Li - m i LQW£LL_TH;.MAS suh , thdhsday 1 April 2fi1 1 Q 3 A GOOD 2VEKING EV j ERYBODY:- Although in Pittsburgh again tonight I a® going to switch over to Washington in ;just a moment. There is big news today and one of the men who made that news is sitting in Washington. So,^* are going to hear a little about it straight from him.^After that we will go on with our evening* journey around the world. RAILROADS o For more than a year now we*we been hearing about that dispute between the railroads and the railroad workers* It has been perhaps the biggest labor problem of them all* Th railroad industry concerns more than taro million men* That huge army of railroad men have been working under a temporary agreement* The agreement is now running out* The railroads have been demanding a change. They thought wages should be out*The workers have also been demanding a change—of a different sort* They thought wages should be raised* And now an agreement has been reached. It has taken six weeks to thrash it out. The terms are that during the next year, the railroads will progressively restore the ten per cent wage cut which the workers took under that temporary agreement* So the wages of the railroad workers are to be increased gradually to the former pre«*depres8ion rate of pay* This eliminatesAthe biggest threat of labor trouble the country has had to face* So tonight we ean-give^three HAILHUADB - 2 Botn sj.deSj the railroad executives and the men, have come out with a statement declaring that it was Coordinator East-man’s untiring efforts that brought about the agreement. Well, let’s hear some more about these cheery tidings -- from a man who took part in the negotiations. Chairman of the Railway Labor .Executive Association Mr, A. F, Whitney is at a microphone in Washington, Mr, Whitney, what did both the railroad and the railroad laborers do to avert that strike? (minute and a half for speaker). Whitney1 s last words HAnd that, Mr# Thomas is the story.M Follow speaker: "And a mighty cheerful story it is, Mr. Whitney, " BUREAU OF ill HE S us. Railroading in one way or another involves all of But, next to farming there are more persons engaged in mining. in this country, than in any other activity. Gold mining in the West; Copper in Michigan, Arizona and Utah; Iron in the Iron-range of Minnesota; zinc in the Ozarks; Silver and lead in the Black Hills, Butte, and the Coeur d’ Laine; Platinum and other rare minerals; coal in many parts of the country, and so on. And that makes this next item important news to an immense number of people. The United States’ Bureau of Mines is today under a new cabinet department. The switch has just been made. By a Presidential Executive order the Bureau of Mines has been transferred from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Interior. I first learned of this through two of the high officials of the Bureau of Mines, William Yant, and J*J. Forbes serving under Scott Turner who is the director in Washington, and Mr. A. A. Fieldner. BUREAU OF #2 Here is part of the story behind the Bureau of Mines. It is of comparatively recent origin, created by an Act of uongress in 1910. The head offices are in Washington, and there are eleven experimeat stations located in our most important mining districts. The one in Pittsburgh is the Bureau of Mines affects,all of us. In addition to the big problems it solves, it even handles such things as advising farmers on the dangers of entering an old well, helps explosive manufacturers with their dynamite problems, solves ventilation problems when cities and states are building water or vehicular tunnels, works out problems for the firemen of the country, and analyzes minerals and the products of the earth. 4 WIgovernments irogi ar± over the world consult largest, in fact, largest in the world.^The work of the our Bureau of Minestf^- lArTRQ There*s a big story about Spain tonight, and a little one. And I just can’t get that little unimportant hit of human drama off my mind, it’s the old story of the grizzled veteran of the War who hears the sound of battle. Antonio Sanchez of Madrid is a veteran retired bull fight Vi1. He heard a terrific commotion in a vegetable market, a yelling and a crashing* A bull was loose and ov the rampage, driving vendors and customers in wild panic, charging the vegetable stands, wrecking them right and left, and tossing showers of cabbages, onions, garlic and frijoles. You can imagine what that meant to Antonio Sanchez, the retired bull fighter* He dashed to his nearby home. He -seized his old sword and red bull fighting cape. Then he darted back to the vegetable market, where the bull was right in the act of tossing a pushcart of ripe red tomatoes. Just imagine the glint in Antonio’s eye. See him step nimbly up to the bull, flashing his red cape. The bull charges him. He sid e-steps. With lowered slashing horns the enraged Toro charges again. This time the old toredor strikes as nimbly IHTRU *■ 2 and deftly as ne ever did when he was young in the ‘bull rings cf kadrid, oj.edo and Old Sevilla, The steel flashes. There is no excited throng to cheer, a.s the "bull goes to its knees, only a lot of onions and garlic and squashed tomotces scatter­ ed on the ground. But to Antonio Sanchez it was the return of the glory that he had never hoped to experience again. And that's how the old retired "bullfighter killed his hull, in the vegetable market of Madrid, But of course neither Antonio nor the hull nor the vegetable market are half so important as the crisis of government in Spain, The little human drama has to give place to a big political drama SPAIS FOLLOW LEAD. For a second time in a little over a month, the Spanish government has deolared what is known as a state of alaam* This is a provision of a peonliar law in that Republic* She state of alarm la a modified form of martial law* She reason twm the crises is the hew bill proclaiming amnesty for all polltleal prisoners* Shis will not only let hundreds of them out of jail, hut also means that some nine thousand refugees, Royalists, Communists and what*.not, will pour baek into Spain from Prance, Portugal and Africa, where they have been in exile* The JCtUgnation of the Lerroux cabinet, was precipitated when President Zamora* after signing the amnesty bill, issued a long, long statement setting forth thirty four reasons why he should not have signed it* And now the talk is that the SPAIN FOLLOW LEAD $2. president ^himself asy resign* What will happen in this ease nobody dares to propheey* But it promises to bring about a ohaotio condition in the country of Bon Quixote* There is an economic background to this situation as well* The Repniblio set going a wide program of social reform* But this program has cost a terrific lot of money* And9 as in France* there are more political parties than you can count—the Royalists* the Agrarians* the Communists* ^L. the Socialists, the Catholics. To make the Job still more A. ^ difficult* there is a growing Nazi organization in Spain which has recently joined hands with a group of Fascists, The leader of these Fascists incidentally is the young Karquis Prime DeRlrera* son of the General who was dictator of the Country under King Alfonso*So over in Spain there is more excitement out^ of the bull ring than in it. tyunxELu It must be easy to pay the grocery bills for -afcatna Gandhi. He la thinking about going on another fast. Why? because some boys threw stones at him, *i'he Mahatma and. ebme frlancls were driving through the City of buxar when suddenly a shower of sticks and stones desoen4e4' on the oar, A gang of boys had hurled the missies, Gandhi himself was not injured, but his companions in the car were. So now he is planning to go on a penitential fast to expiate the sin of not having been aDle to convince tke opposition. jji-ahart/Gandhi fasts again because at present, he "to is unpopular with a large element of his people, ‘rhey^resent his campaign in favor of the untouchables^ outcasts of India whose very shadow is pollution to the haughty brahmin. Anybody who has spent any time In India will understand that in the ease of Untouchables and the whole inatitution of easte, Gandhi is tackling a problem which is about as unsellable as a problem may be* JAP AH* In the Japanese sitaatlon the TJntted States is still asking MWhat,s it all about?" ‘rhe American Ambassador at Tokyo has asked the Mikado's Foreign Minister for the 's exact text of the wapan statement concerning China* in the t Capitals of all the nations concerned in that Far eastern situation, conferences and discussions are being h^ld. The Chinese Minister at ueneva declared laudly that, so far aft the peace of the Far Mast is concerned, Japan is the only disturbance of that Far Eastern tranquility* An international situation of the greatest importance is brewing. It is developing with a logical deliberation. The encouraging thing is that nobody seems to be going off the handle* Ihe western Powers are talking in a oalm, reasoned way« And Tokyo ‘ s movements have an air of grave &e liber at lon«w»if that's any enc ouragement * ME ST A Some things 4® happen in the Orient that seem to us a bit strange* For instance the 0iant American Machine Works where huge tools are made, tools containing single parts that weigh as much as three hundred thousand pounde, got a big order from Japan, The name of this American firm is Mesta, at Homestead, Pennsylvania# They make the tools that operate some of the rolling mills, some of the arson*!s, the locomotive factories of the world, and so on. After getting the big order from Japan, suddenly they received a cable cancelling it and the reason given by the Japanese was:- "Because a baby had just been bom, an heir to the Mikado," I wonder what that had to do with the birth of giant machinery? ESCAPES One can't help asking; What's wrong at the Indiana State Prison? ^ n* e prisoners getting loose within the past few days, just after four convicts, three of them lifers, escaped last weekend. They Just walked out of the prison and got away. This last one, making five, was a negro trusty. He also just sauntered away. He hasn’t been seen since -- and neither have the others. The next thing you know judges may be imposing a life sentence in these terms; "You are hereby sentenced to the State Penitentiary until such time as you succeed in getting away." BUREAU OF MIMS E.MDim Years ago I went to school with a young man who studied chemistry. Then I lost track of him. Today we met for the first time in twenty-two years. His name is George Jones, one of Uncle Sam's chief chemists in the Bureau of Mines. He invited me to broadcast from his laboratory. ^So I am sitting here surrounded by test tubes and apparatus more wierd and complicated than Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist, ever dreamed of. In this laboratory they have just been working, with what they call di-lthyl ether in oxygen. To do this they constantly have explosions, and watch their effect* Every hour or so there is an explosion, like the sound of a gun. But because these made the stenographers and scientists in other laboratories jumjpy — they never knew when to expect A. one — Chemist Jones and his associates now ring a bell to warn the entire building before setting off an explosion. BUREAU CF - 2 They have promised to do one tonight as the signal when my time is up, an explosion in di-Ethyl ether to tell me when to get off the ether. {Sound of bell.) There goes the warning bell. Look out for the explosion! (BOOM) That’s the polite way these chemists have of saying, SO LONG UNTIL TOMORROW.