E FOUR
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1941
_ _ _ _ _
- - - -- --
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Editedand managed by students of the University of
Michigan under the authority of the Board in Control
of Student Publications.
Pul Iished every morning except Monday during the
University year and Summer Session.
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use for republication of all news dispatches credited to
it' or not otherwise credited in this newspaper. All
rights of republication of all other matters herein also
reserved.
Entered at the Post Office at Ann Arbor, Michigan, as
second class mail matter.
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Editorial Staff
Emile Gele .
Robert Speckhard
Albert P. Blaustei
David Lachenbruc
Bernard Dober
Alvin Dann
Hal Wilson
Arthur Hill
Janet Hiatt
Grace Miller
. . . . Managing Editor
Editorial Director
ri. . . . . .City Editor
h . . Associate Editor
. . . . Associate Editor
. . . . Associate Editor
* . . . .Sports Editor
. . Assistant Sports Editor
. . . . . Women's Editor
. . Assistant Women's Editor
Business Staff
. . . Business Manager
. . Assistant Business Manager
. Women's Advertising Manager
. . Women's Business Manager
Daniel
James7
Louise
Evelyn
H. Huyett
B. Collins
Carpenter
Wright .
NIGHT EDITOR: EMILE GELE
The editorials published in The Michi-
gan Daily are written by members of The
Daily staff and represnt the views of the
writers only.
Mr. Haisley -
A Fine Superintendeni
T OMORROW EVENING Ann Arbor's
Board of Education meets to decide
whether to grant a public hearing to Otto W.
Haisley-superintendent of schools asked not
to return.
Such a public hearing before the local board
is the first step of the appeal process provided
'by the State Teacher Tenure Act to which Hais-
ley has referred his case. We hope the Board
will grant such a hearing readily, and avoid the
legal appeals that will necessarily follow a re-
fusal to grant a hearing.
More fundamentally we hope the School Board
will grant the hearing as an indication that it is
representative of the hundreds of Ann Arbor
townspeople who have shown by petitions, news-
paper comment, and the spontaneous protest at
last Wednesday's Board meeting, that justice
must be done. Mr. Haisley has served well Ann
Arbor's citizenry, and particularly its youth, for
17 years. Yet at last Wednesday's meeting the
School Board voted 5-4 not to renew his con-
tract without giving one reasbn.
SOME MEMBERS of the Board gave indi-
vidual explanations after the meeting, ex
planations which have been shown up as the
sheerest nonsense. The Daily in its editorial
columns has already dealt with them adequately,
and it's not the purpose of this editorial to deal
with them specifically.
Rather we wish to present a significant bit
of testimony which shows clearly that any gen-
eral arguments rationalizing the dismissal as
due to alleged "coercion of teachers" or other
arbitrary action on the part of the Superinten-
dent must be suspect. This quotation from
the case book of the Educational Policies Com-
mission of the National Education Association
gives an apt characterization of how Superin-
tendent Haisley has carried out his office:
" AN EXAMPLE of close cooperation be-
tween the teaching staff and the board
of education is found in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Believing that the average board of educa-
tion thinks too little in terms of educational
policies as compared with fiscal matters,
the superintendent arranges from eight to
twelve board meetings a year at which dis-
cussion is confined, as far as ,possible, to
educational problems which confront the
schools. These problems include curriculum,
promotion, classification, health, teacher
welfare, public relations, and so on. Groups
of principals and teachers are invited to
most of these meetings. Frequently they are
chosen by their fellow principals and teach-
ers because of their particular interest or
fitness to discuss the questions up for con-
sideration. This practice gives the members
of the board, who are the official representa-
tives of the public, opportunity to become
more familiar with educational matters and
to hear the views of teachers first hand. It
also helps the teachers better to understand
the administrative and financial aspects of
the school system."
QUCH is the considered praise of a commission
o When is a Forum
Not A Forum?
By TOM THUMB
I JUST CAME BACK FROM THE MOVIES and
I'm plenty sore. The feature picture was
swell, but they showed a short subject that took
all the enjoyment out of the show for me (except
for the fact that my best girl was sitting next
to me).
This short feature was called "Inte'rnational
Forum" and was "the first in a series" of "for-
um" movies on current problems. Now, I listen
to the radio quite a bit, and I like the forum
brozdcasts because they're usually pretty demo-
cratic in that they present speakers with widely
divergent opinions on various current issues.
So it was only natural for me to expect to see
some of this real democratic stuff. But what
do they feed me?
This forum, a discussion of America and the
War" featured the following great and diverse
minds: Dorothy Thompson, Linton Wells, Wythe
Willianjs and William Shirer. It reminded me of
an impartial mass discussion of the National As-
sociation of Clothing Manufacturers on "Shall
We Return to Nudity?" If a forum is a discus-
sion where various viewpoints are presented, this
wasn't a forum
DOTTY THOMPSON would nonchalantly let
a cigarette drool from her lips and she'd
make some statement. Then Linton Wells wouldj
say, "I quite agree with you there, Miss Thomp-
son." William Shirer would rise to the occasionI
and stick in an "Absolutely." Then it would be
Wythe Williams' turn to exclaim "Exactly."
It was generally agreed that (1) We'll enter the
war very soon, and (2) it would be a fine thing.
There was also hearty agreement upon the fact
that this war is a struggle between God (us and
the Allies) and The Devil (The Germans). They
all liked that.
Of course, there were minor disagreements.
For instance, one of the "debaters". complained
that 17 million men would not be enough for our
draft army. The other two fellows said "Abso-
lutely" and "I agree perfectly." Then Dotty
flicked her cigarette into the ash tray and said
prophetically, "Well, Bill, I'd go even further. I
think we need 130 million people." She held the
pose for a while and looked real heroic.
Isn't it swell how people can get along so well
together? But somehow the film gave me a
strange desire to strap Dorothy Thompson into
a theatre seat and show Fantasia over and over
until the film wears out.
RUT Wythe Williams really got in the last gag-
line. They focused the camera on him, then
he got sort of ethereal and hazy and faded into
the distance, it seemed to me. As he left this
world his voice boomed the message, "Those
Germans won't forget us in a thousand years,"
his immortal words ringing and ranging through
the vasty halls of history.
I can imagine what No. 2 in the International
Forum series will be. It may be a debate on the
topic "Shall We Use Bayonets In Warfare."-
a spirited discussion between four Army officers,
whom, for want of a more fitting appelation, we
shall call A, B, C and D. It might go something
like this:
A. I believe that we should exploit bayonets
to the utmost.
B. I agree perfectly, but I think they should
be rammed into the belly.
C. Oh, no, B. You should aim for the heart.
It's quicker.
B. Oh, but the belly hurts more. Or the neck.
D. And don't forget about that agonizing little
twist,
A. Oh, yes!
And so we (0close oi iparti'al litte forum on
"Shall We Use Bayonets," Goodnight everybody.
Go home and get a good night's sleep. Coming
next week-"Shall We Lie On Our Backs or
Stomachs When Dead?"
NOTE: My apologies to the ROTC boys foor
completely insufficient knowledge of the bayo-
net, but right now I'm as close to a bayonet as
I ever want to be-closer.
Well, I'm glad my best girl was sitting next
to me, anyway.
SKm mings
by the edit director
jN LONDON is going on one of the lesser but
most depressing of all the war's tragedies. A
host of Poles. -probably the largest emigre' col-
ony in the world- has been transplanted there,
and with them have gone the characteristic anti-
Semitism of Polish aristocracy. Most of the 13
Polish language dailies in London blatantly
blame Poland's downfall on the Jews, and the
exiled Polish national parliament has voted in
effect that after the war Poland would have no
place for Jews. One Polish newspaper openly pro-
claims the validity of Hitler's racial theories-
which are working today untold misery on the
mass of Poles who are not so fortunate as to be
in London . . . Some will never learn it seems.
i' * *
Louis Fischer-former correspondent in the
land of the Soviets and author of the widely
acclaimed "Men and Politics," sees in the de-
parture of Molotov as premier of Russia in de-
ference to Stalin, a logical step in the Soviet's
"appeasement" policy toward Germany. Molo-
tov, it seems, may have looked with disfavor on
the results of the Soviet-Nazi "friendship" . . .
We're waiting for the day when the Russian
equivalent of a Messerschmidt cracks up in
DRAMA
Ann Arbor, Dramatic Season presents The Male
Animal, by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent, May
19-24 at the Mendelssohn.
THE CAST
Tommy Turner, Conrad Nagel; Joe Ferguson, Leon
Ames; Ed Keller, Matt Briggs; Ellen Turner, Ruth
Matteson; Dean Frederick Damon, Ivan Simpson;
Cleota, Eulabelle Moore; Wally Myers, Whitfield
Conner; Michael Barnes, Robert Scott; Patricia Stan-
ley, Perry Wilson; Mrs. Blance Damon, .Dorothy
Blackburn; Myrtle Keller, Ada McFarland; "Nutsy"
Miller, William Kinzer; Newspaper Feporter, Norman
Oxhandler.
AFTER I GOT BACK to the office last night,
somebody, one of those people, said "It's
very--uh, sort of apropos, isn't it?
If you have ever seen a Thurber man in the
New Yorker you know what Conrad Nagel was
up against being Tommy Turner, and after things
got going around the second act, he was a fine
Tommy Turner. Something was gumming up
the works during Act I and I couldn't for the life
of me figure out what, except that maybe there
were too many people on the stage part of the
time and not enough people the rest of the time,
but when I read the play I didn't think so, and
I guess you know what that makes Act I. Part of
the fault can be traced down to Ruth Matteson,
who appeared to limp slightly through the
opening innings supported oh the shoulders of
the hard working male animals. Perry Wilson
also bogged a bit, although her part is sort of
sub rosa anyhow. Robert Scott, as Michael
Barnes, didn't know what to do with his hands,
and there's something about that man's mouth,
but he saved himself and gave the whole play a
shot of adrenalin with his work in the second
act. By tonight there ought to be some o the
old college pace in that first act, and from there
on, it's a hit.
To get back to Mr. Nagel, he dropped a line at
one point, and threw the already nervous Ruth
Matteson off for one brief instant, but like all
good troupers, both of them dove for the ball,
and things went on, but not real fast. Another
little thing I'd like to see cleared upnbefore to-
night maybe, is the footwork by Ellen and Joe,
which to the tune of Who is supposed to look like
angels, but was off the beat last night. It's a small
matter, just go one-two, one-two, one-two.
WELL, THAT'S ENOUGH growling, and I don't
really feel that way, because as I said, after
Act II, and especially after Robert Scott delivered
that beautiful opening line in the second scene,
"He-is-probably-still-running-with-that-ball," I
was for it, and with company.
Question-does the fact that Mr. Nagel plays
the toughest part in the play, and does it with
the utmost of utmost mean that I can't throw
top honors to somebody else? I'll try. For my
money, give me Leon Ames and Matt Briggs, the
two top performances last night. Naturally in a
cast made up mostly of professionals, the timing
was good, lines came fast upon each other, and
laughs were never killed or still-born, but for all
around showmanship, the very best of comic act-
ing, Ames and Briggs had it-oh boy did they
have it. They convince and tickle the audience
not only with the lines, but with faces, voices,
mannerisms, and all the green-room tricks you
ever saw. Whitfield Conner, playing the all-done
Wally Myers, handled the most important part
assigned to a Play Production student and
handled it with plenty of stuff, equal to any-
thing the pros put forward. Nan McFarland,
though brief, sat in on the operations bit with
Dorothy Blackburn, and comported herself very'
well indeed. Quickly, for space reasons, I was
not prepossessed with the work of Cleota, though
some of the folks around me were, and the play
is swell, and will refund your money or cigar
Icoupons5 if you don't think so too
-By Jay McCormick
LETTERS
rfO0rfI.11+aED1ITOIIA
In Re Harry Bridge
To the Editor:
'N THURSDAY'S DAILY an item from the
Christian Science Monitor was reproduced,
dealing in part with the case of Harry Bridges
and citing it as an example of the recent govern-
ment offensive against alleged subversive activi-
ties. I wish to comment on the Bridges case.
There are many of us-and we are not Com-
inunists--who believe that the Bridges case is
not all that it is represented to be. We have
reason to think that the real motive behind the
deportation proceedings now being carried on is
not to rid the country of a radical but to iid it
of an able, militant and successful labor leader.
It would be very much worthwhile to the West
Coast ship owners if they could, on one pretext
or another, eliminate Harry Bridges.
Several years ago when Congress was con-
sidering a special bill to deport Bridges-which,
by the way, would have constituted a bill of at-
tainder and would have been specifically uncon-
stitutional-Dean James M. Landis of the Har-
vard Law School conducted a special investiga-
tion. No one could accuse Dean Landis of Con-
munist sympathies; yet after careful study of
the evidence he cleared Bridges of the charge of'
Communism.
Now under a new law providing for the de-
portation of aliens advocating overthrow of the
government by violence Harry Bridges is being
tried again, and all sorts of dubious evidence is
being used to try to tie Bridges with the Com-
munist Party, the IWW, etc.
A GOVERNMENT that cannot organize its own
country for production cannot organize the world
for freedom. So long as the Knudsens remain at the
controls of defense we risk our own humiliation and
the contempt of the nations we have encouraged to
resist Hitler. Business-as-usual cannot produce arms
fast enough.
"How can Britain and America hope to win the war
this way?" a Greek asked an American correspondent
as the "Panzer" divisions poured in on his country.
"On October 28 Roosevelt pledged America's complete
aid to Greece, but not a single cartridge has' yet arrived
from America." In a year's time the defense program
has grown from four billions to forty, but headlines
are not armaments. When the backlogs of aircraft
companies are eight times as large as their total pro-
duction last year, ordinary methods will not deliver.
One high army officer told the American Society of
Tool Engineers on March 24 that the greatest service
it could render defense was .to teach manufacturers
"to find ways and means of securing production with
the tools at hand or the tools now in existence." Our
success depends on our ability (1) to divert present
productive facilities to arms manufgcture (2) to keep
the big companies from monopolizing defense work,
and (3) to bring every idle machine into use by sub-
contracting and "farming out" as much work as pos-
sible.
Machinery Reservoirs
A confidential bulletin of the Bureau of Foreign and
Domestic Commerce says that the automobile industry
is our greatest reservoir of machinery for defense pro-
duction. Knudsen seems to have devoted a large part
of his energies to keeping that a secret. Only 3%
per cent of last year's sales by his own company, Gen-
eral Motors, were for defense. In the first quarter of
this year the proportion of defense sales rose to-
almost 8 per cent. The President says he wants a
new super-bomber program to turn out 500 bombers
a month, but everyone seems to have forgotten that
last October Knudsen and the automobile manufac-
turers promised us 1,000 bombers a month. They
formed an Automotive Committee for Air Defense and
announced that the work of manufacturing these
bombers would be done "very largely with existing
machinery and with little new equipment. Both time
and facilities are lacking for development of new
machine tools. The job is one of adaptation . . ." Mr.
Roosevelt might ask Knudsen to explain why the
Automotive Committee was disbanded, the 1,000-
bomber program whittled down to 300 a month, the
decision to use existing automotive machinery aban-
doned. Six months have passed, and Ford and Gen-
eral Motors haven't finished haggling over the terms
of the contracts under which new factories will be
built to turn out parts for these bombers.
AM RELIABLY INFORMED that in its German
factories General Motors is producing aircraft for
Hitler. Why can't General Motors produce aircraft
in its American factories? The answer, as I'showed in
a previous article, is that this would interfere with the
current boom in automobile production. The proposal
for a small-scale test of the Reuther plan was rejected
by Knudsen. Knudsen promised three weeks ago to
supply Reuther with blueprints so he could work out
the details of his proposal to manufacture planes in
automobile factories, but the promise has yet to be
kept. The American Machinist, organ of the machine-
tool industry, said in its issue of April 2 that the Reu-
ther plan had been "rejected squarely on its essential
features-treatment of the automobile industry as
one firm with the work parceled out in ,semi-compul-
sory fashion and labor participation in management-
rather than on the rather irrelevant arguments as to
whether the plan could actually produce 500 planes
a day." The "irrelevant" is appalling.
Mr. Roosevelt says he wants every machine tool in
the country put to work, but his wishes will remain
ineffective as long as he depends onthe OPM to carry
them out. Our smaller factories and idle machines
can be brought into production only by widespread
"farming out" of orders, but when you farm out an
order you farm out the profit too. The Defense Com-
mission has been issuing publicity on "farming out"
since the first of the year--and quietly sabotaging the
program all the while. The President's statement itself
seems to have been the brain child of Knudsen's pub-
licity office, and was apparently designed to provide
a backfire against increasing criticism. The men who
want to farm out orders were not consulted before
the statement was issued, and it can be taken about
as seriously as the State Department's moral lectures
to Japan. The lectures do not interfere with ship-
ments of American oil and copper to Japan, and the
well-staged warnings of the OPM will not interfere
with the backlogs of the big arms makers. By the
middle of February the Bethlehem-du Pont group of
companies, whence Knudsen himself comes, had 23
per cent 6f defense orders. Their huge backlogs in
part explain why-according to OPM estimates-half
the machine tools in this country are in use less than
eight hours a day and many are idle. They also help
to explain why the National Association of Manufac-
ture); in its irecnt survey found that only 28 per cent
of the country's manufacturing plants had received
d1efense' orders.
THIS CONTRAST between idl( machInes and swoll-
en backlogs may also provide a clue to the failure
As Ot
See It
e Cost Onusenism
jhers Writer discusses failure of the national defense program
to produce what has been promised - particularly scores
:failure to 'farm out' production to small plants. r
I. F. Stone in the Nation, May 17, 1941
of the commission to do the obvious a year ago and
order an inventory, industry by industry, of productive
capacity. The findings would have raised too many
uncomfortable questions, and the answers would have
interfered both with business-as-usual and with the
defense profits of big business. Such an inventory
would have disclosed how many machines in the auto-
mobile industry could turn out parts of planes, tanks,
and guns and have shown the vast reservoir of ma-
chine' capacity in our smaller factories and-our small
towns. It would have led to plans like Reuther's for
the automobile industry and Murray's for steel, and
it would have demonstrated the need for community
pools, a form of democratic organization for defense
from which the Knudsens and most of the army and
navy bureaucrats recoil. These pools of productive
capacity, utilized by Beaverbrook in England, serve
to parcel out work and orders to machine shops and
firms too small to handle a whole contract by them-
selves.
Pools of this kind sprang up last fall in some fifty
communities which took seriously the talk of' bottle-
necks and shortages. They 'found advice and encour-
agement in Morris Llewellyn Cooke, the famous Phila-
delphia consulting engineer, long an advocate of scien-
tific management, who managed to find a cranny for
himself in Sidney Hillman's division last October-Mr.
Knudsen wasn't interested in his ideas. The com-
munity pools he helped to organized were given the
run-around, and he himself was shunted to one side
in January just as the movement seemed to be making
headway. The big-business crowd under Knudsen
and John D. Biggers then toed over, with a Kansas
City furniture manufacturer as front man. The Navy .
Department had issued an "order" in January appeal-
ing, as the President now does, for wider subcontract-
ing. But the order, like-Mr. Roosevelt's statement,
was hortatory. It was not implemented by any con-
crete changes in procurement methods. We need an
executive order or a law directing procurement offi-
cers to force subcontracting, to take orders away from
companies which refuse to subcontract, and to deny
certificates of five-year amortization for plant ex-
pansion to manufacturers whoeare not utilizing all
subcontract possibilities. The ease with which these
certificates are now obtained encourages the manu-
facturer not to subcontract. Why should he share
work and profits with smaller firms when he can get
the government to finance a new plant for him?
I
TgOST OF ALL we need a bureau under someone like
Cook to compile the information supplied by com-
munity pools and provide orders for them. They offer
the best way to mobilize the American people for de-
fense. A good example of these pools and their possi-
bilities was provided in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
There local manufacturers, civic agencies, the New
Deal housing authority, the C.I.O., the A.F. of L., and
the railroad brotherhoods joined in a model survey of
its kind. They counted every idle machine and noted
every idle square foot of floor space. They made a
study of the products these idle facilities might turn
out for defense. Though Beaver County already had
several big concerns working at capacity and firms
employing 77 per cent of the county's workers had
defense orders, the survey uncovered an extraordinary
variety of idle productive capacity for armament. Five
modern machine-tool plants, with the skilled men to
operate them, were working only two days a week. Of
the seven plants in the county capable of producing
alloy steels and aluminum castings, one was com-
pletely idle. One large plant equipped to make shells
had been closed. down for some years. The Beaver
County committee came down here full of enthusiasm,
with a handsomely-bound brochure itemizing the fa
cilities they had available for defense, ready to take
orders through one or two of their larger manufac-
turers or to incorporate as a community committee
and parcel out the work that way. They got nowhere.
Community Committees
BELIEVE the President could find no better way
to tap our unused reserves of machines and man-
power than by encouraging these community com-
mittees. Through them he ,can reach down to the
grass roots and set free the unused capacities in thou-
sands of small business men, labor leaders, local
"sparIplugs." They will organize themselves. The
secret of the unsuspected energy put forth in great
emergencies and in the great upheavals, of history,
such as the French Revolution, is that the hidden
abilities of thousands of unknown men and women
break through the crust of bureaucracy, monopoly,
and habit. Must we wait for graver danger to shake
the Inudsens loose and call forth this wide participa-
tion of the American people in the defense effort? Or
can the President, by wise leadership, evoke it now?
Much is to be gained by it-new ideas in defense pro-
duction, the morale that comes from tasks to be' per-
formed, the habit of cooperation among ordinary hos-
tile elements. A. democratic mobilization on a basis
like Beaver County's would do more than speed de-
fense; the attitudes developed would ease post-war
reconstruction. But the big industrialists understand
that a mobilization of this kind is a menace to monop-
oly. It can never come about as long as they are in
charge of defense. They will try to keep "farming out"
in their own hands, and as undemocratic as they can.
,Their background and training make it impossible for
them to understand the meaning of a democratic de-
fense or its necessity.
DAILY OFFICIAL
(Cntin U'd Fron Tlrw: 2)
invited. There will be no meeting
tonight.
Graduate Speech Students: The1
Graduate study Club will meet Wed-
er solar phenomena taken at the Mc- heard Wednesday evening from 7:30
Math-Hulbert Observatory will be to 9:30 p.m.
shown on Wednesday,.May 21, at 8:00 The last Communion breakfast of
p.m. in the Natural Science Auditori- the club will be held Sunday, fol-
iim. While shown primarily for the lowing the 10 o'clock Mass. Tickets
classes in descriptive astronomy, any may be secured any day this week
others will be welcome. up until Friday in the chapel audi-
The Society of Automotive, Engm- toiI .
eers and the American Society of Mimes: I will be in the meeting
Mechanical Engineers will hold a room at the Union beginning 7:00
joint picnic on Saturday, May 24, at o'clock tomorrow night to collect the
2:00 p.m. Tickets may be obtainedasestent gromheting ann:t
from the officers of the organiza- attend the regular meeting at 7:30.