Friday, August 6, 1948

The Charlotte News

Friday, August 6, 1948

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the American, French, and British ambassadors to Moscow met for an hour this date with Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov, following a previous talk with Premier Stalin on Monday night while Mr. Molotov was reportedly on vacation. They were mum on the results.

The Senate Investigating subcommittee shut down its hearings into Communist spying in the Government, claiming that the President refused to provide them with necessary facts out of the confidential reports on loyalty checks, namely that of William Remington, implicated by Elizabeth Bentley a week earlier as an espionage agent within the Government. Chairman Homer Ferguson said that the subcommittee would continue its hearings but in executive session.

During a House speech, Pennsylvania Representative John McDowell, member of HUAC, again asserted his charges that the U.S. Government supplied significant amounts of uranium to Russia in 1945—at a time when Russia was a critical ally in the war, World War II, Second World War, in which the Allies were fighting the Nazis and Japanese warlords. He said that the amounts to which he referred were in addition to the 1,300 pounds in 1943 to which he made reference the previous day during a HUAC hearing. Mr. McDowell said that the materials were obtained after high pressure was applied to the Government.

HUAC, meanwhile, went into executive session to hear testimony of a mystery witness. Representative Karl Mundt of South Dakota said that the witness would prove, along with the other testimony, the existence of a Communist spy ring in the Government.

Who could that be? Only the Shadow knows for sure. The answer to the mystery might lie in Box 13. In any event, only the Republicans, with their secret, mystical double-password cryptographic understanding, could resolve this problem.

Let's face facts: They had Dick on their side.

Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing said that he had planned to fire Commissioner of Education Dr. John Studebaker for irresponsibility, but Dr. Studebaker had resigned before he could be fired. Dr. Studebaker had since accused Mr. Ewing of blocking his efforts to carry on an anti-Communist campaign within the schools and of poor administration generally. Mr. Ewing called it "poppycock". He contended that Dr. Studebaker was absent from his post for four months while conducting business in Los Angeles and San Diego relative to a radio station which he and his son had established, having acquired an FCC license.

The Senate passed and sent to the House a compromise housing bill to speed low-cost home building, but without slum clearance or public housing provisions as provided under the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. House Speaker Joe Martin said that he expected the House to approve the bill. He still looked forward to ending the special session the following day.

The Senate Banking Committee approved the anti-inflation measure, striking the House-approved provision for raising gold reserve requirements of Federal Reserve Banks, which Secretary of Treasury John W. Snyder said would do nothing to alleviate inflation. It approved an increase in monetary reserves on time and demand deposits, an increase greater than that of the House but still substantially less than recommended by the President. The committee approved the House measure which would re-impose restrictions on installment buying. Senator Homer Capehart's proposal to freeze prices effective immediately was voted down by the committee.

A Senate subcommittee rejected the personal plea of Governor Dewey to liberalize the displaced persons bill, taking out restrictions which worked effectively to limit the number of Jews and Catholics who could immigrate under the bill.

A report appears of a brief biography of Federal District Court Judge J. Waties Waring, 68, who, in July, 1947, had issued a controversial decision opening the primaries in South Carolina to all voters, striking down as unconstitutional the Democratic effort to make the primary a private affair open only to members of the social club. Recently, he had ordered the Democratic Party of South Carolina to admit blacks to its membership, after they had refused to do so in the wake of the 1947 decision, allowing blacks to vote in the primaries but not permitting party membership. He also revised the oath of membership required by the party, which had imposed an oath of allegiance to racial segregation and the principle of states' rights.

He had also ruled that blacks had to be admitted to the University of South Carolina Law School unless a separate but equal facility existed within the state. He subsequently ruled that a facility created at South Carolina State at Orangeburg met the standard.

Judge Waring had been a lifelong Democrat, was appointed to the bench by FDR in 1942, had once represented Governor-elect Burnet Rhett Maybank in 1938 when his election was being contested. Governor Maybank was a Senator in 1942 at Judge Waring's appointment. Judge Waring had also supported the other South Carolina Senator at the time of his appointment to the bench, the late Cotton Ed Smith. He was the son of a Confederate veteran.

The better, more complete biography is in the Collier's issue of April 29, 1950.

Why is it that every time a liberal Democrat from the South takes on civil rights effectively, there is a concerted attempt among Neanderthal Republicans, "conservatives", many of them former Democrats, to smear their reputations among recalcitrant, retrenched Southerners and others of their stripe? Sometimes, in consequence of the type of person thus deliberately stirred, the smear turns deadly. The same brand of nonsense had followed in 1937 the nomination to the Supreme Court of Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, trying by prior political associations to damn the sincerity of an individual's stands for progress on civil liberties, which entail necessarily improvement in race relations.

In Polk County, Tennessee, National Guardsmen were mobilized to quell a disturbance erupting as the primaries took place. Two men were reported killed the previous night and five wounded. The violence concerned a dispute over absentee ballots in Copperhill and Ducktown. Polk County was adjacent to McMinn County, where in August, 1946, a gun battle had erupted in Athens between the entrenched political machine there and the G.I.'s who had run their own slate of candidates, claiming that the Sheriff and his deputies of the machine had improperly secured the ballot boxes in a traditional effort to stuff them. Similarly, the confrontation in Polk County was between the Good Government League, which had its own slate of candidates, and the Burch Biggs political machine.

Candidates backed by Boss Ed Crump of Memphis were losing in the races for the Senate and Governor's office, the first major defeat he had suffered in 20 years. Congressman Estes Kefauver defeated incumbent Senator Tom Stewart and a circuit judge backed by Mr. Crump.

The Navy Board of inquiry studied the wreckage of a transport plane in which nine Navy men and a member of the Coast Guard were killed the previous day when it crashed into a training plane 23 miles north of Miami. A report that a Navy WAVE was among the dead was corrected as false.

In Hiroshima, city residents held their second peace festival on the third anniversary of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. The citizens prayed for world peace and the peace of those who died in the bombing. The city was silent except for the tolling of the peace bell over Ground Zero. At the conclusion of the prayers, a girl released a covey of doves.

In Raleigh, a man who had been arrested two days earlier for public drunkenness hanged himself in his jail cell by means of his belt.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., a new type of iron lung for polio victims was introduced. Comprised mostly of plexiglass, it was four hundred times lighter than the conventional type, weighing three to five pounds, and fit like a bowl over the patient's chest and stomach. The device could be powered by an ordinary vacuum cleaner and would start assisting breathing of the patient immediately, whereas the old machines required a warm-up of about two minutes. It had been used successfully on polio patients at the University of Michigan hospital.

The City Health Officer of Charlotte, Dr. M. B. Bethel, told the Civitan Club at the Hotel Charlotte that the new motto for the city was to make the Queen City the "Clean City". Stress was placed on the polio epidemic of the summer and cleaning up the reported sanitation problems in some neighborhoods. Elimination of the "gang toilets", he said, would help to relieve the sanitation issues. Elimination also of industrial wastes being dumped in the city's creeks would remove noxious odors. Sanitation personnel, he reported, were being aided in their work by recently-purchased DDT fogging equipment.

That's a fun place to play in the summertime, in the fog of DDT. But you would not want to live there.

In the Summer Olympics in London, Floyd "Chunk" Simmons of Charlotte appeared assured of second place in the decathlon after nine of ten events had been completed, the last being the 1,500 meter race. He had a shot at first place, currently held by Bob Mathias, only 17 years old. Ignace Heinrich of France, in third place, had 6,457 points to 6,524 for Chunk Simmons.

Miss North Carolina, from Shelby, is pictured on the page choosing the best photographs taken of her in a contest among the state's press photographers.

On the editorial page, "A Bitter Turnip for Truman" suggests that the President's blast at Congress the previous day, stating that the HUAC and Senate Investigating Committee hearings into alleged Communists in the Government were merely diversions from the failure to do anything about inflation, underscored the lack of action in the special session and his disappointment at the fact. His call for Congress to reconsider early adjournment the following day could not have been uttered seriously.

The session had only put the Administration over a barrel rather than placing the Congress on the spot as intended, to pass the Republican platform agenda or face condemnation as insincere hypocrites. It believes that, in light of the results, the President ought be happy to see the Congress adjourn and go home.

The President was hoping that voters would hold it against the Republicans for inaction on price control. But that could backfire if prices were to drop in the ensuing three months. The Administration had taken a hit in the disclosures regarding Communists in the Government.

While it agrees with the President that the hearings were a "red herring" to divert attention from more important issues, Mr. Truman was criticizing it because the hearings were advancing GOP purposes. The Republicans appeared content to have the show go on the rest of the summer and the President had unwittingly promoted it by calling the special session.

The HUAC and Investigating Committee hearings likely would make the negotiations regarding Berlin more difficult. The American Communists claimed that the purpose of the hearings was to sabotage the talks.

The leaders of both parties, it suggests, ought instead be concentrating their energies on the hope of ending the world crisis.

The Turnip Day Carriage was quckly turning into a Pumpkin. Yet, notwithstanding, the Glass Slipper would not to the Elephant go, in the Northwoods in which the Witch resided.

"Filibuster Dampens Revolt" comments on the Republicans having acceded to the Southern filibuster of the anti-poll tax bill, withdrawing the bill, thus condemning the President's entire civil rights program to defeat in the special session. The cessation of effort would, however, be short-lived, as the Republicans had promised that in January they would not only revive the program but change Senate rules to make a filibuster more difficult.

The defeat of civil rights would put a damper on the Dixiecrat movement and give Southerners more time to reflect on the dubious wisdom of it. The Dixiecrats could only accomplish the defeat of the Democrats. Continuing the movement would show that to be their primary motivation, not defeat of civil rights. More would be heard regarding their being Republicans at heart, disguised Republicans, or disgruntled politicians who could not make the grade in the Democratic Party.

"We Like Mountain Music" posits that the nasal-twanged emanations from the radio speaker on Saturday night in recent years manifested a mere impostor of genuine hillbilly music. Genuine hillbilly music, such as that sung by Burl Ives or Richard Dyer-Bennet, seldom made it onto the jukebox. Those who sang the hillbilly music of popular conception for nickels were musicians only in name, not by proper calling.

As now constituted, the genre was open to anything which had loose enunciation and a guitar accompaniment, such as "Pistol-Packing Mama".

Burl Ives had sung the genuine article in "Foggy, Foggy Dew". Composers as Lamar Stringfield and Aaron Copland had used genuine hillbilly music as bases for themes in their compositions.

It concludes that the only way to resolve the problem was to give the popular form of hillbilly music to Tin Pan Alley, which had co-opted it anyway, and label the genuine mountain melodies "folk music".

And so it was. And so it was.

But wait until you get to the folk-rock variety and then have a go again at the genre descrying.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "Rosy Future the Stars Ordain", suggests that prophecies were fascinating, explaining the preoccupation with Nostradamus and the power of Sibyl, down to the modern palmists and fortune tellers.

Moore's Almanac out of England had predicted worldwide recovery in 1949, especially in Britain. The U.S., notwithstanding, would undergo a "wave of industrial unrest" and perhaps "political upheavals". The U.S.S.R. would have administration changes in February, after which affection for the West would flow from the Kremlin.

While pleasant reading, it suggests, it was no more substantial than a dream.

But Moore's had been in the business of predictions for 251 years. And there was the diamond of Cousin Mary which the fortune teller had said would be found in the drain pipe under the bathtub—and sure enough, that is where the plumber had located it.

Drew Pearson tells of the Republican caucus having rubber-stamped, amid only mild dissent, the statement of the GOP leadership regarding the limited scope of the special session, with only limited action on inflation control.

Congressman Jacob Javits of New York demanded that action be taken on both liberalizing of the limitations passed previously as part of the displaced persons bill and to approve the funding for construction of the permanent headquarters of the U.N., that the hole for it was already dug. To that, isolationist Frederick Smith of Ohio, a horse doctor, said that if the hole was already dug, then they ought to take the entire U.N. and bury it.

Mr. Pearson notes that Thomas Dewey had recommended the same legislation urged by Mr. Javits.

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan called the Congress "irresponsible", to which Senator Vandenberg and Senator Lodge took umbrage, to no avail. Mr. Brannan would not apologize. Senator Vandenberg took him to task when he appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee, seeking ratification of the international wheat agreement, favoring farmers. Mr. Vandenberg said that Mr. Brannan had no right to call Congress irresponsible in the face of bipartisan foreign policy, supporting the Marshall Plan and the peacetime draft. Senator Lodge was exercised because he had chaired the subcommittee which failed to approve the wheat agreement, explaining that it could not be approved in the limited amount of time available.

Mr. Brannan explained that wheat farms were lying fallow because it cost more to grow the wheat than the return, that the agreement allowed a market for the wheat abroad, causing him great consternation therefore when it was not approved. He assured the committee that he had great respect for them.

Barnet Nover comments that a year or two earlier, news of a meeting between the ambassadors of the Big Three with Josef Stalin would have been greeted with jubilation, suggesting a new era of amity between the Soviets and the West. Presently, however, the reaction was one of cautious optimism, that an East-West settlement might take place.

In Berlin, the cold war continued to rage, with pressures on the Western sectors and the Western powers by the Russians. In Belgrade, at the conference regarding the Danube, Russia was making a mockery of the treaties with the Balkan states regarding internationalization of the Danube. Thus, a change of approach was not to be expected from Russia.

Russia had failed to win over the West with its tactics in Europe, and the Communist positions in such countries as France and Italy were far weaker than they had been. Russia's domination of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania was counterpoised by the increasing economic distress in those countries. Russia's loss of prestige in Western Europe had precipitated its need for a moral victory in Berlin, leading to the blockade crisis to force out the West or obtain concessions for being allowed to stay.

The Russians did not want war, but neither did the West, and the Russians could capitalize on the fact. Russia might agree finally to extend ERP to Russian satellites or even to Russia, itself. The West might be forced to abandon its plans to establish a separate West German government. Or, Russia might be allowed to participate in the internationalized Ruhr, producing at the highest postwar production level in Europe.

Whatever the demand might be, the West would be well advised, he warns, to proceed cautiously as leaving Russia as a result stronger could be very dangerous in the long run.

DeWitt MacKenzie discusses the proposal for a United States of Europe, conceived for nearly 150 years, the press of Communism giving it new impetus. The Western European Union was the first manifestation, created to form economic and military cooperation between France, Britain and the Benelux countries, complementing the Marshall Plan. In time, he posits, the Plan might be seen as the seed for European union when Communism would disappear, supplanted by freedom on the Continent.

During the previous week, Italy's foreign minister, Count Carlo Sforza, a liberal who had opposed Mussolini's Fascism and gone into exile during his dictatorship, announced that Italy would be willing to curtail its sovereignty to partake of the European union. The Italian Senate also appeared to favor the concept. At the same time, French foreign minister Paul Reynaud indicated his hope that Britain would support the concept the following fall in the Dominions Conference to be held in London. Whether the two announcements were meant to be in concert or were coincidental was not determined.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who had given birth to the idea of the WEU, had stated that other nations were free to join. Winston Churchill had also long promoted the idea of a United States of Europe.

Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, comments on the change in relations with the Soviets since the spring, when it was considered radical to suggest settlement with Russia, now fast becoming a conservative policy. He notes the change, he says, not to be flip, but because it was necessary to be conscious of it and to avoid in the future obedience to peremptory impulses.

Perhaps, he says, there was a genuine change taking place, that a realization that no large social reforms, such as those the President desired, could take place during a period of cold war, that such was a fantasy, the fantasy of "normal unnormality" underlying the refusal to negotiate in the spring, the idea that to preserve the economy meant militarization, that prevention of the spread of communism would be accomplished by not discussing settlement with the Russians. The realization might have come that settlement negotiations could achieve better ends as long as the negotiations did not seek absolute ends leading to war.

He also recognizes the alternative that perhaps there were no such realizations occurring, that the new structure of confidence would topple. He was, in the final analysis, convinced, however, that the changes were real such that prevailing opinion would soon or late coordinate with them.

A letter writer comments unfavorably on Dave Clark, editor and publisher of The Textile Bulletin and head of the North Carolina Dixiecrats, for his claim that the State Board of Elections had acted unfairly and outside the law in denying the Dixiecrats a place on the ballot, despite its ostensible obedience to the law, providing over 10,000 names on a petition to the local registrars. The Board had said, however, that the registrars had not certified the names as registered voters who had not voted in either party primary and so the petition was invalid under state law.

The writer relates that a letter to The News from Mr. Clark in 1945 resided at the FDR Library in Hyde Park, in which he had objected to the newspapers, the radio networks, the movies, the railroads and the people making an open show of grief at the death of President Roosevelt.

The Dixiecrat effort was insincere insofar as it was actually going to have the result of electing Thomas Dewey, not promoting the Southern cause. If Mr. Clark, he thinks, were sincere in his objections to the civil rights program, he would support the President in the election. As Governor, Thomas Dewey had enacted a progressive civil rights program in New York.

He predicts that before the campaign was over, the President would yet show the Dixiecrats for what they were.

The problem with Dave was that, in the end, he was just dumb, but, by being the privileged son of a State Supreme Court Chief Justice, had managed to acquire a higher education of a lower order.

In any event, his ideas were able to stretch through time as, more probably than not, young Jesse Helms of Monroe had been an assiduous reader of the Bulletin, at least being in agreement with the bulk of its editorial stands and strands of colored yarn, right down to their mutual unawares.

A letter writer finds funny a photograph of City Manager Henry Yancey and another man in their choice of neckties.

It's just a necktie. If it lit up, had cow bells on it, and said, "You're stupid for paying attention to pictures of men's neckties," then you could make comment.

He also finds humorous the City Inspector's statement that the houses to be made subject to orders of compliance under the Housing ordinance would be tagged without knowing the owners, as their identification, according to the Inspector, had to be looked up with great effort.

A letter writer says that the time was nigh when the forces allied with Christ would be joined in battle against the believers in the anti-Christ. No thinking man, he proclaims, could deny that Jesus was Lord and God.

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