Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 5, DeMotte, Jasper County, 15 June 1933 — News Review of Current Events the World Over [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

News Review of Current Events the World Over

Economic and Monetary Conference Opens in London--Illinois and Indiana for Prohibition Repeal--Varied Doings in Congress.

By EDWARD W. PICKARD

SIXTY-SIX nations were represented by some of their best financial and economic authorities when King George formally opened the world

economic and monetary conference in London. It was a momentous occasion, for on the results obtained from the conference depends in great measure the welfare of the world, at least in the immediate future. The delegates will be in session for many weeks, and the success of

their deliberations rests on the mutual concessions that may be made, for no one nation or group of nations can expect to obtain only advantages. Most vital of the problems to be tackled is admittedly the stabilization of currencies, which involves the return of all nations to the gold standard or at least to a metallic standard; and this return must be a synchronous movement so that all countries will be on the same level at all times. In the debate on this question leading parts will be taken by Senator Key Pittman of Nevada and Ralph W. Morrison, retired banker of Texas, the members of the American delegation to whom the monetary problem was especially given for formulation of the policy of the United States. Senator Pittman before the conference opened told something of a plan he had devised by which the nations could use silver as a certain percentage of their currency reserves, thereby economizing on gold and stabilizing the price of silver. He insisted this would not constitute bimetallism as gold would still be the standard. The nations appear to be in agreement, Mr. Pittman said, that the currency reserve of gold should be lowered below the 40 per cent now required in the United States. Twenty-five per cent gold coverage was mentioned for purposes of illustration by the senator, who said that one-fifth of this reserve should be silver. When the price of silver was low the governments would buy and maintain reserves of the metal, which they could sell when the price was up, the senator said. The other major aims of the conference are the raising of the world price level, and the lowering of international trade barriers. Of course the three are inextricably intertwined, and they affect all other problems that will come up. Back of it all is the matter of the ten billions odd owed by European nations to the United States. War debts were excluded from the agenda by Washington, but they will be continually in the minds of many of the delegates and eventually something must be done about them. ILLINOIS and Indiana by popular vote added themselves to the list of states that assure their ratification of the amendment repealing prohibition. In the former state the vote was about 4 to 1 in favor of the wets, and the Hoosiers voted for repeal by approximately 2 to 1. There had been no doubt as to the result in Illinois, but Indiana, long one of the driest of states and the very center of the AntiSaloon league’s power, was counted on by the prohibitionists to stand against ratification. One of their leaders, L. E. York, explained their defeat by saying: “The repealists had ample funds supplied by the breweries and distillers and the state organization had paid workers at the polls.” SENATOR PAT HARRISON’S plan for financing the public worksindustry control measure was adopted by the senate finance committee,

which then reported out the bill for debate. The backbone of the Harrison program, which is calculated to raise $227,000,000, is a capital stock tax of one-tenth of 1 per cent on the net worth of corporations. This tax is expected to raise $80,000,000. Corporations are to be allowed to

declare their own valuation, and as check on this provision a penalty tax is provided of 5 per cent on surplus profits of more than 12 1/2 per cent. Second feature of the Harrison program is the imposition, in lieu of normal tax rates levied on the individual as the house bill contemplated, of a 5 per cent tax on corporation dividends to be levied at the source. This is expected to bring in $73,000,000. Third is an additional one-half cent tax on gasoline, calculated to raise $62,000,000, instead of the threefourths of a cent tax proposed by the house. The railroad reorganization bill and the $2,000,000,000 home mortgage measure were among the important bills in conference. The latter was passed by the senate without a record vote.

DEMOCRATIC revolt against some of President Roosevelt’s measures created discord in both the house and the senate and the administration’s program for national recovery was not having a smooth road. The first upset had been the senate’s action in voting a 25 per cent limitation on reductions in compensation payments to war veterans, which added about $170,000,000 to the independent offices appropriation bill before it was sent to conference. Mr. Roosevelt, accepting his first defeat, sought peace by compromise. At his direction new regulations were prepared governing the payments to disabled war veterans and to the dependents of deceased soldiers, under which the veterans would receive an additional $50,000,000 or $60,000,000 over that which was contemplated in the President’s original orders. The reduction in payments under the new orders would be about $400,000,000 instead of the $450,000,000 originally contemplated. The veterans’ bloc in congress was not at all enthusiastic over this compromise. CYRUS H. K. CURTIS of Philadelphia, one of the oldest and best known of American newspaper and magazine publishers, died at his home at the age of eighty-three years. He had been ill since May of last year when he was stricken with heart disease while on his yacht near New York. The Ladies Home Journal, the Saturday Evening Post and the Country Gentleman were Mr. Curtis’ magazines, and he was also president of the Curtis-Martin Newspapers, Inc., publishing the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Public Ledger, and the Evening Public Ledger in Philadelphia, and the New York Evening Post. His gifts to charitable and educational institutions totaled many millions. WHY the government should have paid Richard B. BeVier $1.40 apiece for 200,000 toilet kits for men in the conservation corps--a price that

the War department said was 55 cents too high--was a question that the senate military committee found hard to answer. Louis McHenry Howe, secretary to the President, talked with BeVier 15 minutes before the signing of the contract by Robert Fechner, director of the conservation

corps, but Mr. Howe told the committee he never directly or indirectly attempted to influence any decision as to the purchase. He said he transferred the whole matter to F. W. Lowery, assistant to Budget Director .Douglas. Then Mr. Lowery took the stand and declared he never had any responsibility in the matter, simply making a recommendation to Mr. Fechner. This Mr. Fechner testified he construed as an order. There was no least intimation of improper motives on the part of any of the gentlemen involved, but the senators seemed agreed that Mr. BeVier was a “supersalesman.” When Mr. Howe was on the stand Senator Dickinson of Iowa asked him why he did not turn the matter over to the War department instead of “starting up all this new purchasing machinery.” “Well,” Mr. Howe replied, “this seemed to be a complaint against the War department itself. I was told the War department was about to make a purchase that would be disadvantageous to the government.” “Who said it would be disadvan tageous?” asked Senator Robert D. Carey of Wyoming. “Mr. BeVier,” responded Howe. CREDIT must be given the council of the League of Nations for inducing the Hitler government of Germany to abandon part of its warfare on the Jews. The council, acting on the petition of a resident of upper Silesia, unanimously adopted a report declaring that the boycott of Jewish shops in that territory and some regulations affecting doctors, lawyers and notaries were in conflict with the Pol-ish-German minorities convention. Thereupon Friedrich von Kellar, spokesman for the reich, told the council the German government would restore Jews in German upper Silesia to positions they had lost since the beginning of the Nazi regime. WHEN Princeton’s scholastic year opens in the fall the old university will have a new president, its fifteenth. He is Dr. Harold Willis Dodds, who has been professor of politics in the university and chairman of the administrative board of the school of public and international affairs. Professor Dodds, who is not quite forty-four years old, is the youngest man to be chosen for the presidency of Princeton in 175 years. He is recognized as an international expert on electoral methods, and is regarded as an authority on municipal government.

CONVENTIONS by the dozens and scores are being held in Chicago this year, numerous especially because of the World’s fair. Most of them are commercial or professional, but among them was one, just held, that exhaled a delightful perfume. It was the annual meeting of the Garden Clubs of America, held in the Drake hotel which overlooks Grant park and the lake front. The organization is a federation of local garden clubs whose members are for the most part women of position and means in their various communities. Their interests are especially in the conservation of wild flowers, the preservation of the redwoods of California and the elimination of the billboard along highways. Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley of New York city was re-elected national president. Mrs. Oakley Thorny of Milbrook, N. Y., is the honorary vice president. The hostess clubs were the organizations in Lake Forest, Kenilworth and Evanston. A feature of the convention was a supper held in the Shedd aquarium, where the ladies gave evidence that their interest in gardening included an interest in the culture of gold fish in rock garden pools. FERDINAND PECORA, counsel for the senate committee that has been investigating the doings of J. P. Morgan Co., undertook to bring to light

the details of the operations by which the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland financed their extensive railroad expansion. He said he intended to show that those men, with associates, “purchase railroads with money paid by the public, but always they sit in the saddle.” O. P. Van Sweringen was the

chief witness, and he was the “forgettingest” witness yet to appear before the committee. To almost all Mr. Pecora’s questions he replied, “I don’t recall," or "I don’t remember,” until he drew a sharp rebuke from Senator Barkley, who was presiding. “It seems incredible that a man of as large affairs as yours could have so little information about them,” the Kentucky senator said sharply. “I don’t want to depend on guesswork,” Van Sweringen replied. About all he remembered was that he and his associates received from the Morgan firm two loans totaling almost $40,000,000 on October 21, 1930. Persistently, however, Mr. Pecora drove at two matters--first, to show that the Van Sweringens had built up their railroad holdings, not through investment of their own money, but through borrowings, the pyramiding of holding companies, and the sale of holding company securities to the public; second, to show the rise of the Morgan interest in the Van Sweringen holdings, beginning with equipment loans which were used in several instances to buy from companies doing business with the Morgans, and ending, as future evidence is meant to show, by Morgan & Co. acquiring control over the Van Sweringen interests. VOCIFEROUSLY and loudly Senator Arthur R. Robinson of Indiana, Republican, demanded in the senate that Secretary of the Treasury Woodin be impeached and that Norman Davis, “ambassador at large," be recalled, because their names were on the lists of “preferred” investors of the house of Morgan. And he included in his denunciation Robert Worth Bingham, ambassador to Great Britain. “I say you have a secretary of the treasury that ought to be removed immediately because the American people have no confidence in him,” shouted Senator Robinson. “Time after time he accepted gratuities from the house of Morgan. Is he beholden to Morgan? Of course he is, or else he is an ingrate. If the President does not remove him, the senate should impeach him.” RUSSELL T. SHERWOOD, that elusive gentleman who was reputedly the financial and business agent of Jimmy Walker while the latter was

mayor of New York, and who disappeared when he was wanted as a witness during the Seabury inquiry into Walker’s affairs, came back from hiding and was promptly called before a federal grand jury in New York that was investigating the former mayor’s income tax returns. His attorney,

Michael F. Dee, was in an anteroom but Sherwood did not call on him for advice, which was taken as an indication that he answered fully and freely all questions put to him. When dismissed Sherwood hurried to his temporary residence in New Jersey so that he would not be arrested on the state charges pending since he fled during the Seabury inquiry. At that time he was fined $50,000 for contempt, and, as Attorney Dee said, he did not wish to be jailed for default in payment of the fine. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT nominated South Trimble, Jr., of Kentucky to be solicitor for the Department of Commerce. He also sent to the senate the following nominations of United States attorneys: John A. Garver for Idaho, William J. Barker for New Mexico, Carl C. Donaugh for Oregon, and William McClanahjm for western Tennessee. 1933, Western Newspaper Union.

R. W. Morrison

Sen. Harrison

Louis Howe

R. T. Sherwood

O. P. Van Sweringen