Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the fight for
control of Kashmir had developed into an undeclared war between
India and Pakistan. Kashmir had previously been assumed by the
leadership in India to be a part of that country, as Kashmir's ruler
had so agreed. The trouble had spread beyond the border region with
Paksitan.
Secrecy continued to prevail regarding the talks between the
Big Three ambassadors to Moscow and Premier Stalin two days earlier.
The Russians indicated a willingness to compromise on the
currency issue, whereby one form of Soviet-backed currency was
recognized in East Berlin but not the Western currency, leaving the
city using two forms. It was the first Russian concession since the
start of the blockade in June. The Berlin City Magistrate and the
Communist Eastern Economic Commission had requested that Russian
currency would be recognized as the only legal tender for taxes in
Berlin, in return for Western currency being allowed to circulate in
the Eastern zone.
Nathan Silvermaster, accused by Elizabeth Bentley the
previous Saturday of being leader of a spy ring in the Government,
testified before HUAC this date that he had never been a spy,
refusing to say whether he had ever been a Communist. He said that
he had remained during the war in both the Navy Department and the
Civil Service Commission, though the Government had tried to
terminate him. Mr. Silvermaster had prevailed on Lauchlin Currie,
aide to FDR, and his boss, C.B. Baldwin, to intervene on his behalf
with then Secretary of War Robert Patterson to keep him in his
position.
Elizabeth Bentley then was called again to testify before the
Committee, stating again that Mr. Silvermaster headed a Communist
spy group and operated a laboratory in his basement where secret
documents were photographed.
Louis Russell, a Committee investigator and former FBI agent,
also testified regarding his investigation of Mr. Silvermaster and the suspicions he had aroused while at the Civil Service Commission.
Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina said that
there would be "bloodshed" unless Federal District Court
Judge J. Waties Waring was removed from the bench. Mr. Rivers
contended that he was not upset about the Judge's decision
permitting blacks to vote in South Carolina primaries, that he
believed there were thousands of qualified black voters in the
state. Rather, he was concerned that illiterates, regardless of
race, would be permitted to vote, wanted an educational requirement
for exercise of the franchise. He wanted the law interpreted "with
dignity" by Judge Waring.
But that would imply that all of the members of Congress from
South Carolina were literate, Mr. Rivers.
He said further that Judge Waring was "exacting a pound
of flesh from the white people of South Carolina because, through
his own actions, he has been ostracized from their society."
Well, now, listen heya, you've gone too far. You're calling
him a Jew?
He went on to say that the Judge was "as cold as a dead
Eskimo in an abandoned igloo", that "lemon juice flows
in his cold and calculating veins."
Now, he's an Eskimo who likes lemons? Have you been shooting
walruses with former Senator Reynolds up in Alaska?
The Judge had "lampooned, lambasted and vilified with
unparalleled vituperation the comfort and ease of the outstanding
members of the bar of South Carolina."
Which bar? And shouldn't you add "beleaguered"
and "vitriol" to your run of phraseology to attain the
status of a double-triple alliterator?
Congressman W. J. Bryan Dorn of South Carolina had introduced
a resolution to investigate the jurist for his conduct in office.
How's the price of silver doing?
The DNC banned racial segregation in its headquarters staff,
to be consistent, said chairman J. Howard McGrath, with the policy
favored by the President regarding the Government and the armed
forces. Senator McGrath said that he anticipated appointment of a
black assistant. The separate black division of the DNC was thus
being abolished and its staff members distributed among other units.
The Senator predicted that the President would not lose the
electoral votes of any Southern state.
The RNC retained its separate division for blacks.
Senate Republicans abandoned their effort to pass the
anti-poll tax law after a successful filibuster by the Southern
Senators for five days. The Republicans wanted to reach the other
legislation pending in the special session. The consensus was, after
some discussion, that a substitute measure to send to the states an
amendment to the Constitution banning the poll tax should not be
introduced during the session. The GOP said that Senate rules ought
be changed in January to avoid such filibusters. They now turned
their gaze toward two of the President's proposed anti-inflation measures, limiting bank credit
and installment buying. The Republicans ruled out any form of price
control. According to GOP leaders, there also might be some common
ground for action on housing.
The North Carolina Board of Elections had certified the
petition of the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace to be on the
ballot in November. They had supplied more than the requisite 10,000
signatures of qualified voters. It refused, however, to qualify the
Dixiecrats because there was no way to determine whether the
signatories of their petition were qualified voters as required by
law. The State Board said that the signatories had not been verified
by county election boards as required by the law. The Dixiecrats had
vowed to go to court to contest the ruling.
Dave Clark, co-chairman of the party in North Carolina, said
that the Dixiecrats had presented 18,661 signatures—perhaps a
symbolic number, although for maximum effect it should have been limited
to 18,461. He claimed that it did not matter whether the voters had
voted in the primaries of one of the parties, a requirement under
the ballot qualification law.
And, of course, most of them were dead, if not in fact, at
least by definition.
It may have been the case that Governor Thurmond made a
mistake in kicking off his presidential campaign at the Watermelon
Festival in Cherryville, N.C., the previous weekend.
A movement was afoot by housewives across the country to
boycott meat for its high prices, starting in Dallas, Texas, and
spreading across that state. Miami had also joined in the campaign,
communication being performed by chain telephone calls.
Kerr Scott, Democratic gubernatorial candidate in North
Carolina, reiterated his campaign promise that he would seek from
the General Assembly substantially higher pay for teachers at the
start of the year.
Dick Young of The News tells of recommendations in a
traffic survey report by the traffic engineer to the City Manager
for 4th and 6th Streets in Charlotte to become one-way westbound and
5th and 3rd Streets one-way eastbound. The report found that 333
accidents had been recorded in the sixteen affected blocks, between
the beginning of 1943 and June, 1947, 324 of them at intersections,
usually involving turns. The changes would alter that course.
Well, it's about time.
In the sports section, details are provided of the annual
contest to determine the young sports writer of the year, who would
receive a road trip with the Charlotte Hornets baseball team. You
had better get to work on your entries, starting with the election.
On the editorial page,"For a Healthier, Happier City" congratulates the Mayor and City Council for reacting to public
pressure to implement the Standard Housing ordinance, suspended
since it was enacted in 1943 because of the dearth of available
building materials. The resulting inspections and orders to comply
with the ordinance would help to eradicate the worst of the slum
conditions in the city, improving health and safety for everyone.
"Does Stalin Want Real Peace?" finds pessimistic
voices contending that the only thing which could come from the
current entreaties by the Big Three ambassadors to Moscow speaking
with Premier Stalin was a truce during which the powers would
continue to maneuver to the brink of crisis. The theory was based on
the notion that the Russians would never abandon the Marx-Lenin
party line to promote worldwide revolution.
DeWitt MacKenzie had voiced such pessimism in one of his
pieces, that the Russians would not stop until they succeeded or
their revolution blew up in their faces through anti-Communist
revolt or world war.
The piece adopts a more hopeful position, finds John Foster
Dulles, apparently to become President Dewey's Secretary of State in
January, to have stated the matter correctly in finding that the
Russian policy was one which was "not war, not peace".
Communism thrived on crisis, but the Soviets could not afford a war
with the U.S.
It opines that the settlement discussions were prompted by
the fact that the Berlin crisis had moved the world too close to war
for the comfort of the Kremlin. Mr. Dulles believed that the
Russians could be cajoled to settle down when they saw the rest of
the world recovering economically to the degree that further Soviet
expansion would be deemed futile.
While the tide appeared to have turned in many countries
against the Soviets, it was not yet clear whether this trend would
continue. It was possible that the Politburo and Premier Stalin
would not see that the cold war game was played out, but it was also
possible that they were more concerned than was apparent regarding
the demise of revolutionary ardor in Eastern Europe.
It concludes that the rally against Communism during the year
gave hope that the diplomatic negotiations might achieve positive
results.
"Bureaucrats Grow and Grow" tells of the
Republican Congress, after having won the elections of 1946 on the
basis of cutting Government bureaucracy and cost, having increased
the size of Government by 70,000 employees since the previous
December. Based on new appropriations, the figure might rise by
another 190,000, to a peak of 2.25 million Government employees, by June 30, 1949. The
present peak represented 80,000 more workers than the peak reached
during the war.
Both the Administration and the Congress were responsible for
the increase, at a time when both were seeking control of inflation.
The Government payroll had swollen to seven billion dollars. One out
of every 30 jobs in the country was that of a Federal employee.
A bureaucrat, it concludes, was neither necessarily a
Democrat nor Republican, but rather a creation of the people who
could not understand that the country could not have more government
service without paying for it.
"Higher Than Mt. Mitchell" corrects the earlier
editorial on the highest point in North Carolina and in the Appalachians
possibly to be exceeded by Clingman's Dome in Tennessee, should a
man there get his way in adding stones equivalent to 42 more feet in
height. It had incorrectly stated that Mt. Mitchell was the highest
mountain east of the Rockies. But a reader had pointed out that
Horneg's Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota was higher by
several hundred feet, limiting the geographic superiority of Mt.
Mitchell to the region east of the Mississippi.
Drew Pearson tells of Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, chairman
of HUAC, hiring personnel and then receiving kickbacks of their
entire salaries to his own pocket. He suggests that there ought to
be grounds for income tax evasion and ethical inquiries anent the
practice. He paid taxes based on the lower income bracket of his
employee. He had hired a stenographer for four years at $1,200 per
year and received the entire salary. She did no work save stuffing
envelopes, for which she was paid $2 per hundred.
He then hired another employee on the same basis, at $1,800
per year, for one and a half months, until he hired yet someone
else for $2,900 per year, increased to over $3,400. All the
employment was bogus.
Eventually, based on this information, a grand jury would
indict Mr. Thomas and he would go to jail.
Mr. Pearson next reports that the anti-Communist movement may
have spread to the Red Army. Discipline had apparently sunk to a new
low.
A bloc of German Communists had sought from the Soviet
occupation forces the end of the blockade of Berlin. As a result,
the Russians had ordered a purge of the Russian-sponsored Socialist
Unity Party, one of whose members castigated co-workers at a recent
conference for being anti-Russian, suggesting that they had crossed
the line into being an agent for U.S. imperialism.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop look at the campaign strategy of
Thomas Dewey, find him planning to play it safe as long as he
remained ahead of the President in the polls and as long as the
domestic situation remained stable insofar as inflation. He would
stick to foreign affairs and stress a general cleaning of house in
the Government, to avoid too many commitments. If prices rose
sharply, however, the President could lay the blame on the inaction
of Congress in the special session and at that point, Governor Dewey
would have to wage a fighting campaign. The Dewey advisers believed
that the special session would do no other harm to the Republican
cause.
If inflation remained stable, the Governor would take to the
road only in late September and mainly work for a short period to
get out the vote, which he believed was his for the asking.
They venture that if the election turned out as predicted,
however, the GOP electorate might find in their moment of
jubilation, ironically, that they did not know very well the
candidate they had elected.
James Marlow tells of Alabama Senator Lister Hill stating
that education in the country was a matter of lottery, a view shared
by the majority of Senators. The Senate had thus voted 58 to 22 in
April to provide Government funding of 300 million dollars per year
to the states for education. The House, however, had ignored the
bill. It would not be taken up in the special session, as the
President had urged.
Federal funding to education had been around as an idea for
30 years. Poorer states, especially in the South, would receive more
under the program, as those states had a smaller tax base on which
to draw their funding. Payments would range from $5 per student per
year in the richer states to $28.50 in the poorer ones. The bill was
designed to provide for a total expenditure of $50 per student per
year in each state. The average expenditure was $125 per student,
ranging in 1945 from $44.80 in Mississippi and $56.93 in Alabama to
$198.33 in New Jersey and $194.47 in New York.
One argument against Federal funding was that the richer
states had to pay for education in the poorer states, when the
richer states received the least Federal money under the program.
The Senators determined, however, that all children were Americans
and entitled to equal education, important to the future welfare of
the country.
But the principal argument against the program was that the
Government would be able to interfere with state education, saying
what could and could not be taught. The Senate bill thus expressly
provided for no interference.
Some Senators argued that the money would be used to fund
private and religious schools as well as public schools. The Senate
bill thus specifically limited spending to public schools, except in
the instance where a state spent some of its money on private and
religious schools.
He concludes that given all of the spending approved by the
House, the only reason it had not approved the bill was that it did
not wish to spend the relatively small amount on education.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, admits
that he had not made up his mind as to who of the three candidates
for President he supported, the President, Governor Dewey, or former
Vice-President Wallace. Each party was better at being critical of
the opposition than solving problems.
The notion that merit, however, lacking in one party would
then transfer automatically to another, a sort of Indestructibility
of Merit Rule, did not obtain. Merit was not as basketball, where
one team losing the ball meant that the other had it.
The President had a point in his suspicions of Russia. The
Republicans were justified in their view that the entire world could
change adversely. And Mr. Wallace made his points in believing that
too much suspicion of Russia could lead to war. None of them,
however, promised a sure road to peace and prosperity. None proved
merit by proving lack of merit of the opposition.
Merit was scattered among the parties. He would await another
day, therefore, to make a decision on who would have his support
come November.
A letter writer finds the trend in the world to be that
giving up some form of liberty to the Government was a way to have
security, but that such notions, to which he ascribes liberality,
amounted to a form of tyranny.
He would be good on most of the radio talk shows these days
as another of their shills for the big corporations, pretending to
be a friend to the common idiot, stupid enough to listen to him.
A letter writer from Wrightsville Beach finds the series of
articles by Tom Fesperman on the Charlotte slums to have been a
public service. He hopes to read of results of the campaign to clean
up the city within about 90 days.
A letter from the director of public relations of the
Charlotte Jaycees thanks the newspaper for its support in the
Jaycees' drive to clean up the city.
A letter from "M.B. Query", perhaps a real name,
probably not, objects to the ordinance which proscribed a chicken
coop within 200 feet of a street or residence, thinks that if it was
a menace at 30 or 40 feet, it remained so at 200. He thinks it was
designed to end the businesses which handled day-old chickens. He
thinks that there was no need for any new law on chickens beyond
assurance of clean coops.
No, it is a proven scientific fact that you cannot hear
chickens from 200 feet, known in the scientific literature as the
Limitator Gallus Domesticus Doodle-dooinator, with the single
exception of the Dixiecrat variety of rooster which extends their
noise range much further by working in relays at various wavelengths
until the phenomenon known as Ad Nauseam Anti-Liberalis works to
eliminate the bar to the Barrier.