The Charlotte News
Wenesday, October 19, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that General Hoyt Vandenberg, chief of staff of the Air Force, told the House Armed Services Committee that the B-36 and the atomic bomb could do the job of defending the country, that the weapons were forcing Russia to concentrate on defense instead of offense. If the Navy advice were followed, he said, then the Russians could concentrate on offensive capability. He said that the strategic bomber and the atomic bomb were the only effective counter to Russia's superiority in ground troops in Europe. But, he added, strategic bombing alone could not win a potential war. Some members of the Committee found his statements without credit, one member calling it "bosh".
The U.S. was going to speed up production of atomic bombs at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Washington, in response to the Soviet detonation in August of its first atomic bomb. To this end, the President had authorized the Atomic Energy Commission to use some of its budgetary reserves for the purpose, about 30 million dollars. The Senate also approved lifting of some of the curbs imposed on AEC spending, still subject to House approval.
At the U.N. the previous day, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky reiterated the claim that Russia had been in possession of the atomic bomb since 1947.
Secretary of State Acheson stated that the civil war with the Communist guerrillas in Greece was practically over, as the Greek Government forces had eliminated all except about 2,000 guerrillas, all of whom were widely scattered and mainly concerned with obtaining food.
Congressional leaders called for swift action on the reconciled farm bill, expected to pass both houses, preserving 90 percent parity on six basic crops through 1950, per the House bill, and in 1951 establishing a sliding scale of 80-90 percent parity and, thereafter, 75-90 percent, the latter consistent with the Senate bill.
It was anticipated that the Federal deficit for the year would run to five billion dollars, based on direct appropriations of 37.6 billion dollars and additional indirect and indefinite items totaling to 45 billion, against 40 billion in revenue. The President had told the Congress at the beginning of the year that there would be a deficit unless they found other revenue, following the four billion dollar tax cut passed by the previous Congress over his veto.
The bill to raise the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents per hour went to the President for signature after nine months in the making. It could mean an increase in pay to 1.5 million workers not previously covered by the minimum wage law.
Congress was set to adjourn for the year this night.
John L. Lewis denounced AFL president William Green for rejecting a proposal to help finance the weekly strike fund for the CIO United Steelworkers' strike, which Mr. Lewis had urged both AFL and his UMW to do.
In Buffalo, N.Y., following a four-month strike at Bell Aircraft, about 300 employees were called back to work by the UAW after settlement of the dispute.
In Guatemala City, a flood reportedly had taken more than 2,000 lives.
In Munich, all of the property of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's mistress and, at the end, his wife, was confiscated by a de-Nazification court for aid to victims of the Nazis. Her estate had about $8,300 in cash, a mansion, and jewels.
A hillbilly singer had been arrested the previous night by the FBI and charged with murder in connection with the September slaying of a New York man, whose body was discovered in a gravel pit in Anson County, N.C. The defendant's brother, still at large, had also been indicted on September 28 in the killing. The victim had come to Virginia to buy a farm and then disappeared on September 3.
In Bowling Green, O., about 200 students cut classes at Bowling Green State in protest of regulations prohibiting unmarried coeds from riding in automobiles, 3.2 beer, and imposing restrictions on the student newspaper, the Bee Gee News.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of the visit to Charlotte by First Daughter Margaret Truman for a concert at Davidson College on Friday night. Five Secret Service agents accompanied her on the trip. They were always with her except when she was on a date. Her attitude was that if her date could not protect her in those situations, it was tough luck. She had arrived in Charlotte at the Barringer Hotel after a drive over the mountains from Knoxville, Tenn., the venue for her previous concert. She arrived early so that she could practice and rest.
On the editorial page, "The Air Force Story" discusses the Air Force response being presented to the criticism by the Navy of the B-36 and claimed over-emphasis on its capability to deliver an atomic bomb.
There were only four of 48 or 58 Air Force groups, depending on how many were finally authorized, devoted to the B-36 and it would take only 16 percent of the Air Force budget for all planes, and less than 1.25 percent of the entire defense budgets for 1949 and the ensuing two years.
The previous day, Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington had denied the Navy's claims and said that the B-36 had not caused other planes to be neglected. Other witnesses would provide the details.
It finds his presentation weak only in his faulting the admirals for bringing the controversy into the open, as the people deserved to know what was going on with respect to inter-service rivalries and criticism. While some harm might be done to unity, it was better than the irreparable harm resulting from secrecy over the conflict.
"Old Cronies Rewarded" finds the appointments of former Senator and Governor Mon Wallgren to the Federal Power Commission in place of the failed reappointment of Leland Olds, rejected by the Senate, and former Senator James Mead of New York to the Federal Trade Commission, to continue the President's practice of appointing old political cronies, both having served with Senator Truman on his Senate Investigating Committee.
While Mr. Mead was probably more suited to the position than Mr. Wallgren, deemed too inexperienced to be confirmed for the National Security Resources Board causing that nomination to be withdrawn the previous spring, both appointments were still in keeping with the President's tendency to appoint cronies who had been loyal to him.
"One Big Money Bill" sets forth the procedures being followed for appropriations measures, nineteen of which were considered at each session of Congress, starting in the House Appropriations Committee, through House approval, Senate approval, reconciliation as needed, and then a vote on any reconciled bill, before going to the President for approval.
Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia had proposed in their stead a single appropriations bill. While requiring months of hearings, it would have the advantage that the sum total of appropriations would be before the Congress rather than having expenditures approved piecemeal without being reckoned against overall expenditures versus revenue. According to Senator Byrd, either this bill would provide economy or point to the need for new sources of revenue.
Such a practice could encourage log-rolling, whereby two members would pledge support to each other for their pet local projects to be inserted in the bill. But despite this objection, it appeared that the idea was a sound way to achieve economy and to balance the budget.
A piece from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, titled "Burning Dollars", finds that when people in the city burned their leaves they were, in essence, burning money. For leaves provided the nutrients for trees to grow and formed part of the natural process of annual rejuvenation. The leaves should be saved and placed in the garden the following fall or on the lawn in sifted form. It suggests raking them into a corner under a bush or building a pen with chicken wire for their storage in the meantime.
But what if they dry out and someone carelessly tosses a still-lit match into the pile? Then it would not be such a hot idea.
Excerpts appear from a Senate speech by Senator Frank Porter Graham of North Carolina, in support of the amended Displaced Persons Act to try to eliminate the discriminatory provisions against Jews and Catholics passed by the prior Republican Congress. The amendment had been voted to be recommitted to the Judiciary Committee after it had been discharged to the floor without recommendation. Senator Pat McCarran, in Spain visiting Franco, had held up the bill in the Committee for some time.
Senator Graham explained the new bill's provisions, which had passed the House.
Drew Pearson tells of Operation 23, a group of twelve Navy officers and seventeen enlisted men, responsible for issuing false propaganda regarding the B-36, to try to discredit the Army and Air Force. Cedric Worth, who was responsible for the memo charging Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington with self-dealing in contracting with Consolidated Vultee for the aircraft, was part of Operation 23.
Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming had introduced a bill to legalize the basing-point price system, enabling manufacturers to charge the same price for product regardless of the shipping charges at various points in the country to the destination, ruled an illegal restraint of trade by the Supreme Court under existing antitrust laws. Senator O'Mahoney had earlier fought against the system and so many could not understand his change of heart. He had been sold a bill of goods by a chemical company in Wyoming, Westvaco Chemical, posing as an independent witness, which had discovered natural trona deposits with which it could produce soda ash. Only the alertness of Senators Russell Long and Estes Kefauver had prevented the bill from quietly becoming law.
Westvaco was a subsidiary of one of the largest chemical producers in the country, with ties to I. G. Farben in Germany, and had been fined the previous August for Sherman Antitrust Act violations, along with I. G. Farben and other European countries. The court charged that the conspiracy had been in effect since 1924, pertaining to control of the alkali market and preventing other U.S. companies from selling alkalis to foreign markets.
Marquis Childs, writing from Oslo, Norway, at the beginning of his European tour, tells of the most recent election in the country, the first in four years, having demonstrated the decreasing strength of Communism in Western Europe, based on the negative example of the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. The number of Communists within the Norwegian Parliament was reduced from twelve to one out of 150 members.
While Marshall Plan aid helped to achieve the result, the vote was not a mere reaction to aid, as the Norwegian people were too independent for that.
In 1945, the Communists had received 12 percent of the vote.
The Labor Party in Norway, with a previous majority of one, had been coping with hidden inflation and the results of the war. The 1949 election had increased its majority. It had been responsible for sweeping reforms, including three-week paid vacations for all workers and a 48-hour work week with overtime for hours worked beyond that. The Conservative Party had attacked the Government as instituting regulation for the sake of it and lowering production in the process, similar to the attacks in the U.S. on the Fair Deal or by the Conservatives in Britain against Labor reforms.
The Conservatives in Norway had no positive alternative. Privately, they confided that they were relieved that the voters had not put them in power as they would have had to keep in place many of the regulations they criticized because of the economic dilemma of the country.
That explained the rise of the Christian Peoples Party, which might have seven or eight seats in the new Parliament.
America's aid to Europe had bought the time for the people to realize the meaning of Communism and that, he concludes, was of supreme importance.
Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., public schools, in the seventh in his series of articles on the education of children, stresses the need for free time for boys when they were coming home from school, that they might observe such things as pipe being laid and holes being dug or football being played or a garage yard full of junked cars, to learn how things worked and were done. Such things were not taught in school.
He believes that after a day of regimentation at school, likely to be followed by regimentation when the boy reached home, it was necessary for there to be an unstructured period, and that parents ought not worry if the boy took an hour or so to walk a few blocks.
He says that the same did not hold true for girls and that mothers probably would disagree with him regarding their boys, but that they did not understand what it meant to be a boy coming of age.
He concludes that boys needed to be able to plunder the garages now and then to grab up ball bearings, as a handful of "steels" could do a lot for a boy's "playground prestige".
But what if you have the "steels"
and some bigger boy comes along on the way home and steals your
steels? Then you have to buy protection from the even bigger boys or
learn how to protect your steels, maybe by placing them in a cup as
camouflage, pretending that you are sipping tea on the way home.
Thus, one learns to be evasive in the face of enemy encroachment
But don't go too near the woods, for in there lives the bogeyman. Keep to the straight and narrow path.
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