Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 October 1945 — Page 22

The Indianapolis Times PAGE 22 Friday, Oct. 5, 1945

ROY W. HOWARD WALTER LECKRONE = HENRY W. MANZ Editor Business Manager (A SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPER)

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EP © RILEY 5551

“@ive Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way

A STUPID PEACE TAX : ways and means committee tax bill is not as good as the one proposed by Treasury Secretary Vinson, Though more generous to individual income taxpayers, and therefore more popular for vote-getting purposes, the committee bill retains one tax which would seriously retard peacetime expansion of old industries, the starting of new enterprises and the creation of jobs for returning veterans “and displaced war workers. It is the wartime excess profits tax. Secretary Vinson recommended that this tax be repealed, effective Jan. 1, The war is over and there is no excuse for such a tax in peacetime, The tax, at present rates, takes up to 95 per cent of a corporation's income in excess of its average income in the immediate pre-war years or in excess of a fixed return on capital investment, The committee proposes to continue this tax at the

- reduced top rate of 60 per cent.

~ » » » » » SUCH continuance would not greatly hurt large established corporations which had good pre-war average earnings or heavy capitalization. But it would be deadly to. companies, and they are multitude, which ran in the red or had only small profits in the pre-war period, or which have small capital investment. Ci The purpose of the tax was to prevent war profiteering. It served its purpose. In wartime, with the government spending $100 billion a year and buying about everything industry could produce, this tax was a lolapalooza of a revenue raiser, Carried over into the competitive conditions of peacetime this tax itself would produce very little revenue, and would so cripple business activity as to diminish the yield from all other taxes. .

w 8» : . wn SUCH a tax should not be continued at 60 per cent, or 30 per cent, or even 1 per cent. It should be repealed. The corporations will still pay plenty under Mr, Vinson’s plan— 40 per cent on net income before the stockholder gets a dollar. Then the stockholder pays on that dollar, according to his individual income bracket. A tax which is unfairly assessed among business competitors, which destroys jobs and opportunities and which diminishes the government's revenues, eannot be justified.

‘Member of United Press, E . @eripps-Howard Newspa- ES ‘per Alliance, NEA ‘Bervfos, and Audit Bureau of Qirculationa,

THE OIL STRIKE MUDDLED

E do not know whether the oil companies should have accepted, without reservations, Secretary Schwellenbach’'s proposal for arbitration of the strike. We can not know that because we have no means of ‘knowing whether they could afford, without raising. prices, to pay hourly wage increases exceeding the 15 per cent they had offered the oil workers. If 15 per cent is the limit of their ability to raise wages at present prices, arbitration would have been. an idle gesture. For, by the terms of Mr. Schwellenbach’s proposal, tthe arbitrator might have awarded anything up“to a 30 j per cent increase. But the companies could not have bound Ithemselves to pay more than 15. For the administration's wage policy, as President Truman re-stated it Wednesday, requires government approval of any wage increase that would raise prices, What's the use of arbitrating a dispute when the government reserves the right to change the award? The administration's wage policy, we suggest, is still muddled; » » ~

¥ . » BUT the size of a wage increase that an employer can afford to pay without raising prices is a question of fact. The govérnment, presumably, has means of answering that question, Mr, Truman's policy, applied to Mr. Schwellenbach’s proposal in the oil controversy, seems to mean that the government would have undertaken to answer that question only after an arbitrator had made an award. We believe that, in controversies profoundly affecting public welfare, it should be answered as part of the process of arbitration, That's one reason why we favor the Hatch-Ball-Burton bill, now pending in the senate. Suppose that Lill were law, and the oil controversy had refused to yield to negotiation and mediation, an impartial fact-finding board would be appointed. : For 30 days while this board investigated the controversy, and for 80 days thereafter, a strike or lockout would be legally forbidden. The board would determine and make public the facts about such questions as the ability of the companies to pay greater wage increases than they have offered.

” MS n ¥ » J JNFORMED public opinion would have time to make its influence felt on the contestants. But if either party still refused agreement to a settlement, then the factfinding board would become a board of arbitration and make an award, which would be enforceable in the federal courts. Many labor leaders and employers object that this would be compulsory arbitration, which is supposed to be a terrible thing. But it takes a considerable stretch of the imagination to call arbitration voluntary when employers who refuse to agree to it are penalized by government seizure of their plants. And Mr, Schwellenbach’'s form of arbitration had the additional disadvantage that it proposed settlement of a controversy without informing the public—a vitally interested third party—of the facts at issue,

WHICH WAY'S WHICH? ‘ HESTER BOWLES’ admirers probably are not disturbed to hear that the OPA chief plans to put ceilings on cellar digging. Just let a cellar digger dig down far enough ‘to come up against the ceiling and—smack! Mr. Bowles will have him. :

HE PASSING PARADE ~~. MONG periodicals in a state department waiting room

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t mother’s death,

OUR TOWN— Riley By Anton Scherrer

(Continued From Page One)

:

lished by the Bobbs-Merrill people in 1913, it starts off with the tantalizing sentence: “On an early day in a memorable October, Reuben A. Riley and his wife, Elizabeth Marine Riley, rejoiced over the birth of their second son.” :

Not a word after that—not even a footnote to clear up the mystery of Riley's birth—unless, perchance, there is a clue in the passage: “When James was 20 years old, the death of his mother made a profound impression on him.” It remained for Robert Price, an instructor in the department of English at Ohio State university, to set us straight on the date of Mother Riley's death. “The mother of the Riley children,” ‘says Prof. Price, “died seven years before Miss Loder came to the Riley home.” If you apprehend the workings of the professorial mind, you'll know we're getting warm now, Prof. Price happens to have married Miss Loder's niece, which puts him in possession of certain family secrets—for one, the date of his wife's ‘aunt's arrival in the Riley .home. It was in the, fall of 1876, says Prof, Price. (Miss Loder's presence in the Riley home is accounted for by the fact, that she started teaching the Greenfield school that year. hasn't anything to do with today's piece.)

Facts All ‘Add Up to 96 ALL RIGHT: If Riley's mother died seven years before Miss Loder's arrival in the Riley home, and if James was a man of 20 at the time of his there's no way, this side of Einstein, of refuting the claim of those who Iimsist that James Whitcomb Riley was born in 1849. That would: make it the 96th anniversary next Sunday and not the 92d or 93d as some slovenly encyelopedists would have us believe, Curiously enough, the Dictionary of American Biography is the only one to support the 1849 date and heaven only knows how they solved the problem. There's another way of ascertaining the date of Riley's birth, It isn't as scholarly as Prof, Price's, but it's a damn sight more romantic. The trick’ is to determine whether Riley was 31 years old, or only 28 or 27, in 1880, when he first met and turned down Ella Wheeler, the plushy poetess of passion, Mr. Riley's brief affair with Ella, which overzealous romanticists have lifted into the category of courtships, started, mildly enough, with a letter written in 1880, By that time, the 25-year-old Miss Wheeler (her age has never been questioned) had composed two books of collected poems, both of which were terribly sad and a little on the syrupy side. For some reason, though, they impressed Riley—to such a degree, indeed, that he sent her an enthusiastic letter of appreciation, - i Thus far, it looks as if Riley might have been 26 or 27 years old at the time. Certainly, he wasn't a confirmed bachelor yet, which is to say that up till now the argument is all against Prof, Price, - 5 Three months later, Riley got an answer. “My thankfulness is unutterable,” purred Ella. “I take all that is sent me knowing nothing can come to me that is not sent by my friends, the gods, who know me and love me as their own”

A Lasting Impression THEY MET in Milwaukee, of all places. Riley wag on a hunting trip at the time with his buddy, the Rev. Myron Reed, pastor of the Indianapolis Pirst Presbyterian church. The meeting was a flasco right from the start, Soon as Riley got an eyeful of Ella's fluffy hair-do and cerulean ornamented dress, he askéd' her how she thought “that Godwoman, Hlizabeth Browning, would have looked in a fashionable gown and a bang’ I leave it to you if that doesn't sound like a confirmed bachelor; perhaps not a seasoned bachelor, but one about 31 years old. All right: If Riley was 81 years old in 1880 when he met Ella, it's dollars to doughnuts that he was born in’ 1849, which is to say that Prof. Price wins, Perhaps‘? ought to finish the story, Four years after her affair with Riley—a year after publication of her priceless “Poems of Passion” in 1883-—Ella Wheeler married Robert Wilcox. Jenny Ballou, the official "biographer of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, says that Ella wasn't dressed up when she fist met Mr, Wilcox. As a matter of fact, she wore an ordinary street dress; and, even more to the point, her big hat covered her set of bangs,

WORLD AFFAIRS—

‘Little 45’

By William Philip Simms

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5.-—-Mem-bers of the United Nations more than ever believe a full-dress peace conference with all allies present is essential to a settlement which all will defend, by force if necessary,

if they are to be responsible, along with the Big Five, for enforcing the peace, they should have a hand in shaping the peace. Not that they claim the right to veto a settlement demanded by the great powers which did most of the fighting. They don’t, But they would like to express their views and have those views set forth in the record for future reference. The San Francisco Charter, they point out, stipulates that “All members of the United Nations . . . undertake: to make available to the security eouncil, on its call , , . armed forces, assistance and facilities + « « necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.”

Procedure Wrong THAT BEING true, say the little countries, the London procedure was wrong from the beginning. It put all those absent in the position of signing a blank check. Not even the Big Four at the 1814 congress of Vienna could get away with the back-room, high~ handed methods indulged in by some of the Big Five at London, ‘The little powers of 130 years ago demanded a voice and got it, Secret peace making by two or three powers, it is observed, has no place in a world of global wars and collective security. If members of the Big Five such as France and China can be shunted into ante rooms while the Big Three slip away and hold secret meetings elsewhere, the whole foundation of the United Nations rests on quicksand. 80, increasing numbers of the little nations believe a whole new start in post-war settlement is needed if we are to have a durable peace. If it is the aim of the Soviet bloc on the one hand, and the Anglo-Americans on the other to create a new world balance of power, let them come out and say so. But in that event they can hardly expect the rest of the United Nations to honor their collective security pledge sight unseen at San Francisco,

Different in 1919 : : 1019 peace of Paris, it-13 recalled, has been damned’ by many as “a bad pearve’” But with all its faults it was a noble document compared with some of the dickering attempted at London. Little faith is placed in the outcome of new secret

meetings among the heads of the Big governments. The wartime conferences Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin were useful as they contributed to team play in winning the war. Po-

litically, some of the present great injustices had titty beginning there. The three countries are still

of James Whitcomb Riley” pub-

Outside of that, it]

Most of the “Little 45” have always contended that:

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Speaking of Wasted Energy— -

ETREY | in LET'S TRY HARNESSING

Hoos “IF FOOD'S STILL SCARCE WE SHOULD DENY OURSELVES” By Mrs. L. L T., Indianapolis : Anyone who followed the Girl Scout-Campfire Girl program on Share-the-Food day and who went to bed having eatan nothing but the typleal menus of one of the war~ ravaged countries must have a new and vivid realization of what it's like to be hungry, But if we fasted, we can make up for it. We don’t have to face starvation day after day after day. But millions of people do.

Sure, it’s grand to have all the steak and ice cream we want, and it's wonderful to have real butter to spread on our bread. But I think —I hope our government misjudges us if they think we want to gorge ourselves while others die of hunger. If now, suddenly, there's enough to go around, if there's food for everybody, why sure, let's all feast till our sides bulge. But if food's still scarce, if there's not enough to go around, and our denying ourselves a steak will mean the difference between life and death for some poor starving Belgian, Dutchman or Frenchman, why let's let somébody know we're still willing to share, Let's tell our congressmen and Secretary of Agriculture Anderson that we'll be glad to see rationing go, but we'd feel easier in our consciences if we knew for sure that turning loose surplus food here was not cutrailing in any way the shipment of necessary food to Europe. Otherwise, that unrationed steak may give us acute indigestion. ” - ” “QUALITY COUNTS IN FORUM, NOT QUANTITY” By George F. Lee, 4088 Cornelius ave. At the top center of the Hoosier Forum columns appears a notice that all letters should be limited to 250 words. In the article by Alma Bender of today's publication, Sept. 18, she uses exactly 505 words in her tirade aginst The Watchman, Volce in the Crowd and others. Small wonder that letters to the Forum are so slow in appearing in print. If there are many the length of Bender's, this one of mine should make its “bow” along about next Christmas, if it appears at all, . The Watchman and Voice In the Crowd can “put more on the ball” in 100 words than Alma Bender does in all her 508. Quality counts, not quantity.

A —

Forum

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 responsi. bility for the return of manu. scripts and cannot enter correspondence regarding them.)

“TAKE YOUNG MEN, LET FATHERS COME HOME”

By Mrs. Gerald Gant, New Castle I am the wife of an aviation cadet who enlisted in the army alr corps two years ago. He passed his tests and made the grade for pilot training, only to be one of those cadets who were informed pilot schools were being closed and the program eliminated. Then he signed up for flight engineering, in order to stay in the air crew. Now at Amarillo, Tex, he finds that In order to graduate and be commis~ sioned, he would first have to sign up to remain’ in the army three more years. Is there any fairness there at all?

It isn’t his fault he hasn't been overseas. How could he have enough points to be discharged? We have been married over seven years, have a daughter four and one-half years old—a daughter, who even after two years, never fails to say a prayer for daddy each night and to say, “Please God, keep my daddy safe and brings him home soon.” I should think some of the single fellows, especially those = whose fathers placed them on farms to evade the draft, would be ashamed to look a little child in the face. I know'I am fortunate to have had my husband stay in the states; I thank God for that. But why can't single men still be drafted for a standing army and let married men, especially those who are fathers, come home where they long to be with thelr wives and children? No mother of an 18 or 19 year old boy could say they should be in school or college while a father has to be in the army—

not if she tells the truth,

Carnival —By Dick Turner

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

(Times readefs are invited “WE DO NOT NEED

PEACETIME DRAFT” By Ethel Gurvits, Indianapolis

I am against peacetime consecription. We do not need it. It will be blow under the belt to our Constitution and Bill of Rights. When a child possesses a toy it will play with it. If the brass hats have an army they will be planning for war, Why talk of peace and make charters and in the same breath talk about a peacetime army? This country must learn by others experience. This war has given England her death blow. She will never be a great power again. She sold out all of Europe to save her own skin, put she forgot that God deals out the last cards. Ancient Spain had a great civilization—wars wiped it out, Marie Antoinette of France said if they have no bread, let them eat cake. They made her one head shorter. The czar of Russia in 1905 gave the Muzshiks bullets when they asked for bread. The snow around his palace turned into a mass of red blood—he signed his death warrant then. Would it not be better to start an educational program for physical improvement? My suggestion 1s that the government should estab lish a school system whereby a huge staff of doctors and nurses would be under its control. When a baby is born a nurse should be sent from the first day forward to massage and exercise the baby, ad« vise the mother on proper care, diet, the need of fresh air. This would require only an hour or two a day until the child starts to school. Once in school a steppedup physical program should be installed. Every school should have a complete gymnasium with swim-

{ming pool.

Subjects taught should be daneing, swimming, skating, boxing and other games and sports. During the summer vacation children should be sent to school-operated camps to continue in outdoor activities, This program should be kept up through high school and college. Out of school, the adult should spend two evenings a week in the same school gymnasium and pool. Camps for adults for summer recreation should be established to the age of 45, I am certain that if we build a strong physically fit generation, if any army is necessary, we will have & magnificent army. One year of training by the army would be a waste of time and money. For if the army is not needed for several years after training, the men will have forgotten most of what they were taught and théir physical fit« ness would be decreased.

POUTICS— pm GOP. Issuesfiis By Thomas L. Stokes 5

WASHINGTON, + Oct. 5.— Republicans are steaming up their activity in anticipation of next year's congressional elections. fig 8 campaign openings are being offered for

One is suggested by Dan Tobin, president of the International Teamsters’ Union in the union’s magatine. He warns that if the southern wing of the Democratic ‘party in Congress keeps on messing up President Truman's program labor may stay away from the polls next year. 2 : That happened, to a degree, in the 1942 cdngressional elections due to a number of circumstances. These included migration of many workers normally Democratic to other states where they did not or could not qualify; a general apathy not unusual in congressional elections, and the failure of labor to organize to get out the vote. This failure was recognized subsequently by creating of 0. I. OS very effective Political Action Committee, or P. A. OC. Mr, Tobin, in threatening a political “sit-down” strike. by labor, was talking partly of course, out of the political side ‘of his mouth, He used the usual license of the politically minded head of & group which is’ seeking something from a President and Congress, and must he discounted to that extent, although conceivably there could be some intentional apathy among disgruntled workers,

Voters Look to Results .

FURTHER THAN that, a continual blockade against the President's program such as produced a stalemate in Congress, would lend color to a charge of ineptitude against the administration. This is danger. ous politically, even if Republicans help contribute to it as they have been doing through their coalition with southern Democrats. . BY But, to attract any substantial support from | Republicans must offer it TATE Mr. bar, knows that. So do Republican leaders, This brings up an interesting exhibit by a Res publican congressman, Rep George Bender of Cleve land. In “The National Republican” a paper he edits, he carries some interesting statistics showing how Democrats have run consistently ahead of Republicans in recent national elections in all of the country’s largest industrial and metropolitan counties. “It is obvious therefore” he observed, “that the Republican party must concentrate in larger metropolitan centers throughout the country on a program that will convince labor, our colored voters, and our returning veterans that the Republican party offers better prospects for the future of the nation than the opposition.” * It is just as obvious—and some Republi - cede it—that the Republican party in Ta re party, has not concentrated on such a program.

Raises Pearl Harbor Issue

NOW COMES National Chairman Herbert Brownell Jr, in a speech at Philadelphia in which he devotes half to Pearl Harbor, That is going to be investigated by congress, as it should be: to clear up the record if possible. Even though Pearl Harbor might make some votes, there are also other issues in the troublous present as well as In the future that seem to deserve some attention and clarification by the party. By election time next year it is possible that Pearl Harbor will have been forgotten. It may have taken its place among other similar disastrous incidents, such as the firing on Pt. Sumter and how much Abraham Lincoln's policy had to do with that-q favorite subject among Copperheads of that day—and the Battle of Bladensburg where raw American recruits broke and ran-and let through the British army that burned the Capitol and the White House. : The party leadership in Congress now is drafting a party program on the proper assumption that thers is where the record is made. To be of much influence, such & program must take a stand on all eurrent Issues and embrace the viewpoint of all elements of the party. Some party leaders are aware that this also, and the performance on it, may bé taken into account by the voters. x

IN WASHINGTON—

New Seaway By Charles T. Lucey

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5. ~The St. Lawrence Seaway project is back in | congress with the blessing of Presi- § dent Truman, strong backing from both Democrats #nd Republicans on Capitol Hill and some new arguments for the ape proval, They've been battling here over this issue for 28 years, The White- House—both Messrs. Hoover and Roosevelt before Mr, Truman--has favored it, but congress has cuffed it about repeatedly. Sponsors think their chances are better today. The project is in two parts. It would develop a huge new supply of hydroelectric power. It would open a deep-sea ship channel from the Atlantic ocean to Midwestern America via the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. >

dustries have fought the undertaking, and Eastern seaboard and Mississippi valley interests have been against it because they believed a new navigation channel into the heart of America would injure them commercially. .

National Economy Aid

BUT PROPONENTS advance this new argument for the St. Lawrence seaway now: The nation is seeking a vastly expanded economy with a national product of $150 billion to $200 billion, Transportation is vital to that expansion. The St,

Lawrence seaway means cheaper transportation for °

coal, ore, steel, automobiles, gral and other come modities. Cheaper transport is an element in lower cost production which enables a greater number of people to buy what is made, This encourages business, Also-so this argument goes—foreign trade, of increasing importance to the U. 8, would be exe pedited. We will need to import high grade iron ores, for example, because our supplies are dwindling, We could buy thém from Brazil and sell her coal, shipped from our lake ports to the sea, Similarly, it is argued, cheap hydroeleétric power would aid low-cost production in aluminum and other industries. \ ._ Benator Alken (R. Vi.), ene of the sponsors, argues that the St. Lawrence project would create enough new business in finished consumer goods, which the rallroads would carry, to offset rail cargo in heavy bulk freight that could move more through the St. Lawrence.

Cost to U.S. Estimated

U. 8. ARMY engineers estimated in 1941 that com« pletion of the St. Lawrence project would cost $421

is # ;

In the past the railroad and electric power ins

million. , This cost would be up somewhat now. Total cost would be divided evenly between U. 8. and Canada. Canada would be credited with $1383 million it has already spent on Welland canal, and the U. 8, with $17 million spent on locks at Sault St. Marie, Both would be part of the seaway. Thus, withe credits allowed, and related to 1941 cost estimates, completion would cost this country another $277 million and Canada, $144 million. U. 8, however, get back $93,375,000 York

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