Evening Star Newspaper, April 30, 1937, Page 11

THE EVENING WASHINGTON, D. C, FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 1937, Study Urged On ‘Cause’ Of Jobs Survey to Find What Keeps Many Idle Is Asked. BY DAVID LAWRENCE. OW many “forgotten men” are | there in the United States? | The Roosevelt Administration declines to count them. Vari- ous agencies of the Federal Govern- ment have made estimates as to the | number of unemployed in America, | but the so-called - unemployed cen- sus, advocated in : #eason and out of * season, as a first #tep toward han- j dling the unem- ployment. prob- lem has been ta- booed by the President him- self. As a matter of fact, the Presi- dent isright about it. There 1s no sense in tak- ing & census of the unemployed knew how many pe jobs there would not be any more | information than there was the day before the compilation was announced Everybody knows that there are millions of unemployed but few peo- ple know what is keeping them un- employed. A survey to determine who and what is blocking re-employment would be a useful thing. Likewise a study to determine who and what is creat- ing unemployment and adding to the army of idle persons would be even more useful. It is too much to expect that any government agency would venture on | such an assignment Letter Tells Story. David Lawrence. After the country ons are without News Behind the News STAR. THE 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 This Changing World Roosevelt Reported to Have Changed Approach to Prices-Labor Problem. BY PAUL MALLON. RESIDENT ROOSEVELT seems to have changed his mind definitely about how to stop prices and regulate industry. His position is in the process of complete reversal. The movement could be discerned in a recent series of stage managed maneuvers, but only by those with some official knowledge of how he intends swinging around Three steps already have been taken: a. The wholly unexpected move to indict Mr. Mellon's aluminum monopoly, which was absolved once of violating the anti-trust law. b. The very vague letter which Mr. Roosevelt sent to Vice President Garner, urging that the Miller-Tydings fair trade practices bill be held up, implying the President has some substitute method in mind. c. That needlessly forceful letter from Attorney General Cummings to Mr. Roosevelt, saying the Government could not do anything about steel price fixing and urging revision of the anti-trust laws. Up to this, Mr. R. had been thinking about his price, wage-hours proklem from the old N. R. A. ; . standpoint. His unofficial Altor- o CWARMERSRE: neys General Corcoran and Cohen have been trying to work out new price bills and new wages and hours bills along the same old theory which inspired N. R. A. That is, their viewpoint was that of creating rather than abolishing monopoly and regulating it se- verely to promote certain wages and hours for labor and certain price bases for industry. Their approach was toward colle whatever nicer words they chose to call it Several things have happened lately to make them see the error of that way. Biggest thing was the Wagner labor decision by the Supreme Court. It cut the ground right out from under the Roosevelt method of approach by specifically giving labor the right to get its own hours and | wages under restrictions of a Federal board. At the same time, Gen. Corcoran and Gen. Cohen are supposed to have torn up some dozens of drafted bills which were unsatisfactory efforts to reach Mr. Roosevelt's purposes, Those which survived are said to have been wholly unsatisfactory to the President. These left loopholes, fell short of reaching the problem, etc. x oa k. During all this period of N. R. A. remnant thinking the anti-trust laws were as dead as Attorney General Cummings’ instinct for reform. Now that they are being trotted out again for enforcement and strengthening, you can glean a hint, even without an official tip, as to what the new theory is to be The process is simple: Let labor negotiate for its hours and wages under Government supervision. This will increase prices (as in steel). Then the Government will chase monopolies in an eflort to put a ceiling on prices. It will soak the big fellows, promote com= petition, let the little fellows go. P Offhand. this would seem to get at the problem to the satisfaction even of Mr. R., without packing the Supreme Court, amending the Con‘su- THE TUNE IS tution or abandoning American OK, BUT THE. principles. However, they say, it Out of the many hundreds of thou- #ands of letters that come to Wash- | ington every day might be gleaned | some information. Thus one letter | I received today tells an interesting story: “About seven years ago T put some money into a small busi It drib- | bled along for about two years and | then began to make a little money. It wmade money in 1931. 1932, 1933 and | 1934, broke even in 1935, and then in 1936, due to competitive (‘nndltlon‘,‘ lost money. All during this time none | of us took any dividends out of the business. The manager who was part- | ' owner, worked all this period for a | all salary because we felt that | he earnings must be put back | into the business. | “The business is not big enough to gell stock or float a bond issue. And then we took a look at the surplus | tax, saw the utter futility of trying to | continue to build the business out of | its own earnings, and we decided to | close up the company. This business started out with three employes and | now it is employing 75 people who | will all be out of jobs.” Call Instance Typical. tedly this instance is typical | a small business which must find capital for expansion out of its own carnings. Says my informant: | The purpose of the surplus tax may have been laudable, but the way the law has worked out I believe it will tend to maintain big companies in a position of permanent monopolis- tic se freeze out the little fel How many of these instances are there? And what other factors are blocking re-employment? The United States Employment Service itself says in a recent bulletin: “Important as it is to get a com- plete picture of the unemployed &t a given date, it is of equal importance to secure current information with respect to the changes which are tak- ing place.” The United States Employment icient institution | and it is run by a very efficient man, W. Frank Persons, who keeps out of the limelight and does his job. The service has ju 0 eted two very interesting studies classifying the un- emploved as reflected in about 6,000,~ es in their files. Here is an! g paragraph of comment from one of these surveys e first point to note i that the WORDS NEED is not as simple as all that in Mr. EVSINGS Roosevelt's mind. What the President apparently wants to do is to revise the old Wilsonian theory which was com- promised into formation of the Federal Trade Commission. But he also seems to have a notion of going further. He wants to define unfair trade - practices and fair trade practices upon a reform basis. He wants to upset particularly the Supreme Court rule-of-reason policy as to monopolies. Under this court rule only the bad monopolies are subject to Government prosecution or persecution, depending on your viewpoint, The President has in mind to eflect a reversal of this Supreme Court position and therefore may possibly continue his fight against the courts. Then again, he might get at it in the new legislation (now being worked up by Gen. Corcoran and Gen. Cohen) by writing a new definition in conflict with the established Supreme Court posi- tion and seeking to have it tested by the present court. All these details, of course, are yet to be fought out, but those who have had a hand in it are of the opinion it will not be as mild as the above outline sounds. . e There can be no question about the fact that this is the plan which was fixed in Mr. Roosevelt's mind when he started off for tarpon. No official pledge has been made on it, and past experience with 24-hour shifts of viewpoint in this administration warrant issuance of a warning that it may be sometning different before it gets out In all reasonable expectations, it probably will be followed through, with some alterations, but keep your fingers crossed. ¢ (Copyright, 1937.) largest single group of applicants is shown as industrially ‘unclassifiable’. “It will be observed that more than half of these industrially unclassifiable applicants in both surveys had relief status. This suggests that many of the older applicants in this group have not been regularly employed for some- time, perhaps for years, except on work projects and in a variety of tem- porary employments. Frequent shifts | has there been a central, unified col- lection of job titles, specifications, and classifications.” Cost of Surveys. It cost only about $350,000 to make | the two recent surveys out of which | has been gathered what little informa- { tion about occupational classifications | | there is today. Merely counting the | unemployed is of relatively little im- | portance compared to finding out just | Basques. It is an in the industry of employment are characteristic of these persons. About | a third of the industrially unclassified | applicants in each survey were wom- en, including quite a large proportion of married women without recent work experience.” It is apparent from the same report thet many farm applicants look every year for out-of-season employment to supplement farm incomes, that per- sons under 25 years of age are hav- ing a harder time finding jobs than persons between 25 and 45. Says the official report of the Unemployment Service: “The dearth of factual information about occupations, in either Govern- ment publications or those of private concerns, is a surprising and serious who the job-seekers are. Considering | that the Federal Government has spent | about $10,000,000,000 for relief in the | last four years, it is nothing short of amazing that so little has been spent | in getting facts that can be useful, | There are plenty of white collar appli- cants on the rolls of the U. S. employ=- ment service who could help make periodic reports on what the files {show as to the unemployed. It is just possible also that out of | the surveys and their data ways will be found to place men and women in Jobs, which are waiting for them, but | about which they may happen not to know because the machinery for bring- ing the applicant and the job together is not 80 good when the job happens to be farther away than 1,000 miles by gap in an important fleld. N train or bus. Y readers, although such opinion themselves and directly opposed to The Star’: s may be contradictory among War on Basques’ Blot Proud and Useful Little BY DOROTHY THOMPSON. | N EVERY great struggle there comes & point where minor issues | are sloughed away, where confu- sion vanish, and a single event throws a clear white light over every- thing. That point has come in Spain. It is no longer possible for any human being with a heart in his; breast or a head on his shoulders cooly to debate the pros and cons of Loyalists vs. Rebels. For what is now happening there is the ruth- less, cold-blooded, vicious extermi- v nation of one of | the rarc peoples of the earth—the extermination which beggars every description of war, which vio- lates every convention which has been set by man as an inhibition against his own ruthlessness for 100 years or more. To sit by and not to protest | with all the breath in one’s body reads one out of the ranks of civilized and | Christian society. What is happening is Homeric. It | has the elements of the loftiest Greek tragedy, of the terrible dramas which | purge the soul with pity. No one/ knows whence the Basques came. All we know is that this little people is one of the few rare and absolutely pure races left in Europe, having a beautiful language and literature, beautiful bodies and faces, a people proud, inde- | pendent and free, whose history is as old as Europe’s, and who, during all its centuries, have minded their own business, tilling the soil, building a | domestic architecture of purest design | and exquisite proportion, and churches which are among the gems of civ- ilization. They are Catholics of deepest piety, | and Ignatius Lovola, founder of that most intellectual of Catholic orders, the Society of Jesus, is their son. ‘They are great sailors. Their grace and pride is expressed in some of the world’s most handsome dances, and in a remarkable music. They play a beautiful game of their invention, which visitors to Havana have seen: Pelote Basque, or Jai-Alai. Astride two frontiers, they have never been subjected. Their allegiance to the Spanish crown was given in return | for its allegiance to them, and the promise under oath that their own | laws and customs would be respected. They have never had a nobility. For every Basque has been a democrat | and every Basque has felt himself | a8 nobleman. | From their poor mountainous prov- | inces, year by year, their sons have emigrated to be great colonizers. They | are the best and most constructive | of all the immigrants to the Argen- tine. Poor, proud and hospitable, every stranger who has visited them loves | them. They have adorned the human | race and done it no evil. This week airplanes, reputedly Ger- man, loaded with bombs, armed with machine guns, mobilized to save a| cause which has been lost since Ital- | ian soldiers scattered in a new Capo- | retto at Brihuega on the Guadalajara front, and set out, not to conquer the Basque country, but to extermi- nate its population. The most vivid account comes to us from the cor- respondent of the London Times, in a description of the bombing attack on Guernica. There was nothing hap- hazard about that attack. Iv was planned with coolness and intelligence —inhuman intelligence. Guernica is a little town of 7,000, containing in addition, at the time of the bombing, 3,000 refugees. It is not a part of any | front. A factory producing war mas | terial, lying outside the town, was| carefully avoided. The conquerors, no | doubt. wished to preserve it for them- selves, | The attack proceeded as follows— | study it carefully, for this is the| Dorothy Thompson. | “Pest—1'll fight clean and let you win, you'll treat me to Wilkins Ca_fec later” good ice creams. And ice cream in America. What does this pr dients? Yes...every in Spanish War. | of sheep coming to market was mowed | Fascist. There has been terror on both | is no record of the Loyalists bombing | hearts. but by breaking their hearts. | For what do men fight? | wives and the children are to be sacri- Race Being Exterminated new technique of warfare, the new | military “science”: The day was Monday. That g marketing day in Guernica, when it is certain that the women with their children around them will be in the streets, in the market center of the town. First, small parties of airplanes threw heavy bombs and hand grenades all over the town, choosing area after area, in the most orderly fashion. The bombs tore holes 25 feet deep and brought down buildings over the heads of their inhabitants. As the population scattered in panic the planes swooped low and opened machine gun fire on the running people, whether they were men or women or children. Even a herd off the face of the earth. As the people dove into cellars and under | shelter the planes again flew high | and dropped incendiary bombs, and | the village flared with fire. And in | the midst of this carnage men aloft | W priests kneeling by the dead and‘ dying, administering extreme unction. | Those fleeing were machine-gunned along the roads—women and children! Good God! The game laws of most of our States prohibit the shoot= ing of birds from airplanes. It is unsportsmanlike. Guernica had no anti-aircraft guns. The democratic nations do not believe in “interven- tion.” Instead we sell copper to Germany and oil to Italy! Terror and Psychology. This is Fascist warfare. I mean sides of this war. This is a civil war, and a war of terror. But I have watched the dispatches as they have come across the cable desks and there | civilians. If they did there is no rec= ord. There is an inhuman logic in this technique. One defeats the soldiers at the front, not by blowing out their For their wives and their children. But if the ficed will they not submit? It is the psychology of the kidnaper to whom the victim cries, “Give me my child alive and I will do anything!” Ah. but that is not what the men of the Basque country have said! ‘This morning—1 write on Thursday— a cry goes up from those men. It is not a cry for arms. It is not a cry for allies. It is addressed to Britain, and to America, and to France, and to all nations, with ships on the seas, who still love human liberty. And they say: ‘“Take our women and chil- dren away! Take away our mothers with unborn children in their wombs, take away our little boys and our little girls! Land them somewhere, any- where, that our breed may not die out, and the life that we have begotten may go on! And then wes| will fight, here alone on these rocks, to the last breath, to the last man!” “Tree of God” Oak. There is an oak in Guernica, which | is called the Tree of God. It has stood ‘ for 600 years, and from its stump new | sprouts are shooting. The bombard- | ment which racked away women and! children and youths and old men never | touched this tree. Under it the Kings of Spain took the oath to respect the democratic rights of Vizcaya and were answered with the oath of the Basques, | pledging allegiance to the Senor, the Lord, but not the King of this prov- ince. For the Basques gave obedience to an equal, knowing that men must | acknowledge leadersnip, but they gave subservience to no man. Were the spirit alive in that sym- bol still alive throughout the world, nations would not sit by meekly, but there would arise from all civilized countries, through their governments, a protest, which even the Fascist dictatorships could not ignore. For, believe it or not, there are suach things in the werld as mortality, as low, as conscience, as a noble concept | of humanity, which once awake, are stronger than all ideologists. (Copyright, 1937, New York Tribune, Ine.) This is a “taste test” of Breyers against all other the results are conclusivel Today, more people buy Breyers than any other ove? Simply this. Breyers Ice Cream fastes better. Because of fine ingre- spoonful is backed by the Depletion of Stocks and Arms Factories’ Needs Send Raw Material Prices Soaring. BY CONSTANTINE BROWN. HE most incoherent, illogical and disastrous prosperity reigns these days in the world. This, at least, is the point of view of 8ir Walter Citrine, the secretary-general of the trade unions in Britain. It we were to hope for the best—that is, avoiding another international conflagration—our generation will live under the quadruple sign of rearmament, high cost of living, difficult firances and social conflicts. The depletion of stocks and the needs of the ammunition factories have sent the price of raw mate- rials sky high. Here are just a few figures picked at random: In 1933 the price of wheat was 47 cents a bushel. In April, 1937, the cost is $1.33. Cotton which was sold at $6.18 in March, 1933, mounted to $13.25 in April, 1937. Rubber was offered in 1933 at 3 cents a pound; today it costs 22.96 cents. Tin in- creased in four years from 23 to 57 cents; copper from 5 to 15 cents and gold which in 1933 was worth $20.67 an ounce, today costs $35, * ok ok X Since ammunition factories use all kinds of raw materials besides the basic ones, there has been a substantial increase in the goods we use every day. For instance, felt hats now are going up in price because the fur from which they are manufactured is required by the makers of gas masks. And since in every country—especially in Europe—scores of millions of such masks are being made these days, the demand for fur is so great that the hat manufacturers must pay three or four times the price they paid before a mass pro- duction of gas masks began. LR Great Britain boasted a balanced budget during the last four years; the cost of rearmament has upset the financial equilibrium of the United Kingdom; new taxes—direct and indirect—are needed. The British people will have to foot the bill, as do the people of other countries. The industriallst will pass the increased demands for revenue from the Government on to the consumer; the working men will pass them on back to the manufacturers and other employers and when they are bucked in their demands, strikes—sit-down or otherwise—take place; this adds a further burden on the manufacturer and ultimately on the consumer, for the industrialist, the wholesaler and the retailer must make good the losses suffered during a strike. And when the employers will call a halt to the increase in salaries and wages, because they will see no more profit from their production, social disturbances will be inevitable. It won't be the fault either of the employer or employe when these things occur. It will be merely the result of mad policies of governments and so-called statesmen. * k% % Because of the need for large revenues in practically every country in the world, there is but little chance of any government adopting a liberal tariff policy. Governments are reluctant to tax to death their citizens because they know what the social consequences of such a policy will be. Hence they must get money from every conceivable source, And tariffs on impor- tant commodities are bound to yield a substantial revenue. The consumer kicks less when he has to pay a high price for his shoes, clothes, butter and meat than when he has to cough up four times a year hard-earned money to the tax collector. He imagines that when he pays a higher price for a suit of clothes he gets something for his money—personally—while sending a check to the income tax collector is just so many dollars, pounds or francs wasted for nothing. * % ok ok Indirect taxation has been a favorite method of collecting rev- enue in Great Britain every time the empire found itself in an emer- gency. Thus, during the Napo- leonic wars William Pitt taxed candles, hats, silver flatware, horses and powder for the wigs. The latter tax brought short hair into fashion. At the end of the eighteenth century, Swiney introduced a birth tax in the United Kingdom for the same purpose of getting more revenue for the crown. Thus, the birth of a child to a poor family cost only 2 shillings (50 cents), while a peer of the realm had to pay 30 pounds ($150) each time he becatne a father. * %k k% Gustaf V, the King of Sweden, is undoubtedly the most democratic monarch in the world. Although he has reached the ripe age of 79 he has kept step with the social changes in the world. When the nation decided by an overwhelming vote in favor of the Socialist party—30 years ago this would have been considered an impossi- bility in Sweden—the King sent for the leader of the Socialist party, Hans- son, and enthrusted him with the formation of the cabinet. The Socialist newspaper Socialdemokrat carried on its masthead for many years the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” This has disappeared now and Pre- meir Hansson explains this disappearance “we don't need it, since we have it under our King.” The relations between these two men are excellent. ‘When a newspaper- man asked the head of the government who in his opinion was the best bridge player in the Kingdom, Hansson hesitated for a few minutes, then answered: I guess it's His Majesty.” And when the same question was put to the King he replied right away: “I can play a fair game, but cannot be compared with that of my prime minister, He is a wizard and takes away from me all my spare cash.” Headline Folk and What They Do Jules Bache Is Financier Who Satisfies Own Taste in Pictures. BY LEMUEL F. PARTON. NCLE SAM digs a big hole in Kentucky to bury gold as it pours in from all over the world. The gold is “sterilized.” as the flnancial experts put it. Great art treasures, also pouring in, are never sterile, never responsive to criti- | be (Copyright, 1937.) EXCURSION STEAMER SIDEWHEEL DAMAGED Potomac Under Repair at Solo- mons After Striking Log on Way From Baltimore. The excursion steamer Potomac is under repairs at Solomons, Md., after one of her sidewheels fouled a float- ing log yesterday as she was procee ing from Baltimore, where the steamer had been in drydock. The Cove Point Lighthouse observer reported the steamer “in distress” following the accident and the Coast Guard cutter Apache was asked to go to her assistance. A tug, however, took the steamer in tow shortly afterward and the re- quest for the cutter was canceled. The steamer was expected here to- morrow night after the damaged side wheel is repaire famous Breyers Pledge of Purity. But that isn't the whole story. Breyers have the ‘’knack’’ of blending and balancing these ingredients. Made better — Breyers naturally fastes better. Enjoy Breyers Ice Cream frequently ...it's good for you. Serve it regularly to your family—~ especially the children. Start tonight| cal fiat or caprice. The great Bache Y collection, pre- ¢ sented to the State of New ‘York, possibly has a value sufficient §to balance the State budget. § This value has £ grown during the centuries. We might just look over the idea of an international paint standard of currency. Great accre- tions of gold and art are likely to the backwash of war. Jules 3 Bache's ancestor, serving Napoleon helped the Little Corporal gather for the Louvre the great art of the ages— perhaps the most important balance brought forward in the Napoleonic ac- counting. Europe, always fighting, lost its wings, but it has a wingless victory ‘The Bache family has doubled in gold and art. They removed to Bavaria after the Napoleonic wars and Jules 8. Bache’s father, Semon Bache, emi- grated to America. ,He became a rich manufacturer of pfate glass. Jules S. Bache was born in New York City. He was educated at Charlier Institute, New York, and in Frankfort, Germany. After three years with his father's firm, he joined | the brokerage firm of Leopold Cahn & Co., advanced to its control, through | the years, absorbed it and made it | Jules S. Bache & Co. His holdings |spread through a wide network of directorates in utilities, banking and industrials. He has for many years been a quiet, unostentatious power in the financial world, a man of culture, satisfying his own taste in pictures, as well as his business judgment. The World War, like others, shifted great art. In the post-war years, Mr, Bache has been picking up bargains. | In 1929, he got Raphael's only portrait of a man for $600,000—works of Wat= teau, Romney, Reynolds, Holbein and others. The collection he now pre= sents to the State is one of the finest in the country, including paintings by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Van Dyck, Boucher and Tennant. All great European schools are repre= sented. No matter what happens to the gold buried in Kentucky, this and the Mellon collection look like net public gain. (Copyright, 1937.) . “GONE WITH WIND” SUIT WOULD TOTAL 6 BILLION Publishers Declare There Is No Merit for Action and Will Fight Case. Bs the Associated Press. NEW YORK, April 30.—Six billion, five hundred million dollars. That's what the MacMillan Co. es- timates it would have to pay should Susan Lawrence Davis obtain Judg- ment as asked in her suit alleging that Margaret Mitchell plagiarized portions of “Gone With the Wind.” The company said 1,300,000 copies of the book had been sold. The suit asks $5,000 damages for each alleged infringement, basing its claim on sim- ilar passages in “Gone With the Wind” and the Davis book, “Authentic Hi tory of the Ku-Klux Klan, 1865-187 The company, comparing a long list of passages in the two books on which the Davis claim was based, said its attorneys had advised there was no merit in the suit and that it would fight the case through the courts rather than settle for a cent, Jules S Bache.