Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Big Three
ambassadors to Moscow had met at the Kremlin for the third time in
the previous week, meeting again with Foreign Commissar V. M.
Molotov this date for three hours, concerning resolution of the
Berlin crisis. After leaving the Kremlin, they went to the British
Embassy, where they appeared in good spirits, but remained mum about
the results of their conferences.
Meanwhile, in Berlin, the British-licensed newspaper Telegraf
stated that the Russians were digging trenches and mounting
weapons, including rocket guns, along the border between the Soviet
occupation zone and Western Germany. The information had come from
Germans who claimed that they were pressed into service to dig the
trenches. U. S. border officials, however, said that they were not
aware of anything to confirm this report insofar as weapons, but
that the Russians had, for several months, been strengthening their
border with guards and trenches for the purpose of halting illegal
traffic along country roads from the Russian zone into the American
zone.
Thirty B-29's were arriving in Britain, boosting the
complement to 90 for joint training with the Royal Air Force. The
other sixty had arrived in July.
Before HUAC, Victor Perlo, accused by confessed former
Communist espionage courier Elizabeth Bentley of leading one of two
principal spy rings in the Government, testified that he had never
violated the laws or interests of the country and said the charges
were the "inventions of irresponsible sensation seekers".
He included Whittaker Chambers, who also had identified Mr. Perlo as
an underground leader of the Communists prior to the war, in the
latter group. He said that the grand jury had already refused to
indict on the charges. He refused under the Fifth Amendment to say
whether he had ever been a Communist or knew Ms. Bentley, Mr. Chambers, Alger Hiss, Lauchlin Currie, Nathan Silvermaster, John Abt and others named in the hearings. He stated that he was presently an economist for the Progressive Party and had been employed by the Government in the National Recovery Administration between 1933 and 1935, with the Home Owners' Loan Corporation between 1935 and 1937, at which point he joined the Brookings Institution until fall, 1939 when he returned to Government work in the Commerce Department, where he remained for 18 months. He then joined the Office of Price Administration, not yet called by that name, and remained there until early 1943, when he joined the War Production Board. In late 1945, he joined the Treasury Department. In each case he was employed as an economist and statistician. He admitted that he had been investigated as a security risk and was asked to resign from the Government, which he did.
Ms. Bentley then again testified that Mr. Perlo had led one
of the two groups from which she received secret information on airplane production seven to nine times in 1944 which she
passed to the Soviets. She said that she believed he had acquired the information during his time at WPB. (Committee chief investigator Robert Stripling then entered into the record the purported secret information which Mr. Perlo was allegedly provided by the Resources Protection Board, about which, during questioning, he denied recollection, eventually stating that he received no such information as that described by Ms. Bentley though having had access to some secret information.) Ms. Bentley met him, she claimed, at times in the New York apartment of Mary Price of North Carolina and at other times in the apartment of attorney John Abt. She said in answer to a question that she had
been informed by her contact that there were other groups, probably
"innumerable", in addition to the so-called Perlo and
Silvermaster groups of spies in the Government, but did not know the other groups or their leaders
by name.
The whole Government was Communist, including most especially
the Congress. Everybody knows that.
The New York Police Department, at the request of the Soviet
consulate, asked the New Jersey Police to produce a Russian-born
school teacher, teacher of children of members of the Russian
delegation to the U.N., after he reported the previous day to the
FBI. The Soviets wanted to return the teacher and his family to
Russia. The New York Times quoted him as saying that he did
not want to return to the Soviet Union and intended to place himself
under the protection of the American Government. HUAC expressed an
interest in hearing from him.
Senator Taft said that the special session, adjourned Saturday, had given the
President all he needed to control inflation which was not extreme
or which did not lead to a depression, and foresaw no need to
reconvene Congress before the new Congress would be seated in
January. Inflation, he said, was the product of the war and
Administration policies since 1933. He said that the President's
anger toward Congress could only be settled by the election.
It will be.
Some of the President's best friends on Capitol Hill urged
him to sign the limited housing bill and the banking and installment
credit controls passed by the special session.
The President was preparing to appoint Maurice Tobin, former
Mayor of Boston running for Governor of Massachusetts, as the new
Secretary of Labor to replace the deceased Lewis Schwellenbach. Mr.
Tobin had not yet accepted the appointment, though he had allowed
his name to be submitted to the Senate before the adjournment of the
special session. The Senate had not acted and so it would become, if
finalized, a recess appointment, subject to confirmation when the
Senate reconvened—presumably not until January after the
overwhelming election of Governor Dewey, confirming of the wisdom of
the Republicans adjourning the special session of Congress after two
weeks with little or nothing accomplished besides complaint against
the President and presenting afresh a public exposition of the
witch-hunt by HUAC for Commies in the Government.
Personal income reached a record high monthly rate, averaged
for the year, at 211.9 billion dollars in June, most of the increase
the result of higher wages and higher farm prices. The previous
record rate had been established the prior January at 209.4 billion.
For the first half of the year, the average rate was 208.1 billion,
compared to 199.9 billion during the second half of 1947. The income
for 1947 was 195.2 billion. Coupled with the income tax reduction,
disposable income rose four percent over the first quarter of the
year.
The seventh largest cotton crop was expected for 1948 at over
15.1 million bales, 3.3 million higher than in 1947 and 3.1 million
higher than the 1937-46 average. The record yield was 18.9 million
set in 1937.
Near Charlotte, a man who had picked up two young male
hitchhikers in his car was robbed at gunpoint on Wilkinson Boulevard
heading from Gastonia to the city. He stopped the car and was
ordered to walk into the woods, which he did, and the two then rode
away in his car. But within twenty minutes they had been apprehended
and identified by the man after a truck driver saw the man being
forced to walk into the woods and the men commandeer his car, nearly
then turning it over as they turned around in the road, whereupon
they jumped from the car and also ran into the woods. The truck
driver found the owner at which point he called the police. The
police caught the men walking along the highway. One of them
admitted the robbery.
On the editorial page, "Truman's Political Marathon" discusses the intent of the President's campaign to remain steadily
active for the 86 days until election day, November 2. He had plans
to make whistle stops in the East, North, and West, possibly the
South if time permitted.
The piece finds the President's energy remarkable as the
editorialist admits to apathy. The Republicans in Congress had not
aroused any sense of enthusiasm for their program, any more than had
the President. The piece confesses gratitude to Governor Dewey for
remaining mostly mum since his nomination in June.
Such was all wrong, it confesses, and the next day, intended
to draft a piece condemning the inattentiveness of the public to the
special session. But this date, it limited itself to criticism of
Mr. Truman's campaign strategists.
The whole nation appeared to suffer from lethargy during the
special session called by the President. No private citizens were
called to testify for or against the President's legislative
program, including his inflation control package. Mail to both
Congressmen and the White House was light.
There were headlines aplenty regarding the filibuster by the
Southerners of the anti-poll tax measure, but most of the public had tuned
elsewhere, the enthusiasm being limited to the professional
political participants in Washington.
It concludes that the country was suffering from too much
politics and that the Truman strategists had taken the wrong turn in
raising the volume, adding to the sense of weary confusion. It
thinks that Governor Dewey could win the election without saying
another word.
Time will tell.
"A Knowing Hand in Traffic" compliments the action of the City's new Traffic Engineer in bringing finally to the city a comprehensive traffic plan, the latest example of which was the determination to extend the downtown one-way street system along four streets, based on a study of traffic patterns.
A piece by Melchior Palyi from the Saturday Evening Post,
titled "Public Housing Isn't the Answer", finds that
public housing and slum clearance were not answers to eradicating
poor housing conditions. He contends that inevitably an artificial
line had to be drawn on income, below which one would qualify for
housing subsidies, above which one would not, providing not only inequities but an incentive
to earn less.
He offers as alternative stricter housing codes, as had
worked in Baltimore. In 1947, 93 percent of housing was in
satisfactory repair compared to 88 percent in 1940. When whole
neighborhoods were too deteriorated to permit rehabilitation, the
local government would buy the block and then turn it over for
carefully circumscribed development by private contractors. Such
plans had worked in Indianapolis and Chicago.
Of course, he fails to account for allowing subsidy grants on
a graduated income scale, with a gray area in the middle where
grants would need to be repaid to the Government in graduated
percentages dependent on income qualification, forgoing the bright
line rule which he assumes.
A piece by Reed Sarratt, formerly of The News,
Associate Editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun, tells of the
project undertaken in 1944 in Baltimore to arrest the blight in the
central city. The Baltimore Housing Law Enforcement Committee was
then formed, comprised of nine City officials. It began by cleaning
up one single block on an experimental basis, taking about 18 months
to bring it into compliance with City codes. In 1946, the program
was expanded to include 16 blocks and in 1947, 26 blocks.
There was, however, little coordination of effort, as the
police court magistrates dismissed cases routinely against violating
landlords or fined them only a skimption.
Reorganization limited the committee to five persons, each
from five City departments. But leniency in the courts continued to
hamper enforcement of code provisions. Citizens then proposed
creation of a special court for handling housing cases, on which the
Governor cooperated in setting up. A special sanitation police corps
was also created, devoting full time to enforcement of the housing code.
The reorganized system had increased the number of persons
cited by four-fold and the number fined by 26 times. The special
police were able to obtain correction of more than 17,000 housing
violations without any court action. A large number of dismissals
had resulted from the effort of the special court magistrate to try
to obtain cooperation in fixing the violations rather than stressing
fines.
While the program had hardly scratched the surface, it was a
beginning toward elimination of the blight plaguing the city.
Drew Pearson discusses again the Republican Senate caucus on
the legislative agenda for the special session, telling of the
discussion over whether to amend the displaced persons law which
would admit 200,000 European refugees by 1950, limiting eligible
refugees to those who had fled to Germany before December, 1945,
working to exclude 90 percent of the Jews. The bill also effectively
excluded Catholics. Senator Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia, who
had introduced the controversial amendments, defended it. Others,
including Senators Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Alex Smith of New
Jersey, and Irving Ives of New York, wanted the law revised.
Senator Taft favored withdrawal of the anti-poll tax bill in
the face of the Southern filibuster and not submitting to the states a proposal for a Constitutional amendment banning the poll tax.
Senator Ives agreed, saying it was too late for the latter action.
Senator Clyde Reed of Kansas argued that the Republicans were
committed by their platform to sending the issue to the states.
Senator Vandenberg echoed Senator Ives, however, in finding the most
important issue to be doing away with the filibuster by revising
Senate rules the following January—after the resounding
incipient Republican victory. That was the course on which agreement
was reached and Senator Curly Brooks of Illinois was appointed to
head a committee to study it.
Former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, running in a run-off
primary for the Senate against Congressman Lyndon Johnson, had
gotten the nickname "Cake" on Capitol Hill for his
desire to have his cake and eat it, too, anent the Taft-Hartley Act.
During a Washington press conference, he had referred reporters to
the newspapers for his stand on the Act. But when questioned about
the absence of a prior statement in the press, he said that he had already
made his statement. His assistant then chimed in by saying that Mr.
Stevenson did not intend to allow the press to construct his
campaign and he would answer the questions he wanted to answer. Mr.
Stevenson then continued to hem and haw, saying at one point that
the press questions reminded him of the lawyer who asked a witness,
"Have you stopped beating your wife?" A reporter then
asked him whether he wished to have his cake and eat it, too, thus
the new moniker.
Governor Stevenson had managed to get AFL to believe that he
opposed Taft-Hartley while allowing Texas businessmen to believe
that he favored it.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop state that a Republican Senatorial
campaign committee had found that a Democratic Senate was a serious
possibility in 1949, as six Republican seats were shaky, only four
needed to return control to the Democrats. Senator Sherman Cooper of
Kentucky, a normally Democratic state, had his chances imperiled by
the nomination for vice-president of Senator Alben Barkley of that
state. Mr. Cooper, they find, had been a valuable member of the
Senate.
But Senator Wayland Brooks of Illinois, a puppet of Chicago
Tribune publisher Bertie McCormick, was a different case. He
would be no great loss to the Senate. Professor Paul Douglas was a
formidable opponent in that race.
Similarly, Senator Joseph Ball of Minnesota faced a tough
challenge from Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis. Senator Ball
had supported FDR in 1944 and antagonized his fellow Republicans.
And after building a reputation as a liberal, he became one of the
worst reactionaries in the Senate.
Both of those races would have a Progressive Party opponent
who presented a wild card in the race.
Senator Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia, Senator Edward
Robertson of Wyoming, and Representative Robert Rizley of Oklahoma,
bidding for an open Republican Senate seat, all were also shaky.
Senator Revercomb was opposed by former Senator Matthew Neely, an
"oratorical left-wing hack" who was nevertheless ahead
in the polls. Governor Robert Kerr was likely to defeat Mr. Rizley.
Lester Hunt in Wyoming would probably be the victor over Senator
Robertson.
The Democrats also had some problems. Republicans enjoyed surprising strength in North Carolina and
Democrats in Montana and New Mexico were threatened.
In Tennessee,
Congressman Estes Kefauver, just nominated by the Democrats in the
Senate race, could be defeated by former RNC chairman and former
Congressman Carroll Reece. Boss Ed Crump of Memphis had referred to
Mr. Kefauver as a "pet coon". He would not be backing
Mr. Kefauver, giving Mr. Reece a chance.
It would be worse than they suggest for the Republicans, losing nine
seats, going from a six seat majority to a twelve seat minority.
And there was no surprising Republican strength evident in
North Carolina by November.
Barnet Nover tells of one of the underlying assumptions to
ERP and its success being that trade between Eastern and Western
Europe would resume at levels even greater than before the war. The
ancillary question was whether Russia would allow its satellites to
participate in ERP. Russia had stood thus far unalterably opposed to
the program for both itself and its satellites, despite a desire by
Czechoslovakia and Poland to participate.
Russia had been seeking in the meantime to bring the
countries of Eastern Europe within its economic sphere, but had met
with little success. Russia instead had undertaken a disguised
system of looting its satellites, with the result of growing
resentment in each regarding the failure of Russia to
adhere to promises to send capital goods, machinery, and raw
materials for development of industry. Only the West could now
supply these satellites.
In consequence, to quell revolutionary ardor, Russia had been
forced to permit some trade with the West, such as in Poland, where
coal production was expanding, with an export market only available
in Western Europe. Yugoslavia's Communist Party charged that the
trade restrictions imposed by Russia had not helped the recovery
effort in the country. It stood as a warning to the Kremlin of what
could happen throughout Eastern Europe.
Russia, in consequence, had been seeking ways to allow some
degree of aid from ERP without appearing to admit defeat. Thus,
Russia had joined seventeen other nations at the U.N. Economic and
Social Council meeting in Geneva in adopting a resolution which had
the intent of removing East-West trade barriers.
