North Carolina Newspapers

tittle Evidence Seen of Farm Land Speculation Rural America Seen as Bulwark Against Post war Depression; 'Nervous Gentlemen' Admit Possibilities of Speculative Wave. By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WND Service, Union Tract Building, Washington, D. C. If you see ? cheerful glow along the horizon of rural America these evenings, you'll know what it is?not a prairie Are or the neighbor's bam, but the happy light of burning mort gages. The farmers of America have had their lesson. They aren't throwing their money around this time. They are paying their debts. They are becoming the solid citizens of the nation. They are building a bul wark against a post-war depression that can save the nation financially, unless . . . Right now, the financial health of rural America is better than it has been in many a long decade. But certain nervous gentlemen are be ginning to worry. Will the farmer keep to the straight and narrow or will he be tempted to put down an option on distant hills which are be ginning to turn an alluring green? Listen to what one of those cau tious gentlemen in Washington, Frank Wilson of the department of commerce, has to say. Why, you may ask, does the department of commerce, whose job it is to look after the welfare of the city man, worry about the farmer? Well, when the farmer goes broke, the city man closes up shop. But, a word from Mr. Wilson: "While the level of farm values throughout most parts of the Middle West has increased 10 to IS per cent in the last year, and the transfer of farm properties has been greatly ac celerated, there is, as yet, no evi dence of rthe recurrence of the de structive speculation in ? farm lands which followed the First World war." So far so good. But here is Mr. Wilson's postscript: "Farm lending authorities through out that area, however, admit that conditions are in the making from Which a speculative wave might re sult unless price control measures can be effective in holding farm prices at or only moderately above present levels." Mortgug* Survey The department of commerce made a survey of the farm mortgage situation in II states where the bulk of the food production for war is being made. The federal land banks and the Farm Credit administration which has been watching this situation like a hawk has plenty of data. One out of every ten?or more than 100,000 ?farmer-borrowers from the 12 fed eral land banks and land bank com missioner repaid his loan in full in 1042. In the IB statfs the department of commerce studied, according to the 104iT census, there were more than three million farms, more than half of all the farms in the country. Their total value is well over hajf the total value of farm lands in the country. The survey of this territory, just made public, shows that in 1940, '41 and '42, indebtedness of farmers to the Farm Credit administration dropped a quarter of a billion dol lars. This includes the drouth area in Kansas, one of the states hit hard est by the drouth, 10,000 farmers got out of debt a/id Kansas borrowers ke'pt "right on paying until they had deposited a million dollars in the "future payment fund" to anticipate labor installments. Similar statistics could be reeled off for other areas. One thing that has helped the debt payment is the inability to get into further debt?for automobiles and other commodities which just aren't' for sale. Will that memory fadeT Will the farmer's money begin to bum a hole in his pocketT Will those green pas tures just over the hill begin to lure him beyond his meansT As I said, the cautious folk In Washington are a little worried. ?\ These are some of the danger sig " nals they see: A possible rise in values which cannot be exactly predicted or ex plained. But which is always a pos sibility, If not now, after the war. Then there will be an accumulation of cash; there will be a lot of war bonds In the safe deposit box or in the old sock. There will be a lot of huaky young sons returning from the war for whom fathers will want to buy farms, there will be perhaps an increased demand for farm products as new foreign markets are opened or the United States begins to help feed a starving world. In some places, there is evidence of the tendency toward speculation now. Lenders in Iowa are offering money against Iowa farm land as low as 2V4 per cent. Speculation in livestock is going on in some places. But there is no trend now toward the wild buying of World War I. "And," says Mr. Wilson, "if the tremendous gains in the farm in debtedness situation can be held, the capacity of the great agricultural areas of the nation to absorb the flood of products that will come to all markets after the war will be tremendous." The financial fate of post-war America is pretty much in the hands of the farmers. Let's hope he won't let it (and his spare cash) slip through his fingers. ? ? ? Two-Way Attack On 'Beveridge Plan' When the administration's "Bev eridge plan" for increased social se curity and post-war adjustment was made public, congress proceeded to make it plain that they intended to pigeon-hole it. The general impres sion was that it was laid away be cause it was too "socialistic" to suit the right wingers or even some of the middle-of-the-roaders. But do not think that all the op position came from one direction. The first adventure of the new social security program was, in reality, very much like the "Charge of the Light Brigade" for there were "can nons to right of them" and also "cannons to left of them" which vol leyed and thundered. As I said, the offensive from the right Was taken for granted. But the attack of the left wing, while not as vocal, seems to be just as vehement. There is proof in a press release which prob ably was released by very few pa pers. It comes from the "People's Lobby" in Washington, an institution which believes in "public ownership of natural resources, basic industries and essential processing and distrib utive agencies." But the "People's Lobby" thinks the President's plan is nowhere near socialistic enough. In fact, it is just "another trick . . . to try to lull the people into a sense of false security while economic royalists continue, through ownership, to dictate the standards of living of the American people." Washington? Geometric City The other day, I heard on a radio broadcast the statement that Wash ington was a geometric city. We have so many squares and circles and other geometric figures?Dupont circle that I pass every day, Lafay ette square with its historic memo ries (not to mention its squirrels) where I spend my extra seconds; the Octagon house, built by a wealthy friend of George Washington, where society was lavishly entertained in the early 1800s, now preserved by the American Institute of Architects which bought it to preserve its state ly beauty as well as to house their offices; the sprawling Pentagon building of the army, "a city with a roof over it." With this in mind, I was suddenly impressed with the new patterns im posed on Washington since the war, the human figures, two of which I watched over my lunch in a restau rant the other day. At the next table were, not circles nor squares but human loops and bulges. One was a slim man in eyeglasses. His nose was a loop, his smooth hair was looped back over his forehead. His gestures were looped, the back of the wrist bent and higher than his fingertips as he dangled his ciga rette?I could only think of the paws of a lackadaisical pup begging for a sweet. His partner was Mr. Bulge. The bulge began below the wrinkle in his vest and it was the dhly thing that kept him far enough away from the table to save his bulging nose from reaching the soup I could hear him inhaling. His hands bulged like the padded arms of an overstuffed chair in a hotel lobby. His cheeks were pink and bulging hams. Washington is learning new les sons in human geometry. BRIEFS ...6y Baukhage f The personnel seotion at the Japa mm ministry of commerce has pre pared a set of "laws of etiquette" which is to be distributed to Japa nese officialdom throughout occupied Manchuria. The "laws" corer such details as "posture, attitude, salute, honoridc address and address to sub ordinates." The manner of one's ilwu mini at man Is and the manner Br removing unnecessary trills from scores of articles, ranging from hairpins to industrial power trucks, WPB last year saved 900,000 tons of steel, 17,000 tons ot copper, 180,000, 000 yards of cloth, 30,000 tons of leather, 480,000,000 feet of lumber, 227,000 tons of pulp, 38,000 tons of solder, 8,000 pounds of tungsten and enough man hours to build 23 Liberty ships. VNtfcrntm ELMER TWITCHELL AND THE VICTORY GARDEN Elmer Twitchell issued s commu nique today announcing that he has launched his spring Victory Garden drive again. "I never won a victory over it yet," he said sadly, "but I am going to try once more." ? ? ? "I can't give you much time," he told reporters, "I'm going over the whole situation to check up on gains and losses in my campaigns so far, find out where I am, consolidate my forces and decide on my 1943 tactics." "What's your tactical position?" a reporter asked. "I'm not positive," he replied, j "This is only my second summer in the field. Last summer it was touch and go most of the way, with a pret ty serious defeat at the- finish. I held my own until August when over whelming forces just about ruined me." "Are you more confident of vic tory this season?" "I am stronger than I was a year ago. I've trained hard all winter. I've got some new weapons and I have the will to win." "Do you intend to wage a defense or offensive war?" "I found out last summer that you can't get anywhere with a Victory Garden on the defensive. Those damned bugs love it if you stay on the defensive. That's right up their alley." ? ? ? "Don't forget," Elmer resumed, "that all these garden pests and blights were in a mneh better posi tion than I was when the fight start ed. They had been doing nothing else but waging an all-out war for years. I was green at it." "Was it the element of surprise that bothered you?" he was asked. "Not so much surprise as the pow er and determination of the enemy," he replied. "And of course their reserves are inexhaustible. I'd Uck 'em and think I had wiped out the last bug, and up would come an other battalion of 'em. That sort of thing gets pretty discouraging." "Who do you think was your toughest foe?" a reporter asked. "I thought General Aphis was tongh early in the season but later the Mexican Bean Beetle proved harder to beat. His armored attack on bean vines is terrific. Then came the Japanese Beetle. He used heavy tanks and is strictly a suicide fighter." ? ? ? Elmer seemed depressed just re viewing last year's garden cam paign. "I threw them all back up to midsummer, but then General Cut worm attacked in force, using blitz methods. He was supported by waves of corn borers, potato bugs and snails." "How about your chemical war fare?" he was asked. "Oh, I gave 'em all I had, but they had too many fresh shock troops to throw in. But do you know what really broke down my morale last season?" "No." "The neighbors' chickens." con cluded Elmer. "That was what got me. I thought they were nentral. They were Fifth Columnists!" ? ? ? Add similes: As funny as New , York talking about crime waves in other cities. ? ? ? Ima Dodo thinks that the new Tracy-Hepburn film, "Keeper of the Flame," is a heart-stirring drama of the winter struggle with the oil furnace problem. ? ? ? Larry Singer thinks some con gressmen who turned down the Rami plan thought they were voting against Rommel. . . . R. Roelofs Jr. wants to know if you remember away back when antipasto included a sardine? And ' when you could get a radio repaired? ? ? a Can Yon Remember Away back when you could walk right past a food display in a store window without looking? a a a "M. G." suggests as ids own bev erage plan: Free beer and pretsels from the cradle to the grave. ? ? ? Hi Remember away back when the wail was "all meat and no potatoes"? W. B. FERIOLA. ? ? E. Arcv nemmatet for the civilian "E Aumrd" Oswmld Kilhtf who ofur 30 yean experimenting hot evolved southed of Mug an apple pie without ireds or bits of core in it a a a "Hitler's mental trouble has passed | the phase where it could only be recognized by specialists. It is now obvious to the layman."?Swiss dis patch. Whaddaya mean by "new" I a a a A Guernsey heifer on a form in Elsie. weed. N. Y, suddenly stopped caatasted gracing, tare ocroet the field teed dove into a admwig pooL Sttch idtils It bard to esplain But we suuf remember Ibet a cote can't gat bate the hmdflaw tadey by na* V dtbig die things sutbw need to do. The Congressional Jokes: It lui been reported that Houaa legislative leaders intend to pick a few nimble - witted Congressional sharpshooters, who would be in con stant attendance during sessions?to make clay-pigeons of those who try to spread smears across the Cong. Record. It's about time. We hope their rapier-retorts will help enliven proceedings. Congressional history is crowded with swift repartee-hee ing. Like some petty humans to day, a small-time politico was once trying to make a name for himself by picking on an important Ameri can?who happened to be a Sena tor. The human mosquito annoyed the Senator for months, who finally slapped hiih into oblivion with this story: "A skunk once challenged a lion to a fight. The lion declined. When the skunk asked loudly if he was afraid, the lion said: 'Very much so. For you would only gain fame by having the honor to fight with a lion, while everyone who met me for a month would know that I had been in company with a skunk!" A lawmaker with a sensayuma once told this about himself. He sent a constituent a Cong. Record with a note stating that the Govern ment prints and distributes speeches made by Congressmen without the slightest profit. The voter returned the note with this flip addition: "They are also read the same way!" Huey Long was called a dema gogue after he concluded a teejus filibuster. Hooey foamed at the mouth, daring his critic to define the word. Which his critic did. "A demagogue," he snapped, "is a man who can rock the boat himself and persuade everybody that there's a terrible storm at sea." Here are some o{ the facts of life about Congress every citizen should know . . . Before times got too serious for such levity, a group of legislators organized a "Dema gogues" Club, which met daily in the House cloakroom. After a Repre sentative made a particularly dem agogic speech for home consump tion, he was haled into the cloak roonfc and compelled to make the speech he would like to have made. TTien he was asked to repeat the club pledge: "Vote for all appropri ations and against all taxes," and inducted into full membership. The badge was a safety pin, worn un der the coat lapel . . . Some fun, eh? Then there's the one about the Congressman's wife who woke up in the middle of the night. "Jim," she whispered, "there's a robber in the house" . . . Her Sleep-befogged hubby replied, "That's impossible. In the Senate, yes, but in the House, never." This is one of the Congressional favorites . . . House Speaker Tom Reed had a barbed-wire tongue . . . One day one of the biggest bores in Congress got up, drooled out a lengthy diatribe and concluded by stating: "Mr. Speaker, I am like Henry Clay. I would rather be right than President!" Reed merely intoned: "Don't wor ry?you will never be either." Rep. "Uncle Joe" Cannon loved to tell tall tales about his fishing. He once told a friend about a fish he caught. Trying to beat him to the punch, the chum asked: "About the size of a whale, wasn't it?" . . . But the Congressman wasn't stopped/ "Heck, no," he replied, "I was baitin' with whales." In 1914 the House of Representa tives was evenly divided between both parties. The vote for House Speaker resulted in a tie. One in dependent Progressive could cast the deciding vote. That man was Cong. Thomas D. Schall, who was blind. He felt handicapped in not : being able to judge rival candidates by seeing their faces. So he asked a newspaper man who had "an hon est voice" for counsel. The reporter suggested that with a war going on the House Speaker should belong to the same party as the President. The blind Congressman took his suggestion?and Champ Clark be came Speaker. In that position, Clark played one of the most vital roles in world affairs and turned the tide of history. Csntrary to popular belief, most Congressmen don't like to have the power of giving political jobs. Through bitter experience a Con gressional maxim has evolved: "Ev ery political appointment means one ingrate and a dozen enemies." No column of legislative anecdotes would be complete without the classic about the tot who visited the House of Representatives with his father. The youngster pointed to a man standing on the dais and asked who he was . . . The father ex plained he was the chaplain of the House . . . "Does he pray for the members?" the child asked with logical reasoning. The father informed: "No, my son. When he sees the members sitting there?he prays for the coun try!" Kathleen Norris Says: Wild Oats for Daughters B?U Syndicate?WNU Faaturaa. ? " ? ? W "* V - . .. "Betty-Lou was not yet fourteen when she came home to breakfast one morning bedraggled and exhausted, having danced all night at the country club and various night clubs." By KATHLEEN NORRIS "TT USED to be the boys who I sowed the wild oats and -*? the girls who stayed home," writes a heartbroken mother from a suburb near To ledo. "But in these days it seems to be the other way! My boys, now 24 and 20, both in the services, have been the comfort and pride of my life. Their sis ter, now 16, has given her father and me infinite cause for anxiety and is now in real trouble. "We live in a college town; Betty-Lou was not fourteen when she came in to breakfast one morning bedraggled and exhausted, having danced all night at the coun try club and various night clubs. She had been drinking and was in a con dition to horrify anyone who loved her: Only her father and I were home, and we did what we could. We reminded her, after she had had coffee, a bath and some hours of sleep, that hers is a comfortable, hospitable home, that we have al ways tried to give her every advan tage, and that our hopes for her had been bitterly shaken by her be havior. I was obliged to tell her that hereafter when she told me she wanted to stay with a school friend I would telephone that friend to check on the matter. But both Joe and I regarded this as the reckless ness of a defiant child, and while we watched her carefully, we did not take this first outbreak too seriously. Now I know that it was by no means an isolated instance. "That Christmas we took all tha children east to my mother's place, and there was, a dance among the cousins to which J permitted Betty Lou to go; she had her first formal evening dress and was much petted and praised. At the end of the eve ning she and a boy of 21 disap-, peared; next morning, after a night of horror for us, they were found at a Baltimore hotel: the boy asleep in a chair in the lobby, Betty-Lou and another girl, a girl they had picked up at some night club, asleep up stairs. Expelled From School. "When we came back we tried boarding-school, but last November, in her third half-term there, she was quietly dropped for repeatedly break ing bounds and disappearing for hours at a time. "This Christmas-time her be havior was so reckless that night after night her father and I lay awake waiting to hear her return from various entertainments, some times at two or three o'clock, and sometimes in a state that showed us she had been drinking. Threats are no use; we cannot seem to reach her soul or heart at all. Yet ours is a good home, and we have always tried to keep about her decent and developing influences. "Last night a young marine, 20 years old, called on my husband and me and said that he was 'willing' to marry our daughter if we wished it. Betty-Lou was at a movie with some young friends; we could only gather, from this young man's talk, that he felt obliged to make this suggestion. When Betty-Lou came in she denied everything, said that the boy was romancing, and that she wouldn't marry him under any circumstances. ' But his serious, apologetic manner made a terrible Impression on both Joe and myself. "Now, what are we to do? Here is this girl, not yet 17, who knows neither law nor affection, who is as hard as flint, and who is going to go her own way no matter what we do. In what way have we failed her? We are not church members, but Betty-Lou and her brothers went to Sunday School when they were small, and every lesson in honesty, integrity, self-control that the boys have had she has had, too. She must be a throw-back to some an cestor of whom we are ignorant, for both my husband's people and mine have always been law-abiding, gen tle, good men and women. Must I let this child go on until she does something that destroys her chances of happiness forever? How can I save her from herself? You must have handled cases as desperate as this one, and must be able to under stand that, as far as we know, she has no excuse for treating us this way. What shall we do?" Many Girls Ruin Own Lives. This is a sad letter, and all the sadder to me because I know of no answer. Sometimes the kindest, gentlest, most intelligent of parents find themselves with a child whose cold, hard, reckless nature is a com plete mystery and often completely inefficient parents have sons and daughters who are the greatest pride and honor to them. I know of one fine young lawyer, upright and in telligent and successful, whose mother deserted him and ran off with a lover, when he was only three, and whose father then made a most unfortunate marriage, which ended in his being taken away from the custody of his own people. And I know a brother and sister, both married now, both parents, both un usually fine persons, whose mother's life was an actual scandal, the chil dren themselves having been dragged into court on one occasion to testify in a particularly unsavory suit. And on the other hand there are many cases like that of Betty-Lou, a young girl with every advantage of background and cultivation, who seems determined to ruin her own life and the happiness of those who love her. Affection and patience are the only cure, as far as her parents are concerned. They must go on lov ing her, forgiving her, trying to help her, until her own eyes are opened. And that awakening may not come until she has learned a bitter les son. Our town had a Betty-Lou when I was a girl. A fluffy-headed little beauty named Bessy, who laughed at the prudishness and dullness of the other girls' lives, and boasted of her conquests when the rest of us were begging the virtuous mothers of the nineties please to let us wear corsets and put up our hair. Bessy got into an escapade with a mar ried man when she was 17, had a bad scare and quieted down for I awhile, married in haste at 19, was divorced two years later, surrender ing her little boy to his father, and married again at about the time her contemporaries were blissfully con sidering their first marital venture. IN VAIN REGRET The grief-stricken mother who writes this letter is faced with an alarming problem. Her young daughter, who has had all the advantages of a good home and devoted parents, has grown wild, unreasonable and headstrong. Without a doubt she is doomed to the greatest misery, once her little "fling" is over, unless some thing can be done to keep her from wasting her precious youth, then spending the rest of her hopeless life in vain regret. Re ?tM 1 ? Weete Newvpapei Ul MENTAL AILMENTS There are ailments in which the patient recovers more rapidly in ? hospital than in the home and others in which the home surroundings are best suited tor rapid recover jr. iu? iucan? in some cases that there is something about the change to hospital life from home life that be gets contentment and relaxation, and in other cases the "nat uralness" of the home life reduces feelings of fear, anx iety or misgivings nknnt nntpnmn rtf nil_ Dr. Barton ments. What about slight mental ail ments? At first thought it would seemjthat a patient suffering with mental de pression, obsessions, anxiety, should recover more rapidly amid home surroundings. On second thought, however, the very nature of the home life with its deadly daily rou tine, quiet or noisy, the overanxiety of the family about the patient or on the other hand the feeling that there is nothing wrong with him (or her) and that kindness would be a mis take, interferes with recovery. Trying to prevent neighbors know ing or guessing that the patient is a "mental" case also puts a strain on family and patient. Doctors D. M. Hamilton and J. H. Wall in the American Journal of Psychiatry report the results in the treatment of 100 patients in hospital instead of the home. Treatment was given at the Westchester divi sion of the New York hospital. As with the majority of this type of mental ailments most of these pa tients were above the average in intelligence, the majority had gradu ated from college and some were engaged in professions. The out standing symptoms in the order in which they occurred were tenseness, depression, anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, hypochondriasis (per sisting in believing he has ailments despite evidence that he has not), weakness and fear of insanity. The hospital treatment consisted mainly of interviews with the pa tient and supervision of his daily activities to fit his needs and abili ties. The average length of hospital stay was 8V4 months. A followup study, four to 14 years after this hospital treatment, showed 46 com pletely recovered, five much im proved, 17 improved, making a to tal of 68 of the 100 who had bene fited by the treatment. These were not insane patients, but patients who were not properly balanced. * ? ? Symptoms of Angina Pectoris When a pain occurs in the region of the heart, it is only natural for the individual to fear heart dis ease, because heart disease does cause pain in and near the heart re gion, especially under the breast bone. What is called angina pectoris? viselike gripping pain in the chest? may or may not be a symptom of real or organic heart disease, but the patient should know what angina pectoris is and learn not to be afraid of "sudden death." In the Canadian Medical Associa tion Journal, Prof. John A. Oille, Toronto, points out some of the out standing characteristics of angina. For instance, angina lasts from about one to 30 minutes, averaging about three minutes. The pain is continuous and is not a little stab lasting only a second, which comes and goes for about 15 minutes. Pains lasting for hours or days are too long for angina. Pains that have been coming daily for months or years are coming too often for coronary thrombosis (coro nary occlusion) and are likely due to arthritis in joints of spine. "Angina is a 'wave' of pain and is never a shoot, a stab or a prick. Angina is always the same kind of pain in the same patient; that is, it is never a sharp stab followed by ? dull ache." In heart disease, such as coronary thrombosis, the pain may and often does come on while at rest or dur ing sleep, whereas in angina the most frequent cause is exercise or excitement. "One must find out ex actly what the patient is doing at the instant the pain occurs; fre quently patients will state that they get a pain under the breast bone only after eating, when in reality the pain comes on only in 'walking' after eating. Angina comes during exertion, not afterwards." ? ? * QUESTION BOX Q.?Is cancer contagious? A.?Fortunately cancer is not con tagions; there is no need to worry. Q.?What are the symptoms and what is the treatment for a fallen stomach? A?Tour best plan would be to have a barium meal and X-ray ex amination. This will trace the feed not only aa to the position of the stomach, etc., bat give other ratea ble Information. A supporting belt helps meet eases.