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Show I WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS flew Spy Ring Data Revives Probe; Tax Elike Bugaboo Frightens Some; Berlin Red Vote Tightens Issue OEDITOR'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed in these columns, they sre those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) EMPLOYMENT OF MALE WORLD WAR I VETERANS SEPTEMBER 198 gvC' EMPLOYED va cnon-AGRICULTURAO A 6A5r J ROBOT EAR: New Magic Alexander Graham Bell would have approved Science had moved to make his telephone even more serviceable. Tom Edison also would have nodded in approbation, for these same scientists had tied together to-gether two great contributions to living to make their convenience even more marked, more appreciated. appre-ciated. A NEW robot ear that hears the phone ring and turns on the light was shown to doctors at the American Amer-ican Medical association meeting in St. Louis. The ear could be used when no one is at home to turn on the light outside the front door. When the householder got ready to go home, he could call his house, and tha ear would turn on the light. No one need answer the phone. THE ROBOT is a box on which the telephone sets. When the phone rings, the noise of the bell vibrates a salt crystal in the box. The vibration vi-bration makes electricity flow in the salt, and the current is amplified ampli-fied to turn on the light switch. The box and phone are set in the circuit with the light to be turned on. In this way, the ear could be used to light any lamp in the house, or outside. The device comes from wartime submarine and surface ship detection detec-tion by sound. Nothing but the vibration vi-bration of a phone bell affects this ear. Besides doctors, FBI men have been getting these ears because they are on tall 24 hours a day. Undertakers are getting them because be-cause more people seem to die at night. RAIN-MAKER: In the Bag Perhaps it was in the bag, but Franklin Fenenga, an archeologist of California university wasn't saying. say-ing. All he would say was that he did have the bag. THE BAG was a complete rain-making rain-making outfit he had acquired from an Indian whose grandfather was a medicine man. The bag and its potentialities came to light when Kern county, in the southern part of California's central valley, had its first rainfall in eight months not long ago. Fen- enga -vas right there in the middle of the downpour. And, when he returned re-turned to Berkeley, the rain came down there in torrents. NATURALLY, speculation arose concerning the properties of the rain-making bag, for, when the outfit, out-fit, including the tail of a beaver, a bag of snapdragon seeds, a bag of eagle down, a fossil fish vertebra and various charm stones and pebbles, peb-bles, was brought out of storage, the rain started. Fenenga had the bag with him when he entered Berkeley in a storm. It is now in possession of the university. Three years after the war most veterans, by and large, are firmly established in civilian civil-ian employment, according to statistics compiled by the Research Re-search Council for Economic Security, Chicago. Eighty-nine of the estimated 14.9 million living veterans of World War II were employed as of last September. Sep-tember. Of these, about 900,000 were on farms and another 900,-000 900,-000 in school. About 450,000 were unemployed, vdiile an additional ad-ditional 300,000 were "resting" or unable to work. WITCH HUNT: Pumpkin, Too Like a delayed Halloween episode, epi-sode, with macabre rather than humorous hu-morous undertones, was the revival of the spy hunt in Washington. All the ingredients were there the cornfield, the pumpkin, and the specter of Stalin hovering over the unsavory whole. But there was nothing funny in the situation to the house un-American activities committee or to a federal grand jury seeking to rush indictments against suspected traitors trai-tors and espionage agents. THE PROBE committee declared it had "definite proof of one of the most extensive espionage rings in the history of the United States." Bolstering this assertion was discovery discov-ery of microfilm documents, termed by the committee of "tremendous importance," which had been removed re-moved from the state department for transmission to Russian agents. The rmcrofilm was revealed by Whitaker Chambers, a senior editor edi-tor of Time magazine, who admitted admit-ted its possession and declared Alger Al-ger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, had given it to him for transmission transmis-sion to Russia. Hiss promptly denied de-nied the charge. PLACED ON the witness stand. Chambers said he had not had possession pos-session of the film during the years after 1937, until recently, and declined de-clined to name the persons in whose hands the film rested before being turned up in a pumpkin on Chambers' Cham-bers' farm. Meanwhile, Sumner Welles, former for-mer undersecretary of state, studied the microfilm documents, evaluated their contents, but declined to divulge di-vulge their importance. Chambers, an admitted member of a Communist spy ring which operated op-erated here a decade ago, was slated for further witness stand appearances, ap-pearances, as was Hiss, who maintains main-tains he was never a Russian agent. HIGHER TAXES: Some Frightened Some business men and industrialists, indus-trialists, who feared a Truman victory vic-tory might result in a new "sock-the-rich" tax program, shivered anew as they read a statement by one of the leading proponents of President Truman's twice-rejected plea to .impose a modified form of the wartime excess profits tax. THE SPEAKER was Wyoming's Senator O'Mahoney, Democrat, who cited the 1929 financial crash as an argument for boosting taxes on business profits. The senator declared that "if corporate cor-porate profits of 1929 had been adequately ad-equately taxed, this government would have been in a much better fiscal position to meet the depression." depres-sion." He pointed out that corporate earnings now are piling up at the same rate as in 1929, although the companies are bigger. So earnings are greater than ever before. HOWEVER, industrialists, leaders lead-ers of the big labor unions, accountants account-ants and economists have been requested re-quested to give their views on what, if anything, congress should do about profits, estimated at a record 20 billion dollars this year. O'Mahoney proposed that "little business," or small, independent corporations be given special exemptions ex-emptions under any excess profits tax plan. GOLDEN FLEECE: Page Jason The "golden fleece," subject of one of mythology's most romantic, colorful stories, crashed the world press by proxy as a result of a row over custody of its namesake. The fleece, symbol of one of the world's most exclusive orders of nobility not even the king of England Eng-land is a knight may be "kidnaped" "kid-naped" by the city of Dijon. THE GOLDEN fleece of which small replicas were awarded the knights was kept in Dijon, France, after the order was founded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, Burgun-dy, in 1429, for several generations until Mary of Burgundy took it with her to Austria when she married Maximilian the Fair. The fleece remained in Vienna until the French army recaptured the city during the last war and returned the fleece to Dijon. Now, Austria is asking for it back. But the good Burgundians of Dijon have petitioned the city council to urge the French government to refuse re-fuse the Austrian bid and to retain re-tain the fleece in Dijon. Polio Poster Girl i, ' ? ' - , v : : ? 't I r. - cx . DEADEND: Reds Block Way The struggle for a Berlin peace dragged wearily on, extended by Russian establishment of a Communist Com-munist "government" in the Reich capital. Demanding elections be held on a "city-wide basis," the United States, Britain and France told the Soviet union that there could be no solution to the Berlin impasse until un-til the Russians disown the newly-installed newly-installed Berlin government. The terms were clearly expressed in a note, accompanying a list of Soviet violations of the Berlin constitution constitu-tion that the three powers had submitted sub-mitted for guidance. ALTHOUGH FORMALLY addressed ad-dressed to a United Natjons committee, com-mittee, the note obviously was meant as a strongly worded warning warn-ing to Moscow. It indicated that if what it termed the "illegal body" in the Soviet sector were not disbanded, dis-banded, the western powers would take a series of measures required by the fact, in their opinion, that the "legal, unified administration" of Berlin had ceased to exist. The western powers placed no time limit for the Soviet union to make a decision on whether to continue collaboration. However, the tone of the note, as informed sources stressed, indicated that unless un-less the normal administrative conditions con-ditions were reestablished "pretty soon," a new policy would be adopted. FROM- BEGINNING to end the note gave what the western powers regard as detailed proof that the Soviets have pursued in Berlin a policy of systematic violation of all quadripartite agreements. POTATOES: No More Doubt There was no longer any doubt. Farmers, at last, had a full-blown portrait of the American housewife's house-wife's ideal potato. The U. S. department de-partment of agriculture even suggested sug-gested that farmers tack it up in the barn for quick reference. The department found, after a survey among 3,300 housewives, that farmers and shippers should see to its that potatoes prepared for market are: CLEAN, of medium size, marked by few "eyes," light in color, undamaged un-damaged and of such quality that they will cook up soft, mealy and evenly throughout, without falling apart. Housewives like medium sized potatoes because they rate them easiest to peel and handle, and best for judging individual portions the all-purpose potato, they say. The survey showed more than a fourth of the householders disturbed dis-turbed by "mechanical and handling han-dling injuries" to potatoes. Said the department: "IT IS PRETTY good evidence that too many potatoes are being dug and handled with improper machinery ma-chinery and tools, and that the potatoes po-tatoes are not properly culled before be-fore being sent to market." Immediate question to arise: Will potato growers and shippers do anything about it? Linda Brown, 4, of San Antonio, An-tonio, Tex., has been selected the poster girl for the 1949 March of Dimes, January 14 to 31. Stricken with polio two and a half years ago, Linda was treated at the Robert B. Greene hospital in San Antonio with funds derived from the March of Dimes. She now walks without with-out braces and has only a slight limp. RANKIN: Outward Bound? Rep. John E. Rankin (D., Miss.) one of the foremost house opponents oppo-nents of President Truman's civil rights program, faces a strong fight by northern Democrats in congress to force him off the house un-American activities committee. UNDER THE seniority system, Rankin is slated to become chairman chair-man of the house veterans' affairs committee. The attempt to oust him from the un-American investigating investi-gating group will be based on the general house rule that the chairman chair-man of a committee may hold only one committee post. The northern Democrats will argue ar-gue that if Rankin accepts the veterans' vet-erans' affairs committee chairmanship, chairman-ship, he should be restricted to that. BIKINI: Still Echoes Bikini's atomic blast was still echoing. President Truman denied a charge that the White House had suppressed a final report on the atomic tests off the atoll. The President's statement, made at a news conference, was in answer an-swer to an assertion by a Mr. Bradley Dewey that the White House had clamped the lid on the Bikini findine |