The Charlotte News
Thursday, March 30, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that any cut of the 45 million dollars sought by the President for his "Point Four" program for technical assistance to underdeveloped nations would have negative results in the effort to check Communism in Asia. He said the amount had been the result of careful calculations of that needed for the following fiscal year to get the program going and that he considered it an "essential arm" of American foreign policy in the region. The aim of the program was to train the people of the region to undertake modern methods of industry and agriculture, not to build large plants and the like for them.
The President had apparently decided, according to rumors circulating through Congress, to veto the farm bill which had relaxed acreage requirements on cotton and peanuts while placing increased strictures on potato production. Administration farm advisers did not like the fact that it favored the South. Senators Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, and Claude Pepper of Florida had sent telegrams to the President urging him to sign the bill. Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Harold Cooley of North Carolina, also urged approval.
In Norfolk, Captain William Brown of the U.S.S. Missouri pleaded guilty before the military tribunal convened to hear his court martial for three counts of negligence in being responsible for running aground, the prior January 17, the famed World War II battleship, on which the final surrender terms had been accepted from Japan on September 2, 1945. The captain said that he was not concerned with the legal technicalities of his position but only wanted to recognize his responsibility for the fate of the ship. He apologized for the psychological harm done to others by the fact. Usually, punishment for such charges would be lowering of numbers required for promotion.
In Paris, former Premier Leon Blum, 77, died unexpectedly the previous day. The Socialist Party leader and elder statesman had been Premier twice prior to the war and once afterward, serving also as Vice-Premier in 1948 under Premier Andre Marie.
In Philadelphia, nine male patients of a private sanatorium died in a fire, and one fireman and 30 other patients succumbed to fumes. Some of the patients who died, considered violent, had been strapped to their beds.
In Iowa City, Ia., a 24-year old man tearfully told a jury of killing his 20-year old girlfriend, claiming it to have been accidental strangulation after he had kissed her and they playfully put each other's hands to each other's throats. The death had occurred in the Empty Arms rooming house the previous December 11.
In Los Angeles, according to the medical director of General Hospital, winos on Skid Row were selling blood for $4 per pint to buy whiskey. One patient, said the doctor, had admitted selling five pints in a month, whereas three months between giving each pint was required by law.
In San Francisco, a dancer at a home builders association banquet wound up suing for the fact that a 50-cent piece thrown at her during her routine had chipped one of her teeth.
Senator Frank Graham of North Carolina released a 15-point campaign platform in advance of the May 27 Democratic primary, in which he was being contested by former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and eventually successful candidate Willis Smith, a Raleigh attorney.
Mr. Smith, campaigning in Asheville, told the local Lions Club that there were citizens and leaders in the country "who would change the form of government that has made America great." He asked his audience rhetorically whether they wished to retain the American way of life which had made the country "liberal, progressive and free" or turn it over to the "social planners". His campaign manager was Jesse Helms.
The President urged everyone to
recognize National Hearing Week during the period May 7-14. The
American Hearing Society, founded thirty years earlier, had the
slogan for the year, "Good hearing
The News reports of its intention to give $5 each to any census taker who asked the question and the respondent who accurately told of being 100 years old or older. The newspaper would reserve the right to require substantiation of the claim.
A part of chapter sixty-three of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appears on the page as part of the abridged serialization of the book.
On the editorial page, "Those Census Questions" finds Republicans in Congress needlessly stirring up trepidation among the citizenry regarding the Commerce Department's questions on income in the 1950 census. The Census Bureau would be the only agency receiving the data and it would only be used for demographic assessments, not for individual targeting of citizens. Census takers, it points out, were subject to $10,000 fines and a year in jail for revealing the information they received to anyone other than the Census Bureau. The piece assures that there was nothing about which to get excited.
That's what you say.
"Realistic Slum Clearance
The piece hopes that the League of Municipalities would join the realtors in developing precise wording for the necessary enabling legislation.
"Hoey Opposition Folds" tells of Mayor Marshall Kurfees of Winston-Salem withdrawing from the Senatorial race against incumbent Senator Clyde Hoey, finding it to be a wise move given Senator and former Governor Hoey's broad support in the state and good credentials.
"Patronage Preserved" tells of a Senate bill to remove from patronage by Senators the appointment of local postmasters to allow them to be appointed by the Postmaster General. The bill had the endorsement of the Administration and all of the postal lobbying groups, but had been pigeonholed in the Senate committee considering it, which had the effect of killing it.
The piece finds it not to be the first such good legislation which had been proposed by the President under the Hoover Commission recommendations for streamlining government which the Congress had refused to implement and that it would not be the last.
A piece from the
Asheville
Citizen, "Less Than Lese Majesty", tells of a 19-year
old girl from Elizabeth City, who had been named "Maid of
Cotton", touring the world and while in London, committing a
social faux pas by not recognizing Princess Margaret when
introduced to her. But Princess Margaret took it in stride, said it
was alright
The next day, however, the young
woman found herself in London Tower clapped
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", excerpts from newspapers across the state, presents a piece by John Wesley Clay of the Winston-Salem Journal, who praised the car washing ability of an individual who had gotten his windows so clean that when he spat on the way home, he hit the closed window glass.
The Sanford Herald told of a man who had become interested in a game his children were playing whereby they placed a funnel in their belts in line with their chins and then placed a penny on their chins as they tilted back their heads, sought to get the penny into the funnel. He demonstrated it for a group, but did not think it so funny when he discovered that while he was struggling to get the penny in the funnel, they had filled it with ice water.
It could have been double-double toil and trouble, had he a cleft, and twice that with a double-cleft.
The Harnett County News found that Editor Beasley had wondered how Robert Rice Reynolds had beaten former Governor and interim Senator Cameron Morrison in the 1932 Senatorial race, to which he gave the answer, recalling that it was during the Depression, "The devil could have beat the Lord in those days."
The Goldsboro News-Argus told of a man being introduced as someone who was born in Japan but reared in South Carolina, telling his audience that he had learned that, like South Carolinians, the Japanese revered their ancestors and liked rice.
The Greensboro News recounted that actress Arlene Dahl had been thrown rearward from a horse into a cactus bed near Palm Springs because she rode it in the wrong place, and says it intends to confine its horseback riding to Nags Head sand dunes following a heavy snowstorm.
The Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem had reported of a man who had seen 143 movies in 1949, calling afterward to add that he had never missed Sunday School in five years, as he did not allow his movie attendance to interfere with his church-going.
And so, so, so, on
Drew Pearson suggests some facts about defense cutting undertaken by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, that he had done a fine job of cutting fat from the military budget, such as obsolete weapons systems and old Indian forts, that the new weapons deserved more attention anyway than conventional weaponry, but that he had not given the true assessment of the adequacy of the Air Force, in fact far behind the standard set for it by Congress.
Regarding the latter, Secretary Johnson had advocated 54 air groups, but the President wanted it cut to 48, whereas Congress had wanted 70. Mr. Johnson had told Congress that Air Force personnel surpassed that recommended in a report of experts, but in fact the number included ground operations, which the report had recommended be undertaken by the Army. He had said that the force of B-29's had been doubled, but failed to state that a quarter of them were tankers for refueling purposes, not combat planes; and the B-29 was becoming obsolete in any event, to be replaced by the B-50. The experts had recommended 700 "very heavy" bombers, the B-36, whereas the Air Force only had 60, with 160 on order. The Secretary did not explain that his total figures for planes, 8,800, included trainers, transports, and other non-combat types. In actuality, there were only 3,400 top-level combat planes, whereas the experts recommended a minimum complement of 6,869, twice the number.
Mr. Pearson leaves it therefore for Congress to judge whether the needs of the Air Force were being met properly under the economizing constraints imposed on it by Secretary Johnson and the President.
Congressman Foster Purcolo of Massachusetts, representing a district which was two percent black, had appointed a black candidate to West Point, where only two black cadets had ever graduated.
Marquis Childs tells of economy in the military establishment having led the Joint Chiefs to decide to abandon all save one or two military installations in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. The most important base to be abandoned was Shimya, one of the few islands of the outer chain with a suitably flat surface for landing planes. Adak, developed during the war as a Navy base, was to be maintained.
The reason for the decision was that the outer ring of islands was of little value to either the U.S. or U.S.S.R. and was expensive to maintain. Moreover, fog enshrouded them much of the time, making landings difficult. Even if the islands were taken in a war, the Joint Chiefs had stated that they would resist the inevitable public outcry to retake them on the ground that they would be more of a liability than a benefit to the enemy. The estimated costs to be saved ran as high as 30 million dollars, including savings on the Alaskan mainland, where defense centered on Fairbanks and Anchorage. The total allocation was 96 million dollars for Alaska. But Governor Ernest Gruening was pushing for a billion dollars for defense of the Territory.
The outsider could not judge the merits of the competing arguments, but belief was growing that when economizing measures originated by the military were compounded by both houses of Congress, the danger zone to defense had been surpassed.
Robert C. Ruark tells of the deaths
within a week of pre-television movie serial hero Frank Buck and
Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs having left a void for an earlier
generation which grew up on the fare. Martin Johnson
Tarzan, he explains, led a simple existence and got along fine as long as he was dealing with the jungle life, only got into difficulty when he learned to read, write and talk, deciding he was no longer an ape-man.
With the knowledge that Tarzan could not exist in reality, the younger set had settled for the invincible aura of Frank Buck as the nearest incarnation to the uncomplicated man of the jungle. The feeling was engendered that he had personally wrestled every animal he brought back alive.
It had not been surprising that he got cancer and then appeared a year earlier to have it licked, went to Malaysia on another hunting expedition and brought back a flock of wild beasts, possessed also of a deep tan and his old jaunty bounce. So it had come as a shock when it was announced that he had died of lung cancer after all.
He finds that Mr. Buck would not be much revered in 1950 as the jungle was as close via air travel as the corner delicatessen. And "much bigger game than tigers" was stalked each day in the newspapers. He imagines that modern youth found Tarzan rather dull when placed beside the comic book heroes, the H-bomb, Schnorkel submarines and radar. But, he assures, Tarzan was a mighty myth and Frank Buck bigger than Buck Rogers from his perspective. He regretted that the young person of 1950 would be cheated of such simplicity in hero worship.
In that regard, incidentally, Tarus Heelius Nippin Tuckus, the Greek goddess of basketball, tells us that we must be prepared for April Fool's Day in 2017. By listening to her carefully, we have known all along, obviously
And to all of those idiotic Wildcat fans—or, Wildfat cans, as the case may be—threatening and harassing one of the referees from last Sunday's UNC-Kentucky regional final, try to get a grip on real
Framed Edition
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