St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 14

9 2B ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, MONDAY, JUNE 21, 1948 J-." i. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH The AFL vs. Progress book advertising of Wilcox and Follett Chicago publishers. For all practical purposes, it was the political advertising of the Illinois Republicans, who are eager to kick Dwight Green upstairs in order to get him off the state ticket.

It should have borne the label, "Political Advertisement," for that is exactly what it was. We will soon know how many people at Philadelphia were taken in by this smooth trick. Founded by JOSEPH PULITZER December 12. 1878 Published hy The Pulitzer Publishing Co. Address MAin llll llll Olive St.

(I) THE POST-DISPATCH PLATFORM I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles; that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never- belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare; never be satisfied with merely printing news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty. JOSEPH PULITZER. April 10, 1907 1 11 I I I II I I I 1 I I gM i vlfi LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE Phone Rates and Interest Rates Hearings before the Missouri Public Service Commission have disclosed a substantial dif fer? ence of opinion over the proper annual return "on Southwestern Bell's investment. Southwestern Bell presented a New York economics professor who testified that a return of 6V per cent was reasonable and proper. Witnesses representing Kansas City and St.

Louis favored a return of 5 per cent or slightly less. The question is not academic; it represents a difference of nearly $2,000,000 a year in what Missourians will pay for telephone service. In the past, the Public Service Commission has permitted rates high enough to yield per cent. When the cost of money was higher than it is now, when some savings banks were paying 4 per cent on time deposits, this was not out of line. But for years now Government policy has been carefully directed toward a policy of cheaper money.

The American Telephone Telegraph Co. can borrow all the call money it wants at IVi per -cent. In the past year or so it has sold close to a billion dollars' worth of convertible debentures at 23A per cent. In the past few years, A. T.

T. itself has recognized the lower cost of money by reducing its interest charge for short-term loans made to Southwestern Bell from 6 per cent to 2 per cent. United States Treasury experts have testified at recent telephone rate hearings that 4.87 per cent appears to be enough for a Bell subsidiary to earn. And years ago the late Chief Justice Stone gave an opinion that 4 per cent would not be considered confiscatory. We are in a period of low money cost.

With a national debt of 250 billion dollars, the Government is likely to see that we remain there. It is time, therefore, for Southwestern Bell's rate of return to be adjusted to existing financial facts. This would merely pass on to telephone subscribers the economies which the utility itself enjoys from the historic fall in the cost of money. LOST: One weekend. Finder please return to either House of Congress, and no questions asked.

In its suit to restrain Western Union from mechanizing, the AFL is fighting a battle that was lost more than a century ago. It was the battle against progress through invention. Though its methods differ, the AFL is a broth-er-in-purpose to the Luddites who tried to hold back the dawn of the Industrial Revolution by wrecking textile machinery in England 137 years ago. Mechanization has increased employment and wages in the textile industry and improved the quality of the product but you couldn't tell that to the Luddites in 1811 any more than you could tell it to the AFL, plaintiff, vs. Western Union, today.

The counter-revolutionaries of the Industrial Revolution were still going strong when the linotype was invented in 1886. They were equally unimpressed by the obvious lesson of the past and the inevitable trend of the future. Printers made violent objections to the machine that was to bring about almost miraculous expansions in the printing industry and in the markets for goods which printing advertised. The livery stable operators hollered "Get a horse!" at the patrons of the fledgling automobile industry, and the latter went right ahead and bought more automobiles. It's a good thing for the sons of livery stable workers that they did for the automobile age providers more jobs and higher wages than the horse-and-buggy age.

Today, badly as the country needs housing, the construction of dwellings is still handicapped by trade union rules restricting the width of paint brushes, the use of spray guns, and the like. Petrillo's Federation of Musicians is tilting a lance at the phonograph record. Railroad unionists put artificial limits on the length of freight trains. In these and many other ways, the anti-progressive speaks up for the good old days before 1750. It would seem that if any country should have learned and accepted the lesson of technological progress, it would be the United States.

Here is the native heath of mass production. Here is the country in which mass production has been carried to its greatest attainment. In the specific case of Western Unfon, failure to mechanize in keeping with the times has put the company in financial straits. With outmoded equipment, it has not kept up with the advances in competitive mediums of communication, telephone and air mail. There has been talk in the Federal Communications Commission of having to merge it with the Postoffice or the telephone system unless something were done about its "accumulated inefficiencies." As a practical course, the AFL should have been urging Western Union to adopt modern mechanization long before now.

It should be only too happy now that the company has, though belatedly, elected to do so. The change will unquestionably throw some people out of work. So did the steam engine and the power loom. But a job that depends on the arbitrary maintenance of obsolete methods is shaky security for its holder and an incubus on everyone who buys the product. The AFL and all labor will be better off, in the long run, when more is done of just what Western Union now proposes to do.

Jokers in Freedom To the Editor of the Post-DUpaten; Fitzpatrick's cartoon reference to the Emancipation Proclamation and a short editorial reference to Tom Paine in the Post-Dispatch bring two things to mind. Did you know that the highly-touted Emancipation Proclamation had a "joker" In it? The lofty principle of freedom for the slaves, over which a half million men gave their lives in battle and in which the Tankees enlisted the aid of God's "terrible swift sword," simply did not apply to 13 parishes and the City of New Orleans In Louisiana, seven counties and the city of Norfolk in Virginia, and ALL of West Virginia. AIL of which leads me to believe that Abe was less than honest and was just "another politician" bowing to the expediency of the moment, because the exempted areas were sympathetic to the North and he wanted to keep them that way for the remaining three years of the Principle didn't matter. It is generally admitted that Tom Paine's writings were the spark-plug of the American Revolution, yet the people's appreciation of his work was to allow religious bigots to drive him out of the country. No atheist, but merely a man like the later Thoreau who saw no need for a "middle-man" to worship God, he was also hounded by the same type of fanatics in England and France.

Nor did "organized religion" let him alone when he returned to America a broken man. The crackpots considered it their "Christian duty" to pursue him to his grave in a potters' field. Thus ended the life of one of our greatest Americans, for whom the Bill of Rights provision AGAINST "an establishment of religion" did not operate. That's how the hypocrites killed a real American. E.

T. McNAMARA. Jefferson CAN AMERICA BE DEPENDED UPON? What's Wrong With Hollywood Between Boo Ends They Are Pacifists Why Centralized control and concentration of the industry in one place lead to a stereotyped "product" that avoids all vital problems, an insider argues; counts it no wonder that the movie moguls are timid in imagination and excessively fearful of criticism. The "Mirror Public Opinion To the Editor of the Post-DUpateh: The Christian religion is a pacifist re-. ligion.

Conscientious objectors do not believe they can go to war and still true to their religion. JIM OSGOOD. Jacksonville, HI. For a picture of the deepest melancholy, we suggest a Southern Bourbon brooding over his civil wrongs. Geza Herczcg, Author and Scenarist of "The Life of Zola," in United Nations World For Housing: Stalemate Unless it is called back in special session, the Eightieth Congress will do nothing to relieve the housing shortage.

The Senate passed the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, a balanced measure which would have generously stimulated private building, added federal aid to such local slum-clearance funds as the proposed $16,000,000 St. Louis bond issue, provided public housing for 500,000 families and promoted lower building costs. In the House, however, the leaders allowed the members to vote only on the Wolcott bill which provided the private subsidies and scuttled the rest. In the hectic closing hours of the session, an objection in the Senate blocked the appointment of conferees to strike upa compromise, so the whole matter, died. This is an unhappy outcome for everyone but Democratic campaigners.

By refusing to yield to the need for a moderate-scale program of housing for the poor, real estate lobbyists have lost the vast subsidies which. they sought. The hopes of sufferers from the housing shortage have been blighted. For the Republican party, the. failure to act on housing widens the chasm between its intelligent conservatives and its Old Guard reactionaries.

If the Republican platform actually lives up to the advance assurance that it will be strong enough to hold every element of the party, the housing plank will be a wonderful and fearful thing. In Hollywood, the leading studios out about 300 pictures a -year. This means that about eight producers have the last word on 30 to 60 feature pictures a year. These gentlemen are, undoubtedly, good showmen. But are they good enough to make all decisions on so many pictures and make the right ones? Production of a Broadway play one set, 10 actors, three acts, with a $60,000 to $70,000 investment Churchill Looks at the Record THE GATHERING STORM, by Winston S.

Churchill (Houghton Mifflin Boston, 764 pgs with appendix end index, $4.) The responsiveness of the Knglish speaking public to any and all words uttered by Winston Churchill has given a special value to "The Gathering Storm." The book is news as well as literature and history and for that reason its contents-have been widely disseminated by newspapers periodicals in advance of publication. Nevertheless there is an advantage to having the book complete and in one cover so that it can be read continuously, sporadically or in systematic doses according to one's pleasure. And however it may be read, whether for its information, its viewpoint or its style, it is an obviously superior performance by an old master. As the first of a proposed set of fiva volumes, "The Gathering Storm" describes the events that took place in Europe in the interval between the Treaty of Versailles and the year 1940. The character of these years is indicated by an expression which has come into use largely since the close of the war.

It is called "The False Peace" and it is Mr. Churchill's thesis that it need not have been that the second World War could have been prevented and that it was the carelessness, good nature and stupidity of the English-speaking peoples that allowed it to happen. Disgusted With Congress To the Editor of the Post-Diapateh: .1 have been a close follower of Letters From the People ever since my discharge from the armed services three years ago. I admire the frank spirit of the column. But lately the more I read of it the madder I get.

I am particularly disgusted with the Eightieth Congress. It had a real opportunity to help the country check ris-'ing prices and provide decent housing JTor the returning veteran. Instead the record shows nothing but bungling and "catering to the lobbyists and private interests. There is onlyone way to correct this situation, and that is to get out to the polls and register the correction when the time rolls around. JOHN A.

BAUER. A Spring for Summer to Shoot At Summer having officially started, at 7:11 o'clock this morning, it is in order to say a few words about the spring just ended. It was a Grade A spring. A little dry for crops, but otherwise perfect or a little better. Sunny and cool.

The nights were dreams. Not more than a half-dozen of them when electric fans were needed, even in the city, and quite a few of them when a light cover could be pulled up comfortably. There is no intention here to draw Invidious distinctions so far as the incoming summer is concerned. It is, however, a matter of record that some St. Louis summers are very warm.

Not always does the temperature drop considerably at nightfall and an oceanish breeze spring up. There are even occasions when the old St. Louis saying, that a breeze is just round the corner, is brought into question by non-residents. So as regards the summer now in progress, our only purpose in citing the happy spring just ended is to point out what some seasons are doing is a complicated matter. Imagine Max Gordon or Brock Pemberton or Jed Harris undertaking to produce two three four five dozen Tlays a year.

The Hollywood producer wizards do it with a simple snap of the finger, just like that. It's just as well, we suppose, that the Freedom Train isn't running between Bizonia and Berlin. Centralization production in one Better Man Than Gov. Green To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: Gov. Gj-een of Illinois may be presented as a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States, a news item says.

In my estimation Driscoll Scanlan would be the better man for the position. Why not review the record? JIM HAWKINS. It is true, of course, that the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and even the Scandinavians have a certain complicity in that wantonness of attitude which encouraged the strategy of appeasement. The statesmen of Great Britain, however, were its authors and Churchill's documentary evidence as Imminent danger of drowning in a vicious whirlpool of fear. The movie makers are afraid.

They are afraid of anything new and sincere. They tremble in front of a New Jersey Congressman. Any group or association can scare the daylights out of them. Tried, Safe and Lifeless Frightened people, when approaching any new theme or subject, don't even try to develop the underlying significance of the characters or conflicts. They choose the old, safe, box-office-insured formulas.

The basic reason for their uneasiness never penetrates their brains. They fail to grasp the awful truth that they, and their audiences, live in a crucial period and that the main problem is clear and simple: survival of civilization as we know it. Is there any hope? Let me answer with an anecdote about another crisis. About 20 years ago the "talkie" upset Hollywood's complacent illiteracy. The moguls summoned among others Ferenc Molnar, the Hungarian playwright.

They hoped, presumably, he could inject some precious blood-plasm into the newborn talking pictures. Three leading producers met Molnar in New York and made him the offer of $5000 a week to go to Hollywood and write a screen play. "Your offer is overwhelming! said Molnar. "But I don't like to accept an offer when I don't know exactly what I am expected to do." What Money Won't Buy The three film magnates hesitated. "It's simple," said the first.

"Just come to Hollywood, imagine that you are at your working desk in Budapest and don't think about movies. Think you are writing a play, that's all." Molnar pointed out that he didn't need to go to Hollywood to do that. "My friend is wrong, Mr. Molnar!" said the second moguL "Forget about play-writing just write a nice, simple story with a happy ending that's all we want." Molnar still felt that the directive was not specific enough. He tried to explain how important it would be for him to know exactly what they wanted.

The third film magnate put an end to the discussion. "My dear Mr. Molnar," he said bluntly. "If we knew what we wanted, we wouldn't be offering you $5000 a week." Molnar didn't go to Hollywood. Maybe Hollywood, so long as it remains a centralized, insulated factory, where originality succumbs to formulas, will never come alive.

Noise Instead of Sleep "To the Editor of the Post-DUpatch I agree with "Visitor" that St. Louis Is the honkiest city in the country. We had to move to South Broadway on account of the housing shortage. Now, with windows open, we can't get a decent night's sleep. I wish something could be done about enforcement of the anti-noise ordinance.

MRS. E. K. H. Too Much for Evqn the Farm Lobby As a measure of the deficiency of the new farm bill, the price guarantees it provides are so high as to offend even the Farm Bureau and the National Grange.

The new measure continues through 1949 the guarantee of 90 per cent of the 1910-14 norm. This is an excessively high guarantee placed in effect to meet the demand for increased production during the war. Now that food production is recovering abroad, it carries the serious danger of promoting surpluses. That is why the Farm Bureau and the Grange opposed it. They feared the production of surpluses requiring the Government to spend huge sums to keep up prices, and they wanted to avoid the danger of a public reaction.

President Truman and the Senate favored a bill which would fix flexible price guarantees. This bill would have set 75 per cent of "parity" as a base, with the figure rising for a commodity whose production went below normal and falling for a commodity whose production went above normal. Under the bill Congress has adopted, this flexible provision will go into effect in 1950. But with world production of certain crops like wheat and tobacco rising, and with bumper crops expected in the United' States, damage may be done before 1950. If Congress comes back, as Speaker Martin says it probably will, the farm bill should be revised to conform to postwar needs.

Winston Churchill tation of its signifi-, cance, supports the fact so thoroughly ihat it need never be disputed in the years to come. In 1036 Mr. Churchill said of the Baldwin Government: "The Government cannot make up their minds or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent." This phrase, with its characteristic rhetorical inventiveness, could be used quite justifiably to characterize the whole conduct of democratic high policy during the period when Nazism and Fascism were rising in the world. Chief among the unheeded voices raised against this policy of drift was Churchill's, and while he gives an abundantly full account of his opposition he has not written his book merely to say "I told you so." It is his record, the record of England's Wartime Prime Minister and prime mover, processed from voluminous and scrupulously kept memoranda.

Though there is occasional evidence of Tory bias he has, in general, observed the injunction: "Nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice." THOMAS B. SHERMAN. How We Treat the DPs Although Congress passed a bill to admit adult displaced persons and 5000 DP orphans, it is only fair to say that the whole question of admission of refugees is unfinished business in Washington. If it is not taken up later this year by a resumed session of the Eightieth Congress, it should be high on the agenda of the Congress elected in November. The "compromise" bill discriminates against Jews.

It does not discriminate against Jews by name, but it does so in at least two major provisions. First, it requires that a DP, to be eligible for admission, must have entered the occupation zones of Germany or Austria before Dec. 22, 1945. This rules out many thousands of Jews who fled into the American occupation rones after that date. Second, it requires that at least 40 per cent of those admitted come from areas annexed by a foreign power.

The only areas so annexed are Eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, absorbed by Russia. Thus, this provision also stacks the bill against those who suffered most in Hitler's concentration and slave labor camps. If it is true, as Senator Cooper of Kentucky is quoted, that the bill' will permit the entry of only about 16,000 Jews, this legislation comes close to writing a rule of anti-Semitism in our policy toward the homeless victims of Nazi tyranny. It is a policy utterly unworthy of the nation whose largest harbor presents the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. How was this put over, in view of the lack of hobbling restrictions in the Fellows bill which-the House passed? Missourians in particular should know.

The conference committee in all probability would have favored the House version had it not been for the last-minute addition of Senator Donnell, Missouri Republican, and Senator Eastland, Mississippi Democrat, at the instance of one of the G.O.P. Senate bosses, Wiley of Wisconsin. That took control away from the House and humanity and put it on the side of the Senate and smallness. It can be argued that the DP bill is better than no bill at all and that, therefore, it.should be signed. We hope the President points out its every flaw and does so in language that will be heard in the DP camps in Germany and Austria where men and women and children liave asked for bread and been handed a stone.

whose, is a grave Foren fault of American movies. It stifles originality and variety. A basic problem must be settled in the minds of all who are responsible for picture making in Hollywood. Is the making of motion pictures strictly and exclusively an industry, or has it anything to do with art? If Hollywood is the Detroit of film entertainment, then and only then can the prevailing system be acceptable. But, if picture making has anything to do with art, the assembly line system has to go.

Some Examples to Emulate John Ford's pictures, the late Ernst Lubitsch's famous "touch, John Huston's daring experiments, Frank. Capra's deep humanity. Sir Lawrence Olivier's phenomenal Shakespeare adaptations, the universal significance of the Italian pictures, the, poetry of some French products, all prove that the motion pictures definitely do have something to do with art. If centralization of authority is Hollywood's great fault, geophysical centralization is its original sin. Thirty years ago, Los Angeles provided sunshine and scenery for the primitive silent pictures.

But today sunshine means almost nothing. There is no artistic, professional, technical reason to justify Hollywood's maintenance as a film center. Nonetheless about 30,000 people live in and around Hollywood. In this golden concentration camp, their mental horizon is reduced to Hollywood Boulevard. Their blood becomes as spark-less as the orange juice they drink.

Their spirits shrivel. The real world recedes from them. Curse of Over-Specialization Who could live in Newark If all the shoemakers had made Newark the center of the shoe industry? One would meet shoemakers at breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner hear no conversation at all except the very latest dope about toeless sandals. Who could live in a world which breathes and thinks for nothing but shoes? Having no art life of its own, Hollywood meekly accepts the emanations of New York. A Broadway play, even a mediocre one, will bring half a million dollars or more.

The same script wouldn't even be considered before receiving the blessing of the New York drama critics. Unaware of any problems above the level of Betty Grable's well-shaped knees, no wonder Hollywood becomes painfully disappointing to the world, and steadily loses its grip over the international audiences. Seemingly unaware of its fault or its sin, Hollywood is sharply conscious of its failure. As a consequence, it la just now in The Conchies Who Served To the Editor of the Post-Dispatch: I think it pertinent that the public realize that many conscientious objectors DID in the armed forces. For example, in my medical unit were three such men, one of whom was a graduate theologian.

Like all logical men he abhorred war and the resulting mass killings. However, all these men felt that their convictions also included the responsibility of sharing in the task of preserving the system of government that permitted religious freedom. They, like many other conscientious objectors, never shirked their responsibility and served either "in medical units or administrative postions, assured that they would jiot emerge from the war blood-stained with, their convictions scarred. To grant amnesty, then, to that portion of conscientious objectors who did not don uniforms, is illogical and would be hard to explain to the thousands of citizens equally opposed to war who gave their lives in sacrifice. FRANK J.

GALCYN, Editor, Veteran's News Digest. PURGE OF DEMOCRATS? Trom the Philadelphia. Bulletin. President Truman had better take a look at the record before he repeats his advice to voters to turn out of office members of Congress who voted for the Taft-Hartley Act. The President's veto of the bill made a good talking point for him before a labor union audience.

But the defeat of members of Congress who voted for the law would cause a Democratic purge. When the President vetoed the act, 106 Democratic, members of the House of Representatives voted to override. Only 71 Democrats upheld the President's views. Mr. Truman's veto fared better in the Senate.

Here he was sustained by 22 Democratic Senators; but 20 of his own party voted to override. In Congress as a whola a majority of the Democratic membership voted to enact the Taft-Hartley law." The President is in enough political hot water with his own party without adding to the heat. Presumably he does not want to advocate the defeat of a majority of the Democrats in Congress. Yet that is what he is doing when he wants defenders of the Taft-Hartley law turned out of office. Speaking "informally" has its dangers.

Slick Stuff Something which should not pass without a note in the 1943 convention record is the fact that a new stunt was injected into the promotional campaigning by Gqy. Dwight H. Green of Illinois, the Republican keynoter. Gov. Green, who is candidate for President, Vice President, Attorney General and a third term at Springfield, is the subject 'of a so-called biography, "The Midwesterner," which two former newspaper men, Robert J.

Casey and W. A. S. Douglas of Chicago, lowered themselves to write. Not only was the book a piece of bought-and-paid-for promotion, sent widely to G.O.P.

workers and delegates weeks ago, but it was made the subject of book review section advertising in such newspapers as the New York Times. This advertising appeared to be the regular An Appraisal of Le Corhusier LE CORBUSIER, ARCHITECT, PAINTER. WRITER, edited by Stamo Papadaki. (Macmillan N. $7.50.) The postwar revival in housing and the kindred subjects of architecture and city planning make this appraisal of LeCor-busier's work particularly timely.

While this noted Swiss-born Parisian's ideas are radical, the soundness of their basic principles is beyond serious question. Essentially, he calls for simple, convenient buildings with plenty of open space around them to provide air, light and greenery. Le' Corbusier, the painter, however, clutters up a canvas as LeCorbusier, the architect, would never crowd a landscape. His writ-" ings, on the other hand, are more appealing. These varied activities are covered in essays by Joseph Hudnut, S.

Gideon, Fer-nand Leger, J. L. Sert and James Thrall Soby. And the book is lavishly illustrated. Whose Generosity? To.

the Idltor of the Poet-Dispatch: 1 An A.P. dispatch from London quoting Winston Churchill says the Socialist La- bor Government of England is "de-. pendent on the generosity of the capi- talist system of America." If memory serves me right, England still owes the United States some 11 I billion dollars plus interest loaned that country by the United States during World. War I. The capitalist government of England had the chance for 25 years since World War I to pay off this debt.

On whose generosity did that government depend MARTIN B. LOCHNEB, Housing is reported to be causing the G.O.P. platform drafters at Philadelphia the biggest headache. As who isn't it?.