The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 13, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that leading Senators disfavored the calling of a special session of Congress to pass on emergency aid for Europe to avert crisis in advance of winter. Senator Eugene Millikin of Colorado, chairman of the Republican conference, did not want a special session on a "hullabaloos basis" and predicted that other members would react likewise. Senators Arthur Vandenberg and Robert Taft had already expressed their disfavor of such a session. Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, Democratic Whip, said that he was not aware of any plans for calling a special session, that the members would spend most of their time discussing the 1948 election if one were called, but that ultimately the decision was for the President. Democrats and Republicans suggested a better course might be to call back the Senate committees concerned with foreign aid to begin the ground work for emergency action.
According to aides, the President, returning from the Rio Inter-American Conference aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, was not yet convinced of the necessity for a special session, despite Secretary of State Marshall having told a press conference during the week that he believed it necessary to avert disaster in Europe.
In Paris, thirteen of the sixteen nations meeting to discuss their needs under the Marshall Plan, were planning to consider formation of an economic customs union—to become the European Common Market—, to stimulate free trade to provide self-help, a goal of the Marshall Plan. The plan did not include Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland among the nations at the conference. The 13 nations planned to invite Russia, two Soviet republics, and twelve other Eastern European nations to participate. The plan was announced by the British and Belgian foreign offices. The Benelux countries had already formed such a union.
Secretary of State Marshall summoned the entire ten-member U.N. delegation for a meeting to plan strategy on the issues of Palestine, the Balkans, and other matters hanging fire before the U.N., in preparation for the General Assembly meeting to start on Tuesday. Normally, such meetings were attended by only two or three delegates, indicative of the importance being attached to the coming meeting.
A secretary to Undersecretary of State Will Clayton was no longer so employed after 26 months on the Federal payroll, the secretary claiming that she was the victim of a witch-hunt, forced to resign because she was of Russian descent, born in Czechoslovakia, and had previously worked in 1944-45 for the Soviet Embassy. The State Department contended that she had voluntarily resigned. She had worked at the White House between November, 1940 and April, 1944, after which she took the job as a writer at the Soviet Embassy. She regretted having done so, and stated that she could no longer stand up to the "outside pressures" placed on her to resign.
Senator Taft, after speaking before the State Bar of California in Santa Cruz, was booed by a labor picket line of some 200 persons outside the event, after he stated that the affidavit of non-Communist affiliation required by Taft-Hartley had to be signed or the labor leaders so refusing were "cutting off their noses to spite their faces". The provision prevented the union not in compliance from availing itself of the services of the NLRB, effectively preventing collective bargaining. Senator Taft was beginning a Western tour to test the waters to determine whether he would run for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1948.
Food prices reached levels near the peak experienced following World War I, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that the wholesale price index was but seven percent below the peak reached in May, 1920, having risen ten weeks in succession, rising 4.9 percent in that period. Eggs had reached a dollar per dozen in some cities, choice steaks, a dollar per pound and higher, and butter, near or above a dollar per pound in some locales.
Senator Irving Ives of New York stated that Congress would need take action if wild speculation in grains and other foods did not subside. Otherwise, there might be a depression.
Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, told a mass meeting of workers in Buffalo that he would promote a mass buyers' strike to "smash the profiteers", and would also seek restoration of price control.
Secretary of Commerce Averell Harriman said that the high prices on food were primarily the result of domestic bidding wars from unprecedented prosperity, not exports to foreign countries.
Senator Taft, in his address to the Bar, expressed the belief that the high prices were because of the people eating too much. He advised, "Eat less and eat less extravagantly." He opposed return to price controls.
Chop-chop.
The BLS also reported that construction reached a new postwar peak in August, with 1.4 billion dollars worth of construction ongoing and 1.9 million workers so employed. Employment in construction trades was up 14 percent over August, 1946, with the largest increase occurring in private residential construction, accounting for 40 percent of the construction employment. Employment declined in private non-residential construction. Construction during the first eight months of 1947 reached 8.9 billion dollars worth, two billion more than during the same period of 1946.
Attorney General Tom Clark presented a proposed decree to the Supreme Court, pursuant to its decision and order of June, which had upheld the right of the Federal Government to oil lands off the coast of California to the three-mile limit, overruling the rights claimed by the State of California, which had been receiving royalties from leases of the land by oil companies for many years. The proposed decree would, in accord with a stipulation entered between the Federal Government and California in July, postpone any injunctive relief to the Federal Government and leave in place the present system, subject to later change, to afford California time to adjust to the ruling and avoid thereby economic hardship. California had a petition for rehearing pending in the case.
The severe tropical hurricane in the Atlantic was churning toward Puerto Rico, 250 miles away, intended stop by President Truman on his voyage on the U.S.S. Missouri from Brazil back to Norfolk. The storm, based on its rate of travel and direction, would be 530 miles east of Palm Beach, Florida, the following morning. The Missouri was reported to have slowed its pace to allow the storm to pass.
In Charlotte, Edward Wells Ballenger, 39, telegraph editor for The News for seventeen years, died in Greenville, S.C., after he had become suddenly critically ill two weeks earlier from diabetes.
In Winston-Salem, industrial leaders agreed with City officials to undertake conservation measures to alleviate the desperate water shortage to avoid emergency measures which would require complete shutdown of industries for given periods each week. Mayor George Lentz had estimated that the city would be without water by November 21, were the Rainmaker not to be employed by the City.
The City had sought pipe from the Third Army in Atlanta and was seeking from Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall 35,000 feet of twelve-inch pipe, to tap the South Fork Creek and other sources for additional water supply.
One word: Hollisterians. Think about it
In Detroit, a female stenographer employed by American Express for 29 years, since she was 13, admitted embezzling $107,000 in nine months and giving the money to her boyfriend, a bartender, whom she had met a year earlier in Cedar Point, Ohio, that he could start a linen business and they could be married. Most of the money was in claims of lost checks. She had decided to admit the crime.
That is good. Had you taken a trip, especially in the rain, there is no telling what might have happened.
NBC announced that, beginning January 1, the network and its affiliates would not any longer broadcast detective, crime, or mystery programs prior to 9:30 p.m., to avoid exposure of same to juveniles and adolescent minds.
But how would that avoid the latter if many over the age of consent were still awake and watching?
Native American white women were having more babies by the time they reached 25 than at any time since 1910, according to Pascal Whelpton of Miami University of Ohio, in an address to the 55-nation International Statistical Institute. Women born in 1921 had 958 births per thousand by 1946, compared to 885 for those born between 1915 and 1919 and 864 for those born from 1910 to 1914, by the time they had reached 25. Those who had been born in 1900-1904 had 1,068 babies per thousand by the time they were 25.
If you wonder at the classification "native American white women", it is because they were half-breeds, pink women. That is what happens when you mongrelize the human race, crossing white women and red men.
Mr. Whelpton also told ISI that the downward turn would likely resume in the ensuing few years.
Don't bet on it.
Cheaper by the dozen.
In Houston, a man divorced his wife for the fifth time. They had met through a matrimonial agency in 1943. The last marriage endured 6 days, before they declared another period of truce. His lawyer said that his client said "never again".
In Los Angeles, actress Jane Withers had obtained a license to wed actor-producer William Moss. They had mailed 2,300 wedding invitations to the affair, to be held at the First Congregational Church.
Be sure and attend
Ray Howe on the sports page provides his annual look at area college football teams, starting with Davidson.
On the editorial page, "A Hot Tip from Bob Taft" begins by referencing the callousness of Marie Antoinette toward the starving peasants of France when she said, "Let them eat cake," as forerunner to the stand-pat Republicans, analogous to Mr. Taft's remark in Santa Cruz that the people should eat less as a remedy to inflation. It followed in line with his opposition to OPA and other means of controlling private enterprise, and his assurance that once price controls were gone, the production which would be stimulated would, in time, lower prices.
But the larger pay checks could not meet the higher prices, and so the people who had once supported Senator Taft now began to pull away from his policies, having realized the result.
Mr. Taft had trouble understanding what the people wanted. He appeared to have difficulty hearing the vox populi, as well as talking to the people.
"The Epidemic Crisis" comments on the message from Pope Pius saying that a crisis was at hand. Italy was in turmoil, plagued by hunger and strike of a million farmworkers. The country would likely become the next "victim" of the Truman Doctrine.
America had not learned the lesson of the war, that it could not live alone in the world. The Truman Doctrine offered scant hope for peace or checking of Soviet expansion, but had developed a very real warfare with the Soviets. The Marshall Plan might do little to stop the drift toward warfare with Russia, but the country could not afford not to try it. There was little time left to decide on the Marshall Plan before economic disaster would render it moot.
"A Community Challenge" finds the assault on Don Hunt, organizer of the AFL paper workers, perpetrated by enemies of the labor movement, appearing as a sign that industrial battles were being waged and racial prejudice stirred, in preparation for a nationwide witch-hunt.
The police had determined that labor motives were not involved, but it was unclear how they had come to that conclusion. Mr. Hunt had not been robbed but his labor contract and other papers were missing. It urges that the case should be thoroughly investigated and that the community had a stake in the outcome.
Baiting of minorities and labor leaders could only end in internal warfare. The attack on Mr. Hunt, while new to Charlotte, appeared part of a national pattern.
A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "Occupation Blues", tells of the bill of particulars signed by 55 men of the 503rd Military Police Battalion stationed at Leghorn, Italy, at the General Headquarters of Lt. General John C.H. Lee. The matter was reported by Robert Ruark and told of the men living in unheated buildings with no hot water, only rarely able to obtain three-day passes, and assigned to duty in the snow guarding officers' villas, while being required to salute staff cars and guard the generals' trailers.
The piece asserts that Mr. Ruark had done the Army a favor by publicizing the complaints. He had written a second series of articles after returning to Italy to appraise the official investigation into General Lee, which Mr. Ruark had stimulated.
It was good, the piece opines, that the M.P.'s and enlisted men got their complaints off their chests, but they would also need realize that even at home, there were people with things and without, and that three-day passes were not always easy to obtain.
Drew Pearson tells of Henry Kaiser urging the building of new steel mills, despite opposition to it by Big Steel, which believed that production of steel had reached its limit and to build new mills would mean ultimately having them standing idle after the boom was over. The attitude was causing a bottleneck in the steel industry. Mr. Kaiser pointed to the fact that in only a couple of depression years had the country not built new mills. He wanted continued growth.
He next imparts of Congressman Virgil Chapman of Kentucky having developed a serious drinking problem while on a Congressional junket touring Alaska. At one point, he had to be hospitalized. Other Representatives tried tactfully to get him to curb his drinking. When Mr. Pearson called him about the story, he became enraged and said it was false, that he would hold Mr. Pearson responsible if the story were printed.
He next tells of the large number of military men occupying important roles in the State Department, a list of whom he provides, among them being Col. Dean Rusk, future Secretary of State under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, at the time director of the Office of U. N. Affairs.
Marquis Childs, in Warsaw, tells of Poles not being responsive to Moscow propaganda regarding the U.S. and its supposed imperialistic motives and dollar diplomacy in Europe. But they were affected by the reports that America was seeking to rebuild Germany and its industry, placing priority on same ahead of Poland. The rape of Poland by the Nazis had been complete and it still bore the scars physically and psychologically. Thus, the reaction to Germany being given a renascence before Poland was strong.
Poles still remembered the Wilson policy of rebuilding Poland after World War I and there remained good will toward the U.S. from it.
But former Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane had recently set forth some harsh opinions on Poland in Life
The political trials might result in the prosecution of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, leader of the Peasant Party, who refused to leave Poland despite his situation becoming increasingly tenuous.
The new American Ambassador was Stanton Griffis, a business man with Hollywood connections. That which was needed by American diplomats in the country, he offers, was patience and perseverance, as well as a degree of firmness.
Samuel Grafton reports that most middle class people he knew were engaging in economics in their homes. The level of it depended on income, and sometimes took the form of such insignificant cutbacks as not going to the country for the summer or drinking only the wine on hand in the cellar or cutting back from $300 to $150 the budget for furnishing the son's college room.
Most of the middle class did not mind the end of price control and were not eager to see it return despite the high prices. But they were confused at present. Some of them wanted a return to price control.
He concludes that the phrase "shabby genteel", probably lying dormant for a decade, might be staging a comeback.
A letter responds to the News editorial, "That 'Insult' from Henry Wallace", anent the VFW criticism of Henry Wallace speaking abroad against American foreign policy when the VFW, itself, plentifully criticized foreign policy at home, the editorial having found it violative of freedom of speech, no matter the venue of the American citizen's expression of opinion. In an age of fast media coverage internationally, it made little or no difference.
This writer agrees with the idea and looks at the "People's Platform" of the same date, finds a letter writer responding to another's satire, availing himself of freedom of speech to attack it, suggesting that the "so-called" liberals, such as Senator Claude Pepper, were abandoning the Wallace third-party movement to avoid accusation as fellow-travelers. That writer had found the trend encouraging; this writer finds the previous author to be jumping the gun in being encouraged.
He notes that Senator Pepper did not desert any third-party movement as Mr. Wallace had not formally joined or formed a third party—though he would.
He concludes that in any event, he enjoyed the letter, especially where the writer had suggested that Herbert Hoover was not a cad, wants to know, "What in the (gulp) world is he?"
A letter from the public information officer of the North Carolina Wing Civil Air Patrol thanks the newspaper for its support in helping to publicize its recent air show at Douglas Municipal Field in Charlotte.
A letter writer is inclined to cancel his subscription to the newspaper if it intended to eliminate Herblock and substitute Shoemaker cartoons or, worse, completely eliminate the cartoon from the editorial page, as had occurred three times recently.
Well, we agree, especially on the latter, as it means an extra column for us to read and digest and summarize for your edification and preservation in easily readable and digestible and searchable format, armed with 20-20 hindsight and foresight aplenty.
The editors encourage the writer to be of stout heart, as Herblock would return September 20. He was on "sudden and enforced" vacation for three weeks, even if his cartoons were on vacation for only two of them.
When do we a vacation get, boss? Our fingers are inky and full of blisters. Our eyes are crossed and our minds are worse. We may go on strike. The wages are terrible. The conditions, pathetic. Unsafe typewriters.
A letter from the Chief Barker of the Variety Club of Charlotte, Tent No. 24, thanks the newspaper for its support of its recent benefit premiere of "Variety Girl"
Framed Edition
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