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Show News lbs Behinl By PaulMlon' Released by Western Newspaper Union. NORTH-SOUTH FEUD IN CONGRESS WASHINGTON. Extraordinarily bitter attacks by Senator Joe Guffey upon his fellow Southern Democrats have raised curiosity as to what he is up to. Guffey is an old huckster for the special New Deal line of goods, and when he tries to tear up his own Democratic party without any apparent ap-parent cause, all politicos naturally suspect the left wing New Deal boys downtown, who usually furnish his material, have decided on a new course of action. The personal bitterness of his attack at-tack on Senator Byrd and other Southerners is known to reflect the anguish of the White House New Deal crowd at their inability to get the soldier vote bill through con-1 gress. J They assumed the soldiers would vote for the commander-in-chief if the collection of ballots could be handled han-dled under federal jurisdiction. But now that It Is to be handled by the states with non-New Deal Democrats Demo-crats or Republicans In control of practically all states the blow Is greater than people outside the political po-litical trade have appreciated. But there is another reason. Coming Com-ing up shortly in the senate will be the poll tax bill; an anti-lynching bill is in the offing, and a Supreme court decision on the white primary in Texas is imminent. The old war between the North and South within the Democratic party, therefore, is coming up to a hew series of battles, and Guffey or rather the men behind him are laying the ground for it. Don't ask me to offer any reasonable reason-able accounting as to why this is so. The attacks on Byrd merely will furnish more water on his political wheel in the South. The Southerners have no intention of surrendering, and will block all action of the Guf-feyites. Guf-feyites. The charge that they are in an "unholy alliance" with the Republican Republi-can Joe Pew is only remote political banter. The basis of the Guffey charge is that the former Delaware Senator Townsend, as chairman of the Republican senatorial campaign committee, worked against the soldier sol-dier bill. Townsend is more Du Pont than Pew, and neither Rene Du Pont nor Pierre has co-operated closely with Pew. There is no evidence that they are in a working league on any subject, sub-ject, and probably may be against each other on presidential candidates. candi-dates. But to fight the Democratic civil war all over again once or twice each year in the senate without result, re-sult, has enabled the Northern Democrats Dem-ocrats in the past to make special personal appeals to the votes of the liberal groups in their own communities commu-nities (CIO likes it). This stratagem, strata-gem, however, seems to have outworn out-worn its effectiveness. The same old farce, therefore, likely is to be played through again without change in the plot or ending, but with Mr. Guffey in a leading role that no one else seems to want. I , C V w UNDESIRABLE FACTORS IN SUBSIDY BATTLE The food subsidy fight seems to be cooling. The alternatives offered are both undesirable. The idea of paying pay-ing secret price increases out of the treasury of the United States in order or-der to conceal them from the public is a policy' which the administration has attempted to justify only on the grounds of necessity of avoiding a greater evil wage increases and more direct price inflation. Some commentators have attempted to describe de-scribe it as a tax on "economic business," busi-ness," but It Is far more than that. It is a levy against all people who pay taxes. The opposition wants higher prices, which is likewise an undesirable un-desirable goal for the great majority of the people who pay them. But, of course, the truth is you are going to get higher prices anyway any-way with or without -subsidies, because be-cause of a dominant controlling inner in-ner economic situation pressing toward that conclusion (the current pending bill involves only ' the few commodities on which subsidies are already being paid). The administration has not shown strong interest in compromising the matter, even though a congressional majority Is obviously against subsidy sub-sidy continuance. War Mobilizer Byrnes went on the air in defense of the administration program even in the face of coming defeat They all know very well that Mr. Roosevelt will veto the bill, that it cannot be passed over a veto, and that Mr. Roosevelt will get his subsidies sub-sidies anyway by plucking the money from the bottomless bag of revolving funds under the custody of the New Deal's extracurricular banker, Jesse Jones. The subsidy opposition fears that if congress approves the administration adminis-tration plan and even if not Mr, Roosevelt may expand it into a new spending program as a means" of r-clpctim. |