The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 11, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. forces broke the lull in the ground fighting with a four-mile advance on the left flank of the northwest sector by American and British forces facing little opposition, reaching the outskirts of Pakchon along the Chongchon River. As Pakchon was already leveled from repeated air blows, there was no need to occupy the town.
But on the right flank of the same bridgehead, elements of the U.S. First Cavalry, moving northward from Kunu, met very heavy resistance only 500 yards north of the river where the enemy was dug in. It was not indicated whether the resisting troops were Chinese or Korean. American artillery then bombarded the enemy positions and two flights of F-80 jets supported the action.
The action was designed to test Chinese reaction to the call the previous day in the U.N. Security Council for withdrawal of the troops. The resolution was introduced but no vote was to be taken until the Communist Chinese representatives arrived to discuss the resolution. The resolution, demanding that Chinese troops withdraw from the fighting with the implied threat that the allies would undertake military measures if they did not, promised to respect the Chinese frontier while stating that U.N. forces would be withdrawn from Korea as soon as possible. U.S. chief delegate Warren Austin said that while discussions were going on, waiting for the Chinese representatives, two American B-29's had been shot down by planes originating in Manchuria.
South Korean troops moving further west across the Taeryong River had cut the Kasan-Pakchon road, while fighting enemy troops of battalion strength.
In the northeast sector, the Marines, without much opposition, seized the last of four power plants south of Changjin reservoir, which supplied electricity for most of North Korea and parts of Manchuria.
Two Communist Chinese prisoners, the first captured in the Seventh Division sector near Pujon, said that an army of 30,000 Chinese had crossed the Yalu River into North Korea less than a month earlier. The two did not know what they were doing in Korea, said that there were many Russians in Manchuria trying to rule the country and that their people did not like it. One was told to fight to the finish or the enemy would capture him and torture him to death. The other said that they had walked nine days after entering Korea, moving at night to avoid air attacks. They had lived several days only on potatoes as their supply lines had been cut. Their unit had horse-drawn artillery and small arms only. One said that they did not make enough money in the Chinese army to afford cigarettes.
Secretary of Defense Marshall gave assurance in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Armistice Day that the more than 4,635 Americans who had died thus far in Korea would not be forgotten. The President was absent, on a cruise on the Potomac.
Secretary Marshall recommended that the President appoint Anna Rosenberg, formerly a close adviser to FDR, to be his Assistant Secretary in charge of manpower, with other top assistants to be filled by the associates of Robert Goodwin, head of the newly created Office of Defense Manpower within the Labor Department. Both Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Goodwin had held major posts in the War Manpower Commission of World War II.
Senator Richard Russell of Georgia said that he had no desire to be majority leader in the next Congress, following the defeat of Majority Leader Scott Lucas in Illinois. Senator Joe O'Mahoney of Wyoming had also declined the position, suggesting Senator Russell.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, after being absent from the Senate for many months because of illness, expected to be back on the job in the new Congress. If so, he would likely temper the ardor of his Republican colleagues to defeat the Administration foreign policy. He had, however, joined in the GOP chorus charging the Administration with having given the green light to Communist aggression in Korea.
The nationwide strike of Western Electric equipment installers, causing in turn a strike by Bell system employees refusing to cross picket lines, continued into its third day. The effect of the strike was spotty, varying from city to city.
In Richmond, seven death-row inmates, all black, were granted a stay of execution until February by Virginia's Governor to permit their attorney to file a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking reversal of their convictions and sentences in April, 1949 for raping a white woman.
In Charlotte, a tractor-trailer truck carrying baled cotton overturned on a sharp curve on Independence Boulevard at the corner of Stonewall and Caldwell Streets, narrowly missing a nearby house. The driver was to be charged with reckless driving and failure to have a valid license.
In Columbus, O., a woman told of a person entering her kitchen, turning all of the kitchen chairs upside down and balancing a teacup on the four legs of each. Nothing else had been touched.
On the editorial page, "Challenge to the Trucking Industry" finds it difficult for the trucking industry to explain away the findings of the State Highway Commission that the highways of the state were carrying ever-increasing numbers of trucks loaded at illegal weights. It provides various findings of fact supporting the conclusion. While a healthy trucking industry was necessary to agricultural and industrial growth in the state, many operators were too careless about adhering to weight limits.
The State had increased the gross weight maximum by 47 percent since 1940 while most of the primary roads in use by trucks had been built prior to 1940, leaving the State with a major job of rebuilding its road system at a cost of many millions of dollars. Unless the trucking industry would voluntarily do its part in maintaining the roads by keeping loads within the limits, the people would likely demand stricter enforcement.
"The Play's the Thing" tells of the four-day Midcentury Recreation Conference in Charlotte, convened primarily to discuss recreation in the two Carolinas. It was an important conference, as organized recreation in such tense times internationally was as important as bomb-making, and it thanks those who worked hard that others might play.
"The Goss Austerity Program" tells of Albert Goss, Master of the National Grange, having died October 25, before he was to deliver the annual address to the Grange two days later. In the address, he had set forth his plan for credit controls, allocation of scarce materials, increased taxation including a stiff excess profits tax, personal sacrifice and strong rationing, price and wage controls. He recommended a program of sufficient austerity to win a lasting peace and urged that every young man should devote a portion of his time to direct service to the nation. He did not, however, extend his recommended austerity to farmers, recommending extension of price supports.
It reminds the Grange that the American people would put up with the abuses of the farm price support program only for so long, and with food prices on the rise, the limit of their tolerance was fast approaching.
"On Telling Stories" informs of Bennett Cerf
It finds the rules sufficient and that anyone who could not follow them should give up the comedy game.
An example of a story he imparts in the book, at which his lady friends had groaned, not laughed, for its pun-work, went: "There was a fellow out in Battle Creek, Michigan, whose name was Joe Kissinger. He didn't like the name Kissinger so he had it changed to Mackay. Two months later he tired of Mackay and changed to Johnson. Then he decided he had made another mistake and changed to Cartmell. By this time all his friends had begun to ask, 'I wonder who's Kissinger now?
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Worth Two in the Bush", finds that the birds of England, reported to be slipping into office buildings and tearing paper to bits, had something, as there were too many papers in both England and America, that everything had to be executed in duplicate and triplicate, if not through more layers of carbon.
Drew Pearson finds that after the midterm elections, Governor Earl Warren and Senator Taft, and to a lesser degree, Governor Dewey and Senator-elect James Duff of Pennsylvania, had emerged as Republican leaders heading into the 1952 presidential election.
Truman advisers were debating the future of Secretary of State Acheson, whom they blamed as the cause for many Democratic losses in the elections. His continued defense of his old friend Alger Hiss had proved problematic and Republicans had made the most of it. Senator Scott Lucas, who was defeated in Illinois, and other defeated Democrats were bitter about the fact.
Secretary Acheson had become such a political liability that bipartisan foreign policy had broken down. Yet, the President refused to fire him because he believed he had been a good Secretary of State. In fact, important Republicans, as John Foster Dulles and Warren Austin, were working in the State Department with Secretary Acheson. Several Republicans also held important diplomatic posts. Nevertheless, Secretary Acheson had received the blame for the loss of China to the Communists and for the Korean war.
He notes that many diplomats believed that a Secretary of State who could not hold public opinion in his favor could not mold foreign policy. While the President had continued to defend the late Tom Pendergast after he had gone to jail and could therefore sympathize with Mr. Acheson's continued friendship to Alger Hiss, they did not appear to realize that in politics, friendships had to take a backseat to national policy. FDR, who understood this rule, had been criticized for not being loyal to friends.
The Republicans were surprised by their success in the elections, so much so that celebrations at Republican headquarters in Washington did not begin until after midnight.
Stewart Alsop finds that the midterm election results placed Senator Taft as the top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, that they also demonstrated the demise of the big city machines and that organization by labor caused organization on the other side. But the greatest statement was from the fact that the Republican conservatives headed by Senator Taft would have new power in the Congress. Among the Senator's friends, it was fashionable to pretend that he was not an isolationist, notwithstanding the fact he had voted to kill nearly every measure designed to contain Soviet aggression, including his recent attack on NATO and the military aid program, voting against both.
Other members of the isolationist group were Senators Homer Capehart of Indiana and Everett Dirksen, newly elected from Illinois.
During the campaign, almost every Republican had contended that the presence of a few traitorous clerks in the Government had enabled the Soviets to succeed in their plans abroad. It would make it difficult for the Administration to discuss in a meaningful way world problems with these conservatives.
Such had occurred when the dangers to the country were greatest in its history. Ahead lay the military appropriations bill for around 50 billion dollars, the universal military training bill, bills to continue economic and military aid to the allies, a bill to relieve the economic crisis in Yugoslavia brought on by famine, and bills to authorize excess profits taxes and other economic measures. He wonders what the isolationists would do with these bills.
A successful attack, for instance, on Yugoslavia, would cause the Western alliance against the Soviets to disband, as could weakening or abandonment of the military aid program or the Marshall Plan. Yet, the most costly peacetime program in history would now be presented to a Congress led by members hostile to it.
Marquis Childs finds that the Democrats had suffered a worse defeat in the elections than they had in 1946 when they had lost both houses of Congress. For then the Republicans had to accept responsibility for what went on in Congress for two years, enabling the President in 1948 to campaign with success against the "do-nothing" Congress. While the Democrats would retain technical, organizational control of both chambers, the two conservative Senators newly elected from North Carolina and Florida, Willis Smith and George Smathers, were replacing liberals in Frank Graham and Claude Pepper, strengthening the Southern coalition with the Republicans, that which would hold the real power in the coming Congress.
The likelihood would be that South Carolina's newly elected Governor, James Byrnes, would direct the states' rights movement in the party which would sweep aside the Fair Deal programs.
In every race where McCarthyism had been a factor, the Senator had won, leaving a question mark for foreign policy going forward: would the new Congress accept the rearmament program for Western Europe? Senator Arthur Vandenberg, who had held the Republicans together in support of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in 1947-48, was still suffering from illness and it was doubtful he could exert the same type of leadership as earlier. The next ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee was Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, who had won easily in a campaign which exploited McCarthyism. Senator-elect Everett Dirksen had fought for the Marshall Plan as a Congressman but now had won election as an isolationist, professing the belief that money spent abroad was thrown down a rathole.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Southern political leaders being secretly elated at the election results, as the South now held an unquestioned balance of power in the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate.
The vote appeared to foredoom statehood for Alaska and Hawaii in the remaining session. The Southerners were believed headed for a filibuster of the bills to avoid dilution of their power by four additional Senators. Both bills had already passed the House and would receive a majority vote in the Senate. Only Senator Frank Graham among Southern Democrats had supported the bills. Alaskan statehood had some Republican support and Hawaii, more, as Hawaii had voted Republican for years. It was unlikely that the Democrats would now push the bills, so distasteful to the Southern members.
Democrats had barely maintained their control of chairmanships of committees. Senator Clyde Hoey would advance to second in seniority on the Agriculture Committee after the defeat of Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma and Senator Lucas. Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana would become chairman.
A lead editorial in the Washington Post had urged that Paul Green's "Faith of Our Fathers", the outdoor drama on the life of George Washington commemorating the Sesquicentennial of the nation's capital, become an annual presentation. It had ended its 43-performance run $21,000 in debt, with less than a thousand attendees per performance in a 4,000-seat theater.
A mixed-race cast, including Indians, was banned from performing the drama at Anacostia High School in Washington by the D.C. School Board, upholding the initial decision by the principal. The cast refused to appear unless all members were included. Mr. Green wanted an Indian revival dance included for the children if it was to be repeated in the future.
Five percenters were still doing business in Washington, despite the investigation into their activities by Senator Hoey's subcommittee in 1949. John Marragon's conviction for perjury before the subcommittee regarding his financial dealings had just been upheld by the D. C. Court of Appeals.
The Capitol architect disclosed that the eleven elevator cars of the building traveled over 150,000 miles per year, and one observer had quipped that not more than 149,850 were therefore the result of use by lobbyists.
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