The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 18, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in China, the remaining Nationalist troops in Northern China were steadily losing ground to the Communists, and it appeared that, soon, the Nanking Government would be officially dispersed for reasons of safety. The Foreign Office was being moved southward, probably to Canton. Increasing numbers of troops were falling back to Nanking from positions north of the Yangtze River. Nanking, however, was not being abandoned as the seat of government. Peiping was expected to fall shortly.
In New York, Federal District Court Judge Harold Medina ruled that the trial of eleven of the twelve top Communists in the country, indicted for conspiring to overthrow the Government, would proceed without the presence of top Communist William Z. Foster, unable to attend trial because of illness. The defense successfully opposed efforts by Government attorneys to obtain continuance of the trial until Mr. Foster's health improved. At that point, the Government sought and obtained an order of severance so that the trial of the other eleven co-defendants could proceed, with the reservation by the Court that the defense would be allowed to move for a continuance on a subsequent date.
Again, as the previous day, a 400-man police detail was present at the courthouse, to which defense attorneys raised objections, subsequently overruled, for its prejudicial impact on potential jurors.
In Washington, a delegation of
Southern black and white citizens from the Civil Rights Congress
sought without success to see House Speaker Sam Rayburn. HUAC
chairman John Wood of Georgia also refused to see the group. They
were the vanguard of a "Freedom Crusade" set to arrive at
the Capitol later in the week to seek the release of the twelve
Communists on trial in New York and to campaign for civil rights for
political and racial minorities. The report notes that the group was
listed by the Attorney General as "subversive"
The Congress passed two emergency bills and sent them to the President, one granting Federal workers a four-day weekend for the inauguration, the other providing the President with a pay raise from $75,000 to $100,000, as well as raises for the Vice-President and Speaker of the House. The latter bill had to pass and be signed into law prior to January 20 for it to apply to President Truman and Vice-President Barkley in their coming terms.
This date, the Senate was largely consumed with the confirmation of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State.
In Rio de Janeiro, Charles Ponzi, the Italian fruit peddler who had been responsible for the pyramid scheme which, to this day, bears his name, died at age 71 in poverty and obscurity. In Boston, in 1920, he had advertised "fifty percent on your money in 45 days", and, for awhile, he actually did pay the fifty percent, inducing investors in the U.S. and Europe to send him money, until the bubble burst after newspapers investigated the scheme and exposed Mr. Ponzi's past, which included forgery and smuggling of aliens. Investors began demanding their money back, and he paid them until he declared bankruptcy, after which an audit showed him owing seven million dollars with assets of four million on hand. He explained at his subsequent trial for the fraud that he accomplished the fifty percent return on investment by purchasing international postal union reply coupons at favorable rates of monetary exchange. In the end, the Government claimed that he had bilked 40,000 Americans out of 15 million dollars. After serving a prison sentence for the fraud, he was convicted of a land fraud scheme in Florida and deported to Italy, eventually moving to Brazil where he made a small living teaching English. He was partially blind and paralyzed when he died, had $75 to be used on his funeral.
In Raleigh, the state commander of Amvets, James H. Pou Bailey, future Superior Court Judge and son of deceased Senator Josiah W. Bailey, said that he opposed the drive of the national Amvets organization to obtain a bonus for World War II veterans and that, contrary to claims of the national office, the North Carolina Amvets had not voted for the bonus, that only three of 26 posts had responded to a poll on the issue.
In Tallahassee, Fla., police investigators said that the pistol death of a New York banking heir did not appear to be the result of murder but was possibly accidental or a suicide. A coroner's jury concluded that the death was by a shot from a pistol held by an unknown party or parties. The man's family had entertained high society, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, on the plantation where the victim was discovered dying beside his jeep.
The South Atlantic was being searched for a missing British plane with twenty passengers aboard. It had disappeared on a thousand-mile trip from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica, the previous day. The flight normally took five and a half hours, had fuel for ten hours, and had last been heard from, 150 miles south of Bermuda, at 3:37 on Monday morning.
North Carolina Governor Kerr Scott, in a message to the General Assembly the previous night, sought a bond issue to be placed on the ballot regarding his 200-million dollar rural road-building program, to be financed in part by a one-cent addition to the gasoline tax, to produce about seven million dollars per year in revenue. About twice that amount annually, 14.5 million dollars, would be required to retire the 200 million dollar debt of the project in twenty years. The program would provide for paving of 12,000 miles of rural roads, as well improving the other rural roads to the point where school bus service and farm transportation to market would not be interrupted.
In Raleigh, a ten dollar check from a man who wanted voluntarily to pay for roads, with a suggestion that a special $10 roads tax be added to the vehicle licensing fees for the following year, was returned for want of legislative authority of the Governor to receive new funds for roads.
In Greensboro, a fight broke out in a black church when the preacher wanted a musician to stop blowing his horn so that collection could begin. The musician said that he had four more minutes of playing time remaining, with which the preacher disagreed, leading to fisticuffs. The congregation took sides and a melee ensued. The musician said that so many people were beating him up that he could not see light, took to prayer. The preacher and the musician had to appear in court this date and the judge taxed each half the court costs.
The winter's heaviest snowstorm thus far had struck the Midwest, with up to twelve inches in Nebraska and Kansas, and six inches in Oklahoma City.
On the editorial page, "Petition to the Legislature" opposes the statewide referendum on liquor, by design of the Dry forces to effectuate a ban of sale of liquor throughout the state, thus eliminating ABC-controlled liquor sale in the 27 or so counties which had passed it, of the 100 in the state. The editorial opposes it because it believes that the Drys would win and restore prohibition in Mecklenburg County, ABC sale having won on a referendum in June, 1947.
Liquor was consumed in large quantities under either system, whether supplied by the ABC stores legally or through the bootlegger illegally as under prohibition. In the first year of the ABC system in the county, the bootlegger, and all the attendant crime he attracted, was made a thing of the past. The revenue from liquor now went to the State and County rather than to gangsters.
It concludes therefore that a referendum, with the outcome likely to be in favor of prohibition statewide, would do a disservice to the wet counties such as Mecklenburg.
"Second Degree Citizens" discusses justice in the South, in which it was routine for a black man who killed a white man to receive swift and sure punishment, a white man who killed a black man usually to obtain only light punishment, and a black man who killed a black man usually to receive far less punishment than the crime deserved. Predominantly white juries did not take black-on-black crime seriously.
As example, the previous week in Harnett County, Judge Clawson Williams had blown his top after a white jury refused to return a verdict against a black man accused of murdering his wife, openly chastising the jury for not finding the defendant guilty of first degree murder in the particularly brutal crime. The evidence tended to show that the defendant had tortured and beaten his wife to death with a fire poker, a stick, an axe and a shotgun.
The defendant had been convicted and sentenced to death in a previous trial but the conviction was reversed and a new trial ordered by the State Supreme Court. On retrial, the jury deadlocked, four for guilty of first degree murder and eight for second degree murder, resulting in a judicially declared mistrial. The defense then negotiated for a plea of guilty to accessory before the fact of murder and the defendant received a life sentence, with special instructions from the judge that authorities never grant parole or a pardon while the judge was living.
The piece suggests that those concerned about civil rights in white-on-black crimes should pay more attention also to the injustices occurring in black-on-black crimes.
We note that, while the court in Harnett County may have been operating on the basis of decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court in effect at the time, the more sensible judicial approach in a situation of the type it faced would have been to declare the defendant guilty of second degree murder, based on the jury having determined unanimously that the defendant was so guilty, assuming that under North Carolina law at the time all of the elements of second degree murder were present, as generally the case, in first degree murder, the latter adding usually only premeditation as an element, especially when there is necessarily identical underlying evidence on which the jury findings of either degree were based, as in the instant case.
"The Unlearned Naturalist" finds distress in reading a story about a writer who made his living
writing about nature for the Wall Street Journal, the New
York Times, and other publications. It asserts that one did not
have to possess the knowledge of a botanist or geologist to
understand and appreciate nature. A walk in the woods
"The grass is green and sweet in Spring, crisp and tan in autumn and who cares why? Is the bird's call less melodious because we cannot answer in kind?
"Nuts! Nature is like
womankind—the less
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly discusses the initial business of the 81st Congress, starting with its consideration of the President's requested 41.9 billion dollar budget, tendered along with his request for a hike of corporate and middle and high income taxes totaling four billion dollars.
It also tells of Dean Acheson's appointment as Secretary of State, pending confirmation by the Senate, the effort to extend rent control by 27 months beyond its present deadline set to expire at the end of March, a pending pay raise for the President, raising his salary from $75,000 to $100,000 per year, plus receipt of tax free expense money totaling $50,000 in addition to the $40,000 presently received, and the pending reorganization bill to provide the President with authority to reorganize the executive branch, per the recommendations of the Hoover Commission.
Drew Pearson tells of President Truman's inauguration the following Thursday to be shaping up as a great show, in part because the inauguration chairman, Melvin Hildreth, was president of the Circus Fans of America and genuinely loved the circus, a loyalty second only to his loyalty to the President. All of the clowns and animal trainers knew Mr. Hildreth, a practicing attorney. The inauguration was one of the most carefully planned and extravagant in the country's history.
Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery in World War I, which Harry Truman as a captain had commanded, would march at the head of the inaugural parade. In the morning, they would be honored at a breakfast with the President.
The President hoped the reunion would not turn out as that in Kansas City in 1921 when, after several rounds of drinks, one of the veterans hurled a plate across the room, after which a barrage of plate exchanges occurred over some two hours, breaking 400 plates. Occurring at an Elks Club, the club sent a bill for $158 to the Battery D Association, the president of which was Harry Truman, who paid the bill. He recently told the surviving members in Kansas City that he looked forward to seeing them in Washington, but not to another $158 bill.
Mr. Truman, when he first arrived as a green soldier in France aboard a "40 and 8" boxcar, had met future Senator and then Colonel Bennett Clark of Missouri, who pointed to a dead horse and told Mr. Truman to get his men and equipment unloaded double-quick as the Germans had killed the horse with artillery fire and were closing in. When the job was completed in short order, Colonel Clark informed the future President that it had been a ruse, that the horse had been shot by a veterinarian. Mr. Truman did not think the prank so funny, but, after becoming President and after the defeat of Mr. Clark in his incumbent Senate race, appointed Mr. Clark to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Senator Styles Bridges had wanted to know why FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was omitted from the list of Government employees recommended for a pay raise in a bill sponsored by Maryland Senator Herbert O'Conor. Co-author of the bill Vermont Senator Ralph Flanders responded that the line had to be drawn somewhere, but that Mr. Hoover's position could be included in a later bill.
Joseph Alsop, still in Paris, tells of the French and Italian Communist parties being engaged in retrenchment after sound defeats in each country in the 1948 elections, following expulsion of the Communist ministers from their Governments in 1947. The aim of this Communist "guerrilla warfare" was to cripple the Marshall Plan. The recent coal strike in France showed that the tactics did have some effect. But the fact that they had to resort to such desperation demonstrated the decline of the Communists in Western Europe from their postwar peak.
After the war, the Communists in France had infiltrated many key positions, including the police forces and the labor unions, enabling some success in the general French strike of 1947. But with that alarum sounded, the Government responded by rooting out the Communists. Likewise, the non-Communist elements of the unions responded with a break from the Communists, even if not carrying with them the majority of workers, nevertheless contesting the Communists in all industries except mining.
The Communists, while still an important force in Western Europe, no longer were the immediate menace they once had been. The main dangers were financial instability, to which the Communists contributed, giving sustenance to Communist anti-Western propaganda, and the insecurity deriving from the fear of war. If that fear were removed, then a new scene might open in Europe. But it could only be achieved through strength in the West, especially in the U.S.
James Marlow discusses the Politburo in the Soviet Union, comprised of Josef Stalin and thirteen other top Communists. Though not formally a part of the Russian Government, it was responsible for the major policy decisions in Russia. It was able to hold sway because, as the ruling committee of the Communist Party, its members, along with other high-ranking Communists, held key positions in the Government.
Only about six million of the 200 million Russians were party members. Another 18 million young people, between ages 15 and 26, were members of the Komsomol or the Communist youth league, not officially members of the party. They provided the party with youthful services and formed a pool from which future party members could be selected.
About once per year, the party elected delegates to the All-Union Congress, which then selected the 71 members of the central committee, which, with other committees, handled party details.
Above these sub-structures was the Politburo.
The U.S.S.R., comprised of 16 republics, had a parliament called the Supreme Soviet, responsible for law-making. It was bicameral, with a Soviet Union of the Union, the lower house, with representation proportionate to the population, and the Soviet of Nationalities, with two representatives for every nationality within the sixteen republics. Non-party members could be elected to the Supreme Soviet, provided they received party approval. Thus, the majority of the Supreme Soviet was Communist.
The term of the Supreme Soviet was four years and it was supposed to meet semiannually. The Presidium was elected by the members to perform the work of the Supreme Soviet, which included a judicial branch, on a regular basis when the Supreme Soviet was not in session. The Supreme Soviet also appointed the Council of Ministers, analogous to a larger form of the U.S. cabinet. The key ministers, previously called commissars, were Communists. They ran the Government, but only subject to the will of the Politburo.
Another pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "in Which Is Noted a Certain Sagging During the Period Between Christmas and New Year's:
But between the First and Eighth
Day,
It is seen, much which passes for
sedate holiness
Is the result in fact of a
hangover's cold compress.
Framed Edition
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