Show Washing 4 D b ri LL 25 if laj washington dr francis E Town townsends sends fanciful dream tor for payment of pensions of townsend per month for plan flops everyone over sixty years of a age ge seems to have gone up in smoke but there are developments in connection with the california doctors unworkable scheme that merit comment the good doctor and lits his half baked idea have been skidding rapidly since the house investigating committee showed up tip the plan as a befuddled idea and RS as I 1 once predl predicted eted the bubble burst in a big way while I 1 am inclined to believe that dr townsend was honest and sincere in proposing the per month pension it was the sort of thing that servos server is ar an inducement for racketeers to gather it was the old molasses barrel for the lies files in the world of racketeers it never had a chance to go anywhere and never will because it was fundamentally unsound we can dismiss it then except for the two phases which aught tight to be vigorously condemned condemn ol by right thinking people everywhere every where the two circumstances which I 1 hear discussed most frequently are the tragedy the heartaches that obviously follow in the wake of movements such as the townsend plan that cannot succeed and that draw drav to themselves thousands it if not hundreds of thousands of persons who believe they are going to benefit and secondly it seems to me that the house committee headed by representative bell of MIsso missouri url overplayed its hand with the result that it has brought upon house committees the same public disgust and distrust as characterizes 90 00 per cent of the senate investigations each of these conditions is to be deplored each 11 Is definitely destructive there can be no more excuse tor for some of the methods employed by the committee in crucifying dr townsend than tor for dr Town townsend seitz himself to wreck hearts and hopes and homes by pushing forward such a miserably impossible proposition as his per month ebion ez es slon ion program the house committee had within its power opportunity to do a magnificent job in exposing the racketeering that become part and parcel of the townsend plan it bad within its hands bands the capacity to educate millions within the united states against following such an illusion such a mirage as the townsend plan if it had confined itself to that work representative bell and his committee should receive the plaudits pl audits of the nation but the sad story Is that the committee under sir mr bells guidance allowed itself to become an ag agency ge ney of prosecution even persecution rather than an unbiased sd investigating unit determined only to obtain the truth 0 0 0 since there never was any question that the townsend nostrum would fall of its own weight committee eventually it is ditc errs em ficula to understand why the committee resorted to the tactics it used I 1 watched some of those hearings As the committee delved deeper into the activities of dr townsend and his associates so socia tes it became infuriated that was where it made its big mistake and it is going to be quite a long time before house committees again can have a reputation throughout the country of conducting unbiased and reasonable invests investigations athons dr townsend townsen was wab sufficiently hard boiled to justify the committee in making a vigorous investigation ile he was sufficiently indifferent to their offers or hints of cc operation to warrant a feeling on the committees part that they had to bear down yet it must be said the committee went beyond all reason and I 1 imagine that in the end it will flare back on the individuals now dr townsend surely cannot mame blame anyone other than himself for the fact that he is faced with proceedings by the united states attorney it will be remembered of course that dr townsend deliberately walked out ot of the committee and refused to testify that has always been held as contempt and congress has the right to punish for contempt in this instance the house of representatives elected to turn dr townsends Town sends case ov over er to the united states attorney for punishment in court rather than to employ a house vote tote which might send the elderly dreamer to jail further the whole townsend nd investigation ti has turned out to be something of a mess like the townsond townsend plan itself thus there Is every evidence of a second type of politics in this investigation the evl evi second type dence of politics lay of politics ln in the th fact that hat the e house voted the inquiry largely because many of the individual house members were ir fraid they were too cowardly to take a definite stand in their home districts against the Townsend ites s true they did not know how strong the I 1 to townsend movement was so as politicians always do they dodged th the e is sue and moved to expose it through the medium of anouse ahouse investigation rather than fight individually to show how ridiculous how unsound the he plan was haelig set up the picture showing an utterly impossible program on the part of dr townsend and his big associates and followers the house politicians were confronted suddenly by dr townsends Town sends arrogance in his refusal fu al to testify that presented a sudden budden change in the scenery to explain the dangers in this new problem it Is only necessary to say that if the house hail had acted promptly by voting that dr townsend was in contempt and must murt spend some time in jail I 1 expect the result would bould have beef been martyr martyrdom dorn for dr townsend martyrdom Is always hail baj from a political standpoint if the opposition has hai the martyr the house therefore then lore has bag turned over the affair to the courts and the courts being slow moving as they always are will not set get around to prose cution cut lon of the case until it Is too late to have any influence on the election so we can see readily that dr townsend Is 13 left out in the cold ile he can neither use the influence that Is characteristic act of martyrdom nor can he say that his skirts shirts are clear the house has left him hanging banging conveniently in bild air and it was done solely tor for political reasons there may be some more hearings on the townsend plan during the summer but the chances are that representative senta tive bell will not call the committee together again for some months practically the case Is closed it has undoubtedly stopped to a large measure the drain that the townsend organization was making on the unthinking thinking 1 the aged and the destitute whose quarters dimes and nickels have financed the thing thus far while the committee lid did a good job by exposing the character of the scheme I 1 still am doubtful that it has brought to itself or to the house of representatives any fresh confidence in our governmental structure the national capital along with many other sections of the country has been listening to 17 year the purring of locusts hordes bordes of locusts I 1 use the word locusts in quotation marks because they are not really locusts they are cicadas but to the most of us they are and will remain the seventeen year locusts it Is said that the first colonists in america never before having met with the insects and bellevon bellev believing ln that everything of gods creation was accounted for to in the bible concluded they were locusts and the name has stuck in any event they appear in greatest numbers at seventeen year intervals and seems to be a banner year back in 1019 1919 trees in many sections of the country were pierced by tiny sawlike saw like ilke instruments which the department part ment of agriculture says are part of the equipment of the female cl badas billions of eggs were deposited under the soft bark A month or two later grubs emerged on the branches and dropped unnoticed to the earth then the chronology of toe the life of these cicadas becomes a matter of darkness for seventeen long years the insect in grub form burrow burrowed eC itself in the soil and subsisted on the juices of roots As far as anyone knows they did little or no harm barm but after sixteen years and a few months of this life the grubs awoke this spring and out they came they acted on instinct of course through the last several weeks these great beetle like bugs with wings like isinglass have been humming and thrumming and leaving their empty shells attached to trees and grasses during that period the males have spent their daylight hours singing the department of agriculture Is not quite sure why this singing dg has iode gone on because it has ascertained that all of the lady cicadas are quite deaf perhaps I 1 have devoted too much space to the story of the seventeen year locust perhaps the seventeen year locust Is not important at all except to the robins and the starlings and the sr sparrows arrows and the other birds which have had a feast in that thai almost no other bird now living has known but I 1 have a thought about these seventeen year locusts a train of thoughts in fact they leid to this what will condl conditions LoDs be in 1933 1953 or seventeen years hence when those humans on earth win will hear again the mating song of the locusts will the policies and the principles initiated by franklin D roosevelt and called the new deal be firmly im bedded as american traditions or will they be cast out as impractical and forgotten wilt will the changes in civil be such that people will be willing to submit to rei regimentation to have their government tell them what to do and how to do it or will this nation be a nation of individuals who insist upon the rights and the privileges le es which the founders of our country believed to be just and right 0 western newspaper union |