Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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McCormick messenger, McCormick, s. c.. Thursday, july 22,1937 News Review of Current Events War clouds over china Japs See Little Hope for Truce ... 13 Senators Hold Court Bill in Balance . . . Steel Mills Smoke Once More W. J^idceJvdL * M SUMMARIZES THE WORLI SUMMARIZES THE WORLD’S WEEK C Western Newspaper Union. , Emperor Hirohito New Sino-Japanese Conflict? W AR between China and Japan was believed almost inevitable as hopes of settling a new outbreak of hostilities by diplomatic means faded out. The fight ing ensued as Jap anese gendarmes at tempted to take over the policing of Yu anping and Lukow- kiao, two villages in the Peiping area, near Marco Polo bridge. This, the Japanese said, was provided for in the North China truce. According to the assertions of the Japanese war office Chinese soldiers fired upon the gendarmes and opened up with trench mortars against the Japanese contingent at the Yuanping station. This action allegedly com pelled the Japanese to make a night assault, costing 20 lives, in order to occupy the towns of Lungwangmiao and Tungshinghwan. It was said the Chinese troops had also ad vanced into these points. Officials of the Hopei-Chahar coun- . cil claimed the Japanese moves were in open violation of the truce. They further accused the Japanese of conducting night army maneu vers, using real bullets instead of the blanks ordinarily employed in maneuvers. As Emperor Hirohito and Premier Fumimaro Konoe con ferred with military leaders and the cabinet, the Japanese people franti cally prepared for the war that loomed. China's Nanking government gave orders to Gen. Sung Cheh - yuan, commander of the North China forces, that his army was not to re treat for any reason, but was to be prepared to make the “supreme sacrifice” to hold its position until Gen. Chiang Kai-shek should arrive over the Peiping-Hankow railroad with 50,000 fresh troops. China’s demands for a truce were considered intolerable by the Jap anese government. They included: 1. Japan must assume responsi bility for the “incident.” 2. Japan must express regret. 3. Japan must pay damages to the Chinese and submit guaranties against such incidents in the future. Japan made counter demands at first reported to be accepted by the Chinese, later repudiated by them. These were: 1. Withdrawal of all Chinese troops from the area about Marco Polo bridge. 2. Punishment for “the Chinese responsible for the conflict.” 3. Adequate control of all anti- Japanese activities in North China. 4. Enforcement of measures against communism. As the fighting continued in the Peiping area, with no hope of an effective compromise cm the two na tions’ demands, war seemed the probable result. Struggle in the Senate / T'WELVE Democratic senators and one Farmer-Laborite were believed to hold the fate of the administration’s substitute for. the original bill which would increase the number of Supreme court justices to 15. The administration was certain that the bill would re ceive at least 39 votes, with 49 necessary to a majority. Forty- three senators were definitely com mitted against it. Thirteen were still uncommitted as the battle raged on the senate floor and in the cloakrooms. The twelve uncommitted Demo crats were: Andrews (Fla.), Bone (Wash.), Brown (N. H.), Caraway (Ark.), Duffy (Wis.), Johnson (Colo.), Lewis (111.), Murray (M o n t .), Overton (La.), Pep per (Fla.), Russell, Jr. (Ga.) and Wagner (N. Y.). Lundeen (Minn.) was the Farmer-Laborite. The substitute for the original Ashurst bill provides for appoint ment of one new justice each year to every justice remaining on the court after reaching the age of seventy-five years. It was believed that public opin ion would decide the commitment of the senators “on the fence.” If it becomes apparent that public opinion is against the substitute as it was against the original bill, it is likely that the administration lead ers in the senate will propose an amendment preventing the substi tute bill from including present members of the court. This would postpone the enlargement of the court until some new appointee be comes seventy-five. * C. I. O. Steel Grip Loosens T HE grip of the C. I. O. con tinued to loosen in the steel strike as three big independent steel corporations—Republic, Bethlehem and Youngstown Sheet & Tube— reported more than two-thirds of their idle mill hands had returned to work. This covered plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Inland, the fourth of the steel independents, announced George Gershwin: Dead at 38. that it was operating, with its nor mal force of 13,000 in Indiana since it &nd the Steel Workers’ Organiz ing Committee signed a compact with the state labor commission. Steel production in the Youngstown, Ohio, area, one of the principal scenes of strike violence, climbed to 76 per cent of capacity, 3 per centage points above the operating figure before the start of the strike. The Youngstown Sheet and Tube plant in East Chicago, Ind., an nounced that it would open to 7,000 employees without benefit of written agreement with the C. I. O. A Youngstown vice president force fully denied that the company had made any agreement with Jhe steel affiliate of John L. Lewis’ organiza tion, as Gov. Clifford M. Townsend had publicly annotmeed. Strike Riot Kills Two NE striker and one policeman were killed and twenty men were injured at an aluminum plant in Alcoa, Tenn., when rioting broke out as 3,000 strikers started a back- to-work movement. The plant, be longing to the Aluminum Company of America, had been closed since May 18, when the strike was called by the Aluminum Workers of Amer ica, and affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. Difference in wages paid at Alcoa and at the com pany’s plant in New Kensington, Pa., was the issue In the strike. State troops were on hand, but Adjt.-Gen. R. O. Smith, in charge, said that they were there merely to protect rights, and no martial law had been declared. Violence continued in the friction between steel and labor as one unidentified man was killed and six injured when striking workers of the Republic plant at Massilon, Ohio, brushed with city police near a union hall. Mr. Eden Has a Plan D LANS to maintain the non-inter- * vention patrol of Spain in a fashion that will satisfy all the na tions concerned and insure against the spread of t h e conflict beyond the Spanish borders have blown about like papers in a storm. And when you get right down to it, that is about all they have amounted to. Now Anthony Eden, Britain’s for eign secretary, has come up with a new one, as deft and per haps as futile as any which have gone before it. It provides for the full re-establishment of land and sea control of movements of men and arms into Spain. French and British warships would patrol the coastline with German and Ital ian observers aboard (the Fascist nations, indignant over the Leip zig incident, have withdrawn from the patrol.) This arrangement would operate only until a per manent scheme could be worked out, placing observers for the non intervention committee in all non- Spanish seaports and airports from which men and supplies might leave for Spain, and in all Spanish ports to see that none landed there. After that, the sea patrol would be abol ished. Mr. Eden’s plan, of course, would not work without the approval of the Nazis and Italians. Obituary in Blue G eorge gershwin, composer who lifted jazz music up to the level of the classics, died sud denly in Hollywood after an opera tion for brain tumor. He was thir ty-eight. His “Rhapsody in Blue” was famous among the world’s mu sic lovers, his opera, “Porgy and Bess” one of the most individually American of all musical works. His “Suwanee” sold more than 2,000,- 000 copies, his musical comedy score, “Of Thee I Sing,” was a Pulitzer prize winner, and some of his compositions, such as “Strike Up the Band,” “Soon,” and “Some body Loves Me” were sung and danced to by millions. Many prom inent critics called him the most original force in American music. Anthony Eden what thinks , about: Third Term Ballyhoo. S ANTA MONICA, CALIF.— After a president has been re-elected it’s certain that some inspired patriot who is snuggled close to the throne will burst from his cell with a terrible yell to proclaim that unless the adored incumbent consents again to succeed himself this nation is doomed. Incidentally, the said patriot’s present job and perquisites also would be doomed, so h e couldn’t be blamed for privately brooding on the dis tressful thought. You wouldn’t call him selfish, but you could call him hope ful, especially since there’s a chance his ballyhoo may direct attention upon him as a suitable candi date when his idol Irvin S. Cobb says no to the prop osition. He might ride in on the backwash, which would be even nicer than steering a tidal wave for somebody else. » Political observers have a name for this. They call it “sending up a balloon.” It’s an apt simile, a balloon being a flimsy thing, full of hot air, and when it soars aloft nobody knows where it will come down—if at all. It lacks both steer ing gears and terminal facilities. There have been cases when the same comparison might have been applied not alone to the balloon but to the gentleman who launched it. So let’s remain calm. It’s tradi tional in our history that no presi dent ever had to go ballooning in or der to find out how the wind blew and that no volunteer third-term boomer ever succeeded in taking the trip himself. • • • Modern Prairie Schooners. W E’RE certainly returning — with modern improvements— to prairie schooner days when rest less Americans are living on wheels and housekeeping on wheels and having babies on wheels. Only the other day twins were born aboard a trailer. And—who knows?—per haps right now the stork, with a future president in her beak, is flap ping fast, trying to catch up with somebody’s perambulating bunga low. So it’s a fitting moment to revive the story of early Montana when some settlers were discussing the relative merits of various makes of those canvas-covered arks which bore such hosts of emigrants west ward. They named over the Cones toga, the South Bend, the Murphy, the Studebaker and various others. From under her battered sunbon- net there spoke up a weather beaten old lady who, with her husband and her growing brood, had spent the long years bumping along behind an ox team from one frontier camp to another. “Boys,” she said, shifting her snuff-stick, *T always did claim the old hickory waggin wuz the best one there is fur raisin’ a family in.” * * • Pugs Versus Statesmen. I T’S confusing to read that poor decrepit Jim Braddock, having reached the advanced age of thirty- four or thereabouts, is all washed up, and, then, in another column, to discover that the leading candi dates to supply young blood on the Supreme court bench are but bound ing juveniles of around sixty-six. This creates doubt in the mind of a fellow who, let us say, is quite a few birthdays beyond that en gendered wreck, Mr. Braddock, yet still has a considerable number of years to go before he’ll be an agile adolescent like some senators. He can’t decide whether he ought to join the former at the old men’s home or enlist with the latter in the Boy Scouts. • • • Quiescent Major Generals. COMETHING has gone out of life. ^ For months now no general of the regular army, whether retired or detailed to a civilian job, has talked himself into a jam—a rasp berry jam, if you want to make a cheap pun of it. Maybe it’s being officially gagged for so long while on active service that makes such a conversational Tessie out of the average brigadier when he goes into private pursuits and lets his hair down. It’s as though he took off his tact along with his epaulettes. And when he subsides there’s always another to take his place. You see, uhder modern warfare the commanding officer is spared. He may lead the retreat, but never the charge. When the boys go over the top is he out in front waving a sword? Not so you’d notice it. By the new rules he’s signing papers in a bombproof nine miles behind the lines and about the only peril he runs is from lack of exercise in the fresh air. May be, in view of what so often happens when peace ensues, w e should save on privates instead of generals. IRVIN S. COBB. ©—WNU Service. ADVENTURERS’ CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! “Secret of the Tides" By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter H ELLO everybody! Here’s a yarn that can be told now, but for a long time it was a secret. Frederick V. Fell of Bronx, N. Y., is spinning the yarn for us and he’s letting it out of the bag now because—well—I guess it’s because Fred has grown too old to be spanked by this time, so it doesn’t make much differ ence who knows it. Fred says he can’t trot out any adventure story laid in some glam orous place like India, or North Africa, but he sure had a honey of a thrill once out at Rockaway beach. And as a matter of fact, I’d just as soon have a yarn from Rockaway as I would from Rio or Rhodesia. For as Fred says, it isn’f where it happens, but what happens, that fcounts. So here she comes—and hold onto your hats. Fred was just fourteen years old when, in 1924, his folks rented a cottage at Rockaway for the summer. Fred and his brother Harvey had never been around the water much before that, but they made up for lost time. They spent every spare minute in the big drink, and in two weeks both of them had learned to swim. It was about that time that a strong blow set in from seaward and the ocean began to kick up and get rough. Fred’s parents, playing safe, took to bathing in Jamaica bay, about twenty blocks inland from the ocean, and Fred and his brother Harvey did the same. It was shortly after that that Fred’s cousins from the city came down one Sun day morning, and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before all four of those kids were in their bathing suits and on their way to the bay. Caught in a Death-Dealing Riptide! Near the point where Fred and Harvey always went in swimming was a long pier with a diving board on the end of it. They had never used that pier before, because mother and dad had forbidden them to swim around it. But this Sunday Fred wanted to show off his newly acquired proficiency at swimming before his city cousins, and with a yell of, “Last The pier kept getting farther away every second. man in is a monkey’s uncle,” he ran down the pier, onto the diving board and out into the water, with Harvey right behind him. “We both came up nicely about a yard apart,” Fred says, “and turned around to swim back to the pier. And then my heart stopped beating! That pier was about a hundred yards away and it kept getting farther away every second. In that same moment we both knew what had happened. We had jumped into a racing, surging rip-tide that was sweeping us out into the deepest part of the bay and toward Broad channel.” * The tide was carrying them out at express-train speed and only a man who has been caught in one can realize how powerful a rip-tide can be. For a few seconds the kids drifted, and then they began try ing to swim back. “But bucking that tide was like trying to dam a flood with a matchstick,” Fred says. “Harvey and I tried to join hands and hold each other up, but in another minute we 7 were torn apart and drifting away from eaclv other. Harvey shouted to me to turn over on my back and float, but I didn’t know how to float. Treading water madly, I started shouting for help.” Lucky Fred Encounters Real Hero. Away off in the distance, Fred could see people dashing about ex citedly. One man ran swiftly along the pier Fred had just *left, and jumped off the end. Swimming strongly and swept along by the tide he slowly caught up to Fred, and as he came up, Fred was almost in hysterics, crying, “Save me, mister—save me!” That fellow was a good swimmer and a resourceful man. He told Fred to put his hands on his back and kick the water. “I did this,” Fred says, “and he set off diagonally toward shore, fight ing the tide with tremendous effort. Meanwhile, my cousins on shore had not been idle. Yelling like mad they ran down the beach until they came to a rowboat with two girls sitting in it. The girls launched the boat and, rowing with the tide, soon picked up my brother. My rescuer changed his course and made for the boat, and soon we too were pulled in. The three of us who had been in the water lay on the boat bottom, breathless and exhausted, but apparently safe. The girls started to row back.” Safe!—Six Miles From Starting Point. But do you notice how Fred says APPARENTLY safe? The truth was that they weren’t out of trouble yet, by a long shot. The girls started to row, but anybody who has rowed a boat against any kind of a tide at all knows it is no easy job. And here was one of those express-train tides carrying along a boat loaded down with five people. The girls made no headway at all. In fact, for every two feet they went forward they drifted back five. And ahead of them was the channel—and the ocean. “It began to look,” says Fred, “as if that tide would be the winner after all—and this time with five victims instead of two.” But the man who had saved Fred wasn’t the sort to give up easily. He was just about all in, but he pulled himself together. He grabbed one oar, while the two girls worked the other. Then all three of them started rowing frantically to beat that tide—to get the boat to shore be fore it could be swept out into the ocean and foundered by the roaring breakers. Bit by bit they approached the shore, but at the same time they were approaching the channel too. They were practically in the shadow of the Broad Channel bridge, and not very far from the ocean when at last they got to shore. “And the spot where we landed,” says Fred, “was a good six miles from Sixty-fourth street where Harvey and I had jumped into the bay.” And then came the solemn and secret oath.. Fred says if his folks had ever found out what happened they’d have quit the seashore that same night. And I’ve got a sneakin’ hunch that maybe Fred and Harvey might have got a good licking for going off the end of that pier in defiance of parental orders. Anyway, everybody in the crowd, including the two city cousins, promised they’d never tell a word, and if Fred’s ma and dad ever learn about it, it’s because—well—because they read the Adventurers’ club column, too. ©—WNU Service. Early California Missions Some of the earliest California missions in the order of their es tablishment were: San Diego, 1769; San Carlos, 1770; San Antonio, 1771; San Gabriel, 1771; San Luis Obispo, 1772; San Francisco de Asis (Do lores), 1776; San Juan Capistrano, 1776; Santa Clara, 1777; San Buena ventura, 1782; Santa Barbara, 1786; La Purisima Concepcion, 1787; San ta Cruz, 1790; La Soledad, 1791; San Fernando, 1797; San Miguel, 1797; San Juan Bautista, 1797; San Jose, 1797; San Luis Rey, 1798; San ta Ynes, 1804; San Rafael, 1817, and San Francisco Solano, 1823. ^ The Golden Gate Bridge Seven hundred feet longer than the George Washington Memorial bridge across the Hudson at New York, hitherto ranked as the world’s greatest suspension - bridge, the Golden Gate span, the longest, high est, widest, handsomest, costliest bridge in the world, connects San Francisco with the North-Bay Red wood empire. It is the only one ever flung across the extreme out^r mouth of a major ocean harbpji; if ah its rivets were placeff-T^ad to toe, they would form aniron serpent that would writhe for thirty-six miles. \ \ 'Way Back When By JEANNE ARTIST WAS A LAWYER’S APPRENTICE L-IENR2 MATISSE, one of the 1 1 greatest of modern French art ists, whose works now sell for hun dreds of thousands of francs, might have been a commonplace lawyer had not Fate stepped in when she did. He was born in a small town in Picardy in 1869. son of a wheat dealer. His childhood was unevenly ful and he became a lawyer’s ap prentice. Then, Fatje came along with an attack of appendicitis which left him an invalid for many months. In order to keep occupied while convalescing, he took up painting; and it proved so fascinat ing that he never opened another law book. Matisse’s first paintings, in the early 1900s, brought but a few francs. He and the group with which he associated himself, all fa mous now, were called “the wild beasts” because of their mad style. Their paintings outraged conserva tives of the art world. Matisse was accused of willful eccentricity, senseless disregard of nature, and a deliberate intent to advertise him self. His paintings were refused exhibition space in many galleries, but slowly he built recognition fov his work. In 1927, his “Fruits and Flowers” won first prize in the Car negie International exhibition. In 1928, the Luxembourg galleries bid 300,000 francs for his picture. “Side board,” but the man who once could hardly buy enough bread with the few francs his work brought could now afforo to donate th^- picture to them, accepting only one franc in order to make the transaction le gal. • • • SINGER WAS A BISCUIT PACKER I JSUALLY we are inclined to give too much credit to chance or lucl in analyzing the success of prominent people, forgettuj that without th; talent to ‘ake advantage of an unexpected opportunity they could not have risen. Helen Mor gan’s sudden rise to fame is an ex ample. Born in Danville, Illinois, her fa ther died when she was very young, leaving Helen Morgan and her mother practically penniless. When she was five year' old, paint thrown py another child partially blinded her, and she had to spend a full yeai in a dark room She sang to herself to pass the long dark hours and later she sang in a church choir in Chicago. There, she worked as a manicurist, a waitress, a comp tometer operator, and a model. She was a ribbon clerk at Marshall Field’s department store and a bis cuit nacker for the National Biscuit company. None of her jobs lasted long, for her eyes were always on the stage. She sang occasionally in cabarets and finally got a job through Ziegfeld in the chorus of “Sally.’ Dissatisfied, she quit, and Billy Rose hired her to sing in his Backstage club. That was Helen Morgan’s lucky cnance. The Backstage club was so small that she was forced to sit on the piano! Most of us would con sider it a disadvantage, and per haps she did, too. But the public was interested; she became a sen sation, and speedily rose to fame. Musical comedies and motion pic tures starred her, and soon she was singing in a night club named for her, at a salary of $1,500 per week. Today she is known the world over Perhaps, if Helen Morgan had not had to sit on the piano in the Bdfk- stage club, she would never have risen to ^stffrdom. Perhaps, sh€ would ffave suhg comparatively un- \kh«tvn for a couple of years, and gone back to manicuring or biscuit peeking. But, remember, she had something worth delivering when she sat on tha. piano. Set vie*.