The Charlotte News

Friday, June 23, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Congress had extended the peacetime draft temporarily for 15 days to provide time for both houses to reconcile the bills on extension of the draft, following Senate approval of a three-year draft extension, eliminating segregation amendments, whereby draftees could elect to serve in segregated units, sought to be placed in the bill by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. The previously passed House bill established only a two-year extension and had other differences regarding the President's authority to induct under "national necessity" without Congressional approval, provided under the Senate bill but reserved to Congress under the House version. The present draft law would expire at midnight the following day without extension.

Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews announced that the Navy had plans to build a flush-deck carrier but that construction would not commence until 1951 and that it had not yet been authorized. Confusion had arisen after the Baltimore Sun published an account by a Navy officer claiming that the way had been cleared for the aircraft carrier.

The Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the charges of Senator Joseph McCarthy questioned in public hearings this date John Service of the State Department regarding FBI testimony which purportedly, according to a summary of the testimony by Senator McCarthy, claimed that he had passed secret military data to a defendant, Philip Jaffe, in the 1945 Amerasia case. Mr. Service the previous night had testified that he had never knowingly given any secret military information to Mr Jaffe, then editor of the magazine, that he had no such secret information to give in the first place, but that he had undoubtedly discussed with Mr. Jaffe the wartime military situation in China. Senator McCarthy had contended that the FBI testimony, taken in executive session the previous month, had disclosed that a hidden microphone picked up the conversation between Mr. Service and Mr. Jaffe in a hotel room in Washington in May, 1945, and that it showed that Mr. Service had supplied the secret military information in question.

HUAC voted this date to cite Steve Nelson, organizer for the Western Pennsylvania Communist Party, for contempt for refusing to answer questions on June 8, 1949 concerning Russian atomic espionage, during the Committee's investigation of Communist infiltration to the U.C.-Berkeley Lawrence Laboratory. The Committee had been informed that Mr. Nelson had received confidential information during the war about the atomic bomb. HUAC intended to make a case-by-case review of the testimony of about 30 other witnesses who had appeared before it to determine who should be so cited for refusing to answer questions since the beginning of 1949. The previous day, it voted to issue citations against 29 witnesses who had refused to answer questions during an investigation of Communist activities in Hawaii the prior April.

Senate crime investigators reported that a St. Louis gambling firm, C. J. Rich & Co., had been doing a $500,000 per day mail-order and telegraphic bookie business on horse races and baseball games. The chief postal inspector of the Post Office Department testified to the Senate investigating committee that the Department had obtained indictments against the company for violations of lottery laws. Police in St. Louis had reported that the Western Union office managers had been offered a 25 percent cut on betting profits for handling the bets. Senator Estes Kefauver, chairman of the committee, said that it would look into Ohio operations, with the full cooperation of Governor Frank Lausche.

Off Guam, a fleet tugboat spotted at least nine survivors of an eleven-man crew of a crashed B-29 in life rafts, and rescue planes then dropped lifeboats to the men. The plane had crashed the previous day while on a routine practice bomb run on Okinawa.

In Fullerton, California, a block-square area of the town center was ablaze and out of control after two hours.

In Morristown, Tenn., highway patrolmen were deemed by the State highway commissioner to be sufficient to guard the violence-beset American Enka Corp. textile plant without the aid of the National Guard. The TWUA had been striking there since late March.

In New York, 600 college students were stranded after the Coast Guard branded their chartered ship a "firetrap" as it was set to sail for Europe.

In North Carolina, Senator Frank Graham and Willis Smith wound up their campaigns for the runoff election the following day, with Senator Graham in Greensboro, to finish with a radio broadcast this night from Raleigh, and Mr. Smith speaking in and around Raleigh. The runoff campaign had been characterized by the race issue, with Mr. Smith calling for a vote for "real Southern democracy", hammering the FEPC issue and seeking to offset bloc voting for Senator Graham in black precincts in the first primary election. The previous night, in a radio address, Mr. Smith had made the claim that the politics of the President had injected the race issue to the campaign, through Senator Graham's participation on the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which had issued its report in 1947 endorsing integration throughout society and a compulsory FEPC, among other things. Senator Graham had countered that he did not believe in a compulsory FEPC and that integration of public schools would be unwise for both races.

The News prints a telegram it had received from Roger N. Baldwin of New York anent an ad for Willis Smith which had appeared in the newspaper twice, including the previous day, attempting to taint Senator Graham with Communist sympathies through his membership in the ACLU. Mr Baldwin defends the organization and says that it had undertaken special efforts to eliminate Communists from its membership and that no one should suspect Senator Graham of anything less honorable than standing for the civil liberties which the ACLU sought to promote and protect.

The women of the North Carolina American Legion Auxiliary were holding their convention in Charlotte Saturday through Tuesday, coincident with the state American Legion convention.

On the editorial page, "A Belated Disavowal" tells of Republicans appearing finally to be ready to "unload McCarthy" from the party baggage since he had begun making his charges of Communists in the State Department the prior February 9 in a Lincoln Day speech—based, as disclosed earlier by Marquis Childs, on a randomly assigned topic to the Senator by the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Senator Styles Bridges had spoken out against him while praising his objectives. Governors James Duff of Pennsylvania and Earl Warren of California had denounced him at the Governors Conference during the week. And Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had been a regular opponent for several weeks.

It finds all of these opponents likely to be influential in the 1952 presidential race. It was to be hoped therefore that the GOP would be able to go to the voters with something more than demagoguery in tow, a proof of Lincoln's advice that you could not fool all of the people all of the time.

It believes, however, that it would have been better had such wisdom come earlier, as it was evident early on that Senator McCarthy was merely taking a leaf from the Communist propaganda book, flinging barrels of mud, hoping a little would stick.

It was actually more akin to the Nazi Big Lie theory of Herr Doktor Goebbels—not unlike the analogues in our society still, such as pervades Fox News and its philosophical adherents, at the end of the day, seeking cynically through demagogy two things, money and power by convincing boobs that the handy scapegoat of the moment is the bugaboo of all time, responsible for all their troubles and that the demagogues' solution will provide the sole remedy, such that all will live then happily, sans the troublemakers, in a magical land of make-believe forever and ever without trouble.

"We'll Take Gardner for Constable" finds that the incumbent constable of Charlotte Township, James L. Gardner, should be re-elected in the Saturday runoff, as he had performed his duties satisfactorily. His opponent in the runoff had an extensive, recent police record, including two convictions for drunkenness, thus not recommending him highly for the position.

"The Independent Baptists" finds that the decision of the N.C. Baptist convention a couple of months earlier to decline $600,000 in Federal funds for building a new wing on Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem to have been an act of courage, to maintain separation of church and state. They did not wish to receive tax dollars to propagate the faith in which others did not place belief. It was a striking example of integrity, it finds, in an era when others had their palms outstretched for Federal aid and funding.

"Man and Alcohol" tells of Rowan County the previous year, in voting to be part of the State ABC system, having inserted the proviso that ten percent of profits from liquor sales would go to law enforcement education against misuse of alcohol. The County had hired a man with a master's degree in sociology to be instructor in that education. It wishes the program success as a model, finds such an educational background, supplemented by psychology and other such disciplines, to be ideal for the purpose. It warns, however, of having expectations of too much success, for Americans had for generations sought drink as a path to nepenthe, and that only by maturation as a people would reach the realization of the Greek teaching of moderation in all things. Until then, there would always be those who would seek drink as a catharsis for a variety of ills. In the meantime, the sociologist hired by Rowan County might lessen the impact of alcoholism.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, in the main, drink Cheerwine and learn to dream of Salisbury Plain.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Population Trends", finds the patterns of growth, as determined by the 1950 census, to have been in the suburbs rather than in the cities. Nearly a third of the increase in Charlotte's population, from 100,000 to 133,000, had been from annexation. Norfolk had a similar resulting increase. Greensboro's growth had been overshadowed by that of Guilford County surrounding it. The trend was not surprising as people sought the more preferable rural environment for living while enjoying the benefits of access to the city. There was little if anything in the way of precise delineation of borders to show where the city stopped and the country began. The really important thing in determining size, it concludes, was not the city limits but rather the city's surrounding metropolitan area and the buying power of the population within it.

Drew Pearson tells of Republican leaders being divided into three groups generally for the 1952 presidential campaign, one advocating the candidacy of Senator Taft as a conservative with a social conscience, but not so much as Governor Dewey, another, of General Eisenhower, as a moderate backed by Thomas Watson of IBM, and a third, of Governor Earl Warren, his backers being impressed by his recent primary victory, set to beat James Roosevelt in the fall election, symbolic of defeating the New Deal while maintaining liberal views and backing. The third group was not certain that Americans would be impressed by a military man who had been president of Columbia University since mid-1948.

In North Carolina, a majority of the newspapers were supporting Willis Smith in the campaign over Senator Frank Graham. He was also being assailed by the cigarette and textile interests as a dangerous radical. So, a group of newsmen supporting Senator Graham had put out a special edition of the Mecklenburg Democrat in his honor, saying that the Senator was "as dangerous as the Declaration of Independence, as radical as the Beatitudes, and as revolutionary as the Bill of Rights".

Stuart Symington, chairman of the National Security Resources Board, had told ERP administrator Paul Hoffman that he had to go to Yale to attend the graduation of two of his sons. Mr. Hoffman responded that he had three sons, two daughters and a son-in-law graduating from college as well. Mr. Pearson had followed up on the claim of Mr. Hoffman and confirmed his count.

Recently, former head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Eric Johnston was in England and reported to G.M. president Charles Wilson, future Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower, that the cooperative 5-year G.M. contract, recently struck with UMW without a strike, had convinced Britons that America was making progressive strides in labor relations, whereas previously they had thought the country on its last legs before revolt in that arena.

The committee chaired by Congressman Emanuel Celler, investigating monopolies, had recently obtained a document showing a worldwide conspiracy to boost the price of newsprint, complicating the newspaper business, resulting in mergers to meet increased costs, thereby reducing competition. The head of the Scandinavian Newsprint Cartel had made a trip to the U.S. and Canada some time earlier to persuade the Newsprint Association of Canada to set up a worldwide cartel. Mr. Celler had invited this man and the head of the Canada group to testify, but both had ducked thus far.

Marquis Childs discusses the efforts of the State Department to restore faith in its operations and dispel the perception created by Senator Joseph McCarthy of infiltration by Communists affecting policy, especially in the Far East. The objective of Secretary of State Acheson's series of speeches around the country was to show that not one of the charges had been substantiated by documentary or other proof, that top officials and subordinates alike had been forced to spend hundreds of man-hours disproving the charges, and that it was time therefore to allow the Department to return to doing its job of waging peace without such distraction.

The Federal Grand Jury in New York had already determined that in the 1945-46 Amerasia case there was no dereliction of duty on the part of the State Department or the Justice Department in delaying the case. A State Department loyalty board was about to issue a new report clearing John Service of the Department of any wrongdoing in the Amerasia case, for which he had been arrested but never indicted, marking the fourth time he had been so cleared in the matter.

Deputy Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy had carried the burden as liaison to Congress, a role for which he was well adapted, being an amiable native of South Carolina who was not the usual State Department stuffed-shirt, able to discuss matters with the Senators and Congressmen on their own ground. Indeed, the Senate Appropriations Committee had recognized his abilities in this regard by arranging to give him a salary of $17,500 per year rather than the usual $15,000 for his position. Conservative Senator Styles Bridges had come to his defense when he was attacked by Senator McCarthy for supposedly communicating a deal to John Service. Mr. Peurifoy had maintained his objectivity throughout the investigation, insuring that there would be no internal whitewash of the Department, while also not yielding to political pressure or hysteria.

He had recognized candidly that the origins of the Amerasia case had developed out of a conflict between two factions in the State Department fighting over China during the war, that of Maj. General Patrick Hurley, then Ambassador to China, against that of General Joseph Stilwell, head of the Military Mission to Chiang Kai-Shek, and, later, General Marshall, as special emissary to China for the President in 1946. General Hurley was to testify to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the matter.

Mr. Childs urges that it should also hear from General William Donovan, head of the OSS during the war, who had privately conveyed his views on the Amerasia case to the State Department. It was his operative, Frank Bielaski, who illegally had broken into the Amerasia headquarters and seized the stolen State Department documents which led to the six arrests with five indictments, eventuating, however, in only two convictions, made perforce pursuant to plea bargains, with only small fines in consequence, because of the illegal search and seizure tainting the entire case.

Robert C. Ruark advocates independence after college to find out what one wanted to do in life, rather than following the straight-and-narrow path, unless one had a degree which led directly to a career. He had done so after college, emerging in the mid-Thirties, working an assortment of odd jobs for a couple of years, a sojourn he details, before finally determining that none of those jobs offered anything more than something to avoid, fixing finally on a career as a columnist by happenstance, taking a couple of years finally to obtain $25 per week in salary. Now, he was able to earn a fair sum while sleeping until noon, writing then about whatever topic he chose. Such a journey "west" beat "twisting the tail of a gas pump and living with the folks".

He concludes that he could not recommend restiveness too highly to new job seekers, that while a rolling stone gathered no moss, one could not eat moss and might accumulate dough.

A letter writer favors Willis Smith as a "man with a mind of his own" in the Senate race, feels that no one should care about the claims of Governor Kerr Scott who had not kept his promises.

A letter writer responds to a letter from Hamlet appearing June 19 and its statement that Social Security was part of the "welfare state", saying that as long as the Government was solvent, so, too, would be Social Security. No one, he advises, ought want to return to the days of President Hoover, who had promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage but provided in fact only a depression. He intends to vote for Senator Graham.

A letter writer from Harker's Island, N.C., states his intent to vote for Mr. Smith, as he and the other residents knew his ins and outs as they knew the twenty-foot sharks which flitted here and there about the island.

A letter writer believes that pro-Stalinist politicians were attempting to foist the FEPC on the country, while Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Booker T. Washington had favored segregation, and questions whether the President, the Governor, and Senator Graham thought themselves better than these men. If Senator Graham were re-elected, then the voters would be sending back to Congress advocacy for "Truman's Communist-originated civil rights program", a scheme to destroy the authority of the state over its own affairs. He assures that Christian white people did not hate black people and that Christian black people did not hate white people, but that intelligent leaders of both races favored separation as God intended, else he would have created all people alike.

A letter from a lawyer from Pittsboro expresses sympathy with a letter from an anonymous "Ardent Graham Man" who declined identification for the fact of doctors and teachers needing to be circumspect re involvement in public expression of political beliefs. He does not understand the inclusion of doctors in the group but says that he knew of a teacher who had lost her job for banking with her home bank rather than the local bank. He thinks democracy would work better under its principles. People got upset about the treatment of black people while not doing common justice to their own kin.

A letter from Archibald Henderson of Chapel Hill invites cooperation, by making contributions of photographs, cartoons, portraits of players in plays, playbills, etc., in aid of the creation of his "Centennial Biography of Bernard Shaw", designed for publication in 1956, coincident with Mr. Shaw's centennial year, and running probably to several volumes. It would be authorized, he says, as with his prior works on Mr. Shaw.

A letter writer responds to the letter of June 19 regarding the trucking argument concerning whether trucks were paying their fair share for destruction of the roads. He thinks the Reader's Digest article, "The Rape of the Roads", was biased against trucks and that the argument was based on advocacy for the railroads, seeking to blame their failure on the trucking industry.

But a truck can't pull a train and does not have a cow catcher, even if possessed of a Mansfield bar.

A letter from the secretary of Branch 545 of the N.C. State Association of Letter Carriers thanks the newspaper for helping to make their recent convention in Charlotte a success.

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