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Show is i Unit: used by Western Newsraper Union.) YOU ARE MORTGAGED I 'OR S5.-J8! SECRETARY OF COMMERCE Jesse Jones reports the income of the American people for 1940 was $74,00 ),000,000, including what was paid by the government for relief and farm subsidies. That is just about what ft would take to pay what the federal government, gov-ernment, which is us, owes. We are in the red, including appropriations that have been made but not yet spent and including the obligations of the several government corporations corpora-tions for which the government is responsible, something over $70,000,-000,000. $70,000,-000,000. To pay what we owe would take all the income of all the American Ameri-can people for the entire year of 1940, the highest income year since 1929. Former President Herbert Hoover told me some three years ago that he believed the nation could carry an indebtedness of close to 70 billions bil-lions before going broke and becoming becom-ing the victim of extreme inflation. If that is correct and I believe Herbert Hoover comes nearer knowing know-ing than most men we are on the verge of bankruptcy and inflation. Who Is responsible? The congress of the United States, the men we elected as senators and representatives. No dollar can be taken out of the national treasury until congress has approved the expenditure. The President Pres-ident cannot spend our money un- less congress has authorized the expenditure. ex-penditure. The billions that have been spent on foolish boondoggling projects and for other things had to have the consent of the men we sent to Washington to represent us in the senate and house of representatives. repre-sentatives. That mortgage of more than $70,-000,000,000 $70,-000,000,000 means some $538.00 for each one of us to pay, or about $2,690 for each family of five. When the time comes for us again to select senators and representatives, representa-tives, it behooves each of us to examine ex-amine the records of those asking for our votes, and to turn thumbs down on those who have put us in the red to the extent of our entire income for one year. FORTY-NINTH STATE SEN. WILLIAM H. SMATHERS of New Jersey proposes that we make Cuba the forty-ninth state, but Cuba very definitely does not want to be either the forty-ninth or any other state in the Union. Out in the Pacific ocean, standing as the outer guardian of our western west-ern coast, is Hawaii, an American territory that does want, and has repeatedly asked, to be made the forty-ninth state. In the last World war, Hawaii produced a larger percentage per-centage of volunteers for military service than any one of the present 48 states. The islands were offered to, and accepted by, the United States under a promise of statehood. If we are to have a forty-ninth star in the flag, why should it not represent repre-sent Hawaii? Vernon Yap, a Chinese Chi-nese I know in the Islands, does not feel that he will be an American until un-til he can vote for a President. 'QUEEN BESS' MRS. BESS CROSS of Deering, Alaska, has been paying her every-fifth-year visit to the States. Sounds prosaic, but to her sourdough friends in and out of Alaska, and to the fashionable feminine apparel dealers in New York, it is an event eagerly awaited. To every sourdough miner, trapper trap-per and those in other lines, to every Eskimo, in fact, to all Alaska, Bess Cross is known as "Queen of the Arctic." She went to Alaska as a bride of 16. Her first husband operated op-erated a trading post and she assisted as-sisted him. When he died, Bess carried car-ried on, and expanded. Today she has a large string of such posts all over the Alaskan wilds, and especially espe-cially along the shores of the Arctic ocean. In Alaska, Bess wears a fur parka, walrus-hide boots, sealskin trousers as a matter of necessity, not from choice. She is definitely feminine, and about once every five years she comes to the States, always traveling travel-ing by plane. She goes to New York and indulges in a regular orgy of clothes buying. She selects the daintiest, most luxurious of feminine apparel; lives in a fine suite at the Waldorf; entertains lavishly for a period of from two to three weeks, and then flies back to her string of Alaskan trading posts, to the white men and Eskimos who love and respect re-spect her, and to whom she is always al-ways "Queen Bess of the Arctic." A GREAT WINDOW DISPLAY THE HE IS A window display in Wilmington, Del., which I look at every time I visit that city. In it there are always a considerable number of things, each one of which represents an addition to the comfort com-fort and standard of living and an increase in employment in America. All of these things are the products of an industrial laboratory operated by private capital. The maintenance mainte-nance of such laboratories means coniinued prosperity in America. And it's no government job. |