AMERICA TO-DAY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4693, 14 May 1935, Page 7

AMERICA TO-DAY

VISIONS OF NEW ERA. A BABEL OF BROADCAST. New York, April 10. We hear very little, these days, about the New Deal and the N.R.A. There was a momentary fuss about the President's £1,000,000,000 work and wages programme, when it was defeated by one vote in the Senate, but the solons have since relented, and the Bill is now passed, bringing with it the fervent religious hopes of the President that it will abolish the dole.

Three demagogues, Huey Long, General Johnson, and the Radio Priest remain in the spotlight, telling the people what they think of each other—telling them in language that suggests the non-existence of libel on the air. Long expects his Share-the-Wealth platform to bring him to the White House. With everyone guaranteed an automobile, a radio and ten thousand dollars' worth of real property, and men like Ford being permitted to own not more than four million dollars' worth. Long plans a bourgeois Utopia that will be entirely self-supporting. In the shuffle of highly-placed posts that is being contemplated by party leaders, Johnson is mentioned as a possible candidate for Vice-President.

The N.R.A. goes from one hard knock to another. At the moment, general strikes are threatened in three national industries: coal, automobiles, and silk manufacturing,. Another key industry, lumber, won its battle against the major provisions of -the Recovery Act, which it contended were unconstitutional. At a critical phase of the dispute, the Administration suddenly abandoned the contest, leaving the N.R.A. more at sea, legally, tha*h ever. The lumber industry contested the provision for restriction and allotment of production. The only explanation the Administration offered was that the Lumber Code "contained provisions peculiar to-itself with respect to the extension of discretionary powers to, non-governmental agencies." The public are thus denied an opportunity to earn what the Supreme Court considers of the principal classes of control which the codes attempted to exercise.

The Irish Sweepstakes.

Three times a year, when Irish hospital sweepstakes are drawn, a dapper Englishman, Sydney Freeman, arrives in this city, and takes up his quarters in a suite of the excusive Ritz-Carlton Hotel, with a trained staff, representing the London turf commission specialist, "Duggie" Stuart. On the recent Grand National, Freeman paid out £60,000 during the two days before the' race, for shares of tickets that had drawn horses. He bought outright a ticket on Golden Miller for £6OOO. The holder of a ticket on Reynoldstown, a young Irish saloon keeper in Philadelphia, presented himself, and asked the price of his ticket. "Ten thousand dollars," said Freeman, "but'l never persuade a man to sell his whole ticket." The young Irishman signed his contract, handed over his telegram from Dublin, and went his way with five crisp thousand dollar bills in his pocket. At the door he paused to wish the Englishman good luck, "because, you know, you're in it as deep as I am now." With only one accident, to every 654,610 miles flown, American-oper-ated air passenger lines established a | new safety record last .year. There were 70 accidents in 47,787,000 miles of flying; ten were fatal, resulting in the death of twenty-one passengers and ten pilots. The Bureau of Air Commerce at Washington claims that this is a betteiwecord than British air passengers were able to show, as the thirty-one deaths occurred in the flying of 225,268,000 passenger miles, ' compared with the twenty-three deaths recorded in 50,500,000 passenger miles flown by the British air lines. The United States Aviation Commission says that 56 per cent, of the transport service was rendered with aeroplanes cruising at 160 miles an hour or more, while only thirtythree machines, o'f a total of 616, owned in Britain and on the Continent, were capable of cruising at more than 125 miles an hour.

The Townsend Plan.

The Townsend plan of old age pensions is now before Congress, accompanied by the greatest volume of lobbying and publicity in the history of the Capitol. One Senator stated that he had received 18,000 letters in one mail, commending the plan and urging him to support it. Townsend was a municipal health officer in Los Angeles, and presented his plan as an issue at the last Californian State elections in which Upton Sinclair and his EPIC, "End Poverty in California," plan nearly landed him in the Governor's mansion. Under the Townsend plan, every citizen GO years and over will receive a pension of £4O a month, "provided he discontinues all gainful or competitive pursuits, or salaried positions of any kind, and agrees to spend, the whole £4O within 30 days. Townsend claims it will retire

8,000,000 persons from the field of employment, and force them to spend £300,000,000 a year. There would be 4,000,000 jobs thus made available for younger men. Billions of dollars spent on relief would be saved. The Federal Government says the plan would cost the nation £5,000,000,000 a year, increasing every year, as persons of 60 years have a life expectancy of fifteen years. An immense army of officials would be required to administer the pensions. In spite of objections, more .than 25,000,000 persons signed the petition, urging that it become law.