Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 250,000 to 400,000 long line operators and other AT&T, Western Electric, and smaller telephone company employees across the nation, including those in Washington, New York, and St. Louis, had walked off their jobs for a planned four-hour strike. Emergency and priority calls were not affected. The basis for the strike was an N.L.R.B. report which had recommended dissolution of the Western Electric employees association union of Kearney, N.J., on the alleged ground that it was company dominated. A nationwide strike vote was to be taken.

The strike impacted long distance service in Charlotte. Emergencies were determined as they arose based on an explanation of the caller. Local dial service was not affected.

In Burbank, violence erupted in the eight-month old motion picture strike, as 300 pickets outside Warner Brothers clashed with police, overturning two cars as one man wound up being stabbed. The AFL Screen Set Designers, Illustrators and Decorators union had called the strike in March to protest recognition of the AFL International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees as the collective bargaining representative for 77 set decorators—whether on Sunset Strip in Hollywood or elsewhere, not being stated.

There were 530,000 idle workers across the country, with 147,000 coal miners in six states on strike and 450 mines closed, impacting, as always, steel production.

Following the Government takeover of the 51 oil refineries on strike for three weeks in fifteen states, the CIO Oil Workers union ordered the 43,000 strikers to return to the job, though indicating that the union was still striking against the companies. It would have been a felony for the union leadership to urge the workers to remain on strike following a Government seizure. The workers sought a 30 percent wage increase while the companies had offered 15 percent.

The Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co. strike was virtually resolved after six weeks. That strike, initially involving three workers, resulting in 4,000 leaving the job at the company, had been the primary problem impacting the automotive industry, especially 40,000 at Ford, as well as 40,000 other workers at G.M., Chrysler, and Hudson.

In Tokyo, the Japanese Cabinet, unable to effect General MacArthur's directives to establish a democratic government after the removal of major police officials, resigned and a new Cabinet was to be announced on Saturday. It was believed that the moderate former Foreign Minister Shigeru Yoshida, foxy, would succeed as Premier of the Cabinet formed at V-J Day by Premier Higashi-Kuni. The Emperor stated that he would seek General MacArthur's approval prior to appointment of a new Premier.

The President presented Congressional Medals of Honor to fourteen heroes of the war, including eleven Marines and three Navy men. Among the Marines was flying ace Lt. Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, rescued in August from a Japanese prison camp after being thought dead since being shot down in January, 1944 over Rabaul in New Britain.

Private Jacklyn H. Lucas of Belhaven, N.C., 17, became the youngest recipient of the medal, for using his body to shield two grenades from his fellow soldiers a day after the beginning of the Battle for Iwo Jima in February. The first grenade had gone off but the second was a dud. Though badly wounded at the time, he managed to survive and lived until 2008.

General Patton stated from Bad Toelz, Germany, that Americans held at the Hammelburg Stalag had caused him to abort his intended strike on the town on March 27. He did not realize until nine days later that his son-in-law was among the prisoners. The Third Armored task force on the aborted mission lost 300 men. A previous article by correspondent Austen Lake had related that the mission was a mystery to the men until it was discovered that the General's son-in-law was a prisoner in the Stalag, as the camp was to be overrun anyway by the Seventh Army within a few days. General Patton displayed his personal diaries in response, showing that the reason for the mission was fear that the Americans were about to be murdered by the retreating Germans. Indications were that General Patton last had heard about his son-in-law when a prisoner in Poland.

In Paris, with his lawyers threatened with disbarment by refusal to attend courtroom proceedings, Pierre Laval was allowed to return to his treason trial from which he had been barred the previous day after an outburst when denied the right to make an opening statement after being denied a motion for continuance.

Admiral Nimitz arrived in Washington to a rousing welcome, and the parade to be held for him was expected to exceed in size that of General Eisenhower and General Jonathan Wainwright. The Admiral stated that the Japanese were finished even before the dropping of the atomic bombs on August 6 and 9 and the entry of the war by the Russians on August 8.

The News states its intent, beginning Monday, to carry the serialized account by General Wainwright as told to King Features Syndicate. The memoir would contain many untold stories, including the burying of millions of dollars worth of American gold in Manila harbor, for which the Japanese searched in vain.

Get out your metal detectors, skin divers, for it may still be there.

In Detroit, in the third game of the World Series, the Chicago Cubs took a 2-0 lead over the Detroit Tigers in the fourth inning. Ultimately, the Cubs would score again and win 3-0, taking a 2-1 game advantage as the Series would move on Saturday to Wrigley Field in Chicago.

On the editorial page, "Bargaining Agent" suggests that, while the implicit threat of the atomic bomb to obtain concessions at the London Conference of Foreign Ministers, at which Secretary of State James Byrnes had not fared well in his first outing, was not a new means of achieving compromise, it was hardly in the spirit of the United Nations.

"Not So Simple" comments on the plan for reconversion advocated by Governor Raymond Baldwin of Connecticut in a recent issue of American Magazine, that jobs made at the local community level were the sine qua non for the effort, not jobs made by the Federal Government.

But the piece doubts that it would be quite that simple for local communities to provide the jobs necessary to remedy post-war unemployment. The Governor was relying on such gimmickry as the development in Saybrook of a hamburger-making machine which turned out uniform hamburger meatballs. But the demand for hamburgers first had to be present in sufficient volume to make such a business grow and prosper. Saybrook was part of a larger economy which was not working very efficiently of late.

With New Deal spending out of vogue in Washington, there would be no incentives provided for such small businesses. Governor Baldwin believed that the country had progressed economically since the 1930's such that the transition to a peacetime economy could be effected smoothly. The piece finds it, in all likelihood, wishful thinking.

"Agreement" finds itself in accord with the editorial stand of the Charlotte Observer, that the Federal Government ought exert control over wages, which, implicitly also argued for control over prices, as cost of living had risen more than the allowed 15 percent for wages during the war. Indeed, there was more urgent need for post-war price control than wage control. Heretofore, it remarks, the Observer had argued for a laissez-faire approach, to allow industry, believed primed and ready to produce, to proceed without Government interference.

"Trouble Abroad" recommends another Big Three conference to work out occupation policy, that the military leadership in both Japan and Europe were finding the going tough and the policy thus far ill-defined.

The excerpt from the Congressional Record has three Congressmen speaking for a minute each on topics of their choice. Representative Edward Cox of Georgia expressed disappointment at reading that Secretary of State Byrnes had yielded on a point to Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov of Russia at the London Conference.

Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California stated that with the advent of the atomic bomb, other factors shaping the future became "almost insignificant". He favored turning the secret of the bomb over to an international organization which would control it and inspect the plants producing it.

—Yeah.

Representative John Rankin of Mississippi stated that the "Communist attacks" on General MacArthur had resulted from his not having allowed Communists in Japan to undertake a "synthetic revolution and take over." If Russia did not want the U.S. and Great Britain having a say in the shape of government of the Balkans, then he was in favor of giving General MacArthur complete authority over the occupation of Japan.

It then adds the Speaker's interdiction: "The time of the gentleman from Mississippi has expired."

Drew Pearson points out that when President Truman had chaired the Senate Investigating Committee, a report prepared in early March, 1944 had preliminarily circulated with a provision criticizing General MacArthur for being unprepared in the Philippines in December, 1941 and losing 300 planes on the ground in Manila, more than were lost at Pearl Harbor and with less excuse. It was undisputed that General MacArthur had been warned of the pending attack on the Philippines. The information had only recently become known, and part of the reason for the secrecy, it was asserted, was that General MacArthur did not want to endure criticism for his lack of preparedness.

The fifth in the series of articles by the State Planning Board comments on North Carolina peanuts being more than a minor crop, as they were across the nation. Twelve counties in 1939 harvested more than five million pounds each of the goobers. Six of the counties, in the Eastern portion of the state, harvested over 200 million pounds, and six others another 54 million. Including a portion of southern Virginia, this Northeastern section of North Carolina produced nearly 20 percent of the nation's peanuts. The demand for peanut oil during the war had caused production to increase. Only Georgia exceeded North Carolina in the production of peanuts.

North Carolina also produced some pecans, but not as many as Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma. "[B]ut it is large enough to glut local markets and to add an item to the line of candy and nut processors."

Samuel Grafton comments on the House Ways & Means Committee decision to postpone indefinitely action on the unemployment compensation bill because of the labor strikes in the country. It appeared to be an irrational decision because strikers usually did not receive unemployment compensation, punishing those involuntarily out of work because of striking workers elsewhere. The move invited more labor unrest.

A letter writer, who had once upon a time written to the editors previously on the topic of liquor, joins in the chorus of dissent on the letter printed September 22 agreeing with the prior editorial mocking the WCTU for its stand against beer with 3.2 percent alcohol content on the premise that it was as intoxicating as hard liquor. The earlier writer had suggested that the ladies in the organization had not, on average, more than primary school education.

The present writer says that she regarded the WCTU as a brake against ruin of the bodies and lives of many, teaching as it did abstinence to youth. She also notes that both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had not gone beyond grammar school—yet, between the two, managed Lizzie's Ginny.

Both this writer and the previous critic of the original letter ignore, however, the primary basis for the criticism, that the WCTU equated 3.2 beer with hard alcohol. It was not, as this letter writer responds, the issue of drinking "like pigs to keep from wasting a bottle of liquor".

She argues that laws against murder and theft did not provoke crime and, therefore, neither would laws prohibiting alcohol cause drinking—as, plainly, the Great Experiment of the 1920's had conclusively demonstrated, a time in the country's history unparalleled in innocence and good behavior.

She suggests that her psychology book labeled as a syllogism the earlier writer's argument that if the WCTU members would just stay home, the young would be able to avoid dark corners of society and behave consistent with the popular norm. She states it to be false reasoning.

The editors note that there was one point in her rebuttal with which they agreed, that the former letter writer's statement that members of the WCTU, for whom The News sawed seed, then seed sewed, had not advanced beyond the primary grades was, though subtle, on the face of the responding letter, refuted, for the author did not pick up the word "syllogism" in grammar school, to which, even in the sixth grade, it was not well suited.

Of course, there is no telling where she did pick it up, as we have certainly never seen it used as any term of art in psychology, only in philosophy and symbolic logic, its being of ontology. And, well, if she went to Philosophy to obtain it, God help her. For those who go can never come back, as we can readily attest, clickety-clack. Swim at your own risk in those dangerous, shark-infested waters of the mind, where few signs are posted to warn of the path less trodden at your beck, a parlous course, more dangerous than the most virulent form of alcohol. Those who have been know whereof we speak. Some disappear in the mist, the evanescence of augments, and no one even asks questions as to where they went, for fear that the answer might drive them to think.