The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 3, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Britain had promised to relinquish its control of India to provide for a temporary dominion status, making inevitable the partition of the country between Hindu and Moslem states, the latter to become Pakistan. It would be left to India to decide whether to partition itself. The Indian leaders informed that they would elect partition.
The temporary dominion status was supported by the Conservative opposition in Parliament, led by Winston Churchill, with reservations as to whether they would support details of the plan. Mr. Churchill warned that a "blood bath" might lie on the horizon in India, and that partition might serve to avert such a calamity.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg declared the Communist coup in Hungary to be a "treacherous conquest" which possibly would call for U.N. action. Recently elected President Ferenc Nagy had been forced to flee the country, along with his number two man, and a left-leaning President had been installed in his stead. Senator Vandenberg nevertheless continued to urge ratification of the Hungarian treaty, along with those with Italy, Bulgaria, and Rumania.
David Lilienthal, head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, urged Russia and the United States to come to agreement in the U.N. on a control policy for atomic energy. Russia wanted the proposed international control committee subject to the Security Council and each permanent member's unilateral veto. The U.S. wanted it to be free from the veto, as recommended by Mr. Lilienthal. He stated that until a program was fashioned by the U.N., America would continue to work for preeminence in the field of atomic energy.
The four billion dollar tax cut, as anticipated, passed the Senate, the vote being 48 to 28. The bill had passed the House the previous day and was now headed to the President for signature or veto.
Attorney General Tom Clark asked a grand jury to investigate alleged violations of antitrust laws in the railroad freight car building industry. Only four companies in recent years, he stated, had received 80 percent of that business.
In Columbia, S.C., it was reported that Sheriff's deputies and about a hundred armed men searched for a black man accused of stabbing a white woman and hitting her two-year old son. The woman said that the man was the same one who had sought to rape her the previous Wednesday. He supposedly cursed her this time and slashed her arm with a knife, requiring seven stitches. Her little boy had a bruise
In Williamston, N.C., the father of a 15-year old girl who reported that a black man had attacked her the previous Saturday night, sought additional law enforcement to track down the man.
Why don't you get some of your white trash KuKu friends? Or, are they too busy tracking down the other leerers?
In Moncure, N.C., a truck carrying explosive chemicals turned over and caught fire, injuring two men.
A State Senator in South Carolina objected to an announcement by the Charleston School Board that teachers there would begin an eleven-month work schedule rather than the typical nine-month schedule. The additional two months would consist of work in the libraries, textbook and curriculum selection, as well as playground supervision. Salaries would remain the same.
In Los Angeles, it was reported that California was sending jade to China, rather than the usual other way about. It had not been known until about a decade earlier that jade abounded in the country. A large deposit existed in Placer County in Northern California, where the Chinese had been taking the jade for 30 to 40 years. One man had bought a mountain of jade at Happy Camp, near the Oregon border, and said his mountain was open to everyone.
On the editorial page, "The Dry Victory in Rowan" tells of the dry forces winning the referendum in Rowan County by a vote of 8,423 to 5,988, potentially suggesting tough sledding for the referendum in Mecklenburg on June 14. But the urban precincts had supported ABC stores. Whereas Rowan was more than 50 percent rural, Mecklenburg was more than two-thirds urban. Thus, the same voting patterns would result in a victory in Mecklenburg.
Rowan County had a large turnout, 14,411, just 2,600 votes short of the 1940 presidential election, a record. The advocates of prohibition recognized that they had a responsibility to see that enforcement was carried out, and the supporters of the ABC system stated that they would support continued prohibition.
It was likely that, as in the past, enforcement would not be strict, but the piece wishes Rowan County success nevertheless in its endeavor in that direction.
"A False Sense of Values" tells of Benjamin Fine, education editor for The New York Times, having completed recently a national survey on education, finding that 2,300 teachers held sub-standard credentials before the war, while there were now 125,000 such teachers, nearly half of whom had no more than a high school education, some not going beyond the third or fourth grade.
Only 1.5 percent of the national income was being spent on education, a little more than half of that spent by consumers on cigarettes. Mr. Fine thought that five percent of the country's income ought be devoted to education, with teacher salaries ranging between $2,400 and $6,000, and a requirement imposed of five or six years of college training. Mr. Fine had presented his results to a Congressional committee determining aid for education.
The piece supports the effort to fund education, even if the question whether Federal funding was required remained debatable.
"The Retirement of a Pioneer" tells of the retirement of Dr. H. L. McCrorey, president of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte. He had been at the institution since 1895, first as an instructor and then as president since 1907.
He had viewed his obligation as two-fold, first to provide an education, and then to convince the skeptical white community that a black institution of higher learning should not be the object of suspicion. He had met both obligations admirably. The physical plant of the university had been greatly expanded during his tenure, and academic standards raised. His greatest achievement probably was the acceptance of the university into the community.
The piece regards Dr. McCrorey as a true innovator in black education.
A piece from the New York Herald-Tribune, titled "Lynching and Federal Law", wonders whether Federal intervention could work to suppress lynching in the South. Attorney General Tom Clark expressed shock at the jury acquittal two weeks earlier in Greenville of the 28 defendants who had, by the admissions of 26 of them, lynched Willie Earle on February 17. Mr. Clark had suggested that a civil rights action might be brought against the defendants—entirely feasible under law existing since after the Civil War.
The piece thinks that the state court had done all that any Federal court could have done in the matter and that the acquittal occurred in spite of the fact. The case would at least serve as a warning to others that they would be vigorously prosecuted in the event of such a lynching.
But on the other hand, the outcome might encourage lynchers, as appeared to be the case with the attempted lynching of Buddy Bush in Jackson, N.C., just three days following the verdict in Greenville.
The local prejudice which caused the result in Greenville, it suggests, was the last fortress of the lynching sentiment and needed to be addressed. But whether it was best to leave it to the state or to have Federal intervention remained to be seen.
Drew Pearson tells of there being a wide political rift between the Truman Administration and the Democratic National Headquarters, the latter being in favor of the President sticking to the liberal policies of FDR, while most of the Cabinet, led by Secretary of Treasury John W. Snyder, favored a moderate approach.
He next tells of former President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua having steered the coup which overthrew the new President, Dr. Leonardo Arguello, in office for only a month. Sr. Somoza was as much a dictator as Hitler or Mussolini, even if he had been placed in power by the U.S. In 1927, President Coolidge sent Henry Stimson to patch things up with Nicaragua, the Marines in consequence training the Nicaraguan National Guard, which had just enforced the coup of 1947. General Somoza, thought to be a friend of the U.S.
President Arguello had been considered a Somoza puppet when he came to power. But he quickly demoted Somoza's son-in-law and relieved his elder son from his post in the National Guard, transferring him to a location remote from the capital. When he tried to oust another son-in-law as Ambassador to the United States, General Somoza stepped in and ordered the coup.
President Arguello was replaced by a cousin of Somoza, Benjamin Lacayo-Sacasa.
Though hated in Nicaragua, Somoza had become all-powerful through the efforts of the American Marines, such that he could not be voted out of power.
The policy of sending arms to Latin America, as encouraged by Secretary of State Marshall, was certain to create more dictators. The people thus were sure to dislike America for providing such aid and would be more likely to turn to Communism.
Mr. Pearson suggests that money
He next advises President Truman to take a leaf
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Taft-Hartley bill, on the President's desk awaiting action. They assert that there was no basis for the widespread assumption that he would sign it, even though the worst of it had been taken out in the final form, largely through the efforts of Senator Irving Ives of New York and others.
With the increasing threat of a third party challenge by Henry Wallace, the President was less likely to sign the bill. It would be practical to do so, as it was certain to pass over his veto. And the majority of the Cabinet favored signing it. But Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach was opposed to it. On a political basis, a third party could split the vote sufficiently to cost the Democrats both New York and California, thus potentially the election.
As the Alsops had discussed the previous week, Mr. Wallace's speaking tour of the country had attracted large crowds, and a third party effort was only awaiting his approval and that of the Communists and fellow travelers. No sensible labor leader wanted a third party, and especially not one headed by Mr. Wallace, for its inevitable Communist taint.
Labor thus opposed the President's signature on the bill, for if he were to sign it, they could not fight against a third party movement and for the President, leaving labor on the sidelines in 1948, opening the door for a Communist-supported third party. The opposite would be the case should the President veto both the tax legislation, favorable to the rich, and the labor bill. The labor leaders would then turn to the President, leaving former Vice-President Wallace with no issue except his differences over foreign policy and disapproval of the Truman Doctrine and its bypassing of the U.N.
Samuel Grafton suggests that failing to recognize that Communism had become a major issue in the country would be to blink reality, but it was not the only problem as it was being presented. Communists were now being blamed for everything by a large segment of the population.
Herbert Hoover had blamed the Russians for the fact that the U.S. had to send food abroad, that the Russian refusal to agree on a sensible German treaty which would promote a self-sufficient Germany had led to the country being "bled white".
But if the type of treaty desired by Mr. Hoover were concluded, then Russia would be in a position to ask for food from the United States, and the net export would thus be substantially the same.
Communism had become the universal scapegoat for every ill, even receiving the blame for the dire housing shortage in New York, leading the Welfare Department reportedly to pay for luxury hotel rooms for a few families on relief for a short time. It did not matter that it later turned out that the hotels were actually inexpensive.
HUAC was advancing the theory that anyone who called an American a Fascist had to be a Communist.
To blame one source for all of the nation's ills, in the end, was a dangerous approach, ignoring real causes which might lead to real solutions.
A letter from Inez Flow addresses her favorite topic, liquor; and she had not changed her mind. She urges a no vote on the June 14 referendum to have controlled sale through ABC stores.
She criticizes the Burke Davis trio of articles the previous week on the ABC system and seeks equal front page space for a reply by the dry forces.
The editors respond that Mr. Davis's articles were factual presentations, not designed to be pro or con ABC stores, and the statistics he had cited could be as much marshaled by dry forces as by wets. The newspaper had also afforded ample space in the letters column on a regular basis for the dry argument—including about 25 entries by Ms. Flow, if not more.
A letter from Congressman Hamilton Jones provides a copy of a letter from Congressman John Rooney, which he had sent to Mayor H. H. Baxter, stating that Mr. Jones was in fact present on the floor
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.