Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Columbia, Tenn., a race riot had transpired in which ten persons had been wounded and 70 arrested, 68 of whom were black, charged with crimes ranging from assault with intent to commit murder to disorderly conduct. The trouble had begun the previous afternoon, according to the Sheriff, when a radio repairman was shoved through a plate glass window by a black woman and her son. Four of the town's eight policemen were then shot when they entered the black section, the "Mink Slide", to try to restore order. The other six wounded were shot during the course of the night. Eventually, a hundred highway patrolmen arrived on the scene and restored order.

A house to house search for weapons was in the process of being conducted by members of the State Highway Patrol and by deputized members of the State Guard, in both the white and black sections of Columbia from which police suspected the trouble to have emanated.

The State Safety Commissioner mounted a loudspeaker truck and proceeded hourly through "Mink Slide", saying, "I want you people to know that we are here to protect you as well as the people on the other side of town."

Someone fired a pistol at him from a small barbershop.

France declared the frontier with Franco's Spain closed, that Spain posed a danger to international security. The Consultative Assembly of France had the week before voted to protest the execution by the Franco Government of ten Spanish Republicans, convicted of treason for trying to reorganize the Republic by re-establishing the Socialist Party. France had sought in December British and American support in denouncing Franco.

The Soviet commandant at Mukden in Manchuria confirmed previous reports that the Russians were removing heavy industry built by the Japanese in Manchuria and transporting it to Russia, pursuant to an agreement of the Big Three reached at either Yalta or Potsdam. The heavy equipment, the commandant stated, was considered war booty. He implied that the Big Three agreement had been that the area should be stripped of heavy industry, and, since the Russians could not leave it, they had shipped some of it home. Whether that contingency was intended as part of the agreement was not made clear.

CIO president Philip Murray joined the chorus of labor dissent to President Truman's wage-price formula, saying that any return to wartime wage controls would be disastrous. William Green of AFL already had denounced the plan the previous week.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee voted to cut in half House-approved appropriations for OPA and the Civilian Production Administration for their operating budgets through June 30. It was predicted, however, that the Senate would restore the appropriations.

For the first time, it was reported that J. A. Krug, former chair of the War Production Board, might, as would be the case, be appointed to become the new Secretary of Interior to replace Harold Ickes following his stormy resignation. The announcement might come as early as the afternoon of this date.

Debate on the President's proposed housing plan to build 2.7 million homes in two years began in the House, with Representative Fred Smith of Ohio calling the plan "Communistic".

He obviously preferred to see veterans and their families living in quonset huts, garages and basements.

Ed Pauley was taking under advisement the suggestion from many in Congress, from both sides of the aisle, that he withdraw his name from nomination as Undersecretary of the Navy, provided the Senate Naval Committee would report that there was no basis for the charges against his character.

Which was a kind of funny way of saying if you will leave us alone, you corrupt louse, we will say that you're a good egg after all.

He said he was still there, despite the appeals to have him withdraw. He had demanded an apology from Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire for having smeared him with a false allegation of pre-war sales of his company's oil to Japan. Mr. Pauley said that long before the war began, he had ordered a halt to the supply of oil which might reach Japan.

According to Mayor William O'Dwyer, the citywide transit strike threatened for New York had been called off after it was agreed that a committee would be formed to study the issue of wages and labor relations in the transit industry.

A six-day old strike of 700 city workers in Houston had been settled after thousands of workers engaged in a general strike in support of the city workers' demands. The terms allowed workers to resume work without penalty and that a commission would then study the wage situation to establish comparable pay for similar work in private industry.

Hal Boyle, still in New Delhi, reports of the turbulent past of the city, that it had been rebuilt eight times following wars. Old Delhi had a thousand years of history behind it. It was crowded with a half-million Indian inhabitants, separated from the new section of the capital only by a grassy park. New Delhi was modern and pristine. Old Delhi was full of disease and poverty, flies and bazaars. The former was Little Lord Fauntleroy; the latter was Huck Finn.

The 161 Alaps native to Bikini Atoll are pictured, in preparation for being moved to a new home to make way for the atomic bomb tests set to begin in May, but which would be postponed until July.

On the editorial page, "Is It Ignorance or Contempt?" comments on a complaint by a member of the City School Board against the Police Department practice of holding incommunicado and without bond prisoners charged with public drunkenness. The member had sought release of a school janitor charged with drunkenness and found that he was not entitled to bail during a four hour period following arrest on such a charge. The four hour period was not imposed or authorized by law, but was an arbitrary procedure set up by the police.

"Old 42 Moves Up to 14th" comments on North Carolina exceeding its normal 42nd position among the states in most categories during the drive for the American Cancer Society, in which the state showed up 14th with a contribution of over $100,000 out of the four million collected nationally. Half of the contribution would be spent within the state.

It might have added that North Carolina produced the number one cancer causing agent and produced more of it than any other state in the union, still the case. So, by justice, it ought to have been the number one contributor, per capita at least, to the fund. But in 1946, they did not know quite so much, or at least hid it from themselves, re the dangers of cigarette smoking, as would continue to be the case until the Surgeon General's Report of 1964 stated a definite causal connection between cigarettes and cancer, resulting in 1965 in the mandatory warnings on cigarette packs.

"Two Handy Little Journals" finds the current party lines troubling, with a bloc of liberal Republicans regularly voting with the President and a bloc of conservative Democrats regularly opposing his programs.

Drew Pearson apologizes for some of his February 22 column regarding George Allen, newly confirmed as RFC chairman, and the participation of an insurance company, of which Mr. Allen was made vice-president in 1938 while Federal investigation was ongoing, in a $330,000 bribe paid to Tom Pendergast for which the latter went to prison and the insurance company executives went free.

He corrects his errors and the "injustice" to the "delightful" Mr. Allen. It was not simply the case. He had also been vice-president of three other insurance companies involved in the scandal, "one of the worst pieces of graft in the history of American insurance." Each of those had also hired Mr. Allen during the Federal Government investigation into the scandal in 1938, and all had done so to acquire his contacts with high Washington officials, extending into the White House. The Government case was eventually settled and none of the other company executives went to prison either.

"The column takes this opportunity to rectify its previous slight to Mr. Allen's prowess as the champion American holder of vice-presidencies and directorships—now a director of the RFC."

He notes that in the past the RFC had loaned millions to insurance companies, as well as other companies, such as railroads, paying huge premiums to insurance companies. Meanwhile, Mr. Allen intended to maintain some of his corporate positions while also serving the Government.

He next states, unapologetically, that when Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace stated that the school children of America were worse fed that Iowa hogs, he likely did not know that Congress had set aside half of a 15 million dollar appropriation for a nationwide school lunch program so that a Federal building in Nashville could be constructed, an act of patronage for the King of Patronage, Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, chair of the Appropriations Committee. Some in Congress had described the latter project as unnecessary, especially given its cost of nearly six million dollars, one saying that he liked his pork cooked, "not raw".

The column next relates that the three able men of the Government fact-finding board which recommended a 16-cent pay increase for meatpacking workers, while stating that only 5 cents of it could be absorbed by the meatpackers without a price increase, might have more carefully examined the newspapers. In December, it had been reported that a number of smaller meatpackers had signed a contract with both AFL and CIO unions for a 15 cents per hour wage increase without any condition regarding increased prices. Swift had agreed to a ten cents per hour increase.

But for some reason, the fact-finders found it necessary that 11 cents of their recommended increase should be borne by the consumer.

Marquis Childs discusses the bill passed by the House to put the brakes on James Petrillo's despotic rule of the music industry with his Musicians Union and its demand for silence on the radio and in live performances unless the sound was delivered by union members. The final straw had come when he refused access to the radio by programs broadcast from foreign countries.

A letter writer assails the "ostentatious display of ignorance" by the letter written the previous week attacking the Catholic Church as being totalitarian and hating democracy. He stresses that Church and State had to remain separate, that many Catholics, Protestants, and Jews served the Government without bringing their religious doctrine into the governing process. And so he chastises the writer for seeking to make religion a political issue.

In fairness to the previous writer, it has to be noted that he was commenting on the political stands taken through the years since 1929 by the Vatican, historical fact, not seeking to make religion political, even if he overstated the case and left out the crucial fact that the Vatican had renounced Nazism and Fascism at the onset of the war.

Another letter likewise finds the previous letter without sense and invites the writer to meet with her and assess the many Catholic veterans of the war who fought and died to prevent totalitarian forces from controlling the world. She challenges the writer to "come up and see me sometime."

A third letter, from the acting president of Clinton Junior College, voices appreciation for The News editorial column, specifically offering compliment to "Beyond the Color Line"—actually from the Winston-Salem Journal, as re-printed February 20—and "The Coroner's Inquest", apparently referring to the editorial of the same date bearing a slightly different title.

A fourth letter compliments the editorials regarding the abattoir situation and controlled sale of liquor raising revenue for the community, wishes to nominate the writer for Governor.

The editors note that in both cases, it was former Associate Editor Burke Davis, "The People's Platform Choice", and they would pass along to him the nomination.

A fifth letter from a "Wet Reader" also gives support to the Burke Davis article on liquor. He comments that the local bootleggers were getting lazy, too lazy to make much more money, as evidenced by the fact that their Cadillacs were equipped with radios connected to the vacuum hose of the vehicle's distributor so that the radio volume increased as the speed increased. They also had push-button antennas operating on the same principle.