L.T. SUNOCO ~ Wednesday. January 10. 1954 Good Evening, Everybody:- Another record tonight, but not an endurance record, It*s just the opposite — short and snappy. President Roosevelt today sent to Congress the shortest message in history. In just three hundred words he asked the wise men on Capitol Hill to let Uncle Sam guarantee not only the interest but the principal on thd bonds Issued by the Farm Credit Administration, two billion dollars* worth of them. That would jack up Uncle Sam*s estimated liabilities to the tune of two billion dollars more. While this message was being read to Congress, the Governor of the Farm Credit Administration was making an announcement, he Informs us that the Administration Is planning a new corporation to refinance all of Uncle Sam*s farm mortgage indebtedness. NBC FOLLOV; KES^kQE The resident had another suggestion to offer the statesmen on Capitol Hill. Observers are remarking about the President's silken-gloved tact in his dealings with Congress. For one thing, he never loads them down with heavy suggestions - long wordy messages. Like a first rote showman, he not only times, but he spaces, his effects, with consummate skill. His second message today concerned the ratification of the great St. Lav/rence Water­ way Treaty with Canada. This is a subject on which Franklin Roosevelt agrees with Herbert Hoover. Mr. Roosevelt urges the Congress to ratify. In his message, he answers several critics of the project. He points out that the building of this seaway will not injure the railroads and he also explains that the fear that it might interfere with traffic on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers is unfounded. Then again, he points out, that the building of this waterway will provide a tremendous source of almost incredible cheap power. Furthermore, that the source of this power is so situated that it could be FOLLOW MESSAGE - 2 delivered over a huge area not only to factories and to farms hut to domestic consumers. In other words, he suggests that aside from the cheap navigation this waterway would provide, the power It would furnish would he Dimply invaluable to gg everybody* ^-6 ^ . There's another reform in the wind for labor. General Johnson, High -ooh Bah of N.R.A., announced today that a still further reduction of working hours is con- tern lated. This would effect the codes governinpr every industry in the country. NBC p ARCHBISHOP The Christmas Day murder of that Armenian Arch- hishorn in New York is back in the news. The seven men whom the New York solice had arrested were arraigned in Homicide Court. However, as the new District Attorney of New York had only just been inducted into office, the rrosecutor asked for an adjournment, which the magistrate granted. But that is only the bald and unexciting legality of the matter. 400 Armenians were gathered. The Homicide Court room can barely hold a hundred - a hundred people. But all four hundred Armenians tried to get in today. '.'hen they found they couldn't, a young riot broke out. Some of the mob contrived to get at the prisoners and beat them ut >. It took all the efforts of the rolice and the detectives and the court officials to squelch the disturbance. NBC SACRAMENTO Yes, another youriP' riot broke loose in the sacred city of California, todey. The Communists in the balmy, palmy California capital had been disturbing literature, most cf which wss a rrotest against the c gove-nment for putting them to work. So a thousand C.7.A. men swooped down on radical headquarters today. The Communists stoutly defended them­ selves v.ith clubs, legs of chairs, fragments of tables, and vhat not, A good old fashioned knock down drag out fight, indov/s, as well as heads, were broken, and that headquarters is not e total wreck. The C.7.A, forces marched away triumphant, singing army songs. The story doesn't say what the Communists were singing. ¥es, they rang the curtain down today on that Reichstag fire in Berlin. And the last scene was the guillotine. After one of the most curious trials in history, a trial that attracted the attention and aroused hostile and suspicious comment in all civilized nations, the death sentence was executed today. The young Dutch stone mason who a more lenient sentence, but it was no use. Marinus Van Dei was executed mm r Germany during the French Revolution.. The burning of the Reichstag last February is still a mystery* Van Der Lubbe, during that long-drawn-out and sensational trial, confessed publicly, early and often* The four men who were on trial with him were acquitted despite the most vehement efforts of the Nazi prosecutor to secure a conviction. Throughout the proceedings. Van Der Lubbe alternated was found guilty of the Reichstag fire was the victim9 The diplomats of Holland did their utmost to procure use the guillot: betv/een an expression Of abject terror and loud raucous laughter. FIRE - 2 'll He was a small fellow, half blind, and some of his deportment suggested that he was perhaps even half-witted. When the judges asked him why he was laughing, his reply was: "I am laughing at this trial.n But maybe that wasn’t so haif- witted as some folks said. On the scaffold his attitude was one of complete indifference. TlSa Over in Germany the people don’t know one tenth of what I am telling here tonight* The execution was hardly mentioned in the German newspapers. The Nazi government forbade 1 the press to report anything except the bare fact that the sentence had been carried out; NBC csamare? - t - pt * i* .v PARIS The big French scandal of the day, the affair of that municipal bank in Bayonne, is spreading over a still wider area* For one thing, the manager of one of the big French theatres has rfbw surrendered to the police. He is charged with having been mixed up with the Russian man of mystery. Serge Stavinsky. Russian mystery man — pawn shop bank — politicians, mayor, theatre manager, all In one melodramatic combination. The French do those things up with that Inimitable Gallic touch. A statement was issued in Brussels by a spokesman of the Belgian government. It concerns the rumor that Stavinksy* s trouble was due to the failure of Belgium to buy Hungarian bonds. This the Belgian spokesman describes as fantastic. RUSSIA Word comes from Paris that a trade agreement has been signed between the French Government and Moscow, This agreement provides for aidBZKkijE a considerable increase in commerce between the two countries. The question of Russia’s debts, that is the debts incurred by the Czar1st government, is left for the moment in abeyance. In other words, France seems to have about as much chance of collecting those debts as we have of collecting the debts that France owes us. NEC DIVORCE !Tov. something about young folks. At Kankakee, Illinois, a married courle v/hose combined ages total over a hundred and forty years, were divorced today, and what do you suppose the reason was? The lady, who seems to be more than seventy years young, could not stand her husband because he v/ould not let her go to dances and give ^arties. The husband, also a callow young septuagenarian, wanted a quiet home life, so the giddy 70 year old girl left him and he got his dovorce on the ground of desertion. I sunrose the moral Is there1 s no foo^ liive a young fool. NBC MILK STRIKE Chicago drew a dee* breath of relief today^ leaders of the eighteen thousand members of the Pure Milk Association met with representatives of the distributors in the office of Mayor Kelly. There they signed a truce. The G'! dispute is to be arbitrated. One of the arbitrators will be named by the members of the Pure Milk tomtKK Association, another by the distributors. And these two arbitrators will name a third. This committee will get together to agree on the price to be paid to farmers for milk. Meanwhile, deliveries were to begin all over Chicago r. T> THB miL THE YE a R Don Gillette has .just told me that his publication. The Film Daily, has taken a poll of the movie critics of America, asking them to name the ten the list. Eight of the ten were made in the United States. One, the PxiY.ate Li£a o3L Eanxy. tha Eighth is an English picture, and another Maedchen in Uniform is a German movie. Three hundred and eighty-four critics participated in this poll. best films of 1933. Don informs me Cavalheads A Tha winner in the same poll a year ago was Grand Film Daily. CRIPPLE CREEK Y Here comes Goldfield and Cripple Creek, the old mining camp section where I was brung^p^ odd tale about squatters* A family of squatters have settled down __ guess where? In the City Hall of the Town of Goldfield. Some time ago the squatters moved into the City Hall and sat down there. They had been living there all through the cold weather. All efforts to turn them out have been useless. They just defied the united population of Goldfield to do anything about it. It was not as easy as It sounds, because it so happens that there are no city officials in Goldfield. The citizens are worried. The engine of the Volunteer Fire Department is stabled In the City Hall, right behind the beds and flaw stove used by this squatting family. So the Goldfielders are saying: "If somebody^ house catches fire, whatY^ wlM we do?" The problem has bean turned over to the County prosecuting attorney in Crippl© Creek. Meanwhile, that family of squatters, like the tar baby In the Uncle Remus' story, "aint saying nothin*." They are just staying there right in front of the fire engine. L'OTGH :^c;v In connection v;i,th the snectacular Automobile Show nov.' ^zoinsr on at the Grnnd Central Palace in Mew York, and the a ecial G’©neral ? otors show at the aldorf, niany interesting changes are apparent on all sides. There are those spectacular Cadillacs and La Salles. Those Hudsons and Hurmobi1es that have come out with • ir-cooled generators; those new Lodges equirred v.ith floating cushion wheels; self- shifting Reas th t work like magic; Studebakers that will roll a down mountains and still be in commission so you can drive them right off; bigger and bett r Buicks with knees that teke the bumps out of the road. In feet every type and model seems to have something unusual. L:r. Graham of Gr.- h'-m-Paige de-calres that the most imrortant development to his notion is the new supercharger. And Mr. Franklin of the Franklin Company tells us that the latest flight of the Lindberghs has had an important effect on automobiles. The Colonel’s plane was equipsed with a 750 horse- power '.Tight Cyclone Engine --air-cooled-- which functioned perfectly on the -.hole thirty- thousand-mile flirht. ADD ? iOTQB SHC, Mr. Paul Hoffman, resident of the Studebeker Seles Corporation, is enthusiastic about a new Studebaker which they describe as America1s first land cruiser - with a __ j lot of space for baggage, ell streamlined. And this microphone is retting streamlined from the amount of breath I'm blowing over it about automobiles. POULTRY SHO Did you ever hear of a tosa? The tosa is one of the most aristocratic specimens of roulfry in the world. They ere r>articulerly beautiful, with bronze green, silky * tail feathers, which never molt but continue to grow at the rate of three feet a year. A rair of these toses are now on exhibition at the National 'oultry Show at the Armory of the P44th Coast Artillery in Hew York. The grandparents of this particular ^air of toses were smuggled cut of Japrn three years go. 'hen the owner bought them, he w r forbidden by the Japanese customs officials to take them away. So he rented a small Japanese skiff and rowed out of the harbor under cover of darlcr.es£ . And today he's the only owner of these rare birds outside of Jsran. He's got tosas. ith no h-A-L-I before it. ACCIDENT And hereT s a highly moral tale from Chicago. Three men., accompanied by fair damsels, made their appearance in police court accused of having driven their car into a taxicab and smashed it all up. They gave the magistrate the sort of explanation that might have been expected, that it all happened on New Yearrs Day and the landlord, in the words of the old song,nhad filled the flowing bowl until it did flow over”. nAll right”, said the judge, ’’pay the damage you did to the haC’onanfs taxi and tell him youfre sorry, and all will be forgiven,” Then up spake the culprits: "Ju :ge, we’ll gladly pay the .damage and give him something^ boot, but we won’t say we're sorry,” "‘•hat's that?" spluttered the judge, "What do you mean, what do you mean you're not sorry?" "Well judge”, they said, "you see it!s this way. We were all on, our way to be married and tnis here accident hc^s just brought us to our senses and now we aint going to be married.” And they added: "Please don't ask us to say we're sorry." NBC FLIGHT There was trouble aplenty today for Lieutenant- Commander h eGinnis of the U.S, Kovy and his squad of six huge flying boats. All afternoon those 30 flyers tried to take off from paradise Cove near the Golden Gate on their big hor for Honolulu. But they encountered the same difficulty that beset the Lindberghs on the west coast of Africa when their take-off for Brazil was delayed. There was no wind and the great * lanes iere unable to rise from the surface of the water. However, at a quarter nast five this afternoon, they made it. Other planes kicked the sea for theip, and away they went to the pineapple Isles. They expect to lend in Hawaii twenty-four hours later. The Navy's weather sharks declare flying conditions are ideal. The Navy -'lots will have favorable winds all the we y. Here's later word. Com. McGinnis almost smacked a ferry boat v/hen he took off fit 6 F*K. E.S.T. They were 4o miles out. ENDING A sad story from Chicago, a city of sad stories. After being O'Ut of work many months, a man got employment from the C. V,'. A. He worked three weeks and got a check for §45. And what do you suppose he did with it, at any rate with most of it? He took §25. of it end went out with his wife to buy a fur coat. A pawn broker showed them one which he assured them wos genuine squirrel. The lady liked it so it was bought on the snot and they started home. Onfortunf te3y, it wa s one rf those excersive1y bree;y Chicago days. The wind blew end blew end blew end each gust blev. off a 'big '"©tch of fur. By the time they reached home, that fur coat .as as bald as a China egg. How thet wind did blow! And 1 am going to blow too, end SO LONG UNTIL TOMORROW.