THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 618
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER .Editors
$1.50 PER MONTH $16.00 A YEAR
Entered as second class matter October 14, 1943. at the postoffice
at Nome. Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Monday, January 12, 1948
ERP And The Law
(The Denver Post)
WALTER G. BURTON, said to be a possible candi
date for governor of West Virginia on the Republican
ticket, has announced he will try to get the Supreme
Court to enjoin the spending of European aid money if
Congress adopts the Marshall plan.
Mr. Burton, an attorney, assumes that the only legal
justification for the spending of ERP (European recov
ery program) funds is the emergency aid plan passed
during the war.
* If his assumption were correct, he might have good
legal grounds for questioning the validity of the spend
ing of the proposed Marshall plan billions.
A reading of only the first five lines of the ERP bill
as introduced in Congress shows, however, that the bill
does not rely on any wartime measure for legality.
These lines describe the bill as one “to promote the
general welfare, national interest and foreign policy of
the United States through necessary economic and fi
nancial assistance to foreign countries which under
take to co-operate with each other in the establishment
and maintenance of economic conditions essential to a
peaceful and prosperous world.”
In view of the broad interpretations the Supreme
Court already has put on the “welfare clause” of the
Constitution, it is inconceivable that the court might
entertain the slightest doubt that the ERP expenditures
would be in any way illegal.
—
Sweden And The War •
(St. Paul Pioneer Press)
NO ONE CAN PROFESS great surprise at revela
tions made in Sweden’s latest diplomatic “white book,”
a 395-page study of the situation immediately before
and after April 9, 1940, when Nazis invaded nearby
Norway and Denmark. In bald terms, what the study
shows is Sweden’s complete lack of preparedness
against possible threats from an Aggressor. And in that
respect the Swedes differed in no way from the Nor
‘ wegian and Danish neighbors.
Swedish information services are described as alert
and accurate, but they gave credence, nevertheless, to
repeated reports of a possible German threat in their
northerly area. Thus, 100,000 Swedish troops were kept
in the northern part of the country in the spring of 1940,'
while there were only 1,800 in the southernmost pro
vince of Skaane.
Stockholm’s Tidningen, commenting on the recently
issued white book, says: “In the first place, it confirms
the seriousness of the Allied plans to involve us in the
war, and in the second, it contains a number of docu
ments which prove how the warnings about an impend
ing German attack on the northern countries had liter
ally poured into Stockholm. In view of all these warn
ings from both military and diplomatic sources, the in
activity of the governments, not only in Norway and
Denmark, but also in Sweden, appear both inexplicable
and indefensible.”
Sweden shared with the rest of Scandinavia the no
tion that a neutral policy possible in World War I could
be carried through again. As the war progressed, Swe
den was able to remain a non-belligerent, but her var
ied forms of aid to the Allies left her neutrality purely
nominal. Scandinavia knows today that neutrality is no
longer possible. She knows too that, for smaller nations,
the only hope of future security lies in a workable
United Nations organization. Fifty-seven nations, large
and small, once more face the challenge of making that
organization work as was intended.
WHO’S A MENACE NOW?_
aria
Unions In Politics
(By Victor Riesel)
FBI MEN have gathered enough evidence in those
neat little notebooks of theirs to prove that the big-time
labor chiefs have deliberately broken the Taft-Hartley
law.
And in the White House, the President’s shrewd and
quiet adviser, Clark Clifford, is wondering whether to
suggest that Mr. Truman order the justice department’s
criminal division to start the new year with a flock of
indictments.
The G-men have visited CIO headquarters three
times in the past six months and may be headed for
Michigan soon. That’s the state, should you have for
gotten, which is now as famous for Walter Reuther as it
is for automobiles. And you don’t know the tense, in
tense red-head if you think he’s going to by-pass state
and national politics. He’s not. In fact, he’s already
taken over the political action committee of the auto
union, which gives him one of the most far-flung polit
ical machines in the country.
And he’s going to put the auto union into politics,
Taft-Hartley or no Taft-Hartley.
Walter Reuther’s politics is going to be anti-Republi
can and anti-Communist, of course. And the auto union
again will become the Democratic party of Michigan.
As a matter of fact, that’s about the story for the rest
of labor’s politics in 1948. Virtually all the unions AFL
and railroad brotherhoods and independents which are
about to raise some 18 million dollars for politiking next
year (more than both the Republicans and Democrats
will spend) are for Harry Truman’s re-election. Just
look at the men who conferred in Bill Green’s ancient
AFL Washington headquarters recently.
They were the shrewdest labor politicos in the coun
try, and virtually all Truman. Two of them, David Du
binsky and the Hatter's Alex Rose, were among the
handful of labor men who helped Harry Truman cam
paign for the vice presidency in 1944. I recall the after
noon Mr. Truman arrived at the New York Democratic
headquarters in the Hotel Commodore—only Dubinsky
Rose, this columnist and a photographer greeted him.
It was Dubinsky, Rose and the veteran Matt Woll
who last week drew up the final plans for the 8-million
dollar AFL political campaign, and submitted the strat
egy to husky AFL secretary George Meany.
This doesn’t mean, by the way, that they think they
can swing the AFL's 8 million members over to the
Democratic party. They are realists. What they plan to
do is set up a central headquarters, with thirty or forty
regional offices to link the top group With the AFL’s
40,00() locals. They’re not planning on building their
Labor’s Educational and Political league into a perman
ent machine. Nor do they think they can get an official
indorsement of Mr. Truman.
Instead they plan to divide the league up into four or
five departments, such as public relations, Congression
I al activity, etc., and have all of them fight merely to get
out the vote. So it’s Harry Truman’s ticklish job to de
. cide whether or not the Republi*
j can party can embarrass him if
he doesn’t prosecute the unions for
political activity. And if he does,
what happens to the machines and
the good will the labor chiefs are
carefully and shrewdly building
for him.
I _
\iooxrm
I AHEAD
[>> GEORGE 1 BENSON
^ Ptttidttt—Htrilaf Mkft
■ Stsref. Jritmm .
I -
AN ECHO TESTIFIES
| President Truman recently sug
gested that price controls might
have to be used to meet the pres
ent emergency. Here is a bit ot
history. It is an echo from gov
ernment managed economy that
keeps on testifying to the ill ef
fects of government managed
economy. During the war the gov
ernment kept prices of crude oil
at an abnormal low. This column
called attention to fhat fact then,,
indicating there would be a future
shortage of oil.
Wild-cat operators and small
companies find most of the new
pools and sell much of the crude
oil. But prices during the war
kept wild-catters from buying
adequate equipment. It didn’t
p.'ty. Machinery and wages kept
^ going up, but the price of oil was
held low. Instead of buying new
rigs for new wells, oil men re
moved old rigs from low produc
ing wells that would have been
kept in production if the price of
oil had been favorable.
How to Stall Industry
' There was less searching for*
new fields, because oil prices were
so out of line with cost of labor
and machinery. The risk was too
often a losing proposition. This un
wise control continued so long
that a grave shortage developed in
oil field equipment, in oil well
pipe lines, and even in refineries.
Now we are reaping the harvest.
Many will go cold this winter.
Gasoline may be short in some
areas and industrial fuel scarce.
One big operator said to me
during that period: “To help win
a war I am operating present
equipment at full capacity. But I
am making only about Va of 1 per
cent profit on my investment.
Consequently, I am not spending
new money for expansion of my
business. A man can’t risk his cap
ital when there is only a chance
of Va of 1 per cent profit even if
the venture proves entirely suc
cessful, and 10p per cent loss if
it fails, as many of them do in the
o:l business.
Sad Picture Now
On November 12 Oscar L.
Chapman, under-secretary of in
terior told the American Petrole
um Institute in Chicago: “We face
critical times, critical for all of us.
and for the competitive freedom
of the petroleum industry. This
winter for the first time in its
peace-time history, the oil indus
try will be unable to meet the full
needs of the American people.”
The oil people may come
through with another miracle as
they did during the war. They
may actually meet the demand,
even though this well-informed
government official thinks they
cannot. I am awfully slow to put
a limit on what free men in a free
country can do. But it must be
said that the present threat of fuel
shortage results from the abnor
mally low price that government
maintained on crude oil d- i i
the war and thereafter.
The Danger Is There
This should underscore the dan