Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 June 1944 — Page 16

Price In Marion County, 4 cents a copy; delivered by carrier, 18 cents

«= RILEY 5351

Light end the People Will Find Their Own Woy

THE UNIONS GET ANOTHER BREAK

OST Americans want a square deal for labor, but many are increasingly alarmed about the repeated instances

of official favoritism to union organizations. The latest case is the treasury’s decision (which Republican congressmen say is in clear violation of the legislative intent) allowing local unions to lump their income statements into one over-all tabulation by the parent organization. This will make it impossible to determine even the approximate income of an individual union, and probably will defeat the purpose at which congress aimed—to see if certain classes of “union income, such as rents paid by tenants of union-owned property, should be subjected to federal taxation on the same basis as privately owned and competitive properties. The A. F. of L. and C. 1. O. fought for the treasurys warped interpretation on the ground that they feared the h for information was the entering wedge in a campaign for complete public accounting, and possibly registration and incorporation, of labor organizations. They were shortsighted, because nothing is more likely to stir up antagonism among tax-conscious citizens than the suspicion that somebody or some group 1s unwilling to pay his or its fair share. We prefer to believe the unions are not tax-dodging penny-pinchers (witness their large purchases of war bonds, their contributions to war charities). But the suspicion is going to be in many

minds.

congressional searc

» . . THERE HAVE BEEN many instances of favoritism to labor organizations—they exert undue influence in some government agencies; high officials, even President Roosevelt, minimize the effects of strikes on war production. Some have viewed as a part of this pattern the repeated findings of Attorney General Biddle that the C. L. O. Political Action Committee is within the law in its activities (all of which are in favor of the administration). We believe any labor group or any other group has a complete right to be active in politics, so long as it observes the law. But it is impossible to forget that soon after the third-term triumph, Mr. Biddle, in the course of a congratulatory evening of jubilant New Dealers, observed that the Democratic party had again been successful “because it is a political party tied up with the labor movement under an able

political leader.”

A HOME-FRONT VICTORY HE news of victories includes a great one on the production front, described by Rep. Albert J. Engel (R. Mich.), the tireless one-man investigating committee and frequent critic of many phases of the war effort. This time Rep. Engel reports what he calls “one of the most amazing records of accomplishment in the history of

the industrial world,” in the creation, from scratch, of the powder industry—without which all war equipment would be useless. He recalls the days of 1940 when those who knew the dimensions of our powder industry were alarmed. Since then the 22 government-owned plants - comprising the powder industry have turned out nearly 11% billion dollars’ worth of products. These plants are operated by private industry, which provided the production know-how. Most of the companies had never had any connection with explosives. Yet costs were reduced (in one case to one-fourth their original levels) and new methods of manufacture were developed which saved manpower. The accident record in the hazardous industry was kept outstandingly low. And the operating companies, already in high excess-profits-tax brackets, netted little out of their fixed fees. Mr, Engel's report is assurance that the powder job was done right.

messages, too, and for graduations, Valentine’s day, Christmas and all other such sentimental occasions, not forgetting the day when some little boy or girl finally gets kicked up into grade 3-B to make room for those behind. Far be it from me to interfere with the successful prosecution of the war which is the purpose of the verboten on telegrams of felicitation and congratulation, but if I can combine the effect of such messages with the sort of text that has been approved as helpful and unifying I will have served two purposes and earned, I should think, at least a lower-case “e” from the war communications board.

‘Just the Right Degree of Warmth’

YOU MAY remember that the Western Union used to have a series of canned messages for practically all standard situations which were numbered, 763, 1389, 806 and soforth, a system which saved a great deal of transmission and expressed the sentiments of the senders with just the right degree of warmth, Fahrenheit, and with a lavishness of words that made one seem extravagantly indifferent to the standard, 10-word tradition. If you filed a message in Bridgeport to a couple in Wheeling who had just had a child born and wished to say “We are: happy in your happiness and send love and best wishes to both of you and the baby,” you picked out No. 806 and the girl punched out the address, the number and the signature to the last relay point this side of Wheeling. This operator then put the text of 806 on the actual wire and so it arrived in Wheeling, all spelled out. Or, if you wanted to send kiddiegram

< Hee - +o Tay ke yo Cam

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congratulations for an unaccountable but gratifying spell of good behavior, you sélected No. 1389 which read, “I'd like to kiss you if I could, because you've been so very good,” and the same process followed. And still some people think the Russians have a | better system than ours. But I am keeping you in suspense.

The Hoosier Forum

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

'Are Forever Sending Telegrams’

WELL, AS you may know, I spend a good deal of my time improving that which I have the inimitable drollery to call my mind, by reading the publications of the National Maritime Union and several other highly patriotic, win-the-war organizations and I have discovered that these people are forever sending thousands of telegrams to their senators and congressmen, to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and Mr. Wallace and Adm. Land of the maritime commission and the war labor and labor relations boards, all demanding action on certain propositions dear to their interests and helpful to the prosecution of the war on Nazi aggression. And my plan is to prepare a code whereby a poll-tax message, for example, reading “Demand passage Marcantonio resolution repealing un-Ameri-can anti-democratic tory reactionary Fascist poll-tax in the name of the four freedoms gnd the Tehran agreement” means to the recipient “Thrilled and happy over good news, may the new addition prove a source of joy to you always.” The standard N. M. U. message demanding a food subsidy will mean, in my code, “Congratulations as you start on the marital highway, may its every mile be smooth”; and the one to confer on alien sailors, including continental Communists, all the “rights, benefits and privileges of the American armed forces,” including full citizenship, veterans’ pensions and job preferment over native Americans in their own country, would come out as “Congratulations on your wedding anniversary, may many years to come be as happy as those that have passed.”

‘They Are Vulgar, They Are Snide’

I MEAN they wouldn't really come out that way. But you would have a code-book and if you got the Marcantonio telegram you could look it up and see what it really means. I have never liked the snide, unpatriotic, war-im-peding tricks of people who indorse “mergers” when young American soldiers marry young American girls and wire their approval of “dividends” when they have babies. They are vulgar, they are sly and they impede the ready transmission of those thousands of telegrams which really are “essential to the prosecution of the war.”

We The People

By Ruth Millett

po “I THINK sometimes if I hear just one more 4-F wise crack I'll scream,” says the wife of a man classified as 4-F. “Because,” she explains, “every time my husband hears one of those slurring remarks about 4-F’s he is moody and ~~. hard to live with for days. The physical handicap, which he had learned to live with, has been made the most important thing in his life. And it is ruining our

\ A d home.”

It is strange that the American people have been

“

OF THE CORN” By John Coulter, Indianapolis

‘THE MIRACLE

The fields follow closely now upon the woods in marking the progress of God's calendar. The corn thrusts heavenward. Not long ago we saw men plowing and saw the planting. One day the wind blew warmer, veering to the south. Across the’ planted fields it passed, a breath of life that sought the hidden seeds. Warmth it brought and rain, the soft rain of spring, whose touch of the earth is the touch of the Creator. Then, when you looked one morning, where the earth had been dark and sullen, you saw a tinge of green and your heart stirred as at the return of a friend. It was the corn, the wondrous corn, whose sleeping spirit, touched to life again, awakened and sent up tender leaves to seek the light, there in its radiance to fulfill that miracle of nature upon which all human life depends. Green leaves, faint at first against the blackness of the soil, rise now and spread and soon will cover the earth with their beauty. In them air and light and elements of the soil will meet and in their meeting and commingling in the dim greenness of hidden cells, the food of all the world is made. We are newer than the corn. Its history stretches back into dim, unmeasured ages of those tropics where yet today its ancient parent thrives. But the processes that have made it have made us, too, and the great principles of its existence are the great principles of our own. ‘Somewhere in the long history of evolution there occurred in the case of man a rise of consciousness and therewith of responsibility. Dimly, at first, man became conscious of God and of his own soul. We became the makers of our destiny. Half-blindly we continue to grope at its making. We feel. stirring within us impulses that are unfulfilled, impulses toward making ourselves more worthy of our heritage and of the excellence of our brief opportunity. From the conflicting complex of human feelings and motives there must emerge, if we are to be saved, a feeling that shall be stronger than fear and stronger than all those other poisoners of life that are the children of fear, a feeling that shall lift our vision to vistas beyond the old horizons of selfishness and anxiety about our own well-being, a feeling so strong and sO t that we shall realize

so unfeeling about 4-F’s, because we have learned to

AN ENDURING CONTRIBUTION

HE report of the Indianapolis Foundation, just released for the year 1943, is an index of the continuing and constructive contribution made to the community by this charitable trust fund. During the year, the foundation, whose principal now amounts to $2,596,160.08, spent $102,886.21, largely for the welfare of the youth of the city. Seventy-one college students and 33 high school students were aided, and a substantial amount was spent for the maintenance of the Roberts school for physically handicapped children. Other agencies asdisted include the Indianapolis Society for the Hard of Hearing, the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, the summer programs of both the central branch and the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the Y. W. C. A., Flanner House, the Legal Aid society and the Community fund. Lists and figures, however, cannot measure the good done through the wise stewardship of the foundation's funds. Those whose generosity built this institution have made an enduring investment in the future of Indianapolis. Its dividends are payable in greater human usefulness and « happiness.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH SENATOR EDWIN C. JOHNSON of Colorado has signed

them to conform to a code of ethics. To Senator Johnson

: his name to a letter saying that free speech over the radio is impossible. Therefore he stands by his bill to license commercially spoysored newscasters and require

be considerate of the people who are physically or { mentally handicapped. {

| Stop Making Thoughtless Remarks

| WE DON'T make fun of them the way people | used to do. That is, we didn't until the draft came | along. Then, because we could lump a lot of people | together and call them 4-F's, it somehow became all | right to poke fun at them. And so 4-F jokes and 4-F wise cracks crept into our conversation—and into our attitude. Naturally many persons have been shamed and hurt by this sneering attitude. Isn't it about time we stopped making such thoughtless remarks? The armed forces are taking

one that is either funny or shameful.

snickered at so much,

you know, he’s 4-F?”

To The Poin

a couple of twisters that

cause plenty of trouble.

did with the pint.

the men they want, and there is nothing the men who are left behind can do about it. Their situation isn't

In fact it would help if we would just drop that term 4-F from our vocabularies, since it has been

We could just as easily explain that a man wasn't

taken into the army because he had infantile paralysis when he was a kid as to dismiss him with, “Oh, didn’t

A CYCLONE and a married man at the radio are

AN TLLIONIS boy of 16, arrested for stealing $50, said he spent it all for good liquor. Wonder what he

that only in its fulfillment can we find enduring happiness.

(Times readers are invited to express their views in these columns, religious controversies excluded, Because of the volume received, letters should be limited to 250 words. Letters must be signed. Opinions set forth here are those of the writers, and publication in no way - implies agreement with those opinions by The Times. The Times assumes no responsibility for the return of manuscripts and cannot enter correspondence regarding them.)

may be like weeds that choke the corn, thoughtlessness and selfishness like blights that sweep the field. Only a hunger to make our own lives serve well our fellow men can improve the human harvest or bring ourselves to full fruition. Only a conviction that compels fulfillment of the best that is in us can make us worthy of the miracle of the corn. * LJ “KLAN MIND IS NO RARITY” By William Stokes, Indianapolis Your editorial of June 14, “The Ghost Walks—Out,” was very interesting and brave, but, in my opinion, far too optimistic in some

deep conviction that “The Klan Is Dead in Indiana.” Naturally every self-respecting citizen of this state hopes you are right. But you may not be entirely right on that score. I, of course, have no way of knowing whether or not any semblance of that disgraceful organization still exists or ¢arries on in any formal or organized manner, but I am only too sure that the very quintessence of the Klan, that is, ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, stupidity and plain pure cussedness still exists in many quarters and sections of the state. ! It must be remembered that one of the principal “come-ons” used to build Klan membership (in addition to the childish lure of the sheet and pillowcase), was the promise to the joiner that he personally was to have a hand “in straightening

rilous acts were committed under this urge to persecute, snoop and be

Material comforts and luxuries

Side Glances—By Galbraith

officious, by and large the dupes Who

paid their money for these purposes found themselves frustrated.

urrect it at his peril”

“THE HALF HASN'T

respects. You stated with apparent

things out.” But, while many scur-}

In most respects they are still frustrated, believe it or not. The Klan mind is no rarity. Personally I bump into it almost every day. I can only hope you are right in stating “Let any Hoosier try to res-

# - » BEEN TOLD” By Mrs, 0. H, Bargersville. | I have just been reading the letter written in the Forum of June 5 by the 18-year-old boy who says he was too young to experience the Hoover panic. He may have been, but I wasn't. Besiues, after a war, a panic has always followed so the old people say. But I “:appened to be married during the Grover Cleveland administration. There had been no war to cause a panic, but we had a bad one, as bad or worse than the Hoover one and nothing to lay it onto either. We had our own farm and we could hardly pay our taxes; wheat and corn and hogs were so cheap; people were begging for work and there was plenty of work to be done but nothing to hire with or pay with. A fine hand, if he could happen ontc a job, would go early and work late for 75 cents per day. Hogs were $2.50 per hundred and eggs 2 centg per dozen, but it took money to get them of course. And the half hasn't been

told. ss = =

“WE NEED CONGRESS ON THE JOB” By Si Moore, 2606 W. 16th St. Mr. Walter Scott, marine, should be congratulated for calling the Constitution and Bill of Rights to our attention as being a part of our government, in fact, the foundation when one looks into the matter as he has done. From some of the twaddle going about some of us had gotten the impression that it was

out by Hoover, Coolidge, Harding et al, much as the law of supply and demand that many are fighting to have repealed. Being common dubs, some of us do not care to go into the weightier

are fighting for freedom. Of course, it is too bad that we had to have an election while the boys are away, as we need congress on the job all

i 0 the time. We sent all the officials Ee a == Lr \ into office and they should stay : ot NLS *X)} | [there and earn their pay. The rest “Ny AN of us have to. If they only knew

LET GIRLS JOIN?” By E. L. K,, Indianapolis, ~ °* I am writing a piece concerning the girls of 18 years of age. I am an 18-year-old girl. I do everything I can for my country; but when I want tg join the service, I am too young. I don’t see why they let the

| won't let girls of 18 Join the 8

some sort of skullduggery gotten

boys at the ages of 16 and 17 join} and the navy when they |.

No Man's Collar

By Fred W. Perkins ~~

have not rises in income commensurate with the servative estimate of the (wartime) increase. . . . Before the war a large proportion.

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imminent political action of the white-collar contingent after house and senate conferees. deleted from the OPA bill an amendment which would have removed government control over wage and salsry raises for incomes up to $37.50 a week,

'Opposition Predominantly Administration’

plea had been made for it by Rep. Andersen 1

than the Wiley amendment, had stated it could not accept the argument that it would be inflationary, “Inflation,” said the committee which reflected the views of Senator Thomas and another sdminis-

more than they need for the essentials of life not by the purchase of necessities by the poor or near-poor. Under present conditions the vast majority of persons in the white-collar and fixed-income groups do not belong in the surplus-income category. Grant ing them the opportunity for an adequate diet, decent clothing, medical and dental eare, and other basis necessities will not encourage inflation.” %

Believes Committee Has Helped

NEITHER SENATORS Thomas nor Pepper took part in pushing the Wiley white-collar amendment, and the Utah member said yesterday he did nct think the object could be attained legislatively. But,

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Missouri + Resolutior Hamn

The Evange! Missouri syn ~ resolutions tg high schools and re-electe Behnken, Oak of the church vention at Sa A resolution port, introdu Lichtsins of | ‘unanimously for the synod + education and education to program of | + .the high scho «« The boards -pecommended clare as its po gregations an gations to Christian higl Adopt 34 The conven third recomm mittee headed a survey of .fields and the establishment, . Lutheran hig! . . There are ! . Lutheran chu ..and two in _- these, the En “Bt. John's nov schools,

IAPS RE OF B-

By U Tokyo radi American flie when Japane fighter planes 'B-29 Super FP "ing northern “18 have been in accordance code. The broacas ‘Press in San “Thursday's ec * Times showec graves and th American flier fliers shared t Flying Fortre: northern Kyu .. The broadc tion under th “In accorda. Bushido, the . thorities crem “ B-29's downed and laid thes fliers to eten posts on wh names of the erected on ‘members of t. . graft corps.”

I : prison today.