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Show Washington Comment Residents of the District of Columbia Col-umbia who wish the Republicans well, even though deprived of vote through. nation;:l stupidity and injustice, in-justice, were keenly disappointed over the outcome of the Republican national committee rally last week when it seemed that liberal youth was to triumph over the old moss-backs moss-backs and then it didn't after all! The case rf Mr. Simpson of New-York, New-York, who was not given a place on the executive committee of the Republican national committee, and former Senator Hastings of Dele-ware, Dele-ware, who was, is significant cf (Continued on last page) Washington Comment (Continued from first page) the same gld struggle that has kept the G. O. P. down for the years of the New Deal, and there has been a good deal of lamenting about it in these parts. The hotel meeting was made lively by the rival claims of the conservative eld guard and the young liberals of the party, for the recent Republican victories at the polls. In fact, there appeared to be so much controversy con-troversy about which element turned the trick, that not much else was heard, unless you count the loud expressions of optimism over the 1940 outlook, backed up by tabulations based on the state and congressional victories of last November, indicating that, if the Republicans hold their gains, their candidate for president two years hence would have 3G5 electoral college votes, or 99 more than necessary to elect. (But, by the 1 same token, of course, the Democrats Demo-crats would have no fewer than 266, which is enough to make the grade). The names of the "white hopes" which cropped up most frequently fre-quently at the war council last week were, in order of their frequency, fre-quency, Dewey, Taft, Lodge, Van-denberg, Van-denberg, Salstonstall, Stassen, Brinker, Heil, Barbour, Danaher, Hoover and Landon. Well, it was a grand meeting, anyway, and, as I one news commentator put it, he hadn't seen so many smiling Republican Re-publican faces in six years. Certainly Cer-tainly red-headed John Hamilton was beaming from here to there ! While on the subject of Republicans, Repub-licans, there is a very interesting little lady in Washington just now Miss Gladys Pyle, the new Republican Re-publican senator from South Dakota. Da-kota. Of course, Miss Pyle's term is brief she was elected Novem-! Novem-! ber 8 to serve an unexpired term and on January 3 the neat name-plate name-plate which she tacked on her office of-fice door with her own hands has to come down again. But, until then, Miss Pyle is "en poste" and she's working hard in her office on Capitol hill, mostly answering letters let-ters from constituents, since the senate is not in session to provide other duties. She does things for herself rather than bother to call her secretary. She's pretty and sweet and friendly, and when her term in the senate i over, she will return to South Dakota, where she manages the family farm of 600 acres and is agent for a large insurance in-surance company. Last week, she attended the Republican national committee meeting, alcng with 26 cf the 51 Republican national oommitteewomcn who were here for the session. Treasury experts have estimated that the new federal borrowing scheduled ftr Decemlber 15 will increase in-crease the interest cost of the public pub-lic debt to more than $1,000,000,-000 $1,000,000,-000 a year. It will be the largest interest cost since 1923, when the. high rates on World war obligations obliga-tions raised to $1,005,000,000 the interest on the federal, )ib(t of $22,349,000,000. The federal debt of $39,300,000,000 (after the new borrowing) costs less because interest in-terest rates on government securities se-curities are much lower than in the World war era. Relief and national nation-al defense are now the two highest items on Uncle Sam's budget, with interest cn the federal debt ranking rank-ing third statisticians say it a-mounts a-mounts to nearly a ninth of all federal costs. Interest rates on the present debt range all the way from zero to 4V2 per cent, averaging averag-ing 2.582 per cent. Before the World war, the interest on the federal fed-eral debt was only $25,000,000 a year. Anyway, the W P A rolls are steadily declining:. 27,987 persons left the rolls last week, bringing the enrollment down to 3,215,564, after a record high of 3,262,669 at the beginning of November. |