The Charlotte News

Tuesday, September 21, 1948

TWO EDITORIALS

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.

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