Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 October 1940 — Page 12
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. PAGE 12
‘The Indianapolis Times
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Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1940
RILEY 5551
“WHY WE ARE FOR WILLKIE: ROOSEVELT AND THIRD TERM OUND traditional argument against a third term for any President becomes only more compelling, we think, when applied to the particular case of President Roosevelt. Ludwell Denny’s current series of articles on “The Biggest Job on Earth” shows strikingly the immense and increasing powers of this nation’s chief executive. Let’s see how President Roosevelt has used those powers. . Frankly and fairly recognizing, as we have always tried to do, Roosevelt purposes that were right even where Roosevelt methods seemed to us wrong, let's recall briefly a few of the matters in which Roosevelt methods have revealed the President’s attitude toward the great power he wields—power he now asks, against firmly established precedent, to have continued. ” 2 The President unblushingly proposed a court-packing plan which profoundly shocked a host of Americans, including eminent members of his own party. : His efforts to aid labor went to extremes that stirred class consciousness and needlessly increased industrial strife. By manipulating taxes into confusion worse confounded he frightened private business to a point where confidence faltered and new enterprise shriveled for lack of new investment. This, though the business of this country is business, not politics; though only through industrial growth—watched by Government and kept straight—is there hope for solving unemployment and paying, through taxes, the vast bill that is still “on the cuff.” He has fostered an impression that all profit is more or less disreputable, whereas the plain truth is that legitimate profit must remain a basic, essential, respected element of a capitalistic system which democracy cannot destroy and still be democracy. On the side of Government expenditure he has made a colossal joke of national debt limits, adopting instead a motto of spend, spend, and spend in .Micawber-like faith that something is bound to turn up sometime to set everything right. - He has primed and teprinidd the pump until the water | in the well has almost forgotten what it’s there for. Is this a President for whom the no-third-term tradition should be broken? We think not.
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” During his two terms Mr. Roosevelt has surrounded himself with galaxies of constantly changing advisers and | theorists—a palace guard of Spneiinns, whip-crackers and purge-wielders. Does this inner circle of atte Presidential notionriggers, project-purveyors and political order-bearers deserve a third term? We think not.
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® In his early years in public life. Mr. Roosevelt was regarded as a political purist.
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But after he became President he let the “practical” | politicians use patronage, persuasion and an unlimited flow | of New Deal dollars from the U. S. Treasury to build a | nation-wide machine that made posisbhle a dictated conven-
tion, which, in turn, made possible a third-term nomination.
And today, in seeking a third term, Mr. Roosevelt §#f
counts on machine bosses to assure him votes. He himself
picked one of the biggest of these bosses, Ed Flynn, to run |
his_campaign. Flynn, Hague and the Kelly-Nash outfit— welcome herders of votes to keep the one-time purist four |
more years in the White House! | { Moreover, the President is using the prestige and §
power of his office to spare himself the necessity of active | campaigning—which itself illustrates one of the recognized | improprieties and dangers in third-term aspirations. Does that earn a third term and an overthrow of so wise a precedent ? We think not, » We believe the Presidency is bigger than any President; the tradition far sounder and stronger than any argument which has been advanced for its destruction.
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ARMS “TO BE ORDERED SOMETIME” F the defense emergency is great-enough to justify conscripting men for military service, then surely it is great enough to call for full speed ahead, and no interruptions, in the production of weapons to place in the hands of drafted men. A few weeks ago the New Dealers. seemed to believe this. They insisted upon and obtained a provision in the draft law authorizing the Government to take over any plant which refused to accept armament contracts or failed to execute orders with appropriate speed. But now by a triple play, Labor Board to Defense Com- | mission to Attorney General Jackson—a play so fast and confusing that respensibility cannot be fixed on any one party—a policy apparently has been evolved under which any company which is “in bad” with the Labor Board is out of luck in getting armament contracts—unless special privilege is granted by the powers that be. However you slice that policy, and whoever is to blame, the effect is to place the program of building airplanes, guns, ammunition, etc., in the muddling hands of the National Labor Relations Board. Since it is decreed that any manufacturer who appeals to the court from a Labor Board ruling 1s adjudged guilty before the courts decide, then the incompetent and hiased Labor Board, itself, wili set the pace of rearmament. Hereafter, armament “on order” will have to be re- | ferred to as armaments “to be ordered sometime,” and conscripts probably will have to learn not only to drill with, but
also to shoot with, broomsticks. { d
| also $1,808,000,000 of adjusted service certificates.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler Looking Back He Admits He Was
Pretty Dumb, but He Did Think|
F. D. R. Was the Man to Save U. S.
EW YORK, Oct. 8—My own political childhood ended and adolescence set in about 1932 when I voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the repeal of prohibition. The economic crackup, which began in 1929, did not then seem to me to be anything worse than a few caulifiowered fenders and a smashed windshield. I was still thinking of the crash as a just come-uppance for a lot of swindlers in the banking and promotion rackets and a mishap to many comparatively petty gamblers who were nickling down dinky side bets in the market. Many of these had run up an original taw of $10 or $500 to $10,000 or half a million in paper profits; and it was too bad for them but, after all, no worse than they had a right to expect, because, in gambling, if you don’t know when to take down you are sure to be knocked into the creek eventually. They were just back where they started. , I had seen a lot of country club bankers and corporation boosters around the ringside at the big fights and following the golf tournaments and sometimes had wondered when they ever found time to put in any. licks at the mysterious business which was yielding them such great wealth. They were an excited, money-proud lot—most of them rather young, too— and they had bars in their homes and offices and vaults full of liquor which ran up to $90 a case for scotch and $125 for champagne. < 2 2 = | T just didn’t seem sound to me that men with responsibility for the affairs of companies in| which the people were investing their money should have saloons in their offices. In ns newspaper experience there had heen men who would keep a slab of toddy in the desk and gnaw off an inch now and again during the day, but we never had any bars. Well, so, as I say, when we left the road and hit that tree back in 1929 and began combing splintered glass out of our hair I thought we would soon have her running again, and when Mr. Roosevelt came along I figured he would be the one to do it. | I even thought, in a vague way, that he would juice up. the engine so as to save gas and get more speed out of her and maybe streamline the body, Anyway, I was for him and voted for him, and I had a lump in my neck the size of an egg the day he stood on the county-fair scaffold in front of the Capitol in Washington and said the only thing we had to fear was fear. “There,” I thought, “is my President. Ain't he something?” I am a little reticent about such emotions in print, so I guess I didn't write it, but I thought it. I felt it. I didn't cover the banking inquiry in Washington, but I did follow the story, and nobody took more pleasure from the spectacle of those crooks getting their lumps from Ferd Pecora. But I still didn’t realize what the boys in the Administration were up to, and I doubt that many Americans did, or do yet. The town was full of strangers which, of course, was natural, because the Democrats were closing in for the jobs and the Republicans were thumbing it out of town by every road. F o o ] NE of the male double-domes who has since become a very big man in the New Deal once explained to me that economics was very much a matter of psychology, and I asked him why they didn’t get an alienist for his job, but he just thought I was being flippant. I guess I was, at that. Well what I thought was that they were going to junk and salvage the busted banks and companies, pass sume laws to prevent the recurrence of any such fabulous nonsense, ticularly “lawyers who had devised the clever schemes, and start over. And, of course, prohibition was to be repealed so that the Government could get |
out, of the nasty business of poisoning the hootch and | | {risking people's homes and a man could rub his vest
buttons against a bar again and be a man. And the billion dollars a year which we would get | out of the liquor taxes and the additional taxes which | the states, counties and towns would take from the | dealers and saloons would solve everything, and we would all go back to work again. I was that dumb.
Business
By John T. Flynn
Old-Age Fund Now Owns About| Nine Billions of Uncle Sam's Bonds |
EW YORK, Oct. 8.—Our Uncle Sam—inveterate |
borrower and arch spendthrift—now owes $50.- | 000.000,000. Who did he borrow it from and how did | he do the trick? Probably many people not concerned with Government finance think he borrowed it from his many citizens, persons who freely loaned him the money and took his I. O. U.s in the form of bonds. It did not happen quite | that way. First of all, the whole amount of obligations is not outright bonds, as that word is generally | understood. A great deal of [this | paper is short-time paper—payable in a year, or two, or five. This is issued because the Treasury can | borrow money on this kind of paper at low interest rates, some of it under 1 per cent. But ultimately, of course, all of this short-time low-interest paper must be either paid or refunded with bonds at current interest rates. A lot of the bonds have been issued by the Government to the various retirement and pension funds, including the Old Age Fund. Under the law, certain percentages of the salary of millions of Americans in industry, in the railroads, the postal, foreign and other services, is deducted every month from the pay envelope. When this deduction is made the Government borrows the money and gives bonds to the retirement funds. These bonds thereafter belong to those funds. There is roughly $8,900,000,000 outstanding thus, which belongs to the representatives of millions of workers and which represents their contributions forcibly taken under the law.
Then there are the Treasury bonds and the sav- |
These amount to around $30,000,000,000. o ” "
HE savings bonds belong to individual savers who have bought them directly from the Government. The greater part of these belong, much to our surprise, to people of considerable means who find them a safe and sound method of investing money now, though many small savers own them, too. They: total about $3,000,000,000. The $27,000,000,000 of Treasury bonds are held by banks, savings banks, insurance companies and large investors. Banks have been heavy investors in United States bonds.
ings bonds.
The short term obligations of the Government— Treasury notes and bills—are held chiefly by banks There are $6,380,- ! There are | All |
and large financial institutions. 000,000 of notes and $1,302,000,000 of bills.
these are held chiefly by banks. Then there are $5,788,000,000 of guaranteed obligations. These—at least 80 per cent of them—were given to the holders of mortgage notes in exchange for their mortgages on farms and homes. They are held by mortgage note owners, money lenders, savings banks, etc. These are the people who own our Uncle Sam's bonds and notes, and who will be called on to own and buy more as the months roll by.
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So They Say—
CALL IT THE FIFTH Column if you like, but it | had increasing power in France. A hidden power was | self-exiled | German author, on his way to America after flight
holding me there.—Lion Feuchtwanger,
from France. . * . 1 I DEPLORE boss rule. I am sorry we have to have boss rule in the United States, not only in Jersey City but in other parts of the country ~—James H. R. Cromwe}], Democratic candidate for Senator in New Jersey. Y
send a lot of gyps to prison, par- | !little |
THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES While We've Still Got Coriareror Hie We?
~aINK 1D BETTER
The Hoosier Forum
I wholly disagree with what you say, but will ‘defend to the death your right to say it.— Voltaire.
DEFENDS CRITICISM OF CONSCRIPTION By Mrs, 0. C. Neutzman In reply to Roy E. David, I wish to say I am a real American, born in Indiana. I am for defense of our nation and my views on conscription are the same as 11 members of Indiana’s Congressional delegates. [Does Mr. David think these gentle- | men are not real Americans?
| care of by volunteers and at this
time it ‘is not necessary four youth off good jobs into overly crowded training camps. When Mr. | David says military training never
‘hurt or killed any man I guess he |
I claim our defense can be taken! -
to force,
(Times readers are invited to express their these columns, religious controversies Make your letters short, so all can have a chance. Letters must be signed, bu? names will be withheld on request.)
views in
excluded.
| thing to grab the White House,
in supervising youth. I fully agree with this mother. It is certainly true, that the Police!
a mother, charging the police lack!
thought he had to swear and blackguard and promise jobs and belly fodder in order to be undérstood by that audience. And yet such a man aspires to the Presidency of the United States. . . ! Willkie's candidacy itself is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. He will say or do anyin order to sell it down the river to the Wall Street interests that are subsidizing his campaign. Of all Presidential candidates in all history, of (all parties, Willkie is the most im- | Dotsiiis, : ”
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Department is not interested in our 'EGGING SWITCHES
has forgotten the hundreds who died youth. They are only interested in FAMILY TO WILLKIE of “flu” in training camps who arresting a boy or girl that breaks! | By [Raymond Corroll
never were sent to Europe during a city ordinance. I personally knew |
the World War. several of them. I also know we sacrificed thousands of our youth needlessly and I'm going to use all my energy and strength to keep this country from being so foolish again as we were in 1917. That is being a real American, and I'm for defense of our America too! But we can use reason and common sense in our defense and
‘of the ocean! . # # FJ {CHARGES WILLKIE USED
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| VULGAR LANGUAGE |
{By C. S. | The editorial, “How'd We Get | This Way?” met with our hearty approval but we could not refrain | on wishing tor The Times of
another day which would have honlestly spoken against the obnoxious | vulgarian style of a candidate using | oaths to express his dynamic per-
| sonality—not once but many times By C. P. Miller
| until silenced.
iis incident? A campaign of oaths | land eggs is not the American way. ! 2 2 wi. PRAISES OPERATION OF KEYSTONE BOYS TOWN By A Reader
In answer to an article in the Hoosier Forum recently, written by
above all keep our boys on this side
They should also |
girls on how to become better citi-| zens. There is one place in Indianapolis
be interested in training boys and!
I am one of a family of six in which all are of voting age. That (in itself is nothing unusual, but I'll {bet all the New Dealers in Washington or elsewhere those six votes
that is definitely interested in train-! don't go to the biggest egotist who ing youth to become better citizens.’ ever sat in the President's chair. My nephew living in the southeast | As our family has always been | Indianapolis was telling me of a Democrats maybe that is a bit unboys club known as Keystone Boys usual, but there are a great many Town. I was so interested that I reasons, too numerous to mention ‘paid this place a visit and to make here, why we will all vote for a a long story short, I was thoroughly change. The one that topped them amazed at the work being done by all, though, is the recent episode the boys that heretofore had run in Michigan in which a sincere and the streets and alleys. Can you | fair- minded nominee was egged and imagine boys governing themselves, a woman on the Federal payroll
| making their own laws and enforc- threw an object at Mr. Willkie and
= ling these laws in their own court? |injured another woman.
I failed to ask what department | That, dear readers, is the result
of the city was responsible for this, of the class hatred the one and lor maybe it is a local organization. only Mr. Roosevelt has been stirring
| However, whoever it might be it is| UP in this country.
wonderful. # 8 = HITS AT LABOR LEADERS
FOR DICTATORSHIP CRY
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“How'd We Get This Way” about |
CONTENDS WILLKIE SHOWS INSINCERITY
By Charles W. Lahrman, Democratic Candidate for State Representative. Willkie has demonstrated . In the Sept. 30 issue of a lotask | cal newspaper appeared an article demagogery, insincerity, poor taste nesdeq “Two Local Labor Leaders and ignorance of the mettle of our |Indorse Willkie” naming William L. | citizenship by assuming that it was Hutcheson and Onaules Bon “ » Hutcheson is president of the ‘necessary to “talk down” to workers 0 lin rh in order to appear as one United Brotherhood of Carpenters of them and thereby wangle their and Joiners of America and Kern is
votes. His performance was nothing | President of the Indiana State ; : ; ; Building Trades Council. but a cheap insult to the intelligence ee fe that of working men and women. He| Tpis article goes on to state tha : they are opposed to a third term
his
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Side Glances—By Galbraith
because they fear dictatorship. . . . Mr. Hutcheson was elected president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
COPR. 1940 BY NEA SERVICE, INC. T.M, REC. U. S. PAT. OFF.
in 1915 and has held that office since, and still seeks more terms. Charles Kern has been president of the State Building Trades Council for about the same length of time and neither of them were ever bothered by any scruples as to third terms in their respective organizations. They may say there is no law in their organizations prohibiting a man from holding office so long as he is qualified and can be elected to that office. Neither is there anything in the Constitution which restricts the number of years any President may serve.
OCTOBER SYMPHONY
By MARY P. DENNY There is a symphony of October. The winds they play the basso. The leaves the minor tone. The hills from their high throne Send glory notes divine. Along great nature’s radio. ® Aboye the electric aerial line Carries afar the chime in time. On flute of air the raindrops chime Through gloria of life sublime. ‘The brown birds and the sparrows sing. The school bells early ring. The church bells join the radio line, A symphony of life through time.
DAILY THOUGHT
Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake,
20-8
"This customer puts a nickel tip on the table and | give him my Instead of raising the tip he picks up the Mickel $d walks off!”
usual sneer.
O lord.-—Psalms 25:17.
SORROWS remembered sweeten present joy.—Pollok.
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TUESDAY, OCT. 8, 1940 Gen. Johnson Says—
He Questions the Accuracy of the Gallup Polls and Forecasts Sams Fate as Befell Literary Digest's
JT ASHINGTON, Oct. 8—The political practice about these modern polls is like Shylock with Portia, to praise them when their forecast is favoie able and curse them otherwise. I can escape that charge. I have long regarded all these “sampling” - polls as a public evil capable of vicicus abuse. They won't tell their exact method. They resist investigations that would reveal more than their ‘general princie ples.” These are not enough to determine whether in the science of mathematics they stand even on a sound formula of probabilie ties. They refer to their record of accuracy. Sometimes it has been remarkable, but since they do not claim accuracy within 3 or 4 per cent and many an election has turned on less tHan that, it is not very convincing— especially since they are very coy in reporting the actual number (not the percentage) of ‘‘undecided” answers by locafion. That clouds their whole result, I have been an anti-poll crusader ever since the 1936 Literary Digest poll, which had convinced the country of its accuracy by the same repented assere tions as Dr. Gallup's. ” ” ” OW Dr. Gallup In a critical moment in this came paign and just when it is likely to do Mr, Willkie the most harm with both campaign contributors and sheeplike bandwagon riders, reports 42 states, 499 electoral votes for Mr. Roosevelt and 32 electoral votes in six states for Mr. Willkie. I feel free to say without charge of bias and on the basis of my four years consistent fight against this sort of stuff that it is as dangerous and mislead= ing—if not vicious—as the Literary Digest poll in 1936. There is a survey in this country based on a dif= ferent method than Dr. Gallup's more-and-mora. routine “sampling.” It is called the Dunn Survey. It has been conducted for years by a scholarly retiring sort of fellow. It is not a poll taken by part-tims agents on a theoretically selected sampling and sometimes by tricky leading questions. It 1s scientifig analysis of several factors. He has not attempted to commercialize or publicize it. It has been far mors timely, or at least forecast results far sooner, than the Gallup Polls. Its accuracy has frequently been miraculous and it has gone into much more detail in forecasting political results in Congressional and Senatorial elsce tions. In the 1938 mid-term election, it was 100 per cent accurate in New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Colorado. It was 99.6 per cent accurate in an overall average percentage for the country. On the plain face of its record of results, I would accept. if in preference to any other.
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; . 2 8 N the same day that this recent Gallup blast of 499 electoral votes for Roosevelt was broadcast -—the Dunn Survey with several small states absent, which would not have affected the result—showed 313 votes for Willkie, or 47 more than necessary, witin a probability of a fair incréase. Moredver, while the Gallup Poll gave Roosevelt New England and all the key states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the Dunn Poll puts all these safely for Willkie—by percentages which in some cases check very closely with the local newspaper polls. . Contrary to every other experience, over the years, instead of being relatively close in percentages, this time the results of these two forecasts are in some cases so divergent as to raise grave questions. It is too early for this column to repeat.its 1938 stunt “Landon may carry four states, he is oniy sure of two,” but I don’t think we are going to hear any more of the Gallup Poll after this election than of the Literary Digest Poll after 1936. If it becomes appropriate to eat these words, I shall do it as grace= fully as possible, but I didn’t have any literary ine digestion last time and I don’t expect to suffer gale luping consumption in 1940.
A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson i
HAT queer creatures we are! Nothing illus trates our inconsistency so well as our eagerness to serve the country in an emergency and our total unconcern with political problems in other periods, Right now prominent “dollar-a-year men” offer themselves for any kind of service. The boys, big and little, are in a patriotic stew, eager to do their bit. Yet, in normal years, no beating of the bushes can flush any game less notable than mediocre aspirants for .a liftle salary and some tidbits of political power. Most of the time, businessmen and club women are too languid to visit the ballot box and too blisy to be bothered with details of statecraft. Hordes never register to vote unless there happens to be a hot Presidential campaign just around the corner. We have been negligent or amused by turns, while professional politicians cleaned out treasuries and, like plagues of locusts, ate up our substance. A good many states were already bankrupt when the war scare started, due primarily to no emergency, but only to the consistent, disregard by decent citizens of what went on under their noses. . We all love our counry enough to fight for it, but we never love it enough to stand watch so that other subversive forces—ignorance, incompetence, graft and greed—will not destroy it. Now that we have begun a move to conscript men to be trained in the arts of martial defense, why not carry the idea to its logical conclusion by drafting others—perhaps the group from 31 to 65—to learn and practice the arts of high-class statesmanship. Every American should be willing to give some time out of his life to assist in the functioning of his democracy. » should, when called, do jury service and hold public office when his talents are needed bv city, state or country. It would be dollars in any businessman's pocket if enough of his 8 fond were will
‘ing to do such ‘conscription.”
Voting is not the only duty in a republic. The quality of the candidates is also imporiant. Rarely is freedom lost on battlefields; we throw it away vhen intelligent, capable men and women refuse to “bother with polities.” :
Watching Your Health
By Jane Stafford ;
I ILK bottles in many communities are now wear-= ing hoods’ that cover the pouring lip and fit snugly around the neck. This may seem like a new fall fashion trend, but there is a health reason behind the new milk bottle millinery. That is protection of your baby’s milk from dirt and germs. Caps, the U, S. Public Health Service says,ywill also do the protecting job if the cap comes alf the way down over thie pouring lip and covers it completely. Health ' authorities and doctors and farmers and the dairies have struggled for years to see that the milk delivered on your doorstep does not carry with it such unwelcome guests as the germs that cause tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, arid undulant fever. What with tuberculin-testing, inspection and care of the cows, pasteurization of ths milk, and scrupulous cleanliness all along the line in cow to bottle, protection of the milk—and you— from such disease germs can be, and in very many communities is, excellent. The last weak line in the defense of the mille against germs is between the bottling of the milk - and your pouring it into your glass or baby’s bottle, The fingers of the milk delivery man when he handles the bottle or your fingers when you take it off the doorstep are sure to have germs on them. To guard this last line of defense, hoods or come pletely covering caps are now es on the bottles,
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