Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 May 1943 — Page 10

PAGE 10

The Indianapolis Times

ROY W. HOWARD President MARK FERREE Business Manager

WALTER LECKRONE Editor : (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER) ¢

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«8s RILEY 5551

t and ihe People Will Find Their Owen Way

. Member of United Press, Boripps - Howard Newspaper Alliance, NEA Service, and Audit Bugeau of Circulations.

Give Lioh

WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1943

t—

GEN. ANDREWS HE loss of Lt. Gen. Andrews, killed in a plane accident in Iceland, is incalculable. No man, unless it was Billy Mitchell, did more for military aviation in this country. And there was not a better air commander in ours or any other fighting service. That was the judgment of fliers. y America in sorrow salutes a great general and a great airman.

OPA AND THE PRICE OF PORK CHOPS RICES are fixed, in the United States, by the office of price administration, which has a national headquarters in Washington, nine major district offices, 48 state oMices and 3800 local offices, a good many thousand employpes and a budget running to quite a few millions of dollars.

RALPH BURKHOLDER | Editor, in U. 8. Service |

! a head on his kill because there is a ceiling on his

It has been a full-fledged agency since April, 1941, and has been regulating the prices of virtually all goods | and services since Mav, 1941, or approximately two vears. | It also has a considerable staff of press agents who like to | tell how its operation has saved the country a great many billions of dollars by keeping prices down, and preventing | inflation. and not letting living costs run wild the way they | did in the first world war, when we hadn't thought of such | an enlightened program of controlling them. In the first world war, which by September, 1918, had been going on almost exactly as long both before and after |

our own entry into it, as the second world war hag now, no attempt at all was made to control the prices of anything | soldrat retail, and it was, in fact, quite late in the war before | price ceilings finally were set on a few basic commodities, | such as wheat and steel. | So far as the price of beef steak or potatoes was con- | celned. it was whatever the grocer could ask and get, | thrayaiiont the whole of that war, and if prices were going | to run wild, why no one can deny they had adequate oppor- | tunity. ® » FELL, memory dims with the years, but something somehow didn’t seem to make sense about these prices that are so low under our complete regulation now and were so high under our complete lack of regulation then. Qo Miss Helen Ruegamer of The Times staff looked up the record. as it concerns Indianapolis, going back to the grocery advertisements of 1918 and comparing them withthe grocery advertisements of right now on items of food that are wholly standard and presumably are exactly the same now as they were 23 years ago, if you can find any: Odd as it may seem, the prices are nearly all higher how. with federal control, than they were in 1918, without | any control. Potatoes, that were 30 cents a peck in those unenlightened days, are 75 cents now and currently pretty gearce. Round steak, that was 33 to 33 cents in the 191% | grocery advertising, is 45 cents today. Butter is up 4 to | 10 cents a pound, eggs are 10 cents a dozen higher now, and | dressed chickens, which sold in 1918 for 42 cents a pound, | will cost vou 39 cents and up, today. You can get a lot of fancy figures from our government economists about the value of a dollar and the indices of living costs and the dangers of inflation, but the underlying fact remains that under federal regulation living costs have advanced step by step about as fast and about as far as they had advanced at the same stage of the first world war without any regulation, and the federal struggle against inflation has been, up to now, no better than a draw.

» ® » »

LOG JAM BROKEN

A T last the house of representatives has delivered itself of a tax bill. It ig not a good bill. Tt bears little regemblance to the simple, workable pay-as-you-go measure which the country has been demanding. But at least it breaks the log jam. Now the senate finance committee can go to work. Now, we hope, common gense will be brought to bear on a subject which for months has been obscured in a fog of ighorance and demagoguery generated by the treasury and the house ways and means committee. The Ruml-Carlson plan, which is what the country wants, was voted down again in the house, 208 to 202. Six weeks ago it lost by 215 to 198. Since then many congressmen have been home to talk with their constituents. We think it significant that yesterday the Rumi-Carlson bill had gained four supporters, while its opponents had lost nine votes. 8 * » = N addition, opponents of the Ruml-Carlson plan have made their chief argument against it look completely silly. They called it immoral because it proposes to “forgive” a year’s taxes to all income-tax payers. But they offered in its place the hopelessly complicated Doughton bill, which would have “forgiven” a year’s taxes to some 7,000,000 taxpayers and nearly half a year's taxes to the 37,000,000 others. And most of them voted for the Robertson-Forand

» »

compromise, the bill finally passed, which “forgives” about 75 per cent immoral, in order to beat the Ruml-Carlson plan, ness” is not the right word. taxes, and would require many to pay larger taxes this immediately increase the government's revenue.

They were willing to be 50 per cent immoral, oF even T, of course, no immorality is involved, and “forgive. duty to pay taxes. It would allow nobody to pay smaller basis, enable the treasury to collect at the source, and we

three-fourths of a year’s taxes. ; ». oo 0 S$ & 3 B! The Ruml-Carleon plan would relieve nobody of the year. It would put all who pay income taxes on a current We believe it will get fairer, move intelliger oh In the sen we hdpe it wil

Fair Enough By Westbrook Pegler

PHOENIX, Ariz, May 5—Phil Tovrea, one of the largest independent meat packers in the country, who former! packed about 90

per cent of the meat for the sol- |

diers in Arizona and, in normal times, supplied about 55 per cent of the state's civilian demand, has reduced his volume to 25 per cent of normal. Of that reduced amount, 40 per cent now goes to the army, which, one way and another, has large and hungry forces in the state. and the rest to the hotel and restaurant trade. He sends no meat whatever to the retail butcher shops. He formerly killed about 1200 head a week. Mr. Tovrea curtailed his operations in a rather spectacular way. He telegraphed the Arizona delegation in Washington that he was losing about $20

prices, but no ceiling on the price of cattle on the hoof and ran double-truck ads in the leading Arizona papers explaining his position to the public.

Questions Packer's Losses

I SENSE that the public does not clearly understand and the same goes for me, although I have interviewed two independents in Arizona and one of the big national packers in Chicago, but I do detect some skepticism concerning Mr. Tovrea's losses. One-fourth of his normal kill would be 300 head

9 ®

3 REALS oS

a week now and at the rate of $20 a head his loss would be $6000 a week. It is a little hard to believe that he would continue to take that loss just to keep his hand in. The explanation may be, however, that he has other interests which would help him to stay in action. He processes cotton seed and makes lint for explosives and cottonseed meal and extracts for oil for shortening and he also buys and fattens range cattle in this phase of his operations. He gets the benefit of the unrestricted price of meat on the hoof which he complains of in his role of packer. The cattle on the range in southern Arizona, and in Sonora, Mexico, is terribly sorry, Scrawny stock, somewhat worse than usual just now because of the drought last vear. The poor brutes are weak

and bony from undernourishment and it is necessary to ship them to grass to put enough meat on them to make them worth killing.

No Local Black Market

MR. TOVREA says there is a lot of offhand | slaughtering by thieves on the trails off in the desert and a lot of this stolen meat is being sold in black markets, but neither I nor any friend who has been

| up against the meat shortage in Arizona has dis-

covered any black market among the local butcher shops. | Indeed, most of the shops have very little meat at | all and the biggest retailer in Tucson savs there have been whole weeks in which he didn't have more than | a few pounds for his customers. In a small packers warehouse recently the entire | stock on the hooks could have been loaded inte & | small truck and much of it was just stringy scraps. | Chickens are not plentiful at any time and on a | recent Saturday night in Tucson there was a line of customers like that at an old-time world series inching |

toward a store where two men were killing and | sinte my American ancestry on both | E cleaning chickens in a gory mess following the un- | sides of the family dates as far back Then and only then will we be abl

expected arrival of a truckload of them in crates.

Sees Beef Famine by Fall

THE BEEF shortage for the retail trade has been | slightly relieved lately by shipments from the Fast, ! but that seems to be an emergency supply sent in to | make up for Tovrea's withdrawal from the trade and he predicts that there will be a beef famine in the | West by September on the basis of fat cattle now on hand and in prospect. One of the largest retail dealers with long experience and plenty of knowledge about the supply says | he thinks so, too, but blames the drought as well as the absence of a ceiling on the price of live cattle. | Nobody who examines Mr. Tovrea’s motives for | doing as he has done will get very far with any doubt concerning his patriotism. On the mantel shelf of his home which, incidentally, | is right beside and almost inside his packing house, is the picture of a young American army flier, his son, who was knocked down in the Dieppe raid and is! now a prisoner of war in Germany. * Another son, also an officer, is married to the! sister of Lt. Cmdr. Eddie, or “Butch” O'Hare, the | navy flier who knocked down six Japanese planes in | one day and received the medal of honor.

War Aims By William Philip Simms:

WASHINGTON, May 8.—The | taking of Mateur, oh the very edge | of the entrenched camp of Bizerte, | "is regarded here as & fulfillment of the inspired forecasts by Premier Stalin, Gen. Giraud, President Benes and other insiders that the long-promised invasion of Europe is close at hand. This makes it all the more imperative, spokesmen for the small nations are saying, that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, or their authorized military and diplomatic proxies, meet at the earliest opportunity and decide on an allied course of action in Europe. All hands, of course, are determined to smash Hitfer and the axis. Aside from that however, it is an open secret that relations between Russia and her Western allies are gravely beclouded. Moscow seems to be wondering what the others are going to do. And Washington, certainly, has no very clear idea of the course Russia intends to follow,

See 'Dynamite’ in Delay

SOVIET SPOKESMEN have staked out claims to large slices of territory in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. They indicate that certain governments not to their liking will have to be changed. There are reports that Russian influence will be pushed through the Balkans as far as the Bosporus, Much, if not everything, diplomatic eircles here are saying, depends on what the military situation is at the time of the armistice. That sort of thing is pure dynamite. Tt sounds as though there might be a sort of scramble for influence or power on the continent of Europe—a scramble which would inevitably become more fren zied as the hour of Germany's debacle grew nearer. If so, a worse tragedy even than the present cone flict might develop. The allies might fall out. And while they foolishly bickered over the bone, the Nazi dog might sneak in at the last minute and grab it from under their noses.

Allies Need Liaison Now

TO AVOID such catastrophe, the allie? should come to an understanding now. Hitler and Stalin understood a similar danger well enough in 1988. The meeting of the Soviet army and the Nazis midway in Poland was no accident. It had been agreed on in advance. Germans and Russiang met at the designated line and shook hands smilingly as official photographers from both sides snapped their

HOW, One it the ed war aims,

B INDIANAPOLIS- TIMES Also Back

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to the Mines!

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WORKABLE £ PAY-ASYOU-GO TAX PLAN |

THERE AND Swi NG

The Hoosier Forum

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

a m

“EDITORIAL TYPICAL AMERICANISM™

| wy Kentuckian Abroad, Indianapolis

May I compliment you and your] paper upon the excellence of your editorial, “The Coal Crisis,” which appeared on the first page of Saturday’s Times? It is typical of the form of Amerfcanism in which I believe, and!

as the vear 1835, I consider myself qualified to express an American opinion. J » » “NO DANGER OF LOSING ONE CHERISHED FREDOM" By J. Haggerty, Southport To Mr. Maddox:

(Times readers are invited to their these columns, religious controversies excluded. Because of the volume received, letters must be limited to 250 Letters must be

express views in

words. signed.)

to control persons like John L.

Lewis, William Green and all . « . |who incite men to strike.

If we do not do this or something just as drastic now, we will be in for a much longer drawn-out war and with a very grave possibility of losing. If the present situation

e| they get used to the idea and think

| the boys at the front and the fight{er on the home front. No dues to pay, no one to tell | them to slow down and above all no one to incite a strike, Think it over, workman, Also, make it compulsory for each [person making $50 per week or | more to buy at least one $50 or two |$25 war bonds each month. Of course, a lot of the workers will 'squawk about this at first, but after

what a future bank account they will have, then they will thank | Uncle Sam for putting the plan linto effect; for as we all know, the average man will not save money | voluntarily. This will also help to (prevent the inevitable post-war | depression. | One year's military training for |

| still exists, then and if we do win, every boy when he reaches the age

I have read some of your articles pur post-war efforts for a sane peace of 18 years—make the training

in The Times and I'm sure a great |

many Forum readers back me up when I say that your view is hot only prejudiced, but entirely wrong. Your self-contradiction has a dis-| tinctive quality. One day you say

politics have no place in the WAT {hie we have lost all hope of having

Remember, a busy is a peaceful

and the very next day you can't get | politics off your—shall T say, mind? Then vou speak of strict censor- | ship of the press. Let me say this, | chum: As long as your kind of tripe is printed we're in no danger of losing one of our most cherished freedoms. And, confidentially, judging from the continually sour articles you write, you're my overwhelming choice for “The Meanest Man in the World.” Why don’t you get on the beam, brother? ¢ ¢& § “SET UP A ONE-MAN LABOR BOARD” By H. E. Marshall, 308 E. St. Joseph st. What this country needs and needs badly is a good red-blooded | man, one similar to the present baseball czar (Mr. Iandis), make] him a one-man labor board whose word will be law, Pick a man who has enough personal wealth that bribery will be out of the question, give him a free hand and the legal

power necessary to impose fines will be responsible to himself for |

and prison sentences or both on! any labor leader or group who re-| fused to comply with his orders.’

ination of people

something good may

will be hampered. « . «

| Now all of our post-war planning

should revolve around the possibility of jobs for our boys who return from the fighting front. Any other planning should be overshadowed

{by this fact, and if we lose sight of

a perfect peace.

people.

| Of course there are lots of folks {who will disagree with me on some of these things, and will come for-| ward with a much better plan or

solution of our present and postwar trouble, That of course, is

pretend to be an expert planner; but if there are enough different plans suggested, maybe from the lot come, ana right here let me say our being allowed to make suggestions to our government goes to prove we are still living and expect to continue to live, in a free and democratic country. But right now let's not lose sight of the fact that we are still in a hard war and can lose on the battle front if we don’t start right now to win our own home front by outlawing all our strikes. One sure way to stop all strikes is to put all production on a plecework basis; then each individual

the amount of his pay check, and this will automatically eliminate all unions except the union between

Side Glances—By G

albraith

fine and to be expected as I do not |

|along the same lines as are in effect now, and eall it “military business discipline.” Have trade schools operated by our government, examine | the bovs for mental and physical defects and train them or start] them along the right course. Make | this training open to all boys re-| gardless of their physical defects, | because there are a lot of bright minds in eripvled bodies. See that | these less fortunate are placed) where they feel they are not de-| pendent on society. | This will help curb delinquency (which is now running rampant over | our nation. »

“PASS THE LAP

| TO SIT ON”

| | By James Lloyd Van Zandt, 725 N. East st.

The other night I was lucky enough to get on a trackless trolley

lear, One person got off, a man sat | down and his wife, sweetheart or daughter sat on his lap. That caused a good laugh from (the other passengers, some of the |sourpusses standing smiled, some grinned and there were a couple of belly laughs. I am speaking about the gide seats. I measured with my eye that | the lady took less than three inches. 'A person sitting on a lap at the op« posite side would still leave plenty of passage room or standing room. | figured on this ear, there woud be |enough space to seat about 20 lap'seaters, making room for about 30 standers. I am sure we have many war workers that would be glad to have some other war worker sit on their laps. Trackless trolleys have noth ing in the rear to hang on to. That is one of the reasons why passengers do not move back, but with a lap to sit on, they will move back. Lap-sitting makes war workers neighborly. I would suggést a sign ‘n streetears, trackless trolley: and busses— "Praise the Lord and pass the lap to sit on.”

¢ vw 3 “SELF-SUPPORTING THROUGH GOODWILL INDUSTRIES” By Just An Employes, Indianapolis

Just a line about the Goodwill tndustries, Fletcher ave. and Noble

st. I am crippled and have worked there two years. They are very kind and considerate of us in our training. It is a wonderful blessing to me-—I am self-supporting and take care of my home through the kindness of Mr. Lytle, of Goodwill Industries, and the good people that send in the things to work with, I want to thank everyone that is in any way responsible for my job

DAILY THOUGHTS

They profess that they know God: but in works they deny Him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work repro bate. Titus 1:18,

a»

NOT HE who scorns the Saviour's

il WEDNESDAY, MAY , 1043 South and FSA = >

By Thomas L. Stokes

MEMPHIS, May 5.~A cons MN tributing factor to the current uns rest in the South, an unrest which some clothe with more political influence than it justifies, may be found in the intensified hostility of the plantation owner and big farmer to what the New Deal has done for the marginal farmer and sharecropper through its farm security administration. Numerically the plantation owner is in the minority, but he is noisy and is influential because of a community of interest with businessmen, large and small, in the towns which dot the agricultural sections of the South. This comemunity of interest is even more closely knit now because the businessman alsh finde his one<time easy exploitation of cheap labor hampered by what the New Deal has done for labor.

Old System Breaking Down

BOTH GROUPS find themselves pinched even more tightly now by the war, which, through its de« mands for manpower, has narrowed the labor market still further and given both the farm laborer and the x city worker greater bargaining power, dl With the constant manpower drain, the big farmer looks back longingly to the old days when an abundance of sharecroppers was always at his beck and call. This has whetted his antagonism to the FSA, for that agency has put so many of this onceindigent class into business for themselves, on “le

which they can lease or buy, The old paternalistic system is breaking down, and its beneficiaries are making a last desperate effort to save something. The alliance of the big farmer and the business« man has always exerted more power politically than ts numerical strength justified, particularly in cons gress and local offices, by virtue of a sort of rotten borough system whereby they kept their hands tightly on political machines. In this they were aided by the poll tax, which dis« franchised many sharecroppers, and by the lack of organization and political interest of this marginal group of citizens, except when some cheap demagog came along to enlist them by fancy promises which were rarely kept. They often found themselves sold out, ag in the case of such will<o'<the-wisps as Huey

Long and Gene Talmadge,

New Alliance Attacks FSA

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT took their ease In hand, and did something for them. Accordingly they turn out for him in national elections, But they

| pay little attention to congressional elections, and

thus find their interests endangered in the Interim, as now, For, through their agents in congress, the planters businessman alliance is now pressing vigorously to destroy the farm security administration. And it finds ready help among Republicans, particularly from the Midwest, The tenant farmer and sharecropper have few champions, and little organization, Their enemies are highly organized.

The chief political pressure vehicle of the big farmer is the American Farm Bureau federation. which, in the South as elsewhere, is aligning itself more and more closely with business interests into a political organization that is effective in Washington’ in co-operation with Midwestern Republicans. The farm bureau's own membership records tell a significant story. In the delta country, particularly in Mississippi and Arkansas, the farm bureau has greatly increased its membership in the counties where the big plantations are, and has lost in the last five vears in support of the small farmers in the hill eountry,

Bureau Membership Swollen

THE INCREASE in membership in the plantation counties, wher there are fewer farms and fewer ine dividual farmers, might seem strange. What happens is that the plantation owner buys memberships for every tenant on his farm, white and black. This swells the membership figures that are paraded hes fore congressional committees in Washington, but means nothing for the basic interest of the small farmer, The farm bureau hag gone even further, It has enlisted members in retail stores, and in some cases bank clerks, in membership drives in co-operation with ehambers of commerce, thus sealing its coms munity of interest with business in small towns, The chief spokesman of the plantation farmer in the fight against the FSA igs Oscar Johnston, presi dent of the National Cotton council and operator of a mammoth Mississippi plantation more lordly than anything seen in the heyday before the eivil war,

We the Women

By Ruth Millett

“I MIGHT get a Job In a war plant,” you often hear a woman say casually--as though getting and keeping one were as easy As joining the women's elub. / That is because the average woman doesn't know anything about the jobs in war plants--out« gide of the fact that if she gets one she is likely to wear overalls or slacks, Bhe oan learn something, though about the new world being opened up women-the world of the work bench and drill press, There is a book just out, “Wanted: Women in War Industry,” which leads a woman step by step from the home or office into the factory. It ik a practical book, telling her what war plant jobs are open to women, the aptitugies needed to pers form them, how to get a job, and what to expect of factory life.

War Jobs Mean Work

THE BOOK, which doesn't glamorise factory work, will be a challenge to some women to help win the war by becoming skilled workers. It will scare some women to death, For the jobs all sound like WORK. So if you are toying with the idea of getting a war plant job, without ever having seen the inside of a factory or having met a woman welder, it might be a good idea for you to read “Wanted: Women in Indusrty.” If it doesn't do anything else for you, it will make you respect the women who are holding down war jobs. It may even make you have so much respect for them and what they are accomplishing that will become one of the 6,000,000 women to go to in war plants in 1043--6,000,000, that is if production needs are met,

To the Point—

WITH RATIONING, mother herself is longing for pies like mother used to make, * ROLLER SKATES come with the summer, and the fall will come with the roller skates, + . .

oan go three months without

* *