The Charlotte News
Monday, May 26, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President asked Congress for authority to arm, equip and train the armed forces of the nations of the Western Hemisphere, including Canada. He had asked for the same legislation a year earlier, and stated that it was more urgent at present. It had then been approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but never reached the floor of either chamber for a vote. One feature of the legislation was intended to bring about uniformity of arms and military methods.
Buddy Bush, who had escaped the lynch mob in Jackson, N.C., on Friday morning and hid in a pine thicket without food for two days, had surrendered the previous day to the protective custody of the FBI. Mr. Bush was placed in Central Prison in Raleigh for safekeeping.
Tom Fesperman of The News gives a detailed account of the daring escape which had undoubtedly saved Mr. Bush's life. He had to run in the dark through several backyards before he could reach the wooded area in which he took refuge. He lived thirteen miles from the location and so was not familiar with the area.
With the surrender of Mr. Bush, three young black men were now being held in North and South Carolina jails on separate charges of attacks on white women. One was Buddy Bush, held on a charge of attempted assault, the details of which had not been provided in the front page reports. Another man, 24, was also in Central Prison for safekeeping after he had been arrested in Clinton, southeast of Raleigh, on a charge of rape, based on his torn shirtsleeve when he was found at home sleeping and identification by the victim after the fact. A third man, 20, was charged with raping an elderly woman in Darlington, S.C., and, after being apprehended, was transported to the State Penitentiary at Columbia. He had confessed to the rape, a capital offense in South Carolina.
Near Kingwood, W. Va., a nine-year old boy was found chained to a tree in woods near his home, chained by his parents and left with only a small amount of food. Royal, the stepfather of the boy, said that he had trouble with Lester running away. The parents were charged with neglect.
Near Romerville, Ga., the body of a man, missing from his Greenville, S.C., home since April 30, was found in a densely wooded area. A coroner's jury determined that he had been shot by a man recently convicted of robbery and sentenced to 15 years in prison, the shooting having occurred during the course of a robbery of the man's wallet after being waylaid on the road while driving in his car.
In Los Angeles, a former Army lieutenant was arrested on a charge of selling on Formosa Army-confiscated Japanese gold coins for $100,000. The case was to be submitted to a civilian Grand Jury for indictment.
In New Braunfels, Tex., a prominent doctor of San Antonio was held for the murders of the head of an investment company and three members of his family, all shot to death on a rural road the previous day as they were driving to church. He was also charged with assault with intent to murder a fifth member of the family, a thirteen-year old daughter. The doctor had previously been the physician for the deceased family. The deceased investment company head had been charged the previous March by the S.E.C. with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The doctor had at that time filed suit against the victim for over $80,000 in losses in securities, stocks and bonds.
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland urged that tax cuts be delayed until the spending cuts could be assessed, as the latter were far less than originally intended. Senator Robert Taft urged immediate passage of the tax bill.
Representative Fred Hartley of New Jersey, sponsor of the House version of the labor bill, stated that he believed that a version of the bill capable of attracting sufficient votes in both houses to override a Presidential veto would be approved by the joint confreres seeking to reconcile the variant Senate and House versions of the bill. That meant, in his opinion, abandoning the House ban on industry-wide collective bargaining.
In Managua, Nicaragua, the Army this date seized control of the Government without opposition. In February, Dr. Leonard Arguello had been elected President to succeed strongman General Anastasio Somoza, who had been in the position for ten years. General Somoza favored Dr. Arguello and did not seek re-election. The election was held under the watchful eyes of the Army.
In Santa Ana, Calif., the trial began of the heiress and her errant boyfriend, both college students, who allegedly had blown up the yacht owned by her parents, with both parents' bodies aboard, after they had been bludgeoned to death before the explosion. The claimed motive for the crimes was to obtain the parents' $600,000 fortune. They were planning to be married on April 30, but the March 19 arrest, four days after the explosion in Newport Harbor, had effected a temporary delay in the matrimonial plans. Both of the lovebirds had been aboard the yacht on the afternoon and evening before the explosion. Dynamite and a timing device were found aboard.
You know, those were the good old days, the best of times after the war, carefree and happy-happy for everyone, including Tiny Tim. Don't you wish you could go back and live in those wonderful, simpler times when all was copasetic, the grass was greener and the sunshine sunnier every day of every year? It's a wonderful life
In Atlantic City, 30,000 delegates of the Ancient Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine met in convention.
In Cranberry, N.C., the previously ousted Cranberry High School principal, C.A. Bowlick—apparently not "C.C.", as reported initially on May 14, or "C.E.", as reported the next day, unless he had changed his middle name a couple of times in the interim—, was rehired finally by the School Board, and the striking students of Cranberry High School, protesting the failure to rehire him, called off their strike. The principal looked forward to a long summer vacation
The "Carolina Farmer" section of the newspaper tells of Donald Price, a high school student, having won the District Prize for supervised farming, sponsored by the Chilean Nitrate Educational Bureau. His 45 acres had grossed over four thousand dollars and a net profit of nearly $1,500.
Just what the connection was to Chile, we cannot fathom. You will have to find it out for yourself as it is too far from where we are to get to Chile right away to nail the story down for you.
On the editorial page, "On Supply and Demand" wonders whether Americans really believed in free enterprise. FDR had maintained prices artificially by the slaughter of little pigs in 1934 and plowing under wheat, corn, and cotton, plus limiting the acreage which could be cultivated. Farmers were paid subsidies.
After price stability was thereby achieved, Republicans began assailing the effort at control, that unencumbered supply and demand could function in a free marketplace to limit inflation.
The Republicans now in control of Congress had just permitted an increase in the tariff on wool, should imports threaten to lower domestic wool prices below the 1946 level. It was done despite a warning from the State Department that the tariff would wreck the 18-nation international trade conference at Geneva, and, in fact, New Zealand and Australia were now holding the conference in recess because of the wool tariff.
But the cotton-growers and wool-producers demanded the protection of their prices and the Republican Congress was happy to accommodate, regardless of international consequences. It was just as much a form of control as that which FDR had exerted on the marketplace during the 1930's and during the war.
To the consumer, there was little difference. Under the Democratic subsidy program, he paid a low base price but then had to pay higher taxes to pay for the subsidy. Under the Republican approach, he paid the higher prices based on the tariff restricting competitive imports.
The editorial concludes that faith in the law of supply and demand dissipated whenever it threatened to reduce prices.
"Punishment for Juvenile Delinquents" tells of a Superior Court Judge who believed that the juvenile justice system of the state was without power to punish properly juvenile crime. He had recently heard a case of cold-blooded murder committed by two boys under age 14, for which he was powerless to pass sentence under the law. Both were to be turned over to juvenile authorities where limited punishment would be imposed.
Juvenile crime was dramatically on the rise—most ascribing it to the absence of two parents in the home during the war, when fathers served and mothers worked in war factories. The destabilizing force of that period had carried its momentum, in peer pressure and becoming inured to that greater freedom from parental control, over to the post-war time.
The piece opines that while such cases as that described were shocking, it did not merit scrapping the whole system. The principal purpose of the juvenile justice system was to rehabilitate the youthful offender and make him or her a functioning member of society before adulthood, not punishment, as was the stress of the adult criminal justice system.
While the mild punishments might not be a deterrent to crime, a return to the whipping post, as advocated by the jurist, would likely not be any the more preventative of rash acts committed in hot-headed youth. Juvenile delinquency was properly ascribed to the society at large, beyond the reach of any court, no matter how strictly punitive it might become.
"Slum-Clearance Is Now in Sight" tells of 5,000 slum dwellings existing in Charlotte out of 8,500 sub-standard units. A new law to correct or condemn these dwellings was in suspense for the fact that there were no building materials to be had. Moreover, there was a shortage of 25,000 dwellings in the city and so every useable dwelling space was necessary.
With the Federal Government out of the housing dilemma for the immediate future, the Congress moving in sloth on the long-term housing bill, it was incumbent on local authorities to address the issue. The Chief Building Inspector, however, remained confident that the slum clearance program could proceed within the ensuing year.
Drew Pearson returns to the subject of the starving to death of Marine Cpl. James Pavlockus in Fukioka District camp no. 17 during the war, for which Lt. Commander Edward Little was under court martial in a secret proceeding, based on his having turned in Cpl. Pavlockus to the Japanese for purchasing two bowls of rice from a Japanese soldier, selling one to a fellow prisoner of war. For the act, Cpl. Pavlockus was starved to death over a period of 38 agonizing days, during which he received only rice and water for thirty of the days and only rice during the last eight. He weighed only 55 pounds at the end, having started at 170.
Lt. Commander Little knew that if Cpl. Pavlockus was caught a second time, having already been disciplined by the Japanese and warned of death on a second such occasion, the pointing of the accusatory finger at him would result in his death.
For this and other incidents, including the turning in of another soldier for stealing food, beaten to death as a result by the Japanese, Lt. Commander Little had incurred the wrath of nearly all of the 1,700 Americans, Austrians, Dutch, and British prisoners at the camp.
Mr. Pearson provides a verbatim letter from a former Navy radioman, expressing the collective hatred in the camp for Lt. Commander Little. He told of his own legs being without feeling because of a beating by the Japanese, inflicted as a result of being turned in by Lt. Commander Little for stealing a little rice. He suggests that Lt. Commander Little stole American Red Cross supplies intended for the prisoners. His henchmen traded the supplies to the prisoners for what little they had. Lt. Commander Little was fond of saying to the other prisoners, "Get out of my messhall," words which the correspondent had inscribed on the bottom of his own mess kit so that he would not forget.
Marquis Childs, still in Albany, N.Y., again focuses on Thomas Dewey and his prospects for the presidency in 1948. In 1944, his campaign slogan had been, "Time for a change". But, with the war in midstream, winding down to its denouement, it was not time for a change, and the Dewey camp secretly understood that, as they now admitted. But their expectations for the next election were growing ever greater as time pushed onward toward it. The Democrats had controlled the White House since 1933 and the Congress for fourteen of those years, lending more credence to the slogan now that the war and immediate post-war period were behind.
The campaign would be designed to appeal to independent voters, the deciding factor in recent presidential elections. Unity of action in Albany between the Executive and Legislative branches, after each weekly Sunday meeting to discuss differences, would be used to contrast with the acrimonious situation extant in Washington.
Mr. Dewey tolerated no public dissent from members of his Administration. Whether he was to be regarded as a dictator or mediator for the resulting unity depended on point of view.
Mr. Dewey was no stranger to defeat, having lost the gubernatorial nomination in 1938 and the presidential nomination to Wendell Willkie in 1940. Thus, his team, with a re-election to the Governor's office by an overwhelming majority in 1946, could put great stock in his ability to rebound from such defeat as he suffered to FDR in 1944. Though no defeated Republican presidential nominee had ever been re-nominated, this trait of overcoming setback was being stressed by his managers.
Everything felt carefully orchestrated around the Governor, including his personal conduct. He spent spare time at his farm in Pawling, where he had a hundred cows which were involved in an experiment to raise milk production. Mr. Childs posits that the outcome of the experiment might go a long way in determining Governor Dewey's future on the national scene.
"Nothing is wasted in this efficient political production line."
Samuel Grafton suggests that Henry Wallace's trip abroad, to England and France, had done more good than harm for the private enterprise system, in that he continued to carry on freely despite heavy criticism. Had the Congressional enemies of his tour succeeded in getting his visa revoked, as they wanted, it would have been a blow to such free enterprise, of which they considered themselves the chief proponents.
It was being suggested that satirizing the American businessman
Congressman John Taber of New York wanted Voice of America broadcasts being beamed into Eastern Europe and Russia purged of favorable references to Mr. Wallace and his prior invention of high-yield hybrid corn. Should he get his way, the result would hardly be anything American. If the broadcast did find converts abroad, it would be for an imaginary country
A letter writer discusses her feelings in reaction
She starts by finding favorable advertising of Duke Power Co. during the previous year—presumably convincing her that it was better to have Duke Power than no electricity. In any event, she was contented.
A letter from the campaign chairman and county commander for the American Cancer Society thanks the newspaper for its support of the drive to raise funds in the county for the purpose of fighting the disease
Framed Edition
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