Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS bumper crops due this year may crack high cost living spy probe confusion mounts by bill staff writer EDITOR s NOTE when opinions are e expressed pes sed in these columns they are tl those 0 8 e of newspaper union a news ana analysts ats and not necessarily liv at of his this newspaper 0 of ag A 41 9 41 sidetracks two potential witnesses who were ere expected to add some information to the washington red spy hunt were mrs oksana Stepan ovna kolenkina Kosen kina left and alexander koral neither did however mrs kolenkina Kosen kina who taught children of russian U N officials in new york made headlines by leaping from a third story window in the soviet consulate where she allegedly was being held against her will koral billed bille dasa as a mystery witness and accused of being a paid courier for the wartime communist espionage ring refused to tell anything he might know on the grounds that he would be incriminating himself CROP REPORT momentous there was momentous news from the nation nations s farms in the cards for 1948 was a record setting corn crop the second largest wheat crop and substantial increases mcrea ses over last year in oats barley and rye government estimates as ol 01 august I 1 ot of this year years s gram grain pro read like a statistical fan tasy of the promised land bureau of agricultural economics reported that a corn crop of 3 ODO bushels Is indicated this year far above 1947 a small er plagued crop of 24 billion bushels an approximate bushels of wheat will be forth cona com ing this year other crop estimates were oats 1470 1 bushels barley bushels and rye 26 bushels trouble grew out of the tact fact that although the huge crops are wel come this year they may set the scene for huge postwar surpluses mostly of corn and wheat officials contend that there sun ply aren t enough animals left on the nation nations s farms to take care of the kind of production being achieved this year particularly the corn outturn immediate result of this sudden condition of oversupply probably will be the government s starting to support corn prices as soon as the crop starts moving other gram supports are likely to be evoked later gram exports will be pushed of course but the export market is almost am to fall off 03 in a year or so because other nations also are intensifying their farm prodoc tion with considerable success deflation P brighter side of the crop situation is the tact fact that it promises the consumer almost certain relief from inflated food prices sooner or later since gram supplies and prices are basic in determining cost of living at the household level prices of most grains as a mat ter of fact already have broken corn was down to 2 02 a bushel THESE 8 G CROPS FOOD PR CES I 1 baym a LE 1 leg ff from its postwar peak of 2 80 wheat was down from 3 13 to 2 09 oats from 1 47 to 74 cents further decreases are inevitable when this years great beld makes itself felt generally cheaper grain means cheaper feed for livestock hv estock cheap er teed feed means less expensive meat in the butcher shop this apparently certain rebel relief from the high cost of living is not just around the corner however it lies somewhere in the middle future prices probably will win con taue to rise somewhat tor for the rest of this year after which the im lm pact of the 1948 crop should be felt causing them to come down despite the optimistic outlook there is another problem to corn plicate the picture this year s great crops could lay the ground work for farm gluts that would be followed by costly subsidies in the form of farm price supports should another year of heavy crop yields follow this one and should there be a recovery of agn culture abroad tremendous sur pluses in gra ns would result thus U S taxpayers would stand to lose in the cost of price supports a good deal of what they might save in food prices CONFUSION and spies america s current top thriller the russian spy sensation had devel aped more facets than a cylindrical lens in a lighthouse and each one was blinding to the eye of the be holder the motley group of persons called to testify before congressional in vesti gating committees was grow ing and growing it fas was getting to the point where even the witnesses had witnesses A sensational offshoot of the ong inal trial spy investigation temporarily stole the spotlight from the main event this was the battle of the schoolteachers mikhail I 1 and mrs oksana Stepan ovna ko both U N personnel the goings on over this pair of russian pedagogues seemed to be fairly complicated but they could be boiled down to a sophisticated international game of run sheep both samara and mrs koseck ina had appeared on the scene as potential witnesses in the congles dional investigation then things started to happen first mrs kolenkina Kosen kina disappeared for a few ew days according to the official soviet version she had been i captured by a group of anti communist white russians and held prisoner then she was res cued by loyal U S S R sub ejects A few days later she leaped from a window in the third story of the soviet consulate in new york where she said she had been held captive driven to desperation by fear she was seriously injured when she took the only way out on top of all this the other school teacher also disappeared he too was supposed to be in cus tody of anti commie white rus however information leaked out from the camp he wanted to testify he liked the U S and revolted against going back to russia ACCIDENTS deaths possibly the most shocking set of statistics compiled year in and year out in the U S Is that dealing with the nation a accidental death rate in 1947 national safety council has disclosed about persons d ed accidentally the full accident toll was approximately 2 deaths higher than in 1946 accidents in the home accounted for a majority of all the deaths list ed by the council there were 34 such fatalities the total also in eluded 32 traffic and 17 oc cupat ional deaths some of the other facts released in the annual report more people died in disasters last year than in 1946 in the stu texas city explosion in a texas oklahoma tornado in the centralia III mine blast and in airplane crashes total of 20 deaths resulted from rural traffic accidents while city traffic accidents accounted for 11 fatalities YOUTH MONTH Aita Atta reness it if the day should ever dawn when wh en every family in the nation becomes fully aware that all juvenil uv enile e delm delin quency has its beginning in the home then U S society will have reached its elysian fields once families become endowed with this awareness they will tend to bring pressure to bear to alimi nate the secondary factors that con tribute to delinquency in young peo pie school failure church failure bad housing and the inevitable shift in ethical values from one genera tion to the next which are some times confusing and frightening to immature minds to that end and because a healthy store of young minds and bodies is the best overall insurance any nation can have september has been proclaimed youth month the theater owners of america who feel they have a big stake in the welfare of U S youth have undertaken to organize the pal media of Inform information atlon pers magazines magaz mes radio and motion pictures to publicize the month aside from the publicity to be ac corded tile the problem of juvenile de Im lin quency which Is the immediate purpose of youth month the observe ance is more deeply significant in that it provides some evidence that americans are becoming actively conscious that at least a partial remedy must be found springboard tor for youth month and any other concerted group action that might obtain is a probing and thoughtful report on juvenile delin quency by the national conference on prevention and control of ju venile delinquency washington D C A digest of this report or series of panel reports covering basic causes and possible solutions of the problem is well worth a few hours study on the part of every parent who is aware of his inevitable falli bili abilities ties as a guide and leader of his children NEW LOW But bitterness erness while american british and french ambassadors in moscow were grimly making peace talk with soviet foreign minister molo tov in the kremlin general relations between the east and west were sliding to new depths of mutual re crimination this state of affairs was not eased any by unsubstantiated reports that the moscow talks had degenerated into a deadlock and that no progress was being made for or the most part however the animosity was being spread through raucous propaganda by berlin newspapers with the publications sponsored by the russians and the western powers waging a pitched battle of words the british licensed paper tele graat graaf reported that the soviets were getting ready to move great num bers of new troops into germany and that russia was pressing to ward sole rule over all an of berlin soviet propaganda instruments meantime renewed their overall attacks on the west demanding that the berhn berlin city council be oust ed and that the whole city be made part of the soviet zonal adminis tra tion regardless of any truth implicit in the berlin newspaper fight it was obvious that the vindictive battle would do much more harm than good to relations between the two power spheres it was equally obvious that there was more bitterness and fear at work in berlin than there was a rational understanding of how to cope with the crisis DRAFT questions this may come as a shock to young future draftees who want the world to know that they are loyal americans but just about the only question draft boards will not ask the potential inductee is whether or not he is a communist and if U he is loyal to the U S all the queries in an eight page e ques tionna re for draftees deal wit with h the subject subjects s social economic phys leal ical and marital 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