25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

July 29, 2019

July 25, 1994

GOLDFIELD, Iowa — At a hearing here, working farmers from central Iowa assailed the “mega” hog confinement facilities being built. They put forth proposals that would regulate them with stringent laws protecting air, soil, and water quality.

That was the majority opinion of the 300 people, mostly farmers, at the last of three hearings held by the governor-appointed Environmental Agriculture Committee. Of central concern to working farmers voicing opposition before the task force is the odor and huge open manure lagoons. 

Most farmers see economic devastation developing from being forced to compete with large hog-producing operations. Working farmers are proposing that the big hog bosses put up a cash bond so that when and if they shut down their hog facilities the burden of leaving a mess hits them in their pockets.

August 1, 1969

Yielding to the storm of protest by Japanese and Okinawans precipitated by the disclosure that the U.S. is storing nerve gas on Okinawa, the Defense Department announced that all nerve gas will be removed from Okinawa.

One strong motivating factor in the U.S. decision was their fear that the furor about the incident had added impetus to the powerful movement for an end to American occupation of Okinawa and the return of the island to Japan.

A report in the July 18 Wall Street Journal that 25 Americans were hospitalized by an “accident” involving nerve gas at a U.S. base on Okinawa quickly developed into an international incident. Even some leading members of Japanese Premier Sato’s notoriously pro-American Liberal Democratic Party were beginning to speak out on the issue in the face of the mounting public outcry. 

July 29, 1944

Blessed and backed by a powerful section of the more far-sighted Wall Street interests, Franklin D. Roosevelt was renominated virtually automatically last week as the Democratic Party’s 1944 presidential candidate. His platform contains but one tangible plank — a pledge to prosecute to successful conclusion Wall Street’s war for world domination, and to impose a conqueror’s “peace by force.”

Roosevelt, as he himself stated in his nomination acceptance speech, stands “on the record.” That record has piled up unprecedented war profits and thrust its hands into a grab-bag containing billions worth of government-financed plants and land developments. It has fastened such government shackles on labor as compulsory arbitration, wage freezing, forced labor decrees, anti-strike legislation, extortionate taxes.