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Show Md Adi orb w Pearson Washington, D. C. 40-HOUR FIGHT The furious battle over the bill tc suspend the 40-hour week in wai plants caused a personal rift between be-tween two house leaders that may fake a long time to heal. When Rep. John McCormack, Massachusetts liberal, was elected Democratic floor leader, one of his strongest supporters was a colleague col-league who had nothing in common with McCormack except friendship anti-New Deal, anti-labor Rep. Gene Cox of Georgia. It was with hushed astonishment, therefore, that the house listened to Cox's bitter attack against McCormack McCor-mack during the stormy debate over the anti-40 hour proposal. His voice strident in anger, Cox denounced McCormack on the ground that his opposition to abolishing the 40-hour week was "not good sportsmanship, and I-wonder if it is good leadership." leader-ship." "I have hoped," the Georgian thundered, "that at some time the gentleman from Massachusetts would come to a realization that he is supposed to speak for the majority major-ity of this house rather than for somebody else." Friends rushed to McCormack's defense, but he made no reply. Next day, however, under McCormack's leadership, the bill was defeated 226 to 62 a tally which left no doubts about who spoke for the "majority." Note: Two undercover factors were responsible for this vote, which probably did not reflect the general sentiment of the country. One was a tremendous pressure drive by the A. F. of L. and C.I.O. in the district of each congressman. This was particularly par-ticularly effective with Republicans, who, with their eyes on next fall's congressional elections, are very political-minded. Second, was the failure fail-ure of the farm bloc to support the bill because it feared labor reprisals against the parity and other boodle grabs which the farm bloc is after. The bloc has been counted on to kill the 40-hour week, but the laborites served blunt notice that if the bill was passed, labor would ax the farmers. Result, the farm bloc ran for cover and the bill went into the ashcan. WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED The other day Harry Hopkins had a visitor in the person of Aubrey Williams, head of the National Youth administration, who has been one of his closest friends for many years. "Harry," said Williams, looking around the room in the naval hospital, hos-pital, "how many bottles of medicine medi-cine have you got there?" "About 18," replied the lend-lease administrator. "About 18 too many," commented the National Youth administrator. "And how many doctors have you got?" Hopkins told him. "Well, Harry, what's the use of your fooling around with all these doctors and all this medicine," said his friend. "You know that the more doctors you have the more this whole thing gets on your nerves. Now there's only one doctor who really knew what ailed you, and that's Andy Rivers out at Mayo's in Rochester. Why don't you have Dr. Rivers come East and get you fixed up?" Harry Hopkins acted on his old friend's advice, sent for Dr. Rivers, and now is out of the hospital. He says he has forgotten about medicine and doctors, and feels better bet-ter than he has in months. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, Dr. Rivers has told him that without any question he can recover entirely. NEW G.O.P. CHAIRMAN? It's very shush-shush, but in certain cer-tain inner Republican circles there have been secret pow-wows on replacing re-placing Rep. Joe Martin as national chairman. The hard-working little Bay Stater wanted to quit last year, but party chiefs decided that the wisest course would be to persuade Martin to stay for the sake of harmony. Now some of the strongest advocates advo-cates of his retention are after his scalp. The hostile fire is from two sources. One is from Mid-West leaders, sour on Martin, (1) for his failure to give them recognition in national headquarters; (2) for his secret financial wooing of Pennsylvania oil millionaire Joseph Pew and Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania steel millionaire Ernest Weir. In the farm belt the two big-money contributors are political dynamite and the Mid-West G.O.P. chiefs can't understand why Martin is palling around with them. So they feel the time has come for one of their group to be named either national chairman chair-man or executive director. FRENCH PROBLEM When you get them out of official earshot, exiled members of the old French cabinet now in Washington, are very suspicious of what the Vichy government is doing in Martinique Mar-tinique and Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is a less publicized French island near Martinique, and certain coded messages have been intercepted indicating pro-German activities on both islands. Suspicion Suspi-cion is strong that Guadeloupe is being be-ing used as a submarine refuelling base for Nazi submarines operating in the Caribbean. |