ADMIRES ENGLAND

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 54, 26 November 1937, Page 8

ADMIRES ENGLAND

America's "Radio Priest" SLUM-CLEARANCE PROGRESS . t . ■ Father Cflughlin, famons Detroitj (U.S.) "Radio Priest," admires Eng-| land intensely. . ' Over for a badly-needed holiday, hej tolda Teporter, all about himself, hisj ehureh and his 41. broadcasting' stations' — with' a, girl seerotary faking- short-. hand noles at his olbow. * His fan mail is'.thq largest in the (world — 35 mail openers, 40 sorters and; ;150 aecretaries among his pay-roll of 1600 work pn his letters, which -range, .from 100,000 to 200,000 a week. A turnover of £500,000 passes through his organisation, and of this Father Coughlin receives about four dollars aweek, as he said, * ' enough pocket money for cigaret'tes and a haircut." Father Coughlin is not as;one imagines him to be. Here is no radio spellbinder, no flre-breathing critic of Eoosevelt, no demagogue whose voice sways thirty million listeners. Father Coughlin appeared to me a middle-aged man badly in need of a rest. "No, I can't say that I am a happy man," he said in answer to my question. "There is so much misery in America. "I come to England after nine years' absence and I find slums have vanished. Aladdin seems to havd rubbed his lamp and created a new world here." Father Coughlin was enthusiastie over our housing schemes. "Great Britain," he said, "did not pay the loans extended to her by the United States, but spent the money on homes for her labonring classes. "She is to be congratulated on looking after her own first. She was right in not paying, for most of these loans are fictitious "and simply mean extended sredit." He doesn't agree with flats. "Flats produce divorces," he said, 14 and do not help the wife and hftsband to maintain their love for each other. "Birth control is one 6i the natural ponsequences of flat life, and without jhildren husband and wife lose their |ove for each other and the husband jtarts gallivanting with soine other young thing."