The Charlotte News

Tuesday, March 29, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Italy notified the United States that it was willing to join NATO, bringing to ten the number of nations formally accepting membership. Portugal and Iceland had also been invited to join, but had not yet responded.

Italy was negotiating with Secretary of State Acheson regarding the status of the three former Italian colonies in Africa, Eritrea, Tripolitania and Somaliland. Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk had stated the day before that the U.S. favored return of Somaliland to Italy under a trusteeship but had not yet determined its policy regarding the other two colonies. Italy was seeking trusteeships for all three.

The State Department blocked a planned tour of American cities by delegates of Russia and its satellites attending the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions conference in New York. They had been admitted to the country only for attendance of the controversial conference, which the State Department believed was for the purpose of spreading Communist propaganda against the U.S.

The Senate approved the reconciled rent control measure, detailed the previous day, and it now went before the House where it was expected to pass.

Frank Porter Graham, formerly the president of UNC, was sworn in as North Carolina's new Senator in Washington, taking the seat of deceased J. Melville Broughton. There was no opposition to his being seated. A large contingent of prominent North Carolinians were on hand to witness the ceremony. He was warmly welcomed by his fellow Senators, including several Southern Democrats, and Republicans George Aiken of Vermont and Wayne Morse of Oregon, the latter having served with Dr. Graham on the War Labor Board during the war. Dr. Graham said that he intended to run in 1950 for the remainder of the Senatorial term, which ran through 1955.

Louis Johnson, just sworn in the previous day as Secretary of Defense, ordered the Army, Navy, and Air Force to move their offices to the Pentagon, in an effort finally to merge them, per the legislation passed in mid-1947. The branches were already under orders to move but the orders allowed two and a half years for the process. Mr. Johnson ordered that the move be completed forthwith. He intended to abolish many of the 800 boards set up by the three branches. He was planning shortly to meet with General Eisenhower, temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Howard Blakeslee, Associated Press science editor, reports of one of two cyclotrons in the world, producing man-made cosmic rays, being at the University of Rochester in New York, the other located at the University of California at Berkeley. He describes the large machine, producing 250 million electronvolts, emitting circuits of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light, released then in slingshot fashion, knocking loose a particle of matter called a meson, an unknown entity to physicists, the same particles, along with protons, which came from an unknown source to earth and were called cosmic rays. Scientists posited that the mesons were fragments of energy binding the cores of nuclei of atoms so tightly that their splitting produced atomic energy, changed temporarily and momentarily into solid matter.

Buying on the New York stock exchange occurred at one of the fastest rates of the previous year, the result of news that more credit could be used in securities trading, with the Federal Reserve Board ruling that margin buying could be effected on 50 percent cash rather than the previous 75 percent. Stock prices rose from a few cents to around $2 per share. Buying was so brisk that the ticker tape was unable to maintain the pace.

In Detroit, Kaiser-Frazer cut its automobile prices for the second time in a month, this cut ranging from $198 to $333, the largest cuts of any manufacturer since the end of the war.

You better go buy yourself one of those Kaisers before they sell out.

Other cuts in prices of consumer goods were also reported, including Westinghouse, Willard Storage Battery, National Dairy Products Co., and Borden Co.

In Paola, Kans., the body of dead man and his two starving sisters were discovered in a farmhouse cluttered with ceiling high piles of food and clothing, through which only narrow passageways existed. The sisters were found in a bed underneath a large pile of bedclothes. They were expected to survive. The brother had been dead for about ten days.

In New York, the father of the defendant accused of taking documents from her job at the Justice Department and providing them to a Russian agent, an employee of the U.N. Secretariat, died at age 69. He had been known as the "Santa Claus of the Adirondacks" for his aid to needy children. An invalid, the arrest of his daughter, to whom he was close, had hit him hard.

Emery Wister of The News tells of a pyramid scheme, which had started on the West Coast, having spread to Charlotte, fueled by the dream of something for nothing. People invested $2 with the hope of having it mushroom to $2,000 or more. It was simply the functional equivalent of a chain letter. The Post Office banned chained letters, but this scheme did not utilize the mails, only word of mouth. The local police chief, however, said that it amounted to an illegal lottery and anyone involved in it was committing a misdemeanor. Reports were received that several City officials were participants.

Caveat sucker.

In Amarillo, Tex., two fleeing thieves who had robbed a woman sitting in a railway station, left behind a pair of old brown shoes, one of the thieves having stepped out of his, prompting pursuing police to assert that he must have done so to throw them off the scent.

On the editorial page, "Next Step—Mediterranean Pact?" tells of observers urging creation of Mediterranean and Pacific pacts to supplement NATO.