The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 15, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Government mediation service had given John L. Lewis and UMW up to 48 hours to begin negotiations on an end to the coal dispute or face action by the White House, probably in the form of invoking Taft-Hartley and seeking an 80-day injunction against renewal of the strike after the hiatus deadline of November 30. Many of the President's advisers favored the same approach used with steel, providing a 60-day continued truce while a Presidential fact-finding board determined recommendations.
The President sent a Marshall Plan report to Congress indicating that the European countries had to lower their prices to compete in the U.S. market for American dollars to improve their economic position and that the U.S. had to be willing to accept greater competition from European suppliers. The report repeated the plea by ERP administrator Paul Hoffman for unification of the European economy and the need for relaxation of U.S. import controls and exchange restrictions, inhibiting free trade.
Some of the top staff in the State Department were becoming increasingly angry at the Communist Chinese for holding captive American Consul Angus Ward, presumably held at Mukden, for the previous three weeks. They did not, however, yet favor use of force to free him. The Communists had withheld all information regarding Mr. Ward's health.
The National Association of Manufacturers urged, before a House Judiciary subcommittee, that labor unions be made subject to antitrust legislation.
In Ambala, India, the man and his accomplice who had assassinated Mahatma Gandhi were both hanged this date. Both were Hindu journalists. Their last words, shouted in unison, were the nationalist slogans which prompted them to act in protest of the separation from India of Moslem Pakistan: "May the united India be immortal. We salute the holy motherland."
In New York, a pretrial motion by the defense in the Judy Coplon case of alleged espionage sought, effectively, suppression of Government documents seized from the defendant at the time of her warrantless arrest, incriminating her, as they were handwritten summaries of confidential Government documents, and notes on same, obtained from the Justice Department where she was employed. The defense contended that the papers were personal property and should be returned. Counsel also claimed that she had gathered information on subversive organizations for the Justice Department, and he elicited in testimony from the arresting FBI agent who had investigated the matter prior to the arrest that he had never uncovered any evidence that she was a Communist. She was scheduled to go on trial with the alleged accomplice in the attempt to transfer the documents to the Russians, an alleged Russian spy, whom Ms. Coplon claimed to be merely her lover.
In the Los Angeles Crescent Heights neighborhood, the mutilated body of a six-year old girl in the first grade was discovered in a rubbish heap a few doors away from her home. Nearby was an axe and in a nearby incinerator, police found her panties and a butcher knife. It was not yet known whether she had been sexually molested. Because of the absence of blood in the alley, police believed that she was killed in the adjoining yard and the body moved afterward. A 67-year old baker, who lived nearby the grisly scene and whose granddaughter was the victim's constant playmate, was being sought for questioning. Police said that he was a "known sex pervert", questioned the previous April in a child molestation case but released.
It was the city's most brutal child homicide case since that of a six-year old in 1946, who had been kidnaped while at play, and whose murderer had not been found.
Also in Los Angeles, evangelist Billy Graham, from Charlotte, said that he had visited with gambling kingpin Mickey Cohen at his home and invited him to a revival in Los Angeles. Mr. Cohen denied ever meeting Reverend Graham, who said that he had tried to kill the story as neither he nor Mr. Cohen wanted it to appear as a publicity stunt. He wanted to bring Mr. Cohen's "influence to bear for the cause of the Lord." But Mr. Cohen denied knowing him or ever talking to him. The eight-week revival had attracted several hundred thousand worshipers.
In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott, in response to a question by a reporter regarding the impact of the lawsuit brought by a group of black citizens against the Durham City School Board and the State Board of Education alleging unequal facilities, said that black school leaders in the state had advised him that black schools were receiving "due consideration" in the state's 50-million dollar school building program but not from the City of Durham. He also said that he believed the suggestion that black colleges, North Carolina College at Durham (now, N.C. Central) and North Carolina A & T at Greensboro, become part of the University, was meritorious, but he had no other comment. The proposal was intended to avoid the necessity of integrating the white state-supported institutions at Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Woman's College at Greensboro. The Governor, however, suggested that the proposal had to do with the smaller institutions not getting the proportionate share of funds equal to that of the larger schools, but that it could lead to the University becoming too big.
The Governor said that he did not pay attention to pre-printed postcards sent to him, urging that the real killers be found of a cab driver in Greenville in advance of the scheduled executions of two black men for the murder, pending their appeal to the State Supreme Court.
The "man without fingerprints" who was being held in Columbia, S.C., for trial on robbery of a Salem Crossroads storekeeper of his life savings, after being arrested in Gastonia, had allegedly communicated in a letter threats against a South Carolina prosecutor, that he would be "full of holes" before the trial. The letter referred to the subject of the threat only by initials. The matter was being adduced at a hearing at which the prosecution was seeking an increase in the defendant's bail.
In Charleston, two young white men were arrested on charges of robbing and killing the 67-year old black farmer in Walhalla the previous Saturday night. They were charged with car theft, armed robbery and murder.
In Charlotte, the weatherman
predicted blue skies
On the editorial page, "Coal Fact-Finding Board" discusses the prospect for a renewal of the coal strike should no settlement occur by November 30, that it could cause real hardship, with supplies already short, coming at the onset of winter.
The public still did not understand the precise demands being sought by John L. Lewis for UMW. Apparently, he wanted higher contributions to the welfare and pension fund by the operators and perhaps was seeking a shorter work week and higher pay.
It suggests that a Presidential fact-finding board should be appointed at least to clarify the issues.
The President could not invoke Taft-Hartley until a genuine national emergency arose and the strike had nearly reached that point when Mr. Lewis had called his hiatus. It calls for appointment of the fact-finding board.
"Jaycees Tackle a Big Project" suggests that the Jaycees would need a great deal of their usual tenacity to undertake their goal nationally of stimulating public support for implementation of the Hoover Commission recommendations for reorganization of the Federal Government. It describes the methods which the organization had in mind for accomplishing the goal.
The first session of the 81st Congress had adopted about twenty percent of the recommendations, an estimated savings of about 1.5 billion dollars per year, and the second session, starting in January, would be the great test.
It urges letters to Congress favoring passage of the remainder of the recommendations.
"Reflections on Football" ventures that fans of UNC football would speculate for a long time as to what might have been, had star halfback Charlie Justice been on hand for the Yankee Stadium contest the previous Saturday, lost to Notre Dame, 42 to 6, and not hobbled by an ankle injury. UNC would play the Irish the following year in South Bend and such speculation would at least last until that point, though Mr. Justice would have graduated.
The fans seemed to be satisfied with the first half performance, tying the Irish, and the piece does not lament the trend, given that Notre Dame was a team of "mechanical perfection".
But, it reminds, education was the primary goal of colleges and universities, and as long as the stress remained on education rather than football, no harm would be done.
"Research and the South", tells of former publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, Henry Grady, having once many years earlier editorially summed the need for Southern industry by pointing out that at a funeral for a prominent citizen, the various ingredients, the raw materials for manufacture of the burial equipment and the items which went into making the coffin, came from the South while they were made into finished products in the North and sold back to the South at large profits.
The South, however, now had some 10,000 industrial workers, still, nevertheless, at the bottom among the nation's regions. Research was steadily taking place to try to improve the situation as by the Southern Association of Science and Industry and the Southern Research Institute. The South was coming to realize that it would never achieve the prosperity its resources could afford, as long as it remained only an area primarily producing raw materials and not finished products. The new South, it indicates, was being built on research.
A piece from the Gastonia Gazette, titled "Sad Commentary", finds the attempted escape of fourteen criminally insane inmates from the mental facility at Goldsboro to be a sad commentary on the conditions at the facility. They had said that they were receiving no treatment from the eight staff doctors for 2,735 patients.
Even if the doctors saw patients for as little as 15 minutes each, they could examine only 320 per day in 10 hours. None of the patients therefore were receiving adequate treatment.
It urges the people of the state to awaken to the fact and push the Legislature to make improvements.
Arthur Krock, in a piece from the New York Times, discusses the outcome of the Lehman-Dulles special Senate election in New York, won by former Governor Herbert Lehman. Whether the defeat of John Foster Dulles, who had made opposition to the Fair Deal the centerpiece of his campaign, would broaden support for the program remained to be seen, but it did highlight a division within the Republican Party over what had come to be called, pejoratively, the "welfare state". It raised the question whether, to win in the most populous states in 1950 and 1952, the Republicans had to adopt at least some parts of the Fair Deal program, as had been done by Senator Robert Taft and Governor Alfred Driscoll, the latter having won re-election as Governor of New Jersey the previous week.
Many Republicans believed that bipartisan foreign policy was robbing them of their traditional partisan role of the loyal opposition and weakening the influence of the U.S. across the world stage, ignoring the while the partisan Senate battle had with President Wilson after World War I. The Democrats, rather than showing gratitude for the bipartisan role played by men such as Mr. Dulles, wanted to try to retire them from politics as fast as they could.
The domestic program of the President would have a tougher time if the Republicans decided to adopt a stance somewhere between Senator Dulles and Senator Taft on such things as health insurance, Social Security expansion, repeal of Taft-Hartley, farm price supports, etc. The program would move nearer enactment if the Republicans chose a more moderate path, between that of Senator Wayne Morse and Mr. Taft.
The Republicans had made it clear that on civil rights, they intended to take the lead from the divided Democrats, as well in the revision of the Displaced Persons Act, to eliminate the discriminatory provisions enacted during the GOP-controlled prior Congress.
The New York election had brought the Fair Deal stronger support and pushed Republicans to the brink of hard decisions on foreign and domestic policy. But to achieve the "welfare state", the President would have to win the 1950 mid-term Congressional elections.
So it was likely that the Republicans would not deal as generously with the Administration on foreign policy as had Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Mr. Dulles, before his few months as a Senator. They would likely turn to Senator Taft, not an isolationist but also not a supporter of the bipartisan foreign policy as conceived by the Administration and accepted by most Republicans.
Drew Pearson tells of a poll conducted by the publisher of the San Diego Journal, John Kennedy, regarding the names of California's two Senators, and the public responding well to the name of William Knowland, who had served less than a term, but not recalling Sheridan Downey, who was wrapping up two terms. The reason posited was that Senator Downey, having been elected as a liberal progressive with the support of older voters, farmers and labor, had gone to Washington in 1939 with great promise for populist reform, but then did nothing for years. When he finally did do something, he supported his old nemeses, the power interests and big ranchers who wanted the Government irrigation restrictions not enforced.
Some attributed the shift to his brother, an attorney who represented some of these interests, while others believed it was because Senator Downey had assumed the country would not re-elect President Truman in 1948 and so had planned to leave the Senate and start practicing law for some of those interests, himself.
The Senator had sought to strip the power of the Reclamation Commissioner and Regional Deputy in charge of reclamation in the West by threatening a filibuster if the Senate voted to restore their salaries, cut by the prior Republican Congress for insisting on enforcement of the irrigation limit. Those who knew the Senator, however, believed that he would not go through with his threat, and so passed the legislation to restore the salaries with back pay, and, true to form, Senator Downey had done nothing to intercede.
Now, Senator Downey was desperately seeking re-election, after the win by President Truman. But it was too late and his Democratic opponent, Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, appeared on track to defeat him in the primary—as she would. If by some miracle he were to win, says Mr. Pearson, the major interests for whom he had gone to bat would turn for the Republican, as they had no respect for those, as Senator Downey, who tried to play both sides of the fence.
That Republican candidate, of course, would be Congressman Richard Nixon.
A young Manhattan boy had sought the autograph of Admiral Chester Nimitz as he and his wife emerged from a church service on Fifth Avenue. After obliging the autograph seeker, the Admiral was then asked by the lad who he was, prompting the Admiral's wife to suggest it as an ego reducer.
The youngster was probably Donny, and Admiral Nimitz, in that event, should have retorted, "Who are you, you little frothy-haired bastard?"
Joseph and Stewart Alsop discuss the advice provided by the American diplomats of Eastern Europe, meeting recently in Paris, that there would be no more rebellious Titos in Eastern Europe because of the Soviet purges in deterrence of such rebellion.
Rumania was the best example, where George Dimitrov had died in Moscow suddenly of unknown causes. Then, the second in command of the Rumanian Communist Party had been arrested, along with hundreds of others, including various Cabinet ministers and military chiefs. The "'merciless liquidation'" had led to paralysis in Bulgaria, putting down Titoism for the foreseeable future.
That scenario was being repeated throughout the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. The appointment in Poland of Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky as Defense Minister and Army commander was one example of the effect the purges were having, shoring up the strength of the Soviets.
Titoism had imposed a strain on the Soviet power structure both within and without Eastern Europe, the subject of another future editorial, but the diplomats agreed that the Soviet system was capable of absorbing that impact and that the net effect of Titoism was to strengthen the Kremlin's hold on Eastern Europe.
That fact suggested, the Alsops opine, the need for re-examination of American policy, which had proceeded on the assumption that containment of Russia would progressively weaken it.
Henry C. McFadyen, in the eleventh article in his series on child education, discusses the increasing school construction taking place abroad the nation to accommodate the baby boom during and after the war.
The new schools were being designed to afford plenty of room for physical education, with the need for 20 to 30 acres surrounding the schools and plenty of parking space for presentations at the school auditorium, sometimes the only place in a smaller community where performances of various kinds could be held. The schools were designed to last 50 to 100 years and so such investment was wise and had to be foresighted as well.
School rooms were larger than in the older schools and some of the first and second grade rooms had the bathroom facilities within each classroom and supplied full-length mirrors for the children to check their appearance.
Some buildings were being given
brightly colored doors on the theory that the children could find
such things as the music room
But what was behind that red door?
Rooms were furnished without too much attention to decoration as the children would ornament the rooms with their drawings
The furniture was blond, the lights were fluorescent, and the blackboards were green, all to enhance the brightness of the rooms, in contrast to the old drab darkness of prior schoolrooms.
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