Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 February 1943 — Page 10

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ianapolis “Times|F

RALPH BURKHOLDER | Bditor, in U. B, “Servips |

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Ea RILEY 6561

Give son and the People with | Find Their On Way a

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1043 -— — — COSTLY LESSON ¢

T was only by rare good fortune that this state escaped the most awful tragedy in Indiana history when the state ospital at Evansville burned Tuesday morning.

That the death toll among 1180 mentally ill men and

women and their attendants crowded in that 50-year-old firetrap was not 100 or 200 or 500, was due in large measure to the competence and the calm heroism of Dr. John Hare d to the devotion and courage of the members of his ff, at least one of whom gave her life to save her patients. Yet the Evansville hospital was one of the best of the diana institutions for mentql patients. The spectre of e in the night haunts most of the others—with even eater menace than that which Dr. Hare fought so vigorly at Evansville for the past 10 years. Last N ovember this newspaper called attention to me 0%: the conditions that exist in those institutions, and 0 some of the hazards that confront them. Governor hricker, in hig message to the legislature this year, warned at “no more important affairs” faced the house and senate an the co:recting of these conditions. They have not been corrected. 3 ; ; ® & =» “ ¥. . » LMOST without exception they are understaffed by ; overworked and underpaid employees. In the Evanswille hospital, where Dr. Hire attempted against great obstacles to maintain a high standard of personnel, both in mbers and in quality, conditions were better than in ‘some of the other institutions. Yet the heroic woman who ed in the flames Tuesday morning had been working 65 hours a week for a salary of $95 a month—and paying for her own beard and lodging. + It is not surprising that institution employees, ‘atiracts ed by higher industrial wages, have been leaving their jobs in large numbers, or that they are hard to replace. ~ It is true that under wartime restrictions it will be difficult and costly to improve the buildings and ‘equipment

these hospitals, although some need it so urgently as to.

ustify emergency construction. That makes it all the more important that the highest possible standards be maintained for employees now. Indiafia has had a million-dollar lesson in the folly of neglect. We can be thankful it was no worse. And we can act to protect the other danger spots, rig t now, before it 4s too late, while the legislature is still in session.

Let's not trust the lives of these helpless people to

NEED FOR MORE MONEY .

DROSECUTOR SHERWOOD BLUE has asked the legislature to add a total of $15,000 a year to the amount the ‘county council legally can make available to run the proseieutor’s office in Marion county. The request seems wholly justified. Right now Mr. Blue's office has at least three very important investigations in progress—investigations that ‘might have saved Marion county 10 or 20 times th~ $15,000 he asks if they could have been made a year ag. or two ‘years ago. But he is able to employ only one full time, and ‘a couple of part time, investigators under the present budget Jimitations, | | His office is handling about 60,000 legal cases a year ‘at a Cost of about $1 a case. He asks, in effect, that this be ised. to about $1.25 a case so the job can be done better. ‘Since 1937, when the present budget was set up, Mar‘fon county population has grown by probably 100,000, a \growth that-has added heavily to the load on this office.

Approval of this request by the legislature does not’

quire that the money be spent, nor turn over a blank heck to the prosecutor. It does permit the county council, thich at present is by no means inclined to spend money

oolishly, to grant this office a larger budget if the council |

‘members feel a larger budget is needed.

;ROSS” VS. “NET” INCOME T LAST American business is beginning to think with ** = jts head! Witness the Johns-Manville' Corp. adverisements telling the public, its customers and employees

what the company’s balance sheet shows for the first full

r of wartime operation. Gross income $108,500,000. Salaries and wages $37,00,000. Taxes $16,500,000. Other costs of doing business : ison Rainy-day reserves $3,500,000. Dividends 000. ‘What a different picture that is from the one conjured ap by the demagog who only refers to ‘‘gross” income and pores the “net”—the figure which tells the real story. Johns-Manville had a large total (gross) income but e breakdown shows 34 per cent going into pay envelopes, per cent to the tax collector, and only 2 per cent to the tholders whose venture capital made the business and

As other corporations see the wisdom of going to the ‘with this sort of proof that the profit has been out of war, distortion of the American business picdemagogs, Poliicians and soap-boxers will become of a chore.

GOD'S CHILLUN GET 3 PAIRS A YEAR

D like to see the axis propagandists try to suck any comfort out of this one:

The United States, though rapidly butldin up a war | than that of all the rest of fF is

admicaol Teb. Sleore Spelvin, American, thought ey MeNuts to you McNutt

because if you think you are going to snag me away from the tender

"embrace of my dear ones around | my family hearthside so I have to :

go 'way off to some goffasaken hole of creation to make steamboats and sleep in some triple-

deck flea-bag with a lot of strangers, who maybe

some of them don't smell any too fresh, and live on dogs and hamburger-rye well, brother, leave me ask you how does this affect Harry Hopkins because from all I hear he never lived so high in his life with a nice free apartment in the White House for he ang his

| brige at my expense and the mest dough he ever got ‘and still he has the gall to print an article that we

Spelvins will have to do whatever he says and we can’t eat this and we can't wear that because we are so short of manpower and how about all those for-eign-talking bums down in Washington what they

| call them economists and they come around and they

tell congress how the only way to defeat the aggressors you have to quit your regular job and break up your home but what about those bums? Why don’t they quit their jobs and go to work?

'Hire Economists That Speak U. S.' A

1 MEAN if we have got to hire economists to tell the Spelvins what to do well why don’t you get some economists that speak United States:and not talk like a bunch of comedians and the regular American economist will anyway try to figure out how you can buy yourself a house and lot and an extra suit of clothes and the ever-loving war department she ddesn’t have to do the washing but send it to the laundry and a few bottles of drinking whisky for merrymaking on Christmas and anniversaries whereas those foreign. talking bums all they can think of everybody has got to be poor because the Americans are spoiled and you can’t have a little house or a flat all to yourself but everybody chum up and papa goes to Wichita and: mamma she gets sent to Bridgeport and the kids they go to some school where they all have to learn to be a grease-monkey and the first thing you know, well, the old man gets lonesome and the old lady may be too and so the lallygagging begins. 1f that is your idea why McNuts to you, McNutt, and my regards to Harry Hopkins if you will be so kind.

{Leave Me" ‘Ask You. Out and Out’

AND FURTHERMORE, McNutt, ' while we. are taking our ‘skirt do n leave me ask you out and out and no beating around the bush like a willow the wisp instead of; answering. straight out from the shoulder supposing : say ‘all right I am patriotic and I will do my bit but I will be damned if I will pay $150 or even $5 out of my wages to any muscle from some racketeering union or huy any life insurance from them, so the racketeer’s no-account bum of a no-good loafer of a chiseling son will get 40 or 50 thousand bucks a year out of the premiums and I can buy the same insurance 10 times as cheap a hundred places right here in town but I have to join the union because you say I have to go to work in the steamboat plant and before I can join I-have to buy this hijacker’s insurance or

-otherwise you are going to stick me in the army, be-

cause if that is the idea, well, brother you are Just out of your mind, what I mean.

'Nothing Against You'

PERSONALLY, McNUTT, I have not positively got anything against you, personally in any way shape or form and maybe you are trying to do the best you can but if you are fixing to sheve the Spelvins around why I might as well tell you to get down to brass tacks and stop poisoning the issue with evasions which only stifle the sap-roots of confidence because it is either one thing or other and if we are hard up for manpower, well, Spelvin is your man but on the other hand you take where a printer, for instance, he only works five seven-hour days a week and if he works four hours overtime this week he gets laid off one whole day next week to make a day's work for someone and the same way in the railroad business and what about all those slowdowns wasting time and bums getting rummed up so they lay off Mondays to cool out and guys just stalling around army construc tion jobs because a carpenter gets fined, he moves a ladder so a laborer has to move it for him and you call that labor's gains so I have to bust up my lovebower and go to Seattle or Bangor and eat in the quick-and-dirty while Harry Hopkins and his everloving, they get caviar and champagne wine and free rent and laundry and room service and still he has got the gall to be telling me has he, McNutt? ; Well, like I said in the first place, McNuts to you McNutt and two is eight.

In Wathinglont

By Peter Edson

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10—In a well-camouflaged, highly restricted one-story brick building in the woods of the corps of engineers’ training center at Ft. Belvoir, Va., is the camouflage laboratory of the U.S. army, Here camouflage is tested before it is used in the field, Along one wall of the model room you can, in one sweeping . glance, take in the Aleutian islands, the Belgian Congo, the American desert, the Solomon. islands, Libya and Panama. Every ene of these regions has distinctive . coloration, distinctive lights and shadows, and the camouflage for all must of course be different. : To bring each of these remote spots to. the camou-

‘flige laboratory in Ft. Belvoir, artists have labored

painstakingly to build old-fashioned dioramas—miniature, table-sized, three-dimensional replicas of typical arctic or tropical scenery. Hach diorama is perfect as to detail, to lighting effects and coloring. Even the Intensity of the sunlight and ‘glare is accurately reproduced. When a new paint job is to be done on a fank—sayit’s for Libya—a scale model of the fank is built in

perspective, It is then placed in the Libyan diorama. |

10—1 Walking to the office today, |

_|sort of help the rest of u

4 ° The Hoosier Forum I wholly disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. —=Volizire,

“WRITING MALICIOUS LETTER AN ACT OF COWARDICE” By Bertha Blaylock, BR. BR. 8, Box 136 In regard to the article I had in The Times about mud and the (4. O. P. having to patch streets, I received a malicious letter. Is this permitted by the U. S.? Also, there was an article in the Hoosier Forum recently about The Times printing silly letters. Now, dear public, is it safer to discuss these things sensibly in The Times or write scandalous letters and send through the mail? An act of cowardice. What I said abofit mud and the G. O. P. was the truth. They] started at once doing the things that had been left undone for perhaps 12 years. . « «

2 2 8 “DO YOU THINK THE FAMILY IS ESSENTIAL?”

By G. T. Fleming Roberts; 6137 N. Meridian st,

Our , war ‘manpower commission has just indicated that the draft of married men with children is imminent, starting with a small, unorganized minority deemed nonessential, including curtain pleaters and members of that highly specialized profession of crystal gazers, adding that the list will be expanded from time to time until the army has drawn off 10 of our 14 fit men between the ages of 18-38, regardless of dependents. That means you and me, presuming that you, Pop, aren’t a labor union organizer, a bureaucrat or something equally ‘essential like that. Unfortunately, I T'm not a crystal gazer. Maybe you are, Pop, and can r be nighted fathers. ‘As I see it, without benefit of a crystal ball, a lot of us are going to lose our homes. Oh, I've heard about that one-year-after-discharge debt moratorium to give usa chance to catch up, but that's figuring finances the way the bureaucrats figure, and you and I know Hey

Pop,

Times readers are invited “to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded. Bacause of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 words, Letters must be signed.) Y

don’t use’ the same kind of mathematics we were taught. ’ Then thére’s another item: This allotment ‘for the suppert of our ‘family—a mighty generous offer as far as it went. But. the way I see it, Pop, our wives are going to have to go to work, ' What then about the kids? Are our habies to be taken eare of by volunteer OCD nurses? hat about the children of school age Who's going to give them a straight steer when they need it most? Do you think our being in the army is going to sort of cut down on juvenile delinquency? ' In other words, Pop, do you think the American family is essential? I've got my answer, but I'm trying to get yours. ‘s = = “THE PEOPLE WILL

'SPEAK AGAIN IN 1944”

By Charles W. Archey, 232 S. Illinois st. 1, like Mrs. Margaret Taylor of Fortville, R. R. 1, do not go to bat for anyone very often, but when it

has to do with a personal acquaintance, I donot hestitate to do so. For Mrs. Taylor's information, I would like to say I know this prejudiced, horse-and-buggy Republican member of congress personally and have always found him to’ be a square shooter. Also it seems to me that the people of his district (in which I formerly lived) must have found him the same way. Also, ‘TI would like to say, in the 1ast_ election this horse-and-buggy representative, running against the Hon. William H. Larrabee, one of the origipal ye, master” members

Side Glances—By Galbraith _

It is photographed, looked at from distance, The |: eli:

paint job is changed. . "Results are compared. The lights are changed to

represent morning, midday, rain, overcast or shine, | | ‘More comparisons. Ouf eof this detailed laboratory. :

testing, the ideal paint job is found for this particular fas, Then: te vapied: wn Se tanks o ie een sent to rica.

Waterbugs Go to War Se J

PEOPLE WHO have always considered outboard motor speedboat and” waterbug Tacing as the most: futile and suicidal of might’ { \ngineers has know that foe U8. amy ous of a

has

-| deserve that title

of congress, almost doubled his majority of the last election . . . and only needed 18 votes to have carried elby county, which is normally bb 1500 Democratic. All this in spite of the fact he is a horse-and-buggy, pre-Pear! Harbor isolationist. I, for-one, am in favor of more horse-and-buggy. representatives. Mrs. Taylor speaks in favor of the vast army of government workers, and how vital they are to the war effort. I wonder if she has ever beenn in one of our many statehouses and noticed how overworked they are. I, and I am only one of | many, think they are, in lots of cases, more needed for 1944 than for the war effort. . Mrs. Taylor states “Congress itself determines the need of their work.” I for one think the most | congress has been doing since 1833 to 1942 was to devise some way fo give the President more of their authority. The people have spoken and will speag again in 1944.

2 wu = “HOW RECONCILE WAR OF IDEALS IF DENIED AT HOME?”

By Rose Wright, 62 Downey ave. I have noted with concern the sentiment expressed by some correspondents in regard to the suggestion that Japanese-Americans might be brought into Indiana. Our government is urging communities to receive these people from relocation centers, assuring us 1 | that no one will be released who has not’ been thoroughly investigated and approved by the FBI. To question the sincerity and the judgment of the government on this issue is certainly not loyal ner cooperative, and might be interpreted as a subversive attitude. ; | In a day when industry and agriculture cry out for every ablebodied: person, is it patriotic or economically sound to remove upward of 70,000 loyal citizens from any opportunity for contributions in these fields? The current. issue, of Reader's Digest (February, 1043) carries an. ar-

‘| ticle which I recommend to all per-

sons interested in the question of the loyalty of these Americans who (even though their ancestors are Japanese) as much as do others of us whose ancestors are English, Irish, German,

. | Scandinavian er what have yeu.

The article is called “U. "8. 8oldiers with Japanese Faces,” and is

| written by Blake Clark, author of

the best-seller, “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Mr. Clark has lived in Hawaii

land is surely a more reliable au-

thority ‘on this subject than Hoosiers who have never known, let alone lived near, Japanese-Ameri-cans. : Is not anyone who questions the right of a fellow American to just

®| “ail men are created equal

| [they are endowed by their with

inall enable Hah; life, ¥

Fo WASHINGTON: Feb. 10; President Roosevelt, describMg his |» visit to West Africa at recent _ press conference, r that ; Buropesta have an ‘dominant - since before Columbus but there Sinea the Negro natives are. almost as illiterate, and live asprimitively, as centuries Which is + perfectly true, .And what a idle topic for a fireside. chat that would make, For here in the United States there are. some—both white people, and Negroes— who are: trying to stir up trouble: between the races. Some are doing it deliberately, knowing quite well . what they are doing. Others, sincere and well-megn-. ng Jon; 't know. what they are doing. They are Merely: Nevern all history, in any country, has any peopl eshown such tremendous advancement in so short a time as the Negroes of America, Economically, polit~: ically and socially their progress has been Smply

‘amazing.

In an troduction to “Negroes and the War” an: office of war information publication, Chandler Owen, one of the country’s leading: Negro publicists, sites some figures.

Gain in Many Fields

BETWEEN 1850 ‘and 1930, he chserves, the number of Negro clergymen rose from 12,158 to 25,034; of teachers from 15,008 to 54,439, of doctors from 208 to 3805, of dentists from 120 to 1%, of lawyers and judges from 431 to 1247. There are 680,000 Negro farm operators, 95 per

cent of them in the South. Exactly the same pers: centage of farm-security loans went to Negroes as’ to their white neighbors. ri Today, Mr. Owen goes on to say, Negroes own approximately $200,000,000 worth of church property and some 300 newspapers and periodicals. : About 100 colleges and universities are exclusively theirs and Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, many state universities ands similar institutions are open’ to them. In 1916, less than 1700 students were in Negro, colleges. By 1941 there were 40,000. In “Mein Kampf,” as Mr. Owen points out, Hitler said it was a “crime” for “bourgeois” Americans to educate Negroes. For Negroes, said the fuehrer, wers “half-apes” who .could only learn things “like a poodle,” hence could never really have a “scientific education.” .

Greater Than Any Other Country :

TO ALL THIS the Negro in America has given the lie. In a féw short decades this country has produced its Booker T. Washington, its George Wash-" ington Carvérs, its Judges Toney and Watson, its

4 “iad

Justices Myles Paige and Jane Beil, its law dean .

Hastie, its singers Robeson and Anderson, its writers Phyllis Wheatley and Richard Wright, and a whele long line of leaders in the professions, the arts and sciences. That there is still plenty of room for. improvement no informed person will deny. But it is equally undeniable that in no country on earth has a racial minority made such progress as have the 13 ,000,000 Negroes in the United States. Nor ‘has this been any accident. It didn’t Just’ happen It was the result of two things: First, the native intelligence of the negro himself, and, second, f the help of the white majority,

Secret Is Co-operation

RACIAL PREJUDICE and discrimination there are, of course. But that these have been gradually on the wane in the United States is shown by the figures above.

oon,

Moslems are prejudiced. against “Ohristian dogs.” A

Orientals are prejudiced against “foreign devils.” The people of any one country tend te be Prejutticad, against the people of every other country. Prejudice is older than civilization itself. Ana! it can be eliminated or minimized only by a long, process of education. Force will not destroy it. : The secret of the Afro-American’s unparalleled: progress in America is patient and systematic €0-0p=; eration between him and the white American. Those, who preach anything else are the enemy of both.

We the Women

By Ruth Millett

JUVENILE delinquency would: not be a national problem if per-, ents aceepted it as a Perasial problem, . A good start would be for par-; ents to judge whether or not they; are ‘delinquent parents.” They: might put the fellowing questions;

- to themselves, and see what their

honest answers are.

Are your children really a part ? of your home? They aren't if you A

keep them out of the living room for fear they will disturb its perfection, if you always push’ them outs. when you have guests, or if you decide all family, questions without considering their opinions. Don't run’ your house as a dictatorship, but rather as a small, wholesome democracy where. everyone has, some Bay. Do you know where your children are and with: whom they are when they ‘go out? They won's be” hanging around the streets at night if you take the trouble to keep, track fo them, Ho ai :

Faith in the Future re]

ARE YOUR attitudes toffard the war and your family’s part in it such as to make each member feel that he must be helping in every way he can; and such that everyone looks Torward to a better, world in the future? It’s almost inevitable that oe children will de velop a» “So what?” attitude if you sit around and predict that the war. will end with the world in & hopeless muddle. You must instill, in. your children a belief in the future. : Are your children free to be themselves at home; to talk their silly-to-your-ears slang, to play the music they like, instead of having to £0 to. some joint with) a jukebox to hear it? Aro you takin the rai Jo oink out o them. 1 da; ‘place ‘of

religion in » ward :

could ask ye