The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 10, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.S., Canada, and Britain, meeting in conference on the British financial crisis, issued a report which encouraged the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank to make loans in sterling bloc countries. It also recommended removal of obstructions to flow of private capital abroad. The conference was set to end on Monday.
The President asked the steel industry and the Steelworkers Union to agree to a truce for ten more days to avoid the start of a scheduled strike the following Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. Both sides had agreed to a 60-day moratorium beginning July 16. The President's fact-finding board had just submitted to him its lengthy report and the President wanted the additional time so that the parties could consider the report and seek a compromise. It was reported that the secret findings recommended that no wage increase be provided but that ten cents per hour in pension and insurance benefits be awarded. The union was seeking a package increase equal to 30 cents per hour in wages and benefits.
In Berlin, it was reported that a new German Air Force of fighters and bombers was being built in the Eastern zone, a claim that if true constituted a violation of the four-power Potsdam agreement of July, 1945, requiring disarmament of Germany.
In Budapest, the Hungarian Government accused eight former high-ranking Communists of treason and trying to overthrow the Government with the armed aid of Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia. Their trial would begin the following week.
In York, Maine, Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge, 55, had taken a turn for the worse this date, again lapsing into a coma. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage the previous week and his left side was paralyzed. Justice Rutledge, appointed to the Court by FDR in early 1943 to replace James Byrnes who had served only a year and left the Court at the request of the President to join the Administration to direct war mobilization, would die later this date, the second death on the Court in less than two months, Justice Frank Murphy having died the previous July 19 of a heart attack. Justice Rutledge was considered a solid liberal on the Court who had usually voted with Justice Murphy.
Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray restored Maj. General Herman Feldman to his post as Quartermaster General and granted the requested retirement of Maj. General Alden Waitt, both having been suspended pending the outcome of the Senate investigation into their behavior regarding influence peddling in obtaining Government contracts. Secretary Gray praised their military service generally but criticized both for having become involved in the activities investigated by the Senate. He said that he found no evidence of dishonesty or other conduct meriting court martial of General Waitt but that it would be in the best interests of the service for him not to continue his current duties as chief of the Chemical Corps. He found that General Feldman had committed errors of judgment which the Secretary did not condone but was convinced that he would not repeat them.
In Washington, a Navy court martial sentenced to four months in the brig the sailor who claimed to have been shanghaied in July, 1947 into the French Foreign Legion and forced to fight the Vietnamese in Indo-China, the tribunal finding him guilty of unauthorized leave, but finding inadequate proof of desertion. After serving his sentence, he would receive a bad conduct discharge.
Industrial production in the country rose the previous month for the first time since October, 1948, increasing seven points to 169, the base line of 100 being the average production during the period 1935-39.
In Chicago, a woman told police that she and a male companion had been abducted by a man with a gun and forced to drive around for 45 minutes before the gunman shot and killed her companion. The woman was questioned and ordered held pending a coroner's inquest.
In Grundy, Va., a 19-year old boy killed his father with a pistol, firing six times after his father had slapped his mother. The boy was charged with murder.
Guns are wonderful. They keep your family safe.
In Petersburg, W. Va., five occupants of a crowded car were killed when it collided head-on with a coal truck on a mountain road. The driver of the truck suffered only minor injuries.
In Philadelphia, a five-year old girl who had disappeared from Trenton, N.J., the previous day was found alive and well. A man who was a hairbrush salesman was being held for kidnaping her in his car and keeping her through the night.
Howard Blakeslee, Associated Press science editor, tells of polio victims who had recovered from the disease, even if crippled, showing no signs of mental damage and only slight and transitory personality changes, two-thirds exhibiting signs of increased restlessness, irritability, impulsive behavior and early fatigue, those characteristics dissipating, however, in the course of two years and not being substantially higher in any event than observed in children generally of the same age group as those studied. The findings were based on a study conducted over a period of several years by Dr. Dale Harris at the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota.
In Atlantic City, the Miss America pageant was set to conclude this evening after three days. Fifteen of the 52 contestants would compete in the final round of competition.
When's the mud wrestling start?
In Berkeley, California, two boys, ages 8 and 10, were breaking a trail through dense shrubbery on a hillside lot near their homes when they discovered boxes containing 15,000 pieces of bubblegum. Brand and condition are not provided.
You better give us some of that bubblegum or we're going to throw you down the hill.
On the editorial page, "Road Commission's Job" discusses the need for the new State Municipal Roads Commission to determine a fair formula for sharing highway funds for both the State-maintained secondary rural roads and the roads of the towns and cities. It compliments the Commission's efforts thus far.
"Study in Contrast" comments on the fact that Howard Unruh, who had killed thirteen people with a German Luger in Camden, N.J., the previous Tuesday, the worst act of mass violence to that time in U.S. history, had been inextricably linked in the reportage to his having been an Army veteran who served in the war. He had become familiar with firearms through his Army training. He had combat experience and so no longer had the inhibitory repugnance to killing which most had instilled in them from a young age. It ventures that he likely would not have acted as he did had he not served in the war.
It contrast, however, were the actions of another war veteran, Willie Webb, who had saved the life of a small boy who had been sucked into a local storm drain and was washed out unconscious after traversing, submerged, through 400 yards of pipe. Mr. Webb, who had been working on the drain, began immediately administering artificial respiration, a skill he had learned while in the service.
It concludes that service in the military taught many things, how to kill and how to save lives. Which skill one used in civilian life depended on many more things than prior service in the military.
"Richard Strauss" laments the passing of the composer who had died two days earlier. He
had achieved both renown and fortune during his lifetime, unlike many
of his predecessor composers of the era prior to radio and the phonograph. His
compositions ranged from "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks"
Because he held official positions under both Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, he had been accused of mixing politics with music. But he had broken with the Nazis in 1935 and a denazification court had cleared him the previous year of any taint.
It suggests that his name would live
as long as people listened to music
Dick Young of The News, in the third of a series of four articles on State Government, again discusses the proposal for a merit system for hiring and promotion to afford job security to the bulk of State employees who were career personnel having nothing to do with transitory politics, to make them immune from political firing by the Governor, who wielded absolute power in this regard by dint of his control of the state purse strings.
He supplies a list of the Personnel Department's specific tasks as provided by the Legislature.
A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Pooh Bah McCarran", discusses the power wielded by Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the ERP watchdog committee, and an important Appropriations subcommittee. He also maintained close ties to other committees.
He had frustrated the displaced persons legislation to replace the discriminatory bill passed by the previous GOP Congress but had championed admission of foreign sheepherders to benefit Nevada. He personally had sponsored the ERP amendment to include Franco's Spain as a recipient of aid. He had also sought to provide more money to Nationalist China despite their losing effort to the Communists and consistent reports of internal corruption and incompetence. It points out other dubious actions of the Senator, such as accusing U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie of loading the U.N. deliberately with Communist spies, and his releasing the names of persons smeared by former Communist Elizabeth Bentley—a principal accuser, along with Whittaker Chambers, in the HUAC and Senate Investigating Committee inquiries of the summer and fall of 1948 regarding allegations of Communist cells within the Government.
It suggests that other Senators were tired of his domineering but were afraid to offend him. Seventeen years a Senator, he maintained his power through the seniority system. The piece urges adoption of a more sensible procedure for allocating committee posts.
Drew Pearson tells of the compromise of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson's decision to halt Congressional junket trips aboard military aircraft after Senator Elmer Thomas of Utah had complained and threatened an investigation of the Administration's use of military planes. Undersecretary of Defense Steve Early had explained to Senator Thomas that Mr. Johnson had not seen the letter to the Senator denying the reqested use for a Congressional junket, that it was issued by a subordinate and that henceforth when members of Congress stated that the reason for requesting a military plane was official business, it would be accepted at face value. The reason Secretary Johnson had given in was that there was quite a bit of use of military planes to transport members of the Administration on purely private business. Secretary Johnson himself used such a plane to travel to and from his home in West Virginia each weekend. So Senator Thomas and the Defense Department finally agreed that it was best to keep the whole matter quiet.
Mr. Pearson proceeds to tell of numerous cases of use of military planes for private use, a practice started by Patrick Hurley when he had been Secretary of War under President Hoover.
Inadvertently, the FBI had caused problems for Senator Thomas in his home state because they had interviewed the Republican chairman who then told the story that the FBI was investigating the Senator, a Democrat. In fact, he was being routinely investigated as a delegate to represent the U.S. at an international conference in Geneva.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the Council of Economic Advisers' assessment of the economy as cautiously optimistic given that production was again beginning to rise after being in decline since the start of the year, leading to layoffs and consequent loss of buying power which could have produced a downward spiral. Instead, production was starting toward an intersection with buying power and it was to be hoped that some equilibrium in the two curves could be achieved more or less permanently.
After the war, production could not keep up with buying power but at the start of 1949, production had outreached buying power, topping out at 190 on the index, nearly twice the prewar rate, causing inventories to pile up, with the consequent production decrease of 15 percent in just six months, an alarming trend through July. But during August, production had begun to rise again by seven points.
The wild card in the mix, however, was the effect which a prolonged steel strike would have on the economy, this prospect therefore tempering the optimism. A steel strike would impact many other industries, especially automotive, in turn pushing buying power down and thus depressing production again generally.
The President and his advisers were thus hoping for a peaceful resolution to the steel dispute.
Marquis Childs discusses two key developments on the foreign scene, starting with the progress of the Greek Army against the Communist guerrillas, attributed to the Truman Doctrine and its 700 million dollars worth of military and economic aid thus far, with more on the way.
The State Department and the Army had worked well together in coordinating the supply effort to Greece. But the recent success of the Greek Army, following three years of frustration despite two of those years being suffused with U.S. aid and advice, could never have transpired had not Marshal Tito closed off the Yugoslav border. While the guerrillas still could take refuge in Albania, the Greeks, themselves, could close off that border far more effectively than the tortuous Yugoslav border.
The end of the civil war was the only hope for economic and political stability in Greece.
The other key development was in the Middle East to which Gordon Clapp, head of the TVA, had been sent as chairman of a U.N. economic survey mission, with the aim of improving the standard of living in the region. The mission could produce peace between the Israelis and Arabs in Palestine as the survey had been proposed by the Palestine Reconciliation Commission, which had been struggling for weeks regarding the major obstacle to peace, the issue of the several hundred thousand refugees, perhaps as many as 800,000, along Israel's border, most of whom had fled from Palestine and were surviving on a subsistence diet provided by the U.N.
Only through large-scale rehabilitation, expanding agriculture and industry, could the refugees be absorbed. That was the aim of the survey mission, which was consistent with the President's program for development of underdeveloped countries around the world through affording technical assistance and encouraging private investment, his so-called "Point Four" program outlined in his January inaugural address. Such was the only hope for peace in the Middle East.
A letter writer supports another writer who had suggested that the state needed a safety director with a new approach to highway safety, other than stressing the safety of bus and truck drivers, who, said the previous writer, were the most consistently safe drivers on the road.
This writer finds that the Highway Patrol only wanted to catch speeders. He views the greatest hazard on the road to be the Sunday driver creeping along at a slow pace.
As a former truck driver, he attests to trucking safety and finds the drivers to be the best on the road.
He thinks too many drivers in Charlotte drove down the street hugging the center line, a practice which the police did nothing to correct.
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