The Charlotte News

Saturday, June 28, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Eisenhower told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that the Army badly needed 478 million dollars more than appropriated by the House in its economizing efforts. He said that the Army was behind that of the Soviet Union and that predictions of push-button wars of the future were premature. He believed the House reductions left the country vulnerable and in a dangerous situation.

A showdown was approaching this day at the U.N. as the Security Council was ready to vote on the Balkans, after a report by the Balkans Commission that Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria were responsible for aiding the guerrillas operating in the north of Greece. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Warren Austin had the previous day asked that the Security Council condemn the action as a violation of the U.N. Charter, threatening the peace, and use force if necessary to stop the aid.

In Paris, the atmosphere pervading at the conference of foreign ministers from Britain, France, and Russia was deemed gloomy, as both Ernest Bevin of Britain and Georges Bidault of France were pessimistic about the success of the conference, that it appeared Russia only wanted to obtain information as to what the June 5 statement at Harvard by Secretary of State Marshall, anent U.S. aid to Europe, actually meant. The purpose of the conference was to discuss actual administration of the Marshall Plan, the heart of which was that the nations receiving the aid would be responsible for its administration. M. Bidault proposed that all European nations except Franco's Spain be included in the receipt of the proposed American aid.

The State Department requested cooperation from Indonesia in forming immediately an interim government and promised financial aid when such a government would be established.

U.S. Steel and Consolidated Coal Co. both recommended that the other coal operators accept John L. Lewis's demands to resolve the contract, as the deadline approached of June 30 for the Government to turn over the coal mines to the private owners after 13 months under Government administration. U. S. Steel was the largest owner of captive coal mines and Consolidated was the largest commercial coal company in the world. Starting at midnight Friday, the coal miners were on a paid ten-day vacation, after about half of the miners had remained off the job during the week in protest of Taft-Hartley becoming law the previous Monday.

The Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. announced the layoff of 10,000 steel workers because of the coal miners' vacation, as production was reduced to 45 percent of capacity, having been operating at 104 percent.

It was expected that almost all of the 120,000 workers in the shipyards of the East and Gulf Coasts would be on strike by the following Tuesday. Presently, 40,000 workers were striking.

In Cumberland, Md., a 28-day strike of textile workers at the Celanese Corporation ended with a three-cent hourly wage increase.

Philip Murray of CIO declared that member unions would not obey the Taft-Hartley ban on political activity and would deliberately disobey it to provide a test case for the courts. He asserted that it was an abrogation of free speech.

The Senate passed the presidential succession bill, placing the Speaker of the House third in line to the presidency, replacing the Secretary of State in that position. It was certain also to pass the House.

In Bayreuth, Germany, prosecutors asked a court to impose a six-year sentence to a labor camp against the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner for her alleged Nazi sympathies during the war. The prosecution also asked that her property be confiscated.

In Caracas, Venezuela, a bootblack wielding a pocketknife ran amok on the grounds of the presidential palace, wounding two Army officers and a soldier.

In Boston, the case of Douglas Chandler, accused in Federal District Court of treason for his "Paul Revere" broadcasts from Nazi Germany during the war, went to the jury for deliberations.

In Dallas, Tex., a woman discovered the dead and bloodied body of her five-year old daughter in an upstairs room of the family home. No details were provided as to police theories.

In Allentown, Pa., four men, two of whom were armed, held up five couples at a single house and made off with $175,000 worth of loot. All of the stolen property was covered by insurance.

In Hollywood, actor Herbert Marshall was scheduled to wed in August actress Boots Mallory, following the finality of her divorce decree the previous day from producer William Cagney.

On the editorial page, "Notes on UN's Second Birthday" finds the U.N. still only a potential world organization rather than an actual one, with the U.S. and Russia never being so far apart as they were presently, with zones of influence drawn by each side across Europe and an arms race incipient.

Yet, the Marshall Plan had met with some tepid favorable response from Moscow, at least willing to test the waters at Paris in the meeting with the British and French.

Henry Wallace, critic of the Truman Doctrine for its bypassing the U.N. in unilaterally providing aid to Greece and Turkey, had greeted with favor the notion of the Marshall Plan and its stress on European self-reliance in administering the aid.

While, based on prior performance, there was no great hope of success to come out of Paris, at least the effort was being made to bridge the East-West widening gap.

"Senator Hoey's Blow for Liberty" finds Senator Clyde Hoey under attack in Raleigh for appearing in a photograph shaking hands with Senator Robert Taft in the aftermath of the Senate vote overriding the President's veto of Taft-Hartley, causing it, after the House had the previous Friday already overridden, to become law on Monday.

Then, Senator Hoey released a statement explaining that his vote to override was premised on the belief that the President could not have been re-elected in 1948 had his veto been sustained—presumably implying that labor trouble without any ability to curb it would have followed.

The piece concludes that the whole thing now was clear. The Democrats who voted with the President to sustain his veto were really conspiring to defeat him in 1948 while the Democrats voting against him were secretly saving him from himself.

"Any further questions?"

"One Guess—Across the Board" tells of the latest in a series of circuitous endeavors to circumvent South Carolina's laws, joining the all-white primary produced by privatizing the process as a party club, effectively raising, against the State Constitution's prohibition, the salaries of State legislators by granting "expenses", and allowing dual office-holding in violation of the Constitution. Added now to that trio was the concept of "equal mutual guessing" to get around the law banning pari-mutuel betting.

At a horse track in Myrtle Beach, customers voluntarily contributed to the track an amount of money and after the race, the patrons received their winnings, the excess after deduction of track expenses and a reasonable profit.

The courts had issued a restraining order to prevent interference at the track by law enforcement.

The piece finds it all very nice, as they were as anxious as anyone to see the racing breeds enhanced.

A piece from the Hickory Record, titled "Mecklenburg's Good Generalship", compliments Mecklenburg County on its decision to pay the new ABC Board chairman, Frank Sims, a substantial salary of $7,500, despite criticism for it being more than the $6,000 paid the State ABC Board chairman, as the county had a substantial bootlegging problem and the Board needed sound administration to make the new liquor control system work well.

Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of State Marshall, still, as during the war, if then five minutes to the windward, a believer in a 20-minute nap after lunch every day, having placed his cot in a large safe in his office, which had been designed for keeping secret military plans. Secretary Marshall believed that such plans were no longer necessary. The Secretary had also hung large green draperies over war murals which adorned his office, formerly a part of the War Department, as he could not have them removed without an act of Congress.

Worried over alienating the affections of labor with Taft-Hartley, the Republican leaders were now busy pushing the minimum wage act, designed to raise the minimum wage from 40 to 60 cents per hour.

President Truman was upset with his friend George Allen for his tell-all Saturday Evening Post piece on "two years with Truman". And former Democratic press agent Charlie Michelson was extremely angry with Jim Farley for his revelations about FDR in Collier's.

White House radio adviser J. Leonard Reinsch had been responsible for the noticeable improvement in the radio voice of President Truman. Mr. Reinsch had forced the President to slow his delivery by putting only one sentence at a time, in large block letters, on each page of speeches. He convinced the President that the radio networks would not cut him off the air and that he could therefore talk as long as he wished.

The President had been careful not to be photographed eating ice cream at the annual event for wounded war veterans. The previous year he was caught smiling while eating ice cream, as the nation's railroads paralyzed the nation's economy.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the meeting in Paris in the clockroom of the Quai d'Orsay by the three foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Russia, Messrs. Bevin, Bidault, and Molotov, to discuss the Marshall Plan for U.S. aid for rebuilding Europe. The Alsops find it to be possibly the last and most important of the post-war conferences between Russia and the West.

A belief, however, was pervading in the West that the Russians had accepted the British and French invitation to the conference only in the hope of sinking the Marshall Plan, to avoid losing the Soviet foothold in Eastern Europe. As evidence of it, the Russians had sought to cripple the U.N. European Economic Conference by insisting on a Soviet bloc veto and elimination of the subcommittees on coal, transport, and other key aspects of the commission. The Russians had also opposed consideration of the German economy, the primary component of the European economic problem.

The Soviet press regularly inveighed against the Marshall Plan, describing it as an effort at American imperialism to influence internal affairs of the aided countries. The Soviets were believed to be ready to demand a large share of the aid to restore Russian devastation, knowing that the Congress would never approve it.

Yet, there remained hope that the Marshall Plan would save Europe. Mr. Bevin had promised that any attempt to sabotage the effort would be exposed in Europe, and Communists disliked hunger as much as anyone else. Second, the Eastern European countries, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland, would naturally gravitate toward Western Europe for resumption of traditional trade. Third, Russia, unlike other European countries, had a gold reserve believed to be worth as much as two billion dollars and faced no export-import imbalance, had a favorable net balance of 50 million dollars during the previous year. Furthermore, if the Russians were given a substantial piece of the aid pie, then they would be required to account for how it would be spent.

Marquis Childs comments on the increased lack of reticence in modern times regarding the political past, contrasting the decision of Robert Todd Lincoln to keep his father's personal correspondence under seal at the National Archives until 21 years after his own death, the date for opening them being July 26, 1947, with the decision of Elliott Roosevelt the previous year to publish a verbatim account of conversations of his late father, including his judgments on contemporary public figures.

Now came Jim Farley, publishing his memoirs in Collier's, regarding his split in 1940 with FDR and what had led to it. At one point in the first installment of June 21, he said that Eleanor Roosevelt told him, in explanation as to why he was not invited into the inner social circle, that Franklin Roosevelt was not at ease with those who were not his social equals.

Mr. Farley had admitted to Mr. Childs that the account, the expanded version of which was to be published as a book, was largely ghost written by Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau. He also admitted that his previous book, Behind the Ballots, was written by Edward Roddan, formerly of the DNC. Mr. Farley told Mr. Childs that the entire book would show his admiration for the man whom he, more than any other, had piloted into the White House. Mr. Childs thinks, however, that the excerpts thus far sounded only as the isolationist Tribune and its publisher, Col. Bertie McCormick, consistently a Roosevelt detractor.

Other accounts of the FDR Presidency were likewise on the way, by Harold Ickes, Henry Morgenthau, and a posthumous presentation from Harry Hopkins, being prepared by Robert Sherwood.

He recommends The Roosevelt I Knew by former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, not sensational, but providing an interesting account.

The scorners of Roosevelt would chip away in vain at the myth, and the corrections would be left to historians 50 to 100 years hence, "and even they may not catch up with the core of truth."

A letter writer finds instructive a statement by an investment counselor for Fiduciary Council, Inc., which found the President's veto of the tax bill inconsequential when measured against the needs for revenue to support foreign aid to rebuild Europe and Asia and thereby promote peace abroad the world.

A letter writer takes some issue with TVA stressing too much its power development and not enough flood control, saying that 11 of the 21 dams under TVA management were primarily devoted to power development and only secondarily to flood control. The proposed Buggs Island dam project, in North Carolina and Virginia, was for 9 of 11 dams to be devoted primarily to power development.

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