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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS BY JOSEPH W. LaBlNE Boost in Relief Fund Forecast As House Joins Spending Spree; Leave Tax Bogy for Next Year (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) Released by Western Newspaper CONGRESS: Coup de Grace "You have just done the most tragic thing in the history of the country. You have shown a reversal of the spirit congress adopted from the beginning in trying to live within the budget . . . I feel this afternoon very much like the poet who said: 7 was at the funeral of all my hopes And tombed them one by one. Not a word was said, not a tear was shed When the mournful task was done.1 " Thus did Virginia's Rep. Clifton Woodrum scold and eulogize his fellow fel-low congressmen who had Just administered ad-ministered the coup de grace to a great and Idealistic crusade: The 1940 congressional economy campaign. cam-paign. Until the senate added almost al-most $300,000,000 to the farm appro- son: It proposes a graduated tax, based on the number of stores. Myers My-ers pointed out that the Constitution Constitu-tion requires that taxes be levied uniformly, geographically speaking. WHITE HOUSE: Welles Return Down the bay at New York went some 25 reporters to meet the incoming in-coming Conte di Savoia. A few minutes later, in her card room, they faced a tall, dark-suited and handsome diplomat. Behind him was a 90-minute talk with Adolf Hitler; Hit-ler; two meetings with Benito Mussolini; Mus-solini; long and private discussions with Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier. Had he wished. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles might have pulled big news from his bulging ' ' ' " it - V i portlolio. Instead he said: I am mighty glad to see you, and I'm glad to be home." With that he caught a train for Washington where rumors were already al-ready mounting fast. Revived was the favorite chestnut that Sumner Welles' report held the key to Franklin Roosevelt's third term ambitions. am-bitions. Said the wiseacres: If Mr. Welles felt a European peace was in the air, the President would retire; re-tire; otherwise, no. Judging by European Eu-ropean news Mr. Welles read the American papers, it looked like a third term. EUROPE: Telegram AVIATION: Achievement Skies were overcast but radio reception re-ception was good. Pilot A. F. Olson nosed his Northwest airliner into the night toward Billings, Mont. Just west of Helena a bolt of lightning "appeared from nowhere," ripped the fabric from the right aileron and gave Pilot Olson, his two fellowcrew-men fellowcrew-men and 21 passengers a good scare. When Pilot Olson landed at Billings Bill-ings he also brought home the bacon. That night the nation's 21 commercial airlines completed a full year's operation, flying almost 88,000,000 miles with not a single crew or passenger fatality. While operators slapped themselves them-selves on the back, actuaries figured fig-ured this record made it safer to "Thanks to the wisdom of the Sonet government and to our valiant lied Army, the plans of the llritish h'rench warmongers who attempted to fan the flames of war in northeastern Europe again failed . . ." Such was the telegram sent to Dictator Josef Stalin the day Russia made peace with Finland. It came not from friendly Germany but from hostile France from Soviet Ambassador Jakob Souritz. Two weeks later Envoy Souritz's recall at request of the French government govern-ment created a mild diplomatic flurry that echoed across the English Eng-lish channel. There, Britain and Russia were at swords points over British seizure of a Soviet freighter in the Pacific. After several days the excitement had apparently died down, but not a big question mark: It '- v I NSUt pi fly than to walk. UNAMER1CANISM: 'Amazing Back into the headlines after his vacation in Florida went Texas' Rep. Martin Dies and his un-Americanism un-Americanism investigating committee. commit-tee. Current enemy: Russia and Communism. While Chairman Dies announced plans to "summon witnesses wit-nesses as fast as we can locate them," his operatives swooped down on Pittsburgh Communist headquarters in search of a Red who used the name "Franklin D: Roosevelt" on his party membership member-ship card. Also hard at work was New Jersey's Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, Thom-as, a Dies aid, who told reporters that "any number" of school textbooks text-books used in the U. S. contain "one subversive passage right after another . . . Taken with the surrounding sur-rounding material, they may mean little, but when they are put with other selected passages they fit together to-gether perfectly, and the result is amazing." COURTS: Sherman Vengeance VIRGINIA'S WOODRUM lie felt poetic. priation bill, house skinflints had slashed more than that from early budgetary requests. They had saved almost enough to avoid the $450,000,000 new tax levy which Franklin Roosevelt wanted in order to avert a boost in the $45,000,000,000 debt limit. But senate spendthriftiness now found its way to the house. Upped $55,651,058 above the President' budget request were CCC and NYA funds, and it was this particular increase in-crease that made Virginia's Wood-rum Wood-rum wax poetic. Next item would be relief, for which the President asked $1,000,000,000; but everyone knew that this figure would be increased. in-creased. Sole remaining bulwark of economy was the house appropriations appropria-tions committee, which was rumored ru-mored about to slash $00,000,000 from the navy bill. Meanwhile it was a safe guess that congress would shun new taxes this session. Reasons: (1) It's an election year; (2) the debt limit won't be exceeded until next year, and a new congress will then be In ession. Also in congress: C Flayed by customarily ardent New Dealers like Key Pittman, Joe O'Mahoney and Pat McCarran, a resolution for three-year extension of the administration's reciprocal trade act neared its showdown in the senate. Chief quibble: Whether the senate should retain ratification power. Franklin Roosevelt promised prom-ised to veto the bill if the senate did. C The perennial and controversial anti-lynching bill, already passed by the house, went to the senate floor after an okay by the judiciary committee. com-mittee. C Inserted in the Hatch anti-politics bill by a house committee was a clause forbidding expenditures of more than $3,000,000 by any national political party in any campaign. C Hearings opened on the chain store tax bill, flaming torch and cause celebre of Texas' Rep. Wright Patman. First blow: Weaver Myers, My-ers, legal staffman for the congressional congres-sional committee on internal revenue, rev-enue, opined that the measure was "clearly unconstitutional." Rea- TREND I How the wind is blowing . . . POLITICS At Dallas, ex-Gov. Miriam A. ("Ma") Ferguson announced an-nounced she was willing to run for a third term. JAPAN At Tokyo. Rear Adm. Shozaburo Kanazawa viewed with "grave concern" a report that the U. S. is strengthening its Philippine naval forces. INCOME Salaries and other money paid U. S. individuals in February totaled $5,554,000,000, a 6 per cent increase over February, 1939. AGRICULTURE Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace asked congress to make it easier for farmers farm-ers to get credit. Reason: One-fourth One-fourth of all farm mortgages are in arrears. Meanwhile the department depart-ment viewed with alarm Britain's decision to decrease imports of American cotton. Probable upshot: A revival of export subsidies. AVIATION Army and navy spokesmen revealed 1,600 warplanes have been sent to French and British Brit-ish forces in the past 14 months; that production is being rushed on 2,700 more. ENVOY SOURITZ Got his wires crossed? Did Envoy Souritz, a seasoned diplomat, dip-lomat, send this uncoded wire as a deliberate attempt to shatter Franco-Soviet relations? Chancellories In Paris, Premier Paul Reynaud's new cabinet made an auspicious start in its aggressive campaign against Germany. Summoned home one by one were all of France's diplomats, chief among them Ambassador Am-bassador to Italy Andre Francois-Poncet Francois-Poncet Reason: Premier Reynaud will do his best to keep Italy away from Berlin and Russia. Meanwhile Great Britain was also starting trade negotiations with Rome, but more important for the moment was creation of a five-man "inner cabinet." cab-inet." The War For two days the British blockade block-ade worked its way into the Skager-rak Skager-rak and Kattegat and threatened to cut off Germany's merchant trade with Scandinavia. There was still a chance it might succeed, but the Nazis began fierce warfare in the North sea with the apparent purpose pur-pose of diverting British attention from the blockade. Meanwhile spring flowers began blossoming on the western front. PAN-AMERICA: Strong Arm Stuff At dawn 2,000 of Bolivia's 12,000 soldiers marched against the presidential presi-dential palace at La Pas, resolved to assassinate the provisional president presi-dent and seize the government. Out to meet them went Chief of Staff Gen. Antenor Ichazo with two machine ma-chine guns and a handful of loyal officers. Into the enemy ranks went an army captain, recapturing tanks which the plotters had stolen. In a few minutes the war was ended. At Washington last year an A. F. of L. teamsters' union allegedly "conspired" to make concrete mixing mix-ing companies hire union teamsters to drive mixer trucks. About this time the anti-trust division if the department of justice began casting cast-ing a suspicious eye at the sorry plight of America's building construction con-struction field. Taking a long shot. Trust Buster Thurman Arnold slapped a charge of Sherman act violation against Washington's teamsters. The allegation: That this squabble interrupted building operations, therefore the union had restrained trade. Protesting loudly that unions do not fall under the Sherman act, A. j F. of L. cooked up a demurrer J and a motion to dismiss the indictment. in-dictment. In late March Federal j District Judge Peyton Gordon sur-! prised everybody by upholding the indictment, maintaining the Sherman Sher-man act applies to unions where their objectives are not "legitimate." "legiti-mate." Day before it struck at labor, the Sherman act floored a capitalist. A unanimous Supreme court ruling held that patent owners may not extend their legal monopoly to con-, trol their product after it reaches 1 the dealers, and specifically may not impose price-fixing restrictions. Case on which the ruling was made j was that of the Ethyl corporation, I which has licensed 123 refiners to manufacture anti-knock gasoline i with its patented tetraethyl lead fluid, and in turn has made the refiners re-finers license dealers who sell it to the consumer. |