The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 23, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Joseph McCarthy, in a telegram sent to the President, accused him of endangering national security by his "arrogant refusal" to give the loyalty files to Senate investigators, calling it "inexcusable". He claimed that the Senate had a right to the files under the Constitution. While in the past the President had refused to provide the files, he in fact was presently still considering whether to turn over the files of those specifically named by Senator McCarthy, for inspection only at the White House. An unnamed Democratic Senator said that the criticism by Senator McCarthy was "such a lowly attack" that he could think of no fitting reply. Senator Millard Tydings, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges, refused comment. The subcommittee was considering issuance of a subpoena for the files but was hopeful to obtain them voluntarily.
Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa told a church meeting in Des Moines the previous night that there would be "several more startling arrests" of those suspected of violating atomic security, that some of the arrests were in process and would be closer to home than the recent London arrest and conviction of Dr. Klaus Fuchs for providing the Russians with atomic secrets from his time working for the British atomic program as well as during his work on the Manhattan Project in the U.S. during the war. Senator Hickenloooper was a member of the subcommittee investigating Senator McCarthy's claims of Communists in the State Department.
HUAC intended to prepare a list of subversive activities containing a million names, called a "bible" by HUAC chairman John Wood. The House approved, by a vote of 347 to 12, $150,000 in additional funding for HUAC. The money was also to be used to continue investigations into subversive activities, including, according to Mr. Wood, investigations of the Klan and Fascist organizations, as well as Communist and Communist-front groups. HUAC had been given an additional $200,000 since January, 1949 at the beginning of the 81st Congress. Among the twelve voting against the new appropriation was Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of California, to contest prominent HUAC member, Congressman Richard Nixon, in the California Senate race in the fall. Mr. Nixon's campaign would brand her the "pink lady" on his way to victory—with a big triple V.
Or was it shorthand for 11-22?
Ruth Cowan of the Associated Press tells of the American military building a large number of bases outside the continental U.S., especially in the Territory of Alaska, with others in Hawaii, Kwajalein and Johnston Island in the Pacific, Bermuda in the Atlantic, Labrador, the Azores, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. The objective of the bases was to avoid a sneak attack, possibly utilizing atomic weapons. The Air Force was proposing to spend 43.6 million dollars on a radar "fence", long-range weather stations and secret "interceptor stations", the latter capable of eavesdropping on messages from a thousand to two thousand miles distant. She reviews the various appropriations requested by the three branches.
The House rejected the President's two billion dollar plan for middle income cooperative housing, despite his last-minute personal plea for the bill, defeating it 218 to 155, including 137 Republicans and 81 Democrats in the majority and 141 Democrats in the minority. The House then approved a four billion dollar expansion of the existing housing program. The Senate had defeated the cooperative plan the previous week by a vote of 43 to 38. The cooperative, formed by a Government corporation, would have loaned money at three percent interest to families with incomes between $2,800 to $4,400. A conference committee would seek to reconcile the two passed bills on housing. The President intended to use the defeated bill as an issue in his cross-country speaking tour for the midterm elections. House Majority Leader John McCormack of Massachusetts said to Republicans that they could fool the public at present, voting one way and talking another, but that the issue would be a live one come November. The Republicans booed.
The FHA placed Government-guaranteed home mortgages on a rationed basis as they neared the limit of the 6.75 billion dollars allocated for the purpose.
In Detroit, Federal mediators were seeking to get Chrysler management and the UAW to agree on a compromise to end the 58-day old strike regarding pensions.
An Air Force B-50 crashed west of Gila Bend, Ariz., killing at least nine of fourteen persons aboard, with at least two having survived. A C-47 transport plane caught fire and crashed in a snowstorm at Rome, N.Y., killing one man and injuring one other slightly. Three other crewmen aboard were uninjured.
Rain and snow fell in the Northern Rockies to the Middle Atlantic states, but temperatures were spring-like in parts of the Midwest. Spring storms in the North Atlantic continued to delay shipping schedules. One captain said the storms were the worst he had seen in his 30 years of service in the North Atlantic.
In New York City, an experiment in rainmaking was called because of rain in the Catskills this date. The City had planned to initiate a $50,000 cloud-seeding operation to conquer the drought.
Ralph Gibson of The News tells of the trial of the defendant accused of hiring the man who had confessed to an attempt to blow up the WBT radio tower based on a labor dispute. The defendant denied that he hired the man to do the deed or furnished the dynamite for the job, as also alleged. He said that he had been in Charlotte the whole day of January 12, providing evidence to back up the claim. He had been accused of having been in Columbia, S.C., on that date, paying the man $250 to do the job. The defendant also denied telling Alonzo Squires, a blind radio announcer for another Charlotte station, that he intended to bankrupt WBT or "blow hell out of it". Mr. Squires had said that the defendant made the statement while they were on a picket line together in front of the Wilder Building, headquarters of WBT. The man who the defendant had allegedly hired had turned State's evidence and pleaded guilty to the charges.
The defendant was a member of the Park & Recreation Commission, a deacon of his church, and business manager of the Charlotte local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which had been picketing WBT. The defendant had been fired from the station as a technician the previous September as part of a layoff of ten men following a labor dispute.
In Bristol, England, a man who wanted a new set of free false teeth under Britain's National Health program told the Bristol health committee that he had lost his teeth during an illness. But his wife interrupted, instructing the committee not to believe him, that he left them in a dressing gown at his lady friend's home. The husband had to pay for his false teeth.
He must learn to stutter
Parts of chapters fifty-two and fifty-three of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appear on the page as part of the abridged serialization of the book.
On the editorial page, "Irregularities Compounded" tells of State Attorney General Harold McMullen having determined that the State Board of Elections had acted without authority in not accepting the elections officials nominated by the local elections boards in eight Western counties of the state. But the resentment of the counties which arose out of the controversy would likely linger even after the decision was reversed by the Board.
The whole matter, which apparently had been orchestrated in advance, was irregular and did not serve to generate confidence in the new Board appointed by Governor Kerr Scott. If there had been election irregularities at the local level which prompted the move, as claimed by the Governor, saying that there had been drunks and the like manning the polls on election days, then those problems needed to be remedied and not compounded by irregularities at the State level.
"Cleaning Up Our Creeks" tells of the engineering report to the City Council anent the industrial wastes being pumped into the creeks of the city, causing offensive odors and health hazards. One recommendation was to permit dumping of the waste into the sewer system, but it was so corrosive that it would likely damage the pipes. The other recommendation was to pre-treat the waste at the plants which discharged it. Another recommendation was to continue forbidding industries from putting waste in the sewers but making them pre-treat the waste dumped into streams. The latter, it suggests, made the most sense. Industrial waste was not a public responsibility and the costs should be borne by the polluters.
"Tony's Troubles" tells of State Highway Patrol commander C. R. Tolar having a penchant for bad press. Just prior to his appointment, a report had surfaced that he had fixed a traffic ticket by asserting that he would soon be the new chief of the Patrol. Now, he had been indicted in Beaufort County for reckless driving and improper use of his siren at a funeral when he disobeyed traffic directions of Patrolmen on duty and drove on, claiming that he was investigating a report of a traffic accident in the area, not realizing until he reached Wilmington that he had driven through a funeral procession.
Mr. Tolar liked to get in on the act, driving his car along at breakneck speeds to chase speeders. The piece finds that he deserved no special immunity by his position, that either the Governor or the courts in Beaufort County ought put the brakes on him.
"Tarzan's Creator Passes On" tells of the death of Edgar Rice Burroughs at age 74 the previous week. He had brought Tarzan to life for the youth of the country in an earlier generation. Youngsters for awhile had set up swings in the back yard to mimic the antics of the ape-man of the jungle. He had been a positive influence, standing for the right and opposing wrong, but was too primitive for the youth of the atomic age, who had turned to crime, sex and death-by-radiation stories.
The piece finds it lamentable that Mr. Burroughs could not transplant Tarzan to the modern age as it "could use a good scout like the Ape-man."
Bill Sharpe provides his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state. The Mullins Enterprise told of a man who lived to be 100, providing as the reason for his longevity his life-long abstinence from intoxicants. At that moment, a racket commenced from an adjoining room, which sounded as though someone were destroying furniture and throwing it out the window. When the old man was asked what it was, he replied that it was his father, drunk again.
Pete Ivey of the Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem told of a man who asked a Bishop for 50 cents and that he would tell him how he proposed to spend it after the contribution to his "subscription". The Bishop complied. The man then told him that the money would be used to remove the weather vane from the First Baptist Church, as the arrow pointed only in one direction, toward the Yadkin River, no matter which way the wind blew. The Bishop then donated another 50 cents to the cause, finding it compelling. But nothing had been done about the matter, and another such vane on Fries Moravian Church pointed constantly in the opposite direction. The man with the Bishop's dollar owed therefore an explanation.
Mrs. Theo Davis of the Zebulon Record related of leaving several chores for Saturday, as the previous Saturday, for the first time in decades, as she laid out her plans for the coming day, she realized all of her chores for the ensuing several days were accomplished, causing her to feel empty, without purpose, as if floating in space.
The Moore County News found the chaplains of the House and Senate beseeching sometimes what the Congressmen needed of the Lord and at other times prayerfully inquiring what the Congressmen should do to please the Lord. But the piece observed that, regardless, neither the Lord nor the Congressmen paid much attention to the prayers.
Drew Pearson tells of Oklahoma Senator Robert Kerr striving to protect the oil and natural gas interests, his own holdings being valued at 100 million dollars, from which he received a gross income of 14 million. He now wanted to have appointed to a Federal judgeship Bob Wallace, who had been in the pay of the oil companies for years. Senator Kerr's contributions to the Truman campaign fund in 1948 virtually assured the appointment, despite the apparent conflict of interest.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were telling friends of the great time they had in attending Mardi Gras.
The American Legion's tide of toys sent to Europe as a post-Christmas gift for the children had been received with open arms by the Rotterdam press. CARE was distributing the toys. Even the Communist press, while expressing suspicion of the motive for the gift, had kind words to say of the warmth thus communicated.
So many Senators had acquired ghost writers that it was difficult to distinguish the ghost writer from his ghost. Senator Kenneth Wherry's statements were drafted by Arthur Hachten, former ace Hearst newsman. George Waters, former city editor of the Washington Times-Herald, and Ken Hunter, who master-minded the MacArthur-for-president campaign, were the ghosts for Senator McCarthy.
Congressman and future Senator Mike Mansfield was putting the brakes on his bill to have Werner Plack made a citizen. It had been discovered that Herr Plack had been an aide to Nazi chief propagandist, Herr Doktor Goebbels.
Joseph Alsop, in Berlin, tells of the German Communist youth organization in East Berlin, the Freie Deutsche Jugend, claiming a million members and having all the attributes of the Hitler Youth, even utilizing some of the same facilities and a number of the Nazi youth leaders. A half a million members of the FDJ were set to march on May 28 at the celebration of the German Whitsuntide, to hold a "peace" rally in the Olympic stadium, then would invade the Western sectors of the city, with intentions to intimidate the anti-Communist residents and flout British, American, and French authority. The entire demonstration was being militarily organized by the new German Army being created by the Russians.
It was unlikely that the rally would be as dangerous as intended, as Western authorities were ready. But the planning spoke volumes regarding Soviet intentions in Germany. The Russians intended to follow the May rally with a series of comparable attacks on the Western positions in the city.
The Kremlin was planning to impress the people of West Berlin with Soviet strength and Western weakness, taking a leaf from Hitler's terror tactics, intending to create fear and resignation throughout Europe, in the hope that appeasement might follow, as at Munich in 1938.
Marquis Childs tells of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson having, in his first year in the post, made more enemies than any Cabinet officer in modern history. As much was to be expected if he was to make a success of unification, resisted within the ranks of the military, especially by the Navy. His economizing efforts, however, were supported by the leading military men who believed it would afford better return for the tax dollar and that it had brought a sense of realism to the Joint Chiefs, without compromising strength. Yet there was a realization that the cuts had brought the military close to the danger line and if Congress added more cuts, serious harm might be done.
Secretary Johnson was critical privately of the CIA and hoped to install his own person as its director, a position currently occupied by Rear Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter. In part, the effort to replace him as director reflected resentment of Army and Navy intelligence having to work through a new agency.
Rumors of Secretary Johnson's resignation were rampant among his enemies. His every action came under intense scrutiny and was considered controversial. In the past, in his role in the American Legion, he had also been the object of controversy but had shown great resilience in the face of adversity. At present, he was considered one of the half dozen most powerful men in the country.
Framed Edition
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