The Alamance gleaner I
Vol. LXIV ^ GRAHAM, N. C., THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 1938 ? No. 5
News Review of Current Events
MORGAN ASKS INQUIRY
Chairman of TVA Brings to the Surface the Feud
With His Colleagues . . . Corn Acreage Allotments
Here, photographed after their arrest in New York, are Johanna Hof
mann of Dresden, Germany, and Gnenther Gustav Romrich, former United
States army sergeant and a deserter, two of the three persons accused of
complicity in an international spy plot, the aim of which was the sale of
United States military secrets to a foreign government. The woman, a
hairdresser on the German liner Enropa, was messenger and paymaster
for the ring.
SUMMARIZES THE WORLD'S WEEK
C Western Newspaper Union.
Berry Claim Cause of Row
T ONG existing warfare between
Dr. A. E. Morgan, chairman of
the Tennessee Valley Authority, and
his fellow directors, David Lilien
thai and Harcourt
Morgan, has come
to a climax, due to
the claims of Sen.
George L. Berry
for *5,000,000,000 be
cause his alleged
marble quarries
were flooded in the
Norris dam area.
Doctor Morgan has
demanded a show
down in the form of
a congressional in
A. E. Morgan
vestigation of the whole TVA set
up and its activities.
A commission appointed by a fed
eral court in Tennessee reported the
claims of Berry and his associates
were worthless because their prop
erties could not be profitably operat
ed commercially.
Chairman Morgan then issued a
long statement revealing that the
quarrel in the authority was due not
to differences between himself and
his colleagues over policy, but to his
efforts to obtain "honesty, openness,
decency and fairness in govern
ment." He said: "The Berry mar
ble case represents the kind of dif
ficulty with which as chairman of
the TVA board, I have been faced
in the effort to maintain good stand
ards of public service. To a steadi
ly increasing degree X have con
tended with an attitude of conspira
cy, secretiveness, and bureaucratic
manipulation, which has made the
proper conduct of TVA business dif
ficult."
The statement declared that Ber
ry charged Morgan with blocking
"a sacred, binding agreement,"
when the TVA chairman halted the
friendly agreement reached with
Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan.
"In my opinion, a 'friendly' agree
ment, in the face of what seemed to
me to be an obvious intent to ex
ploit was not a good public policy,
and lacked several degrees of being
'sacred,' " said the chairman.
Doctor Morgan intimated that the
Berry deal was only a part of the
issue of honesty and decency which
he had to face and that there was a
lot more he would like to tell a con
gressional committee.
|/( VUUVU15 states were told by the
Agricultural Adjustment adminis
tration that they might plant this
year in corn 40,491,279 acres in 566
counties. This compares with 58,
616,000 acres in 1,123 counties har
vested last year. The complete
national goal for 1938, including the
commercial corn acreage allot
ments, is 94,000,000 to 97,000,000
bushels.
The 1938 allotments by states and
total acres harvested in the total
number of counties in each state
follow:
Illinois? 1938 allotment, 7,348,396
acres in 102 counties against t,45 1,
000 acres harvested in 102 counties
in 1937.
Indiana ? 3,456,212 acres for 77
counties against 4,706,000 in 92
countifes.
low*? ?, 249,259 acres in 99 coun
ties againt 11,180,000 in 99 counties.
*
Com Acreage Cut
of 12 commercial corn
Kansas ? 2,108,602 acres for 27
counties against 2,456,000 in 105
counties.
Kentucky ? 150,390 acres for four
counties against 2,906,000 in 120
counties.
Michigan? 223,791 acres for five
counties against 1,590,000 in 83 coun
ties.
Minnesota ? 3,319,803 acres in 45
counties against 4,788,000 in 87 coun
ties.
Missouri ? 3,267,088 acres in 6
counties against 4,260,000 in 114
counties.
Nebraska ? 6,757,345 acres in 64
counties against 7,904,000 in 93 coun
ties.
South Dakota ? 1,635,794 acres in 17
counties against 3,155 acres in 69
counties.
Wisconsin ? 452,810 acres in 6
counties against 2,424,000 in 71
counties.
Ohio ? 2,521,779 acres in 57 coun
ties against 3,796,000 in 88 counties.
Under the new farm program,
acreage allotments will be set by
county committees for individual
farms.
Tax Bill Battle Starts
t) OBERT L. DOUGHTON of North
Carolina, chairman of the ways
and means committee, submitted to
the house the revenue bill formulat
B. L. Dooghtoil
ed by a majority of
the committee, and
the struggle over
this measure began
at once. The admin
istration leaders
claim the act will
stimulate trade and
remove hardships
on both big and lit
tle business without
lowering the aggre
gate federal income.
Mr. Doughton knew
he had a fight on his hands, but pre
dicted the speedy passage of the
measure substantially as reported.
The most vulnerable provision ad
mittedly was a proposed penalty
tax on closely held corporations.
McCormack of Massachusetts and
Lamneck of Ohio filed a separate
report attacking this feature.
Republican members of the com
mittee united in a report which
blamed New Deal taxes for the
"Franklin D. Roosevelt depression"
and which charged that the tax on
closely held corporations is a polit
ical weapon to be used to purge the
nation's business structure of cor
porations controlled by New Deal
foes.
Chairman Pat Harrison, Demo
crat, Mississippi, of the senate fi
nance committee, said his group
would begin hearings soon on the
measure. A majority of his com
mittee is reported to be opposed to
several provisions of the house bill,
including the retention of the prin
ciples of the undistributed profits
tax.
? *
Disaster in California
COUTHERN CALIFORNIA, espe
^ cially the region about Los An
geles, was swept by a destructive
flood following extraordinary rains.
Nearly 50 persons were drowned
or killed in landslides and thousands
fled from their homes. It was
thought the property damage might
reach $30,000,000. For a time Lo?
Angeles was cut off from all com
munications except by radio.
Death of D'Annunzio
f^ABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, poet,
^ playwright, soldier and Italian
patriot, died at his villa in Gardona
Riviera of a cerebral hemorrhage.
He would have been a6venty-flv?
years old in a few days. The demise
of this really great man saddened
the whole Italian nation for he had
made himself the idol of the people
especially by his bold seizure of
Fiume after the World war and his
aerial exploits in that conflict. The
world of letters also mourned him
deeply.
*
WPA Rolls Increased
/"'ONGRESS having sent the quar
ter billion dollar emergency re
lief appropriation to the White
House, the WPA officials immedi
ately authorized the state adminis
trations to hire 500,000 more relief
workers this month.
Aubrey Williams, acting WPA ad
ministrator during the convales
cence of Harry Hopkins, estimated
that the March increases would pull
up local enrollments from 15 to 25
per cent, depending on state needs.
Williams said he expected large
industrial centers to furnish heavi
est demands for a slice of the new
relief money, but added: "There is
no part of the country that is not
affected in some real degree."
Sfi
British Air Program
npHE British government an
nounced the greatest air force
estimates in the nation's history and
disclosed that a corps of scientists
had been mobilized to aid in secret
air defense plans. For the fiscal
year beginning April 1 the air force
estimates total $367,500,000. Next
was announced a 23 per cent in
crease in army, appropriations for
the coming year.
Hi
Gets Out of China
'TpHE Fifteenth United States in
fantry left Tientsin after a quar
ter century of service in North
China, during which, its officers
boast, it has not fired a shot in an
ger. The regiment, stationed there
under the Boxer protocol, is being
withdrawn permanently, to be re
placed by a marine detachment.
- *
Soviet Chiefs Face Death
WITHIN a short time we may
expect to read of the execu
tion of 21 prominent citizens of So
viet Russia, latest victims of Dicta
tor Stalin s blood
purge. They were
put on trial before a
military tribunal,
and there was little
doubt as to their
fate. Among the ac
cusations against
them were conspir
ing with foreign
powers to dismem
ber the Soviet Union,
plotting to assassi
nate Lenin and Stal
Alexis Rykov
in, inspiring the assassination of
Sergei Kiroff, and putting to death
the writer Maxim Gorky and two
others previously supposed to have
died of natural causes.
Most prominent of the men put
on trial were Former Premier Alex
is I. Rykov, who succeeded Lenin
and held office for nearly two years;
and Nikolai Bukharin, chronicler of
the red revolution and editor of the
government newspaper Izvestia be
fore March, 1937.
All of the accused men admitted
their guilt, but Krestinsky, former
ambassador to Berlin, tried to re
pudiate his confession. The others
one after another told in court of
their alleged conspiracies and trea
sons.
OVERNMENT agents and New
York police broke up a ring of
spies engaged in selling secrets of
the American army and navy to a
European nation described as a
world power but otherwise not
named. Three alleged members of
the ring were under arrest and held
in heavy bail. Two of them, a for
mer sergeant in the United States
army and a private in the army,
were said to have confessed. The
third was a German girl, hairdresser
on the German liner Europa. The
G-men were diligently searching for
other members of the band.
Guenther Gustav Rumrich, the
ex-sergeant, who is a deserter, said
he was engaged in obtaining secrets
and information concerning military
operations of the United States
army and was forwarding it
through confidential channels to va
rious addresses in Europe.
Erich Glaser, the private, had
been stationed at Mitchel Field,
New York, the largest army air
base on the East coast and key to
the air fortifications of the metropol
itan area. He supplied certain air
corps codes to Rumrich.
Johanna Hofman, the woman ar
rested. admitted she was the "liason
officer and paymaster" between the
ring and its employers. Secret cod*
keys and considerable quantities of
money war* found on her paraoa.
? * ?
Three Taken at Spies
THIS THING CALLED SWING
i
America Goes Primitive to
Rhythmic Tunes of
the 'Cats'
By JOSEPH W. LaBINE
A bunch of the cats were
lickin' their chops and friskin'
their whiskers, just aching for
a jam session. Up on the stage
a long underwear gang was
handing out sweet and sticky
schmaltz while a monkey
waved his baton. The alliga
tors didn't like it either.
No, Genevieve, this is not a
description of open house at the
200 ? it's just a picturesque way
of saying that an audience of
dissatisfied patrons in a New
York night spot are hungry for
that indefinable, primitive and
captivating type of alleged
music called "swing."
The "cats" are swing musi
cians, rhythm-mad boys who,
by "lickin' their chops" and
"friskin' their whiskers," indi
cate a desire for an impromptu
gathering of their ilk to play
for the fun of it, otherwise known
as a "jam session." The "long
underwear gang" they despise
might be Guy Lombardo's
orchestra, famous for its smooth
and restful tunes (otherwise,
"schmaltz"). Lombardo himself,
the director, might be the "mon
key."
The "alligators" are several mil
lion Americans ? mostly younger
generation ? who play no instrument
but have been bitten by the swing
bug.
A BIT FAMILIAR
To youth it is a new delight but
to middle-aged Americans it has a
strangely familiar beat, reminiscent
of something they heard IS or 20
years ago, before what is known as
"jazz" attained respectability.
Those were the days when jazz was
"hot," when polite society frowned
on it as primitive and uncivilized.
It was before George Gershwin
wrote "Rhapsody in Blue," before
jazz symphonized itself and fell un
THE MASTER OF THEM ALL ? Benny Goodman, the king of swine,
with the "atony stick" that helped discredit "sweet" jan and broofht
America a new era of hot music. Or is it music?
and restrained tunes that were pop
ular with the customers but sicken
ing to musicians. In 1931 he tried
his own band but it flopped because
of the Gersh win-G rofe-Whitem an in
fluence. In 1934, nauseated, he or
ganized another outfit that was
fired from Billy Rose's Music Hall
in New York. In the nick of time a
large commercial radio show picked
him up. Next came a Manhattan
hotel engagement which closed be
cause the customers weren't pre
pared for hot music. The skies were
again dark until Fate intervened
one night at the Palomar ballroom
in Los Angeles and swing began an
overnight stampede to popularity!
We'll guess with you ? what is the
mystic element of swing that makes
some people stamp their feet and
shout, that makes other people sit
tensely listening for every note as
if life itself depended on it?
Gene Krupa, popular drummer
der such artistic control that it was
no longer free and natural.
Swing took its place. And swing
is nothing more than the original
Dixieland jazz, a second wave of
the throbbing, carefree rhythm
which New Orleans' shanties and
honky-tonks discovered 20 years
ago.
Hiding the crest of this wave has
been ? bespectacled young man to
whom swing is a semi-sacred Cause,
an orchestra leader who tossed it
right in the laps of New York's so
cial elect by staging a concert at
sophisticated Carnegie hall a few
weeks agol
His name is Benny Goodman, and
although the Carnegie hall concert
prompted one critic to change the
name from Manhattan to "Madhat
tan," he will continue to play hot
music until the Cause is won or the
battle lost.
Though (till youthful, Goodman is
a jazz man of the old school. He
got his start in Chicago with the late
Leon Bismarck (Biz) Belderbecke,
great trumpet and piano man of
the early days who played with such
outfits as Frankie Trumbauer and
Jean Goldkette.
Goodman played for years with
other bands, unhappy because ha
was forced to restrain himself and
produce "commercial" music, sweet
HOW SWING AFFECTS THEM?
When Benny Gwdntin'i bud ap
peared at Mew York's Paramount
theater recently the customers were
so carried away by the twine music
that some of them danced in the
aisles. A few, still more intoxicated
by the rhythm, iwarmed up on the
stage where the orchestra f ave im
promptu exhibitions of the "shag"
and other iwinf tempo dances. In
lower picture the conductor is in the
left background while Gene Krupa,
kin i of the drummers, plies his trade
behind Ua "suitcase."
with Goodman's band, says swing
is "complete and inspired freedom
of rhythmic interpretation." Which
means that you don't follow music;
instead you create and improvise as
you go along.
Though critics scorn swing as an
"art," the musicians themselves
have demonstrated a positively ar
tistic regard for their profession.
Swing, unlike Gershwin jazz, will
thrive without glamor. Some of
America's most able "cats" are
found in such small and out-of-the
way places as Chicago's "Three
Deuces" night club.
The "Three Deuces," like other
swing spots, was once famous for
its "jam sessions." Nightly, after
other clubs had closed their doors,
musicians from world famous or
chestras made this dark basement
their rendezvous, treating the cus
tomers to impromptu swing con
certs that made the welkin ring.
The Chicago musician's union put a
stop to this delightful custom, but it
still prevails in Harlem.
What will happen to swing? As
the "alligators" become more nu
merous and historians announce
that this primitive music is Only a
second edition of the early jazz,
it becomes increasingly possible that
swing may also try to get respect
able and thereby kill itself.
WILL IT STAGNATE?
Soon may come the stagnation
that usually seizes arts patronized
by the well-to-do. It will be spon
sored and supported. Swingmen
will, without realizing, develop a
codified technique and a set of rules
to which all music must conform
before it can be called swing.
True exponents of swing will not
be frightened by this prediction.
When they gather 'round tonight
and "go out of the world," watching
hundreds of the faithful cock an at
tentive ear to the music, all fears
will be cast aside.
Even though the current swing
craze does give way to the respect
able jazz of future George Gersh
win* and Ferde Grofes, it will prob
ably return at a later date. For the
New Orleans honky-tonks will al
ways be loyal and the tom-tom
rhythm that beats within a negro's
breast must find expression. Then
will come a third wave, and the
"alligators" will be happy again!
? WMtn Nmopn Union.
Indian Father's Vow
Costa Lives of Sons
Nahan, India. ? During the crit
ical illness of his two sons, an
Indian father vowed that if the
boys survived he would crawl
with them to the shrine of Lord
Krishna in Hardwar.
While still convalescing, the
two sons and the father set oat
to fulfill the vow. They planned
to d6 the journey in CO stages
of 5 miles each day. One son
died of exhaustion on the seventh
stage. The other succumbed
when he was within ten miles at
the shrine.
The father crawled the remain
ing ten miles alone.
DONT "KITTY" THIS
ODDEST OF TOMCATS
He Like* to Play the Piano,
but Detests Radio.
Circleville, Ohio. ? Casey Jooea
may be just another cat in Siam.
but he is something to behold here.
Born Dechai. "My Boy," in his
native Siam, but renamed after the
famous railroader because he was
lost in transit here, Casey seems to
be a cat only in name.
He won't respond to the conven
tional "kitty, kitty," but comes run
ning when you whistle.
He likes to play the piano, espe
cially before an audience, and wiD
sit for hours amusing himself by
striking the keys with his paws.
The radio is coe of his pet aver
sions. He will tolerate it only while
he is sitting on the buffet, where he
isn't allowed, but he takes no pain*
to hide his displeasure.
He lunges for the telephone when
it rings, and sits by, growling doc
like, until someone answers it.
He likes rubber balls, but be
doesn't play with them in the usual
dignified feline manner. He lifts
them between his forepaws and
hurls them across the room.
The garbage pail under the sink
is one of his favorite haunts. It is
a rare day when he isn't trapped
inside.
A substitute pail without a Bd
was placed under the sink for
Casey's convenience, but the cat
still prefers the hazardous old one.
Six-Word Will on Torn
Paper Filed in Coot
Dallas, Texas. ? A win of only abc
words, hastily scribbled on a scrap
of paper no larger than a giwaj
receipt torn in half, may play an
important part in the distribution at
a Dallas man's estate.
"All I leave belongs to Bun," the
penciled instrument said.
Bun is Mrs. W. G. Davis. Her hus
band in 1920 wrote the instrument,
which was filed as his last will aad
testament.
Davis wrote the statement in Gal
veston just a few moments before
he crossed the causeway to the
mainland. Storm warnings were
raised while he was working on
jetties then being constructed. He
sent his wife and children to Cali
fornia but waited until the storm
broke to leave the island. He was
the next to last person in an auto
mobile to cross the causeway be
fore it collapsed.
Mrs. Davis discovered an old wal
let belonging to her late husband,
who died last October, recently, in
which was the paper with canceled
checks and papers indicating he was
in Galveston at the time. Tbe pa
per was signed "W. G. D."
Mrs. Davis, temporary adminis
tratrix of the $7,500 estate, is seek
ing to be named permanent ex
ecutrix.
Family Charges Strange
Curse to an Elk's Head
St. Paul. ? An elk that was killed
near the St. Paul business district
in pioneer days has put a strange
curse on the family of the late Hor
ace Austin, governor of Minnesota,
1870-74, it seems.
Wherever the elk's head trophy is
placed a fire breaks out, consuming
everything but the trophy, accord
ing to its present owner, Herbert W.
Austin, city purchasing agent and
son of the governor.
The curse began to work in 1881.
Governor Austin had the trophy
hanging in his executive offices
when fire destroyed the building.
Excited lawmakers rescued the
elk's head, overlooking important
state documents.
The trophy was removed to the
old Austin family cottage at Late
Minnetonka. Fire consumed the cot
tage and some valuable walnut fur
niture, but neighbors retrieved the
trophy intact
The trophy was stored in the old
Chapman house pavilion at Mound.
The pavilion burned to the ground,
but someone saved the elk head,
which now reposes at the Austin