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About The Oregon statesman. (Salem, Or.) 1916-1980 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 20, 1944)
Air Ddji Concern Ammunition Trains. Wine-Soaked Sod "No. Favor Svoay$ 0$: No Fear Shall Aim From first Statesman, March 28, 1831 AT THE FROim r THE STATESMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY CHARLES A. SPRAGUE, Editor and Publisher ' Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for publication of all newt dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this newspaper. Industrial Wastes Sewage disposal plants when installed will not completely purify the water in the Willa mette river. Pollution irom farm animals and farmsteads will drain into the river, but worst of all industrial wastes will still be emptied into the river from pulp and paper mills, can neries, and flax plants. They do as much toward reducing the oxygen content of the water as the urban sewage, does. A step toward ending pollution from pulp and paper mills was taken with the formation Pacific coast, which was completed in Seattle last month. It plans to support! the activities of the national committee on stream improve ment which is unaertaKing a Droaa program of research looking for answers to the problems of waste utilization and disposal. The problem is not local. In Wisconsin and other states it is even worse than in the west. Thousands of dol lars have been spent in efforts to solve it, es pecially through utilization. Lignin forms the largest part (aside from water) of the wastes of pulp and paper mills. It has value, but its use is baffling. The Molalla logging road is going to use lignin for a binder on its surfacing, hauling it by tank-truck from the paper mills at Oregon City-West Linn. That was tried with only partial success in Washing ton. Eventually though some practical use for lignin will be found. We hope the newly appointed committee bends to its task, because the need for stream cleansing is irgent. Research surely hold the key; but the industry, should not be allowed to think it can loiter along under the excuse of prolonged research. Public pressure should make the researchers (and the owners) think and act faster. I, 'Bond.Bidding :r--'H -' ::AP The system of competitive bidding for sale of bonds by public utilities and railroads ap pears to be netting some good results as far as. the issuing companies are concerned. The $100 million in bonds sold by Great Northern was bid in at a little better than, par by Halsey, Stuart & Co. while Monday the O-W R &! N (Union Pacific) sold $54 million worth of bonds to Quhn, Loeb & Col at a little better than 102. The sale on bids breaks the hold of banking houses which by representation on boards jot directors got control of bond issues to the great profit of the banking houses. Great Northern, for instance, always sold its bonds through; J. P. Morgan & Co, while Union Pacific and Pennsylvania marketed Usually through Kuhn, Loeb & Co. ' fy ' I Opinion is divided however as to the long time value of competitive bidding. Some con tend that banking houses working continually, with issuers can do a better job for the compa nies than if the bonds are sold by competitive bids. SEC and the interstate commerce . com mission are favoring the competitive bid sys-, tern for utilities and railroads, though the can- dition may be waived if deemed advisable. At any rate, the grip of the finance houses is being' loosened from! these, great quasi-public corpor ations. , ; ' Postal Rates The postof fice department finally ran into one law of classic economics which it found it could not abolish, that of "diminishing returns." It had run the fees, for money orders so high that its business fell off, so now it is marching down the hill, reducing its fees sharply, cutting the former fee of 10c minimum charge to the old-time charge of 3c. We wonder if the people realize that the one utility in the United States which over the past , 12 years' has increased its rates is the United States postoffice. Electric service rates have been slashed, telephone service (long distance) costs less and service is much improved, tele graph1 service costs less. But the one agency With an absolute monopoly and that of the most vital of all services, which has increased its rates Lon letter mail by 50 per cent is the United States postoffice. And it is the one agen cy where government ownership is absolute and complete. Fourteen years ago some people were saying that what this country needed was a Mussolini. Remember, he made the trains run on time,: and "put labor in its place." ' Editorial Comment ENCORE FOR A NIGHTMARE? Plans are developing for the creation of great , post-War surpluses of farm products to be dumped on foreign markets at world prices, with our Fed eral Treasury taking great losses caused by the prospective wide difference between the American price level and world prices. Probably nobody con sciously desires to set the stage for a national dis aster, but the review' of the situation printed in a recent issue of this newspaper leaves no doubt of the direction in which the efforts of the farmers' Washington (friends are heading.. To begin with, the Stabilization Act of 1942,-with . subsequent amendments, pledges the government to support prices of nearly all farm products at 90 per cent of parity and at 92 per.cent for cotton. This week the conference committee on the reconversion bill agreed on the Bankhead amendment setting 95 per cent of parity for cotton. It also agreed to au thorize government agencies to' sell farm products . (acquired in the course of. price-supporting and crop-loan operations) abroad at what the com t modi ties wUl bring and to sell them at world prices to American processors exporting the finished pro- ducts. These provisions, obviously, would foster American agricultural production, which just as obviously is capable of great expansion. ' Secretary Wickard and others are aware of what these legislative efforts to protect the farmers from a post-war price decline Imply. Hence there is informal but earnest discussion of ways to limit farm output, such as denial of price-suppoPt bene fits to farmers who exceed assigned quotas for wheat, corn, cotton or whatnot. ' ; It is a decade and a half since the late Federal Farm' Board began the experiment of supporting agricultural prices with federal funds. It spent a lot of the taxpayers' money and did not stop price declines. : Next was production control: killing little pigs, plowing under crops and fining people for raising too much. Mr. Vickard and his department were right up to their ears In this business after we un dertook a commitment to feed a considerable por tion of the world. At the time of our own plunge Into the war we were threatened by a food short age. We were saved from the worst effects by for tuitous circumstances.. ' - ." : Tardily and in somewhat of a panic curtailment 'was . reversed and production inducements substi . tuted. Rationing was instituted. Now we" have great stores of food which we do not know what " to do with. - '..'. . And what is the remedy offered? Why price1 sup port And there bobs up Mr. Wickard shouting pro duction control.' Do we intend to start the cycle all over again? It's like a man asking for an en core to the tortures of a nightmare. Suppose we support prices. Consumers will de mand higher wages to pay the higher living costs. So what then? Probably a subsidy for the con sumer.;; -;; v.v ,li '::.' " .-: .:;y' ' And all this" time people are growling about . regimentations-none more than the farmer. People are demanding relief from high taxes. That is Vhat we are saying. What is it.we are doing? Are we con templating a course which will necessitate that the government take; the taxes from us and .then give them back again acompanied by detailed regula tions of what we can and cannot do. Wall St. Journal, 1 Command Performance I Hollywood had another one of its cozy little; weekend parties Saturday night, embroidered ' with a black eye and a! scratched forehead for a brace of the guests. This was not a balcony seen rehearsed for public' gaze in. the wee hours of the morning, as was the last publicized party at the film capital. This was a garden fisticuffs, in which Lana Turner's ' ex-husband, Stephen Crane, took on Turhan Bey, a Turkish denizen of Hollywood who escorted Lana, once famed as a sweater girL to the, party.? Crane got the black eye, Bey the scratched forehead, and Lana got mad find threw a diamond-ruby ring tljat Crane had given her into the bushes. ; One can't help wondering how they make Up their guest lists in Hollywood. Is there no "waiting period" before divorced persons are invited to the same social affairs? Or are guests selected with a view to a real tussle for the en tertainment of the jaded 'movie; colony? Some enterprising promoter ought to hire Hollywood bowl for the next big party andf charge admis sion for a repeat performance of some of these fistic free-for-alls. Bewildering A contributor to the letter column of the Ore- gonjan starts out with this paragraph: Am getting so bewildered. I Was 5 years old, Just old enough to go! to school, at the time Mr. Roosevelt was; elected president of the United States. I will be 21 years old in time to vote in November presidential election, f. We're bewildered toj; at his arithmetic. :Or is he writing about the fifth term? ! A deputy OPA adnjinistrator comes along and warns that we on the coast may get less gas oline after the nazis aire defeated. That's the bunk. The savings in Europe will be far more than the extra needed for powering the Pacific attack. Some of these jgovernrneni men think they have a duty to be ticking the people and all the time tiiey are using up transportation, riding in government gas-buggies, eating on expense account, of course) at the best 'hotels. Well, we'll win the war in spite of them, and when we do we want pjir gasoline back and we don't want to wait till! some underling gets to Tokyo, either. If' I ; I Interpreting The War News K1RKE U SIMPSON ! ASSOCIATED PRESS WAR ANALYST Driving to link up with airborne allied forces in eastern Holland, British armor as threatening to do more than turn the flank of the Siegfried line. It is aiming a deadly shaft at Berlin itself through the half -open! Nujmegen-Arnheim gateway at the head of the.-Rhine delta. ! f l'- i j A Berlin radio admitted further allied air land ings in eastern Holland with fighting progress "north of the great rivers The reference appar ently is to the Maas and the Bhineand their tribu taries. Arnheim, gripped by airborne troops, is the northern Portland of the) Brabant gateway to- Ber lin Through that area run the direct road and rail Connections between Berlin and the low countries. It is to early yet to say definitely whether the allied break-through attempt at the head of ; the , Rhine delta is the main attack of the Anglo-American "blows in the west, or is designed in! part at least to force a diversion of German forces north ward from the American front It seems precisely aimed through the Nujmegen-Arnheim gateway to avoid both the nazi flooded coastal areas in Holland and the heavily congested Esscn-Cologne-Aachen triangle that faces American first army forces on the British right . . i f That highly industrial lower Rhine area of Ger many is the most densely populated portion of the country. Farther north, however! where the allied air army now is operating with a fast-paced British followup around the southern portal of the Brabant gateway, there is no such obstacle! A break-through there,, once the Rhine is left' behind, would en counter no further water barriers of consequence . to slow Its pace, i , I I J . The fact that General Eisenhower has thrown his carefully conserved separate air army into' ac tion in. this theater, indicates the importance he at taches to the move. It may prove that it was with held not only until the British ground forces in western Holland were iri a position to take advan tage of the' air borne sweep, but urttil - American pressure along the rest of the front had occupied all available German reserves, i - v j It is significant, at least, that in following through . on the airborne attack .j British iarmor apparently found meagre resistance and relatively little Ger man damage to communications. , ! That indicates that the nazi high command was caught off guard. It that is not the case, the only answer to the speed with which British ground forces moved must be utter confusion in German ranks. . WITH THE AEF IN FRANCE, Sept 17. r (Delayed)-W,hToot-notes from the fly boys in France: '. a Reconversion Time in Germany A French ma jor! has taken his prized "leaf from thj t'ti e of rrnce' back to where it came froin.l,:v-y;l .!' A Six weeks ago, th officer was flying P-47 from Corsica over.rrance, tii H?n - fighter Kenneth L. Uounltg 0 ns countrymen. He strafed a; Ger man troop train so closely that he ploughed trirough. treetops, but the powerfulj Thunderbolt brought him back to Corsica, leaves decorating Its wings, fu selage and tail assembly. J He divided these leaves among bis fellow pilots and they flew over their homelanid on D-day of the Riviera: invasion, each with a leaf from the tree of France o ver bis heart j j Later, they moved to the main land and continued their oper ations against the Germans. Al ways it was the major who was out in front burning the; deck with his eight 50's spitting bul ' lets at the hated boche. j j Over the Belfort Gap a few days ago he hit an ammunition train, it blew up under him. The. gallant plane and the gallant pi lot tried to recover but the ex plosion was too great 'and they ploughed straight ahead into a clump of trees of j France.; The other members of his outfit still carry their leaves. r - t -..- (Continued from Page 1) The price consumer $190. average per year dends share to $6 ness was $150 of has had nd Now it ers. of the welder to the. dropped from $550 to that same period rose from $1300 to over $5400. Divi- from $2.50 a 00 a share. The busi-' started in 1896 with money and outside capital since. over 1000 work- During wages increased borrowed employs How did he do it? By what he calls intelligent selfishness. He quotes William James to support his view that man develops be cause of- "crisis and incentives.' Men rarely extend themselves; if the reserves of their talents , could be tapped they could im ' prove theif performance greatly. . So Lincoln draws on his own I creative genius and encourages his workers by rewards to do the same for the constant im provement of the company prod uct and reduction of unit costs. Lincoln regards this as funda mental for man's achievement: "He must first have the oppor tunity, wiich is freedom, and secondly, the reason, which is incentive. j : That br ngs him head-on into collision with Washington. He is , prevented! from extending his system of incentive rewards to his workers because of wage controls, and finds himself pen alized by renegotiation of con tracts though he sells a better product for less money than his competitors. Thus he says of one , item he can sell it for $256 but after taxes and renegotiation his profit is cut ' to one-third of what it was for the item before the war, which his competitors seU for $360, after taxes, and make less (profit and are not re negotiated. So he is dead against government control of business, regarding Jit as a deadening hand "to achievement To quote: I "Unfortunately, theorists In government feel that they know just how jto run industry so as . to produce Utopia. But the oper ation of an industry, as the in dustrialist knows, is one ofhe most intricate problems that man handles. It is obviously im possible to operate industry by rule. The only way, however, that government can run any activity; is by dogmatic direc tion. That must fail in industry as we so clearly see now." In wartime even original geni uses like Lincoln have to con form to general rules; and he can endure j renegotiation and wage control without very serious in jury. But when the war is over then human energy and enter prise should be released. Lin coln is right as to the potenti alities of the human mind, and his prescription of freedom of opportunity and incentive through . reward is correct. This prescription runs, into two inw pediments within Industry, pne is the attitude of employers who still regard labor as a commo dity to j be bought at the lowest price in a competitive market, which denies incentive except hunger; and second, the attitude of labor organizations which limit output per man and resist labor-saving devices. It is noted that there is no union at Lin coln Electric company. The record of. the Lincoln Electric company is just a mini ature of the whole system of modern industry. It is. the prac tical application of ideas for production which will contri bute something to man's comfort or welfare. Wages (real wages, that is, not money signs) rise as the productivity of the industrial i plant increases. It is of far more importance to labor to have goods produced in abundance at lowering prices than to have fewer goods at higher prices. For it1 is goods - and services which people consume, not the paper pt currency. . v Russia, which started out bravely on a communist line, had to come to the principle of incentive and reward for work ers. America can do the job bet ter than Russia if it retains teamwork of management and workers and keeps alive the twin principles of freedom of opportunity and Incentives for effort I "THE i YOUNG IDEA" By Mossier ' "r-J v j itr4 fwttwrfrWw- - 7 1 - ft - ii ii j "Do yoa think I should wear a more conservative tie tonight? .. . M The party's strictly formalT w , ,T FACING FOREST FIRE FACTS The 1944- season has shown again how close we may be brought to economic catastrophe by situations of forest fire dan ger beyond all human control. In the f week of September 3 a long drouth and dropping humid ity formed the worst fire hazard the woods of Washington and Oregon had ever known. An av erage of 20 new fires daily blazed up during the week. The news papers on the morning of Tues day, September 12, reported fires burning everywhere in the two great forest states, two large ones "out of control', and ..others threatening to blow up. In the critical dawn of Septem ber 12, the wind could have been from the east devastatingly dry Instead, it blew out of the west bearing in drizzle and fog over the Washington coast and also hoisting humidity in Oregon. Loggers'; luck saved us from another 1933 season, when dire drouth did run on week after week, and was climaxed by the Tillamook ! fury. Every warden I've talked to on the danger says he got through it just by the skin of his teeth, j It is time to look the facts of forest fire causes full in the face and to speak out honestly on what we see there. CRIME AND MISDEMEANOR Forest fire prevention, in real and effective sense, abides in the laws and their enforcement Right there is the tap root of the problem of preventing the man caused forest fire. This Is a grim fact that has never been fully faced and looked in the eye. It is too simple and easy to con sider fire caUses in terms of "cig arette flippers,' "careless camp ers',' and! such-like, and to be content with campaigns of kind appeals to the general public to Toe "careful with fire v -The Keep Green programs of Oregon and Washington are of course all to the good and are vital in the-field of public edu cation on the first problem of forest conservation. But their sponsors do not pretend that they have any effect on the sinister minority of vicious criminals and irresponsible conkheads among the people who live in the woods, or work in the woods, or find re creation in the woods. , Criminals and conkheads cause the worst fires. They cannot be touched by any sort of an appeal. The forest arson they commit can - only ; be reduced by the strong" N arm of the law with a club in Its fist by full-strength enforce ment Of j the forest protection laws we already have, through the cooperation of ALL law en- forcement agencies. Including the courts, i The man who deliberately sets a forest fire; is a criminal, heart soul and hide. . Under present laws it Is well-nigh Impossible to convict forest arsonist as such. . Because public opinion still holds the setting of a forest fire to be not a crime but a. .misdemeanor, , judges," law officers j and law makers commonly consider arson . in the woods no crime. THE Nt 't JOB .. Such are the facts we need to look into and to grasp with fight '.. ing determination to . root them out and work them over. Appeals ' to the noble and good in human -. nature will not touch , these evil rotts, ' any j- more ' than spring burning of fern may touch the roots of this tenacious weed. ' The tough, . mean, miserable job we have to do Is agitation of public opinion into a state- that will force public servants jto jail the forest criminals and conk heads without mercy. ;", That is the one and only sort of fire pre vention that the worst human sources of forest fires can under stand or will obey, j The Literary Guidepost By JOHN SELBT ONE MAN'S WAR," as told te Pete Martta ky Sft. Charles K, KcUy (Knopf; $2). A short book called t'One Man's War turns out to be ex tremely interesting, and perhaps worth considerable study, j It Is Sgt Charles E. Kelly's story, and Sgt Kelly is the famous Pitts burgh Kelly who is, up to now, the Sgt York of this war.1 It Is the . perfect story the boy brought up, as he himself re marks, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks who goes into this . war without benefit of ideology, simply as another chore in the succession of chores that is the Army, and makes himself a great and fabulous hero.j There aren't more than a half dozen readers, most likely, who won't like Sgt. Kelly and his hon esty. But the ones jwith good lit erary taste will feel like turning one Pete Martin oyes their knee and dusting his pants. Mr. Mar tin, or the editor of the Saturday Evening Post which, I believe, published "One Man's War" in the first place. ; Somewhere be tween Kelly's doubtless highly colored narrative and the -printed page, the storyi got all phonied up. It sounds like those patriots for the day who talk about "GI - Joe!" with trembling voice: at ev ery opportunity. s L. Kelly got into the Army be cause it seemed a good idea; he didn't quite know why. He went over the hillwhile in training, for exactly the same lack of rea son. He took his punishment ; made a good soldier, got to Italy, mowed down Germans by the score, won the 1 Congressional Medal of Honor and th Silver Star, and was the first enlisted man to be so honored in this war. j Mr. Martin writes Kelly's story in the first person. That being the case, he should use Kelly's vocabulary. Ill bet Kelly never said "This was ) a. worrisome thing in his life, but Is made to say it in the book. He is con' stantly made to write "peer" in stead of "look," -rib" for "kid." "horrible example" , for "dope." He Is made to describe dried ba nanas as "queer, I wispy-looking things, and to write about sour- v More fortunate in i the same sort of situation was Lt George Potts of Dallas, Tex who went out with four Thunderbolts on "a routine armed reconnaissanae mission" over the Belfort Gap sector. - " He spotted an enemy train with full steam up nestled in a ravine. He made one pass and blew up the locomotive. "It looked like a set-up," said the veteran' of 90 combat mis sions later. "We reformed to strafe the cars. I pulled out of my pass at about a hundred feet and banked over to see what had happened. AU of a sudden it seemed as though Vesuvius had busted loose." ; After that he (was not quite r sure what happened until he "sort of came to" a few moments later and found the other pilots more than 50 miles away. Then he knew" another ammunition train had been blown up. Despite blazing wing tanks which he jettisoned, a jammed taQwheel and ri p p e d wings. Potts managed to get his Thun derbolt back . to his base, but what remained of the craft went immediately to salvage. He is flying a new P-47. Brig. Gen. Gordon P. Saville, tactical air commander in this theater, is pretty proud of Lt Robert S. Mandell of LaJara, Colo, for helping solve, the tick lish: gas supply storage problem, ' but there are certain persons around the world who probably will howl with rage when they hear now. . It had been tough to get suffi cient gas ferried up by Libera tors, Bostons and C-47's, and then the fighter outfit found it had no place to store the pre cious petrol needed for the thun derous chase of the Germans westward. ' Mandel miraculously came up with four railroad tank cars. He 'persuaded French authorities to shift them to a siding near the airfield. With finesse, he urged the French to dump the contents of the cars. Sad - faced French m a q u 1 s emptied them of wine. Now 25,000 gallons of aviation gaso line fill the. cars, and pilots find their way back to the field by following their noses to the wine-soaked sod.. . ., . War Agencies Due to Close l WASHINGTON, Sept 19.-(flV President Roosevelt today noti fied the 'government's war agen cies to get ready to go out of bus iness, buteconomy advocates on Capitol Hill advocated that the cuts begin right now. Chairman Byrd (D-Va) of the joint committee on reduction of nonessential federal expenditures expressed the belief that 300,000 to 400,000 civilian employes' could be released before the end of hos tilities without impairing govern ment functions. - Rep. Taber (R-NY), a member of the same committee, suggested "Let's do it now; let's not wait" Mr. Roosevelt himself estimated that some of the cuts could be made as soon as the fighting is over in Europe. State GOP Club Keeiects rresiaent PORTLAND. Ore., Sept 19-JP) Ray Carr, Portland, was reelected president of the Oregon. Republi can club today at the 11th an nual convention. ' . Mrs. Ed Goetzl, Oswego, was elected secretary. Dr. O. Aj Ol son, Salem, was named vice presi dent in the first congressional district; Charles f.- Bollinger, Gladstone; Mrs. Anna M. Ellis, Tillamook; and Mrs. Mae . T. Brandt Corvallis, members of jthe advisory, board. OSC Frosh Registration Same as Year Ago CORVALLIS, Sept 19-CP)-Freshman registration i at Oregon State college reached 773 on the first day exactly the saVne num ber as last year, the registrar said today. Upperclass students will register here Saturday, and classes open Monday. . ' ' ,' : . . : Ing milk of human kindness' and turning thirst Kelly comes through in spite of it- but It's v tough on him;: GIFT CANTEEN .Gift Suggestions! Ruby-Signet and Emblem Rings, Identification Bra celets, Billfolds Dog ' Chain, Comb and Brush Setsw - - -; -f -Modi Before . October 15th! , . V - Credit If - . i - Desired 1