Tuesday, December 22, 1942

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, December 22, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: As Rommel was reported on the front page to have retreated to within 100 miles of Tripoli, heading, the report speculated accurately, toward Tunisia to bolster the Axis forces there, an Allied commando raid was undertaken against Bizerte in Tunisia, one part of the commandoes having penetrated to within five miles of the Axis port city before fatigue halted further advance. While met with heavy German fire from coastal defenses, the commandoes reported that the Germans never left their entrenchments to seek out the invaders. The men had to swim for the sanctuary of awaiting transports or submarines to escape the fusillade trailing them, but few casualties were reported.

On the Russian front, the Soviet troops were reported to have been stalled by German defenders at or near Millerovo, along the route to Rostov, the ultimate goal of the Soviet pincer campaign to trap one-third of the German army in Russia.

Strikes were reported in crucial war plants, out of Republic Steel in Cleveland and from a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Jackson, Michigan. The latter strike had started in the gun department of the rubber plant. Employers claimed that the strikers were not cooperating with the President's executive orders on extension of the forty-hour work week, while employees, represented by CIO, contended that the employers had illegally locked them out at the end of a forty-hour week and refused trainees proper pay for overtime. The matter was referred to the War Labor Board for sorting out the opposing claims.

Whether the guns in the gun department of the rubber plant were used to promote the strike is not reported. It was clear, however, that, despite ordinarily labor friendly Wayne Morse's rebuke of CIO's continuing efforts to gain advantage by tying up key defense plants, that recounted by Raymond Clapper Saturday, labor remained pregnant with its driving ambitions and the gun department could, until wages were consistent with the pregnancy, go hang.

On the editorial page, Raymond Clapper provides a synopsis of the scenario which led to the forced resignation of Leon Henderson as head of OPA. He was forced out by the farm bloc, upset with price controls on farm commodities. Mr. Clapper relates the absurdity of the point of view, praising Mr. Henderson's complex job during the previous year, requiring for universal acclaim the unattainable zenith of satisfaction of all the people all the time, even less possible than usual when the goal was to curb the number one enemy of wartime supply, inflation, a major problem in the United States during and after World War I as shown by Mr. Clapper's citations of yearly statistics from 1916 through 1921, during which time the cost of living more than doubled.

Sportscaster Clem McCarthy's account of comedian Joe Frisco's bad luck transference at the track may or may not have been inspired by the mangy tale, woven stewball fashion, which had circulated four years earlier, as related in The News in October, 1938.

The squib at the end of the editorial column underestimated the lasting worth of songs on the radio in our youth in comparison to the Gay 90's fare played live under the Sunday afternoon gazebo by the band of horns, woodwinds, and bass drum, amid frills and twirling parasols, shading ladies’ hoops and garters. Imagine that.

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