The Charlotte News
Wednesday, January 26, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Chinese Foreign Office announced that the Nationalist Government was moving immediately to Canton and that all Government offices in Nanking would be closed by February 3.
Meanwhile, a Nanking city councilman moved to send a special peace mission to the Communists to establish a separate peace for the city if national efforts at negotiations failed.
In Rome, Communist leaders of France and Italy, Marcel Cachin and Palmiro Togliatti, joined to issue a statement urging their five million followers to unite under a "peace-front" orchestrated by Russia. At the same time, the top Communist in West Germany called for better relations between the U.S. and Russia.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson, holding his first press conference as Secretary, said that the President's new initiative for raising the living standards of underdeveloped countries through sharing of technology and capital had no existing blueprint, but that he heartily endorsed the program and the State Department was busy drawing up plans for its implementation. He stressed that the primary responsibility for getting American capital into these nations would rest with those nations themselves, primarily of the Far East, Southeast Asia, Africa and parts of South America.
Britain deferred action on recognition of Israel until after it had consulted with other members of the British Commonwealth and its four allies in the Western European Union, France and the Benelux countries.
The Senate Banking Committee approved a seven-month extension of voluntary allocations of steel and other scarce commodities, rejecting a Republican plan to extend it to 13 months, paving the way for the President's proposals for more stringent measures, including taking over construction of steel mills by the Government should the steel industry fail to meet the country's steel needs.
Senator Russell Long of Louisiana stated that Southern Senators were prepared to engage in a filibuster tying up the entire first session of the new Congress if necessary to save the filibuster against an attack to limit or ban it by a change in Senate rules. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts said that he could not imagine 16 or 17 Senators tying up business "'til hell freezes over" to save the filibuster. Senator Irving Ives of New York also said that he was ready to call Senator Long's bluff, if necessary, to change the rules of debate. Later, Senator Long said that if the Southern Senators were going to filibuster the civil rights program, there was no reason why they would not do likewise against rules changes designed to limit or ban filibuster.
Senator John Stennis of Mississippi had proposed a compromise whereby the filibuster would be banned on issues involving a national emergency but preserved otherwise. That was big of him, since there had never been such a filibuster attempted on a matter of national urgency.
In Omaha at a meeting of the RNC, Republicans were considering dumping RNC chairman Congressman Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania in the wake of the fall election debacle.
A former Nazi radio official, testifying in the Federal trial in Washington of Mildred Gillars, charged with treason, identified the defendant as "Axis Sally" of radio broadcasts during the war aimed at breaking the morale of Allied troops. The Judge told the Nazi witness to quit chewing gum during his testimony and the man then gave it to the U.S. Marshal with an apology.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., eleven CIO United Steelworkers members, organizers of a raid the previous December 1 by 300 members which resulted in violence at the Shakespeare Company steel plants for alleged strike-breaking activities, were indicted by a State one-man grand jury. The specific charge is not provided.
In Bowling Green, Ky., a bomb concealed inside a parcel exploded at the post office on this date, injuring three employees, including one who was expected to die. The critically injured employee had been inspecting the package to a bogus address when it exploded.
In Raleigh, recommendations by a commission to the General Assembly for revisions to the administration of justice in the state were introduced as a bill by a State Representative. The details are provided.
Also in Raleigh, Senator J. Melville Broughton, acting as attorney for condemned James R. Creech, convicted of murder, pleaded with Governor Kerr Scott to commute the sentence. The execution was set for the following Friday. The attorneys claimed prejudicial errors had occurred during the trial. The State Supreme Court had upheld the conviction 5 to 2. A petition signed by 2,300 Johnston County residents was presented to the Governor. Mr. Creech's father told the Governor that the tobacconist had been drinking for a period of time prior to the killing of the defendant's wife the previous summer, a claim confirmed by a psychiatrist who said that Mr. Creech had been hospitalized as an alcoholic three days before the crime.
In Fayetteville, 15 passengers escaped from a burning Carolina Trailways Bus after it collided with an automobile. Two of the passengers were slightly injured. Many of them lost their luggage.
The News names "Mr. X" after he had been identified by a woman of Charlotte who thus won $20—and thereby deprived needy families of $50 for the Empty Stocking Fund the following Christmas.
The winner, a Southern Bell Telephone Company service assistant, could not believe it when she won, as she said that she had never won anything before. She said that she was going to apply the proceeds to a trip to Miami she intended to take later in the year.
If you wish to boycott this effort to deprive the needy by vain attempts of loser Scrooges, wanting Florida tans, to "win" something while others starve next Christmas, then do not look at the answer and continue to play the game with us through Friday night at 8:00.
Anyway, we hope that we did not give it away with our two inadvertently telling additional clues from yesterday, the revelatory nature of which we only came to realize after finding out the answer.
Here's our clue for the day: Twelve
drummers drumming, plus two
On the editorial page, "Needed: A Positive GOP Program" tells of the Republicans, disheartened and chastened after the repudiation in the election following months of expectation of a grand win, meeting in Omaha to figure out what to do to regain ground. The meeting betrayed three separate factions emerging from the prior unity of the party. Governor Dewey's supporters formed one bloc, led by RNC chairman Congressman Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania.
The second faction was headed by Senator Robert Taft, who still had a large following among rank-and-file Republicans and GOP state legislators. Senator Taft wanted Mr. Scott to resign as RNC chairman.
The third faction was the smaller group of Republican liberals, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. They hoped to promote the latter as the GOP nominee in 1952.
Out of the factionalism would need to emerge a clear program should the party hope to win in 1952. The piece suggests it would not need to ape the Fair Deal to enjoy that success, would have better results if it presented its own philosophy of government.
What would happen, Quiz Kids, not just in 1952 but subsequently, through August 8, 1974?
Then, six years later, would come the Man on the White Horse to save every good little boy and girl from the Big, Bad Federal Government. Who was he?
And all would happily live
"Specialist in Service" discusses Dr. William Lowry Pressly of Due West, S.C., named family doctor of the year by the AMA. "Dr. Buck", as he was called, was loved by thousands of patients for following his principle of serving the rural population with medical care. If he received a call from a patient in a rural area twenty miles away in the middle of the night, he went. It enabled him to sleep more soundly after his return.
"Barriers Down" tells of the approval of a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee of Superior Court Judge Wilson Warlick as Federal District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina being signal of his eventual confirmation by the Senate, expected shortly. He had originally been appointed the previous March, but the Republican-controlled Senate had not confirmed the appointment, leaving the post open, until the President made a temporary recess appointment in the fall of D. E. Henderson of Charlotte. The newspaper had endorsed Judge Warlick since his original appointment.
A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "Prohibition's Ghost Stirs Carolina", bemoans the prospect that North Carolina apparently would soon hold a statewide referendum on alcohol sales, which would probably wind up voting dry, removing controlled ABC sales from the fewer than 30 counties in the state which had the system. Even though it would increase trade to Virginia's border ABC counties, the piece regrets to see its neighbor returning to a system replete with corruption and bootlegging as had been the case during the days of the Great Experiment in the Twenties.
Drew Pearson tells of the President's decision to recommend a four billion dollar tax increase, the bulk of which was to be on corporate and high income taxpayers, in lieu of the excess profits tax he had recommended a year earlier and during the July, 1948 special session of Congress, having come from Secretary of the Treasury and Presidential chum John Snyder, trumping the previous recommendations of the Council of Economic Advisers. For the first time in recent history, the Treasury Secretary had no affirmative recommendations on taxes for Congress, instead presenting several alternatives, an abdication of Administration leadership on fiscal policy, which would make it hard for the President's tax program to pass the Congress.
Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio had stated recently, after being introduced as Thomas Dewey's running mate in 1944, that, indeed, he had campaigned for the Governor in 1944 and 1948 and that if the Governor had campaigned for himself, he would be in the White House.
Housing advocates Senators Burnet Maybank of South Carolina and John Sparkman of Alabama, and other liberals, were upset about the Administration's housing bill, introduced by Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, which did not address the plight of war veterans and others in the $2,000 to $3,600 income group, despite the President having championed low-cost housing for this group.
Mr. Pearson next provides a few anecdotes from the inauguration, such as the President, immediately following the ceremony, going from the inaugural stand to obtain a ham and turkey sandwich.
Secretary of State Acheson had told his chauffeur the news that he had been confirmed by a Senate vote of 82 to 6, to which his chauffeur responded that he wondered why the other fellow ran if he could only muster six votes.
A group of Congressmen were planning to introduce a bill to increase the salary of Bureau of Standards director Dr. Edward U. Condon, an expression of confidence after the smear he had endured from HUAC the previous year.
The President's close advisers were putting pressure on him not to appoint Louis Johnson as Secretary of Defense—as the President would.
American diplomats in China reported that the new Communist Government of the country would be independent of Moscow, to be patterned on Tito's Government in Yugoslavia and anxious to get along with the U.S.
Marquis Childs discusses John J. McCloy, head of the World Bank, and its U.N.-determined role as lender to developing and rebuilding nations of the world. The bank had done little business since its inception, as Western Europe was receiving ample aid under the Marshall Plan and Eastern Europe was too involved in the cold war to be considered good risks for loans. The Middle East, in need of these loans, was likewise too unstable to borrow from the bank.
Thus, the President's plan for using American technology and capital to help the underdeveloped nations help themselves appeared as an appropriate project for the World Bank to fund. Since Russia was not a member of the bank, the veto did not apply as a potential roadblock to making the loans. The President had recently held a conference with Mr. McCloy at which, in all likelihood, such a plan was discussed.
The World Bank was considering making loans to India for rehabilitating its railroads and reorganizing its agricultural system. The country stood as a perfect example of how technology and capital could raise the living standard.
The President's proposal in combination with the financing from the World Bank offered an opportunity to demonstrate that the U.S. did not intend to usurp the role of the U.N. in nation-building.
James Marlow discusses the new rent control bill which would extend control for two years and provide the Government with greater control, allowing the Housing Expediter to charge an offending landlord with a criminal offense. The only current sanction available was a civil suit by the tenant for treble damages. The bill would also embrace hotels except those catering solely to transients. The Expediter would have to approve any eviction. The bill would also extend the housing preference for veterans for two years. Leases allowing for 15 percent increases, which had been designed to enable the tenant to freeze the increase in place for the duration of the lease beyond possible expiration of rent control, would continue to be frozen. The new rent control law would also apply to rental units which had not been rented between February 1, 1945 and April 1, 1948, whereas the present law exempted those rentals.
So, study it carefully and you may save some dollars on your rent, provided it is not yet March 31, 1951.
A letter writer comments on a report by Tom Fesperman appearing January 20 regarding old age assistance in Mecklenburg County, that the aged were getting by on 70 percent of the budget established by welfare experts as the lowest amount on which a person should subsist. There were 150 persons, according to the report, entitled to the benefits but receiving no assistance. The average payment to beneficiaries was $24.17 per month. The writer favors that the County provide more charity to its aging constituents, as did the residents regularly in charity drives of private organizations.
A letter from a black barber suggests daily contact between the races as a cure to the race problem, that he had found such to be true in his experience as a barber. As long as racial segregation prevailed, it stood as an "iron curtain" to interracial understanding.
A letter writer thinks that the newspaper had taken a dirty crack at the President in a headline for a story in section 1, "Truman Says Truman Is a Congenial Man". He thinks that the story confused the President's quote, that he and Vice-President Barkley were the most congenial President and Vice-President the country had ever had, finding that it referred to general congeniality, when the President had meant only congenial with respect to one another. He believes the dig came from The News having endorsed Governor Dewey in the fall and being thus unable to restrain itself in taking a jab anew at the President.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for the publicity given to the Charlotte Day Nursery Association.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for a January 22 article by Martha Azer London of The News regarding polio, during the March of Dimes drive.
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