4 / t4%r£s-Mi~A-<£j l*. . __■, 1 ..„ „ - LOWELL THOMAS SUK. WEDir^sn^ April 19 S4 GOOD EVENIxiG EVERYBODY I suopose you would say that I 'm in the soup tonight, or in a pickle, because I am broadcasting from the Heinz Auditorium in Pittsburgh, On my ramble, observing business conditions, to report to you what is going on, I came to this plant, which like a number of other American institutions, reaches out to the ends of the earth. And the report here is that so far as the depression is concerned they are not in the soupf They are out of it, with twice as many employees as a year ago. Two hundred thousand farmers throughout America who supply vegetables here will be interested in this. INTRODUCTION #2 As I went over the fifty—seven varieties of world news today, it occurred to me that if there were no governments on earth, we'd have mighty little news. Most of the news concerns the doings of rulers, kings and presidents, parliaments and authorities. Usually in some sort of a pickle. That's why the newspapers send their best men as correspondents to the great capitals of the world. Today is a good example —stories about government action - from Tokyo to Helsingfors, from Washington to Nanking. Of course, there are some bits of news that have nothing whatsoever to do with government, presidents, kings, parliaments or' cabinet ministers —— and in many v©ys these are the most beguiling of all. In Helsingfors, the capital of distant Northern Finland the word is — spy. We Americans have been looking in a rather disinterested way at those spy scares in Europe the sensational affair of espionage in France and now one INTRODUCTION #3 almost equally imposing in Finland, They seem to toe remote and of little concern to us. But now it toegins to hit home. The government of Helsingfors declares that there is a bit spy ring operating in The United States, a secret organization that directs the work of espionage in European countries —— also trading in the military secrets of Uncle Sam. This is said to have been revealed by an American who has been convicted in Finland along with a large group of other spies. This American who is in the soup in Finland, has an interesting history. His name is Arvid Jacobsen, and he swung an axe in Michigan lumber camps during his youth, then went to the University of Michigan. He became conspicuous as a communist. In spite of this he managed to get a job teaching in a high school INTHOliUOTIQI'l #4 Somebody overheard him say he would like to do post graduate work. This somebody was a Soviet agent who offered to pay Jacobsen's waj at a foreign university. In return he was to do a little spying. He agreed and when he arrived in Finland he was put in contact with a German female spy and from her learned the technique of espionage. Perhaps that answers the question many of us have been asking, the question "what prompts people of America tradition and background to go in for spying in foreign countries?" But spying sooner or later gets you in the soup and worse. Look at the Switzes in France, the young aviator and his wife from Orange, New Jersey. And now Arvid Jacobsen, the Michigan school teacher, and twenty—eight others, get five years of hard labor in a Finnish prison. And if toat isn't getting in a Dickie I wonder what is? KIDNAP Behind any story of crime stands the imposing figure of government-only I wish the authorities always could display the gumption of a certain young woman in Texas, Few men would have had the presence of mind of Mrs. Dock McKee who helps her husband run a filling station in Winfield, Texas. Three customers, after ordering their tank E ts ■ ' V ’ filled with gas, said they had no money. So they offered to trade the filling station owner a shotgun for the gas. Most of us would have become just as suspicious as Mrs. McKee. But few of us would have imitated her when she went inside the station, picked up her pistol and walked behind that car. From the inside of the closed rumble seat she heard a faint knocking. One of the strangers was standing near the car. Mrs. McKee promptly covered him with her pistol and opened the rumble seat. And, surely enough, somebody had been knocking. . . KIDMP #2 Tied up inside that rumble seat was a young man, an official of the telephone company who was very much in the — I'll not say it this time. But he had been kidnapped from Fort Worth the night before. Thanks to Mrs. McKee the young man was released, two of his would-be kidnappers were taken prisoners. One of them is still at large, with several guns and three bars of candy which he bought from the McKees without paying for them. Quite a person, this young lady from Texas who carried off a dangerous adventure so neatly. And talking about adventure — I*m having one myself — of an entirely new kind. I'm adventuring with adventure — also adventuring as an editor. Kvery newspaper man has dreamed of taking a fling and editing something or other* I have always wanted to edit an adventure magazine, a publication with a place for all those doers of thrilling deeds in far away lands. And now I've KIDNAP #3 got my chance. I’m helping launch a new adventure magazine called Saga or Saga? pronounced both ways. The first issue out t oday• PI LUNGER The government is, of course, involved in that Dillinger case in a "big way. And now the talk is about the Of United States Army. They say that if Dillinger is found again, Washington will call out the regular troops in Wisconsin or in whatever other state he appears. That means that in his next fight he and his gang will have to stand a siege from Uncle Sam’s tanks and artillery. Meanwhile the Attorney General of the Government takes advantage of the Dillinger drama to ask Congress for more men for the Department of Justice, Says he:— “We need two hundred more agents and armored tanks." Europeans are giving Uncle Sam the raspberry on account of that latest fiasco in Wisconsin, The Hitlerites say:- "Until you catch Dillinger you ought to quit criticizing our Chancellor. Hitler knows how to handle criminals and you PILLINSSR #3 "1 don't.” course, that’s not comes from the Berlin newspapers. like to pluck a few feathers from official statement. It Foreign editors always the tail of the American Eagle. They like to see all of us in the soup occasionally ROOSSVELT If Mr. Average Citizen gets up on his hind legs and declares we are lazy — that is not news* When the head of the government of the United States says it, it makes the front page. President Roosevelt in an address calls for more mental energy in national life. He talked about the necessity of thinking ahead. He took a fling at Panaceas that will cure all our troubles in thirty days. The core of his utterance was a declaration in favor of planning — the planning of national affairs — and of further experiment. Every time the President makes an important speech it becomes clear that he is sticking to his ideas of a changing order of things. It seems to me that what we may look forward to is this — if recovery is rapid enough there will be less and less experi­ ment, while continued depression would put pressure on Washington to do more experimenting. ROOSEVELT #2 Meanwhile, some of the newspaper publishers in their big annual convention at the Waldorf-Astoria in Ifew York have been throwing verbal bricks at the President, Mr. Roosevelt, they said, had “put the newspaper publishers on the spot •11 .__________ baseball There1s some governmental news — about the head of the United States government and the big chief of the city administration in Hew York. As the manager of a baseball team, that soft ball aggregation of mine in Dutchess County — I want to pass a few managerial judgments. I'd call the ?resi- dent of the United States pretty good — nothing special. He tossed the ball out in the routine way. Then the Washington Senators, got whitewashed by the lowly Red Sox — not an in­ spiring Presidential day. And the President was just another ball player, like those White House Correspondents. But in Hew York it was different — three cheers and Bronx cheers. Three cheers for Fiorello in the box, Bronx cheers for Col. Jake at the plate. Precedents w<3 e broken at the Yankee Stadium when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, marched himself out to the pitcher's box and buzzed one over, with Colonel Jake Ruppert, the mighty Jake, at the date. You'd think Jake would know something about home runs. He'd had BASEBALL #2 enough conversations with Babe Ruth. Mostly about salary. Apparently the Bambino never told Jake how to hit the ball. As Mayor buzzed that fast one over, Jake just blinked and the umpire yelled — Strike One. I'd like to put Mayor La Guardi a in my line-up as star pitcher this summer. But as for Jake, he can be the bat boy. Pittsburgh saw the most sensational opening game of the year, a melodramatie thriller. I stayed for the first three innings and then had to leave for the tower of the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, to prepare my broadcast. So I missed the fireworks. It looked as though the St. Louis Cards had the game in the bag, with the Pirates in the soup. That' s the way things stook in the last half of the ninth. The score was four to two in favor of the Cards, in the eighth inning when Short Stop Vaughan got a run which didn't seem to help much. And so it was in BASEBALL #3 9 the last half of the ninth. Then the first Pirate up, Earl Grace, popped alucky fly that got him to first. Lloyd Wayner smacked a long fly to the St. Louis center fielder who caught him out. Then Pirate Roettger singled to left putting two men on base. A tense moment. The end of the ninth, score four to two for the visitors, one man out, two men on base. Up came the bit outfielder. Slugger Lindstrom, who swung his war club and knocked the apple clean out of Forbes Fie]a, way out into Schenley Park, bringing in three runs. __________ __ _ ... BASEBALL if 4 And you could hear fifty-seven varieties of Pittsburgh yells come floating up on the smoke and clouds clear to the tip top of the forty-fourth story of the Cathedral of Learning. A dramatic finish, if there ever was one. And that*s what makes baseball a popular game. The people in Pittsburgh say they don1* care how dirty the city is. They are tickled pink, or tickled black to see smoke pouring from all these chimneys. Up and down the Monongahela River today I found the huge plants busy. The American Sheet & Tin Plate at honessen, one of the largest in the world is working 100 percent. And the employees and business people of the town, so the employees and the Mayor tell us, are getting ready for the biggest celebration they have ever had. They are calling it Tin Mill Appreciation Day with a parade that will last for hours and including twelve bands and thirty-five drum corps. Here in the Heinz Plant you find fifty-seven varieties of smiles because there are twenty—five factories in this country, Canada, England and Spain, and two hundred agencies all over the world, are busier than ever. Blond and beautiful Miss Josephine Gibson is mqnessen #3 the Horae icon oral cs Authority* Miss Sigson, in your low and musical voice which has long been familiar over the air, will you tell us whether the women of America know any more about scientific housekeeping than they used to? FOR MISS GIBSQN:- "Oh, yes, they surely do. They know a great deal about calories and vitirains, aid everything of that sort. And we have discovered the health of the nation is improving because of this." FOR L* T.:- nyjLHiajn Hynes, president of some twenty thousand united mine workers told me today at Uniontown, in the heart of the richest coal fields in the world, that things are looking better for the miners, and for the soft coal industry. And that1s good news tuc ^ kll I thought the latest case of Dr, Wirt had been laid to rest for good. But here’s a most significant follow­ up to that story of the party where people shocked the doctor by saying all sorts of revolutionary things. The name of professor Rexford Tugwell was prominent in the Senate investi­ gation, He was constantly referred to as the source of the dangerous revolutionary ideas. And now we know wh^t President Roosevelt thinks about it. He has indicated it most plainly. He has appointed Professor Tugwell Under-Secretary of Agriculture, The Professor had been Assistant Secretary, Under-Sec ret ary is a significant step up. Now he has next to the top hole job in the Department that deals with the affairs of the Farmers JAPAN It is curious to observe that the government of Japan is using to other governments almost the identical words that other governments have been saying to Japan. The gist of Tokio's formidable pronunciamento is "Hands off China." And that is exactly what the rest of the world has been unsuccess­ fully saying to the Mikado* And there's a pronounced difference in the re­ plies made by the governments of Great Britain and the United States. For John Bull says to the Nipponese rather sharply "Just read again that Nine Power Treaty which you Signed," Uncle Sam more suavely, says to Tokyo:- "What does this mean, please ?" To the layman the meaning seems fairly clear. Japan wants to be China's big brother. "And", say the Japanese;- "China wants it too." To which the Nanking government replias:- "We do in a pig's eye." "So, we're in a pickle and want help." says John Chinaman, in Japan's bid for supremacy in the Far East, it's a chorus of yes and no, pro and con. SEA S£RP£NT. e- Of course there are some news stories that have nothing to do with government — the sea serpent for example. That old sea serpent yarn at Lake George, New York, quite naturally reminds us of the recent Loch—Ness monster. The weird creature seen over in Scotland is still a matter of myster, hut we have a complete expose’ of an equ&lly inter­ esting critter that created a wild scare at Lake George some thirty years ago. At this late date a confession is made by Henry Watrous, the eighty-four year old president of the National Academy of Design. Mr. Watrous admits that the famous Lake George sea serpent was a joke, and he was the jokester. He made the monster by carving a cedar log—a big mouth, gigantic teeth and two wicked, ugly eyes made out of telephone pole insulators of green glass. He put weights on it so that it would float in a proper position in the water. Then he manip­ ulated it by means of ropes and pulleys from the shore. And SEA SERPENT #2 Mr. .'/atrous fri&iiip'u.Z&'tsd. it so clsverly in various oarts of the lake that the hoax lasted for a long time. It scared hundreds of people and wrecked one marriage, a new blissful honeymoon. The honeymooning couple were out in a row boat. Mr. Watrous with his ropes and pulleys caused the sea serpent to bob out of the water near them. The young bridegroom let out a yell and dived overboard. He swam to shore learn ng wifey in the soup - in the boat. After that wifey wouldn't talk to him, and romance was blasted. And that seems tocombine the tw> dissimilar themes of sea serpents and love, neither of which are connected with the orderly processes of government. But wait a minute I guess I'm wrong, here's a story about love and it has a good deal, to do with government. Five good looking young women met for luncheon in Hew York. And then and there formed the Reno Wives Protective Association. They are going to canpaign to have the laws changed until a. SEA SSRPENT #3 mm Reno divorce is recognized in every state in the Union. Some states say nix to those Reno divorces. And that makes it embarrassing when the divorced ones remarry. They expect to have a national convention next week with divorced delegates from all over the country attending. PTQK.LE SUDIIG People are always in a pickle or in the soup, and governments, too. If that were not so there would be no news. And now I'll be in it if I don't hurry up and get some z—soup and say. Bo Long Until Tomorrow*