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Show News Review of Current Events the World Over Congressmen Hurrying Willi Tax and Relief Programs Black's Committee Wins a Decision Distracting Distract-ing Rivalries in European Diplomacy. By EDWARD W. PICKARD Western Newspaper Union. CONGRESS settled down to earnest earn-est work that would clear the way for early adjournment, the two chief matters under consideration t hems taxes and re- j - ' lief. Democratic j -,-r "j members of the f ; house ways and I j means committee worked In execu- - 'y ; tive session to '. draw up the new 9 revenue measure r I which they expect t . 1 1 will yield about Li & iS ?.000,000 In additional ad-ditional taxes dur-Harry dur-Harry L. , ., , , , . ing the next year. Hopkins m, , M The minority mem bers stayed away, scornfully asserting assert-ing their presence was useless because be-cause the preparation of the measure meas-ure was utterly partisan. Representative Repre-sentative A. P. Lamneck of Ohio, Democrat, was Insistent on his plan to raise $500,000,00 by a flat 20 to 22 per cent tax on corporation Income. In-come. To produce $203,000,000 more nnd bring liis plan nearly up to the money requirement outlined by President Pres-ident Roosevelt, Lamneck would repeal re-peal the present exemption of corporation cor-poration dividends from the normal Income tax rate. On that, he was In agreement with the committee program. Harry L. Hopkins, head of the WPA, appeared before a subcommittee subcom-mittee of the house appropriations committee, also in executive session, to urge compliance with President Roosevelt's request for an additional addi-tional billion nnd a half to finance relief In the 1937 fiscal year. Various Vari-ous committee members at once demanded de-manded that Mr. Hopkins tell what had been done with the $4,SOO,000,-000 $4,SOO,000,-000 granted last year. He was said to have promised to do his best to satisfy them, but Chairman J. P. Buchanan warned the minority members that ."this is not to be made into an Investigation." CENATOR NORRIS' bill creating a Mississippi Valley authority to apply the TVA experiment to 22 states Is not approved by the National Na-tional Grange, which thinks it would be absurd to bring new land Into cultivation by Irrigation while farmers are being paid for letting their land He fallow. Fred H. Brenckman, legislative representative representa-tive of the Grange, appeared before a senate agriculture subcommittee and said the organization also objected ob-jected to the proposal to construct huge dams throughout the Mississippi Missis-sippi valley for the production of , hydro-electric power. He favored a scientific program of soil conservation conserva-tion but Insisted upon a distinction between conservation and reclamation. reclama-tion. He also advocated a scientific flood control program, hut distinguished distin-guished between flood control and hydro-electric power development. Like previous witnesses. Including electrical engineers and Morris L. Cooke, the New Deal's rural electrification electri-fication administrator, Mr. Brenckman Brenck-man Informed the committee that flood control can be accomplished only by constructing little dams far np in the headwaters. SENATOR BLACK'S lobby committee com-mittee won a considerable victory vic-tory in the District of Columbia Supreme Su-preme court when Chief Justice Wheat refused to ismi':mi enjoin the commit- V - tee from using the telegrams from and U1 ::: ' to William R. C-J:.: Hearst which had , -Vil been seized. The 1 judge held that the JiU, I court had no juris- pX'jM;! ill diction over the , ;, ;'::-"' V committee, and said ii,,'' I he could not see v'Hssf' Jj that the freedom of D1 . Senator Black the press was In any way involved. Said his honor: "I have not been informed yet of any case in which any court has assumed to dictate to a committee of the senate what it should do and what it should not do, nnd I do not feel that I have any right to inaugurate inau-gurate any such principle as that." Elisha Hanson, counsel for Mr. Hearst, announced that he would appeal from the decision, and It was certain that the case would ultimately ulti-mately be taken before the United States Supreme court. Continuing its Investigation, the Black committee heard the testimony testi-mony of Fred G. Clark of New York, national commander of the Crusaders. Mr. Clark denied that the organization had ever engaged in lobbying, and declared that it had assailed the methods of lobbyists in a national radio broadcast. Senator Black endeavored to show that the Crusaders, the American Liberty league, the Sentinels of the Republic, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution, the American Taxpayers' league, the National Economy league, and similar simi-lar organizations opposed to the New Deal were supported largely by the same small group of wealthy industrialists. One of his investigators investiga-tors put in a list of contributors to two or more of the groups named. Mr. Chirk obtained permission to include in-clude In the record a list of hundreds hun-dreds of small contributors, who sent in sums ranging from $1 up in response to the radio program. INLYING through a fog on Its way to Pittsburgh, a Transcontinental Transcontinen-tal and Western Air liner went far out of its course, plowed through the forest seven miles southeast of Union City, Pa., and smashed into a granite wall on Chestnut Ridge. Nine passengers and the two pilots were killed. The stewardess, Miss Nellie Granger, managed to drag one man and the sole woman passenger pas-senger from the flaming wreckage, bound up their wounds, ran four miles to a farmhouse from which she telephoned to Pittsburgh the news of the disaster, and then returned re-turned to the scene to care for the survivors until a rescue party could arrive. The pilots were flying on a radio beam, and it was believed their radio apparatus failed. At this writing there is no other explanation explana-tion for the crash. FF.DKRAL money totaling $970,-000,000 $970,-000,000 will be spent in the next four years on low-cost rent and slum clearance construction projects, pro-vided pro-vided the adminis- - tration's housing bill, introduced by 5) Senator Robert F. l' Wagner of New sj York, is passed by I congress. Mr. Wag-!' Wag-!' ner hopes it will be V if j P"t through during 1 the present session. 1 The measure is wisSkLJI a compromise of the many proposals Sen. Wagner ma(Je by the vari. ous relief and housing agencies of the New Deal and was drafted after a series of conferences with President Presi-dent Roosevelt. It would create another bureau, with five directors, including the secretary of the interior in-terior in his ex officio capacity, receiving re-ceiving $10,000 salaries. The authority au-thority could employ officers, agents, counsel and other personnel without limitation as to number or compensation compen-sation and without regard for the civil service laws. This authority would supplant the existing housing division of the Public Works administration. admin-istration. The authority would be empowered empow-ered to make grants not to exceed 45 per cent of the total cost and loans for the remainder to any public pub-lic housing agency for the acquisition acquisi-tion of land and the construction of "low-rent" housing projects. The loans would be repayable over a period pe-riod not to exceed GO years, at such rates of Interest as the authority decreed. In addition to the loans and grants, the authority could develop de-velop and administer so-called demonstration dem-onstration projects, which "as soon as practicable" would be sold to public housing agencies. MUSSOLINI'S African adventure and Hitler's Rhineland doings and future intentions, tangled together, to-gether, have created a situation that seemed to imperil the formal friendship between Great Britain and France. The British were insisting in-sisting that Italy be curbed, that her use of poison gas In Ethiopia be taken up by the League of Nations Na-tions and that peace negotiations between Italy and Ethiopia be opened quickly to forestall any attempt at-tempt by Premier Mussolini to sign a settlement which might rise from ruins of Haile Selassie's Ethiopian empire. Foreign Secretary Eden Indicated In-dicated the British were determined to make peace progress "before we leave Geneva," Britain reserving its decision as to what to do next If this conciliation effort failed. The conciliation committee of the league was making little or no progress, prog-ress, nnd in Rome Mussolini told his cabinet that Ethiopia's armies should ancTVould be "totally annihilated." anni-hilated." His own forces, meanwhile, mean-while, were moving rapidly toward Dessye and Addis Ababa. France was reverting to her former for-mer policy of letting Italy go ahead with its African conquest, devoting her attention mainly to Germany and central Europe. The British continued to treat all that in a conciliatory con-ciliatory way, which disgusted the French. Premier Sarraut handed In his government's reply to the Hitler settlement proposals, submitting In return its own plan. This demanded that Germany keep "hands off" the rest of Europe for 25 years, renouncing re-nouncing her apparent Intentions of action against Austria, Danzig and Memel, and claims for colonies. It submitted a French peace plan based on "collective security" with regional mutual assistance pacts backed by an International army directed di-rected by a commission working through the league. p tESIDENT ROOSEVELT, happy and well tanned, wound up his lishing cruise in the Bahamas and returned to Washington. He landed at Fort Lauderdale and boarded his special train at once, being accompanied accom-panied for a time by Governor Sholtz of Florida and James A. Mof-fett Mof-fett who may be appointed assistant assist-ant secretary of the navy to succeed tlie late Henry Roosevelt. Governor Gover-nor McNutt of Indiana, possible keynoter of the Democratic convention, con-vention, went up from Miami to greet the President. On the way to Washington Mr. Roosevelt stopped for half a day at Warm Springs, Ga to look at his farm and take a swim In the resort pool. Passing through part of the region devastated by the recent tornadoes, tor-nadoes, he received reports from eyewitnesses along the route. T) ESOLVIXG itself Into a court. the senate began the impeachment impeach-ment trial of Federal Judge Hal-sted Hal-sted L. Ritter of Florida the twelfth such case r-.um -xnt in 137 years. It -" -j was believed the , , " 1 trial would last at j least one week! The s j defendant was rep- . I resented by Carl T. is-Hoffman is-Hoffman of Miami t " f and Frank R. f '" J Walsh of Washing- ' "" " J ton and New York. ; J The prosecution f Cj was in charge of ' , ' Representatives!- Judge Rltter mers of Texas, Hobbs of Alabama and Perkins of New Jersey. Originally approximately GO witnesses wit-nesses were summoned for the trial, but 29 were excused because of withdrawal by the prosecution of two specifications In article seven charging Judge Ritter acted improperly improp-erly in electric rate and banking proceedings. Judge Ritter is charged in seven impeachment articles voted by the house with allowing A. L. Rankin, a former law partner, exorbitant receivership re-ceivership fees, with "corruptly" receiving re-ceiving $4,500 from Rankin, with violating the judicial code in practice prac-tice df law while on the bench, and with evasion of taxes on part of his 1929 and 1930 incomes. In a 12,000-word reply, Ritter denied de-nied all of the charges. He asserted assert-ed none of the actions cited had "brought his court into scandal and disrepute" or "destroyed public confidence con-fidence in the administration of justice" jus-tice" in that court SOMETHING new in Spanish history his-tory took place in Madrid. The parliament, by a vote of 238 to 5, ousted Niceto Alcala Zamora from the office of president of the republic. re-public. This action, accomplished by a coalition of Socialists, Communists, Com-munists, Left Republicans and ten minor groups, was taken on a Socialist So-cialist motion that the president had acted illegally In dissolving the last parliament before the elections and that therefore he should be expelled ex-pelled from office. Back of this motion, mo-tion, however, lay radical sentiment that Zamora, In using his power according ac-cording to personal whim, has hampered ham-pered the progress of the "republican "repub-lican revolution." Diego Martinez Barrio, speaker of parliament, was made temporary president to serve until elections are held. FIVE hundred members of the Workers' Alliance, in convention in Washington, marched to the White House to demand continuation continua-tion of the Works Progress administration, admin-istration, but nejther President Roosevelt nor any of his secretaries was there to receive their petition. The men were orderly and the police po-lice did not molest them. WPA Administrator Ad-ministrator Hopkins also was absent ab-sent from his office, but his assistant, assist-ant, Aubrey Williams, received the delegation. David Lasser, national chairman of the organization, told Williams the group had been promised food and shelter during their stay in Washington and transportation to their homes. Williams said that under a regulation regu-lation promulgated February 2 no federal funds could be donated for conventions of the unemployed unless un-less congress made a specific appropriation appro-priation for that purpose. TORNADOES tore across Mississippi, Missis-sippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Arkan-sas, and Tennessee, leaving death and destruction in their wake. About 400 persons were killed and hundreds hun-dreds of others injured, and the property losses ran up Into the millions. mil-lions. The little city of Tupelo, Miss., suffered the most, with nearly 200 on the death list and more than a hundred homes smashed Into kindling kin-dling wood. A few hours later another tornado Etruck Gainesville, Ga., and in three minutes had nearly ruined the business busi-ness section of the town and killed more than 150 persons. In fires that followed the storm the bodies of many victims were burned beyond be-yond recognition. IN A decision concerning a specific spe-cific action of the Securities Exchange Ex-change commission the United States Supreme court ruled against the SEC, and Id its pronouncement it uttered a significant warning against the exercise of arbitrary power by governmental agencies. Especially censured were the "fishing "fish-ing excursions," often undertaken by commissions and congressional committees. Justices Cnrdozo, Stone and Bran-deis Bran-deis dissented In part. |