The Charlotte News

Saturday, December 3, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Franklin Richards, commissioner of the FHA, said that the new rule to be implemented banning FHA backing of any financing of properties which had restrictive covenants in place, would only be applicable in certain rare instances and would do little in practice to inhibit use of restrictive covenants.

The Government had announced the previous day the new rule to reduce racial discrimination in housing by enforcing the ban on neighborhood restrictive covenants, held by the Supreme Court two years earlier to have no force and effect. The new rule would not affect existing loans on properties with restrictive covenants. About a third of all new home construction loans were guaranteed by the FHA.

In Washington, a former Army captain during the war told radio commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr., that deceased Presidential aide to FDR, Harry Hopkins, had, during the war, provided the Russians secret documents, with the secret-designation markings cut out, whenever they needed information. Former FDR press secretary and presently Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Early said, however, that he found the story "unbelievable" and had not heard of it before.

Columnist Bruce Barton tells of a time in his younger years when a failed businessman would obtain some cards reading: "Specialist in Real Estate and insurance."

Then later came the failures setting themselves up as "advertising experts", with anyone who had gone through two or three bankruptcies suddenly becoming qualified to tell others how to run their businesses.

Columnist Franklin P. Adams had said that no one had been born such an idiot that he could not become a ticket chopper in the subway or an efficiency engineer.

Then came the "investment counselors", followed by the "public relations counselors".

After the unworthy were weeded out of each of these waves, each group became solidified as a permanent part of the economy.

He finds the expert, however, still under suspicion. He wonders what made anyone a "foreign affairs expert". He thinks that state departments maintained their secrets as much from their own people to avoid revelations of the ineptness at work as from the enemy.

He thinks wars might have been avoided if the diplomats had used as much savvy as the average salesman did daily to retain his job.

He objects with even greater stress to the practice of newspapers quoting such experts anonymously. He wants the names and who had made the persons experts and their past experience before they became experts.

Now, such people become "president-elect".

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. raised its tire and rubber prices 3.5 percent, the last of the major rubber producers to raise prices during the fall.

Near Catania, Sicily, the eruption of Mt. Etna threatened the little town of Maletto, but the flowing lava had slowed several kilometers from the town.

In Daytona Beach, Fla., cartoonist Frank Miller, 51, creator of "Barney Baxter", had died.

In Norman, Okla., fire swept through a wooden dormitory in the early morning hours on the University of Oklahoma campus, taking the lives of at least three students and injuring at least 19 others, two critically. More than 300 people escaped the structure. Many of the residents were former GI's.

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., two 18-year old boys from Detroit were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas heater going full blast in a tourist cabin.

In Aberdeen, N.C., the two-story school building, built in 1912, burned to the ground in a pre-dawn fire.

In New Orleans, a parking lot attendant was convicted of murder of a Bristol, Va.-Tenn., millionaire in a French Quarter hotel the previous February 22. The conviction carried an automatic death penalty. His father told him, "So long."

In Charlotte, a Superior Court judge ruled valid the portion of the City ordinance regulating taxis which banned the renting of cabs by the companies. He delayed until December 31 lifting his previous temporary restraining order against enforcement of the ordinance so that the cab companies could comply. The court found that the City had authority to demand full accounting by the taxi companies and that such was not being done when they rented cabs to drivers.

Bob Sain of The News interviews comedic actor Harold Lloyd, 56, visiting Charlotte as the Potentate of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He said that young people did not know his work in the movies, but that some of his old pictures were being released again. He recounted that in the Twenties, an audience would clap as soon one of his pictures flashed on the screen, perhaps "The Freshman, "Safety Last" or "Grandma's Boy". He imparts that he had gone to the theater to see how an audience would react when one of his pictures was re-released. The audience, primarily young, had just sat there without uttering a sound, did not understand his character. But about a third of the way through the film, they began to catch on.

Actor Peter Sellers, as pictured, posing as a local Asheville Shriner, was with Mr. Lloyd as an undercover agent providing him protection from the teenagers.

On the sports page, The News announced its 1949 All-North Carolina and All-South Carolina high school football teams.

On the editorial page, "City Council Pay Question" tells of former City Councilman J. A. Baker suggesting a pay increase for the Mayor from $1,200 to $7,200 per year, and for City Council members, from $200 to $2,400 per year. While it finds that the existing salaries were too low for the work performed, the proposed raises were too generous. The real work of running the City fell on the City Manager and his department heads, not the Mayor and City Council. The former were amply compensated. To increase the salaries too much, making the jobs of City Council members and the Mayor into full-time positions, would jeopardize the city manager form of government which had served the City well.