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Show News Review of Current Events the World Over ConTrrps Not Arromnlisliinjr Anvtliinp; Tmnort-iTit Budget Balancing T.ikelv to Be Postnoned Johnson Assails Borah in Senate Debate. By EDWARD W. PICKARD IF ANYTHING of moment Is accomplished accom-plished by the present session of congress, almost certainly the last "lame duck" session that ever will be Rep. Rainey held, political observers observ-ers will be astonished. aston-ished. The Democrats. In numerical control of the house, seem bewildered be-wildered and uncer tain; the Republicans gleefully assist In distracting dis-tracting their opponents oppo-nents mid complicating their attempts at legislation leg-islation ; the more radical rad-ical members of both parties slash right and left and add to the confusion. The senate doesn't especially espe-cially like the house's beer bill, and the house doesn't approve of the re peal resolution before the senate. Proceedings Pro-ceedings In the upper chamber at this writing are held up by a llllbuster conducted con-ducted hy Senator Huey Long of Louisiana for the purpose of defeating the Glass banking hill. And over all hangs the prospect that President Hoover will veto certain of the most I important measures if they reach the White House. As for balancing the budget, that probably will have to wait for the special session of the new congress. President Hoover appnrently hns abandoned aban-doned hope that It can be accomplished accom-plished at this session, and the Democrats, Dem-ocrats, Including f'resldent-Iilect Roosevelt, Roose-velt, give no Indication that they have decided how It should be done. They now deny thnt they plnn to raise the income tax, the leaders who conferred with Mr. Roosevelt repudiating their first statements that such was theli intention. Representative Henry T. Rainey of Illinois, majority leader, declares congress can balance the federal fed-eral budget without the Imposition of additional taxes, except a tax on beer, and his statement Is greeted with general gen-eral expressions of approval from the taxpayers and many members of congress. con-gress. He says the budget should be balanced by cutting down the cost of government a proceeding that has the nominal approval of both parties and that the Imposition of a heavier tax burden on the people would be to "Invite "In-vite revolution." All of which sounds fine, hut so far congress hns failed to reduce governmental costs In any ap prcciable degree. The amount it will save In this session may not be as much as $100,000,000. Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, one of the most astute of the Democrats, Demo-crats, agreed with the Rainey program. pro-gram. "We." he said, "are going to try to retrench snlliciently to nvold levying of new taxes. It Is too early now to tell Just how close we can come to balancing the budget through economies. Our plan is to hold off on revenue legislation for several weeks while we try to secure enactment of the beer bill, re-enactment of the gasoline gaso-line tax and all possible economies. When we know how much we can rnise and save it will be time enough to talk of new taxes." DEMOCRATIC logrolling and Republican Re-publican tactics of hampering marked the debate on the domestic allotment farm relief bill in the house. Even If it were passed by house and senate It probably would be subjected to veto by the President. The measure was loaded down with amendments by representatives who refused to be controlled by their party lenders. Proposals to Include rice within the benefits of the act were adopted 09 to '2-1 ; peanuts were added by the close teller vote of 111 to 110 and the butter but-ter tat products of the dairy industry Included 102 to 7S on a rising vote. When It was finally assured of passage by Hie house, the Roosevelt farm relief program was rounded out with the introduction in-troduction in the senate of companion bills designed to lighten the burdens of agricultural mortgages through '.he use of further federal aid and federal money. SENATOR RORAll'S assertion in the senate that France was justified justi-fied In her stand on the war debt because President Hoover in his con ference with M. I.nval had given the European Euro-pean debtor nations reason to believe their obligations to the I'nited States would he scaled down if reparations were reduced re-duced brought on a sharp debate between the Idaho gentleman and Senator Hiram .lohnson of California. The row started with the reading in the senate sen-ate of letters from r A k&m ..... I Senator Johnson Secretary of State Stimson and Secretary Sec-retary of the Treasury Mills denying that Mr. Hoover had given Lnval any such assurance. These denials. Borah paid, were Inconclusive, though it Is hard to see how they could be more specific. .lohnson thereupon soundly berated P.orah for his stand, and satirically scolded him for not giving the senate the "facts" known to him when the moratorium was before that body In lfKll. The exchange of personalities between the two erstwhile close friends was acrimonious. I Though Mr. Roosevelt declined to co-operate with President Hoover on the war debt question, he Is getting ready to tackle this and other International Inter-national matters Immediately after his Inauguration. In pursuance of tlds plan he held long conferences In New York with Secretary Stimson, Col. Ed wilrd M. House, who Is nn authority on foreign affairs; lames W. Gerard. American ambassador to Germany Hi the time the United States entered the war. Sumner Welles, who was assistant secretary of state In the Wilson Wil-son administration, and Senator Swan-son Swan-son of Virginia, one of our delegates to the disarmament conference. Over in France there Is a growing belief 'hat Mr. Roosevelt secretly engaged en-gaged himself to a drastic revision of the war debts, and the public also refuses re-fuses to accept Laval's denial that President Hoover promised him a reduction. re-duction. A S LAID before the senate, the reso-lution reso-lution for repeal of the Eighteenth Eight-eenth amendment was a compromise between the drys and wets on the judiciary committee and satisfied no one. It Is designed to bar the saloon, retains for the federal government a certain amount of control over the liquor traffic, aims to protect dry states from Importations of liquor from wet neighbors, and provides for submission of the amendment to state legislatures rather than to special state conventions. Speaker Garner and Representative Rainey said the resolution reso-lution in that form would not even be Introduced in the house if it were passed by the senate, because it does not conform to the Democratic platform, plat-form, PRESIDENT HOOVER in a special message asked congress to ratify the long-pending international arms convention or to enact legislation at this session, giving the Chief Executive Execu-tive wider powers in placing embargoes embar-goes on shipments of arms to belligerents. belliger-ents. Neither request is likely to be granted. Chairman ISorah of the senate sen-ate foreign relations committee has opposed op-posed the arms convention for years and is still against It, he and others holding that it would not interfere with the enterprises of the greater powers, but would discriminate against small nations. Senator Shipstead of Minnesota said he could approve neither nei-ther plan, and some of the Republicans, Repub-licans, notably Representative Hamilton Ham-ilton Fish of New York, declared themselves against them. ( T INGFISH" LONG'S filibuster I against the Glass banking bill amused a handful of senators and a lot of visitors in the galleries, but kept Sen. Glass the senate from accomplishing ac-complishing anything, Huey made a number of sarcastic allusions toSenatorGlass, which rather annoyed the Virginian. He asserted as-serted that when recently re-cently he said he knew more about branch banking than Glass, ho really "was not giving himself much credit." Then he produced a big Bible and read from Isaiah : "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, .that they may be placed alone In the midst of the earth." "Just change that to branch banks." he shouted, "and you've got what'U happen to the independent bankers." "If you don't take the house of Morgan 'nto consideration,'- was another an-other contribution, "you ain't going to regulate many hanks with any bill yon pass here. The house of Morgan is the undisputed kingfish of the banking bank-ing business." Long's plan to end the depression was characteristic. He would survey the country, order production to cease of any product of which there is now plenty, issue ten billion dollars of federal fed-eral bonds for food, clothing, and public pub-lic works, and "just a little capital levy" on the rich would pay for all ot this program. REPUBLICAN membership in the house of representatives was reduced re-duced by two during the week by death. Congressman Robert R. Butler of Oregon died of heart disease induced in-duced by pneumonia. Next day the capital was shocked by the suicide of Samuel Austin Kendall of Lie Twenty-Fourth Twenty-Fourth Pennsylvania district. For months he had grieved over the death of his wife and finally gave up and put a bullet through his head as he sat in his room in the house office building. Among other well known men who died were Guy D. Goff, former United States senator from West Virginia, and Benton McMillin, former governor gover-nor of Tennessee and for 20 years a member of congress. IN RESPONSE to a special message from the President urging "emer- j gency action" to stave off wholesale ! forced foreclosures, congressional lead- i ers .iromised a partial revision of the j bankruptcy laws at this session. The ! house Judiciary committee began consideration con-sideration of a bill embodying the principles prin-ciples suggested by Mr. Hoover to ease the debt situation during the present period of depression. f'ALVIN COOLIDGE'S will was found among his personal papers and filed for probate. In a few words the document, drawn by Mr. Coolidge himself leaves his entire estate to Mrs. Coolidge. The property was estimated esti-mated by friends at -bout $2."i0,(KK). John Coolidge. the former President's son, was provided for In a trust fund estimated at $100,000, created by Mr. Coolidge a short time after his son's marriage to Florence Trumbull. Thnt Mr. Coolidge had known for a year or so that be was in danger of sudden deatli was 'udicated by a story from New York to he effect that his application for .?2oo.ooo life insurance had been rejected because of the condition con-dition of his heart, ILLINOIS Democrats victorious in the November election gave the country a lesson on bow to get elected at small cost. Figures submitted bv j William H. Dieterich the candidates in that statt to the clerks of the senate and house showed that William II. Dieterich spent only on-ly $'272 in winning the United States sennt,or-slilp; sennt,or-slilp; the expenses of his defeated rival. Senator Otis F. Glenn, were $5,8:18. Martin A. 'irennan expended only S'2 In his successful success-ful race for the place of congressman - at -large. The most expensive victory In Illinois Illi-nois the contested victory of James Simpson, Jr., Tenth Illinois District Republican congressman-elect, cost $3,-950. $3,-950. Personal, exempted expenses brought the total up to S1S.9I4. His election was contested by C. H. Weber, Web-er, Democrat, who spent $1,525. THOSE Iowa farmers who conducted conduct-ed the "strike" of last year are making mak-ing rather successful attempts to stop the sales of property for delinquent taxes and unpaid mortgages. In several sev-eral localities they gathered In large crowds and saved the properties of farmers, at least temporarily. Their demonstrations were orderly. FIVE THOUSAND Indiana farmers met in their annual conference at Purdue university nd adopted a program pro-gram developed by the farm management manage-ment experts of that institution. The fourteen point plan, worthy of the attention of agriculturists of other states. Includes a policy of "pay as you go, reduction in costs especially those for outside labor, production of concentrated concen-trated products to reduce marketing costs, production of high quality goods, taking advantage of marketing short cuts, increased intensity of operations op-erations on good lands, culling of live stock 'vigorously' and feeding of good animals well, Increased attention to seed selection, testing and other crop practices, increased study of management manage-ment practices. Increased use of home grown seeds, producing more of the family's requirements on the farm, increased in-creased production of legume crops, avoidance of investments in permanent improvements, and making more use of governmental and educational forces available to farmers." DESPERATE fighting for possession of the rich Jehol province wag going on between the Japanese and the Chinese armies toward the jiose oi the week. The scene of the battle was Chiumenkow pass in the Great Wall, the Pass of the Nine Gates." The Japanese, employing Infantry, cavalry, artillery and bombing planes, attacked at-tacked fiercely and occupied oc-cupied the northern end of thp pass, but the Chinese concentrated concen-trated af the southern south-ern end and put up a stiff resistance, being : MSiC: : Gen. Tsal Ting-Kal aided by the mountainous nature of the country. Japanese planes flew far across the border of the province and bombarded bom-barded the city of Jehol and other towns, the war ntlice lustifying this action ac-tion by charging thai the presence of Chinese troops there constituted a "menace" to the Japanese forces. Of course the Chinese were on their own soil, but a little thing like that does not deter Japan. The Tokio war office of-fice claimed victory at Chiumenkow. Gen. Tsal Ting kai. who commanded the Chinese Nineteenth route army in its gallant defense of Shanghai a year ago. has come to the front and asked that he be permitted to lead his army from its encampment in Fukien province prov-ince against the Japanese invaders. He has little confidence in the stamina of Marshal Chang and seeks to replace him as commander in the Shan-haikwan Shan-haikwan region. The Chinese Nationalist government handed to all the foreign legations in Peiping a sharply worded note stating that Japan, a signatory of the protocol of 1001, had taken an unfair advantage of. the terms of the protocol pro-tocol when its troops attacked and occupied oc-cupied Shanhaikwan. For this reason, the protest said the Chinese government govern-ment could not be held responsible for whatever may be the result of Chinese resistance against Japanese aggression . 1933. Western Newspaper Union. |