Coral Gables Historical Archive
Coral Gables Riviera
Friday, April 3, 1942, page 6 (of 8)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
THE CORAL GABLES RIVIERA AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
Published every Friday by the Miami Riviera Publishing Co., 306 Coral Way, Coral Gables, Florida. Established January, 1926 Combined with the Dade County and Coconut Grove Times, 1929. ALBERT E. HARUM President and Publisher JAMES R. MOORE Managing Editor Mailing Address, P. O. Box 704 Telephone 4-1634 Member, Florida Press Association National Editorial Association Represented in the National Advertising Field by the American Press Association, New York City SUBSCRIPTION RATES Six Months $1.25 One Year $2.00 Out of Town $3.00 Entered as second class matter May 21, 1926, at the Postoffice at Miami, Florida, under Act of March 3, 1879.
Get in the Scrap!
Coral Gables residents have it easy when it comes to salvaging waste materials to help the war effort. Our country is calling for millions of tons of waste paper, old rubber, scrap metals and rags. All Gableites have to do is to continue making their regular daily trips to the garbage can. From that point the city takes over. The waste material is sorted at the incinerator and turned over to reclaiming agencies, where it is used to make tanks, planes, guns, munition containers and boxes for shipping war supplies. But here's the point. Most of us are junk collectors at heart. Stuffed away in closets and boxes, piled up in garages and storerooms are tons and tons of salvageable materials. Some of the junk has lain for years and will never be used again. Paper, rubber, rags, metals and bottles-all vital to our war effort. It would not be too great a task to roll up your sleeves and give the house a thorough going over in search of such materials. You'll be surprised at the amount you'll unearth. And remember, no bailing or bundling is actually necessary. Just pile it beside your garbage can and leave the rest to the city's trash collectors. Don't put it off another day. Your country needs that material-you don't. Get busy. Get in the scrap!
Follow Their Lead
Adults who have been putting off the purchase of Defense Bonds and Stamps can take a cue from the children at the Coral Gables Elementary School. Pennies and dimes that used to buy candy and Yo-yos are now buying guns and munitions. The kids have foregone many of childhood's chief delights in order that Uncle Sam can have the equipment to Axe the Axis. Just look at this record! These pennies, nickles and dimes, converted by the children into bonds and stamps, totaled $3,690.25 during the last twelve weeks! How many local organizations can match that record? If the kids can give up candy and bubble gum, toys and movies, certainly we adults can donate the money that would buy a few cigars, movie tickets or highballs. Never before has the expression "every penny counts" meant so much. Next time you feel like an extra cigar or "one more drink," think about those kids at the Elementary School and follow their example!
A Merrick Monument
Since the untimely demise of George Merrick last week, there has been a lot of talk going around about a suitable monument for the city's founder. Despite the fact that the community itself will always stand as a living, growing memorial to the genius and foresight of Mr. Merrick, it is thought that a specific memorial, located in beautiful little Merrick Park across from City Hall, is in order. We think so, too, and urge the immediate appointment of a committee to prepare a suitable monument.
Spring Sales
There will be a meeting at 12:15 today at the Gables Restaurant that should be of vital interest to everyone doing business in Coral Gables. At that time members of the Merchant's Division will discuss plans for their coming spring sales, which will take the form of a "Festival of Values" during the week Coral Gables celebrates its 17th birthday. The importance of an annual sales event cannot be overestimated. The merchants of Lincoln Road have proved that. Because they have been consistent with their yearly sales, people now drive for many miles to participate. The Coral Gables Festival of Values can be of equal importance, not only to local residents, but to the southwest section and all of the communities to the south of us, in the rich vegetable growing Redlands. But such a festival cannot be staged by a handfull of merchants. It must be the result of the combined effort of all the merchants. Lack of transportation can be no excuse for not attending today's meeting. It is being held right on Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Everyone has been notified, so a representative group should be present.
Walter Lippmann
The labor leaders, like the automobile manufacturers before them, will be much happier and also much wiser when they quit trying to swim up Niagara Falls. They have not yet made up their minds that war and nothing else is now their business in life. There is no use crying out that they are under attack from the ignorant and the impractical and from labor-baiters and Fascists. Every every private interest that has had to undergo conversion to war, the same kind of cry has gone up. As late as last December those who demanded a shutdown of the civilian automobile business were met by plantid protest that the campaign for conversion was being conducted by men who did not understand industry and were under the inspiration of Communists. To be sure, the enemies of business joined in the agitation. Corporate industry was in an unten-able position, and its enemies made the most of it. Labor unions are now in an untenable position. The enemies of labor are making the most of it. The only possible answer is for labor to get out of its untenable position and, like Detroit, to go to war. This is not a mere matter of labor leaders modifying their demands, conceding this or that point when the heat is too intense. It is a matter of radical change in their whole approach-a change which will cause labor leaders to convert the machinery of labor organizations to war production. The conversion of the unions will take place, as has the conversion of the corporations, by the combined pressure of patriotism, reason, and sheer necessity. When there was no more rubber and no more steel for private automobiles, the proposal to convert Detroit to war use seemed much more practical, and finally positively attractive. There are no happier civilians in America, and soon there will be no more popular civilians in America than the plant managers who are making the industrial miracle of Detroit. The labor leaders stand now just about where corporate executives stood when the industry is ripe for conversion. They are under tremendous popular pressure. They are worried and unhappy, beavted by their own patriotic feelings. They are about to be deprived of the means to carry on their business as usual. This will not in the main be brought to pass by laws that "freeze" and put "ceilings" and "canons". There may be some laws of that sort. In the main, the conversion of labor unions will be brought about by the general mobilization of man power through the selective service machinery. This will affect labor unions and labor leaders very much as the system of priorities and allocations of materials is affecting private corporate business. As every adult person is registered, classified and made liable for the national service wherever he is most needed, there can be no such a thing as a strike. For the striker will be a man who has left his post of duty and is absent without leave. Either he goes back to his post or he is reclassified for another post. In time of war when there is universal service, no one resigns without permission. There are rewards and promotions for good service. Because of the sheer fact that service is compulsory, the inducements for good service are more effective in that the alternative of not serving at all is ruled out. Under this system, which is now certain to come rapidly into operation, there disappears the ordinary business of labor unions-a business which is based on a monopoly or at least on a powerful control of the labor supply in particular plants or industries. The real question for the labor leaders will then be: Will they stand aside, protesting and complaining, while General Hershey and the selective service organization take charge of the mobilization of man power, or will they convert the union machinery into an active and leading part in this mobilization? If they stand aside, they will not only find themselves pushed out into the cold, but they will prepare a very bad future for the kind of labor unions they represent. For the more men there are who go to war, the more men there will be to hold the civilians at home accountable for what the civilians do during the war. Wise business men saw in December that there was no future for them, or for the system of free enterprise, if they did not prove to the country, and particularly to the fighting men and their families, that they could play an indispensible part in winning the war. I tremble to think what will happen to labor leaders, to labor organizers, and to the defense workers, if the soldiers who do not have enough weapons come back and find that people at home are comfortably fat and prosperous. The rumble of the popular discontent from all over the country today is a mere squall as compared with the storm that will blow up if those who stay at home do not go seriously and fully to war. We shall do well always to bear in mind, I believe, that there is no peculiar and separate "labor problem." What we call labor problem today is merely one aspect of the general problem of mobilizing the whole nation of a sovereign military society into a nation dedicated to waging war. Thus we have gone a far way but by no means all the way yet, toward mobilizing the automobile industry to war; whatever the personal details of the Guthrie affair, for example, the underlying truth is certainly that there is still some resistance among business men, and that there is still some indecision in Mr. Nelson's organization when it comes to mobilizing business. The same resistance to mobilization is only too evident in the departments of the government which do not have a direct part in the war. They still occupy office space and use up clerical forces on a lush pre-war scale of abundance. They are conducting their business very much as usual, and the effective way to deal with the situation is this, I believe, to do what "The Baltimore Sun" did this week when it spotted the machine tools being hoarded by the National Youth Administration-that is, to run up these hoards of surplus facilities be converted to war purposes. Senator Byrd would make more headway, I feel sure, if instead of campaigning for "economy" at a time when the budget figures are unintelligible, he went after the facilities which the money represents-the buildings, administrators, clerks, typewriters, card indices, filing cabinets, telephones, etc., etc., which could be requisitioned and converted for waging the war. (Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc.)
The First Easter Hat
BY BROWN FARM BLOC RULE CONGRESS
OUR TOWN by Jim Moore
Every now and then a newspaperman will write something that hits the nail right smack on the head. What we mean is a piece that goes right home and doesn't waste a lot of words beating around the bush... the kind of writing that makes every other newspaperman say, "Gosh, I wish I'd written that." Such a piece is an editorial written recently by E. T. Leech, editor of the Pittsburgh Press. Since that time it has been published in every Scripps-Howard newspaper and read over some of the radio networks. Because we feel that every American should get the message, we are devoting "Our Town" this week to Mr. Leech's splendid editorial, entitled: "Wake Up America-It's Late!" "The nation needs to awaken to the full gravity of the peril that confronts it. It needs to appreciate how badly we have been defeated in three months of war. "It needs to understand that it's possible for the United Nations and the United States to lose this war and suffer the fate of France-and that this possibility may become a probability if the present tide does not change. "It needs to realize that there is grave chance of the Japanese pushing through India and the Germans driving through the Near East, to join their armies and resources in an almost unbeatable combination. "It needs to get away, once and for all, from the comforting feeling that while we may lose the war at the start we are bound to win in the end. "Only when fully aware of existing perils will the United States do its utmost. Pray God that awareness will not come too late, as it did in France! "Production Director Donald Nelson appeals for vastly increased industrial output on a 24-hour, seven-day basis-168 hours a week. Maximum production, in short. "Can we get it? "Not on the present basis-not under the psychology of recent years. "Not until we quit thinking in terms of less work for more money. "Not while there is greater concern about overtime pay than overtime production. "Not while farmer politicians are more interested in higher prices than raising more essentials. "Not while government bureaus-created to meet a depression emergency that is ended-continue to grab for themselves money needed for armaments. "Not while an army of federal press agents clamors to promote and perpetuate activities that have no present need or value. "Not while Congressmen try to put over useless canals and river schemes and take up the time of defense officials clamoring for factories and contracts as if war were a great gravy train. "Not while WPA, despite a labor shortage, seeks to carry on projects which it doesn't have the men to perform or the need for performing. "Not while CCC and NYA stretch greedy hands for funds to pamper young men who ought to be in the armed forces or the war plants. "Not while strikes hamper war production, despite a solemn promise that they would stop. "Not while the life-and-death need for uninterrupted production is used as a weapon to put over the closed shop. "Not while double time is demanded for Sunday work, which is only part of a 40-hour week. "Not while a man can't be employed on an army project or in a war plant until he pays $20 to $50 or more to a labor racketeer. "Not while criminal gangs control employment and allocation of men to work on the Normandie and other ships along New York's vast waterfront. "Not while fifth columnists are pampered and enemy aliens move freely in defense areas. "Not while the grim job of preparing our home communities against air raids and sabotage is gummed up with a lot of highfalutin, boom-doggling, social service activity. "Not while pressure blocs clamor for higher benefits, bounties and pensions. "We will not get maximum production, in short, unless, first, we fully realize our awful peril; and, second, get over the gimmes of recent years. "'Gimme shorter hours, gimme higher wages, gimme bigger profits, gimme more overtime, gimme less work, gimme more pensions, gimme greater crop benefits, gimme more appropriations and patronage, gimme plants for my Congressional district, gimme fees and dues to work for Uncle Sam, gimme ham'n'eggs, gimme share-the-wealth, gimme $30 every Thursday. "'France had the gimmes, too-had them till the Germans were close to Paris. Then everybody went frantically to work-too late. "'France has no gimmes today-except gimme food for my baby, gimme a place to lay my head, gimme death.'"
Mark Sullivan
The atmosphere of Washington this week is not that of foreign war. It is not of peace either. It is of domestic battle, the battle of the New Deal to keep and increase its power, of New Dealers to hold onto their offices. To call all this a battle is too small. It is a campaign, including at least six separate and distinct battles raging simultaneously. For several reasons all the battles come to a climax this week. They include: Struggle of President Roosevelt to prevent Congress from passing labor legislation, and thus keep labor relations within their own hands. This is approaching climax because of several measures in Congress strongly pressed within that body and by much of the public, and because Congress would like to take a recess, beginning next week. Struggle of C. I. O. to the same effect. When the labor measures got headway in Congress C. I. O. called an emergency meeting in Washington this week, consisting of some 400 members of its officials throughout the country, to fight the legislation. The meeting, in addition to other actions, passed a resolution insisting upon "union maintenance"-that is, a stipulation that whoever is a member of a union must remain a member, or be discharged by the employer. Battle of New Deal agencies, especially the National Youth Administration, to hold on to their lives against an economy drive in Congress which would wipe them out or transfer their work to a regular government agency. N. Y. A. was started in 1935 for a specific purpose, clearly stated in the legislation at the time. The purpose was to aid students to remain in school and college when their fathers were out of work or their families otherwise strained. To such students N. Y. A. made small monthly grants, from $5 to $30-the total ran up to some hundreds of millions of dollars. With widespread ending of unemployment the need for N. Y. A. ceased to exist; thereupon the government staff officials, adopting the technique of wide awake business, looked into defense work. They announced they would train youths for work in defense factories, bought some millions of dollars' worth of tools for training, and set up some scores of branches throughout the country. This led to commotion, for the educational tools were badly needed in actual defense factories and the vocational training already was being done by state public schools and the apprentice system in factories. Battle to preserve the Civilian Conservation Corps. This struggle is somewhat the same in circumstances as that for N. Y. A., except that the heads of C. C. C., who include some Army officers, have seemed less intent upon keeping the organization going on a large scale. Battle over "management-labor" committees, which W. P. B. head Donald Nelson has asked all factories to set up. As soon as Mr. Nelson made his announcement, it was recalled that for some year and a half C. I. O. has been saying that industry should be directed by joint committees of management and labor, with government sitting in as arbiter. To the outcry, Mr. Nelson responded this week that all he had in mind for his proposed committee was merely for stimulating production, not for actual management. Many continued to fear that the committees would be a first step toward the C. I. O. program-C. I. O. thus regarded them. In this aggregate of controversies that compose the battle of Washington, the New Dealers have developed some new strategies. One is to intimidate public protests. When it came out that circulars calling for change of the forty-hour law were being distributed in some parts of the country, the New Dealers demanded a Congressional investigation in the source of the funds. Another New Deal technique is a variation of an old one. The familiar technique is to call your opponent a name-as, 'the New Dealer; call their opponents Nazis. Wage and hour Administrator Walling, in a speech last Saturday, was quoted as saying: "The Nazi propaganda machine is behind this whole movement to do away with wage and hour standards ..." Variations of this utterance have come from some of the highest officials in the Administration. This use of the real war as a source of epithets is about the only way the real war figures in the local battles, engaging civilian departments of the government. Meanwhile, the Army and Navy go patiently and admirably ahead doing what they can to win the battles of Australia, the Philippines and elsewhere. (Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc.)
ONE'S to YOU
APRIL DESSERT-If you see Gus Lancaster picking his teeth, you'll know that he's still trying to extricate some pieces of cardboard that he ate on Wednesday. Attending the Lions luncheon, Gus and several other members were served a very luscious-looking piece of pastry for dessert. Without thinking that it was April 1, they dived in, to discover that beneath the whipped cream exterior was nothing but layers of cardboard. All but Gus claim to have discovered the hoax before they swallowed. CAT'S MEOW-Johnny Scott, over at the Coral Gables Garage, thought he had discovered a new kind of car trouble when he hopped into his auto the other day and discovered strange noises coming from the vicinity of the back seat. Investigation revealed a litter of new-born kittens, crying for dear life. To date, their errant mother has not shown up. ON THE TOP-A fellow we know, who picks up a few odd pennies now and then by letting you try to guess who's going to win the horse races, recently spent a session, as a result of his avocation, in the county bastile, on the twenty-first floor of the Courthouse. We happened to meet him the day he got out and asked where he'd been. "Oh, I've been livin' high," was the airy retort. NO EASY TASK-There's nothing soft about the jobs Frank Holley, Andy Houston and Arch Cassidy hold on the tire rationing board. On several occasions, Frank tells us, turned-down applicants have become so irate that they've wanted to do fistic battle, right then and there.
Book Briefs
"THUS PLAY I IN ONE PERSON MANY PEOPLE." (Samuel French, publisher). By Marjorie Moffett. Reviewed by LOUISE LEYDEN This recent collection of monologues, twelve in number, takes its title, as may be observed, from King Richard II. The author, a popular and brilliant disease, has run the full scale from sparkling comedy to stark tragedy. She possesses in large measure the sensitiveness and the finesse of the true artist and has woven into her monologues vivid characterizations that stand out plainly before the reader. These brief soliloquies are punctuated often by wit, humor, and a poignant realization of the more serious issues confronting mankind at this hour. They are filled with an emotional pith which is discerned and felt from the beginning of the book to the end. The foreword is by Daniel Frohman, who says, "Marjorie Moffett is a young artist whom I esteem as a genius . . . I regard her as one of of our greatest exponents of a unique and difficult art." Truly, Miss Moffett is at home in the realm of the monologue, and "Thus Play I in One Person Many People" is a book which is outstanding in its particular field.