The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 26, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that former Vice-President Henry Wallace testified before HUAC that he had nothing to do with wartime shipments of uranium compounds to Russia and did not even know that the Russians had requested licenses for such materials. He added that the Board of Economic Warfare, which he chaired during the war, had no authority over such shipments, that they were within the province of Lend-Lease, then headed by Edward Stettinius, but was glad to be associated with an Administration which made the necessary materials available when needed under Lend-Lease. His testimony was in response to a radio program of Fulton Lewis, Jr., the previous month in which Mr. Lewis claimed that Mr. Wallace had helped the Russians obtain supplies of atomic materials. Mr. Wallace said that he regarded the broadcast as an attack more on the Administration and the late President Roosevelt than against him, personally. Mr. Wallace's testimony had been confirmed the previous month in testimony by General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project during the war.

In Berlin, American, French, and British commanders sent a sharp note of protest to the Russians of the Eastern zone regarding the slowdown of truck traffic at checkpoints between Berlin and West Germany. One truck was passing at Helmstedt every fifteen minutes, backing up 400 trucks five days earlier. An American truck convoy had passed, however, without hindrance this date.

It was reported by a source close to John J. McCloy, American High Commissioner of the U.S. zone of West Germany, that he believed that the recent slowdowns in checkpoint traffic by the Russians was a forerunner of the beginning of another blockade as initiated in June, 1948. Currently, Mr. McCloy was in the U.S. to consult with other Government officials. He was also reported to believe that West Germans, including West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, supported some transfer of sovereignty to make the idea of a united Western Europe work.

Senator Millard Tydings, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed to call Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews for questioning regarding the ouster of Admiral Louis Denfeld as chief of Naval operations. Senator William Knowland of California had been pressing for the investigation. Senator Joseph McCarthy had proposed impeachment of Secretary Matthews over the matter, claiming to have a document showing that Secretary Matthews had recommended Admiral Denfeld for another term just before his termination.

In Tokyo, General MacArthur, celebrating his 70th birthday, had said that he doubted war was imminent. There was little fanfare surrounding his birthday and the General greeted several well-wishers, including several hundred Japanese children who sang "Happy Birthday".

In New York, in the espionage trial of Judy Coplon and Valentin Gubitchev, the attorney for Mr. Gubitchev said in his opening statement that his client's behavior on the day of his arrest was not that of a spy but of a man wanting to be with the woman he loved. He said that he would prove that Mr. Gubitchev never asked Ms. Coplon to bring any documents from her place of work in Washington at the Justice Department. Ms. Coplon had already been convicted the previous summer in Washington for taking the documents in question. Both claimed that they were in love with one another and had no spying in mind.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover issued a written report to the House Appropriations Committee saying that the job of protecting the country from spies was greater than at the height of World War II and that the Bureau consequently needed $600,000 more for the purpose than allocated in the 56.8 million dollar budget in the current fiscal year. He said that one of the effective tools used to penetrate subversive organizations was limited wire-tapping. He denied that it was used on a wholesale scale, that only 170 cases had utilized the practice and all involved international security. He also reported that major crime had increased by 12 percent in the first three quarters of 1949 over the same period of 1940.

An Immigration & Naturalization Service inspector told the same Committee that three million aliens were in the United States, of whom 3,500 were deportable and free under court bond, but not acceptable to any other nation. The assistant commissioner of the INS said that border inspectors found it nearly impossible to carry out the required examinations at border stations. He estimated that there were thousands of aliens in the country illegally, of whom the INS had no knowledge.

The soft coal industry renewed its offer to UMW to negotiate a new contract, expired since July 1, listing the same conditions as previously rejected by John L. Lewis, rejecting the demanded 15 cents per ton increase in welfare and pension fund contributions and wage increases of 95 cents per day.

In St. Eloy, France, thirteen coal miners were killed and about 30 injured in a coal dust explosion.

In North Carolina, coal stocks were well below normal but no actual suffering as a result had yet been reported. The two major utilities said that coal stocks were adequate for the immediate future. Coal stocks for consumers were sufficient for a week to ten days. The vice-president of the N.C. Retail Coal Merchants Association said that colder weather could produce an acute shortage.

In the Northern plains, bitterly cold temperatures continued to prevail. A new storm struck the Pacific Northwest, with the coldest weather in 60 years hitting eastern Washington. Fog blanketed New York City and New Jersey, halting shipping. A new wave of freezing temperatures were predicted for Southern California. But cotton was blooming in Orangeburg, S.C., five months ahead of schedule, flowers were yielding their petals in Virginia, and in an Atlanta suburb, a quince tree was sprouting blossoms.

In Charlotte, a preliminary hearing would take place February 2 in the case of the man accused of hiring the man who was charged with attempting to blow up the WBT radio tower using dynamite. The man who had been arrested the previous night on the conspiracy charge was a prominent labor leader and business manager of the Charlotte local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was also a member of the Charlotte Park and Recreation Commission. He proclaimed to police his innocence in the matter. The man had been identified, according to police, by three witnesses as having been seen with the principal defendant in Columbia, S.C., a few days before the attempted explosion. The union local had been involved in an ongoing picket against WBT. A fourth man allegedly involved in the plot was the unnamed driver of the principal defendant, who, according to the police chief, might also be arrested soon.

Whether all four had bobby pins in their hair was yet to be revealed.

On the editorial page, "Vote My Way or Else" tells of the latest issue of the North Carolina Education Association's news bulletin containing an editorial reminding that pamphlets were available on how the members of the 1949 General Assembly voted on education.

While there was no reason for the state's education forces not to lobby for better schools and teacher salaries, it was unfair, the piece ventures, to judge a legislator's merits by how that person voted on a single issue. Nor could an earnest desire to have a sound fiscal policy be equated with callousness toward the children of the state and their education. It advocates that the Association educate the legislators to the needs of education rather than coercing them to vote a particular way by threatening lack of voter support otherwise.

"Bumper Egg Production" tells of the Department of Agriculture having been forced to purchase 72 million pounds of dried eggs during the fiscal year because of overproduction by 2.5 billion eggs. It would cost the Government 95 million dollars but bring in only 16 million in sales revenue, and the difference could go even higher.

The price-support system was imperfect, so much so that the Brannan plan looked good by comparison. But there was little hope of improvement as long as the farm vote was more important to Congress than the organized consumer vote.

"Outer Banks National Park" urges creation of the proposed national park on the Outer Banks. The proposed park would include Ocracoke and Hatteras islands, excluding villages, part of Bodie Island, a new approach to the Kill Devil Hills area, and Fort Raleigh, site of the original "lost colony", the first English settlement in the New World.

The Great Smokies National Park had become the most popular in the country. So a complementary park in the Eastern part of the state would increase tourist trade the more for the state and would enrich the acquaintance of native North Carolinians with the quaintness of the region, as many in the state had never visited the Outer Banks for its remoteness. It regards it as a good idea.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Back of Giving, The Need", tells of the most recent issue of North Carolina Public Welfare Statistics providing data to show that need for welfare assistance was great among both the elderly and children, as both categories had made increased requests during the previous year, by 20 percent and 32 percent, respectively. But the State could only provide so much of the assistance, leaving the balance to the Community Chest and private donations.

Drew Pearson tells of Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, spokesman for the Southern Democrats, having indicated his willingness at a recent meeting of Senate Democrats to compromise on civil rights. Some remained skeptical, however, as he was needled into the compromise by a lecture from Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois on party harmony being a two-way street of give and take. Other Southern Senators said that they would not compromise on the FEPC but might on other aspects of the President's program, as anti-lynching and the ban on poll taxes.

Except for Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, the general attitude among the Democratic Senators was to support the President on Formosa.

Former Congressman George Bender of Ohio, a Taft supporter, recently showed up at the Republican Policy Committee meeting and had the band at the Mayflower Hotel sing a rendition of "I'm Looking over a Four-Leaf Clover" with pro-Taft lyrics. He then stated that he was unorthodox and wanted his fellow Republicans to follow suit.

Given the choice by General Eisenhower for his vice-presidential running mate in 1952, perhaps Senator Taft would have been a better choice for the GOP, assuming, of course, he would not have won and before that, made the same mistake...

Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan slyly pointed out the absurdity of the price-support program on potatoes by offering them for free to any nation which would take them. There would be no takers for their transportation overseas meant spoliation. But the Government, nevertheless, was paying out 80 million dollars to buy an estimated 67 million surplus bushels, only 17 million bushels of which could be utilized in the school-lunch program. The Brannan plan provided for allowing retail prices to drop to benefit the consumer while paying a subsidy to the producer to make up the difference.

Millions of U.S. dollars provided to war veterans in the Philippines was being taken by Filipino politicians, prompting the American Ambassador to the Philippines to urge Secretary of State Acheson to provide an ultimatum to President Quirino to stop the practice.

East Germans had been crossing to the West recently in great numbers to obtain jars of jam. The Eastern jam was so bad that it blackened teeth.

The British were placing pressure on Trans-Jordan to make peace with Israel, and on Iraq to open a pipeline to ship oil to Israeli refineries. But at the same time, Britain was shipping its latest tanks and jet aircraft to Egypt for use in a new Middle Eastern war.

Marquis Childs tells of a probable strike by the scientists if asked to build the hydrogen bomb, for its ultimate potential for devastation without the positive attributes associated with nuclear fission for peacetime uses. The hydrogen bomb, utilizing a fission trigger to produce nuclear fusion resulting in a thousand-times more powerful explosion than the atom bomb, was only useful as a weapon to destroy vast areas.

Even some military leaders doubted its usefulness even as a weapon for the fact of the wide dispersion of Soviet industry. Moreover, the problem of containment had not been resolved, as it had not fully even been resolved for nuclear fission after nearly five years since its first use.

Many scientists believed that the secrecy surrounding the atom bomb performed a disservice to the American people by keeping them blind to the facts. If the hydrogen bomb were developed under the same veil, then the sense of resulting bewilderment would only increase and a justifiable feeling generated that the rights of freedom in the democracy had been lost.

Robert C. Ruark advocates a personal depletion allowance, similar to that used in the oil industry to offset dry holes, the equivalent of depreciation of assets in ordinary businesses. He also wants a personal capital gains exemption from taxes. He believes everyone ought get the same breaks which General Eisenhower got on his memoirs, the right to keep 75 percent of the profit on sales for the book being representative of his life's work. He thinks all writers ought be entitled to like treatment and that the depletion of brain and body was every bit as deserving of favorable tax treatment as the depletion of oil.

But to take the latter proposed allowance, one would have to prove a dry hole, perhaps a significant number of rejections or efforts to accumulate data for reports which never materialized, which means production of notes, work-product, etc., perhaps in the process, unwittingly compromising assets necessary to future reports. The leisure time would be better and work only on wet holes.

A letter writer urges contribution to the March of Dimes to combat the continuing threat of polio, reminding that in 1948 when the epidemic occurred in North Carolina, the Mecklenburg chapter had to rely on the national organization to supplement its funding for the care of the patients.

A letter from a woman who had received praise from another writer for her contribution to creation of the Spastics Hospital for care of cerebral palsy patients, including her young son. She thanks the contributors to the hospital and the previous writer for the praise.

A letter from the chairman of the North Carolina Association of Finance Companies thanks the newspaper for its publicity for their third annual convention in Charlotte during the prior week.

A letter writer praises the letter of January 23 which had proposed that women become involved in City Government to show the city fathers how better to stretch tax dollars, thinks money had been wasted on such projects as the new "joke-making" Independence Boulevard, causing houses to be perched in the air on either side of it. She also favors continued use of the old Armory-Auditorium rather than building a new one. She praises Senators Clyde Hoey and Frank Graham and the State Superintendent of Prisons, J. B. Moore, for helping people.

A letter from Harry Golden of the Shakespeare Society of Charlotte and Pauline Owen, head of the Mecklenburg Council of English Teachers, thanks The News and especially reporter Bob Sain for coverage of the presentation of The Taming of the Shrew by the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company, a "record-breaking occasion" for a Shakespeare play in Charlotte.

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