i n *1 o ) 5 * I don’t ^novv’ whether the historians of the future v/iil try to x establish any precise irae as marking the end of the great depression of the .thirties. But this //inter xxxat would seem to be as good .an end-marker as any. One might argue that if the dolorous era of hard times had not finished its course this winter, xi it was because it had already finished before. Any way, the upward swing seems unmistakably under way. The figures are most substantial. v Let’s look at insurance. The $fcadfc±xsix± hew York Life announces a business gain of sixty million dollars during the last year. The Northwest*ern Mutual, twenty million, the Guardian life fifty-two million* and other companies down the line show similar increases for a total insurance gain for the year of One Hundred and Fifty-Eight million dollars. But steel is a more crucial indication. Steel figures for January show a jump of one million sfosiixxxxx tons over January of last year. From December to January oig-iron production increased forty-three percent. The January pig-iron total was one : nd a rial •' inillion tons, which "Iron Age”, the official publication of the industry, describes as the highest in any one mouth since 1931, And that big business man and financial magnate, nUncle Sam11 reports — the tax collection in 1934 rose nine hundred million dal ars. That venerable collector gathered two billion dollars in 1933, two billion and bine hundred million in 1934, M&pbe the sensible thing is not to ask whether or not we are out of the depression but to wonder how long we have been out of it N« R» A The renewal of the N* R* A* brings up a eurious point. Washington expects Congress to get a message from the President within the next few days asking that the National Recovery Act be extended for another two years. And Mr* Roosevelt is determined that the Act shall not be tampered with. For example, there*8 the famous Section 7A. That brings up the curious point* — * Section 7A is the renowned collective bargaining clause. It guarantees to employees the right to organize as they see fit. Heretofore, the most of the opposition to the collective bargain­ ing clause has been in the employer group. But now — take a look at the quarrel between the American Federation of Labor and 4 the President, because of the automobile code. The Federation wants to draw into Its fold the auto unions* But the auto code provides that the motor employees shall decide for themselves, ttnd the indications e# the government seem to be that the motor employees want individual organizations of their own. According to this the auto code is quite in harmony with Section 7A. And the reason £ 0 ? the Administration standpoint would seem to be A. K that the A. F. of L., by opposing the code, is also opposing Sec- ifecLf' tlon 7A, collective bargaining clause of the N. R. A. A LINDBERGH t C«<KVV. ^ kKT " t?^a '•■■^VO *. rSc”TVv^^^wCfc5^ )^^L k ufca. /Xfv Once more the parade of weird witnesses was t^4 continued^/* The defense has brought forward as curious a collection as you could find outside of a parody. Take the following scene.today. A witness was put on the stand to testify that Millard Whited, a prosecution witness who had identified Hauptmann, was a notorious .liarj Tfeen=bs testified to that, emphatically. In the cross-examination Attorney Wilentz General asked:- lfViihited never was in jail, was he?” The answer was:- ^No sir .11 "But you were, weren*t you?" asked Wilentz. And the answer was, "ies sir." “/V0U* There*fc been a fantastic lot of jail and lunatic A asylum connected with the whole string of defense witnesses. Then another man was called to the stand to testify ¥ that Millard Whited was a liar. H© turned out to be a man to whom Whited owed money for a load of wood. One defense witness gave some exceedingly direct and positive testimony — alibi. He placed Hauptmann in that Frederickson bakery at seven-fifteen on the night of the LIMPBERGH - 2 kidnapping* He was a shabbily dressed sickly middle-aged painter named Walter Manley, mhe best the prosecution could do against this alibi was to draw from Manley the fact that the time of his seeing the man was only for five minutes -- the man he identified as Hauptmann, There was a lot of maneuvering along the wood expert line. The defense introduced evidence to discredit the expert identification of the plank in the ladder as the plank missing from Hauptmann’s attic. They produced a witness expert who swore the plank did not match with the attic floor at all. There was testimony that the matching of a couple of planks could not be conclusive, that on a basis of wood grain you could match up various planks that had never been near each other. The defense exercised all sorts of strategies to prove that there was no such thing as a wood expert and that therefore that kind of LINDBERGH - 5 testimony against Hauptmann didn1t mean anything. The nail holes in the ladder came in for a lot of argument when the prosecution attacked the fingerprint man. Dr. Hudson, who testif the ladder now than there were when he examined it first. The Doctor stuck to his story. Attorney General K±ii Wilentz produced a photograph of that crucial board in the ladder, a photograph which he said was made shortly after the kidnapping. The picture shows four nail holes, while Dr. Hudson said there was only one when he saw the ladder. The Attorney General asked the Doctor whether, if the photograph were proved to be as claimed, he v/ould change his opinion and agree that he' lad been mistaken. The Doctor admitted that if the photograph were genuine, he would change his opinion. One defense witness turned out to be not so hot — or rather,too hot. A friend of the dead Isidor Fiseh was put on the stand and questioned on the supposition that Fisch had got the $ ransom money. The witness shouted his denial and defended his dead led,that ther there were more nail holes in friend. The defense excused him on the grounds of being — hostile PRISONER A classic escape occurred today. We have heard of prisoners making a getaway on railroad trips and stea&ship voyages, from stage coach journeys in the old days,and maybe from Roman chariot races. But here’s a prisoner who escaped on an airplane trip. And that would seem to be an accomplishment - jumping out of sky craft^maybe^and landing on his feet. But it wasn’t quite like that. Jesse Coyle, thirty-four years old, is said to be a member of the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, the one that the federal agents have been shooting up lately. He-was arrested in Kansas City. ;j Two Department of Justice agents v;ere taking him by plane to St.Paul, where he was to be questioned concerning the Bremer kid­ napping. The plane got lost and missed the Chicago airport. The circled around and finally'had to make a landing before running out of gas. They came to earth at Aurora, Illinois, xiamswfeKXjS between Chicago and Kansas City. During this halt in their journey, the two Federal Agents took their prisoner to a nearby hotel, where one of them went to the telephone and notified his division office of the forced landing. The prisoner slu£ged- the other agent,cracked him over the head, took a dive out of the ^window, and made his getaway. iQ &oSix! An escape from an airplane ride, with a forced landing .9 Jet?. 77^r f i ! CLYDE PJIHGBOHM All of us aviation enthusiasts will be watching for the next few months, as the big American International Air Derby keeps xx developing. Of course I figured that Clyde Pangborn y/ould be In it. Pang, fresh from his remarkable prize-winning performance in the London-Australia Air Derby, could- hardly be kept out of the American continent-jumping event. So I brought him to the studio here' at Rockefeller Center tonight. How does' that around the Western Hemisphere Sky Derby look to you Pang? i PAMG: Great! The London-Australia event turned out to be a huge success. It was a trail breaker and the means of speeding up the sky service across Europe and Asia. So riaturally that made the idea sound good for over here. k.T.: I understand Two hundred thousand Dollars is in the jack pot - for prizes. General Hugh Johnson of N.R.A. fame, is going to run the show, along with Elliott Roosevelt. How will the course compare with the London-Australia route? CLYDE PANGBORN _ g RAiiG. A lot longer:— v,'ashington to Panama, down th© v;est coast of uonth America, across the Andes, and. up the coast and across Brazil, ana then north to the U.S.A. No dust storms to buck, as vie faced over the Arabian Desert. In the. Australia Derby we flew over jungle, down the Malay Penninsula, and across Borneo. But the hop across Brazil will be a far worse jungle flight than Borneo. L.T.: Yes, I know In the tropical fores’t out east you are never very far from somewhere, but if you land in the South American jungle, you may be in the unknown depths of one of the few unexplored territories still left on earth. But vdiat other thrills are you looking forward to? PANG: Well Ifll tell you a couple of thrills Idm not looking forward to. I am glad we''ll not be flyin'g over India! Roscoe Turner and I got lost at night over Bengal. We missed our way to Alahabad. Roscoe likes to fly by following landmarks on the ground. I prefer the compass. We saw a light flashing in the CLYDE PAMGBORN - c distance. Roscoe said it was the beacon of a flying field, but I figured it was lightning, distant flashes of lightning. While we flew we argued. It was lightning all right. The flying field was somevdiere else. L*1» What1s the other thrill you're not'looking forward to? PANG: We reached the coast of Australia shortly before dawn and did not want to get into the flying field of Charlieville until it was light. So to kill a couple of hours we flew back and forth, just loafing, along the shore of the Gulf of Carpenteria. Later on, in Melbourne, we were told that we had picked on one of the most dangerous places in the v/orld for our ioafing act - a savage section inhabited by the wildest of the Australian aborigines, ferocious cannibals! If we had been forced down there. Colonel Roscoe, his mustache and I would have ended in the soulfk. And by soup I mean soup! L.?*! Well, Pan American Chili carni is better than cannibal soup, • •"rw CLYDE PANGBORN - 4 PANG,: Ifm looking for the right kind of plane just now. I»m studying the types of aircraft available, and will pick the one that suits conditions best. L.T.: And after the Iwo hundred thousahd Dollar Pan-American Derby, what next? PANG : Vincent Buranelli, is building a ship for me to make a non-stop flight around the world, refueling. L.T.: And now letTs refuel with BLUE SUNOCO and take a non-stop flight to Berlin SPY 1 Maybe over in Berlin a trial is under way. It isn’t certsin, merely probable. No word has been given out. The affair is shrouded in the deepest secrecy. It concerns a sensational spy scandal. If the trial is beingheld, as there is reason to believe, the defendants are Captain Baron George von Sosnowski, a former Polish officer ani Frau Benita von Berg, a German woman - together with several others * Word has leaked out concerning ]ghxxadb£Eiaxxa 3 ia chivalries and romances among the accused spies during■their detention in German prisons. They say that Baron Sosnowski was offered his freedom. The Basis wanted to exchange spy prisoners with the government, ana turn over to them the Baron, in return for some Germans, w'hom the Poles are holding as spies. But Baron W' Sosnov/ski refused. He insisted on sharing the lot of the Germans stand by Benita von Berg. Another report declares that Frau von Berg, w-hose marriage has been annuled, is likely to marry the Baron in prison. 7 This spy affair has all the elements of a good story, haroii So snow sk i, wealthy philanderer, race horse owner and gambler, cut a brilliant figure in Berlin’s gay society. His supper parties were the mecca of the fashionable crowd - two or three hundred guests including the leaders of the German army, politics and industry. The leaders of the Nazis attended The high officials were brought to the Baron’s parties by women clever, beautiful ladies, of the highest circles. The charge against him is that he played a game with them; that he fascinated women of society, and used them for his own ends - and those ends were to gather military information and sell it to France In the spring of last year, the Baron staged his most brilliant sensation. He brought to Berlin the exotic Parisian dancer, Leaniako, He financed and launched her for an artistic triumph^and for a dazzling social success. He staged "after the dance" champagne parties, and gathered about him the most important personalities- In Berlin. But among his guests were some personalities even more important, secret service men, in evening clothes. One of the "after the dance" champadrgne parties was in merry progress,-when there was a raid. The secret police surrounded the Baron*s home, came dashing in. The whole party was arrested, aristocratic ladies, stage and screen stars, and all. Most of them were released, but thirty remained in prison. The ones released were bound to the deepest secrecy and were threatened with three years in prison if they said a word about the affair. The ones held in prison were kept-incommunicado, not allowed to see anyone. Women in evening clothes have been sharing the prison yard with ragged Communist womfin^ of the Berlin slums. So deep hag been the secrecy that a foreign journalist was arrested and kept for several days because he wrote an article SPY - 4 in which he linked the case of Baron Sosnowski with certain German airplane engine experiments. But that points to the heart of the matter. It was noted that a number of German military inventions suddenly appeared in Prance, put to use. And it is believed the route that patents took from Berlin to Paris was by the Baron*s "after the dance" champagne suppers. And after the dance of the news it’s, SOLONG UNTIL TOMORROW