The Charlotte News
Friday, March 18, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the agreed text of the North Atlantic Treaty was
released
The Treaty would become binding on the United States only after ratification by two-thirds of the Senate.
Secretary Acheson would deliver a radio address on the Treaty at 10:30 p.m.
British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin hailed the Treaty as "one of the greatest steps toward world peace and security since the war." French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman expressed a similar sentiment.
In Rome, the Chamber of Deputies voted two to one in favor of Italy becoming a part of NATO. The decision broke a three-day filibuster and caused a violent reaction in the chamber, as upset Communists, predicting that the Treaty would result in an invitation to invasion of the country, hurled chairs and threw missiles. A siren was sounded, a technical foul called, and the riot was then quelled with free throws. The Chamber also voted for a resolution of confidence in the Government's foreign policy.
The U.S. Senate the previous night voted 63 to 23 to adopt the Republican-Southern Democratic compromise on the Senate rule change to allow cloture of debate in all instances, including motions and resolutions, except regarding a rules change, by two thirds vote of the Senate membership. Thirty-four Republicans and 29 Democrats voted for the compromise. Fifteen Democrats and eight Republicans voted against it. The previous rule had allowed for cloture on a two-thirds vote only of those Senators present and voting, but only applied to "pending measures", interpreted previously to exclude motions and resolutions. Vice-President Barkley had overruled that interpretation earlier in the week but the membership had then voted against the interpretation.
Administration Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas, said that the rule would permit blockage by filibuster of the President's civil rights program.
The Senate Labor & Public Welfare Committee unanimously approved the 300-million dollar Federal aid to education package, as well as a 35-million dollar program for student health services. The latter program required contributions by the states ranging from 25 to 50 percent of the Federal money, depending on the income of the state.
The President, vacationing in Key West, Fla., said that he hoped that the Congress would enact the major portions of his Fair Deal program, though he acknowledged that the Congress was now comprised of "three parties", including the Dixiecrats, who, he said, were not good Democrats. He nevertheless did not sound angry.
In Raleigh, the State House Judiciary Committee voted to postpone indefinitely a measure to outlaw the Communist Party in the state.
In Houston, Texas, actress Dorothy
Lamour explained the Irish shenanigans which had disrupted her St.
Patrick's Day radio broadcast the previous night as being the result
of the crowd getting out of hand. The broadcast originated from the
Shamrock Hotel, which had opened the previous night. Ed Gardner of
the "Duffy's Tavern"
In Raleigh, at Central Prison, a 42-year old farmer convicted of beating his wife to death was executed in the gas chamber. He had been convicted of first degree murder in Harnett County in September, 1947 and the conviction had been upheld the previous March 2 by the State Supreme Court. Governor Kerr Scott announced the previous day that he would not intervene to commute the sentence.
If the juxtaposition on the page of
the last two pieces seems a bit surreal
The N.C.A.A. Tournament began this night with two quarter-final games in the eight-team field. In the Western Regional in Kansas City, Oklahoma A & M, winners of the 1945 and 1946 Tournaments, nipped Wyoming, winners of the 1943 Tournament, 40-39, and Oregon State beat Arkansas, eventual winners of the 1994 Tournament, 56 to 38. The winners would meet Saturday night in the regional final.
The Eastern Regional semi-finals would take place Monday night in Madison Square Garden in New York, pitting Illinois against Yale and Kentucky, winners of the 1948 Tournament, against Villanova, the winners to meet Tuesday night. We are going to predict Kentucky to win 85-72 and Illinois, 71-67. Trust us. Those are safe bets.
In Madison Square Garden this night, the N.I.T. semi-finals in the original eight-team field took place, with the underdog University of San Francisco, eventual N.C.A.A. champions in 1955 and 1956, beating Bowling Green 49-39, and Loyola of Chicago, eventual 1963 double-overtime N.C.A.A. champions, beating Bradley 65-60. The two winners would meet for the championship Saturday night.
We offer these scores to bring you back down to earth after that raucous, ghostly broadcast from the Shamrock Hotel, that you will not think Armageddon imminent.
On the editorial page, "Another Big Stick" finds that Secretary of State Acheson had, in his nearly two months in the position, successfully arranged the North Atlantic Treaty and expanded the member nations beyond the initial seven signatories. It asserts that the State Department was due high commendation for the treaty, acting as a bridge between the democracies of the West.
The U.S. already had a practical commitment, via the U.N., the Marshall Plan, and the Truman Doctrine, to come to the aid of Western Europe in the event of Soviet aggression. The Treaty merely formalized this commitment but, in so doing, gave needed security to Western Europe and served as a deterrent to Russia and its satellites.
The Russians had no cause to be disturbed in fact by the wording of the treaty as it only assured mutual defense in the case of an armed attack on one of the member nations, then leaving it to the discretion of the individual countries as to whether force would be used in response.
The U.S. would arm Western Europe, such that its production could be devoted largely to domestic recovery. Until each nation could stand alone, it was the obligation of the U.S. to devote its strong capacity for production to maintenance of the peace.
But the Treaty also was subject to abuse by unscrupulous Western leaders, should they be elected in the future. It was, concludes the piece, a big stick which had to be carried softly.
"Main Street Institution" finds that life insurance was such an institution, as borne out by statistics, and that the industry had little to fear from the Truman Fair Deal. At a recent meeting of life insurance executives in New York, the president of the Ohio State Life Insurance Company had stated as much. This night, the Institute of Life Insurance was holding a meeting in Charlotte and, no doubt, would find the statistics cited in the piece supportive of that thesis.
"Variety Among Thieves" finds variety and imagination among robbers and thieves. It cites several examples, such as the man who sought to rob an establishment with a stocking over the top of his head, showing his face. When the store manager asked him why he wore the stocking, he promptly pulled it down over his face and demanded all of the store's money. In another case, a learned man had been visiting a hotel during summers for several years and everyone knew him. One night, however, he demanded all the money in the safe and told the clerk to cancel his reservations for the following year as he would not be back. He never came back.
The piece finds that concocting such devious schemes, no doubt, helped those incarcerated to pass the time after they were inevitably caught.
Drew Pearson tells of the wire-tapping scandal in New York being co-extensive with the powerful of the city. The notebook of the wire-tapping detective even contained the name of Bernard Baruch as a target. G.M. had sought the services of the law firm which hired the detective, to enable their dealerships to be tapped to determine whether cars were being sold on the black market.
The wealthy Clendenin Ryan had been seeking to clean up City Hall and became overzealous in hiring the detective to plant wiretaps. He may have been following the example of his old boss, the late Fiorello La Guardia, who had also used indiscriminate wiretapping, as had, notes Mr. Pearson, Thomas Dewey as District Attorney.
A bill was pending before Congress to permit more wiretapping and even allow intercepted phone calls to be used in court. He suggests that perhaps Congress would take a cue from the mess transpiring in New York and show some restraint.
Marquis Childs discusses the President's usual optimism even in the face of his Fair Deal program bogging down in the Senate.
He had developed a strong foreign policy over the course of the first four years, now culminating in the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty to bring Western Europe into an incipient union of states. Critics, however, remembered the failures, prime among which was China.
Domestically, the President downplayed the Southern revolt and believed that the party rift would be healed. Critics suggested that the President was supportive of civil rights for political reasons, but the truth was that the President had a genuine commitment to a principle of fairness and justice for everyone.
He had voiced disapproval of the Communist witch hunts conducted by the 80th Congress, and did so with a firm grasp of the problems caused in American history by the Alien and Sedition Acts after the Founding and the loyalty investigations following World War I.
During his current vacation in Key West, Fla., he had spent many hours with personal chief of staff Admiral William Leahy, who was preparing his memoirs. The President was hopeful that the Admiral would recount his time in the White House accurately, refuting some of the rumors and propaganda. "But the last, as he has come to know, is part of the hair shirt each President wears."
James Marlow discusses the rent control extension bill. It had passed the House and was pending in the Senate. The current measure expired at the end of March. The House version allowed for extension of controls for 15 months, whereas the President had sought two years.
The primary difference between the House version and that probably to be passed by the Senate was the House version's "home rule" provision which gave to the states and localities the right completely to junk Federal controls and either use their own regulations or not. The Senate found that provision worthless and would not go along. Only five states had their own rent control laws and three of those were set to expire within a few months.
The Senate version would allow for some graduated rent increase by landlords, to 15 percent more than the rent charged in mid-1947. The House version allowed for existing contractual rent increases per the prior law, but otherwise disallowed them. The House version allowed the housing expediter to raise rents to enable a reasonable return by the property owner, a provision to be eliminated in the Senate version.
Edwin Shanke, in the fifth of his five-part series of articles on Britain's new socialized medical and dental plan, describes the British Dental Association reaction to the dental part of the plan as unfavorable, claiming that it threatened to break down dental service in the country. One primary reason was that the dentists were revolting against a 50 percent cut in their fees payable under National Health for all services in excess of $1,600 per month.
With Britons' teeth in bad shape, waiting rooms were 50 percent more crowded than before the program's inception. And there was a serious shortage of dentists in the country. Some 8,000 dentists were needed to fill the gap.
Some dentists warned of a black market in dentistry as a result. Under the plan, dentists were earning an average net after-tax income of $7,600 annually, although some were working extra hours and earning as much as $40,000, while an estimated fifth of the profession earned more than $19,200 in gross annual income.
The BDA had advised its members not to join the plan, but 90 percent had signed up because they were making low income before the advent of the plan.
Dentists could perform ordinary preventive care without State oversight, but had to have approval to remove teeth and replace them, as well to perform other types of extensive treatment. A patient could contribute the cost of more extensive repair work.
There had been many complaints regarding the several weeks of delay required for approval of such work.
Part six of the series, obviously devoted to the death panels for grandma and grandpa, which always accompany Socialismization of anything, apparently was censored. But you will note that old people in Britain often die. It's obviously because they gave up their guns.
Framed Edition
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