around the NATIONAL CAPITAL Carter Field ^ Washington.—President Roosevelt does not intend that the construc tion of the two new battleships— to cost $50,000,000 each—shall be started until he has exhausted every possibility for obtaining an interna tional agreement to cease such con struction. That is the real reason that there appears to be so much ground work to be gotten out of the way before construction can actually start. The truth is that the Navy department would be able to call for bids within twenty-four hours after the Presi dent gave its officials the green light The Navy department always has plans for new battleships. It keeps changing them as this or that fac tor develops—as each new discov ery is made. It has been a long time, so far as can be discovered since any really important change in the general lines of construc tion was made. The last two big ones were the changes designed to make the big ships less vulnerable to submarine and airplane attack. Strangely enough, the defense from airplane attack was not as important as might be thought. The chief idea is a very heavily armored deck, at some little distance below the “false” deck that the visitor on a battleship sees. But this armored deck was forced not so much by airplane bombs os by “plunging” tire. The real target of a fourteen or sixteen-inch shell is not the side of the ship but its deck. This is because, when the shell strikes, it will be falling in a slow arc very close to the perpen dicular. In fact, it hits almost precisely as would an airplane bomb. This gradually developed with the increasing range of big guns. No matter what the velocity of a shell is, it falls—as soon as it stops rising—with the same speed as though it were released from a bombing plane. Hence to ob tain great range it is necessary to “elevate” the guns to an extraor dinary angle. Thus when the shell strikes a target say at 20,000 to 30, 000 yards that shell must have been a terrific distance up in the air at the top of the trajectory. Change in Fighting It is this change from the old days of sea fighting which results in a battle line of ships now at tempting to maintain a broadside position to the enemy instead of be ing headed directly toward the hos tile ships. It is much easier for long range gunners to hit a ship facing them or steaming directly away from them than it is a ship which seems to present a much bigger tar get by being broadside on. In short, as the shell is falling when it hits, it is much easier to hit the length of a sh*ip— which runs up to 1,000 feet—than her width, which is around 100 feet at the widest part. But the whole point now is that for several years there have been very few important changes in fun di mental construction of battle ships. As a matter of fact, few have been built anywhere since the Washington arms conference which concluded in the winter of 1922. Aviation enthusiasts thought there would never be any more. The ad mirals still want a lot of the big fellows. President Roosevelt in clines to the side of the admirals in this controversy, but is still hope ful that some common sense agree ment can be reached which would save the American taxpayers $100, 000,000 in this particular instance, and the taxpayers of Britain, Japan and Germany, not to mention some other countries which really cannot afford new battleships, equal sums. Moreover, the President is definite ly of the opinion that an armament race does not make for peace. War Boycott Proposal to boycott any country at war—that is to refuse to buy its exports—is the latest development among what might be called the “Peace Is Worth Any Price”—to avoid the less flattering “Peace At Any Price”—element in congress. Trade experts are inclined to re gard this addition to the plan of re fusing to sell war supplies as rather academic, especially as there is by no means any certainty that a ma jority of congress would vote to ban all war supplies. The present language reads "arms, ammunition and imple ments of war." This does not in clude steel, copper and manganese, though every one admits these are essential war supplies. It does not include cotton, which should prob ably come in the next category, and does not include foodstuffs. Nor is there any certainty that they will be included. For example. Senator Bennett C. Clark of Mis souri, one of the leading advocates of a drastic neutrality law, would put foodstuffs and cotton on a cash and carry basis. That is, any bel ligerent could buy them, providing they were paid for at the port of New York or any other American port, that the ship carrying them to the scene of war did not fly the American flag, that it carried ne American citizens, and was not In sured by an American underwrit er. He admits that copper, steel and manganese are in a definitely more warlike category than foodstuffs, but is not certain as to whether he would ban them. So that the advocates of an embar go against imports of any sort from any belligerent nation would seem to be a long ways out in front of the procession for the moment at least. As Economists See It Economists in the Department of Commerce, however, point out that a nation engaged in a really im portant war would not be able to produce any considerable amount of goods for export anyhow. It would be too busy producing supplies for its own fighting forces. A huge percentage of its ordinary produc ing men would be called to the col ors, its working womer., both from factory and farm, to plants produc ing supplies needed for the army and navy. Then there are other develop ments, aside from these obvious ones. For example, Italy did not have to strain very much, in a mili tary way. in her Ethiopian war. But she was obliged to stop the export of one of her excellent money crops—lemons. That is the reason the price of lemons in the United States was so much higher than last year. One of the few exceptions is wine. It may be recalled that the French had piled up an enormous amount of wine by the close of the World war. They thought they could sell huge quantities of it, at high prices, ir. the United States. In the excite ment of war they had overlooked the fact that the United States was to try the prohibition experiment —every one here thought perma nently-beginning in January, 1920, and that war-time prohibition would bo effective until that date. This almost forgotten—so far as the United States is concerned—fac tor was one of the causes of bitter ness on the part of the French about the war debt. How could they pay us if we wouldn’t take their products? So, altogether, the idea of banning imports from a nation at war is likely to be more of a thumbing of the nose rather than a real eco nomic threat Worry Over Strike Win, lose or draw, the C. I. O. war with General Motors is giving considerable distress to those opti mists among President Roosevelt's advisers who had counted on mag nificent increases in federal tax revenues as a result of improved business conditions. It is working as a two-edged sword, lopping off corporation earn ings, not only of the motor com panies, but of every company that sells things to everybody affected, and also boosting the unemployment relief expenditures that the govern ment will make. Estimates of 200,000 men out of work, mada by the representatives of the motor companies here, are regarded as very conservative. It is not only the men actually work ing in the motor plants, nor even those employed in factories making parts, plate glass, etc. The attempt by C. I. O. to cut off the supplies of the automobile manufacturers is hitting a number of other industries. For instance, it is hitting build ing construction by cutting down the supply of plate glass, the chief object of which was to hamstring the motor makers. Henry Ford is reported to be about to use laminat ed window glass, so real is the shortage of the glass normally used. This particular hamstring, of course, hits not only General Mo tors, at which it was aimed, but all the other auto manufacturers as well. Hits Revenue So that actifally, on a part of the loss to all these big corporations, the government is actually taking more than half of the loss of profits —considerably more than half, if one reflects that before the divi dends are paid out the government takes 15 per cent of the net earnings of the corporations. This 15 per cent loss of revenue will apply to all corporation losses of earnings due to strikes, tie-ups or whatnot. But it is on the individual in comes that the loss will be highest. Due to the new tax on undistributed earnings, corporations, as evi denced last month, are making ev ery effort to pay out all net earn ings to stockholders. So that aft er taking 15 per cent of the net loss due to the strikes, the govern ment will then lose a big slice of tax revenue from the individual stockholders. Some of the percent ages of course will be fairly low, but nearly all security holders, with few exceptions, pay income taxes, and every dollar lost through the strike will come out of the high est brackets that particular taxpay er reaches. It will come off the top. When 200,000 well paid men—for most of them affected by this strike were earning way above the aver age wage paid labor throughout the country—stop buying anything but necessities, the earnings of a great many corporations not affected di rectly by the tie-up will be cut. Washington observers do not at tempt to belittle the skimming of the cream idea, for i^ works to the detriment of the Treasury in every possible change of earnings. And the Treasury was counting heavily on improved business conditions to boost taxpayers into higher bracket classes. IS Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service j Golden Stated Parade at Angels Camp, California. Prepared bj National Geographic Society, Wanhlngton. L>. C.— WNU Service. UT HOLD they are not worth a f dollar.” That is what Daniel J_ Webster thought of Califor nia, and other southwestern lands, when it was proposed that we take them as indemnity after the war with Mexico. “What sympa thy,” he added, “can there be be tween the people of . . . California and . . . the Eastern states . . .?” Webster gave that opinion of Cali fornia in the senate only 88 years ago. Today it is the wealthiest state west of the Mississippi, and has some 6,158,000 people. One of them said to a visitor: “It took my folks 200 years to get to California. They landed in Virginia about 1650, and moved west with the frontier. My father got here in the 1850s.” Up in Humboldt county at a “For ty-niner's ball,” for which men grow full beards, a sweet, bright-eyed lady said: “My dress must be all of 130 years old. It was old when my mother brought it around the Horn, from Nova Scotia.” Her men fought grizzly bears and Klamath Indians, panned gold, and cut timber to build schooners. Only once in 15 or 20 years did they get down to San Francisco, and then by sea; no rail road reached northwest California till long after she was grown. “My father was general Mariano Vallejo, the last Mexican officer to command this post,” proudly as serted Senora Luisa V. Emparan of Sonoma. “He was born at Monte rey. Here are his silver mounted saddle, his sword, spurs, and pistols. After America acquired California he became a patriotic, influential citizen of the United States.” In such ways came the whites who people this land — divergent races, from sources far apart. Many Came From Foreign Lands. In Napa county you see how French, Italian, and German grape growers form yet another racial strain. In 1880 one-third of all peo ple then here had come from for eign lands, a fact which was pro foundly to influence the human and economic geography of this oldest and largest of all Pacific Coast states. Seek quiet country lanes that lead to long established homes of both native American and foreign stock, and you sense the social maturity of this complex yet mellow land. Monterey was a seat of Spanish culture before Washington, D. C., was even surveyed. Russians had built Fort Ross, and were grtJwing wheat and trading counterfeit wam pum for otter skins before peace ended the War of 1812. Ever since Hubert Howe Ban croft’s painstaking researches, writ ers have told and retold the story of early California — and they still make use of Bancroft’s incompara ble source material, preserved now at the state university in Berkeley. To see what the white man has done with work, tools, and science in developing this region as it is now, consider the place where his labors began. Ride through the “Mother Lode country," where the first pick marks on this now lush, opulent land were made by the gold seekers. Every hillside, gully, and stream bed shows the scars of shafts, tunnels, and frantic digging. Ruined huts and half - desested "ghost towns” dot these gold fields from which bearded men in red flannel shirts gouged nuggets and panned the yellow dust. Melancholy Columbia is adumbrative of all these early camps. In its old Wells Fargo stagecoach office you see the clumsy scales on which, records prove, more than $30,000,000 in gold was weighed. In boom days 15,000 people lived and worked here; now the village is shrunk to a bare 250. Ghost Towns Are Numerous. All through Sierra foothills you find these fading towns, with such names as Rough and Ready. Slug Gulch, You Bet, and Grizzly Flats. At Hangtown (now Placerville) long stood the big tree on whose stout limbs two men could be strung up at once. In Tuolumne county is the cabin of Bret Harte, whose charac ters in ‘‘Tennessee’s Pardner” and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat” were drawn from hereabouts. Another shack is labeled "Mark Twain's Cabin." Violent, murder ous, and thieving though life in these diggings was. Twain was able later to say: "Always do right; it will gratify some and astonish the rest!” In those halcyon mining days he wrote "The Jumping Frog of Calav eras County.” Each spring now the once hedonic town of Angels Camp stages a “jumping frog” contest; entries come even from distant Ar kansas. Guests with what Pope culled “nice foppish gusto” look w'lth gluttonous avidity on the fat legs of these prize-winning frogs. Though from these gophered hills some gold seekers took their dizzy millions, the real contribution of the Gold Rush to California’s destiny is often overlooked. Think of the black smiths, carpenters, cowboys, farm ers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers who came with the gold - hunting horde. They cleared land, built towns and roads, sent East for wives, raised husky ‘‘Sons of the Golden West,” and spread the raw canvas for this 1936 picture of north ern California at work. Few, comparatively, got rich in the mines; that wasn’t economic production, anyway. They simply found the gold, at first, and took it. In time, mining settled down to a business of deep shafts, stamp mills, smelters, timbered tunnels, roads, and towns. All this meant more food, machinery, lumber, transportation, clothing, amuse ments. To supply these, farms to grow meat and grain developed; towns with factories, schools, and music halls grew up to take care of mines, of farms, of each other. Law grew, too, from this pioneer experience—the doctrines of appro priation and use, the laws of mining, water rights, and grazing. Students of jurisprudence say it is seldom that the customs of a people have had their origin, development, and final adoption by a legislature all within one lifetime, as came to pass here. Sutter Founded Sacramento. John A. Sutter, Swiss adventurer, built a trading post on land given him by the Mexicans. That was the beginning of Sacramento, in 1839. It was a strategic location; soil was rich, the river afforded easy transport to San Francisco, and the new town was right in the path of settlers coming from the East through Emigrant Gap. Sure, swift steps in the rise of that town epitomize the American conquest of this region. First Sutter fought the Indians, then hired them to farm his lands, run his cattle, and work about his "fort.” Kit Carson and John C. Fremont came here for fresh horses. Into Sutter’s Fort (now Sacramen to), in 1841, drove the first immi grant wagon train to cross the Plains. From here men went, in 1847, to rescue the Donner party, snowed in and fighting starvation. Sutter’s hired man, digging to build a sawmill, found gold at Co loma in 1848, and started the great stampede. This lawless horde robbed and ruined Sutter; he died poor. Others held the fort, and traded furiously. They charged $64 to shoe a horse; $2,000 a ton to haul freight to the mines. It cost a pinch of gold dust to buy a drink of whiskey, and only men with big hands were hired to tend bar! Dance halls never closed; even to day one advertises itself as “Bon Ton Dance Hall. Beautiful Girls Galore.” Miners, coming to cele brate, brought their gold in an old sock, or in yeast cans! Modern youths buy a strip of tickets, each good for a dance with a “taxi girl.” California became a state in 1850. That year more than 42,000 miners swarmed through Sutter’s Fort, from the East. About it a wild lawless town was growing, a town of tents and rough boards, of saloons, eating places, stores, and black smith shops. Most goods came first to San Francisco by sea, and then up the Sacramento river. State Almost Divided Once. Jumping from Monterey to San Jose. Vallejo, and Benicia, the state capital got to Sacramento in 1854. Many a bitter battle has been fought at this capital, none more exciting than that which once almost divided California into two states. Only the diverting advent of the Civil war prevented this. From Missouri came the Pony Ex press in 1860. Next spring riders carried Lincoln’s inaugural address through from “St. Joe” in seven days and seventeen hours—the fast est trip on record. Then a half ounce letter cost $5; one now is flown by overnight plane for six cents. Building east from Sacramento in 1869, the Central Pacific met the Union Pacific railroad at Promon tory Point, in Utah; Senator Stan ford drove a golden spike. Isola tion was ended. Men and goods moved west at unheard - of low rates, at speed thought miraculous. Today Sacramento railroad shops are among the world's largest. About the old fort, where pioneer blacksmiths shod mules, filed saws, and whittled out pick handles for the miners, rises now a busy city of more than 500 factories, including colossal canneries of fruit and vege tables. . A Mental Inventory— m Wishes Are but Wasted Thoughts Unless We Work to Attain Fruition IT is well in these early weeks of the New Year for us to take a sort of mental inventory of our i selves, and see if we are foster ! ing any of the good things which we openly spoke of, or silently j wished would materialize during 1937. Have these things already gone into the dump heap of futili ty? Have they been scrapped be cause of no effort on our part to further their becoming realities? Are we aware of this scrapping? Or do we still vaguely suspect they will materialize or be fulfilled just becuse we think of them with desire? Action Essential. Most of us remember the Ma cawberism “Name a wish and gratify it.” There have to be things j set in motion before a wish can Ask Me Another 0 A General Quiz © Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service. 1. What are “blue sky laws?” 2. What is sake? 3. What is a hookah? 4. What does “cloistral” mean? 5. What is the capital of North ern Ireland? 6. What World war campaign brought forth the battle cry “They shall not pass?” 7. In what famous child’s story does “the Red Queen” appear? 8. What mythology tells of Val halla? 9. For what is Marie Montessori famous? 10. What is a bonanza? Answers 1. Laws intended to protect in vestors against sellers of poor securities. 2. A Japanese rice beer. 3. A tobacco pipe in which smoke is drawn through water. 4. Secluded. 5. Belfast. 6. The attack on Verdun. 7. “Alice Through the Looking Glass.” 8. The Norse. 9. For a system of education. 10. A rich vein of ore. come to fruition. Unless we actu ally want a thing enough to try to get it, we cannot want it very much. Our New Year wishes if they are to be fulfilled should be more than thought-seeds by now. They should have been planted and tended and perhaps have be gun to show tiny sprouts. Diversity. As wishes vary according to de sires of individuals and avenues of opportunity for them to materi alize differ, it is difficult to make helpful suggestions except in very obvious instances. Making Wishes Come True. Not every fervid wish can be literally acted upon. But even if not, it can be nurtured. Perhaps in the quiet of one’s own room, one can prepare oneself for calm er and stronger progress, making one ready to work and see things through to a fine and a happy finish. Whatever the wish, it is but wasted breath or thought un less one makes some attempt to attain its fulfillment. © Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service. jn .** / DAYS LATER -^. 8AH! AND WE COULD HAVE THERE WRECKED "THEIR. HAPPINESS A THEY FOR KEEPS — IF POSTUM GO— HADN'T SPOILED OUR PLANS/^ HAPPY AS . LARKS! __ READ ABOUT POSTUM^ ) MONEY- BACK OFFER/_^y If you are one of those who cannot safely drink coffee...try Postum’s 30 day test. Buy a can of Postum at your grocer’s and drink it for one full month. If ...at the end of the next 30 days...you do not feel better, return the top of the Postum container to General Foods, Battle Creek, Michigan, and we will cheerfully refund the full purchase price, plus postage! Give Postum a fair trial...drink it for the full 30 days! Postum contains no caffein. It is simply whole wheat and bran, roasted and slightly sweetened. Postum comes in two forms... Postum Cereal, the kind you boil or percolate...and Instant Postum, made instantly in the cup. It is economical, easy to make and deli cious. You may miss coffee at first, but after 30 days, you’ll love Postum for its own rich, full-bodied flavor. A General Foods product. (This offer expires June 30,1937.) Copr. 1937. King Features Syndicate, Q. F. Corp. Licensee