Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 July 1942 — Page 10

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> HILEY 851

. Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

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Member of Unitga Prom, oripps - Howard News pér Alliance, NEA ce, and Audit Bureal of Circulations.

MONDAY, JULY 6, 1042

MORE TIME TO HUNT RUBBER SURE an army travels on its stomach, But if it's going far it has to have rubber and lots of it. The President has extended the old-rubber drive until Friday. Those of us who've already contributed something _ should make a new and more thorough search for odd items of rubber that can help out the government. And those who haven't done anything at all ought to get a move on.

- WHEAT, CORN AND WAGES ; THE country has an over-supply of wheat and corn. The government holds hundreds of millions of bushels, acquired to protect farmers against ruinously low prices. : ‘The country has, or is in danger of having, an undersupply of pork, beef, milk, poultry and eggs. President Roosevelt wants to sell part of the government's huge stores’ of grain to be fed to cattle, swine and poultry at prices low enough to encourage production of more pork,

f . beef, milk, poultry, eggs, thus holding the retail prices of

these foods below the ceilings. The senate has voted to let 125,000,000 bushels of the surplus grain be sold at 85 per cent of parity. The house has voted to let none be sold below parity. There is a deadlock between the two branches of congress. The president, urged by seven officials of farm, labor and | religious organizations, has written a letter strongly condemning the “pressure-group tactics’—the ‘‘certain selfish and power-hungry groups”—which oppose his plan, He means, of course, members of the farm bloc in congress and leaders of several powerful farm organizations who charge that the plan would undermine the principle of

parity.

» 8 »/ # 8 tJ E believe the general welfare would be served by a victory for the president in this fight. It is one phase of a battle to stabilize the price of food, and that is one of the things that must be done to prevent the cost of living from spiraling upward and to avert the disaster of . wartime inflation. The president has fought this battle on the farm front with much vigor, with much strong language, and—so far—with no success. The chief reason for his lack of success, we think, is that he has not fought with equal vigor on the labor front to stabilize wages. He hag said that stable wages are as necessary to the prevention of inflation as stable food prices, but he has stopped there. He has proposed no definite plan, and his war labor board, the agency to which he assigned this problem, apparently has no plan | except to “adjust” wages upward wherever unions make demands,

» » » YET if high farm prices mean high food prices, it is just as true that rising wages mean rising prices for everything farmers must buy. The promise of parity is what farmers depend upon to keep them abreast of rising prices. So long as there is no real prospect of stable wages, many farmers will support their organizations and their congressmen in resisting anything that seems to endanger the ~ promise of parity. And charges of “selfishness” and “hunger for power,” which seem to impugn their patriotism, will only make them angry. The president’s budget director, Harold Smith, said a very true thing in a recent speech. He said that the fruitless argument over whether farm prices should be ~ stabilized before wages, or vice versa, should stop—that both must be stabilized at the same time, and quickly, ~ or the war against inflation will be lost. If the president would. go down the line for that thoroughly sound principle, we are sure he would hear a vast majority of farmers—yes, and a vast majority of union members—cheering for it.

WE STRIKE IN THE ALEUTIANS

HE disclosure that army bombers, presumably operating out of Dutch Harbor, are continuing whenever weather permits to harass the Japanese expeditionary force in the Aleutians js welcome news. ~ + Our aireraft are functioning under severe difficulties and dangers, because of thé almost constant fog that ,8hrouds these captured ramparts, not to mention the antiaircraft defenses which the Japs have-brought with them. But they are functioning, and not only against the enemy's position on the shores of Kiska harbor but also against a ap flotilla discovered, ominously, at the nearby island of Agattu, . ; Qbviously, and fortunately, the men in charge of the defense of the Aleutians—and of the Alaskan mainland— have no such illusions as those voiced by certain Washingn authorities a few weeks ago; i. e., that the Kiska-Attu landings 2re a trivial matter. Specific information on the progress of our Alaskan defenses is: naturally secret. But we can all at least hope that the army and navy, and our Canadian ally, are accumulating in the right places the equipment with which to deroy the invader and make these stepping stones a strictly one-way-west proposition.

VE A MINUTE [INUTES make hours, hours make days, days make -years, and years make a lifetime. ve minutes. Some safety wizard has doped it out. Take a man. whose earning career has 25 years to go. hat makes 13,148,640 minutes. (Figure it out, if you We did, allowing for six leap years.) We dash across street against a light. "If we win, we save a minute. we luee, we > donate up to 18 million minutes to Death.

at

jOW MORE THAN EVER, T00

RES soem to rid f garages that they o's

So we all try to

y

x

Air's 3-

(ton says, and as we believe, we do not

By Major Al Williams

NEW YORK, July 6—Sometimes I wonder whether our general education system is riot long’ overdue for a coniplete overhaul.

In the first place, education is not |

available on the basis of merit or capacity. It doesn’t have to be earned, but rather is accepted. ‘The grammar schools teach everything else but: don't teach ‘reading, writing and arithmetic thoroughly. Of the colleges and. univergition a a nation-wide survey discloses, 82 per cent do not require the study .of American history for a degree, and about 72 per cent do. ‘not require American history for admission. Phil Beta Kappa is reputed to be the highest honor for scholarship in American colleges. There are about 90,000 Phi Beta Kappas in the country, but only about 6000 yearly subscriptions to the Phi’ Beta Kappa publication designed: for mentalities of such levels. Did 84000 Phi Beta Kappas quit thinking as soon as they graduated, or were the standards for selecting them faulty? : And what about the education of our youth in

‘the practical use of the machinery available on all

sides?

Not Engineers—Pilots!

CONSIDER THE RECRUITING and training of thousands of young men for our air forces. True, aeronautical engineering is a highly Specialized science. Careless habits of loose thinking led to the assumption that knowledge of algebra, plane and solid geometry and trigonometry was absolutely necessary for candidate student pilots, For years we tolerated the highfalutin’ nonsense of insistence upon two years of college “or its equivalent” for candidates in our fighting air arms. Such restrictions, possibly appropriate for a snooty club, where social behavior is of greater importance than

mental and physical merit, are totally unworthy of a combat service. Of course, a candidate for training as an aeronautical engineer must be educated in higher mathematics. But it isn’t engineers—slide rule manipulators—we need now. It's pilots. | The engineering which created the modern airplane is an intensive life work in itself, but it does not require engineering education » learn how to use a plane intelligently.

L&t's Stop This Nonsense

THE OUTSTANDING PILOTS of the last war were by no means distinguished for their collegiate degrees. They were alert, mechanically-intelligent men who learned quickly how to use the machinery placed at their disposal. ‘How many of the millions of people driving high-powered motor cars in this country can sketch and describe any major item of the equipment under:the hood before them? Yet

watch, them weave in and out of trafic and make "time, The American people have far more native me« chanical aptitude and machine sense than any other people in the world. » They learn rapidly to use machines whose engineering features they understand vaguely.

Of course, the two years of college ‘“‘or its equiva-

lent” nonsense has been wiped out. But it wasn't

done until we ran smack dab intd the necessity for

turning out in a hurry thousands of physically fit and mentally alert young men to fly thousands of planes. Let's quit bowing Jelore the shrine of engineering, teach our youth how to use the machinery of this war, and let the engineers worry. about the formulae , and the higher inathematics. All these physically fit and mentally alert youngsters who can learn to drive automobiles expertly in a short time can learn to

fly airplanes expertly without hesoming semi-en»

gineers, S——————

Editor's Note: The views expressed by columnists in this newspaper are their own. They are not necessarily those of The Indianapolis Times. :

Gas Rationing! By S. Burton Heath

CLEVELAND, July 6—~This is a highly controversial topic. It is easy to get a hot argument on any of its several sides. But those on the inside, with no personal or political axes to grind, say that the sooner we institute . nation-wide gasoline rationing, the quicker we can win this war, The story is that all the best informed administrators, up to and including President Roosevelt, realize we are wasting irreplaceable rubber every hour we permit automobiles to operate for non-essential purposes. They know that a tire burned out in the Midwest Southwest or Far West—has been diverted from war use just as definitely and finally as a tire worn out on the eastern seaboard. They are convinced that it is silly even to think about getting enough synthetic rubber for two oF three years to relieve the situation. Through general surveys, as well as trom isolated emergency situations, they have obtained evidence that a crisis is on the way in the transportation of workmen to war: industry plants. The tire stockpile is utterly inadequate to do more than defer production stoppages based upon this cause,

The Old Hoodoo of Politics :

PERHAPS THE REASON the president has not already ordered nation-wide rationing of gasoline,

| in order to prevent general use of tires, is that this

is an election year.

Mr, Roosevelt if not running for re-election, of |

course. But all members of the house and a third of the senators must face their constituents in November They may have convinced the president that fof their sakes he must delay such presumably unpopular

moves as nation-wide gasoline rationing until the votes have been cast.

We, on the outside, can only accept the facts ob-

tainable from the insiders, so long as they stand up against every available crosscheek. The menace of the rubber shortage meets such. tests. On that basis, withethe utmost of sympathy for

the oil industry and the nation’s motorists, we do : not see how Mr. Roosevelt can weigh the fortunes of |

individuals, who like being members of congress, against the nation’s security. If the rubber situation is as critical .as Washingsee “how nation-wide rationing of gasoline, purely as a meas-

ure of rubber conservation, can be loager delayed.

So They Say—

Demobilize @s you mobilize. Don’t let the soldiers

and sailors out of the service until you can place | | them in jobs—Maj, Gen. Tews B. Hershey, selective 4 service director.

* - #

There wont be » pound of ayuhti rbber 10 |

‘defend to

I wholly disagree wi h what you say, but will ir right to say it.—Voltaire,

the death ad

“WHAT ABOUT RUBBER GAS STATIONS USE?” By J. R. As I made my small contribution of rubber to a gas station, I was somewhat amazed to see across the driveway of this establishment several long strips of good rubber, the

‘much-needed rubber that our old

friend Uncle Sam is realiy asking

what this was used for, ne informed me it was to ring a bell: to signal the approach of a car needing a supply of gas. It might be a splendid idea for someone in authority to remind the gas station attendants that the Japs never ring a bell, but the sound of an exploding bomb informs us that they are on the job, and how! 2a s = = “LET'S STOP DEBATING AND START SOME ACTION” By Mrs. BR. XK.

It is of the utmost importance for us to open a second front at once. Almost everything we have done so far has been too litle and too late.

Let's stop debating and start some action. We must prevent Hitler from conquering the Caucasus and its oil wells. If we fail to open a second front immediately and the Nazis get the oil wells then we are in for a terribly long and hard war.

Let’s have one real offensive, concentrated in one particular spot; France, for instance, where England can serve as a base, " “He who hesitates is lost.” We have been on the defensive so long, foo long.

” A » “IT’S TIME TO QUIT IDEALIZING THE RENTER” By Mrs. Landlord, Indianapolis.

- Today I went to see the OPA rent director and. I came away. feeling that there is absolutely no premium on thrift any more and the old theory in the economics textbook that all business enterprise starts with real property, is thrown into the discard. We were taken in groups and talked to by some OPA representa-

for, and upon asking the attendant|

fies | ik hders are invited

to, expreit| their views in

these coll tins, religious cone o> oxcluded. Make short, so all can ce. be signed.

troversies |. your lette i:

have a ch Letters must

i that all rents were July 1, 1941, regardhere be any grounds for an-appe? ? Oh, yes, after two weeks we mi have a blank to fill out in tripli¢ije. Why we were not given one tod: y when they have had 60. days to pare them, we were not told. Vig were told that if we painted the | © roperty and redecorated througl jut—still that is no basis for an normal upke p, so says the rent director. on 7 such things as a new bathrofi: n or a totally new furnace or na i room counts. I can tell [iim that if owners are not given cif dit for painting and i i+ is going to be a sad looking lot o ental property in Indianapolis aii r this present decorating job gel old and dirty. ‘ We were [ld that the patriotic thing was ii set the .rents back. Why patriot? Why would it not be just as 1¢iriotic for the tenant to pay whai ‘he general upkeep is

exorbitantly high on a. | his patriotism is not i. spent a full year’s |» double on the North side painting gutters, and | Unfortuna/ ly, I did not install a new bathro¢i1 or furnace. I did put in $25 vith of furnace repairs for one ofl our patriotic defense workers “whi ‘is fighting, bleeding and dying [izht hours a day for $45 a week {lus overtime, because he was too (ireless to take. care of the furnace roperly. But all this does:not col i t. I do not bi: ieve that rents © on the whole in In anapolis are even on a level with 0st of upkeep. I paid $8 for haviz paper steamed from a living roon: wall that I could have had done for $3 three or four years

tives who sg to go back i less. Would)

a = Wet me pre

=

Side Glances—By Galbraith I.

ago. There! n As never been enough

appeal. That is only!

of a shortage here to permit landlords to be unreasonable. The defense worker is being idealized, For the most part, he came here only since defense work started and he will leave the minute it stops and take his hoardings back to Tennessee or wherever he came from and the landlords will have a lot of vacant houses. for their paitriotism. The young defense worker is keeping out of the army in- many cases while making more than he has ever made before. I am .a widow with no source of income except my rentals. I am told that I am too old to go back to school teaching or office work though I am well experienced in both. My son, who contributes something to the upkeep’ of. the home, will soon be in the army,

It certainly is unfair to landlords to settle things according to a date. You can't date a gouger. He prob‘ably was an early bird and raised his rent in June, 1941. Why not settle things according to whether the rent is a fair and reasonable figure for such a house in such a neighborhood in comparison with other houses in a like neighborhood?

The property owner is the first and last goat. Many renters have never owned property and their parents and grandparents before them have not. They won't be bothered with the responsibility of property. - They have never concerned themselves with the real cost in taxes and upkeep. At this time we have a large number of floaters who brought nothing into our community. ... . . They live too many in a house in order to save more money to take back where they came from. When they go, the Indianapolis landlords, the backbone of our citizenship, will be left to bear the load of taxation whether he had broken even before or not. It’s time. to quit idealizing the poor renter and defense worker, He is drawing high wages in’ many cases and keeping out of the war. Let him pay full fare the same as the rest of us. /Also Mr. OPA, quii putting all landlords together as rent gougers. Deal with gougers where you find them, and there

July 1, 1941, Some of the rest of us waited until we improved our property with a major improvement—and I contend that a major improvement should be judged by its cost and not as to whether or not it was a new bathroom or furnace.

® " » “YOU CANNOT FOOL THE PEOPLE, MR. GOVERNOR!” By Duke E. Hanna, 360 Dowuey ave,

The governor of Indiana, Henry F. Schricker, in his partisan speech at the convention in Indianapolis,

|made several statements that should

be condemned by the people of Indiana. He tried:to make it appear that his party has made a better econcmy record than has the Republican party. Plain facts reveal that Republican state office holders and Republican legislators have greatly reduced state

|expenses. Furthermore, the Repub-

lican leadership in Indiana since 1940 has reduced taxes. Both “the state property tax and the gross substantially

income tax were

|lowered. These are facts, Governor,

{and you cannot fool the people. We

all know that your party, the New

* | Deal, both in Indiana and in the na-

San, stands for Rigs spending am

‘extravagance.

DAILY THOUGHT

And the priest said unto them, Go in peace; before the Lord is your way wherein ye so—Judges 18:6.

In

were no doubt some of them before |

‘ashingfon’ By Peter Edson

\

wisHmNGTON, July 6—If the - speed and the number of wartime -ofders, regulations, schedules, amendments, interpretations and explanations rolling from the duplicating machines of Washington ‘has seemed to you a hit overwhelming, the answer is yes, it is. ¥ For without anyone’s being particularly aware of it, a new law-making machine which is the equal of congress has been set up by the war production board and it is turning out— well, maybe not laws in the strictly. Harvard -law school sense of the word—but orders which are the equivalents of laws, and if you think they're not laws, Mister, just try getting funny with a few of them and see how fast they can put you in jail, fine you by the century or grand, take away your hoarded stockpiles and in general put you temporarily bus completely out of business till you've made amends and promised to be good.” The average two-year term of congress, during the last couple of decades, has ground out from 500 to 1000 laws per biennium. This is considered as a firghtful enough accomplishment by the average citizen, though it makes business good. for the lawyer fraternity and frightens many otherwise normal parents into sending their progeny to law schools instead of exposing them to useful trades like bricklaying or truck driving.

It's Law, Brother, Law!

BUT THERE'S NOTHING slow motion about thé ° way those orders go rolling along at WPB. When an order is about to get born at the war agencies; the - chief of the industry branch usually calls in his priorities expert, and they figure out what they have to do. They. call in representatives of the industry af» fected, and discuss it with them. No one is ever 1 per cent satisfied, but pretty soon a formula is worked out which causes the least inconvenience. Then the WPB lawyers draft the order in good whereas style. When drafted, the order goes to a clearance committee of army, navy and WPB brass has which sits four or five hours a day and okays or rejects. Y If okay, the order is published, and that’s all where £ is to it. People—meaning those inanimate things called corporations—who may get hurt by these ore ders can appeal back to the WPB and maybe get relief. But there is no place where a people or a Sorparation can go and say, “Hey, you can't do that me!” The authority to issue these orders is all pased on a law or an executive order which is based on 2 law, giving the WPRB or any of its agencies the right to hand down these decrees.

Way Up There in the Hundreds

IN THE TWO YEARS since June 30, 1940, that WPB and its OPM, SPAB and NDAC predecessors have been functioning, there have heen issued between 1000 and 1500 of these directives, rules, orders, amend ments, interpretations, definitions, repeals and xs planations. No one knows exactly how many there have been, The serial numbers don’t mean anything, for a log of orders that get written are never approved, The explanations don’t change the original orders - they apa, though the interpretations and amendments do

The number of these orders now in effect is well over 500.

And they're all perfectly legal, friends, they're all perfectly legal,

A Woman's Viewpoint By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

LONELINESS IS A universal affliction, sparing no one and, ; strange to say, felt most bitterly) in crowded places. It takes three forms. First, that which besets us in every-day life when we are separated from our companions. Children. away at school for the first time suffer this kind of nostalgia, Individuals who move from familiar places where they have lived half a life~ time, or mothers obliged to leave their babies for a few days, or boys in army camps who have never been away from their families, or men who are forced to leave the women they love—all these are victims, They feel the fleeting pain which hurts but leaves the depths untouched. Another and worse loneliness is the wall of silence which shuts us from our dead. Against that barrier we fling ourselves in vain, aware gt last of the narrow limitations of a physical world. There is no need to enlarge upon the experience here. Those who know such frustration will understand its every pang and

those who know it not will he unable to comprehend even the least of them,

The Third Is the Worst .

THE THIRD, MOST dreadful loneliness is sutlored by the person who lacks faith in his God and so can have no faith in his fellows. This form of trouble is No respecter of persons. It afflicts alike the very rich and the very poor, At its worst, we know .it when our hearts shrink fo peanut size while we bh . after the baubles of Vanity Fair. It eats into the souls of men who are bent only en getting power, prestige and money, into the souls of women who use their lives to promote themselves. It tortures the aimless, the selfish and the mean, who never find heart’s ease. So, when you look at it thus, it is obvious that we build our own prisons. Every cruel, every evil act, every ignoble impulse adds another stone to the dungeons in which our little souls are confided. The loneliest hearts are those who have voluntarily hidden themselves far away from God or good—it makes no difference which name is used—because when that is done the individual :loses forever the power to communicate with his kind, and that is the Witimate disaster.

Questions and Answers

(The Indianapolis Times Service Bureau will saswer ny question of fact or information, not involving

cannot be given. Address The Dimes Bureau, 1013 Thirteenth st., Washington, ». co)

Q—What is Freedom House? : * A—An institution, headed by. —

a aunt ih given oh March 19, with Wendell L. yillk principal speaker. “a

Q—Is there any federal Iw: which a birth certificate is the only Froat the United States? A—No; but many officials of private demanding birth ‘certificates as proof and few will accept any other proof.

: @ How id the leiged srise Shut less rib than woman?

A—From the biblical acount i G