Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Jewish soldiers
had been backed into a corner for a last stand in the old city of
Jerusalem as the Trans-Jordon Arab Legion hit them with armor,
infantry, and artillery. Arabs claimed to have captured 80 percent
of the old city, including the Tiferet Israel Synagogue, pushing
Haganah and Irgun fighters into the Beir Yaacov Synagogue. Haganah
tacitly acknowledged loss of the Sheik Jarrah section of the city
but contended that Arab attempts to advance further had been
repulsed.
Arabs held nearly all of the territory north and east of the
walls of the city, except Mt. Scopus. Haganah still held the
railroad station.
The Syrian Army claimed to have destroyed five Jewish
settlements south of the Sea of Galilee. The Israelis, however, said
that all Arab attacks in the area had been repulsed.
Israeli planes attacked the Arabs in the Gaza coastal area
south of Tel Aviv and at Shu'fat, north of Jerusalem. Israel bombed
Samakh, south of the sea of Galilee the previous day and occupied
Safari, southeast of Tel Aviv.
Egyptian planes raided Tel Aviv four times the previous day.
At the U.N., Andrei Gromyko declared King Abdullah of
Trans-Jordan to be a "Caesar" and supported the U.S.
proposal to send armed force to stop the Arab-Israeli violence.
The State Department demanded that the Lebanese Government
release 40 American citizens held in Beirut after being taken from
the American steamship Marine Carp and interned along with 29
passengers of other nationalities for being able to bear arms for
Israel. The Department said that the American Government would "view
seriously" any discrimination against American citizens based
on race, color or creed.
In London, the four-power efforts to reach a treaty on
Austria ended after two years of effort.
Following President Truman's veto the previous Saturday of
the bill to force Executive departments to turn over to
Congressional committees confidential reports on Government
employees and to subject anyone who revealed the information
contained in the reports to criminal penalties, the Senate was
preparing to vote whether to override the veto. Both sides predicted
victory. The dispute arose after HUAC had demanded the loyalty
investigation records of Dr. Edward Conlon, head of the Bureau of
Standards, deemed by HUAC to be the greatest security risk to atomic
secrecy for his alleged association with a Soviet espionage agent.
Dr. Conlon had been cleared by the routine FBI investigation, and
President Truman had ordered the Commerce Department to refuse the
disclosure of the confidential records.
The President was about to ask Congress to extend Social
Security benefits to farm labor, domestic workers, the self-employed
and other groups who were not presently covered by the 1935 law.
In Oregon, the heavily contested Republican primary took
place between Governor Dewey and former Governor Stassen. It was
likely that the loser would suffer heavy damage to chances for the
presidential nomination. Should Mr. Dewey win, he would return as
the top contender for the nomination. Should Mr. Stassen win, he
would have a legitimate claim to the nomination, having won the
Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries, and the non-binding Pennsylvania
write-in primary. A loss would likely eliminate him from
consideration, as his support would be deemed confined to the
Midwest.
In Washington, screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and John Howard
Lawson were each sentenced to a year in jail and fined $1,000
following their previous convictions for contempt of Congress for
refusing the prior October to answer questions of HUAC regarding
whether they were or ever had been members of the Communist Party or
the Screenwriters' Guild, the latter believed by the Committee to be
a Communist-front organization. The other eight of the so-called
"Hollywood Ten" still awaited trial.
The NLRB voted 3 to 2, based on an interpretation of the
Taft-Hartley ban on closed shops, not to conduct union elections in
the thirteen states, including North Carolina, in which state laws
prohibited or limited union shops, permitted under Taft-Hartley
provided a majority of the workers voted for them and the union shop
allowed management to hire new workers who were not members but who
would become so within 30 days. In those latter cases, Taft-Hartley
provided that the NLRB would conduct the election. Effectively, the
NLRB therefore ruled that where there was a conflict between
Taft-Hartley and the state laws governing union shops, the state
laws trumped, even regarding a business operating in interstate
commerce—appearing to flip the Supremacy Clause of the
Constitution on its head.
In Chicago, an end appeared imminent to the 67-day old
meatpackers' strike, as union members appeared likely to have
approved settlement of wage demands on company terms in a secret
ballot held the night before. The settlement was for an increase of
nine cents per hour, retroactive to March 16, the start of the
strike, plus other demands regarding preservation of seniority
rights and hiring and firing. The union opposed the settlement.
In Cleveland, the official AFL publication accused Alvanley
Johnson, head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, of seeking
to hire new members to break an AFL elevator operators' strike at a
hotel owned by the Brotherhood. Mr. Johnson denied the report. The
Brotherhood was one of three railroad brotherhoods engaged in a wage
dispute on which negotiations continued while the roads were
operated by the Government.
John L. Lewis shunned efforts by the mine operators to begin
new talks on negotiation of the UMW contract, set to expire June 30.
Negotiations had broken off after Mr. Lewis and the union refused to
permit the Southern Coal Producers Association to have
representation in the talks.
In Dante, Va., at the Clinchfield Coal Company's No. 2 mine,
a collapse of a roof section four miles underground killed six
miners, whose bodies were retrieved by midnight. The roof was
reported to have been weakened by over-excavation.
In Birmingham, England, a woman, trembling, told a court of
being held up in her home by a man wielding a knife who had said to
her that he was just as frightened as she was. Just as she so
testified, a thud was heard in the courtroom. The rubber-legged
defendant had fainted.
In Charlotte, a passenger train struck a Hennis Freight Lines
tractor-trailer truck, injuring the driver, at the crossing at
Liddell Street. The engineer said that the truck was stopped astride
the tracks with no other vehicles in sight.
The Davidson College Board of Trustees stated that all
matters related to the estate of Baxter Davidson had been settled
the previous October following a will contest by relatives, and the
half-million dollar estate had been added to the college endowment
fund. The relatives reportedly received $110,000 as the settlement.
The report stated that construction on a new $600,000 gymnasium
would begin by midsummer and that improvements would take place to
the fine arts department.
On the editorial page, "Stand for Democratic Party" finds the North Carolina Democratic Party pledging as practical
support of the President by impliedly stating that there was no
sense in bolting the party and putting a Republican in the White
House for four years.
The South Carolina Democrats had voted Wednesday to bolt if
the President were the nominee and his civil rights program were
adopted as part of the platform. The South Carolinians had
designated Governor Strom Thurmond as their favorite-son candidate.
It posits that if the four or five Southern states which
appeared to be bolting wound up walking out of the convention, the
Democrats would definitely lose the election. The Dixiecrats could
also bolster the stock of Henry Wallace as the left, too, might
depart the party in the face of certain defeat of the President.
Such a defection could become permanent, causing a three-way
division by 1952, leaving it uncertain as to whether such an
emasculated party could ever be reunited.
The South would be less potent in such a Government than it
was at present.
The Dixiecrats hoped to avoid this scenario by drafting
General Eisenhower for the Democratic nomination. But the chances of
that appeared slim to none. The actions of the Dixiecrats were thus
threatening to end the two-party system nationally.
"Appeal for World's Children" tells of there
being 230 million hungry children in the world, largely dependent on
America for aid. North Carolina was sponsoring the statewide Crusade
for Children to raise money for the cause, part of the U.N. Appeal
for Children. The state also had a drive to collect books for
European children whose homes and schools had been destroyed in the
war.
The Charlotte Elks were helping to collect, haul and pack the
books.
"The Heroic Milkman Cometh" tells of the Milk
Industry Foundation announcing its award of the Pasteur Medal for
outstanding heroism and distinguished service to sixteen milkmen who
had saved lives from pre-dawn fires and the like.
It wonders who the milkmen of Charlotte were and, having
inquired of the milk distributors, found that he was on average 32
years old, married with two children, had a junior high school
education, and earned $50 per week. He arose at 2:00 a.m. and worked
until noon. He generally liked his job.
It says that the city slept better because of the presence of
the milkmen and their clanging bottles at dawn, and it was good to
know that some of their number had been rewarded for outstanding
service and heroism.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Mr.
Spring", traditionally provides a welcome to the season,
celebrating the coming of the mockingbird.
"But it is the song that fills him, the overflowing
ebullience of Spring. And anyone who goes South to find Spring will
know, even with his eyes shut, when he reaches it. The mockingbird
will tell him, over and over, that Spring is all around him."
Drew Pearson discusses the appointment by newly inaugurated
Louisiana Governor Earl Long of William Feazel to replace recently
deceased Senator John Overton. Mr. Feazel had been involved in shady
dealings with the Huey Long gang and had contributed $200,000 to
Earl Long's campaign. Other interim appointments to the Senate had
previously denied seating by the Senate when they had made large
contributions to the appointing Governor. Until FDR called off the
investigation, the Justice Department had once probed a large
payment by a Louisiana Electric Bond & Share subsidiary, part of
which was paid to Mr. Feazel, another part to Governor Dick Leche,
subsequently jailed for other graft.
He notes that Governor Long would prefer to appoint his
nephew Russell Long to the seat, but he was only 29 and as yet
ineligible. Mr. Feazel's appointment was intended to make way for
Russell.
Representative Mike Monroney of Oklahoma had been offered the
job of Secretary of Agriculture to replace outgoing Clinton
Anderson, running for the Senate, but turned it down on the basis
that he would not know enough about agriculture or the farmers'
point of view. He had spent his career championing instead the
consumer.
He notes that Mr. Monroney during the war, despite his
state's interests, challenged the oil lobby's efforts to get prices
raised. The oil lobby had sought to unseat him, but the people of
Oklahoma City had responded positively to his challenge of the
big-moneyed interests.
Colorado Senator Eugene Millikin was blocking the nomination
of Dr. James Boyd to be director of the Bureau of Mines for his
being opposed by John L. Lewis, despite Senator Milliken initially
supporting Dr. Boyd, also from Colorado. Dr. Boyd had been serving
without pay since the previous summer.
Marquis Childs, for the second successive day, looks at the
Mundt-Nixon bill, comparing it to Prohibition in terms of trying to
eradicate a social evil through law, believing that it would have
even worse consequences than Prohibition.
Karl Mundt was a former South Dakota school teacher before
entering Congress and honestly believed that Communism could be
eradicated by law. He was also running for the Senate and the issue
was popular.
He does not discuss Congressman Nixon of California, the
co-author of the bill, whose name was little known during his
freshman term in the Congress. He also had a fair amount of ambition
coloring his ideals.
The law, Mr. Childs finds, was but one step on the way to
outlawing Communism. Congressmen John Carroll of Colorado, Chester
Holifield of California, and Jacob Javits of New York had stated
during debate that the law was superfluous and that the only way
Communism could take root in the country was if there were a sense
of injustice and serious social maladjustment. There were laws
already on the books which could deal effectively with attempts to
overthrow the Government by force and violence. Mr. Carroll had
aptly suggested that it was the group who fought hardest for the
bill who also did the least to propose constructive programs to take
the wind out of Communism, such as the long-term housing program and
other social legislation. The Congress had been stingy with
appropriations even for defense and security.
Joseph Alsop, in Portland, Ore., finds that on the day of the
Oregon primary, Thomas Dewey had made a battleground of it, whereas
a month earlier it was assumed that Harold Stassen would win
handily. The campaigning in the state by Governor Dewey had revealed
a new side.
He had always been ambitious, saw others as stepping stones
to his success. Someone had once said of him that you really had to
get to know him to dislike him. Nevertheless, his closest staff had
always remained loyal.
Mr. Dewey had met defeat previously, in his first run for Governor
of New York in 1938, in his first bid in 1940 for the Republican
presidential nomination and in the race for the presidency in 1944.
Each time, he had learned something and had come back stronger. With
the losses to Mr. Stassen in Wisconsin and Nebraska, Oregon was a
must win.
The Governor was now facing issues head-on, rather than sliding around
them as before. On the Communist Party and the Mundt-Nixon bill, he
said that one should never be prosecuted for what one believed.
Harold Stassen favored outlawing the party.
The once and future nominee had scored a major success by backing Mr. Stassen into a
corner on the Communist issue and forcing him to change his
position.
A letter writer favors election of Elliott Newcombe to the
County Board of Commissioners, compares the Board to a cat without a
bell to warn of its approach, thinks Mr. Newcombe would be the bell.
A letter writer responds to a letter of May 17 in which it
was suggested that the author was a Dixiecrat, to which he replies
that he was not. He says that the civil rights program could not be
defeated by deserting the Democratic Party. Republicans would be
elected in their stead who would more likely pass it. He adds that
if he failed to vote for the Democrats in the election, it would not
be because of civil rights.
A letter writer says goodbye to her dog, proceeds to tell
what a fine dog it was.
"Little Lassie went home … home to the place of
real rest ... and I hope she goes real slow along the trail till we
can catch up to her. Heaven would hold no better welcome than for
her to greet us at the Gate. I only expect dog lovers to
understand."
You know good and well that your dog is where it is and is
panting, perpetually now in need of quench, of which there will be none afforded.
A letter writer thinks that the divide between nations
occasioned by borders and differences in ethnicity, language,
tradition, and the rest could be overcome by cooperative thinking
and by more even distribution of surpluses.
A letter from the secretary of the Southeastern Educational
Congress of Optometry thanks the newspaper for its publicity for the
recent congress held by the organization in Charlotte.
