savior. We will do thas for anyone who succeeds him--never fear,
Watching Your Health
By Jane Stafford
IGNS that diphtheria has become a chiefly rural J disease have recently been noted by Dr. © ©, Dauer of the District of Columbia Health Departe ment. This dreaded killer of grandmother's time has lost much of its power in the past decades, It killed some 14,000 persons in the nation during 1920 but in 1938 only 2600 diphtheria deaths were ree ported. Cases fell off from about 150,000 in 1920 te 30,000 in 1938. Along with this reduction of about 80 per cent In both cases and deaths, a change appeared in the geographic distribution of diphtheria, Dr. Dauer ree ports to the U. 8S. Public Health Service, Diphtheria death rates were much higher in the cities than in the country before 1910. Since however, the picture has been reversed and rural ree gions have a higher diphtheria death rate than cities, A diphtheria mortality map of the nation for the years 1929-1933 shows a high death rate belt extends ing from Pennsylvania southwestward to Arizona, The 1934-1938 diphtheria mortality map shows the. high death rate belt extending in the same direction, bug much narrowed and broken by large areas where the euth rate is no longer so hi eason for the geographic shift in from urban to rural areas cannot be Wiyon hihen tainty, Dr. Dauer says. There may have been change in the virulence of the germ itself or ea may be more carriers of diphtheria germs in the country now than formerly. Part of the reason for more diphtheria cases in rural areas than in cities ay be that immunization against diphtheria is ried on more extensively in Urban regions and \nat people in ities have hetter acoess to doctors whe § Give lite-faving antitoxin te @ibhtheria patients, TF
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