No U.S. goods reach Axis
None of supplies for French Africa taken
…
The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SAN FRANCISCO – Except for our little side trip to the House of Mystery, I drove straight through from Portland to San Francisco – two and a half days.
On this trip I had a traveling companion, and a very pleasant one. There’s a slight difference in our ages, but he’s one of the best friends I have. A few of you with elephant-like memories may remember a column I wrote about him one summer from Alaska.
His name is Johnnie Palm. He has lived in Alaska for 45 years. For most of that time he has carried the mails – by dog team, by nurse sled, on snowshoes, on skis, and by truck. He has lived the toughest, hardest life of anyone in my acquaintance.
Yet today he is so tiny, and so timid and so courteous, and the dresses so meticulously and conducts himself so quietly, that you’d never know he’d ever seen a malamute dog in his life. He is 76.
During most of his years in Alaska he seldom came “outside,” as Alaskans say of coming to the U.S. But three or four years ago he came out to get a set of teeth, and he liked it so well he’s been coming out every winter since.
He and Mrs. Palm are spending the winter at a hotel in Seattle. I ran onto them there, and coaxed Johnnie into riding down with me. He came to Portland by bus, and we started out.
Johnnie is the perfect traveling companion. He talks just enough to break the monotony, but doesn’t keep you talking. He enjoys a moderate speed, as I do. He likes to stop early, as I do. And in two and a half days he can remember an awful lot of good Alaskan stories to tell.
At 76, his health is perfect
Johnnie was up every morning at 5. He’d just sit around in the hotel lobby waiting till I showed up around 7 (which practically killed me). In those two hours he had found out from the night clerk, in his quiet way, everything about the town.
We had a lot of fun. One morning Johnnie was in such a hurry to get down to the lobby to sit that he shaved only one side of his face.
Johnnie is really a phenomenon. Although he is 76, he doesn’t look or act much older than I do. His health is perfect. He has no aches nor pains. He doesn’t wear glasses. He is young in mind and big in soul.
Like most Alaskans, Johnnie was practically raised on the bottle – the whisky bottle, I mean. In all those years behind the dog teams he never went on trail without a quart of whisky on his sled. A quart a day, that’s what he used. Of course he can’t go that strong nowadays, but. as he says, he sure keeps trying.
Seattle is filled with Alaskans down for the winter. Hundreds of oldtime sourdoughs, just loafing the winter away. They have nothing to do all day but slap each other on the back and have a drink for old times’ sake.
And since Johnnie knows everybody in Alaska, that makes it tough. Mrs. Palm laughs and says, “It’s just ‘Johnnie, here have a drink,’ ‘Johnnie, come have a drink,’ from morning till night.” Johnnie just grins when she tells about it.
Johnnie’s home in Fairbanks is rented out for the winter. He was already in the States when Pearl Harbor happened, and he’s been fretting ever since about getting back to see about his business.
Planes substitute for dogs
He runs a small trucking line, and holds several mail contracts. Things are pretty modem now in Alaska. Hardly anybody ever takes a long winter trip by dog team any more. They go by airplane. Most of the winter mail is now carried by air.
Johnnie made his last winter mail trip six years ago – and he was 70 then. It was a run of 180 miles, and his schedule was six days – 30 miles a day.
Johnnie has had a lot of close shaves in his 45 years in the Arctic, but he had his closest one that winter. He was breaking trail and somehow he got himself caught. He worked all day through the snow; finally was so weak he could barely keep going; when at last he reached a trailside cabin they said he could not have lasted another 15 minutes. As it was his hands were frozen and he lost his finger nails. But his hands are all right now.
Johnnie doesn’t like to travel away from the West Coast, because he considers himself so “green” in city ways. He eats nothing but meat and potatoes.
Ordinarily you would visualize an old sourdough who ran behind dog teams for 30 years, who drank a quart of whisky a day, who at 76 can still do a day’s work and drink a day’s share, as a pretty hard egg.
If there has ever been a kinder, nicer-minded man than Johnnie Palm, I have never met him. I admire him so much that I almost have a notion to get me a team of huskies and a quart of whisky for developing my own character. (Note to belligerent readers: Now, don’t write me dirty letters about that. You know I’m joking. Why, what would I do with a team of huskies?)
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
CHICAGO – Edmund Scott, a reporter for PM, the strange journalistic whatizzit, which Marshall Field runs in New York, has written a shocking account of conditions aboard the Normandie and along the New York waterfront, generally, under the domination of the Longshoremen’s Union of the A. F. of L., which is an unconscionable racket with a long underworld history.
For authentic background on this union read “Dock-Walloper,” the memoirs of Dick Butler, an old underworld character, who formerly was an official of the racket along the Chelsea piers and as a side job delivered Harry Thaw from Matteawan, a historic jailbreak. It was ghosted by Joseph Driscoll, I believe, and not only reads well but checks well against the known facts of life on the West Side waterfront.
Scott recently was assigned to obtain work as a longie aboard the Normandie. He joined the union at a cost of $26, marked down from the standard price of $100, without the slightest inquiry and was put to work on the Normandie notwithstanding his own intimation to the business agent of the longshoremen that he had been “in trouble” and might be using a false name.
Anti-sabotage head scoffs at news
Incidentally, the percentage of criminals working along the North River docks is high. Common alley criminals, of course, may be loyal Americans but the disposition to permit men to change identity and ask no questions obviously opens the door to the enemy agents.
Scott was picked for the Normandie job by the union and when he had written his story his editors spiked it because, they report, it was “a blueprint for sabotage.” However, PM says the gist of the piece was communicated to Capt. Charles H. Zeerfoss, the chief of the anti-sabotage division of the Maritime Commission, and that Zeerfoss scoffed and warned the paper to get Scott out of there “before he gets shot.”
Scott reported loafing by the men and himself, stalled a total of one and one-half hours in one day, locking himself in staterooms aboard the liner to smoke. He saw 20 open barrels of excelsior into which a saboteur could have tossed a match and learned that there were no precautions against sabotage by fire through any of the simple chemical devices which the Germans used freely to ignite cargoes in the last war.
The character of the Longshoremen’s Union cannot be unknown to the FBI. Or any other government agency. It is a job monopoly extending to the vital shores of Staten Island and Jersey where racketeers rule with despotic power and prey on the men not only for fees and dues but for various shakedowns.
Several weeks ago, these dispatches described the racket in general terms and a copious file of squeals and leads, including a copy of a report by a policeman who got nowhere against the political power of the criminals, was submitted to our desk. However, our best digger was otherwise engaged so along comes Scott to tilt the lid.
Fees comparable to exclusive clubs
I am rather glad PM did it because when I explode such stories they are instantly denounced as “labor baiting” by such journals which have played up to these rackets along with Mayor LaGuardia whose sympathy generally runs with pickets and unioneers and against his own cops whose loss of morale is largely attributable to that.
The Longshoreman’s Union not only certifies the longies but actually qualifies the guards who are supposed to protect property on the piers and its fees for various classifications are comparable to those of some of the most exclusive clubs in the country.
This union was responsible for the rise of Harry Bridges because its acquiescence in the pitiless robbery and exploitation of the workers put them in a mood to adopt any leader who would pretend to be their friend even though he should exploit them, himself, in the interests of the Communist conspiracy. Bridges is the only alternative they know now although one small Catholic labor school is making a little progress along the docks as a middle choice between the most vicious corruption so common to the complacent AFL and the Soviet way.
The attention of Sen. Wagner and Mrs. Roosevelt is invited to the story of Edmund Scott in last Tuesday’s issue of PM which certainly will not be accused of union-booting, having started life with a large Communist cell on the editorial side and buttered the union fakers consistently down to now.
Clapper: Just hold on!
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – This frantic scramble to find scapegoats upon whom to blame our wave of disasters probably is inspired more by panic than by common sense.
There is reason for alarm. But we are likely to do better for ourselves by trying to find out what needs to be done than by wasting too much energy in chasing scapegoats.
I find myself fixing on two points.
First, the United Nations simply will have to arm themselves more strongly before we can hope to stand up to the enemy at every point. There has been blundering, but if no one had blundered at all during the last year we still would have had hard going. Japan might not have had it so easy if Pearl Harbor had not been so disastrous to us. Still, even when we had our whole Navy in operating condition, our military people were begging for more time because they did not feel strong enough to go to war against Japan.
Future of war to be decided here
Our side is short of planes, tanks, navy, shipping and all the accessories. We cannot have enough force on hand standing ready at every point at which the enemy might attack. Until our Navy has recovered its strength we cannot hope to take the offensive, because in the fighting off our own shores shipping and a Navy that can protect it are necessary. You can’t get fighter planes across the ocean without ships.
American production and training of American manpower, both military and industrial, are necessary before the balance can be turned. If not another single blunder is made, the United Nations cannot go definitely on the offensive until American force comes more fully into play. So the future of the war is to be decided here in this country, in the factories and the training camps.
Second, the United Nations are indispensable to each other. We cannot win without the help of the British, the Russians and perhaps the Chinese. They cannot win without our help. The Dutch may be knocked out as a factor. The others must stick it out together, or each will risk defeat separately. If they were knocked out one by one, it would be a question how long we could keep the war out of this country.
At Singapore, Japan is 3000 miles from home. It is another thousand miles on to Java, where Japan is aiming now. San Francisco is 4500 miles from Japan. The Atlantic is 3000 miles across, and less than 2000 in the South Atlantic jump from Africa to Brazil. Great distances can be overcome if you control the sea and the air, as is being demonstrated against us with savage definiteness now.
Everybody must hold to the limit
Japan controls now the whole other side of the Pacific. Only Hawaii remains as a cushion. In the Atlantic we still have Britain as an outpost. Last week the Germans shook that outpost by running their fleet through the Channel. If they add the French fleet to their own strength now about to be released for action on the Atlantic, we may expect to be hard pressed to hold open the North Atlantic. The Germans have cut through it with submarines. They are working up and down our coasts and have now shelled the vital oil refinery on the Dutch island of Aruba, inside the Caribbean ring which guards Panama.
If the British are having their Pearl Harbors, we have to remember that we need the help of every nation that will stay in the war. No matter how far the British are pushed back, whatever is left is that much help. Whatever is left of the Russians and the Chinese is a help. Resistance at any point, even the feeblest, helps to give us time.
We have to get some planes and some navy and some ships built. Germany and Japan are in a desperate race to knock out the other United Nations before we have time to produce. Before the fires died down in Singapore, the Japanese had taken the chief Sumatra oil center. They are heading for Java. Germany is preparing to resume the offensive in Russia and on the Atlantic. Everybody has to hold as much as possible while we get up speed.