The Charlotte News
Wednesday, November 12, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Marshall testified before the House Foreign Relations Committee that the Government was working on a program to aid China, with the expectation that funds devoted to the effort, which he estimated should be 300 million dollars over a period of 15 months, would be about 70 percent effective.
He said that the situation in Europe was completely different and urged emergency aid. Italy had the most acute problem as it would be out of money by December 1. France would be in the same straits by the end of December. China, by contrast, still with adequate purchasing power for imports, could endure several months without aid, though it was in a state of greater chaos than Europe.
The Secretary also stated that it was not in the best interests of the country, in his opinion, to release a special report prepared for the President and the State Department by Lt. General Albert Wedemeyer after a visit to China—discussed further by Drew Pearson. The General stated that he expected the Congress to act on the aid to China without any committee having perused the report.
Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that 597 million dollars in goods could be supplied to France, Italy, and Austria as emergency aid without a strain on the economy.
Senator Robert Taft had started a drive to cut down the proposed aid and was receiving backing from some fellow Republicans. He intended to bring the matter to a head before the Republican Policy Committee the following Friday.
Retired Maj. General Bennett Meyers testified to the Senate War Investigating subcommittee, investigating the Howard Hughes war contracts, that he and his wife had netted $90,000 from a four million dollar wartime war bond purchase, purportedly approved by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and Federal Reserve chairman Marriner Eccles before the General made the purchase. Mr. Morgenthau stated informally to the press that the statement of General Meyers was an "outright lie", that the Government had discouraged speculation in Government bonds during the war.
General Meyers stated that the claim of Howard Hughes, that he had sought to borrow $200,000 while negotiating with Hughes Aircraft to form the contracts with the Government to build the Spruce Goose and F-11 reconnaissance plane, was a lie. He claimed that he had been offered $250,000 by way of a loan and had turned it down. Mr. Hughes had also, according to General Meyers, offered him a house near Los Angeles as a gift.
Dr. Vannevar Bush told a news conference that the U.S. lacked a system to warn of a sudden air attack. The Research and Development Board, part of the new National Military Establishment, was studying the concept of early warning radar nets in the country. The Army, Navy, and Air Force each had its own detection equipment, but it was not operated as a cohesive national defense network.
The week of July 11, 1948 was set as the time for the Democratic National Convention to be held in Philadelphia, the same host city for the GOP Convention, to begin June 21.
In Gallup, N.M., another DC-6, this one being flown by American Airlines, was forced to land because of a fire aboard, following the tragedy which took the lives of all 52 persons aboard a DC-6 two weeks earlier over Bryce Canyon, Utah, also the result of an in-flight fire. This flight was able to land safely, albeit with flames pouring from its lower fuselage. No one was injured as the fire did not penetrate the cabin floor. Upon reaching the aircraft after it landed, ground personnel found a broken fuel line emitting gas and quickly capped it.
Get your kicks...
As a result of the two fires, United, American, Braniff and National Airlines suspended all flights aboard DC-6's until the source of the fires could be determined. As indicated, in the case of the Bryce Canyon disaster, it would be determined by the Civil Aeronautics Board that the fire had been caused by a routine transfer of fuel from an outboard to an inboard tank, having overflowed into a heater duct and ignited. There had been no training for this procedure and no instruction by Douglas Aircraft, manufacturer of the DC-6, as to any danger in such transfers.
A person who had declined to be identified stated at the time of this day's report that both fires had been caused by ignition in the heater compartment.
The President's new plane, the "Independence", a DC-6, would also be grounded.
Prob'ly the Rooskies puttin' the fire in 'ere. Or the Illuminaughties or the Skull and Bones. Or it could a been them Martians that landed in July. Maybe all 'em together. They're the cause of all this stuff.
Be a risin' up
More than 400 people turned out at
the Hotel Charlotte ballroom to celebrate the Christmas Festival and
greet actress Anne Jeffreys
Ms. Jeffreys cordially thanked the
city for its kindness and said to Mayor Baxter, as he presented the
key to the city, "My, my what big
The train ride into the area had been less than fun, as the plane, scheduled to land in Charlotte, had been re-routed to Atlanta because of heavy fog, and had bucked as a T-Model on a bumpy road during the rains of the previous day.
But sunshine had come out during this day to bless the Festival.
The line-up of the parade, set to start at 6:30 p.m., is provided, should you wish to go down and catch only a portion of it. It would include Governor Gregg Cherry and Miss North Carolina, Miss South Carolina, 32 other beauty queens, and the Cherryville Band, not to mention the Cowboy and Football Player balloons.
At 9:00, Miss Christmas was to be crowned, and she was to accompany Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, as rumored.
Whether the chimes of Charlotte had
yet rung
But the Mayor was big
On the editorial page, "Secret of Soviet 'Atom Bomb'" comments on the report from Prague and Paris that the Soviets had produced a small atomic bomb somewhere in Siberia, detonated on June 15. It followed on the statement recently by V. M. Molotov that the secret no longer existed, only the secret of how to assemble the device.
It appeared to be more of the effort of the Soviets to wage a war of nerves against the West, to frighten Western collaborators, to get the U.S. to abandon efforts to thwart Soviet expansion, and to convince the Russian people that Stalin had scored a victory over the capitalists. Only in the latter effort had the Russians enjoyed some success, as shown by the Muscovites' 30th anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution and its lavish ceremonies.
With the increase in anti-American propaganda had also come increased tones of reasonableness in the Kremlin. As the Communists declined in Europe, more of the same two-faced tactics could be expected. Both were signs that great events were at hand.
"Marshall's Trumps on Germany" tells of Secretary of State Marshall, in pushing for a treaty with Germany as he discussed before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the previous day, urging Germany's restoration as being vital to the success of the Marshall Plan, appearing to try to effect an end to the partition of Germany. It stood as warning to Russia to reach an agreement on the German treaty.
If the peace with Germany were finally to come, it would be Secretary Marshall who should be thanked for the effort. Many Republicans in Congress, however, appeared to want to close the door on peace with Germany before the London foreign ministers conference on the treaty could begin.
"Hope for W. Trade Underpass"
tells of the real possibility finally that an underpass could be
built to eliminate the dangerous Southern Railway crossing
Be careful until that time comes,
especially if you are still among the unfortunate driving those old
jalopies, apt to stall on the tracks and cause you to get squished
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Incentives to Produce", tells of G.E. ending its profit-sharing plan with its rank-and-file workers as it no longer served as an incentive to produce. Such a system worked best when it was based on volume of production and not profits.
Sears continued its pension plan, extant since 1916. Eastman Kodak paid dividends to its employees when common stock dividends exceeded a certain rate.
Experience with such incentives was mixed but success was enough in evidence to suggest that correctly structured plans provided incentive to workers to produce.
The Congressional Quarterly reports on members of Congress coming back to Washington for the special session to convene November 17, and the stances of the various special interest groups exerting pressure on them. Few of the groups flatly opposed the Marshall Plan. The Amvets, the ABA, and several other listed organizations had unreservedly endorsed it. The Farmers Union had developed a plan by which the aid could be achieved, including a return to rationing and price control. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish religious groups supported the Plan. Organizations principally focused on foreign policy also generally gave their support.
Drew Pearson tells of Mayor George Welsh of Grand Rapids, Michigan, being aboard the "Friendship Train" traveling across the country collecting food for Europe. Mayor Welsh was head of the Conference of Mayors, created during the Depression to form a coterie to go to Washington and plead to President Hoover for aid to the cities. The President had listened sympathetically but told them that municipal problems were for the municipalities to correct. Mayor Welsh, a Republican, then voted in 1932 for FDR.
He complained that cities paid the largest proportion of taxes into state coffers but did not receive in return a fair proportion of the revenue, resulting in poverty in the cities while governors boasted of surpluses.
Legislative bodies were often set up so that small towns had an equal vote to that of the larger cities, defeating democratic will.
The previous summer, he had traveled through Europe and reported that it was a grim sight. He was now fervently taking part in the effort to collect food for Europe.
Walter Hogan, Mayor of Stockton, California, was also aboard the train. He had been Mayor for 19 years, second longest continuous term in the country. Several mayors had been in office for awhile, but city managers tended to have short tenures. According to mayors on the train, having such a manager discouraged alertness of the city council and the electorate.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was demanding to see the secret report on China prepared for the State Department by Lt. General Albert Wedemeyer, who made a tour of China for the President. He reported that while the U.S. had supplied arms to Chiang Kai-Shek's military, it had not supplied ammunition, rendering the weapons virtually useless as they required American ammunition not available in China. General MacArthur had plenty of ammunition but had not been ordered to turn it over to China. General Wedemeyer indirectly blamed the State Department for this failing. It might take Chiang six months to purchase the ammunition and get it to China, by which point the situation with the Communists in the North might be hopeless.
General Marshall had rendered his report on China a year earlier, before becoming Secretary of State, after spending a year there as the President's special emissary. His report, highly critical of the Chiang Government, was in direct conflict with that of General Wedemeyer, another likely reason why the latter report was being maintained in secret.
Marquis Childs, returning from Europe, tells of the contrast of America, with its vitality instantly impressing, whereas Europe gave the impression of a society "fraying out at the ends". Production was at an all-time high in America, with the 60 million jobs envisioned in 1945 by Henry Wallace as he took over as Secretary of Commerce having become a reality and even taken for granted. But prices were also high, having undergone a considerable rise even since Mr. Childs had left the country three months earlier.
Yet it was not the kind of inflation gripping France and Italy in terror, even if the President's Council of Economic Advisers and other economic observers did not believe that the country was immune to such disastrous inflation.
The Russian propaganda campaign against the U.S. had helped to unify opinion in support of the Marshall Plan. But there would still be disagreement in the Congress on how much and what form the aid would take in specific countries, as well as the duration of the program.
But partisan bickering would surely ensue in the debate over how to curb inflation. To avoid giving the world to the Russians, however, some area of mutual agreement had to be found.
Samuel Grafton urges that the coming debate in the special session of Congress on emergency aid and in the regular session on the full Marshall Plan had to form around an intention to preserve the peace rather than to promote a better position for a coming war, with a fine line separating the two.
The original conception of the Plan, to include the Soviet-bloc countries, had been formed with a sincere intent by Secretary of State Marshall that it be one for peace. And if peace were desired, then the country had to behave as if it expected peace. It was likely valueless as a military measure in any event.
But if the line were crossed to the other side, using the plan to prepare for war, then a subtle change in national character would take place. Diplomacy would change in form. Industry, trade and the internal life of the country would change. Such a policy would guide the country more than the country would be able to guide it.
Wars were made in that moment of subtle crossing of the invisible boundary, not in the declaration of war. It was important that the country be wary of the fact.
Framed Edition
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