America at war! (1941– ) (Part 1)

Servicemen – here’s how to keep ‘her’ loving you

Rules advanced for method soldier may follow to hold on to the girl ‘way back home’
By Ruth Millett

State is third in bond quota

Pennsylvania must raise $81,050,000 in July

Washington (UP) –
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. today announced the state-by-state breakdown of the $1-billion July quota for war bond and stamp sales.

New York, with $171,596,000, has the highest quota, while Nevada, with $1,038,000, has the lowest. July’s quotas were based on sales in May, when the national quota was $600 million. June’s quota is $800 million and it probably won’t be reached.

Mr. Morgenthau pointed out that in areas where the war is closest, bond sales soared above prescribed quotas in May. Hawaiians, he reported, bought 503% more binds than their quota while Alaskans bought 148% of their quota.

Pennsylvania, which is the second ranking state in population, received a quota of $81,050,000 for July, third highest, while Illinois, third ranking in population, was second with $84,925,000.

Two ships launched

Kearny, NJ –
Two cargo ships were launched yesterday at the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock ways, the second double launching in eight days.

Fit budget to bonds, women are urged

36,000 youths will register on fifth R-Day

County’s 168 stations open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. for enrollment tomorrow

When civilian rubber supply goes, it’s gone

Scrap rubber dealer profiteering charged

New York World’s Fair gives out bad news

The Pittsburgh Press (June 30, 1942)

Panel backs Little Steel pay increase

Membership maintenance also won by union in report to WLB

Another R-Day –
County offers 36,000 youths

Registrations start slowly at 168 stations

‘Bombs can lick Nazis’ –
Sister of ‘Billy’ Mitchell back from Berlin prison

Parry

I DARE SAY —
Patriotism is not enough

By Florence Fisher Parry

Once to every man in the nation – and columnist – comes the moment to decide. I’m confronted with that choice right now. Shall I take the easy way and write with soft soap, or shall I cut with a rasping chisel and let the chips fall where they may?

I’ve been harping on rubber. Well, I’m going to keep on harping on it as long as we keep on being damn fool optimists when it comes to rubber conservation. It seems as though nobody actually realizes that this one leak in the dike can let loose upon us the floods of defeat. I guess I’m scared. Why shouldn’t I be? Not a soul I’ve talked to is actively worried.

Patriotism is not enough. We’ve tried it. It’s failing. It simply isn’t enough. All right then, let’s admit for the sake of argument that mortal man is ignoble – shameful thought – he has to have more of an inducement before his patriotism really gets working.

I offer a crass solution: I offer the inducement of money. Our government, always idealistic, thought that a penny a pound would be a fair price for scrap rubber, and the government, as usual, overestimated us.

A penny, a pound seems not to be enough. Don’t tell me, that in every American household and on every American farm, there wouldn’t be a more productive research for scrap rubber if we were offered, say, 5¢ a pound and in direct ratio to our national need, up to 10¢ a pound if need be.

Let’s face it. The American public has been pampered and babied and nursed and paid premiums for too long a time. Subsidies, doles, concessions, inducements – even a war won’t kill these diseases overnight. They’ve eaten into our bone and marrow and flesh and blood like a national trichiasis which no cautery can burn out at once.

Brass tacks

The realists, the unsparing realists, tell us that the American people are simply not coming through with their rubber as supposed; that thousands of pounds of it still repose in barns and attics and cellars and scrapheaps. Negligence accounts for part of this. Ignorance of our national peril for a part of it. But downright, deliberate, American enterprise accounts for the greater part of it.

Mr. Average Citizen says to himself:

I have 100 pounds of scrap rubber. Why shall I give this up for a penny a pound and get only $1 for it when if I hold back a little longer, I might get 2¢, 5¢, 10¢?

The junkman says to himself:

Why shall I kill myself, wear out my own tires, hire men with my own money, use up my time collecting scrap rubber and other scarcities when all I’m allowed for it is a measly so much a pound?

As for the farmer – and it’s on the farms that the real scrap is to be found – if you know farmers, you know that they’ve been brought up the hard way, the saving way. I know farmers’ wives who get up in the middle of the night and work in the fields long after dark in order to make a couple of extra pennies on their produce.

A farmer will go out of his way to make a few pennies. How much out of his way do you suppose he’d go for every pound of scrap rubber he could dig up, if he could get a fair price? I claim: There is no earthly way to uncover a hidden or neglected store of scrap rubber under the present setup, under the present national mood.

The American way

They tell us, the experts: If we lack tin, we’ll use substitutes of copper, aluminum, silver, and if need be, gold. Well, that recourse would be plenty costly, wouldn’t it? Yet the government stands ready to use those costly substitutes if the need becomes great enough. All right then, why not apply the same to rubber? It looks as though rubber will be scarcer than any other war commodity if this war lasts long enough.

Then we’ll have to pay more for it, that’s all.

Patriotism isn’t enough. We like to think it is. We like to brag about it. We spend millions propagandizing it. But until our back is to the wall and we are fighting for the most elemental kind of survival, not even we can be counted upon to yield up our basic instincts of enterprise. I firmly believe that the present campaign of the government to salvage scrap rubber has done little more than skim the surface.

Most auto drivers are “better fixed” for tires than they let on. Most Americans are driving ten times as much mileage and twice the speed necessary for the basic conduct of their normal lives. Most Americans need a practical incentive to spur them on to an all-out effort.

Our children have done a wonderful job of finding scrap rubber to sell for a penny a pound. It would be interesting to know just how much more they would be able to uncover for 2¢ a pound.

We are a peculiar breed of people, we Americans. We are a wasteful people, a generous people; other countries look on us as a prodigal people. But we possess one basic, wholly American trait – the love of striking a good bargain. We are born moneymakers.

Even patriotism isn’t enough to change all that overnight. We see the government spending billions for what it wants and that’s all right with us. We’re willing to be taxed through the nose.

But when the government goes out in the open market to buy scrap rubber from us, it simply goes against the grain to be paid so darn little.

Weeks of careful planning necessary before vessels of AEF can embark

Most difficult job over before gray-painted troopships sail
By Tom Wolf, Pittsburgh Press special writer

The article below is the first of two eyewitness reports on the secret sailing of an American combat force, bound for foreign service.

Senate passes fund for Army

Chamber races deadline for appropriations

Army flier in Nazi plane takes big chance over U.S.

Some patriot might shoot at the swastika, but that’s major’s risk in Air Cavalcade

Steel’s story given to public

War production revealed in series of ads

Boston curfew favored

Boston –
The city council has moved to stop a “shameful and intolerable” condition by voting unanimously for a 9 p.m. curfew law to keep girls under 16 off the street. The council agreed that some such measure was necessary to save girls from a “life of shame.”

Conferees deadlocked on farm fund measure

Dean of photographer dies

New York –
William H. Jackson, 99, Civil War veteran and dean of American photographers, died today. He photographed the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and fought at Gettysburg.

Subsidy held essential for price control

Inflation is certain unless government takes loss, OPA warns