Vol. 73/No. 8      March 2, 2009

But new details about this were reported in the February 14 New York Times in an article by Drew Middleton.

Two separate U.S. Army plans in early 1954 advocated the use of nuclear bombs at Dienbienphu. One proposed dropping anywhere from one to six 31-kiloton bombs from carrier-based U.S. aircraft. Each bomb was three times as powerful as that used on Hiroshima by the U.S. ruling class in World War II.

These were not “contingency plans,” based on some hypothetical scenario. They were actively considered for implementation.  
 
March 2, 1959
NEW YORK—Marx and Engels’ observation on the function of capitalist government—that it serves as “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”—is regarded by many today as disproved. But Mayor Wagner’s Democratic administration seems hell-bent on showing how right Marx and Engels were in the Communist Manifesto.

Right now the administration is busy trying to slap new taxes on the working people, keep the public schools segregated, break a teachers’ strike and help renting-gouging slum landlords.

Despite this hectic schedule, it’s also working on a deal to donate an estimated quarter of a billion dollars of public property and tax-payers’ money to Consolidated Edison, the city’s monopolistic public utilities corporation.  
 
February 24, 1934
Like a good many other industries, the hotel industry expanded and overexpanded during the boom period of the 1920s. The effects of this investment orgy were obvious even as early as 1928, at the very height of the prosperity flush. In the eight year period from 1920 to 1928 the number of available rooms had increased 50 percent whereas the rooms actually occupied increased less than 13 percent and the number of guests by about the same percentage.

Wages in 1929 were as low as $844 annually for dining room, lunch room and kitchen employees in the whole country and $988 for New York workers. Since the above figures were gathered wages have fallen twenty-five percent and more. Nor has the NRA [National Recovery Act] helped any. Quite the contrary. Wages of waiters and waitresses which were $20 before had fallen to $15 in August 1933.  
 
 
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