Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. General
Assembly convened in Paris, its first meeting in Europe. Australian
Herbert Evatt was elected as presiding officer of the session by the
58 member nations.
Secretary of State Marshall urged the body to accept as a
good plan the posthumous report of Count Folke Bernadotte,
assassinated former U.N. mediator for Palestine, in which he had
recognized Israel and urged that the Arabs be given control of the
Arab areas of Palestine should the Arabs and Israelis not reach
agreement on their own.
Representatives of the three Western powers continued to meet
in Paris regarding the next step on Berlin.
Governor Dewey kicked off his campaign for the presidency the
previous night with a speech in Des Moines, and then headed to
Denver, right behind the President. He stressed the theme of "faith
in America", that the enterprise system would achieve "free
and fuller production for the benefit of all our citizens",
and professed faith that there would be peace in a world with
tyranny on the march. He said that he did not contend that the
Administration had caused all of the country's troubles, but that
part of them were the result of the Administration's poor judgment
and lack of faith in the people. He promised to untangle government
when he became President and would test every decision by whether he
believed it good for the country.
The President was headed through Utah into Salt Lake City.
In Oklahoma City, police broke up a poker game and took the
participants to headquarters. When asked why they had picked on
them, the police told the men that their wives had reported them.
In Columbia, N.C., the East Carolina Bank was robbed shortly
before noon of about $60,000 by six or seven men who fled in a
high-powered automobile. No one was hurt. Six of the men were black
and one was white. A yellow-skinned man did all of the talking. The
men were well-dressed and operated smoothly. The get-away vehicle
was abandoned nine miles from Creswell and it was believed that the
men then fled in another car. A man said that six men had filed into
his store shortly before the robbery but turned and walked out
without making a purchase.
If you see Robin and the Seven Hoods, or a yellow-skinned man
doing all the talking, call the police in Columbia.
Ray Stallings of The News tells of the delayed running
of the Soap Box Derby in Charlotte, after the national finals had
already transpired in Akron, O., postponed in Charlotte because of
the polio epidemic of the summer. The finish line was down by
Central High School on Elizabeth Avenue.
The cars bore such names as the Red Bird Special, the Booster
Special, the Black-hornet, the Beetlebomb, and the Turtle, the
latter winning its first heat easily. One car spun around and
crossed the finish line backwards, being eliminated by the judges.
Julian Massi, 15, sponsored by Domestic Laundry, won the
event, the eleventh to be held in Charlotte. He won $150 and a
trophy. He beat an eleven-year old in the final heat. About 5,000
persons turned out for the race, sponsored by The News and
Pyramid Chevrolet, open to boys 11 to 15. All the winners and their
sponsors are listed.
Despite spending the whole of Saturday down there at the
junkyard, we couldn't find a single suitable engine and so had to
abandon the effort. Maybe next year. Give some more notice. It's not
fair. That $150 could buy a house and car.
Key West was hit by a hurricane packing winds gusting to 140
mph and with sustained speeds of 125. According to on scene reports,
tides were devastating some of the keys. The overseas highway was
closed. Two trains were being readied at Fort Pierce to transport
some 2,000 persons from Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades. Two
thousand persons were occupying Red Cross shelters in Miami. The eye
of the hurricane, while passing over the hills of Cuba, had become
distorted into the shape of a horseshoe at around midnight but
regained its circular shape during the early morning hours—plainly
predicting the Cuban Missile Crisis fourteen years hence. The storm
paused in the Florida Straits where it gathered greater strength.
Time to come down off those towers, gentlemen.
E. V. W. Jones tells of Miami being indoors and under wraps
awaiting the hurricane, with the ocean churning "to milkshake
hue" and breakers washing the sands. Only a few cars were out
on the streets. Many hotels and homes under construction had to be
specially lashed down to prevent scaffolding, lumber and supplies
from being flung helter-skelter to the wild winds.
Sports editor Ray Howe tells on the sports page of the Duke
football team being short on experience and long on injuries,
looking forward to the season with less than anticipation.
On the editorial page, "Natural Gas for Charlotte" states that no one had come up with an opposing argument to the
proposed venture to build a natural gas pipeline from Texas and
Louisiana to the Carolinas. It thus appeared to be a worthy project.
It awaited only the approval of the Federal Power Commission.
The piece suggests appointment of a City commission to help
put the project over in Washington, much as had the air commission
to the Civil Aeronautics Board, seeking more air routes into
Charlotte, now a reality.
"In Retrospect: The Polio Epidemic" tells of the
North Carolina epidemic having produced over 2,000 cases during the
year, most during the summer months. Three out of four persons
diagnosed achieved complete recovery, compared to only a 30 percent
recovery rate for rheumatic fever. Doctors contended that there was
likely not a higher incidence of polio but a higher rate of
reporting of the disease.
It concludes that the epidemic therefore looked worse than it
actually was. The reduction of tourists at the resorts was an
economic by-product of the epidemic.
A more deadly virus could appear one day on the scene, it
ventures. For the present, the rate of affliction of children under
five, the age group which had been most affected, was in decline. No
conclusive cure had yet been discovered.
It urges the State Health Department to provide a full report
on the fate of the 2,000 stricken patients. Of those, there had been
112 deaths. It wants to know the rate of serious paralysis and other
forms of paralysis, as well as the number who achieved full
recovery.
A piece from the Wilmington Star-News, titled
"Manufacture at Home", explores the concept of North
Carolina raw materials being sent out of state to be manufactured
into finished products rather than remaining at home to make cheaper
products in local industry. Democratic Senate nominee, former
Governor Melville Broughton, had told the story of a peanut-based
candy bar which utilized North Carolina peanuts but was manufactured
in California.
News publisher Thomas L. Robinson, formerly of The
New York Times, had recently given a talk in Rock Hill to the
Kiwanis Club, in which he promoted the concept, citing the kyanite
in York County and the pyrophylite in Moore County as being capable
of making refractory brick. He wanted industries established which
would manufacture dinnerware, pottery, electrical insulators and
porcelain products from North Carolina soil materials.
The piece approves the idea propounded by both Mr. Broughton
and Mr. Robinson and believes it to be the key to prosperity in the
state, raising incomes. Along with economic growth would come social
progress.
Drew Pearson comments on the beginning of the U.N. General
Assembly meeting in Paris. He posits that the spirit of Hitler was
probably rejoicing as the nations met, as his former allied enemies
were now at odds, centered on the Berlin crisis, at its climax.
The Western envoys in Moscow had hoped for another meeting
with Premier Stalin to try to get him to enforce his promise to have
Marshal Vassily Sokolovsky, military governor of the Russian
occupation zone of Germany, negotiate in good faith regarding the
principle issue leading to the blockade, the dual currencies. Thus
far, Marshal Sokolovsky had remained intransigent, insisting on
Russian control of the political and economic life of Berlin. The
four envoys were informed by Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov,
however, that Stalin was sick and could not see them, that he was
out of Moscow receiving treatment.
That now left the stage to the U.N. to hear the case. Russia
would demand world disarmament, abolition of the atomic bomb,
destruction of all means of waging bacteriological warfare, and
withdrawal of all occupation forces from Europe, on its face a
salutary plan but in substance meaning nothing, only that the way
would be left open for Soviet domination of all of Germany and then
Europe, or, when attempted, another world war.
Vice-presidential nominee Senator Alben Barkley was asked
what he thought about GOP campaign promises to "stabilize"
the farmer. He said that he had been stumped on the matter for days
until it finally hit him: the Republicans intended to take the
farmer from his house and relegate him to the stables.
The GOP in Maine garnered a record vote, but so, too, did the
opposition. Maine labor leaders had defeated a bill which would have
outlawed the closed shop, as had Taft-Hartley among employers
subject to its provisions. The farmer who had proposed the bill was
also defeated in his run for the Legislature.
Bachelor Senator Joseph McCarthy had spent his vacation in
the wheat fields of Lefor, N.D., posing as a hired hand—perhaps
an occupation to which he was more suited than the Senate in the
final analysis. He had received ten dollars a day and operated a
combine, "lost seven pounds even so". Precisely what the
"even so" means to insinuate is difficult to discern.
Perhaps, the Senator did not give up his bourbon habit during his
work.
The Sheriff of Providence County, R.I, was holding up
evictions and helping families find other accommodations, much to
the scorn of landlords.
Tennessee Democratic Senate primary victor Congressman Estes
Kefauver had reached an uneasy truce with Memphis Boss Ed Crump,
whose candidate Mr. Kefauver had defeated, ending Boss Crump's
decades old grip on state politics. Mr. Crump had threatened to
throw his support to GOP candidate, former RNC chairman and
Congressman Carroll Reece. Congressman Kefauver had gotten Senator
Kenneth McKellar to agree to vote a straight Democratic ticket, and
the Senator then went to Boss Crump and got him to commit to the
same position. Boss Crump would not oppose Mr Kefauver, but also
would not actively support him. Mr. Kefauver had promised nothing in
return.
Joseph Alsop, in Dexter, Iowa, comments on the hopeless
campaign of President Truman, starting in Dexter. He tells of the
crowd of 90,000 farmers, 70 percent of whom were Republicans, being
politely responsive to the President as a decent man, but not being
aroused by anything he had to say about the 80th Congress and
"gluttons of privilege" who he said controlled it
through the lobbies.
He spoke the truth when he said that after twelve years of
Republican policies, the state of Iowa by 1932 was owned by the
Eastern insurance companies. Over 40 percent of it had been. He
accurately said that the Democrats were responsible for changing
those policies to the benefit of the farmers. And he was truthful
when he said that the 80th Congress kowtowed to big business.
But the problem was that none of it appeared to resonate with
the farmers to whom he spoke. They were merely polite in bestowing
scattered applause. It would thus do him no good to rise at 5:00
a.m. and greet farmers along his whistlestop tour if he could not
convince them that he could bring change in a job he had held for
over three years.
Yet, Mr. Alsop finds, there was also a warning to Republicans
in those crowds, that if the interests who controlled the 80th
Congress ever completely took over and began depriving the farmers
of their prosperity again, limiting the cooperatives and the like,
then there would be problems, including the potential for violence.
Just because the President lacked the ability to inspire did not
mean that his message was wrong.
The President would go on to win Iowa, polling 50.3 percent to 47.5 for Governor Dewey.
James Marlow discusses the absence of a U.N. police force
after three years since the founding of the organization, because
the military committee, comprised of the Big Five, had been unable
to agree on the size and composition of the force. The original
Charter provided for creation of such a force. It might not have
prevented the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte the previous
Friday, but it would have made it more difficult to accomplish and
also less likely because it would have provided a means to make the
truce in Palestine more effective.
Russia had insisted on a police force with each member nation
contributing equal forces. But the Chinese had no navy and Russia
had only a small one. Thus, it was unclear how a police force of any
size could be formed per the Russian plan. The other four nations
favored a plan whereby the nations would contribute according to
their ability to the creation of the force. Finally, after two and a
half years of haggling, the committee reported in August that it
could reach no agreement. Secretary-General Trygve Lie had called
upon the nations to create a small force of 1,000 to 5,000 until
such time as agreement could be reached on a larger force.
A letter writer discusses moral character and the character
of the United States compared to that of other nations. He hopes
that the country could lead toward better things through a positive
example.
A letter writer responds to A. W. Black's September 16 letter of
vituperation against FDR and the New Deal, suggesting both as
Communist-inspired. He finds it not surprising
coming from Mr. Black, who had written the previous October 21 in some other publication, presumably The Charlotte Observer, (see October 23, 1947), in
high praise of Fascism and had followed the same pattern since. Parenthetically, the writer may actually be referring in the latter case to Mr. Black's letter of October 25, 1946, condemning Harry Golden who had criticized certain newspapers for expressing that the photographs of the hangings of the convicted Nuremberg defendants were "too gruesome" for publication while having published a year earlier the photographs of concentration camp victims piled as cordwood. That example of Mr. Black's writing, at least, provides the functional equivalent of that to which the letter writer refers.
The author
finds that FDR had provided the country with hope at a time when it
was down, spiritually and economically. He changed those morose
feelings to optimism and it had worked to turn the country around.
He predicts that the memory of FDR would survive many ages hence.
He remarks that FDR had foreseen the criticism, as when he
said in his second nomination acceptance speech in 1936 that the business man had gone
down twice and come up twice and when the Administration had saved
him the third time from drowning, brought him to shore and revived
him, he turned, cursed, and asked why they had not also saved his
silk hat.
The latter referenced statement of FDR, slightly at variance with the author's rendition, was actually made, incidentally, at the New York State Democratic Convention in September, 1936, rather than as part of his acceptance speech.
A letter writer takes issue with the School Board's athletic
chairman who had defended on Thursday the raising of the price of Central High
School football game tickets by a quarter to $1.25 by saying that
Central played tougher competition than the other schools. This
writer says, "Nuts!" Central could not beat Wesley
Chapel this year. He thinks that the School Board was doing its
utmost to commercialize high school football. He suggests that by
1952, Central would be playing UNC and Wake Forest. Charlie Justice,
he remarks, would be gone by then.
He wants good football played by the boys who wanted to play
and coached by the man who wanted more from his boys than making the
cash drawers jingle.
Well, we had a coach in high school who used to advise always
that making the tackles in just the right way could cause the jewels
to sparkle, and so there is a method by which both goals may be
accomplished simultaneously. We seem to recall in there something
about an object lesson in putting the thigh pads in backwards but we
only recall with precision the part about the sparkling jewels
And, by 1952, Central might well have beaten UNC, which
finished that year, the last under formerly successful coach Carl
Snavely, 2-6. The previous two seasons had been worse or only
slightly better, following the departure of Charlie Justice at the
end of the 1949 season.