Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that during the third
straight day of discussions between the Big Four military commanders
in Berlin, the anti-Communist city government demanded a voice in
the deliberations, certain to face veto by the Russians. The
anti-Communists wanted an end to the blockade and restoration of a
unified city administration under the elected government, guarantees
of protection for the city assembly against Communist demonstrators
who had broken up recent city government meetings, and guarantees of
restoration of freedom of travel between Berlin and all four
occupation zones. No official statement had emerged from the talks.
General Lucius Clay, American military commander, appeared grimmer
than following the previous two sessions as he emerged from the
talks.
Oksana Kosenkina, the Russian teacher who had jumped from the
third-floor window of the Soviet consulate in New York to escape her
"cage", turned down an offer by the consulate to pay for
her bills during her extensive recovery at Roosevelt Hospital in New
York. The consulate had sent a check for $250 to the hospital but
Ms. Kosenkina had instructed the hospital not to cash it. The
hospital had complied with her request, though she was without
funds.
The Air Force disclosed that at least ten U.S. bombers,
including five B-29's, one of which had been shot down by Soviet
planes, were seized by Russia during the war with Japan. The other
four Superfortresses had run out of fuel over Soviet territory. The crews
were interned. The shooting down of the B-29 occurred August 29,
1945, 20 days after Russia had declared war on Japan. Two Yak
fighters pretended to be friendly to the B-29, directing it to land
as it carried supplies to Korea. When the pilot saw that the runway
was too short, he refused and one of the Yaks fired a shot across
his nose. He then directed the plane to head home, at which point
the Yaks pursued and shot it down off the coast of Korea. Six of the
crew bailed out and the remainder rode the crippled plane to a landing,
were then held by the Russians for two days before being released
with an apology for the incident. A Russian engineering officer
examined the downed plane in the presence of one of the American
crew and appeared quite familiar with its design. The Russians used
the B-29's to reverse engineer their own version of the plane.
Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall indicated his support for General
MacArthur's no-strike policy for Japanese workers, a policy being
criticized by the Russians.
On the West Coast, longshoremen quit work and prepared for a
strike regarding increased wages. Harry Bridges, president of the
International Longshoremen & Warehousemen's Union, predicted
that the strike would last three months. The strike would affect
16,000 longshoremen and 500 ships. Military freight would not be
affected. In Seattle, a Federal District Court judge ended the
80-day injunction against the strike after the statutory time limit
had expired and a vote by the membership to have the strike had been
conducted, per Taft-Hartley.
The trucking strike in New York began to choke off supplies
of the city but most residents had not yet felt the results.
Before a House labor sub-committee, the CIO
secretary-treasurer testified that the CIO United Electrical Workers
Union had fired many anti-Communists and that some employers had
found it easier to get along with Communists. He said that if the
Congress would leave the union to its own devices, it could clean
its own house.
The deportation hearing concluded on Alexander Stevens,
implicated before HUAC by Whittaker Chambers as the leader of the
national Communist underground during the 1930's while under the
name "J. Peters". The presiding inspector at the hearing
took the matter under submission.
The GOP claimed labor support in all sections of the country
for the Dewey-Warren ticket. They did not mention the recent
endorsements by CIO and AFL for President Truman.
In West Frankfort, Ill., a gang of toughs was reported to
have stoned the Progressive Party Senate candidate, a professor at
Northwestern University. He was reportedly struck by ten stones.
Henry Wallace canceled three appearances in Alabama when
police enforced segregation ordinances. The Alabama chairman of the
Progressive Party was hit by a barrage of eggs at Birmingham.
Mr. Wallace spoke to a non-segregated audience of about 300
in Vicksburg on the Courthouse lawn. There were about 50 black
citizens in the audience. There were no demonstrations. He had
breakfast at Edwards, Miss., at a black junior college.
Jackson, Miss., turned down a request of Mr. Wallace to speak
from the Capitol steps. Governor Fielding Wright, vice-presidential
candidate of the Dixiecrats, appealed to the residents of
Mississippi to treat Mr. Wallace courteously.
He would next proceed to Monroe and Shreveport, La., before
touring Arkansas.
In Thomasville, N.C., four children, ranging in age from three
months to nine years, perished in a fire at their log home on a farm.
The mother had been up late tending to a sick child and arose to
light an oil cook stove, then inadvertently fell asleep and awoke
with the home ablaze.
In Winston-Salem, officials of the Piedmont Natural Gas Corp.
met with officials from Charlotte and 21 other Piedmont Carolinas
chambers of commerce to discuss support for a thousand-mile natural
gas pipeline from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana to Danville,
Va. It would pass through the Charlotte area.
In Charlotte, Frank Cothran, internationally-known
industrialist, died at age 70 after several weeks of illness
following a stroke. He had held several positions with the Duke
interests and been president of the Piedmont & Northern Railway
and the Durham & Southern Railway.
City officials of Charlotte planned a homecoming for Chunk
Simmons, Olympic bronze medal winner in the decathlon.
In Hollywood, police investigators said that the arrest of
actor Robert Mitchum and three others in a raid on a home, in which
it was alleged that three of the four, including Mr. Mitchum, were
smoking marijuana cigarettes, was only the beginning of a clean-up
campaign in the movie capital. A sergeant of the police force said
that investigators had been watching Mr. Mitchum for eight months
before the arrests. They were after the suppliers as well as the
users of the marijuana and other narcotics. Other prominent actors
and actresses, as well as other persons associated with the movies,
he said, were under surveillance.
RKO announced that Jerry Giesler, prominent Western criminal
defense attorney, would represent Mr. Mitchum. The four had been
released on $1,000 bails. The studio urged the public to maintain an
open mind on the matter. Three completed films of Mr. Mitchum were
yet to be released.
On the editorial page, "Juvenile Delinquency" tells of the phrase coming into vogue in the mid-Forties as the war
drew to a close, with "zoot-suiters" and "Victory
girls", the latter falsifying their ages to gain entry to
dives, trying to attract soldiers, the former assaulting passersby
in dark streets. While an active campaign against it had done much
good, juvenile delinquency still thrived.
In Charlotte the previous week, reports emerged of an
organized racing club of teenage boys, many too young to have
licenses. They would gather at night and race down country roads two
or three abreast.
Juvenile delinquency had shown a slight rise in Mecklenburg
County, though perhaps the result of stricter enforcement. Truancy
was the foremost violation brought before the court.
Youth Month nationally, sponsored by the Motion Picture
Exhibitors, urged by Attorney General Tom Clark, was a drive to
raise awareness of the problem.
The piece urges that parents had to open their eyes to the
problems and find ways to avoid the tendencies in their children.
Churches, schools and law enforcement each had to do their part as
well.
"You're Welcome, Williamsburg" tells of North
Carolina playwright Paul Green having produced a successful outdoor
pageant at Williamsburg, "The Common Glory", rivaling
"The Lost Colony" , performed each summer since 1937 at
Manteo. Mr. Green had said that his ancestors had come from
Virginia.
But now Virginia wished to claim Mr. Green, the only Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright in the region.
While the polio scare had harmed business of "The Lost
Colony" during the summer, attendance had picked up in the
last month and it finished its run in good shape financially. Mr.
Green had done so well by his home state that North Carolinians did
not begrudge lending him to Virginia.
"Mockingbird Melody for the Yankees" tells of the
mockingbird's annual departure for the North. It was with sadness
that the editors read of it in a pamphlet of the Smithsonian
Institution. But it was with generosity that the songbird left the
South and gave its song to the North each annual passage. It
suggests that the South should greet the opportunity to share with
open arms, just as when it gave to the nation fried chicken, greens
and many other Southern dishes, or the current fashions which owed
their origins to the Southern belle.
So, it bids to the mockingbird, "go", with the
blessings of the South.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled
"Tree or Forest", tells of a Buncombe County Superior
Court Judge finding that an overlord of the rackets worth over a
million dollars was present in the county. It had been reported that
in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Charlotte and even Raleigh, tickets could be purchased for the numbers rackets and sports
betting pools, and that there were thousands of suckers who played
them daily.
In some places, it was said that these rackets also ran
liquor and women as well numbers and bets.
It suggests that other judges and law enforcement officials
in other counties might do well to follow the lead of the Judge in
Asheville.
Robert Allen, substituting for vacationing Drew Pearson,
tells of Eva Peron of Argentina being eager to visit the U.S., in
the hope of building her own political ambitions to succeed her
husband Juan as dictatrix. But Washington had not issued an official
invitation. She was embarking on a publicity campaign to try to get
support for the tour by appealing directly to U.S. opinion. She was,
to that end, broadcasting via shortwave a radio speech to the U.S.
anent old-age pensions, sponsored by her Social Assistance
Foundation, to which everyone in Argentina gave generously, from
school children up, to achieve good standing with her highness. An
example of the Social Assistance offered by the Foundation was the
provision to each of the three Argentinian Olympic gold medal
winners a new, completely furnished home, though masked as personal
gifts from Evita.
The Greek Government was upset at the $10,000 to $12,000
salaries being paid to Greek mission officials, out of line, they
said, with local employee salaries and U.S. salaries. The money came
from the U.S., not Greece, and one of the problems facing the
Government was to tax more extensively the wealthy of Greece and
reduce the chaff on its Government payroll.
The Senate and House Appropriations Committees were
investigating the large sums Holland was spending on military
operations against the newly created Indonesian Republic, while
Holland received 400 million dollars in ERP aid. They were spending
a million dollars per day on a blockade of Indonesia. The Dutch were
resisting the efforts of Indonesia to sell tin, rubber and other
materials to the U.S. outside the Dutch cartels. The Congressional
Committees wanted to know whether ERP money was involved. The Dutch
claimed that no ERP money was involved but they also claimed that
they were broke and thus were seeking 400 million dollars in loans
from the World Bank after already receiving 195 million. ERP
administrator Paul Hoffman was also looking into the matter.
The diary of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, who
committed suicide with Hitler at the fall of Berlin in late April,
1945, had netted thus far to the U.S. Government $300,000.
Britain's Princess Margaret would visit the U.S. the
following year.
The Office of International Trade within the Commerce
Department had authorized the export of over seven million ball
bearings to Czechoslovakia, one of Russia's leading munitions
producers.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Joint Research &
Development Board headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush, investigating the
defense establishment for the Hoover Commission on Government
Reorganization, examining the costs of defense and how to enable
allocations to be more efficiently spent.
The accuracy of aerial bombardment had assumed a new
significance which few had noticed. In the atomic age, only one or
two bombs were necessary per target, rather than the saturation
bombing of the late war. The absence of accurate maps of the Soviet
Union made the prospect of bombing in a future war difficult. The
JRDB wanted top priority to be given accuracy in bombing. But the
Air Force was making only a limited effort toward realizing this
goal.
The menace of the German Type 21 long-range, high-speed,
radar-proof submarine was significant, as the Soviets were said to
have 250 in service while the U.S. had no equivalent. The effort to
develop anti-submarine equipment and tactics was regarded as
inadequate.
The JRDB had not been permitted yet to make an adequate
critique of the Navy's controversial 60,000-ton carrier. It had to
operate fairly close to enemy shores to effect launching of bomber
aircraft at inland cities. But the big carrier, and its substantial
supporting flotilla of ships, would be especially vulnerable to
enemy submarines. Thus, none but Navy planners favored it.
There was also a large disparity in the price of defense in
America compared to that of other countries.
That which was needed, they posit, was strong Presidential
leadership to insure that the country got the most defense for its
money.
Marquis Childs, in Los Angeles, tells of the fringe element
being attracted to the Progressive Party in sufficient numbers that
they might determine the election in California as between the
Democrats and Republicans. But third party interest had waned and
even party leaders were curbing estimates of how many votes they
would get. In California, estimates had been limited to 1.3 million
votes out of four million to be cast. But impartial observers put
the figure at no more than half a million, probably fewer.
One of the reasons for the decline was the popularity of
Governor Warren in California and his presence on the Republican
ticket. Support of the President was at best lukewarm among
Democrats. But also fewer Democrats were likely to stay away from
the polls than was predicted a few months earlier. Defections to
Henry Wallace had dissipated.
Also, the reports in the press of Communist domination of the
Progressive Party had caused declining support.
Still, the size of the Wallace vote on election day could
become a surprise as many who feared to express support openly might
switch their preference in the privacy of the polling booth.
Mr. Wallace would return to California in October for six
days. His visit in the spring had produced large crowds, most of
whom paid to see him. The President and Senator Barkley would also
spend at least six days in California.
There was no great enthusiasm evident for either the
Republicans or the Democrats. Most people were preoccupied with the
struggle against inflation and lack of housing. But they did like
Governor Warren.
A piece by Davis Lee, publisher of the Newark Telegram,
a black newspaper, comments again on race relations in the South, as
he had in a previous piece the prior week. He offers that the
present civil rights controversy had created a good deal of
bitterness, as no other single issue had in recent memory. He finds
the President's program to have been stimulated for political
reasons, to garner black and Jewish votes, and to have split the
parties down the middle and made enemies of black and white friends.
He says that his previous editorial had not encountered
anything among black civil rights leaders other than agreement until
it appeared in over a hundred white publications, at which point
black leaders hit the ceiling. He had suggested that race riots in
the South would be stimulated by the anti-lynching legislation
proposed.
He continues to oppose the program as an invasion of personal
liberty. He says that there were plenty of blacks with whom he would
not want to sit down in a restaurant, invite into his home, or even
ride with on a bus or train.
He believes that without the aid of the Southern white
population, blacks could not reach the top in education,
agriculture, politics or economically. The black man had to assume
the responsibilities of citizenship. There remained too much
illiteracy, ignorance, superstition and prejudice among blacks
despite great strides forward. Southern whites, he finds, understood
this fact.
Blacks needed to be taught literacy and pride in being born
black, and that color was no barrier to success in the Deep South
any more than in New York City.
Southern blacks had an economic edge over their Northern
counterparts because conditions in the South had forced blacks to do
business in the black community, creating black businesses. He
believes that the South was capable of resolving its own race
problems.
He thinks it unfair to blame a state or region for poverty
conditions besetting white and black alike.
He refers to a series of articles by Ray Sprigle, regarding
the author's posing as a black man in the South for 30 days, in which he
disclosed horrors and indignities suffered, eagerly read by Northern
audiences, many set for for a second civil war and ready to
establish a new underground railroad.
He says that he had spent considerable time in the South as a
real black man and had not ever suffered as Mr. Sprigle had. If he
looked for only the worst in the South, he suggests, he would find
it. But he could also find examples of the same in the North.
Recently, a story appeared in his newspaper that several blacks had
been sold to whites in Michigan at $30 apiece. Another told of the
Klan operating in New Jersey. The previous week, six black men were
convicted in Trenton and sentenced to death for the killing of one
white man, though testimony established alibis for some of the
defendants.
In contrast, Sandy Magee in Mississippi had been convicted of
murder and sentenced to death, only to have the State Supreme Court
reverse the verdict three times and finally, on a fourth appeal,
reduced the verdict to manslaughter.
There could be no harmony among the races, he concludes, if
the truth was to be distorted.
