Evening Star Newspaper, August 9, 1937, Page 9

Pay-Hour Bill Called Bid for Votes Roosevelt Sees Battle Cry in Measure, Writer Says. BY DAVID LAWRENCE. ARDLY any piece of proposed legislation in many years has occasioned as much inquiry, apprehension and search for information as the pending bill to give the Federal Government the power to define overtime and to define mini- mum “vages. Nobody here in officialdom know how many work- ers will be affect- ed or what in- dustries will come 3 under Federal Jjurisdiction, since | the line between wholly intra- state and inter- § state businesses i not clearly drawn. If ever there was an example of hodge - podge legislating it is in what is going on now. With members tired and worn out by the long session and strain of previous controversies, the President is urging action for plainly political reason Mr. Roosevelt feels that “maximum hours and minimum wages” constitute a good battle cry for the 1938 cam- paign. The fact that the business and industry of the country will be faced with & major readjustment and that already full of exemptions, gpecial privileges and clauses put in there by deals between groups seems to give Mr. Roosevelt very little con- cer The fact also that the bill, if it s Jaw, will present an almost unworkable problem and that it will take a long while to iron out the many icated questions that will arise orcement seems not at all to r the President. David Lawrence. Principle Long Discussed. le of minimum-wage maximum-hour regula- long has been discussed in America, but the States have hardly had a chance to work out the problem because until this year the reform was not held by the Supreme Court to be within the constitutional right of either the States or the Federal Gov- ernment, As a matter of fact, the caution of the Supreme Court has been wise, be- cause when Government steps in to regulate wages and hours it does seem as if this were a question on which the people should pass directly. Assuming the Federal Government has the power to regulate minimum wages and maximum hours—something on which the Supreme Court has not yet passed even though the rights of the States have been upheld—it would sppear that on a matter of such grave importance thorough consideration should be given to the many conflict- ing viewpoints that have arisen. The | hearings were relatively brief. When | they were held recently a different bill was before the Senate committee than is now before the House. Decisions of Economic Policy. Vital decisions of economic poli sre wrapped up in the prososed law. | For a while it may be literally true | that about 6,000,000 workers will be directly affected, it cannot be denied that the others gainfully employed will be indirectly affected. Actually the bill is & price-raising measure, for the increased wage costs due to higher rates for overtime and to increases in expense necessary to establish a minimum wage will be passed on to the consumer. It is a curious situation, too, which surrounds the supposed right of the | THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1937 What’s Back of It All R. O. T. C. Seen in Jeopardy as Colleges Fail to Receive Appropriations. BY H. R. BAUKHAGE. NLESS something happens soon, it looks as if the college boys in some 50 institutions of higher learning who thought they were going to get a chance 0 learn squads right and section halt next Fall, won't. The American Legion battled valiantly for an appropriation for Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Congress passed it. But so far none of the colleges which applied for units have been notifled that they will get what they have asked for. The official answer of the War Department, hitherto silent on the subject, is as follows: “Under existing policy, no funds are available for the estab- ashment of new R. O. T. C. units. When, and if, funds become avail- able, consideration will be given to their establishment.” - But it can be safely predicted that there will be no bugles blowing 'meath academic elms unless something happens soon to change the edict. The appropriation is merely authorized by Congress, and tech- nically there is no mandate for its expenditure for R. O. T. C. units. This item was specifically budgeted in the Army bill, however, and the sponsors meant what they meant. The Legion boys, who only recently announced with no little satisfac- tion that the plan would be carried out, will be considerably surprises when they read of the War Department’s decision. What irks some of the boys who would like to see their sons mix a little school of the soldier with the rest of their schooling is that the President recently announced his plan for an extended Naval Reserve. The candi- dates for these units—including high school students—would be given training without pay, but they'd get their keep and likewise expenses to and from the naval training station. This, it 15 pointed out, would cost less than amounts specified in any pending Navy Reserve bill and the money could be obtained “by simple appropriation” from voted funds and wouldn't require a special law. * K K x Where, asks the old gray squirrel on the White House lawn, is this mandatory neutrality which Congress passed with such a flurry against the wishes of the administration for discretionary power? You won't hear any official statements on the subject, but there are some thundering silences which conceal a number of expletives. Two things are not happening which are significant: One, the President is not invoking the law, as laid down by Congress, in the Sino-Japanese undeclared war; two, the proponents of this law aren't doing anything either. They can't do anything about it, of course, for the President is within his rights. But by not saying anything, they tacitly assent to the thesis that the President gets the last word, if any, on the question of neutrality, which, in effect, nullifies the “mandatory” element entirely. The law, of course, is on the statute books all right, but Congress is realizing that it doesn’'t matter what brand of neutrality is specified—if the President can't see a war on the Far Eastern horizon, there is just nothing that can be done about it It has been the administration’s contention from the first that only the broad principles of neutrality can be legislated. The present Sino-Japanese case is being offered as fresh proof that each situation must be judged on its own merits. A An embargo clamped down on both belligerents would work distinct advantage to Japan, while America’s traditional sympathy has always been® with China. No wonder the diplomatic equivalent of “I told you so” is peing heard in the solemn corridors of the State Department. It will be no surprise if Senator Vandenberg or some of his colleagues across the aisle who battled to the death for mandatory laws may hove something mollifying to say on the subject. Or, perhaps quite as significant still, they will say nothing. * ok K % A very formal reception the other night at the Egyptian Legation cele- = brated the investiture of King G Farouk I. ) On the invitations, which were sent out to a rather inclusive guest list, appeared the word “dec- rations,” which means that the military and diplomatic representa- tives must wear their foreign orders. Some of the guests took the word in a more generic sense. Several Congressmen appeared Wwith their ornate “master farmer” badges in their satin lapels. * ok ok X Aubrey Williams, deputy relief administrator, sitting in for his chief, Harry Hopkins, while the latter is vacationing, had a strange experience out in the dust bowl the other day. Mr. Williams was scheduled to appear at a meeting to discuss relief for the drought-stricken inhabitants, but nearly missed it. His car got stuck in a mudhole. (Copyrizht, 1037, by the North American Newspaper Alliance, Inc.) Fourth Army at “War.” SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., August 9 (# —The 4th Army began today Horace Dodge, Jr., in Crash. Horace E. Dodge. jr. member of the frHE 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 WINDSOR, England, August 9 (#).— | four d of intensive maneuvers. Maj. Gen. Walter P. Story's brown Army and the advancing 6th Brigade Regulars, commanded by Brig. Gen. | Walter C. Sweeney, were to engage in | battle, with all the elements of actual Detroit, Mich.,, family prominent in | development of the automobile, was severely shaken vesterday when his | car collided with another near his | country home, St. Leonard’s, Oc-| cupants of the second car likewise | Federal Government to wield the | power to regulate maximum hours. Originally this power was supposed to proceed from the idea that the health objectives of the maximum hours are entirely demolished by the clauses ! providing that it is very healthy indeed to work overtime provided the em- ployer pays time and a half. Description of Bill. An accurate description of the bill would be a measure to increase wages irrespective of whether the marginal producer can afford to pay such wages in competition with the well-capital- | zed employer. It is a curious commentary on the so-called humanitarian nature of the proposal that many persons will lose their jobs when the law is enacted. 8mall businesses will be forced to the wall because they will be unable to afford the increased costs and, of course, the large businesses will swallow up the orders left by the weaker units. It is another case of monopoly benefitting just as it did under the N, R. A. One of the reasons why several elements of big business are strong for the bill is that they already are paying the probable scale that will be fixed and they want the marginal ceompetitors to do the same, knowing full well that they can't afford it. Says Study Not Wanted. But controlled economy, which assumes that the Federal Government is omniscient and can regulate the economic life of the country under a system of Government-encouraged monopolies as contrasted with free competition, is in the saddle today. Strong pressure is being brought to bear to cause the House Rules Com- mittee to postpone action on the bill till the next session so as to give the country an opportunity to study it. But Mr. Roosevelt doesn't want the country to study the bill. It studied his court packing measure and de- feated the proposal. The motto of the present administration is to jam everything through before the people can wake up to what is happening to their rights. Maybe when the 1938 elections come around, no kindly Su- preme Court will have vitiated the lJaw and it will be in full operation with all the irritations and disloca- tions that produce unfavorable re- action on the voters. It would be much better to have the people them- selves discover the flaws in the law than to have the Supreme Court declare it invalid. There is a bare chance that the House committee may succeed in postponing action, but it is only an outside chance. In all probability there will be considerable delay in conference, by which time @ move to adjourn or an effort to get & special session arranged for October might possibly cause the bill to go over for a few weeks. But it does seem a5 if the Federal experiment in maximum hour regulation and mini- mum wage regulation is going to be made. F -/ warfare simulated. were only shaken. WZZ2 O ves 3 Five round WP® d rmation 0F themselves and directly opposed to The Star’s. German Art for Guns? Possibility That Purge of Museums May Supply Munitions Cash Is Discussed. BY DOROTHY THOMPSON. N THEIR ostensible effort to elim- inate “bolshevist culture” from German art, the Nazi govern- ment has actually out-bolshevized the bolsheviks. Presumably bolshevist culture is mass culture, in which the standards of criticism are set by the masses. And the mass standard has always been ex- pressed in the phrase, “I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.” Or, if bolshevist art is art forced to conform to a cer- tainideology, then again the Nazis have the jump on the Communists, who have retained very fine collec- tions of “bour- geois” art. The artistic criterion for the aver- age man has always been compre- hensibility. But comprehensibility for the untrained eye and ear is largely a matter of familiarity., Long estab- lished verse forms are familiar, therefore Edgar Guest is a poet. New rhythms are not, so T. S. Eliot is a charlatan. The ear has become ac- customed to the harmonies of | Beethoven and Wagner, and even the | average man can listen pleasurably, | or without acute pain, to the over-| ture to “Tanhauser” or the “Ninth| Symphony.” But the average man | and even the average critic in the| days of Beethoven and Wagner were horrified by what seemed to them the cacophonies of both composers. They affected him then, as Stravinsky affects the average man today. and | had® they had their way two titanic | musicians would have been banned and burned. In civilized societies, however, the | average man is not the court of last | appeal on artistic matters and he is encouraged to respect his betters, that is to say, to admit the existence of criteria above his own. Mr. Babbitt furnishes the funds for the art gal- Dorothy Thompson, leries, but takes the advice of “experts” in the interest of his money’s worth, even if he scratches his head over the | results. He may get more pleasure out | of a collection of photographs of | movie stars than out of a collection of Van Goghs, but he vaguely apprehends | that in some few people the Van| Goghs awaken a sharp and almost | painful pleasure, an exquisite emotion, | for which, though he does not share it, he has respect. Effect of Hitler Decree. Future historians of this civilization —if there are any civilized historians in the future to record it—will regard Mr. Hitler's recent pronunciamentos on art with interest and wonder. They tell a great deal more about what is really happening in Germany than all the talk about the new elite, with which German literature is replete. They show that in the sphere of cul- ture there is no remote chance for an ! elite to emerge. On the contrary, the | standards are those of the most un- differentiated masses, of the Babbitts and sub-Babbitts, of whom, in cultural matters, Adolph Hitler is the apo- theosis. His speech in Munich last month, and Gen. Goering's ordered purge of the German galleries last Tuesday, must have caused the most acute dis- comfort and embarrassment to thou- sands of cultivated Germans in and out of Germany. He suggested that any artist who sees a sky green might be examined for visual defects and sterilized. He set a uniform standard for artistic criticism—that of his own lamentably ignorant, uneducated, ex- house painter's, ex-lance corporal’s ex-coffee house sketcher's taste. don’t like it,” he said, “so it's not art.” Thereupon the ‘“critics” burst into their customary regimented eulogy and hailed Hitler as “the master of German art.” Two-thirds of them must have had & jaw ache from hold- ing their tongues so long in their cheeks. The thesis is now apparently advanced that because Hitler is a master political organizer and dema- gogue, he is by nature a master of all spheres. His henchmen are already dictating physics and mathematics and searching for a Germanic theory of the atom, so why not? Mr. Hitler is catholic in his dis- tastes—that one must admit. Noth- ing alien to the mass-eye scems to him human. German painters be- longed to many schools—which means they were categorized into schools by their critics—and, of course, they were part of all Western culture. There were abstract painters, like Kandinski; impressionists who had been greatly influenced by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet, like Kokoschka, who, however, always credited Van Dyke as the source of his greatest inspiration There were realistic painters, like Dix, and very Germanic souls like Paula Modersohn-Becker, who tried to get at the simple inwardness of forms. There were post-impressionists, like Schmidt- Rottluft and Pechstein, to class them broadly. These were all names in German painting, and shrewd men who spent their lives with pictures bought their canvases, speculating on the power of these squares of color to survive a day. Prefers Gap In History. But Mr. Hitler neither likes the Zeitgeist nor any of its expressions. He prefers a gap in history Gen. Goering, who as an expert avia- tor may be trusted with the related matter of art, is instructed to strip the German museums and reduce them to the taste of the maestro. I am not sure, however, that air- planes and art are unrelated in this whole incident. There is a fortune of modern paintings in Germany— not only of German paintings but of modern French pictures, some of the best of which the late Paul Cassirer and other Jewish dealers brought into Germany. The very pictures Mr. Hitler anathematized in his paper designed for the Zenith Ladies’ Cul- ture Club, are those which have the highest value on the international art | market. And Hitler needs foreign currency. If he can strip the peo- ples’ museums for good Dutch guild- ers from the art mart in Amsterdam he will have a little gold with which to run his labor brigades and arma- ment factories. Thus a purge for the welfare of the German soul can be combined with a good business deal. (Copyright, 1937.) “After Stock Taking...Short Lots! Beginning this morning at 9. :. And s0 | which | This Changing World Germany, Italy and Japan Reserve Comments on New American Credit. BY CONSTANTINE BROWN, THE new American credo to be applied to our international relations has received an enthusiastic indorsement from most of the countries seeking to avoid an armed conflict at the presens moment. The ideals expressed by Secretary Hull could receive nothing but an appreciative reception. When the preacher in a jail tells the con- victs about the Ten Commandments they do not say “baloney,” they listen and approve. But whether telling them they shall not steal will change them after they leave the prison is another matter. The German, the Italian and the Japanese governments have so far failed to comment on the American credo. They are honest enough to keep quiet and reserve their approval until after they have completed their expansionist plans. * K Kk ‘The Chamberlain-Mussolini love letters are arousing France'’s jealousy. Like all jealous persons Marianne says she is delighted at the develop- ment of the new friendship between the trusted Neville and the hated Benito. In order to show that she really doesn't care she has inten- sified her ardor toward her other wooer, Stalin * ok % X What brought about the un- expected change in relationship be- tween Italy and Great Britain is the situation in the Far East. The French maintain that Mussolini began to be really worried because of the increasing pace of the Brit- ish rearmament. But the truth seems to be the British, faced with the possibility of a really dangerous situation in the Far East, want to appease Mussolini and secure for a while at least the unhampered communications through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to Singapore. e Like o stazm = T [hew e * K K % In any case, nobody seems to think the British-Italian affair is more than a passing thing. The fundamental differences which have caused the conflict between the two powers have not changed. Mussolini continues to have his eye on the Eastern Mediterranean and wants to dominate it exclusively. The British continue to distrust the “upstart” more than they distrust Hitler. Some kind of a temporary reconciliation might be patched up in the course of the next few weeks, but the whole thing will be on a shaky basis. Xk In the meantime the French have strengthened their relations with Russia. At a time when the question of a Western non-aggres- #ion pact is being discussed in London, Rome and Berlin, the French foreign secretary, Yvon Delbos, has given the Russians emphatic assurances France will not enter into such an agreement unless Russia and Czechoslovakia are included. ERE The death of the famous Italian inventor and scientist, Gieglielmo Marconi, has brought out some heretofore unknown diplomatic secrets Marconi, whose mother was Irish, had many close contacts in London, where he was as much at home as he was in Rome. During the critical period of the Anglo-Ital British fleet was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean and Britain's An ny Eden took an aggressive tude toward M , Marconi wrote to some of his trusted friends, saying he would be broken hearted if the British fleet attacked Italy. He had invented, Marconi informed “death ray” which would cause havoc among the Br: Some people were inclined to take the Italia nevertheless communicated it to the admiralty, It appears the admiralty was not as skeptical as the foreig office and suggested the foreign secretary pull tn his horns as best he could. FEden did. n conflict, when the -k ox % Although only few reports re- garding the purge which is going on in the U, 8 8. R. are percolating through the strict Moscow censor- ship, it appears the arrests are continuing The foreign office has suffered a good deal. Litvinoff's wife, an Englishwoman, has been exiled to Sumara. She was talking too ~ ¥ S g 4 I much out of turn, Troyanovsky appears to have ‘:“'*‘(-,l, ey been able to clear himself and may return to the United States former Ambassador to Turkey; Rosenberg, former Ambassador to Spain: Kretinsky, the vice commissar; Starky, former Ambassador to Kabul: Zukerman of the Near Eastern division; Stern, the head of the Central Europe unit, and Beckman, the chief of protocol, all are under arrest Some are reported to have been executed. Karakhan, Headline Folk and What They Do E. L. Cord Got Start With Rusty Flivver in Los Angeles. BY LEMUEL F. PARTON. HEN Amadeo P. Giannini A came roaring out of the West to challenge Wall Street, he won his fight. Not so conclusive is the tourney of E, L. Cord with the Eastern bankers. Hia aviation battle with Lamotte R. Cohu in November, 1932, was a lion and unicorn engagement “all around the town,” but now his holdings on land, sea and sky —he been a riple-threat op= erator —pass to control of & York bank- ing grou It is reported that the aviation, automoe bile and ship= E ng §OCUrle ties of the Cord Corp. will not be reoffered publi E. L. Cord. had won bat in the heavens above, the earth be- neath and the waters under the earth, His first stake was $50, weighed care- fully before he invested it in a rusty flivver in a Los Angeles junk yard. Ha was 17 years old then, just in from Missor He fixed up the car and sold it at a profit. That was the start of a number of fast deals. Buying and recond 1g old cars, he cleared $10,000. One of his best bets was a ! body on a Ford ing line to radial engine 1933 bought control of the | New York Shipbuilding Corp. He was 135 tickerside when, in 1932, he took on Lamotte T. Cohu for | control of the Aviation Corp. of Dela- ith the latter weighing in at It was a memorable battle of the air. His affairs became more and more complicated after that. In 193 he was in seclusion w his far in England after threats to kidnap his two children. He built one of the | most bea houses in Los Ange but hasn't had much of a chance to settle down pansion of hi aloof man, w tacles, a mechanical ar genius, who can't help 1 out. Wall Street by no means counts | him out. (Copyright, 1837) | a is importing about 4,000,000 | pounds of American tobacco every we start selling accumulated Odd Lots from Inventory while quantities last . .. 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