Evening Star Newspaper, September 21, 1936, Page 9

Defections Give Bay State to Landon Majority of 50,000 or More Seen in 2 “Anti” Waves Today's dispatch completes the summary of the New England | States by describing the situation in Massachusetts. BY DAVID LAWRENCE. OSTON, Sept. 21.—The word “Democrat” has been made so unpopular in Massachusetts by the administration of Gov. James M. Curley that there are two negative waves of sentiment here, an anti-Curley and an anti-Roosevelt vote. Judging by the intensity of the feel- ing which has been engendered, Mas- sachusetts may €0 Republican by anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 votes, which is quite a turnover from the 63,000 victory won here £} four years ago by President Roose- velt. It must not be forgotten that Al Smith carried this State by 16,000 in 1928, polling a total of 792,000 votes, and that this total was increased in 1932 by only 8,000 votes to about 800,000. To accomplish this, Mr. Roosevelt had the aid of Al Smith. ‘This year the former Governor of New York, who was the standard bearer of his party in 1928, will be found on the stump in the Bay State. This, together with the Lemke- Coughlin vote, means such a sizable defection that one can hardly see how Mr. Roosevelt can keep the Landon plurality down even to the 50000 mark, though conservative estimates by well-informed persons put that down as the minimum Republican tally. Lodge Got More Than Curley. ‘There have been some indications of a statistical nature which would tend to prove this contention. Thus in the Democratic primary last week, Curley, who won the nomination for the United States Senate, faced nearly 150,000 hostile voters, Henry Cabot Lodge, jr., & grandson of the Republican Senator of a gen- sration ago, won the Republican nomi- pation for the Senate in a primary n which he had relatively little op- position. Yet the Lodge vote was far in excess of the Curley vote. It seems a safe bet that the candidacy of Thomas O'Brien, running mate of Representative Lemke on the Coughlin ticket, which made its appearance as & protest vote in the senatorial pri- maries, means third-party trouble for the Democrats. The Curley regime is unpopular. ‘The voters of Massachusetts resent what they consider to have been high- handed and arbitrary methods in government, Also, one of Curley's henchmen has been ordered by lower court decree to return certain funds supposedly misused in the conduct of a city treasurer’s office. All this has produced a very unpleasant impres- sion in Massachusetts and, judging by the way electorates behave when they see State government waste and polit- 1cal spoilsmanship at its height, there will be a protest vote of mammoth proportions. Drag on New Deal. ‘To put it another way, the Curley regime is tied up so closely with Mr. Roosevelt's administration that a general tendency is to vote anti- Democratic as a matter of course. Mr, Roosevelt, in other words, has & big liability in the Curley regime but he cannot ditch his political ally who alone made the fight for him in the 1932 primaries when Al Smith and his friends carried it against Roose- velt. The President has sent his son James here to help manage the cam- paign and look out for his interests. He used to live here and knows the political situation intimately. In fact he took an active part in the last eampaign. The Republicans have an excellent organization, one of the best they have ever had. There is harmony in the ranks of the leaders and it looks, at the present writing, as if young Lodge will be elected United States Senator and that the entire Repub- David Lawrence lican ticket will be swept into office |, next November for the first time in many years. State Issues Predominate. National issues are important here, but this is a case where the State issues seem to predominate and will influence the voting against the Democratic ticket. Gov. Landon has considerable strength of his own here, as was manifest in his remarkable showing in the pre-convention primaries, but it is not detracting from his prestige in the slightest to say that he will win Massachusetts’ electoral vote very Jargely because of the anti-New Deal and anti-Curley feeling of a large pumber of independent as well as Democratic voters. (Copyright, 1936, Mongolians Exchange Prisoners. ULAN BATOR, Mongolia, Septem- ber 21 (P).—Mongolian commanders yesterday exchanged 12 Japanese- Manchurian soldiers caught last March for 12 Mongolians taken last ‘Winter in border raids between Mon- golia and Manchuria. 78] //IUIM(III(/) U/ DOCTORS DO GENTLE THOROUGH THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1936. News Behind the News Campaign Is Unlikely to Hamper Business—Usual Pressure for Votes Going On. BY PAUL MALLON. USINESS ordinarily falls victim to campaign palsy along about now in a presidential year. Operators decline to plan ahead, most lines adopt a restrained gait until after election. ‘The usual easing has not only failed to develop so far, but it is not likely to. One reason is that President Roosevelt is said to be determined upon a campaign strategy of spending and business encouragement. New Deal administrators generally understand they are to do or say nothing upset- ting. No important governmental steps affecting business sre expected before the people go to the polls. 2 Src Likewise, the many powerful congressional investigations, au- thorized at the last session, have been keeping their hands out of business men’s hair. The La Fol- lette committee is following only one line. The Black committee is dormant. The Wheeler investiga- tion is off until after election. The campaign investigating committees are comparatively quiet. Further- more, the Justice Department is avoiding the usual campaign weapon of anti-trust suits. Add to this the strong undercurrent of industrial expansion and you will see reasonable justification for the general expectation that Fall busi- ness will continue to improve, in reversal of the usual trend. R If any one believes this expectation is due to lack of warmth inside the campaign, he does not know what is going on. The public speeches may have been exceptionally gentle so far, but the inner heat-generating influ- ences on both sides have been turned on earlier than usual. For example, two Federal agencies invited their fleld agents down for a talk about 10 days ago. These private comferences were held separately, and apparently for routime organization purposes, but agents who attended either conjeremce came away with the same idea, namely: Their personal ecomomic future depended upon the re-election of Mr. Roosevelt. You would mot suspect ihey would have to be told that, but they were. Similarly, on the other side, there is the yarn about the Pennsylvania manufacturer who slipped into his pay envelopes recently a little white elephant. These bore no inscription and were the kind sold in gadget stores (usually marked “Made in Japan™), but the employes were probably able to catch on. * X % Certain civil service employes have been complaining among them- selves (but not aloud) about various little pressures exerted upon them for campaign contributions. Some of this solicitation is reported to be subtle, and some not so subtle. In fact, one letter, which comes “straight 1o the point” in the first sentence, was probably not authorized. Charges and counter-charges will undoubtedly soon center around this phase, but it is nothing unusual. All these three related varieties of pressure have been used in nearly every campaign. Politicians expect it, and use it to the fullest wherever they can. Off the record, they will admit they would be foolish if they falled to. * X X % A political promoter was going through his oppoment’s campaign expenditures statement in the office of the clerk of the House. He grappled with it for half an hour, before exclaiming in eTaspera- tion: “These things are meant to confuse mot only the layman— but the ezpert as well!” That is the answer for all of them. The lists are submitted from time to time, because the law requires, but the law says nothing about making the accounting comprehensible. A common trick of political accountants is to mmnnl from uldln': ‘ll!pp;: 'ihe d expenditures. Another is to file a separal or SE e each State. A third is to file an incomplete statement and then sup- plemental ones, switching donations back and forth between State and national organizations. Contributions by individual per- sons are obscured in several ways. Most common method in the latest filings was to break the total con- tribution up into two to five parts, listing each under the name of an aunt, uncle or what-have-you. ‘Thus a $25,000 contributor's name may show only as a $5,000 contributor, while mother-in-law, married daughter, etc., are listed as contributors of the femainder. Furthermore, the collectors make the rounds several times among the same people during the course of the campaign, 50 it is impossible to tell how much any one really gave until after the final report is made, after election. The accepted method of creating confusion about erpenditures is to list each of the thousands of incomplete payments made weekly out of the check stub book, including each individual salary of office boys, stenogs, rent, etc. Thirty days after election, a corps of half a dozen accountants may be able to figure it all out accurately in a week's time. Until then, the published figures will continue to represent mainly an effort on the part of all political organizations to keep their opponents from finding out what they are doing. (Copyright. 1936.) CHURCH LOYALTY DAY URGED BY ROOSEVELT lawyer and son of the late President, called religion and welfare recovery “a major enterprise of our people.” Indorsing Attendance Oectober 3 or 4, President Says Religious Recovery Basic Needs By the Associated Press. NEW YORK, September 21.—A let- ter from President Roosevelt indors- ing the plan of the National Commit- tee for Religion and Welfare Recov- ery to celebrate October 3 and 4 as “loyalty days” was read by James W. Gerard, former Ambassador to Ger- many, at a meeting sponsored by the | committee yesterday. | In approving the committee’s pro- gram to urge every citizen to attend his place of worship on one of those days, the President was quoted by Gerard as writing, “I believe pro- foundly in the efficacy of religion and welfare recovery as basic in any permanent program of industrial and social recovery.” Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2-HOUR SPECIAL Tuesday Night—7 to 9 ONLY 9-DRAWER KNEE-HOLE DESK Beautiful Walnut Finish Buy now and save! Pull-size $13.88 88c DOWN desk 1n the ever popular Colonial D Chair to match, 95¢ style and richly finished in wal- nut! Its nine biz. roomy drawers Not on Display Until 7 PM. Tuesday Night TRICO Radiator Covers complete the beauty of well- furnished and decorated rooms, prevent radiator smudgeand pro- vide proper humidity. Reason- able prices—convenient terms. Estimates without obligation. FREDERIC 8. BLACKBURN 1700 Conn. Ave. 2nd Floor Potomoc 4793 provide plenty of storage space! We have only 35 to sell at this sensationally low price . . they'll be much higher later on! Open TUESDAY and FRIDAY Till 9 P.M. ‘Week Days Till 6 P.M. JrURNITURE 1245-47 Wisconsin Ave. Georgetown, D. C. Mississippi Invitation to Industry Cheap Labor of South May Spell Trouble in North BY DOROTHY THOMPSON. HE Mississippi Legislature is the enactment of & program which is called “A Plan to Balance Industry and Agriculture,” and which was pre- sented to that body last Monday by Gov. White. The Governor’s speech is in the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, and contains some state- ments very significant for the indus- trial States of the more pros- is now in an un- settled condition. There is need for the type of labor . we have to offer 3 new locations. * * * Many fac- tors are beckon- Derethy Thompson. ing these industries to locate in the South.” The type of labor which Missis- sippi has to offer is not distinguished by any special skills. It is cheap la- bor, simply that and nothing more. The Governor’s proposals represent an organized attempt, through legislative action, to lure capitalists from the North to the South under the promise of cheap labor plus State governmen- tal assistance. Tax-Free Factories. Under Gov. White's plan, the Legislature would authorize counties and municipalities to issue bonds for the purpose of erecting buildings to be occupied rent free and tax free for a specified number of years by factories. Upon a two-thirds vote of the people in any city or county, the program could proceed. It follows, of course, that these factories, already enjoying these special privileges, would be manned by labor at rates with which non-Southern employers could not compete. In March, 1936, a Government in- vestigation showed the following pay roll in such a county-sponsored gar- ment factory in Mississippi. Of 272 employes in the sewing room 96 got $5 for & week of 40 hours, or 125 cents per hour; 73 were paid $6, 37 got $7, 31 got $7.50; 12 got $8, 23 8ot $9. . At the time that these figures came out there were only a few such pub- licly subsidized factories. The new legislation proposes a wholesale growth of such industries, under direct State government planning. Furthermore, there is already evidence that the idea will not be confined to Missis- sippi. Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama may very soon seek to solve their economic problems this way. And if they do, the results will be very serious for industry and labor in the rest of the country. Even without governmental subsidies, the cotton textile industries of New Eng- land have been ruined by Southern wage competition, plus raw material at the source. Taxes Show Standing. ‘The immediate cause of these meas- ures is the desperate poverty of the State which is taking them. Missis- sippl is 83 per cent agricultural, largely planted to cotton, a crop which is in & declining condition for reasons which are both domestic and inter- national. In 1932 the individual Fed- eral income taxes paid in Mississippi totaled $134,000—in a State with a population of 2,000,000. The 10-year average, 1920-1930, of Federal income taxes paid by individuals 'vas 39 cents. Mississippl is the poorest State in the Union. The first result of such a program, it it goes through, is that these fac- tories will undersell all the rest of the country. A warm climate, which means & low cost of living, plus low wages, plus free rent and no taxes, will be an irresistible combination. Non-Southern manufacturers will have to lower their wages, go out of business, or move South. “Moving day has arrived,” said Gov. White, This obviously means a tremendous dislocation of labor and industry all over the United States, and that will inevitably mean labor disturbances in It is avresult of & policy which has been pursued in the United States since 1861, whereby, through high tariffs, the South was hampered in its exports of raw cotton, its principal product, and was compelled to buy manufactured products in a tariff- protected market. The South, that is to say, was reduced to the status of a colony, and now, like all colonies when they begin to industrialize themselves, lives to plague the empire. National, like international imperial- ism, contains the seeds of its own ruin. Manufacturers in this country are complaining that they cannot com- pete with Japan because of her gov- ernment-subsidized industries plus low-cost labor. They will soon be faced with precisely the same condi~ tion in the United States, with no Department of State to complain to. It looks as though we needed a national economic conference fully as much as an international one. (Copyright, 1936, MONUMENT DEDICATED TO MORMOM MARTYRS Bronze Memorial Tribute to 600 Who Died in Emigration 90 Years Ago. By the Associated Press. OMAHA, Nebr., September 21.— Dedication of & bronse monument to 600 Mormon martyrs here yesterday was attended by a throng estimated | 8t 2,500 persons. A Nation-wide radio | broadcast preceded ceremonies. The monument, weighing 2% tons, commemorates a burial ground for persons who died 90 years ago at Winter quarters of the Mormon emi- gration from Nauvoo, Ill, to Utah. Tribute to these and 6,000 more Mormons who died on the march was paid by high-ranking officials of the church and laymen from the West and Middle West as the monument was unveiled. It depicts a man shielding his grieving wife from the wind as they view the grave of their child. Heber J. Grant, the 80-year-old seventh president of the church, presided. We, the People. It's Good, Clean Fun, This Repealing Laws of Arithmetic for Campaign. BY JAY FRANKLIN. T with tropical hurricanes, political apeeches and other low- preasure arens, the campaign teems to be getting funny without being vulgar. As evidence of this light-hearted spirit, both the United Prees and the New York Herald Tribune have combined to repeal the iaws of arithmetic. ‘The trouble started in London, where business men, anxious to insure themaselves against the losses bound to accrue should world trade and international exchanges be disturbed by a reversal of Roosevelt's policies, ‘went to Lioyds. Lioyd’s will insure you against anything from earthquakes to s, looked the fleld over and quoted the following terms:, 60 guineas (the equivalent of 63 pounds) premium for 100 pounds insurance against the defeat of Roosevelt—the same as any Ameri- ean insurance company asking 363 premium against $100 in- surance ‘The United Press did some hasty figuring and announced that Lioyds was betting 5 to 3 on Roosevelt. This roused the latent Repub- licanism of the New York Herald ‘Tribune, which crashed sack with the statement that Lloyds was offering “odds of 3-to-2 on Landon to win.” I may be dumb but I fail to fol- low this sort of arithmetic. If Lioyds collects & premium of 63 pounds and Roosevelt wins, Lioyds gets 63 pounds. If Landon wins, Lloyds pays back 100 pounds—a sum which includes the 63-pound premium. Since 100 pounds minus 63 pounds (the premium already in hand) equals 37 pounds, it follows that Lloyds is out 37 pounds on a Landon victory. Therefore Lloyd’s is betting 37 pounds on Landon against 63 on Roosevelt. Odds of 37 to 63 work out at a fraction under a bet of 8 to 5 on Roosevelt. The same odds are said to prevail in Wall Street. * x % % ‘To transiate this simple proposition into the Herald Tribune’s “odds of 3 to 2 on Landon to win” is on a par with Einsteinian mathematics in which & straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. Let’s work it out the easy way. Suppose I want to insure my life over the next year for $10,000 and take out term insurance. The insurance com- pany will examine my health, my ancestry, my occupation and the actuarial life expectancy for a man of my age. It will then charge me a premium of, say, $50—although it might well charge more, since I am a journalist who believes in the New Deal. Call it $50, though, to make division easy. If I die, my esiate gets $10,000. If I live for a year, the company keeps my $50 premium. ‘Therefore, the odds against my dying in a year are reckoned at $9,950 o $50, or at 199 to 1. ‘Would the New York Herald Tribune headline this transaction as “Insurance Firm Offers Odds of 199 to 1 on Jay Franklin to Die Within a Year'? * x * % It's only too easy to twist figures, particularly when the odds seem close. For ezample, the Republican papers headlined the Maine election as “Republicans carry Maine by 50,000,” while the Democrats simply observed “Brann beaten in Maine by only 5,000 votes.” ‘The Digest poll is there for people to play with and, if they don't like its figures, they can turn to more comforting percentages elsewhere. It’s all good, clean fun and no real harm done—but with Harvard celebrating a tercentenary in the name of pure science, for Newton's sake, gentlemen, keep arithmetic clean. (Copyright, the Register and Tribune Syndicate.) FORMER SENATOR ALLEN thpublimn presidential candidate, as WILL SPEAK ON LANDON | tande sorved s Ation's pemonai | secretary when the latter was Gov- Pormer Senator Henry J. Allen of | ernor. Kansas will be the principal speaker at a Landon-Knox Campaign Club rally at the Willard Hotel at 8:30 tonight. Allen will describe Gov. Landon, the Entertainment will include solos by Mrs. Flora McGill Keefer, accom- panied by Mrs. Dorothy Radds Emery. There will be also a brief program of organ music. 'HE opinions of the writers on this page are their own, not necessarily The Star’s. Such opinions are presented in The Star’s effort to give all sides of questions of interest to its readers, although such opinions may be contradictory among themselves and directly opposed to The Star’s. Headline Folk and What They Do Philosophy of French Professor Wel:omed by America. BY LEMUEL F. PARTON. CLECTICS have picked from the Harvard Scientific Eouilla- basse things they liked to be- lieve. What the visiting schol- ars thought of America was inter- esting, but also interesting, and pos- sibly, revealing, is what America thought of them. A good off-hand deducer could figure Gov. Landon’s election from the way editorial writers wolfed Prof, Etienne Gilson’s remarks about professors, He thinks they ought to stick to their search for objective truth and not mix up in affairs of State. He says there is “too much idealism” and that “too many theories are being worked out in rooms by scientists without contact with the world.” That seemed to fall in with America’s mood, Jjudging from the exchanges. Prof. Gilson is France's great me- dievalist philosopher, To him a horse and buggy is new-fangled rig. He wants to go back to Greek and Rome —this being an inadequate paraphrase of his philosophy, but accurate in in- dicating his belief that much modern scholarship isn't yet dry behind the ears. He is 52 years old, born in Paris and educated at the Sorbonne. He taught st Lille, Strassburg and the College of France, won the Croix de Guerre in the war and is now pro- fessor of medieval philosophy at the Sorbonne. He is director of the Institute of Medieval Studies at To- ronto, Canada. He frequently has visited America and was exchange professor at Harvard in 1926 and 1927, Possibly it is significant of somethirg or other when the world’s most fa- mous medievalist rings more bells in latter-day America than all the for- | ward lookers at Harvard's stupendous brain round-up. Klementy E. Voroshiloff, command- er of the Russian Red Army, who gives Hitler some rough back-talk, has or- dered every officer in his army to learn to fox trot. Not that he figures on that kind of war, but it happened that, in his native Donbas, in Southern Russia, he was a master of that quaint Russian sitting-down dance and, be- coming famous for both fighting and dancing, went modern in both lines. He is a dapper, stocky little man, 5 feet 4 inches tall, with a Hitler mous- tache, shrewd, sharp, gray eyes and loose, wavy hair. He is the most grega- rious of the Russian hierarchy, the best hoofer and singer in the lot of | them and fell hard for polo when for- | mer Ambessador William Bullitt intro- duced it. He was a breaker boy in the mincs at 7, learned to read at 12 and there- upon became a Socialist and was mostly in jail between the years 1895 to 1917. He won his military renown in fighting the “White” Russians after the Bolsheviks seized power, and be- came a member of the powerful “Polit- bureau” of the Communist party. The son of a railroad laborer, he is Stalins runner-up in Russia. (Coprright, 1038)