July 30: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1941, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — President Roosevelt today asked Congress to enact legislation permitting ceilings on prices and rents in order to ward off inflation that would be disastrous to the defense effort. Wages, he said in a special message, should be regulated by cooperation between labor and industry rather than by legislative or administrative fiat. But he warned that unless ‘we act decisively and without delay’ to control already-spiraling price and rent levels, the nation faces inflation ‘and the specter of future deflation and depression.’ He said the administration has ‘sought to maintain a stable level of prices by enlisting the volunteer cooperation of business’ during the last 12 months, but that the authority to do this has been ‘indirect and circumscribed’ and further weakened by ‘evasion and bootlegging.’ In some cases, he added, the administration ‘has been openly defied.’ He said that the facts of American economy today are ‘frighteningly similar to those of the World War period.’”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1943, Eagle columnist Daniel Lionel wrote, “The shark menace has increased in local waters since the ban on offshore fishing has been in effect. The scavengers have been reported close to shore and the other day they came up into Jamaica Bay to ruin our weakfishing. Pleasure fishermen, whether they sailed aboard party boats or chartered cruisers, did much to keep the shark population in hand. Self-respecting party boat skippers never missed a chance to either handline a shark or pump a few well-directed shots into their carcasses. Many a tuna fisherman has hooked into sharks while trolling or chumming for tuna and thus brought another miscreant to gaff. In the course of a single season hundreds of sharks were accounted for in this way. Unless there is some action taken on the shark question, we may expect them to increase in numbers and cause a corresponding drop in the amount of fish caught in local waters.”