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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Bumper Crops Due This Year, EVlay Crack High Cost Living; Spy Probe Confusion Mounts ' By Bill Schoentgen, WNU Staff Writer (EDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed in ttietie columns, they are those of Western Newspaper Lnion's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) 4 ,-' t - .-4 1 ? SIDETRACKS . . . Two potential witnesses who were expected to add some information to the Washington Red spy hunt were Mrs. Oksana Stepanovna Kosenkina (left) and Alexander Koral. Neither did, however. Mrs. Kosenkina, 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 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 tbe grounds that he would be incriminating himself. YOUTn MONTH: Awareness If the day should ever dawn when every family in the nation becomes fully aware that all juvenile delinquency 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 eliminate elimi-nate the secondary factors that contribute con-tribute to delinquency in young people: peo-ple: School failure, church failure, bad housing and the inevitable shift in ethical values from one generation genera-tion to the next which are sometimes 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 lias 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 principal princi-pal media of information newspapers, newspa-pers, magazines, radio and motion pictures to publicize the month. Aside from the publicity to be accorded ac-corded the problem of juvenile delinquency, de-linquency, which is the immediate purpose of Youth Month, the observance observ-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 for Youth Month and any other concerted group action that might obtain is a probing and thoughtful report on juvenile delinquency delin-quency by the National Conference on Prevention and Control of Juvenile 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 fallibilities falli-bilities as a guide and leader of his children. NEW LOW: Bitterness While American, British and French ambassadors in Moscow were grimly making peace talk with Soviet Foreign Minister Molo-tov Molo-tov in the Kremlin, general relations between the East and West were sliding to new depths of mutual recrimination. 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 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-graaf Tele-graaf reported that the Soviets were getting ready to move great numbers num-bers of new troops into Germany and that Russia was pressing toward to-ward "sole rule over all of Berlin." Soviet propaganda instruments, meantime, renewed their overall attacks on the West, demanding that the Berlin city council be ousted oust-ed and that the whole city be made part of the Soviet zonal administration. administra-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. I 1 CROP REPORT: Momentous There was momentous news from the nation's farms! In the cards for 1948 was a record-setting corn crop, the second largest wheat crop and substantial increases over last year in oats, barley and rye. Government estimates, as of August 1, of this year's grain production pro-duction read like a statistical fantasy fan-tasy of the promised land. Bureau of agricultural economics reported that a corn crop of 3,506,-363,000 3,506,-363,000 bushels is indicated this year, far above 1947's small, weather-plagued crop of 2.4 billion bushels. An approximate 1,284,323,000 bushels of wheat will be forthcoming forthcom-ing this year. Other crop estimates were: Oats, 1,470,444,000 bushels; barley, 313.139,000 bushels, and rye, 26,664,000 bushels. Trouble grew out of the fact that, although the huge crops are welcome wel-come this year, they may set the scene for huge postwar surpluses, mostly of corn and wheat. Officials contend that there simply sim-ply aren't enough animals left on the nation's farms to take care of the kiiid 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 grain supports are likely to be evoked later. Grain exports will be pushed, of course, but the export market is almost certain to fall off in a year or so because other nations also are intensifying their farm production produc-tion with considerable success. Deflation? Brighter side of the crop situation is the fact that it promises the consumer almost certain relief from inflated food prices sooner or later, since grain supplies and prices are basic in determining cost of living at the household level. Prices of most grains, as a matter mat-ter of fact, already have broken. Corn was down to $2.02 a bushel 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 agriculture agri-culture abroad, tremendous surpluses sur-pluses in grains 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 developed devel-oped more facets than a cylindrical lens in a lighthouse and each one was blinding to the eye of the beholder. be-holder. The motley group of persons called to testify before congressional investigating in-vestigating committees was growing grow-ing and growing. It was getting to the point where even the witnesses had witnesses. A sensational offshoot of the original orig-inal spy investigation temporarily stole the spotlight from the main event. This was the battle of the schoolteachers Mikhail I. Samarin and Mrs. Oksana Stepanovna Kosenkina, Ko-senkina, 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 run. Both Samarin and Mrs. Kosenkina Kosenk-ina had appeared on the scene as potential witnesses in the congressional congres-sional investigation. Then things started to happen. First Mrs. Kosenkina disappeared for a few days. According to the official Soviet version, she had been "captured" by a group of anti-Communist anti-Communist White Russians and held prisoner. Then she was "rescued" "res-cued" by loyal U. S. S. R. subjects. sub-jects. 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, Samarin, also disappeared. He, too, was supposed to be in custody cus-tody of anti-Commie White Russians. Rus-sians. However, information leaked out from the Samarin camp: He wanted to testify; he liked the U. S. and revolted against going back to Russia. ACCIDENTS: 100,000 Deaths Possibly the most shocking set of statistics compiled year in and year out in the U. S. is that dealing with the nation's accidental death rate. In 1947, National Safety council has disclosed, about 100,000 persons died accidentally The full accident toll was approximately 2,000 deaths higher than in 1946. Accidents in the home accounted for a majority of all the deaths listed list-ed by the council. There were 34,500 such fatalities. The total also included in-cluded 32,300 traffic and 17,000 occupational oc-cupational deaths. Some of the other facts released in the annual report: More people died in disasters last year than in 1946550 in the stupendous stu-pendous Texas City explosion, 167 in a Texas-Oklahoma tornado, 111 in the Centralia, 111., mine blast, and 198 in airplane crashes. Total of 20,900 deaths resulted from rural traffic accidents, while city traffic accidents accounted for 11,400 fatalities. I CROPS OU5HTA '''iJ7!rf3&$' from its postwar peak ol sa.BU. Wheat was down from $3.13 to $2.09, oats from $1.47 to 74 cents. Further decreases are inevitable when this year's great yield makes itself felt. Generally, cheaper grain means cheaper feed for livestock. Cheaper Cheap-er feed means less expensive meat in the butcher shop. This apparently certain relief from the high cost of living is not just around the corner, however. It lies somewhere in the middle future. Prices probably will continue con-tinue to rise somewhat for the rest of this year, after which the impact im-pact of the 1948 crop should be felt, causing them to come down. Despite the optimistic outlook, there is another problem to complicate com-plicate the picture. This year's great crops could lay the ground- |