It was a cheap trick by Congress to put the onus on the President to sign the bill or appear responsible ultimately for the death of OPA.

With all of its amendments, it would be difficult to discern how individual Senators and Representatives had voted. The reason for the chicanery was that continuation of price control had broad popular support.

Most Congressmen, it was plain, however, favored abandonment of controls and letting inflation run rampant in consequence.

The cheap political trick had been used also with respect to the military draft extension and the temporary housing bill, albeit in the latter the provision for two-thirds of the 600-million dollar builder subsidies sought by the Administration had been restored.

The piece urges the people to see through the trickery and apportion blame appropriately between a weak and vacillating President and the Congress.

The piece suggests that such a private endeavor would have considerable advantages in being without the legal constraints and bureaucratic red tape of a publicly funded organization.

But winning the war in such a relatively short period of time was no small accomplishment and demonstrated mass efficiency in Washington.

Mr. Royall, a welcome visitor, was about to address the Executive Club in Charlotte on this night, but was scheduled not to debate those issues, rather to report on his world tour regarding the effects of the war on foreign countries. The piece suggests that those issues were of prime importance and would continue to be, long after the issue of the caste system and court martial procedures had passed from concern.

He favored emphasis on treatment of alcoholism as a disease rather than as a moral deficiency.

The piece favors joint Federal and State contributions from liquor revenue to such programs and research.

Senator Alben Barkley remarked: "It reminds me of the young man who shot his mother and father, then appealed to the court for leniency on the grounds that he was an orphan."

Mr. Pearson next reports that Fred Vinson, James Byrnes, and Robert Hannegan were all opposed to the appointment of John W. Snyder to replace Mr. Vinson as Secretary of the Treasury as Mr. Vinson was appointed to be Chief Justice. Mr. Snyder, however, was the strongest advocate among the high-level advisers to the President for Judge Vinson's appointment. Mr. Pearson ventures that he wanted the job of Treasury Secretary for himself.

One of Mr. Snyder's worst blunders had been to promise to the steel industry a price increase before there was any commitment to a wage increase, prolonging the steel strike by several weeks. Mr. Snyder had also recommended shortly after V-J Day that all price controls be abandoned, and only the intervention of Mr. Vinson had prevented that from occurring. Mr. Snyder did abandon controls on construction, but had to re-implement them, as well as with woolen goods and nylons, creating shortages in each category.

The House Un-American Activities Committee had voted not to investigate the recent increase in Klan activity. Congressman Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., of Baltimore had demanded such an investigation and committee member Gerald Landis of Indiana had promised publicly that an investigator would be sent to Georgia.

But chairman John Wood of Georgia held a vote at the next meeting, before which Representative John Rankin stated that the way to investigate the Klan was not to send investigators to Georgia but rather to subpoena the Grand Kleagle to testify before HUAC. Liberal Representative John Murdock, however, opposed that proposal on the basis that it would give the Klan a sounding board to promote its ideas.

Mr. Rankin then made the statement that the Klan was completely American and that the committee was not set up to study such an organization but rather was intended to stress foreign organizations.

A voice vote then defeated the proposal for an investigation. Only two of the members favored it. Mr. Landis did not oppose dropping the idea. Three members voted against it and two were not present.

The Secretary contended that the country was doing all it practically could and far more than any other nation, the latter incontestably true. But the former part of the statement begged credulity when measured against potential production.

Meanwhile, as of June 15, India would have less than a month's supply of starvation-level rations. There was fear that mass starvation on the subcontinent would destabilize the Government of India within five or six weeks. Thus, Mr. Childs expresses, there should be no surprise at that time if grim headlines of starvation and revolt greeted the reader.

Governor Earl Warren had won both party primaries, assuring him re-election as Governor in November. Several other positions were won likewise in the same manner by Republican candidates.

The only victory for the Democrats had come with Will Rogers, Jr., who captured the Democratic nomination for Senator. It was the only major race in which the Democratic nomination was not won by a Republican.

Mr. Grafton finds the shift signal of the loss of Franklin Roosevelt and his ability to hold the Democratic Party together. There was no Democratic Party left in the state. Voters might support a Republican with a strong anti-labor stance, but not a Democrat. The voters had not turned against the Democrats; the party had simply crumbled from within, departing from its liberal stance of the previous dozen years.

The party no longer was either an organization or an idea, the latter having held it together during the New Deal years. Labor and liberal groups were now split between those supporting President Truman and those bitterly opposed, both as to labor issues and foreign relations with Russia.

The swing to the right by the Democrats had made it both the victim and vehicle of its own demise.

In a Congressional race which would over time loom large on the American landscape, both Congressman Jerry Voorhis and Republican opponent Richard Nixon cross-filed in both primaries, each winning their own party nominations, with Mr. Voorhis capturing 7,700 more votes overall than candidate Nixon. The outcome in November would be different.

And the rest, as they say...

The Declaration, as we have noted previously, is of doubtful validity; the Mecklenburg Resolves, which only abolished all royal offices, was signed on May 31, 1775. The Declaration, appearing to be more myth than reality, did not surface as a document until the early part of the nineteenth century, replete with some language identical to the Declaration of 1776, the Mecklenburg document having been constructed from memory by Mr. Alexander in 1800 after the supposed original documents, including the Resolves, had been destroyed by fire.