The Charlotte News
Friday, October 29, 1948
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., Britain, and France denied charges of the previous day by Josef Stalin that an official agreement between the West and Russia in Moscow in August had been breached by the U.S. and Britain, saying that no official agreement had ever been reached regarding having Russian marks become the official currency of Berlin in exchange for lifting the blockade. Premier Stalin had stated that Britain and the U.S. had made two such breaches. Some U.N. delegates found the statements to be the Premier's most defensive ever directed toward the West, suggesting fear by the Soviets that the U.N. debates on Berlin were impacting world opinion adversely to the Soviets.
The U.N. Security Council placed the issue of Palestine in a specially created five-nation subcommittee to study the British-Chinese proposal to have Israel withdraw from positions won in the recent fighting in the Negev desert and impose economic and diplomatic sanctions to end the fighting. Russia and the Ukraine abstained. Rumors had it that the President had withdrawn support for the sanctions proposal. Another source, however, said that the President had not taken any stand on the issue and had left it to the diplomats in Paris to determine.
Paul Hoffman, ERP administrator, said that the French coal strikes were being led from Moscow. He said that an additional 1.25 billion dollars would be necessary to fund ERP for the last quarter of the 1948-49 fiscal year, that ERP had asked the President for permission to use the rest of the original five billion dollars appropriated for the year by March 31, allowed under the original legislation.
In Paris, police indicated that they had jailed 700 French citizens and foreigners in an attempt to end the 28-day old coal strike. They were charged with either assault or interfering with non-strikers' right to work. The strike had cost France four million tons of coal.
In Budapest, three former Hungarian Government officials received life sentences for attempting to overthrow the republic or, in one case, treason. Nine others received sentences ranging from ten to fifteen years.
In London, the Labor Government published its controversial plan, opposed by Conservatives, for nationalization of most of the country's steel industry by May, 1950, the eve of the next scheduled general election. Under the plan, mid-sized companies would not be owned outright by the Government but would need to acquire a Government license to operate. Smaller companies would be exempt. It was believed that passage would be delayed by debate until latter 1949.
The U.S. rejected the Soviet demand for an official explanation of General MacArthur's meetings with other American military commanders in Tokyo, saying they were routine as part of his command duties.
The President was campaigning in Harlem, pledging "resolute and unwavering" support for his civil rights program. He called equal rights and opportunity "democracy's answer to the challenge of totalitarianism". It was the first time during the campaign that he stressed the civil rights program, coming on the anniversary of the recommendations made by his specially appointed Civil Rights Commission, which had favored immediate integration of society and abolition of all forms of Jim Crow. He said that he could not do anything about the goals, however, as long as there was a recalcitrant Congress doing nothing about them.
DNC chairman J. Howard McGrath recognized the Truman Democrats of South Carolina as the official Democratic Party of that state.
Governor Dewey, touring Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, agreed with House Speaker Joe Martin to cooperate in the event of a GOP election the following Tuesday. He said that the Truman Administration had only discovered during the past week that it was not for Communism and had undermined the efforts of representatives working abroad for peace. He promised to support expansion of Social Security, raising of the minimum wage, and protection of veterans' rights and benefits.
In Philadelphia, the American Council of Christian Churches, a fundamentalist church organization, officially announced its opposition to the appointment of John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State in a Dewey administration. It also opposed his being a U.N. representative. The opposition was based on his long association with pacifist church leaders, specifically the World Council of Churches, which it found had attacked the capitalist system and declared that it had failed.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., Senator Arthur Vandenberg, giving a radio talk in favor of the Dewey-Warren ticket, said that the 80th Congress had been "amazingly useful" and was not the "whipping boy" which "self-serving critics" had made it out to be "to divert attention from their own embarrassing shortcomings." He said that it had balanced the budget, lowered taxes, and reduced spending.
The Republican candidate for the North Carolina Senate seat had spent $10,000 on his campaign, compared to $350 for the shoo-in Democrat J. Melville Broughton, former Governor, who had defeated interim incumbent William B. Umstead in the primary. The GOP candidate was seventh among all Senatorial candidates in the nation in spending.
All Republican House candidates reported a total of $425,000 in spending to $217,000 for Democrats, while Senate spending was $120,000 for Republicans and $96,000 for Democrats.
In Asheville, former Congressman Zebulon Weaver, in the House for 28 years, died at age 76 after a long period of declining health. First elected in 1916, he had been a prominent member of the House Judiciary Committee. He had been defeated in the 1946 primary.
On the editorial page, "Debt Limitation Amendment" favors abrogation of the State Constitutional amendment passed in 1936 to limit new indebtedness of the State Government or any municipal or county government to two-thirds of that which had been retired during the previous fiscal period, except by vote of the people. Such a limitation was good for the depression years when debt was being retired, to promote fiscal responsibility in government. But now, it had outlived its usefulness as many counties and municipalities were out of debt, as was the State, leaving the amendment to work against the efficient administrations which had retired their debt, prohibiting them therefore from undertaking any new debt for various needs.
"School Commission Report—III" provides the third editorial on the report of the State Education Commission anent the status of education in the state and the need for remedial action.
It had found that there were gross inequities between the state of rural schools and those in urban areas, with the former laboring under dilapidated and outmoded facilities. Also, the better teachers were attracted to the richer counties, causing a double loss for the impoverished areas.
The Commission estimated that 150 million dollars would be needed for an adequate building program to bring equality between the 100 counties. Aid would be needed from the State to accommodate these needs. The 1949 Legislature would have to consider how much sacrifice the people of the state should be asked to make for the future of education of its children.
Easy solution: Put some of the children under the kitchen radar.
"Radar in the Kitchen" tells of the Navy Supply School at Bayonne, N.J., having found that a radar device could cook meals in seconds. The idea of the Raytheon oven had been around for awhile but was now being developed by the Navy.
It proceeds to explain the device, which we know as the microwave oven.
It suggests that while it would
speed things up, it would deprive the olfactory sense of the scent of
cooking bacon and eggs, frying apples
Gone would be the winter chopping of
wood and the woodshed, itself, where "The Old Man" meted
out justice
"Progress," it concludes, "can't be stopped. Shouldn't be stopped. But, ah! The good old days!"
Drew Pearson, in Los Angeles, finds that to trace Republican contributions to the campaign, one had to look beyond the RNC to the Senate and Congressional committees set up to get around the campaign finance limitations of the Hatch Act. The du Ponts of Delaware and the Pews of Pennsylvania, along with Wall Street, were the primary GOP contributors. They were funneling money primarily to the Congressional and Senate races, figuring Governor Dewey to be a shoo-in to the White House. He provides the details of the contributions, showing that separate members of the du Pont family had made contributions to the $5,000 limit per individual.
On the Democratic side, labor was the primary contributor.
He relates of former Ambassador to China Pat Hurley, running for the Senate in New Mexico, having reserved ten rooms at a hotel in a small town, only to renege and claim that he had never reserved them. The owner of the hotel then stood and read to a Hurley rally the exchange of correspondence first reserving the rooms and then claiming not to have done so, saying that if a man could not keep his hotel reservations straight, he could not keep the affairs of New Mexico straight in the Senate.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, describes the tawdry scene in Illinois in the closing days of the campaign, with the President making a cheap appeal to blacks in his Monday speech in Chicago, suggesting implicitly that the Republicans were making way for a Hitler, while Thomas Dewey was busy cozying up to Governor Dwight Green, head of one of the most corrupt political machines in the nation, possibly more so than the old Tom Pendergast machine in Kansas City at the height of its powers.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in a series of courageous, hard-hitting editorials published since the previous August, had exposed the tribute being paid to the Green machine by Chicago vice and gambling rackets. For its efforts, the reporter who had uncovered the scandal, Theodore C. Link, had been indicted by a grand jury impaneled at the behest of the Governor, an arrogant, cynical abuse of power.
To give its editorials greater impact, the Post-Dispatch had taken out ads in several Illinois newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, reprinting the editorials.
Governor Green had hoped to be either the vice-presidential nominee or the Attorney General under President Dewey, but Col. Bertie McCormick of the Tribune had nixed the plan by insisting that Governor Green stick with Senator Taft at the convention in June. Mr. Childs compares the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to the making of Harry Daugherty Attorney General under Warren G. Harding after the 1920 campaign.
There was hope in the form of candidate Adlai Stevenson in the gubernatorial race, who had a chance to defeat Governor Green, and Professor Paul Douglas in the Senate race, running against incumbent Curley Brooks, the puppet of the Tribune.
Billboards around the state advertised Mr. Green as "The GOOD Governor", "a bad joke flung in the face of a state that produced Abraham Lincoln."
James Marlow suggests that the winner in the presidential election Tuesday would have very little peace in the ensuing four years, during which there would be a possibility of war with Russia. What happened at home would depend largely on what occurred abroad and what occurred abroad would depend on what happened at home, operating in a circle.
If the economy of the U.S. collapsed, then so, too, would that of the Western world, allowing Communism to have appeal among the masses, giving the Communist countries the opportunity to conquer without war.
While ostensibly the country was prosperous and fully employed, underneath that surface lay problems inherent in inflation. The new President would need to reduce the cost of living to levels simpatico with current earnings. But he would have to be careful not to trigger a depression in so doing. One necessity would be to cut Government spending. But the question was how to do that without compromising defense and foreign aid, amounting to more than 20 billion dollars annually.
Marriner Eccles, vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and former chairman, had recently said that the way to obtain prosperity was to achieve peace as early as possible, even at the risk of war.
Russia, on the other hand, was spending only on its military research and armed forces, without the necessity of contributing to foreign aid. The Soviets could sit back and wait for a bust in America and the West, the hope of which was being maintained by keeping a crisis here and there going, such as in Berlin.
A letter from twice-failed Republican Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder, who the previous Saturday had announced his conversion to the Democrats and that he was done trying to work within the elitist Republican organization of Mecklenburg County, was going to support his previous opponent in the 1946 race, incumbent Congressman Hamilton Jones, contradicts leading Republicans in the county who had claimed error in Mr. Burkholder's reasoning process.
Nobody, wethinks, really cares, Mr. B, save a couple of other escaped lunatics in the community.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for its October 21 editorial endorsing Thomas Dewey and Earl Warren. He says that "Ex-President Truman" was showing his desperation in every speech. He thinks the Democrats were "DE-MENTED-CRITICS".
He also says that during the previous weekend the Democrats had acquired a new member worthy of their lot in Mr. "Ten Gallon Hat" Burkholder.
He signs as a "Deweycrat".
A letter writer says that there would be a Republican President and Congress come January and that Roy Harmon would serve the district in Congress as a Republican better than Hamilton Jones.
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