THE NOME NUGGET
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W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER Editors
Entered as second class matter October 14 1943. at the postoffice at
Nome. Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1379.
Monday, February IS, 194(5
FIRST ROUND
In the battle of the Territory of Alaska versus the
Maritime Commission-War Shipping Administration
regarding the hearing of evidence pro and con for ship
ping rate increases, the Territory has won the first
round.
The commission wanted to get the rates increased
now and hold hearings on the matter later, so that the
Territory would be paying nearly $2,000,000.00 in
creased tariffs during the first six months of 1946. This
saving has been brought about through the veto of the
commission’s request for permission to increase the
rates on a temporary basis. If th£ increase had been al
lowed, the people of Alaska would lose the fight, as in
the past, for example, the rates were upped in 1937,
temporarily, while hearings were in progress. When
the war came along the matter was dropped, up in the
air, the rates still high. Then came the surcharges, etc.,
to increase the costs even more.
As Abraham Lincoln would say: “Four score and nine
years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new territory, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that all men have a right to a decent
living. We are now engaged in a great rate war, testing
whether any territory so conceived, can long endure
such high and exorbitant rates ... it is for us in Alaska,
to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who
have gone before have no nobly advanced. That Alaska
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
its people shall not perish from the earth."
INDUSTRIAL INFANTICIDE
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
A research conducted by the National Association of
Manufacturers, as reported in the business columns of
“The New York Times,” has disclosed:
“Numerous cases of small business being threatened
with liquidation, including a Massachusetts company
which was held by OPA to a $9 ceiling on an article
which had to sell for more than $10 to cover material,
labor, overhead and a 10 per cent markup."
“Voluntary renegotiation left the firm with no sur
plus to tide it over a period of losses,* the report stated.
“This company described OPA officials as admitting
that only large firms have a chance for survival under
prevailing price formulas, and that many small plants
which have limited purchasing power and depend on
day-to-day profitable operations will have to close.”
The manufacturers’ survey listed other examples.
There is ample evidence that the extinction of small
business concerns is not the result of mere bureaucratic
ineptitude but is actually a purpose steadily pursued.
In fact, the New Deal’s so-called “reciprocal” trade
agreements scheme has as one of its objectives the liqui
dation of small businesses.
The exponent of this free-trade policy is Sumner H.
Schlichter, Lamont professor of economics at Harvard
University.
Professor Schlichter is the author of an article in the
December issue of “The Atlantic Monthly” entitled
“The American Tariff and World Trade.”
In this article, he makes the cryptic remark:
“Reduction in the tariff would raise our standard of
living by bringing about a more productive use of labor
and capital in the United States.”
Standing alone the statement is meaningless.
Its purport becomes clear, however, in the course of
'HZ MY5T‘e52 ES O? JMJ JlTSU
- ■■ -- i
Professor Schlichter’s plea to break down our system
of tariff protection.
“Opening up our market," he says, is the only way
in which to move labor and capital out of industries in
which our relative superiority is small or in which we
have no superior efficiency.”
The shallowness of this sort of thinking is made ap
parent by Professor Schlichter himself.
He gives his own case away by his own estimate of
American industrial efficiency as developed under the
protective tariff system.
“Fewr Americans realize," he comments, “howr great
is the managerial and engineering superiority of Ameri
can industry . . .
“Before the war, the annual product of the world was
roughly 280 billion dollars.
“Of this amount, the United States, w ith six per cent
of the population, and using less than six per cent of the
man-hours, produced over one-fourth.
“Soon the United States will be producing about one
third of the world’s goods."
Obviously the United States will not obtain maxi
mum production if the federal government continues its
policy of delivering the home market to cheap foreign
competition.
Moreover, a policy of killing off “little business” will
prevent the future development of new enterprises and
the growth of “big" companies out of small ones.
Almost every “big” business in America began as a
“small'’ business.
We would have none of these large concerns today,
and surely would not have attained the productive effi
ciency that Professor Schlichter notes, if his tariff theo
ries and the murderous methods of the OPA had pre-1
vailed in the past.
Under those same policies, any number of new indus
tries that are now coming into existence will be stran
gled like babies in their cradles.
The industrial welfare of the country is at stake.
SALT AND HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
A salt-free diet treatment will help some high blood
pressure patients, Dr. Arthur Grollman and collabora
tors of the Southwestern Medical College report on the
basis of animal studies and trials in patients.
This type of diet treatment was tried many years ago
and abandoned when it failed to give good results. One
reason for the.failure, Dr. Grollman believes, was that
| the diet was not really free of salt, or rather of sodium.
! It is the sodium part of salt, not the chloride, that Dr.
Grollman finds important in high blood pressure con
trol. To eliminate enough of this from the diet means
patients must cook everything, including bread, at home
and if they drink milk, that must be treated to remove
the sodium.—Science Digest.
Church School
Goes To Movies
HOLLYWOOD — Producer-Di
rector Leo McCarey, having de
nicted priests’ lives in "Going My
Way,” takes us inside a Catholic
school for a close-up of the lives
of nuns in "The Bells of St.
Mary’s” starring Bing Crosby and
Ingrid Bergman.
The story, as McCarey consid
ered it, went through several
changes. At one stage it was to be
that of a young opera singer de
sirous of being a nun but per
suaded by the sisters that she
could be more valuable to the
church in the outside world.
Subsequently, he conside red
showing the Sisters of the Good
Shepherd, working among juve
nile delinquents. Finally McCarey
returned to the original suggestion
of William Mooring, motion pic
ture editor of the Tidings, weekly
newspaper of the local archido
cese, that it pictured life in a
Catholic school.
Mooring and the Rev. Thomas
J. McCarthy, Tiding’s editor, sat
in on numerous story conferences.
Miss Bergman, herself a Luth
eran, spent several days at St. Ag
nes High School Convent, meeting
the sisters, seeing how they lived
and attending prayers and classes.
In the picture we see her, in the
garb of a nun, taking an experi
mental stance with a baseball bat
in a sporting goods store flipping
a ball into the air with a tricky
snap of the wrist . . . teaching a
timid lad how to fight the play
ground bully.
Perhaps the choicest sequence
in the picture was done by actors
who aren’t even listed in the cast
of characters. A group of youngs
ters was told the story of the na
tivity and instructed to enact it in
their own wav.
McCarey barred visitors and all
but esential production workers
from the set. Equipment and crew
were concealed behind curtains.
Bobby Dolan, five-year-old son
of the film’s music director, Rober*
Emmett Dolan, is Joseph and th<
narrator. Mary perches on a sau
horse mule whose tail is a mop
An infant upsets the continuity b:
climbing out of his clothes baske
and toddling onto the stage. Child
ish mistakes and improvision
were left in.
The idea was borrowed fror
the Mayfield school in nearby Pas
adena, whose kindergarten clas
stages the nativity every Chris'
mas.
The only love angle is a reuni
ing of the parents (Martha Sleep<
and William Gargan) of a proble
pupil (Joan Carroll). Joan, 13, fo
merly was under contract to 20
Century Fox—in the days wh<
Shirley Temple ruled the realm
child performers.
The first American India
came over the Bering straits frc
Asia as a hunting people 15 to
thousand years ago, archaeok
ists say.