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 .**
/<ecipe
By
Nina Wilcox
Pu+nam
Crullers
1 cupful of sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoonfuls of cream
1 cupful of sweet nilk
% teaspoonful of nutmeg
2 heaping teaspoonfuls of bak
ing powder
Flour enough to make the dough
stiff enough to roll. Cut out and
fry in deep fat.
Copyright.—WNU Service.
Staff of Solons
Each member of the house of
representatives is allowed $5,000
for clerk hire. Of this not more
than $3,900 may be paid to any
one person. Each member of the
senate is allowed a secretary hav
ing a salary of $3,900 and three
clerks whose salaries range from
$1,800 to $2,800 a year.
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Copr. 1937. King Features Syndicate, Q. F. Corp. Licensee
