Back-to-mines order due; Roosevelt upholds WLB
Wagner denounces Lewis for ‘blasphemous’ plea under labor act
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Editorial: Do we have power to win this war?
Must this nation lose the war because our government lacks power to do the things necessary to win it?
Must American soldiers, sailors and fliers die in vain because they were betrayed at home?
It’s time to ask these questions; because the strikes that developed this week have passed the limit of ordinary labor disputes.
They are strikes against the government, aimed at destroying policies which the government holds to be essential to the war effort.
John L. Lewis called out a half-million coalminers because he wants to break up the War Labor Board and force wage increases which the government holds would start disastrous inflation. He has placed his will and his lust for power above national welfare.
The various truck strikes are also against the government. They are aimed at forcing the Office of Defense Transportation to abandon delivery instructions intended to conserve gasoline so there will be enough for the Armed Forces. Because of them American people are being denied milk and other necessities, in the hope that hunger and suffering will make the government modify its policies.
During May – when our forces were winning a glorious but bloody victory in Tunisia and were battling savage Japanese in the snows and fog of Attu – there were more strikes than in any month since Pearl Harbor. They involved the production of such military essentials as tanks and rubber.
We keep hearing about “labor’s no strike pledge.” But almost daily that pledge is broken with impunity. And a government which thinks it is strong enough to
‘Glorified WPA project’ –
Interned Japs use autos for fun, Congressman says
‘Soft’ treatment in relocation centers assailed; youth movement is investigated
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I DARE SAY —
They enjoy poor health
By Florence Fisher Parry
Not long ago, I went to see a woman who was celebrating her 100th birthday. The house was heavy with the hush you feel only when in some temple. Soft padded voices bade me ascend the cushioned stairs. When I was ushered into her presence, I was made to feel that I was approaching a shrine.
She lay in her bed like some exquisite doll. Her hands spread delicately over the fine lace spread. Her face was like the inside of a seashell, iridescent and lovely. Her eyes held the look of a little child’s, and when she spoke, her voice was a pure immature treble.
Her spinster daughter lovingly explained:
Mama has always been delicate. When Papa married her, she was not expected to live long. It was a miracle how she had all her children. We always took care of her from the time we were little. Papa called her his Dresden doll.
I looked at the picture of Papa. He had died many years ago, worn out from anxieties. Most of the children were dead too. Dear fragile Mama had outlived them all.
When I was a young woman, I knew two remarkable men who were pinned down by ailing wives. It is hard to estimate how far these men might have gone if they had been free to follow the direction of their genius. But they had to spend every available moment looking after their wives. They both died very young, at the height of their promise.
Their wives promptly regained their health, have basked in the security and independence their husbands had provided them, and have led busy, useless lives ever since.
Willful ‘invalid’
For years I had a friend who was possessed of extraordinary talent. Her native endowment amounted almost to genius. She could have been a brilliant writer, a peerless actress; her versatility was astounding. But just as she dramatized and heightened everything that touched her, she dramatized her “health” – or rather her lack of it. She was the most interesting self-made invalid I ever knew.
Somehow, she was able to make her ailments fascinating; even doctors fell under the spell of her extraordinary self-diagnoses.
As a matter of fact, her only disability was her inability to utilize her great gifts. She had a generous income and was cursed with the laziness that came from a long line of utterly UNcontributory aristocrats. Her “ailments” were her rationalization of that laziness. She had to find an excuse for making no use of her birthright and talents, and chronic invalidism was the perfect solution.
There was no way to jerk her out of her fond delusion that she was a sick woman.
She indulged, I remember, the daily luxury of an afternoon rest. Never mind how urgent the occasion that might threaten this siesta, she was adamantine, and had that rest, cost what it might to others. One afternoon, after a particularly lazy day, she announced that she was going to rest up.
“FROM WHAT?” I demanded; my patience gone. She burst into laughter and admitted:
I AM a fraud, aren’t I?
But blandly kept on being an invalid until Nature, finally coerced, fell in with her, and now she is indeed a hopeless psychopathic case.
No time for frauds
Now with all due respect to Elizabeth Barrett Browning (whose Sonnets from the Portuguese are lovely songs), I suspect that she has been the prototype of all too many ailing ladies whom the war is just now showing up. There’s simply no place for them in the present desperate day.
And I predict that one of the most salutary improvements that will come out of this war is the weeding out of thousands of Elizabeth Barrett Brownings. Nobody has time to pay any attention to them, and deprived of an audience upon whom to perpetuate their fancied symptoms, they will be forced out of their pretense and become – let us pray – passably normal creatures.
There’s simply no time anymore to be self-centered. There’s scarcely time even to be legitimately sick. We can’t nurse so much as a headache. And the doctors remaining on the home front are suddenly so busy trying to take care of really sick patients, that they haven’t time to spare for the frauds. And this will be a good thing for them, too; for to lose a lot of bedside palaver will be good for their souls. There was too much of this going on before the war anyway.
United Nations delegates end food sessions
Delegates going to Washington for Roosevelt’s congratulations
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Dempsey’s wife named as liquor party member
She fell ‘all over the lobby of apartment house,’ divorce court is informed
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Strike-control law headed for House and Senate melee
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Observers believe –
U.S. offensive in Pacific due
Fleet’s inactivity is seen as period of preparation
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Yank bombers hit Jap base
Tons of explosives rained on Guinea stronghold
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‘Fair chance’ seen for survival of actor
London, England (UP) –
British ships and planes searched the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond today for trace of Leslie Howard, stage and screen actor, and 16 other persons who were aboard a British airliner shot down by German aircraft within two hours’ flying time of Britain Tuesday.
A spokesman for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, operators of the Douglas twin-engined airliner, said the 13 passengers, including at least three women and two children, and four crewmen would have a “fair chance” of survival if they were able to make a reasonably good landing in the water.
However, Lisbon reports said rough weather in the Bay of Biscay was hampering the search and presumably increasing the hardships of any survivors.
The plane carried two rubber self-inflating lifeboats capable of carrying all 17 persons and equipped with flares, water, food, compass and paddles.
The BOAC spokesman said:
If the pilot was able and the plane was not shot to pieces, then I am sure the plane would remain afloat long enough for the crew members to launch dinghies.
The dinghies are inflatable by a simply apparatus and it seems reasonable that those not wounded or injured in landing could get into dinghies, but of course this all depends on whether the plane got down safely and that is what we do not know.
The last word received from the plane, on a regular flight from Lisbon to England, was that it was under attack by enemy planes. That was five hours after the plane had left Lisbon and the flight normally requires about seven hours.
The BOAC spokesman said that Royal Air Force pilots and crewmen forced down at sea have frequently survived four to five days in rubber dinghies identical to those with which the missing airliner was equipped. However, the RAF men were more warmly dressed and in better physical condition than the missing passengers.
The spokesman declined to comment on a Radio Berlin report that service between Lisbon and Britain has been suspended because of the attack, the first on a British airliner on this service since it was inaugurated.
There was some speculation that the Germans attacked the plane in the belief that Prime Minister Churchill was aboard. Spanish reports were that Mr. Churchill had arrived in Gibraltar last week from the United States and it was noted that the Gibraltar-Britain air route parallels that between Lisbon and England most of the way.
Stalin’s letter to Roosevelt arrives today
Message borne by Davies may affect progress of whole war
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
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In neutral Sweden –
Enemies meet in city streets
U.S. newsmen rubs elbows with Nazis, Japs
By Nat A. Barrows
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Japanese dead on Attu 1,791
U.S. ‘now within striking distance of Japan’
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Stimson lists 17,083 soldiers as Axis captives
Most of food packages are reaching prisoners in Germany, Italy
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Cradle-to-grave security proposed in Senate bill
Employee and employer each would pay 6% on all income up to $3,000 yearly
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Ferguson: Doing men’s work
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
After a visit to Fort Oglethorpe, Dick Thornburg wrote:
The Army only has one complaint against the WAACs. It wants more of ‘em. They are taking over more and more of the duties of men, doing more and more men’s work.
And how the men love that. It is to be hoped the training of our enthusiastic WAACs and WAVES will include some research into the psychology of the male animal, who has always been pretty clever at persuading women to work for him.
Releasing soldiers for combat service is of course now a patriotic duty – but Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby should warn her WAACs about being too generous with their help. Because the more a woman does for a man, the more he expects her to do.
One who has observed this trait over a period of years shudders at the possible consequences of our present situation. You’ve only to glance into the immediate past to get the point.
Long before they were at liberty to go into the business world, women did most of the work at home. Presently they got into the school-teaching profession, where they now do nine-tenths of the labor while men do the bossing. Next, they entered the business offices and gradually took over all the dirty detail jobs, releasing men from the more tiresome and rigorous tasks. The war has sent them into the machine factories and the Army, where we expect to see the same thing happen.
To be sure, this upsetting of routine has given many more women positions of authority, which we pray they may keep after the emergency. Just the same, we must be realistic about the matter.
“Doing men’s work” is a proud phrase. But let’s not forget caution, girls, or we’ll be stuck with something we can’t get out from under.