Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 June 1951 — Page 14

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Ww STUART SYMINGTON; the administrator of the "Reconstruction Finance Corp., revealed some new

Petroleum Co.

~ During hearings last year the Senate Fulbright Committee noted that Allen Freeze, an assistant RFC controller

the Texmass financing. Also, that Texmass wanted to hire Mr, Freéze away from the RFC. The lending agency finally approved a $15 million loan for Texmass last September, and it is a matter of record that Mr. Freeze did resign from the RFC on Sept. 28 to become a vice president of Texmass at $22,500 a year. Subsequently, during receivership proceedings in ‘the Texmass case, Judge John A. Rawlins of Texas, had this to «gay of Mr. Freeze's employment by the oil company: “He (Mr. Freeze) is not a professional oil man; he was employed at a salary of $22,500 a year merely because he “ “was at the time assistant controller of the RFC, and this was to get along with the RFC.”

® = » » H . : NOW, Mr. Symington has come up with some startling ‘ ‘charges. He says that Mr. Freeze was signing papers as an officer of the borrowing company five months before he

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.. gave early notice to the RFC and left, but because of ~ “accumulated annual leave, he was drawing his salary until o September. «+ Well, this is a question for the courts to determine. Mr, “Symington has turned it over to the Justice Department and he says: “Our assumption is that something is wrong in Denmark and we intend to find out what it is.” ." , Whether it is illegal or not in this case, it is certainly improper on the face of it for an RFC official to become © ‘eoyly flirtatious with a company which is trying to put the ‘arm on the RFC. Too many RFC employees already have ‘turned up in better-paying jobs with successful loan applicants, : That must stop, says Mr. Symington, and he seems

determined to stop it.

France Remains Divided

TEE FRENCH election settled nothing. The same chaotic political situation which has prevailed since the end of the war has been projected into the .indefinite future.

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*. “blocs of roughly equal strength. Some ground was lost by the Communists. But they ~. again demonstrated that they have enough popular support to remain a dangerous internal hazard, if Russia marches . against the West. Gen. Charles de Gaulle's- followers have become the ‘most powerful party in the country, but it can be outvoted py a middle-of-the-road coalition similar-to that presently in control of the government. This coalition has strong, intelligent leadership but lacks the cohesion to produce genuine stability. ‘The returns offer no promise that France will play a . larger role in the European defense program. The present government, if it is returned to power, is expected to ' co-operate as best it can. But it must do this without alienating the support of elements which will not accept * the material sacrifices necessary if France is to maintain an all-out rearmament program. wv: Nothing less than an international crisis or an internal : upheaval would appear likely to change this dubious outlook.

Stand-sill Congress

T= present 82d Congress is setting a record for + legislative inactivity that, by comparison, will make ~ the “do-nothing Congress” of three years ago look like a speed-up in a beehive. ~~ Bo far, in a session nearly six months long, the current Congress has enacted virtually no major legislation, A This, in face of the growing menace of inflation, a . war soon to enter its second year, the unabating threat of “Russian aggression and the slow progress of our preparedhess program. Though the present Defense Production Act, with its authority for controls, expires in two weeks, neither the House nor Senate Banking Committee has yet been able to draw up a new law. "Though the government's fiscal year ends July 1, no appropriation pill has yet been passed. Neither has there been any action to move forward the proposed $60 billion defense fund for the coming year. The new tax bill has just reached the House floor, but the Senate Finance ttee has yet to consider it, and the prospects are for no action until the end of . August, at the earliest. And the $8.5 billion Foreign Aid foil has not been taken up by either House or Senate Ke ® » .

MEANWHILE. the usual gicta af Congressmen is

at home and abroad. And in both Houses, the Tuesday-to-y club is rounding into seasonal form. This is the ‘of Easterners who find Washington weather so » they go home for long week-ends to escape it. course Congress is finding time to investigate. 5 full-dress legislative inquiries are now 8 Boon completed and a dozen mére are such diverse matters as monopoly pnd the ethics and morals of govern.

of Congressmen and Senators the duty they were elected

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aspects yesterday about the RFC loan to the Texmass

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STRATEGIC MATERIA LS ..

*WASHINGTON, June 18-—-Tough action by the United States is beginning to break the back of price-gouging foreign monopolies on strategic materials. The campaign is expected to save this country hundreds of millions of dollars. Three months ago this government, tired of being held up by British, Dutch and Bolivian tin cartels, pulled out of the world market as a buyer and decided to make a fight of it. «Bb IN THESE three months tin prices have tumbled from nearly $2 a pound to $1.11. The, foreign tin producers have panicked. + And the U. B, {is telling them that if they want to sell tin they'd better get the price down even more, Credit for this seems to go chiefly to Sen. Lyndon Johnson (D. Tex.), chairman of a Benate Preparedness Subcommittee which built a hot fire under the administration; RFC Chair-

“man Stuart Symington and Donald C, Cook, the

Senate committee’s chief counsel. On Feb. J2 the Senate committee, in a detailed report on tin, said: “The American taxpayer is weary of being

His Master’ : Voice

3 By Charles Lucey tr hen Wh et ane ‘Uncle Sam Smacks Down International High Price Gougers

gouged for the privilege of obtaining “trom some of its Allies the raw materials with which he is expected to supply the food and armament ‘needs of the non-Communist nations in the event of another all-out war. And this com«mittee intends to do Whatever it can to put an end to that gouging.” The ceiling drive on tin in World War II had béen only 52 cents a pound. In May, 1950, the price was 76 cents. But the Korean War gave the tin producers a lever to shove prices up and they did—to about $2 in February. Tin was coming into the U, 8. both as a metal and in concentrates—the latter to be smelted at the Texas City, Tex. tin smelter

_ operated by the RFC. The RFC bought .all the

tin that came from overseas, and sold it as needed to U. 8. Mausy. 5 »

AFTER the Senate committee report, the’

RFC dropped its tin'price from $1.82 to $1.57 and then to $1.34. This meant the U. 8: no longer was tied to the world-controlling Singapore tin price. The Singapore price followed

downward at first but then, perhaps “feeling out” the U. 8., moved higher again.

By Talburt

hs UP

\ A HAPPY NOTE . .. By Frederick C. Othman

WASHINGTON, June 19—I had to buy new spectacles with double-thick rose-colored lenses to find in the fine print of the new tax bill some pleasant news, but here it is: The gentlemen have voted to remove taxes on the rubber wheels

that go on baby carriages. The word otherwise is almost uniformly bad for us who pay the bills. It could have been worse (and should have been, according to President Truman) but the only gents I could find who got a break on their income tax bills were the. rich. They had been soaked so hard already, that a bite much bigger would have turned ‘em into tramps. The rest of us must pay 12% per cent more income taxes as soon as Congress gets around to passing its new law later this summer, but the multimillionaires escape. Take, for example, the fellow who earns $80,000 a year. His top tax rate today'is 87 per cent. Raise that 12% per cent and the House Ways and Means Committee decided he'd have nothing left for eating money. The most generous gentlemen fixed as their highest tax rate 941% per cent, and even I feel sorry for the man who has to pay it. The committeemen, most of whom are oldfashioned fellows who don’t use cigarets, raised the tax on same to eight cents a pack, or a good deal more than the smokes cost to manu-~ facture, I'm thinking of buying a pipe, myself, and putting in a small patch of tobacco behind the garage. Whisky in these inflationary times costs almost a dollar a gallon to make. The tax

SIDE GLANCES

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No Tax on Baby Carriage Tires

on it will be raised to $10.50 a gallon and this, according to some of the experts who testified, will be a break for the moonshiners. Every time the tax is raised, their business increases. Many a reputable liquor man estimates now that the bootleggers do a bigger business today than the legitimate trade. The tax bill authors went through all the things that people use with such a fine-toothed comb that they slapped a tax on the comb,

itself. There’s hardly an electrical appliance’

left, from"mangles to pants pressers, that won't be taxed 10 per cent. I was pleased to see the gentlemen tax gamblers. They figure, in fact, that by demanding 10 per cent of the take of numbers operators and bookies, they'll take in 400 million a year. They could have obtained more if they'd gone along with Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall (R. N. Y)

Tax on Light

HE WROTE a bill taxing gamblers 100 per cent and then collecting from them an additional tax. Mr. Hall, incidentally, is the man who produced another bill ordering auto dealers to sell sedans for $1 down, Neither statute passed the first pigeonhole. I had hoped that my own personal plea far relief might get someplace, but the gentlemen went only halfway. I had suggested to them that when I sat up half the night slaving over a hot typewriter to earn the money to pay my taxes, I was inclined to resent paying another tax on the light bulbs that made this possible. They didn’t exactly sneer. They went along in part by removing the three and a half per cent take on electric current. But the tax on the bulbs they allowed to remain, This, I think, was a mistake. I didn't even know there was a tax on my electric current until they removed it. They might as well have left it on. I'm still sore about the bulbs. They'll be hearing from me later.

PARIS, June 19 — There's trouble ahead for France. This is true even though the large popular vote in Sunday's election for the opposite extremes of communism and Gaullismi’ were offset partially

by the democratic coalltion’s self-protective electoral law.

Gen, Charles de Gaulle with his new bloc of obstructionist deputies will make it even more difficult for a parliamentary government to func‘tion. The Reds will increase their wrecking tactics.

So the French disease of disunity feeds upon itself. Divisions among the large anti-Red majority of the nation now are multiplied. = Henceforth there will be four forc¢s bidding for power. All of which widens the disruptive opportunity of the Red minority. Most of those who voted Red are not Communist Party members, are nots revolutionists and are not pro-Russian. Ninety per cent of them are industrial voters simply pro-

testing the low wages, poor

EREEREE

At one point the RFC, paying more for tin

than it was selling it for to U. 8. industry, : upward—

wavered and shoved its selling price and promptly drew a severe rebuke from Sen, Johnson, Then, on Mar. 6, the U, 8. decided it could stop buying tin for its stockpile and this decision plus the earlier pressure at last got tin prices in Singapore and London rolling downward in gearnest. > ON APR, 12, the Singapore price was $1.50, the RFC price $1.47, By May 31 both prices were $1.39. On June 1, the RFC pulled its price to $1.36 and Singapore went to $1.32. Then RFC went down to $1.29 and so did Singapore. RFC led down to $1. 24 and Singapore followed. Last Thursday the Singapore price went to $118 and the RFC cut its price to the same level. Friday Singapore went to $1.11 and so did the RFC. This was an 18-cent tumble in four days.

What was happening?

Well, after the RFC stopped buying tin for the stockpile, the only tin coming into U. 8. was that which had been contracted “under

long-term contract. These contracts carried a clause saying that if the tin price was above

FOULGIS i profi this year, The Senate Committee had recommended cancellation, and the government decided now to do that. Nothing has been announced about it, but a notice of intent to cancel went out to Singapore. It could have reached there toward the end of last week—when prices really began to tumble. * All of this has caused much wringing-of« hands by the tin producers, and the State Department, always intent on keeping our overe seas ANies happy, has passed on their protests, But Stuart Symington, new one-man head of RFC after the ousting of the old five-man board, is having none of it and is determined to keep prices down. >. : THE U. 8, world's biggeést tin user, chews up about 135 million pounds a year. The price tumble since February, applied to that, repre. sents more than $100 million. And, ‘although detailed figures can't be disclosed .in relation to this country’s tin stockpile, the saving could be several hundred millions there. “If we don’t buy their tin they'll choke on it,” says one U. 8. official.

WILL IT WORK? . .. By Clyde Farnsworth

U. S. Pours Water on Troubled Oil

TEHRAN, June 19—It looked today as if strong pressure” the United States brought to bear on Britain for settlement of the AngloIranian Oil Co. dispute mignt work. Heré®in Tehrah, as well as in London and Washington in recent months and days, the U. 8. State Department nas been pressing Britain and the company, of which the British government is the majority stockholder, to yield in a compromise that would rescue something of Britain's position and save Iranian oil for the non-Communist world. The American warnings even preceded the nationalization act of last March 26, but collided . with the business-as-usual resistance of conservatives on the company's board in London. Now the company is caught in an Iranian wringer. The United States, through Ambassador Henry F. Grady, is trying to pry that wringer open a bit—not so much to see that the company escapes, but to assure continued production, processing and distribution of Iranian oil under nationalization. ’

Agreement Expected TURNING point of the Iranian-British dispute was perhaps‘ reached and passed over the week-end in Tehran. This week may well _produce an agreement in principle between the Iranian government and company negotiators. Last week the Iranians told the company delegation, headed by Basil R, Jackson, that the company, as a prior condition to any negotiations, would have to issue immediate instructions for: Payment to Iran of all proceeds less expenses and 25 per cent to be set aside to meet the company’s future claims against Iran's new “National Oil Co.” That was last Thursday. The British agreed to a meeting Sunday morning, by which time they said they hoped to have an answer from London where the company board plus a cabinet committee, it is believed, are calling the plays. Mr. Jackson had come to Tehran with broad powers but these hardly included surrender of the company’s receipts before a compromise offer could be made. 80 Mr. Jackson hurried to Ambassador Grady who promised to use his good offices with Iran’s Premier, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh. Through an intermediary, Mr, Grady on Friday reached the ailing Premier with counsel against any ‘rigid attitude, and presumably word was passed that Mr. Jackson had ‘“‘constructivé suggestions” which might lead to an

SUSARMAENRERNATENNEES

Hoosier Forum—Beef Prices’

“I do not agree with a word that you say, but | will defend to the death your right to say i.”

agreement within the framework of the nae tionalization law, Ambassador Grady asked that there be no deadlines and Premier Mossadegh agreed not to press for a reply by Sunday morning. An extension was granted until a meeting set for 8 p. m. today. The British felt that might give them the time they needed. Back in 1949 the Anglo-Iranian Co. ied unwisely that it had buttoned up its Iranian

———— Fat

problems with a supplemental -agreement which financially liberalized the 1933 concession that had long been under Iranian fire. After All Razmara became premier in 1950 he tried to reopen negotiations on such nonmonetary mvatters as Iranization of company personnel, salvage of escaping gas for Iran's use and pricing of locally peddled oil products no higher than those furnished by the company to the British Admiralty ahd other British of. ficial purchases.

With concessions along these lines Razmara might have put the agreement through the Iranian Parliament. But the British would have nothing to do with the proposals. The British still were adamant. Razmara, however, advised the Iranian Parliament against outright nationalization of the company. For that he was killed and Premier Mossadegh, the father of nationalization, came to power.

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‘Famine Due’ MR. EDITOR: Mike DiSalle tells us the reason for the rollback in beef prices is because in spite of the largest number of beef cattle in history, prices have been going up. There are two reasons for high prices. First is government buying and second low income families who formerly bought ears, snouts, kidneys, chitlings, etc, are now working at high wages and are buying the choicest cuts of meat regardless of cost. DiSalle has now announced that the supply of cattle at the stockyards is back to normal again which any one with normal intelligence would expect as cattlemen have to sell their

"cattle sometime regardless of price. ¢ & &

HOWEVER, that is not going to prevent a beef famine in the next few months and I can tell you why. Suppose a thin steer weighing 900 pounds is slaughtered immediately, you would hardly get more than 350 pounds of a poor quality meat. The rest is bong, gristle, hide, intestines, ete. Put the steer in a feed lot for a few months and you can add pounds and have choice beef, There is no increase in the weight of bones, etc, so you have actually doubled the supply of beef. Now in normal times the packers: will only buy thin cattle such as canners and cutters at a very low price. However, right at present they are grabbing these ‘cattle because there is a big demand for hamburger, lunch meats, ete. Naturally the cattle feeders are not going to bid against the

By Galbraith EUROPEAN POLITICS . . . By Ludwell Denny French Disease of Disunity Grows Worse

MOST of those who voted for Gen. de Gaulle’s Rally of the French People are not yearning for his semi-authori~ tarian system and ‘have no enthusiasm for his bigger army. They are mostly desperate middle-class victims of inflation, and small peasants protesting against hard times and the coalition gdvernment they hold responsible, Unlike the voters In some European countries, the French with all their faults are not politically immature and are not hankering after ‘totalitarian rule in any form. They are in grave danger of losing their liberties through disunity and desperation. If they do not, it will not be because they trust Stalin or want a new Napoleon, ‘but despite their hatred of dictation in any form. There are exceptions but they ' constitute a minority smaller than in most countries.

The large popular vote for De Gaulle was due to the following factors:

ONE: A protest against the

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compelling personality in tho midst of colorless and almost doddering “political ties.

THREE: Gen, De Gaulle was a faith-hope-and-glory candidate appealing to one side of France's split personality. Beneath a surface cynicism and hard realism is a romantic mysticism, the unhealed humiliation of Hitler's occupation and a nostalgic yearning for lost power and grandeur, liberation’ ~Teader touched these inner chords. FOUR: At his campaign ral lies the loudest cheers were for his anti-American jibes His favorite line was that France should have allies instead of masters.’ Not all Frenchmen have this inferiority complex but Gen. De Gaulle gets those

FIVE. He talked generalities instead of specific program. . This demagogic technique wus especially effective because in his case it was sincere rather than synthetic. He wasn't cov-

packers when they know the prices will be rolled back in August and October. Neither, is it %Yikely many retailers are going to try to handle beef. ®* ° @ I TALKED to a meat salesman who told me that every grocer he called on, that handled beef, said they had actually lost money in trying to cut beef and sell it under government regulations. However; it is my opinion thers is going to be plenty of money made out of beet in the next few months. Th money will be made of course on the black market. And after all, when we already know OPS is a big political racket, no one who buys on the black market should be censured very much because we all know the boys in Washington, District of Confusion, are going to get theirs.—C. D. C., Terre Haute,

FOR ALL MANKIND

MAY YOUR eyes only see the good things + +» » may your lips only speak the fair , . , may your ears only hear the true things .. . may your heart never know a care . . may your face wear a smile of beauty . . . that will radiate Joy all around... may your hands be the hands of friendship . . . that extend to a human who's down . . . may your feet trod the straight and narrow . . . that is always the happiest road . .. may your mind be as strong as your back is... so that you can carry the load . . . may your soul be a soul close to heaven filled with faith, hope and charity . . . and may God up above always bless you . . . that's my prayer for humanity. ’ —By Ben Burroughs

rule of political ‘parties and curb the Communist menace. mediocri- won HIS PAST inability to get along with France's allies and his present suspicion of the United States and Great Brit. tain, while gaining support from one type of voter, alienated many ‘others who would tighten allted ties for French recovery and defense. - From ihe American viewpoint probably the most appeal ing. thing about De Gaulle is his pledge for a larger French

isn’t popular with the majority, S80 Gen. De Gaulle 1sn’t as frank about it as some of h's candidates, such as Gen, Joseph Koenig, former French coms mander in Germany. Most Frenchmen don’t want to pay for a larger army or serve in it,

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