The Charlotte News
Monday, March 14, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas stated that a second attempt at compromise with Southern Democrats regarding cloture of debate on motions was about to begin during this afternoon. Each of three groups, Administration Democrats, GOP leaders, and Southern Democrats, had met separately to try to come up with acceptable solutions. The GOP leaders then agreed to support a compromise resolution. The Southerners said that they had reached an agreement among themselves but declined to disclose what it was. The three factions had met Sunday also, but without agreement. The Administration Democrats had rejected a compromise whereby a three-fourths majority could effect cloture on motions and resolutions, but were divided on a requirement of a two-thirds majority. The Southern filibuster of the proposed rules change had been ongoing since February 28, blocking other Senate business. Senator Lucas warned that if the filibuster continued, he might order round-the-clock sessions as a test of endurance.
About 437,000 bituminous coal miners in ten states stayed off the job this date as predicted by John L. Lewis during the weekend, in protest of the confirmation of Dr. James Boyd as head of the Bureau of Mines. The walkout did not affect the Western mines. The walkout was scheduled to last two weeks, ostensibly as a memorial to miners who had died from lack of appropriate mine safety during 1948. Dr. Boyd's appointment had been pending in the Senate since 1947.
This date, the Senate Interior Committee recommended, by a vote of 10 to 1, confirmation of Dr. Boyd.
The Hoover Commission recommended to Congress that the Selective Service System be placed under the Labor Department to cut down on overlappage of administrative bureaucracy and waste. Secretary of State Dean Acheson and outgoing Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, both on the Commission, along with one Congressman, dissented from the majority report. All twelve commissioners agreed that Selective Service should remain under civilian control, but the three dissenters wanted it maintained as an independent agency to prevent it from becoming subject to special interests.
The Supreme Court accepted for review a case on the issue of whether rules regulating Southern railroad dining cars discriminated against blacks. A lower Federal court had so held.
A U.S. military tribunal in Munich found eight Europeans guilty of espionage and sentenced them to terms ranging from one to eighteen years.
The first great-grandchild of FDR was expected in August by his granddaughter, the daughter of Anna Boettiger.
In New York, a multi-millionaire, Clendenin Ryan, claimed that he had been promised the Ambassadorship to France if he were to lay off Mayor William O'Dwyer, object of Mr. Ryan's reform movement. He denied any connection to a wiretapping plot by a former city detective, who had been charged in the matter and surrendered to authorities. The alleged wiretap was designed to obtain information regarding Mayor O'Dwyer and high city officials.
In Thomasville, N.C., a man jailed on a charge of vagrancy had refused to eat for five days, saying that he would not eat while in jail. In court, he attempted to interrupt testimony against him and the judge offered him a chance to take an oath and testify, but he refused. The judge then ordered him back to jail. He said later that as long as the government refused to allow him to work, he would not take the oath. Court personnel said that the German-born mendicant would be given another opportunity to testify on his behalf in a day or two and that if convicted of vagrancy, he faced thirty days in jail.
We wouldn't take the oath either, you stupid hick jackasses.
Haven't you heard that it's unconstitutionally vague to charge vagrancy?
You stupid hicks don't have much respect for the law, do you?
Why don't you give him the Chair, next time?
Martha Azer London of The News tells of the Red Cross drive still being $21,000 short of its $108,000 goal. The Chief of the Mecklenburg County Police and the Chief of the Charlotte Police had voluntarily agreed to go to jail until the goal was met. They are pictured therefore behind bars. Whether the County or City would contribute more by noon Thursday would determine which police chief was the loser and thus to be arrested by the winner.
A new "Miss X" contest begins this date, the last such contest to be held. The first clue is that the woman is a native of Florida.
She may be a welcome stranger or a confidential agent or might even ride a pink horse. You never know.
On the editorial page, "On Stage, Mr. Lewis!" finds that the two-week walkout by John L. Lewis and the UMW in protest of confirmation of Dr. James Boyd as director of the Bureau of Mines, held up in the Senate at the behest of Mr. Lewis since 1947, would not meet with much disapproval, as it would have little impact on the nation. The miners west of the Mississippi, where weather had played havoc with the coal supply, were not striking. And the mines in the East had a 45-day supply, were only operating three days per week on average anyway.
But the walkout was nevertheless objectionable as it was being done for a purely manipulative political motive, would likely have an adverse impact on the public and Congressional perceptions of labor, producing an even more restrictive labor law than Taft-Hartley; and the antagonism toward Dr. Boyd for the deaths of miners in 1948 blinked the fact that lax enforcement of state regulations were responsible for the safety hazards in the mines. The Bureau of Mines had little impact on safety regulations and enforcement.
"A Contemptible Traitor" finds that the treason trial of Mildred Gillars, accused of Nazi propaganda broadcasts from Berlin as "Axis Sally" during the war, had not so much angered as sickened the nation for the fact that she had not accomplished her goal of demoralizing the troops. That she had, as she claimed, done the deed to protect the nation from Russia was nonsense, and she would, predicts the piece, get the sentence which she deserved.
"They're All Citizens" tells of a State legislator seeking to have the State take over responsibility for the maintenance of city streets as well as rural roads, a proposal which did not stand a chance of passing, but which might become a rallying point in years to come for more equitable treatment of the municipalities and urban dwellers regarding their disproportionate tax burden for road maintenance.
"The Egg and the Ham" tells of the bristle-thighed curlew
Once found, he would blow the insides from the egg and tuck it into a cotton container for study.
The piece announces that it collects collectors and welcomes the oologist to the collection.
Drew Pearson discusses the threatened walkout by John L. Lewis and UMW in protest of the Senate confirmation of James Boyd as director of the Bureau of Mines, held up since 1947 by Mr. Lewis, primarily through Senator Eugene Miliken of Colorado.
Longtime Congressman Sol Bloom, suggests Mr. Pearson, had died the previous week from overwork, as most of the burden on the House Foreign Affairs Committee was left to him as chairman, along with Republicans, while his fellow Democrats on the Committee loafed. The new chairman, John Kee, warned Democrats that it was time to stop playing hookey, lest the GOP take de facto charge of the Committee.
Forrest Warren, 71, of the San Diego Journal, who had lost his wife in a train accident, spent much of his time raising money to buy shoes for needy children and wheelchairs for polio victims.
Col. Bertie McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, had developed admiration for El Presidente Juan Peron as the isolationist publisher traveled through South America, spending more time in Buenos Aires than in three other capitals he had visited. There, El Presidente decorated him with a medal, just as he had done in Washington for General Harry Vaughan, the President's military aide.
After declaring himself simpatico with dictator Peron, Col. McCormick found himself being greeted warmly by U.S. Ambassadors across Latin America, suggesting implicitly that his isolationist background fit the Administration's policy. He also expressed a negative attitude toward Europe, conveying indifference to whether Western Europe would turn Communist if invaded by Russia. His translator, however, changed the statement to refer instead to "Eastern Europe".
Stewart Alsop discusses the economy and the general opinion in Congress that an economic downturn was on the horizon, forecast by the rise in unemployment, with the result that there was little chance for the President's anti-inflation program of standby price and allocation controls, as well as the proposed 4.2 billion dollar tax hike, to pass.
But the facts suggested that the President was on sound footing in making those requests, as his economic advisers were suggesting that the overall economic picture was sound, with production continuing at a high rate and employment at a higher rate than a year earlier. The 3.2 million unemployed was higher than at any time since the war, but about half of that number reflected an irreducible minimum of unemployable persons plus seasonal and casual workers.
Steel production was at an all-time high and farm and food prices had begun to rise again. Construction starts were higher than the previous year, though new business plants and equipment had fallen off a bit.
Mr. Alsop concludes that the economic boom, according to the leading economists, had not ended and thus there was danger of renewed inflation, triggering the need for the President's program of higher taxes and economic controls.
Marquis Childs again dicusses the benefits of TVA, which during the war had enabled production of aluminum for 50,000 airplanes per year. New Government hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest were generating thousands of jobs for persons who had worked in war plants.
Harnessing the resources in the Missouri Valley for a TVA-type project would develop the resources along the Missouri River and its tributaries.
TVA was never meant to generate revenue as private utilities and its principal benefits were regional and systemic, providing incentive, as a sine qua non, for the private operators to construct the dams and power projects made associated with TVA.
Edwin Shanke of the Associated Press, in the first of a five-part series of articles to be presented on the British experiment in socialized medical and dental care, reports that the plan covered 95 percent of Britain's population but cost in its first year 852.5 million dollars in tax revenue and another 96 million from the national insurance fund, to which everyone contributed. The total for the first year would reach more than a third of the nation's prewar budget. Of 50 million eligible persons, 41.5 million had signed up for the plan.
In consequence, waiting rooms were full and waiting lists longer than before the plan went into effect. The Health Ministry proclaimed that the plan was working, as there were fewer dental problems than expected and, generally, absence of abuse of the system. Complaints were few in number. The British Medical Association had favored a national health plan for years, provided the independence and ethics of the profession would not suffer.
National health for low-income persons had been on the books since 1911. The general plan of Lord William Beveridge had been given impetus by the Coalition Government of Winston Churchill in 1944. It took another four years, however, for the Labor Government, elected in mid-1945, to put the plan into effect.
Everyone in the country received free medical care, regardless of contribution to national insurance. Even foreigners could receive free health care. But no one could bring suit for inadequate care under the plan, as there was no requirement of paying for insurance
The Health Ministry believed that the budget would level off or be reduced subsequently, as more people were being treated initially who had not received treatment in the past.
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