Back in 1948...

Published: February 1, 2012

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- There was a temporary break in the awful cold wave that had found a home in the area since winter began. Local coal breakers, in some cases, were working 24-hour days, seven days a week to keep up with the demand for coal, a demand made more severe by the shortage of fuel oil and natural gas.

- John L. Lewis, the bushy-eyebrowed head of the United Mine Workers union, said he couldn't care less about the cold wave - if the companies did not establish a pension fund for some 400,000 miners, he would call a strike in the soft-coal fields. Another union bigwig, Phillip Murray, chief of the CIO, said he would do everything possible to see to it that former Vice President Henry Wallace did not become president of the United States.

- Two Northumberland County judges, Robert Fortney and William Troutman, came up with an interesting new idea as the result of a sharp increase in divorces in the county. They established a new courthouse office. Its job would be to try to bring out reconciliations between couples who were apparently headed for divorce. It was a one-man office headed by a former detective who was the desertion and parole officer for the county. No statistics are available on how well that idea worked.

- A national opinion poll said the subject that caused the most arguments between couples was money. Clergymen said the polls were wrong. Money just wasn't that important, they said.

- Doctors were talking about a new miracle drug they said would be as much a blessing to health as sulfa and penicillin. The drug was streptomycin.

- Southern Democrats were furious with President Harry Truman, who had offered Congress a 10-point civil rights package.

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