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Show The World This Week by ROBERT PATTERSON 1945 CROP THIRD LARGEST American farmers came . through another tremendous production pro-duction record for 1945, falling ' ' only slightly "short of the mam-- mam-- moth harvests of 1942 and 1944. New production records were established es-tablished in a number of crops including wheat, hops, rice, .peaches, pears, almonds and grapefruit. High yields per acre were said to be the principal reason , for the generally excellent excel-lent results. The dark spot in the report of the U.S. Department of Agriculture concerns cotton which, with the exception of 19-21, 19-21, had the smallest crop in the last half century. But the overall over-all results of 1945 show that our farmers came through again in the "pinch" in spite of the pinch of labor shortages and inadequate inadequ-ate farm machinery with which to do the job. LESS CONTROL. MORE PRODUCTION The Senate Small Business Committee has been hearing an earful about the handicaps imposed im-posed on American retailers ' and the public by some of the weird ana inconsistent policies of OPA. A long parade of witnes ses pointed out that the OPA seems more concerned with keep irtg a tight control on a limited quanity of goods a quanity which is steadily - decreasing than with encouraging full production pro-duction which would soon make price controls unnecessary, Particular Par-ticular objection has been voiced to the policy of forcing retailers to pay higher prices for goods at " wholesale while being allowed 'no increase in their own sales prices. This "squeeze" is working a hardship on many small merchants mer-chants who do not have enough , financial resources to cushion the blow. America's many thousands of small independent merchants . are a tower of strenght to the national economy in the jobs they create, the service they render ren-der and the taxes they pay. But their problems are made doubly hard by those OPA- practises which tend to stifle rather than to stimulate business. Not only in their interests but in the interests inter-ests of the public at large, government gov-ernment price regulations should be made less constrictive and more constructive. STALIN'S RETURN The return of Joseph Stalin to Moscow after a nine-week absence ab-sence put to silence the rumors about his health which had been floating around since his failure to appear at last month's 28th anniversary celebration of the Red revolution. His arrival in Moscow just as the meeting of 2SBig Thruce forcISn ministers started was hardly a coincidence We can be pretty sure that while Uncle Joe" was out of sight he waf.not out of touch wh affairs m the Russian capital. In fact one might say that wherever btalm is, there is the capital. ARMY NAVY MERGER t V' ?' , War department won a sort of private war with the Navy when President Truman Tru-man came out in support of the Army Navy merger. The President Presi-dent s move could hardly have occasioned surprise since he had written a magazine . article in favor of the merger last year be fore his election to the vice-presi dency. His full backing for thp Army point of view, however has proved embarrassing to the Navy officials who bitterly opposed op-posed the unification plan. In his special 6,000-word message to Congress on the subject, Mr. Truman Tru-man declared that the need for a single department of national defense de-fense is clearly evident. If Congress Con-gress approves the plan, all arm- ea io.rces win toe headed by a civilian as secretary of national defense. Now that the President has spoken, the "top brass' of the Army and Navy can put away their verbal rapiers, for peace has come to the Potomac we 1 hope. WHAT! NO HARA-KIRI? The recent suicide of Prince Fumimaro Konoye is of particular particu-lar intrest not only because he was a relative of the emperor but because of the manner in which he took his life. Instead of com mitting hara-kiri as tradition would dictate he chose the less dramatic, but equally effective, method of poisoning himself. His death and the way in which he preferred to die highlight the fact that the ceremonial dagger has been almost completely ignored ig-nored by those Japs who have decided to end it all. What is more, the number of suicides has been amazingly small. For a people to whom "face" was supposed sup-posed to be everything, the Nipponese Nip-ponese simply are not acting up to expectations. Maybe they feel it is better to stay here rather than to join their ancestors who undoubtedly would ask embarrassing embar-rassing questions. |