The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 13, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Maj. General Harry Vaughan, the President's military aide, said that the home freezers sent to him and, through him, to other Washington officials, were just gifts from two old friends, Harry Hoffman and David Bennett, nothing improper. General Vaughan had then given the freezers to his friends, including First Lady Bess Truman, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder, James K. Vardaman, member of the Federal Reserve Board and former Naval aide to the President, and Matthew Connelly, a Presidential secretary. General Vaughan said that the recipients, as far as he knew, were not familiar with either Mr. Bennett or Mr. Hoffman.
The story had surfaced the previous day out of hearings before the Senate Investigating subcommittee examining influence-peddling in procurement of Army contracts. The freezers were provided by a perfume company, of which Mr. Bennett was president, the subject of part of the subcommittee's investigation.
Subcommittee counsel, William P. Rogers, future Attorney General and Secretary of State, said that a subpoena had been issued for Mr. Hoffman to appear.
In Frankfurt, Germany, leaflets were being circulated, urging citizens to boycott the election the following day for the West German federal parliament, the first such federal election since 1933 when Hitler seized power. Most of the pamphlets were signed by small, independent groups, deemed of little consequence.
In Strasbourg, France, the newly created Council of Europe's assembly rejected Ireland's attempt to call up the Irish partition problem for debate. Most of the British delegates had strongly opposed the proposal.
Republican Senators Kenneth Wherry and Wayne Morse still wanted General MacArthur to return to the U.S. to testify regarding the proposed 1.45 billion dollar foreign military aid bill, despite his citing a too busy schedule in Japan to make the trip.
General Lawton Collins, as anticipated, was named by the President to succeed General Omar Bradley, named the previous day as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to become chief of staff of the Army.
Senators, such as Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Brien McMahon, and Republican Chan Gurney, generally approved of swapping military supplies with Canada, though some lawmakers, as Senators Styles Bridges, Burnet Maybank, and Warren Magnuson, expressed reservations.
The Senate stepped up action on two Government reorganization plans, following exhortation the previous day by the President to do so. One plan was to set up a Department of Welfare and the other was to restore powers to the Labor Department stripped away during the war. Both proposals had received negative recommendations from the Expenditures Committee.
In Kanhsien, China, 215 miles northeast of Canton, Chinese Nationalist troops were said to be holding against 50,000 to 60,000 Communist troops. In southeast China, heavy fighting was reported as Communists sought to isolate the port of Foochow, opposite Formosa, with the heaviest fighting at Yungtai, 30 miles southwest of Foochow.
In Kozane, Greece, some 8,000 Communist-led guerrillas were reported the previous night to be fleeing into Albania as Government troops hit them in their Vitzi mountain stronghold, at the Greek border with Albania and Yugoslavia.
In Birmingham, Ala., bombs were hurled from a speeding car, occupied by five or six unmasked white men, at the homes of two black ministers, and 18 persons therein narrowly escaped injury. The two ministers were embroiled in a zoning law controversy regarding the black-white segregated zones of the city, as their homes were located in a white-only zone.
One of the men was standing on the running board of the automobile when he tossed the explosive devices. Witnesses were unable to provide further description of the men or the car. The car had been seen by others cruising the neighborhood the previous night. Several shots reportedly were fired at the fleeing car but it was not clear that any of them struck the target.
The editor of the Birmingham Age-Herald, Harry C. Frye, said that the explosions had awakened him, four miles distant.
On March 24, three unoccupied houses purchased by black residents had been dynamited a half block from the scene of the two bombings. Two other black citizens who moved into the section received anonymous threats.
In San Francisco, in the treason trial of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, "Tokyo Rose", the Government opposed a defense motion to dismiss for failure to prove its case after the close of the Government's case-in-chief. The case had gone on for 26 days with 46 witnesses having been presented. The Federal court had not yet ruled on the motion.
In Elko, Nev., former President Herbert Hoover, just turned 75, was stricken with an internal disorder while on a train trip via the City of San Francisco to New York. After examination, he was allowed to proceed to Ogden, Utah, where, after further examination, he was released to continue to New York. The former President said that he believed that he was having a gall bladder attack, a recurrence of previous such attacks.
Well, had you a little more gall back there in 1929 and onward, through 1932...
In Chicago, jailers ripped $7,400 in $100 bills from the underwear of a 73-year old Lothario, jailed for swindling two widows of their savings, totaling about $20,000. Jailers became suspicious for the fact of his seemingly endless supply of readily available cash, in violation of jail rules that prisoners were limited to $8 each at any one time. He was quoted as telling police at his arrest that he had swindled millions from widows over the course of a half century.
In Kinston, N.C., a former employee of the Commercial National Bank, a 24-year old native of Pennsylvania, was being held on suspicion of embezzlement occurring over a period of two years, totaling about $34,000. The young man had settled in Kinston after the war, been a department store Santa Claus at Christmas, and was generally well liked.
Well, he should have provided last Christmas the 13-year old boy from West Virginia with $60 for his bicycle so that he would not have shot and killed his father the previous day. What kind of Santa were you?
He told FBI agents that he had no money left because he had lost it gambling.
Crime does not pay.
In Charlotte, the Reverend Fletcher Nelson, pastor of Dilworth Methodist Church, was elected to be the president of Lees-McRae College at Banner Elk.
The pastor of the First Methodist Church in Charlotte, Dr. Clovis G. Chappell, would soon retire after serving in churches as a pastor for 32 years, coming to Charlotte four years earlier. He had previously been pastor at churches in Houston, Birmingham, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Jackson, Miss., Memphis, and Washington, D.C., among other places. He was author of 26 books on religion, some of which are listed. He had received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Duke University.
In Dover, England, 17 year old Shirley May France reported completion of her training for her swim across the English Channel, perhaps coated only in grease. The Air Ministry in England reported that it would be a good weekend on the Straits of Dover for the swim, with a light sea and light, variable winds. She planned to swim from Cap Gris Nez to Dover. She had prepared by swimming three hours against the tides without respite.
If she makes it some of these days, she will probably change her name.
On the editorial page, "Hoover, the Humorist" finds it better to have a "Laughing Boy" in the White House than Calvin Coolidge, but also wonders at the quality of the humor surrounding the President emanating from such personages as George Allen, former court jester, replaced by Maj. General Harry Vaughan, billiard-pumper Mon Walgren, party-thrower Perle Mesta, and back-slapper Tom Clark.
Now came former President Hoover delighting the President with his statement in Palo Alto recently that the country was drifting toward collectivism, which the President, when asked about it by the press, had found funny.
The piece thinks that it was no laughing matter.
And it goes on, saying that while Mr. Truman got his joke, the end of it had not been reached.
The comment of Mr. Hoover ranks with "two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage", or the reverse of that, whichever it was, in being quite unintendedly risible in its effect, given the results.
The piece waxes far too serious, as is too often the case these days.
"$10 for 26 Years" tells of James Montgomery of Waukegan, Ill., a black man, having just been set free by a Federal judge after serving 26 years of a life sentence for rape of a 62-year old itinerant saleslady, since committed to a mental institution, the granting of the habeas corpus petition being based on newly discovered evidence suppressed by the prosecution at trial in 1924. The prosecution had not revealed that a doctor had found that the woman had not been raped, that the prosecutor had threatened retaliation by the Klan should any defense be presented, that the issue at trial was racial subjugation, not guilt or innocence of the accused, and that the testimony of the prosecutrix had been false, a fact known to the prosecutor at the time. The chief of police had also told the defendant that if he sought liberty on bond, they would turn him over to the Klan, of which the chief bragged of being a member.
The defendant was provided $10 by the State when released, the standard fee to a released prisoner. The piece finds such a skimption to underscore the woeful inadequacy of any amount paid for unfair arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, and loss of personal dignity and respect.
"Humanitarian Measure" finds fault with Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada for not allowing the McGrath-Neely displaced persons bill, designed to replace the narrow bill passed by the previous GOP Congress which had been discriminatory to Jews and Catholics, to reach the floor of the Senate for a vote. He apparently objected to the non-discrimination provision in the new bill, its easing of immigration against existing quotas, and its increasing the number of such persons allowed to immigrate.
The piece supports Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas in saying that it was a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "They Asked For It..." wonders whether the State Utilities Commission would see to it that electricity rates being charged by Duke Power would be reduced commensurate with the hike in the bus fares of Charlotte, Greensboro, and six other towns from a nickel to a dime for the fact that the Commission had allowed the increase on the rationale that Duke had been losing money on bus transportation and passing the loss on to the consumers of electricity in the places served by the company.
Neal Stanford, in a piece from the Christian Science Monitor, considers the State Department "white paper" on China, finds that an appendix thereto presented a revealing cable from Ambassador Stuart to Secretary of State Marshall a year earlier, recommending against formation of a coalition government between the Communists and Nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek for the fact that the Communists, traditionally, would be able, in the end, to take over such a coalition by political means, as in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans. He concludes that the view had shown that the U.S. had come to realize, in the course of two years, "the ideological facts of international life."
Robert S. Allen, substituting for vacationing Drew Pearson, pays tribute to Paul Strachan, "tall, deaf, and impassioned" founder of National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. He had conceived it while in Johns Hopkins Hospital in September, 1940. He fought for its Congressional approval for five years. Since its founding, it had allowed more than a half million handicapped men and women to obtain employment. Within a few weeks, the NEPHW drive would start.
Mr. Allen explains Mr. Strachan's motivation for founding the organization, from his experience as someone with 85 percent disability and seeing disabled veterans of World War I tossed on the "scrap pile", unable to work, though desirous of doing so.
He was now seeking a national program for rehabilitation and training of the physically handicapped, a bill for which was pending in Congress, though encountering bureaucratic resistance. Mr. Strachan nevertheless persisted.
Mr. Strachan had done many things in his past, including being a traveling companion to Jack London. Barred from World War I because of his disability, he helped to set up the Bureau of War Risk Insurance and, from there, became active in vocational training. He authored and got passed by Congress the Federal Vocational Training Act.
Then, an automobile accident severely disabled him in 1940, after which time he conceptualized and pushed for establishment of NEPHW.
His assistant, Mildred Scott, was also handicapped, and so Mr. Allen pays tribute to both.
Mr. Allen had lost an arm during his military service in the war.
Freshman Representative John Walsh of Indiana, 36, met the President and confessed to being nervous, to which the President said he had felt the same while in the Senate whenever he met with FDR. He could not understand, however, how anyone could feel nervous about him.
James Marlow tells of the House having passed the increase in the minimum wage law, from 40 to 75 cents, albeit with coverage dropped on an estimated one million workers presently covered under the original law. Now it was up to the Senate to pass its bill, which provided better coverage than the House version.
He presents the background for the Wages and Hours Act, originally passed in 1938, applying only to businesses transacting in interstate commerce, exempting many of those. The original minimum wage was 25 cents per hour, raised by the original bill automatically to 30 cents in 1939 and to 40 cents in 1945.
Of the 22.6 million covered workers in 1949, only about 1.5 million earned less than 75 cents.
The House bill changed the ambit of coverage from workers "necessary" to the production of goods to "indispensable" workers, provoking, if passed, inevitable litigation as to the definition of the latter term. Would it, he asks, cover, for instance, night watchmen and window washers? presently regarded as "necessary" workers.
Robert C. Ruark tells of how to catch a walrus in Antarctica, waiting at the walrus's blow-hole in the ice floe.
Everybody's got one—except the perfect ones with their consequentially onerous load, even if some of it was stolen from others.
Well, he continues, when the walrus
came from out the hole, one would hand him a Popsicle
He finds that fishing through the ice for a walrus was not so much fun and just as chilly. He prefers old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice cream.
Pneumonia was not so bad now that penicillin was on the scene.
Frostbite was a constant delight, enabling one to wallow in the snow to be rid of it.
During the war, in the North Atlantic, it had been so cold on deck that whiskers froze and guns had to be thawed with a blowtorch. It was wonderful, even with the submarines.
Water in a mountain lake where he once fished was so cold that it pressed on the hipboots until the feet were numb.
The
coldest he had ever been was in Chicago in 1937
Camphor was cool and so was the icy towel which the barber used to wrap one's face.
The polar bear was the prettiest of animals and the Eskimo, one of nature's noblemen.
A penguin was a "cute little beastie" and Admiral Richard Byrd, one of the greatest heroes. Rasmussen and Peary were also good explorers.
The icebox was man's greatest invention.
Sonja Henie was a great performer because of her performance medium.
He concludes: "This essay has been brought you as a public service, by a man who just melted into a little pool on the rug."
The
"Better English" answers could have maybe were: "She
never even."; i-ref-u
A Quote of the Day: "[State] Sen. Lee B. Weathers [Editor of the Shelby Daily Star and president of WOHS radio station] says Tom Dixon did not hate, but loved Negroes. Certainly he did. By writing novels and plays which made others hate Negroes, Mr. Dixon was able to make himself a pile of money which nobody hates." —Greensboro Daily News
The latest average of ten poll results, incidentally, for the past two weeks in 2016, back to the Fox News poll of July 31-August 2, is now 8.3 in favor of former Secretary of State Clinton, without the Monmouth University poll of August 8, showing Secretary Clinton with a 13 point lead. The average is 8.8, inclusive of the Monmouth poll. Including the three non-updated polls taken just before that period, from July 29-31, the average of fourteen polls is 8.4, with the Monmouth poll included. The latter result agrees with the average compiled by Huffpost Pollster. (Say that fast four times running and see if you do not wind up saying "upholsterer" at least once. But better than the mantra of the Republican nominee's campaign: "We paint houses.")
The average is not merely 6.8, as RCP has it, artificially manipulating the result by arbitrarily reducing the number of polls averaged from ten to six, initiated Thursday, substantially favoring thereby the Republican nominee. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times-USC static survey of the same 3,000 people per week, surveyed at 400 per day, shows now Secretary Clinton with a widening lead at 4.7, a 7-day average available for the last 24 hours but not changed on the RCP list as of midnight Sunday, still showing a 4 point lead based on the 7-day average of 3.5 registered Friday. Gone on vacation, RCP? It is not real clear at this point.
While not changing the above overall average of the polls, two hours subsequent to the above, we note, the LA Times-USC survey published its Monday results, showing Secretary Clinton's lead diminished to 3.6. But, the point remains that RCP did not register a "5" yesterday, as would be consistent with their ordinary daily update, quick to post, for instance, the one day 7 point lead for the Republican nominee in this same survey, registered the third day of the Democratic convention, in steady decline and incline the other way since that time. Again, we stress that this survey only shows change within the set sample, rather than polling of a new random sample each time, as do the standard polls. It also weights the stated preference based on how certain the respondents are that they will vote as they have stated. Such a methodology, insofar as it would predict the outcome, besides being entirely dependent on the representative nature of the original sample, obviously showing a distinct disparity when poised against the results of the other polls, tends toward becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Among the participants less committed at the start to either candidate, there is likely a tendency, knowing that they will be polled weekly, not just once, to state a preference deliberately to influence results and external perceptions along the way in response to particular news stories, rather than providing an honest response disclosing the candidate for whom they intend to vote and the certitude of that decision. It is more likely that an honest response will be provided by one-time respondents who know that they will not have another chance to state their preference. When objectively viewed, therefore, this survey methodology devolves to little more than nonsense, showing, if anything, only a trend through time since July 10, not the actual poll numbers on any given day.
Framed Edition
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