N«R»A» iyjr •^:. .1 i'» j r'Kj/ :. AV Pirst and foremost in the dayf s news is the event in Washington which so directly affects the system under which we live, iho df.^my>ic_s of the Supreme Court gold decision were more more startling in immediate possibility* impressively Uut the Presidents N.R.A. message haI's^^ui e?^^gnif i c a nc e endur^g over"^^stretch. What's to happen to the N.R.A.? Everybody who can think a thought has been reflecting on that question, on and off. Is the tf_ l/ v'*/7 N.R.A* to increasidg^ become more and more s dominating system of economics? Or is it to grow pale and dim and pass out of the I*-1-.'. .... picture, a mere emergency measure? 1 The President's declaration today takes a middle position, and paints the National Recovery Ac as a permanent institution, with just about the same power in importance as now, neither increasing to any absolute dominance, nor diminishing. He calls upon Congress to rene?/ the National Recovery Act and extend it for another two years. This would carry the Blue Eagle into nineteen thirty-seven, well beyond Mr. Roosevelt's ^ ^ ^ Anri t-hp President visions it as projected present term of office. And tne rresiueiiu -h£« c^ju^h. , II . R. Aa_ - 1A Speaking of the purposes and principles of the Act, the president declared: Mfo abandon them is unthinkable," In the changes and new singles that he suggested to Congress today, the President leaves the Blue Eagle pretty much as it stands - or perches. Some of the changes are minus - yanking out a Blue feather or two. Others are plus - the Blue tail feathers a little longer The feathers of the broad blue wings seem to be clipped a trifle in the President's call for Congress to clarify sections of the h.R.A. and make them more precise. This would seem to he a side glance at the Supreme Court, £&nd the exceptions it has taken to Administration policies, as in the gold decision, but more pertinently in that previous decision concerning "hot oil'1. The high justices miacr-j^ federal control A A angle in the Oil Code, on the ground that Congress had given the President powers too vague, too indefinite, too sweeping. So now Mr. Roosevelt wants Congress to go over the N.R.A. with a fine comb and clear oSS points of vagueness, and make the presidential A powers more specific, not so indefinitely broad. That will ii give the Supreme Court less to pounce upon. Basically it means - squaring the N.R.A. more accurately with the Constitution. A more obvious trimming of a blue feather, comes in the President*s declaration against the idea of jail sentences for N.R.A. violators. He says there is no need of dusting out a prison cell for people who don't live up to the codes. Regular civil proceedings he thinks are enough, injunctions, mandamuses, and other legal ways with Latin names. Meaning — that code vio­ lations are to be handled through the regular courts and not by the more direct sort of action on the part of the Code Adminis­ trations. And that would seem to end the era of ’♦cracking down." As for the clauses in the presidential message which give the blue Eagle a bit of a boost - the principal one concerns coal, natural gas and oil. Mr. Roosevelt recommends that the government under the N.R.A, shall assume supervision over these industries, to stabilize them and eliminate ruinous price-cutting. This of course would tend to put the coal, natural gas and oil industries into the same government regulated class as public utilities. The question is, whether -hey can legally be considered as public utilities. And the Blue Eagle, screams with price as the President caresses and smooths down its feathers with praise - telling Congress fas of the good the N.R.A. has done, and the recovery results accomplished under its regime, Mr. Roosevelt calls for a continuation of the N.R.A. policies of collective bargaining for labor, the abolition of chil<? labor, the enforcement of the anti-trust acts and the protection of small industries - the little fellow. And Congress is getting busy pronto to shape a new N.R.A. in place of the old OQQLIDGE Thx’ee names were associated in my mind today, in connection with President hoosevelt»s newest appointment to the Consumers Advisory Board of the N.R.A. The first is the name of Mrs. Emily Newell Blair, who has become Chairman of that me Mew Deal Consumers Board. The second is Calvin Coolidge, and the third is the composer Mozart. An odd selection, which comes about through the bizarre association of ideas,suggested by the news. Mrs. Emily Newell Blair was Assistant to the former hep-1 of the Consumers Board - Mrs. Mary Harrlman Rumsey, who was fatally rk injured by a fall from a horse. ^Mrs.'Blair nas been active for a long time in political affairs pertaining to women. She was a suffrag\it€li leader, a member of the Council of National Defense LXXEXKEtlt^ time to time, including an associate editorship on Good Housekeeping during the World War- yTgyy-gTggre*»*KXKd±± All sorts of jobs, from * * Magazine. That’s what suggests the name of Calvin Coolidge, because ft. ii A<r> . Good Housekeeping, in its *B3»B*issue, prints a collection of anecdotes about the New England sage in the bhit- Houseman article by Mrs. Coolidge herself. In one of these, the former rnOLIDGE - s First Lady tells how she and Cal were just setting up housekeeping, and* Cal arrived at their new home.- He was carrying an odd little russet colored bag, Mrs. Coolidge writes. V.nen she opened tbe bag she found it crammed with men1 s KlatHE socks, all in need of mending. "I counted them,,, I says Mrs. Collidge - n fifty-two pairs.'' S’^ ^ su U xml <5^. ,Vw»ffl^cS?t?nues, he had mj A A /v ft\»hen I inquired" married me to get his stockings darned, he replied quite seriously: "'No, but I find it mighty handy.'" And i call that domestic statesmanship on the part of aAnatioi The anecdote reminds me of something I reed about the the New Englander, who became a^nationa! statesman. composer Mozart, who wrote such angelic music. Mozart, having f! I i decided to get married, sent a letter to his father, asking i.or permission. And he gave a list of half a dozen reasons, the next to the last of which was that he needed somebody to look after his clothes. And last - he was in love! i gold The talk of government action about the gold decision seems to b© premature. i.nei e Hcive bfcen all sorts of reports that tr'e Administration Is planning legislation to plug up any hole the decision may have opened in the present gold policy. Of course this refers to the paradoxical angle of the Supreme Court ruling - that it wls illegal for Uncle Sam to refuse to redeenT^Ji bonds in i£Jt the equivalent of gold, but nothing da** be done about it. !hat»s a A sort of logical and legal dilemma tfhich might lead to complications. P esident Roosevelt declared today that he had not come to any decision about asking Congress for legislation along these gold lines. He emphasized tand explained that he had no Intention of making up his mind about it for at least a week. Because it will take at least that long for the legal experts of the government to analyze, digest and figure out all the angles of the complex verdict - •You were wrong Uncle Sam, but they can*t do /v anything to you.n INDIANA The idea of secession is a familiar one in American history. From the earliest days of the federal union right on down the line, states talked about seceding, until it all culminated in the Great War of Secession. And the theme of secession is In the news today. Does this signify - a state 'or a group of states, planning to break away from the Union*: perhaps by force of arms? No, there won't be another Civil War, It all quite peaceful. The official word Is - "Go on and secede,if you want to, go your way in peace." And this nineteen thirty-five ordinace of secession does not concern a revolting state, but a revolting county - Lake County Indiana, If the legislative program goes through, Lake County will break away from the grand old commonwealth of Indiana, where the Wabash flows. Lake County will become the forty-ninth state of the Union and will supersede Rhode Island as the smallest state. slavery nor states* rights - but horse racing. La^e County io the rich manufacturing area southeast of Chicago, containing 'g y ii. instrial centers such as Gary and Hammond, Lake County Behind this story of^secession we find, HE&i neither INDIANA - £ decided it wanted a racetrack or two. And its representatives backed a bill in the btate Legislature to legalize pari-mutual betting, so the boys could lay a wager or two on the galloping tive James V. Kent, Jr., or Lake County, who is the author of the defeated horse-racing bill, and he gave me an inside account of the curious complications that have followed. The disgruntled Lake County legislators expressed their resentment by introducing a bill to separate the county from Indiana and mane it a separate sovereign state all by itself. The bill was intended to be a joke, a gesture of indignation. But what has happened? The joke seems to be on Lake County. Because the Indiana Legislature proceeded to take the bill quite seriously. With a rousing vote of approval the secession measure was turned ^ ^ over to the House Military Affairs Committee. And now the Committee a ready to pass it. 53? is being considered tonight, and Representative un Lhe Legislature turned the bill dov/n and that made the La*e County representatives mad.^ Today I telephoned Representa­ has •MQrtrtwimcinria■f.-! nn that Lake County be given fun consent to secede ^ Le^at^Tl^tSg Kent tells me that tomorrow it will undoubtedly be passed and sent" to the State Senate* It isn’t certain how the Indiana Senators (or the Governor) will feel about this On-the-Banks-of-the-Wabash out­ burst of legislative humor. But if they follow through with the joke, the Lake bounty race-track secession will be placed before the assembled wisdom of Congress in Washington. Because Congress has something to say about the creation of a new state, whether for reasons of horse-racing or otherwise I A family ot explorers President Theodore Roosevelt was an explorer. His son. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt ha« paen an explorer. And now Colonel T.R. Jr., has a son wha-i* headed in the same direction. This lad, Cornelius Roosevelt, has been investigating pre-Inca civilization at the sources of the Amazon. Afhis makes three generations to contribute to one of America^ most important publications: The Geographical Review, of the American Geographical Society, the organization of which Dr. Isaiah Bowman is the active head. pjmsging Here*s a criminal yarn for you detective story fans— the trail of the Chinese symbol« What sinister murder did it solve? What gigantic robbery of gems or gold or documents of state? Nothing so magnificent as all that* It was just a forty dollar robbery, a small crime, a minor manhunt— but a little masterpiece, for all that* Some days ago an apartment in the Bronx was robbed, some forty dollars in trinkets and jewelry swiped, (such things do happen, even in th® JBronXf which Jafsey eulogised so eloquently. The local detectives investigated with their work-a-day routine. In the apartment they found one single clew •*- a wallet, dropped by the robber. In the wallet was nothing save a small slip of yellow paper, one side torn, and some Chinese writing on It. Just an ordinary Chinese laundry ticket. The detectives said:- "He's as good as locked up I right now." And they had a peculiar reason for their confidence. I have the story from Police Headquarters, from In­ spector Joseph Donovan, head of the Identification Bureau, who told me how years ago his department got busy with something that DETECTIVE-2 wasn't intended to have anything much to do with crime detection. It was a mere measure of identification to be applied to the find­ ing of bodies — particularly in the river. It was based on the fact that water does not obliterate those marks which a laundry puts on articles of clothing it handles. Naturally those laundry marks are not supposed to wash out. They are always available as a clew for identifying a body in the river. So those years ago the police bureau in charge of such matters called upon all laundries in the city to send in their own peculiar symbols, which they mark on clothes. And these symbols, thousands of them are filed in the bureau of identification. Of the twelve thousand laundries in hew York, fcur thousand are Chinese. There’s one whole file of Chinese laundry symbols, registered every slant­ eyed washy-wushy man in Bagdad-on-the-Hud son, or shall we say Shanghai-on-the-Spuyten-Dyvil? So you can see why the detectives were so confident. They figured they could pick the Chinaman whose symbol was on that laundry ticket they found, and get from him some sort of clew to the robbery* It turned out oetter than that. DETECTIVE - 3 When they found the almond-eyed Gelvetial he nodded vigorously at the ticket* rtMelican man lose tickey, want washy," he babbled. Yes, the man who had lost the ticket had come demanding his laundry. But John Chinaman was a careful laundry- man. He wasn’t giving out clothes without precaution. He made the man prove who he was and where he lived and write the name and address in a book. That careful Celestial did a competent piece of police work. The detectives went to the address and found the customer who had lost the laundry ticket. They handed him the ticket and told him where they had found it. He confessed -- they say, everything, more than they expected. So the police report tha^ they have ubk * nabbed a youth who, with three other men, committed forty recent robberies A1HPLANE There is nothing like going back to nature, as when the old time motorist used to get a horse to pull him out of the mud. 1 Here’s a case of aviation taking refuge on a freight train, a broken winged airplane riding on the top of a cattle car. It happened at Sonora, Texans, where Jasper Jones, a mighty aviator took off In his plane with two passengers aboard. He got off the ground but couldn’t get much higher. The plane went F !■ staggering over the railroad tracks, where a freight train was rumbling along. Pilot Jasper Jones, unable to get his coughing. II if | snorting flying bus to stumble along any further, made a highly original landing. He set her down on top»of a cattle car. And J ii ill i I. the freight train kept going with the plane perched on top, something like a monkey riding an elephant. khiixxJcx The sky craf t that coiildni t get into the sky neither its was a bit damaged, but^xiEthEjcxit^ pilot nor Its passengers were injured. VMn-O Un original end for a flight, which^biings V^fe^»*quite an unoriginal end — with SO LONG UNTIL A TOMORROW.