The PCA wanted to cut out the "cancer of concentrated private economic power" which was "slowly eating the life out of American democracy". The group appeared to have miscalculated the public mood on these issues through its policy statements, for instance asserting that coal miners had not been able to earn a decent living or have safe working conditions under private monopoly ownership. It also asserted that modernization of railroads could only be had under nationalization, discounting the streamlined new railroad equipment and that railroad workers had lost none of their power to bargain successfully.

The result would likely be that liberals would question whether the PCA might be hampering the work of reform rather than helping it.

It concludes by saying hamburger, rather than the poor piece of pork had at lunch, would be on the menu for the following day.

Green's Lunch. Go there.

But the piece suggests that "not bad" was not good enough in such crucial times. Nor was the feeling tempered by the sudden turn of fiscally conservative Representative John Taber of New York in the latter days of the session to support most of the requested funding for foreign aid. But it had come only in the last days, after Secretary Marshall had urged the emergent need for such aid in Europe.

The 80th Congress and its Republican majority still refused to meet the country's full responsibility in European recovery, meeting minimum requirements when only the maximum would suffice.

The piece suggests that "bashful Asheville" had thus far refrained from making a bid, but as long as the debate was still open...

As indicated, the medical school would be in Chapel Hill.

In fact, the Democrats would take back both houses, with substantial majorities in each.

Pan Am favored a monopolistic system whereby one airline would control all of the routes to certain areas. Pan Am had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the routes to all of Latin America south of Mexico since the Hoover Administration, when Postmaster General Walter Brown had gotten Secretary of State Henry Stimson to agree to urge Latin American diplomats to grant concessions to Pan Am over its competitors at the time, an unprecedented policy. After State Department pressure was applied in that direction, the Guatemalan Cabinet resigned in protest, and in Haiti and Nicaragua, U.S. commanders objected to the monopolistic character of the agreements pushed on the countries. The Honduran Congress passed a resolution condemning the Honduran President for bowing to State Department pressure on the matter.

Mellon family money, along with Cornelius Vanderbilt, supported Pan Am.

Behind this monopolistic plan of Pan Am had always stood Senator Brewster in support of it. But thus far, he had not attracted the majority of his colleagues.

While Pan Am had always been supported by Republicans, Howard Hughes and TWA had always leaned toward the Democrats. Secretary of Interior J. A. Krug was presently the Administration official supporting TWA's cause.

The President would win the election, polling not quite 50 percent to Governor Dewey's 45 percent.

To win the election, Mr. Childs continues, the Republicans had to do more to win over crucial independents than they had in the first session. Merely championing frugality was not enough. While millions were eager for a change in the government, they would not be willing to trade something for nothing. To the independent, Taft-Hartley was one dubious measure, not a program. The merger of the armed forces was simply overdue housekeeping, recommended by the President not long after he came to office over two years earlier.

The trend toward change would not be enough to sweep the Republicans into the White House. The Republicans had controlled the Executive Branch from 1868 to 1912, with the exceptions of the two separate terms of Grover Cleveland. Though some of the Republican Presidents during that stretch were little better than average, the people continued to favor one-party rule. The same could prove true again for the Democrats.

As he left Washington, he was showing signs of being closer to Senator Arthur Vandenberg, encouraging on foreign policy. It was likely that he would at least not come out in California against the Marshall Plan, would support the European federation, and generally take a non-isolationist stance.

Governor Dewey, during his "vacation" tour of the Midwest, had stirred up a few hornets' nests. And former Governor Harold Stassen had declared that he would not run with Dewey on the same ticket. Moreover, there was an increasing belief that General MacArthur would return from Japan in the spring and make a tour of the country, which would really be an effort to nominate Taft, though ostensibly couched in his own presidential bid. General MacArthur would then throw his accumulated delegates behind Senator Taft on a second ballot at the convention.

But the latter campaign was being urged by notorious isolationist Bertie McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, and so forces would be bearing on Senator Taft from that direction. If he were to succumb to such pressures, the result could be disastrous for the country.