The bill perpetuated the controls of which builders complained as restricting production while killing off the stimulus to production. So it appeared unlikely that the result had been produced by the lobbies, called "greedy" by Chester Bowles.

Congressman Sam Ervin had voted against the subsidies on the basis that extracting money from the Treasury was not the panacea which it was labeled. That seemed to be the rationale for most of the opposition, a desire not to spend Federal money. But the consequence of such myopia would be thousands of homeless veterans.

The more disturbing aspect, however, was the coalition thus formed, which promised to continue through the Truman Administration and perpetuate the deadlock which had been apparent since war's end.

The obstructionist course would cause the most harm to the South, as it would create a group of Congressional representatives no longer able to work within their own party and thus without a substantial voice in party matters. The South therefore would no longer have a positive voice in Congress and it should not prove surprising if the region received nothing in return.

The reaction suggested itself as a retreat to 1936, substituting "Russia" for "Germany". These same men were proponents of the U.N. while also favoring getting tough with Russia. They wanted to spread democracy throughout the world while bringing American troops home, urging the demobilization which was disintegrating the Army and Navy built up during the war. They wanted security for the country but would not appropriate money for defense.

The piece concludes that the name, in short, for this mode of thinking used to be isolationism.

The present Governor who granted the furlough to Mr. McGaha was unaware of the previous incident and the prison superintendent had taken full responsibility for the situation.

South Carolina had a tradition of issuing gubernatorial commutations and furloughs since the late Cole Blease had left office opening the prison gates and saying that the last one out was a rotten egg, or so went the legend. Whispers of corruption in high places accompanied this policy.

But, it concludes, at least South Carolina handed down appropriate sentences for murder in the first instance, rather than the leniency shown such crimes in North Carolina. Prisoners in South Carolina having their terms commuted to 15 years appeared no worse than having 15-year terms imposed initially as by their neighbor to the north.

While the abductor did not appear vicious, she did take the child from her parents and but for this difference in accent, the child might have remained hidden away for years or forever.

It quotes Jean-Jacques Rousseau as saying, "Accent is the soul of talk; it gives it feeling and verity." Some, it comments, found the Southern accent cute while others found it insufferable. Some could pinpoint the state, or even the section of the state, from which a Southern accent derived while others lumped all Southern accents as one fused quantity, heaped in garrulous profusion south of the Mason-Dixon Line, not wishing, in fine, except as novelty, its parlous intrusion, finding its too oft phrase-abrasions only inspiring alternate jollity or Boy, "Do you see that sign?"

But no one could deny the existence of the Southern accent, persisting even in the face of "the fruity radio voice" and "misguided educational zeal" to eliminate accent from American life, to homogenize the American experience.

"There it is: pleasanter in some cases than in others; but cultivated or crude, charming or merely mushmouth, it is always there, ineradicable, undisguised, the soul of the talk of those who speak it."

In any event, it concludes, Terry's parents were thanking Heaven for it.

General Marshall had ordered the seizure of bases in Ecuador and Brazil, ignoring both countries' willingness to cooperate with the United States in the war effort. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles had intervened to prevent trouble from the incident. Also, toward the end of the war, prior to the death of FDR, General Marshall had drafted a directive to maintain peacetime permanent military bases in the two countries. This latter attitude had gone far to precipitate cooling of Latin American relations with the United States.

Mr. Pearson notes that President Truman had adopted a policy of appointing military personnel to the State Department and diplomatic service, having appointed General Walter Bedell Smith as Ambassador to Russia, Admiral Lan Kirk as Ambassador to Belgium, General John Hilldring as Assistant Secretary of State, and General Frank Hines as Ambassador to Panama.

He next observes that it was difficult to accept that Army brass hats were blocking the return of Dr. Nils Bohr, father of atomic theory, to the United States from his native Denmark. The Army had also blocked a visit from the son of Madame Curie, Jolliot Curie, also an atomic scientist. The only reason offered in each case was to isolate American physicists from foreign physicists to avoid sharing of information which might get back to the Russians. Yet, the very origin of the atomic bomb had come from collaboration between American and European scientists.

He adds that the Army was busy also urging passage of the "fascistic" May-Johnson bill which would permit the Army to remove from a faculty any professor believed to be a danger to national security and try such an individual in military courts during peacetime.

Mr. Pearson next tells of Captain A. N. Granum having received the Navy Legion of Merit award after the sinking of the Indianapolis in latter July, despite his being charged with negligence in that sinking, along with Captain McVay, the commanding officer of the ship at the time. Captain Granum had received an official reprimand for his role, failing to report the fact that the ship was overdue despite having at his hand the board showing all vessels and their scheduled arrival times plus a written report indicating that the ship was overdue at Leyte. He had failed then to undertake promptly a search, the ships survivors not being discovered except by the fortuity of a routine patrol plane on the morning of August 2, three days after the ship sank, during which time, some five hundred of the survivors succumbed, either to thirst and starvation, wounds from the explosion of the ship, or shark attacks.

It appeared that Captain Granum had won his award only by virtue of being an Annapolis graduate. In any event, the Navy was now withdrawing it in light of the reprimand.

Southern Democrats opposed the bill, with Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana leading the way. Senator Ellender and Senator Robert Taft of Ohio were seeking a compromise bill which would afford a smaller rise in the minimum wage.

It had been agreed that, to curb inflation, a provision would be inserted to allow suspension of the minimum wage for up to a year if it was shown in a particular industry that inflation would result.

The major point, he says, was that the President had finally shown that he could supply the necessary guidance in Congress for a bill when necessary. He hoped that the President would do more in this vein.

Had it lasted, the recently resolved steel strike, impacting 750,000 workers, would have been much more crippling to the nation than the G.M. strike involving 175,000 workers. While G.M. impacted other automakers, supplying necessary components, the impact of its absence from production was not so pervasive as steel.

After citing some of the worst strikes in U.S. history and their impact on the country, he relates of one of the longest strikes being one of the least damaging, that of the typographers union in 1921 seeking a 44-hour week. While lasting two years and achieving its goal in certain businesses, others converted to the open-shop system, enabling hiring of non-union personnel without the mandate of joining the union.

By contrast, one of the most important strikes was one of the shortest, that at Ford in 1941, lasting less than ten days, but establishing the right to have a closed shop and the check-off system, as opposed to the owe-debts system, a variant of the peer-and-'ello system used mainly in England, Birmingham in the south and Wales in the north to be precise.

He does like the Burke Davis series, however, favoring legal sale of liquor under the A.B.C. system.

But, he finds fault with overuse of by-lines on the second front page, the local news section, and suggests at least using real names rather than nicknames calling attention to such physical anomalies as freckles. He advocates a change of policy whereby, per the practice of a collegiate publication, there was award of theater passes in lieu of by-lines on run-of-the-mine stories. Then, he concludes, they might have room for the captions in the "Mr. Breger" strip.

He suggests himself to be a representative of the vox populi on these opinions.

The editors respond, regarding Freck Sproles: "Freckles as charming as those adorning Miss Sproles are a decided asset."

That ought spawn some response from the WCTU, too.