Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the six "neutral"
nations of the Security Council, Syria, Colombia, Argentina, China,
Belgium and Canada, were expected the following week to back the the
West in the Berlin crisis and call upon the Soviet Union to lift the
blockade. Russia continued to sit in on the debates but did not take
part.
Andrei Vishinsky, however, debated arms reduction before the
political committee of the U.N., charging the Western powers with
blocking disarmament for 20 years. He wanted all of the Big Four
immediately to cut their armies by one-third and ban the atomic bomb
completely within a year. The 58-nation committee assigned to an
eleven-nation subcommittee the question of control of nuclear
energy. The subcommittee included all of the Big Five nations.
In Berlin, British fliers engaged in the airlift said that
they had seen Russian planes drop live bombs in the Russian
occupation zone twelve miles northwest of Berlin. The bombers
appeared to be part of the largest Russian air maneuvers since the
start of the airlift June 26. These operations may have been part of
large-scale Russian maneuvers which were scheduled to take place
this date. The German press had reported several months earlier that
Russian planes on maneuvers had dropped live bombs on a small town,
causing some casualties. The Russians were said also to be
contemplating formation flying, contrary to four-power regulations.
Assistant Secretary of State George Allen told an advisory
commission on the Government's Office of International Information
that the U.S. should allow Russia and the Soviet satellite countries
to continue to distribute their propaganda in the country, to assure
a two-way street of communication and avoid a justification of the
accusation of imperialism being made by the Soviets against the West
and particularly the United States. He said that the U.S. sent
50,000 copies monthly of Amerika to the Soviet Union.
Censorship of any kind would only increase interest in foreign
propaganda.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida resigned following
revelation of a growing Government scandal for which he took "moral
responsibility". The entire Cabinet also resigned. The scandal involved
allegations of a bribe to obtain a 10.3 million dollar loan from the
Government to Showa Denko, a fertilizer company. The
coalition Government had come to power the previous March 9. It was
the sixth Government since the end of the war.
The British Foreign Office reported that the Spanish
republicans and monarchists, both opponents of Francisco Franco in
Spain, had patched up their differences in a formal agreement. The
two factions were seeking Western power backing to oust Franco.
Britain had demanded such an agreement to obtain recognition for the
coalition exile government.
In Pontiac, Mich., a warrant of arrest was about to be issued
against the man accused of attempting to murder UAW leader Walter
Reuther on April 20.
Attempts to settle the dispute between the railroads and
sixteen non-operating unions, involving a million employees, had
failed. It was expected that the President, pursuant to the terms of
Taft-Hartley, would appoint a fact-finding board to forestall a
strike for three to four months.
In Richmond, California, the Sheriff was authorized to hire
extra deputies to maintain order in a bloody fight between striking
oil refinery workers and police at the Standard Oil Refinery.
Pickets had sought to block entry of non-strikers to the plant,
strike-bound for 34 days. Following a 20-minute fight, police
restored order and arrested six of the strikers on charges of
inciting to riot. Standard canceled its negotiations until the riots
ceased. The CIO representatives blamed Standard for the violence for
using non-strikers to keep the refinery going. The union was
demanding a raise of 21 cents per hour from $1.68 and the companies
had offered 12.5 cents. Tensions were mounting also at the Shell
Refinery in Martinez and at the Union Oil Refinery in Oleum.
In Chicago, a drop in meat prices was settling down at the
retail butcher shops as many retailers had cut prices on pork for
the coming weekend based on an outpouring of hogs.
You had better get on down there and get you some pork while
the porking's good.
In Philadelphia, the United Lutheran Church was asked to
increase its support of nine seminaries and twelve colleges by six
million dollars.
The President said in Bridgeport, Pa., that the Republican
opposition was afraid to reply to his criticism for high prices and
Taft-Hartley brought about by the "do-nothing" Congress.
The President would give a major address in Jersey City, N.J., this night. He had
told the crowd in Philadelphia the previous night that the GOP
wanted to put the plain people in a "company union" run
for the benefit of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Word from Albany was that Governor Dewey was planning a major
speech on Taft-Hartley and labor issues for Monday in Pittsburgh. He
would then begin a 38-speech, eight-day tour of nine states.
Hey, relax. It's over. Why do you want to go and spoil a good
thing?
In Memphis, Boss Ed Crump said that the President had "sold
the South down the river for Negro votes in large Northern cities."
In Crescent Beach, Fla., 44 whales swam from a rough ocean
onto the beach in an apparent mass suicide this date. Most of the
whales died quickly. Those who survived were towed back into the
water, but then swam headlong back into shore.
We've been telling you. There is something out there. It's
them Martians. The world is coming to an end.
In Raleigh, the North Carolina Education Association
announced its legislative agenda for the coming year, including
increased teacher pay, reduced classroom size to 30 pupils, and
improvement of service to the children.
Emery Wister of The News tells of the establishment of
a highway mail truck service between Asheville and Charlotte, to
begin between October 25 and November 15. It would provide faster
mail service to both cities and intermediate points.
If you aren't on that route, tough luck.
In Boston, the Cleveland Indians led the Boston Braves 3 to 1
after five innings of the second game of the World Series. Warren
Spahn was on the mound for the Braves and Bob Lemon pitched for the
Indians. Cleveland would go on to win this game 4 to 1, rendering
the Series even at one game apiece.
On the editorial page, "Downtown Parking Facilities" comments on the City Engineer's talk before the Rotary Club
regarding the inadequacy of downtown parking in Charlotte and the
probable need, absent private initiative, for a municipal parking
garage.
The flight to the suburbs had already begun in Charlotte and
alert companies were responding by placing stores away from the
center of town. Thus, a problem arose as to how to prevent the
erosion of downtown. Creation of the Parking Authority was a
solution offered by the Planning Board. The City Council had not yet
acted on the recommendation and unless the Council could develop a
better solution, it should push the recommendation through the next
Legislature.
"Music in the Air" tells of the new season of
Community Concerts beginning in Charlotte three weeks hence, with
the presentation of Charles Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet".
Concerts to follow would be presented by the Revelers Quartet, the
Indianapolis Symphony under the direction of Fabien Sevitsky,
Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling, one of the most popular tenors in the
world, and the Philharmonic Piano Quartet.
The piece urges support for this centerpiece to Charlotte's
growing cultural pastiche, competing for recognition with
overshadowing Atlanta and Richmond.
"Happy Muttering, Mr. V" tells of Andrei
Vishinsky's speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 25,
haranguing America for warmongering and singling out Esso—whose
motto was "Happy Motoring"—for special recognition in
that regard. He contended that Esso Marketeers had developed a World
War III map of Pacific Military Operations.
When reporters went to Esso, they found instead "War
Map III, featuring the Pacific Theater", published during
World War II to help the public follow war operations. Two maps had
preceded regarding the European theater.
Thus, Mr. Vishinsky sought to indict an American company for
warmongering based on an out of date map. The piece wonders whether
other charges made by Mr. Vishinsky against the West had equally
solid foundations.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "It's
How Many Won't", looks at the Gallup poll results for the
state, predicting that 44 percent of the people would vote for the
President.
The piece reminds that in the May gubernatorial primary, it appeared by the
polls that State Treasurer Charles Johnson would win 5 to 1.
Instead, Agricultural Commissioner Kerr Scott had won.
The question actually boiled down to how many North
Carolinians would not vote for the President, and the polls did not
reflect that, failed also to take into account the rural vote.
The President would carry the state 58 to 32 percent.
Drew Pearson tells of former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes
visiting the President during the week for the first time since his
resignation from the Cabinet in February, 1946 regarding the
confirmation process of Undersecretary-designate of the Navy Ed Pauley and the
President questioning publicly the accuracy of Mr. Ickes's
recollection of events regarding an incident in which the latter
claimed that Mr. Pauley, as DNC treasurer, had promised to raise
several million dollars for the Democrats in 1944 in exchange for a
promise to turn the tidelands oil over to the states and abandon the
effort to have them declared subject to Federal auhtority. Now, Mr. Ickes
told the President that he had admired the way the President had
insisted that the tidelands issue be pressed in the courts, per the
request of Mr. Ickes, eventually winning at the Supreme Court. Mr.
Ickes was now willing to make speeches on behalf of the President.
The President told the press upon his return to Washington
the previous weekend, after his 16-day cross-country train tour,
that he felt better than when he left and had gained ten pounds
while making his 120 speeches. He also said that he was sorry to
hear of the eggs and tomatoes being tossed at Henry Wallace across
the South. He said that some of the Texans had not liked Mr. Wallace
since he had the little pigs slaughtered in 1934 to maintain prices
because of excess pig production. Moreover, he said, they did not
like Mr. Wallace posing as a missionary to convert the Southerners
to Christianity, or his Communist connections.
HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas was sending out 10,000
special letters at taxpayer expense to improve his shaky chances for
re-election.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg had not wanted to campaign for the
GOP, but when reminded by colleagues that if he did not, the
Democrats might re-capture control of the Senate depriving him of
his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, he began to
campaign.
The President was going down fighting in the campaign, with
another 100 speeches scheduled before election day, November 2. Mr.
Pearson provides the President's whistle-stop schedule for the last
week of the campaign, probably the most vigorous campaign ever waged
to that point by an incumbent President.
Michiganders wondered why the Ford Motor Company had not
canceled the franchises of two dealers indicted for violations of
the Corrupt Practices Act for making illegal contributions to the
Republican Party.
Mr. Pearson congratulates Attorney General Tom Clark for
naming a woman, Grace Stewart, to one of the top positions in the
Justice Department, that of executive assistant to the Attorney
General.
Joseph Alsop, in Chicago, tells of big business and small
politicians dominating the scene in Illinois, surely bane to Thomas
Dewey and his progressive spirit. Yet, despite only tepid support
for Mr. Dewey by the dominant businessman, Col. Robert McCormick of
the Chicago Tribune, the coattails of Mr. Dewey would pull
along the McCormick-backed politicians if they were to win at all.
Senator Curly Brooks was in a dogfight with Professor Paul Douglas
and Governor Dwight Green was in an equally tough fight with Adlai
Stevenson. Both Senator Brooks and Governor Green were lackeys of
Col. McCormick. Governor Green had wanted to court Governor Dewey at
the convention in the hope of getting the nod for the
vice-presidency. But Col. McCormick insisted that he back the
Colonel's man, Senator Taft, for the nomination and so he did.
The Progressive Party had not qualified for the ballot
statewide, only in Cook County, and therefore there was nothing to
divide the Democrats. The Illinois Republicans therefore needed the
coattails of Governor Dewey on which to hang, even if he was not
particularly fond of them or they of him.
In the end, both Mr. Douglas and Mr. Stevenson would win,
Governor Stevenson becoming the Democratic nominee for the
presidency in both 1952 and 1956, eventually becoming U.N.
Ambassador under President Kennedy.
Marquis Childs tells of Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell
Smith reporting to the President and the Joint Chiefs that Russia
was five years away from having an atomic bomb in sufficient
numbers to make war. Russia had the knowledge but lacked the
industrial development which had come about in America during the
war. Only the U.S. could produce the bomb in quantity. Ambassador Smith
nevertheless urged a policy of pacification, stopping just short of
appeasement. He favored caution because of the weakness of Western
Europe. The Russians had completely equipped troops in Eastern
Germany, subject to mobilization on a moment's notice, and could
reach the English Channel within 30 days.
Such were facts ignored by some American generals who favored
a quick war of one to three months' duration, conducted by small
fleets of high-speed planes dropping atomic bombs on strategic
centers.
It explained why France was reluctant to join the Western
defense alliance.
The scientists had said since the war that nuclear physics
was known to leading scientists throughout the world. The Russians
had such leading scientists. Since the release by General Leslie
Groves of the Smythe Report, explaining the development of the bomb,
there had been few secrets for Russia or any other nation to
discover.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, tells
of the election being so dull that people did not expect anything
good from the near future, just more of the same, regardless of who
would win. There would be crisis upon crisis on the international
scene and a retreat from the post-war boom on the domestic front. It
was not an election as during the previous four in which a clear
issue, jobs during the Thirties and whether there would be isolation
in the Forties, dominated.
It was a sad, complex election, with reform taking a
backseat. For how could reform continue amid continuing inflation?
Mr. Wallace posited that the two major parties were to blame.
Mr. Grafton wishes that it were that simple. He believes that the
problems were so ingrained in the society that it went beyond
partisan politics, that there was a fundamental dislocation within
society of which bipartisan agreement on foreign policy was a result
and not a cause.
No one knew whether peace was possible in a world in which
Communism competed with capitalism. The agreement on foreign policy
existed because of the world problem and not by conspiracy.
The problems facing the country were real even if the
candidates' speeches were not. The election was more a sign of the
difficulties rather than a solution to them. Only by accepting those
realities could the country begin to find a wise solution.
Albert Coates of the North Carolina Institute of Government
in Chapel Hill again examines a proposed amendment to the State
Constitution, this one, as authored by Mr. Coates, himself, would
change the requirement for special elections to allow simple
majorities of voters actually voting to determine the outcome, for
instance in school bond elections. The existing provision of the
Constitution had required a majority of those registered to vote for
passage of such measures.
Mr. Coates explains the competing arguments for and against
the amendment.
Another Pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, this
one "in Which An Observation is Made regarding a Natural
Result of the Long Hot Spell:
"It is safe to say the nation Is awash with perspiration."
But soon there would be elation At the prospect of winterization.
