The sun. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1937-1972, March 08, 1940, Image 2
THE SUN, NEWBERRY, S. C, FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1940
By DREW PEARSON
and ROBERT ALLEN
WASHINGTON. — Amiable little
Harry Woodring has won the New
Deal record at side
stepping a resigna
tion from the cabi
net. But the time
may soon come
when he will get the
substitute job which
he wants.
The last tone
Roosevelt ap
proached Harry
with the idea that
he might want to
trade his present
job of secretary of
war to become an ambassador.
Woodring replied:
“No, not that job, Mr. President.
I don’t want to go to Rome. But I
would be interested in going to
the court of St. James’.”
Joe Kennedy
The President pointed out that
that post was not open.
“Yes, I know that," said Mr.
Woodring, “but you and I know that
Joe (Joseph P. Kennedy, now am
bassador to Great Britain) never
stays long at any one job. He’ll be
leaving there soon. And meanwhile
I don’t mind waiting.”
Whereupon, Mr. Roosevelt’s ge
nial and tenacious secretary of war
got up and departed, leaving the
President half amused, half flab
bergasted.
Volatile Ambassador Kennedy.
For the President knew that Har
ry Woodring was right; Joe Kennedy
does not remain too long at any one
job. In fact, just a few weeks after
this conversation took place. Secre
tary Woodring almost got the very
wish he had expressed.
For after the appointment of Sum
ner Welles as peace envoy to Eu
rope, the British announced that all
their files would be placed at the
disposal of Mr. Welles; he could
read everything they had; nothing
would be kept secret. This set off
the fireworks.
“Now just where does that put
me?” roared the explosive Ambas
sador Kennedy,
while on vacation
in the United
States. “You
would think I had
just been pouring
tea over there in
stead of working
my head off. If
they think they
need a special
ambassador over
there to get all
the British se-
erets I failed to
get, they can
count me out.”
This was what Harry Woodring
Kennedy re
marked to some of his friends. And
he did almost as well when he
talked to the President. Roosevelt,
however, calmed him down; said
that he was indispensable in Lon
don. So Woodring will not get the
job of ambassador to St. James’—
at least not yet.
• • •
Note—Real fact is that Ambassa
dor Kennedy does have access to
British secrets. In fact Chamber-
lain is extremely frank with him,
and the general consensus in the
Roosevelt administration is that the
United States seldom has been more
capably represented in London.
Roosevelt is most anxious that
Kennedy continue.
SOCIAL SECURITY VAGARIES
If congress would take time out
from its political antics to examine
toe hundreds of letters pouring into
toe social security board, it would
uncover some extraordinary facts
about toe much-touted old-age pen
sion system.
It would learn, for example, that
while the complicated social securi
ty law is barring tens of thousands
of needy oldsters from pensions, it
is also putting a premium on de
ception and dishonest pensions.
The system requires that aged
persons should have earned $50 in
wages in half the quarters since
January, 1937, before they can re
ceive a pension. Since most work
ers near 65 have been unemployed
and cannot get work, they are auto
matically precluded from pensions;
in other words, from the very pur
pose for which the law was passed.
But while honest oldsters are left
out in the cold, smart or crooked
ones find no trouble in getting pen
sions.
By the simple process of having
a relative or friend give them a fic
titious job, they make themselves
eligible for an annuity.
Here is one case of this kind
which came to the attention of the
board. An oldster went to a friend
ly employer and on the promise to
pay the required taxes got the em
ployer to certify him as a worker.
For a total payment of $9 since
1937, he thus became eligible on
January 1 for a $15 a month pension
for the remainder of his life.
Another case was that of a re
tired millionaire, living in Florida,
who was put on the payroll of the
family firm as a vice president and
will soon begin drawing a monthly
pension of over $60.
Kathleen Norris Says:
Wives Who Constantly Complain
Become Pests
(Bell Syndicate—WNU Service.)
“When you have a husband who sleeps until the very last moment” she said, “and
rushes through breakfast, nothing you can say affects him”
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
ALMOST any woman would be
very much happier if someone
I A. else was just a little different.
Usually it is several someones else
who make the trouble.
Her mother-in-law, her children’s
teacher, her kitchen assistant, her
friends at the club all fail her in
various small ways. She spends a
good deal of time wishing they
would see things as she does.
As for the husband and the chil
dren; well, their faults keep her
nervous and fretful. She spends
countless hours in trying to make
herself beautiful, but she forgets the
worried little frown that is perma
nently between her eyes. She wants
to be considered a woman of cul
ture, a woman other women envy,
admire and secretly copy, but she
never thinks of the tones of her
rasping, critical, dissatisfied voice.
In a New York bus the other day
I sat next to a well-dressed woman
of perhaps 35 or a little less; she
had met a friend and she was tell
ing the friend all about matters at
home.
“My dear, when you have a hus
band who sleeps until the very last
moment,” she began, “and then
rushes through breakfast, nothing
you can say affects him! I scold
untU even the boys are .taking
George’s part, but what good does
it do? He simply goes on scram
bling through the paper. The chil
dren stop eating, of course, and
then their breakfasts are cold. Per
haps some women can get their
children to concentrate on eating
when they’re at the table; I never
can. Who are they with this morn
ing? Oh, his mother. I never leave
them with Carry, she has a beau and
her one idea is to keep her hair
curled and one ear on the tele
phone. Not that she ever gets a
message of mine straight.
“George’s mother is a darling and
the children adore her. But she is
a real farmer’s wife, and she drops
all her ‘g’s’ and says she’s goin’ to
lay down, and the children pick up
her expressions, of course. She
spoils them, too, Junior always cries
to go back with grandma when she
goes.
A Stupid Day Ahead.
“Where am I going? Well, I’ve
got the stupidest day ahead of me
that you can imagine. In the first
place I'm taking that hat back. I
left the tag in, but you know how
they are about changing a hat. Then
I’m going to the Lost and Found bu
reau, I’m still convinced I left that
purse at the glove counter. After
ward the dentist; my filling came
out. I do think they could put in
fillings that would stick, and I’m
going to tell him so. Then Larry’s
shoes, he goes through a pair about
every six weeks, and then I pick up
George. He was to have the car
fixed and he didn’t—trust George!—
so we have to go out to the club
with the Greenwoods; and even if
she was my bridesmaid, that giggle
of Harriet’s simply gets me down. I
ought to have had my hair done, I’m
a sight—”
We had reached her comer; I
heard no more. But I had heard
enough to know that living with this
woman, despite her pleasant appear
ance^ and her evident devotion to
home, husband and children, would
be heavy going. She wanted every
one to change, apparently it never
occurred to her that she herself is
the one who should change.
She never really has faced the
fact that her husband, being a hu
man being, has minor faults. He is
late; he is hurried; he is negligent.
If he wasn’t these things he might
be a martinet who fretted her to
death about details and hammered
DON’T BE A PEST
When there is trouble within the fam
ily circle it isn’t always the husband’s
fault, according to Kathleen Norris.
Friend husband may have his faults,
to be sure. But after all—he’s only
human. And a human without faults,
just wouldn’t be a human.
Sometimes it's the little wife who
must make a few changes in her man
ner of living.
Check-up and find out where the
trouble is. Don’t just keep blaming it
on someone else
all happiness out of his children’s
lives.
She doesn’t know that all elderly
women, unless they are social auto
mata, get a trifle slipshod in gram
mar as well as in house shoes, and
that spoiling grandchildren is one
of the legitimate rewards of a moth
er’s life.
She Is the Real Pest.
She won’t concede that a “gen
eral” servant, a young creature who
washes dishes and sweeps floors and
answers the door and the telephone,
has a right to be pretty and to en
courage a sweetheart, and that if
this girl was the mental force that
her employer evidently expects her
to be she wouldn’t be working in
anyone’s kitchen.
The little flaws of dentist, sales
woman, old friend, the loss of a
purse, the delay in repairing a car,
the sturdy wear a small boy gives
his shoes—all these and a thousand
other matters she exaggerates into
serious troubles; her shrill complain
ing voice makes so much of them
that in the end she herself becomes
much more of a pest than any of
these annoyances, or all of them
put together.
Seeing her go off on her compla
cent, competent way; pretty and
brisk and with a head full of plans
and a purse full of money, I won
dered what sort of drilling through
marble it would take to convince her
that she herself is the person to
change; that a little common sense
and self-control on her part would
make the difference between dark
and dawn to husband, mother-in-
law, house-maid, sons and friends.
What an amazing surprise for them
if suddenly Jean became an altered
woman! If lenience and good nature
took the place of that eternal criti
cism and impatience. If th'» nerv
ous comments stopped, and an ami
able tendency to live and let live
took their place. If Jean began sim
ply to make allowances for Carry’s
young vanities and giddiness, for
Junior’s stamping little 'eet, for
George’s absent-mindedness, for
grandma’s indulgences to the adored
grandsons.
Husbands Won’t Change.
For husbands will continue to gulp
breakfast to the end of time. Den
tists will sometimes insert fillings
that don’t stay in. Friends will gig
gle, or develop some other trying
trait. Maids will decline to become
deeply and passionately absorbed in
the welfare of the family that is pay
ing them $35 a month, to the exclu
sion of all other interests. Purses
and rings and tickets will get lost;
repairs on the car will take longer
than the garage man originally sus
pected.
Why not take all these things as
the inevitable little roughnesses of
living in the complicated and im
perfect world of today? The aston
ishing thing is that matters aren’t
infinitely worse. It’s only the very
fortunate women of the world who
can afford to carp at these trifles.
For the more real and the more
desperate our troubles grow, the
more silent and heroic we women
become.
T OS ANGELES.—I read recently
•*—' that Old Mose Grove had signed
his contract with the Red Sox.
That’s Old Mose’s sixteenth major
league contract. He
signed his first one
with the Athletics
away back in 1925.
He was 25 years old
then and had come
up to the big show
after five years in
Baltimore. The late
Jack Dunn had kept
him in Baltimore
for five years be
cause in those days
toe Orioles ruled
the International
league as the Yan
kees rule the American league now.
It was good business for Jack to
hold onto his ball players for a few
years. They pulled in the crowds
at the turnstiles, they won pennants
and Little World Series—and the
longer they remained in Baltimore
the more eager the major league
club owners were to buy them and
the bigger the price they brought.
Jack Bentley—Joe Boley—Max
Bishop—Grove—all brought box car
figures when Dunn, one of baseball’s
shrewdest traders, sent them to
market. Grove brought $100,600. I
don’t know what the $600 was for.
Amusement tax, possibly.
Offered to McGrow
At the time the story was—and so
far as I know it may have been
true—that John McGraw had turned
Dunn down when he offered the big
left-hander to the Giants.
That happened in 1925. The price
was $100,000—with, perhaps, a little
off for the Giants. But McGraw
wasn’t paying $100,000 for a pitcher
in 1925. He had just won four pen-
Grantland
Rice
MOSE GROVE
nants in a row—thereby cracking an
all-time record for the major leagues
—and it looked as though he might
go on from there. So he wasn’t in
terested.
At any rate, that’s the story.
The Yankees’ Cousin
Meanwhile, Dunn had some sort
of agreement with Connie Mack that
called for him, in the natural course
of events, to send his better players
over the short line from Baltimore
to Philadelphia and in the spring of
1925 Grove arrived at the training
camp of the Athletics.
He was young, eager and tireless.
He had a strong back and a rubber
arm. But he wasn’t a pitcher. He
was a thrower. He won 10 games in
1925, 13 in 1926 and 20 in 1927.
Those were the years in which he
was a first cousin to the Yankees.
In toe ball players’ argot a cousin is
a pitcher that the hitters like to face
—and there wasn’t a pitcher in the
American league the Yankees liked
any better than Grove. All they had
to do was to wait him out—or hurry
him—and then slug him.
As he acquired poise, he became
more effective, not only against the
other clubs but against the Yankees
as well. His figures in the victory
column mounted. He won 24 games
in 1928, slipped to 20 in 1929, rose to
28 in 1930, and to 31 in 1931. He
won 25 in 1932 and, although he
dropped to 24 in 1933, he led the
league again—as he had in 1928,
1930 and 1931.
In the winter of 1933 he was sold
to the Red Sox for $125,000. In 1934
he had trouble with his arm and
won only eight games while losing
as many—and it was right after
that that he became a real pitcher.
He was forced to out-think toe bat
ters, and in doing that he became
one of the greatest pitchers in the
history of baseball.
Learning How to Pitch
The time had come when he had
to do more than just rear back,
stretch out and whip that fireball at
the hitters. The old blaze had died
out in his fast ball. He couldn’t fool
the hitters with it any more. He had
to do something he hadn’t done be
fore. He had to stop and think—
to study the hitters and develop a
curve ball, a change of pace ball
and a slow ball and brush up on
his control. And when he had done
all that, he was a pitcher—a real
Bitcher.
GENERAL
JOHNSON
Jour:
U-ludtatiM W WSl S—~™.
ROOSEVELT’S THIRD TERM
I believe that Mr. Roosevelt will
be nominated and elected for a third
term. I have said this more than
once here and elsewhere.
Every time I say it publicly, I get
a lot of indignant fan letters from
people who agree with me—at ’east
in being very much opposed to a
third term for any man. The com
plaint is that this is “defeatism”—
almost treason
In the first place, to be either a
“defeatist” or a “traitor,” you have
to owe somebody an allegiance for
which you are fighting. I shall fight
as hard as I can against a third
term for Mr. Roosevelt, but I be
lieve that a column that tries—
sometimes not very successfully—to
—“and we thought he didn’t
talk much.”
—Cartoon by Burck in Chicago Times.
be a fair comment on events and
actions in general—hasn’t any busi
ness tying up with any favorite to
the exclusion of any contrary com
ment, at least until the issues are
drawn and there is no other thing
to say except “yea” or “nay.”
In this view it is neither “defeat
ism” nor “treason” to say that I
believe Mr. Roosevelt will be our
next President—if that is my opin
ion—which it is.
As to his nomination—does a
majority of the Democratic party
desire it? Decidedly not.
In Dixie there are curses not loud
but deep. Southern democracy has
been the stepchild of the New Deal.
It threatens white political suprem
acy. It has taken the South’s two-
third rule away from the nomina
tion.
Its farm policy is ruining toe for
eign market for cotton.
The South has received the lowest
per capita handout for “recovery
and relief.”
They are now only a minority
without a veto in the convention.
They must get on any band wagon
that really starts to roll, or read
themselves into the outer dark. In
the election, the South will vota
Democratic as usual.
What do politicos like Frank
Hague in New Jersey and Chicago’s
Boss Nash care about Mr. Roose
velt and his New Deal?
They care principally for its hand
outs—but that is enough.
Less powerful politicians are
somewhat in the same category.
You could count the really con
vinced and zealous New Dealers in
the senate on the fingers of one
hand.
If you were Siamese twins you
could count all there are in both
houses of congress on your fingers
and toes.
But here again the vast New
Deal political and patronage ma
chine controls political attitudes if
not political thinking.
These are the gents who decide
on toe delegates and pick men of
their own type. \/hether or not he
raises a finger, or even permits his
name to be used, most of these men
will not vote against Mr. Roose
velt.
Some boy orator will arise at
sometime in the convention with a
cross of gold and a crown of thorns
speech and it will be all over except
the shouting—which will last for two
hours.
• • •
WASHINGTON’S TIMES
Washington is increasingly being
appealed to as an authority. Yet
somebody said recently that his
tones were nearer to Julius Cae
sar’s than to Franklin Roosevelt’s.
This referred, of course, to the
tremendous increase in human
knowledge and conveniences since
our beginnings compared with the
whole of history before. This kind
of statement is usually a preface to
an argument that, since conditions
are so different the leaders of our
earliest days can’t be too much re
lied upon now.
To the extent that modern gov
ernment and laws must conform to
modern conditions, that is undoubt
edly true.
Nobody more clearly recognized
that than Whshingtoa.
That was the way he got his big
start and changed the whole sys
tem of law and government to a
new one by revolution.
But the principal reason for his
unmatched success was that he al
ways kept his feet on the ground.
His was not the quarterback theory
of government.
»/lsk Me Another
0 A General Quiz
The Questions
1. What are the catacombs of
Paris?
2. Is it true that each star in
our flag stands for an individual
state?
3. Why is the Arctic ocean so
named?
4. Where is the largest jail in
the world?
5. How did the word colony orig
inate?
The Answers
1. Vast excavations extending
under the city, formerly subter
ranean quarries which furnished
building material for the city.
2. No, the stars collectively
represent the 48 states of tha
Union.
3. “Arctic” k from toe Greek
arctos, a bear, toe reference be
ing to the northern constellation of
the Great Bear.
4. The largest jail is in Ward
road, Shanghai, with accommoda
tions for more than 7,000 prison
ers.
5. The Romans made settle
ments of men to cultivate the
soil, these being known as colonla;
hence the origin of the word col
ony.
HELLO, AMERICA/
HOPE YOU'RE
ENJOYING
SLOW-BURNING
CAMELS AS
MUCH AS WE ARE
HERE IN
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CAMELS SURE
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PLEASURE!
f
VERNON BOYD of the
U.S. Antarctic Expedition
T AKE a tip from the men of die
U. S. Antarctic expedition com-
r. anded by Rear Admiral Richard
E. Byrd: When it came to cigarette^
the expedition took Camels. Camel*
born slower...give you more pleasure
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5 ;*****
'smoke*
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FOR EXTRA MILDNESS/
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