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Show I Weekly News Review 1 American Political Tradition Decreed Republican Upsurge I .Ry Joseph W. Lalline I I JOcp ' 3 Base Map American Map Co. REPUBLICAN GAINS IN NOVEMBER ELECTION Slates shown in bluck showed definite swing away from Democratic parly by giving victory to Republicans in two out of possible three divisions (governor, (gover-nor, senate, house); stales shaded gave Republicans minor inclory in house or gubernatorial election; states shown in while jailed to record substantial change in political status or (Maryland, California, North Dakota) showed Democratic Demo-cratic gains. Politics Like all natural phenomena and many not so natural, U. S. political fortunes run in cycles of liberalism and conservatism. Thus every lengthy Republican administration has been succeeded by a shorter Democratic one, attesting to the American people's inherent conservatism. conserv-atism. Since the Republican party reached its' latest low ebb under Candidate Alfred Landon in 1936, none but the most optimistic expected expect-ed anything but a minor gain so early as 1938. But it has proved otherwise, thanks to (1) a growing belief that the Roosevelt administration's administra-tion's expensive recovery efforts have been unsuccessful, and (2) a fear that New Deal policies were encouraging en-couraging the growth of radicalism. Moreover, it has been apparent that the public must eventually protest pro-test against the political corruption which unavoidably gathers aromd so large a financial project as WPA. Though the Roosevelt administration may be blameless in this "respect, such political machines as that of Pennsylvania's Gov. George H. Earle have unsavory reputations. Another consideration, one that received re-ceived less attention than eventually proved justified, was dissatisfaction among America's numerically important im-portant farmers. Since the agricultural agricul-tural vote can control congress, it looked bad for the administration when this year's highly touted farm program failed. Despite Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace's sincere efforts, New Deal farm legislation leg-islation has left producers in northern north-ern states without permanent relief. Almost without exception the November No-vember general election has therefore there-fore made the U. S. return to its most normal political alignment in 15 years. (See Map). Always Democratic, Dem-ocratic, the "solid South" has clung tenaciously to tradition. But this tradition does not mean the South will line up 100 per cent behind President Roosevelt, for South Carolina, Car-olina, Georgia and Maryland elected elect-ed senators partially unsympathetic with the New Deal. Several other southern senators and congressmen, not up for re-election this year, are also unsympathetic. Though in many cases the Republican Repub-lican trend is not so great as the above map might indicate, practically practi-cally all northern states have shown a surge back to conservatism. This was especially marked in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where Farmer-Labor and Progressive partisans were ousted after long incumbencies. Michigan swung away from Democratic Demo-cratic Gov. Frank Murphy largely because he sympathized with the radically tinged Committee for Industrial In-dustrial Organization. In all northwestern north-western states the swing to Republicanism Repub-licanism was due partly to agricultural agricul-tural dissatisfaction. New England's industrial population rebelled against allegedly oppressive taxation taxa-tion and the C. I. O., while this territory's ter-ritory's traditional conservatism also played an important role. Substantially Sub-stantially the same explanation can be made for votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The only important New Deal gains have come in California, where a rock-ribbed Republican governor was ousted; in North Dakota, Da-kota, whose notoriously unsettled political situation has freakishly placed a Democrat in the governor's chair, and in Maryland. But such a resume does not tell the entire story, for even those states which remained Democratic have shown an amazingly strong Republican Re-publican upsurge. New York's Gov. Herbert H. Lehman won by only 70,000 votes over his Republican opponent, op-ponent, youthful Thomas E. Dewey, whereas two years ago Mr. Lehman Leh-man had a 500,000 margin. Illinois, which remains predominantly New Deal, increased its Republican house representation and returned a much larger conservative vote than in 1936. Having gained at least 8 senators, 75 house members and 11 governors, the Republican party once more has a vocal minority in congress. Moreover More-over its 1940 presidential hopes are better, despite the defeat in New York of Tom Dewey, once consid ered a likely candidate. If the 1938 election has created any new presidential presi-dential possibilities, they are Ohio's Republican Sen. Robert Taft and Missouri's Democratic Sen. Bennett Champ Clark. What the Republican upsurge will do for the U. S. remains conjectural, but post-election stock market activity activ-ity has been encouraging. To aid industry, the American Federation of Labor is already banking on G. O. P. congressional aid in amending amend-ing the Wagner labor relations act. The outstanding fact is that 1938's Republican party has emerged a liberal entity, well-spanked for its former ultra-conservatism. Foreign That a state visit can hold much international importance is sometimes some-times hard to believe, since state visitors make a studied effort to avoid shop talk with their hosts. But diplomatic Great Britain refuses to minimize the significance of King George's visit to the U. S. next summer, and every sign indicates the English reasoning is correct. Coupled with the U. S. visit is an invitation for French President Albert Al-bert Lebrun to drink tea in Buckingham Bucking-ham palace next spring, thereby returning re-turning the honor accorded by George's visit to Paris this past summer. While all this sounds like social pother, it really means that France and England are desperately desperate-ly trying to give the world a spectacle specta-cle of democratic solidarity, offsetting offset-ting the trumpeting of Premier Benito Be-nito Mussolini and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Though King George's visit will not result in a U. S. -British pact, it will certainly tighten the bonds between England and America. Amer-ica. This means that next spring and summer Italy and Germany will go into eclipse, while world democracy democra-cy stages its show. There is every w-s 4 1 1 1 CK 1 KING GEORGE VI How important is his visit? reason to believe the Fascist-Nazi nations appreciate this and realize they must gain their concessions from France and Britain within the next six months. That is why Hitler Hit-ler is pressing his demands for a return of British-mandated colonies, and why Mussolini is urging internationalization inter-nationalization of the Suez canal. People - The death of Turkey's dictator, President Kemal Ataturk, removes the most colorful totalitarianist of our era. A man whose passion was violation of every accepted rule of human behavior, he customarily stayed up all night, ate every food that disagreed with him, had an amazingly large capacity for raki liquor and champagne, was Turkey's Tur-key's champion cigarette smoker and drank gallons of coffee every day. He detested exercise. More benevolent and less anxious for self-aggrandizement self-aggrandizement than most dictators, dicta-tors, Mustapha Kemal established a model nation out of the post-war debris of Turkey. At his death, the nation he founded looks in bewilderment bewil-derment for a successor, while Europe Eu-rope fears southeasternbound Adolf Hitler may seize the opportunity to establish his economic strength in the Dardanelles. Business Government prosecution of com- binations in alleged restraint of trade was known as "trust-busting" in the days of President Benjamin Harrison. In 1890 the Sherman anti- i trust law began hacking at financial octopi in what was shown to be a legitimate campaign to keep American Ameri-can industry from killing itself by mushroomed growth. Modern trust-busting Is an outgrowth out-growth of the New DeaL Its intended in-tended victim is not the monopolistic monopo-listic trust of bygone days, but usually usu-ally a group of powerful corporations corpora-tions which dominate an industry. But though the 1938 model trust buster can be credited with success (17 victories, 12 cases still pending, out of 42 filed since March 4, 1933) he might also be charged with making mak-ing political capital of his job. Thus it has been hinted that Solicits: So-licits: General Robert H. Jackson, ones an assistant attorney general, joined the anti-trust crusade last year largely in the hope of winning New York's Democratic gubernatorial gubernato-rial nomination. If politics was the inspiration for some anti-trust suits, these same sui'. have now become such hot potatoes thfrt a vanished political purpose dot not justify the justice department's dropping them. One possible exampto may be the trust case against the Aluminum Company of America. To date this year-old investigation investiga-tion has failed to uncover much except ex-cept a re-hash of testimony and evidence evi-dence from the 1935 federal trade commission's probe, and a private litigation of a decade ago from which the company emerged with a clean bill of health. Today's anti-trust division of the justice department has 90 lawyers compared with 15 in 1933, handling THURMAN ARNOLD New technique: Price policing. monopoly cases and proceedings connected with 31 other major acts of congress. Trust-busting boss is Thurman Arnold,, whose fetish is investigating in-vestigating the price policies of industry. in-dustry. Says Mr. Arnold: "We are being forced to take control of inflexible in-flexible price structures and coercions coer-cions in restraint of trade today just as in 1933 we were forced to take control of the financing and marketing market-ing of securities." Much interest now centers in the justice department's newly inaugurated inaugu-rated suit against Delaware's Columbia Co-lumbia Gas & Electric corporation for allegedly "conspiring to monopolize" monopo-lize" the natural gas industry of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Michigan. But in accordance with his probe of price policies, Thurman Thur-man Arnold is probably more interested inter-ested in oil. Since crude oil prices recently plummeted in the wake of alleged over-production by refineries, refiner-ies, both the President and Mr. Arnold Ar-nold favor a program for state control con-trol over oil production and refining. refin-ing. Harking back to the trust-busting days when Standard Oil's case first made the U. S. monopoly-conscious, the new probe will examine every phase of the oil industry from production pro-duction to marketing. Though oil men will welcome an intelligent government gov-ernment program to stabilize crude oil prices, observers fail to see great consistency between this program to raise prices, and other monopoly quizzes which prosecute men for allegedly raising prices. Religion After 31 months of strife, four months of which cost 1,317 lives and left 1,150 wounded, Palestine's "holy war" is still not ended. The British-mandated territory has been Arabic for centuries but was set aside as a homeland for Jews following fol-lowing the World war, only to arouse Moslem fears that Hebrews would soon dominate the land. Using terrorism ter-rorism as their weapon, Arabs have attempted to force an immediate settlement on slow-moving Great Britain, but London has just announced an-nounced its refusal to make an immediate im-mediate decision. Great Britain proposes to call a conference of Jewish Jew-ish and Arab leaders whose compromise com-promise agreement would wash Great Britain's hands of all responsibility respon-sibility for the Holy Land. This would be fine except that Arabs refuse re-fuse to arbitrate in this fashion, which leaves Palestine's problem still a hopeless muddle. Miscellany An Evanston, 111., woman has been granted a patent for a pair of pockets to be hung over her cocker spaniel's head, carrying his ears for him. In 12 months just past, the Methodist Meth-odist Episcopal church of America increased its membership by 131,-: I 297, approximately 1 per cent. j |