The State Board of Elections had stated that it was in the nature of an allegation of violation of the Corrupt Practices Act and so it had no jurisdiction. Nor did it have authority to refer it to the Attorney General who did have jurisdiction. It appeared that little was going to take place.

While it appeared unlikely that any transgression of the election laws had occurred as charged, since Mr. Jones, having run previously, only needed to distribute a few cards and place his name on the ballot to get elected, it still was remarkable that such insouciance characterized the elections system in North Carolina.

The piece does not agree that campaign limits were too low. At $6,000, the limit was adequate for a position with a salary of only $10,000. The problem was in the failure to enforce the law, rendering it meaningless. The Corrupt Practices Act could be made to work if the Legislature were to enact appropriate amendments.

It reminded of another admiral telling Billy Mitchell that the future of the airplane in warfare was doubtful in relation to the Navy.

Yet, the damage accomplished to the ships in one blast had equaled that inflicted during the war by hundreds of kamikazes. Moreover, the crews of the undamaged or slightly damaged ships likely would not have survived such a blast for the consequent radiation.

If the ultimate outcome of the test would be the sort of closed-minded conclusions reached by Admiral Blandy, then the results would be worthy of the critics' label of the test as an elaborate boondoggle for the brass hats.

The underwater Baker test later in the month might convince the Admiral to give up the ship, but it was likely that it would cost more than the 72-million dollar Bikini test to do so.

Of course, the answer would eventually come in the form of the nuclear submarine equipped with missiles capable of firing nuclear warheads, enabling undersea stealth and mobility for the atomic sea monster, and nuclear power to enable range and time at sea never imagined in the age of the old diesel sub, thus assuring the viability of the Navy into the nuclear age and through the Cold War.

Housing Administrator Wilson Wyatt, not personally present at the meeting, favored the veto, but with less vigor, as did Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson.

The President had almost changed his mind the previous Friday when he met with Congressional leaders, but explained to them that the bill was simply unworkable despite their long and careful crafting of it. The cost-plus amendment which Senator Robert Taft had sponsored was especially onerous, causing impossible accounting tangles for both the Government and business. Even proponents of the overall measure in industry had so advised.

He concluded that he would not fool the country and put forth a band-aid which would not cure the disease.

He also told them that if they went home to campaign without delivering a substitute bill, he would call them back into special session.

Mr. Pearson notes that the President had reluctantly accepted the resignation of Chester Bowles on the eve of the announcement of the veto, Mr. Bowles insisting that many members of Congress would view price control in a more favorable light following his departure. Mr. Pearson notes that the truth, however, was that, over time, any such administrator charged with the responsibility of keeping the lid on inflation would wear out his welcome with Congress. The same had been true of the first OPA head, Leon Henderson.

He next reports that Kodak was unable to use its film stock packed in Kansas straw because radioactive dust from the Trinity test a year earlier in New Mexico had drifted over Kansas and settled on the straw, turning the film stock black.

HUAC chairman John Wood of Georgia and Representative Karl Mundt of South Dakota had ordered quietly an investigation to begin into the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, following which a vote would take place again on whether to have a full-scale investigation.

A report of the United States Bombing Survey quotes Dr. Robert Stone of the Manhattan Project stating that little was still known of the mechanism of the action of radiation on living tissues. Methods of treatment had therefore been symptomatic rather than causal. Studying the outcome of radiation effects on human beings following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, the Survey reached the conclusion that the number of deaths from radiation within a half mile of ground zero would have been nearly as great as the actual figures even without the immediate effects of the blast, that is fire, wind, etc. The deaths of those within a mile would have been only slightly less than the actual number. The major difference would have been in the time of death from radiation poisoning, anywhere from a few days to three or four weeks.

The military still controlled the technology such that it was largely inaccessible to medical science. The skin cancer treatment had come out of cyclotrons operated at the direction of Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California. But the amount of radioactive substance which could be produced in that manner was infinitesimal compared to what could be produced at the atomic facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The House had held up the bill passed by the Senate to provide control of nuclear energy to a civilian commission. The House Military Affairs Committee, chaired by Representative Andrew May, had essentially filibustered the bill out of ignorance and fear.

Mr. Childs suggests that nuclear technology potentially held in its store great wonders in medical science, but thus far Americans had cowered "before it in pitiful fear of our own inhumanity."

Of the 63 U.S. corporations which had assets of over 100 million dollars, their assets had more than doubled, from an aggregate of six to fourteen billion dollars, during the period from June 1939 to June 1945, permitting these hugely capitalized corporations to take over areas of the economy in the post-war world.

The chairman of the House subcommittee was Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who had drafted a strong anti-monopoly bill, requiring that any corporation embracing more than five percent of sales in a given area of commerce would be subject to Government review for monopolistic practices. It would eliminate a loophole in the Clayton Antitrust Act, which prevented a corporation from buying the capital stock of another company if the effect would be to reduce competition or create a monopoly while allowing a corporation to purchase the assets of the other company.

It was as bad, he says, as the buttermilk fight.

But, was the Kansas meat tainted with radiation from the grain consumed after radioactive dust had fallen on the crops the previous summer? Perhaps the State inspectors knew more intuitively than superficial examination of the matter suggested.