POLITICS HI ^ v2*-t4/. LC<3r. / /f£4s In Boston Jotin ^ Barry, a newspaper man, not only writes A lively stories, but also gets into stories just as lively. The score up to now is only two, but these two stand in entertaining juxtaposition. One sprightly affair was with the Roosevelts, me other is with Father Coughlin. Reporter Barry1s difficulties n-th the Roosevelts do not, however, concern the White House clan, lineage. Itrs the other branchy T. R. A, Remember how last November Cornelius, son of Colonel Teddy, was arrested for shooting with an airgun - just some collegiate high-jinks? From a dormitory window CiSjrv with pellets. The target was A. of the dignified Massachusetts Institute of Technology, young Roosevelt peppered a John J. Barry, the Boston newspaper man. Finding himself in the hail of**bee-bees” Barry called the cops, and the august name of Roosevelt got into a police court. Ttfs this same journalist who today makes the headlines in a row with Father COUghlin. There seems to be some moqopatix dispute about just what Barry did to provoke the Radio Priest. Father Coughlin declares that the reporter tried to crash a POLITICS - 2 private meeting at Providence. A meeting was being held behind closed doors* and the newspaper^tried■to edge inland get the story. There are rumors that in the conference Father Coughlin removed ixsixiisia the two top Rhode Island leaders of the Union for social Justice, ousted them. That wguld^ make it a private meeting all right. of questions about the attacks the Radio Priest had made on Felix Frankfurter, the well known professor of law, who is said to be an inspiration to the Mew Deal., Father Coughlin did not like the tone of the reportorial questions, s® says Barry. Whatever may have been the genesis- of the disturbance — the scene was dramatic indeed! A Providence hotel lobby. Newspaper men waiting for Father Coughlin. .Among them, John Barry. The Radio Priest appeared. When he saw Barry, things began to I happen*. "He snatched the SEinifcER glasses from my face," says the reporter. ^Stepped against me and pushed me against the wall. It was all very unexpected." I should think it would man at a prev he asked a lot Father CoughMn POLITICS - 5 have been unexpected I But the police stopped further hostilities. Father Coughlin went on to Boston and there he fumed with complaints against the reporter^ called him an interloper. And he made the threat that he’d get Barry. T o this the reporter laughed. This afternoon Father Coughlin was in a Boston hotel, secluded, under a guard of police. In Boston also tonight is Cardinal Pacelli, Papal Secretary of State from Rome. He's visit­ ing Cardinal O’Connell, long opposed to the Radio Priest. Rumor has been insistent though denied, that the Cardinal is here in America to look into the political activities of Father Coughlin. There they are — both in Boston tonight, the Papal secretary of state and the Radio Priest. But it is said they will not meet. Meanwhile, the two principal figures of the campaign are continuing their oratorical sparring. President Roosevelt is in Governor Landon’s home state — Kansas, where today he denounced the Republicans for calling in the Boogei" Man, preaching fear, trying to scare the voters. Governor Landon tonight is in Ohio. At Toledo he made an appeal to Ohio workingmen. He talked in favor of union organization and warned labor to be wary of false POLITICS - 4 friends - meaning the President's labor policies. Newspapers far and wide are printing stories to the effect that Bepublicans are afraid to subscribe to their party war chest because of threats some have received. GOLD Today's biggest news is a headline that snaps and crackles with vivid interest and significance - today the United States went on a new kind of gold standard. Those two words "gold standard”, ring with meaning, meaning in terms of money. Then the story gsea=s» with such expressions as \ /\ stabilization funds, ear-marking, currency ratio*! exchange markets, and international speculation. Our vivid headline turns into a maze of technical language, the jargon of finance, intricate and abstruse. Let's see what we can do to make clear: A whatr- - too 1-ly pp-ened » First let’s state the bald fact. The United States, Great Britain and France have entered into a new agreement to stabilize their currencies. Then let’s try to illustrate this by taking a look back at the most famous and dramatic event in American financial history — Black Friday in Eighteen Sixty- Nine, Jay Gould and the gold corner. Gould, the mighty buccaneer of finance, struck a tremendous *inafK>ia* stroke - lie was buying up all the gold in the country, cornering gold. Then - anybody who had to have GOLD “ 2 gold would have to come to him fof it, and he could charge what he liked. You can see how the price of- the metal would it illustrates what Secretary Morgenthau meant today when he talked about the money speculators and the way they create ups and downs in the -value of gold and currency. Jay Gould was operating nationally. Th<_^ _ „ lionally. They keep prices on the money exchange bobbing up and down in such a way that a plain, ordinary business man in international trade never knows where he*s at. He never can tell whose_ money will be worth what tomorrow or the next day. An element of uncertainty that haciadt handicaps world trade. But how, back there in Eighteen Sixty-Nine, was Jay Gould able to get a corner on gold? There was a lot of yellow metal in the nation, more than Gould could buy. But a great pare of this was in the possession of the government. If the shoot skywa: A hat produced • panic^ and Black Friday on Wall Street - with desperate financiers having to get gold Gould it all. That gold corner was a classic of money speculation — GOO/ - 3 government murtirm —4 refused to sell any - then it was possible for Gould to buy up all the rest, the gold stocks possessed by banks and business. So Gould had to persuade the Treasury Department to refrain from selling gold. He did this by pulling strings at Washington, That gold corner of Eighteen Sixty-Nine was finally smashed. Black Friday was at its blackest, when the Treasury Department suddenly changed its policy and threw fe± a big supply of gold into the 7/all Street market. Jay Gould himself was smart enough to get out from under, and made millions. But Jim Fiske, his partner in the scheme, was ruined. For the gold corner was fextm broken. The United States jzovernment was able to do it, because Jay Gould was playing in the national market. But^ the speculation today is in the international market. So the three injLqL biggest financial Powers have^ombined* The Treasury Department broke Jay Gould1 s gold comer by selling gold. Today, the three powers nropose to stop the speculators in somewhat the same way - sell gold when the speculators are trying to force GOLD - 4 its price up, and buy gold when they are trying to beat it pot of money to play around with. So the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of France have put up a stabilization fund of four billion dollars. This will be used in something like the way the federal gold supply was used in smashing Jay Gould's Black Friday scheme. Wall Street Journal, and atk* asked him to tell me something about that international money speculation. He told me there has been next to none of it over here* It mac* has been mostly in France and Holland - gambling not only by speculators but by the general public as well. In Holland, he said, they've been selling everything, even their houses - to bu^Bwtefe Sterling. The French have been selling their gold, to buy dollars - sending their gold over here. That's why nave, right now half the world's supply of the yellow metal. There s ) twenty billion dollars' worth of gold in the world, and of this down. To back up these operations they've got to have a Today gate, publisher of the GOLD - 5 we have ten billion^ Washington gives out the headline - "A New Kind at Gold Standard.” But the British government denies it’s returning to gold. Because, in the last couple of years the British public has lost its faith in t*# Gold Standard^, How it will all work out remains to be seen. The Three governments have left themselves a quick "out” if it doesnTt work* The new gold pact can be cancelled by any of <?V\. the three Powers sstSP* twenty-four hour notice. FRANCF High in the Bavarian Alps, in a stately house — a group oF men are meeting. And statesmen in many a worldls capitol are wondering — what are they talking about at that conference. If we we.i*e there, although we would never get in, we would observe the scores of guards watching everywhere, and they’re wearing brown shirts. Storm troope's! — that’s the tip off. Hitler holding a secret discussion with a group of High Nazi chiefs. We can make a guess of what they are talking about. Probably that latest German communication to the French Government. They certainly must be having a few words about that — Berling has protested to Paris because a French leader insulted Hitler — a French Communist leader. The insult angers Germany all the more because it wras delivered in Alsace, the province on the German border, one that was formerly under the Kaiser’s rule. France has had plenty of worry about those Communist meeting in Alsace. Most of the people are strongly catholic, dead against donununism. So there were threats of trouble. Socialist Premier Blum, however, made the Communists cut down the number oi their scheduled rallnes to FRANCE - 2 a minimum. And he sent heavy forces of Mobile guards to protect the Reds. So, there *as no rioting. Only now - Germany protests The insult to Hitler was delivered in a speech by Communist Chief Thorez. "We prefer an honorable Negro,” to a dishonorable Hitler”, he shoiited. Moreov r Germany protest a big placard displayed at the Communist demonstration. It showed Hitler with a red nose FfUiMCE -5- and between his teeth was a bloody red dagger. I don*t know which the Nazis objected to most — the red nose or the red dagger. They dislike red anyhow, including the red flag. The affair however, goes beyond, any mere matter of insults. X& k Berlin protests the whole business of h&v±ag’ those Communist demonstrations in Alsace. right has Germany to meddle with political happenings inside of £ France? That is answered by one statement in the German complaint. This points out that Germany and France have an agreement that neither nation shall have any political demonstrations in the vicinity of the Franco-German border. Berlin claims that the Communist-whoop-it-up in Alsace violates the agreement. The kind of political xx hoorah that the Nazis dislike most is a parade of I red Bolshevism right at the door of the House of Hitler. SPAIN The picture from opain tonight Is the same thing we*ve been having — out intensified, deeper colors. ’The swarming of the Left Viing masses to the battlefront -• workmen, civilians of all sorts, hastily armed, hardly drilled'at all. More women than ever in the tramping columns. Young women, women not so young, mothers of families - going out to fight. Dispatches from Madrid describe it as a "mass counter endive." The extreme Socialist Premier, Largo .Caballero, has made a tour of the war front, where the Fascist lines have Madrid almost hemmed in. The Rebels have been pushing rapidly on the City of Madrid. They've almost reached the historic palace, the Escorial, which is not far from the outskirts of the capital. Largo Caballero saw for himself how desperate the situation was. how the Left Wing defense had crumpled. A mere attempt to hold the lines wouldn't do, not merely the defensive slogan - "They shall not pass!" So he ordered - a counter offensive. a mass counter offensive. That's the reason those swarms of from city dwellers .^.Madrid are on the march, workers, clerks, women. >nt\ A* Presumably they will be thrown In mass formation against the SPAIN - 2 mechanized regiments of General Franco - trying to overwhelm cannon, machine guns and tanks with the sheer weight of numbers. There's a rumor that Oviedo* has been relieved, but it is unconfirmed. It claims that a* rebel column has driven to the city and raised the siege that has been going on ever since the revolt began - with Asturian miners hurling dynamite the against^desperate defenders. «_-------------- ------------ ——— And there's another report that at Bilbao the government forces have released their women hostages. Bilbao is held, not so much by Reds and Anarchists', as by Basque Nationalists. They are said to have contracted with the Rebels for a release of women hostages on both sides. That's a merciful note from Spain tonight, which is not the usual thing. WEATHER overcoat'. The weather man says Get out your winter is coming. And in many places it has already arrived At Green Bay, Wisconsin, the mercury ducked way below freezing and there washeavy snow for three hours, * Upper New York State felt the nip of freezing temperatures and saw white flurries of early snow. This afternoon at Quebec the kids dashed merrily out of school for their first frolic on sleds and skis DR. Lift YUTMG - EMDIJjG One evening last week. Doctor Lin Yutang, author and philosopher, was here on the air with me for a few moments. Tod^r I happened to hear him speak at a luncheon, where, with exquisite Oriental finesse and. charm he poked fun at certain things in our American life which he doesn1t like. For Instance, he objects strenuously to shaking hands, thinks it not only unhygienic, but barbarous from an esthetic standpoint. Perhaps the Doctor doesn*t realize that nearly all Western peoples agree with him. The trouble is, itTs an ancient tradition,and far more difficult for us to shake off our handshaking custom than it was for the Chinese to get rid of their pigtails. Doctor Lin Yutang also said that he objected to our punctuality, our efficiency, and our discipline. But most of all, he objects to our mania for being punctual. He thinks it's absurd to go to a seven o*clock dinner at seven o*clock. Why not roll in at eight? I am inclined to agree with him, But, wouldn*t his idea turn things upside down In the world of radio I For Instance, what if I kept right on talking now for another half hourI Ah, have no fear — I'm going to be punctual to the second! And that second has arrived! And SO LONG UNTIL TOMORROW