Saturday, July 20, 1946

The Charlotte News

Saturday, July 20, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the House-Senate conference showed hopeful signs of reaching agreement on the OPA revival bill. A proposal to send the bill back to the Military Committee, which would have effectively tabled it for the session, was defeated. A compromise had been worked out whereby food controls would remain off for a certain period and then be automatically restored unless the three-man board created by the bill, to be appointed by the President, would find their restoration unnecessary. Only the time for that period was in dispute.

OPA head Paul Porter stated that even if controls were restored, some of the damage of the previous three weeks likely could not be remedied. He added, however, that much of it could still be salvaged with prompt action by Congress.

The House passed a heavily amended atomic energy bill, differing from the Senate bill, and thus requiring reconciliation in conference. The House bill provided for a military person on the five-member commission and for authority of the military to produce atomic bombs under certain conditions. It also provided for the death penalty for breaches of security. The FBI was authorized to conduct a loyalty check of all persons connected with development of atomic energy.

Representative John Rankin had urged the loyalty checks on the basis that the War Department and every other department of the Government were "packed" with Communists.

Action on membership of the United States in the World Court was delayed apparently until 1947 by the introduction of amendments prepared by future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Senator Arthur Vandenburg set forth the recommendations and indicated that the Senate Military Affairs Committee would need to study them further before taking action on the proposed membership. The President and Secretary of State Byrnes, as well as Senator Tom Connally, favored submission to the jurisdiction of the Court.

One of the objections raised by Mr. Dulles was the prospect of other nations not submitting, under particular circumstances, to the Court's jurisdiction on a given issue while the United States would be bound by the assertion of charges against it from those same nations.

The War Investigating Committee turned its attention to Representative John Coffee of Washington who received in 1941 a $2,500 campaign contribution from a war contractor. The committee wished to hear his explanation. Members of the committee believed that he was covering a bribe with a belated explanation of the payment as a contribution.

The American Army in Germany determined that Fred Kaltenbach of Iowa, who had been sought as a traitor for anti-American broadcasts on behalf of Germany during the war, had died of natural causes in a Soviet detention camp the previous October. Mr. Kaltenbach was "Lord Hee Haw" of Radio Berlin. He had been charged with treason in absentia in June, 1943 in the District of Columbia. He held a master's degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Berlin University. While a teacher in Dubuque, he had organized a Nazi group and was then dismissed. He had been an Army officer in World War I and had married a German woman he met during the war. His belief in Nazism stemmed from his conclusion that the Versailles Treaty had been unduly punitive to Germany.

In New York, a week-long sympathy strike at Macy's by 5,000 employees supporting the CIO Drivers and Helpers Union ended when the dispute was settled.

In Oroville, California, a fourteen-year old boy admitted to police that he had committed two murders and was planning a third. One of his victims was a fourteen-year old girl, strangled, whose mother confronted the boy in the courtroom and asked him why he had killed her. He lowered his eyes and said nothing. The boy's mother, however, leaped forward and struck the victim's mother, claiming that she was lying. The other victim was a married woman, who had been shot in the back as she turned to get the boy a cookie and some water. He had also shot at her husband and assaulted their daughter and a six-year old daughter of a neighbor.

Off Peru, three Army P-47 planes which had taken off from Howard Field in Panama were missing in a storm, had not been heard from in 36 hours.

No Devil's Triangle mystery, this time, as with Flight 19.

In Clear Lake, Iowa, the chief of police was cleaning a jail cell when he suddenly found himself locked inside, the door having shut on its own—perhaps the little shove of a disgruntled prisoner passed on to the other side.

The undaunted chief, however, managed to use a screwdriver to remove the door hinges, but still could not open the heavy door—a ghost with a heavy foot. He proved too large to get out through the window and became stuck, with half of his body inside and half hanging out—a ghost with a sense of humor.

A friend happened along and removed a grating above the chief's head, enabling him to extricate himself and return to the cell—a ghost with a sense of irony, as well as ridicule. The friend also could not open the unhinged heavy door—perhaps more than one ghost involved by that point.

Finally, the chief kicked the door and it opened—the ghost, no doubt, wishing to prove his point to the chief and give him something about which to cogitate.

"Explanation", of October 5, 1945, incidentally, is now here. "Caller" is now here. "Third Game" is now here. Numb Nells are now here.

On the editorial page, "How Can You Tell Who's Winning?" comments on the President's statement at a press conference that he was indeed expecting James Pendergast to lead the Goats in opposition to the re-election of Missouri Representative Roger Slaughter, a symbolic sacrificial lamb, perhaps, for his having consistently opposed the President's legislative proposals.

The piece suggests that if the President intended any widespread purge, he would find 83 of 106 Democratic Congressmen from the South in the same category as Mr. Slaughter, forming the coalition which had worked to defeat the Truman legislative agenda thus far.

It rendered ironic the President's statement that he would take to the stump if he could prove helpful in winning seats. The piece suggests that it would be better for the Democrats if the Republicans won majorities in the fall in both chambers. Mr. Truman, it recommends, should therefore offer his stump services to Representative Carroll Reece, head of the GOP.

And, of course, the Republicans would so triumph; and it would prove to be the soundest strategy for winning back both houses in 1948, plus retention of the presidency on sounder footing.

"How to Steal an Election" finds the peculiar county unit voting system in Georgia, under which Gene Talmadge had won the gubernatorial nomination, and, hence, for all intents and purposes, the election, to be a system inherently unfair and weighted toward rural areas, disfranchising the cities. James Carmichael had won the cities and the overall popular vote, but had lost the unit voting.

In a Congressional race, incumbent Helen Mankin had won the popular vote by 11,000 ballots, but lost the unit votes. She was challenging under equal protection the unit voting system.

Fulton County had 400,000 people but only six unit votes. DeKalb, with 87,000 population, also had six unit votes. Rockdale, with but 8,000 people, had a third of the unit votes of each of those two populous counties. Nevertheless, the latter county had decided the Mankin contest by giving its two unit votes to the challenger, despite only 1,000 ballots having been cast. Atlanta and Fulton were thus effectively disfranchised. Moreover, the unit voting system had not been used in the district in several years and was resurrected only to defeat Ms. Mankin, deemed too progressive.

While there might be some justification in unit voting for such offices as State Senate, when applied to all offices, it worked a clear injustice.

It wishes Ms. Mankin well in her contest of the system therefore and concludes that any limit on the franchise was an invitation to corruption.

As we indicated, that case in October would be dismissed by the Supreme Court without opinion, with instructions to the U.S. District Court to dismiss it.

We're sure glad that this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. That was terrible. Popular vote winner not being allowed to win. Have you ever?

That could never happen at the national level though, not in modern times.

"Mr. Mills Adds a Dimension" reports of the losing campaign by a Commissioner of Iredell County, having supported erection of a schoolhouse in West Statesville, that the editors did not know of his general merits but cherished his ad:

"I stuck my neck out for a schoolhouse. And I am still going to have that schoolhouse, regardless. One enemy has a neck longer than mine, and I have been a friend to him since he was born. Anyway his neck is longer than mine, and some day a question mark will be made out of it."

Mr. Mills then added his thanks for not being elected as he would not have wished it without the schoolhouse, and the election was stolen from him. He vowed to live a better life, but wished to be crossed off the list of politicians for their "cheap, low-down, insignificant, incorrigible politics".

The editorial finds the statements in a full-page ad taken out in the Statesville Daily to be refreshing candor and far superior to the usual concession statement of "best wishes". It hopes that Mr. Mills would achieve success ultimately in his drive to have built the schoolhouse, probably a little red one.

A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "The Tobacco Growers Know", comments on the travails of the tobacco farmer, forced to deal with a dozen or so buyers, and hence at the whimsy of a fickle market. He had learned the value of the Government's quota system on acreage and support prices on flue-cured tobacco under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration during the thirties. The farmers had just voted overwhelmingly to support quotas for the next three years.

They understood the benefits of the New Deal and voices in protest of it were lost on them.

Marquis Childs discusses the lobbying efforts by large businesses to restrict the distribution of patents by the Government on atomic energy, such that only a select few would have access, those firms which had participated during the war in their development, rather than having the patents, which were developed under Government contracts, owned by the Government and distributable freely in the marketplace, subject to licensure by the atomic energy commission. The Senate bill had provided that no patent concerning fissionable material could be owned by a particular company. But the lobbying efforts with the House Military Affairs Committee had created confusion, such that a proposal was afoot to restrict the patents based on "private enterprise".

The Senate bill made sense in context because the atomic energy commission would be the only agency with the right to produce fissionable material. Under the limited patent scheme being considered in the House, competition would be squelched and monopolies would quickly result, monopolies in which the Government would be a partner.

Senator Arthur Vandenburg had inserted in the Senate bill a provision whereby no license for patents could be issued by the atomic energy commission until after a report had been filed with Congress regarding its intended use and a period of 90 days had lapsed. That would give Congress time to decide whether the particular patent application was appropriate in the context of the whole of the economy.

Mr. Childs views the Senate position as the only reasonable one to insure both control of atomic energy and also maintenance of the democratic system.

Samuel Grafton finds that the drift to the right in the country was being greeted by conservatives with uncritical joy as if such a change was always good, "like strawberry ice cream". But at the same time, the end of price control had resulted in a slump in the stock market, a reaction to buyers' boycotts and inflation, an oddly concurrent event with the shift to conservatism. Some victories could be costly.

One of the results might be, he posits, that the House would become Republican, with the Senate still Democratic, and "an average man" in the White House, against a backdrop of inflation. Thus would come the problem of getting through the ensuing two years.

It was necessary, he believes, to change the climate of exultation regarding this rightward drift, as it had stocked within it unwanted potential for untoward results, excesses, such as the removal of all price controls on food under the Senate bill, while leaving controls on the price of fine cars, and continuance of food subsidies after removal of the ceilings. There was also a growth of cynicism in American life, that after winning the war, the country was slowly blowing an opportunity gained from the victory.

The Republican Party, as a result of the conservative swing, would choose another "dreary road, a dreary name", rather than Harold Stassen.

The swing therefore needed to be tempered in enthusiasm by the realization that it was not necessarily going to be "peaches and cream", that it could also carry with it a recipe for willful self-defeat.

From April 13, 1946, "April" is now here. "Know-how" is now here. You keep playing musical chairs with us, Sonny, and we'll make of you quick draw.

A letter from a meteorologist, a 1st Lieutenant in the Air Corps, comments on the series of articles by Reed Sarratt regarding employment opportunities in Charlotte for veterans and the unemployment compensation system. He says that the average veteran had a right to complain about a $27 per week job, the average wage offered him, and a choice instead not to work while receiving $20 per week in Government unemployment compensation. The wage was not enough to live on, and a veteran with four or five years behind him of being told what to do and when to do it, had not expected to come home to such conditions. He criticizes Mr. Sarratt for not actually interviewing the veterans who had turned down such low paying jobs and instead finding fault with them for living off Uncle Sam.

The editors respond that the newspaper had never charged that veterans as a class were loafing, as suggested by the writer, but that many had chosen to accept the rocking-chair money in lieu of work. They agree that better paying jobs should be made available. But in 1944, the average pay in the country was only $21.50 per week, and in North Carolina, $11.30. Moreover, the unemployment compensation was hardly going to raise the national average wage. Veterans were not entitled to be treated as a special class to receive twice the average wage.

Drew Pearson devotes the bulk of his column to his reasons for going to Atlanta the following day at the invitation of Governor Ellis Arnall to broadcast from the steps of the Capitol his usual Sunday radio program, this time to be devoted to a challenge to the Klan. Many had told him that he was simply giving the Klan undue attention, that their resurgence was but a ripple in the pond and their shadow would not cast large or long on the landscape.

He uses a history lesson to try to dispel the notion, based on the same reaction to the Klan in the late teens and early twenties when they had reached their peak in membership nationwide under the Imperial Wizardry of Dr. Hiram Evans, a dentist.

After going through that history of the resurgence of the Klan, he explains the organization as being little more than a Ponzy scheme for the enrichment of the leaders, each of whom received his share of membership dues from the suckers who joined it. It became a lucrative source of income for those at the top, all based on dissemination of hate through the society.

Governor Henry Allen of Kansas, serving from 1919-23, Governor John M. Parker of Louisiana, in office from 1920-24, and Governor Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia, in office from 1917-21, had been especially active in fighting it during those years. Governor Dorsey had reported 135 lynchings in Georgia in two years, with blacks in some counties being treated as wild beasts, in others, sold as slaves, while in others, removed completely from the area. Only two of the 135 cases involved the classic basis for lynching, alleged rape of a white woman.

During those years, it was impossible in some states to achieve public office without being a member. In 1922, membership rose at the rate of 3,500 members per day. By 1925, the Klan had nearly nine million members.

In those days, too, observers had said that the Klan would die a natural death, to leave it alone. Instead, it had spread as a wildfire. Laws were passed against wearing masks in public. But they were not always enforced.

The Klan had adopted a block-by-block membership apparatus—a kind of neighborhood-watch form of vigilanteism.

Solicitors of membership dues of $10 each got a cut. So did the Grand Dragon, Kleagle, and Imperial Wizard. The leaders then paid off police and bought state contracts through bribes. Thus it obtained practical immunity for the night rides.

"To be sure, this meant a system whereby one Government operated inside another Government. But that made no difference, for one was elected by the other and the elected Government was usually powerless against the invisible Government."

Once a Grand Dragon or Imperial Wizard had supported a candidate for Governor, he expected political repayment. That was how Hiram Evans got his asphalt contracts with the Administration of Georgia Governor E.D. Rivers, a member of the Klan elected in 1936. The asphalt contracts were $2 per ton higher than other Southern states paid.

Walter Boussart represented the school textbook combine and was determined to sell books to the State through his KKK connections in State Government. Mr. Boussart had been an errand boy for Will Hays, former GOP national chairman during the period 1918-21, and the first official movie censor of Hollywood, serving from 1922 through 1945, when U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Eric Johnston succeeded him, serving until his death, August 22, 1963.

Bob Lyons, former treasurer of the Indiana Klan, represented the chain stores in trying to defeat a chain store tax sought to be imposed under Governor Rivers. In the process, Mr. Lyons found out about the Hiram Evans asphalt deal and told the authorities, resulting in two indictments against Dr. Evans, a fine of $15,000 eventually being imposed.

He concludes therefore that no chance should be taken that the Klan might again obtain a grip on state governments.

As we once suggested, Lester and Mo' Lester.

He adds that NAM opposed OPA on the ground that the latter kept down production. But figures from June showed production at its highest point in history.

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