L*. T* - SUNOCO - MON. T JUNE 15, 1956 BONUS Yes, this was anything but "Blue Monday" - I mean for some three and a half million World War veterans. For Uncle Sam*s postman clayed Santa Claus? The rejoicing is not confined to the veterans, their families and dependents. Millions of business people, who Sk expect to sell something, are also rubbing their hands in glee. Government officials are consoling themselves and others who opposed the measure, with a prochecy that the spending of this money will provide a powerful priming to the business pump. The persons best qualified to know how many of the bonds will be cashed and how the money will be spent, are officials of the American Legion. They estimate that some six hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars will go into circulation immediately. That is, it will be spent over the counters of merchants and retailers. Then they estimate that thirty two and four tenths per cent will go for homes and the expenses of the home. Thirty-one and four tenths per cent will be used to nay off old debts, wine the veterans* BONUS - 2 slates clean. Seven and eight-tenths per cent will he invested, either in stocks or in business ventures. The clothing merchants will get seven per cent for the replenish­ ment of family wardrobes that have sorely needed it. Motor car and machinery manufacturers, ought to get eight and seven-tenths per cent, and twelve and seven tenths will be used for various purposes such as education, savings accounts, insurance. And in our life-time there'll never be another bonus - do you think? 1 VI CONGRESS The political scene shifts from Cleveland back to Washington. President Roosevelt returned to the capital from his speaking tour this morning. He returned to find his lieutenants and partisans rejoicing over the speech made by Republican Semtor George Norris last night. On the other hand, he found awaiting him a tough fight with a recalcitrant Congress. The gentlemen and gentlewomen on Capitol Hill, just canft agree on the lTesident,s tax program. The joint committee of the House and Senate has been at it hot and heavy all day. But the task of Ironing out I differences, producing a piece of legislation satisfactory to all I parties, grows no easier. That tax bill is still an uncrossed ravine between Congress and adjournment. The prospects for an end to this congress by Saturday night are no rosier today than they : were a week ago. But the tax bill isn't the only hurdle, there's the business of appropriating money for the Treasury, the Post Office and the Department of the Interior. Also, there's a measure to regulate chain stores on the slate, to say nothing of the bill through which optimistic reformers hope to squealch the lobbies. CONGRESS - 2 So the wise men xxxa=wem8m on Capitol Hill have still qjiite a VHn, Slice of work ahead of them. But tefBiaeB* Roosevelt isn’t /V letting that discourage hi#. He has made arrangements to take time out for a journey to New Haven on Friday. There he’ll see his son, Franklin D., Jr., row for Harvard against Yale. COMVBMTIOfl SUMMARY Now that the tumult and the shouting is over, letT s review the Cleveland Convention for a moment, and recall a couple of highlights: When Keynoter Steiwer arrived at what evidently was an unexpected climax. Those of you who were listening in will remember. The Senator asked a series of questions — wFor how long have we lived under the evil trinity of increased deficit, increased debt and increased taxes? For three long years!" And so on. This touched the delegates to their souls, and up went a mighty chant: xlt** "For three'long yearsl” It was one of the most dramatic situations I have ever seen. And to show you how unexpected it was, the newsreel sound cameras were not on at thatmoment; and it would have made perfect material for the screen — marvelous sound, great dramaj probably the best thing in the entire convention — for them. But, the newsreel cameramen have copies £x of all such important speeches in their hands made. They don’t film the whole thing. before the speeches are cohvehtiqm - e They go through and mark the passages that seem most important, and that was one they hadn*t marked* As Bill Hawkins, head of the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers remarked to Heinnal Waranreth and me;- "Had Senator Steiwer been a bora showman, a born orator he would have tossed aside the rest of his long speech and ended it right there. It might ha-® made him the Vice Presidential candidate, and he would have gone down in history as ' a great orator. But — the Senator went right on and on and on, ending with Valley Forge and Gettysburg. And then that row over the platform bet tween the Landonites, Senator Borah and the Old Guard. When the Thursday afternoon convention session consisted of nothing but a few songs and then adjourned, along with all the other scribes and commentators I fared forth to find out what had happened* Men on the inside, even old friends of mine, must have been sworn to secrecy because they told me; n0h, the pressure of getting out copies of the platform this morning was too great. The CONVBNTIQfl - 5 mimeograph machines bro.tte down, and that^ the reason for the delay 111 Ho, Hoi All of which nonsense made me positive that something extraordinary had happened, and I set out to find the truth. Then it was that I learned of how the Old Guard in the Resolutions Committee, had slipped one over, had written the platform! Consternationamong the Lan^onitesl That dramatic long-distance night call to the Governor* s mansion in Kansasl His reply that the platform didn*t suit him, miJst be changed or the whole business would have to be fought out on the floor of the Convention. That was the reason for the delay, and finally Governor Landon got his wish, on most points. His courageous telegram to the Convention, sent just before he was nominated, made it clear just how he stands on those planks worded not just the way he wanted them CONVENTION - 4 Another memory — one I'd like to forget:- The speeches seconding the nominations. Most of them so bad j that people around me were holding their noses. The seconding I sneakers were using all the old sentences: "From the rocked- | I ribbed shores of Maine, to the Founding Forefathers of [ | Gettysburg -- and so on.” Until along came a plain man the I prairie, Charles Day of South Dakota, who instead of indulging . '' .' ■■■■■: f- f in a burst of flowery oratory spent most of his time clearing l t [ his throat, blurring and sending great roars of raucous sound at us over the public address system. The crowd yelled and laughed at this. It was a timely relief.j Then came the roll call and the voting:- Alabama so many votes for Landon. Arizona so many for Landon, and so on and so on all for Landon. A Landonite was sitting next to me and Just to razz him I said:- ”Why doesn't someone, for a little excitement, just to be independent, cast a vote or two for Borah." And a moment later to the amazement of the throng that's exactly what happened. One West Virginia vote went to Borah, and a block of eighteen votes from Wisconsin. It seemed a shame. The Convention had a chance to break an eighty year old CONVENTION - 5 record by unanimously naming a candidate on the first ballot. INSURANCE Scandals in two different parts of the country throw the spotlight on a picture somewhat amazing to us peaceful folk. In Massachusetts, the authorities have unearthed facts which point to & vast conspiracy to defraud insurance companies by murder on a wholesale) Kj/scale. Meanwhile, from Los Angeles comes the story of people deliberately maiming themselves, smashing their fingers or wrists, with rolling pins, in order to swindle the automobile insurance In Springfield, Massachusetts, three men died recently, and at first were thought to have passed away from natural causes, Then the famous toxicologist. Dr* William Boos, of Harvard began investigating. And what he found indicated that probably died of poison, r slow poison difficult to detect* Thereupon, police and insurance Investigators went on the hunt. And in no fewer than half a dozen towns in western Massachusetts, they found circumstances to indicate that more than ditfysSL ^ fifty people had thus been^ttmswteES&^so that criminals might collect the insurance. In some cases, auto drivers who were INSURANCE - 2 believed to have been killed in hit and run accidents, were found to have died not as a result of accidents but from poison. So now it has been officially stated from the bench that a gigantic poison rackett has been thriving in Massachusetts. In Los Angeles five people have been arrested. charged with mayhem. They are accused of having fake* motor car A accidents. STORM The Inhabitants of Florida got another scare last night. Without warning one of those tropical storms came whooping out of the Gulf of Mexico. It*s first target was Bonita Springsj twenty miles from the town of Naples *• sounds like Pompeii twenty miles from Vesuvius. For several hours Bonita Springs was isolated. No deaths, no injuries - just a spectacular storm. But several small rivers overflowed their banks, several towns narrowly escaped the flood and many people had to climb to the second floors of their houses to escape the rising water. The downpour was torrential all over southwestern Florida. What was more, a forty-mile en hour gale whipped up such mighty tides, that people living on the beach had to move fast. The most curious feature of the storm was that it had no business coming along at all at this time of the year. Just one of those unexpected guests. caterpillars We»ve often read about plagues of locusts. But never before have I heard of an entire region overrun by a veritable army of #*H#rpiliars. That’s the strange story that comes tonight from northern Ontario. An area of eight thousand square miles devastated by these pests. The entire population is being mobilized to stop their relentless march. Children are being let out of school to sweep them off the walls and roofs of buildings. Troops of workers are trying desperately to stem the tide. The people of Ontario are fighting on a hundred and seventy-five mile front. The crawling plague has devoured crops, fruit trees, every kind of vegetation - even forests. XI Nothing seems to stop them. The folks in Ontario have tried jura pouring thousands of gallons of kerosene over the creeping army and then destroying them with flames. But behind the advance guard are billions more act that creep on slowly and implacably. They are eble to climb over everything, even cross rivers. But that isnft all to this curious infliction. They have impeded traffic both on the highways and on the railways. The surfaces of the roads have become so slippery that they are caterpillars - £ dangerous for rno'tor cars which, can only procead at slow sneeds. And have a dually stopped the trains in many places, just as grasshoppers have done in Kansas, because the rails a became so slippery as to make It impossible for locomotive wheels to get traction, Canadian official reports send a warning to us in the United States, These psx pests are what we know as tent caterpillars. Theyfve already become a nuisance throughout many of our states. Here and there people have tried to cope with them individually, but there has been no official action to eliminate them. If they can inflict such vast damage in Canada, they can do it here - if we don’t watch out. STRIKES Europe is having the jitters over the "Mtt strike situation. It is fairly quiet for the moment In France. But the long expected crisis in Belgium arrived today. A hundred and ten thousand workers in steel plants and mines threw down their tools, However, the government Is ready to resist any attempt at disorder. The Belgian Premier, Paul Van Zeeland, has mobilized the entire reserve corps of the Gendarmerie, ready for any trouble that may break loose. therefs , c A And, by the way, one point of interest in the Belgian crisis. The Minister of the Interior, Charles Dubus, is a graduate of PrInceton.th3£vse**tdgp% And it is on his shoulders that the principal burden of preserving order Is falling. His first step was to make sure that there would be no repitltlon of what happened in France. He has forbidden the Belgian strikers to follow the example of the French workers. There will be no holding the fort in Belgian factories or mines and keeping employers and officials out, 'in—Fratics», The authorities in Brussels lost no time in moving to STRIKES - 2 settle the trouble. Employers and union leeders heve been conferring all day. Already the famous diamond cutters of Antwerp have gone back to their benches. While things are quieter in France, there are still underground rumblings with an ominous sound. The Mobile Guards, fully armed and steel helmeted, are on the watch for the slightest sign of disorder. A few plants are still shut down, but they are only the smaller factories. Nevertheless, all Europe is on pins and needles. The rumor was ourrent today that no less a notorious person than Leon Trotzky was at the bottom of the strikes that threatened Monsieur Leon Blunts new government. But then Trotsky has so often been blamed for things. There is fear that the advent of the first radical government in jrance may be the prelude to a Fascist upheaval. To guard against this, the new ministers are preoaring legislation to curb not only the extreme Communists but also the Croix de Feu, the trench Fascists. PIRATES An exciting story comes from South China, There’s an American hospital at Amoy, conducted by missionaries for the benefit of the Chinese. In the middle of the night theire was an alarm, a band of pirates swooped down on the hospital compound. The pirates had sailed up the river to the shore on which the hospital Is located. With the quietness of cats, they swarmed over the sides of their junks and crept across the beach. They started to clamber over the wall, when to their astonishment they were met by a volley of rifle fire. Somebody had betrayed them, the police had been notified. So there was a detachment of machine guns to greet the savage yellow skin marauders. By the time the ruffians were driven yelling back to their junks, five bodies la^ on the ground, dead. Unfortunately, two of them were the defenders of the hospital. But at any rate the ;feRaerican hospital at Amoy is safe. I ERNESTINE This happens to be the 75th birthday of one of the most extraordinary peonle in America. They call her the Grand Oid Lady of Opera. Of course you will know from that, that I mean Madam Ernestine Schumann-Heink. When she made her debut at the Imperial Opera in Vienna, she was just fifteen years old. Now after sixty years of the arduous life of an opera singer, she gallantly and successfully plunged into a new career. She went to Hollywood and today is known as not only the Grand Old Lady of Opera but the Grand Old Lady of the cinema. There's a record few men could approach let alone equal. Nothing has ever fazed that Grand Old Lady. Where other professional women would protest that you could not have a family and a career at the same ■fime, Schumann-Heink said nothing. She Just went to work and had both, a tremendous career, and a family of eight children. They used to tell a story about her a few years ago. One of her colleagues asked her: "What have you been doing Ernestine?" To which she replied: "Sing a little Wagner, have a little baby, sing a little more Wagner. And, SO LONG UNTIL TOMORROW.