Tuesday, May 14, 1946

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, May 14, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the coal strike continued as John L. Lewis persisted in the demand that a welfare fund for miners be established under union control. He now proposed that the operators pay a seven percent payroll tax to constitute the fund, instead of the previously proposed 10-cent royalty per ton of coal, the latter not legal under the Wagner Act, prohibiting capital from making direct payments to unions.

The temporary housing bill, with its restored 400 million dollars in stimulus subsidies to builders passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the President for signature.

Housing Expediter Wilson Wyatt complained that the Civilian Production Administration was approving as essential too much non-residential construction, having approved 605 million dollars worth during the first four weeks of the freeze on non-residential construction.

The Senate was prepared to accept the House version of the draft bill, exempting 18 and 19-year olds and fathers. The draft was set to expire the following day. The bill only extended the draft for 45 days.

In Paris at the four-power foreign ministers conference, V. M. Molotov proposed withdrawal of Soviet troops from Bulgaria provided that Allied troops would depart from Italy, a condition unacceptable to the British and Americans. Ernest Bevin stated that the British would withdraw from Italy provided the Russians would leave Rumania.

The British and French were reported to agree that Trieste could be internationalized, but the United States and Russia adhered to their previous positions on the city.

Russia reportedly had indicated to Syrian officials that the Soviets would back the Arab cause on Jewish immigration to Palestine should the matter be brought before the U.N. Security Council.

The Iranian Army prepared for war with Azerbaijan Province. Sources in Iran expressed the belief that the military and local northern tribes were backing the Shah rather than the Government.

Hal Boyle, still in Berlin, reports that the Jew remained one of the major question marks in Europe, was attempting to solve his dilemma by seeking refuge in Palestine. It was believed that of the six million non-Russian Jews in Europe before the war, there were now only 1.5 million still alive. Those still living, however, were tough, aggressive, and knew what they wanted.

Anti-Semitic Europeans contended, albeit without basis and absurdly, that the Jews formed the backbone of the black market and other illegal activities in Europe.

Mr. Boyle provides a verbatim summary of the situation written at his request by a young Jew living in Germany, saying that the Jew was done with Europe. They effectively had lost in the war, but their spirits remained tough. Thousands wandered about Europe aimlessly, but still had a purpose and leadership toward that purpose—to emigrate to Palestine.

The Jews were moving toward Southern Italy, from which they hoped to disembark. They sold food and belongings in the black market to be able to afford to buy or charter a boat for the purpose. They had the numbers of the death camps tattooed on their arms.

Nothing, he said, could thwart their determination to reach their goal.

In Fayetteville, the State Board of Conservation & Development answered charges of the North Carolina Wildlife Association, stating that all of its funds went to propagation and conservation of fish and game in the state. The shortage of quail was the result of nature, and fees were increased for hunting licenses to acquire more lands and waters for wildlife and fish.

Hawaii became a state in 1959.

In Pinehurst, Charles Cannon of Cannon Mills told the American Cotton Manufacturers that price control and OPA were the culprits causing the black market.

General Jacob L. Devers, head of the Army Ground Forces, arrived in Charlotte, scheduled to make a speech before the Jaycees in Gastonia. Foul weather had forced a landing in Charlotte, one still complicated by the weather, thick as pea soup, nay, split-pea soup, nay, jaypee soup, but expertly handled by the Army Air Force pilot.

In London, a 22-year old woman died in her sweetheart's arms when he accidentally hugged her too hard, placing pressure on a nerve in her neck, causing immediate paralysis of the lung and heart.

On the editorial page, "A Question of Confiscation" comments on the North Carolina bankers speaking out again against the North Carolina law of escheats to the state, for the benefit of the University, of assets unclaimed for five years.

Originally, the statutory limit was $5, but the Legislature had removed the limit such that now the University received approximately a half million dollars under the law. That was so despite over 90 percent of the banks of the state having refused to cooperate with the escheats law.

The fund formed only principal, the interest from which went to scholarships. The University trustees promised to refund any money when the rightful original depositor claimed it.

So the escheats fund was as safe a place as any for a depositor to have his money. The banks, however, disagreed. The University had the better of the argument, to devote the idle money to education until it was claimed.

"Crusades, or Family Squabbles?" points out that the conflict between AFL and CIO was an old one, stemming ultimately from the different approaches of the organizations to union structure, the guild unions versus the horizontal unions. Nevertheless, hearing the rhetoric regarding competition in organizing in the South, the listener was struck by the level of mutual obloquy.

William Green, speaking at the AFL convention in Asheville, had labeled CIO "Communistic". Likewise, the CIO regularly bragged on its victories over AFL unionizing efforts.

The important thing to workers in the South seeking union organization, especially in the textile mills, was not whether there would be Communists or reactionaries organizing them but rather that they become organized.

"Spare the Rod or Go to Court" tells of a ten-year old boy in Wilson having received paddles from three different teachers, and when the boy showed the results to his father, the latter found a lawyer and sued for assault.

The piece finds it suggestive of the society becoming inured to the false modern theory of exercising undue gentility toward wayward youth, spoiling the child.

In our day, the gym teachers had authority to spank virtually at will, and some did. We never felt the paddle though, not once. For we were proper, having learned appropriate discipline at HOME. Some don't, seek to spank others, but then get SPANKED, Spanky.

A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "Mr. Flagg and the Ladies", comments, as had the New York World-Telegram, reprinted the previous Thursday, on Mr. Flagg's taking to task female dress in blue jeans and other sloppy attire.

The piece remarks that Mr. Flagg's observations and blank response from his own daughter were nothing new, that all fathers endured the same thing with their daughters, departure in the face of stories of the father's own more disciplined and less spoiled youth.

Mr. Flagg had also suggested that every time a new fashion came along, women followed as sheep. The piece finds it likely as old as Antony observing the same of Cleopatra. All men had seen the like: women changing fashions every year in response to the changing fashions of the dress designers, and all had given up long ago on seeking to change the behavior pattern. Mr. Flagg, it suggests, ought also throw in the towel.

Drew Pearson reports that not long ago, Evalyn Walsh McLean of Hope Diamond fame, had thrown a soiree to which John L. Lewis was invited and seated between Mrs. Leon Henderson, wife of the former OPA head, and Mrs. A. Mitchell Palmer, widow of President Wilson's Attorney General, neither of whom cared much for Mr. Lewis but transacted conversation across him between each other.

Eventually, a male guest hallooed Mr. Lewis and he hallooed back, and Mrs. Henderson, then wishing to recognize Mr. Lewis, asked whether he remembered Mrs. Palmer, to which he replied that he could scarcely forget the widow of the man who threatened him with jail if he did not desist in a strike within 24 hours, to which Mrs. Palmer responded that she wondered what Emily Post would have her reply to that one. Mr. Lewis then asked, diplomatically, "Who in hell is Emily Post?"

The strike to which he referred was in 1919, which led, in Mingo County, W. Va., to riots and killings.

He next tells that among Boston aristocrats, there was a saying that the "Lodges speak only to Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God." Yet John Cabot, U.S. charge d'affaires in Argentina, had recently spoken to Juan Peron, newly elected President, at the invitation of Sr. Peron, a conference to be held in secret. He told Mr. Cabot that he was an advocate of democracy, and that the diplomatic heat being placed on Uruguay was not contrary to this intent. He further stated that Argentina would stand firmly with the U.S. and Britain in the coming war with Russia. Mr. Cabot responded that he foresaw no such war and amicable relations between the U.S. and Argentina rested entirely on Argentina's acceptance of the Chapultepec accord, guaranteeing the autonomy and sovereignty of all democracies in the Western Hemisphere.

Mr. Pearson notes that a Russian trade mission had been in Buenos Aires for some time ingratiating itself to Sr. Peron.

He next informs that on Capitol Hill, Congress had reacted in two camps to the coal strike. The Republicans found it a blessing in disguise, as Mr. Lewis could undermine the New Deal gains as no other labor leader could. It took the onus off them to vote for the Case anti-labor bill because labor itself was now at odds with Mr. Lewis. Having already voted to emasculate OPA, they did not want to hang another albatross about their necks. By the same token, those who had voted for the Case bill could point to Mr. Lewis as the prime reason for it.

Finally, he reports that veterans were planning during the summer to wear their uniforms in a visible protest of the failure of the Government to force the hand of clothing manufacturers to make more men's clothing than women's clothing in which there was higher profit.

He notes that there was no regulation against the wearing of the uniforms, provided all insignias were removed.

Samuel Grafton suggests that the failure of the foreign ministers conference in Paris could be termed a routine disaster, as it was the year of such disasters. When the first failure had occurred the previous September, discussion of the failure was active. But now such failure was being taken in stride as an expected result.

At present, the situations in New York at the U.N. and in Paris appeared as only series of moves, without accomplishing anything of substance. And the disaster was becoming more permanent.

The New York Times reported that the White House had come to accept that the world would be divided into a Soviet domain and a non-Soviet domain, and that the United States should seek to bolster the efforts to rebuild the Western bloc. Such a policy was simply to institutionalize the disaster.

"It is like an old, cold quarrel, now, in which the slaps are being monotonously exchanged, number ninety-five, number ninety-six, number ninety-seven, and in which both sides have almost forgotten if they ever knew, who delivered the first." Not even the offer of an alliance could end the series of slaps.

"And there is no last paragraph to this column, but absolutely none; for the point of this piece is not to offer a gadget, but to decry gadgets."

Bertram Benedict explains why the President would have lost his ability to end the coal strike by seizing the mines had the Senate not acted quickly to pass the draft bill, that Section 3 of the Smith-Connally Act of 1943, which provided the authority for seizure, was, in form, an amendment to the Selective Service Act of 1940. The other parts of the 1943 Act were independent, providing criminal penalties for support of a strike of a Government-seized plant. Moreover, the President had authority to seize plants under the 1941 War Powers Act.

"The present crisis engendered by the coal strike is not unlike that of 1919."

You know the rest; as well, how the rent was defrayed.

A letter comments on the testimony at Nuremberg of Admiral Karl Doenitz that a German U-boat had sunk the passenger ship Athenia in September, 1939 at the start of the war because the U-boat commander mistook it for a converted cruiser.

The letter brings up the matter to remind of the reaction of three Senators at the time to the sinking, that it was part of a British plot to bring America into the war. The America First Committee had reacted likewise.

He suggests it as evidence that it was difficult to recognize Nazism and Fascism for what it was, now that it was on trial in a courtroom.

A letter from Inez Flow reacts negatively to the editors' reaction to her letter of the previous Thursday which had reacted to what she had perceived as an inaccurate heading to her previous letter before that.

She contends that it was The News, in a piece of February 18, 1946, which had divided the quote, which the editors accused her of doing. She says the original quote as contained in the article by Burke Davis had the phrases broken, such that the second part of the quote was a separate sentence; and so she was not guilty as charged of "breaking off a sentence."

The editors respond: "How's this?"

A letter writer says that a few months earlier when the Southern Conference for Human Welfare met in North Carolina, three newspapers and a statewide columnist had warned of the organization being emblematic of the CIO and Communists taking over. But when the news came of the recent Klan activities, the same newspapers and the columnist were mute. He asks therefore whether progress was really being made in race relations.

Herblock.

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