The Charlotte News
Monday, February 7, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in China during the weekend, a difference between the policies of the Canton Government and that of Acting President Li Tsung-Jen had emerged, as Premier Sun Fo in Canton warned the Communists that they would need to amend their peace proposals, especially as to their list of war criminals, which included Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang, or the Nationalists would continue the war. Nanking Government officials found the statement "unfortunate" as it might prolong the war, undermining Li's efforts to effect peace.
Meanwhile, there was evidence that the Communist troops encamped north of the Yangtze were growing restless.
A Norwegian diplomat had arrived in Washington to solicit advice from Secretary of State Acheson on whether Norway should join the North Atlantic Pact or accept Russia's tender of a non-aggression pact.
In Berlin, the British-licensed newspaper Telegraf reported that the Russians were rebuilding a giant air raid shelter outside the city, to resemble Hitler's elaborate bunker where he spent his last days, based on seized drawings from Albert Speer, architect of the Third Reich. The Russians had begun to reactivate the shelter, located at Ruedersdorf, eighteen months earlier, after it had been neglected since the end of the war. German workers had outfitted 370 rooms in the shelter during recent months, making it large enough to house for several weeks the entire Soviet military government staff in East Germany.
The Hoover Commission reported to Congress, urging that 65 Government agencies reporting directly to the President be reduced to about one-third that size, all under firm control of the President who would be given new staff and wider powers to reorganize the Executive Branch. Former President Hoover contended that the reorganization plan could save the taxpayers three billion dollars, provided efforts by "propagandists" against the proposals, desirous of wholesale exemptions of certain agencies from reorganization, were not allowed to interfere.
Former chairman of the War Labor Board William Davis told the Senate Labor Committee that he believed the Government ought have the authority to seize plants in a strike which threatened a "national emergency".
Housing Expediter Tighe Woods predicted to the House Banking Committee that there would be a 50 to 60 percent increase in rents unless Congress extended and strengthened rent control legislation.
The Supreme Court, in Fisher v. Pace, 336 U.S. 155, a 5 to 4 decision announced by Justice Stanley Reed, upheld the contempt citation against a Texas attorney who contested with the judge several times over the substance of his closing argument in a civil case, and contended to the Supreme Court that the lower appellate courts had not accorded him due process by refusing to review whether a contempt occurred and, if there was a review, by refusing to find that there was no evidence of contempt. The Court simply held that the trial judge was in the best position to adjudge direct contempt, that which occurs by conduct of the attorney in the courtroom, and declined to disturb the judgment.
Justices Wiley Rutledge, Frank Murphy and William O. Douglas filed dissents, with Justice Hugo Black joining in Justice Douglas's opinion. Justice Douglas disagreed with the majority's interpretation of the colloquy between the attorney and the court and found that the attorney's right of free speech, even in the courtroom, could not be surrendered so easily as to defer to the trial judge to interpret whether the accused contemnor's words, innocent on their face, were stated in a contemnacious manner. Justice Rutledge felt that the conduct of the attorney might have justified a finding of contempt but for the fact that it was plain from the record that the trial judge acted injudiciously out of anger in repeatedly increasing the fine and punishment.
The case was misreported, or at least not very well worded, regarding the nature of the contempt. It did not involve the attorney claiming that his client was receiving unfair treatment before the trial court because he was black and because the opposing counsel was the son of the judge—even if that might have been a good argument. Perhaps, the attorney had informally stated those opinions after the fact. Normally, a judge, under modern canons of judicial conduct, would be required voluntarily to recuse himself from sitting on a matter wherein a relative was a party, witness, or counsel for one of the parties, absent the consent of both parties to the suit.
A crippled former G.I. identified Mildred Gillars as "Axis Sally" in her trial in Washington for treason for her propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Nazis during the war. He said that Ms. Gillars had visited him in a Paris hospital after he had been captured in August, 1944. She had represented herself as working for the Red Cross to record messages of the G.I.'s for relatives back home. The G.I. recorded a message which he then heard played back on the "Axis Sally" broadcast. He said that she did not engage in any propaganda when she spoke to him. Another G.I. had identified her the previous week for the same activity.
In Donaueschingen, Germany, 30 German skiers died in an accident after the bus in which they were returning from the Black Forest slid off a road and went into a 60-foot crevice. Thirty-seven others were injured.
In Happersville, N.C., near Kinston, four men died in a fire in a small shack. One of the dead had rescued a crippled man from the fire and then went back into the flaming structure to try to rescue others.
A new winter storm hit the Rockies and Pacific Northwest, with rain drenching central California, northern Florida, and the South and Middle Atlantic states. Most of the East had mild weather.
The newspaper begins another "Mr. X" contest, this one identified as a former well-known football player. We shall inform in advance that at no time during the week will the newspaper share the identity of the person on the front page and this will be the only clue, the identity apparently having been solved by another Scrooge right off the bat. Moreover, we shall save you the time of looking back through the front page photographs of the previous month, as there is no help there as in the first two contests. We do not know, candidly, how we shall ever identify this figure conclusively, save by serendipity. So, you may be trying to guess the identity well into the summer. Have at it.
We think it must be Congressman Gerald R. Ford.
On the editorial page, "Birth of a New Nation" tells of the President having recently granted formal recognition to Israel, shortly following Britain having informally granted recognition. About 33 nations of the U.N. had thus far recognized the new State.
Although Israel at times had violated U.N. directives and rules, they had won their recognition and won in the process the respect of the majority of the 58 member nations. It was now hoped that the nation would assume the responsibilities attendant to its status.
Israel was right in the middle geographically of the East-West conflict, lying on the fringe of the iron curtain and slightly within the Western sphere of influence.
The previous week, Israel had elected a socialist-labor government in its first general election, thoroughly defeating a pro-Russian faction which received only 14 percent of the vote.
The piece suggests that Israel would need "strength, courage and wisdom" if it was to survive in the divided world into which it had been born.
"Growth of Lobbying" tells of the Congressional Quarterly reporting that 6.2 million dollars had been spent on lobbying efforts in 1948, an increase of over a million from the prior year, with the amount spent by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Physicians Committee not yet reported. The total amount would likely exceed the combined salaries and expense allowances of the entire House membership. The piece lists the largest lobbying groups, primarily concerned with displaced persons from Europe, ERP, TVA, public housing and rent control, repeal of the discriminatory margarine tax, and the railroad bill.
The piece regards it as a disturbing trend that the Congress, supposed to represent all of the people, was being coaxed with such large amounts of money by special interests, and effecting apparent results, as the same lobbying groups returned year after year spending such large sums.
"Martin Bill Needs Amendment" says that it would support a proposed statewide referendum on alcohol to be held November 1, provided that the 26 North Carolina counties and three towns in which ABC controlled sales had passed were exempted from the referendum, and provided further that each county could hold its own referendum whenever a proper petition for such an election were presented. Otherwise, the bill was simply seeking to make the state dry, notwithstanding the will of the inhabitants of certain counties and towns.
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Time Is Working a Subtle Change", finds "bad-tempered" the proposal of Senator Richard Russell of Georgia for a 500-million dollar voluntary relocation program for 1.5 million black citizens of the South to move to the North and white citizens of the North to move to the South to make up for the population shift. The piece finds it as bad-tempered as the "extremists" on the left who favored force to effect a Federal civil rights program.
That which Senator Russell was proposing was happening informally anyway. In 1900, there had been 286 counties in twelve Southern states which had majority black populations, whereas in 1940, the number of such counties was only 180. The total number of counties in the South was 1,132. Moreover, there had been a net decline of four percent in the Southern black population since 1940, down to 28 percent of the total population of the South.
At that rate of decline, by 1988, it posits, the black population would be only eight percent of the South, that which was the case in the more populous Northern states.
The piece therefore asks why, assuming such a shift to be beneficial and desirable, there was any need to have it funded formally through Federal legislation.
The 1990 census, incidentally, found that of 30 million persons nationwide identifying themselves as black, 15.8 million lived in the South, including Delaware and Maryland. The total population of the South was 85.4 million, meaning that 18.5 percent of the population was black. Excluding Delaware and Maryland, where a total of 1.3 million blacks, 24 percent of the population, lived within a total population of 5.45 million, would not appreciably change the statistics, dropping the Southern black population to 18.1 percent of the total. By contrast, in the Northeastern United States, the black population was 5.6 million of a total of 50.8 million, or 11 percent of the population, 12.2 percent including Delaware and Maryland in the Northeast, commensurate with the nationwide average of 12 percent. (See Table 27 at page 22 of the above-linked document.)
Whether, by the way, Willie Horton in 1988 counted as more or less than one black man in Maryland is up to the individual to decide.
Drew Pearson tells of a woman who was a French Communist bringing an offering for the Merci Train, the train bearing gifts for the American people as an expression of generosity for the Friendship Train of November, 1947, which had brought food and clothing to the French and Italian people for the winter, as a stopgap between the end of UNRRA aid and the beginning of Marshall Plan emergency aid.
Coal stocks were 58 percent higher than the previous year, meaning that John L. Lewis could not tie up the nation with another coal strike, as there was a 60-day stockpile on hand.
House Ways & Means Committee chairman Robert Doughton was planning to pigeonhole the President's four billion dollar tax increase plan because of the fact that the Democrats had stacked the Committee with six liberal Democrats.
The Senate Small Business Committee had gone out of existence, although a new small business subcommittee had been created within the Banking & Currency Committee, chaired by Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina. Senator James Murray of Montana had opposed ending the Small Business Committee and warned that it could backfire on the Democrats as the Republicans, under the chairmanship of Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, had done a good job of running it. Someone, however, begged to differ by asking what good it had done the Republicans in the election.
Senator Maybank asserted that the Committee, at the end of the day, had not possessed any authority to do anything after its hearings and investigations. To have the power to legislate, it would have to be a permanent standing committee and not just a special committee. Senator Murray began work on a resolution to revive the Committee.
Illinois Congressman William Dawson, the first black member of Congress to head a committee, was doing an effective job as chairman of the House Expenditures Committee regarding the reorganization measure. The President had personally complimented his work thus far. Three Southerners on the Committee, Porter Hardy of Virginia, Herbert Bonner of North Carolina, and Henderson Lanham of Georgia, respecting Mr. Dawson's style and ability, were working closely with the chairman to effect cooperation.
Stewart Alsop imparts of the Russian "peace offensive" and the decision of Norway to join the North Atlantic Pact, two significant events within the previous week, the Russian move being in direct reaction to the proposed North Atlantic Pact. The Soviets were meeting in Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, to attempt to get Poland and Czechoslovakia to accept the East Germans as political brothers in prelude to formation of an Eastern European Union—that which would be known as the Warsaw Pact.
The Soviets had also threatened Sweden with full occupation of Finland should the Swedes join the North Atlantic Pact with Norway. Such a move would break the peace treaty with Finland, signed by Britain and Russia, not by the U.S. as the U.S. was never at war with Finland.
The North Atlantic Pact was designed to prevent Russia's attempt at hegemony over Europe. Mr. Alsop urges that the Soviet threats and "peace offensives" could not be allowed to stand in the way of that design.
James Marlow tells of the Government having allocated 1.35 million dollars to Western state storm and blizzard relief, to feed snowbound residents and the cattle and sheep. Some had questioned why the Government should provide such relief rather than private organizations as the Red Cross. While the Red Cross provided substantial aid, the Government had a long history of doing so, dating back to 1887 during the Administration of Grover Cleveland.
The Army and Defense Department were coordinating the relief efforts, at the direction of the President, and the Western states, themselves, were spending large sums of money for the task, Utah reporting an expenditure of $20,000 per day just to keep its roads open.
A letter writer finds unfair to farmers the editorial of February 2 on taxes for rural road improvements and other public services, the editorial finding objection to the disproportionate tax burden on urban dwellers to pay for the rural roads over a four-year period under the Governor's proposed program, requiring a 200-million dollar bond issue and deficit financing, whereas an extended program could be accomplished without sacrificing the budgetary surplus accumulated during the war years to meet increased costs of local government.
Why do you need roads? Get the tractor out and rough it. What are those trucks for, show? Sissy.
A letter writer, apparently, as had a previous letter writer, confusing pardons and paroles, writes to object to the letter from William Dunn, Acting Director of the State Parole Commission, seeking to explain the parole system in the state.
This writer does not wish to accept the explanation and instead remains alarmed at the number of "paroles and pardons" being granted to persons convicted of serious felonies, especially murder.
A letter writer supports the March of Dimes and urges giving to its campaign, decries the slurs on the organization from a previous writer of January 31.
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