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Show WEEKLY A'ETS ANALYSIS BY JOSEPH W. LaBLE Social Security Amendments Pave Way for 1940 Elections By Wooing Townsend Voters (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed in these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessarily of this newspaper.) I RclpnspH by Western Newspaper TTntnn I CONGRESS: Pensions : Many a Republican, and a few Democratic legislators were elected last November on the promise that Dr. Francis E. Townsend's $200-a-month pension plan to be financed by a 2 per cent transaction tax would get a hearing. Hearing it got, but little else. Yet Townsend-ites Townsend-ites are potent enough to cause plenty plen-ty of trouble in next year's election. J . , I : j -A ' 1 ' ' i DR. TOWNSEND Beaten, but the ghost still haunts. To satisfy the pension vote, to provide pro-vide weapons for next year's Democratic Demo-cratic campaign based on "humani-tarianism" "humani-tarianism" and to soothe tax-eaten businessmen, the senate passed amendments to the social security acl which, if approved by the house, would: (1) Broaden old age insurance to include 1,100,000 persons like seamen and bank employees, and step up the starting date from 1942 to 1940. (2) Require states to supply $10 per month for each pension beneficiary, bene-ficiary, the U. S. to match state funds 2 to 1 up to a total pension of $15 per month; i.e., a total monthly minimum of $25 for each beneficiary. benefi-ciary. (3) Freeze the present 1 per cent payroll tax against both employees and employers until 1943, instead of jumping to 114 per cent next year. Estimated saving to employers and employees: $275,000,000 annually. (4) Permit downward revision in payroll taxes to finance state unemployment unem-ployment insurance. Estimated annual an-nual saving to employers: $80,000,-000. $80,000,-000. Fly in the ointment was that the plan actually boosted federal-state cost while lowering taxes, a situation situa-tion which on its face fails to add up. Though a new "contingency" social security reserve of $8,000,000,000 will replace the old plan for an eventual reserve of $47,000,000,000, Michigan's Sen. Arthur Vandenberg figured the senate had added $750,000,000 to the cost (spread over 15 years) without providing any method of paying. RELIEF: 'Ungrateful' Old WPA regulations provided union un-ion wages for skilled workmen, who thus labored fewer hours for their monthly pay than did unskilled reliefers. re-liefers. Example: Union carpenters might work 53 hours a month and pick up odd jobs on the side; common com-mon ditch-diggers might work 121 hours for the same money. Said WPA Administrator F. C. Harrington to congress: "It is my recommendation that persons employed em-ployed on . . . WPA be required to work 130 hours a month and that earnings of such persons be on a monthly basis ..." Said congress: O. K. Said more than 100,000 reliefers, going on strike: Congress must restore re-store union wages. Said President Roosevelt: "You cannot strike against the government." govern-ment." But strike they did. In Minneapolis Minneapo-lis two lay dead after riots. Mayor George E. Leach asked Washington to "clean up the mess" and State WPA Administrator Linus Glotzbach shut down all Minneapolis projects. President Roosevelt found himself on a spot with both A. F. of L. and C. I. O., who have helped elect both him and his friends. But both congress con-gress and the White House apparently appar-ently stuck to their guns despite bellowing by John Lewis and William Wil-liam Green. Commented the Cincinnati Cincin-nati Enquirer: "The American people peo-ple have a great deal of patience wilh the unfortunate and needy. But thry have little patience with the u ;rateful . . ." ASIA: Exit Britain? One hot day in Tokyo workers at the British embassy heard a storm brewing outside. Soon a mob that numbered 15,000 began throwing stones and denouncing "British intervention in-tervention in China," "British imperialism im-perialism in Asia" and "British support sup-port of the murderer, Chiang Kai-shek," Kai-shek," who is Chinese generalissimo. generalissi-mo. The day before two hand grenades gre-nades had been thrown into the Brit ish consulate at Tsingtao. Spreading Spread-ing down the coast, Japan's blockade block-ade of British concessions struck awfully close to home when the crown colony of Hongkong found itself it-self threatened by food shortages as Nipponese vessels blocked ports at Changchow, Tungshan and Chaoan. AU able-bodied Britons in Hongkong were subsequently eonscripted. In such a tense atmosphere British Brit-ish Ambassador 6ir Robert Leslie Graigie opened his long-touted conversations con-versations with Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita, knowing full well no settlement would be reached. Japs demand that Britain cease supporting support-ing General Chiang and abandon her "anti-Japanese policy in China," which would constitute complete surrender of all her Asiatic interests. inter-ests. Britain, on the other hand, insists in-sists that discussions shall deal only with the original conflict over Jap blockade of the British concessions at Tientsin. When the first day's preliminary confab ended in hopeless deadleck, key Jap officials on the Chinese front issued more threatening statements and precipitated a few more incidents inci-dents to help make up the harried British mind. First sign of what may become wholesale British withdrawal with-drawal from China came when missionaries mis-sionaries were shipped from Kai-feng, Kai-feng, important Honan province railroad rail-road city, sharp on the heels of a Jap-inspired ultimatum. EUROPE: Visitors to Paris Mid-July found Europe in pre-dog day doldrums. Adolf Hitler was reported re-ported by the Chicago Tribune's Sig-rid Sig-rid Schultz as consulting the stars to guide his decisions. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels fumed over the anti-Nazi letter England's Stephen King-Hall was writing in wholesale lots to "dear German rsaders." The Reich's toy industry complained that an English-made "Chamberlain-with-an-umbrella" toy ? Is ? I SARAH DELANO ROOSEVELT She was there, too. was outselling German-made toys in ttie British isles. Biggest news in Paris, however, was Bastille day, 150th anniversary of the French revolution. Hobnobbing Hobnob-bing on the reviewing stand with President Albert Lebrun as 30,000 troops filed by were Mrs. Sarah Delano Roosevelt, mother of the U. S. President, British War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha and many another an-other English notable. Keynoted Premier Edouard Da-ladier: Da-ladier: "We menace no one. We dream of no conquest. We desire only peace among all people . . ." LOUISIANA: Indictments Out of its cell at Baton Rouge walked a parish grand jury to plump down the makings of a scandal that started with Louisiana State university's univer-sity's President James Monroe Smith, spread to include two of his aides and finally caught in its net Dr. Clarence A. Lorio who is president presi-dent of the Louisiana Medical society, so-ciety, state senator, member of LSU's supervisory board and its medical director, physician and surgeon sur-geon for the state penitentiary and visiting physician for the tubercular hospital. The 29 indictments hit: Dr. Lorio, for allegedly receiving stolen property and conspiring with 300-pound George Caldwell (ousted LSU construction superintendent) in embezzling $249 in school building materials. Caldwell, on two counts alleging embezzlement of LSU building materials ma-terials worth $2,097. He is already under federal charges of diverting WPA materials for private use. E. N. Jackson, LSU business manager, man-ager, charged (with Caldwell) with embezzling $480 in school materials, and separately with receiving stolen property. Dr. Smith, charged on 23 counts, 12 of them with forgery, 11 with altering minutes of the board of supervisors su-pervisors so he could (1) borrow $500,000 from three banks; (2) add $3,000 "bonus" to his yearly $15,000 salary; (3) allow Caldwell 2 per cent commission on all WPA construction con-struction at LSU. INTERNATIONAL: Neutrality Every congressman and senator wants to keep the U. S. out of war. But of ideas on how this shall be done, there are almost as many as there are lawmakers. Late in 1935 congress banned shipment of armaments arma-ments to warring countries in the first neutrality act. Early the next year it added a provision banning loans to belligerents. In 1937 came a third provision, banning export of goods to embattled nations except on a cash-and-carry basis. The latter provision expired two months ago. This year, with war hovering over Europe and Asia at the prolable expense of Friends Great Britain and France, President Roosevelt wanted new neutrality legislation. His chief aim: Repeal of the arms embargo because it encourages self-sufficing self-sufficing aggressor nations like Germany, Ger-many, Italy and Japan. To replace it he wanted the cash-and-carry provision pro-vision restored, since Britain and France would nominally control the sea during wartime and could pay for their purchases. Isolationists meanwhile called his attention to the fact that Japan is also a big maritime power. Upshot was a senate foreign relations rela-tions committee decision to table neutrality for this session. While British economists were privately pri-vately calling wary U. S. isolationists isolation-ists "cowardly," there was good reason to think all neutrality legislation legis-lation may be wiped from the books and a return made to old international interna-tional law. Thus the President would be better off, isolationists would be partly satisfied and politically important im-portant the intra-party Democratic squabble would cease. NAVY: Heart Break Fifty-two days after the submarine subma-rine Squalus carried 26 men to their deaths, patient salvagers got their giant chains around her (each link 15 inches long, 2 inches thick, 76 pounds heavy), pumped air into stern and bow pontoons and raised her from a 240-foot grave to 155 feet. From there she was to be towed to shallow water, pontoons readjusted re-adjusted and raised again. As planned, two top stern floats broke the surface, indicating the Squalus lay at even keeL While jubilant salvagers sighed over a job well done, water suddenly began churning churn-ing around the submerged craft. Up for a moment burst two huge pon- SQUALUS SALVAGE CHAINS Big, but they jailed to bind. toons. Then came the Squalus' bow like a whale's snout, out of the water wa-ter an instant, then down to her 240-foot grave again to nullify all that had been done. Next two days, with falling barometers and heavy seas around Portsmouth, N. H., Rear Adm. C. W. Cole and his divers could only sit and wait, moaning over the mess below. |