Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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McCORMICK MESSENGER. McCORMICK. S. Cm THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1937 IVeteg Jtgpfeig of Current Event* C.I.O. STEEL POWER FADES Thousands Back at Jobs as Companies Maintain Stand • • • Congress Digs In • • • Hitler Warns He'll Act Alone ^l&durtx/id. U/. J&LdcanA v er nv^Tv/r a »pwt! wnRT.r SUMMARIZES THE WORLD'S WEEK C Western Newspaper Union. Adolf Hitler Steel Furnaces Glow Again P LANTS of the independent steel corporations in Pennsylvania and Ohio were once more operating as state troopers kept the peace. Vio lence among strikers, workers and police dwindled to a handful of hand to hand fights in which injuries were comparatively few. With Gov. George H. Earle hav ing lifted martial law in John- town, Pa., it was estimated that nearly half the 15,000 workers of the Bethlehem Steel corporation’s great Cambria plant were back on the job. It was apparent that the real, grip of the strike had been broken. Mayor Daniel Shields declared it was all over, but there were still about 250 pickets on hand. The day before the plant re-opened the C. I. O., in a last-minute attempt to save its cause, promised a mass meet ing near Johnstown of 50,000 min ers who would then aid the steel strikers in keeping the plants closed. Only about 1,500 showed up, and after listening to speeches by union leaders they dispersed peaceably. Plants of the Republic Steel cor poration and Youngstown Sheet & Tube company in Ohio’s Mahoning valley, where half of the total num bers of state militiamen were pro tecting the public peace, again were operating. Steel plants in Chicago were preparing to reopen. Still none of the independent steel corpora tions had signed contracts with C. I. O. unions. Their refusal to sign had been the sole issue of the strikes. Der Fuehrer Scores Neutrals •*C'ROM now on,” Adolf Hitler told ^ 200,000 Nazis at a party rally in Wurzberg, “we will prefer ... to take the freedom, independence, honor and security of our nation into our own hands and pro- tect ourselves alone.” Disgusted, Germany withdrew from the non-inter vention patrol of Spain, as Italy did likewise. Der Fuehr er warned that the Nazis would take in dependent action to protect themselves from attacks by the Spanish government. He described how Germany had been condemned for shelling Almeria after a Spanish airplane had bombed the cruiser Deutschland, and how, when the cruiser Leipzig was attached by a submarine while on patrol duty, the non-intervention committee had done nothing about it. A remedy suggested by Great Brit ain and France was that the patrol duty be left entirely to them, with Italian observers on French patrol ships and German observers on Brit ish ships to ” judge the equitable, im partial working of the system.” Mediation Board Gives Up T HE mediation board of three, named by Secretary of Labor Perkins to sit in Cleveland and at tempt to negotiate a settlement in the steel strike, gave up in despair. Its chairman, Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, and the other two mem bers, Lloyd Garrison, former pres ident of the national labor relations board, and Edward F. McGrady, trouble-shooting assistant of Mme. Perkins, were unable even to per suade Tom Girdler, Eugene Grace and other steel officials to sit around a conference table at which union leaders were present. The board explained its failure, “The only hope of settlement lies in such a meet ing.” In criticizing the companies for their stand the board said, “Nothing can be made clearer today than that management and organized la bor, when it really represents the wishes of the men, have got to learn how to live together, to reach agreements and to abide by them when made.” Steel officials handed Taft a writ ten resume of their stand, that they would not make any agreement with Lewis’ “irresponsible” C. I. O. They admitted that the Wagner act might force them to negotiate with the union, but declared another law pro vides that no one need make a con tract he doesn’t want to make. Governor Davey of Ohio revealed that after the board had given up, Secretary Perkins telephoned to ask him to subpoena steel chiefs to the state capital, Columbus, and “keep them there until they sign an agreement.” Meanwhile state troops would keep the mills closed, Mme. Perkins suggested. Governor Davey refused, saying: “Secretary Perkins’ suggestion would be the exercise of the most autocratic and dictatorial power ev er attempted. In private life it would be kidnaping. “Until the courts have decided that the companies have to sign contracts or agreements I have no right to take anybody and hold him. I have no right to keep plants closed except in case of riot . . . The troops are in the steel district Love surmounted the hatred of two political dynasties as Miss Ethel du Pont married Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. now for the purpose of maintaining law and order; to protect the rights of those who want to go back to work.” —"k— Looks Like a Long Summer /^ONGRESS will be in session for ^ a long time yet, probably until September 1. That was the consen sus of the 240 senators and congress men who attended President Roose velt’s week-end outing for majority members on Jefferson island in Chesapeake bay. Although they insisted the meet ing was purely social, it was gen erally accepted that attempts had been made to swing back certain of the New Deal lawmakers who had been getting out of line lately. The result is that a heavy program of legislation desired by the admin-* istration will be attempted before the members of congress can leave for home. The President’s court bill—pre sumably in its original form, al though it seems to face certain de feat, either through a vote or through filibustering—headed the list. It was closely followed by gov ernment reorganization and wage and hour measures. — , k— Seeks Changes in Wagner Act S EN. ARTHUR H. VANDENBERG of Michigan proposed three amendments to the national labor relations act designed to broaden the rights of e m - ployers under the Wagner act, forbid “sit - down” strikes and other “unfair” union practices, and provide severe penalties for unions which violated con tracts with employ ers. His amend ments : 1.—To give em ployers the same right which only em ployes now enjoy to appeal to the national labor relations board for an election to determine the rep resentatives of employes. 2.—To require agreements in writ ing and to permit strikes only after a majority vote of all employes. Any group which broke its contract and did not repair the break after being ordered to do so by the board would be suspended from repre sentation. 3.—Establish a code of practices for labor. This would: Prohibit compulsory political as sessments on union members. Require that all union officers, agents and representatives be Unit ed States citizens. Forbid union organization by co ercion. Prohibit damage to property, strikes intended to force any person to violate a contract or federal laws, and violations of “any per son’s rights in rea- or personal prop erty.” Montagues and Capulets* ■YX^ITH all the family blessings ▼ » save those of a political class ification, Miss Ethel du Pont, daughter of Eugene du Pont, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., son of the President of the United States, were married at Christ church near Wilmington, Del., in a “simple” wedding attended by a “handful” of about 400 picked guests. Bitter political hatreds of the older generations were buried in the protests that this was “the youngsters’ day.” Gedeon Slayer Surrenders O OBERT IRWIN, New York sculp- ^ tor once treated for insanity, who killed Veronica Gedeon, beau tiful New York model; Mrs. Mary Gedeon, her mother and Frank Byrnes, a boarder in the Gedeon home, on last Easter Sunday, sur rendered to police in Chicago. He was flown back to New York City where indictments were being pre pared. He prepared to defend him self from the electric chair by a plea of insanity. Senator Vandenberg Irvin S. Cobb mn 'Dfwvdit) about Comfort in Traveling. L ATELY, on a cross-country prowl, two of us invaded one of the remotest corner* of the desert. Until our car broke down crawled along some of the roughest backways in crea tion, then escaped on what by quaint irony was called an accommodation train over a side- spur of a prehistoric railway line. When we hit con crete high roads and air- conditioned fliers, I caught my self saying our fore fathers put up with plenty of misery in order to move about. And then I realized that what we had endured did not date back to former genera tions. So soon have we grown ac customed to luxury with speed we forget that most of America, fifteen years ago, lacked what w T e now ac cept as common traveling comfort. Why, less than two decades ago, for my sins, I rode on a certain jerk water railroad in the deep South. The last work done on its tracks was in 1864 by General Sherman—he tore ’em up. I made the mistake of trying to shave while en route. When I got through, I looked like one of those German student duelists. But, nowadays, even those who use homemade trailers seem al most happy at times. • • • Diplomatic Busybodies. W HO’LL be the next member of our diplomatic corps to open his mouth and put his foot in it clear up to his hip-joint? It has been nearly two months now since our ambassador to Ger many had a bad dream and before nursie could quiet him was pro claiming that a certain billionaire was willing to put up one of his loose billions to buy a dictatorship for this country. He failed to fur nish the name and address. Maybe they got left out of the nightmare. Hardly had paregoric wooed this distinguished sufferer back to hush- a-bye-land when our new represen tative in the Philippines began de manding that, when it came to drinking official toasts, his name must come higher up on the wine list or he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences. However, the excitement subsided before he could summon the Pacific fleet to bom bard Manila. There’s a rumor that Washington sent him word he needn’t worry about being appro priately saluted—there’d be a na tionwide Bronx cheer awaiting him on his return home. Since then there’s been a lull and the American public is getting im patient. We do so love a free show and especially when it’s amateur night. • • * Hard-Bitten Females. T OURING about over certain Western states where open gam bling either is by law permitted, or by custom winked at, I noticed this: Generally speaking, the feminine patrons are the steadiest drinkers, the most persistent gamesters, the most reckless betters of all. And frequently their manners are the rudest and their faces the grimmest —determined seemingly to disavow the theory that their sex is the gentler sex. On the other hand, the men pa trons—descended, many of them, from old gun fighters, old prospec tors, old path-finders—grow increas ingly docile and subdued, absorbing less thhn their share of the hard liquor—maybe because they fear there won’t be enough left for mama and the girls—and risking their dimes where the gallant ladies plunge with dollars. Sometimes a fellow, watching the modern processional from the pro tection of the sidelines, gets to long ing for the bygone days when, as Kipling might have put it and, in fact, almost did, a woman was only a woman, but a good cigar was te# cents. • • • These Candid Cameras. O NCE a citizen had a right to ob ject to the publication of a flashlight view showing him beat ing his wife or exhibiting his appen dicitis scar or taking out h.is up pers or something. That was before they began print ing magazines for those who’ve abandoned the old-fashioned habit of reading and writing. And it’s doing glamorous movie queens no real good when these betraying close-ups prove that maybe the glamor is only paint-deep. Thus the last strongholds of our one-time personal liberty crumble. I used to think a passport picture was about the frankest thing we had in the line of intimate likenesses, excepting, of course, the x-ray. But this candid camera business which catches you unawares—and often without your underwears eith er—is the most fiendish attack of all against our practically vanished privacy. IRVIN S. COBB. O—WNU Service. “Streak of Death" By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter Y OU know, boys and girls, about half of our battle to live is fought against ourselves and other people, and the other half is fought against Old Dame Nature. For every Bill Jones who got himself caught in a whirling piece of man-made machinery or had to fight for his life against some vicious or crazed fellow hu man, there is a Pete Smith, who finds himself in a jam with an earthquake, or a wild animal, or some other of Mother Nature’s tools of destruction. I wouldn’t attempt to say which type of adventure is worse. I’ve got a hunch that one is just about as bad as the other. But there’s something about Dame Nature’s right hooks to the jaw that makes them more terrifying than the others. I guess that’s because we don’t understand Nature so well as we understand ourselves and the machines we create. And here’s the story of a bout with Nature, sent to me by Mrs. John J. Sproul, of Keyport, N. J. It’s one of those things that might happen to anybody and everybody. And when it came along, it threw the whole Sproul family into a sudden, reasonless . panic. Adventure came on the Sproul family in the dead of the night. They were all sleeping—Mother and Dad and the children. The Sprouls had four children then, but only three of them were at home. The other was away for the night. The evening had been cloudy and threatening. The sky had been black overhead when they had gone to bed. And now, sud denly, they were awakened out of a sound sleep by a series of loud, crashing reports. This Was No Ordinary Storm, No, Sir! The din was so terrific that the Sprouls jumped out of bed. It was a thunderstorm—but what a storm. The first sweeping patter of the rain quickly rose to a loud, drumming roar. The wind howled, and the thunder, punctuated by bright flashes of lightning, sounded like a battery of siege guns being fired right beside the house. Few people pay much attention to a night thunderstorm. Some folks sleep right through them. Others get up and shut the windows to keep the floor from getting rained on. But this storm was so terrific that the Sprouls were alarmed. Every crashing bolt of lightning seemed to be striking right around the house. John Sproul was hardly out of bed—he was standing in the mid dle of the bedroom floor—when one of the little boys came running into the room. John and the boy started for the stairs. As he did, he shouted back to Mrs. Sproul. “Get the other children,” he cried, “and come down- She Found Her Husband Lying Stiff and Still on the Floor. stairs as quick as you can. I’ll light the lamp in the kitchen so you can see.” Mrs. Sproul Is Petrified With Fear. John went down the stairs. Mrs. Sproul could hear him in the kitchen. She had started out of the room, headed down the hall toward the room in which her two other children were, when suddenly she heard a deafen ing clap of thunder, louder than all the rest. “I could feel the house shake and vibrate, and immediately I thought it muse have been struck,” she says. “There was a smell like that of brimstone permeating the whole upper floor. I stopped and stood stock still for a moment. The children were still in their bed and I had to get them. But right then I couldn’t seem to move. “I don’t know how long I stood there, but it must have been for a long time, for presently it occurred to me that, since that last crash, I had not heard a sound from either my husband in the kitchen, or from my son who had followed him downstairs. And then, all of a sudden, I heard a voice coming from below.” Fear Lurked in the Blackness of Night. Mrs. Sproul says that voice sounded as if it came from the dead. It was her little son downstairs with his father and he was calling very feebly, “Mamma—mamma—come here. Papa’s dead!” Ten seconds before, she had been stiff with fright and unable to move a muscle. But that sound shocked her into activity. She ran through the hall and began groping her way down the stairs. The lower floor was in total darkness. She began calling hysterically to her boy—asking him where he was. At last he answered. “I’m here,” he said. “By the high chair.” Feeling her way through the dark house, she moved toward the high chair. Thunder was still roaring outside and an occasional flash of lightning brightened up the room. At last she found her boy—lying on the floor. She picked him up, carried him into the dining room and asked him if he knew where his father was. “He’s in the kitchen by the stove,” the boy said. “I saw him fall down. I guess daddy has been killed.” She groped her way toward the kitchen. Her bare feet lit on some thing wet—then on shattered bits of broken glass. But she didn’t even feel it in the stress of the moment. She didn’t know until later that her husband had fallen with the lamp in his hand and that glass and oil were strewn all over the kitchen floor. Storm Provides a Weird Tattoo. She found her husband—lying stiff and still on the floor. She began screaming hysterically at the top of her voice. But at the same time she was tugging at John Sproul’s still form, dragging it toward the dining room. In a few minutes neighbors began clamoring at the door. They crowded in and a lamp was lighted. John Sproul wasn’t dead, but he was badly burned by the lightning, and his clothes were charred and smoking. When they pulled his clothing from his body they found that the lightning had played a curious trick. Photographed on his back was a silvery spot the exact shape of a tree. A doctor came, worked over him, and brought him back to con sciousness. He said he couldn’t understand how he had lived through the shock, and he was fascinated by that tree imprinted on John’s back. He said he’d never forget it—but what Mrs. Sproul will never forget is that terrible night of storm and destruction. ©—WNU Service. Sunday Island Sunday island is one of the isles of the Kermadecs. They were the landfall of the Maoris who came sailing over the Pacific to colonize New Zealand, and they have been known to the West ever since a British ship, the Lady Pembyn, found them in 1788. They were a port of call in 1791 of D’Entrecas- treaux, who named them after his captain, Huon Kermadec. First Really Democratic King William IV was the first really democratic king to occupy the Brit ish throne. He was also the first Biitish sovereign who knew New York a* first hand. As a midship man, says London Answers Maga zine, he was in that city towards the end of the American War of In dependence, and had a narrow es cape from being kidnaped by agents of Washington. "Way Back When \ • By JEANNE FAMOUS SONG WRITER KEPT A BOARDING HOUSE I WONDER how many many * women who are just simple little housewives today would be famous, if they had the time to take from demands of their homes and fam ilies. Carrie Jacobs Bond made her success because circumstances forced her to change from a house wife to a business woman. She was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1863. She liked music and stud ied piano from childhood until she married at the age of eighteen. When she was twenty-five, she re married Dr. Frank L. Bond, who took a sympathetic interest in her music and encouraged her to com pose. She wrote one song, “Is My Dolly Dead?”, at that time and it was accepted; but the work was merely a hobby with her and she did not produce more. She devoted her time and efforts to being a good housewife and mother for the Doc tor and her little boy. Then, Dr. Bond was killed in an accident and she was left an invalid without money, and an eight-year-old son. Carrie Jacobs Bond did not lose heart. She rented a large house in Chicago and took in roomers. She made some money as a dressmaker *>nd painting china. They were so f>oor that her son had to go to vork soon thereafter as a delivery boy. Ambitiously, she devoted all her spare time to composing songs. Through financial support from a woman singer she started a small music publishing house, writing the words and music, and painting the cover designs of the songs she print ed. She even promoted the songs herself, and little by little she won success. Today the songs she wrote are remembered and sung through out the world, “A Perfect Day,” “I Love You Truly,” “His Lullaby,” “My Son,” “Do You Remember?” and others. • • • SENATOR PITTMAN RUSHED TO ALASKA / S O OFTEN gold buried far away in some inaccessible part of the world looks easier to get than for tunes awaiting us right at home. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada started his career on a wild goose chase for gold, but came back to make his success in the occupation lor which his schooling fitted him. Key Pittman, who was born in 1872, attended law college in Ten nessee. His career at that time looked as though it might consist of practicing law, obtaining an ap pointment as district attorney, and forging ahead in politics with the United States senate as a goal. But young Pittman could not see it that way, and the reason was the Alas kan gold rush in 1896. He rushed up to the Klondike! And what hapt pened? Key Pittman landed at Daw son just ahead of the freeze almost penniless. In Nome it is said that he worked at one end of a bucksa^w to make a living. Then, the peo ple made him district attorney. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the United States, settling in Tono- pah, Nev., where he laid the founda tion of his fortune in the Tonopah Telephone company. In 1913, Key Pittman, in his first political contest, was elected to the United States senate, where he has given a good account of himself for 24 years. His greatest interest is to better the position of silver, in spired of course by the great pro duction of this metal in Nevada. Stories of wealth to be won in foreign fields sound so much more alluring simply because the fields represent the unknown and seem to offer more adventure. Probably while we are pining to be in one place, the fellow who is there wishes he were in ours. ©—WNU Servlet.