The Charlotte News
Monday, August 8, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson, testifying before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, rejected the proposal of Senator Arthur Vandenberg for only stop-gap military aid to Western Europe until the following fiscal year. The Secretary again reiterated the emergent need to provide full aid quickly to the countries to afford reality to the deterrent aspect of the NATO pact, as the Western European nations were so weak militarily that they provided an open invitation to an aggressor. He rejected Senator Vandenberg's notion that it would be better to wait until conclusion of the NATO planning stage by member nations before providing full aid.
Secretary Acheson also rejected the idea of military aid for Nationalist China or the Far East as a whole. He said, however, that allowing the President, at his discretion, to use a small amount of the aid in the Far East would be helpful. A group of twelve Senators had introduced a bill to earmark for China 175 million dollars of the 1.45 billion dollar requested aid package.
The Senate Investigating subcommittee examining the influence peddling scheme anent Army contracts, heard from a furniture company head that James V. Hunt had told him he had influence to sell by virtue of his friendship with the President's military aide, Maj. General Harry Vaughan. The man's statement to the press had originally sparked the investigation the previous June. Mr. Hunt, while with the War Assets Administration, was assigned the task of selling billions of dollars worth of war surplus goods. The furniture company head had hired Mr. Hunt to obtain a Government contract for him. Mr. Hunt also had suggested that the furniture manufacturer should obtain the contract for the woodwork to be used in the White House renovation. Mr. Hunt had also claimed a close relationship with Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson. He bragged about various other contracts he had set up with the Government for private companies.
In Ecuador, the death toll from the earthquake the previous Friday in the Ambato region, south of Quito, had reached an estimated 4,600. Emergency airlift services were being sought from the U.S. Air Force and Navy in Panama. The President of Ecuador, Galo Plaza Lasso, described the scene of the damage as "Dante-esque". Four towns had virtually disappeared. The previous estimate of 500 dead in Ambato was said to be an underestimate. It was reported that some of the dead buried along the slopes of the erupting Tungurahua Volcano might never be known.
In Atlanta, Grand Wizard of the Klan, Dr. Samuel Green, issued an imperial edict forbidding Klansmen, under threat of banishment, from any longer wearing masks. He said that unlawful acts by some persons posing as Klansmen had resulted in "unjust criticism" of the Klan.
The edict came 36 hours after the one-armed Mayor of Iron City, Ga., C. L. Drake, and some of his friends, exchanged fire with a Klan motorcade of twelve to fifteen carloads of Klansmen riding through the town during the early morning hours of Sunday. The Mayor, several hours later, chased a Klan official, Bill Hendrix, 38 miles into Dothan, Alabama, reaching speeds of 100 mph, before having him jailed there on a warrant issued out of Iron City for assault with intent to commit murder. Dr. Green claimed that Klansmen were not involved in the incidents.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Dr. Robert Rutledge, having earlier been found guilty of second degree murder for killing his wife's paramour or seducer, depending on accounts at the trial, was sentenced by the court to 70 years in prison, of which he would serve, with good time credits, about 30 years. As previously indicated, after the conviction and sentence would be upheld on appeal, Dr. Rutledge would kill himself in 1951 while still free on his appellate bond.
In Crystal Beach, Fla., armed bands of vigilantes sought the killer of a 70-year old man, stabbed, shot, and mauled to death the previous day. The man's wife was also critically wounded, and a grocer and his wife and child were wounded when they came to the house to see the couple. The motive for the crime appeared to be burglary, as the house had been ransacked.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., a two-year old girl was given a better than even chance to live following surgery to remove a large tumor from her chest the previous week. The size of a man's hand, the tumor was described by doctors as the largest of its kind they had ever seen. The tumor developed from a condition called "the included twin", the cause of which remained a mystery. Had there been normal prenatal development, there would have been a twin at birth rather than the tumor. The tumor had caused the collapse of the child's right lung, but after surgery it had reinflated.
In Charlotte, speakers to 300 members of the North Carolina Federation of Labor praised President Truman and North Carolina Governor Kerr Scott for their efforts on behalf of labor interests and condemned the Taft-Hartley law. Dixiecrats, who had supported Taft-Hartley, were labeled "Republicans in disguise". Governor Scott was lauded for his appointment of pro-labor Senator Frank Graham to the seat vacated in March at the death of new Senator J. Melville Broughton. The speakers also criticized the 1949 North Carolina General Assembly as "obstructionist". Governor Scott was expected to address the members during the afternoon.
Also in Charlotte, the 21-year old mother of the baby girl who had been given to a stranger on the street on Saturday had been located by the police. She said that she had no way to care for the infant and did not want the baby back. Welfare Department superintendent Wallace Kuralt said that the five-month old child would be turned over to the welfare office in Gaston County, where the mother formerly resided. The Department sought court approval for psychological evaluation of the mother, being held in custody without charges. She said that she had been walking the streets previously and had no place to live.
Noted operatic baritone Alicante Emilio Sagi-Barba
On the editorial page, "Good Riddance" finds Federal aid to education dead for the present session of Congress, helped toward that end considerably by the debate spawned by Francis Cardinal Spellman, opposed to the Barden substitute measure in the House which would have prevented public funds to transportation, health services and the like for all schools, denying therefore all public funding to private and parochial schools.
The crisis in education had come out of the wartime lull in school construction and the postwar inflation and scarcity of building materials in the initial postwar years. But, it offers, education remained a state and local responsibility.
It continues to oppose Federal aid as it would eventually result in Federal control of education—though the bills in issue expressly stated otherwise. The Federal money came from the states in one way or another and so Federal aid would do nothing except create a new bureaucracy. With the Federal Government already operating at a deficit, it lacked the money to embark on this new social welfare program.
Thus, it finds it no loss
The piece neglects completely the fundamental rationale for Federal aid, to share responsibilities for the poorer states and school districts of the country, unable to provide the revenue base for adequate schools.
Although there would be passed in 1950 some targeted Federal aid to education in specific areas, no general aid to education bill would come until 1965.
"The Agile Mr. McGrath" tells of the editors enjoying the lingual gymnastics employed by Capital Comment, produced for newspapers and Democrats by the Democratic Party regarding politics in Washington. DNC chairman Senator J. Howard McGrath had gone to great lengths to explain away certain problems, remindful of the Kremlin's propaganda efforts.
Recently, he was confounded by the House Democrats who had opposed the Brannan agriculture plan, which was to replace the sliding 30-90 percent parity program passed by the previous GOP Congress and opposed by farmers. The House re-enacted the old 90 percent flat parity system instead. Nevertheless, Senator McGrath presented it as a Democratic victory for American farmers, without mention of the Brannan plan, meant to keep farm prices on perishable produce high while also giving true prices to the American consumer, irrespective of support prices.
"Facts and Figures" finds that, according to a piece on the page from State Magazine, the full story was not being told by Governor Kerr Scott in advocating faster extension of electrical and phone services to rural areas by the providers. The Governor's figures did not take into account the lack of ability to pay for telephone service and lack of desire by some for electrical services. Thus, the utilities were not so far behind in providing services as the Governor had suggested.
"Sweltering Officers" advocates provision of summer uniforms for the police officers of Charlotte, constrained to wear their winter garb, sans coats. Roanoke Rapids, N.C., had provided its officers with summer substitutes for the following summer. It thinks Charlotte ought keep pace with the fashion trend thus set, including gray sun helmets.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Step-Mama Now", finds that with the winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary in one-party Virginia, John Battle, originally of New Bern, N.C., not one of the principal three elected officials in the state were natives. Both Senators Harry F. Byrd and Willis Robertson, father of evangelist Pat Robertson, had been born in Martinsburg, W. Va. (It should be noted that subsequent West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, no relation to Harry Byrd and his famous brother, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, was born in North Wilkesboro, N.C.)
The piece remarks that the state which bragged that it was the "Mother of Presidents" could no longer even produce native sons for its own major political offices, leading someone to remark that the state had not been pregnant for 50 years—or at least 29 years, since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, born in Staunton, Va., albeit growing up in Georgia and South Carolina before being educated as an undergraduate at Davidson College near Charlotte and at Princeton, eventually becoming Governor of New Jersey after his stint as a professor and president of Princeton.
It might be said therefore that in that instance, Virginia was only a little pregnant.
A piece from State Magazine discusses Governor Scott's program with respect to the utilities, urging the power companies and telephone companies to expand services at a more accelerated rate in rural North Carolina. The piece looks at the telephone and electric companies' perspective on the subject, finds that electrification of rural areas in the state led the nation save for Texas, that only 12.6 percent of farm homes had not been provided with access to electrical lines, not taking into account the fact that 8.3 percent of the dwellings were unoccupied, even if 20 percent of the farms to which access was supplied had not yet chosen to hook up to the lines, leaving 68.3 percent actually electrified.
Providing the telephone lines was an expensive proposition for the 55 companies operating within the state and, moreover, there was a disconnect between the number of farmers able to afford telephone service and the cost to the companies in providing it. There was a long waiting list for service and the companies were trying to provide it as fast as available equipment and costs would allow.
Drew Pearson discusses the Senate Investigating subcommittee's probe opening this date regarding Maj. General Harry Vaughan and John Maragon, regarding their role in influence-peddling in Army contracts. He looks back to their roles in determining the Truman Doctrine for military aid to Greece, enunciated in March, 1947. Mr. Pearson finds Mr. Maragon's influence on White House policy from the position of a hanger-on to be reminiscent of the days of the Harding Administration.
He recounts his shady past, yet being ingratiated to the Truman White House and even attending the Potsdam Conference in July, 1945. He was a good friend to General Vaughan and exerted considerable influence over him, and in turn, General Vaughan was the chief military aide to the President.
Mr. Maragon had at least indirect influence on the development of the Truman Doctrine, as he, with the help of General Vaughan, steered two Greek callers to the White House who were highly influential in making the case for the aid, Archbishop Athenagoras and Rev. Thomas Daniel of the Greek Orthodox Church, the latter of whom had a shady past, with several serious brushes with the law.
Mr. Maragon wound up assigned by the White House to be an observer in the Greek elections, though eventually was fired from the post by special envoy Henry Grady following a row.
Mr. Pearson finds that Greek Embassy officials in Washington were properly worried that the Senate investigators would begin to look at the operations of Mr. Maragon with regard to Greece.
James Marlow finds American policy toward China being "up a tree" with the Communist takeover. The release of the State Department white paper on American relations with China had done little to correct that perception. It said that the Nationalists under Chiang were corrupt and incompetent, that Chiang had been given American aid with which to improve the situation but had failed to do so. Thus, the Government was through helping Chiang, but would give aid if China demonstrated a true democratic will toward independence. In the meantime, the U.S. would seek to cultivate recognition in the people of China that the Communists were mere puppets of Moscow, not the agents of independence as they represented themselves.
Mr. Marlow finds the report and the statements of Secretary of State Acheson regarding it to omit, however, how that policy would be achieved to provide the Chinese people with true independence.
Stewart Alsop, in New Delhi, tells of witnessing a demonstration of an American drill which provided water to the parched landscape before arrival of the monsoon season, welcomed with obsequies by the peasants as a miracle in man-made irrigation, enabling the production of two or three crops annually rather than just one. But it would still not relieve the vast amount of hunger present on the subcontinent.
The drills were expensive and there were less than a dozen in the country. India did not have the dollars to afford more, a problem in dollar deficiency repeated throughout the non-Soviet world. Meanwhile, India suffered, as did China, with too many people and too little food to feed them. The deficit in productivity of the land was about ten percent. That difference made India far more ripe for Communist infiltration than if the population were properly fed.
The President's new program to aid underdeveloped countries, to be performed with the cooperation of the U.N., could go a long way toward helping India resolve this problem but the Congress was in no mood to spend the money for the program, in the case of India, alone, running to hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Indian Government had proposed turning over the surplus American wheat to India for free or at a nominal price, to be used to cover its deficit in food production until it could become self-sufficient.
British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin had recently complained that the American farm subsidy program, approved generally by both major U.S. political parties, complicated the dollar supply by keeping American food prices high such that foreign countries could afford to buy less.
The subsidies meant that wheat would be piling up, and thus the Indian suggestion provided a plausible answer as to what to do with it, rather than letting it rot in Government warehouses. The State Department was therefore considering the proposal.
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