Dorothy Thompson

The Pasadena Post/January 21, 1937

Since the last airliner crash, in which Martin Johnson lost his life, I have spent many hours with aviation reporters and trained flyers, asking the question: Why do these accidents happen? What is to blame?

Conceivably they may be laid at four doors: the machine; the instruments; the weather; the man.

All my informants agree in exonerating the machine. As a cause of accident the airplane can be as generally eliminated as the construction of the modern automobile. Once engines failed, as once automobile steering gears broke in an emergency, or almost-new tires exploded. But today the great gleaming metal birds function with god-like precision. Mechanically, the domain of the sky is conquered.

Are the instruments to blame? Does the radio fail? Is the weather responsible? Are accidents “acts of God?”

The official statements issued by the companies operating the lines usually divide the blame between the two: Instruments and weather. Icing conditions; thunderstorms; radio beam off-course or silent; radio receivers failing. We have heard all this many times.

No instrument in the world is always, under all conditions, 100 per cent perfect, but the pilot flies with the aid of many instruments, devised with incredible subtlety to supplement, check, offset and correct each other. There are two or three radio sets in each airliner, with two or three types of antennae, each set checked at the end of each flight. Sets do go dead; radio beams do bend; static under certain weather conditions does interrupt the constant Morse code tick in the pilot’s earphones which tells him that he is flying the beam and flying in the right quadrant. But even a bent beam can be followed to a safe destination. And the pilot is never entirely dependent on radio. He is not unprepared for ice. And, curiously, the worst accidents have not occurred in the worst weather, as the worst automobile accidents do not occur on the worst roads. Call them contributing factors, they are not, thereby, the cause.

Blame Events

The Department of Commerce reports on accidents on the mail and passenger lines place most of the blame on the elements. But the aircraft accident reports in the military services tell a quite different story. They say: Ninety per cent of accidents are due neither to machines nor instruments nor weather. They are due to men. The military reports are not cagey. And what the Army says about its accidents, the most disinterested experts whom I have been able to find say about all accidents. Your chance of getting from Newark to Los Angeles in safety depends chiefly, overwhelmingly, on the two men up there in front and the personnel on the ground. It depends not only on their skill—they are all skillful. Not only on their judgment, their adaptability, their concentration, their experiences, but on subtler traits. It depends upon their character. Aviation will be safe when the knights of the air are no more, and the engineers of the air pilot planes; when there is a new creed governing, when the aviator is not a hero but a craftsman; not a rugged individualist, but a co-operator. The race of birdmen is not yet bred.

He’s Not An Angel

Man has got himself wings, but it hasn’t made him an angel. He can manage the most grandiose machine, the most subtle instruments, better than he can manage himself. He trusts his wits, his skill, his flair, his luck; he will not always subordinate himself to discipline, not even the discipline of his instruments. So say the candid pilots. “Present-day scientific airline equipment has eliminated all expected failings except human incompetence, disobedience and poor judgment,” said Bill Taylor, a flyer, in “The Sportsman Pilot” last May.

How About Fuel?

If a pilot forced by storm into a long detour makes a forced landing in an unlikely spot because his gas is out, when did he last refuel? Not at every station. It would delay the flight. He shares the blame with the administrative personnel. If he chisels in on his fellows by reporting that he will arrive earlier than he knows he will, at the rendezvous before the airport, whence all ships are ordered into port; if, by this false report, he gels himself ahead of the line, only to keep someone else up in the air and circling around with gas failing—well, he gets in on time, and gets the kudos. Perhaps the other fellow doesn’t. This complaint is commonly made by airmen. If a pilot with a full load of passengers, his radio not functioning, and gas to spare, tries to come through the ceiling in the middle of notoriously mountainous country, and pancakes on a hillside, are the mountains, the radio, the ceiling to blame? Or is it human judgment?

Don’t Choose Veterans

“Don’t fly with veterans,” says my mentor. Choose for a pilot a pink-faced boy. He may belong to the future race. He doesn’t sit around swapping yarns of the time when flying was flying; he doesn’t brag of miraculous flights; he doesn’t get gloriously drunk the night before he is going to fly. He isn’t a barnstormer. He is a member of a guild. “When all the war flyers are underground, and the romantic tradition of flying is definitely past then perhaps we shall have flyers whose wings become them.”

Lindbergh hates publicity. Perhaps he senses deeply just why. Perhaps he knows that personal glorification may negate personal skill. Others called him “The Lone Eagle.” He wrote a book called “We.”

Consider Executives

Consider not only the pilots. There are executives bent on holding the mail subsidies, lost or diminished if the mail is entrained. There are politicians in and out of government bent on whitewashing their own bureaus, or raising publicity for themselves in flashy “investigations.” There is competition, in which the schedule as well as safety is reckoned. There are all the rules that are not enforced, and there is the insufficiency of rules that are universal, too many of them made by bureaucrats with too little collaboration with the men who actually fly. And there are the passengers whining and complaining to the company when the flight is interrupted and they must go part way by train. So say the candid aviators.

When they telephoned you that your son was in the hospital with compound fractures, and his car a wreck by the roadside, was the car to blame? Was it the slippery road? Was the traffic light not functioning? Or was he taking a curve too fast, or disregarding the light, seeing no car in sight and “knowing this road so well?” If men hate law on the ground, will they love it in the air?

Outstanding Person

The good aviator is, to start with, an outstanding individual. He must have ebullient health, a sense of adventure, a willingness to take risks of training. Not by nature pedestrian. And that man must lake his individualism, so great an asset, must be tempered by social discipline, hardened into obedience, elevated into responsibility. Before he gets to a school for aviators he has gone through the public schools and been influenced by the habits of the society about him. How good is his preparation?

After all, the question is part of the whole social problem. The 20th century is upon us, bright, swift and powerful. But man, so noble in reason, so infinite in faculty, is still the quintessence of dust.

Enlarges Pictures

A device using a spiral mirror revolved by an electric motor has, been invented in Germany that enlarges television pictures to a size that enables them to be shown on a large screen to theater audiences.

Protects Motor

For protection of airplane motors an automatic propeller mounting operated by oil pressure has been invented that permits a motor to run at a desired speed regardless of the altitude or speed of a plane.

Stabilizing Fins

Stabilizing fins that operate automatically as the draft rolls have been fitted to an English Channel steamship in experiments that are expected to lead to more comfort for passengers crossing the channel.

Dorothy Thompson

Pasadena Post/January 25, 1937

The publication at Christmas time of the second annual report of the Resettlement Administration, in the form of a 175-page book, handsomely printed, illustrated in color and distributed to the customers at a fraction of its cost price, raised some critical comment in Washington. Now the first printing has been exhausted, and the answer to criticism is to publish another edition. The whole matter seems trifling, but it has connotations that are not trifling at all. No administration in the history of the United States and apart from the dictatorship no government in the world, has so used publicity as the Roosevelt regime. Propaganda has been introduced as an adjunct of government on an unprecedented scale. We have not, like the Germans or the Italians, established a special government department of “propaganda and enlightenment,” but we have attached such departments to practically every branch of administration. The policies and achievements of this Administration are being “sold” to the American people by experts in the business, by the high-pressure methods already developed by Councilors on Public Relations in the great corporations.

The rumpus raised over this particular book brought out that the Resettlement Administration alone turned out in eight months, between November and last June, over a quarter of a million copies of printed matter. Heaven only knows what the total production of all the departments—agriculture, as a whole, relief, labor, commerce, Relief Administration, etc.—would amount to, if printed stuff, reports, mimeographed hand-outs to the press, photographs for publicity purposes, news releases, and pamphlets were all combined in one place. Huge forests would be needed to replace the paper consumed; whole buildings would be insufficient to house the mass.

Other Techniques

Nor does government propaganda confine itself to printed and mimeographed hand-outs to the press and public. It has adopted other press-agent techniques. A stunt of the commercial press agents has long been to interest special writers, whose names carry weight, in the commercial projects which they represent, and offer such writers free trips, hotels, automobiles and other perquisites to make “investigations,” and write articles which are then sold through normal channels to magazines and newspapers and appear as completely disinterested reports. A while ago when there was a campaign on the part of Hawaiian sugar interests to persuade Congress to let their product come into the United States free of tariff, and give it preference over Cuban sugar, writers were offered luxurious trips to Hawaii with all expenses paid, if only in whatever they wrote they would point out that “Hawaii is an integral part of the United States.”

Same Methods

Several celebrities accepted the suggestion and had a pleasant and profitable winter vacation. The Administration uses the same technique. Special writers who are known to be favorable to the Administration have been offered opportunities to get “on the inside” on special stories. They have been invited to accompany commissions, been given access to all sorts of privileged material, and otherwise aided in earning their livings. Those who have been critical have found the doors slammed. For the free-lance writer who earns his living by special reporting, or for the correspondent whose effectiveness for his paper depends on his having ready access to important material, this sort of discrimination amounts to real economic pressure.

Baffling Problems

For the independent and objective reporter who wants to find out what is actually going on, the Resettlement Administration offers some baffling problems. A number of housing projects, costing many millions of the taxpayers’ money, have been started or completed. I defy a reporter to find out what they have actually cost. That information, in any specific detail, is simply not forthcoming. It is not even easy to view the projects. Some months ago the New Jersey garment workers’ housing project was so surrounded by guards that I, visiting it, had to use the utmost cajolery to be allowed to see one of the houses. A few weeks later I went a quarter of the way across the country at my own expense to visit a suburban project near Cincinnati, and met the same difficulty. There it stood, open to the four winds and partly completed, but a very icy gentleman barred my way from even walking through the streets. But at the gate I was handed a handsome little brochure, describing the whole thing in glowing terms and containing photographs which presented the project as though it were practically completed and the houses ready for occupancy. I was told that both these projects had huge waiting lists. Then why the sales talk? The sales talk is expensive, and gave me the impression that it was not designed to rent the houses but to promote the government!

Why Advertise It?

I see no reason on earth why press agents and promotion experts should be attached to a relief administration. Certainly it is not necessary to advertise Santa Claus to the relief clients. They will find the place without any high pressure salesmanship. And why must it advertise itself to the taxpayer? He has to pay anyhow, whether he likes it or not. His subscription is not solicited. It is collected. Yet the Relief Administration and all its branches have press agents, under one name or another, whose business is to turn out “stories” about the poor, about the nobility of the government, and about specific cases. Photographers, ex-newspaper men, special writers, are all busy, not at administering a government bureau, but at selling that bureau’s necessity, wisdom, and efficiency to the people who pay for it.

Dangerous Departure

This is a new departure for democratic government and a dangerous one. It got its start during the war, when expert molders of public opinion and public psychology were turned loose by the government to sell the people the war. Before that in most countries the foreign offices and the chancelleries had secretaries who were really press attaches, contact men with the correspondents, whose business it was to facilitate their getting news. That was a useful and probably necessary function. But they did not write editorials and news releases and press them into journalists’ hands! And even now, after the experience of the war, there is nothing in any democratically governed country to compare with what is going on here. We have been accustomed to seeing the people lobby the government, but it is a new thing to see the government lobby the people. With the people’s money.

Who Paid For It?

I wonder who paid for the very handsome and convincing exhibition which was organized at the Democratic Convention last June to show all that the Roosevelt administration had done. It was a sort of before-and-after exhibition, designed, of course, to excite the greatest admiration for the government’s accomplishments. Did the Democratic party, bidding for re-election, pay for it? I was told that much of the work was done by WPA workers on white collar projects. And certainly the material was assembled by government employees. But is it not a curious thing to see government use the taxpayers’ money for a campaign for its own re-election?

Undermine Free Press

Liberals and a liberal government rightly demand a free press. Business first began undermining the free press when it hired experts to get advertising into the press columns instead of in the advertising columns where it belongs. Now the government is busy at the same game, and because it is a liberal government the liberals do not protest. God help them if they wake up one day with a reactionary government in power and see what instruments precedent has put at its disposal!

Dorothy Thompson

The Pasadena Post/January 28, 1937

This column predicted many weeks before the election that President Roosevelt, in his second term, would face serious embarrassment from some of his own supporters. But it is surprising to see it come so soon. John L. Lewis’ statement on Friday was extraordinary. He apparently suggested that the President owed the Committee on Industrial Organization—Mr. Lewis’ trade union movement—a quid pro quo for electoral support, and that the CIO intended to collect it. The President’s reply—given to his press conference—was noncommittal, but a hardly veiled rebuke. And the rebuke was in order.

What, precisely, does Mr. Lewis wish the President to do? Shall he tell General Motors that it must recognize Mr. Lewis’ union as the sole collective bargaining agency? Shall he go on the air and advise the workers of the United States to join Mr. Lewis’ union? Shall he create a special cabinet position and delegate to Mr. Lewis the job of organizing the industrial workers of the nation? To do any of these things the President would have to usurp power which he does not have and delegate authority which he does not possess. Mussolini did that in Italy. He ordered the workers in every industry to join one sort of trade union and recognized that trade union, then, as the sole collective bargaining agency. Stalin can do the same thing in Russia. But the United States is still a democracy, and has to move by democratic processes.

The situation is this: Under pressure of the extremely costly strike, and through the influence of a federal and a state government which are both definitely friendly to labor and trade unionism, General Motors has retreated a considerable distance from the position which it took originally. General Motors agreed to negotiate on all eight points of the union’s demands, and to negotiate for the industry as a whole, and not plant by plant. It agreed, furthermore, to suspend production while the negotiations were in progress—not to reopen the plants. But on its part, it demanded that the sit-down strikers evacuate the two Fisher body plants in Flint, which they still occupy, while the negotiations were in progress. The union agreed.

Want To Work

The union evacuated all but two plants. Then came the Flint Alliance episode. The Alliance was organized by a former mayor who is a General Motors employee, and it claims to represent the workers opposed to Lewis’ union. It sent a letter to General Motors petitioning to go back to work and asking General Motors to negotiate with them as well as with the union. General Motors replied that it would always be willing to negotiate with any group of its employees. No date was set for such negotiations. Lewis charges that the Alliance is a stooge of the management and that the whole exchange of notes was a maneuver of the company. Since the eight points on which General Motors had agreed to negotiate included the claim of the union to be recognized as the sole representative of the workers, Lewis declared that the demand had been denied by implication in advance of opening negotiations, and was evidence, therefore, of bad faith. So he halted the evacuation and retained the two Flint plants with his sit-down strikers—as “hostages.” General Motors, on its part, claimed violation of the agreement, and broke off negotiations.

Action Disconcerting

For the government, which we guess wants to arrive as speedily as possible at a peaceful solution with some recognition of the trade union, Lewis’ action and his statement must have been extremely disconcerting. Apparently the rigid attitude of the management had broken down; apparently the situation was moving toward solution. And it is not easy to envisage what Mr. Lewis’ strategy will be. He does not want to submit the question to a vote of the workers. He charges that the workers will be intimidated, but we suspect that he is not nearly strong enough to control a majority, even in the most carefully protected election. Probably he does not really accept the idea of majority representation at all. It is a new idea in trade unionism. But it has come into trade unionism, by the very fact that labor is seeking government support and government co-operation. As long as employer-employee relationships were not a matter for government interference one way or the other, the question of who and how many any union represented was not so important. But if decisions are to be made by government, the democratic process will become a public demand. For government cannot arbitrarily choose to sponsor whatever minority can bring most pressure upon it. That way lies chaos.

Passive Resistance

In the great industries of this country the trade union movement is still struggling for mere status. The movement is extremely weak. In the sit-down strike it is using the most effective possible weapon of the weak against the strong—a very old weapon indeed, that of passive resistance. It is also a hazardous weapon, because it can certainly be an instrument by which a minority can coerce a majority, even of the workers themselves. If independent trade unionism were accepted in principle by industry, genuinely accepted, then this weapon would have no more moral justification than it has legal justification which, we suspect, is nil. But as it is, it is not easy to work up moral indignation, for this is a fight going on, a real fight, for the status of something recognized by law but sabotaged by heavy industry in practice, and industry certainly holds the bigger guns and the stronger strategical positions.

Can’t Have Both Ways

But the trade unionists cannot have it both ways. If they want to fight it out by themselves, that is one thing. Their success will depend on their power with the workers, and incidentally with public opinion. But if they want government as a party to the struggle, and they certainly do—it was their idea and not that of the industrialists—then they must collaborate to create conditions under which government can participate. Government can protect their right to organize, and see that the laws on the matter are enforced. Government can mediate as between equal parties. But it can only act in a spirit of arbitration. The government does not represent Mr. Lewis or even “labor.” It represents the people of the United States, all of them, who are directly concerned in this strike, because they are going to have to help pay for it. The temper of the country as a whole, at this moment, is sympathetic to labor. But that temper can be exasperated, and, we fear, will be, if Mr. Lewis overreaches himself with demands upon the President, which the President has no power to concede.

Westbrook Pegler

Lexington Herald-Leader/December 1, 1955

The wistful efforts of President Eisenhower and his steering committee of quacks from the fields of journalism and banking have collapsed and our United States today are in worse position than we held before the convening of the so-called Summit Conference in July. Our position is worse because we were morally and politically “fine” as the phrase goes among athletes and we now find ourselves flabby and overhung from heavy indulgence in the addling brand of emotional bust-head which this time took the place of vodka We not only broke training but went off on a wild long toot. We are now morally out of shape; our sharp suspicions are dulled by inexcusable hopes and the traitors and their apologists among us are relieved of a hateful opprobrium which must be revived by special effort

Russians Gave Nothing

There never was the slightest excuse for any intelligent American adult to believe that the Russians would give up anything anywhere They did give back after 10 years a few thousand German slaves who had been convicted of “war crimes” in the court of the accuser and complaining witness, but they shut off the pathetic trickle of these “home-comers” without announcement or excuse. Thus many more thousands of lost Germans and their yearning families are damned again to despair, perhaps forever. That was not a concession however but a coldblooded trade which Moscow got the better of.

Moscow now can send Soviet Russians into West Germany where theretofore they were barred by signs on the Rhine bridges. The Russian people are as various as other peoples though generally debased by 38 years of Bolshevism, but it is juvenile to consider the character of peoples including our own in such manipulations. The Russian government is still the same brutal apparatus of a small group that it has been since a few reptilian American financiers underwrote the extinction of the czars in 1917.

No Mandate From People

Our government had no specific mandate from the people of our United States to weaken the moral defenses built by years of hard painful work of the House committee, the FBI and by all means Joe McCarthy. True, we had been exhorted all that time to seek some elusive good in Bolshevism and pie-in-the-sky moral profits of massacres and subjugation of civilized peoples. But our Red-baiters had done a good job against handicaps and we were lean and beautifully suspicious. Then one of the Russian geniuses hit upon the brilliant idea of Inviting American reporters and even a few tourists to visit Russia, take pictures of trivial and meaningless scenes and write freely about the lack of consumer stuff which was notorious anyway and undenied. All those 38 years this mysterious machine with agents planted in governments all over the world had been so frankly hostile against us that the mere muscular exercise of a few motivated smiles seemed to be the sunrise of a new age of peace and joy.

Made No Advance

Throughout that infatuation however Sen. Bill Jenner of Indiana was hollering “our defense against the many-sided Communist threat has made no visible advance within the last few years. The retreat of our anti-Communist forces must be ascribed to false hopes that we could dislodge a machine built by the cleverest political brains in Europe simply by changing the man in the White House and the party label of the administration.”

Father Leopold Braun the American priest who spent 13 years in Moscow as accredited Catholic chaplain wrote me on June 30 as I set forth for Geneva: “Let no one belittle the importance of the power-wielding Khrushchev who incarnates the high command of the presidium, the substitute for the old politburo. If it can be said that the Soviet Union is without a dictator since Stalin’s death let no one think dictatorship has disappeared. Sergei Kruglov as Beria’s successor continues to tighten the strait-jacket using the identical methods for which Beria and his two predecessors Yagods and Yezhev were liquidated. Apparent compromises in Russia are nothing but slowdowns brought about by peasant unrest and industrial and agricultural chaos within the country.”

Needed Breathing Spell

Russia was in trouble and’ needed a breathing spell to rearrange deployments military, agricultural and industrial. They wanted to switch idle soldiers from unnecessary military occupations to the homeland for productive work. For years countless divisions had been parasites on the economy. Now they are becoming productive and as the Army of Occupation checked out of Romania the puppet premier fetched them a snarling adieu, closing however with the dictum that all foreign military forces should quit similar posts and go home. He referred of course to American bombers in Morocco, Germany and England.

Jenner warned us not to discuss anything with Red China. But we started in July a pathetic talkathon between our Alexis Johnson of the State Department and a Chinese Red which was still going without the slightest hint of success after three months. We were pleading for the release of a few American civilians apparently including some traitors and an unknown number of soldier captives of the Korean War, probably beaten to death long ago.

British Sneered At McCarthy

Joe McCarthy stuck to his guns and was sneered at especially in the English papers, which had laid down on their obligation to fight treason in their own Foreign Office and connivance at treason in both their political parties.

On Aug. 25 McCarthy said Eisenhower had given ground every time the Communists exerted heavy pressure against the free world. “His is,” Joe said “ a record of appeasement, retreat and surrender in the pattern of the Truman administration.” The Russian psychological strength has improved to the extent that ours has been weakened by our indulgence in silly hopes which mocked our practical intelligence.

Westbrook Pegler

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/December 16, 1917

A whole fleet of airplanes splintered by falling, and sprayed with bullet holes from machine gun fire, is kept in the back yard of one of our big aviation schools. They are veteran machines They’ve been through the mill up at the front. Some have brought their pilots down to death. The pilots of others have stepped out of the wreckage unwounded.

When a machine takes a knockout blow from the old Boche the French send it to our school, where American future air mechanics use them for experiments. They take them down and assemble them again. Flying experts tear the old joints apart and lay the pieces in a jumble on the ground, whereupon young American airplane builders get busy and solve the puzzle of the tangled pieces.

Going through this school, Sammy sees every model of flying craft the allies are using, learns to recognize each type on sight and to put it together so that every wire and bolt is tightened to just the proper tension. He gets that sense of adjustment which tells him whether the machine is “right” for flying.

There are monoplanes, biplanes and triplanes; scouts and raiders, the latter of huge wing spread with plenty of room in the cockpit and sometimes mounting a light cannon.

The engines are dismounted from the machines and set up on low scaffolds in the schoolroom–scaffolds approximately showing how the engine is set in the plane. Sammy learns through lectures and study just what makes the V-shaped engine a better one for the big, awkward-looking raider than the whirling rotary engine with its cylinders standing out from the core like a bunch of steel pineapples.

On the other hand he soon savvies that the swift scouting plane, with its small wing spread and tiny cockpit never would operate with the other motor.

While he is attending a lecture someone steals into the engine room with a wrench and a screwdriver and monkeys with the machinery. The man with the wrench may take an insignificant-looking belt off an engine or loosen an important gas jet somewhere down in the vitals of the temperamental steel motor.

Every day, after finishing his study, Sammy goes to the motors assigned to him for that day and hunts for trouble. There’ll be something wrong with it all right, because the trouble-maker has been there, tampering with the works. Sammy repairs the damage even if he has to take the whole works apart.

That is the way our mechanics are learning the airplane—from the inside out and upside down an airplane motor and the plane itself will have no mysteries for them when the course is finished.

Dorothy Thompson

Oakland Tribune/March 22, 1936

Some time ago I decided that it was the duty of any student of public affairs to learn something about the money economy under which we live, and in pursuit of knowledge I waded with damp and corrugated brow through volumes by experts, Austrian, German, Swedish, English, American. I found that a great many serious and gifted men have devoted their entire lives to the subject, and come to definite conclusions, but I also learned that these conclusions by no means agree. I found that the profound Austrian Herr Hayek, now of the London School of Economics (who is being considerably read at this moment in Washington), was in gross contradiction to that great creative genius, John Maynard Keynes. After that, I am not in the least astonished to hear that James Warburg is in heated disagreement with Marrriner Eccles.

Obviously, it is not for a layman like myself to decide between distinguished gentlemen. I know now that there is a field of human knowledge forever closed to me. I, like 120,000,000 other Americans, will probably never grasp the truth about the money system. Professor Einstein also admits that he doesn’t understand it, so I am not as humiliated as I otherwise might be.

Views At Variance

This is a modest preface to saying a few diffident words about the President’s proposed tax on surplus earnings of corporations, now under consideration by Congress. About this tax there are the most heated differences of opinion. There is, for instance, W. J. Cameron’s view, who on Sunday evenings is Henry Ford’s radio voice. Cameron, it can be presumed, speaks for most of our corporation directors, and for once, and just to show how complicated this money business is, Raymond Moley agrees with him.

Cameron apparently believes that the money economy in which we live is essentially the same as was Pharaoh’s economy in the days of that most famous of all brain trusters: Joseph. Joseph, you remember, was the bright boy who, being the victim of a pogrom—inflicted on him, however, by his own brothers, because he was such a know-it-all, and terribly good looking besides—got into Egypt without a passport, and worked himself up to be financial adviser to His Majesty. Joseph invented a way of gyping the business cycle. He didn’t get his idea by honest hard work, either, but by inspiration, revealed to him in a dream. Joseph’s idea was the cushion-against-depression plan. Egypt had seven years of fine harvest, and Joseph didn’t let the people eat it all up, but he put it into surplus-earnings-reserves, and kept it in storage.

Then came seven years of famine, and he handed it out, and saved the people, and even turned the other cheek handsomely toward the brothers who had done him wrong. The only difference between this plan and Cameron’s was that Joseph (being a brain truster) didn’t leave the grain in the hands of the owners, but nationalized it.

Eccles On Money

Now this isn’t Marriner Eccles’ idea at all. Eccles thinks that this way of beating the business cycle is very fine in a primitive economy like Pharaoh’s, but that it works havoc in an extremely complicated and even visionary one like ours. Money, according to Eccles, isn’t goods, but creates goods in collaboration with labor and services, and thereby creates purchasing power at the same time, and as long as it goes on creating and doesn’t get frozen somewhere, or doesn’t get into too few hands and escape into the speculative market or into too much production of capital goods—there isn’t any depression.

The only sound money is used money, according to Eccles. In a depression, when no one else would spend, it was the business of the government to do so, to create new deposits and new credit in the banks by offering them government securities and to create new purchasing power by relief and public works, which purchasing power in turn would flow back to the corporations and could be passed on in higher wages, or dividends, or by building up depreciated plants, etc,, and so keep circulating. But if any considerable part of this is kept as undivided earnings, then the more purchasing power that the government creates the more a log jam of unspent money accumulates to impede the stream.

So although on the surface the object of the new corporation tax is to raise money to pay the soldiers’ bonus and take the place of processing taxes invalidated by the Supreme Court, actually this bill is being proposed because it harmonizes with the monetary ideas held by the President’s advisers.

Radical Departure

Now, I don’t pretend to know how valid this theory is, although I do know that a lot of intelligent people believe it, just as a lot of other intelligent people disagree with it vehemently.

But that the new tax bill represents a radical departure from what has been our taxation custom is unquestionable, and here, I think, there is really something which even a layman can say. There is no indication whatsoever that this taxation proposal has been carefully considered in all its possible details by the Treasury. On the contrary. The government needs money to meet an emergency due to the passage of the bonus bill over the President’s veto, and to meet the demands of the new agricultural act. And also, it may be added, to meet the Republican campaign cries about the unbalanced budget. That’s a very important factor. So the President flings Congress this taxation measure “merely as a suggestion.” Before Congress has even begun to consider it, lobbyists pro and con are rushing to Washington and into the public prints to influence the decision of the committee. A radical proposal cannot even be considered in a dispassionate atmosphere.

British Methods

People continually ask: Why is the British government so much more efficiently conducted than ours? Here’s an answer. If the British Treasury had been proposing any such thing—and they have launched equally drastic taxation bills—months would have been spent by Treasury experts, going carefully into every imaginable phase of the measure, reviewing it in many aspects, and quietly consulting the best opinion they could reach. They would have analyzed the various types of corporations which would be affected by it—banks, insurance companies, industrial corporations, newspapers, etc. They would have found out what the habits of these companies were in the matter of reserves, and in regard to the disposition of surplus earnings; how these earnings were held, whether in cash or investments; and what the predictable results of the bill would be from this or that point of view; what the possible results might be on the methods of financing the corporations.

If all their investigations had seemed to justify the measure being tried, then they would have framed a bill which they were prepared to support in detail and answer questions about it at every point, and they would advise that it first be tried tentatively, and on a small scale, taking a couple of years to test the results. They certainly would not count on it to carry immediately a large proportion of the budget.

Throughout our history we have paid over and over again for our unconsidered impulses, for our unwillingness to apply the inductive method to legislation. This is not merely a fault of this administration. We are, as a people, timid in thinking, but reckless in action.

Dorothy Thompson

Chattanooga Times/September 29, 1936

Dorothy Thompson Analyses His Insulting Claims One by One—

Is Nazi Germany Really as Prosperous as Hitler Claims?

I have waited to comment on Hitler’s proclamation at the Nuremberg Party congress until the German newspapers should reach here and I would have an official German text before me. Now the papers are here, and the text baffles the imagination. I doubt if ever a speech was made in history insulting to a larger number of nations, and insulting to ordinary intelligence as well. The speech contains a long hat of the specific claims of the German dictatorship. Were these claims tenable, Mr. Hitler would stand as the greatest miracle man in history, and a most powerful argument would be made for dictatorship everywhere. Inside Germany not one of them will be challenged in any newspaper or any platform or in any publication. Outside Germany it is more difficult to contest them, because all the facts are not known. But they ought to be analyzed on the basis of what is known because the people of the democratic world have been treated to very misleading propaganda.

Mr. Hitler’s insults to Russia are one thing. They are sui generis. As Sir Austin Chamberlain—who will not be accused of pro-Soviet tendencies—remarked, “It will be difficult to find a parallel for such a gross attack by the rulers of one country upon the government of another.” But these remarks were given wide notice here and need not be gone into. What was not so generally noted was that Mr. Hitler did not confine his caustic comments to Russia. He embraced in his disdain all the nations of Europe “with the exception of one great power (Italy) and a few other countries.” “Everywhere else” he said, “we see the spasms of Bolshevist revolution.”

That “everywhere else” is an insult to every democratic country in Europe, including the “great power” of England, which with democratic institutions is enjoying unparalleled prosperity and social unity. Bolshevism looms as an immediate threat only in Spain, where German intervention has increased its menace; in France there is social disorder precipitated by the fear of German Fascism and by the persisted-in deflation. But it is still a long cry from Bolshevism.

The many claims which the Nazi Government makes for the support of its people and the admiration of the rest of the world display Germany under dictatorship as a modern Eden. Unemployment has been reduced from 6,000,000 to 1,000,000. The dispossession of German peasants has ended and the agricultural income is higher than in any previous year of peace; trade has increased; the German port towns are lively with shipbuilding: many factories have doubled, tripled and quadrupled their workers; automobile factories are increasing tremendously, and motor cars will increase from 45,000 in 1932 to 250,000 this year; the deficit of States and cities has been removed; the Reich has an increased tax revenue of $5,000,000,000; the German Reich has roads unequaled anywhere in the world. These are the high points of the Fuehrer’s clams.

What is there in them?

1. The International Labor office recently reported that German citizens had been removed from the unemployment rolls in the following manner: By absorption in increased business largely due to the immense armament program which is busy manufacturing goods of no use to Germans except to fight with; by spreading work in the factories, whereby more people work, but for less average weekly wage; by increasing the army eightfold and introducing universal compulsory two-year military training; by removing women from industry; by work camps, which demand compulsory service of all young men for a stated period; by the forced emigration of over 60,000 Jews.
2. The peasants have been saved from foreclosure by completely limiting their ownership rights; no peasant may raise credit on his land, mortgage it, or sell it. Nor may he sell his products to anyone except government agencies at fixed prices, and he must deliver fixed quotas. Agriculture enjoys a monopoly of the domestic market at the cost of high food prices and definite shortage to the urban consumer.
3. Trade has been restored to almost the position which it occupied when Mr. Hitler came into power at the bottom of the depression. Today trade is on the increase everywhere in the world. German trade under the Republic surpassed the figure of 1913.
4. Ships are being built and the Government is paying heavy deficits for their building. The whole Merchant Marine has been socialized and the amount of the deficit is kept secret.
5. Production is enforced by government order, many factories being compelled to undertake reorganization at a loss. Armament orders are making others prosperous.
6. In the Democratic country of England which Hitler referred to disdainfully under his blanket indictment, the number of automobiles has increased from 223,000 in 1931 to 348,000 in 1934. Last year Germany had less than half as many autos as England, in spite of the fact that autos in Germany are exempted from taxation because their widespread ownership is desired for military purposes and in spite of the fact that there has been a vast increase of party and army orders for motor cars. There are more automobiles in Democratic France with less than two-thirds of Germany’s population.
7. The deficits of states and cities have been taken over by the Federal Government and thus “removed.” Debts owed to foreign creditors have been “frozen.”
8. The Reich certainly has an increased tax revenue. The income tax begins at wage or salary of 900 marks ($225) a year, on which a flat 10 per cent is paid. With compulsory party contributions and the compulsory social insurances, the total taxes are 30 percent of such an income.
9. The great housing program which Hitler points to with pride has not proceeded faster than under the great building days of the Republic. Democratic England has rehoused 50 percent of her entire population since 1918; Holland and Sweden are almost completely rebuilt. All without dictatorship.

M. Hitler also made some grandiose claims for the renaissance of German culture. About that it is more difficult to judge. But so far not a single novel or play or international recognition has emerged from Nazi Germany.

But there is one claim that cannot he denied. “There is not a Socialist, a Communist, a Center party or a bourgeois party member left in Germany.” That claim cannot be disputed. And one item Mr. Hitler failed to mention. He did not claim to have balanced the budget, although he might have made the claim and no one could have contradicted it. No budget has been published since he came into power. What the national debt is nobody knows. And if anyone did, he would be sent to prison for publishing it, I suppose, under the law of “divulging information damaging to the interests of our nation.”

Damon Runyon

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram/February 1, 1938

Among the lost arts is singing by the cash customers in the drinking establishments of the period. These establishments are known as bars, grills and cafes. We used to call them saloons.

In the good old days before prohibition, which was when we called them saloons, and saloons had swinging doors to veil the cash customers from the vulgar gaze of their wives in quest of them, mass singing by the customers was one of the great American pastimes.

You seldom found a saloon that did not have a coterie of cash customers assembled at one end of the bar, blending their voices in sweetest harmony. A quartet was the usual thing, but trios and duets were not uncommon, and there was no law against a customer singing solo if he desired. He could generally get the bartenders to join in, if trade was a little quiet.

That was a wonderful era—the era of singing among the cash customers of the saloons. It lent zest to drinking. It had a fine effect on the musical spirit of the nation. It helped develop the national voice.

Bar Singing Taboo in Speakeasies

The singing died out with the coming of prohibition, of course. The reason was simple enough. During prohibition, the cash customers did their drinking in speakeasies, in which the noise attendant upon singing was discouraged by the proprietors. They feared it would attract the attention of the prohibition enforcement fellows who might come in and drink up all the liquor.

By the time repeal got around, the old time singers had retired, or been killed off bv the bad booze that circulated during prohibition, and apparently the generation that has come after them has no interest in music. We canvassed a large number of bars, grills and cafes in New York recently, and did not hear any singing whatever, except occasionally by paid entertainers, and that was pretty bad.

Nowhere did we find the cash customers lifting their voices in song. All the cash customers were doing was sitting or standing against the bars drinking their liquor in the glummest manner imaginable.

Several of the pre-prohibition bartenders agreed with us that it was all due to the absence of singing among the customers. They thought some of the customers might be deterred from raising their voices in song by the public nature of the modern drinking establishment, which must be open to general view, but were more inclined to attribute it to the lack of soul among the customers.

In the good old days, the spirit of song came on among the cash customers after about the tenth drink. There was no special rule for the organization of the mass singing. It just sprang up extemporaneously, so to speak.

A customer at one end of the bar might start softly intoning well, let us say “Down By The Old Mill Stream.” Other customers would quietly drift over to him, and pick up the refrain, and there you had a quartet, or even sometimes a sextette made to order.

‘By the O-Ho-Hold Mee-el Stuh-ream’

The way you sang in quartet was to first clear the throat with a good jolt of rye, or bourbon, rest one foot on the bar rail, then take a good grip on the bar with both hands, throw the head back, open the mouth, and let ’er roll:

By the o’ho’hold mee-eel stuh-ream,

Where I first met yoo-hoo, With your huh-heyes of bloo-hoo—”

And so on. If someone in the quartet seemed to be singing off-key, you paid no attention. If could not have been you. Anyway, it was never advisable to be critical about anyone else’s singing in quartet. The criticized one might get sore, gather up his groceries, and go home, and you would then be short a voice. This might not be any calamity at first, but you needed every ounce of vocal power when it got around time to singing:

Cuh-harry me-hee buh-hack

To o-o-hole Vah-jin-yah.

All right there, bartender, give us a little more of that hair oil!

Damon Runyon

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph/February 15, 1938

MIAMI, Feb. 15.—O. O. McIntyre was undoubtedly the most beloved newspaper writer of his time.

His appeal to the newspaper reading public was at once the marvel of publishers, and the despair of other writers.

There never was anything exactly like McIntyre’s column in newspaper history, and never anyone else exactly like McIntyre himself.

While ostensibly devoted to news and small talk of New York City, Odd’s column always reflected his own personality and It was that personality—gentle, lovable and essentially human—that was probably the real secret of his tremendous appeal. It was the same element that made the late Will Rogers so popular, and it is an element that cannot be simulated or imitated. It is something that comes from the soul.

Small Towner

Though McIntyre wrote of the big city, his following was not metropolitan. It was in the small towns of the United States. He sprang from the small town himself, and he was always recognized by every small-towner as a blood brother. He was, of course, completely sophisticated and cosmopolitan in the later years of his life, but he had the trick of maintaining the wide-eyed amazement of a country boy at the big show that is New York, and his friends saw in him their own selves.

Mirror of Big Town

His column was not a Broadway column, though he wrote of Broadway as much as he did of any other section of New York. It was more a mirror of the big town in general, and through his comment he generally managed to weave a strain of homely observation and philosophy that was the delight of the greatest newspaper audience enjoyed by any individual since the late Arthur Brisbane. It was my privilege to know McIntyre for many years. I always found him an interesting, kindly gentleman.

All-Around Newsman

He was an all-around newspaperman. He came up the hard way, and the now familiar story of his rise from the obscurity of a country town to fame and affluence will always be one of the greatest inspirations of the newspaper game. McIntyre found his gold in a field that thousands and thousands of others had been prospecting for generations. Before McIntyre, it would have been difficult to convince newspaper publishers outside New York that their readers could possibly be interested in the people, and neighborhoods, and small happenings of the big city.

Gave Column Away

As a matter of fact, McIntyre himself found difficulty in convincing the publishers for years. It is related that in the beginning, he practically gave his column away just to get it going. It may well be that had McIntyre remained in Gallipolis, Ohio, the small town on which he hung a wreath of fame, he would have become celebrated just the same because of the magnetic quality of his writing.

The newspaper game lost a tremendous personality in O.O. McIntyre, and his readers have lost an entertainer who will probably never be replaced in their affections.

O. O. McIntyre

Chattanooga News/September 29, 1936

New York Sept 20—There was a vivid collection of real life triumph and tragedy of the stage when they buried the roly-poly and cherubic Nikita Balieff of the famed Chauve Souris in Belasco’s tomb some weeks ago. The chief mourner was rightfully Morris Gent, who discovered him in a dark Moscow cellar.

Balieff was still performing in a cellar—a gilded grill on Central Park South—when stricken. He had but one trick. That was his strutting exploitation of “The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” a tune that sets feet atingle wherever it is heard. And Balieff made the most of it.

He paraded it in New York more than a year, then in every large city in America and across the European Continent and back several times. He had at one time a fortune of $500,000 in a safety box in cash. But eventually his wooden soldiers became worn out toys. And Balieff a Pagliacci.

Like many improvident idealists, he thought success would go on forever. He lived on a grand scale, a charming host to Russian refugees and titled pick-thanks. Always good for a touch, this bland smiling little man. But not many came to him in his hour of dolor.

And there was scant comment on another figure in the Broadway theater world who passed from the scene the same time as Balieff. I refer to White, the pioneer photographer. The first to introduce flash light, then a dangerous experiment that maimed and blinded. Readers of theater news learned to know that identification on a picture “Photo by White Studio.” Two others I recall were Byron and Sarony. But White seemed better known and his full stage enlargements graced many lobbies. He paved the way for the Cevil Beatons and other deluxe lensmen who now merely touch a button to achieve art with the elegant A.

I somehow do not laugh over my reading as once. But the other day the usually grave Times in attempting facetiousness inspired a chuckle. I cannot tell just why and likely few other mouth corners would curl upward. Yet I chuckled when it editorialized: “It was a great advantage to a Republican orator if he could bring to the platform a white-haired and lifelong Democrat who had at last seen the error of his ways and turned to the true party faith.” A convert, in other words, in the Billy Sunday style. But the writer of this unexpected mirth made the mistake we all make—having said the thing he goes on to say it again and again. We who write are wont to repeat and thus evirate the edge of bright expression. Rare indeed the writer who “hits and runs.” Booth Tarkington is about the only one who says it and never refers to it again.

Newspaper fellows show a better-than-average knowledge of English, naturally But I don’t know that they ought to upbraid others for being less proficient. To many educated people, approximate constructions and sounds are considered near enough and in matters other than English such persons may express intellectual virtues in which newspaper men are sadly lax. The other day a great scientist on the air said e-pock’-al for ep’-ochal. A fellow in our berg excused himself from a dance with a young lady one night saying his collar was “irrigating” his neck. Invariably he said “comic” for “comet.” He became a state’s attorney. A malapropish attitude may merely mean the offender does not think it worthwhile to dig out the exactitudes.

Few actors can fool around with indifference to audiences. Noel Coward accomplishes it to a degree. Lou Holtz at times has an irritating nonchalance. The Barrymores—Ethel and John—expressed a hoity-toity. But Lionel, more unbending, has endured longer and is far the more popular of the royal family. In the old Winter Garden days there was an outfit eager to please—Jolson, Florence Moore, George Munro and Harry Fox. Yet among them was a performer of extreme diffidence. I refer to Melville Ellis. When he swaggered on to play the piano he didn’t give a whoop whether anyone remained or not—but nobody ever thought of leaving.

An old, but still good, story via radio today. It was one the mordant and wry-necked Rube Marquard used to tell. The locale, Haverhill, Mass. The Browns were playing the Greens during a wet season with the river out of banks cutting into left field. A player hit a long one to deep left. The outfielder went back for it—his hand and the ball shooting simultaneously into the stream. Then he threw the runner out at third with a mackerel.