15 ^JL5J^4 rgqs ^ v ^ t The issue cet^een the Administration anil public utilities nas entered a new phase. The government has put its hand on wh A looks like poten^ weapon in its controversy -with the power corporations, the fight over such fed era! electric power projects as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Mayor LaGaardia of hew York has be n conferring with President Roosevelt about a proposal to establish, a municipal power plant in hew York City, this to be financed by federal Mayor money, P.W.A. funds. Arid the President has said ,,yesH. ^LaGuardia announced today that the government would, put up the cash to enable New York City to build an electric plant. The direct purpose o provide electric power for the use of the municipality and federal government institutions in New York City. Any sur­ plus cower above xhese needs will be availaole for sale to tre public. This follows a long drawn out argument between the New York power companies and the City government. But this only begins '"he story. T.rie New Yoi* wi uy electrical project, financed by federal money, will, according to tentative plans, be the first of c whole series of municipal ROCSEYKLT - 2 power pi 'in4:3 in ilew YorV State, And it all will connect up with the St. Law re .ce waterways project, which will provide enormous water owcr for .conversation into electricity. ”his certainly looks like war on a wide front, a national fron4, against the power companies. These, acting through the Edison Electric Institute, are fighting in the courts against the federal gov.rnment going into the electricity business in competition with private industry. The Administration now is making a. sweeping gesture in retaliation - the prospect of a government s-pon so red, government financed campaign, in favor of municipally owned plants for reducing electricity. Such an Administration battle, on a national scale, against utilities, would raise the orobiem of government in business to truly major proportions. It would mean a partnersnip of federal gov rnment and municipal government, in business to­ gether - the electric business, competing with private industry already in the field. The Adraini st ration is accusing the utilities companies of charging exorbitant rates. The companies, on tneir side, have be n complaining thv.t they cannot operate when they RCQSSVEL? - 3 are face<3 with government competition "based on emergency public works and new Deal expend itures. They say they arc legal companies, long in the field, and threatened with ruin when government goes info business BLACK The passing of Eugene R. Black removes an influential and a humorous figure from public life. The man who recently resigned as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board owed his influence in a large part to his sense of humor. As a laison man between the Administration and the bankers of the country, the tall man from Georgia had a way of driving home a point of shrewd wisdom and of getting a laugh at the same time. Lean and lanky, with a big nose, big mouth and b|g ears, his intimate friends called him Andy Gump, and he didn't mind it. He found that the genial guise of an Andy Gump helped things along when he had to use persuasion on hardboiled functionaries of government and chilly masters of finance. He v/as a lav/yer — he becaiie a banker• The story goes arttrfc how one day, yearsLawyer Black walked along the street from one law office to another and passed a bank. He noticed that it closed at 5 p.m. And right there he stopped and began to think. He decided that banking was an easier job than practicing law. So he became a banker ttr&iA. vvtr ^ .. .. ... . DEB Here s a surprisxng picture - a society debutante, beautiful and wealthy - she's on her knees picking cigarette stubs off a court room floor and then sweeping the court room with a grimy municipal broom. It happened to Miss Mancy I, Bullitt, a Boston daughter of society, S She was hurrying between a couple of her homes, from Kentucky to Massachusetts, for the holidays - and stepped on the gas through tuskzBi±±s Rockville, Connecticut, The Rockville cops arrested her for speeding, and she had to spend a nervous hour in a local court room, waiting' for the judge. She smoked a pack or two of cigarettes and chucked the butts on the floor. It was a shabby old court room, so what did it matter? But when the Judge slapped on a fine of eleven dollars, he also added an extra penalty, most unusual. He sentenced the society deb to pick up all the cigarette butte, then to sweep the floor - and she did. , -:.w ^__ FLYERS ' Trans-Atlantic flying - moonshinei The Adamowlcz brothers did fly across the broad Atlantic. - There' s no moonshine about thati It's a case of illegal liquor, a still for making hootch.'^hat»s where the moonshine comes in. Remember how Joseph and Benjamin Adamowicz made that flight from the United States to Poland? They said it was to add glory to Poland1 s name. They had a lot of stops here and there, but they did make the hop across the ocean and finally set their white and blue monoplane down on the flying field of Warsaw, amid loud They were in the soda pop business, and that interested their old country friends and neighbors a good deal, Thej^ figured the soda pop business must be a great thing in America if the two soda pop brothers ©«* make enough out -I +* -hn "hnv A fly across the ocean. But did the Adamowicz brothers stick to soda pop when they got back? The federal government says "no", and it accuses the sodo pop trans-oceanlc ajllipsea of switching Irom soft drinks to hard. Word comes that the two Adamowicz biothers, another brother and four other men have been indicted for operating the FLASKS - 2 large;-4'- illegal still ever seized by government agents on Long I land , two the defendaiits are under arrest, neither of whom ever flew the ocean, Trie aviators are at liberty, though under indictment. Perhaps the question is, would this be the time for them to ake another Transatlantic Plight? RESCUE Last night we left that rescue story right in the middle of anxious suspense - imperilled, storm beaten sailors waiting to be Yl^vO saved, v/e can rehearse the happy ending we had all hoped for. Pour rescue ships around the sinking Norwegian freighter, 4 . A the SIETO, -Aai-With searchlights streaming through the storm and * playing on the deck of the foundering vessel, a lifeboat of the steamer NEW YORK fought its way through the raging seas. took sixteen men from the storm swept deck of the SltsTO, and brought them back to safety KHGLAMD There is always something to be respected in the stern relentlessness of British law. Yet it is no wonder that there were frantic appeals for mercy from all over England* for who was tods® hanged. One thing that strikes the American is the brevity of the evidence on which she was convicted. The unfortunate vroman hanged herself in advance while she was being questioned by a police officer. There was nothing in the background of the conversation to explain i&exfatal remark; stesastdafe "I didn't know^ A, A ss fTtyx^that my husband had died of strychnine poisoning.11 :s "Mobody has said he did", responded the detective with a deadly logic. And nobody had said it. There was no reason why she should have known — unless she had done it. On that iron logic of a few words, she was convicted. And not all her protestations of innocence to the very last nor the flood of emotional appeals to the British government, to King George, to Queen Mary, could save her. MVY Ihe die* if not cast, is as good as cast - although the action of the Privy uounCii of the Etoperor or Japan ffierely added the most official sort of 3f. aclsijonfc what we already knew was K coming. The members of that grave and stately Council, the present day version of the former group of elder statesmen, is the number one advisory body to the Mikado. Its action, taken - V ' i with the advice of the Empeeor himself, is virtually final. In fact, the statesmen cast their votes in the presence of tiie Emperor. They recommended to him that he terminate the Haval Treaty,, And the Nipponese Eon of Heaven is certain to act in accordance, so certain that the Japanese Foreign Minister ; announced immediately afterward that notice of the denunciation of the Treaty would be sent on Thursday, tomorrow, to the other nations that signed the Washington Treaty, Great Britain and the United States, also the smaller naval powers, France and Italy And the Mikado's Council, in addition to this . definitive act, added a word of comment, a declaration that stands as a formal answer to th^American announcement of policy. 1 I mean - that strong declaration some days ago by Norman Davis, American Ambaasartor-nt-La -ge and delegate to the London Haval Conference, in which he insisted that the Treaty shoufll stand as is. But, that if it didn't, and if any nation started to build warships, why the United States would respond with more warships, and out-build the competitor - meaning of course Japan,. Yes, this is answered by the Japanese Council, which declar s most pointedly that in terminating the ilaval Treaty, the Japanese government is Mready to face any consequence,” It would taire the most dyed-in-the-wool optimist, looking through the rosiest of rose-colored spectacles, to evade the belief that a naval race is inevitable, a naval race with all its incalculable consequences -- more taxes 'for you and me, BrotherJ I wish I were an alarmist, a gloomy prophet of danger and disaster, for then I could have a lot of fun with still another bit of news that co?ne3 from Tokyo. It concerns naval raanoeuvers in the Pacific. The Japanese admiralty announces tnat it is going to sta :e its naval war games next year a-, far eas-., in the Pacific as the Hundred and Eightieth Meridian - way out at the International Ha^e line, where you skip or gain a day. HAVY - 3 And this is something new. Kever before have the Japanese maneuvers reached so far into mid-pacific. Hever before have the Nipponese warships played theoretical campaigns and fought mythical battles within hundreds of miles of that Hundred and Eightieth Meridian* It certainly looks as if the Japanese fleet, in its practice strategies, will be edging over toward the American side of the Pacific, a phenomenon to give any appre­ hensive and agitated spirit a resonant chance to view with alarm. This war game announcement from Tokyo follows right on the heels of that spectacular British sham battle off Singapore. mhere has been mighty little news about the imaginary attack and defense of "the Cross Roads of the East", so little as to suggest the old shroud of secrecy. We've heard some of the spectacular details about rushing ships, zooming war planes, the deploying of land batteries and aircraft guns - and the final brief word that Singapore had been successful in fictitiously defending itself against the rnake-beli eve attack. With these spectacular sham battle sights to benold, ^he people of Malaya had reason to be reminded vividly of tnose HAV’Y - 4 astya, nearly twenty yeara ago, when the warlike sights out there wer>e no sham bat + les. '"he las+ time the Kalay Peninsula experiencer! the booming of naval guns in earnest was when that cool and insolent German raider, the Emden, ran right into Penang Harbor, blasted and sunk a Russian cruiser at anchor, and then in a chase riddled a French gunboat. Right now in. Penang Harbor they're salvaging that foundered Russian cruiser - the Japanese are doing it. A Tokyo salvage firm is cutting up the hulk for the copper and brass it contains. And the rust covered cannon of the ill-fated cruiser now strew the beach at Penang, From London the word i r flashed today that the Laval Conf* is adjourned, delegates of the United Stages, Great 1 and Japan, after wrangling long and vainly, trying to agr< But wait a minute ere a climax to the Laval a way to renew the Haval Treaty - have at last called it ? Yes, that's the climax, or maybe the anti-cliraaxJ TURKEY Tne kingdom of Italy sesms to Ue developing into something of a storm center. There has been, of 'course, the Yugoslav agitation against Mussolini-land, which followed the assassination of King Alexander. More recently there has been that flare-up "rouble between Italy and Turkey. The news dispatch tells us that I/ustapha Kemal, the Turkish Dictator, is mobilizing and fortifying the coast of Asia Minor opposite the Dodecanese Islands, those twelve isles of ancient legend. These are held by Italy. The Turkish military move is described as being in response to Mussolini's men fortifying the historic island of Rhodes, largest of the Dodecanese, But there are broader grounds of difference between the two dictators, the Dues and the Ghazi. Mustapha has been wary of Benito ever since Mus cl ini in one of his ringing speeches declared;- "Italy's expansion must lie in Asia." Turkey d ernand ed an' expl an at i oo. The Di pioraat ie Mussolini replied that he did not regard Turkey as being in Asia. And that didn't reass re the Diplomatic Kemal one bit. If Turkey ^■s hot in Asia, where is it? . . **' , :fH i -i' . ^ : Wsx- — ..... MR. DAWSON AKD L.T. RKX One agreeable thing about being in New York City is that your friends are always dropping in. Here's one tonight, from Russia. I am not going to ask him to make a speech about Russia, but while I was waiting tok go on the air he made a remark that leads me to believe we ought to make him this week's Lord High Prevaricator of the ^all Story Club. A.K. Dawson is the head of the Travel Department of the great American Express Company, and he says that during his recent stay in Russia he saw Noah's Ark — yes sir, old Father Noah's Ark. Now, what kind of a liar does that make him out to be? —o— MR. D.: - I beg your pardon, Lowell, I am not a liar, it's the truth. L.T.i- Okay, Brother Dawson, you win. Tell us your whopper. A Tall story with a SSidi* Biblical touch ought to be appropriate at this Christmas season MR. D. AND L.T. - 2 MR^D-x- In the course of some four thousand miles of traveling % in Russia, my wanderings brought me to Mt. ijrarat. L.T.;- Where the Ark ran aground. MB. P.Sure! And on the xh slopes of Mt. Ararat there's an Armenian church, and the cathoicus, the chief priest, showed me IS a part of the Arkt L.T.:- I thought Carveth Wells was lying when he told us that 1 i i I one MR. D.I hope the Armenian Catholicus isn' t listening in jj over there. Though he might be. People ±x in Russia who understaid < English often listen to your program. I did, on a number of occasions, by short wrave. And right now, they can hear over there at Mt. Ararat. L,T. All right, A.K., that sounds like another Tall Story. But now, if we were on Mt. Ararat, how would I end this broadcast? Mfi* pj; - Poka. Well, poka, poka, and SO LOWG UNTIL TOMORROW