Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 September 1942 — Page 18

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The Indianapolis Times

ROY W. HOWARD “RALPH

President MARK FERREE WALTER. LECKRONE- * Business Manager Editor (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER) Owned and published | daily (except Sunday) by . The Indianapolis Times Publishing Co., 214 W. Maryland st.

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states, 75 cepts a month; ,others, $1 monthly.

\ ‘ Give Light ard the People Will Find Their Own Way

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1942

ACEY-DEUCY TRAPPED, five decks down on the sinking Yorktown-—a chief petty officer and two enlisted men. A telephone still links them with the ‘upper decks. Over it the petty officer says: “Sure. We know you ean’t get us out, but we got a helluva. good acey-deucy game goin’ down here. ... . When you sink her, put the torpedoes up forward. We don’t want it to last too long.” That is a story of our navy that needs no lily-gilding from this swivel chair.” But it seems to typify the readiness of our fighting men to face death with chins up and colors flying and no whimpers. There was something of that in the old over-the-top exhortation of the first world war: “Come on, you -, do you want to live forever!” You get it again in the flippancy of those staccato wireless conversations among fighter pilots in life-or-death action. And in the language of motor-torpedo-boat men in the Philippines, as recorded in W. L. White’s new and terrific book, “They Were Expendable,” Or in the 20th century eloquence that celebrates a victory: “Sighted sub, sank same”; “Scratch one flat-top.” We'll never lose this war from any lack of guts and sangfroid among the men who are fighting it for us.

THE SYMPHONIC CHOIR HE Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, which has the distinction of being one of the country’s outstanding sym-

L phonic-choral groups, is having its wartime difficulties.

The 225-voice choir, which appears frequently with our symphony orchestra, has lost many of its’male members to the armed services. Elmer A. Steffen, the widely known director of the choir, has now made an appeal for male singers to enroll with the choir during its rehearsals. Every music-loving citizen of the community will ap-

* preciate Mr. Steffen’s appeal and hope that the ranks of

the choir will be filled rapidly and ably.

7

TEMPORARY FREEZE LBERT 8. GOSS, master of the National Grange, has made a suggestion -to congress which we think has much merit. Instead of rushing to write long-range: tegllation on _prices and wages. before the president’s Oct. 1 deadline, Mr. - Gess suggests; congress would do well to pass a temporary . law freezing all prices—including farm prices—and all wages for 60 to 90 days. That would give congress time to draft, consider carefully and enact a detailed anti-inflation program of its own. It may be suspected that Farm Leader Goss is mot without guile. His plan would also give farm lobbyists more time to work on congress. But 60 or 90 days hence the November elections will be history. By then, there is reason to hope, the senators and representatives will be

in a frame of mind to act with more consideration for the

welfare of the whole country and less for the demands of either farm or labor pressure blocs. The usual pulling and hauling between these power! ful groups is going on in the present deadline rush. The result may easily be something much worse than Senator Brown’s administration bill, which isn’t too good itself. Organized

. labor’s approval of that measure has made organized agri-

culture not unnaturaly suspicious that, under it, the president might be tender when stabilizing wages and tough when stabilizing farm prices. So the farm bloc is crying for a new definition of parity, taking farm labor costs into account and permitting farm prices to go still higher, and many members of congress: are listening with sympathy. The chances for thoroughly good long-range legislation by Oct.'l are practically nil. The chances for: thoroughly bad glong-range. legislation by that date are considerable. Yet” even if Mr. Roosevelt had never announced his deadline, the need ‘would be just as great for quick and positive action by congress to ‘stop the menaging advance of price inflation. A law ireeting all prices and wages where they are for two or three months would be quick, positive and effecIt couldn't seriously hurt either, organized labor or organized agriculture. To be sure, it would provide no relief for manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers who are being squeezed against their price ceilings by commodity and labor costs, but the Brown bill doesn’t hold out much hope of relief for them either. And the temporary freeze would provide congress with time to do the careful, thorough job: which is nits duty,

HE WORKS FOR U. 8, T00

N THE annual lists of Americans earning the largest salaries and bonuses, Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood proucer, habitually, like Abou Ben Adhem, leads all the rest. “This year the movie king is listed as receiving in salary and bonuses a total of $704,425. : As we reckon the new tax bill, upwards of $600, 000 of that amount will go to the United States treasury. By that ckoning, six-sevenths of Mr. Mayer belongs to the governnt, and only one-seventh of Mr. Mayer belongs to Mr, fayer and is family and his retainers. ty Morgenthau ought to wish Mr. Mayer aud er Such big i income earners a Jon life and good health. °

" “

, (DAY—AND SCRAP ; E District of Columbia Sunday school. association i"

BURKHOLDER | Editor; in U. 8. Service

By Westbrook Pegler

ty, 3 cents a copy; deliv-

| Mail rates in Indians, | $4 a year; adjoining|

> | RILEY 5801

Fair Frou

‘NEW YORK, Sept. 18.—If it is scrap we are wanting, Mr. Presi-

dent, ancl not old rusted iron and |

chicken wire and broken screwdrivers but good, live steel, there is a deposit of it, amounting to

© serving no necessary purpose, in the forin of automobile bumpers, which probably could . little more than the asking and 2 the work of collection. These bumpers each weigh from around 10 pounds to as much as 25 pounds and there are two to every one of the 28 million passenger automobiles in the United States. | These! figures come from the man who used to be my own automobilemonger, an old hand at the trade, who naturally is up on the number of cars a-rolling at any give time on the streets and highways of the country. At this time, of course, many of them are up on blocks or, anyway, retired, but for the purpose of this discussion may be counted

among the 28 million, rolling or not, because they

all carry two bumpers, fore and aft. My old automobilemonger says he doesn’t see why they -couldn’t be . . Fortunately for the/purposes of the collection here suggested, some manufacturers, ‘and I have Chrysler in mind at the moment, went in for enormous bumpers in their last models before Pearl Harbor and conversion. They give a car a lot of style, but rags are royal raiment when worn for freedom’s sake and the car which has sacrificed its bumpers for the scrap collection need feel no humiliation.

They Give No Protection, Anyway!

MY MONGER'S ‘ESTIMATE of about 300,000 tons of steel, and fine steel, too, is based on the minimum of 10 pounds per bumper and two to a car, plus a little dividend from the heavier ones. He says he is being conservative, at that, because the average would be much heavier than the minimum. There is really no necessity for bumpers. In a real smash they give no protection, anyway, and are not intended to. They are intended only to protect the fenders, front and rear, in small scrapes at low speeds, and to prevent damage to the grill-work and radiators, also at low speeds. Given reasonably decent and conscientious driving and assuming that there will be much less driving from now on, anyway, and, for economy’s sake, as we have been seeing in the rationed states of the East,

at a little under 30 miles an hour, the bumper’s

reason for being begins to be ain't. Sometimes it deflects some clown Who doesn’t know how or is too lazy to dock correctly at the curb or on the lot and bangs up the car next to him, but even in such cases more often the clown bunts a

stove in the other guy’s fender and gets away, anyway. |

And Eliminate the Profit, Too

THERE IS AN AWFULr lot of steel that could be salvaged off live automobiles as they stand right now without any sacrifice of their essential purpose to get people where they have to go and get them back. Many of them carry two wells in the forward fenders of the accommodation of: the spares, includ-

ing steel spare wheels and steel brackets. Nobody ever really needed two spares except on long tours in the desert and inasmuch as touring is

.out and considering the probably quick disappearance

of the extra spare, well, there are maybe 20 pounds of steel from wheel and bracket doing no good on each car so designed.

If you think anything of the idea, Mr. President,

couldn't you fix it so as to eliminate from the collection any thought that the junkman or collector would make a lot of money for his trouble in. handling the job? He should get something, to be sure, for that is his line of work, and other civilians who do things for the government are paid. But it sours people to believe that anyone along the line in any of these collections is profiteering on. their free contributions, whereas they will let go gladly if they know it is going to the shipyards and tank plants free of any lug. Three hundred thousand tons of steel doing nothing but look nice and trying, mostly without success, to stand of! the carelessness of bum drivers, and we ae thinking about ornamental doorknobs and drastic steps.

The Facts on India By S. Burton Heath

. CLEVELAND, Sept. 18.—The monsoon season is ending in India.

Japanese armies, poised on the

border, are ready to spring into action. They count upon the antiBritish disturbances, which are worse than censorship has told us, to expedite their conquest of that rich land. To the. Japanese, anxious to bring all of the East under their rule, India would be a prize hardly second to China. Many of us do not realize that, in addition to the natural resources of which we know, India has become the eighth industrial counry of the world. . To the united nations, already under terrific handicaps in our attempt to preserve democracy, the loss of India would be another awful blow. Unless some settlement of the British-Indian controversy is worked out soon-—if, indeed, it is not already too late—the task of saving India will be well high impossible. On principle, Americans sympathize with the Indians and feel that they are entitled to their freedom. If India falls, because that freedom has not been

granted, there will be an eruption of violent criticism |

of the British.

Let's Not Be Too Hard

BEFORE THAT HAPPENS, if it must, let us have in mind certain facts which, while they do not excuse British pre-war errors, are very pertinent now. Most important is this: Whatever was true before the war, Creat Britain cannot turn India loose now. India is not a nation, as we think of nations, nor are Indians a race. There is no unanimity on any single matter. There are 562 Indian states, the largest with 16 million citizens, There are 24 languages, each spoken

| by as many as a million Indians.

‘Two Indians out of three are Hindus. One out of four is a Moslem. The two hate each other with an all hatred. While the Hindus greatly outnumber the Moslems, the latter are better fighters, and could prolong civil war for years. The Hindus insist upon freedom of India as an entity. Thus they would rule Moslems by force of

There is no way in which Britain now can turn India loose without provoking # War between thege two major factions, FES"? Washinton has. ‘been exploring every

which would in- | |

- maybe as much as 300,000 tons,

had ior’

te The Hoosier Forum I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.—Voltaire.

“LET'S KEEP UP THE GOOD BLOOD DONOR WORK” By Jesse M. Evans, 421 E. 9th st. To the Allison employees: In behalf of those serving at the front wherever that may be, I wish to thank the employees of -Allison for their wholehearted response to the blood donor drive now in progress at the plant. Our goal has always been 100 per cent, let's keep itup..... Let's help our fighting forces and give them that added insurance. We are in a real war—so let us act like it. This need is urgent. Give today, for tomorrow could.be too late. Remember, we have already experienced too little too late. » ” » “SO BOARD THINKS CHIEF IS IRREPLACEABLE, EH?” By Cyril Brown, 1733 N. Meridnan st. So the board of safety thinks that the police chief is “indispensable and irreplaceable.” They haven't interceded for any other police officer. There is considerable question among the taxpayers’ minds about whether Mr. Morrissey could be replaced. Should a: Republican victory come to pass in November what will the police department do with a new man in. as chief? , , . ” s » “DIRT FARMERS BETTER MANAGERS THAN OWNERS” By W. F. Smith, 66 N. 14th ave, Beech Grove We have noted, without {fully understanding why, that some farm homes along the highway have a prosperous look while others, with much the same type of soil, topography, etc., look anything but prosperous. One of your. readers advanced the theory that jt, the contrasts, was mostly the absentee landlords who make money ih industry, buy farms and keep them both as investments and show places, while a farmer who owns his own farm cannot make enough

(Times readers are invited to express their these columns, religious controversies excluded. Make your letters short, so all can Letters must

views in

have a chance. be signed.)

money to spend it on improving his homestead,

= This may be partially true, but we are inclined to think that many of these “real dirt” farmers are better farm managers than owners. When working ror a big guy or a boss who can fire them they must keep on their toes; but if left to run their very own farm as they see fit they may have a tendency to let things drift, and put off until tomorrow things that should be done instantly.

In other words the two farm lands might be ‘equally productive, but it is more often the temperament of the farmer, than the economic factor that makes one farm pay and the other fail. This is not the same case in every owned farm, because we personally know prosperous farmers whose homes are show places in the township. But lke mechanics in town there are indifferent lazy ones and first class ones. And since it is human nature to want to be lazy there will generally be more of the poorer than of the latter prosperous energetic farmers. The facts are there is inequality, too much so, in what a farmer gets out of his labor, over what he buys but if the economies of farming were as the reader suggests, then no farm could make enough to maintain its buildings and itself without a generous subsidy . either from a benevolent landlord or a paternalistic government, And again this is not so. As for the unending beef about farmers not making a living we seriously question this on.one fact

of the poor farms are not all de-

serving of that lot, but these in-

mates are the cast-offs of industry, cast-off farm hands or the tradesmen. This it seems is at least an eloquent testimony as to which groups get the “breaks” in our economic system. In point of fact we would be willing to take on any farmer's argument that he is not one of the most favored group of producers in the world and yet he is not entirely justly handled in our prof and loss system, on _ 8 : “SCRAP IS NOT STANDING IDLE IN JUNKYARDS!”

By Paul V, Armstrong, Tz Pleasant st, apt. 2

In Mr. Engle's letter in The Times Sept: 16, he shows ignorance of the facts in regards to the .government’s drive for scrap metal to satisfy the ferocious appetite of our war industries. As Donald Nelson pointed -out in one of his recent speeches, this

‘scrap is not standing idle in the

junkyards but is mov in an endless stream to the blast furnaces and foundries throughout the nation. This is evidenced by the fact that, since Pear] Harbor something like 10 million tons of scrap has been collected ‘and utilized by our war effort. However, this is not enough. More and more must be collected

daily, Since there are probably |]

thousands of junkyards in this country it is only natural that they

are not all bare .of scrap iron at}

the same time. Most yards turn over their inventories every 15 days, But to quote Mr. Nelson; “When the scrap reaches the junkyard it is then in the river and ‘this river flows to the very doors of our nation's great foundries.” So I say to you, Mr. Engle, give your 200 pounds of metal and trust that your old Uncle Sammy will make a big bomb to squash Hitler.

» » y

alone; show me any farmer worth| “HERE 18 THE STEEL

his salt as a man who ever died in ‘a county poor house. The inmates

Side Glances—By Galbraith

dil!

SITUATION, IN BRIEF” By a Steel. Man, Indianapolis The layman is in danger of becoming confused, in all the discussion about steel output, if he ignores the big difference between ingot tonnage and the weight of finished plates, sheets, bars, pipe, wire, rails and other forms. Here is the situation, in brief. The national capacity now is approaching 92 million tons a ‘year. At the end of 1941 it was 88 million tons. That is the capacity to make ingots—steel in its crude form. Presently we are turning out seven million tons a month. These seven million tons of ingots make only about five million tons of shapes. But we need nine million tons of shapes. So, with the world's

greatest steel capacity, we are pro-|

ducing little more than half as much steel as we should have, The steel industry privately questions this interpretation. It believes that if steel were more efficiently distributed, there would be little or no shortage. That may be. But if, with the distribution we achieve, we lack 44 per cent of the steel we need, then there is a steel shortage ior all prac. tical purpsoes.

DAILY THOUGHT O give thanks, unto the Lord; for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever.~Chronicles 16:34. . 0» OPEN THY gate of mercy, graci- . ous God!

my aol Bc trough, wee |

a PR Ow

: By William Philip Simms

| serious aohpomS depression hit the isl

Filipinos

‘ ¢

ASHINGTON, Sept. 18.— , Nine months under the Japanese have made the people of the Phil- a ippines more intensely pro-Amer-ican than they ever were in all” their 44 years of partnership with § Uncle Sam. This I am able to state on the completely reliable testimony of an eyewitness who recently managed to epcape to. China. Two reasons are given. First, a ds with ine" Japs, flattening out all classes. Second, where the. Americans were the friends and associates of the. Filipinos, the invaders are their masters. And in no uncertain tones. "Neither of these things sits well with the islanders, : For more than four decades they had enjoyed steadily . rising standards of living. From something like the

| Japanese, .or average oriental, level, the Filipinos

had risen to the highest in the Far East, They had become accustomed to wearing the best clothes, eating the best food, riding in the best automobiles and .

. | owning refrigerators, radios and the other typically, | American gadgets.

Rice, Rice, Rice—The Japs, Insist

WITH THE APPEARANCE of the Japs, all this began to change. The Philippines are largely agricul= tural and the new masters promptly insisted on & different kind of produce. Instead of sugar, the big crop, the Japs want rice. The American. market for copra, hemp, tobacco and other island products dise appeared, of course, and while the Nipponese are using some of them, they name their own prices in paper pesos printed in advance in Japan, Printing-press money ordinarily means inflation’ and rising prices. But not in the Philippines. The Japs brought only 60,000,000 paper pesos with them, and they refuse to increase the figure. This has made for deflation. The things the farmer has to sell bring low prices, but, even so, the city worker can’t buy them because he is now jobless and broke. : So the Philippines ‘are suffering. the worst depres= sion in their history. Meantime the Japs are behaving L. quite as if they expect -to remain in possession fore ever. They have taken over some of the larger aparte ment houses, office i and other properties on 50-year ‘leases. »

Down Goes the Living Standard

THE JAPANESE ARE being careful to treat the Philippines as an “independent” country without any American strings whatever, This fits in perfectly with their “new brder in East Asia” policy. ‘The idea is to’ set up a number of puppett regimes on the order of ' Manchukuo which, while “sovereign” on paper, are run entirely from Tokyo. This obviously calls for a drastic lowering of the" standard of living in the Philippines. Patently, the Japanese are not going to pay higher wages to the Filipinos than to workers in Japan — notoriously among the poorest paid workers in the world. If the: invasion is to be permanent, therefore, the Filipinos must quickly unlearn their American ways and begin to educate themselves to a diet of fish and rice. And they know it. ~

What They're Really Thinking pie

EVEN A MINOR ACT of sabotage like cutfing & telephone wire means the firing squad. Lesser infringements mean being strung up by the wrists for three or four days to a tree or a pole. ' When finally cut down, the poor devil is left lying where he falls. When friends or relatives come (o pick him up, they often find only a lifeless body. The Filipinos, however, are not making’ any great outcry. They dare not. They would be. shot if they did, ruthlessly and speedily. : ‘But the day when Manila hewspapers printed .. little item about Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo, everybody seemed to have read about it at once, Men in the streets forgot the Japs, threw their hats ing

“the air and shouted hooray. There were so many of °

them that the guards were helpless. That shows what , Filipinos are thinking. - .

Peter Edson is on vacation,

A Woman's Viewpoint . By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

4 ¥

ACCORDING TO GENERAL’ opinion, the war won't be won by’ wishful thinking. Right! And may" we add that it won't be won by hard drinking, either, There® seems to be quite a little of both now going on, ° Our approach to the subject of increased drinking is interesting, but disturbing! With blood in our eye we charge boldly up to the question. Then, apparently une able to face the facts, away we creep, to study some= thing less frightening. We're in a big, bad war, folks. In fact, it's so, big and so bad that lots and lots of people will try” to take periodic flights from reality. There are seve eral ways of doing it. Buf since Nogh first monkeyed"with the juice of the grape, “ohe little snort, fol lowed by several more” has been regarded by many: as the easiest method. \ In a world already drunk on blood we can exe

pect an increase in other forms of intoxication,

It’s part of the price we must pay for our sins of omission. .

But Not Another Dry Lawl | :

THE USUAL “EAT, drink and be merry for tos morrow we die” attitude, becomes exaggerated when actual death is everywhere imminent. There are moments when men and women feel they must run away from themselves and from the Present-..whep courage seems no longer possible. Let's not scold them for that. Everybody keeps & little private sanctuary into which he can slip when the world becomes unbearable. Sports, books, movies, card games and love are all escape mechanisms for certain people. Others get drunk. I'm sure I don’t know the answer to the hard. drinking problem, the country faces. Not anothep prohibition law stirely, for the last one ended disase. trously for sober Americans, \ But it seems to me ‘a time for the sensible zens of every community to take a hand. Drinking on trains could and should be s —and, right now, we should feel ‘that ‘the most patriotic gesture the civilian can to. the so dier-is to offer him a drink: of Also civilian might atk himself how much his. war wo is slowed down by resort to ‘the bottle,

N+

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