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Show GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON Jour: ICKES 'BEARS GIFTS' WASHINGTON. Vox-Popper calla the running row between Secretary Ickes and myself a racket, saying "There's fees in them thar' fe-uds." This is only partly true. The "feud" "fe-ud" never gets as hot as the blood-thirstier blood-thirstier fans like, for two reasons, (1) I like the secretary; (2) while I abominate his oratorical and other misgivings, I think he is by so far the best secretary of the interior that we have had that there isn't any runner-up. That does not mean that I cannot comment on some of Donald Duck's quackier utterances. He frequently prp fn China en to tell that eitv what a boon he has been to it by "giving it a subway" and the "greatest "great-est sewage disposal plant in the world." 'Carpetbagger' in Texas. The original Texas Garnerite, Amon Carter, called him a "carpetbagger." "carpet-bagger." In the manner of his wooing woo-ing of Chicago, Mr. Ickes replied: If hen you are hungry for neus. By Thomas "I have come to Texas bearing gifts rich gifts not a few of them . . . and you never thought of calling me a carpet-bagger." He related also how he went into Texas and pulled the oil industry out of mess "that you yourself had created." This is pretty terrible. Kowtow to Pooh-Bahs. The federal government has no money that it doesn't take out of the states. If they were permitted to exercise their own taxing and spending power, they could control both by their own votes. By permitting the federal government govern-ment to do it for them, state officials offi-cials escape their own responsibilities responsibili-ties but they surrender their own authorities. They have to come kow-j kow-j towing to unelected federal and Ickensian Pooh-Bahs to get back their own, and then have to suffer the impertinence and political whip cracking of those same political taskmasters, who remind them threateningly of the "rich gifts" the bureaucrats "come bearing" which they do like the Greeks. This kind of thing is perilously close to being a kind of personal political extortion. It reveals the peril to local self-government from federal assumption of local rights and responsibilities and from lump sum appropriations by billions to appointed officers without legislative allocation. m m m TIN AND RUBBER SUPPLIES Several years ago Mr. B. M. Ba-ruch, Ba-ruch, on the basis of his World war experience in economic warfare, began be-gan to urge on this government the need for accumulating reserve supplies sup-plies of tin and rubber materials absolutely necessary for our defense which at present come from halfway half-way round the world sources which may possibly be threatened it the war spreads. These sources are in British, French and Dutch hands. A little later when our supplies of cotton began to pile up threateningly, he advocated trading surplus cotton, which those three countries need and do not produce, for their surplus sur-plus rubber and tin. Chance for Barter. I Now the British and French are becoming increasingly dependent on us as a base of supplies. Our laws prohibit our selling to them except for cash. There is a great com- k'cui commotion com-motion among our interventionists to relax these laws sooner or later to buy for us a stake in the war That is going to be a difficult bill of goods to sell to the American people. We did that once before. But are there not here the mutual elements of accommodation' Our government can deal with the problem of paying for groat reserves of tm and rubber in one of several Ztn' tU an SWp thcrn colton controlled con-trolled by our government, or it can advance them credits to purchase other munitions against shipment vX tin and rubbcr ta Wiser Than Burying Gold. As to the wisdom from our standpoint stand-point of doing this, it is certainly far better for us to pile up such J strategic war material as tin or rub ber. nether of which deteriorates ln storage, than to keep on 11 holes n the ground in Kentucky and at WeSt Poi gokJ Ky and The former has some justification e learn from Mr. Berle of the state department that we c east give it away to aid the na .onal casualties of the struggle" Lurope But the silver is no longer af military value. '""fier |