Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TACOMA, Wash. – I’ve just hit a new all-time high in meal prices.
It was late in the evening when I got to Tacoma. I was tired and chilly; felt as though I’d just like to relax and eat in my room; felt like good old-fashioned bacon and eggs.
So that’s what I got. The ticket was one dollar and ninety-four cents. Yes – $1.94.
I had orange juice, fried eggs, bacon, toast and coffee. Just like an ordinary breakfast. $1.94. The 4 cents was tax. Fifty cents was surcharge for room service – which isn’t modest, you must admit. But discounting all that – still the price of the meal itself was $1.40, flat.
That tops by 5 cents my former record for the same dish at the Chateau Louise in Lake Louise, Canada, a few years ago. It was $1.35 there. I once had the same meal in St. Petersburg, Fla., for 35 cents.
So you see how things are going now. If they don’t get me in the February draft, I think I shall go into the bacon-and-eggs business for the duration. I’ll bring them to your room for one dollar even, and do a little dance for you besides.
And speaking of dollars, the cartwheel is passing from the scene.
Many younger people in the East have never seen a silver dollar. But until recently they were practically compulsory in the West.
Silver dollars become scarce
I remember my first trip to Seattle, 20 years ago, when a restaurant actually refused to take a dollar bill. They haven’t been that finicky in recent years, but still the silver dollar was predominant. If you handed over a ten your change was in silver, and you went around thereafter all dragged down on your money-pocket side.
But now silver dollars are getting scarce, even out here. They say the government has quit making them. Even when you do get silver in change, they usually ask if you’d prefer paper.
Before long the cartwheel will follow the buffalo, and we’ll have them only in museums.
Down at Gold Beach the other day, I inquired about my friend “Stuart X.”
You old readers may remember him from a column a couple of years back. He is one of the world’s oddest people. His egoism is supreme and superb. He readily admits two the greatest intellect ever known – past, present or future,
It was Stuart X who, after a long correspondence with George Bernard Shaw, wrote the great playwright (himself no mean egotist) a final letter, asking him not to write again, and ending with “Shaw, you weary me.”
Stuart X was well-to-do, and had built himself a large hidden estate up the Rogue River, some 30 miles back in the Oregon wilderness. That’s where I saw him last. He built this place in order to have a hiding place when the world finally broke into flames.
So on this trip – now that the world conflagration is upon us – I asked if Stuart X were secure in his long-prepared hideaway.
The answer was no. He sold out last year. He is again living in San Francisco’s East Bay region, which everybody knows is one of the safest places in America right now!
He writes his own obituary
Incidentally, Stuart X sent out his obituary this year as a Christmas card. A friend gave me one. As you will see, it is written in Stuart X’s own personally invented language, which I shan’t attempt to explain. Here it is:
AN OBITUARY
(As excerpted from Who’s Who in California, 1942-3)
X. STUART (Stuart X) – Prophet (past the five meditations of Buddha).
Psychologist (long before the term became re-spectable)–Philosopher–Philologist–Economist–Biologist–Individ-ualist and Recorder–of his now passing race.
Born – Brooklyn, N.Y., December 10, 1864.
Named – Henry Clifford Fowler Stuart.
Dropped the “Fowler” as soon as he grew strong enough. Dropped the “Clifford” because no one would use it. Dropped the “Henry” because there were too many other henerys. And anne-x-ed an “X” to mark his unknown-ness.
Left school at 14, escaping further e-duc-ation (mental emasculation).
Lost 30 years – on other people’s busy-ness.
Author of “Principally About Finance” and “A Prophet in His Own Country” – (both of which he had to print and distribute himself) – and ori-gyn-all matter for many other books for which the whirled-are not yet read-y.
Retired over 30 years. And growing more and more tired of “Le Comedie Humaine.”
Aspiration – to avoid in carne re-nating.
When I last saw Stuart X, a few days after World War II began, he predicted that only the yellow race would survive, That’s tough for all you white people. Personally I have yellow jaundice, which I figure will qualify me for the great new world to come.
Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
NEW YORK – I covered professional and amateur sport throughout the era of wonderful nonsense, when we gave ourselves over to a passion for games and gain, and met or observed all the great American athletes of the time, both men and women, ignorant and educated, the wellborn and the lowly.
There were many fine, clean characters among them of whom no disparagement is meant in observing that Joe Louis, the prize fighter, seems a distinct degree the most admirable. His virtue as a citizen and sportsman is accentuated because he is a Negro and risen from cabin poverty and it would be dishonest to deny that the merits of a conspicuously good Negro are over-emphasized to the same extent that, in general, the faults of a disreputable one are over-emphasized.
But if Louis were a white, or, as Shaw might say, a pink, man he would, nevertheless, receive the recognition as champion of many other Americans, particularly of those who know him best.
Taken for dumb field-hand, at first
Some years ago, when Louis was on his way up, the writers on the sport side wrote amusingly of his drowsy indifference and his frugality of words. He could drop asleep like a tired dog in from the field, all oblivious of the ribald crew around a fighter’s camp, on the day before an important fight or even a few hours before ring-time. And when one asked a question, he gave a civil and sufficient answer, but in no more words than just enough. This, for a time, was taken to mean that he was a dumb field hand; but that was an excusable error, because there had been no man like him before.
True, there had been dumb fighters with nerves so insensitive and with such limited imagination that they could snooze on the table of a smoky dressing room during the semi-final and so stupid that speech was a mental exercise. But the quality of the answer which Louis did return in so few words presently proved that he was uncommonly wise, for they always covered the ground or frankly and briefly hedged the question. He used words to express thought, but not to make idle conversation, and he expressed his thoughts efficiently and stopped.
No other sportsman on the professional side ever has matched the unqualified generosity of Louis in risking his championship, a business asset of great value, in his recent fight with Buddy Baer and donating, entire, his share of the purse to the Navy’s Relief Fund.
Others have been and others will be lost in battle, but Louis, too, is a soldier now, and if he is withheld from the realities and especially protected from the normal risks of war to be exploited as a money raiser and morale builder, that course will be inconsistent with his conduct and remarks to date and the serious fault of the Army, itself. The morale of the rest would suffer, not profit, and the whole purpose of the man defeated. The Army, not Louis, will make the decision here.
Men wonder ai the instinctive tact and sporting decency of Louis’ little, breathless comments on the air when a fight is just over and he has won, or lost, not at all because he is a Negro, but because he never has been heard to complain, explain or withhold honor from an opponent.
Were you hurt, Joe?
Yes, he shook me up pretty bad there in the third.
Will you fight him again?
Yes, he is a nice boy and a good fighter. I would like to fight him again.
Louis had reason to hate Schmeling
Max Schmeling struck him an unintentional foul after the bell which started his collapse in their first fight, but he made no issue. But, for contrast, when he unintentionally fouled another opponent, the white boy howled with outrage. The only opponent he had reason to hate, personally, racially and politically, was Schmeling, who had said that he was a member of the master race, that Louis recognized this and that therefore “the naygur” knew he could not win.
For that, Louis briskly and fiercely knocked Schmeling’s body out of plumb like a bombed building with a right-hand smash beside the spine and humbled him and his Fuehrer before the world in a very few minutes. But even then he did not gloat.
Louis is race-conscious and fights as a Negro, but some Negroes who aren’t fit to carry his bucket. obstreperously attempt to capitalize his victories and fineness as being somehow, in part, their own. This, however, is not peculiar to Negroes. All breeds sullenly resent identification with the wrongs of any evil brother but noisily emphasize as distinctly racial the virtues and victories of their best.
Clapper: New labor plan
By Raymond Clapper
WASHINGTON – This new labor plan of President Roosevelt’s is one of those offhand improvised schemes, but it can take care of the situation between the AFL and the CIO if both sides play ball.
Mr. Roosevelt’s plan is simple. He proposes to have both sides sit down with him at fairly frequent intervals to talk over anything that needs attention. Each side will have three representatives who will be chosen by President William Green for the AFL and by President Philip Murray for the CIO. That seems to be all there is to it.
But don’t give the idea the brush-off just because it is simple. We sometimes lean too heavily on organization. Two or three men, if they have the authority and the will, can get more done in this kind of business than the most elaborate organization that a red-tape artist could work out on paper.
Neatest intercepted pass of week
That’s what I like about the new War Production Board. It isn’t anything very complicated. Mr. Roosevelt told Don Nelson to go ahead and do whatever he needed to do to obtain maximum output Nelson in turn is parceling out the work to a number of other men and is giving them his full authority. Organization is secondary in this kind of activity. Men are the key to it – men who have the will and the judgment and, most important of all, the authority.
So Mr. Roosevelt has brushed aside the scheme of John L. Lewis to merge or “accouple” the AFL and the CIO. The timing of Mr. Lewis was perfect. Action was needed. But his scheme aroused suspicions, and if he had a physical merger in mind there are practical obstacles to trying to do it in this emergency, because it would set off a number of jurisdictional fights.
William Green and Philip Murray can get along together. On the whole they are reasonable men. Working directly with President Roosevelt, decisions can be made by informal discussion whereas more formal means would become tangled in endless controversy. Perhaps after this has worked a while, the way toward a merger of the two organizations – if that still seems desirable – will be easier than it would be now.
Mr. Roosevelt got the idea apparently after Mr. Lewis made his spectacular move for labor unity a week ago. Neither Mr. Roosevelt nor the heads of the two labor organizations wanted Mr. Lewis to regain his former strategic position in the labor movement. All three were ready to form a united front to hold control. Mr. Roosevelt becomes the key man instead of Mr. Lewis.
Roosevelt will be his own Bevin
The chief thing to be said against the arrangement is that the President of the United States is as usual trying to do something that should be delegated to another – in this case to the Secretary of Labor. Or if not to Miss Perkins, then to Sidney Hillman, head of the Labor Division of the War Production Board.
He could not give the job to Miss Perkins because of the feeling against her among the labor leaders. And as you know, Mr. Roosevelt does not displace his Cabinet officers. He either goes around them or takes on the work himself. Why he could not have given this Job to Sidney Hillman is not clear. True, Mr. Hillman is loaded down with the job of organizing industrial manpower. But of course Mr. Roosevelt is loaded down, too. Mr. Hillman gets along with the other labor leaders sufficiently well for this purpose.
At any rate, instead of finding a Bevin and turning the job over to him, Mr. Roosevelt will handle it in person. He will be his own Bevin, with Hillman, Green and Murray as his chief advisers and lieutenants. You might almost say that Mr. Roosevelt is setting up a new super-ministry of labor and is holding the portfolio himself.
Again the only test is – does it work? So, pending time for an answer, there is little point in quibbling about the method chosen.
Maj. Williams: Role of Congress
By Maj. Al Williams
“Japan must be bombed to defeat.”
An old friend of mine, a member of Congress, recently wrote to me saying that he intended – in a few months and after he had done all he could in Congress to pass certain aviation legislation – leave Washington for active service with a combat air unit.
Far be it from me to weigh the judgment of any fellow American as to his duties or part in winning this war. Each one of us has his and her job. Where one’s age or any other restriction limits one to working in non-combat capacity, one’s moral light is about the only beacon light. But it does seem to me that the part to be played by members of Congress in the prosecution of this war to a successful conclusion is clearly defined.
As members of the only body in this country charged with representing the interests of the whole people, and supervising the conduct of the war, they should stay on that job and refuse the urge for active service. Almost all of these men are well over the age required and needed for active service. In fact, the only reason they are able to obtain assignment to active duty is by reason of their influence with the assigning authorities in the armed services.
One satisfactory way to find the answer to any debatable question is to reduce it to an absurdity. Now just imagine, for instance, that Congress as a body was to enlist and don the uniform for active service. That would automatically destroy the last vestige of representative government – our last anchor of windward – the sacred provision of the Constitution. This Constitution was not designed for peacetime alone. It is perpetual – everlasting – and it will last to the end of time.
Congress has a job
No Congressman or Senator can do all that remains to be done and leave Congress during this war or any other war or under any other set of conditions. These men were freely elected by a free people to assume certain and most definite duties – war or no war – for the duration of their prescribed terms. And as far as I know, there are no provisions in the Constitution enabling any member of Congress to leave his duties or seat in Congress untended – with or without the verbal approval of his citizen constituency (without first amending the Constitution).
Humble or prominent, every American must do his duty to the fullest extent of his ability. America expects and deserves such service. And the sacred trust bequeathed to us by the founders of this, the best form of government the world has ever seen, demands it. The restrictions on age for active combat service will one day be lifted, just as the two years or its equivalent restriction has been lifted by the Army and Navy Air Services for enlistment and training as a combat airman. There are many thousands of able-bodied men well and far over the age limits who are eminently fit for active combat service. Their time will come. But the lifting of the age or any other restriction is and cannot be morally interpreted as an excuse for a man to leave one sacred duty to select another more compatible with his desires.
Plane ‘cow-catcher’
One of the most interesting mechanical devices that has come to light is the shot-down Heinkel bomber equipped with a veritable cow-catcher built out in front of its wings, motors, props, and fuselage to ward off the cables of captive balloons. These cables are a fearful menace to the invading air raider. They are there somewhere in the murk and fog before him.
The balloons may be hidden in the dense masses of fog and mist and darkness ahead of him. But so are their cables that sever wings from planes like razor blades cutting cheese. If this device is an actuality, it is a confession by the Nazis that the British balloon barrage is taking a high toll of their bombers. And it is an excellent instance where the development of a new gadget clearly indicates the necessity for its creation.
When ground fog and zero-zero visibility conditions preclude the visibility conditions preclude the take-off of the deadly single-seater fighters, the bomber pilot always faces the silent, deadly steel cable of the barrage balloon. How efficiently or whether it works at all is not within my ken. The leading edges of the aerial cow-catcher must indeed be razor edged in the hope of cutting the balloon cable.
The impact with the cable, by a plane traveling 300-400 feet per second, must be terrific. Likewise, the shock throughout the plane. If this device works, the British are in for a lot of bad weather bombing on a far larger scale than attempted to date.
If it doesn’t work, the Nazis are in real trouble and have confessed the trouble by revealing to all the research and construction effort they have gone to in order to equip their planes with it. The effect of this ungainly device on the flight behavior of an aircraft is unknown. But it certainly cuts down speed and undeniably affects the plane’s handing to a great extent. It’s a desperate expedient – so the Nazis must be in trouble.
U.S. move to clear Wenner-Gren seen
MEXICO CITY (UP) – The newspaper El Universal today quoted Gen. Maximino Avila Camacho, cabinet minister and brother of Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho, as saying he believes Axel L. Wenner-Gren, Swedish financier, soon will be removed from the American economic blacklist.
The minister was reported to have said inclusion of Wenner-Gren’s name on the list was the result of an intrigue of the part of elements interested in freezing funds of the international capitalist in the United States.
Gen. Camacho asserted he had heard that Wenner-Gren’s name would be removed as soon as Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles returns from the Rio conference.
Wenner-Gren, often a guest at the hacienda of Gen. Camacho, had announced his intention of investing “several millions of dollars” in Mexican industries.
