Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 April 1952 — Page 23

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3 Inside Indianapolis

By Ed Sovola ; THE MEN who handle the coins that rattle in Indianapolis Railways, Inc., fare boxes sure

_are careful once they're on the way to transit

system's coffers. rs: Not many persons, outsiders , ever get to see the strong room where all good little fares wind up every day. An & Alaskan bus token began a chain reaction that got me in. vr A friend called and said he heard Indianapolis Railways collects tokens from all over the country and he specifically knew about one frofh Alaska. “Whadda you know about that?” he asked. : A “Ummmmm , , , nothing,” I & a> answered. or “Well.” You can’t know everything. Life would ccertainly be dull if you did. Someone would know. Subsequent questioning revealed there were persons who knew about “foreign” tokens but it's not a subject close to their hearts. In Indianapolis, W. Marshall Dale likes customers to use tokens bearing his company’s name. Bus drivers are instructed not to accept 8t. Louis, Windy City, Kansas City tokens. And a token from Fairbanks, Alaska, is nothing more than a curiosity here. v * ¢ &

HOWEVER, BUS drivers get busy and can't watch everything that falls into the box. Most tokens have the same general appearance. To the transit rider a token is a token and he feels someone should give him a ride. You can’t overlook the honest mistake either. I wanted more information. The only place to get more would be where coins and tokens are handled. Heads ‘shook and eyebrows lifted. “I'll keep my hands above my head, roll up my sleeves and cross my heart, I won't tell anyone where you count and sort your loot. Honest Ed gives you his word.” A trusted, bonded official with a green labél escorted me to his car and drove to the sanctum sanctorum, No blindfolds or devious routes were used. We rattled with “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line” in mind. It doesn’t hold true in this city but he tried. * & @ : GOOD FORTUNE rode along. Employees with dollar signs in their eyeballs were engaged in

It Happened Last Night

By Earl Wilson

NEW YORK, Apr. 16—1I've just seen Little Boy Boo-Hoo Johnie Ray weep while singing and my

verdict is: “For cryin’ out loud— money.” $d ye YOu make

The skinny, 25-year-old, Oregon farm boy who prays in a phone booth before singing, and delivers a short religious talk during his act, has pulled one of the greatest stunts in New York show business history. As a sobbin’ showman, he's “tear-iffic.” Opening at the Copacabana the other night—a “far cry” from Oregon — before a crowd including a fellow who'd brought a towel to cry into — “Mr. Emotion” worked up a fever that was something like a Holy Roller meeting, something like voodoo , , . and very little like a night H actual count, he didn’t squeeze out more than nine teardrops. “Just a splash in the pan,” thought Gertrude the Cafe Socialite. “When he doesn’t at first succeed, he will cry, cry, again,” mentioned other brilliant punsters. But the truth is that he won them by his humility; many of those who came to laugh, remained to like. Unable to get a job here a year ago, the halfdeaf, 6-foot kid who used to be a car hop and a soda jerk, packed the saloon with celebrities, and to the crowd he said: #Some-.of you behind the post can't see my face. I just want you to know you're not missing a thing.”

Johnnie Ray

* 4 4

BY OUR WATCH the first teardrop fell at 10:04, during “Broken-Hearted,” which he was pianoing and singing. He was jumping up and down, flexing his muscles and grimacing. “He perspires too much, it may only be that

Americana By Robert C. Ruark

NEW YORK, Apr. 16 — The Western Union strikes, and the steel strikes, and the telephoye cur‘ailments remind me that spring is here again, and once more they have stoned the first robin. I can tell it is spring because everybody is out in the playing fields, hollering for more pay and screaming, “damn the consumer.” 40) In very many fields the consumer, who is only the poor jerk who pitches in the steady, ready money for service, is the scapegoat of it all. This 1s a fresh approach to civilization, born of recent years, in which the man who pays the freight is scorned for the payment. The old idea of a buyer's market is as dead as technocracys nN All the troubles that man is heir to seem to be the customer's fault. Management has a fight with labor; labor has a fight with management. The grapes of their mutual wrath get crushed against the customers brow. There is an actual transference of trouble and anger to where Homer Q. Sapiens, the meek mouse who makes the world spin, bears the brunt of private quarrel between isolated groups.

> 4 9

# MOST of the anger at the buyer was born in the mock shortages of the last war, when it was learned that the consumer could be made to stand for anything, if only you caused him enough trouble, were rude enough, and overcharged him sufficiently. In the post-war everybody got away eco-

nomic aspects of the land. The air lines were brutish in their disregard for customer conveniences and the food they fed him would have gagged a goat. The liaison between ground and air was nearly nil. There were loud screams. An adfustmént was made: : > &

ON TRAINS the Pullman conductors openly sought bribes and cadged drinks in the club cars. Time and again the communications setups of the telegraph and telephone companies collapsed under strikes, literally strangling the business of a great nation which is subsidizing the world for

lasting peace but which couldn't reserve a hotel

room in Aching Sinus, 8. C. The other day the elevator sprung a tendon and roared like an angry Congressman as it labored painfully up and down. It was like living in the middle of an oil-well-drilling mechanism. Couldn’t fix it today, labor trouble or union trouble or something. Maybe fix it tomorrow. You know how things are today. All I know is that nobody cares how you acquire the money to pay the rent.’ 3 :

AT IDLEWILD AIRPORT the other day some friends were seeing some people off. They walked into the uncrowded bar after the plane took off, and in a pleasant, conversational tone; directed a mild query at the barkeep if they mightn’t have a small snap to ward off the weeps. : _ “3¢ 1 get around to you,” the bartender snaried, in a voice generally reserved for oberleutepants in

Here's the at, of

watts The Indianapolis

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1952

pouring ¢oins into hoppers which adorned the) tops of Rube Goldberg type machines. We had arrived when business was good.

Sure; they knew about tokens that belonged ;

in other cities. This was the slow season. During the summer. months “outside” business would pick’ up. When the 28th Division was at Camp Atterbury, there was a noticeable increase in

“strange tokens.

“We'll probably have the same thing happen

when the 31st Division gets settled and the men

begin coming to town,” explained the host. Transit companies in large cities throughout the country have a reciprocal trade agreement, Chicago token handlers will set aside Indianapolis- tokens until they have collected enough to make shipping worthwhile. : : Meanwhile, Indianapolis collects Chicago tokens. It's a simple trade transit firms render because they're all about in the same bus, Every fare, token, nickel counts in the never-ending struggle to keep the wolf away from the bus stops. * * THE OUT-OF-STATE token isn’t a big. problem. It's more of a nuisance to be tolerated, like the weather. No one has bothered to even tabulate the number that pass through the local till in a year's time All they know is that when a small sack is full it gets shipped. Practically every major city in the couhtry has been given the service, Fairbanks, Alaska, won't get a sack for a long, long time. : The coin sorter, a development of the repair shop brains, is pointed to with pride. If one took the host's word for it, the machine is the most unique in the country. Could be. A sack of coins is poured into a hopper, they slip down into a whirling, tilted container and there two arms push them against steel plugs. Dimes, nickles, pennies, tokens, quarters roll on to a tilted shaft by gravity, When they reach the proper slot, the tilt sends them completely over, The speed with which they disappear sometimes gives the appearance of a twisted ribbon. Half dollars, there aren't many, are lifted out by hand. One week over two million coins were sorted and counted with a mistake of only 25¢. That is supposed to be remarkable. PS. I promise not to drop “foreign” bus

tokans, buttons, gum wrappers, cigaret butts into fare boxes. Good resolution for the day.

Johnnie Ray's A Weeping Tom

his eyes are sweating.” thought one spectator. As he continued clenching his fists, beating the piano, winding up like a pitcher and sinking onto his knees, the mob shrieked—some with

laughter, some with worshi pi, p—and one cynic “Only in America.”

* 4

BUT SOME clamored, “More, more.” And when he roamed around the room insisting that

a) join in clapping to punctuate one song, most . *

His religious approach was rare for a cafe, and yet touchingly sincere.

First he introduced his sister, Mrs. Arthur Haass, who, he said:

“. .. Has contributed so much to my life and to my soul.”

Half a dozen times a day, he said, he has a private little talk with God. “It's like God has picked me up and kissed me,” he said.

In his dressing room I asked about his religion. He was brought up in the Christian Church.

“I never tell my religion now,” he said. “I go to any church- because I figure God is in all of them, The faith I've had in God is well placed. “I had a little prayer in the phone booth before I went on, I also prayed for the Kean Sisters (who preceded him), I didn’t pray for the chorus giris—nobody needs to pray for them,” he laughed. *> > &

THOSE WHO think of him more as a showman than a singer won't get an argument from him,

“No one is more aware than I am how easy it 1s for somebody to dislike me violently, For myself,” he said, “I don’t care to listen to my own records.”

He will become an increasingly controversial figure, Paul Sann, the editor, thought he might go on television, sponsored by Cannon Towels.

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were there, and Ava’'s comment to me about his singing was: “Hi, Earl.” That’s Earl, brother.

Spring's Here, Everyone ants More ay

charge of torture in Nazi prison camps, “I may take your order.” “Possibly,” a meek man ventured, “before you get around to taking the order, you could include a little politeness in the deal.” The bartender turned around in a towering wrath, “You don’t expect politeness and service, too?” he asked. The customers—ladies and gentlemen and mild-mannered to a fault—arose and told him what to do with his bar and himself and their future custom and the custom of his friends. 3 » % I WAS REARED on good manners and ordinary politeness and a fair expectancy of fair value in return for what I had to barter, and am become too old and crusty to change. I don't know about you, but I am apt to demand politeness received for politeness offered. Favors I do not expect. Routine treatment and value for value is all I ask. If you go into a barroom with money in your pocket it is not illogical to expect a drink in return for your presence. You did not go there to buy an insult, One thing these people with the private wage battles and policy battles and specialized grudges must realize sooner or later: They got to have customers. A customer is an important fellow, because he is all of us, He is what makes things run. I'm sick of seeing him shoved around as if he were a criminal or, at least, a mild man on a waiting list with no civil rights of his own.

Dishing the Dirr

By Marguerite Smith

Q-I have two lovely ivy plants , , , grow n «+. but I don’t seem able to get rid of scale , . . read in your column to wash leaves with suds . . . I've done this but don’t get rid of scale. My mother says that once I get them outside I'll get rid of it, Mrs, Philip Caito, 1726 haron. : A—You are missing the important part of the scale treatment. That's a teaspoon of coal oll to each quart of suds. The suds is merely a spreader

Read Marguerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times ¢

of the oil. Yes, when you get plants outdoors you will get rid of the scale. When I get too busy to keep after scale on my ivies, I get them out into the ground. They'll take a lot of cold. The nearer the leaf to the ordinary ivy, the hardier it's likely to be. Set them out in the ground now, Or if you want to keep them in ‘pots all summer you could keep them out except on coldest nights. '‘Q—1I have about 14 African violets . . . leaves seem to curl , . : I have them In a ‘south window. Could this be the cause? Mrs. O. 8. Gardner, 3701 Grand Ave. © > aan A~—A south window is too hot for African violets now. Violets can be kept in a south window all summer if’ (this is a big if) you can shade them with uptilted venetian blinds or an awning or not too thin glass curtains. By all means protect your plants from so much heat, If leaves then continue to curl they may be diseased. : dg

, lem with Gen, Vaughan. Vaughan advocated ‘the cause

—

EX-MEMBER OF THE CLUB—

No. 8

By KERMIT McFARLAND Scripps-Howard Staff Writer

WASHINGTON, Apr. 16 ~The day after he became President in April, 1945, Harry S. Truman set the first of the many precedents— big and little—-which have marked his administration, He unceremoniously went to the Capitol for lunch.

For 10 years, Mr, Truman had been a member of what has been called the “most exclusive club in the world” —the Senate of the United States.

S80, by the gesture of this impromptu appearance for lunch in his old haunts, the new President seemed to be turning to these, the men he knew best in government, for help and counsel, “We must stay together; we must see this thing through together.” He said it several times that lunch hour, as he chatted with hi= old Senate club members. But it didn't last long. ” » - IN THE seven years he has been in office, Mr. Truman has had far more troublé with Congress than the average President. Up until his announcement that he would not be a candidate, at least, he would have been hard put, at times, to hustle up more than a dozen sure votes, based alone on his political and personal friendship. The President's decision not to run may change this, Some Congressmen who have opposed administration policies think so. But, until now, the Congress of the Truman years has been an ever-shifting mixture of factions passing respect for conventional party lines. The growing emphasis, "in these years, had been anti-Truman, especially among the President's former buddies in the Senate. : . 8» MR. TRUMAN'S so-called Fair Deal program was listed as a dead duck when he sent it to Capitol Hill again last January. Whether his decision to retire will mellow congressional hostility and suspicion toward this program remains to be seen. ' Mr. Truman often has boast-

which showed only.

a»

TOM CONNALLY, Texas, theoretically administration leader in the Senate foreign policy, has lately joined old Democratic hands opposing Truman's administration.

ed that the Senate War Investigating Committee which he headed in World War II never turned in a report which was not unanimous. Whatever persuasion, comspromise or tact produced that record soon was abandoned by + Harry Truman as President. 5 - ~

ON JAN, 6, 1948, Mr. Truman wrote in his dairy, according to his book, this comment:

“Congress meets—too. bad, too. They will do nothing but wrangle.” , ; What he might have said was: “They will do nothing but wrangle with me.”

This was a Republican Congress, the one the President beat over the head in his dramatic “give-'em-hell” campaign of 1948. But he has had no better luck with the two Democratic Congresses. which followed.

The President toughest opposition comes from old hands inside his own party, from the hard-bitten individualists who served in the Senate with him, Even grumpy old Tom Connally of Texas, theoretically the administration leader in the Senate on foreign policy, lately has taken to sniping at administra-

. 3 *

SEN. PAUL H. DOUGLAS, Minois Democrat who backed Mr. Truman oftener than not, came under the Truman lash because the President wanted to vent his spite on some indi vidual Congressman.

tion proposals-—Old Tom being a candidate for re-election at that time.

" ” LJ MR. TRUMAN'S honeymoon with Congress, at the start of his administration, was shortlived. After the collapse of Japan in August, 1945, Congress came rushing back from a short recess to meet the new problems posed by the end of the war, Mr, Truman asked 17 “must” measures. Congress passed six. Congress turned him down on such things as labor legisiation, a “full” employment bill, extension of unemployment compensation, an {increase In the minimum wage. eivil rights, the St. Lawrence Beaway, That was 6'3 years ago, and some of these things Mr, Truman still is demanding of Congress without success, By the next year, it was obvious that Congress and the President were working at cross purposes. Mr. Truman was piling up an extraordinary record of vetoes and Congress was slapping down his proposals almost as a matter of routine, » ~ ~ THE President has gone out of his way, repeatedly, to

HOW TO GET RICH IN WASHINGTON . . . No. 3—

Special Favors Are Worth Big Cash

By BLAIR BOLLES

EASY MONEY from the government comes as simple gifts to the favored. These include the overpayments which military officers made to industrialists in settlement of wartime contracts. Or the Maritime Commission’s practice of selling to shipowners for $100,000 vessels which. the government had bought from the same owners for $1 million. Government officials work a variation of this approach when they give some one person an opportunity to make money that they deny to others. Gen. Vaughan, President Truman's military aide, performed such a service for a

friend of his, William Helis, in the fall of 1947.

At that time it was the polfcy of the government to permit only. builders of houses to use construction materials. Materials were scarce, and the demand for houses, especially by young men recently discharged from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, exceeded the supply. Mr. Helis wanted building materials for the erection of stables at the Tanforan race track outside San Francisco. Was there any way to get atound the public policy?

~ ~ .

MR. HELIS took up his probGen.

of Mr. Helis to the Office of the Housing Expediter, and the office - decided that Tanforan was a “hardship” éase, worthy .of exemption from the general rule. Mr. Helis bought $150,000 worth of lumber which had been. earmarked for dwellings,

Tanforan was opened for business, and Mr. Helis and his partners, Eugene Mori and Samuel. P. Orlando, profited from the operation. Mr. Helis, a regular contributor to: the Democratic Party, had given Gen. Vaughan $4000 for the

. State Demotratic Committee in

issouri. : A government. organization

SEN. OWEN BREWSTER, Maine Republican, wanted only one U. S. airline to provide service across the Atlantic. To

placate Sen. Brewster, President Truman fired CAB Chief James Landis, who favored competition,

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third of a series. They are from the book, HOW TO GET RICH IN WASHINGTON, reé cently published by W. W, Norton & Co. Mr. Bolles, the author, is the well - known writer and former mnewspaperman with many years of experience in Washington. that President Franklin Roosevelt developed to restrain: those whom he called - “economic royalists” is now making it pos sible for the “royalists” to regain their paramountcy in the national economy.” ~ ~ » THE Sugar Section of the Department of Agriculture went out of its way in 1948 to protect sugar refiners in the United States by drafting and pushing through Congress a bill which restricted the refinement of, sugar in Puerto Rico. The Department of Agriculture: was still the captive of

« the sugar refiners when the 1948

law came up for amendment by Congress in 1951. sw -" The quotas in the law were

JOHN R. STEELMAN, presideritial assistant, advised the President to override the board even though it opposed this

move after Mr. Landis was fired. The President followed his advice.

damming the flow of West Indiez molasses into the United States. This was a blow to eaters of gingerbread, Boston baked beans, Indian pudding, brown bread, and a host of

, other yummy foods cooked with been

molasses ¥ which have prized in America since the days of the colonies. " ~ ~

THE sugar refiners wanted the barrier against molasses reinforced, as an encouragement ‘to bakers to use more brown sugar. The American Molasses Company, which is the kingpin molasses maker, proposed to Charles F. Brannan, Secretary of Agrieulture, that the barrier be lowered. Brannan told Paul Porter, attorney for American Molasses, to clear it with the sugar industry.

The government encourages monopoly in aviation. During World War II, Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster, Republican of Maine, began a campaign for what he called the “chosen instrument” in American aviation policy. He meant that the United States should permit only one American airline ta_ provide ‘service across the Atlantic

SEN, CHARLES W, TOBEY, New Hampshire. Republican, denied that he was out to imach Truman, The President ushed off the denial. and raged at the Senator over ‘Yhe telephone,

thumb his nose at Congress, He frequently has vented his spite on individual Congressmen, such as 8en., Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, a diligent Democrat who has backed the President oftener than not, But the Senator sometimes has spoken out effectively against administration plans.

Typical is an incident involving Sen, Charles W, Tobey, the fervent New Hampshire Republican, Mr. Truman had a rumor that Sen. Tobey thought some of the things the President had said about members of Congress constituted an impeachable offense.

» » » SO HE called the Senator on the telephone. Mr, Tobey denied the rumor, but the President brushed aside the denial and raged at the Senator: “Now let me tell you this, Senator. If you want to have

ahead and I'll help you” When Mr. Truman was in Congress, he was considered a “border state” Senator. He generally voted with the ad-

“SEN. BURTON K. WHEELER, when the government tried to supervise the railrdads, remarked that when the government intends to control a group the group usually ends up do. ing the controlling. Ocean. Sen. Brewster's candidate for the chosen instrument was the Pan American Airways. The opinion of Sen. Brewster became important to Mr, Truman when the 80th Congress convened in January, 1947, because Republicans had the majority of seats in the Senate and the House. : x » TO PLACATE Sen, Brewster, Mr. Truman dropped James

Landis as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board; the administrative agency which controlled the country's air policy. Mr. Landis favored the existing competition across the

Atlantic between three American airlines—Pan American, American Overseas and Trans ‘World. Airlines. Pan American was applying to the CAB for permission to absorb American Overseas, and Mr. Landis ob-

: jected to it. .

* President Truman favored if. The board disagreed with him. With Mr. Landis removed, it still opposed the absorption. Thereupon the President, on the

ministration, but often he didn't. Recently Mr. Truman's most consistent allies in Congress have been the “liberals” he so frequently avoided when he was in the Senate. In the present Congress, the President was licked befors he -started on such top planks in his platform as civil rights, tax increases, a broad federal-aid-to-education program, health ine surance, and so on. . ” . OUT. OF it all came what loomed up as his most potent political threat-—until he took himself out of the 1952 race, Two members of the Senate had announced themselves as candi dates for the Democratic nomi

nation, despite the uncertainty as to whether Mr. Truman would run, :

One of them, Sen, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, said he

wi in

for special powers Morris, his cor Hen his proposal e scandal-haunted failed in. the Senate votes,

ni now thi ie | expected to ease, In his

son-Jackson speech,

cans, : | NEXT — What Kind of » ‘Deal’? 0

”

advice of his assistant, John R, Steelman, overrode the board and authorized Pan American to buy American Overseas. . ~ w » Si TO RUN the Civil Aero nautics Board after the de. parture of the aloof and ime partial Mr, Landis, and after merger, President Truman chose a brillant young man whose business career had taught him the aviation business from the

point of view of the major air. lines. s : :

This was Delos W. Rentzel, an easy-talking, swift-acting Texan. He was 39 years old when he was’ appointed. The preceding 15 years he had been working for “Big Air.” Fyom 1933 to 1943 he was on the pay roll of American Airlines, the largest line of all, After ‘wo years as its director of come - munications, he left American to become board chairman and president of Aeronautical Radio, - Inc., which was owned jointly by the principal airlines. As a matter of. public policy, the appointment of Mr. Rent. zel was a step backward from the previous practice in the selection of chairmen. The .CAB is one of the independent agencies that is losing inde. pendence, ek ” » ~

PRESIDENTS had chosen a succession of Solomons, as above suspicion as Ceéasar's wife, without friends or ties in any of the camps subject to the board's jurisdiction. : The change in the Aeronais tics Board's leadership only proved anew the truth of the. observation made long ago. by Sen. Burton K. Wheeler in a moment of sad reflection oh the government's attempts to supervise the railroads, - “It seems to almost invare fably happen,”. Sen. Wheeler said, “that when Congress ate tempts to regulate some group, ‘the intended regulatees wind up doing the regulating.” = (Copyright, 1952, by Blair Bolles.)

NEXT: Government Loans a a Snake Farm and to »

ETL

Hgtel With Gambling Caines.