The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 21, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate-House conference committee agreed to an Air Force comprised of 70 groups, a victory for those who had fought for such a modernized Air Force for several years. Senators had sought a more generalized Air Force based on airframe weight of 225,000 tons, as they argued that a "group" could include any type of plane. The House members of the committee won the argument. The compromise was expected to obtain quick approval in both houses before being sent to the President.
Senator Millard Tydings said that the FBI had found nothing to corroborate the claim of Senator Joseph McCarthy that the loyalty files of the 81 persons he contended were disloyal in the State Department had papers removed or otherwise altered. Meanwhile, State Department Undersecretary John Peurifoy testified in executive session to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, chaired by Senator Tydings, responding to the claim of Senator McCarthy that he had recently made a deal with a former State Department employee, Emmanuel Larsen, a defendant in the 1945 Amerasia case, that if he testified favorably for Senator McCarthy before the subcommittee, the Senator, in exchange, would see to it that the Government would go easy on Mr. Larsen. Senator McCarthy had also claimed that Mr. Larsen then told Mr. Peurifoy that he need not worry as he would not implicate John Service of the Department.
The Senate, over the protests of Senator Taft, approved, by a vote of 42 to 32, a bill toning down the harsh penalty provisions of the Hatch Act, designed to foster clean politics by prohibiting Federal employees from participating in campaigns, being thus potentially subject to coercion by elected officials. The new provision permitted, after unanimous vote by the Civil Service Commission, suspension without pay for no less than 30 days rather than outright dismissal. It would also permit those Federal workers living in Maryland and Virginia to take part in party politics at the local level. Senator Taft claimed that the amendments would kill the Act, that existing provisions allowed for a jail sentence of up to a year and a fine for violations and that he would not object to those penalties substituting for dismissal.
The Senate approved by a vote of 81 to 2 the Social Security benefits extension bill, roughly doubling the benefits to be paid and adding ten million persons to the 35 million covered under existing legislation. The bill would proceed to conference to be reconciled with the similar House bill passed the previous year. The House bill provided for benefits for the disabled, omitted from the Senate measure, in addition to having differences in benefit formulas, tax rates, eligibility requirements and Federal contributions for public assistance.
Does that not make it a bipartisan "welfare state"?
In Geneva, Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin said that the U.S. had eliminated the secret of major depressions through economic and social legislation enacted since 1933.
In White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., at the Governors Conference, Democratic governors decided to sidestep a resolution endorsing Secretary of State Acheson and the State Department for concern that a debate might erupt on the measure, causing the hesitation to be misunderstood abroad.
In Raleigh, a member of the State Highway Commission denied a report that citizens of Sampson County would get no new roads unless they voted for Senator Frank Graham in the Saturday primary runoff election, a claim made by the state campaign manager of Willis Smith, based on a farmer having contended that he had been told as much by one of the commissioners.
In the North Carolina Senate campaign, race was the dominant topic of the day as each side blamed the other for the issue having been raised during the campaign. The previous night in Asheville, Willis Smith had said that he did not know the type of deal Senator Graham's supporters had made with the black leaders of the state, but that the raising of the race issue by them had produced results for Senator Graham, with bloc voting for him evident in some black precincts in the initial primary. Meanwhile, Governor Kerr Scott, in a radio speech, said that injection of the race issue to the campaign was an "insult to the intelligence" of the people of the state, "an obvious move to confuse the issues". Senator Graham, in the eastern part of the state, said that he continued to oppose the compulsory FEPC bill and believed instead that the race problem could be worked out through education, religion and good will.
The effort to resolve the dispute between Duke Power Co. and the bus drivers of six cities, including Charlotte, reached a stalemate in the negotiations this date.
In Angier, N.C., a man who had robbed the First Citizens Bank and made off with $52,500, utilizing a cap pistol, was tripped and tackled, after he fled along the street, by a father and son dynamic duo, capturing the man and the stolen loot.
Holy cap pistol! Zap! Trip! Pow!
In Charlotte, a 200-year old red oak tree, the largest in the yard of the First Presbyterian Church, fell during the morning, injuring no one, though children were playing in the area and a man had been resting at the base of the tree moments earlier. It also fell away from nearby W. Trade Street buildings. A wind reaching gale force of 35 mph had blown through 25 minutes earlier, and winds had averaged 20 mph during the morning hours. A tree service had just examined the tree the previous week and found it stout.
It's probably the result of those Commie beetles boring from within.
The winds in the city had cooled down the hot temperatures of the previous couple of days, as the high reached only 84 by noon, with an expected final high of 87 on the first day of summer, the low being 74.
In Callander, Ontario, Oliva Dionne, mother of the famous quintuplets, denied the rumor that she was expecting again.
The Oakland Tribune in California reported that a disc-shaped object, traveling at an estimated speed of a thousand to fifteen hundred miles per hour, had passed five times over Hamilton Air Force Base, 25 miles north of San Francisco, this date at around 1:35 a.m. Three non-commissioned Air Force officers were quoted in the report as having seen the object, tracked with binoculars, with blue flames and a roar of thunder emanating from it, traveling an altitude estimated to be between 2,000 and 5,000 feet.
They're here. And they're not going away. We must erect defenses—a dome.
Near record supplies of peacetime pork were to be available the following fall and winter, according to the Agriculture Department's predictions, with a consequent decrease in prices from the summertime peak. Increased pig production and larger than normal slaughter of beef cattle were responsible for the huge glut, with over 60 million head of pigs for the spring crop, compared to a spring crop in 1949 of 56.4 million.
Go out and slop them pigs, boy. Swing your partner, shoot the saucer...
In Bray, Ireland, a record for heavyweight newborns was set as one chubby neophyte weighed in at 17 lbs, 3 ozs., fifth child of the couple, new son of a bus conductor.
Get him a cheap pig to eat from America or send him on out with the flying saucer people, to avoid being eaten out of house and home.
On the editorial page, "Saturday, and the Next Few Years" tells of Willis Smith's campaign having been "becomingly" toned down in the two-week period since he announced his desire for the runoff, and Senator Frank Graham having been "his most engaging self". If it were making its decision on the basis of the better campaigner, it says, it would opt for the latter.
But by whatever name the aim of each side was called, it concludes, the voters would be either casting a vote for the Fair Deal or putting a check on it. And based on that determination, it continues to endorse Mr. Smith because he would, during the remainder of the unexpired term of J. Melville Broughton, through 1954, plump for conservatism in Washington.
We predict that it will not come to pass that way as he will be dead by mid-1953 and Governor Scott will be Senator Scott by the end of 1954. What do you think about that? The best laid plans of mice and dead men...
Yeah, we know. You think we're crazy. You'll see.
Tricky Dick will also be President one day and be forced to resignation after obstructing justice regarding the break-in by his henchmen of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. The radio news director who turned in the prison director a couple of weeks ago for using prisoners to paint his porch and build his garage will become Senator in 22 years and remain for five terms. And actor Ronald Reagan will one day become President as a conservative Republican.
See what kind of world you are constructing in 1950 by being churlish and irresponsible, sowing the seeds of division?
"Petty Vindictiveness" finds that the President had made the decision undoubtedly on his own not to invite Governors Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright, the two respective Dixiecrat ticket candidates for president and vice-president in 1948, to a Democratic governors luncheon the following Thursday at the White House, asserts that, despite the action having been recommended by DNC chairman William Boyle, the fact of the required Presidential seal of approval on the omission suggested it as vindictive and petty, not letting bygones be bygones, perpetuating rather than allaying old animosities.
"Independence, Lausche Style" tells of Democratic Governor J. Frank Lausche of Ohio having said that he had not made up his mind to support the Democratic opponent of Republican Senator Robert Taft in the fall, saying that he would not place party interests above those of his country. The Governor, it finds, was a liberal, but one with crow's feet from squinting at the political consequences of decisions before committing to them. The Governor could have been nominated for the Senate seat, himself, and probably could have beaten Senator Taft, but decided to remain as Governor. It finds that fact to his credit, and even more so to his credit that he was setting a new standard for political independence.
Governor Lausche, following the death of Senator Taft in mid-1953, would appoint the ensuing November Thomas Burke, a Democrat, in his stead, thereby temporarily shifting the balance in the Senate of the 83rd Congress from a spare majority for Republicans to a nominal majority for Democrats, remedied the following June when Democratic Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming would die and the Governor of that state would appoint a Republican. In the meantime, however, independent Senator Wayne Morse would agree to vote with the Republicans, his former party, to form the Senate leadership, such that the leadership and committee chairs did not shift hands.
The fact that he might have won the Senate seat, himself, in 1950, had he run, apparently motivated Governor Lausche's tip to party fealty in appointing a Democrat, in an effort to shift the Senate majority. Senator Morse would then become a Democrat in 1955.
"And So to Court" finds it probably best that the controversy over the location of a proposed Latta Park recreation center was headed to court so that it could be judicially determined whether the complaints of local residents over consequent noise and traffic were justified to block the plan for the proposed facility.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "For Linguists Only", tells of a Midwestern newspaper reporting that Boston suburban teenagers were engaging in a type of gibberish driving their parents crazy. The communities involved were noted for their high standards of culture and education.
But, it finds, teenagers of all places and times had demonstrated an affinity for jabberwocky, such as "pig Latin", which failed even to tell listeners to "sustutopup itut" in standard English. So the elders were having the last laugh on the teenagers who thought they had invented something new.
It concludes: "Babutat eway kuknunowash etterbay, don't we?"
Eosey whatdoddabbadoew
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Owen Brewster, who, with Senator Homer Ferguson, had ordered the bugging of the telephone of Howard Hughes in 1947 during the war contract hearings, having once had Mrs. Brewster stand by to listen to a conversation he had with a Federal judicial appointee whom the Senator opposed. Henceforth, a standing joke developed whereby people would ask, when having private conversations with the Senator, whether Mrs. Brewster was present.
Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, unlike Congressman John Wood of Georgia, had declined a gratuity of $500 from a constituent for whom he had passed a compensation bill after an accident involving an Army truck. As the column had previously reported, Congressman Wood had taken a $1,000 commission for pushing through a $10,000 accident compensation bill, the check for which had been passed through his law firm. After Senator Sparkman had returned the deposit, the bank sent back the slip inscribed on which were the words, "At last, Diogenes can put down his lantern." The honest man, in other words, had been found.
Senator Joseph McCarthy had done a great job for the housing interests in opposing public housing and so there may have been more than met the eye from his receipt by prefabricated housing builder Lustron Corp., recipient of over 18 million dollars in RFC loans, of a $10,000 fee for an 8,700-word article on prefabricated housing. The Senator had used his influence to place an opponent of public housing as chair of the Joint Housing Committee in 1947, of which he had been vice-chairman.
Mr. Pearson adds that Senator McCarthy had a loss of $25,000 on the sale of railroad securities in 1948, perhaps to pay for his tax deficiency to the State of Wisconsin, amounting to $45,000 in unpaid taxes during the war. He posits that the $10,000 fee from Lustron probably came in handy, therefore, in making up the difference.
Marquis Childs discusses the power of Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, neither a Democrat, save in name only, nor a Dixiecrat, but rather head of his own "party" dating back to Thomas Jefferson and the "squire-archy" which some of the founding father's devotees believed he had envisioned for the nation. Senator Byrd, an apple farmer, was such a squire on a Twentieth Century scale and the prestige acquired from that status was the source of much of his power.
As a demonstration of that power, he had just vetoed the President's appointment of Martin Hutchinson as a member of the FTC, a Virginian who had run against Senator Byrd for the Senate nomination. His declaration that Mr. Hutchinson was without the training and experience for the job proved sufficient to black-ball him for the nomination, despite other persons from the Virginia hierarchy praising his abilities. Thus, the Commerce Committee reported unfavorably on the appointment and the Senate was expected to follow suit.
The Senator's friends believed that the appointment was designed by the President as a slap at the Senator, whom the President had once described as being "one too many Byrds" in the Senate, that after earlier in the year, the Senator had blocked Mon Wallgren, the President's personal friend and former Governor of Washington, from nomination as chairman of the National Security Resources Board.
The Senator's claim to popularity was his fiscal conservatism, and in that had performed a valuable service.
Recently, Senator Hubert Humphrey had introduced a measure to abolish the committee chaired by Senator Byrd on non-essential Federal spending as duplicating the work of the Expenditures Committee, and so, itself, a waste of money. But the Republican-Southern Democratic coalition then blocked it. No one from the Democratic side of the aisle rose in defense of Senator Humphrey's measure. It was that party within a party, forming the coalition, which Senator Byrd led, "in a sense, a government within a government."
It should be noted that a decade later, Senator Byrd, while not officially a candidate in the presidential election, would receive all of Mississippi's and six of eleven electoral votes of Alabama in the electoral college vote, after "unpledged electors" won the popular vote in both states, with Senator Kennedy having finished second and also receiving the votes of the other five Alabama electors. The slate had also appeared in Louisiana but polled third.
Joseph Alsop again discusses the urgency of building Western defenses to match the Soviets, as a means either to win the cold war or suffer total defeat, stressing this time the optimistic side of the coin. When things had been bleak in the summer of 1947, the U.S. had responded with the Marshall Plan to provide the Western European nations the ability to rebound from the war. The program had been a success, as life had come back to Western Europe; but internal political and economic problems remained from the prewar times, particularly in West Germany and Italy. There was great complication in trying to form a united Europe because of past mutual enmities and suspicions. But the tendency with the new pooling arrangement of iron and steel between France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries was a positive sign of attempted cooperation.
Production was up in Western Europe and the mood of the people had improved with it. With that accomplished through the Marshall Plan, it should give, he ventures, the U.S. the self-confidence to get the second part of the program, defense, accomplished with the self-help of the involved nations. The effort could fail by pushing onto them more burdens than they could handle or the U.S. could fail to make the effort. The effort had to take into account the continued convalescent nature of Western Europe and, if so, it could result in a positive success, capable of resulting in total victory in the cold war.
A letter writer finds the Willis Smith supporters in the Senate race to be engaged in "Bilboesque tactics"—those of the racist, reactionary deceased Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi. The "Negro lover", "book larnin'" and "Communist" labels sought to be stuck on Senator Graham were increasingly leaving voters disgusted. Humaneness was becoming a reality rather than a Sunday ethic and education was no longer looked upon in the state with suspicion. This change in the South was part of a national and worldwide evolution of beliefs. He concludes that the backgrounds and conditioning of the two candidates ought make the choice easy for voters.
A letter writer tells of a Republican reading with interest an article, "Smith Hit for 'Republican'", referring to use by Graham supporters of the term "Republican" to describe Mr. Smith's policy stands—Marquis Childs having compared Mr. Smith's stands to those of the McKinley-era Republicans, standing so far to the right that he stood with only about six existing conservative Republicans. The writer thinks, however, that the ideals for which Mr Smith stood equated with "Americanism".
A letter writer from Hamlet expresses support for Senator Graham and provides his reasons, primarily that he was for the common man, a trait, he finds, shared by few others in public life.
A letter writer from Asheboro finds the application of "Republican" to Mr. Smith as a smear tactic to be troubling as he identified as a Republican, himself; likewise, the attribution of Mr. Smith being a corporate lawyer as a negative, as he believes corporations, not the Government, were responsible for the high standard of living in the country. He takes to task a previous letter writer of June 16 who used the latter term, thinks Senator Graham would only help foster the "welfare state". He instructs that the Constitution provided for the "pursuit of happiness", but did not guarantee it.
You obviously know a lot about the Constitution, as it is the Declaration of Independence which provided for the "pursuit of happiness". The word "happiness" or any variant thereof does not appear in the Constitution and, indeed, would have no place, other than perhaps in the Preamble, which does contain the phrase "[to] promote the general welfare" as one of the document's primary purposes. The Constitution instructs as to our form of Government, the limits of its power, and those rights and privileges inherent in the people with which the Government cannot interfere. The Declaration was a statement of independence by the colonies from the oppressive measures of the Crown.
Some blind mice get stuck in the run, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and think therefore that it also appears in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which requires due process of law before deprivation of "life, liberty, or property". Such are the hazards of trying to learn by rote rather than reasoning and substance, coupled with careful reading.
Undoubtedly, such ignorance and confusion regarding the very basis of American life and law is why you want to vote for Willis Smith and not the Truman "welfare state". You could, however, get a well paying gig today at Fox News, probably. All you need is an ability to speak like you know what you are talking about while being as dumb and uninformed as a fence post, or be able to lie effectively with a smile, engagingly weave a tapestry of alternative facts as if they were reality.
A letter writer rejects the previous letter writer's reference to John T. Flynn's The Road Ahead as illuminating the character of Senator Graham by aligning him with Communists and Communist sympathizers. He lists a host of persons who had endorsed Senator Graham's character, including General Marshall, Senator Wayne Morse and Senator Clyde Hoey.
A letter from Major General William Chase, GSC chief of staff, at Fort McPherson, Ga., on behalf of Lt. General Alvan C. Gillem, Jr., commanding general of the Third Army, thanks the newspaper for publicizing the first annual Armed Forces Day in Charlotte and making it a success.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.