THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome. Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 618
$1.50 PER MONTH flS.OO^A YEAR
WA~ and EMILY BOUCHER..Editors
Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943, at the postoffice at
Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Friday, March 15, 1946
OPA ENFORCEMENT AGENTS
(By Bruce A. Gustin, in The Denver Post)
The OPA is having tough sledding in its fight for ad
ditional funds to hire more enforcement agents. It wants
$1,954,000. Wednesday, the Senate voted to allow it
only one-half that amount. The slash in the proposed
appropriation was made after Senator Wherry of
Nebraska had charged that the OPA is trying to
build up a nationwide “Gestapo” and Senator Hick
enlooper of Iowa had declared that “no more sprawling,
no more stupid agency of governments exists” than the
OPA.
The Senate slash in the OPA appropriation reflects
growing public resentment against the way Washing
ton bureaucrats have been kicking American business
around and hampering production. More and more, the
people of this country are blaming OPA policies for the
shortages with which they are afflicted. One thing cer
tin, under the existing system of OPA regimentation,
production increases, which are the only real cure for
inflation, have NOT materialized.
Wednesday, The Civilian Production Administration
reported that American industrial output has dropped
to the lowest levels since the spring of 1941. But the
production capacity of American industry is the great
est in history. The demand for consumer goods is great
er than ever before. More people have more money than
they ever had in their lives to pay for the things they
want.
Undoubtedly, as the OPA says, strikes are responsi
ble for many shortages. But a large part of this strike
paralysis of production is due to asinine price-wage pol
icies. Industrial employees have been encouraged to de
mand wage increases. When employers could get no as
surance they would be allowed to make price increases
to cover wage advances, strikes resulted and produc
tion stopped. The Truman administration has shut its
eyes to the economic fact that wages do enter into prices
and refuses to see that increased production is the only
effective regulator of prices in a free economy.
A Senate subcommittee was told Wednesday by a
large chain store official how OPA “stupidity and in
competence’’ have caused clothing shortages. He ex
hibited two men’s knitted cotton undershirts. On one,
Mexican-made, he said the OPA ceiling price is $2. The
other, American-made and a superior garment, could be
produced profitably, he declared, at $4.50 a dozen
which would allow a retail price of 50 cents, but the
OPA has ordered a ceiling price of $3.75 a dozen with
the result that this shirt is not being made. Holding
down prices doesn’t benefit the American people when
that prevents them from having anything to buy.
ADHESIVES ON A GRAND SCALE
(Scientific American)
Those who still look askance upon synthetic resins as
a reliable bonding agent for wood will find many of
their questions answered by work going forward on the
200-ton flying boat nearly completed by the Hughes
Aircraft Company. Here, a group of adhesives—liquid
and film—are being used to make the millions of glued
joints required in the mammoth aircraft. Tests extend
ing over a three-year period have proved the efficacy
of the bonding materials. And the lessons learned will
flow readily into other industries, from the production
of boats and furniture to pre-fabricated houses and
junior’s toys.
MAXIM REVISED—All work and no play,
Makes “Jack” and that ain’t hay.
TROtiiV StC KHV5S__
“YOU’D BE SURPRISED”
I ,
(By George Stimpson)
In 1553, when Ivan the Terrible was Czar of Russia
and the young and sickly Edward VI was King of Eng
land, Richard Chancelor, sailing in the Admiral, made
the first trip by an Englishman to Russia.
Richard Hakluyt in 1589, about the time Shakespeare
was beginning to write plays, published an account of
Chancelor’s Russian expedition under the title “The
Discovery of Muscovy.”
In Hakluyt’s work we have the earliest account of the
Kremlin at Moscow written by an Englishman. The
chronicler of the expedition wrote:
“There is hard by the city (Moscow) a very fair cas
tle, strong and furnished with artillery, whereunto the
city is joined directly toward the north with a brick
wall; the walls also of the castle are built with brick,
and are in breadth or thickness eighteen feet. This cas
tle hath on the one side a dry ditch, and on the other
side the river Volga, whereby it is made almost preg
nable.
“The same Volga, tending towards the east, doth ad
mit into it the company of the River Occa.
“In the castle aforesaid three are in number nine
churches or chapels, not altogether unhandsome, which
are used and kept by certain religious men, over whom
there is, after a sort, a patriarch or governor, and with
him other reverend fathers, all which for the greater
part dwell within the castle.
“As for the king’s court and palace, it is not of the
neatest, only in form it is four-square and of low build
ing, much surpassed and excelled by the beauty and
elegancy of the houses of the kings of England. The
! windows are very narrowly built, and some of them by
! glass, some other by lattices admit the light, and where
as the palaces of our princes are decked and adorned
with hangings of cloth of gold, there is none such there.”
r
wmmmmmmmmmmmmarn1
I MITCHELL
AND BIKINI
WASHINGTON — In May, on
I the lonely little atoll of Bikini,
halfway betwen the Philippines
and Hawaii, an atomic bomb will
be exploded over 92 ships of war.
Two months later, according to
. present plans of “Operation Cross
' roads, as the joint chiefs of staff
have dubbed this experiment, a
barge will drift into the lagoon to
explode another atomic bomb
among warships at surface level.
Exactly 25 years before this lat
ter test, in July, 1921. Brig Gen.
William Mitchell and a handful of
his flying Jennies proved to the
world that a battleship could be
sunk by bombs from the air.
It will be well for the people of
this country to evaluate the Bikini
atomic bomb tests in the light of
those conducted a quarter of a
century ago, when a 42-year-old
“flying fool” tried to make the
world understand that the warfare
of tomorrow would be somethine
else again.
"Billy” Mitchell is now vindi
cated by acts of a Congress that
once brushed him off; is now hon
ored by military men who sit in
the same chairs of those generals
who contributed to his court mar
tial and disgrace.
Perhaps unfortunately for the
nation, there is no one individual
screaming at the top of leather
lined lungs about the consequenc
es of the Bikini atomic bomb tests
a: Mitchell yelled for a unified de
partment of defense, with Army,
Navy, and air branches; for air
craft carriers; for airfields in the
Aleutians.
When Bill Mitchell made his
tests in 1921, he was operating un
der orders designed to make suc
cess of the experiment virtually
I impossible. Those orders were
that he was not to use anything
heavier than a 600-pound bomb
! and that the bombing planes must
fly at 10,000 feet or higher when
i they dropped their bombs.
Mitchell violated both orders
when he and his infant airforce
sank the German battleship Ost
friesland off the Virginia Capes.
His planes carried one-ton bombs
and although one of them got to
the height of 11,000 feet on the
previous test, most flew at a
height of a mile or slightly over.
Considering the antiquated planes,
the lack of adequate bombsights, *
the fact that they had to fly their
loads 60 miles off shore and dump
them without the aid of, modren
mechanisms, the miracle is that
they hit anything at all.
But the Ostfriesland went down
in from four to 20 minutes, (Of
ficial reports vary that much).
Air Com/nodore Francis Charl
ton of the British Navy, who was
one of the observers, messaged
Mitchell: “This shot will ring
around the world. I am leavii^g for
England convinced that yofo have
shaken naval tactics to the(r foun
dation. May Lord Nelson rise
from his tomb and smite me if I'm
wrong.”
inose few who remember when
Brig. Gen. “Billy” Mitchell proved
to the world that bombers could
sink a battleship will have at least
one eye on the foreign observers
and their reaction when the joint
chiefs of staff conduct their atomic
bomb experiments in the almost
land-locked lagoon of Bikini atoll.
It having been 1921 when Mi
chlel’s so-called “fool-luck” sank
the German cruiser Frankfort and
the German battleship Ostfries
land off the Virginia Capes, there
were no German observers aboard
the transport Henderson.
But in less time than it takes to
tell it, Mitchell got a cable from
Germany asking for a 3,000-word
report on the experiment from
Berlin’s widely read scientific
publication, “Gasschutz und Luft
schutz.” Somebody must have
been around.
On deck of the Henderson was
one observer who wasn't making
any secret of it. He was the Hon.
G. Katsuda, member of the Tokyo
House of Peers. With him was one
Hon. G. Shibuta, who identified
himself as a representative of the
Kobe Chamber of Commerce.
The Hon. Mr. Katsuda was so
interested in the experiment that
he kept a stopwatch on the Ost
friesland from the moment Mit
chell’s bombers hit until it sank in
the choppy seas. More important
ly, the Hon. Messrs. Katsuda and
j Shibuta were very enthusiastic
[ amateur photographers — so en
thusiasitc in fact that they kept
four high-powered cameras click
ing away during the entire test.
Emile Grauvreau and