OCR Text |
Show National News Summary Supreme Court By refusing to examine a lower low-er court opinion, the Supreme Court, in effect, has sustained the 1947 law passed by Congress repudiating re-pudiating claims for retroactive "portal-to-portal" pay, reaching perhaps $6,000,000,000. The high court acted by writing the word "denied" against an appeal by thirteen employes of B. II. Mub-bert Mub-bert & Son, of Baltimore. While acting upon the Hubbert case, the Supreme Court postponed any decision on a plea to rule directly on the constitutionality of the congressional act. Pensions The National Military Establishment Estab-lishment will soon offer special retirement privileges to civilian employes of the armed services who reach the age of 60 and qualify qual-ify otherwise. Persons with 20 years or more of satisfactory service, who spent sometime on active duty in the armed forces II JeAY PlJA JO I -re ay ppoAV ut are eligible. Applications from all services will be handled by the Adjutant General, Department Depart-ment of the Army. New Cruiser The United States Navy cruiser, cruis-er, Des Moines, rated as the world's most powerful, received its last testing and was commis-isioned commis-isioned on November 16. The 1 17.000-ton Des Moines is the first of a new class of heavy cruisers and carriers having the first completely automatic, rapid-fire battery of nine eight-inch guns. The vessel has a speed 'in excess of thirty knots." Labor The American Federation of Labor will urge Congress to repeal re-peal the Taft-Hartley Act as soon as possible, and to substitute the old Wagner Act for it, and then to take up possible amendments to the old labor law. William Green, president, expressed confidence con-fidence that the Taft-Hartley law could conceivably be "past history" his-tory" by March 1. Relief The number of actual relief cases in the nation has increased 54 per cent in the last three years, from 232,000 to 358,000, despite the presence of the highest high-est prosperity the country has ever known while costs have jumped 136 per cent from $6,-600,000 $6,-600,000 to $15,600,000. The gain has been attributed to inflation, unemployment among- unskilled workers displaced by skilled war veterans and movement of many families to other parts of the country, causing temporary family fam-ily emergencies. 81st Congress Control of the 81st Congress to be seated in January, will be in the hands of conservative, old-line old-line Senators and Representatives, Representa-tives, predominantly from the East and South. Ten of the top chairmanships are slated to go to southerners. The remaining major chairmanships are earmarked ear-marked for five easterners. Molor Vehicles In the fifty-five years of its existence, the automobile industry indus-try has turned out more than 100,000,000 vehicles. The industry indus-try now employs directly or indirectly in-directly more people than any other business in the world. More than 9.000,000 persons in the United States are employed in making, selling, servicing or in the commercial use of motor vehicles. Today, more than 40,-000.000,000 40,-000.000,000 motor vehicles, including in-cluding 7,000,000 motor trucks, are rolling the streets of this nation. |