The Charlotte News

Tuesday, July 1, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Marshall, speaking before the Women's National Press Club in Washington, had denounced Soviet propaganda that the United States intended imperialist aims with the recently enunciated Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe through American aid to be administered by the aided countries. He cited as proof the fact that the U.S. had fought a war to destroy the greatest military apparatus ever created and left in place only small garrisons of troops in the occupied countries. No conditions had been placed on the withdrawal and 82 million tons of goods worth nine billion dollars had already been sent to rehabilitate the war-battered nations of Europe.

Secretary Marshall said that the proposed aid would require that it be used for its intended purposes, to assist in economic rehabilitation to restore hope and confidence of the people in security, and not be used to advance selfish political or economic interests.

In Paris, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Russia continued to meet to discuss the Marshall Plan, despite V. M. Molotov of Russia having vetoed the plan the previous day and proposed instead only that the conference determine how much each European nation would need in aid and whether the U.S. would provide it, a plan rejected by Britain and France. Foreign ministers Georges Bidault of France and Ernest Bevin of Britain indicated willingness to continue discussions even if Mr. Molotov absented himself from the meeting. They reportedly proposed to create a plan of European needs and ability to supply same, keeping aid to a minimum.

M. Bidault was planning to offer a compromise proposal, the terms of which were not disclosed. Both French and British observers believed that only a miracle could now save the conference from failure. The interpretation of the Molotov proposal was that the U.S. would have to commit to aid without knowing specifically where or how it would be used. Mr. Bevin had reportedly compared it to demanding a blank check.

Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio denounced as cheap demagoguery the President's proposal for a Congressional investigation of the real estate lobby, in conjunction with his message accompanying his signature the previous day on the rent control measure. Senator Robert Taft, however, stated that he supported the President's proposal.

Amid indications that property owners planned immediately to take advantage of the rent control law, allowing 15 percent increases where written leases were signed through 1948, the Charlotte Property Management Association met to draw up guidelines under the law.

The new law also removed virtually all construction industry controls and local builders in Charlotte were reacting positively. Shortages of such necessary items as nails, plaster, and wall board, however, were likely to continue, though the shortages were being gradually abated.

In the meantime, they would need to suffice with Elmer's, cellophane and tin foil, a little thin but making for a neighborly home life, provided no tornadoes blew through.

Additional shipyard workers, numbering about 80,000, walked off the job on the East Coast, bringing the total to 120,000 strikers since the previous Thursday. Negotiations to resolve the strike continued but talks had thus far failed.

Along a 90-mile stretch of the Mississippi River, in the vicinity of St. Louis, new breaks had been discovered in the levees, causing the evacuation of additional thousands of people as the river reached a 103-year peak.

In Carrollton, Ga., a lynching was prevented at the Carroll County Jail when about twenty policemen formed a cordon to protect a black man arrested on a charge of murdering a white man from a mob of 100 to 200 men who had formed in front of the jail. The mob dispersed at about 1:30 a.m. The jailed man then was transported to Atlanta by state troopers without incident.

In Lassen National Park in Northern California, a two and half year old girl was found on the side of Mt. Harkness after she had been missing for two days in sub-freezing temperatures. Her grandfather, former Congressman John Tolan of Oakland, 70, had died of a heart attack twelve hours earlier in a hospital in nearby Westwood after leading the initial search for the child.

The little girl was found by a lion hunter of French Gulch at 8:00 a.m., less than a mile from his cabin. She told her parents that she had hidden the previous day from a searcher with a bloodhound because she was afraid of them. The searchers had surmised that she was playing hide and seek with them.

When found, she was wearing only her undershirt in 25-degree temperatures, was shivering, but insisted she was not cold, curled up in a gully. Experienced mountain men expressed amazement that she had been able to climb the steep mountain and had survived in the cold temperatures for two days. She had wandered away from a family cabin on Sunday while playing with cousins, with her mother nearby.

Ally, ally, oxen free...

South of Sibley, La., a staff sergeant at Barksdale Field in Shreveport was killed while on an unauthorized flight in a B-17, the plane having crashed.

In New York, thousands of people, including Jim Farley, were forced to flee via stairwells a 42-story skyscraper after a fire blocked the elevator service.

Tom Watkins of The News continues his report of the previous week on the strange disease which had destroyed 3,000 acres of cotton in Mecklenburg County. Still a mystery, the disease had never before been observed by scientists in the state. It had been reported in other areas of the state and in South Carolina as well. Unaffected cotton in the county was doing better with the arrival of hot weather. Previously, it was theorized that the hot weather followed by a cold snap had caused the plants to be attacked by lice on the basal leaves. The lice were not present but the lady beetles which fed on the lice were in evidence.

On the editorial page, "A Fateful Problem in Semantics" tells of familiarity with the concept of atomic fission on the part of the public having in two years bred contempt, even though the mechanics of the splitting of the atom remained too esoteric for the average citizen to grasp. Recently a radio commentator, serving as moderator for a nationwide broadcast of a discussion of nuclear energy, searched in vain for the right word to describe the concept.

The efforts to get across the basic notion of bombs which were now capable of multiplying by thousands the destruction wrought on Hiroshima had reached a jaded public without impact. John Hersey's Hiroshima had barely made a ripple. The radio broadcast of the Bikini tests the previous July had done little more for the public understanding and imagination. The world continued as if Hiroshima had never been. The old pattern of complacency had returned. The conception that conventional warfare was still the way of the future firmly stood, as Minute Men, ensconced.

But the hard truth remained that atomic energy could destroy a whole city the size of Charlotte and a way of life with one blast in seconds, rendering war no longer practicable.

"We still regard peace as desirable, but it appeals only to our higher instincts. We do not yet recognize it as the price of survival."

"On Cows and Publicity" remarks on a milking contest at the Courthouse in Winston-Salem, sponsored by the Jaycees, to demonstrate that North Carolina, while having good dairy production, needed more to meet its needs, relying on imports for a third of its milk. It also needed to increase its milk consumption, only half the national per capita average.

The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem had suggested that "cows deserve more publicity." The piece agrees, that the cow afforded an economic opportunity to the state, not only to meet its needs but also to become a dairy exporter.

First, they had to figure out how to substitute milk for the booze, one nipple having supplanted another.

"Three Hides on the Barn" finds it salutary that the Government had obtained convictions against two prominent American Communists for contempt of Congress and caught a former State Department employee hiding his Communist Party affiliation in replying to a Federal loyalty investigation. Their civil liberties appeared not to have been violated and they had been convicted of not providing truthful answers under oath.

It proved that the Government could cope with any domestic threat from Communists by following simple rules laid down by the chief anti-Communist, J. Edgar Hoover. He had recently stated in Newsweek that those rules were not to label anyone a Communist until the facts were in hand; not to confuse liberals and progressives with Communists; and not to be party to violation of the civil rights of anyone, as that only confirmed the desires of Communists.

The piece hopes that the sound advice would register with the "hot-eyed members" of HUAC. Catching Communists was no trick, as long as the label was not hung on anyone with whom the hunter happened to disagree.

And, of course, as time would move on, the advice of Mr. Hoover would be as useful to instruct the public as were the efforts of atomic scientists to convince of the dangers of war in a nuclear age. The fears would eventually collide with xenophobia generally in 1963 to produce the most cowardly act of all, in Dealey Plaza.

No one but a dirty little coward, Communist, Fascist, racist or whatever –ist might be applied, would ambush an unarmed man with a high-powered rifle, whether the result of a single madman or a small cabal of conspirators.

The piece overlooks the fact that to target an individual or a group of individuals because of their beliefs or affiliation is, ab initio, a gross violation of civil liberties under the First Amendment. To ask someone about affiliation and then use the response as an excuse for criminal prosecution or imposition of other disability is an abrogation of the Constitution and can be used to justify any form of witch-hunting.

Are you or have you ever been a witch? Failure to answer honestly will result in a jail term for perjury and ruination of your life. There will be tests and investigation into your past after you provide the answer to determine whether we think you are telling the truth.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "A Prince Plays Hooky", tells of Prince Hamid Reza Pahlevi of Iran, half-brother of the Shah, having taken a plane to Paris, playing hooky from his school in Rhode Island. But members of the Iranian Legation had been waiting for the truant in Paris and he was scheduled to return to school in a few days.

The piece concludes that not even Princes could escape the inevitability of the truant's lot, that he could not get away with playing Tom Sawyer any more than anyone else could. "Always he comes home just little Johnny Jones who ran away from school this morning. He will be 'back tomorrow, sure.'"

Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of State Marshall having convinced the President to veto the Taft-Hartley bill because to sign it would have alienated the liberal and socialist sectors of Europe, with whom the country sought mollification. Secretary Marshall was following the advice of policy-planner George Kennan who believed it a mistake for the country to swing too far to the right. The appeal should be to moderate forces in Europe, and it was with this goal expressly in mind that Secretary Marshall recommended the veto.

Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico convinced the DNC that an overridden veto would be best for the Democrats, assuring the President continued support by labor and also providing the Chief Executive with legislation to correct labor abuses. Only the Southerners in the DNC opposed the veto.

The rest of the veto fight had centered around whether Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, in Geneva at the international trade conference, could be flown home or paired with a Republican Senator who would abstain and thus neutralize the absence. While two Republicans, one of whom was Senator Joseph McCarthy, were willing to pair, Senator Taft and Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska refused to allow it. Senator Claude Pepper of Florida then sought to delay the vote until the return of Mr. Thomas. Meanwhile, arrangements were being made in New York to get the ailing Senator Robert Wagner, original sponosr of the Wagner Act, to the floor for the vote.

In the end, neither voted. But their votes would not have made any difference to the outcome, 68 to 25 in favor of override, needing at least 32 to sustain the veto. (Senator Theodore Bilbo, re-elected from Mississippi in 1946, had never been seated in the 80th Congress and was shortly to die from cancer.)

Mr. Pearson remarks that Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who favored the veto, had come out of the fight with increased stature and was being considered a possible vice-presidential nominee for the Republicans in 1948, to attenuate the extent of loss of the labor vote resultant of the bill.

Joseph and Stewart Alsop tell of a move afoot within the UAW to oust Walter Reuther as president and replace him with George Addes, the ambitious secretary-treasurer of the union who had consistently worked with the Communists. The UAW represented a majority of the CIO membership and thus the move would place CIO under the control or considerable influence of the Communists.

For some time, there had been a jurisdictional dispute between UAW and the Farm Equipment Workers, the latter tightly controlled by the Communists. Mr. Reuther and the UAW leadership had sought consolidation with FEW to eliminate the jurisdictional dispute, notwithstanding the known Communist ties of the union. But FEW had always resisted the entreaties of UAW.

After aborted efforts at merger, the Addes wing of UAW worked out an agreement with which FEW was happy. Mr. Reuther did not know of the negotiations with the FEW and when he read the agreement, disapproved of it, wanted a special meeting during the week of June 23 to consider it. Instead, the Addes-controlled executive board of UAW ordered a referendum by July 15.

If Mr. Addes succeeded in gaining control of UAW through the FEW, it would affect the influence of Communism generally in the nation. Neither the non-Communist majority of CIO nor the Taft-Hartley Act likely could arrest the process once started. The future of the UAW in the ensuing few months, they predict, would directly impact the future of the country.

Thus, we conclude, the happy FEW seeking control of the auto workers union might control the destiny of the world. The day might be saved, however, should UAW form itself into a League.

Marquis Childs discusses Robert Lovett, new Undersecretary of State, replacing Dean Acheson who had resigned to enter the private sector. Labeled a "Wall Street banker", the description, while narrowly accurate, was far from adequate in describing Mr. Lovett, an enlightened capitalist. He had been in France when that country fell to the Nazis in spring, 1940. He came home and became the Assistant Secretary of War for Air in 1941. He had been a Navy flier in World War I and so was assigned the job at the beginning of World War II of building up the country's skimpy Army Air Force. Starting with 2,000 planes and not enough pilots to fly them, by the end of 1942, the Air Force had 30,000 planes and the crews to man them.

Secretary of State Marshall had convinced him to return to Washington to act in his new capacity with the State Department, knowing that he was a determined worker.

The policy of the President and Secretary Marshall stood firmly opposed to rejuvenation of the cartelists who had supplied the Hitler war machine. Mr. Lovett would implement that policy vigorously. Mr. Childs thus reminds that it is best to look behind the label, to the person actually appointed to a post, before making judgments.

A letter comments on the Collier's articles by former FDR kingmaker and adviser Jim Farley, two of which had thus far appeared, explaining why he had broken with the President in 1940 at the time FDR determined to run for an unprecedented third term in office. He concludes that Mr. Farley was simply angry because the President had excluded him from inner circle social gatherings and because he had wanted to run for the presidency in 1940—throwing his hat into the ring befo' ya'll at the Ma'se Robe't Ho-tel down theya in Wins'on. But his only prior experience for holding the highest office in the land, before becoming Postmaster General and DNC chairman, was his having been Boxing Commissioner of New York State.

The writer opines that long after the dedicatory address by Josephus Daniels of the Little White House as a national historic landmark at Warm Springs, Georgia—on the way to and fro which, the train bearing the President would usually pass through Charlotte—, parents would tell their children of the greatness of America in that it could produce someone of the stature of Franklin Roosevelt.

A letter from failed Republican Congressional candidate P.C. Burkholder, as usual, finds the New Deal wanting compared to Republican rule, says that the New Deal had been less a job creator than the Hoover Administration—comparing apples and oranges statistically in job creation across the last four years of Republican rule with the first four years under FDR, cleaning up the undisputed mess which laissez-faire had left behind after twelve years of Republican rule.

A letter writer tells of the Golden Rule Party, of which he was secretary-treasurer, with national headquarters in Efland, N.C.—long reputed as the place where failed UNC students go for refuge.

The party stood, on religious grounds, against the death penalty, against ABC stores, for manufacture by the state or Federal Government of all medicines and alcoholic beverages to be sold cheaply and "pure" and placed under "honest control". A Democrat, a Republican, and a Golden Ruler should be elected every five years in each county of the state to control manufacture and distribution. The party also stood for open access to power, telephone lines and telegraph lines, as well as railroads, that they should be operated by a commission of 300 persons elected every five years.

He invited all Golden Rulers to meet July 4, 1947, probably coincident with the expected arrival of the Roswellians any minute, to save the world from itself.

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