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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS National Income Reaches Record Level j With Farm Total at $19,690,030,000; Hcuse Group Pigeonholes 4-F Draft; ! Snow, Floods Menace Midwest Farms j IFDITOlt'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed In these eolumns. they are those of j Western Newspaper L nion'b news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) i Re!f-..sed hv Western N'e'A'rjr;ner L'r.ion 1 I 5 . . r . 4 - . -- ' ' ' - " ' ' :: ' ' i - i 't , ' I I ' ' - ' l : - " 11 'y v 1 v. y , $ i . y New Britain Doughboys cluster around bogged jeep to give it lift from heavy New Britain mud after rain which stopped hostilities on both sides. DRAFT: 4-Fs Spared Declaring that selective service and the Manpower commission already al-ready possessed enough authority to deal with labor problems. Representative Repre-sentative May (Ky.) announced that house military affairs committee pigeonholed the proposal to draft 4-Fs into work battalions if they failed to take essential employment. "We heard testimony by army and navy officials that the manpower situation is critical, but then Manpower Man-power Commissioner McNutt told us there is no labor shortage and that new controls are not needed," Representative Rep-resentative Costello (Calif.) said. 4-Fs could be influenced into entering en-tering essential war work if the army adopted a policy of inducting them for limited service if they remained re-mained in unimportant occupations, Representative Costello added. Vets First, Ford Says Declaring that civilians have "made a lot of money out of this r w wjtxtw-i If X Henry Ford war and the servicemen serv-icemen have made nothing," Henry Ford promised that vets would receive first call on employment in his plants when peace comes. Hoping that other industrialists industrial-ists would follow the same policy, Ford said that when his com pany starts producing cars again, all a vet need do is "to come in and go to work." EUROPE: N Sevastopol Besieged Their retreat across the Crimea ended, German and Romanian troops backed into the historic base of Sevastopol, while Russian forces pressed against the city's outer defenses de-fenses and their aircraft trained their sights on Axis evacuation tes-sels tes-sels in the harbor. The Russian advance in the Crimea Cri-mea highlighted Europe's warfare, with U. S. and British bombers concentrating con-centrating on the continued bombardment bom-bardment of German industries and communications in the west to prepare pre-pare the invasion path, and Allied forces sparring in Italy for openings in the Nazi guard below Rome. As Russia laid siege to Sevastopol, other Red forces encountered stiffening stiff-ening Axis resistance in Romania and southeastern Poland, where mixed German, Romanian and Hungarian Hun-garian armies went onto the offensive offen-sive to launch local counterattacks. Diplomats Curbed Taking no chances on the leakage of any military information to the Axis, the British government prohibited pro-hibited the departure of any neutral diplomatic officials from the United Kingdom and also assumed censorship censor-ship of any of their dispatches. In taking the extraordinary action which was approved by the U. S. and Russia, the British explained that any leakage not only might impair im-pair Allied operations, but also might complicate relations with the countries whose nationals divulged I any information. The British action followed on the heels of the Allies' further restriction restric-tion of communications with neutral Eire. AGRICULTURE: Stormy Weather Unseasonal snowstorms and flood-waters flood-waters sweeping through the great plains area of the West and Illinois menaced sheep and cattle and retarded re-tarded field work, but promised relief re-lief to some of Nebraska's winter wheat plantings, needing moisture. Because of a shortage of protein feeds through the winter, stockmen feared cattle would be hard pressed by the wet, heavy snowfall and attendant at-tendant cold weather. In eastern Colorado, heavy calf and lamb losses were reported as a result of a deep snowfall that extended to Wyoming and New Mexico. In Illinois, farmers prepared to move their stock to higher ground in the Sangamon river valley as lowlands low-lands flooded, and downstream at Beardstown, townsfolk anxiously scanned the water gauge as the crest of the Illinois river rose near the 20-foot mark. Lighter Hogs With corn and other small grain disappearing rapidly on the nation's farms, lighter hogs already are being be-ing marketed, the U. S. Department of Agriculture disclosed. With corn being consumed at a rate of 295,000,000 bushels a month since January, stocks were down to 1,113,549,000 bushels on April 1, compared com-pared with 1,374,748,000 a year'ago. Also as of April 1, wheat stocks totaled 217,684,000 bushels against 325,387,000 a year ago, and oats supplies sup-plies stood at 418,255,000 bushels against 709,170,000 as of January 1. With farmers selling hogs in the largest volume in the country's history, his-tory, weights received at the seyen biggest markets have averaged 13 pounds less than in April, 1943. PACIFIC: India in Spotlight In the Pacific area, the spotlight continued focused on India, where British and Indian troops fought with desperation to check the Jap'ssteady advance on the all-important Bengal-Assam Bengal-Assam railroad supplying Lieut. Gen. Joseph Stilwell's U. S. and Chinese Chi-nese forces in northern Burma. While the fighting in India flared to new intensity, U. S. bombers ranged the length of the Pacific, hammering at enemy installations on the Kurile islands to the north of Japan, and blasting the foe's establishments es-tablishments at Truk, doorway to the Nips' major Asiatic holdings. Bitter fighting in India occurred in the mile-high Naga hills vJhere the ' Japs were closest to the vital Bengal-Assam railroad, and equally hard fighting went on to the south near Imphal, where rolling plains allowed the use of tanks. NATIONAL INCOME: -Record Levels With heavy increases in industrial wages and salaries, federal payrolls and farm returns, national income soared to 5147.900.000,000 in 1943, the department of commerce estimated. esti-mated. With income at double the 1939 figure, the department computed that private industry paid out $80,000,000,000 of wages and salaries. Farm income was estimated at 519.690,000,000. Corporate profits of $8,900,000,000 were indicated. As the growth of national income slowed during the last three months of 1943, there were signs the nation's economic activity had reached its peak. AUTO OUTPUT: Waits on War Sitting together in Washington, D. C, representatives of nine automo- bile companies and top executives of i the War Production board huddled i over plans for future resumption of . civilian auto output, with emphasis '. on partial manufacture following the 1 defeat of either Germany or Japan. With the industry's manpower situation situ-ation easing and companies fearing wholesale unemployment when mu- : nitions production tapers ofT, the ex- , ecutives returned to their plants to take under study requirements of j materials, space and tools for re- ; suming civilian output, and the time j that would be needed to get machinery ma-chinery and set it up. j Although no quotas for different I manufacturers were discussed, some executives favored a production of j 2,000,000 cars during the early stages- U. S. OIL: More Seen Possibilities of new discoveries and more efficient prbduction methods meth-ods should assure the U. S. of sufficient suffi-cient oil for the future, Socony-Vac-uum President John A. Brown told stockholders during the course of a report on 1943 operations of the company, com-pany, showing a profit of $35,944,983. Besides discoveries from ordinary explorations and wildcat drilling, Brown said, additional crude oil should become available through better bet-ter production technique and secondary secon-dary recovery methods. At prices no higher than the average' aver-age' dealers' prices of 1918-22, exclusive ex-clusive of taxation, gas can be produced pro-duced from coal. Brown declared. COLD STORAGE: Big Holdings Cold storage holdings of meat and lard reached all-time highs on April 1, but because of a reduction of point values, there were heavy withdrawals with-drawals of frozen fruits and vegetables. vege-tables. Of total meat holdings of 1,273,-145,000 1,273,-145,000 pounds, beef stocks amounted amount-ed to 296,380,000 pounds and pork 748,651,000 pounds. Lard holdings aggregated ag-gregated 400,999,000 pounds. Despite heavy withdrawals, frozen fruits stocks totaled 161,221,-000 161,221,-000 pounds and frozen vegetables 129,767,000 pounds. There were 82,038,000 pounds of butter on hand along with 149,942,000 pounds of cheese, 4,416,000 cases of shell eggs, and 168,036,000 pounds of frozeo poultry. SHIPPING: Neiv Rates Continuing its policy of keeping shipping profits in line, the War Shipping administration prepared new charter rates for vessels taken over by the government. Under the new WSA rates, a basic charter fee of $1-25 per deadweight ton per month will be paid for use of the vessel, with all 'operating expenses, ex-penses, including t:rew hire, borne by the government. Under time charter Tates, the basic fee of $1.25 will be paid plus $1,425 per deadweight dead-weight ton per month for operating expenses. In setting the purchase value of-old of-old vessels, a basic level of $56.25 per deadweight ton will be paid, compared with the present $65. SKY GIANT: Good Time Piloted by the Transcontinental and Wpstprn Air Prpsidpnt .Tapir Frye, . and the millionaire mil-lionaire motion picture pic-ture and aviation executive Howard Hughes, the 40-ton Lockheed Constellation Constella-tion airship flew the 2,467. miles from Burbank, Cal., to Washington, D. C, in the record time of 6 hours and 58 minutes. Averaging 355 miles an hour and - 9 i v t Howard Uugnes slightly favored by tailwinds at heights from 15,000 to 19,000 feet, the shark-shaped Constellation carried car-ried 17 passengers, although it has accommodations for 40 more. Sponsored Spon-sored by TWA, the Constellation was to be turned over to the army for transport. CHICKS: Record Number A record number of chicks were hatched in commercial plants during dur-ing March in the face of a sharp decline in the price of eggs. Estimated Esti-mated output is 284,915,000, compared com-pared with the previous high mark of 274,953,000 in 1943. For the first three months of this year, however, total number of baby chicks was 1.3 per cent below last year. The break in egg prices caused considerable cancellation of orders for young chickens, dealers said, and a surplus of chicks for March was reported from most sections of the country. ITALY Because of the increasing issuance is-suance of paper money, the Italian lira is taking a tumble in German-occupied German-occupied Italy, and Fascist ruthori-ties ruthori-ties fear further depreciation may cause a disastrous inflationary spiral. Spurring the use of paper money is the continued hoarding of cop- ! per and nickles because of their metallic value, with the public resorting re-sorting to use of postage stamps and perforated cards for newspaper and street car fares. j |
