The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 23, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the House passed, by a vote of 244 to 177, a bill setting up a Fair Employment Practices Commission, but stripped of its enforcement provisions. Southern Democrats had uniformly opposed the bill and were responsible for removing the enforcement provisions. Some of the bill's original supporters had refused to vote for it with the enforcement mechanism removed. The bill, which expressed a policy of non-discrimination in employment and sought to avert discrimination voluntarily through education and persuasion, would next go to the Senate.
A former undercover agent for the FBI testified before HUAC that accused Communist leader Steve Nelson constantly referred to the U.S. as "the enemy", when the undercover agent had spent seven years in the party in Western Pennsylvania. HUAC accused Mr. Nelson of being a West Coast espionage agent, specializing in obtaining atomic secrets for the Russians, and the chief organizer of the party in Western Pennsylvania.
In England, the general elections were being held for the House of Commons and turnout across the country was heavy. About 26 million of the 34.4 million qualified voters were expected to vote. The results would not be known before the next day.
John L. Lewis and the coal operators were reported closer to agreement on a new contract, in an effort to end the coal strike. It was the last chance to reach an agreement before the following day when a hearing was scheduled before the Federal judge who had found UMW in contempt earlier in the week for not ending the strike, though not holding Mr. Lewis or the local union heads in contempt as they had sought compliance from the miners, who were acting on their own in refusing to return to work, even after being apprised that heavy fines could be levied by the judge on UMW. The judge had provided until the following day to get the miners back to work to expunge the contempt.
The President was said to be ready, pursuant to the Railway Labor Act, to appoint on Saturday a fact-finding board to seek to avert a nationwide rail strike set for Monday. The Conductors and Trainmen's Brotherhood refused arbitration as proposed by the National Railway Mediation Board. The Act required the sides to remain status quo for up to 60 days once a fact-finding board was appointed, 30 days after the board's report would be filed within 30 days. The unions primarily wanted a 40-hour work week to supplant their present 48-hour week.
In Charlotte, the refusal of arbitration by the Trainmen affected the bus drivers of Duke Power Co., who were threatening a strike in Charlotte and five other cities in the state. The drivers were members of the Trainmen's union. Duke had announced that it would arbitrate the drivers' demands for a wage hike.
In Manchester, N.H., the doctor on trial for murder in the mercy-killing of a terminal patient dying from cancer, had, according to the prosecutor in his opening statement, admitted killing the patient by injecting air into her veins. He had acted based on the pleading of the woman's husband to end her life and the belief that she would have died within two days. The husband was a friend of the doctor.
In Winnsboro, S.C., in the trial of the "man without fingerprints" and his alleged female accomplice in the robbery of an elderly storekeeper of his life savings of $41,000 the previous summer, the victim testified that one of the three persons accused, who the day before had pleaded guilty and turned State's evidence against the other two, had sent him a Christmas card the prior Christmas saying that he was sorry for the robbery. That co-defendant told the court the previous day that he was entering the plea and turning State's evidence because he was mad at the other two for not receiving his fair share of the loot. Whether he also hinted at that state of mind in his Christmas card to the victim was not revealed.
The second chapter of The Greatest Story Ever Told, by Fulton Oursler, appears on the page as part of the serialized installments of the recently published book.
On the editorial page, "An Answer to Communism" praises the President's Washington's birthday speech regarding the necessity to support underdeveloped nations in their quest to establish freely elected governments, no matter the precise form, whether identical to the U.S. system or not. He had reminded that where poverty and illiteracy was the norm, the difference between Communism and democracy was not readily apparent to the people, and so it was the role of the democracies to educate those peoples to the differences, that his Point Four program was designed to encourage education, better agricultural techniques and health in the underdeveloped nations.
Freedom of choice was the principal point to be encouraged. The piece finds it an effective answer to the false promises of Communism.
"Uncle Sam Gets Tough" supports the State Department's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Bulgaria after expulsion of the U.S. Minister and harassment for months of Ministry representatives, limiting their ability to travel freely and access to proper food and supplies.
Similar treatment of American diplomatic personnel had taken place in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Communist China had used a variant of the technique to expel American Consul-General in Shanghai, Angus Ward.
It had been suggested that the move against Bulgaria would send a message to other Communist satellite nations, and it was to be hoped that they would receive it. If not, other diplomatic breaks might ensue.
"Rebellion in Raleigh" finds the Raleigh City Council following the lead of Charlotte in refusing to fund access by indigent patients to a private hospital on the ground that the Wake County Government should do so, as the residents of Raleigh were also residents of the county. A similar issue had come up in Charlotte the prior year, with the same reaction by the City Council. The piece finds it an appropriate reaction given that city residents, in both instances, bore the brunt of ad valorem tax revenue, compared to county residents.
"Because of a Kiss" tells of a Bethany, Okla., schoolboy having been chosen to place a crown on the "Basketball Sweetheart" of the local high school and having caused quite a stir when he also then kissed her. The community, dominated by the members of the Nazarene Church, was quite conservative and did not like school dances, women wearing short skirts, or cigarettes.
The piece thinks it much ado about nothing, refers Bethany to the lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Bill Sharpe provides his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state. The Roxboro Courier reported that there were 256 party lines in the town and as many as ten families on a line. It therefore did not disparage the "jiggler" who, after having to sit through overlong talk awaiting use of the line, would jiggle the receiver incessantly, making it impossible to continue the conversation. The jiggler, however, was apt to be held in lower regard than the eavesdropper.
The Mullins Enterprise suggests advice to writers by way of an anecdote imputed to Professor Einstein when he was invited to speak at an Eastern university. When introduced and asked to say a few words, he had declined, saying that he had nothing to say but would return when he did. A few weeks later, he wrote that he had some things to say and was invited to return.
And so forth, and such and so. The turpentine was dripping ever so slowly this week, more so than usual, about the speed of molasses.
Drew Pearson tells of plans being drawn up under civil defense preparedness for an alternative national capital in the event of nuclear war, a place where all national records could be archived on microfilm. Also, the recent Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Washington might be the last time the President and Vice-President appeared together with the Cabinet and Democrats of the Congress. A Russian atomic bomb hitting the event would cause chaos in the Government. Speculation was that the doomsday capital would be placed somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
Of course, an atomic bomb hitting Washington would wreak havoc, regardless of a single meeting place at a given time.
Federal Judge Richmond Keech, who had made the temporary order ending the coal strike pending a hearing on the injunction, and who had found UMW in contempt—or, depending on the reporting, issued an order to show cause re same—, for violating the order, was not a "crackdowner" but rather liked people, especially average people.
Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada was, in his role as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the displaced persons bill, emulating Spain's dictator Franco, whom he had befriended the previous summer while on a European junket. He had railroaded the bill through the Committee, allowing only fifteen minutes for consideration of a substitute measure. He had also fired a staff member suspected of disloyalty and undue loyalty to another Senator, and hired a pro-Nazi to the staff. He also sought to handpick the Committee members, was upset the previous summer upon his return from Europe to find Senator Estes Kefauver on the Committee, tried to oust him. Senator Kefauver, however, remained on the Committee.
Robert C. Ruark decides to play Draco and tell of his views on crime and punishment, opting for locking up permanently anyone found guilty of multiple sex crimes, especially those committed against children, citing Mosaic law for the rationale. He suggests that deterrence was the prime motivation for punishment of crime and so disagrees with the New Jersey State Commission on Sex Crimes, which had found that treatment was more important than punishment.
Mr. Ruark thinks treatment not a viable form of avoidance of recidivism in sex crimes, that the sex criminal was, in effect, a status offender, incapable of correcting the behavior pattern, thus finds the New Jersey approach to be "rot". He finds that only shooting the sex offender, locking the person away, or "improving on the old Arab formula" of cutting off the hands of thieves would serve as a proper deterrent. He does not want any sex offender having the chance to come around a school where children were present.
He cites the case of Robert Irwin, sculptor who in 1937 had murdered three individuals, including a mother and young daughter, in their apartment in New York one night, based on a frustrated love obsession for another daughter who was not then present in the apartment. Mr. Irwin had confessed and, pursuant to a plea bargain, had been committed to a mental institution for life. Mr. Ruark finds the case illustrative of his contention that sex-obsessed crimes were committed only by incurable perverts who ultimately might commit murder.
He suggests therefore that when a person manifested such a tendency through a series of "small" acts, they should be locked away permanently.
Of course, in the United States, we have the Eighth Amendment which bars "cruel and unusual punishment", one primary definition of which is disproportionality between the offense and the punishment. No doubt, short of a serious felony offense committed in series, the courts would find Mr. Ruark's prescription for punishment of sex offenders violative of the Eighth Amendment, insofar as he would seek to punish misdemeanants by locking them up permanently. A society cannot lock people away permanently for even a series of misdemeanors, assuming that is what he means by "small" offenses.
To be thorough, carrying Mr. Ruark's logic and emotion, primarily exhibiting the latter, one step further, the society would begin to develop predictive models based on DNA and genetic coding and lock up the children and grandchildren of convicted child molesters and the like and throw away the key, indeed extending the protective custody to the victims as well, as they become the most likely candidates for carrying the "germ" to others. That, of course, would be ridiculous and Draconian, reducing our society to a police state, causing more disrespect for the law than respect for it. Thus, there must be a reasonable compromise on punishment. Moreover, the cost to the state of housing career criminals can be staggering when such Draconian measures are put in the law.
The more appropriate remedy is to educate parents to spot the possibility of a sex offender, someone who spends too much time, without a reasonable purpose, lurking around school grounds or other places where children gather or seeking routinely to charm children not known to the individual, and then assure that their child does not wind up in company alone with such a person or, generally, accompany strangers anywhere, no matter what the purported reason, short of an atomic attack, earthquake or similar catastrophe which is demonstrably obvious to the child and requiring of emergency evacuation.
And, of course, the sex offender might be a trusted person in the child's life, a coach, a priest, sometimes even a parent, or some other adult or older person in a position of authority over the child, above reproach in generating suspicion. Then, it is up to the child to have enough understanding of the situation to resist and report the conduct.
The law cannot protect absolutely from all untoward conduct, no matter what punishment is exacted as deterrence. We do not live in a perfect world and, to the extent possible, each individual, even small children, must look out for themselves and not expect anyone else, the proverbial guardian angel, to come to the rescue as on tv and in the movies, just in the nick of time.
Bill Ladd, in a piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, tells of the coming age of the coaxial cable, bringing television to everyone. But the squirrels were attacking the cable. So the broadcasting companies laying the cable placed nitrogen gas around the lead lining which attracted the squirrels, waited for squirrels to interrupt the signal, then went out and located the escaping nitrogen gas and made the repair.
The nitrogen gas did not deter the
conduct, as supping on "One Man's Family" or "Lights
Out"
The albino squirrels of Olney, Ill., were said to be even more determined to sharpen their teeth on the lead, requiring, he suggests, rerouting of the cable by way of Kokomo to reach Louisville from Indianapolis.
Speaking of "lead", we have seen, in more than one place of late, and in mainstream journalistic accounts online, the word "led", the past tense of the verb "lead", being spelled "lead" as in lead pencil. The two words are different and we must spell correctly so that the younger people reading the accounts will not become confused and fall into bad orthographic habits. Moreover, the words are spelled differently to differentiate from the present and past tenses of the verb "lead". Perhaps, newspapers ought hire some retired school teachers to provide elementary English lessons for some of the would-be "journalists" today, who grew up able to download canned term papers rather than doing the work for themselves, never understood that there is a reason for diagramming sentences in pre-college years.
And if you idiots who do so
routinely do not stop using the word "iconic"
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.