Thursday, June 13, 1946

The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 13, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the looming maritime strike, set to have begun on Friday at midnight, appeared to have been averted by a tentative agreement to terms as suggested by the Government's Wartime Shipping Administration, a pay raise to merchant seamen of $17.50 per month plus a shortened work week from 56 hours to 48 hours. The maritime unions had originally sought a 40-hour week and had indicated willingness to compromise at 44 hours, rejected by the ship owners.

President Truman went to the airport to wish Secretary of State James Byrnes success on his important second attempt to conclude peace treaties in Paris at the four-power foreign ministers conference. It marked the first time the President had done so and was perceived as indicating the importance of the conference. As before, Senator Tom Connally of Texas and Senator Arthur Vandenburg of Michigan accompanied Secretary Byrnes.

The U.N. Security Council was still considering the case of Franco's Spain. Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko indicated his opposition to a proposal to turn the matter over to the General Assembly.

The Senate rejected an attempt to strip OPA of virtually all controls via an amendment proposed by Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma.

The OPA announced that as price controls would be removed from food, restaurants could follow suit with higher prices to compensate for the higher prices of food.

The House Banking Committee approved the 3.75 billion dollar British loan, sending it to the floor for action the following week. The approval had already passed the Senate.

Senator John Bankhead of Alabama, 73, a Senator since 1931, had died the previous day. He was the brother of the deceased former Speaker of the House William Bankhead and the son of the late Senator John Bankhead. He was also the uncle of actress Talulah Bankhead. Representative John Sparkman, future vice-presidential candidate with Adlai Stevenson in 1952, would be elected the following November to fill the seat.

Senator Carter Glass of Virginia had died just two weeks earlier.

The House Judiciary Committee indicated that it was not disposed to take any action in consequence of the letter sent from Justice Robert Jackson to the House and Senate judiciary committees, criticizing Justice Hugo Black and contending that he had tried to get Justice Jackson to cover up facts in the 1945 Jewell Ridge mining case in which the successful UMW was represented by Justice Black's former law partner. The committee only had jurisdiction to pass rules and to impeach, and nothing it had seen called for impeachment. It would consider legislation to establish rules or guidelines for recusal by justices.

James Caesar Petrillo was indicted, as expected, in Chicago for a violation of the Lea Labor Act, forbidding a strike to coerce an employer to employ additional union members. As a test of its constitutionality, Mr. Petrillo had deliberately violated the act by inducing three librarians of radio station WAAF to strike to get the station to hire more personnel as librarians.

King Umberto departed Spain for Portugal to begin his exile, following the rejection by voters the previous week of the monarchy. He had been king for a month following the abdication of his father, King Vittorio Emanuelle, who entered voluntary exile in an effort to bolster chances of retention of the monarchy.

In Washington, the death of a 25-year old female short story writer who apparently jumped from the ninth floor of the Lafayette Hotel clad only in panties, was being investigated as a possible murder-suicide. Her male companion, 36, also clad only in underwear, jumped to his death 45 minutes later after barricading himself in the room and refusing entreaties of police to give himself up. He left a note saying that some women tell a man they love him when they don't.

On page 6-A, a story appears of test pilot Jack Woolams, who would soon try to fly faster than the speed of sound in Bell Aircraft's experimental plane, the XS-1.

Mr. Woolams would die just two and a half months later during a test flight of a P-39 Airacobra near Lake Ontario, N.Y., at speeds approaching 400 mph.

On the editorial page, "Justice Jackson's Sensational Cable" discusses the cable from Justice Robert Jackson to the House and Senate judiciary committees criticizing Justice Hugo Black. It remarks that Marcus Childs had stated a few days before the cable was sent that Justice Jackson had been exhausted by his labors in the Nuremberg trial, and suggests that, coupled with his disappointment over not being named Chief Justice, the cable may have been the result.

The acrimony presented an intolerable situation on the Court, which could not be dismissed lightly. It called for investigation by the Congress. The piece suggests that impeachment might be the only solution. If the charges against Justice Black were true, impeachment might lie. And if they were not true, it would call into question the integrity of Justice Jackson. In any event, one of them, perhaps both, it suggests, ought leave the Court.

It leaves room for the notion that both might have been guilty of nothing worse than poor judgment, Justice Black in refusing to recuse himself in the Jewell Ridge case, and Justice Jackson in making his charges public before they had been investigated.

Yet, bad judgment on the part of Supreme Court Justices was intolerable and "an absolute disqualification".

Neither would leave the bench in the least disgrace. Justice Jackson would die in 1954 while still on the Court, with his good reputation intact. Justice Black would retire in 1971, esteemed as one of the great liberals and civil libertarians in the history of the Court. Little would be remembered or discussed of this unpleasant episode.

Today, canons of judicial ethics would work to require all Federal judges to disclose to litigants any personal relationship either to the parties or their representatives and then afford the parties opportunity to ask for recusal.

More seriously, however, Justice Jackson charged Justice Black with trying to get him to conceal facts in the mining case.

"Watch Those Booby-Traps, Boys" discusses the demand of Drew Pearson in his Sunday radio broadcast that an investigation be undertaken regarding the funneling of thousands of dollars by the Hanes and Chatham families into the campaign of Thurmond Chatham against Congressman John Folger in the Fifth District of North Carolina.

Mr. Chatham had counter-charged that the CIO PAC was pouring thousands of dollars into the Folger campaign. He went further to state that he was on the side of the President while his opponent apparently stood with PAC against the President.

The piece recommends against trying to identify with the Administration for its mercurial nature of late. No sooner than said, Mr. Chatham found himself in disagreement with the President regarding veto of the Case bill.

"Politics South of the Border" comments on the gubernatorial campaign in South Carolina with eleven Democratic candidates stumping the state in advance of the primary. More than half attacked the traditional Barnwell Ring in the state, which had purported control of the Legislature. They damned Washington and Yankee legislation. One had dragged in White Supremacy.

Del O'Neal of Columbia, a preacher's son, had as his chief campaign platform planks bar and cocktail lounges to educate drunks, opening liquor stores at sundown because that was when people needed them, legalizing of gambling, and passage of a liberal divorce law. He appeared to be making the "most astounding political gesture of the century".

A piece from the Winston-Salem Sentinel, titled "A Matter of Co-Operation", sides with The News in its editorial stance that the cities of the state and region ought unite to seek more air routes into the region, that all boats would rise from that cooperative endeavor, and that seat allocations to individual cities could then be worked out equitably.

Drew Pearson comments on some acrimony apparent between Senator Tom Connally and Senator Arthur Vandenburg, arising from tension during the Paris conference, made evident by the discussion in committee of the St. Lawrence Seaway project. Senator Connally opposed it and was opposed to it being presented as an international agreement rather than as a treaty, requiring a two-thirds majority to pass. Senator Vandenburg carped that Senator Connally knew that there was nothing improper about the presentation as an agreement, that he, himself, had done as much in the past. Senator Connally accused Senator Vandenburg of insulting him and demanded a retraction, which never came. Other committee members intervened to preserve the peace.

Senator Walter George of Georgia also became upset regarding the project, which had been pigeonholed for twelve years.

Mr. Pearson notes that the project had been supported by both President Hoover and FDR, and had been planned for years as an international agreement rather than as a treaty.

He next informs that Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson did not know of the President's intention to appoint him to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court until ten minutes prior to the announcement.

Treasury Secretary-designate John Snyder had pleaded with Undersecretary O. Max Gardner to remain in the position and to try to get others at Treasury to do likewise. Former Governor Gardner of North Carolina was having little success at the friendly persuasion.

Lastly, he reports that, with John Snyder and George Allen out of the White House, a new power in the executive advisory team was Commander Clark Clifford of St. Louis, who was ghost-writing some of the President's speeches.

Mr. Clifford would eventually become Secretary of Defense during the last year of the Johnson Administration.

Marquis Childs discusses the upcoming second round of the Paris foreign ministers conference of the Big Four nations. Nothing had occurred since the end of the first meeting to inspire confidence in a salutary result. But things were not quite as bad as they appeared at first glance.

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin would propose a plan to internationalize the Ruhr. It could prove the foundation stone for curing the problems in occupied Germany, and was a plan which ought be acceptable to the French, who wanted the Ruhr separated from Germany. France, Belgium, and Holland would gain significantly by such an arrangement.

The plan contemplated Russia's participation and exchange of food from Eastern Germany for manufactured goods in the West, as envisaged by the Potsdam agreement. "It was not foreseen that a part of Germany should be walled off from the other part."

Internationalizing the Ruhr would remove the primary obstacle to converting Germany into a federation.

Overall, he views the British Labor Government as putting forth creative proposals for peace. The granting of independence to India and the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt, along with the proposal for the Ruhr, provided hopeful signs to the world.

Samuel Grafton writes again from Los Angeles, this time of his visit to the Rodger Young Village, a community of 750 Quonset huts set aside on Griffith Park land for veterans and their families. It had the feel of an Army camp as there were no trees, just the huts. The huts were divided in half to supply housing for two families, each unit renting for $35 per month. The only thing the families had in common was that the husband had been in the service.

The village was operated by the E.B.B.D. Corp. which anticipated keeping it going for at least five years.

The transitory living of the war years had now carried over to peacetime and it could be several years before all of these veterans found permanent housing. Most of them had young children six and under.

After leaving the village, he found it shocking to realize the price exacted by the age from its young generation, a generation still paying. As he entered again the more permanent world of Los Angeles, he found it suddenly strange, full of people who had not been forced to move in years.

A letter writer finds the labor unions demanding everything they could get for as little work as possible and suggests it as a destructive device to the country during reconversion. He cites the allegorical story told by his preacher regarding a motherless calf as emblematic of the labor problem in the country. The calf grew into a bull and killed the farmer who had nurtured him.

He questions whether Armageddon was on the horizon.

A letter writer claims to express the sentiments of most of the men on Okinawa, that a good draft bill which would assure the proper complement of armed forces ought be passed to enable rotation of personnel overseas. He says that the men resented being called draft dodgers by such men as Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi. A year or 18 months overseas was enough.

Herblock.

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