In Our Town, Owens Illinois hopes to ship trainloads of glass block

COMMENT

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By Wilber E. Sutton

IT ALL RESTS

ON HONESTY —

THIS business of fixing tax rated would be comparatively simple if everybody were utterly honest. In such case there might be a division of opinion an to minor items of expense, but not rifts that could not be closed. Remove every thought of political advantage and advantageous pub­licity from the minds of public of­ficers and put the whole matter upon a basis of facts, figures and common sense, and before you could say Haile Selassie there would be a satisfactory agreement.

But the average public office­holder seems to believe that in some way a kind of glory floats above him as an aura if he can obtain a large amount of money for the op­eration of his office. With huge funds he can grant many political favors. He can reward, then, the "boys" who went into the trenches to elect him. To refer to some pub­lic officers as "public servants" should call for an outburst of ironic laughter from the taxpayers.

But there are other public officers who are conscientious in their pub­lic duties, who have a sincere de­sire to serve the people but them­selves only incidentally. The trouble is that they are too few and often when they come up for re-election they are turned down by the en­lightened electorate because these officers foolishly figured that their duty was to run their offices in a business-like way in the public's in­terest rather than to devote their time to slapping backs, chucking babies under the chin, flattering im­pressionable women and glad-handling morons.

Operating a public office should not differ greatly from running a private office. The reason that the officer of a public corporation so often refuses to adopt private-busi­ness principles is because he does not have to show money profits for his corporation. He has no boss that can fire him except the voters and they can't do it for two years four years or six years. If he had to show dividends he would be far more efficient. But all he has to do is to assess the stockholders and the bigger the assessment the more friends he can provide with jobs, and the more friends that have jobs the bigger his personal and political ma­chine and the greater the likelihood of his keeping his tentacles firmly implanted in the hides of the easily-fooled proletariat.

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IN OUR OWN

HOME TOWN —

Someday train loads of glass build­ing blocks will steam out of Muncie just as trains of fruit jars now go out if the hopes of the Hemingray Division of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company are fulfilled. The company is now endeavoring to "sell" its pro­ducts to the architects and building contractors and in the last issue of a magazine that goes to nearly all architects of the country, had 32 pages of tenchnical [sic] technical description of the blocks. Eventually a public appeal will be made. The local office has received hundreds of inquiries concerning the product and a num­ber of buildings partly or wholly of glass blocks, or "bricks," have been erected.................The shrubs in the Washington school yard have been trimmed again, so they won't have any flowers next year. Next year's flowers come on this year's growth. Emphasizing again: Not six persons in Muncie or Delaware county know how to trim trees and shrubs.......................The way Muncie orators have been going after it, the Constitution must be pretty fatigued by this time .... The people with quiet voices, or voices so loud they drown out all others, seem to get what they want. The late Edward Tuhey, twice mayor of Muncie, never spoke above a low, well-modulated tone, never showed even a flash of anger — and he got about what he wanted both from friends and opponents. But then, there was Huey Long who accomp­lished the same thing by noise .... The Muncie City Council needs leadership if any political body ever needed it. Whatever it has of that quality shifts about from one meet­ing to another. "The trouble is." said one councilman, "that nearly every member thinks he's a general. We ought to have some privates.." But welladay and alackaday, who of us, in his inner thoughts, ever thinks of himself as a private? And maybe when one is elected to the city council his ego is accentuated. Maybe he has delusions of gran­deur. That is something for the psychiatrists to ponder ..... gambler's lament: "If they shut down our rooms in Muncie like they have done ("they" meaning the po­lice department) they’re not only cutting a lot of folks out of fun but they’re decreasing the city’s revenoo. Just go up and down Walnut Street and find how many merchants want gambling stopped. So I did and talked to three merchants and all of them did......Brief poem: Torrid August’s bathing beauties now re­sume their household duties......................"Trouble with the Republicans," said a one-time local leader of that party, "they don’t have red-eyed hates and fire shooting from their nostrils. They're not making folks mad" ........ Pastoral: Harsh electrical machines grinding down the boards of the floors monotonously, sometimes shriekingly; painters painting hither and thither and yon; the little Scottie terrorized by the horrific sounds, decides to make the garden his permanent home and on­ly can be brought inside when the sounds are stilled or he is hungry; dust everywhere; furniture, includ­ing beds, spread in wild disarray; finding the bed the same as trying to locate a collar button under adresser. The house beautiful?

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WHILE THERE’S CORN

THERE’S HOPE —

THE rains may fall, the floods, descend, or the drouth may wither the sunbaked land, but the Indiana corn crop never fails. It never has failed in all history. That does not mean it has not been poor in certain spots, for it some­times has been, but merely that, taken throughout the state, there is no record of its failing to be of acceptable proportions.

Nearly always we are worried about early or late, frosts. Fie upon them! If frosts come in the spring to nip the early com shoots, the farmers merely replant; if frost come too soon in the fall it is when the corn actually is out of the milk or the protective covering of shucks is sufficient to prevent damage.

You may worry about almost everything else, if you wish to get right down to it, except Indiana corn. Wheat fails, occasionally, of course, but what Indiana farmer should try to compete in wheat with the great Northwest and Canada, anyway? Or oats may not turn out to be so pro­lific, but maybe you do not have a horse to feed oats to, or have no in­terest in a breakfast food factory. Rye is not of much concern anyway, but the old dependable always is corn, and in Indiana while there’s corn there’s hope.