The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 23, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. General Assembly convened in Lake Success, N.Y., with President Truman delivering the opening address. A crowd of 25,000 gathered at City Hall in New York to honor the event, and the delegates paraded through the streets in a long procession of cars amid a small amount of tickertape released among 175,000 mostly quiet spectators.
While the city welcomed the delegates officially, the prevailing opinion was that the permanent site ought be on the Flushing Fair Grounds.
In Prague, Col. General Kurt Daluege, "The Butcher of Lidice", SS chieftain of Bohemia and Moravia who ordered the razing of Lidice on June 9, 1942 following the fatal shooting of Reinhard Heydrich by persons accused of being protected and harbored within the village, was hanged in Pakrac Prison three hours after his conviction for war crimes by a Czech court. Guards interdicted an attempt to smuggle poison to him inside a cigarette. Daluege succeeded Heydrich as the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Prior to the massacre, Lidice contained 667 persons. All of the men were murdered and the women and children were shipped to concentration camps where most perished by war's end.
The U.S. accused Russia of ordering the suppression in Bulgaria of a State Department protest of the lack of protection of civil liberties in the upcoming Bulgarian election of October 27. A Russian colonel in Sofia had ordered the protest letter not to be published.
Winston Churchill told Commons that the Soviet domination of the Balkans was wholly incompatible with the agreements at Yalta and elsewhere. He stated, however, that it was essential that the West get along with Russia to prevent another war. He again criticized the Labor Government for having no policy on Palestine, and also criticized the United States for not shouldering its burden with respect to Palestine. The former Prime Minister also found all the major powers to have abused their unilateral veto powers on the U.N. Security Council and urged reassessment of its intended purpose.
In Miami, eighteen Estonian refugees who had sailed in a small fishing boat from Sweden were told by immigration officials to decide within 24 hours where they wanted to go or they would be removed to Ellis Island and then deported back to Sweden. The refugees had received an offer to live either on a Canadian farm or on a Cuban plantation and were awaiting word from the authorities of each country as to whether they would be permitted to enter.
In Chicago, an elevated train hit the rear of another in a heavy fog, causing injuries to between 240 and 270 passengers. The forward train was running ten minutes late and the second train was pulling into the 47th Street station for its regular stop when the collision occurred. There were between 1,300 and 1,500 passengers on the two trains.
OPA removed all remaining price controls from foods and beverages except sugar, syrups, and rice, effective at midnight this date. The order extended to all restaurants and other sellers of foods and beverages. The action left only about two percent of food items still under control. Sugar and rice were in critical shortage, and thus the controls on those items remained.
The strike of AFL deck officers of the merchant marine remained in effect and settlement appeared not within reach.
Dr. Claudius Murchison of the Cotton Textile Institute asserted that the sudden drop in cotton price the previous week was merely a normal adjustment to market pressures and consumer behavior, that the market would continue to react in that manner. The problem was a relatively low annual cotton yield against high demand resulting in a spike in prices three weeks earlier, to 39 cents per pound from 23 cents a year earlier, and 10 cents in 1939.
Representative John Sparkman of Alabama urged farmers to hold onto their cotton until prices rebounded following the dump on the marker by one large trader the previous week.
The draft evader artist in Detroit who was shielded for two years by his wife until she divorced him, then three more years by his girlfriend, was sentenced to three years in prison pursuant to his previous guilty plea. The two women, both school teachers, were charged, pleaded guilty to aiding him and were still awaiting sentence.
Ernest Seton-Thompson, renowned author and authority on Indian lore and wildlife, died at age 86 in Santa Fe. His best known of 42 books was Wild Animals I Have Known, published in 1898.
News reporter J. A. Daly tells of the Chamber of Commerce giving its imprimatur to the proposed municipal zoning ordinance regarding required setbacks to afford broader right-of-ways in the downtown area to relieve traffic congestion, and for the proposed cross-town boulevard. Among the other actions approved by the Chamber was the sending of a telegram to President Truman urging him to intervene in the Teamsters strike which had crippled delivery service in New York City, and, in turn, had hampered Charlotte business. The Chamber also protested against an effort to remove from the North Carolina flag the date May 20, 1775, in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, trumpeted—albeit apocryphally—as the first such declaration in the colonies.
Martha Azer of The News reports of Edwin Queen of Charlotte receiving his new black Chevrolet, specially designed for the veteran amputee. He got behind the wheel, slipped the specially designed clutch into place, cranked the car, put it in gear, and asked the dealer if he could take it home to show his wife. The dealer, not named Raoul, said, "You bet!" and Mr. Queen drove away.
On the editorial page, "The Golden Fleece Is Tarnished" tells of the troubled cotton market, with prices falling rapidly, $25 per bale the previous week, and promising staggering losses to cotton farmers should the trend continue. Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, long an opponent of Government ceilings on cotton prices, now ironically wanted the Government to intervene to prevent further declines. He wanted an investigation into what he called the deliberate "bear conspiracy" of a few large traders to sell large quantities of cotton deliberately to depress the price.
Some months earlier, the column had quoted from Business Week a prediction that though at the time there was a bull market in cotton, it would soon decline. The piece had quoted the old song, which it had not heard in many years:
"...ten cent cotton and forty cent meat, How in the hell can a poor man eat?"
It concludes: "When you multiply those price quotations by two it's still a good question."
"On Teachers and Unions" comments on a Greensboro Daily News editorial suggesting that if teachers' unions had formed in Japan, where it was reported that 6,000 teachers were seeking to participate in collective bargaining for better salaries, then it might be time for the teachers of North Carolina to form a union. The teachers, too, were beginning to consider formation of a union. It was always indicative of trouble when unions were the last resort.
The twenty percent pay increase urged by the North Carolina Education Association would, according to some teachers, not be enough to stem the growing sentiment toward unionization. The NCEA goal did not provide a fair living for teachers. That of the Piedmont District Classroom Teachers did.
While the 20 percent increase might be the limit to which the Legislature could go at present, the teachers had always been reasonable in the past, to the point that salaries in the profession had dropped below those for unskilled factory labor. Whether the teachers obtained their goal in 1947, there would be no peace for the politicians until they did.
"The C. of C. Bites a Businessman" comments on the Chamber of Commerce expression of dissatisfaction with the Eastern Air Lines air routes into Charlotte, as well as the inadequate passenger service provided by the Seaboard Railway and the lack of a downtown ticket office at Southern Railway, plus the criticism of Duke Power Company for inadequate buses. The piece thinks the transportation companies were doing the best they could but might do better with such fires lit beneath them.
Drew Pearson discusses the beginning this date of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in Lake Success. The forum would allow the smaller nations to consider and debate issues, to make recommendations, but not to act. The initial discussions would not accomplish much, but, like the Continental Congresses within the fledgling United States, they would likely lead to greater things. For it was debate which constantly shaped the direction of the Western world.
One of the most important issues before the Assemby was the veto on the Security Council. Cuba would propose its elimination. Russia would oppose the move, as would the U.S. and Great Britain, albeit the latter two countries set to propose that it be eliminated in time.
Another major issue would be Palestine, with other mandates and trusteeships also set to cause furious debate. Some members would seek to wrest Palestine from British control, granted to it under a mandate created by the defunct League of Nations. Russia would challenge the status of Pacific islands held by the United States.
The location of the headquarters would also be discussed, many delegates not happy with the perceived dearth of New York hospitality and wanting it moved to Europe. San Francisco would also again put in a bid for becoming the headquarters.
The British would resist providing figures of its troop presence on foreign soil. Russia would demand it. The U.S. would not hesitate to provide such figures.
The U.N. had made good progress on such matters as refugees, health, aid to children, reconstruction, and human rights. Though not given great publicity, these were among the most important jobs of the organization.
He next returns to the report of Assistant Attorney General O. John Rogge, resulting from the investigation of the Nazis in Germany after the war, this time focusing on the role of Father Coughlin of Detroit and whether his anti-Semitic sermons were inspired or sponsored by the Nazis. It appeared that Father Coughlin had sought help from Hitler, sending an agent to meet with him. But the Nazis concluded that he did not need any help in getting out his message. Father Coughlin's agent suggested that Hitler make a pro-Christian statement in exchange for the priest's help in the United States in defeating FDR and spreading anti-Semitism. The agent met with Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop to negotiate this deal.
The column then provides the text of a note from the German Foreign Office regarding a letter from father Father Coughlin to the German Honorary Consul in Detroit in August, 1939, in which the priest specified the terms of his offer. He wanted the church in Germany improved to help in his fight against the Jews and Roosevelt.
Father Coughlin had been a frequent topic of conversation in the German Foreign Office.
Marquis Childs, in Los Angeles, finds that the public was irritated with the cumulative effect of 18 months of strikes since the war in Europe had ended, especially with respect to the feuding union bosses. In Los Angeles, a jurisdictional strike was taking place staged by the movie industry set builders, the AFL International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees versus the AFL Conference of Studio Unions, one which threatened to shut down the entire movie industry. Forty-two unions, most of AFL, operated in Hollywood, with 690 separate job classifications.
At stake in the current strike were only a few hundred carpentry jobs and so it seemed a small stake for such a broadly impacting strike. Management believed it to be the product of a dispute between union bosses. The national carpenters' union had over a half million dues paying members. The union boss was rightwing Republican William Hucheson. But the negative publicity attending the strike had worked against labor as a whole and hence against the Democrats in the upcoming election. Perhaps it explained the reason for the strike.
Mr. Hucheson was counting on a conservative Congress favorable to AFL and hostile to CIO. The head of an AFL union would likely be named Secretary of Labor by a conservative Republican President in 1949.
But the promised new labor legislation might wind up hitting AFL as hard as it would CIO. It would likely outlaw the very AFL jurisdictional strike now taking place in Hollywood.
Harold Ickes looks at the Nuremberg executions. He expresses only regret that not all of the guilty had shared in that fate. Senator Robert Taft had objected to the sentences because the convictions were based on ex post facto laws. He favored life imprisonment, but that, too, says Mr. Ickes, would have been pursuant to ex post facto laws and so Mr. Taft was engaging in circumlocution. He finds no problem in the fact that the laws were written after the defeat of Germany. Had Germany won, there would have been no such trial, only summary or virtually summary executions.
Germany had adequate notice after World War I that a new concept of international morality had developed. The Allies could not have predicted the bestial brutality of the Germans in the late war and so could not have been expected to set forth a body of law tailored to such war crimes. There was no precedent for such crimes in modern history.
Whether the proceeding would be helpful in deterring such war crimes remained questionable. Mr. Ickes states that he had sometimes wondered during the trial whether a summary court martial proceeding would have been more effective. Swift punishment after war's end might have had greater impact.
He adds that some newspapers devoted unwarranted space to the suicide of Hermann Goering, that a bare recital of the facts was the only fit treatment. Nor should the broadcast of the executions to America allowed the executed to air their last words.
It appears to Mr. Ickes that the commanders were more interested in creating salacious news stories than in having these debased men pass from the world in ignominy.
A letter from a former messenger of the Southern Express Company in Atlanta at the time of the wreck of the
He says that the statement about the two canaries surviving the wreck was true. An express messenger whom he was to have relieved in Atlanta came through the wreck alive but badly bruised. He only made a few more trips afterward.
The editors then add a letter received by The Richmond Times-Dispatch after the Virginia newspaper had reprinted on October 12 a News editorial on the subject.
This writer confirms the rumored claim that a large number of canaries were flying from the wreckage in the aftermath of the crash, and states that they were being killed by English sparrows. It was not reported at the time because enough tragedy had occurred.
He goes on to explain that the 97 had no schedule, meaning it was an express train, and so was due to travel from Monroe, Va., to Spencer, N.C., a distance of 200 miles without a stop. Steve Broady was not a passenger engineer but rather a freight man. He was used in an emergency as the engineer on the date of the wreck. A few days after the wreck, a passenger engineer told the letter writer that Mr. Broady had stated that he would get the train to Spencer on time or go to hell trying.
A witness to the train passing just before coming to the fatal turn into the trestle where it crashed said that she saw the fireman and Mr. Broady hugging one another as they passed her position, suggesting that they knew they would not make the curve before the Still House trestle.
The black fireman was scalded so badly by the burst steam pipes that he was almost white.
The train, this writer says, carried fine imported lace. Those who came to the accident scene helped themselves to it. The onlookers were allowed to take wreckage as firewood and one farmer hauled wood for several days from the scene.
He adds that a few years after the accident a member of the wrecking crew who normally sat in the door of an old mail car on the wrecking train, was doing so when the train stopped suddenly one day and the door, which operated on rollers, abruptly closed, killing the man almost instantly.
A letter from Tuskegee Institute appeals for gifts of clothing and other necessities for its annual drive to provide farm families with donations for the winter.
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