The Sunday Mirror carried Drew Pearson's column 'Washington Merry-Go-Round" with the disclaimer that "The author of this column is given the widest latitude. His views do not necessarily reflect those of The Mirror." No such disclaimer accompanied the right wing rantings of Ruth Alexander, but Pearson was liberal and the Mirror was not. However Pearson was widely seen as having the best sources in the nation's capital and had a popular network radio news commentary show. He was an asset to the stable.
On April 14 Pearson wrote in his column that the Washington hotels were jammed with lobbyists. He pointed specifically to the army representing the real estate industry. This contingent, headed by Herbert U. Nelson, vice president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, had assembled to defeat the Veterans' Housing Bill. At one time Nelson had praised William Wyatt, the former mayor of Louisville who had become head of the Housing Administration, and had pledged his personal support as well as that of his association for the housing proposals that Wyatt had set forth. Instead, they had worked vigorously against them, even buying radio time for attack ads on Wyatt. Some things never change. In a side note. Pearson pointed to the Revercomb Amendment in the Senate, removing price ceilings on existing homes, as Nelson's greatest triumph.
Pearson also reported on the fight by Representative Jackson of Washington against a shipping industry tax scam. During the Depression subsidized shippers were permitted to put their profits into a tax exempt reserve fund for future purchase of new ships. When the War Shipping Administration took control of shipping for the duration. the subsidy program came to an end. A bill ending the reserve fund was set aside as unnecessary since the program was no longer in operation. As a result the subsidized lines continued to stash away their war profits into the tax free fund. Some things never change.
The House Appropriations Committee slashed funds from the State Department's budget for combating Moscow's propaganda. It is interesting that Pearson decried these cuts since some of his Right Wing opponents portrayed him as a Commie sympathizer.
He also called for a crackdown on what he called a "mean racket" that was "rooking vets." We would call this racket co-op conversion. In this unregulated scenario, speculators approached apartment-house owners convincing them to divide their buildings into shares, each share the equivalent of an apartment, and then selling the shares to the speculators. The speculators would then offer to sell the apartment to the tenants at a tidy profit. If a tenant couldn't cough up the dough, out he or she went. The tenants who purchased their apartments would be obligated to help manage the building or hire a management firm (often at fees that approached their former rent). This "racket" has been highly successful throughout the US in the decades since then. Interestingly, Pearson puts it all in terms of the "veteran," as if this was the only category of tenant who might be affected. I guess it was easier then to drum up outrage or sympathy if you made it all about our boys returning from the war.