The Charlotte News
Monday, March 23, 1942
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The typical story of sailors lost at sea for days came from the vast Pacific, far from continental land masses. The front page carries the more atypical recounting by survivors of eleven days on the Atlantic, somewhere off the northeast coast of the United States, after their merchant ship had been torpedoed, machine-gunned and sent to the bottom. Where was Tallulah Bankhead?
The editorial page begins with the announcement that the "Big Shot" bootlegger of Mecklenburg had finally been nabbed red-handed by the police, with 3,000 gallons of moonshine on his premises. Still, however, after all these years, we don't know who "Big Shot" was. Perhaps, his identity will come to light soon. Maybe The News feared identifying him too closely lest the windows might wind up shattered Al Capone-style. As we said Saturday, the Big City ways were fast catching up to sleepy old Charlotte, maybe fifteen years behind the big cities.
The editorial cannot figure out why they caught him finally, other than either through the assiduity of a tenacious police force, reorganized under the new chief, or that "Big Shot" was tired of running from them or felt sorry for their efforts theretofore exerted in vain. Maybe that was it. Or maybe the absence of rubber, gas, and tires had made the getaway vehicles not so available even among the underground runners. Maybe sugar rationing had also hit his trade. Perhaps, the war had unintended ameliorative consequences on the domestic front.
Anyway, we want to know who "Big Shot" was. Stay tuned. The suspense builds. Was it the Black Daniel who left the court in fall 1939 bidding "au revoir"? Was he merely a lieutenant in the wayward enterprise of his captain?
On the same subject, that is insanity, the country, says Dorothy Thompson, had gone mad for the heroics of Doug MacArthur in a losing effort in the Philippines. "Character is Destiny" to Americans, she suggests, echoing the Greeks. She points to the irony of General Homma, commander of the Japanese armies in the Philippines, having committed suicide two weeks earlier while winning the Philippines campaign for the Japanese while MacArthur's merely holding firm the last spit of ground in Bataan earned him the admiration of the vast masses of the American people and, to exuberant cheers, the command for the Allies of the last stronghold in the Pacific, Australia. The winning bully does not usually win sympathy among the defeated. It is why many Southerners for so long honored Lee. Nevertheless, Ms. Thompson's point is well made. Winning every battle does not necessarily win the war or the loyalty and respect of the people. The more salient question is who was the initial aggressor. In this instance, there can be no doubt of it.
Raymond Clapper tells of his experience in Cairo and concludes with the observation that Hitler would have been better off to have done as Cheops and employed 250,000 slaves for 30 years to build a tomb for himself than to enslave millions to try to conquer the world.
Paul Mallon writes of the wage-hour debate, to remove it or not remove it. The President favored leaving the 40-hour workweek alone as long as labor remained quiescent on strikes. It appeared to be the President's bargaining chip with labor to achieve cooperation. The President's other hedge against labor demands was to hold onto the card as to whether to order wage, price and profit freezing.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Mallon points out, the problem remained of defense industries thus being required to shell out overtime pay in areas where insufficient trained labor existed, passing on higher prices to the consumer, in this case the government and the taxpayer. In other industries, also ancillary to defense production, though not directly on the government dole, the practice would be simply to limit production to avoid higher costs of production.
"Oblivion List", on the playboy lifestyle of Tommy Manville, might be revitalized with a more apropos title, "Blonde on Blonde".
That piece, plus "Emancipation"--indicating that the freeing from the kitchen of the masses of women to the workforce was not, as the First Lady had suggested, being accomplished merely by the presence of the defense industries, but rather had been ongoing since the Twenties--once again serves to pin the beginning of the "sexual revolution" not so late as the 1960's, the decade so often assumed by modern media.
Is there symmetry between these two editorials and the little squib at the bottom of the column mentioning the Canadian psychiatrist who believed that in 25 years "entire populations" would be fit for insane asylums?
It seems to us that the wait was unnecessary: most of the world was ready in 1942. Perhaps in fact one of the few sane people left in the entire state of North Carolina, for instance, was Tom Jimison.
By 1967, the alienist was probably proved no more correct than in 1942, but correct nevertheless? Now? Let us return to that piece on MacArthur.
Framed Edition
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