k.-Z- SUffOCg_-_ AUGUST 1933 Good Evening, Everybody I don^t know whether this will bring you good cheer or the contrary, but inriation of the currency is not at hand; at any rate, not immediately. Inflation talk has been in the air, of course, ever since March, and recently wiseacres in Washington have been telling us it was imminent. But the Secretary of the Treasury, when he left President Roosevelt at the Summer White House today, announced that the question of inflation had not even been discussed during his visit at Hyde Park. Mr. Woodin said also that the question of hisAresignation had not come up either. And he said emphatically that he has 1“ U) Vwt' --^ ^-*^7 not resigned. The Secretary and Mrs* Woodin spent the night A and a considerable portion of the morning at the Summer White House, LEAD - ,2 The principal topics discussed between the President and the Secretary were government credit, the financing of public works, and the embargo on gold. Mr. Woodin says he informed the President that the Treasury was in excellent shape to handle the. financing of public works, but he wanted to know how fast funds may be needed to pay for the program, explaining that the Treasury did not want to borrow money before it was needed. Then the Secretary discussed the wording of an executive order which the President is preparing to send to Attorney General Gummings on the subject of gold hoarding. One of the things that have to be decided is the interpretation of what is gold. And by the way, Secretary Woodin's health, we leam, is much improved. Following the departure of the Secretary and Mrs, Woodin, the President*s next guest was Lewis Douglas, Director of the budget. From him Mr. Roosevelt learned how his economy program has been progressing. The President is going to be a wrestling fan tonight At Nyack on the Hudson. He will see a program of amateur bouts. Post Master Jim Farley will be there. WHEAT Well, who'd have thought it? A world conference that has not bust up in failurel The news from London today is that the delegates to the wheat congress have reached an agreement in principle, at any rate. That certainly is news. One thin^_ tIni it will mean is that Mr. Wallace, our Secretary of Agriculture, will not have to carry out his threat to dump the surplus supply of the U.S.A. in the Orient. By the terms of the agreement the price of wheat, that is, the price at which tariff reduction will begin, is fixed at 63-S/3 gold cents a bushel. That means 87-1/10 cents at the present depreciated price of the American dollar. This principle was accepted by the exporting nations. Another clause of the agreement is that the exporters agree to limit exports to five hundred and sixty million bushels in the season 1933 -34. Of this amount the U.S.A. is allowed forty-five millions. t is ported out at presei^ the Chi/ago^m^rket 1 far ahead of parity at Liverpool. Consequently o help, YtHEAT - 2 this 'f‘igure/must ^porting nations rempire the/^uota pestrict This news was received with much satisfaction in ?v7ashington* HSS* though no official statement was made, big-wigs of the Department of Agriculture said that one repercussion of the London agreement will be a considerably greater reduction in the acreage of the American wheat crop than has been contemplated. In fact the acreage will probably be reduced as much as fifteen percent. The Department has its field forces organ!zeo and ready to istrr**: immediately the word is given. Farmers in the A principal wheat belts have been thoroughly educated in the terms of the Government’s reduction of ,Jasi^dnd about the only thing left is the actual signing of the contracts. me EPIDEMIC That epidemic of sleeping siclmess out in St. Louis is growing worse* !n feet medicel officers ere beginning to consider it as the^ worst they have ever known or heard of. For instance, no less than thirty new cases were reported today. two hundred and forty-three. What is more, other cases are beginning to be reported from points widely scattered over the middle west. What makes it worse is that it has the medical profession baffled. Physicians, members of University faculties, and local health authorities are doing their utmost, but so far without the slightest encouragement. <^ 2 ^ & And in St. Louis County alone the tc amounts to NBC GERM MY Over in Germany the Nazis are on the rampage again. H*R*Knictcerboeker cables the Nemr York Evening Post that +he Hitler government hasissued its first proscription list. On it are thirty-three names, thirty-three of the Germans who were most prominent in the days of the Republic before Hitler came to the throne. Among them is that of Dr. Philip Scheidemann who was first Chancellor of the Republic. By this edict the proscribed men are deprived of their citizenship and their property is declared confiscated. Nothing like this has been known in history since the days of medieval and post-medieval Europe. Most of the men on this proscription list have already fled the country -« are already in exile. The authors, Leon Peuchtwanger, the Jewish novelist, and the novelist Heinrich Mann, are included, but not his more celebrated brother Thos, Mann. For the rest this list consists mostly of Socialists, Communists, and Pacifists. Many of them are newspaper men. is no tic able that the name of Dr. Albert Einstein, the famous mathematician, is not on the list. It is claimed that as he was a citizen only owing to his membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences, flERMAM - g he Iqst that citizenship when the Academy expelled him. -So Also, all^^^'ope^ty has been confiscated long ago^ so there’s no use confiscating it all over again. Knickerbocker N.^.Eve. Post CUBA Things are on the move in ^ba. The new government is making a clean sweep of everything and everybody connected ^ith the rule of the exiled President Machado, President de Cespedes and his newly formed Cabinet issued a decree dissolving the Cuban Congress, The decree also declared everything that had been done by the Machado government since the beginning of his second term in 1929 was illegal and unconstitutional. Cuba’s new president also issued a call for a general election to be held February 24, 1954. Hejka±so> decreed that ^ 4 Cuba should discard fcfc* present constitution and go back to that which prevailed in 1901 when Uncle Sam’s military^ forces controlled the island. The outlawing of every act of the Machado government since 1929 does not mean that Cuba will not pay 11*- debts. President de Cespedes announced emphatically that Cuba will honor all international debts and obligations regardless of when they were incurred. R.F.C. Some good news for bank depositors in Michigan comes from Washington today. And it comes just as the investigation of the Grand Jury in Detroit into the Michigan bank situation was approaching a climax. The news is that the Reconstruction Finance Corporation announces It will loan two million eight hundred thousand dollars to banks In upstate Michigan. The loan will be scattered among fifty-three fearwk of these institutions and will enable them to open their doors once more. This loan brings the total amount of money loaned by the R.F.C. in Michigan to nearly seven million dollars. NBC REPEAL V Tomorrow is going to be another important day in the history of the prohibition repeal movement. Texas, the largest state in the Union, will go to the polls and vote. Of course you know that Texas is the home state of Senator Morris Sheppard, the father of the Eighteenth Amendment, also of Vice President Garner, an emphatic opponent nf — . A. Texas has two things to decide; one is the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment; the other is whether beer is to be legal. Hitherto, in spite of the act of Congress allowing the three percent stuff, it has not been sold in Texas A* because an amendment to the State Constitution prohibits it. Senator Sheppard and other dry leaders have been carrying on a vigorous campaign for therg=uoiin-jjatl^rni^ Xi* Vice President Garner has been resting and taking but a small part in the campaign. However, he appears now and then at repeal meetings to support Postmaster General FarleyTs plea to Democratic voters. The association against the prohibition amendment predicts an overwhelming wet victory. Even such die hard dry REPEAL - 2 papers as the ^1 Paso Herald are conceding that the amendment will be repealed. Senator Sheppard -and Bishop Canon by no means admit this* The Literary Digest’s poll of last summer showed Texas, which had hitherto been a dry stronghold, has now become anrewfaw overwhelmingly wet. At any rate it will make interesting reading in your Sunday papers. NBC TANKS Oncle Sam s chemical engineers have sprung a new wrinkle. Ifs a device by which battle tanks may carry their crews in safety even against the deadliest poison gases. Experiments in that direction are now going on at Fort Benning, Georgia. The problem of raanoeuvering tanks against poison gas has hitherto been exceedingly difficult, because it was shown that the wearing of gas masks hampered soldiers inside the tanks and prevented their moving around, and using their weapons freely. So the new idea is to gas-proof the tanks themselves. Each tank becomes one huge gas mask. NBC SMI A curious fact I learned today was that it costs more to keep a big hotel cool in the Summer than it does to keep it warm in the Winter, W, D, Lewis, the Chief Engineer at t&e Hotel A* Hew Yorkes^ tells me that he burns forty tons im of coal a day to keep the temperature right for the guests during the winter. But in the summer, he has to use fifty tons of coal to operate the air cooling system. If you don’t believe it, Mr. Lewis has the bills to prove It PEACHES I am glad to say that I was mistaken about that peach crop in Southern New Jersey. The information I received was that this magnificent crop had been totally ruined by the hurricane. But the Cooperative GrowerTs Association of Southern vwori New Jersey telegrapbr me that all the crops have been cleaned up A and they add that the peaches remaining on the trees are of exceptional size and color.iaLid nobody is going to be sorry for »,«. W^a, ^ L.T. Telegram. HOBBIES I happened to mention curious hobbies the other day, A writer I hnow has been doing some research among captains of industry and other celebrities. As I suppose moat of you are aware Franklin D, Roosevelt is a famous collector of old ships prints, also of postage stamps, J. P, Morgan is a student of ecclesiastical history, Samuel Untermyer is almost as celebrated for his orchids as for his prowess in the law courts, Tom Beck, Editorial head of Colliers Weekly, has a hobby of fish and game -- in fact he’s the head of the Fish and Game Commission of Connecticut. George Wickersham reads Dante in the original, Henry Ford collects old inns and machines. In fact the list of strange pastimes among our magnificoes is almost endless WHALING FLEET There is something rather mournful though not uninteresting in some information given out 'by Uncle Sam’s Department of Commerce. It concerns the American whaling fleet which was once the pride and champion of the Seven Seas. It’s headquarters were at New Bedford, Massachusetts, and the fascinating island of Nantucket* In itsprime that Yankee whaling fleet included seme two hundred thousand gross tonnage. What's become of the American whaling fleet today? For one thing it has moved to the Pacific coast. It consists of only ten thousand tons spread over fourteen vessels. Thirteen of them are in San Fraincisco and Seattle, one in New York and none in Massachusetts waters. Many a darn good yam used to come out of the whaling fleet, but I haven't run across any in many a moon, and perhaps the facts I have just been relating explain it. BASEBALL There is going to be a baseball celebration at the Polo Grounds in New York tomorrow. The hero of it will be Adam Comorosky, the lively left fielder of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In Wilkes-Barre,^where Adam was horn, they consider Babe Ruth a pretty good player. In fact, a pretty fair runner-up^ to Adam Comoro sky S ^ • A delegation from Wilkes-Barre called on me this afternoon to tell me that seven hundred Wilkes-Barrenos are going to march in a body to the Polo Grounds to see their favorite Adam play the Giants. After a few minutes conversation j | with patriotic Wilkes-Barrenos, you gather that Adam is pretty much the whole of the Pirate»s team, though they have to have a couple of youngsters like the Waner Brothers to help fill up the batting order. The American Legion Band from Wilkes-Barre will be with the delegation at the Polo Grounds tomorrow and will play "Hail to tha Chief" while the boss of the baker^where Adam used to work before he became a baseball star will make him a handsome present. Let’s hope Adam is able to break the rule and hit a SSW??Sj? TRASEBALL 2 home run. It is a standing joke in the sports world that whenever a player becomes the hero of a ceremony like that* he either ug commits some terrific error in the field<3^^ Incidentally the two pigeons I released when I broadcast** from the air two months ago "Anthracite” and®Blue Sunoco" will be gam released from the Polo Grounds to carry the news of the ceremony to Adam’s mother in Pennsylvania. NBC EMXU F13HI1IG Th® aeronautical publication called Skylines tells of an old fisherman, member of the Tall Story Club, who took a greenhorn out fishing. "Hey," cried the greenhorn, "I’ve got a bite. What ’ 11 I do?" "Heel in your line," replied the old fisherman. A moment later the greenhorn quavered; "I've got the line reeled in and the fish is right up against the end of the po 1 e. What * 11 I do now?" "All you got to do now," drawled the fisherman in disgusted "is climb out to the end of your rod and choke the fish to death." And SO LONG U2JTIL MONDAY, Skyline Magazine