Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Berlin,
American officials curtly rejected a Russian attempt to limit the
Western airlift supplying the city, demanding data on every flight
for purposes of safety. The previous day, anti-Communist Germans
ripped down the Communist flag from the Brandenburg Gate and
Soviet-controlled police fired into demonstrators, killing at least
one person.
Associated Press correspondent John Scali, who would play a
pivotal role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, reports that
American officials were predicting disagreement among the Big Four
regarding disposition of Italy's prewar African colonies. That came
on the heels of Secretary of State Marshall indicating that
bipartisan general agreement had been reached as to the U.S.
position regarding the colonies and that the U.S. would agree to
meet, per a Russian suggestion, with the other Big Four nations to
discuss the matter. Under the Italian peace treaty, if the Big Four
failed to agree on the disposition by September 15, the matter would
have to go before the U.N. General Assembly for determination.
Russia wanted Libya, Eritrea, and Somaliland returned to Italy under
U.N. trusteeships. The other Big Four nations had opposed this
proposal, though it appeared of late that the U.S. had reversed its
position.
In Paris, it was believed that new Premier Henri Queuille, a
conservative Radical Socialist, would be able to achieve a majority
in the National Assembly after the Gaullists promised their support.
A spokesman for General De Gaulle, however, called for new national
elections. There were several work stoppages across France,
including at Renault, whose workers marched to the center of Paris
and there attacked police, eventuating in the injury of a dozen
demonstrators and twenty policemen. The Communists had been excluded
from the new Queuille Cabinet. It was likely that Robert Schuman,
whose 64-hour old Government fell earlier in the week, would remain
as Foreign Minister.
ERP administrator Paul Hoffman said that he would terminate
aid to any nation which became fascist, just as would be the case
with a country which became communist.
The Air Force was awaiting authorization from the President
to spend 200 million dollars for more than 200 new bombers and
fighter planes, including 96 million for the Boeing XB-47, a fast,
swept-wing bomber.
General Leslie R. Groves, military head of the Manhattan
Project during the war, testified to HUAC in executive session that
there may have been leaks of atomic secrets to Russia during the
war. He declined to provide details. He said that of 600,000
employees on the Project, it was not to be expected that all would
be perfect in maintaining secrets. He also said that he was not
aware of uranium having been shipped to Russia during the war, as
Congressman John McDowell had reported during earlier hearings in
August. He said that he did not authorize any such shipment and
could not imagine it being done.
The House Civil Service Committee was studying an allegation
that postal promotions had been sold for as much as $500. The
allegations were yet to be proved.
The Dixiecrats failed to qualify for the Indiana ballot after
the State Board of Elections had certified them. A court contest
challenged the sufficiency of the petitions and claimed that the
party had defrauded the Board of Elections. Only 700 signatures had
been properly acknowledged. Some of the 11,000 signers were found to
be dead. The State Attorney General argued the case on behalf of a
private citizen who brought the suit. The court sided with the
plaintiff.
Truckers in New York City were set to vote on wage demands to
try to end the ten-day strike. The originally demanded 25-cent per
hour raise had been scaled back to 17.5 cents.
As summer ended, there was an expected drop in employment and
individual incomes from the record highs of mid-summer.
In Atlantic City, Miss Utah won the talent competition the
previous night with presentation of a dramatic monologue as a mother
talking to her dying son in the hospital. Miss Minnesota won the
bathing suit competition. Two nights earlier, Miss Tennessee had won
the talent competition and Miss Kansas, the bathing suit contest.
In Louisiana, the Democratic State Central Committee took the
President's name off the ballot and substituted that of Governor
Strom Thurmond—who would, surprisingly, go on to win the state
in November. The committee voted to go ahead and pledge all ten of
the state's electors to the Dixiecrat ticket, changing from their
previous unpledged status. President Truman was relegated to
write-in status.
In Charlotte, two teenage boys had shot a man in the legs
with a shotgun the previous night and forced him to ride with them
on a Duke Power bus to Independence Square to be taken into custody
by the police. They alleged that the man was a prowler at the home
of one of the boys. Prowlers had been spotted on two previous
nights. The boys claimed that the man had walked near a window of the
house and then came up to the window, crouching in the bushes, and
peered into a room where there were four women talking. When the man
straightened up, one of the boys shot him from a distance of three feet. No
charges had been lodged against anyone yet.
Sorry, but you have no right to shoot a prowler who is
unarmed. You boys are going to the Big House.
Besides, he was only operating on the same premise as HUAC.
On the editorial page, "'Hummon' Takes Over in Georgia" discusses the gubernatorial primary victory of Herman Talmadge,
running on a white supremacy platform, over colorless career
educator Governor M. E. Thompson. There was no surprise in the
outcome. Mr. Talmadge would complete his father's unexpired term
through the beginning of 1951.
Russell Long, another son of a dead demagogue, had scored a
victory in the gubernatorial primary in Louisiana.
The setting for Mr. Talmadge, it ventures, was perfect. The
President was pushing his civil rights program to the ire of many
Southerners. Governor Dewey had created an FEPC in New York. Mr.
Talmadge had warned voters that after November, such would become
national policy. Henry Wallace had just completed his tour of the
South, sleeping in black homes and hotels, stumping for racial
equality. Mr. Talmadge made sure that his wool-hat boys heard about
that, too.
Governor Thompson was weak competition, having neither the
acumen nor the force of former Governor Ellis Arnall. He had also
been forced into an unhealthy alliance with former Governor E. D.
Rivers, another demagogue.
Mr. Talmadge had learned well from his father how to relate
to his rural backers without letting his college and law degrees get
in the way. That, plus the county-unit voting system which gave
rural counties disproportionate strength relative to the cities, had
assured his victory. Mr Talmadge's lieutenants boasted that they
would be in power for 50 years if they won the election.
The piece finds the boast not necessarily idle. While there
was much opposition to Mr. Talmadge, they would find it difficult to
express themselves as Mr. Talmadge, like his father, would control
party machinery and formation of a third party was not a realistic
alternative.
Mr. Talmadge had promised to mend his ways once in the
Governor's Mansion. But it was unlikely that such a miracle would
occur. The wool-hat boys were back to stay and Georgia's progress
realized under Governor Arnall had been set back many years.
"The Church and Economics", in comment on the
World Council of Churches having condemned both laissez-faire
capitalism and Communism, finds the American Indians to have been
organized along communist lines while the ancient Phoenicians had
practiced laissez-faire capitalism. Not until the
mid-eighteenth century, however, did Adam Smith champion the latter
form of economy. High taxes on large incomes and estates were
designed as levelers. Communism was championed by Karl Marx in the
mid-nineteenth century, to eliminate class antagonisms in the
"bourgeois" society through association to free the
proletarians from the chains of their economic rulers.
Communism, however, in its true sense was never realized in
Russia. It became the instrument of tyranny by a ruling class, the
party.
It questions, in light of the Council resolution, whether the
Christian Church would favor instead socialism. Any system of
government was faulty if the wrong men controlled it.
It advises the Council to leave economic and political
systems alone, save those genuinely nefarious in intent. It urges
that it would be better to get the Golden Rule firmly established
before invading these realms of discourse.
A piece from the Anderson (S.C.) Independent, titled
"'Money Time' in the South", views with apprehension the
coming of the first mechanical cotton picker to the region. It could
never replace the "low-bent cotton pickers shuffling down the
rows, their sacks heavy with the white treasure of the red earth."
Cotton pickers had long been a part of the Southern scene in autumn.
It waxes poetic on the disappearing system of manual labor.
Here we have, for instance, contrary to the assertion of the letter writer of the previous day, a great disconnect between the
North Carolinian, who likely had never seen a cotton picker, and the
South Carolinian. Furthermore, the North Carolinian would
undoubtedly refrain, in public at least, from seeking to romanticize
the occupation as life among the lowly.
Anyway, it goes on quite a bit, describing detail of how it
all worked, should you ever have a hankering to be a cotton picker.
"It is cotton picking time, a good time for all in
South Carolina. May the harvest be plentiful."
It takes all kinds.
Drew Pearson, returning from his vacation begun August 16, writes from his farm
in Gaithersburg, Md., tells of having had a swell vacation, until the
pigs got loose—perhaps in subtle reference to HUAC. He thought of going
many places, settled on Germany, but in the end remained at home on
his farm.
He filled the silo with the corn crop and had enough for two
temporary silos to boot.
He recommends William Vogt's Road to Survival which he
read, warning of ruination of the country's natural resources by too
much timber cutting and pouring of its iron and steel into munitions
for foreign battlefields.
He went to church, especially enjoyed a sermon by Bishop John
Hines of Austin, Tex, preaching at Bethany Beach, Del.
He decided not to plant any more corn. So, you can read the
corn of the prior paragraph for yourself.
He met a gradually disappearing species, the country doctor.
His wife did not care too much for the stay-at-home vacation
for obvious reasons, but had been a good sport about it.
But then the pigs got loose. They played deck tennis on the
lawn and in a half hour pretty well ruined it. Starting at 5:00 a.m.
the next morning, he spent the rest of the vacation piecing it back
together as a puzzle. But he received free exercise in the bargain.
And his wife, who had worked hard to maintain the lawn in pristine
condition, said that she was almost glad that they had bad pigs as
they proved her husband's early 5:00 a.m. devotion.
Marquis Childs finds the reports of the death of the
Democratic Party, like that of Mark Twain, to be premature and much
exaggerated. In his travels, he had found it showing aggressive
signs of life of late. Americans, no matter their conviction, had
remarked that the two-party system was essential to the country's
politics. That would not necessarily translate to results in
November as decadence had transpired in the party for three years.
But in the Congressional races, the Democrats had more
candidates who stood for something positive, related to the deep
convictions of such members of Congress as Helen Gahagan Douglas and
Chet Holifield of California. In Iowa, Guy Gillette, though
conservative, stood for something, was expected to beat the
incumbent Senator George Wilson, colorless and without conviction.
A second important force in the party was the power of
organized labor, mainly behind the President. It could conceivably
wreck the Republican celebration. The intensive organization of
labor in 1944 had a lot to do with the Roosevelt victory over
Governor Dewey. The UAW had turned out the vote in Michigan, with
shop stewards using a master file of union members to insure their
participation. Both AFL and CIO would undertake such an effort in
1948. Mr. Childs, however, believes it would fall short of the 1944
effort and not produce an upset. There was far less enthusiasm for
President Truman than there had been for President Roosevelt.
UAW president Walter Reuther was said to be considering
formation of a non-Communist labor party to be formed after the
election, with himself as leader. That could spell the end of the
Democratic Party, drawing off a key support group. The indifference
of voters who disliked both tickets might determine the outcome. And
most of that group was in labor.
Whatever it meant for the long term, there was a revival of
life in the Democratic Party.
James Marlow finds the question and answer, "Who did
it? He did it," to sum up the presidential campaign
henceforth. The Democrats and Republicans began the campaign on
Labor Day, with the President addressing labor regarding living
costs, prosperity and housing, and Harold Stassen providing the GOP
rejoinder. The four issues would be central to the campaign.
Each blamed the other for inflation. As for Taft-Hartley, a
majority of Democrats joined the Republican majority in passing it.
Mr. Stassen found it to be a good law; President Truman said it was
bad and a foretaste of things to come from another Republican
Congress. The President warned of an end to prosperity if the
Republicans won. Mr. Stassen promised continuity of prosperity, that
the President was trying to scare the people. Mr. Stassen claimed
that both Democrats and Republicans were responsible for the housing
shortage; the President blamed Congress.
Mr. Marlow says that the voter now had to figure out who was
right while even experts had trouble sorting out these issues. Some
people might vote for a candidate because they did not like his
eyeglasses or his mustache. Arguments would do little to convince
such a person. The rest would have to listen to make up their minds.
He concludes that they had a tough job ahead.
A not so challenging set of "Better English" questions follows, especially given that the answers appear
immediately below the questions.
Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News,
comments on the rejoinder to President Truman's Labor day speeches
by Harold Stassen, proclaiming "better living, better housing
and better health"as the GOP campaign position. Mr. Grafton is
glad that he championed such ideas and believes that he truly
supported them, but cannot understand why such a person had joined
the Republican Party in the first instance during his youth, then
the party of Harding. The GOP and liberal reform did not go hand in
glove, as, say, bananas and Central America.
The same question would arise with respect to Governor Dewey
when inevitably he would champion the same sorts of things during
the course of the campaign. He had approved Mr. Stassen's remarks.
There was a form of gallantry involved in trying to achieve
these lofty goals through the party of Harding and Hoover, instead
of through the party of Wilson and Roosevelt. But it left open a
question of judgment, for if it was snow one wanted, you went to
Labrador, or Hibbing, Minnesota, not Florida.
Idealists, he concludes, would believe anything if they
believed it could all take place within the context of the
Republican Party. While there had been social dreamers among the
Democratic reformers, they were more firmly planted on the ground in
one important respect: they had never believed that social reform
could be accomplished in the Republican Party.
A letter writer applauds the piece of September 2 on juvenile
delinquency, finds the existing work of juvenile courts and
reformatories splendid. But, he cautions, the society had neglected
the importance of righteous home influences and the careful training
of children from infancy to adulthood. Children from Christian homes
were good boys and girls.
There had been an example recently in New York City,
regarding a Chinese boy who was an accused youthful offender, whose
father threw him to the will of the court after saying he had tried
to raise the boy well but was fully responsible for his wayward
conduct. He thinks that a good example for parents to follow, that
parents should take more responsibility for the actions of their
children.
A letter writer finds that the radio, economic chaos, and FDR
had combined to give the liberals enough power to "drive the
moneychangers from the temple" during the 1930's. But it was
inevitable that the New Deal would die as big business never had a
change of heart. With the death of FDR, there was no longer any
force breathing life into it.
The principal issue remained, as in the day of Thomas
Jefferson, plutocracy versus democracy. Grover Cleveland had said
that the Old Guard may die but it never surrendered. It took a
Roosevelt, he concludes, to come along every once in awhile to save
the Old Guard from themselves.
