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Show states are Louisiana, Mississippi,. New Mexico, Oregon and West Virginia. The "5 percent" investigation is considered here as "made work" for Republican members of the congress. For instance a former colonel of the army. James V. Hunt, is under probe as a dealer in influence because he "knew the right people" in Washington. This is another instance of "smearing" "smear-ing" a man or men by a senate committee. There is no legal action ac-tion which can be taken against Hunt for telling anybody that he had influence in Washington. nn Hie domestic front this wecM .' -'fill interesting developments the play awav for a time the international legislation Z as ECA appropriations and foreign arms program, "ruese developments included the .-elation that Sen. Styles Brid-;.!. Brid-;.!. ' n. H.) was drawing a ?srv of $35,000 from a private -ial interest, the pension, fund j'the United Mine Workers, that ;:.j0US prejudice is blocking pas--'4'of at least two important -Tmocratic campaign pledges and 'iit the so-called "five-percent vestigation" is being fanned into Jut anti-administration forces ;pe may be a full-scale scandal. Observers here recall the drastic dra-stic last-minute deal whereby -afressman Joe Martin, of Mass-aiusetts, Mass-aiusetts, former house speaker, and Bridges were able to call off the coal strike, and at the same time Bridges and John L. Lewis became the majority team in directing di-recting the $100 million pension fund of the miners. The other member is Ezra Van Horn, coal operators' representative, representa-tive, who draws $35,000 from the 20-cents-a-ton royalty, which amounts to a 20 cent tax on each ton of coal mined. Bear in mind that Senator Bridges' Brid-ges' action is legal, although he is drawing a salary from the general gen-eral taxpaying public as a United States senator of $12,500 plus an aditional non-taxable alowance of 2,500 for expenses plus the $35,-000 $35,-000 annual salary paid by those who buy coal, amounting to a total of $50,000 per year. It is impossible that other senators sena-tors obtain money outside their salaries from their private business, busin-ess, but this is from a private enterprise en-terprise upon which Senator Bridges Brid-ges is called upon to cast his vote for legislation. Observers here point to the fact that the miners fund paid out $14,000,000 more last year than it received indicating indicat-ing that the royalty or tax must be increased to keep the fund solvent. sol-vent. Despite the fact that President Truman has made a special appeal ap-peal to the congress for a bill to provide federal aid for education, the turmoil raised as a result of the bill introduced in the house by Congressman Graham A. Barden of North Carolina, which the Catholic Cath-olic hierarchy declares is anti-Catholic, anti-Catholic, likely will result in no action on federal aid at this session ses-sion of the congress. The exchange of letters and statements between Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Francis Cardinal Spellman of the Catholic church at least has had the effect of clarifying the atmosphere atmos-phere on this moot question in that the cardinal insists that only "auxiliary services" such as transportation, trans-portation, free text books and health services are in question, and not general aid for maintenance mainte-nance or operation of parochial or private schools. Mrs. Roosevelt said this was a "fair" clarification of the issues. What the Barden bill did was to prohibit use of federal funds for these auxiliary services although the supreme court has ruled that such services or expenditures of public money for parochial schools are not a violation of the constitutional consti-tutional prohibition. The issues of states' rights also is paramonut in the consideration of the federal aid bill, and the senate bill (or Thomas bill) recognizes recog-nizes these rights by permitting the states to use the federal money mon-ey as they see fit, whether for or against these auxiliary services for parochial or private schools. For the benefit of the general public there are five states which permit the expenditure of public funds for free non-religious text books in parochial schools. These |