Coral Gables Riviera

Friday, April 24, 1942, page 4 (of 12)

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CORAL GABLES RIVIERA

AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER Published every Friday by the Miami Riviera Publishing Co., 306 Coral Way, Coral Gables, Fla. Established January, 1926 Combined with the Dade County and Coconut Grove Times, 1929. ALBERT E. HARUM President and Publisher JAMES B. MOORE Managing Editor Charles S. Leyden Advertising Manager Gertrude Hardeman Circulation Manager Helen Reynolds Society Editor Edythe Farley Credit Manager 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.

17th Birthday

Seventeen years ago this week a dreamer saw the beginning of the fulfillment of his dreams. To be exact, on April 29, 1925, the charter for the City of Coral Gables was granted by the State Legislature. The real estate development, that was born and nurtured in the brain of George E. Merrick, was now an accredited city. The new city had been born amidst fabulous surroundings. It's first cries were broadcast throughout the nation. It was truly a "million-dollar-baby" and thousands came, from all parts of the country, to see and marvel. But the babe born with the silver spoon was not destined to tread the velvet path of ease and luxury. While still in swaddling clothes it was dealt two blows that could easily have meant finish-the hurricane of 1926 and the disastrous collapse of the Florida bubble. But Coral Gables did not collapse, like hundreds of other Florida developments. Its roots were firmly embedded by the faith of its founders. Coral Gables had a plan and a purpose. The people who lived here, who had helped build the miracle city, had faith. That is why, seventeen years from that day, Coral Gables is still a glorious memorial to George Merrick and the others who worked with him. Mr. Merrick has passed on, gone just a few short weeks. But he went with the satisfaction of seeing his dream come true. He lived to see a city of beauty, of culture, dedicated to graceful living and the better things in life. Coral Gables is still a young city. It is now experiencing its first war. When the bugle sounded for World War No. 1, only a tangled wilderness existed where Coral Gables now stands. World War No. 2 finds the community wholeheartedly in war work, with young men from far-off Britain in training here. Its steady building program has been momentarily halted so that materials may be used for the all-out offensive. With the rest of the nation Coral Gables has set aside her own ambitions to preserve the way of living she typifies so well. When peace comes again, Coral Gables will go on. As the years pass, it will remain a mecca for those who love beauty and who want to live amidst it, knowing that it will always be protected against the encroachment of the ugly and the subversive. Coral Gables is a city with a plan and it will follow that plan to greater glory, guided always by the spirit of its founder, George E. Merrick.

School Bond Issue

A year ago when three series of school bonds were up for election in three school districts, The Riviera pointed out the need of District 5, which composes the Coral Gables-Coconut Grove section between Coral Way and Bird Road and asked why those schools were being overlooked. This matter has been attended to, and when property-owning voters go to the polls on Tuesday, May 5, they will be asked to vote on an issue of $850,000 in school bonds for District 5. To those who are familiar with the school needs this word is being received with gratification. To those who do not know the present condition of our schools, will be pertinent to point out the need for improvement. No school bonds have been voted in District 5 since the latter part of 1926, and today we are stowing into the same amount of space nearly 400 more boys and girls than the five schools accommodated before. This means present conditions are overcrowded and many classes are too large for efficient instruction. In other words, your child may not be getting the teaching to which he is entitled. Another side of the story is the fact that in the last 16 years funds for what improvements and repairs have been made on school property have come from operating funds at the expense of both the pupils and the teachers. Gableites are able to vote this year on school bonds because of the change in the basis of tax assessments, the new system of 100 per cent valuation, raising the tax rolls so much that the school board now is in a position to legally float a bond issue. If approved by the voters and by the courts, the proposed bonds would be used to construct a new junior high school at Ponce de Leon High. This would be located near Riviera Drive and Bird Road and would consist of approximately 30 rooms in addition to a completely equipped cafeteria and auditorium. Next largest amount would be spent on Ponce de Leon High School, where an auditorium and equipment would cost $125,000, with another $80,000 to go for a new gymnasium and its equipment. At Silver Bluff School $45,000 would be spent for an auditorium and equipment, while the white school in Coconut Grove would come in for $50,000 for additions and alterations. A 12-room addition would be constructed for the Colored Grove Negro school and an auditorium and cafeteria would be added at a cost of $130,000. For the district as a whole $45,000 would be spent to install heating equipment in all schools, $50,000 would go for painting, repairs and alterations, and $25,000 would go to the purchase of additional school sites. The school board plans to spend this money only as rapidly as the work can be done, and toward that end plans a piece-meal sale of the bonds, once they have been validated.

Walter Lippmann

(Continued from Page 1) tion of the currency, if money is more plentiful than goods, frozen prices merely hide the inflation and dam it up until some time later when it cannot be dammed up any longer. For consider what has happened when a merchant has to sell his goods for less money than they would fetch in a free market: the merchant has had to accept dollars which buy not as valuable as the goods he has sold. He has received depreciated money-which is the very essence of inflation-and the more depreciated money he has to accept, the more he will seek to get rid of the depreciated money and get hold of goods-which is the vicious spiral of inflation. It is therefore, highly misleading to identify the control of inflation. It is just one more example of trying to control the temperature by controlling the thermometer. Free basic factors must be strictly and practical effects. One is to make people think that in wartime a government can fix prices so that the consumer may expect to spend the same funds for the same expenditure of effort. This is not possible in wartime. We have to make up our minds that even if prices of goods are not allowed to rise, the amount of goods we can buy must be reduced; that even if we stabilize prices, we cannot stabilize the standard of living. Under no circumstances must we let the illusion prevail that there is any kind of price control which will enable us to continue to consume as usual. Is, therefore, we keep prices from rising, which is on the whole but not in all cases probably desirable, then the amount of money which cannot be spent will accumulate somewhere. This accumulation of unspent and unspendable money is inflation itself-it is depreciating money which men will not try to keep and will turn into more valuable goods as fallen they can. So it is mis-leading to popularize the idea that price control prevents inflation. As such it in fact promotes inflation. The true policy, I submit, must put its primary emphasis not on the control of prices but on the control of supplies-the supply of money and the supply of goods and services. It is necessary to control the supply of money in order to keep money from depreciating; when there is too much of currency in relation to other things, that thing must fall in value. The supply of money can be controlled by taxes, by contracting credit, by rationing and by compulsory saving. It is necessary to control the supply of goods by rationing where the goods are necessities of life and where the supply is short and cannot be expanded. In other cases, however, market will best be exercised by allowing the prices to rise. This is where a rise in the price will discourage unnecessary consumption or where it will stimulate production. No system of price control is a substitute for, or can for more effective without, the control of the supply of money and the control of the supply of goods and services. If reliance is placed upon ceilings, if attention is not concentrated upon taxes, credits, loans, rationing, and the deliberate manipulation of prices, the ceiling formula will be a snare and a delusion. If, on the other hand, the real measures of control are made effective, what Mr. Baruch is aiming at will be achieved. But it will be achieved not because prices have been stabilized, but because the factors which made prices have been stabilized. It is, of course, highly desirable and indeed imperative that money should not become too depreciated. But this can be done only by taking heroic measures to reduce the quantity of money through taxes and to reduce the circulation of money by savings and other devices to keep money out of circulation-for the duration not only of the war but to a considerable degree for the transition to peace. Even the most heroic measures we must, however, recognize that money cannot be so valuable in an era where goods are scarce as in an era of abundance. For the whole world wants goods much more than it wants money, and nothing we can do about the price of goods will alter this condition. We must recognize also, I submit, that while the rationing of necessities at moderate prices must be done as a measure of social justice and social order, it would be a mistake to assume that even in total war there is no usefulness left for the regulating effect of prices. The function of prices is to bring supply and demand into balance, and even in a total war there will be many commodities and services where free prices will serve us well. They will serve us well where, if prices rise, necessary consumption will diminish or potential production not necessary to the war will increase. This is a fairly large field, and price movements in this field ought not to frighten us. There would, for example, be no point in freezing the price of strawberries, which are produced locally for local consumption. If the price goes up, there will be more strawberries produced until the price of strawberries goes down again. This is the normal function of prices, and where the needs of the war do not intervene, there is no reason to interfere with it.

And Metal From Toothpaste Tubes Will Help a Lot

By BROWN [Cartoon: JAPAN, WAR POWER, FOR RUBBING OUT HONORABLE TEETH AND ALL!, U.S. WAR PRODUCTION]

OUR TOWN

by Jim Moore JIM MOORE What about the George E. Merrick memorial? Since the passing of Coral Gables' founder there seems to have been a lot said but little done about a monument to the man who made our beautiful city possible. The site has been selected-but that was done years ago, when the City Commission designated the beautiful little plot of ground opposite City Hall as "Merrick Park." There amidst beautiful tropical landscaping and a profusion of flowers is to be a fitting monument to the poet and dreamer who conceived the world's most beautiful residential city. But what steps have been taken towards this end? The matter has been discussed by the Merchant's Bureau and the City Commission. Sam Weissel came forth with a pledge for $50 for the first donation. We hear that another $100 has been proffered. And there the matter stands. It seems like a fitting time, during the celebration of the city's 17th birthday, to get the ball rolling on this project. But how to get started? There are several things to be done. Firstly, a monument committee must be set up. This should be composed of representative citizens and officials. George Merrick has made a contribution, not only to Coral Gables, but to the whole state. So, it seems appropriate, that while the main body of the committee should be made up of local people, that the State and County Governments should be represented. Next, a suitable monument must be planned and its cost determined. This will be quite an undertaking. We all have some ideas about what kind of a monument should be erected. Personally, we vision a likeness of Mr. Merrick, seated on a bench amid that beautiful flora; a book of verse open on his knee. He sits quietly, comfortably, looking with a dreamer's satisfaction at the city he created. But that's only our idea. There are hundreds of others which must be sifted and weighed out by the committee. We have several able sculptors in the area who should be invited to submit ideas. There's Lampert Bemmelmans, who did a splendid bust of the late Phineas Paist, right here in Coral Gables. There's Gustav Bohland, Miss Willie Jane Frost, Mr. and Mrs. Paul St. Gaudens and many others. George Merrick's brother, Richard, and Denman Fink, both artists, should have some splendid ideas about the memorial. All these ideas should be collected, as well as those from private citizens and pioneers who worked with Merrick. From these one must be selected. Then a program for handling the contributions must be instituted and some responsible financial institution designated as a repository. When these things have been accomplished, then we will have a good start on the Merrick Memorial. But somebody must take the initiative. This cannot come to be automatically. It means a lot of work, but it will be a labor of love for the people who know Coral Gables and who did know George Merrick. It seems to us that the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce is the logical organization to undertake the starting of this movement. We don't mean that the responsibility should rest with it for seeing the project through to completion, for every organisation should have a hand in this. But we feel that the directors of that representative body should appoint the committee and get the work started. The Chamber should not hesitate at the thought of being presumptuous. That idea has no place in this project. Rather, the directors should consider it an honor to take the initiative. Next Wednesday night, at the Country Club of Coral Gables, the residents of George Merrick's community will gather to celebrate the city's 17th birthday. It is our hope that at that time the Chamber of Commerce will announce the names of those who will constitute the "George E. Merrick Memorial Committee." The torch is your's, Chamber of Commerce-keep it burning!

In Our Mail

Editor, The Riviera: In your April 3rd issues of The Riviera appeared an article about Architect H. George Fink, which was definitely misleading concerning the early architectural development of Coral Gables. I believe this misstatement should be corrected. In the beginning my brother engaged Denman Fink, nationally known artist and authority on Spanish design, to serve as art director and to work directly with him in the planning of Coral Gables. In that capacity, it was Denman Fink who designed all of the plazas, the Granada Entrance and the Venetian Pool. However, the first houses in Coral Gables were designed by Architects H. H. Mundy, H. George Fink and Walter DeGarmo. During those early days my brother often borrowed draftsmen from those architects to work under Denman Fink in carrying out some of the usual routine drafting of his projects, and it was probably in this connection that led you to make your misstatements. Later, Phineas Paist was made supervising architect for the Coral Gables Corporation, and it was then that Denman Fink, in association with Phineas Paist, designed the Douglas Entrance, the City Hall, the Art Center Building and many others erected by the corporation. The facts concerning this have been recorded in several national and international publications which carried featured articles about Denman Fink and his architectural works. Among them the 1925 Sketch Book Magazine and the May, 1925, issue of the International Studio. Yours sincerely, RICHARD L. MERRICK. Editor, The Riviera: Now that the 1941-1942 racing season at Tropical Park is a matter of history, I want to take occasion to extend my personal thanks, and the thanks of the Gables Racing Association, Inc., for the generous treatment accorded our press releases by your paper. Throughout the season we made a serious effort to supply you with copy that was newsworthy. Our clipping files show that on many occasions this copy was acceptable to you and was used. We feel that in some measure such use contributed to whatever success our meetings enjoyed. It is our hope that if you have in mind any means by which we can improve our press service in the future, you will submit your ideas. I assure you that we will be grateful for any suggestions along these lines. With renewed thanks for your kindness and with cordial good wishes, I am, RUSSELL OAKES, Director of Publicity.

Mark Sullivan

The War Labor Board last week imposed what is known as "maintenance of union membership" on a company and its employees at Plainfield, N. J., the Walker-Turner Company. This company is comparatively small; it has only 293 employees. But the principle involved, "membership maintenance," is extremely far-reaching. The same principle is involved in an important case which the Labor Board is on the eve of deciding, the International Harvester Company. One gathers that last week's decision was a trial balloon, a precedent forecasting the same kind of action in the Harvester Company case. If so, and in any event, the country is going to become apprised of what "membership maintenance" means. One result is likely to be increase in the already strong pressure on Congress to enact legislation dealing with this and other features of labor relations. To understand membership maintenance read some words from last week's order of the War Labor Board: "All . . . employees who are . . . members . . . of Local No. 435, United Electric, Radio and Machine Workers of America, this contract date, for the duration of this contract, remain in good standing as condition of continued employment with the company." (The duration of the contract is one year.) Within these words are two heavy compulsions-first, compulsion on the member of a union that he remain a member; second, compulsion on the company that it discharge any employee who ceases to be a member. Now if this were merely a matter of private contract voluntarily arrived at by the company and the union, such compulsions would not be novel. In that case, membership maintenance would be merely a variation of the closed shop or union shop-in which the employer voluntarily contracts with the union to employ only union members. Many persons strongly disapprove the union shop-in principle. But, in fact, voluntary contracts for union shops have existed for years, in many industries and individual plants, and have worked satisfactorily. But, between the union shop, or membership maintenance, when voluntarily arrived at by private contract-between that and the present case, there is the wide difference in the world of human rights. In the present case-and this is the new and far-reaching principle here introduced-the two compulsions are imposed by the Government. Here the Government of the United States orders every member of a union to remain a member-or lose his job. And the Government orders the employer to discharge any worker whenever the union says he must be discharged. The way it works, as set down in the present order of the War Labor Board, is this: the union serves notice on the company that a worker has failed to keep up his membership, or has in some respect violated union rules, and that the union has decided to expel him. Thereupon the company must discharge the worker. In effect, the company becomes an agent of the union (and also of the Government). The company may prefer to keep the worker-they may regard him as the best man in the plant-the employer may prefer to promote him. All that does not matter. The company must discharge him just because the union says he must be discharged. True, there is in the War Labor Board's order a provision for a strange sort of arbitration. The company, when ordered to discharge a worker, may ask for an arbitrator. But the arbitrator passes only on one strictly limited question-whether the worker has actually violated "any of the terms or provisions of the constitution and by-laws of the union." It does not matter what the worker's reason is for not keeping up his membership in the union. It may be a reason of judgment; he may prefer to belong to a different union, or no union. It may be a reason of conscience-he may disapprove the course of the union, or C. I. O. As a national organization, about public questions. As a matter of fact, considerable numbers of C. I. O. members have withdrawn because of positions C. I. O. or some of its leaders took on political or other controversial questions outside the field of labor. Compelling a company to maintain a member of a specified union has some of the nature of requiring a man to remain a member of a specified political party or a specified religion. And while the present Government order is merely that a man remain a member, the next step, easy to foresee, will be to require that he become a member. This contains the explosives that have given rise to some of the bitterest and most prolonged strikes in history. (Copyright, 1942, New York Tribune, Inc.)

BOOK BRIEFS

"BOOM IN PARADISE." By T. H. Weigall (Alfred H. King, Inc.) Reviewed by LOUISE LEYDEN "Boom in Paradise" is not a new book. In fact, it was published in 1932. Its chief contribution at this time is the special light it throws upon the building of Coral Gables and upon the personality of the late George Merrick, who planned and built it. This reviewer ran across it recently in the Coral Gables Library and thought it worthy of a place in the sun during the celebration of the city's seventeenth birthday, which is being observed this week. The author, an Englishman, is an artist and a writer. He came to America during the boom days and becoming entranced with stories he heard of South Florida, decided to come down from New York and cast his lot with the thousands who took up residence here during the hectic days of the twenties. At first his sailing was not easy. It was only after he became associated with the news bureau of Coral Gables that the tables began to turn. He entered into the spirit of the boom, became known to quite a few of the men behind it, especially George Merrick himself. He watched the foundations being laid for many of the beautiful buildings we see everywhere to enjoy today, witnessing the completion of no small number of them, and attending their gala openings. It was only after Mr. Weigall saw the handwriting on the wall that he decided to leave Florida and return to England. To many people in Coral Gables this book will be but a review of the times which they know so well. To those who have moved here since those turbulent days it will be a means of pointing out the salient facts (and some not so salient) concerning this city's meteoric rise from the well-laid plans of the man who dreamed it all.