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The Alamance gleaner VoL LX1X ^ GRAHAM, N. C., THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1944 No. 60 WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS ""T pt?^T As Southwest Drive Perils Nazi Troon, Allied Bomber. Plaster Western Euro?;' Strikes Show Marked Increase in 1943 *f Ui* "?vsp?>*r*' J I "War /? Hell" Nowhere better Is this expression indicated than in this Italian town of Castel Di Sangro, lying in rubble. SOUTHWEST PACIFIC: Jungle Fighting Like the story of every other is land in the South Pacific, U. S. troops have had to fight for every inch of ground on tropical New Guinea, where landings have placed doughboys in possession of the air strip on Cape Gloucester and ? beachhead at Arawe. With the enemy dug well in the Jungle, U. S. dive bombers and ar tillery helped clear the way for the infantry as it edged forward through the dense brush about Cape Glou cester. In similar terrain at Arawe, the enemy also fell back grudgingly. While doughboys clawed forward in New Britain, other elements of the U. S. Sixth army beat south eastward along the New Guinea coastline toward a juncture with Australian troops driving north ward. In this sector, the Allies aimed for the big Jap shipping base of Madang, supply point for their coastal positions. Ace Lost Only hours after a dispatch from Guadalcanal had ' announced that pudgy, 30-year-old Maj. Gregory ("Pappy") Boyington had shot down his 26th Jap to enter the selective list of U. S. air aces, his mother received word in Okanogan, Wash., that he was missing. M With a mother's faith she said: 'I am confident he is all right and he will show up somehow, some where." Called "Pappy" because of his comparatively older age among the younger marine fliers, Boyington *as a picturesque daredevil. Once, Pappy" purposely led a squadron RVfI 3 ^ap airdr?me, circling the held slowly and daring the enemy to wne up and fight. When they did, Pappy" nailed three. STRIKES: Increase in '43 Almost 14 million working days *?e lost through strikes in 1943 oompared with 4 million in 1942, ecords of the bureau of labor sta shes mdicated. Approximately 3,337,091 workers were involved in the estimated 3,737 ,a, which topped the 1942 to 2 . men ><ile because of z,?8 strikes. year's strikes doubled the average of 1,945, but it was vaiipH ^?Ut * depression pre call n,Urmg that Period- and be out. scarce employment walk ??? were less frequent. EUROPE; PWr Defenses lied'^8 ?ver an 800-mile front, Al mantE?18 rapped hard at Ger ?rn p 'enses and industries in west 'Wed ^esionreParat0ry 10 the her" cdBAiiLItaly' bad weather restrict tainou? t progress over the moun rMisUnrfrrai?' and dually bitter the dicr m future loomed with ^e^ery that the Germans instructing another "Siegfried milej in f^erete and steel several of their and just to the north ??r present positions. ** ?' we^femep80ftCTling up proc" U S. and r.v u ullrope' 8Warms of ?ri lashed at n bombers and flght ^Portant n G"man factories, the fields sir, ? base of KieI- air channe&?T and the feportedlvl ' along which Nazis wrtedly have erected rocket guns. AGRICULTURE: Hogs Pour In Shipment of 476,500 hogs within a 3-day span recently in comparison with 278,400 for the same period a year ago, reflected crowded condi tions i in 12 leading middlewestern markets, with only choice 200 to 300 pound pigs attracting $13.75 per hundredweight. Many hogs were left unsold as daily trading closed, and fearful that animals might contract pneumonia with snow and colder weather, some packers urged farmers to curtail shipments, while embargoes were imposed at other centers. Tight labor conditions restricted packers' capacities, and in Chicago, at least 200 soldiers from the labor pool of a nearby camp were sent into the packing houses to help out. RUSSIA: Tangle in Poland Russian armips forged deeper into pre-war Poland in flaming action on the eastern front, overrunning terri tory the Reds claimed as their own, but the Polish government-in-exile insisted must remain part of the country. As the Russ surged forward into pre-war Poland, Gen. Nicholas Va tutin threw out a spearhead to the southwest, aiming toward the en trapment of 500,000 Nazis from the rear in the big Dnieper river bend. The Reds entered pre-war Poland at a time of heightening tension over their claims that the White Russian and Ukrainian provinces of the old state were racially related to Rus sia. Reportedly headed for Washing ton, D. C., to seek U. S. support for the Polish government in exile's case for retention of the territory was Pre mier Stanislaw Mikolajzyk. WAR PROFITS: IP ant Strict Control Recommendations to change the present government procedure of re capturing excessive profits on war material by rewriting old contracts, were bitterly opposed by Senators Walsh (Mass.), LaFollette (Wis.), Lucas (111.) and Connally (Texas). Two recommendations particular ly opposed would exempt from pres Senators LaFollette and Walsh ent repricing all contracts for stand ard commercial articles, and prod ucts not actually a part of goods delivered. In the first case, the senators said, one company with orders for a standard commercial article did six times the business of the 1935-'39 period, yet would be exempt from repricing. In the second case, the senators said, one machine tool company whose product, of course, does not actually appear in finished war goods, did six times its normal busi ness, yet would not be forced to re price its contracts. PROHIBITION: Before Congress Prohibitionists lined up In support of Rep. Joseph R. Bryson's bill for bidding sale or manufacture of all beverages containing more than Vi of 1 per cent of alcohol for the duration as a congressional commit tee prepared for hearings on the measure. As prohibitionists organized sup port, Rep. Emmanuel Celler said it was rumored that they had raised $10,000,000 for lobbying in Washing ton. Meanwhile, it was reported that the Anti-Saloon league would remain on the sidelines during consideration of the bill, devoting its efforts to persuading President Roosevelt to declare prohibition as a war meas ure under his present vast powers. COLLEGE FOOTBALL: No Deaths For the second time in the 12 years he has compiled statistics on college football deaths, Dr. Floyd R. Eastwood of Purdue U. announced no fatalities due to football in 1943. Possibly because of a lack of suf ficient amounts and quality of equip ment, nine deaths were recorded in high school football, Dr. Eastwood said. Fatalities in the sport have gradu ally decreased since he started his survey in 1931, when 31 deaths were announced, Dr. Eastwood said. Since most deaths have been due to head injuries, he suggested that grid leaders look into possible use of new crash helmets designed for military use during the present war. '44 CONVENTIONS: Chicago Bids With 10,000 visitors expected at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year. Big Business in Chicago bid to have the conclaves held there, with New York also reportedly Interested. In Chicago alone, representatives of hotels, restaurants, realty and financial concerns, banks and utili ?- TT -t Chairmen Spangler and Walker ties agreed to raise $75,000 to help defray hall expenses, etc., for either party, or $150,000 for both, if they met in the Windy City. As the national committees under Frank Walker of the Democrats and Harrison Spangler of the Republi cans studied convention sites, the Office of Defense Transportation de clared Chicago was the city least likely to upset train schedules, since regular line sleeping cars with 11,368 beds terminate there, compared to 7,129 in New York. CANADIAN WHEAT: To Increase Imports With approximately 350,000,000 bushels of U. S. wheat expected to be fed to livestock during the cur- j rent feeding season, an additional 100,000,000 to 150,000,000 bushels will be brought in from Canada, accord ing to government sources. Because U. S. railroad cars will be sent into the interior of Canada this winter, from 25,000,000 to 50, 000,000 more bushels of wheat will be imported than otherwise possi ble, due to the freezing of the Great Lakes. Although the heavy dairy and poultry producing areas of the Northeast have bettered their feed situation, feed grains are needed in the drouthy south central regions, and protein meals are scarce in the southwest range districts. The to tal supply of feed concentrates was estimated at 169.000,000 tons. SOLDIERS' VOTE: Urge Uniformity While congress wrangled over whether the federal government or the individual states should control soldier voting in 1944, the war and navy departments recommended that applications for absentee bal lots be distributed by the services and local officials accept such appli cations any time before election. Other recommendations made by the army and navy were that voting material be designed for air car riage, and that a serviceman's vote be acknowledged by an officer no lower in rank than sergeant. Ballots must be distributed to the servicemen by mail, the depart ments said, and although it is the army and navy policy to assist sol diers and sailors in voting, "nothing must interfere with the . . . primary obligation to wage a victorious war." Washington, D. O. WASHINGTON AND WAR'S END Washington officials who watch the trend of the war admit now pri vately that "things will happen very fast" in the next few months. It pressed, they even make flat predic tions that Germany will fold before summer. Publicly, they stick to the line that it will be a long war. This is the only sound position to take, as an official line, since no war can be suc cessfully waged if the people spend their time peeping around the corner for the approach of peace. But the facts allow a hopeful ex pectation. Unquestionably the inva sion of Europe will be a winter in vasion. For many reasons, spring will be too late. February is the likeliest month. The exact time will be no secret to the Nazis, because we will be pounding the French coast well in advance. The offensive will be a tremendous operation, combining a cross-chan nel invasion with heavy drives from Russia and Italy, plus all-out air attacks everywhere. (The Balkan in vasion urged by Churchill is doubt ful.) Some experts go as far as to name the length of time?in days?which this big operation will require, be fore the end. One highly placed of ficial says it will take three months and twenty days. Thus, if the in vasion starts by mid-February, this would mean the end by early June. But military experts won't say such things out loud, because they fear the U. S. public will overlook the fact that the days between Feb ruary and June will be the bloodiest days in the history of all the world's wars. ? ? ? ARMY POSTAL SERVICE On a recent visit to the front lines, Lieut. Gen. Mark Clark found a soldier busy scribbling a V-mail let ter on his mess-kit. The soldier looked as though he had lost his last friend, so General Clark asked him what was wrong. "Oh, I'm getting a little weary of this life, sir," replied the soldier. "What's your trouble?" asked General Clark. "Why, I haven't received a letter In five days, General," replied the soldier. "What does the post office department think we are over here ?a bunch of archeologists?" "Personally, I think five days is pretty good service from the United States to the front lines, son," re plied Clark. "But I'U talk to the postal service officials and see if you can't get your love letters quick er. I see your point, soldier." ? * ? VETERANS EXPAND The Ramspeck committee inves tigating civil service has spent most of its time trimming the numbers of government workers. But it has now stumbled into a situation re quiring a complete change of policy. The Veterans administration, in stead of submitting to a reduction of personnel, is asking for more?thou sands more. Men are being dis charged from military service so fast that the task of Veterans ad ministration is going up like a sky rocket. Now employing 45,000 work ers all over the country, V. A. will soon have to double its staff. ? ? ? BACK TO PEACETIME INDUSTRY Donald Nelson is engaged in a behind-the-scenes race with Elder Statesman Bernie Baruch to work out plans for the reconversion of American industry and see who can get it done first. This was behind the war production board meeting last week when Nelson Called in his top aides and outlined a big post war program of civilian production. Nelson wants plans for the change over of industry to begin at once. This does not mean the actual re conversion of factories, since a lot of them may be busy on war orders for some time. But it does mean full speed ahead on plans for recon version. This may provide one clue on how soon the administration expects the war to be over in Europe. However, insiders who know something about personal rivalries of Washington, see in if also the desire of Donald Neson to grab the ball away from Baruch and "Assist ant President" Jimmie Byrnes. These two long have wanted to get Nelson out, and at one time FDR actually signed a letter appointing Baruch chairman of a special com mittee to take over all war produc tion. . Note: Before Nelftn got busy on reconversion, Baruch had been asked by the White House to study plans for converting industry back to a peace basis. An American Railroad Maintains a Unique ! Museum Which Links the Present With the. Historic Past ot the Regions It Serves By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. IT'S only a yellowing piece of paper upon which is scrawled a single sentence, yet there's a lot of American history, past and present, bound up in that brief message. Visit the Union Pacific museum in Omaha, Neb., and there you can read for your self this historic telegram: "You can make affidavit of completion. of road to Promontory Summit." The date was May 9,1869. The writer was Grenville M. Dodge, who had been a general in the Union army during the Civil war and who was now chief engineer of the Union Pacific railroad. And when he penned that laconic message to Presi dent Oliver Ames of the U. P. he was writing a new chapter in : the history of transportation? also a new chapter in the annals of America. For the first time these United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, were bound together by twin bands of steel, never to be broken. No longer would the westward-far ing pioneer have to plod along afoot or on horseback or ride in swaying. Jolting stagecoach or prairie schoon er in order to reach the new lands of opportunity which beckoned him in the West. The overland journey which had once been a matter of months, even years, would now be reduced to weeks, then days. That is the Past in thia scrap of paper. As for the Present?well, at the very moment you are reading Dodge's telegram there is flowing over this first transcontinental rail road, as well as the others which have been built in the last three quarters of a century, an endless stream of men and munitions, bound for the far-flung battle lines of the greatest war in human history. Sol diers, sailors and marines; machine guns and jeeps and tanks; shells and gasoline and food?powerful locomotives are speeding them west toward their final destination: Tokyo. And these huge iron horses meet and roar past others headed east, pulling behind them the men and munitions which will break down the walls of Hitler's European fortress. But Dodge's telegram is not the only document in the collections of this museum which links the past and the present in graphic manner. We hear a lot of talk today about the manpower shortage. Back in 1869 it was also a problem, as wit ness a letter, preserved in the U. P. museum, written by Brigham Young, president of the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons), in which he tells of his struggle to secure enough labor to build a con necting link of railroad from Salt Lake City to the U. P. main line. Or talk to Mrs. Ruth Hamilton, the kindly gray-haired lady who is the curator of the museum, and she will tell you how the Past frequently walks through its doors in the per son of some one of the thousands of persons who visit the place annu ally. There was the day when a little group of dark-skinned boys came shyly into the big room and surveyed in silence the Indian relics in one of the cases. Suddenly there was an exclamation of delight?it seems that one of the boys had rec ognized an old-time photograph of one of his forebears?Crow Dog, a great war chief of the Sioux. Then there was the day when two big-hatted westerners showed un usual interest in one grim relic in the museum?the shackles used on i "Big Nose George," a famous out law, when he was brought back from Montana for an attempted hold up of a Union Pacific train. The label on this relic says that the sheriff who-' captured "Big Nose George" was one Joseph Rankin. ! "That was your grandfather, you know," said the elder man to the younger, and he might have added that Joe Rankin was not only a fa mous western sheriff in the early days of Montana but he was also a renowned scout for the army and the hero of a remarkable long distance ride during the Ute Indian war of 1879. In fact, the collections in the Union Pacific museum constitute a veritable graphic history of the old West. The era of the fur trade is symbolized in two relics of one of its greatest figures?the watch and scissors used by Old Jim Bridger. Here is a mute symbol of the days when the buffalo roamed the west I The "Wedding of the Ralls" at Promontory Point, Utah, May M, 1869, marking the completion ot the first transcontinental railroad. The Cen tral Pacific engine Is on the left, the Union Pacific on the right. (From an original photograph by C. R. Savage in the Union Pacific museum.) era plains by the millions ? a bleached, whitened skull of one of the great shaggy beasts. And, of course, there is many a memento of the man who won his fame as a slayer of bison?"Buffalo Bill" Cody ?and the notables, both American and European, whom he guided on their hunting parties. Among them were James Gordon Bennett, fa mous publisher of the New York Herald, the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia and the English nobleman, the earl of Dunraven. Over there is a memory of the epic migration of pioneers over the old Oregon Trail, a huge ox-yoke which once encircled the necks of the patient animals that dragged the covered wagons up through the Platte River valley, across the bar ren plains of southern Wyoming and through South Pass toward their goal beyond the Rockies?the very route over which speed the stream liners of today. Here, too, are mementos of the day of the cattleman and the cow boy?one of them a rare old book showing the trails from Texas to Ellsworth, Kan., one of the roaring "cow towns" oa the Kansas Pacific in the seventies. Then there's a col lection of branding irons which once burned the insignia of famous "cow outfits" on the hides of Texas long horns?and Mrs. Hamilton will tell you that these branding irons were of special interest to one party of visitors a short time ago. They rmx. 1! J!. Rare photograph of Col. W. F. Cody, "Buffalo BUI,'' autographed by hint to Chief Red Shirt of the Sioux, who waa one of the Indian notables in his Wild West show. This is one of the few pictures ever taken of Cody wearing the uniform of the Nebraska national guard in which he was an officer and is here repro duced for the Arst time. (Original in the Union Pacific museum.) came from Argentina where similar irons are used today to mark the cattle that roam the pampas of that country by the hundreds of thou sands, and the designs of their branding irons are not unlike the Spanish designs which were used by the vaqueros in the early days of California. Of course, most of the exhibits in the museum relate directly to the history of the Union Pacific railroad itself, but since U. P. history is so inextricably interwoven with the history of the trans-Missouri fron tier it is almost impossible to say where one leaves off and the other begins. Nor are all the relics there mementos of westerners. The East is well represented, too, for it was eastern capital that built the Union Pacific and the history of the U. P. is studded with the names of promi nent easterners?Asa 'Whitney, Oli ver Ames, George Francis Train, Thomas C. Durant and Massachu setts-born Grenville M. Dodge, who surveyed the route for the first transcontinental railroad and then was chief engineer for its building. It may surmise you to see how many relics Of Abraham Lincoln there are here, too. But It is not ? inappropriate that they should be, for it was the Great Emancipator who, on July 1, 1862, signed the Pacific railway bill, passed by con gress, which provided for a land grant and subsidy from the govern ment to aid in the construction of a railroad westward from the Mis souri river to California and for an other road eastward across Califor nia to connect with it. It was Presi dent Lincoln who designated Coun cil Bluffs, Iowa, as the eastern terminus of the U. P. and among the most treasured documents in the museum's collections is an origi nal Lincoln letter?an executive or der, dated October, 1863, appoint ing Springer Harbaugh of Pennsyl vania as a government director of the projected railroad. Fortunately for posterity, photog raphy had become a well-established art by the time the Union Pacific begaiT building west and to that re gion flocked many of the daring early-day "camera men" who had won their spurs as photographers on the battlefields of the Civil war. Among them were such men as Al exander Gardner, Capt. A. J. Rus sell, who became official photogra pher for the U. P., William H. Jack son, Savage and Ottinger and oth ers. So an important part of the collections in the U. P. museum are the photographs made by these men which comprise a priceless pictorial record of one of the most thrilling epochs in American history. It was Savage who made some of the best pictures at the historic cere mony at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when there took place the "Wedding of the Rails"? the driving of the golden and silver spikes which symbolized the joining of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific lines and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. And incidentally one of the most in teresting of the documentary exhib its in the museum is the photostat of the diary of this same C. R. Sav age from May 4, when he set out from his studio in Salt Lake City, through May 11 after his work at Promontory Point was done. Too many museums are places of static exhibits where the whole at mosphere is that of the dead and moldering past. To visit this unique museum in Omaha (unique in that no other railroad, so far as is known, has set aside space in its headquar ters to preserve materials connected with its own history and the history of the country it serves) is to have a feeling of seeing history on the march, with the past Mending into the present in the continuing story of a nation still being built. It may be due to the vision of Carl R. Gray, former president of the Union Pa cific, who established the mu seum and sponsored its early devel opment. Then again it may be due to the galvanic influence of his suc cessor who takes a keen personal interest in the place and is respor sible for the addition of many an interesting item to its collections. His name, in case you don't happen to remember that dynamic personal ity who went to the national capital a year or so ago and showed Wash ington officialdom how to do a big job quickly and efficiently, is "Big Bill" Jeffers.
The Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.)
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Jan. 20, 1944, edition 1
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