WOOL FIRM AT SYDNEY SALE

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26264, 8 November 1950, Page 7

WOOL FIRM AT SYDNEY SALE

SYDNEY, November 7. Top price of 232 d bas paid for six bales of superfine greasy Merino fleece at ni? e Sydney wool sales to-day. ' vas a t° ta l clearance of the 16.965 bales offered. Competition was strong and spirited and the market was very firm for all descriptions with values showing a slightly upward tendency.

The consensus is that the Republicans will make gains, but not enough to win control of either House; but the importance of such gains, if achieved, is that they would probably check Mr Truman’s programmes and make legislating chaotic.

Both the Senate, with a Democratic majority of 12, and the House, with one of 89. have had rebellious elements which had to be counted as opponents and whipped into the party line to achieve tne Administration's objectives in the last session. Any Republican strengthening would add to the rank-and-file Democratic rebellion and resentment.

The stark truth facing Mr Truman, therefore, is that he cannot afford losses of Congressional strength. , He might stand limited losses in the House, where even a fairly substantial turnover of, say. 30 seats, would still leave him in a position of “paper” strength. But it is the Senate voting that holds the key to Mr Truman’s Administration's fate, and with it to a great extent the future of the world. whereas the whole of the House of 435. with the exception of three Republicans elected in Maine in September, faces the electors, only 36 of the 96 senators have to se£k re-election; but the rub for Mr Truman is that 23 of those 36 are Democrats. Lowes in Primaries

JThe primaries by which a party chooses its candidates have already robbed him of several out-and-out Trumanites like Senators Claude Pep-

per (Florida) and Frank Graham (North Carolina). Their successors, assured of election in these States, will be Truman critics. Others of the 23 Democrat senators have had rough going in their campaigns, including some in States which Truman carried in the 1948 Presidential campaign only bv his magnetic coast-to-coast stumping tour. Well-known Democrat senators in fight-tor-life campaigns are Senators Scott Lucas (Illinois), State majority leader: Francis Myers (Pennsylvania), majority whip; Millard Tydings (Maryland), chairman of the Armed Services Committee: Brien McMahon ‘Connecticut), chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Committee: and Albert Thomas (Utah), chairman of the Labour Committee. On the other side of the fence. Republican fenators whose political fate is trembling are Senators Robert Taft (Ohio), who is the party's policy leader: Eugene Millikin (Colorado). Forrest Donnell (Missouri), and Homer Capehart (Indiana). | Of these bigwigs of both parties, ' men like Senators Lucas. Tydings, McI Mahon and Taff appear likely to | weather the storm. One factor which might have been underestimated by even cautious obvrvers. predicting limited Democratic reverses, is the pro-Administration strength in the farm and labour vote. It was this vote which Mr Truman won to his side in 1948 and thus confounded the prophets. With both farmers and working men clinging to the material gains which the fast six years of the Truman Government have brought and maintained for them, there is no sign of a breach in this farm and factpry support. Its continued loyalty could sway the ballot