Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 September 1940 — Page 14
PAGE 14
The Indianapolis Times
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SEE
Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1940
Member of United Press, Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bu-
reau of Circulation. RI LEY 5551
NO TIME FOR LONG VACATION HE Democrats in Congress are preparing to move for adjournment at the end of next week. If the motion carries it will mean that Congress will be away from Washington through the months of October, November
and December—unless recalled by the President for a
special session. The Republicans say that for the record they will vote against adjournment, though off the record they admit they are tired and privately hopeful for adjournment. They are voting against it to place political responsibility on the Democrats. ; Granted that members of Congress have had a long, hard grind since January and are really in need of rest,
and more importantly in need of an opportunity. to return |
home and consult with the constituents they represent— still, for Congress to be absent from Washington for three whole months in times like these would be nothing less than desertion from duty. It might be reasonable to take a recess of four or five
weeks, permitting the Congressmen to sound out senti- | If the recent tempo is any criterion,
ment back home. there should be plenty of unfinished business accumulated by then. out of existence lately in less time than that.
‘A REAL SHOT IN THE ARM HOSE who are described as the Administration's leading economists now break forth with a siren song.
Their tune is new. theme is old. It is that the Government can create pros-
perity by spending borrowed money. Specifically, their
proposal is that the Government shall finance the defense | program with 20 billion borrowed dollars—that it shall
not attempt to pay the costs by increased taxation. A meeting has just been held in Washington.
were such New Deal figures as leon Henderson, Jerome |
Frank, Lauchlin Currie, Benjamin Cohen and others. Present also were a number of investment bankers, business men, industrialists—men who, in the past, have been critics of the New Deal's theory that it can spend the country rich. For the program of the “economists,” these things were promised: It would shift the economic machine into high gear. would put idle capital to work producing armaments. It would achieve “full employment” and a $110,000,000,000
Price in Marion Coun- | ty, 3 cents a copy; dehv- | ered by carrier, 12 iii
Mail subscription rates
It is national defense. But their |
| : a Aviation By Maj. Al Williams
| Have Runways Inadequate Fighting Planes and Big Bombers
| HILE Washington blueprints the Atlantic Ocean and dreams of naval and air bases offshore, let's look into the situation within our own boundaries. | Just suppose we had 25,000 airplanes, or let's go all wrong and take 50,000. If we had those airplanes | today we would be the laughing stock of the world. We haven't the men to fly or service them, and —this is frightfully important— we couldn't get them across our own county month, We just haven't got the
airports to handle any such vol- |
ume of airway traffic,
Of Nation's 1824 Airports, 1548 for |
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES
Faced With an Invasion of His Own!
in less than half a
| We have about 1824 airports in
i 3 this country. No matter how S many thousand planes we plan to x build, none of them can fly off A factory floors. War-time planes are not noted for their low land- | ing speeds, hence the need for wide and spacious | airports. Of the 1824 airports, 1548 have runways only 1500 feet long. This means they are absolutely unfit for | modern single-seater fighting planes or bombers, and | are officially entitled to lowest rating for airports— | Class One. »
to 3500 feet. In Class Three, there are only 28 airports whose runways are 3500 to 4500 feet. And in Class Four there are only three airports in the United States with runways of 4500 feet or more. And that’s not the whole sad story by a long shot. | In spite of all kinds of warnings during the years when foreign air powers were being built, ‘our aeronautical brains in Washington concentrated upon building “runway” airports (not surfaced all over), A runway will accommodate one ship at a time. Nice
F the remaining 276 airports, 245 are entitled to | the rating of Class Two, i.. e, runways of 2500 |
| little problem to get 40 or 50 planes down on such a |
| field, isn't it?
around, shooting the airport—one at a time. Per-
I have sat up over airports waiting a half an hour while 30 and 40 military planes have been milling |
haps our experts may be forced in time to recognize |
where entire squadrons can land in formation. n » 5
OME day there'll be a mighty ugly row about New
fo
millions and was never used. Likewise, about the new La Guardia Field, costing between 50 and 70
crowded and inadequate. Military airports? Nonsense.
and servicing fields for any kind of air power. What
Present |
| ground is inviting destruction.
| provide huge airdromes at strategic points, as for | instance Jacksonville, Fla.? All this yelling about the vital necessity while we have only one airport at the northern tip { of Florida (Jacksonville), and it is still hopelessly { inadequate. Hangars and storage facilities? More nonsense. Hangars are being built hither and yon— { all above ground.
| key operating men, wants to know why someone in authority hasn't learned that leaving hangars above Among airmen that
question makes sense. Why haven't we planned huge
| underground hangars all along the eastern flanks of | the mountains paralleling our Atlantic and Pacific.
| Coasts?
! Wiver ‘ y : - y ivrdy | Several Democratic governments have passed | why European powers built sod-covered airdromes,
York City's Floyd Bennett Airport, which cost |
million dollars (another runway field), already over- |
Our coastlines are devoid of anything approaching the necessary landing |
was the matter with the Government in failing to |
for dominating the Caribbean, |
| {
Larry Pabst of Atlanta, one of Eastern Air Lines’ |
|
THURSDAY, SEPT. 19, 1940 .
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly
disagree with what you say, but will
defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.
FEELS COMPLIMENTED BY PEGLER’S COLUMN. | By Mary OC. Gaines i Will Jesse M. Wilcox please read | the editorial in the Saturday Even- | ing Post of Sept. 14 concerning cogscription of wealth? I also noticed that one of your| readers will quit The Times if you! do not quit Pegler because of an!
The answer is simple. Responsibility for the air article written by him about the
| defense of America is hopelessly divided between the
Tt |
two old jealous services.
characteristics of Hoosiers. I have
| always been proud of being a Hoos- Meitzler that in Cleveland's time
ier, but this article made me a litt prouder. In a latér column, Mr. Pegler gives a good reason for his former observations when he says: . “these dispatches were writ-
ves, he does say President Roosevelt is class conscious, and he did say that industrial plants should not be drafted. Could this be construed as class conscious also? . .. Willkie's biggest asset to the Republican Party is that he has fought vigorously and tenaciously against the New Deal and its policies. There is no doubt that Willkie, if elected, will endeavor to cancel all New Deal legislation now in effect. If this is what the public wants, they cannot do better than elect Mr. Willkie; but it seems to me that unless one is in the upper brackets financially, his vote to do so will be a vote to cut his own throat.
(Times readers are invited
to express their views in
these columns, religious conMake
your letters short, so all can
troversies excluded.
have a chance. Letters must be signed, but names will be withheld on request.)
|
farmers, too, could live on soup, or nothing at all, for all the Government cared. Mr. Meitzler reminds me of the Townsendites. They weep con-|
| ¥ nn =
| the extra dimes. | the company exactly as though they had been col-
Gen. Johnson Says—
If La Guardia Wants the Red Cap Vote for Third Term He'd Better Get That 10-Cent Rule Repealed
EW YORK, Sept. 19.—Mayor La Guardia wants to mobilize the Pullman porters for the New Deal third term. I don’t know about the Pullman porters. They are railroad employees. Neither NRA
i hor its successor labor laws could help them much,
Certainly the Mayor would havs harder sledding with the station porters, Both the Red Caps and the public are regimented by the Wages-and-Hours Administration and they don't like it. Before the more abundant life came to them, while there was nobody to guarantee their maximum hours and minimum weekly wags and no compulsion on the passene ger to pay them 10 cents for every package toted. they found ths travelling public reasonably generous. A two-bit tip was usual for a real load. Sometimes it was only a dime and some= times nothing. But these cases were exceptions--usually old ladies and country bankers of the David Harum type. A compulsory dime for every package carried was an untried experiment. Now the Red Caps wish if had never been tried even if when the public doesn't collectively pay their minimum wages in full, their employers—the terminal or railroad companies—hava to make up the difference.
»
HE boys variously estimate to me that it has ree duced their incomes on the average from 10 to 25 per cent, They would prefer Adam Smith's doctrine of laissez-faire to the Henry Wallace thesis of “regu« late everything.” They want their rugged individuals ism restored. I don’t believe the story some of them like to tell about servicing a swanky orchestra when one Red Cap got a dime for wrestling on a windy day a distance equal to two city blocks with a great bull fiddle, while his mate collected half a buek for carrying three pice olos and a couple of flutes. I don’t believe it, but it shows what's wrong, Formerly, and because he didn’t have to, the avers age passenger with one man-sized grip, willingly gave a quarter for carrying it. Now Uncle Sam tells him that 10 cents is enough and that the porter must take it—and like it. He takes it but he doesn't like if, and the average passenger never pauses to give that discontent a thought. Sometimes, as in a recent experience of our First Lady, who left a train with seven parcels, what with the hurry and bustle and this and that, the passenger forgets the new rule and, as in that experience, hands out half a buck and thinks it generous. It used to be, but now the tariff should be 70 cents. The carrier« for-hire relationship has not yet been sufficiently dstablished for these small enterprisers to demand Just the same, they get debited by
» ”
lected.
u u
HIS may also he imagination, but some of the Red Caps think they see a tendency to fewer hut larger pieces of luggage. If not, why not? It has ale ways seemed to me that, where there are plenty of porters, the European practice of traveling about wit} a single suitcase harnessed for portage and as big as a pullman trunk is much more convenient. Couple that with a little toilet case you can carry in your hand and, under this new regimentation, your care rying charges will only the “10 cents, a dime, twice the twentieth part of a dollar’—and all the Red Caps will get humpbacks and starve to death. The new system is also inconvenient to hoth the public and the porters with its red tape delay of claim checks and receipts. If he wants to corral the station porters’ vote, the Mayor should get the third term candidate to issue a new emancipation procla=
un
Business
national income within three years. It would remove neces- ‘Tow ; »'vineingly about the prodigal spend- yprGES WILLKIE REVEAL | mation, or pass the word to Col. Fleming quietly to
sity for further Government control of business. It would make possible the maintenance of a high standard of living. It would avoid removal of money from the income stream through increased taxation. . At least some of the businessmen who attended the | Waghington meeting are said to have been favorably im- | pressed by these promises. If that is so, these businessmen need to have their heads examined.
{
For if the theory that Government spending of bor- ©
rowed money can create prosperity was unsound in more normal times—and there is abundant evidence that it was —1it is doubly unsound, it is dangerous, when hooked up to! an-armament program. = ~ =
” 2
The spending of 20 borrowed billions on defense would produce something that, for a time, would resemble feverish prosperity. War spending of borrowed billions did pre- | cisely that in 1918. | Prices would tend to skyrocket, as they did then. There would be demands for increased Government control of business and prices. There would be boundless extravagance, since economy becomes a vice when pumping out Government money is regarded as a virtue in itself. There would be a temporarily inflated national income, dependent on a vast armament industrv. There would be clamor to continue the building of armaments, whether needed or not, | to prevent deflation of that income. Finally, inevitably, there would be a collapse under the burden of debt, and
=
there would be such hard times as would make the post- | world war depressions look like booms. Increased taxation to pay for defense means sacrifice. | No one can promise that it will work miracles or that it will | be painless and pleasant, | But it is the only safe way-—the only way to avoid turning the national-defense effort into a national tragedy.
CONSCRIPT WEALTH?
ANY readers have asked us why we advocate conscrip- | tion of men and do not advocate conscription of wealth | —why, as one reader puts it, we think the Government | should demand the services and perhaps the lives of soldiers | while permitting corporations to make huge profits on war or defense orders. Ve do not think the Government should permit corporations to make huge profits on war or defense orders. The wealth of corporations is not in cash. It is in plants, equipment, inventories, land. The Government would have | no use for one-fourth of a steel mill, a railroad, a power plant. The corporations could not sell one-fourth of their properties to raise cash. With every corporation in the country trying to sell at the same time, there would be no buyers. And if by any method one-fourth of the property of all corporations could be confiscated, that would at once | throw at least one-fourth of their employees out of jobs | and deprive the nation of at least one-fourth of their | products. As a matter of fact, it would shut most industries | down entirely, Of course, the Government might confiscate—and then | attempt to operate—the entire property of every corporation. Soviet Russia did something like that. It would ruin millions of people whose savings are invested in cor- | porations—people, incidentally, many of whom have sons | who may be drafted. It would destroy the democratic principle of private ownership of property. It would not defend the country.
| trade deficits.
| ment agency.
By John T. Flynn
Cites Italy's Creaky Barter System To Quiet Fears on Post-War Trade
EW YORK, Sept. 13 —Those who are more ing terested in frightening us into war hysterics than in solving our problems have taken a good deal of trouble to make it appear that the barter system of international trade is going to give Germany and Italy some great advantage over us. Those who think this have not
barter system works. If they are willing to learn they might read an account of the way in which Italy manages her foreign trade which appears in the current number of the American Economic Review. Its author is Henry Miller of Queens College New York. The central idea of this system is to balance imports and exports, since the totalitarian Govvernments have little or no gold to be used to meet
to be exported and imported. This means complete control of foreign trade by the Government. An Italian ships goods to Rumania. The Rumanian buver owes him the price.
One agencv—the Government—is the sole buver of all such bills. Also if the Italian merchant wishes to buy goods in Rumania he can buy the funds necessary only from the Government. Thus all the funds paid for exports and paid in for imports flow through the hands of the Government. The merchant cannot huy what he wants, seil what he wishes or deal with the foreign buver of his
The Italian merchant, therefore, cannot go about “bargaining for the best price when he buys abroad. Mr. Miller points out that the head of the confed-
| eration of merchants complains that Italian dealers
know where to get the best meats at the lowest prices, but are not allowed to do this. Hence they pay more for meats. The control authorities decide from what countries goods shall be bought and what Italian
| firms shall get the goods.
# » ”
|
| ten by way of refuting Harold Ickes charge that Wendell Willkie was putting on an act in returning to Elwood to make his acceptance speech.” It seems to me Mr. Pegler is paving a compliment to Hoosiers, and I am now proudest of being one.
o n “
| “FREE MEALS" FOR
| | |
taken the trouble to learn how the |
, made them.
For the time being, at least, its aim is | | also to give the Government the decision on what is
{
This claim |
| the Italian must deliver to the Italian Government. |
| |
|
| own selection. All must! be approved by the Govern- |
WILLKIE DRAW REBUKE By Mrs. C. W. L. |
I see Mr. Willkie is still getting free meals. He visited a South Side restaurant and gave a 90 cent check in payment for his meal. Anyone could figure that out — the lady would keep it for his autograph, so he got a free meal. Now in Chicago he walked out of a worker's restaurant without paving. If he is so ab-! sent-minded, he would forget his campaign promises as soon as he If he was: not absentminded, then is that a sample of what the working class can expect?
# nn a
MEITZLER'S POSITION WEAKENED, HE CONTENDS By Clande Braddiek James R. Meitzler, the Attica farmer, has at last tipped his hand In a single sentence he has cast to, the winds whatever influence he may have had in his anti-Roosevelt tirades. He acclaims AAA, and asserts that Henrv Wallace “has done more for the farmer than all his, predecessors combined!” | A short time ago Mr. Meitzler was telling us that donated soup was good enough for the unemployed and their families in Cleveland's time, and was good enough today. I must now remind Mr.
| |
ing and the certain ruin to follow
| county
But if vou hear them out, you will learn that it isn't the enormity of
the spending that appalls them; 1t|
is the fact that much of this bounty is going to somebody else It is perfectly plain that little can be done toward curtailing Government spending while each group is denouncing it for others and loudly demanding it for themselves.
"nn AGREES KLAN AGAIN CONTROLS COUNTY G. O. P.
By Regular Republican About a week ago vou had an article by “Interested” and last Right one by “Republican Worker” which hit the bull's eye. The Cof-fin-Klan gang of political pirates
=
and freebooters is in complete con-|
trol again of the Republican county organization. . This gang drove the Negroes from the Republican Party and is now making that departure permanent. . I have been active in Republican
except in the Coffin-Klan dominated years, and so far as the ticket, . is concerned, I am out again. [I shall vote for Willkie and the Republican State ticket as usual. Ho o o CONTENDS WILLKIE LACKS FRANKNESS By Walter C. Gulick
. ++. 1 had hoped Wendell Willkie would be as firm and frank in his intentions as President Roosevelt has continually been. I thought at first he would be, but unquestionably he is riding the fence al-
PLAN TO MAKE JOBS By T. L. Mr. Willkie says, “I'll give jehs—not, the moon.” Mr. Willkie is campaigning and to take him too seriously too literally would be unfair. But when Mr. Willkie makes
or
give the Red Caps back their freedom before election
| day.
you |
| the above statement, would it be un-
| fair to ask him just what he means,
{concretely ? .
| Does he really have some con-
[crete plan, something different that no one else has thought of? If he {has, then in the interests of his fellowmen, which are after all his own interests, Mr, Willkie should have |offered that plan to the presiding | President, whoever he might have | been. Surely it is not impudent of me to ask Mr. Willkie that question Surely it is not wrong to say: “Show us your plan, Mr. Willkie, tell us of your ideas, we are awaiting eagerly to hear them. Surely there is no better way for you to get votes, no better way for you to win the con-
{politics here for more than 50 years, | fidence of the people.” !
on CHARGES ‘POISON FACTORY’ NOW IN OPERATION | By Edgar A Perking Sr Apparently the poison factory of the opposition is swinging into gear {In the forum one John M. Caylor | breaks in with a silly little screed, (“What's My Name?” This effusion 1s not original with Mr. Caylor.
Some two weeks ago in a North Side tavern an Indianapolis attorney (not such shucks as a lawyer) |of sufficient: import that he had
n »n
ready just like Herbert Hoover. Oh made the grade two years ago as a
Side Glances—By Galbraith
N the other hand Italian merchants, in order to | make Sales abroad, must sell at a low price. The |
Government encourages them and compensates their loss by paying them a bonus.
As a result, we see the | strange and damaging mercantile spectacle of the |
Italians—a poor nation—selling their goods cheap and
buying them dear because of these controls. There is much more to the story, not least of which is the red tape and ths restrictions which make the way of the importer and exporter hard all along the
| line,
To suppose that this kind of mechanism gives the
| Italian foreign trader any advantage, when dealing | with free countries, over traders from other free coun- | tries 1s an economic bed-time story to scare the timid.
The presence of such trade in the world is not to |
be ignored by us, and it is a force we must arrange to meet. But we will not proceed intelligently if we
| begin by thinking it is some superior trading device,
enjoying elasticity and . advantages ours does not possess. In that case we might try to imitate it. Indeed we have already begun to do so.
‘Words of Gold
RINTING The Congressional Record costs the taxpayers about $50 a page. Many pages these days are filled with political material having nothing to do with business before Congress. On Friday, Sept. 13, the following members of Congress put into The Record the material described below, at a cost approximately as stated: ag aloe Guffey (D. Pa.), an anti-Willkie editorial, $
ican Efforts to Hoodwink the Public,” $23.
Senator Barkley (D. Ky.), Mayor La Guardia's pro-
Roosevelt speech, $52.50, Rep. Reed (R. N. Y.), remarks entitled “Republicans in Congress Back Willkie,” $18.50, Total cost to taxpayers, $118—more than enough to buy two new Garand rifles for the Army,
Rep. Coffee (D. Wash.), remarks entitled “Repub- |
a-19
F"GOPR. 1040 BY NEA SERVICE. INC. T. M. REG. U. S. PAT, 08¥
"Doc is reading the only copy of that magazine we have—if you come back in a couple of hours.| ll be ables. to sal it to you," »
\
nominee for one of the Superior Courts on the Republican ticket, in a voice that was easily hearable in {adjacent booths, to a little group of [five associates, amplified and enlarged on the story as told by Mr. | Caylor. | This extension of remarks may { have been due in part to the time
| of night, it being right at 11 o'clock, |
where there is likelihood of the wine being in and the wit being out. So it is rather easy to infer that this little yarn has a common starting point.
|
In the tavern instance it did not!
go over so big to the attorney's lis-
teners. And it may be that Mr. Cay-|
ior's story will find the same reception. . ..
PATRIARCH
By VERNE SS. MOORE Sunday saw him churchward drive his mare Easing the reins along her baek. Somehow sun shone prighter passed and there Were flocks of singing birds taat ! seemed to follow.
Each
The as he
Through the flaming judas trees, along Far, winding country lanes until he re@ched The small hill-crowning house of prayer and song Where to his friends most clemently he preached.
DAILY THOUGHT
O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.—Psalms 107:1,
AMONG THE attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines witn even more brilliancy than justice.—Cervantes, +
i | |
A Woman's Viewpoint
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
HE American housewife is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, #and I can prove it. Every time a bride comes into sight, we old heads sound off with advice. If it were followed-—-or so we fondly believe—she would make a good wife and the public would benefit. We dee clare unctuously that the sounde ness of marriage rests in every generation upon the usefulness of a man’s wife as well as upon his own industry. And certainly the statement is true, so long as we are willing to interpret usefulness in modern terms. There's the rub, for a large part of our admonition nas to do with domesticity and, according to opinion, family life wilk be im= proved only when women are as industrious as their grandmothers —and in the same way. ° Yet if every little bride took our advice on ‘hak point, and went back to old-fashioned habits of housekeeping, we'd be in the mid@le ot a depression that would make the last one look like a Golden Age. Laundries, bakeries and countless other industries would have to curtail production Dressmakers would be forced to shut up shop, and department store sales would fall off. When every housewifs bakes her own beans, for example. or manufactures soup in her kitchen, what will happen to the canners ana the radio programs? it, would be nothing short of a national industrial calamity should every housewife decide to bake all the bread consumed by her family, and I daresay the bread would be no more palatable and tha genera{ saving no greater. When vou hear, then, as you often will, that the modern girl isn't able to create a presentable garment at home, you can retort, with good sound sense: So what? Our society is geared to mass production, We may as well accept the fact. And when we say soe ciety, surely women are to be included in the term, The question of feminine work keeps us in a pere petual muddle, which is not strange when we cone sider that, while our heads may top the horizon nf the 21st Century our emotions lag behind in the early 19th. One of these days, maybe, we'll get them to= gether,
Watching Your Health
By Jane Stafford
ETURNING from summer vacation to be greeted by a houseful of fleas is certainly an unpleasant ending to the holiday. - Yet that is what happens to many families. They can rightfully blame it on the cat—or the dog. Reason why the peak of the season for flea troubles comes right after Labor Day is the presence in the home of pet animals. Under normal conditions, entomologists of Cons necticut's Agricultural Experiment Station explain, cats and dogs have a few fleas but they never seem to cause very much trouble either to the animals or to the members of the household. While the animals are in the house, the fleas stay on their bodies. However, when Fido or Pussy leaves for a short period of time, accompanying the family on a vacation or holiday jaunt, outbreaks of fleas may start from the animals’ infested bedding. The insects hatch from the eggs dropped in the bedding and multiply in the empty house. Fleas can live without food for more than a month. Some fleas can find sufficient food in the cracks and crevices of apparently clean houses to keep themselves alive. Two ways to rid a house of fleas are recommend ed. One is to use five pounds of flake naphthalens for each ordinary sized room. Scatter it on the floor and leave the room closed for 24 hours. Then sweep up the naphthalene and use it in another room. This is safe, effective and cheap. If the fumes are annoy. ing, leave open the windows of the rooms not being fumigated, @