U.S.A. AFFAIRS

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 May 1945, Page 4

U.S.A. AFFAIRS

CONTROLS AND REGULATIONS

WASHINGTON, May 9

Mr. Vinson, Director of War Production, summarises the United States home front as follows: The midnight curfew is abolished immediately. Horse and dog-racing can be resumed immediately. Food, ten per cent below the 1944 rationing will continue. Drivers will get more petrol for pleasure. Travel -transportation continues tight. Reconversion will begin, immediately. Some controls will be relaxed at once. Full reconversion must await the defeat of Japan. Few- motor cars will be available for some months. Economic controls, price, wage and tax controls remain. The manufacture of washing machines, and refrigerators will be immediate, and there will be more electric irons, and stoves m three to six months. Taxes at the present high rates, will continue. Fifteen hundred thousand may lose their jobs within a year, but mostly temporarily. Manpower strict controls will continue with a 48-hour week remaining in war plants, but will be dropped gradually elsewhere. Draft calls will continue to be large. Women’s services recruiting will continue. Merchant fleet need for seamen and officers continues. War production, within six months will equal that of 1943. Business will get the first chance to reconvert wherever possible. Undiminished purchases of war bonds must continue. The general scarcity of clothes will continue. There will be the building of 250,000 to 400,000 new homes within one year. Wages controls will continue.

WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, May 8.

President Truman and family moved into White House on the eve of the President’s announcement of V.E. Day, and his 61st birthday. The family, including the President’s mother-in-law, dined quietly. They did not make plans for entertaining until the end of the 30-day period of mourning fox' Mr. Roosevelt.

PULITZER AWARDS

NEW YORK, May 3

John Hersey, author of “A Bell for Adano’,’ has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the most distinguished novel by an American author. Other awards include the Associated Press correspondent, Joe Gosenthal, for a photograph of Marines raising the flag on Iwojima; the “New York Times’s” reporter, James Reston, for- distinguished reporting of international affairs; and Mary Chase for the play “Harvey.”