The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 15, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a new policy statement by the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been issued with respect to Germany for the first time since April 26, 1945, stating that the German people should be assisted in obtaining a higher standard of living and economic self-sufficiency. The highest priority was to be given to production of coal, food, and export goods. The removal of industry as reparations and limiting Germany's war-making capability, should not, the directive continued, limit its industrial capacity permanently. It directed General Lucius Clay, head of the American occupation forces, to consult with other European countries and international organizations in matters of German production and trade.
Secretary of State Marshall had stated to the Governors' Conference the previous night in Salt Lake City that money under the proposed Marshall Plan would not be available until Congress could act on it, probably in January. He stated that the country was at a "turning point" in world relations. The talk was confidential as to the details of the program disclosed to the Governors.
Both Democratic and Republican Governors expressed their full support of the Marshall Plan. Governor Thomas Dewey declined comment but Governor Earl Warren expressed his support for the Plan.
The reaction at the 16-nation Paris conference to discuss their needs under the Plan in conjunction with coordination of their own resources was that the nations would continue their work and submit their plan by September 1. One person at the conference had stated that any delay in implementation of the Marshall Plan would be felt most acutely by France, which expected its dollar supply to run out by the end of the year.
Governor Dewey won first place in a straw poll at the Governors' Conference among Republicans as the favorite for the nomination for the presidency in 1948. In a distant second place, with two votes, was Governor Warren—who would be the vice-presidential nominee.
The Democratic Governors were polled on their vice-presidential choices, and only former Secretary of State James Byrnes received more than one vote among nine candidates. He received two votes. No votes were cast for Senator Alben Barkley, the eventual vice-presidential nominee.
At the U.N., the American delegation demanded that the Balkans situation be given top priority by the Security Council, based on the report of the Balkans Subcommittee stressing the emergent problems.
The Greek Air Minister declared that the situation in Epirus, in northwest Greece, had radically changed in favor of the national forces fighting against the guerrillas. The Government claimed that the 2,500 guerrillas had come from Albania, the border of which was six miles from Konitsa, where initial fighting had occurred two days earlier, and that a new invasion was possible from Yugoslavia.
The U.S. Navy denied reports that American ships were being dispatched to Greece from their positions in the Mediterranean in the vicinity of Italy.
According to White House press secretary Charles G. Ross, the President intended to send his veto message on the repeated tax bill, vetoed and sustained in June, to the Congress by the end of the week.
It appeared unlikely that there were sufficient votes in the Senate for override of the veto, as the final vote on it had been 60 to 32, with three absent. Twelve Democrats had voted for the bill. Two Republicans, Senators Wayne Morse and William Langer, voted against it. At least 64 votes would be needed to override if all 95 sitting Senators voted.
In Melbourne, Fla., after some confusion, it was determined that the wife of the co-pilot of the plane which had crashed and killed 21 people two days earlier, was among the victims, as was her husband. Her grandmother stated that she had lost three previous husbands in airline crashes. The confusion developed because the co-pilot's former wife, from whom he had not obtained a legal divorce, was found alive.
In Portland, Ore., the national leader of the Elks asked the lodge's 900,000 members to join in a fight against Communism.
Residents of the mining town of Cokeville, Pa., surrounded the school building to prevent removal of desks and equipment in anticipation of closing the school.
On the editorial page, "Judge Waring States the Issue" compliments Judge J. Waties Waring, Federal District Court Judge in South Carolina, for his decision, announced Saturday, that the South Carolina all-white primary was unconstitutional, in accord with the Supreme Court decision in Allwright, decided in 1944, striking down an all-white primary in Texas as abridging the right to vote. That the party was denominated a private organization was of no moment because of its inherently public function when operating the primary.
Judge Waring had stated that it was "time for South Carolina to rejoin the union."
It doubted that the decision would be overturned for its good reasoning.
It believes that the white voters would come to realize the wisdom of the decision. The white voters had paid a terrible price in keeping black voters from voting, alienating themselves from the national political framework, as Governor Strom Thurmond was reminding them.
Unfortunately, Governor Thurmond would choose a different and politically expedient path a year hence and lead his fellow Dixiecrats out of the Democratic camp at the convention because of the introduction of a strong civil rights plank into the platform. He would scarcely relent in this stance during the remainder of his long political career in the Senate.
The piece does not comment on Judge Waring's decision, announced the same day, regarding the conditional admission of a black man to the University of South Carolina Law School, only if by the fall there was no law school at the South Carolina State College for Negroes, providing a third alternative that South Carolina completely abandon legal education.
"Mr. Warren Wants a Probe" tells of Comptroller General Lindsay Warren of North Carolina having reported to Congress recently that the settlement of at least 79 Federal war contracts, involving at least nineteen contractors, had been induced by fraud, causing a loss to the Government of at least two million dollars. He wanted an immediate investigation of the matter.
The piece agrees. It was unlikely that former Congressman Andrew May was the only member of Congress guilty of graft in awarding war contracts.
The Republicans, after coming to office promising to probe everything, had not gotten beyond a Red-hunt in Hollywood. They had shown no inclination toward investigating Congressmen for such graft.
It favors following the advice of Mr. Warren.
"A Note on the American Accent" remarks of the shift of the center of the world to America, as evidenced by the critical response to the British-authored American play "The Voice of the Turtle"
The play, liked by American and British audiences, had been received by British critics with disdain for its portrayal of loose morals.
Harold Hobson of The London Times remarked, "The last place where I encountered such morals was a rabbit warren
One might ask him what he was doing there.
Hubert Griffith of The Graphic found the British author, John Van Druten, now to be completely American, indicative, suggests the piece, notwithstanding British supercilious disapproval, of the shift
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Gob Who Gabbed With Gandhi", tells of Pat Wellington, a ship's radio operator from Mississippi, who sought and obtained an audience with Gandhi when his ship put into port for boiler repairs at New Delhi. The Indian leader broke his "day of silence" to discuss for a few minutes what was on the radio operator's mind, which was what all the trouble was about in India. Gandhi replied that it was the same "poison" which afflicted the rest of the world.
The piece concludes that neither this incident nor the telephone call made recently by the railroad man from Oelwein, Iowa, to Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov, would change the world. But it reminded of Walt Whitman's lines, describing the plain spirit of American democracy:
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom...
Those with a never-quelled audacity...
Those that look carelessly in the faces of
Presidents and governors, as to say,
Who are you?
It hopes that the leaders might sense the simple good will present in these two audacious gestures.
Drew Pearson tells of the State Department being relieved that Russia and its satellites had decided not to join the Marshall Plan as it would have meant giving aid to Communist governments. The Russians did not know that the State Department had not obtained the prior approval of Senator Arthur Vandenberg anent the Plan. Had they been aware of the fact, they might have put the U.S. on the spot by agreeing to participate, provoking the ire of Republican fiscal conservatives such as Congressman John Taber of New York, who already opposed aid to the Soviet-bloc states.
The State Department had just withdrawn a fifteen million dollar balance due on a 30-million dollar credit to Hungary because of the recent Communist-backed coup in the country. Had Moscow permitted Hungary to participate in the Marshall Plan, it would have proved embarrassing to the State Department, and Congress would likely not have approved the aid package.
So, in the end, Foreign Commissar Molotov proved a great friend to the U.S. by walking away from the Marshall Plan in Paris.
He notes that diplomatic observers believed Mr. Molotov was taking orders from the fourteen Soviet politicians and generals comprising the Politburo, which actually ruled Russia.
He next informs of Senate Minority Leader Alben Barkley, who in 1944 had led the fight to override FDR's veto of the tax bill that year, now leading the fight to sustain the President's veto of the current repeated tax bill. The argument against tax relief, as put forth by Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming at a Democratic caucus, was that the budget remained unbalanced.
Senator Walter George of Georgia, always a champion of the wealthy, was not impressed by the argument and stated that he would vote to override. His view was that the people were entitled to tax relief as long as millions of dollars were being sent abroad in aid.
Senator John Overton of Louisiana believed that it was silly to vote for tax relief before knowing how much the foreign aid program would cost the country.
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland reminded that hungry people would not worry about having democracy.
Only Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado believed that the change of the effective date of the tax cut to January 1, 1948 from July 1, 1947, was a reason to vote for the bill.
Marquis Childs tells of the reliable trade journal Iron Age predicting that steel prices would rise $5 per ton, set to send all prices rising again. It was not clear how much the rise was the result of the coal settlement just reached with UMW. The industrialists who had effected the settlement sought a conference with the President's Council of Economic Advisers to counteract the idea that it would set off an inflationary trend. They had reasoned that a strike would have definitely caused an inflationary spiral to begin, because of low stocks of coal, producing shortages in steel.
They stressed that the resultant increase in the price of coal might not be as high as anticipated, perhaps as low as 35 to 50 cents per ton.
The industrialists also reasoned that the new miner was a skilled worker in whom $15,000 of equipment per man was invested. It was necessary to give him a better standard of living and keep young miners working.
The new contract gave the miner breaks which others in industry had enjoyed for some time, such as the eight-hour work day.
One estimate predicted that the coal contract would cost the consumer 580 million dollars, 180 million of which would be the result of rise in steel prices. Railroads and utilities rates would rise with the rise in coal prices. That in turn would impact the entire economy.
The steel companies were operating at nearly full capacity and a strike would have cut across their favorable profit position.
There was conflict within the steel industry as to whether current plants were enough to produce for the country's growth.
He concludes that those were some of the questions which had arisen in the wake of the favorable settlement with UMW.
Samuel Grafton tells of Governor Dewey approaching his campaign for the presidency as a man trying to solve a Chinese puzzle, with his moves and the sequence of them being more important than ideas. He wanted to remain prominent without appearing too forward. He avoided comment on Taft-Hartley because he was not yet officially a candidate. He had gone to Kansas City as part of a vacation.
It all appeared as a throwback to the political past, of the days of Uncle Joe Cannon or Marcus Hanna. Happy was the people who could so elect a President as it meant that there were no pressing issues of the day.
One had the feeling that a single powerful speech by someone of the stature of General Eisenhower could blow the whole thing up, "leaving the carefully contrived structure spread over the landscape like jackstraws, with committeemen's faces peering oddly through the mess here and there, like bits in a surrealist picture."
A letter from Air Force Major General St. Clair Street, chief of the Military Personnel Procurement Service, tells of Air Force Day set to occur on August 1, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the Army Air Forces, with the theme that "Air Power Is Peace Power". It would serve to stress the need for continuing volunteer enlistment.
A letter writer objects to the crowding on Charlotte buses, where people were crammed as sardines.
A letter from a visitor who had a flat tire on his way home to Memphis finds him disgruntled at what he found in Charlotte, a hillbilly town, he says, with no service for tourists after 6:00 p.m., a second-rate movie theater selling confections, no patronage by the major studios for the good reason that the railroad station and the auditorium suggested a one-horse town. Nor could he locate but one public golf course, that outside the city limits.
The only thing he found positive to say of Charlotte was that it had helpful police officers.
He concludes by issuing the hope that the city would someday become what some misguided natives believed it to be.
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.