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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 29, 1938)
NATIONAL I AFFAIRS Rtvitwed by CARTER FIELD Present sliding scale on corporation income taxes to be abandoned in favor of a fixed rate ... /Vo big boost in spending to come from national defense ... 7 tvo price system blotvs up with a bang .. . Dumping policy causes irritation. WASHINGTON.—Despite all the propaganda for ‘‘incentive tax re duction”—both for expansions which would make work and for profit sharing with employees—no action of the sort will be taken. Instead, corporation Income taxes will be fixed at 18 per cent instead of the present range from 16*4 to 19 per cent. Congress leaders would like to wipe out the last trace of the punitive tax on undistributed earn ings, but any such move may not succeed because of stalwart White House opposition to elimination of President Roosevelt's pet tax the ory. But another step in that direc tion seems inevitable. Congress is set on substituting a straight 18 per cent for the present sliding scale because the national legislators are convinced that the present system bears more heavily on small business men and manu facturers—that the big corporations are taking advantage of the lowest rate by paying out their earnings, having adequate surpluses to make this possible, whereas little fellows are forced to insure their future by building up surpluses, which makes them pay 19 per cent as against 16Vi per cent for the big ones. The treasury department is not adverse to the straight 18 per cent— if it could go for it without irri tating the White House. It believes the straight 18 per cent would bring in more money—always Secretary Morgcnthau'8 chief interest. Roosevelt will fight again for more drastic capital gains taxes, but will be defeated. Incidentally the tax bill will be slow in passage as no subcommittees were left on the job and a start will have to be made from scratch. Army and Navy Are Now Spending a Billion a Year No big boost in spending will coma from national defense, how aver much the White House may approve that picture for public con sumption. Actually the army and navy are now spending at the rate of a billion a year. A boost of about $300,000,000 between them, plus their existing balances, is all they can spend, experts say, no mat ter how much more may be author ized or appropriated. The real fear of the deficit wor riers centers on the agriculture, flood control and health programs. No one can foretell just how wild congress will go on these three. ociitruiij ui a^iauiiuit 111:111 jr Wallace wants processing taxes to take care of the increased agricul tural benefits but congress will dis pose otherwise. The money must come from taxes—or increased debt. Flood control threatens to take the place of the old rivers and har bors pork barrel bills of unsavory memory. Every creek in the coun try has become a flood menace. “Why should Tennessee get all the bacon?” is a popular question. Federal aid for health services is nebulous but very menacing to the treasury's red ink supply. “Two-Price System’ Blows Up With Resounding Bang The subsidized export plan for relief of the farm problem, better known as the "two-price system,” has blown up with a resounding bang. One shipment of wheat to England, and it passes into history as another flop on the well littered road to agricultural prosperity by governmental .control. What happened was precisely what was predicted would happen. It is also what was predicted would happen when the solution of the farm problem—back in the days of Calvin Coolidge—was the McNary Haugen plan. In those days the McNary-Haug en plan was regarded by most con servatives as crackpot. But it had a good many features which now commend it to folks who were called conservative 10 years ago. For in stance, the much talked about equal ization fee. That was the ingredi ent in the plan which would have prevented the farmers from going hog-wild on overproduction. Or at least it was so argued. It was the two-price system of its day, but it had brakes. The equal ization fee was the brake. Theoreti cally it would not cost the govern ment anything. The loss on wheat exported at a lower price than was charged inside the United States, for example, would be assessed against the wheat farmers, pro rata. So the more produced, and hence the more the loss on exports, the smaller the actual price the farmers would get for their wheat But it was predicted then, and apparently with good reason in view of recent developments, that the oth er nations of the world would not stand for this subsidizing of ex ports. It would be called “dump ing,” it was predicted, and other nations would not permit their im porters to buy any product so sub* sidized. ‘Dumping’ Policy Causes Irritation in Foreign Lands Critics of the present department of agriculture insisted there would be loud protests this year if the two-price system were put into ef fect. They were right. Along comes Britain highly indignant about one shipload of wheat. What did we mean, just after she had gone the limit in straining her empire trade concession plan in order to agree to a reciprocal trade treaty with the United States, by dumping wheat at a subsidized price, thus irritating Canada and Australia? French Guiana made a surprise move—threatened to bar any grain imports from the United States if this "dumping” policy were to be continued. So there won’t be any more. Again Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace have clashed, and again Hull has won. In fact, Hull has not lost a battle since March 4, 1933, when Roosevelt became Presi dent. Of course, anything calculated to help American export of our farm surpluses must be fitted in with the Hull doctrine of trade agreements, or else the trade agreement policy will be wrecked. The difficulty would be great enough if it were just a question of tariffs. But that is only part of it. There are quotas to be considered also. Obviously no foreign govern ment is going to permit this country to dump a surplus of wheat at a subsidized price AFTER it has reached an agreement with this country as to just what would and what would not be done in accept ing American exports—driven a bargain, so to speak, that they would take so much of our products if we would take so much of theirs. Morgan Sorrows That Better Job Is Not Done at TVA It's a pity that the government is not doing a better Job at TVA, for mer chairman Arthur E. Morgan remarked to a group right after his last appearance before the congres sional committee which is supposed to be Investigating the Tennessee Valley Authority. “The point is,” he said, "the trend all over the world, in virtually ev ery country, is toward government operation of the electric industry. That being obviously so, It makes no difference whether one likes the idea of government ownership or not. It makes no difference wheth er private ownership is actually bet ter for the interests of all the people or not. Regardless of the answers to any of these questions, this gov ernment should prepare for the pos sibility that it will have to operate the electric business of the entire country. “It is like Are insurance. A man who insures his house against fire does not necessarily hope that it will burn. In fact, most of the time he may still be anxious that it should not burn. But he sees the obvious danger, and takes precau tions accordingly, “Thus I think that even people who think that government owner ship of the electric industry is in trinsically bad should be anxious that the government make this TVA experiment, against the possibility that, having some day to run all the electric business of the country, the government will have learned how to do it, and thus not make a fiasco if it should have to take over the big job. "No manufacturer of motor cars, for instance, would start turning out a car of a new design by the thou sand until there had first been ex perimentation, to get out the bugs, to make sure that it would work smoothly. Similarly, if the govern ment will only do the sort of job for which I had hoped at TVA, it will not be so likely to have a ghast ly economic tragedy if some day in the near future it finds itself operat ing the entire electric industry of the country.” Fears Sacrifice of Flood Control to Power Creation Dr. Morgan is obviously proud of the engineering of TVA. But he is very much afraid that tragic conse quences may follow yielding to the temptation to sacrifice flood control safety to the production of power. He still believes that he did abso lutely the right thing in the Miami conservancy district in Ohio when he put engraved plaques on certain dams stating that the reservoirs they were holding back must never be used for the generation of elec tric current. To do so, he caused to be engraved on the plaques, might endanger the people the dams were supposed to protect from floods. Dr. Morgan has been accused many times of being too friendly to the utilities, but actually he believes in government ownership and opera tion of the electric business if the people in any given community fa vor it. Moreover, he believes that, even with the utmost fairness tc utilities, multiple purpose dams— those designed for example for flooc control, navigation and power—car afford cheaper electricity than car a privately owned competing utility Also, he believes strongly in nav igation on the Tennessee river, i point which has been of little inter est to the TVA investigating com mittee. A great many who believi strongly in flood control and ever in public power do not. C Bell Syndicate.—WNU Service. Trinidad Isle Lies Quietly In Caribbean Discovered by Columbus, bund Now Belongs lo Great Britaiu 1 : Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C.-WNU Service. Columbus discovered Trin idad in 1498, on his third voy age to the New World. In a letter to Ferdinand and Isa bella, he explains why it was named “Trinity”: “A sailor went up to the main-top to look out and to the westward saw three mountains near one another.” These peaks, lo cally known as the Three Sisters, officially are Trinity hills. Sailing along the island’s southern coast, the explorer saw lands “as lovely and as green as the orchards of Va lencia in March.” After cross ing the Gulf of Paria, he turned westward along the coast of what is now Venezuela. This shore he termed “the most lovely in the world.” Convinced that the "earthly par adise” of the ancient philosophers lay somewhere in these newly dis covered regions, the admiral later petitioned his sovereigns for author ity to explore further, but his pro posed expedition was never carried out. Across the gulf, dimly, Co lumbus saw the hills of the South American continent rolling away in recurrent waves. Dismissing them as another island, he set around for home. Raleigh Burned City. In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh came to Trinidad, on his way to El Do rado, which had been located be yond question in the upper regions of the Orinoco. Being of a mili tary mind, and knowing the danger of a hostile city at his rear, he burned the Spanish capital. He The island of Trinidad lies triihin sight of South Amer ica's nation of Venezuela, in the southern reaches of the Caribbean sea. white cotton, young girls and boys playing—all "latter under the trees while the air is cool and the world good. It will not be the same at noon. Trinidad, superficially, seems the reverse of an ant heap, for its activ ity shows best at the surface, the veneer of the water front. You stand by the cranes where cargo is fed into the maws of omnivorous tenders and come to the conclusion that the island is crudely modern. The coconut is one of the faces. Out of the palm groves, mile after mile of them, come millions of coco nuts a year. Many of them are turned into copra, which is the dried broken meat of the coconut. In some regions of the island you see East Indians working in the flooded fuzzy-green areas of rice fields, their legs bare, their heads shielded under big hats, their whole aspect suggestive of the Orient. But rice is rare. Mile after mile of sug ar cane rolls down from the moun tains, pale-green and high. Water buffaloes work in these fields at cutting times. You happen upon a group of women who are chopping stalks into small sections. “They plant these,” says your guide. "After a while another sug ar cane grows out of each section. They get about five new sugar canes out of each old stalk.” Use Weapons Craftily. The cane workers wield their ma chetes with consummate skill. They are predominantly East Indians. Trinidad is crowded with East In dians; about a third of its population belongs to that race. After slav ery was abolished in the island, they were brought over from India between 1845 and 1917, under a sys tem of indenture, to work on the East Indian employees at work on a sugar plantation, cut ting up stalks which will be replanted and produce new cane. 1 his, like almost everything else, is an immensely humorous business to the natives. tarried in the Gulf of Paria to calk | his ships with pitch from the fa mous Pitch lake. Another arrival. Sir Ralph Aber cromby, sailed to Port-of-Spain in 1797 and demanded that Don Jose i Maria Chacon, the Spanish gover 1 nor, surrender the island. Chacon was a humane man, out of touch with his times. Sensible of the bloodshed which was certain to re sult from any conflict with Aber cromby’s superior force he turned Trinidad over to the English. There and then the island settled into its | niche, became steadfast, loyal, and I serene. Ranking next to Jamaica in size among»the British West Indies, Trin idad has nearly twice the area of the state of Rhode Island. The col ony of Trinidad and Tobago has a population estimated (in 1935) at more than 439,000. More than 1,000 miles of good roads and 123 miles of government railways help trade i and travel. City Not Distinctive. Perched on the bow of a tender you see the capital from the hum ble viewpoint of the early visitors. Port-of-Spain today is rather enig matic. Unlike most cities of the world, it has no established person ality, no tangible formula of atmos phere that one can grasp and hold aloft with triumph. It is a tropi cal metropolis of about 75,000 peo ple, with some of the finest hotels in the West Indies. Hot in Mid-Day. Some of the British residents rise I at sunup while the air is cool to walk the circle of that vast space of meadow, Queen’s Park Savan ! nah. It is a long walk. But morn , ings in the tropics are a compensa , tion for the day: the English in white linen, the East Indians in plantations. After their period of service was ended, they were either given free passage back to India or allowed to remain. Many stayed. East Indians throng Port-of-Spain. They crowd the streets and mar kets with a lusty carelessness; they regard work but little, and seem to subsist, almost miraculously, with out it. They stride on their way with easy carriage, rather a lordli ness. and incessant amusement. And they laugh at themselves, wholeheartedly. An East Indian was having his hair cut, or rather (although unwittingly) having it shaved. Absorbed in conversation with someone standing in the door way, he was unaware that the bar ber was half asleep at his work; it was near siesta time. Not until the patron had risen, clapped on his hat, and found it upheld only by his ears, was he conscious of what had happened. A flood of terrible abuse descend ed on the barber. It continued un abated until finally, screaming aloud his misfortune, the bald vic tim emerged onto the street where he called on the passers-by to wit ness his misery. Heads popped from windows, men stepped to the doors of their stores, even the donkey carts paused. Everyone thought it was funny, very funny. The victim stormed away, shaking his fists at the heav ens. But after a while he came to a silent alley, where he turned aside to contemplate himself. His big hand explored the stubble that stuck out on top. After a moment a smile spread upon his face. He grinned. He put both hands to his head and chuckled. In a moment, hands still on his head, he started to roar. i ■■■— — ... BOWL BUSINESS ... Football's biggest event comes on ISew Year's Day in this modern world. Bowls of all flavors attract several hundred thousand spectators. Here are last year's bowl games, where huge crowds gather again this ISew Year's Day. Oldest of the IS etc Year games, Pasadena’s Rose Bowl dates back to 1916. Last year it attracted 90,000 spectators who watched California defeat Alabama by a score of 13-0. Above is an aerial view of the 1938 crowd. The spectacular tournament of roses always precedes the game. Shrinera sponsor the annual East-West all-star game at San Francisco each New Year's day, an event that drew 65,000 foot ball fans last year at Kezar stadium. The game ended in a scoreless tie. Brilliant pageantry featured the between-halves period. imiinintiii ... f ~ TinrffTin~iD'ninnnnnrii)rrnrinrri' n mwiwni irr HiriPnnimwiii>'iiiniwiniiiiii¥innntnriiirii i ini— hmhi innmfimurnmni ihthi At Miami, Fla., 18,000 attended last year's annual Orange Bowl game where Auburn defeated Michigan State 6-0. Half back Sits (No. 11) carried the ball for many of Auburn's gains. The Orange Bowl is fast becoming a major gridiron attraction. Santa Clara beat Louisiana State 6-0 at the ISew Orleans Sugar Bowl last year. Tteo other “boicia” attracted attention. At Dallas’' Cotton Bowl Rice beat Colorado 28-14 before 37,000 fans, and at El Paso a crowd of 13,000 watched ff esl Virginia nose out Texas Tech, 7-6. Truly, (,bowl business” is becoming I “big business PATENTS-INVENTIONS Patents Obtained formation w rite Arthur Sturm, R^Utend U. 3. taunt Offict, 302 NuvUU Block. Omaha. Nabr. Double Bedspread of Luxurious Taffeta By RUTH WYETH SPEARS «'f")EAR MRS. SPEARS: I have long been wanting a taffeta spread for a double bed. I figure that, if I can make one from 10 yards of 39-inch taffeta, it will cost about half as much as one of the same quality ready made. Will you be good enough to tell me how to cut the material so there will be no waste? This is impor tant as I must economize. M. G.” Here are cutting dimensions for a double bedspread of 39 or 40 inch material. You will need a little less than your 10 yards— r~z-ig-... ....-nioi.-. 9% yards will be enough, and this makes the spread long enough to cover the pillows nicely. Cut the center panel first, then divide the material that is left as shown in the upper diagram. Join the two pieces of ruffle material to make one long piece, then divide it evenly; for the two ruffles. These cutting dimensions allow generous seams. Enough material may be taken from the seam edges to cover cords for welted seams if desired. A very narrow machine stitched hem should be used at the bottom of the ruffles. Full directions for making welt ed seams are contained in Book 1, offered herewith. There are also directions in this book for making bedspreads of 36-inch cotton ma terial. -Today’s lesson is not in either of the books offered here, so be sure to clip and save it for reference. NOTE: Mrs. Spears’ Book 2— Gifts, Novelties and Embroidery, las helped thousands of women -o use odds and ends of materials ind their spare time to make hings to sell and to use. Book 1—. SEWING, for the Home Decora or, is full of inspiration for every lomemaker. These books make lelightful gifts. Mrs. Spears will mtograph them on request, drazy-patch quilt leaflet is includ 'd free with every order for both >ooks. Books are 25 cents each. \ddress Mrs. Spears, 210 S. Des ilaines St., Chicago, 111. Changing Dances From 1776 to 1911, American so cial dancing was virtually con fined to six dances: the polka, reel, square dance, minuet, waltz and two-step, reports Collier’s. From 1911 to 1938, more than 25 new dances have been introduced, among them being the turkey trot, grizzly bear, Texas tommy, bunny hug, hesitation, tango, maxixe, one-step, Castle walk, fox trot. Charleston, black bottom, Lindy hop, rumba and the big apple. If you think nil laxative* act Alike, lust try thl* all ngetibli laxatlva. ...So mud, thorough, re freshing, Invigorating. Dependable relief from sick headaches, bilious spells, tired feeling when associated with constipation _ Without RiskM0MtM“lho)£ If not delighted, return the box to us. We will refund the purchase x quf,orKacidF INDIGESTION Powerful Example Example is more forcible than precept. People look at me six days in the week, to see what I mean on the seventh.—Cecil. 6^^ relieves 0 COLDS n a**1 a»y | I Headaches w and Fever LIQUID. TABLETS doe to Colds SALVE. NOSE DROPS In SO minutes. rry “Rnb-My-Tlsm”-* Wonderful l iniment WNU—U 52—38 MERCHANDISE jr 1 Must Be GOOD | to be ; Consistently Advertised | | I BUY ADVERTISED GOODS