Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Berlin, Germans
in the Soviet-occupied zone were instructed by the Russian commander
to set up an economic commission for the Eastern occupation zone of
the country, similar to that in the Western zone. The commander
turned down an invitation to join the zone's economy with that of
the Western zone and continued to protest the establishment of a
combined British-American economic zone, so-called Bizonia. A Soviet
spokesman stated that the directive did not imply creation of an
East German government.
In Jerusalem, reports came of the killing the previous night
of four Jews, whose bodies were found at Stephens Gate shortly after
British troops had picked them up at a gunpost and then supposedly
released them after questioning. It was not clear how they had died.
The deaths caused the Jewish quarter of Rehavia and the business
sector of Zion Square in Jerusalem to be placed out of bounds to
British troops out of fear of reprisals.
The death toll in Palestine had reached 1,161 since the
partition by the U.N. had been approved November 29.
The British Foreign Office announced that Sir Oliver Franks,
expert on the Marshall Plan, would replace Lord Inverchapel as the
British Ambassador to the United States, beginning probably in May.
UNC president Frank Porter Graham ended his U.N. duties with
the Committee of Good Offices, which had formed the truce between
the Netherlands Government and the Indonesian nationalists. Dr.
Graham was appointed as a special adviser on Indonesian affairs to
Secretary of State Marshall.
Commodities prices showed some signs of strength with grain
prices irregularly climbing. Butter, however, dropped between five
and 6.5 cents per pound on the wholesale market. Retailers had
reduced the prices of flour, bacon, ham, lard, vegetable shortening,
eggs and butter, and, in some cases, beef. Cotton prices dropped
about $2 per bale in New York, $1.25 to $2.60 in New Orleans. Price
changes in stocks were small.
In Nebraska, Senator Taft proposed a cut in farm supports.
In Uniontown, Pa., a baby girl born without a mouth, a first
in recorded medical history, had two operations performed by a
dental surgeon to separate the jaws which had grown together. The
premature baby now had a chance for a normal life after her jaws
were freed.
In Utica, N.Y., eleven members of a family, six of whom were
children, died in a flash fire in a ramshackle frame dwelling.
In Salem, Mass., Moses T. Stevens, textile magnate who owned
the North Andover mill, left an estate valued at six million
dollars.
In Jackson, Miss., the Democrats of that state met in
convention, replete with Confederate flags and rebel yells,
determined that Senator Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia—to whom the
Mississippi electors would go in 1960, despite the state having
voted for Senator Kennedy over Vice-President Nixon—might be asked to head a revolt from the
Democratic Party based on the ten-point civil rights program being
advanced by the President. Governor William Tuck of Virginia was
also being counted on to take a prominent role in the revolt. The
group backed a resolution to hold a conference of "all true
white Jeffersonian Democrats".
You had better watch yourselves, for we have a feeling that
Tommy would not really approve your taking up his name in such
reckless manner.
First-term Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis, succeeding
the deceased Theodore Bilbo the previous November, advocated keeping
the fight within the party.
North Carolina Governor Gregg Cherry was, according to
reports, planning to try to sway his appointees to cease support of
former Governor J. Melville Broughton for the Senate seat held by
William B. Umstead, appointed by Governor Cherry to succeed deceased
Josiah W. Bailey, who had died in December, 1946.
As indicated, Mr. Broughton would win but would die in March,
1949, two months after taking office. Frank Porter Graham would be
appointed by new Governor W. Kerr Scott to fill the seat.
Arthur Jones, Southeastern representative of the National
Recreation Association, was named as new superintendent of the
Charlotte Park & Recreation Commission.
Freezing rain and snow hit areas from the Plains states to
the East Gulf region, causing a partial embargo on rail freight into
parts of New England and New York State, even though temperatures in
those areas were moderate. Most of the South received heavy rain.
On the editorial page, "The 1929 and 1948 Price Breaks" recounts that Bernard Baruch believed the present price decrease did
not foreshadow a depression. But economic experts had been saying
the same thing at the time of the October, 1929 Crash, described
then by Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale as merely a shake-out of the
"lunatic fringe" who speculated on margin. He had
predicted that the market would climb again within weeks. It did
not.
Farmers, who had been leading the opposition against price
controls, now wanted Government supports for their prices. They had
to recognize that neither consumers nor producers would be safe
under the Taft program of allowing the free market to run without
controls.
"An Emergency for the Navy" tells of the post-V-J
Day two-year enlistments in the Navy coming to an end by July 1,
leaving the Navy facing then a manpower shortage of about 150,000
men. Those presently deployed were fewer in number than those
involved in the Guadalcanal invasion in August, 1942. Filling the
gap was necessary for the security of the nation, and the Navy would
be making therefore a broad appeal for enlistments. Its success
would determine whether a volunteer force would be adequate to the
military needs of the country or whether Universal Military Training
would have to be instituted.
"Piedmont on the Airways" tells of the Civil
Aeronautics Board having authorized the new Piedmont Airlines to
establish a new route from Wilmington, N.C., to Cincinnati via
Charlotte. Piedmont, headed by T. H. Davis of Winston-Salem, had
thus become a pioneer in the area in commercial aviation and The
News welcomes it to the fold of airlines serving the region,
believes that it would be a boon to Charlotte's development.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled
"Strikes—Then and Now", provides the pre-Taft-Hartley
strike statistics of 1946, in comparison to those after the Act took
effect the previous August 22, finding that the number of strikes,
strikers, and man-days idle to have been greatly reduced, with the
latter figure being about 28 percent of the 1946 total. The purpose
of the legislation, whether it was to be considered good or ill, had
been, thus far, fulfilled.
Drew Pearson recounts that the President had so alienated
both the Southern and Northern wings of the Democratic Party that
there was talk of dumping him. His demotion of Marriner Eccles from
chairman to vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as well as
ridding from the Administration other New Deal appointees, had angered Northern
Democrats, while the proposed ten-point civil rights legislation had
boiled Southern Democrats. The only people the President had
pleased were Republicans.
In consequence, some Democrats were talking privately of
organizing for Justice William O. Douglas as the party nominee,
while others favored a draft of General Eisenhower. Henry Wallace
had indicated that he would withdraw if any New Deal Democrat were
nominated.
The joint Economic Committee had voted to restore grain
controls on distillers, despite opposition by Representative Jesse
Wolcott of Michigan, considered the distillers' man in Congress, a
loyal subject of Hiram Walker.
House Ways & Means chairman Harold Knutson was
vacationing in Florida while members of the Committee had become
incensed at a footnote in the report on taxes commissioned by the
chairman, the footnote saying that small businesses were ailing from
high taxes, wage and hour laws, cooperatives and Government
regulations. No mention was made of big business and its
monopolistic practices. Republicans were outraged to find the note,
and a secret caucus was called to try to redirect the legislation
away from the chair's sole discretion. Finally, after some
wrangling, the caucusing members of the Committee decided not to do
anything about the footnote and hoped that being mum would cause it
not to be noticed.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop inform of a change in
Administration policy on Palestine, as demonstrated by the President
having told DNC chairman J. Howard McGrath and executive director
Gael Sullivan not to give encouragement to Zionist leaders seeking
aid, and that all policy on the issue would be made only at the
highest levels.
It was reminiscent of the change in policy which had occurred
in September, 1946, when, on the eve of a leaked statement to be
made by Governor Dewey advocating immigration of 100,000 Jews to the
United States, the President, on hearing of it from then DNC
chairman Robert Hannegan, beat Mr. Dewey to the draw by proposing
his own immigration policy for 100,000 Jews, whereupon Governor
Dewey increased his proposed number. The entire matter, however, had
derailed careful negotiations ongoing between the Jews and Arabs in
Palestine and the British, who reportedly were near a compromise
agreement on the division of Palestine as proposed by the
Anglo-American Committee.
Now, the policy-making on Palestine was consigned to the new
National Security Council.
Reportedly, the President had told a Zionist leader that he
would not lift the embargo on arms to Palestine as it would expose
America to involvement in the conflict. He also blamed the Zionists
for not resolving the crisis in compromise a year earlier. The
Alsops, however, find the President's charge, if true, to convey an
abdication of Presidential responsibility in the matter.
The DNC leadership believed that the Palestine problem could
hurt the President in the coming election, even more so than the
third-party candidacy of Henry Wallace. It was hoped therefore that
the issue could be removed from the political arena.
They suggest that no matter what would take place or what the
correct strategy was on Palestine, it should not be colored by
election year politics for the purpose of outdoing Governor Dewey.
Samuel Grafton looks at definitions of certain words in the
current economy, starting with "inflation", that the happy
situation constituted inflation while the unhappy was a
deflationary cycle, with unemployment and loss of value on
inventory. The Republicans contended that the Government's buying of
wheat was inflationary and that deflation would occur when the wheat
purchases ceased. Some believed that fasting was the way to stop
inflation, others, that unemployment provided the path, while still
others of a small minority favored Government planning.
He defines other terms: "winter weather", that
which caused the fuel shortage; "government planning",
that which had caused the fuel shortage the previous year in Great
Britain; "freedom", the right to discuss the government
measures to protect the people and the right then to discard them as
interference with freedom; "progress", that which was sure
to come without change; "change", that which occurred
sometimes when no progress took place; "oil", that which
powered ships in Britain to keep the displaced Jews out of
Palestine, preventing its desert lands from becoming arable and, in
return for which, Britain made deals with the Arabs to nullify the
UN-approved partition plan; the "left wing", those who
took the more advanced and radical view, having recently become to
Americans a derogatory reference, as most so leaning had been swept
from the Government.
A piece titled "America's Turn to Freeze", absent a by-line, tells of the weatherman having
swapped the extreme winter of the previous year in Europe, one of
the worst of the Twentieth Century for most areas, for one with
severe patterns affecting North America. Temperatures in St. Moritz,
Switzerland, were at 50 degrees, causing some tough sledding for the
Winter Olympics in that locale. But Maine, North Dakota, and other
border states were hitting near-record lows this winter.
Snow had been bad but not so bad as the March 11-12, 1888
30-hour blizzard which dumped 21 inches of snow on New York City,
four inches less than the 25.8 inches which had fallen December 26,
1947. Yet, Washington had deeper snowfall in both 1899 and 1922.
California had a 60-inch snowfall in 1933 in Giant Forest and 73
feet, eight inches in 1906 in nearby Tamarack.
The Arctic icecap, thought by most scientists to be
retreating northward for the previous 20,000 years, having once
reached into what was now U.S. territory and covering nearly all of
Europe, was observed to be retreating in Siberia at the rate of 100
feet per year.
Stefanson found Arctic seas to be a degree warmer than a
decade earlier, indicating drier, milder winters in the long-term
future.
As the scientists have pointed out, that which today we call
"global warming" or "climate change" has been
going on for the ages naturally. The point is that in the previous
165 years or so, during the Industrial Age, the rate of that trend,
whether cooling or warming, or vacillating somewhere in between, is
vastly accelerating beyond that produced by the natural processes,
not allowing for Nature in its normal slow course to adapt to the
changes. And the data is inescapable that the accelerating pace
correlates with the precipitously increased emission of greenhouse
gases, hydro-fluorocarbons, since 1850.
One cannot point to the immediate weather pattern of the
present year or the previous year or the previous single decade to
develop the trend, but must look to the long-term changes compared
to the data on previous long-term changes to enable an adequate,
objective assessment, sans economic bias toward continued dependence
on fossil fuels which emit the bulk of hydro-fluorocarbons into the
atmosphere, forming the greenhouse effect.
Remaining stuck in an obscurantist view does no one any good,
does not make the pattern go away by ignoring it and pretending that
it does not exist. Trying, perhaps as a rationalization for continuing to drive the gas-guzzler without compunction, to contend that catching some scientists a few years ago falsifying data in an area where, obviously, data and conclusions therefrom are going to vary as to the timetable for the melting of the polar ice and consequent rising of sea levels, somehow relieves recognition of the reality of polar ice-melt, still does not make the fact any the less, does not relieve the individual from the responsibility not to drive the gas-guzzler, U.S. auto pollution being the greatest single factor in contributing to the potentially irreversible cycle from excessive accumulation of hydro-fluorocarbons in the atmosphere, does not relieve the electorate of the responsibility of removing from office oil-money induced members of Congress, State Legislatures, and Governors who conveniently blink the truth for the sake of personal power and wealth, who try to make it into a left-versus-right issue for appeal to the gullible constituent with a right-think checklist, while making jest out of the worst calamity imaginable, far worse than any terrorist act ever committed or the sum of them, with potential consequences far worse than even the two world wars combined. Trying to say that well, after all, it is them who are to blame for it and resigning that the poor, little individual is thus helpless to stop it, merely avoids personal responsibility while continuing to be a contributor to the problem.
Such snow-blindedness as becomes manifest in occasionally bad winters, leading some to say, "See, the cold winter where I live proves it isn't so,"
will only mean, through avoidance, that the next generation, those presently in the
crib, will suffer from the ill effects of ignoring the problem and
damn this generation before the end of their lives. For we have the
data and the capability of discernment of the patterns shown in
photographs taken from space and the other technological advancements in our time, which our forebears did not. For them,
the frontiers were limitless. We now have the knowledge at our
disposal which informs that the frontiers do have finite limits
which, when exhausted, cannot be replenished. Energy based on fossil
fuels cannot be maintained indefinitely. But beyond that undeniable
fact, to continue to emit the hydro-fluorocarbons into the
atmosphere will, with time, upset the planetary ecosystem with
disastrous results, potentially leading to worldwide famine. To continue to
live it up in spite of that knowledge is to do the damnable thing
with respect to later generations as yet unborn, daily committing
the equivalent of violence against them.
The solution starts with the individual and exercise of individual responsibilty to pollute as little as possible. We all pollute to some degree, based on carbon usage in a given year. The goal is for each individual substantially to reduce that footprint and to try within one's means to convince others to do so, either in refraining from driving so much or in buying alternative energy vehicles and getting rid of the gas-guzzler. No one is trying to take away the freedom of another by so suggesting. We are merely trying collectively to survive on a planet which otherwise may not have many years to go in a form fit for human habitation.
We hope that a hundred years from now they will either thank us for responsible action in time or will laugh at us, much as we laugh at some of the quaint misconceptions of the masses of a hundred years ago following in lock-step the practices of the robber-barons and corrupt opportunists who always abound from age to age, because we did not foresee until it was nearly too late that abandonment of the archaic oil industry and all of the international terror it had spawned in the Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries to their light cars and other energy consumptive applications running on alternative energy plants which work just as well and go just as fast and far without polluting the atmosphere, was not only the wise choice but the only one to make in the end. If they wish to laugh because we were slow to realize the problem, at least they will be able to laugh and not damn us for being responsible for killing them. And the naysayers today can always continue to say twenty or forty years from now that it was all a hoax, that we did not need to get rid of the good old gasoline engine and the friendly neighborhood gas station, that it was the socialists and globalists and all those creeps with fancy degrees and wild talk, that all would have been well had people just gone about their business. At least they will have survived on a planet with an environment which can still be inhabited and sustain life and permit such talk, without roasting to death by the millions in the year-round some-sum-summertime.