NOTES IN THE NEWS
But one common denominator runs through them all, whether the country is Canada or Lebanon, Peru or Burma, Venezuela or Indonesia—and that is a deepening conviction that the United States is...
...A two year United Nations study being readied for publication next month is no exception...
...Item: A recent Gallup Poll showed Republicans suffering the sharpest losses in four years...
...In the long run, the real friends of freedom will not be those who have been showered with millions of dollars worth of guns and tanks and planes, but rather those who have been given a helping hand to build the system of economic security on which political freedom rests...
...As one American correspondent, Joseph Newman of the New York Herald Tribune, summed it up: "Russia obtained a maximum audience at a minimum price...
...Some months ago the Soviet Union sent one of its leading composers, Aram Khachaturian, to Argentina to conduct a Buenos Aires symphony orchestra...
...But such a policy would involve a basic change for the United States...
...Item: The Ohio primaries showed the Democrats casting more votes than the Republicans for the first time in many years...
...It is far too early, even for those with crystal balls, to predict the outcome of the 1958 elections four months from now, but it seems clear enough that the first straws are blowing in a strong Democratic wind...
...The coalition forms quickly whenever there is a showdown on progressive legislation...
...Item: Registration figures in Maryland show Democrats outnumbering Republicans by three to one...
...The other day the Suez Canal Authority, wholly controlled by Egypt, reported that ship passage is up 7.7 per cent since the canal was nationalized and is now at the highest point in the history of the canal...
...The decision to reject tax reduction as a weapon against economic recession was reached by four men, President Eisenhower and Secretary of the Treasury Anderson, both Republicans, and Speaker Rayburn of the House and Majority Leader Johnson of the Senate, Democrats...
...Observers were startled at the extent to which Stevenson, who had declined to defend President Truman's record in the 1952 campaign, and whose throat was cut by the former President at the 1956 convention, went out of his way to say kind things about Harry Truman and his tenure in the White House...
...Adlai Again...
...The United States is securing a minimum audience at a maximum price...
...Thus we apportion 80 per cent of our foreign aid program for anti-Communist military operations, and a pitiful 20 per cent for economic assistance, which means, for example, that a little country like Jordan is bristling with American firepower while the great mass of people live in indescribable squalor...
...And yet Secretary of State Dulles sees no need for "basic change" in the "American policies which are based upon our traditions and our own faith...
...In Buenos Aires, largest city in Latin America, with a population of 5,000,000, fewer than 6,000 persons were able to attend the three concerts...
...Thus we neglect the Catholic continent of South America because we feel it is safe from Communism...
...But a new study by Murray Wernick, Federal Reserve Board economist, reveals that the salaried white collar employee is taking a much larger bite of increased costs than is the blue collar worker...
...Oscar Yanes, pro-United States editor of La Esfera in, Venezuela, put it this way: "We like the United States' political and economic systems...
...One dependable reporter, Godfrey Sperling, Jr., of the Christian Science Monitor, quoted a close friend of Stevenson's as confiding that the latter is "burning" to have another crack at the Presidency...
...From where we sit it doesn't seem to make much difference, and we say this mindful of the fact that Democratic ranks in Congress include a number of first-rate progressives...
...In this instance the coalition was greatly assisted by a last-minute reversal of position by the President and the State Department...
...Wernicke report shows that: • Between 1947 and 1957 employment of non-production workers skyrocketed 1.4 million—eleven times the increase of production workers...
...On the basis of the poll's questioning of a cross-section of the electorate, the 100,300,-000 citizens eligible to vote would divide as follows: Democrats—56,800,000 Republicans—35,100,000 On the fence—8,400,000 Coalition Theoretically the Democrats control Congress, but when major issues are resolved the dominant voice in our legislative branch is a coalition of hard-bitten conservatives in both parties...
...A high official of the State Department acknowledged that it would take the United States six months to a year to meet such a request—largely because of the months that would be required to complete security clearance of the man chosen...
...Polls of public opinion show Mike DiSalle, former mayor of Toledo and former OPA director, running well ahead of Governor C. William O'Neill, who is seeking reelection...
...Orchestra seats at the Colon Opera House were priced at 300 pesos—about $7, clearly beyond the reach of the average person...
...Their report estimates that tests to date have already caused 3,000 to 120,000 future cases per year of "major genetic defects...
...It sounds simple, doesn't it...
...The Kremlin responded in 10 days...
...Item: In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party decided at its recent convention that the prospects for a Democratic sweep were so bright that they allowed Representative Eugene J. McCarthy to give up a safe seat in the House and impressive seniority on the House Ways and Means Committee so that he could run against Republican Senator Edward J. Thye, a formidable opponent...
...McCarthy, an able, scholarly Congressman, defeated Mrs...
...Futhermore, when buying declines, as in the present recession, production workers are laid off, reducing costs...
...Everything else seems expendable...
...Salaries for the managerial and research force were 25 per cent of labor costs in 1947, 33 per cent in 1957...
...We have commented on some of their shrewd activities in other issues...
...Twice defeated for the Presidencv, Adlai Stevenson announced some time ago that he will not be a candidate in 1960...
...But we would like to see the State Department export the great commodity and the greatest selling point the American people have—democracy...
...Salary costs per manufactured unit soared 65 per cent in the same ten years, while wage costs went up only 30 per cent...
...a recent development provides a new example...
...Eugenie Anderson, ambassador to Denmark in the Truman Administration...
...Suez White Westerners cherish the notion that peoples of color and of the East are simply incapable of acquiring the know-how of the West...
...The Milwaukee Journal, in this connection, asked us to remember "the stories of not so many years ago that Russians couldn't successfully operate machinery and the Japanese couldn't learn how to fly airplanes...
...Thus, too, we support every regime, however feudal or dictatorial, if it is anti-Communist...
...If the present trend continues, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the Democratic plea this fall to keep the Congress Democratic...
...Both Senators from Maryland are now Republicans, but the Democrats are united behind a single candidate for the first time in years, Baltimore's Mayor D'Alesandro, who is seeking to unseat one of the most reactionary and McCarthyite Senators in that body, Senator John M. Butler...
...Experts from fifteen nations have agreed that "even the smallest doses of ionizing radiation can give rise to mutant genes . . . which are considered to be harmful to the human race...
...Fallout Few scientific subjects have been more widely debated in recent years than the biological effects of nuclear test radiation on the human race...
...But the price for attendance has been placed so high that only the well-to-do can afford to hear our great symphony orchestra...
...But salaried employes are kept on the payroll, making it harder than ever for decreased demand to bring about lower prices...
...Our government has sent the New York Philharmonic on a good-will tour of Latin America with Dimitri Mitropoulos and Leonard Berstein as conductors—certainly a most laudable project...
...Item: Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, Democrat, piled up 600,000 more votes in the California primary than did his Republican opponent for the governorship, Senator William F. Knowland...
...It seemed to some of the reporters that a "new" Stevenson was busy mending political fences by making his peace with one of the most powerful king-makers in the party...
...It would mean an end to decorating dictators in Latin America, an end to coddling feudal regimes in the Middle East and Asia simply because they insist they are anti-Communist, an end to pouring so much of our foreign aid into military operations...
...Political observers rarely take such pronouncements seriously, and it is now beginning to look as if Stevenson himself wants to keep the door as wide open as possible...
...Contrast The Russians have acquired a knack of outsmarting us in little things that add up to a great deal...
...Some of the experts came to this conclusion at a recent $100-a-plate dinner for Democrats at Chicago...
...Under California's cross-filing system, each won his party's nomination, but Knowland succeeded in defeating Brown in the Republican primary by less than three to one, while Brown swamped Knowland six to one in the Democratic primary...
...A good example was the outcry, after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, that she would never be able to operate it with any degree of competence and efficiency...
...Some estimate of the reversal involved in the recent primary can be gauged by recalling that six years ago Knowland captured both the Republican and Democratic nominations in running for the Senate...
...The price charged was 10 to 15 pesos, or about 35 to 50 cents, and the concert was held outdoors so that 33,000 persons could attend...
...The government of Ceylon asked the Soviets to provide it with an irrigation expert...
...Even more worth recalling, we think, are the gloomy predictions that newly freed people like those of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon would find it impossible to govern themselves once they were freed from political domination by colonial powers...
...A coalition of conservatives from both parties in the Senate deleted from the foreign aid bill a proposal to give President Eisenhower authority to use foreign aid funds to help Communist-ruled nations loosen their ties with the Kremlin...
...It would mean the beginning of an affirmative American policy of lending a helping hand to the underprivileged of our world, even if they don't hate Communism as much as we want them to...
...The attempt to liberalize the President's unemployment compensation measure was scuttled in both the House and the Senate by a bi-partisan coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats...
...Another bit to explain why the Soviets are winning friends and influencing people around the world turned up in die news the other day...
...A foreigner seems to us to understand more clearly what that faith and these traditions are...
...But as the investigations and reports multiply, there is increasing agreement among scientists that present fallout radiation is harmful, and that continued testing will greatly intensify the risks...
...But one common denominator runs through them all, whether the country is Canada or Lebanon, Peru or Burma, Venezuela or Indonesia—and that is a deepening conviction that the United States is strapped inflexibly to only one aim in foreign affairs —the negative doctrine of "stopping Communism...
...Prices and Wages High prices have increasingly been blamed on rising labor costs, with production workers and big labor unions getting the great share of the blame...
...While much of the research and development work of the salaried scientists and engineers may reduce production costs sometime in the future, their pay checks must come from today's production...
Vol. 22 • July 1958 • No. 7
