The Wyandotte news-herald., March 14, 1946, Page PAGE FOUR, Image 4

About The Wyandotte news-herald. (Wyandotte, Mich.) 1943-1963

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THE WYANDOTTE NEWS-HERALD
PAGE FOUR
Wyandotte News - Herald
Published Seml-We«]j by THE WYANDOTTE NEWS COMPANY
3042 First Street, Wyandotte, Michigan
Phones Wyandotte 1166 - 1187.1168
Politically Independent Owned and Printed in Wyandetla
Member National Editorial Asaoclatlon
STRAUSS GANTZ Managing Editor
E. RAYMOND SAQE Advertising
KENNETH BRETHEN Advertising
ELISABETH BROWN News Editor
VIRGINIA KLEMKNT Society Editor
ERNIE EPPS Sports Editor
JANET WENDELL Classified Advertising
ALMA BOWERS Trenton Correspondent
C.E.D. And Price Control
Nobody wants inflation—except, of course,
in what each of us may have to sell. But
the formulas offered for preventing it run
to such polar extremes that the public can
hardly be blamed if it finds judgment dif
ficult. And the noise and dust kicked up in
the fight over whether or not O.P.A. and
price controls should be tossed overboard
hasn't helped. What Ralph E. Flanders re
cently told the House Banking Committee,
and the simultaneously released report of
the research staff of the Committee on
Economic Development bring, therefore,
some welcome clarification —and, we think,
good sense.
Mr. Flanders spoke as representative of
the C.E.D. He is also a New England indus
trialist and President of the Federal Re
serve Bank of Boston. Obviously neither
he nor the C.E.D., headed by President
Hoffman of the Studebaker Corporation,
could be classed as leftist. Here is the gist
of Mr. Flander’s recommendations:
(1) Extend O.P.A. and price control for
at least another year; (2) Then terminate
price controls, except for rents; (3) In the
meantime—and this is imperative—speed up
and streamline O.P.A. procedures by such
means as: self-pricing bv industry subject
to O.P.A. later revision, vigorously seeking
out areas in which controls can be dropped,
and affording immediate relief where “price
squeezes” block production; (4) And per
haps most important of all—“To terminate
price control, we should start now to re
move the conditions which make price con
trol indispensable today.”
All of this follows essentially the line of
the C.E.D. report which also refutes the
argument that supply and demand would
bring about an automatic adjustment of the
Nation's economy if controls were dropped.
In the near future, says Research Director
Yntema, return to a free market would ag
gravate inflation —a few years hence is an
other matter.
Both Mr. Flanders and the C.E.D. report
emphasize the necessity of defeating infla
tion through a flexible, coordinated, and
well-timed program of fiscal and monetary
policies. Price control must be viewed as
a temporary, emergency expedient, but none
the less an indispensable one.
—Christian Science Monitor
Lesson From Argentina
We re-read some of the entries in Ray
Josephs’ Argentine Diary the other day,
seeking some clue to the whole Argentine
mess in terms of what made it possible—
and how those things affected us.
We found it; not in the record of the
goose-step down the Axis path which fol
lowed the take-over of the Buenos Aires
government by Colonel Juan D. Peron and
his bullv-boys, but in the less dramatic, far
more significant picture of the Castillo
regime which came first.
Old, close-mouthed Ramon S. Castillo,
whose name is almost forgotten now, moved
into the Presidency of Argentina when
Roberto M. Oritz became critically ill not
long before Pearl Harbor. The men were
worlds apart in their thinking—Oritz a pro
democrat who believed in cooperation with
Uncle Sam! Castillo an isolationist who felt
Argentina's position as the grannery and
meat producer for the world must not be
endangered by taking sides.
So during 1942 and 1943, as the demo
cratic world sacrificed men and money to
come to grips with the Nazis and the Japs,
Castillo and his crowd determined to do
nothing that might affect trade with both
sides. First came suppression of the press
and radio, the films and the organizations.
Then limitations on Congress and on elec
tions, on liberty of thought and action—all
in the interests of neutrality, of course.
Some Argentines worried. But most, pros
perous as never before, selling and profiting
as rarely in their history, grumbled, made
jokes, shrugged their shoulders and did lit
tle or nothing to fight for the democratic
rights they were losing. They hoped some
body might ultimately get rid of the un
popular Castillo . . . and that it might be
their Army.
The Army did. But once the militarists
gained power, obtained recognition and be
gan operating, the truth was out—its seizure
was not to restore democracy and suppress
the Nazis, but to enchain democracy and
give the Nazis a place to hide out for a
“next try.”
And as Josephs quoted an unnamed
Argentine: “We realized too late that losing
die w r ill to fight for our rights as free men;
coping someboc/y else would do the job of
getting us the democracy we wanted . . .
meant that we lost our chance through
neglect and indifference.”
Argentines are fighting for democracy to
day. But their lesson is one no American,
North or South, can afford to overlook.
“Only way to beat inflation is thru full
production. Only way to get that is thru
policy permitting sale of products of at
least cost.” —Sen. Hickenlooper, lowa.
“I’m wearing them myself!”—Clifton Wat
son, Washington, D. C., bachelor who won
6-pair of ladies’ nylons on radio quiz.
THURSDAY, MARCH 14. 1946
Keep Government
In Its Place
Competition is as foreign to a government
bureau as the bureaucrat is to private in
dustry. The only competition in govern
ment is in the internecine struggle for pat
ronage and privilege.
A public official has announced that the
government is planning on installing stamp
vending machines in post offices “for the
convenience of customers.” Undoubtedly
the “customers” would appreciate the ma
chines, but they should not be disappointed
if they do not appear overnight. The post
office department is a government monopoly
rendering a vital service. It is efficient, but
unprogressive. It has no competitor across
the street—or stamp vending machines
would have been installed twenty years ago.
To further sharpen the contrast, observe
private industry, particularly the natural
resource group such as metal and coal min
ing, oil and power. These industries pro
duce the sinews of America. Hardly a day
passes that a technical development of some
kind is not put to work. In recent years,
coal mining has been largely mechanized.
As Coal Age points out, “Higher produc
tivity and lower cost always have been
major concerns of coal men because of their
close relationship to meeting and beating
competition. Since the machine is the out
standing means of attaining that end, de
velopments in machine design and especially
in capacity, are matters of prime concern
to production men.”
Is UNO Enough?
W T hen almost a thousand distinguished
Americans, headed by such people as Irving
Langmuir, Albert Einstein, and Sinclair
Lewis, asked President Truman to use what
authority he has to transform UNO at once
into an agency of true world government,
something • must be stirring. This group,
generally recognized to be sane and sensible
citizens, and including industrialists, clergy
men, labor and rarm leaders, prominent
educators, scientists, authors, architects, and
leading artists of stage, radio, and screen,
recently petitioned the President to take
steps that would advance us far beyond the
present UNO set-up. It is their conviction
that UNO is now but another League of
Nations, composed of sovereign and there
fore inevitable competitive states. To trans
form it into a World Government with forc
ible authority to prevent war would require
the vesting of external sovereignty in a
supra-national authority, acting under world
law, which law would be exercised not on
each separate nation, but on the individual.
The petitioners, perhaps realizing that UNO
is hardly likely to vote itself out of exist
ence, further ask the President, if the re
construction of UNO proves impossible, to
take the lead in calling anew World Con
stitutional Convention whose aim would be
quite frankly to create the framework of
a federal world government.
Back of this bold move lies, of course,
the fear of an atomic war and the feeling
that nothing UNO is now doing or can do
under its present charter can remove the
threat born of uranium mixed with sover
eignty. Only the prevention of the manu
facture and use of instruments of mass de
struction can begin to remove the threat.
The importance of the Petition lies in the
indication it gives that at least one segment
of responsible American opinion is willing
and anxious to make a decisive step toward
the One World of which Wendell Willkie
dreamed. What the petitioners believe is
open to argument; and, in the spirit of our
tradition of free speech, it is to be hoped
that that argument will continue seriously
and systematically until every citizen is
aware of the fateful issues involved.
Cost High, Quality Low
Federal compulsory health insurance such
as proposed by the President would compli
cate the already serious problem of social
security taxation. Under the proposed pro
gram, actuaries estimate that the total for
social security taxes, inclusive of sickness
insurance, would eventually reach the
equivalent of 17 per cent of payrolls, and
possibly more.
But burdensome as would be such large
new taxation, the medical care question is
much more important. With respect to the
latter, the Christian Science Monitor, which
has written some of the most penetrating
criticisms of socialized medicine, states:
“Authorities say in a great many cases
workers w r ould simply not be getting the
quality of medical care they expected. Mass
medicine administered by" a Federal bur
eaucracy would result in deterioration of
standards of service . . .
“Government insurance schemes have
been found to relieve the individual of his
own responsibility, to increase the prolonga
tion of the illness and to encourage maling
ering. The result of the program in America
is foreseen as foisting upon an inadequately
informed American people a system of
medical practice of demonstrably inferior
quality and at a constantly increasing cost,
with a huge extension of administrative
expense.
“Aside from the huge cost, the problem
sifts down to the one essential point—getting
people well. A mechanized governmental
system, run from Washington, overstandard
ized, and open to political pressures, will
not suffice.”
A Pennsylvania judge recently proved
himself no piker on the problem of juvenile
delinquency when he recommended to the
state legislature an appropriation of $4,400,-
000 for inauguration of a program to curb
crime among youth.
The judge advocated co-ordinated effort
by community educational and recreational
departments in checking youthful delin
quency. The judge’s “ounce-of-prevention”
move is one worthy of study. It seems feas
ible to expect, at least, that long-range pre
ventative programs would ultimately re
duce operating costs at penal institutions.
Y~ • j
'! I
Othman Looks
at
Washington
By Frederick C. Othman
United Press Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON (U.R) Need a
few shirts? I know where you can
buy 11,580,368 in two qualities and
all sizes.
Your shorts are ragged? I have
the address of a fellow who has
5,696,127 pairs for sale, including
2,006,209 in size-34, alone.
The government owns this haber
dashery. Tlie navy doesn’t want it
any longer, and why it isn't helping
to cover the nakedness of American
men is a mystery that Sen. James
M. Mead of N. Y., is trying to
fathom. He is amazed. Me, too.
What happened was that I was
deep in the bowels of the Capitol,
burrowing into the files of the sen
ator’s War Investigating Commit
tee. I was jotting down notes on
Army surpluses, such as 438,839
pounds of powdered soap, 11,000
one-gallon cans of castor oil, 1,527
half gallon cans of Ditto, 21,580
gravy boats, 23.281 cream pitchers,
and 20,000 surgical knives in as
sorted sizes.
This looked like subject matter
for an interesting dispatch and I
was plowing happily through the
surplus lists when I came upon the
Navy file, turned it open and
stared, bug-eyed:
Blue chambray shirts: cost 85
cents each; 6.926.903 declared sur
plus; 5,560 sold to civilians; 6,921,-
343 still in federal warehouses.
The Navy went on to list more
surplus shirts of cotton, 4,359,025
more to be exact. It mentioned 281,-
000 gray cotton hats, 313,000 gray
cotton pants, 116,000 cotton jump
ers. 1,894.212 pairs of work gloves,
1,852,000 twill jackets, 3.280,375 twill
trousers, and 167,600 pairs of cot
ton socks.
This was news, all right, all
right. I took a sharp pencil and
listed some more stuff: 218,470 rub-
Know Your Schools
SHORTAGE
Before the children go trooping
back to classes next fall, Michigan
school systems must find a total
of about 12,500 new teachers. About
4,000 of this shortage existed during
the war. The rest comes about
through the cancellation of about
5000 “war emergency certificates”
and an estimated 10 per cent in
crease in school enrollments.
During the war thousands of
teachers (about one in five> left
their classrooms to take better
paying jobs in industry, business,
military, and governmental service.
The gaps in the ranks that they
left were partially filled by issuing
“war emergency certificates” to
sub-standard teachers who could
rot meet the regular requirements
for teaching in Michigan. Remain
ing vacancies were compensated
for by increasing teacher load, by
cutting down the school curricu
lum, by half-day sessions, and the
like. In Wyandotte the situation
was handled by hiring substitute
teachers on a full-time basis and
by increasing teacher load in some
schools.
Like everyone else during the war
years, -he stork w'as working over
time. School population was on the
decline before the war, blit with
the Wyandotte births increasing
fiom 773 in 1935 to 1,607 in 1945
wc can expect our school popula
tion to be on the increase.-This is
further augmented in our secon
dary' schools by the return of young
war-w'orkers and of veterans who
wish to complete their high school
course.
Now that the war is over and
“war emergency certificates” are
cancelled, how can school districts
recruit an adequate teaching staff?
One way would be to lure back into
the profession those who went into
war jobs. With teacher salary ad
justments far behind cost-of-living
increases this is hard to do. Sur
veys indicate that fewer than half
will return.
Dr. T. Luther Purdom, head of
the placement bureau of the Uni
versity oi Michigan, states that
records show that nearly all men
who went from teaching into mili
tary or Government service are
ber arctics, 352,000 black rain coats,
I. Sou'westers, 2,051,615 white
cotton trousers, 5,314 aviators’
trousers, and other articles too
numerous to mention.
Came then an item, buried among
hundreds of other items, that made
me gulp: shorts, mountains of
shorts, enough to provide every
man in New' York City, for in
stance, with two pairs. Good qual
ity, too.
In the federal storerooms, ac
cording to the Navy’s count, there
was one batch of 4,520,740 pairs in
ah S i zes f rom 3q t 0 42 . Another con
signment of Navy shorts in sizes
unspecified totaled 1.175,387 pairs.
I got in touch with Sen. Mead,
who has been badgering the War
Assets Corp., to sell a couple of
billion dollars worth of surplus ma
terials to the people who need
them. Sen. Mead could use a few
shorts, himself.
“I am amazed,” he said, “to find
11. shirts and 5.500.000 pairs
of shorts declared surplus by the
Navy and still in Navy storage. It
would seem to me that in view’ of
the need of the men of this country
that the Senate War Investigating
committee had better take steps to
see that the nation's males get
these shirts, shorts and other items
of clothing still in shortage.”
So much for men's haberdashery.
I can report further that the fed
eral surplus disposeroos are about
to get some peculiar merchandise
for sale, such as five human skele
tons, 130 bassinetts, 322 cradles and
among other things, 20 pairs of
ice tongs. These materials are in
stock at the Army Medical Supply
Depot in Binghampton, N. Y„ the
Army doesn’t seem to need ’em
any longer, and they will be de
clared surplus soon.
The line for bassinets forms on
the left; for skeletons on the right.
returning but, thus far, only a
small proportion of the women who
left are seeking reinstatement.
Another logical source of supply
would be new graduates of our
teachers colleges, but the situa
tion there is truly alarming. Mich
igan’s graduates from teacher
training institutions have declined
from 2,100 in 1941 to 1,100 last year,
a cut of about one-half. The
student in a modern teacher's col
lege is taught the importance of
“meeting individual needs' and of
“promoting the mental and physi
cal health" of his pupils. Imagine
his dismay and frustration if he
finds himself in his actual teach
ing with a class of 40 to 50 pupils
where he ought not to have more
than 30 at the most. What oppor
tunity is there in such a situation
for meeting the individual needs?
What will be the effect on ths
mental health of both the teacher
and the pupil? The sincere lament
of many an able teacher is, “I know
how to teach so much better than
I have time to.”
A local teacher was tactfully sug
gesting to a Wyandotte gradual#
of fine personality and excellent
record that teaching would be a
good profession for him to enter.
His reply was, “I don’t want to b#
a teacher; teachers have to work
too hard.”
Each year the Wyandotte
A.A.U.W. conducts a vocational
guidance meeting for high school
senior girls. Out of the 80 to 100
who attended each of the last two
years very few have indicated in
terest in teaching as a vocation.
To quote Dr. Purdom again, “My
guess is that many days will go
by before superintendents get per
sons they want for what they art
able to pay, in view of condition*
under which teachers must work.”
Next week's article in this column
will deal wuth “Teachers’ Pay.”
“Now maybe my ex-girl friend
will be sorry!” Ex-GI Jack Love,
South Bend, IncL, inheriting |1
million.
RE-ELECT HARRY G\ ROUSE.
LIFE-LONG RESIDENT.
PeL Adv,
Letter Box
To The Editor
News-Herald
Dear Sir:
I am a resident of Wyandotte
and a business woman.
Recently I have been eating my
lunch in a local restaurant. I could
not help but notice several boys
who eat their lunch there. No mat
te *• how many people are in the
place, they say “grace” before and
after their meals.
Yesterday I asked them where
they went to school. They told me
they were eighth grade students
at St. Patrick school. They were
very polite and I do think these
boys should be congratulated, also
the teachers of St. Patrick school.
A Business Woman
25 YEARS AGO
IN WYANDOTTE
John J. Marx and A. H. Lewis
assumed managership of the Wy
andotte City Mills, Oak and Van
Alstyne.
Charles Gartner was chosen pres
ident of the reorganized Board of
Commerce. J. P. Ballantyne, who
performed most of the work of the
American City Bureau in enlarging
the local Board of Commerce, was
leaving the city after several weeks
work here.
The new program suggested by
the Board of Commerce and heart
ily endorsed by its members, called
for anew high school, a garbage
disposal system, more parks and
playgrounds, improved transporta
tion to Detroit, paving of more
streets, a cleaner city, and indus
trial development.
“Work is being rushed on a big
addition to the plant of the De
troit Brass and Malleable Works.”
Quotes Os
The Week
‘T think I'd better just keep on
acting!” Movie Star Jimmy
Stewart, declining to run for Gov
ernor of Pa.
“Government swollen with power
and laden with burdens becomes
something above and apart from
the governed.”—Ex-Pres. Herbert
Hoover.
What the
TELEPHONE WAGE SETTLEMENT
Means...
. . . TO THE PUBLIC
Recognizing their responsibility for maintaining a
vital public service, both union and management
representatives made concessions that averted a tele
phone strike recently. • Settlement means that the
welfare and security of the public were not imperiled
by a general curtailment of telephone service; that
business and industry were not handicapped by a
lack of communications in their efforts to regain
full stride.
. . . TO THE EMPLOYEES
The settlement provides basic wage increases of $5
to $8 a week for non-supervisory male employees
and $5 to $7 for non-supervisory female employees.
The increases boost Michigan Bell’s hourly basic
wage rates an average of 187 c, or 17 cents an hour.
• This is in line with the national pattern of recent
wage increases in other industries, and is subject to
governmental approval under the national wage
stabilization program.
. . . TO THE COMPANY
These new wage adjustments, together with those
granted recently to supervisory employees, will add
about $6,500,000 to Michigan Bell’s annual pay
roll. #The settlement means that the Company
can keep moving ahead with its big expansion and
improvement program to the end that the kind of
telephone service wanted can be provided when and
where it is wanted. #With both employees and
management pulling together, Michigan Bell looks
forward to the busy months ahead with complete
confidence.
MICHIGAN BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY
Urges Curb on Remarrying
INDIANAPOLIS —(U.R) Judge
Ralph Hamili of Superior Court
advocates that courts be given
authority to examine the financial
statui of divorced men to deter
mine whether they can afford to
remarry.
He said this would prevent men
from taking on the responsibility
of anew family and stinting a
family to which they already were
responsible.
Os the People
the J-deopfe
/or the JQeonle
That's what this Insurance Exchange ia . . . of,
by, for the people who own motor cars . . . those
who show' their good driving and their good motor
citizenship by their membership in America's
largest Automobile Club, the Automobile Club of
Michigan.
The protection afforded members of the Club bv
this Exchange is the broadest automobile insur
ance conceived in tlie insurance world. 'The com
of the insurant* to the members is just the cost
to the Excliange. It has these reasons for its
being ... to protect, to serve, to please. It is
truly of the people, by the people, for the people.
Detroit Automobile
In ter-In sura nee Exchange
Attorneys-in-fact: Ralph Thoma*
Chaa. B. Van Dusen Roy M. Hood
John J. Ramsey, General Manager
at Automobile I lob of Michigan
Open 2913 BIDDLE AVE. Open
Evenings Wyandotte, Mich. Eveningi
A. D. Olmstead, Mgr.
Call at the Division Office 1472-3 4
For More Information
Plans Aeronautics School
EVANSTON. 111. fIJ.R) President
Franklin B. Snyder of Northwest
ern University has announced that
the university will establish an in
stitute of aeronautics on its down
town Chicago campus.
Snyder said the new institute will
conduct research In the general
field of aeronautics, but will not
give instruction in flying or offer
vocational courses In the field of
aviation.