Jim Hogg County Enterprise (Hebbronville, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 50, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 24, 1941 Page: 2 of 8
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THE JIM HOGG COUNTY ENTERPRISE
WHO’S
NEWS
THIS
WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS
By Edward C. Wayne
Nazi Drive Cuts Deep Into Greece
As Jugoslavia’s Army Is Smashed;
London Blasted With ‘Worst’ Raids
In Reprisal for Attacks on Berlin
(CDITOK‘1 NOTE—WhfR aplalaas ara iiprrntd la Ik*** ctlimu. lh»»
tn Ihiu tl iha mwi analyst and nat nKtiiarilp at tfcla nawspaper.l
. iftalaascd bv Waaiarn Newspaper Union.
By LEMUEL F. PARTON
I Associated Nrwspapera— WNU Service.I
\J EW YORK. - Quintilian’s line,
“He abounds in sweet faults."
was meant for James F. Dewey.
The quite uniformly successful fed-
Shar. a Failin'. .ft"
Promote Harmony, seems to
o.u,.y. u.a.i
are more apt to be brought together
»y pooling their little redeeming
rices than by matching virtues.
Share a human weakness with a
man and he’s apt to begin to feel
the stir of fellow-feeling. That
teems to be the idea, although there
is no evidence that all this is pre-
meditated on Mr. Dewey's part.
Here’s how he “joins" ’em:
He doesn’t mind his calories, or
worry about his waistline.
He likes to sleep late.
He smokes cigars so strong they
make an Erie freight engine smell
like an atomizer.
He Isn’t systematic. Taking
over as a conciliator, perhaps
addressing a big Jittery meeting,
he excavates various bulging
pockets and discovers he has
forgotten his credentials. Then
he forgets about all that, opens
with a wide nonpartisan smile,
delivers his speech and makes
them like it.
He dislikes exercise, yet he is a
rough-and-ready hoofer who will
dance on the slightest provocation—
until his tongue hangs out.
He wears his hair loosely and
casually.
All this and more of the same,
sets Mr. Dewey sharply apart from
the slick and impeccable conformist
who is always putting other people
in the doghouse and thereby getting
nowhere as a conciliator. Sen.
James J. (“Puddler Jim”) Davis set
him up as a mediator, in the depart-
ment of labor, after he had done
some strikingly effective conciliating
in Pennsylvania. He was a school
teacher, auditor for a coal company
and a telegraph operator. At the old
home place at Chester, Pa., he
spends a lot of time patching things
up and making them work. Amateur
tinkering always denotes the true
pragmatist at work. Maybe that's
what all this strike trouble needs.
A MONG those ready to affirm that
** a prophet is not without honor
wave in his own country, Leon M.
Henderson, director of price stabili-
mn , n l » ration for the
Here, a Prophet Nationa, De_
Given Full Honor, fense com-
, ... n , , mission, may
In Hi, Own Land notbeinclud'
ed. Once he was a farm boy in
Millville, N. J., and his hometown
folks have just honored him with a
banquet and other proceedings, es-
tablishing him as “No. 1 Citizen" of
the village in which he was born 40
years ago. Joined with the citizen-
ry were not a few government of-
ficials coming from Washington to
approve and acclaim the excellence
of Millville's choice.
Here is a village Hamden, “inno-
cent of his country's blood," who
didn’t stay in a village, one who has
been in the thick of things, up to his
elbow as some one recently said of
him, in all sorts of affairs best
known by alphabetical designations,
as NR A, WPA, TNEC, SEC, NDAC,
etc.
One of the strong men in the
national defense picture—he is the
only New Dealer on the defense
commission of seven members and
its only economist—they called him
the nation’s outstanding crystal gaz-
er when he predicted the business
boom of 1936 and its drop later, in
1937. Ironically smiling, Hender-
son has subscribed to the appella-
tion.
His Induction Into government
service came about in rather a
curious way. In 1934, as direc-
tor of the remedial loan division
of the Russell Sage foundation,
be began sniping at the NRA, and
his shots were so accurately
aimed as to arouse, not the an-
ger, but the admiration of Gen.
Hugh Johnson who grabbed him
as consumer advisor. Very soon
thereafter he became director of
research and planning, and
when a Supreme court broadside
sank the NRA he was appointed
secretary of the senate commit-
tee on manufactures.
There he was when the 1930
national presidential campaign ar-
rived. He was withdrawn and made
economist for the Democratic na-
tional committee. It is said of him
that the source of information en-
abling Jim Farley to predict so
shrewdly the outcome of this elec-
tion was Leon Henderson.
Then Henderson became econom-
ic counsellor to the WPA and subse-
quently held various important of-
fices until the creation of the advi-
gory commission to the N*t>nnal
Council on Defense. His hobbies—
smoking cigars and early rising.
William Knud sen, Defense Com-
mission chief, who has announced
that auto manufacturers will cur-
tail production 20% to speed de-
fense work is shown as he inspected
a shipyards at Quincy, Mass. He
told workmen that: “Time is the
thing.”
Kfii
m
m
BALKAN:
Catastrophe
Before the Nazis’ Balkan cam-
paign had been under way two
weeks it was apparent that another
major catastrophe for Hitler’s ene-
mies was in the making, but how
extensive or how catastrophic none
was prepared to say.
After eleven days of fighting, Ber-
lin reported that Jugoslavia’s army
of some 1,200,000 men had capitu-
lated and laid down their fighting
equipment which had proved rela-
tively ineffective against the highly
mechanized Nazi legions.
London announced bad news too
with the report that it had been sub-
jected to the worst air blitz “of all
time." German sources say this
terrific raid came as a reprisal for
British raids on “cultural and non-
military” objectives in Berlin.
In the very beginning of the
Balkan campaign, the Nazi-Italian
forces took the offensive in Northern
Africa, and the two battles proceed-
ed almost in unison, the British be-
ing driven practically out of Libya
by the time that the British sources
were ready to admit that Jugoslavia
had been defeated.
Reaction of the British people was
bitter, not that they were unwilling
to receive news of a defeat that
had been more or less expected, but
because the ministry of information
and the intelligence department
were accused of having fallen down
on the job.
This also was the reaction in
Washington, where it was freely
said by those in the military know
that the British permitted Roose-
velt to promise aid to Jugoslavia
and Greece when it should have
been known that aid to the former
was to be only a gesture, and that
the Serbs and Slovenes could not
hope to stand up to the attack more
than a week or two.
Washington sources of high mili-
tary information frankly said that
the British intelligence had fallen
down, as it had in the Battle of
France, and that the best informa-
tion in our national capital had been
to the effect that the infiltration of
Nazi mechanized forces into North
Africa had been of the smallest.
These sources said they had been
told that this shipping of tanks and
men to North Africa had had only
one purpose—that of putting pres-
sure on the French colonies, arid
forcing them to stand firm with the
Vichy government.
Whether this was deliberate self-
delusion, or an attempt to delude
the American and British people was
not known, but certainly it was bad
information, whether deliberate or
not.
For in about two weeks the Brit-
ish had lost everything they had
gained in Libya, and found them-
selves seriously on the defensive us
far as the vital Mediterranean port
of Alexandria and the equally vital
Suez canal were concerned.
Highlights
lie tvs
BELFAST: Observers were won-
dering what stand, if any, Eire
would take in the face of the first
serious bombing of northern Ire-
land. This city and surrounding
towns were hard hit by a blitzkrieg
from the air and there were many
casualties.
WASHINGTON: Danish Minister
Henrik De Kauffman made the
Greenland agreement with this gov-
ernment, and then was fired, but he
I is still recognized by the U. S. The
same happened to French Vice Con-
sul Faui Bibily, who, claiming he
| was the sole "real" repiesentative
5 of France in the U. S., offered this
country the use of bases ui North
A(ric8 •
CHUNGKING: China, despite the
recent Japanese-Russian accord, has
been advised that Russian aid to
China in its fight against Jupan will
be continued.
i
‘Barracutey’
m
It’s fishing time again. And
Evelyn Dinsmoor, Long Beach,
Calif., winner of many fishing
contests is shown above proudly
displaying her prize • winning
catch of Barracuda. Deep sea
anglers report that early runs of
fish are better than they have
been for years due to warmer
air currents.
Farm
Topics
STRIP CROPPING
CHECKS EROSION
New Practice Preserves the
Soil and Water.
GREECE:
On Her Heels
The Greek armies, which had
checkmated the unaided Italian
forces presented against them in the
Albanian campaign, found them-
selves facing a horse of another col-
or when the Nazi hordes moved in
from Bulgaria and south from Jugo-
slavia.
Greek sources in the United
States, many of them intensely pa-
triotic and hoping against hope for a
Greek victory, had been saying dur-
ing the Albanian battle that if the
Nazis ever got in, Greece could not
hope to hold out a month.
How true these predictions were
in their essence began to be seen
as the Nazi campaign against north-
ern Greece proceeded. Salonika fell,
trapping much of the Greek army
in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace.
Then the Germans broke through
into the Struma river valley, through
the Monastir gap and made contact
with the Italians in northern Alba-
nia.
It was not long before the plan of
the Graeco-British forces to defend
a line running in an inverted V-
shape from Adriatic to Aegean seas
had to be revised, and the whole
hinge of the V, ih the Lake Ochrida-
Phlorina sector had to be aban-
doned, and the armies retreat until
the line was more nearly straight.
Along this line a frightfully in-
tense battle started, and few were
sanguine enough to believe that the
line would hold and further retreat
and withdrawal not be necessary,
particularly as the line, as first
drawn, lay over heavy mountain
ranges with peaks up to 6,000 feet.
And the Nazis had broken through j
these, and the fighting in its sec- j
ondary phase was on terrain more
to the liking of the mechanized units
LABOR:
And Defense
The strike situation showed some
further amelioration, with the an- j
nouncement by Bethlehem Steel that
about 90,000 of its workers would get
a 10-cent-an-hour increase in wages. I
This, for the moment, relieved the 1
public of the anxiety lest a strike hit
this steel-producer, holder of more
defense contracts than any other one
concern in the country, and one of
the nation's largest builders of mer-
chant ships.
The coal strike, however, contin-
ued to cause trouble, with four more
killed near Harlan, Ky., at a mine
which was continuing to operate de-
spite the general shut down.
Negotiations for the ending of this
strike were in their final phase, with
every evidence that the agreement
would go through and that soft coal
strikes would be over for another
two years, if not longer.
Those watching the labor situa-
tion felt that the soft-coal agree-
ment would pave the way for better
general industrial conditions and
that proinisl-d strike threats against
U. S. Steel und General Motors
might not materialize.
The settling of the Ford strike was
held up as a shining example of han-
dling what looked like a certain im-
passe.
Yet there were still moves afoot
in congress which would not exactly
outlaw strikes, but which would pro-
vide for a 30-day "cooling off pe-
riod" before the actual calling of
a walkout, and also calling for offi-
cial recognition of the Dykstra-
headed national mediation board.
SHOTS:
And Spies
The shooting to death of Editor
John F. Arena of an Italian language
newspaper in Chicago was tabbed
as a Fascist secret police slaying
after it was learned that a few hours
before he was shot he had furnished
information to the Dies committee
A Chicago newspaper man who
had tulked with Arena a few hours
before he was murdered beside his
automobile, quoted the editor as
saying that he had received threats
against his life.
THE GERMAN:
Plan
Long range views of the eventual
German plan in the Balkans as giv-
en to the house of commons by
Churchill, and as figured out by ob-
servers in neutral points like Ankara
and Berne centered on one general
line, with certain individual ramifi-
cations.
Once Greece had been defeated,
said these sources, and the king-
dom subjugated much after the pat-
tern of Norway, France and the Low
Countries, then the Nazi forces,
flushed with victory, would turn
their full attention to the Battle of
the Mediterranean.
In this observers saw the North
African campaign and the Balkan
campaign as a huge pincers move-
ment, aimed at the Suez canal and
points between.
The recent overturn in the govern-
ment of Iraq, frankly said to have
been engineered in Berlin, provided
a back-log of soil turned back of
Turkey and Syria.
The Nazis would then, it was said,
turn their attention to Turkey and
Syria, aiming at the oil in Iran and
Iraq, and the wheat-fields of south-
ern Russia.
These would be mare by-products
permitting a fuller supply source for
the eventual campaign against Suez.
In the meantime it was the plan,
these observers said, for the Italo-
German drive against Egypt to con-
tinue, and to meet the southward-
pushing Nazis at that point.
STIMSON:
And Knox
The growing seriousness of the
crisis as far as the United States
was concerned brought grave state-
ments in congressional committees
from Secretary of War Stimson and
Secretary of the Navy Knox.
Stimson, warning of the gravity of
the situation, told congress that men
now in uniform would have to be
trained not only for service in the
United States, but also in all parts
of Central and South America, if
need be, and "also in other parts of
the world."
There were many who believed
that the secretary was not talking
about the Philippines and Greenland,
but was pointing to the eventual like-
lihood of another A. E. F.
On the same day Knox, addressing
another committee, said that the
day was past when we could con-
sider ourselves as unmenaced, and
declared that "America was being
encircled by unfriendly countries.”
The American people, meanwhile,
had to guess at the amount of lease-
lend aid that was actually getting
over the ocean. No facts or figures
were being given out, and yet on
the surface, judging by reports from
various ports along the Atlantic sea-
board, British-bound merchandise
was showing a tendency to pile up,
and the action regarding Danish and
other seized vessels was still being
talked about in Washington.
LOWER:
Draft A fie?
The selective service act, popular-
ly known as the draft, may be
amended by this congress to include
lads of 18, und also lower the top
| limit from 35 to some lesser age.
President Roosevelt told newspa-
per men that changing age limits
was under study now in draft circles
i in congress, and that the matter
may be taken up formally early in
I June. ’ •
Army sources also revealed that
the war department has modified its
i ban against men with criminal rec-
ords From now on the induction
authorities will consider each of the
eases on its merits, and will be per-
mitted to pass for possible military
service those whom it considers de-
sirable to train.
Trainees alko have been given five
more days in which to report for in-
duction after receiving an order to
do so, and this 10-day period can be
extended to 60 days or more by
order of the local board, where a
| hardship might otherwise result.
By W. D. LEE
(Exttnsion Soil Coa'onr'tionist. Norik Cuo
lias Sttto Coil's* )
Increasing public interest in
checking wasteful soil erosion is al-
tering the traditional rectangular
fields with straight rows so familiar
in the American landscape.
A new practice known as strip-
cropping, resembling a marble cake
because of its swirls, has been gain-
ing increasing favor since the crea-
tion of the soil conservation service
about seven years ago.
Three types of strip-cropping have
come into general use in the United
States to meet various conditions.
Contour strip-cropping is the produc-
tion of the ordinary farm crops in
long, relatively narrow strips of va-
riable width on which dense erosion-
control crops alternate with clean-
tilled or erosion-permitting cropr.
The strips are placed crosswise of
the line of slope approximately on
the contour.
Field strip-cropping is the produc-
tion of the regular farm crops in
more or less uniform parallel strips
laid out crosswise of the general
dope but not parallel to the true
:ontour. This is a modified form of
:ontour strip-cropping and is appli-
cable to uniform gradual slopes on
soil which are resistant to erosion.
Wind strip - cropping, the third
form, is the production of the regu-
lar farm crops in long, relatively
narrow, straight, parallel strips
placed crosswise of the direction of
the prevailing wind without regard
to the contour of the land. Wind
strip-cropping is an effective agent
in preventing wind erosion but may
be of little value in conserving wa-
ter.
Strip-cropping, combined with con-
tour tillage and terracing where nec-
essary, has been proved by experi-
ment stations of the soil conserva-
tion service and by co-operators in
the various demonstration areas to
be economical and effective and the
most practical means of controlling
erosion and conserving soil and wa-
ter on cultivated land.
Horses, Mules Decrease
As Tractor Use Rises
The use of tractors reduces the
need for horses and mules on farms
and, through a decrease in the num-
bers of work stock, has a marked
effect upon the agricultural produce
available for sale, and also upon the
financial organization of the farms.
Before tractors came into general
use 25,000,000 horses and mules were
reported on farms in the United
States. Since 1920 this number has
gradually decreased until only 15,-
000,000 were reported in 1939.
Approximately 50,000,000 acres of
crop and pasture land needed for
horse feed in 1920 are now available
for other purposes. The displace-
ment of work stock on farms should
not be attributed wholly to the use
of tractors. The use of automobiles
on farms, which increased until
about 1930, and the use of trucks
for hauling, were as effective as
tractors in reducing horse and mule
numbers.
At the present rate of work stock
reproduction it seems that horse and
mule numbers v/ill be stabilized at
about 12,500,000 head. However, the
recent introduction of the small one-
plow tractor may reduce the need
for horses still further.
Corn Cobs Valueless
Ground corn cobs have practically
no feeding value for poultry. Conse-
quently it is much better to feed
ground shelled corn than corn and
cob meal. The cob bulk simply
means so much uselessaflller in the
ration.
Farm Notes
NATIONAL
AFFAIRS
Reviewed by
CARTER FIELD
Railroads can handle
freight of coastivise ships
required to aid Rritain , • •
New shipyards hold solu-
tion of problem of replac-
ing freighters sunk by
Nazis.
I Bril Syndlcato—WNU Service.!
Whatever the outcome of the
European war, the prospect is for
small exports in the years ahead,
according to the U. S. bureau of ag-
ricultural economics.
a a a
Higher agricultural income is the
principal reason why an increasing
number of tenant farmers have
bought farms this year, says the
Farm Credit administration.
a a* a
The use of nitrogen fertilizers in
the United States practically dou-
bled in each of the 10 years between
1880 and 1910, when it reached a
total of 130,000 tons. The 1937 figure
was 433,000 tons.
a a a
Farm labor is likely to be scarcer
and farm wages higher in 1941 than
during the past year, farm econo-
mists say.
* • •
Argentina wheat production varies
from year to year, but over a period
of years it about equals that of
farms in Kansas and North Dakota.
a • a
Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay
customarily produce about 25 per
cent of the world’s beef and veal.
The United States produces about
30 per cent.
I
WASHINGTON.—Any day now all
the ships in the coast to coast serv-
ice via the Panama canal will ba
taken off that run and put into trans-
atlantic business, whether under the
British flag or some other. There
are 113 vessels in this trade now,
and the Pacific coast is all in a
dither as to whether they can be
spared. There are a lot of curious
angles to the picture.
One of the funniest would seem to
be that war makes even stranger bed
fellows than politics. Back in 1914,
the question of Panama canal tolls
had the country by the ears.
The Democratic platform on which
Woodrow Wilson had been elected in
1912 pledged continuance of free
passage through the canal for ships
in the coastwise trade—that is ships
plying between Seattle, or San Fran-
cisco, or Los Angeles, on the Pacific
coast, and New York or some other
Atlantic coast port in this countnr.
Under our law, foreign flag ships
are not allowed to take part in our
"coastwise" trade,
President Wilson decided, how-
ever, that under the Hay-Pauncefote
treaty this business of exempting
coastwise shipping from tolls was
unethical, so tnere was a spectacu-
lar fight.
SHIPS BADLY NEEDED
Now the fight—if it can be digni-
fied by that name—is over whether
we are going to turn all our coastwise
ships over to Britain. Those ships
are needed to carry the supplies ws
want to give Britain across the At-
lantic, and, as Col. William J. Dono-
van says, there is no use making
the guns and shells and planes if we
can’t deliver them.
Next comes the question, what will
happen to that freight that these 113
ships have been carrying? That’s
easy, too. M. J. Gormley, executive
assistant of the Association of Amer-
ican Railroads, says the increase in
the railroad business resulting would
be so slight "we would hardly no-
tice it.”
The last available figures, if you
are skeptical, are of the year 1937,
but that happens to have been the
best year since Coolidge. In that
period e^stbound traffic via the Pan-
ama canal amounted to 4,693,541
short tons, or 177,436 carloads, while
westbound traffic amounted to 3,039,-
164 short tons, or 109,355 carloads.
The heavier eastbound traffic
would amount, Mr. Gormely points
out, to one train daily of 70 cars on
each one of the seven transcontinent-
al railroad lines, which, he insists,
would not complicate the schedules
of any one of them.
Cargo Ship, Needed
To Defeat Germany
The only risk about final victory
over Germany in this war is
whether enough ships can be pro-
vided to supply Britain in spite of
the terrific sinkings of merchant ves-
sels by Nazi submarines, planes,
mines and raiders.
For some unexplainable reason
this country has been very slow in
realizing this danger, and in getting
started on ship construction. British
agents sre urging that we revive
Hog Island, which toward the end of
the last war, was turning out more
than 20 ships a month. Incidentally,
while they were not the best ships in
the world, they were much better
than generally supposed.
So far this government has In-
clined to expanding existing ship-
yards rather than to constructing
new yards.
LABOR SHORTAGE UNLIKELY
The chief objection made to new
shipyards, such as Hog Island, is
that they would drain workers away
from existing yards. There is, of
course, this danger. But there is
also a lot of bunk to it. For example,
the British in peace time, always
made an apprentice work for seven
years before he could be a boiler
maker, but at Hog Island during the
war men who had no more knowl-
edge of machinery before going
there than operating a lawn mower
were turned into pretty good
mechanics.
During the first World war also
the ship building facilities of the
Great Lakes were used heavily.
Plenty of the very type of ships need-
ed most can be built on the lakes
now and transported to the ocean
through the existing waterway, in-
cluding the Welland canal.
Perfectly good freight ships have
always used this route.
There is considerable point to
buiding smaller ships for running
the submarine blockade. One rea-
son is that it is a much simpler
proposition to build a small ship than
a Queen Mary. Another is that it
takes less experienced officers to
navigate her. And finally there is
much less loss when a torpedo sends
her to the bottom.
Most of the transatlantic freight
was always carried in small ships
anyhow.
V
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McGee, J. Frank. Jim Hogg County Enterprise (Hebbronville, Tex.), Vol. 15, No. 50, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 24, 1941, newspaper, April 24, 1941; Hebbronville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1017288/m1/2/: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .