The Charlotte News

Tuesday, June 13, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that eleven members of Congress, including six Senators, among whom was Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, urged the President to veto the basing point pricing measure, designed to override the Supreme Court's ruling holding the system violative of existing antitrust laws. Critics assailed the measure as favoring big business against small business and consumers, by enabling big business to absorb higher freight costs in certain distant areas from the market, to provide uniform prices, thereby reducing competition and hurting consumers.

Yugoslavia and Italy were unable to reach terms of agreement on Trieste, as Yugoslavia said that it refused to yield to pressure from Italy, and declared that settlement could not occur on economic terms.

In New York, William Remington, who had resigned as a Commerce Department economist, entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of perjury on which he had been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury based on his denial before the Grand Jury that he had ever been a Communist, refuting the allegation of Elizabeth Bentley made before the Grand Jury, repeating her earlier charges before the Senate Investigating subcommittee and HUAC in July, 1948. He was released pending payment of a $5,000 bond within two days and the trial date would be set July 5.

Air France said it feared all save six of 51 passengers and crew aboard a C-54 Skymaster airliner were lost in a crash into the Persian Gulf off Bahrain while attempting a landing at the nearby airport. Thirty-nine persons remained missing.

In Massanetta Springs, Va., the 90th general assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the Southern branch, stated its opposition to the provision of Federal educational aid to parochial schools, as violating the doctrine of separation of church and state for which it reaffirmed its support. It also opposed appointing a successor to Myron Taylor as the President's emissary to the Vatican.

The American Newspaper Guild went on strike at the New York World Telegram & Sun this date, causing suspension of publication of the afternoon daily when mechanical operations employees refused to cross picket lines. The Guild was demanding a minimum pay raise of ten percent and that 90 percent of new hirelings be members of the Guild, in addition to other demands.

A walkout by 400 technicians in New York and Hollywood caused CBS to alter its television schedules.

In Raleigh, State Attorney General Harry McMullan—following his review of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Sweatt v. Painter, ordering admission of the petitioner to the University of Texas Law School for the State having failed to show, within the meaning of the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, that a substantially equal law school existed in the state for black students—, said that North Carolina was facing a "very serious handicap" in its defense against a lawsuit aimed at integration of the UNC Law School for otherwise qualified black students. He found that since the Court had assessed such factors as the reputation of the faculty of the school and the standing of its alumni in the legal community, in addition to the objective factors as size of the faculty, student body, and law library, seeking to equate the N.C. College for Negroes Law School, later N.C. Central University Law School, with that of UNC presented a difficult legal hurdle.

Predictably, therefore, the case of McKissick, et al. v. Carmichael, 187 F.2d 949, decided by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1951, involving four plaintiffs, including Floyd McKissick, future executive director of the Congress of Racial Equality, resulted, in reliance on Sweatt, in the plaintiffs being admitted to the UNC Law School.

Attorney General McMullan also said that the decision in the Texas and Louisiana tidal oil land cases, holding, as the Court had previously held regarding California, that submerged tidal lands belonged to the Federal Government and not the states, had made the North Carolina tidelands subject to the same ruling, rendering private investment in exploration for oil therein pointless without first Congressional legislation ceding those lands to the states while preserving to the Federal Government control of navigable waters and other Constitutionally authorized powers.

The 1950 Census showed that Charlotte's population was 133,212, placing it first among cities in the two Carolinas by nearly 46,000 persons, the largest numerical gain in the state. Charlotte had grown by 22 percent between 1930 and 1940, ten percentage points less than since 1940. Since the first polling of residents in 1774, with 209 counted, the city had never shown less than 20 percent growth decennially. By the first official census in 1790, the population was 326. It had passed 1,000 in 1850, more than doubling to 2,265 by 1860, again doubling by 1870—with a table completing the chronology. While dwelling units had increased in number by 13,000, or 50.7 percent, over 1940, the number of persons per unit had decreased from 3.97 to 3.48, producing errors in statisticians' preliminary estimates for 1950. Charlotteans were disappointed that the predictions of reaching the vicinity of 150,000 persons had not been fulfilled.

Second most populous in the Carolinas was Winston-Salem at about 87,000, nine percent more than in 1940, causing like disappointment in the Twin City for failure to reach the 100,000 plateau. Statesville showed the largest percentage gain in the state with a 46.5 percent increase over its 11,440 of 1940. Raleigh had increased by 39 percent, to 65,029, 5,000 short of the expected goal. Wilmington increased by 11,500, a 35 percent gain. Asheville increased by only 900 persons, to 52,208. Salisbury showed a five percent gain, to 20,004.

How about Fuquay-Varina?

On the editorial page, "Now We Are 133,212" finds the city's residents surprised that the census had not tabulated to 150,000, the city having reached the 100,000 plateau by 1940, especially since as many as 20,000 people had been annexed in the meantime. The normal growth rate of 30,000 sounded correct. But, it finds, there had been considerable error in the estimates of people in the annexed areas, turning out to hold no more than 10,000 persons. County growth had accounted for undue estimates of city growth. Yet, the figures showed that the community was growing and remained the dominant city in the Carolinas.

Many complained that growth in itself was undesirable, that the city was large enough. It disagrees, in that while growth per se was nothing about which to brag, rise in commercial importance needed as a concomitant growth in size.

"Bear in the Woods" finds that if the Russians were not preparing for war, they were making a good pretense of doing so. It counsels knowing whether these preparations were defensive or offensive. The Kremlin had indicated that they regarded the build up of Western defenses in Europe to be aggressive, that NATO was a war pact.

It finds the safest bet would be that the Russians were preparing for a first strike, though, in actuality, it might not be the case. The only way to dissuade the Soviets from their bellicose course was to provide proof of Western strength ready in response, to act as a deterrent.

It finds "inane" the suggestion by Senator Owen Brewster that the President's recent warnings in that regard were an attempt to take the public mind off the charges leveled at the State Department by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a line, it finds, similar to Russian propaganda. The left would also likely attack the President for war-mongering in his St. Louis speech. The President, it concludes, was not seeking to stir up war but rather warning of there being a "bear in the woods", a fact which the people had better not forget.

"The Catawba" follows the course of the river poetically from its source in the mountains, meandering across the edge of Mecklenburg, down into South Carolina for its final journey to the sea.

Slow day?

A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Promise of Action", tells of distillers promising cooperation to officials of sixteen states who had met recently in Asheville seeking that cooperation to enable clamping down on bootlegged whiskey bought legally but shipped into dry states through various means. The distillers promised a new level of cooperation in an effort to tighten the law under which stamps were issued indicating the whiskey was tax-paid and legally shipped to wet areas.

Drew Pearson writes for the second day in a row of HUAC chairman, Congressman John Wood of Georgia, having taken a ten percent fee for passing a compensation bill for $10,000 for his constituent injured in an accident with an Army truck and finding it the more startling for the fact that Mr. Wood was well off financially and so not in need of such an illegal payoff. He had also employed a black domestic worker, who had been employed for years in his household, at Government expense by claiming that the man worked as a janitor at the Capitol, where he occasionally put in a small amount of time. The position ended, however, when Mr. Wood ceased to be chairman of HUAC in early 1947, when the Republicans took over control of Congress, and Congressman J. Parnell Thomas became HUAC chairman—the latter having subsequently been found to be padding his payroll with salary kickbacks from bogus employees for which he had since gone to jail.

Mr. Wood had also retained his law partner on the Government payroll as an assistant at $7,000 per year, the same law partner to whom the $1,000 check for compensation had been paid for obtaining for the constituent the liability claim.

California Attorney General Fred Howser had been administered a crushing defeat in the primaries the previous week, losing in his own Republican primary and coming in last in the Democratic field under the then permitted cross-filing system. It was significant as Governor Earl Warren, who had sought to clean up the state's crime problem, had been rendered virtually powerless by the Attorney General's failure to act likewise. Mr. Howser, according to Mr. Pearson's previous reports spanning back to 1948, had been a friend to the gambling interests—a reported claim for which he had sued Mr. Pearson for libel, then later dropped the part of the suit premised on the alleged falsity of the friendship claim after it had been proved in depositions. He says that the action had not been lost on California voters.

The winner in the Democratic primary, incidentally, who would go on to win the race in the fall, was Pat Brown, to serve two terms in the position before being elected Governor for two terms, starting in 1959, the second time defeating former Vice-President Richard Nixon, who, having been kicked around too much by the press, decided then to wrap up his political career, a decision, as it turned out, to which he would have been wise to have stuck.

Congressman Emanuel Celler of New York had related to the President the story of 106 Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany before the war, wound up in Shanghai, from which they then had to flee before the approach of the Communist Chinese, winding up in the U.S. at Ellis Island, where they were then placed on a sealed train to be deported back to Germany. Mr. Celler had asked for the President's intervention to avoid the deportation until his revised displaced persons bill could pass the Congress. The President had agreed to help.

Joseph Alsop finds, based on second-hand reports of U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie's summary of his Moscow meeting with Joseph Stalin made to London and Paris on his return, that he had received the same old line from the Russian Government which had been rejected by the West previously: that as prerequisite for ending the cold war, Germany would need be settled on a basis which essentially assured eventual Soviet control, as conveyed and rejected by the West in the Paris conference of 1949 to end the Berlin blockade, that being withdrawal of all occupation troops, leaving behind the Sovietized East German police force. The only difference was that the demands to Mr. Lie had been less precise. He had also been told the old line that Prime Minister Stalin was holding back the more determined efforts of the Politburo.

Thus, Mr. Alsop concludes, if the second-hand summary could be believed, then the Soviet imperialistic urge appeared as strong as ever, with piecemeal surrender by the West being at the heart of the suggestions to Mr. Lie as the path to peace. He says that Mr. Lie would no doubt dispute that characterization but that it was the hard truth and that it proved more than ever where the West stood with respect to the Soviets.

Robert C. Ruark takes a look at the state of marriage and finds that men were being treated by women as dogs in need of domestic training or habitual criminals needing a warden to watch over them, the result of loads of propaganda to that effect being disseminated through the culture.

Dr. E. J. Dingwall of Britain had published a scathing account of the American woman in which he posited that the male was such a "mass of inhibitions as a result of his inferior position", which women had begun fighting to achieve ten years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, that women had succeeded in becoming the superior in the relationship, "and in winning this the American woman lost her femininity, her peace of mind and her happiness in sex."

A letter writer from Pinehurst finds no reason to change his opinion ventured in a previous response, critical of the editorial of May 5 endorsing Willis Smith. He concludes, after a lengthy criticism of the newspaper's stand in support of Mr. Smith, as voiced in another editorial, "A Weak Platform Plank", which had criticized Mr. Smith's claim that Senator Frank Graham had subscribed to the compulsory FEPC without having read the President's Civil Rights Commission report of 1947, that 368,257 voters had voted against Mr. Smith in the initial primary, a response to the newspaper's position in supporting the runoff that a majority of the voters, 314,874, had voted against the plurality winner in the first primary, Senator Graham.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.