Tuesday, June 1, 1943. The attack on Flight 777.

The Luftwaffe shot down a civilian DC-3 airliner belonging to BOAC flying out of Portugal, killing the passengers on board, which included actor Leslie Howard.

The flight, 777, was a regularly scheduled flight of which the Germans were aware.  As odd as it is to think of this in the context of a global war, commercial aviation continued on during the war where it could.  The fact that the aircraft was shot down has led to speculation that the Germans may have thought Winston Churchill was on board the craft, although other conspiracy theories exist including that Howard was the target, as, it is theorized, he was a British spy.  Some speculation exists that the Germans targeted the plane simply to cause British demoralization, which they theorized would occur with the death of Howard.  Having said all of that, the plane had been attacked by German aircraft twice before during the war.

The flight was overbooked and Howard actually joined the passenger list late, bumping off another passenger who accordingly was spared his fate. Some other last moment changes have led to some confusion over who was originally supposed to be on the flight.   Catholic Priest Father A. S. Holmes, vice president of the R. C. English College, left the plane at the last moment in order to take a phone call.  Actor Raymond Burr claimed that his wife Annette Sutherland, an actress, died in the crash, but no record of her being on the plane exists, nor of Burr having ever been married to an Annette Sutherland.

Howard is best known to American audiences for his role as Ashley in Gone With The Wind, a role which I feel he was miscast in.

The SS John Morgan, carrying explosives, exploded when it accidentally struck the tanker SS Montana in Baltimore's harbor. Sixty-five of the 68 men on the John Morgan died in the explosion, while 18 of the 82 men on the Montana were killed.

The United Mine Workers went into a coal strike.  It lasted only a week.

Tuesday, May 4, 1943. How did they intend to pay for the war?

The Federal Government, oddly for wartime, was looking for ways to reduce income tax and nearly passed an income tax holiday for 1943.

The Germans lost three U-boats, two in accidents, in a month that would later be called Black May by German submariners.

Tail Gunner, Cpt. Clark Gable, flew on his first mission:

4 May 1943

Taketora Yamamoto,  Santa Fe Rail Road machinist, at the Winslow. Colorado River Relocation Center, Poston, Arizona:

Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?

Real beer, made locally.

In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion.  Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish.  It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.

Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon.  I haven't seen the play and don't care to.  I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion.  Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective.  The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part.  It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean.  I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group.  None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke.  From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.

My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith.  In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.

That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.

But I digress.

Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does.  She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television.  Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood.  It's really creepy.

For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.

Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers.  I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.

Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it.  Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like  AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.

I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer.  If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.

Here the decision was blisteringly odd.  Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion?  The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?

I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.

Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.

Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.

Anyhow, just buy local.  If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.

And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer.  It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause.  I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season.  The brots I bought were from a local butcher.

There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?

Saturday, April 10, 1943. Sfax taken.

The Tunisian port of Sfax was captured by the British 8th Army.  It would later be the staging point for the invasion of Sicily.

It was also used as a POW camp, holding German Prisoners of War through the rest of, and after, the war.

Foreshadowing that later event, perhaps, the Italian cruiser Trieste was sunk by B-24s in the port of La Maddealena, Sardinia.

Tom Harmon, well known collegic football star, a halfback, now a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force, disappeared when a bomber he was flying cracked up in a storm over Surinam. The only survivor of the plant, he'd emerge several days later with the assistance of natives, who escorted him out of the jungle.

Harmon as a football player for the University of Michigan.

Harmon had been drafted by the Chicago Bears but had declined to take up professional football, which was not as lucrative or as followed as it now is. Instead, he intended to pursue a career in acting and radio, although he ended up joining the American Football League in 1941 for a $1,500 per game salary, a large sum at the time.  

Harmon had resisted being drafted, something we don't think of as occurring much during World War Two, but which was in fact much more common than might be supposed.  He received a 1-B classification in May 1941 as he was a student and then given a 60-day extension on the basis that he was the sole support for his parents.  He asked for a permanent extension thereafter, but was denied and classified as 1-A, which he appealed.  Losing the appeal, he was ordered to report by November 1941, and he thereafter enlisted as an Air Corps cadet.

Following the bomber disaster, he became a P-38 pilot and flew in combat missions over China, being shot down in 1943.  He was returned to the US following evading the Japanese, having been shot down behind enemy lines, and was released from the service in January 1945.  In 1944, he married actress Elyse Knox.  Actor Mark Harmon was one of their three children.

He played for the Los Angeles Rams for a while after the war, and then returned to sports broadcasting.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—April 10, 1943: US Department of Agriculture establishes Women’s Land Army: during WWII, 1.5 million women from non-farming backgrounds will serve on farms.

Monday at the Bar. So, Yeoman, what do you think about. . .

Lots of legal news recently.

1. Donald Trump indicted.

He deserves to be charged with a crime, but that crime is sedition.  Maybe other things connected with taking documents and the like, but sedition is the big one.

The current charges?  Hmmmm. . . .

Frankly, those who regard the New York DA as pushing it are probably correct.  These charges are never brought and they look weak.  Added to that, New York prosecutors are subject to claims which at least have some merit that they tend to be influenced by politics.  The state's going after the NRA, for example, had that appearance. This does as well.  

Given that, this probably only serves to discredit the more serious claims to come, assuming that something surprising isn't revealed.

2.  Fed Judge says name the names.

In Wyoming, that is.

This is the suit involving the UW sorority, which has admitted as a member a guy claiming to identify as a girl, even though his anatomical reactions to the girls suggest that his biology isn't that confused.  The plaintiffs, member of the sorority, wanted to sue anonymously. The Federal District Court judge presiding over the case said no to that.

He's right.  It's not like anyone is a minor, and while I don't even think there really is such a thing as transgenderism, we all know who the guy is.  The Plaintiffs' should be known, and for that matter, there's honor in being known in a cause, even amongst those who oppose those in it.

3. Gwenyth Paltrow v some guy.

Didn't follow it and don't care.

4. The Justice Thomas vacation "scandal"

M'eh.

There's no law that says members of the Supreme Court can't accept gifts, even lavish ones, from their admirers.  Accepting them may not be wise, but it's not illegal.

Is it supposed to be reported?  The law seems vague on that.

Basically, this amounts to an effort to get Thomas to resign, which the political left has been working on for some time.  The Thomas' for their part don't seem to act wisely in this area, giving fuel to those who are trying to ignite it.

This is also part of the unfortunate modern trend of dragging the privileged down.  That may sound odd, but the real story of American wealth since World War Two is that the population has moved from mostly being lower middle class to mostly being upper middle class.  Not everyone, of course, but that's been the move of the economic center.  Oddly, as it has happened, resentment towards the really wealthy has increased, even though more Americans than ever are in the wealthy class at some point in their lives.

5.  Amending Title IX to include transgenderism

It's an attempt to usurp democracy at the state level.

You can't really have it two ways with democracy, for the most part.  Democrats became very used to rule through the courts until the court turned to the right and started sending stuff back to legislatures.  That's distressed the left no end, even though court rule fed the populist right.  Since the January 6 Insurrection, the left has rediscovered democracy, but it can't quite break itself of its old habits.

5.  Booting legislators out of their legislatures.

We've all been reading about the three legislators who have been booted out of Tennessee's legislature for violating decorum rules.  It's being portrayed as a shocking attack on democracy.

Frankly, this example should be followed more. There's a Wyoming legislator right now who is in trouble for wearing an assault rifle themed transgender shirt, right during a time period in which it seems there were in fact two armed assaults by people identifying themselves in that fashion.  She's apologized, but maybe she should get the dope slap.

Anthony Bouchard of Wyoming's legislature certainly should have.  MTG should have been booted out of Congress.

Thursday, April 8, 1943. Roosevelt freezes wages, prices, and jobs. The law of unintended consequences.

USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37) steaming at high speed through heavy seas off Cape Hatteras, April 8, 1943.

Franklin Roosevelt instituted wage and price controls in an effort to combat inflation, and froze employment in place.  The move, of questionable constitutionality, had a permeant, unintended impact on the U.S. economy.

While wages and prices were frozen, benefits, including health insurance, were not. That's because many employers didn't offer it until this time.  Unable to induce workers to switch from one employer to another, they switched to offering benefits, such as health insurance, although Roosevelt's order also precluded workers from switching jobs.  Employees required permission to move employment, and unions lost the ability to bargain for higher wages in an era when wages were rising, but the benefit inducements came in none the less.

We pick that story up here, from a prior thread:

Americans like to think we have a fee market health care system, but we do not and haven't since World War Two.  What we really have is a health insurance based system, although it's breaking down by anyone's measure..  Prior to WWII, most Americans just paid as they went for health care, which had the collateral effects of making health care generally very service oriented on a person to person basis.  I.e., "family" doctors were the majority of doctors not just because of the times, but because if mostly "health care consumers" were average folks with average wages, that's where the work was, and it wasn't going to pay all that well as a rule either.  That doesn't mean that there weren't surgeons, etc., of course, and it doesn't mean the level of care, where received, wasn't very good.  Anyhow, the switch to an insurance based system, with health insurance companies regulated on a state by state basis, alters the free market system as the carriers determine what benefits exist and what they regard as a fair price, based upon actuarial concerns and analysis.  Whatever that price may be, it's not the same as an average person going in to the doctor, and of course people who are covered can go in for much, much more than they otherwise would be able to afford.

Health insurance existed prior to World War Two, but most people didn't have it. But when wages were frozen during the war, for the first time a lot of companies started offering health insurance as a company benefit.  The law didn't allow employers to increase wages to compete with other employers, but they could sweeten the pot by offering health insurance.  For a long time after WWII health insurance benefits and retirement benefits were American employer norms for their employees.  Health insurance actually became increasingly common following the war, and was very common by the 1970s, as an employee benefit.  That's passing away now, however, as its become increasingly expensive for employers to provide.

In contrast to the US's history in this area, Germany introduced a type of national health insurance in the Bismarck era as a type of industrial insurance to combat the rising influence of Socialism and to acknowledge the increased danger of industrial work. The German model of health insurance is the model for at least one states Workers Compensation law, my state's, which provides it as a state benefit (no private carrier) and taxes employers accordingly.  The Germans seem to like their system, but there's always a lot of complaining about the same basic type of system here in the state, even though it actually runs fairly efficiently and pays for a lot of horrific injuries and their medical treatment.  It's interesting to note here that the Germans, whose political history is extremely different from ours, introduced national health insurance to combat socialism, when here its generally regarded as a type of socialism. That doesn't mean it is or isn't, but it's interesting to note that Bismarck took that approach in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of his primary opponents.  It worked fairly well too, in that the Socialist did not take over in Germany until the Weimar Republic, at which time they were the first, and ineffectual, party to govern under the Post World War One parliamentary system that fell in 1932.

The British NHS system, which most Britons seem to be quite proud of, also came about due to World War Two, sort of.  It was first proposed in its current form by the Labor Party in its 1945 platform.  As we all know, Churchill lost his position in 1945 at a time when most Britons believed a return to the Depression was inevitable.  Indeed, that was a very current view all over the world and generally assumed to be almost a certainty.

Stating that "Victory at war must be followed by a Prosperous Peace" the Labor Party proposed:

"By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill-health can be prevented. In addition the best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment.

In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.

Labour will work specially for the care of Britain's mothers and their children - children's allowances and school medical and feeding services, better maternity and child welfare services. A healthy family life must be fully ensured and parenthood must not be penalised if the population of Britain is to be prevented from dwindling.

Sort of interesting, therefore.  Germany's national healthcare system came about when it was becoming a modern industrial power, in an effort to tamp the socialist down.  The US system came about as a way to skirt the wage freezes imposed during World War Two in order to attract workers.  The British NHS came about when Labor successfully argued that it could better protect the British against what was thought to be an almost certain return to Depression economic conditions.   Whether Labor successfully ran the government after the war is another question, but the NHS remains today and no British political party is going to touch it.

A national health care system was first proposed in the United States during the Truman Administration, but it failed to get very far.  Truman's presidency came hard upon the heels of FDRs and at the time the New Deal was pretty much accepted as having saved the United States from full economic collapse during the Great Depression. That proposition wasn't debated much (although it was always debated by Hoover, who remained a dedicated public servant even after the loss of the election to FDR) but it isn't nearly as accepted now, and really hasn't been since the rise of modern Conservatism starting in the late 1970s.  Even at that, however, Truman wasn't able to pass a national health care bill. The concept revived from time to time, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, without getting very far. Prior to Bill Clinton's attempt during his administration, spearheaded by his wife Hillary, the last really serious attempt had been under Richard Nixon.

Prior to Barack Obama's presidency nobody got very far with such ideas, as noted, in part because Americans were basically satisfied with the existing health care system, which had roots predating World War Two, but which had been heavily impacted by it, as noted.  People might asked what changed between 1970 and now, or 1990 and now, and the answer probably would be "personal experience."  And what that personal experience would likely reveal is a change in culture and in technology.

Prior to World War Two the country was much more rural than it is today.  Indeed, the rural nature of the country, which was predominate up through World War One, has declined steadily since that time and is mostly a memory, if that, for most people now. But that isn't that long ago in historical terms, and its an important aspect of this story.  "Rural" doesn't mean "everyone lives on a farm" like people tend to believe.  But agriculture heavily impacts everything about a rural society, and part of what that impacts is the nature of towns and cities in rural areas.

In that more rural era, doctors were principally general practitioners and generally had solo practices.  Over time this has steadily changed to where today group practices are likely the norm.  At any rate, in that earlier time, health care was very direct and personal.  It was also much less technical. Given that, being that it was less technical and more direct, it was priced accordingly.

That doesn't mean everything was wonderful.  Less technical equates with an era when a great deal less was known on every medical topic.  My grandfather, for example, who was born on this day, died from a stroke when he was 47 years old. There was just nothing that could be done for his condition.  He had high blood pressure and that equated with a type of death sentence really.  One of my partner's father's shared the same fate.  Today, they'd probably both have lived on a great deal longer.

At any rate, technology and an evolving practice model, funded mostly by insurance, has provided us with wonderful health care, but it's also become very expensive.  From World War Two, and increasing on through the 1970s, this was largely funded by health care which was purchased by employers. Some people bought their own health insurance, which was affordable at the time. Those without insurance paid as they went, which was inconvenient for most, and bad for some, but generally workable.

Now, expenses have reached the point where many cannot afford to pay themselves and health insurance has gone from being a workplace benefit to a near necessity for most.  People actually keep jobs just for the insurance.  I've known, for example, of one person who kept a job she wanted to leave to return to school for just that reason.  As a practical matter, the government has become the insurer of last resort for many who have no insurance and who end up using the hospital, in emergencies, as their health care provider.  Increased private medical competition, in the meantime, has become an increasingly common feature of health care as the large dollar amounts that are present in the industry naturally has resulted in private competition.  County and state facilities, therefore, end up in competition with each other, with the practical result of that often being that county and state facilities end up becoming more and more in the nature of public clinics in some ways.

And people have an expectation of health care, which is not abnormal, nor greedy, in a generally affluent society.  That's true of our views on a lot of various things, and its particularly true of health care.  People generally feel that anyone ought to, and even should, seek the health care that they need, when they need it, and there's a feeling of distress when a certain percentage of the population cannot afford it.  Put another way, back in the 1940s if a person was afflicted with a stroke died, it was probably the case that this would have occurred no matter what.  If they were unable to secure health care for some reason for that condition, the result probably would have been the same as if they did.  This would not be true, of course, for every sort of condition, but what that does mean is that there was an overall greater acceptance that if economic conditions prevented treatment, that this was part of the nature of life, rather than being something that would be regarded as deeply unfair. And, for that matter, the medical community made a dedicated effort to include those who could not pay in their practices. They still do, but the nature of that society wide had become different.

I note all of this not to promote or discredit any particular health care system.  It does, however, inform a bit of the background of the debate, and it might explain why the system that is presently being debated is an insurance based system.  That is, the AHCA is actually an insurance centric national system, which was probably a natural route given our history in this area, although its certainly been a controversial one.

Preventing workers from moving from one job to another was frankly a shocking move, in the modern context.  It effectively imposed a type of conscription, or even darned near slavery, upon the civilian population during the war.   Employees could move jobs if they secured permission, but it required that.

The 1943 NFL draft was held.

French actor Harry Baur died shortly after being released by German authorities, having been tortured by the Gestapo after his arrest which stemmed from his efforts to secure the release of his wife, Rika Radifé.  A Turkish actress, she had been arrested on charges of espionage and would survive the war.

I guess on this one, I should ponder what this meant for my family.  My grandfather owned his own business, a meat packing business, so the order wouldn't really apply to him, save for the fact that it did for his employees, which must have been an odd experience.

Saturday, April 3, 1943. The Battle of Manners Street

The Battle of Manners Street occurred in Wellington, New Zealand, when American servicemen and New Zealand servicemen came to blows over American racist attitudes, which caused some American servicemen to attempt to exclude Māori soldiers from the Services Club.  The two-hour riot/brawl resulted in many injuries before order was restored.  News of the riot was suppressed.

Such events would repeat throughout the war.

Poon Lim BEM (Chinese: 潘濂; pinyin: Pān Lián) a Chinese merchant sailor who was cast adrift in a U-boat attack was rescued after 133 days at sea on a raft.

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt, who went by the stage name of Conrad Veidt, died of a heart attack.  He's most famously remembered today for playing the German villain in Casablanca, which was in its first running year at the time.  A Lutheran, he had left Nazi Germany in 1933 as his wife was Jewish and personally was opposed to the Nazi regime and its policies.

His heart condition was known to him, although he continued to worsen it by smoking.

Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923

Members of the Wasatch Mountain Club members on the porch of the Hermitage, Ogden Canyon, Utah, Easter Day, 1923

It was Easter Sunday for 1923. 

The silent classic Safety Last!, starring Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis, premiered.   The movie is famous for its harrowing stunts, which were preformed by Lloyd.

The United Kingdom began numbering its highways.

France reduced the compulsory military service period from two years, to 18 months.

Wednesday, March 31, 1943. Oklahoma!

Oklahoma! opened on Broadway.

Having a very long initial run, and having been revived from time to time, I have to admit, I've never seen it.

I have been, however, to Oklahoma on numerous occasions.

The Afrika Korps withdrew from Cap Serrat, the Tunisian city that's about as far north in Tunisia as you can go.  

The British took El Aouana, Algeria.  The ancient city is famous for the French discovery for four dolman there.  Dating back to Roman times, the city was named Cavallo, "horse", by the Romans.

A photographer was apparently touring the Port of San Francisco, which I've also been to.

USS Albireo (AK-90), the former John G. Nicolay,  a Navy cargo ship at San Francisco on this day.

Cavalryman, Gen. Frederick Gilbreath, Commander of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, on this day in 1943.

Actor Christopher (Ronald) Walken born on this day in 1943 in New York.

Russian writer and politician Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov (Па́вел Никола́евич Милюко́в) died in exile in France on this day in 1943.  He had been a member of the Provisional Russian Government after the fall of the monarchy.   While an opponent of the Communists in his native land, he supported Stalin's efforts to expand Soviet territory and was an ardent supporter of the Soviet war effort against the Germans.

Saturday, February 10, 1923. The Lloyds marry.

 

The Saturday Evening Post went to the stands with a tear jerker illustration.

Comedic actors Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis married.

It was a highly successful, and therefore very unusual, Hollywood marriage.  The couple remained extremely close their entire lives, she dying in 1968 and he in 1971. They'd have three children.

Texas Tech University was legislatively founded.

Heidi Brühl 1966 - Hundert Mann und ein Befehl

This is a surprise.  I wouldn't have expected a German rendition, sort of, of this tune:

The theme isn't the same.  Hundert Mann und ein Befehl is more about the futility of war.  I.e, more of a post World War Two West German sort of thing.

Heidi Brühl, for those who might not recall her, was the disloyal mountain climber's wife in The Eiger Sanction.

Friday, January 26, 1973. The Battle of Battle of Cửa Việt.

The Battle of Battle of Cửa Việt took place one day prior to the Vietnam War supposed cease fire coming into effect as the ARVN and South Vietnamese Marines, supported by US air cover, attempted to retake the port of Cửa Việt in Quang Tri Province.  The battle spilled on over to January 31 before it concluded.

Late war efforts such as this were also common to the Korean War.

The effort was unsuccessful.

The battle was also telling. The effort relied upon US air cover, in this instance supplied by the Navy and Air Force.  

The peace was supposed to take effect immediately, but never really did.

The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation went into effect.

Screen legend Edward G. Robinson, who is principally remembered for playing tough guys in the movies of the 30s and 40s, died at age 79.

Robinson was born Menashe  Goldenberg in Bucharest to a Jewish Romanian family in 1893. The family moved to the United States in 1904.  He joined the U.S. Navy in World War One, and served stateside.  He was already acting before the war, although he'd originally planned on being a lawyer.  He acted up into 1972.

Thursday, January 25, 1973. Endings and Beginnings.

A state funeral was held in Washington, D.C. for Lyndon B. Johnson.

An off Broadway production, National Lampoon: Lemmings featured John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Christopher Guess.  Belushi was praised for his performance by the New York Times while the Times described Chevy Chase's performance as "piddling".  

Chevy Chase is not funny.

Wednesday, December 30, 1942. Sinatra breaks out, and Soviets starting to. And, Bobby Soxers.

Frank Sinatra appeared as a solo act for the first time, appearing before a screaming crowed of bobby soxers of 5,000 at the Paramount Theatre in New York City.

Sinatra on the radio with actress Alida Valli.*

Sinatra in some ways was the first example of a phenomenon that would attach to certain male performers of the mid 20th Century in which they were the subject of gigantic teenage female fascination.  We tend to think of personalities like Elvis in this category, but Sinatra had the same adulation prior to their experiencing it.

His appearance at this point in time raises certain interesting questions.

Sinatra was born into an Italian American family that endured rough circumstances, to some degree, but which also saw his father go from being a boxer to a fire captain, and which featured a dominant, highly driven mother.  The mother supported the son's endeavors.  Sinatra, who always performed under his own name, took an interest in music early and started singing professionally with bands at age 20.  He sang with Tommy Dorsey's band in the late 1930s, with his desire to break free from the band resulting in a legal battle and persistent rumors that Mafia boss Willie Moretti, who was Sinatra's Godfather, had held a gun to Dorsey's ear.  That rumor was incorporated by Mario Puzo in the novel, and later the movie, The Godfather to apply to a very much Sinatra like character.

Sinatra was a huge hit in the early 1940s, but being of conscript age, the logical question is why he wasn't drafted.  He was categorized by the Selective Service as 4-F, which provides the reason, due to a perforated ear drum, but Army files later indicated that he was regarded as psychologically unsuitable for military service due to emotional instability.  He did tour with the USA in the latter portion of the war.  A lack of wartime service did not hurt him, as it did not hurt John Wayne, which says something about the culture of the time.

He campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

Sinatra lived a long, and not uncontroversial, life, dying at age 82. As all that would really be too long to go into, will stop here, with the World War Two story told.

Bobby soxers should be noted.

Bobby soxers have come to be erroneously associated with the 1950s, but in fact were a 1940s phenomenon.  They were teenage girls and women in their very early 20s who were an early example of the emerging youth culture of the United States.  Indeed, they were in some ways its real pioneers.  They were called "bobby soxers" as, at the time, they wore short "bobbed" socks with saddle oxfords.

Saddle oxfords are a dress shoe now, but they've always had the reputation of being a semi casual dress shoe.  At some point they became heavily associated with students and young people.  They were introduced as a mass manufactured shoe in the early 1900s by the Spaulding Company, with the first example introduced in 1906. That's the same company, we'd note, famous for basketballs, etc., which says something, as at first, it was an athletic shoe, not a dress shoe.

Probably that origin as a sporting shoe caused its popularity.  It crossed over pretty quickly to dress wear, anticipating a later trend we have seen the past few decades of basketballs hoes in that use.  

The shoe came on the scene just as there was a real expansion of women in sports, so it was ideally timed  It became hugely popular with cheerleading teams.  By the 1930s it was approaching near universal adoption by schools as mandatory footwear for girls academic uniforms, although it remained popular with men.  They began to become school uniform shoes for boys in the period as well.

The same period saw a shortening of skirts. The combination of the shorter skirts, saddle shoes, and short socks lead to Bobby Soxers being the name for young women affecting the style.  The style endured until the 1950s, when it faded, but the shoes themselves retained widespread academic popularity until the decline of clothing standards started to set in during the late 1960s.

While it may seem odd now, the style was somewhat risqué.

President Roosevelt spent the morning visiting with Naval personnel, including Admirals King and Leahy, and the Secretary of the Navy.  He was in New York City at the time, and had a doctor's visit in the afternoon.

The Red Army was generally gaining ground everywhere to the south of Stalingrad.

Footnotes:

*Not really related to this entry but for this photograph, Alida Valli was an Italian actress coined by Mussolini as "the most beautiful woman in the world."  She truly was lovely.

Born to nobility, her real name and title was Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg.  She was born in a part of Italy that is now in Croatia, and which had once been part of Austria Hungary.  She was of mixed heritage, but considered herself Italian.

The photo must have been taken post 1943 as she was active in Italy at this time.  Married three times, her first husband was an Italian fighter pilot who was killed in action at Tobruk.

She was popular in Western films throughout her career, which again says something about the times.  Unlike hugely popular Italian actresses of a certain appearance, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale, Valli had a more normal figure and rose to popularity in the "dirty" Italy period when Italy was regarded as, and truly was, fairly backwards.

Dunday, December 24, 1972. Bombing hiatus.

The United States halted aerial bombing of North Vietnam for 36 hours, commencing at 0800 local time.

The bombing campaign, Operation Linebacker II, had commenced only on December 18, 1972.  The bombing campaign was designed to force a North Vietnamese return to the Paris negotiating table, which had just recently seen talks break down.

Bob Hope gave his last Holiday's show in Vietnam.

I would have been nine years old at the time, but I can recall the Christmas bombing hiatus, as well as its commencement several days prior.

Wednesday, December 20, 1922. Rises and falls.

Sir Percy Cox, British Administrator for the Iraqi Mandate, agreed to a joint Anglo Iraqi declaration to create ea government for the Kurds provided that rival Kurdish leaders could agree on a constitution for the state, and to its borders.  

Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji.

Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji, who had appointed by Cox as the governor or southern Kurdistan, refused to go along with it and allied himself with the Turks against the British, destroying the opportunity for an independent Kurdistan.  He is regarded to this day as a hero in Kurdistan, but it can't help but be noted that his obstinacy may have frustrated Kurdish aspirations, perhaps permanently.

William Hays lifted the ban against Roscoe Arbuckle in the movie industry.

Poland appointed Stanislaw Wojciechowski as President of the republic.

Friday, December 8, 1922. States of Unions.

Warren G. Harding delivered his 1922 State of the Union address, in which he stated:

MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESS:

So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them, in the face of the known limitations of a short session of Congress, would seem to lack sincerity of purpose. It is four years since the World War ended, but the inevitable readjustment of the social and economic order is not more than barely begun. There is no acceptance of pre-war conditions anywhere in the world. In a very general way humanity harbors individual wishes to go on with war-time compensation for production, with pre-war requirements in expenditure. In short, everyone, speaking broadly, craves readjustment for everybody except himself, while there can be no just and permanent readjustment except when all participate.

The civilization which measured its strength of genius and the power of science and the resources of industries, in addition to testing the limits of man power and the endurance and heroism of men and women-that same civilization is brought to its severest test in restoring a tranquil order and committing humanity to the stable ways of peace.

If the sober and deliberate appraisal of pre-war civilization makes it seem a worth-while inheritance, then with patience and good courage it will be preserved. There never again will be precisely the old order; indeed, I know of no one who thinks it to be desirable For out of the old order came the war itself, and the new order, established and made secure, never will permit its recurrence.

It is no figure of speech to say we have come to the test of our civilization. The world has been passing – is today passing through of a great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not more difficult than the solution of the problems which necessarily follow. I am not speaking at this moment of the problem in its wider aspect of world rehabilitation or of international relationships. The reference is to our own social, financial, and economic problems at home. These things are not to be considered solely as problems apart from all international relationship, but every nation must be able to carry on for itself, else its international relationship will have scant importance.

Doubtless our own people have emerged from the World War tumult less impaired than most belligerent powers; probably we have made larger progress toward reconstruction. Surely we have been fortunate in diminishing unemployment, and our industrial and business activities, which are the lifeblood of our material existence, have been restored as in no other reconstruction period of like length in the history of the world. Had we escaped the coal and railway strikes, which had no excuse for their beginning and less justification for their delayed settlement, we should have done infinitely better. But labor was insistent on holding to the war heights, and heedless forces of reaction sought the pre-war levels, and both were wrong. In the folly of conflict our progress was hindered, and the heavy cost has not yet been fully estimated. There can be neither adjustment nor the penalty of the failure to readjust in which all do not somehow participate.

The railway strike accentuated the difficulty of the American farmer. The first distress of readjustment came to the farmer, and it will not be a readjustment fit to abide until he is relieved. The distress brought to the farmer does not affect him alone. Agricultural ill fortune is a national ill fortune. That one-fourth of our population which produces the food of the Republic and adds so largely to our export commerce must participate in the good fortunes of the Nation, else there is none worth retaining.

Agriculture is a vital activity in our national life. In it we had our beginning, and its westward march with the star of the empire has reflected the growth of the Republic. It has its vicissitudes which no legislation will prevent, its hardships for which no law can provide escape. But the Congress can make available to the farmer the financial facilities which have been built up under Government aid and supervision for other commercial and industrial enterprises. It may be done on the same solid fundamentals and make the vitally important agricultural industry more secure, and it must be done.

This Congress already has taken cognizance of the misfortune which precipitate deflation brought to American agriculture. Your measures of relief and the reduction of the Federal reserve discount rate undoubtedly saved the country from widespread disaster. The very proof of helpfulness already given is the strongest argument for the permanent establishment of widened credits, heretofore temporarily extended through the War Finance Corporation.

The Farm Loan Bureau, which already has proven its usefulness through the Federal land banks, may well have its powers enlarged to provide ample farm production credits as well as enlarged land credits. It is entirely practical to create a division in the Federal land banks to deal with production credits, with the limitations of time so adjusted to the farm turnover as the Federal reserve system provides for the turnover in the manufacturing and mercantile world. Special provision must be made for live-stock production credits, and the limit of land loans may be safely enlarged. Various measures are pending before you, and the best judgment of Congress ought to be expressed in a prompt enactment at the present session.

But American agriculture needs more than added credit facilities. The credits will help to solve the pressing problems growing out of war-inflated land values and the drastic deflation of three years ago, but permanent and deserved agricultural good fortune depends on better and cheaper transportation.

Here is an outstanding problem, demanding the most rigorous consideration of the Congress and the country. It has to do with more than agriculture. It provides the channel for the flow of the country’s commerce. But the farmer is particularly hard hit. His market, so affected by the world consumption, does not admit of the price adjustment to meet carrying charges. In the last half of the year now closing the railways, broken in carrying capacity because of motive power and rolling stock out of order, though insistently declaring to the contrary, embargoed his shipments or denied him cars when fortunate markets were calling. Too frequently transportation failed while perishable products were turning from possible profit to losses counted in tens of millions.

I know of no problem exceeding in importance this one of transportation. In our complex and interdependent modern life transportation is essential to our very existence. Let us pass for the moment the menace in the possible paralysis of such service as we have and note the failure, for whatever reason, to expand our transportation to meet the Nation’s needs.

The census of 1880 recorded a population of 50,000,000. In two decades more we may reasonably expect to count thrice that number. In the three decades ending in 1920 the country’s freight by rail increased from 631,000,000 tons to 2,234,000,000 tons; that is to say, while our population was increasing, less than 70 per cent, the freight movement increased over 250 per cent.

We have built 40 per cent of the world’s railroad mileage, and yet find it inadequate to our present requirements. When we contemplate the inadequacy of to-day it is easy to believe that the next few decades will witness the paralysis of our transportation-using social scheme or a complete reorganization on some new basis. Mindful of the tremendous costs of betterments, extensions, and expansions, and mindful of the staggering debts of the world to-day, the difficulty is magnified. Here is a problem demanding wide vision and the avoidance of mere makeshifts. No matter what the errors of the past, no matter how we acclaimed construction and then condemned operations in the past, we have the transportation and the honest investment in the transportation which sped us on to what we are, and we face conditions which reflect its inadequacy to-day, its greater inadequacy to-morrow, and we contemplate transportation costs which much of the traffic can not and will not continue to pay.

Manifestly, we have need to begin on plans to coordinate all transportation facilities. We should more effectively connect up our rail lines with our carriers by sea. We ought to reap some benefit from the hundreds of millions expended on inland waterways, proving our capacity to utilize as well as expend. We ought to turn the motor truck into a railway feeder and distributor instead of a destroying competitor.

It would be folly to ignore that we live in a motor age. The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present-day life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim. With full recognition of motor-car transportation we must turn it to the most practical use. It can not supersede the railway lines, no matter how generously we afford it highways out of the Public Treasury. If freight traffic by motor were charged with its proper and proportionate share of highway construction, we should find much of it wasteful and more costly than like service by rail. Yet we have paralleled the railways, a most natural line of construction, and thereby taken away from the agency of expected service much of its profitable traffic, which the taxpayers have been providing the highways, whose cost of maintenance is not yet realized.

The Federal Government has a right to inquire into the wisdom of this policy, because the National Treasury is contributing largely to this highway construction. Costly highways ought to be made to serve as feeders rather than competitors of the railroads, and the motor truck should become a coordinate factor in our great distributing system.

This transportation problem can not be waived aside. The demand for lowered costs on farm products and basic materials can not be ignored. Rates horizontally increased, to meet increased wage outlays during the war inflation, are not easily reduced. When some very moderate wage reductions were effected last summer there was a 5 per cent horizontal reduction in rates. I sought at that time, in a very informal way, to have the railway managers go before the Interstate Commerce Commission and agree to a heavier reduction on farm products and coal and other basic commodities, and leave unchanged the freight tariffs which a very large portion of the traffic was able to bear. Neither the managers nor the commission tile suggestion, so we had the horizontal reduction saw fit to adopt too slight to be felt by the higher class cargoes and too little to benefit the heavy tonnage calling most loudly for relief.

Railways are not to be expected to render the most essential service in our social organization without a air return on capital invested, but the Government has gone so far in the regulation of rates and rules of operation that it has the responsibility of pointing the way to the reduced freight costs so essential to our national welfare.

Government operation does not afford the cure. It was Government operation which brought us to the very order of things against which we now rebel, and we are still liquidating the costs of that supreme folly.

Surely the genius of the railway builders has not become extinct among the railway managers. New economies, new efficiencies in cooperation must be found. The fact that labor takes 50 to 60 per cent of total railway earnings makes limitations within which to effect economies very difficult, but the demand is no less insistent on that account.

Clearly the managers are without that intercarrier, cooperative relationship so highly essential to the best and most economical operation. They could not function in harmony when the strike threatened the paralysis of all railway transportation. The relationship of the service to public welfare, so intimately affected by State and Federal regulation, demands the effective correlation and a concerted drive to meet an insistent and justified public demand.

The merger of lines into systems, a facilitated interchange of freight cars, the economic use of terminals, and the consolidation of facilities are suggested ways of economy and efficiency.

I remind you that Congress provided a Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry which made an exhaustive investigation of car service and transportation, and unanimously recommended in its report of October 15, 1921, the pooling of freight cars under a central agency. This report well deserves your serious consideration. I think well of the central agency, which shall be a creation of the railways themselves, to provide, under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the means for financing equipment for carriers which are otherwise unable to provide their proportion of car equipment adequate to transportation needs. This same agency ought to point the way to every possible economy in maintained equipment and the necessary interchanges in railway commerce.

In a previous address to the Congress I called to your attention the insufficiency of power to enforce the decisions of the Railroad Labor Board. Carriers have ignored its decisions, on the one hand, railway workmen have challenged its decisions by a strike, on the other hand.

The intent of Congress to establish a tribunal to which railway labor and managers may appeal respecting questions of wages and working conditions can not be too strongly commended. It is vitally important that some such agency should be a guaranty against suspended operation. The public must be spared even the threat of discontinued service.

Sponsoring the railroads as we do, it is an obligation that labor shall be assured the highest justice and every proper consideration of wage and working conditions, but it is an equal obligation to see that no concerted action in forcing demands shall deprive the public of the transportation service essential to its very existence. It is now impossible to safeguard public interest, because the decrees of the board are unenforceable against either employer or employee.

The Labor Board itself is not so constituted as best to serve the public interest. With six partisan members on a board of nine, three partisans nominated by the employees and three by the railway managers, it is inevitable that the partisan viewpoint is maintained throughout hearings and in decisions handed down. Indeed, the few exceptions to a strictly partisan expression in decisions thus far rendered have been followed by accusations of betrayal of the partisan interests represented. Only the public group of three is free to function in unbiased decisions. Therefore the partisan membership may well be abolished, and decisions should be made by an impartial tribunal.

I am well convinced that the functions of this tribunal could be much better carried on here in Washington. Even were it to be continued as a separate tribunal, there ought to be contact with the Interstate Commerce Commission, which has supreme authority in the rate making to which wage cost bears an indissoluble relationship Theoretically, a fair and living wage must be determined quite apart from the employer’s earning capacity, but in practice, in the railway service, they are inseparable. The record of advanced rates to meet increased wages, both determined by the Government, is proof enough.

The substitution of a labor division in the Interstate Commerce Commission made up from its membership, to hear and decide disputes relating to wages and working conditions which have failed of adjustment by proper committees created by the railways and their employees, offers a more effective plan.

It need not be surprising that there is dissatisfaction over delayed hearings and decisions by the present board when every trivial dispute is carried to that tribunal. The law should require the railroads and their employees to institute means and methods to negotiate between themselves their constantly arising differences, limiting appeals to the Government tribunal to disputes of such character as are likely to affect the public welfare.

This suggested substitution will involve a necessary increase in the membership of the commission, probably four, to constitute the labor division. If the suggestion appeals to the Congress, it will be well to specify that the labor division shall be constituted of representatives of the four rate-making territories, thereby assuring a tribunal conversant with the conditions which obtain in the different ratemaking sections of the country.

I wish I could bring to you the precise recommendation for the prevention of strikes which threaten the welfare of the people and menace public safety. It is an impotent civilization and an inadequate government which lacks the genius and the courage to guard against such a menace to public welfare as we experienced last summer. You were aware of the Government’s great concern and its futile attempt to aid in an adjustment. It will reveal the inexcusable obstinacy which was responsible for so much distress to the country to recall now that, though all disputes are not yet adjusted, the many settlements which have been made were on the terms which the Government proposed in mediation.

Public interest demands that ample power shall be conferred upon the. labor tribunal, whether it is the present board or the suggested substitute, to require its rulings to be accepted by both parties to a disputed question.

Let there be no confusion about the purpose of the suggested conferment of power to make decisions effective. There can be no denial of constitutional rights of either railway workmen or railway managers. No man can be denied his right to labor when and how he chooses, or cease to labor when he so elects, but, since the Government assumes to safeguard his interests while employed in an essential public service, the security of society itself demands his retirement from the service shall not be so timed and related as to effect the destruction of that service. This vitally essential public transportation service, demanding so much of brain and brawn, so much for efficiency and security, ought to offer the most attractive working conditions and the highest of wages paid to workmen in any employment.

In essentially every branch, from track repairer to the man at the locomotive throttle, the railroad worker is responsible for the safety of human lives and the care of vast property. His high responsibility might well rate high his pay within the limits the traffic will bear; but the same responsibility, plus governmental protection, may justly deny him and his associates a withdrawal from service without a warning or under circumstances which involve the paralysis of necessary transportation. We have assumed so great a responsibility in necessary regulation that we unconsciously have assumed the responsibility for maintained service; therefore the lawful power for the enforcement of decisions is necessary to sustain the majesty of government and to administer to the public welfare.

During its longer session the present Congress enacted a new tariff law. The protection of the American standards of living demanded the insurance it provides against the distorted conditions of world commerce The framers of the law made provision for a certain flexibility of customs duties, whereby it is possible to readjust them as developing conditions may require. The enactment has imposed a large responsibility upon the Executive, but that responsibility will be discharged with a broad mindfulness of the whole business situation. The provision itself admits either the possible fallibility of rates or their unsuitableness to changing conditions. I believe the grant of authority may be promptly and discreetly exercised, ever mindful of the intent and purpose to safeguard American industrial activity, and at the same time prevent the exploitation of the American consumer and keep open the paths of such liberal exchanges as do not endanger our own productivity.

No one contemplates commercial aloofness nor any other aloofness contradictory to the best American traditions or loftiest human purposes. Our fortunate capacity for comparative self-containment affords the firm foundation on which to build for our own security, and a like foundation on which to build for a future of influence and importance in world commerce. Our trade expansion must come of capacity and of policies of righteousness and reasonableness in till our commercial relations.

Let no one assume that our provision for maintained good fortune at home, and our unwillingness to assume the correction of all the ills of the world, means a reluctance to cooperate with other peoples or to assume every just obligation to promote human advancement anywhere in the world.

War made a creditor Nation. We did not seek an excess possession of the world’s gold, and we have neither desire to profit Unduly by its possession nor permanently retain it. We do not seek to become an international dictator because of its power.

The voice of the United States has a respectful hearing in international councils, because we have convinced the world that we have no selfish ends to serve, no old grievances to avenge, no territorial or other greed to satisfy. But the voice being heard is that of good counsel, not of dictation. It is the voice of sympathy and fraternity and helpfulness, seeking to assist but not assume for the United States burdens which nations must bear for themselves. We would rejoice to help rehabilitate currency systems and facilitate all commerce which does not drag us to the very levels of those we seek to lift up.

While I have everlasting faith in our Republic, it would be folly, indeed, to blind ourselves to our problems at home. Abusing the hospitality of our shores are the advocates of revolution, finding their deluded followers among those who take on the habiliments of an American without knowing an American soul. There is the recrudescence of hyphenated Americanism which we thought to have been stamped out when we committed the Nation, life and soul, to the World War.

There is a call to make the alien respect our institutions while he accepts our hospitality. There is need to magnify the American viewpoint to the alien who seeks a citizenship among us. There is need to magnify the national viewpoint to Americans throughout the land. More there is a demand for every living being in the United States to respect and abide by the laws of the Republic. Let men who are rending the moral fiber of the Republic through easy contempt for the prohibition law, because they think it restricts their personal liberty, remember that they set the example and breed a contempt for law which will ultimately destroy the Republic.

Constitutional prohibition has been adopted by the Nation. It is the supreme law of the land. In plain speaking, there are conditions relating to its enforcement which savor of nation-wide scandal. It is the most demoralizing factor in our public life.

Most of our people assumed that the adoption of the eighteenth amendment meant the elimination of the question from our politics. On the contrary, it has been so intensified as an issue that many voters are disposed to make all political decisions with reference to this single question. It is distracting the public mind and prejudicing the judgment of the electorate.

The day is unlikely to come when the eighteenth amendment will be repealed. The fact may as well be recognized and our course adapted accordingly. If the statutory provisions for its enforcement are contrary to deliberate public opinion, which I do not believe the rigorous and literal enforcement will concentrate public attention on any requisite modification. Such a course, conforms with the law and saves the humiliation of the Government and the humiliation of our people before the world, and challenges the destructive forces engaged in widespread violation, official corruption and individual demoralization.

The eighteenth amendment involves the concurrent authority of State and Federal Governments, for the enforcement of the policy it defines. A certain lack of definiteness, through division of responsibility is thus introduced. In order to bring about a full understanding of duties and responsibilities as thus distributed, I purpose to invite the governors of the States and Territories, at an early opportunity, to a conference with the Federal Executive authority. Out of the full and free considerations which will thus be possible, it is confidently believed, will emerge a more adequate, comprehension of the whole problem, and definite policies of National and State cooperation in administering the laws.

There are pending bills for the registration of the alien who has come to our shores. I wish the passage of such an act might be expedited. Life amid American opportunities is worth the cost of registration if it is worth the seeking, and the Nation has the right to know who are citizens in the making or who live among us anti share our advantages while seeking to undermine our cherished institutions. This provision will enable us to guard against the abuses in immigration, checking the undesirable whose irregular Willing is his first violation of our laws. More, it will facilitate the needed Americanizing of those who mean to enroll as fellow citizens.

Before enlarging the immigration quotas we had better provide registration for aliens, those now here or continually pressing for admission, and establish our examination boards abroad, to make sure of desirables only. By the examination abroad we could end the pathos at our ports, when men and women find our doors closed, after long voyages and wasted savings, because they are unfit for admission It would be kindlier and safer to tell them before they embark.

Our program of admission and treatment of immigrants is very intimately related to the educational policy of the Republic With illiteracy estimated at front two-tenths of 1 per cent to less than 2 per cent in 10 of the foremost nations of Europe it rivets our attention to it serious problem when we are reminded of a 6 per cent illiteracy in the United States. The figures are based on the test which defines an Illiterate as one having no schooling whatever. Remembering the wide freedom of our public schools with compulsory attendance in many States in the Union, one is convinced that much of our excessive illiteracy comes to us from abroad, and the education of the immigrant becomes it requisite to his Americanization. It must be done if he is fittingly to exercise the duties as well as enjoy the privileges of American citizenship. Here is revealed the special field for Federal cooperation in furthering education.

From the very beginning public education has been left mainly in the hands of the States. So far as schooling youth is concerned the policy has been justified, because no responsibility can be so effective as that of the local community alive to its task. I believe in the cooperation of the national authority to stimulate, encourage, and broaden the work of the local authorities. But it is the especial obligation of the Federal Government to devise means and effectively assist in the education of the newcomer from foreign lands, so that the level of American education may be made the highest that is humanly possible.

Closely related to this problem of education is the abolition of child labor. Twice Congress has attempted the correction of the evils incident to child employment. The decision of the Supreme Court has put this problem outside the proper domain of Federal regulation until the Constitution is so amended as to give the Congress indubitable authority. I recommend the submission of such an amendment.

We have two schools of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned by deliberate public opinion.

One year ago I suggested the submission of an amendment so that we may lawfully restrict the issues of tax-exempt securities, and I renew that recommendation now. Tax-exempt securities are drying up the sources of Federal taxation and they are encouraging unproductive and extravagant expenditures by States and municipalities. There is more than the menace in mounting public debt, there is the dissipation of capital which should be made available to the needs of productive industry. The proposed amendment will place the State and Federal Governments and all political subdivisions on an exact equality, and will correct the growing menace of public borrowing, which if left unchecked may soon threaten the stability of our institutions.

We are so vast and so varied in our national interests that scores of problems are pressing for attention. I must not risk the wearying of your patience with detailed reference.

Reclamation and irrigation projects, where waste land may be made available for settlement and productivity, are worthy of your favorable consideration.

When it is realized that we are consuming our timber four times as rapidly as we are growing it, we must encourage the greatest possible cooperation between the Federal Government, the various States, and the owners of forest lands, to the end that protection from fire shall be made more effective and replanting encouraged.

The fuel problem is under study now by a very capable fact-finding commission, and any attempt to deal with the coal problem, of such deep concern to the entire Nation, must await the report of the commission.

There are necessary studies of great problems which Congress might well initiate. The wide spread between production costs and prices which consumers pay concerns every citizen of the Republic. It contributes very largely to the unrest in agriculture and must stand sponsor for much against which we inveigh in that familiar term—the high cost of living.

No one doubts the excess is traceable to the levy of the middleman, but it would be unfair to charge him with all responsibility before we appraise what is exacted of him by our modernly complex life. We have attacked the problem on one side by the promotion of cooperative marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative buying. Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price, especially between the production of food and its consumption.

A superpower survey of the eastern industrial region has recently been completed, looking to unification of steam, water, and electric powers, and to a unified scheme of power distribution. The survey proved that vast economies in tonnage movement of freights, and in the efficiency of the railroads, would be effected if the superpower program were adopted. I am convinced that constructive measures calculated to promote such an industrial development—I am tempted to say, such an industrial revolution would be well worthy the careful attention and fostering interest of the National Government.

The proposed survey of a plan to draft all the resources of the Republic, human and material, for national defense may well have your approval. I commended such a program in case of future war, in the inaugural address. of March 4, 1921, and every experience in the adjustment and liquidation of war claims and the settlement of war obligations persuades me we ought to be prepared for such universal call to armed defense.

I bring you no apprehension of war. The world is abhorrent of it, and our own relations are not only free from every threatening cloud, but we have contributed our larger influence toward making armed conflict less likely.

Those who assume that we played our part in the World War and later took ourselves aloof and apart, unmindful of world obligations, give scant credit to the helpful part we assume in international relationships.

Whether all nations signatory ratify all the treaties growing out of the Washington Conference on Limitation of Armament or some withhold approval, the underlying policy of limiting naval armament has the sanction of the larger naval powers, and naval competition is suspended. Of course, unanimous ratification is much to be desired.

The four-power pact, which abolishes every probability of war on the Pacific, has brought new confidence in a maintained peace, and I can well believe it might be made a model for like assurances wherever in the world any common interests are concerned.

We have had expressed the hostility of the American people to a super government or to any commitment where either a council or an assembly of leagued powers may chart our course. Treaties of armed alliance can have no likelihood of American sanction, but we believe in respecting the rights of nations, in the value of conference and consultation, in the effectiveness of leaders of nations looking each other in the face ace before resorting to the arbitrament of arms.

It has been our fortune both to preach and promote international understanding. The influence of the United States in bringing near the settlement of an ancient dispute between South American nations is added proof of the glow of peace in ample understanding. In Washington to-day are met the delegates of the Central American nations, gathered at the table of international understanding, to stabilize their Republics and remove every vestige of disagreement. They are met here by our invitation, not in our aloofness, and they accept our hospitality because they have faith in our unselfishness and believe in our helpfulness. Perhaps we are selfish in craving their confidence and friendship, but such a selfishness we proclaim to the world, regardless of hemisphere, or seas dividing.

I would like the Congress and the people of the Nation to believe that in a firm and considerate way we are insistent on American rights wherever they may be questioned, and deny no rights of others in the assertion of our own. Moreover we are cognizant of the world’s struggles for full readjustment and rehabilitation, and we have shirked no duty which comes of sympathy, or fraternity, or highest fellowship among nations. Every obligation consonant with American ideals and sanctioned under our form of government is willingly met. When we can not support we do not demand. Our constitutional limitations do not forbid the exercise of a moral influence, the measure of which is not less than the high purposes we have sought to serve.

After all there is less difference about the part this great Republic shall play in furthering peace and advancing humanity than in the manner of playing it. We ask no one to assume responsibility for us; we assume no responsibility which others must bear for themselves, unless nationality is hopelessly swallowed up in internationalism.

The recent rail strike was obviously very much on the President's mind.

One area where the union's state was not well was in racial violence, with the ongoing feature of lynching continuing on.  On this day, two consecutive lynch mobs in Perry, Florida murdered two black suspects who were being transported by the authorities for suspicion of being involved in the murder of a white teacher.

The Irish union was getting off to a bad start.

The Irish Free State carried out the execution of the four Irish Republican Army leaders who had led the takeover of the Four Courts in Dublin in April of that year, the same being. Rory O'Connor, 39; Joe McKelvey, 24; Liam Mellows, 30; and Richard Barrett, 32. 

The death warrant was signed by Irish Free State Justice Minister Kevin O'Higgins who had seen O'Connor as the best man at his wedding fourteen months prior.

I'm not a fan of the Irish Republicans, but a true irony of the Irish Free State is that it started off being every bit as repressive on radical minoritarian views as the United Kingdom had been.

A horrible fire destroyed thirty blocks of Astoria, Oregon.

New York born frontier New Mexican lawyer and territorial Governor L. Bradford Prince died in Queens.

Like so many frontier figures, he wasn't from the West, and he didn't stay in it either.

B actress Jean Porter was born on this day in 1922.

Never a big star, she's notable for her long marriage to director Edward Dmytryk who was blacklisted in the 40s and who refused to testify in Congress in the 40s.  He would return to the US with his wife, with whom he ultimately had three children and testify.  In spite of his having admitted to having briefly been a Communist, his career rehabilitated, with The Caine Mutiny being an example of that.

Jean Ruth Ritchie, the "Mother of Folk", was born in Viper, Virginia.