OCR Text |
Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS . Allies Plow Through Siegfried Line as Big Guns Blast Enemy; F.D.R. Ponders Wage Increases I Released by Western Newspaper Union. ' (EDITOR'S NOTE : When opinions are expressed In these columns. Ihey are those of Western Newspaper Lnlon's news analysis and not necessarily of this newspaper.) if . Z f f 1 ' ' r i I - I ' v Q b' o. 4 II! " v (; h $2 Shown leaving White House after wage conference with FDR are (left to right in front row) Philip Murray, CIO president; Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, secretary to the labor board; William Green, AFL president; and Daniel Tobin, teamsters anion president. In back row (left to right), Julius Ems-pak, Ems-pak, CIO electrical workers president; R. J. Thomas, CIO auto workers president, and George Meany, AFL secretary and treasurer. (See: Wages.) EUROPE: Shift Attack With the British Second army running run-ning into increasingly stiff resistance in Holland as the Nazis poured in reinforcements to prevent it from swinging around the northern terminus ter-minus of the Siegfried line into the Ruhr, the American First army swung over to the attack to the south in the Aachen region. Although continued murky weather weath-er prevented full use of the power-ful power-ful Allied air force, U. S. infantrymen infantry-men plowed forward in the wake of a thunderous, rolling artillery barrage bar-rage to advance upon the important communications center of Julich, from which hard surfaced highways lead to the great Rhineland industrial indus-trial cities of Cologne and Dussel-dorf, Dussel-dorf, 20 miles away. As the First punched its way through the belt of Siegfried forts and pillboxes leading back to a depth of some 50 miles, Lieut. Gen. George S. Patton's Third army continued con-tinued to meet heavy resistance in its drive to the rich Saar coal basin to the east of Metz and Nancy. About Metz, the Nazis fought from concrete and steel fortifications built so that the fire from one covered the approaches to two on either side of it, while about Nancy, the enemy used the heavy woods for cover. At the south end of the 460-mile front, Lieut. Gen. Alexander Patch's Seventh army drove to the approaches ap-proaches of passes through the rug- Genera Patton (left) confers with General Eisenhower (right) at Allied headquarters. ged Vosges mountains leading to the enemy border, and moved closer on the sprawling Belfort Gap with its 25-mile open corridor to southern Germany. Having smashed through the forward defenses of the "Gothic Line" in Italy, the Allies met stiffening German resistance as they descended on the great Po valley, and heavy rains, which greased mountain slopes and swelled lateral streams, added to the Fifth and Eighth armies' difficulties. Deep in the Balkans, Russian troops pressed down on the rich coal and copper mines of Bor in central-eastern central-eastern Yugoslavia, while farther to the west, the last columns of 200,000 Germans hurried northward from the Greek border area. With Russian forces surging against its southeastern borders, the Hungarian army went over to the attack in an effort to stave off a Red breakthrough onto the fertile plains leading to the capital of Budapest, once picturesque, now heavily razed by bombardment. To the north, German forces fought to check another an-other Russian drive through the Carpathian Car-pathian mountains, designed to link up with the columns hammering from the south. In the Baltic area, remnants of the Germans' Latvian and Estonian armies slipped through the narrow corridor rearguards kept open below Riga to escape annihilation. WAGES: Study Boosts Despite organized labor's assault upon the "Little Steel" formula limiting lim-iting wage increases to 15 per cent over January, 1941 levels, President Roosevelt indicated that there would be no change in government policy before the November election. Meeting with high AFL and CIO chieftains in the White House, the President reportedly favored a plan for retaining present wage controls until large cancellations of war contracts con-tracts cut down working time, when increases will be made in basic, hourly rates to compensate for the difference. At the same time, it was reported that the War Labor board is considering con-sidering a plan under which employers employ-ers would be able to grant increases during the reconversion period without with-out government approval, provided they are not used as a basis for boosting prices, or as a lure for attracting at-tracting workers from war industries. indus-tries. PACIFIC: Shipping Target With U. S. forces standing on the threshold of the Philippines, ' powerful pow-erful American bombing squadrons continued to sweep over enemy supply sup-ply lines in the vicinity. As the big bombers sought to disrupt dis-rupt the flow of men and material to Philippine bases, U. S. troops cleaned up the southern Palau islands is-lands 600 miles to the east, with the total of over 10,000 dead and only 187 captured attesting to the fanatical fanat-ical resistance of the enemy. Besides slapping at the Philippines, Philip-pines, U. S. bombers attacked Jap defense installations over a wide Pacific area, ranging from the Ku-riles Ku-riles in the north to the Marshalls in the east. Lose Chinese Bases With Chinese opposition disintegrating disinte-grating because of loose military leadership and inadequacy of equipment, equip-ment, Japanese columns pressed their drive to seal off the whole eastern Chinese coast, with a view toward preventing U. S. landings. As a result of the enemy's drive, U. S. air forces were forced to abandon four advanced bases from which they had been peppering the Japs. ALLIED CRISIS: Polish Dispute With the Russian sponsored Polish Committee of National Liberation in Lublin making another strong attack at-tack on the U. S. and British supported sup-ported Polish government-in-exile in London, the ticklish diplomatic situation situ-ation arising from the troubled affairs af-fairs of that country took another serious turn. Occasion for the Committee of Liberation's latest broadside against the London exiles was the latter's appointment of Gen. Tadeusz (Bor) Komorowski as commander-in-chief of Polish forces to replace Gen. Kazimierz Sosnkowski. In attacking the London exiles, who have jockeyed against Russian claims to eastern Poland, the Committee Com-mittee of National Liberation not only flailed Komorowski as a criminal crimi-nal for leading the ill-fated premature prema-ture uprising of patriots against the. Germans in Warsaw, but also sought to belittle the refugee government by declaring that it was out of complete com-plete touch with the people inside the country. Batting Champs Lashing out 191 hits in 535 trips to the plate. Brooklyn's veteran out- - Boudreau elder, Dixie Walk-J Walk-J er, won the Nation-I Nation-I al - league batting 1 championship with a ' .357 average, while Cleveland's youthful , manager, Lou Boudreau, Bou-dreau, copped the American league title by banging out 191 hits in 584 tries for .327. j POSTWAR REFORM: France Declaring ". . . We do not want to go back to the prewar pclitical. social and moral situation which took us to the brink of the abyss . . ." , French leader Charles de Gaulle outlined out-lined his economic program for the nation in an address in his home town of Lille. "Our economic duty is to make the fullest use of what we have in our soil . . . and our empire," de Gaulle said. "The only way we can do that is by means of what is called a planned economy. We want the state to direct the economic eco-nomic activity of the entire nation." Under de Gaulle's plan, both industry in-dustry and labor would participate in the formulation of economic policies, poli-cies, but initiative and profit would be preserved. Goal would be the elimination of concentration of interests in-terests . . . "which, in England and America, are called trusts," de Gaulle said. Britain More radical than de Gaulle's program pro-gram is one drawn up by the general council of Great Britain's Trades Union congress, calling for public ownership or control of all industry, with immediate transfer of the transport, fuel and power, and iron and steel enterprises to government hands. In the event of public ownership, the congress' council recommended the formation of public corporations under a minister responsible to parliament, par-liament, with provision for representation represen-tation of labor. Part of the control of private industry in-dustry through special boards made up of labor, business and public members would call for standardization standardiza-tion of equipment and products, pooling of methods and patents and general commercial information, and creation of common marketing and purchasing agencies. FLOUR: Canadian Output With a shortage of space for bulk shipments, and much of Britain's elevator capacity destroyed by enemy en-emy bombardment, Canadian flour mills have- been kept busy grinding wheat for export. With some mills operating as much as seven days a week, flour producers turned out 24,474,696 barrels bar-rels of 196 pounds each last year, of which approximately 13,500,000 barrels were exported. This year, the output is expected to reach 26,-366,000 26,-366,000 barrels. In all, increased milling activity absorbed 100,000,000 bushels of Canadian Cana-dian wheat last year, and bulk exports ex-ports accounted for 283,000,000 bushels, bush-els, of which more than half went to the U. S. - This year, the dominion's domin-ion's wheat production is expected to reach 447,000,000 bushels, on which the farmer is guaranteed a minimum of $1.25 a bushel under the quota system calling for him to retain re-tain his grain until elevator capacity becomes available. LARD: Production Down As a result of shipments of fewer hogs and lighter weights in recent months, lard production has been the smallest in two years, with cold storage stocks cut 50 per cent in a 90-day period, and the government owning 50 per cent of the reserve. In meeting the situation, packers have trimmed more lard and fat off hogs than in the last 10 years, with the average of 14.6 pounds per live weight comparing with 12.8 in 1943,' and below 11 in some former years. Despite the close shaving, however, August lard and fat production at 153,220,000 pounds was about 12,000.-000 12,000.-000 pounds below 1943. With the average weight of cattle in August at 891.6 pounds compared with 943.6 last year, a tight situation situa-tion also has arisen in production ol tallow. NATIONAL INCOME Although the national income in July was smaller than in the same month last year, the decrease was more than offset by gains in preceding pre-ceding months. For the first sever months, the national income amounted amount-ed to $84,810,000,000 this year as against $82,154,000,000 last year. Preliminary information indicates that the moderate upward trend ir the national income will reach a peak in October and will giye waj to a decline in November and December |