Thursday, August 29, 1946

The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 29, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at Lake Success, N.Y., the Australian delegate to the U.N. Security Council charged that Russia was being prejudiced to the application of Transjordan for membership in the U.N. based on the fact that the Russians had no diplomatic relations with the country. Russia supported the application of the Mongolian People's Republic for admission, against the will of the United States and Great Britain. China also supported the application, but favored its deferral. The United States also opposed the admission of Albania. Afghanistan was approved for admission with little debate.

At Bad Nauheim, Germany, Col. James Kilian, former commander of the Lichfield Prison in England, was convicted and fined $500 for his role in permitting cruel and unusual punishment of American soldiers under detention. He was also reprimanded. He was acquitted for aiding and abetting cruelties for which nine enlisted men and three subordinate officers had been found guilty. He was also acquitted of knowingly permitting the cruelties. He had testified that he knew nothing of the corporal punishments and did not authorize them.

At Nuremberg, war crimes trial defendant Hjalmar Schact threw a cup of coffee on an Associated Press photographer attempting to take his picture during lunch. The photographer wiped off his lens and continued to take the photograph.

The British Colonial Office in London announced that the death sentences given eighteen Stern Gang members for bombing the Haifa railroad yards in Palestine had been commuted to life imprisonment.

In Paris, the Council of Foreign Ministers met to try to clear the impasse at the peace conference caused by submission of some 300 amendments to the five treaties under consideration. Thus far, only 200 words of the 55,000 words of the five treaties had been accepted by the 21-nation conference after five weeks of meetings.

The Ukraine delegate who had declared that at the rate it was going, the conference would not end before 1955, was being unduly optimistic, as in fact, at that pace, World War II would officially be over at the beginning of 1974.

In LaGrange, Ga., the American Cotton Manufacturers Association's executives demanded decontrol of cotton waste products as not impacting retail prices. They also asked the State Department to prevent the type of cutthroat competition in textiles from Japan which had preceded the war.

In Harrisburg, Pa., Governor Edward Martin had ordered a State Police investigation, at the request of the head of the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, of an advertisement placed in The Chambersburg Public Opinion by the Ku Klux Klan of Pennsylvania. Portions of the ad are quoted. It suggested that the "Negro problem is a Deep South problem of long standing" and was political in nature such that if blacks were given the vote they would quickly turn on the Democrats of the South who had held them down.

It blamed the Southern members of Congress and the Administration for the situation and asserted that if Georgia wanted Talmadge and Mississippi wanted Bilbo, that was fine.

Their meetings, it declared, were opened with the singing of "America" and with the Bible open to Romans 12, that the Klan was a Protestant organization just as the Jews and Catholics each had their organizations.

Unfortunately, some of the members of the flock could not read so well when it says:

19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Some chapters of the organization obviously took it to mean that it was part of their duty toward their enemy "to heap coals of fire on his head".

In Richmond, a young woman, a graduate of Vassar College, was stabbed, beaten and left for dead during the evening hours the previous day. A search was on for a black male. She was beaten with a brick and piece of wood after having her throat and abdomen slashed with a knife. After regaining consciousness, she was able to flag a passing motorist.

In Arlington, Mass., Dr. Ernest Groves, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina and considered a world expert on marriage, died.

In South Haven, Mich., a 92-foot yacht sank with three crew members at just before 6:00 the previous evening and a search was proceeding for the missing crew. Cause of the sinking of the vessel owned by a manufacturer not onboard was unknown. The craft was headed to obtain repairs of a hole in its keel but it was thought that it was not the cause of the sinking.

Government experts stated that individual incomes would set a record in 1946 of around 165 billion dollars, five billion higher than in 1945. The prediction was based on the country remaining free of large strikes. It meant that tax revenue would exceed expectations and reach nearly 40 billion dollars against the previous forecast at the beginning of the year of 31.5 billion. The 1946 fiscal year had yielded 40.6 billion in revenue and 1945 had, under the higher tax rates, produced 43.8 billion. The boost in expectations meant the possibility of a balanced budget for the first time in many years.

Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson stated that his announcement of livestock ceilings the previous day had not caught OPA "unawares", as he had discussed them fully with OPA head Paul Porter.

Meanwhile, OPA maintained its schedule for restoring meat price ceilings on September 9 despite a snarl which kept live animals free of controls for four extra days.

Be vigilant for roaming cattle, hogs and sheep in your neighborhood, especially if they are in the throes of their unawares of their ceilings.

Increases were also set for prepared pancake and waffle mixes, canned Hawaiian pineapple and pineapple juice, canned salmon, and most syrups. Buckwheat pancake mix and other popular mixes would rise by two to three cents because of higher prices on flour and corn meal. Syrups would rise by twenty percent.

Candy would rise but not at the retail end.

On the editorial page, "The Virtues of One-Party Government" tells of Congressman-nominate C. B. Deane of the North Carolina Eighth District telling young Democrats that they should not be seduced by the invitation of a two-party system and asked them to join him in a crusade against the newspapers advocating it.

The piece states that The News was practically the only such newspaper and so was flattered by the gauntlet laid down, though its campaign was little more than something to fill space during a dull summer.

Mr. Deane had advocated a strong, progressive, youthful movement to eliminate the need for a two-party system. The piece wonders if he was proposing a faction such as the G.I. Democrats of North Carolina. But intra-party struggles never seemed to clarify issues and merely increased confusion in voters.

The one-party system was not present in most of the United States and had not been in the South until after the Civil War, in an effort to subvert the Constitution. And so the piece wonders how it could be justified as anything American. It more closely resembled the Soviet Union, Spain, Argentina, and other such states.

It finds the only reasonable defense to it to have come from R. F. Beasley of the Monroe Journal, but his defense was based only on the sui generis notion that North Carolina had developed good government from the system. The piece suggests, however, that the good government was anomalous, in spite of the one-party system.

But it welcomes nevertheless the debate from Mr. Deane.

"The Philosophy of Scarcity" says that Representative Paul Brown of Georgia was likely the strongest advocate for the cotton farmer after the death of Senator John Bankhead of Alabama. Mr. Brown had fought against OPA placing a ceiling on cotton prices. The National Cotton Council had thanked him for his efforts.

He believed that in a free market, cotton would hold its present 36-cent per pound level for a year or two. It depended on whether the Commodity Credit Corporation would continue to enable the cotton farmer to borrow up to 92.5 percent of parity, about 25 cents per pound, and whether voluntary restriction of planting would work to limit production to ten to eleven million bales per year.

Despite the immediate good news, a bleak prospect lay ahead for cotton in the longrun if the farmer would have to rely on loans and restrictions to prosper, especially when the world was wanting for clothes. But the foreign market was dead.

The piece does not propose an answer and apparently neither did Mr. Brown. But, it says, it stood as a fact that 36-cent cotton which once would have made every farmer a king now was a harbinger of trouble.

"No Caste Among Corpses?" tells of General Gladeon Barnes, serving in the ordnance department at the Pentagon, having been fired at one day while at work in his office during the war. He had just swiveled his chair a quarter turn to his left when a bullet whizzed by him, barely missing him, because of his quarter turn in the chair.

No one was caught in the apparent sniping attempt. But it was ultimately presumptively laid to a small boy squirrel hunting on "D" Ring of the Fifth Level.

The piece suggests that if warfare had progressed to the point where generals sitting at their desks in the Pentagon were subject to being targets, then it might be good to "think this thing over a little".

A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "Hit a Hot Lick, Tovarich", tells of Eddie Rozner, formerly of Harlem, leading the "sultriest jive band in the Soviet Union". While the youth had responded eagerly to the music, Izvestia had found it "trivial". Nevertheless, Mr. Rozner was continuing to play to sell-out audiences and take the lion's share of the time on Moscow Radio.

The piece suggests that Izvestia ought realize that the Soviet could not write the songs which inspired the youth of the country.

Paul Porter, OPA director, substitutes for vacationing Drew Pearson, extols the virtues of Senator Alben Barkley, Majority Leader from Kentucky, to become the Vice-President in 1949. He had, says Mr. Porter, preserved representative democracy in a tough period of transition from war to peace.

While the 79th Congress had not passed many aspects of the President's program and had not lived up to the hopes of Mr. Porter, it had, he says, met the basic challenge by assuring the world that America would carry its postwar responsibility in the atomic age. Mr. Barkley had been primarily responsible for this achievement of Congress.

One of Senator Barkley's heroes had been Woodrow Wilson and his ideals were similar to those of the former President. Mr. Porter quotes from President Wilson's Calendar of Great Americans regarding Henry Clay's ability to establish "instant sympathy" with all of his fellow countrymen. Mr. Porter believes that the description was apropos to Senator Barkley.

He quotes again from President Wilson at the dedication of Congress Hall in Philadelphia in 1913, again finding it to be adaptable to Senator Barkley, that politics "is made up in just about equal parts of compensation and sympathy" and that no person should enter the field without comprehending that he would attack Then, according to President Wilson, had to come the impulse of sympathy connecting the politician with the rest of mankind. No one was fit for it unless realizing that they must "seek more than their own advantage and interest".

Mr. Porter had watched Senator Barkley since, as a young reporter twenty years earlier, he had covered his rise in the Senate, but during the summer of 1946, he had seen at close hand for the first time his deft skills as a lawyer, legislator, and leader, in the fight to preserve price control.

Marquis Childs tells of the career of the chief coordinator of the Treasury's law enforcement division, Elmer L. Irey, who was retiring after 40 years of Government service. Through the turbulent era of Prohibition in the Twenties, he had fought the rampant lawlessness with the income tax law. Putting away such known murderers as Al Capone only for income tax evasion was a commentary, says Mr. Childs, on the values of the times. But, regardless, they were put away. Others followed, including Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City and the Huey Long gang in Louisiana.

He expresses the hope that President Truman in his frustrating search to find good people to fill positions in the Government could find someone of the caliber of Mr. Irey to perform the nation's business.

Peter Edson tells of the end of the War Shipping Administration, begun in February, 1942, set to close its doors at the end of 1946. At its peak, it controlled 5,000 ships, all owned by the Government or under charter from private owners. It was slowly trying to redevelop private shipping interests but costs had risen during the war while shipping rates had been frozen, inhibiting private business from coming back to operate the ships. It was cheaper to handle some freight by rail. The Interstate Commerce Commission was reviewing the relative rate structures. It could mean the beginning of Government subsidy to keep private coastal shipping afloat.

A letter writer responds to an item appearing on August 26 regarding Federal investigation of lumber shipped to retail lumber dealers, allegedly improperly invoiced by wholesalers. He says that the investigators were simply OPA snoopers, not lumber inspectors. The wholesaler who received improperly graded lumber had nothing to do with it, simply was receiving shipments and passing it to the retailer. During the previous July when OPA was not functioning, a lot of lumber had been sold at high prices, albeit no higher than on the black market. Under OPA restrictions, lumber could not be sold at a profit and had thus made crooks of the manufacturers, forced to upgrade the lumber.

A letter from the vice-president of the Tanners' Council of America appeals for cooperation in making known the facts on leather pricing under OPA. A misunderstanding had caused farmers to slow production of hides and skins. Unless more were made available, shoes could not be produced. So it was necessary to correct the misunderstanding that the price adjustment announced by OPA was for imported goat and kidskins, not domestic hides and skins.

Enough said.

You could wind up wearing wood shoes from illicit, misgraded lumber should the farmers not understand that the leather being regulated was that coming into the country.

A letter writer says: "The threat of war impels this 'peacemonger' to request the publication of all or part of Elliott Roosevelt's book, 'As I Saw It.'"

The editors respond: "The reaction of such New Dealing newspapers as the Louisville Courier-Journal ('Cheap....trading on his father's name again....filled with immature and irrelevant philosophy') impels us to decline."

Herblock.

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