Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 6

ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1948 PAGE SIX In righteousness shall thou be oppression, for thou shalt not fear; near thee. Isa. established thou shalt be far from and from terror, for it shall not come Douglas And Dewey Are Old Rivals Count Our Many PEARSON We are in receipt of a communication which ought to soothe a lot of fevered St. Petersburg brows.

It follows: "Dear Sir: "I am a newcomer to Peerless Pinellas. "With great interest I have followed the trials and tribulations which beset St. Petersburg and the other cities and towns in the county. "My home town is Chicago, which I consider second only to St. Petersburg as the finest city in the United States in which to live.

"But after six months here when I hear the moaning and groaning issuing from a lot of the 'native sons (average time of residence years), I wonder if the residents of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County know just what they've got. "There's a lot of hollering about how poor the-city government is. Well, I'll admit that from What I can tell, the City Council could stand some improvement. The Honorable Mayor doesn't stack up as much against Martin Kennelly of Chicago, and two or three of the Councilmen don't seem to know quite what the score is.

"But did you ever stop to think that Chicago has 50 (50 count 'em 50) aldermen on its City Council? If you think you have troubles with your city government here where a professionally trained city manager handles the bulk of the problems of operating the municipality you ought to try getting along with 50 aldermen, each of whom is a little czar in his own ward. "Take the matter of garbage collection. I lived in a 'silk stocking' district where everything was supposed to be of the finest. But we were lucky when we got a garbage collection every 10 to 12 days. Here I get it twice a week just as regular as clockwork.

"There's a lot of hollering here about the poor drainage system, because in a rainv season some streets get flooded. Wellthat's too bad, but in Chicago, with a sewerage system that cost about as much as the whole assessed valuation of St. Petersburg, every time there's a good rain half the underpasses and low sections of streets on the south side of Chicago get so full of water that hundreds of cars and busses get stalled. That's not in any 'rainy season'. It's about once a month around the calendar.

By DREW PHILADELPHIA Should the warring Democrats happen to compromise their differences by picking Justice William Orville Douglas as their presidential or vice-presidential candidate, an old, old rivalry with Tom Dewey would be revived. For Dewey and Douglas were members of the same class at Columbia Law School, Douglas at the top of the class, Dewey not so near the top, with both rivals in law-school debates. FDR, who had to run against Dewey in 1944, always said that one reason he liked to have Bill Douglas around was because he knew how to get the best of Dewey. Should the Democratic lightning strike Douglas at Philadelphia, it would bring belated fulfillment of Roosevelt's original wishes four1 years late. For at the PEARSON 1944 convention which finally nominated Harry Truman as vice-president, Douglas's name was mentioned first in the letter which FDR wrote Bob Hannegan expressing his choice of running mate.

But Hannegan, determined' to put across his old Missouri friend, withheld publication of the letter until after the Truman bandwagon had gathered momentum. Douglas' Handicap Justice Douglas has suffered politically from one of Franklin Roosevelt's pet policies his desire to keep the Supreme Court as a protective bulwark against reaction. Fearful that his social program would be hacked down by the judiciary as it was by the Supreme Court prior to 1936 and worried lest reactionary successors sabotage the New Deal, FDR appointed some of his ablest young executives to the bench. Douglas was one of them. There" his hands have been tied politically, and he has dropped partially out of sight.

When you first meet Douglas, he looks as innocuous as a male ribbon clerk and talks as pleasantly as Robert Taylor. But when the New York financial writers staged their annual dinner back in 1938, they handed the then chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Mr. Douglas a black-snake whip in token of what he had been doing to Wall Street. Douglas came to Washington shortly after the financial debacle of 1932, joined the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission, and undertook the job of cleaning up a system of financial brigandry which had skimmed the savings from millions of investors. Today the Street is an example of virtue compared with what it was then, and one reason was Douglas's whipcrack-ing.

Before he finished he had sent Richard Whitney, onetime pillar of Wall Street respectability, to the penitentiary. Up By The Bootstraps Justice Douglas got his early training under the late Chief Justice Harlan Stone when the latter was Dean of the Columbia Law School. Douglas, a rawboned, gangling youngster from Yakima, had arrived in New York via the empty freight-car route with exactly 36 cents in his pocket, applied for a small loan from Columbia, and sold papers on the streets of Manhattan to make the loan go further. Once when his finances were desperately low, and it looked as if he would have to drop out, Dean Stone took two hours out of a busy day to help Douglas get a new job. youngest Justice of the Supreme Court looks Scotch and is Scotch.

Per 1 Hi Blessings "And you've got hospital troubles. "Ha! "Cook County Hospital, with 3,000 beds, is the biggest one in the world. And it causes headaches in just about the proportion it bears to Mound Park or the proposed new hospital. "Chicago has 28 miles of waterfront, most of it in beaches and parkway. That's wonderful.

For about three months every year it gives Chicagoans a wonderful playground. On Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day probably a million people swarm over the beaches. "And what's St. Petersburg got? About 128 miles of waterfront' and it can be used 12 months out of the year instead of one-fourth that time. "Chicago's a great, booming industrial city.

With its suburbs, such as Gary, it's the greatest steel center in the world. It's the greatest railroad center on earth. VSo what? So an average of 128 tons of soot per square mile falls on Chicago every month. So curtains rot and windows get so greasy and black you can't see through them without a weekly washing. So a nice fresh snowfall turns into a dirty, black mess of slush within 12 hours.

"There ought to be a law to make these disgruntled transplanted Yankees 'go back where they came from for about a month or so every year preferably about February. "I'll bet there wouldn't be the griping we hear now. "There's just dhe thing I think St. Pete could do along the lines of what's been done in Chicago which would make it a better place to live. That would be to provide a beach and maybe swimming pool for the Negro citizens.

Chicago's Negro populate is less, percentage-wise, than ours is here, but those recreational facilities are available. "With all our waterfront, and the year-round swimming climate, I think this ought to be done." WELL, IF ANYONE WANTS to swap Chicago for St. Petersburg after that, he's welcome to it. And we think the idea of swimming facilities for our Negro population is a point well made. This ought to "have been done long before now.

We've been wonderfully blessed by nature down here. We have a pretty good city and county government. We ought to keep on our toes to keep this the best place to live in the United States. where this can lead. Perhaps a truly objective study of our chaotic tax system would reveal that too great a share of the burden is being carried by wealth.

But a compliant Congress, willing to repeal or nullify the inheritance a could very quickly throw the whole structure out of balance. In finding ways to make up the deficit, the burden would be passed to those less able to bear it. Our inflation-ridden economy "Good Morning, Mr. BooiiP "Morning, Mr. Bust" would be under still, another strain.

Powerful exploiters hope to use a Republican victory in the field of public power and public land. As Bernard de Voto has shown so effectively in Harper's, a concerted plot seems to be aimed at turning over all public lands to the states and from there to private owners. It has begun with a high-powers attack on the modest regulations of the Forest Service which protects part of the public lands your land and mine from ruin through over-grazing. Back of this is seen the dim outline of an intention to break down all barriers, including even those in the National Parks.This would be a repudiation of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the crusading Republicans who long ago believed they had won the conservation battle. In public power, the goal is to stop, further federal power development and to turn all power distribution over to private utilities.

The real gains fhat have come to so-called backward regions from federal power could conceivably be reversed. A victory won in part by default and on the false opposition of control vs. freedom would give the extremists far too much license; a license they are already preparing to use. In 1934 and 1936, the years of the New Deal high tide, we heard a great deal about the need for restraint and effective opposition under the two-party system. That need may be even greater today, when the party in power for so long seems on the point of disintegration and is all but powerless to make itself heard.

And Wonderful L. STOKES Wandering Minstrel I A Thing Of Shreds And Patches .1 politicians. They did it, of course, for self-preservation. But the upshot is that, with the party in the shape to which they, themselves, now have brought it, they would seem to have far less chance for self-preservation than if they had gone along the way practical politicians normally do with what they had and make the best of it. But most astounding is the hysteria into which they worked themselves over a war hero to save them, with no assurance whatever that the war hero, namely General Dwight D.

Eisenhower, had any intention of saving them from their folly. It was a hysteria more weird than the tulip craze of Holland, the Mississippi Bubble, the Florida Land Boom of the middle twenties or the stock market speculative spree that ended the twenties in a parade of breadlines. Most of the principals in this hysterical episode woke up woozily in the eerie morning after, and stumbled contritely to the Truman mourner's bench. But the damage was done. They've got to go back home now, being Democrats, and make some sort of gestures for the man they condemned, with their double lives known to every village gossip and to every Republican who can read and who, it is certain, will make the most of such political assininity.

Questions and Answers Write our question clearly, sign your name and address and mail this heading and 3-cent stamp to St. Petersburg Times Service Bureau, 1217 Thirteenth Street, Washington 5. D. Q. Can you tell me the ages of some of the persons mentioned as candidates for the presidency? A.

From the eldest to the youngest, they are: Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, 71; General Douglas MacArthur, 68; President Harry S. Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenburg of Michigan, 64; Senator Harry Byrd Virginia. 61; Senator Robert A Taft of Ohio, 59; Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, 46 and former Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen. 42.

Q. Why are steep roofs, those constructed with considerable inclination, best adapted for houses in cold climates? A. So that the snow may move from them. Otherwise the building may be injured by its weight. Q.

Will benefits I now receive under the GI Bill be deducted from any future Federal bonus? A. The original GI Bill specified that such monetary benefits enjoyed today would be deducted from any bonus (federal) made in the future. However, an amendment adopted Decembrfr, 1945, struck out that provision. Existing laws provide that present benefits are to be deducted from future bonus, however, no one knows what a bonus law may provide. Q.

Who holds the 1947 Diamond Sculls championship? A. John B. Kelly of Philadelphia. Q. What kind of Government is the "United States of Indonesia" to have? A.

According to an agreement reached between representatives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia, it is to have "a sovereign state on a federal basis under a constitution which will be arrived at by democratic XpJ nn rip rn 1 nn yp 'Careful, Whoosh? It's Sad By THOMAS PHILADELPHIA It was in this city or hereabouts that wise old Benjamin Franklin made the observation: "If we. don't hang together, we'll all hang separately." With application to a slightly different situation, the Democratic Party has acted that out here, hanging itself, so to speak, in the public square, in full1 view of everybody. It's not a single corpse dangling at the end of the rope.There are four or five, figuratively representing the various parties of which the Democratic Party is made up irate and iot-blooded Southerners, big city bosses, the energetic but politically inept ex-N Dealers, the silk-stocking element clinging sedately still to something incorrectly labeled the Thomas Jefferson tradition, and just ordinary Democrats, moderately progressive, who ask a fair deal from their government. The Democratic Party always has been several individual parties. They only hang together under the stress of a great national need, when some leader of extraordinary capacity rises to weld the diverse and conflicting elements into something STOKES approaching a single party with a single purpose.

Such as. for instance, when Woodrow Wilson pulled them together to become the voice and instrument of the pro-gressivism then welling up among the rank and file of people who saw that our growing industrial society was not organized to serve their needs. Or, as twenty years later, in 1932, when the system again failed to meet the needs of the people and collapsed in the nation's most severe depression and another magnetic leader came along to fuse the various elements of the Democratic Party into an instrument of political revolt to change the existing order. Franklin D. Roosevelt held the party together longer than anyone expected.

It was obvious at the Democratic convention four years ago, when the Southerners and the big city labor and minority elements were holding meetings denouncing each other, that the party probably would hold together for only that election, the 1944 election, and that would happen only because of Mr. "Roosevelt's leadership and the national emergency of war. It has been flying apart faster and faster since then under the looser reins and the less intense purpose of his successor, Harry Truman, and so now, in its 1948 convention here, it is as Ben Franklin put it. hanging separately, with the gibbets all over the scene. It's A Little Indecent But, while this basic inner weakness has been apparent for some lime, nobody could have foreseen that the party would commit suicide so publicly and with such evident relish, particularly in view of the natural self-protective instinct of politicians and the auspicious ouward circumstartces, meaning the general prosperity, full employment, and the lack of any targument against its continuance of power on that score.

It chose to commit suicide when its household affairs were in excellent order. The wrangling between the Confederates and the Free-Soilers in the Democratic Party is perennial. It broke out in 1924 over religion and "likker," with Al Smith of New York, the Catholic and 'wet," the inciting factor, and the rift still was not healed when Al Smith became the nominee four years later and lost four Southern states in going down to rather inglorious defeat. But the spectacle this year tops them all. Nothing has been seen in our time quite like the great rush to the public platform and the public prints in the two weeks preliminary to the convention by self-appointed leaders of the various elements to cry down their President in the White House and ask publicly that he be cast into outer darkness.

Queerest of all is that these Jeremiahs included sme usually astute practical I1, Opposition From Losing Party Is Major Hope For Good Government By MARQUIS CIIILDS haps it is this inheritance plus the fact that he raised himself by his own bootstraps, which has given Bill certain Calvin Coolidge characteristics. Even with the salary of a Justice of the Supreme Court, Bill used to walk from the District of Columbia line to his home a few blocks away in Maryland, in order to save 20 cents extra taxi fare. The border between the District and Maryland marks the taxi zone limit. when the Douglases later rented a suite in the Anchorage apartment house, its owner at one time asked her attorney to bring an viction suit against the Justice of the Supreme Court because the' Douglas family kept food in a cold-air locker outside the window and hung the washing up in too conspicuous a place. The attorney, Fontaine Bradley, nearly had a fit at the idea of suing a Justice of the Supreme Court, finally persuaded the apartment-house owner that the Douglases were going to move anyway which they did.

Milly Douglas, the Justice's daughter, seems to inherit her father's Scotch independence, and last year amazed social Washington by getting a job as a soda-jerker in an Alexandria, Va drugstore. Wearing The Black Robe On the Supreme Court Douglas has been a restless, prodigious worker. Leaving social engagements early, he goes home every, night to work on opinions. Along with Justice Hugo Black, he has usually led the Court in the number of decisions handed down. For some time it has been known that Douglas was fidgety on the Court and had his eye on more exciting pastures.

In fact, when Harold Ickes resigned as Secretary of the Interior, Truman offered him the Ickes vacancy and Douglas was briefly tempted. But a couple of visits at the White House and the sight of the Missouri gang, specializing POUGLAS on bourbon and branch water rather than affairs of state, convinced Douglas that he could serve his country more effectively on the bench though more prosaically. Douglas was a close friend and intimate adviser of Roosevelt's to the very end. His work was not publicized, 'because a Supreme Court Justice isn't supposed to get mixed up in the administrative branch of the government. But Douglas helped out' on various national-defense matters, especially the development of adequate electric power.

It was his quiet backstage work on this, long before Pearl Harbor, that was responsible for the nation having enough power to take care of its tremendous war needs, including the manufacture of the atomic bomb. Douglas has said he wasn't seeking any political office which is true. Right now he is out in the Columbia River basin country where he grew up and where he always spends the Summer, fishing, riding a cow pony, and enjoying his neighbors. There he would prefer to stay. But if the Philadelphia convention should nominate him, Douglas will serve.

For Bill Douglas has never shirked a call of duty from his country. finance these institutions and we do want to help all we can, but it looks to me as though our city officials are taking on too much of a burden at this time. The owners of tenant houses are being criticized now for charging high rents, but if 'the taxes are raised what will these people do? This will not encourage tourists to come here as they know higher taxes mean higher rents. It doesn't seem that the drop in tourists last season had any effect on our councilmen or city manager. J.

H. BOWMAN 621 Mound Park Way Carole Landis Editor, The Times: Your picture of the late Carole Landis on July 7, was in my opinion and others too, unnecessary. Everyone realizes she was a movie star, but do you honestly think she would have wanted it printed? I don't think she would have. During the war the G.I.'s that saw her liked her and want to remember her as she was a happy and pleasant person and not like the picture. She did a wonderful job in keeping our spirits and our morale high.

Let's hope this won't happen to some other movie star. AN EX-G. I. JOE DAILY AND SUNDAY Entered as second-class matter ot the Post Office. St Petersburg Florida Published every morning by The Times Publishing Company from The Times Building.

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The right is reserved to edit or shorten any communication. PHILADELPHIA Watching this slack and spiritless gathering reluctantly begin its 'foreordained business, you need no crystal ball to -see what kind of campaign will develop in the fall. The contest will be more one-sided than any in our recent political history. The Democratic organization will be virtually "without funds. It is even now living from hand to mouth.

The newspapers will be overwhelmingly lor the Republican ticket. The Democratic chieftains here for this convention see all too clearly how bad is their plight. But such an unbalance is bad not merely for the party that happens to be on the short end. Under our two-party system, it is bound to be bad for the country and even for the Republicans, who are at this moment looking on with such smug self-satisfaction. There CHILD must be vigorous comp etition if the system is to produce truly representative government.

Already the effort is being made on the Republican's side to make it sound as though this were to be a contest between the individual and individual freedom, on the one hand, and the all-power- ful state on the other hand. Nothing could be more false. A victory won on that ground would open the way to exploitation by interests more powerful than government itself. In two fields it is already evident what this can mean. No.

1 is taxes. In this connection, a plank in the Republican platform deserves more study than it has received. The plank says: "The Federal Government shall as soon as practicable withdraw or reduce those taxes which can be best administered by local governments, with particular consideration of excise and inheritance taxes." This is an outright invitation to repeal the federal inheritance tax. State governments are far more subject to pressure from wealth, and power. Moreover, the way would immediately be opened to rivalry, with some states deliberately trying to attract wealth by a low inheritance tax or none at all.

At the last session the Republican Congress went a long way toward this goal. The new tax law permits the splitting" of estate and gift taxes between husband and wife in the same manner that income tax can now be split. In his message vetoing the tax bill. President Truman said that nearly all of the annual reduction would go to of the nation's most wealthy families. The new law, according to one theoretical example, wouldpermit $1,000,000 to be yassed on tax free.

Look Where We're Headed You do not need to be an apostle of the soak the rich tax school to see Huge Success Editor, The Times: The Firemen's Field Day at Pinellas Park was a huge success, even though staged in a day-long drizzle. The fact that it was not a complete failure, we attribute to the wholehearted support given to our project by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times who so kindly publicized the event to the extent that an estimated 4,000 people attended the show. Truly, our expression of thanks is heartfelt and yom co-operation in "putting over" this Field Day has not gone unappreciated. Thank you again.

RUSSELL T. PLACE Chairman Field Day Activities Volunteer Fire Department Pinellas Park, Florida Our Many Problems Editor, The Times: As I am now a permanent resident and taxpayer of St. Petersburg, I would like to give you my views on the matter of a new hospital here. According to the papers the new hospital for crippled children has been given approval. The amount for this institution is $600,000.

I also read where the city needs 800,000 to straighten out the bus and street car affair. While I approve of the children's hospital one hundred per cent, I cannot see the advisability of a new hospital at this time. Everyone knows that there are hundreds of retired people living here in St. Petersburg on a limited pension and right when the cost of living is at its highest peak and with the other projects going forward, I really think an addition to Mound Park Hospital would be the logical thing at this time. I also think the citizens should have a vote and voice in this matter.

You know we are not all fortunate enough to be able to buy homes at Bahama Beach and have our names and pictures in the I -rrs. hut we will be askorl to Pre'rnt FOVMTFR r- i ffli.