The Charlotte News
Saturday, October 20, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert Tuckman, that Communist liaison officers had accepted a U.N. compromise of a quarter-mile wide security path from Communist headquarters at Kaesong and from U.N. advance headquarters at Munsan to the agreed new site at Panmunjom for renewal of the ceasefire talks, an agreement which appeared to pave the way for their quick resumption. The agreement resulted after over four hours of discussion, the longest one-day session since the liaison officers began discussion of conditions to resume the talks. The Communists had wanted a three-mile security corridor, whereas the U.N. had wanted only protection for the road itself. An allied liaison officer indicated that he expected it to result in a settlement one way or the other by the following day, the only remaining issue being agreement on the security conditions surrounding the neutrality zone. The Communists wanted an agreement that mere flight over the Kaesong security area would constitute an hostile act, whereas the allies indicated that their pilots had been warned to stay away from Kaesong and that such was sufficient without any written agreement.
In ground action, U.S. tanks smashed into enemy-held Kumsong this date and blasted enemy targets there for an hour before returning to U.N. lines two miles south without any casualties despite heavy enemy anti-tank and artillery fire. About a mile to the south, allied infantrymen battled in wind and rain for the last major ridge line below Kumsong. The Eighth Army communiqué said that advancing U.N. units were within 2,500 yards of the town—a former enemy bastion, which was the major objective in the U.N. fall offensive.
Egypt continued to be defiant to Britain in the Suez Canal zone but its armed forces kept out of range of British forces dug in along the zone. The British had reportedly moved its entire garrison from the island of Cyprus to reinforce with a full brigade of paratroops the 40,000 British troops in Egypt. A British military spokesman in Cairo said that no incidents had occurred in the Canal zone during the night. In Cairo, Egyptian officials delivered a formal protest note accusing Britain of endangering the peace in the Middle East and blaming it for Wednesday's pre-dawn battle in which two Egyptian soldiers were killed at the only bridge over the Canal. The top Egyptian Army officer for the Sudan, ordered out of the Sudan by the British to maintain public order, remained behind under orders by his Army superiors to stay, after the Egyptian controller-general for education in the Sudan, also ordered out by the British, had left by plane.
On the previous day, in its rush to adjournment this date, the Congress took several actions. The House approved and sent to the President a 5.7 billion dollar tax increase bill which it turned down in nearly the same form on Tuesday. Both houses passed a bill to revise postal rates. Both houses also passed bills raising the pay of 1.1 million civil servants by $300-$800 per year. The Senate approved a four billion dollar appropriations bill for military construction and confirmed nine of the President's nominees to become delegates or alternates to the U.N., but took no action on the nomination of Ambassador Philip Jessup to become a member of the delegation, leaving the way open for the President to make a recess appointment so that Mr. Jessup could join the delegation for the November General Assembly meeting in Paris.
The compromise tax bill passed the House by a vote of 185 to 160 after the Senate had approved it Thursday by voice vote. The President had sought a 10-billion dollar increase. The lesser passed increase was expected to bring the Government's income to about 64.7 billion for the 1952 fiscal year, an amount which would still be between three to eight billion dollars in deficit. The House had originally voted for a bill providing for a 7.2-billion dollar increase in taxes, but the Senate had cut it to 5.4 billion, before the compromise bill was agreed upon in conference, resulting in 5.7 billion. Along with two other prior tax bills passed since the outbreak of the Korean War, 16 billion dollars had been added to taxes. In the final vote on the measure, 126 Republicans joined 34 Democrats in opposing the bill, while 147 Democrats and 37 Republicans voted for it. For most Americans, the bill would result in an increase of slightly less than 11.75 percent in income tax obligations.
Among the bills passed this day was a Senate override of the President's veto regarding a bill to help disabled veterans purchase automobiles, an override which was also expected to pass the House by the necessary two-thirds vote. The bill required the Government to pay up to $1,600 toward the purchase of any car by a veteran of World War II or the Korean War who had lost a leg, an arm, or was blind or had impaired vision resulting from service. (We hope the measure also provided a stipend for a driver in the event of the latter conditions.) Also on the agenda for this date were three large appropriations bills, including the 7.3 billion dollar foreign aid bill.
The President nominated General Mark Clark to become the first U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. The President had a special representative to the Vatican for several years, but he had resigned sometime earlier and no subsequent representative had been appointed. Since that time, several Protestant church organizations had urged the President not to reappoint a special representative. General Clark had played a major role in the invasion of Italy during World War II and he was presently commander of the Army Field Forces. There had been talk of his early retirement from the Army but no advance word had come regarding the appointment as Ambassador and the President issued no statement with the nomination.
In San Francisco, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, led by Harry Bridges, agreed to furnish an officially deputized crew after Montgomery Ward and Co. filed a Superior Court complaint for delivery of $44,000 worth of Christmas toys aboard two strike-bound vessels in port at San Francisco. The deputized longshoremen had previously refused for three months to unload the two vessels. They agreed only to unload the cargo affected by the Montgomery Ward complaint, an unloading paid for by the store.
In consequence, the children gathered around the tree on Christmas morn would have the Sheriff of San Francisco, Harry Bridges and Montgomery Ward to thank for getting steam trains, dolls, miniature cook stoves and model aeroplanes in their stockings from Santa rather than coal. But why were the ships at San Francisco and not the North Pole? No doubt, their path had been diverted by Commies.
In New York, police, acting on a tip by a woman, said that they were holding an unidentified man for questioning in the killing of underworld figure and gambler Willie Moretti. Police said the woman claimed to have driven the man and two others to Joe's Restaurant in Cliffside, N.J., where the killing took place on October 4. The man picked up and questioned denied complicity in the slaying.
Also in New York, the Police Department was undergoing a major reorganization after disclosures regarding bookie bribes to crooked cops. The Police Commissioner ordered the changes after the chief inspector had announced his resignation because of impaired health. The Commissioner praised the inspector's service and announced his successor.
In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott was having fun with reporters over the speculation that he might run for lieutenant governor the following year, turning aside press questions on the subject with joking answers. Many observers, however, believed that he would instead run for the Senate in 1954 against Senator Willis Smith and did not believe that a victory in the lieutenant governor's race would help him greatly in such a contest, while defeat would be a serious setback.
Those observers were correct, although by that point, Senator Smith had died in mid-1953 and was replaced by Alton Lennon, appointed by Governor Scott's successor, Governor William B. Umstead. Governor Scott would win that race.
On the editorial page, "A Poor Way to Run the People's Business" discusses the repeated delay by the City Council of consideration of the City Traffic Engineer's plan for routing trucks through the city to alleviate traffic jams, a plan filed early in the year and accepted and endorsed by the Motor Freight Carriers Association and the Chamber of Commerce, but on which thus far, the Council had not acted. As Charlotte had grown and become a distribution center for trucks, congestion had increased and would continue to increase into the future. It therefore urges the Council to have the foresight to fight for the truck regulation plan and if any individual member was possessed of the will to do so, it urges him to step forward.
"Europe's Economic Alternatives" tells of lecturer Henry C. Wolfe, who had visited Charlotte during the week, holding the opinion that until trade between Eastern and Western Europe was re-established, Western Europe could not be made self-sufficient, necessitating continuing aid from the U.S. indefinitely into the future.
But resumption of such trade would aid Russia in receiving strategic materials and Congress would not support aid to Western Europe in that event, with the prospect of U.S. products going to Russia, China and North Korea. But if Mr. Wolfe was correct, a failure to re-establish that trade would result in long-term U.S. economic aid to Europe, also not acceptable to Congress or the taxpayers.
Former Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Will Clayton had stated that if U.S. trade restrictions prevented Western Europe from selling goods and obtaining thereby U.S. dollars to buy goods from the U.S., then it would proceed to trade with the Soviets.
Trans-Atlantic trade required the removal of tariff barriers and it suggests that economic nationalism was as disastrous as military nationalism in the modern world, as recognized at the Ottawa NATO conference, where a concerted effort had been made to integrate the economies of NATO nations. Meanwhile, it asserts, the members of Congress who were opposed to any trade with Communist countries could aid the free world by taking a more positive alternative step in increasing trade between the U.S. and Western Europe.
"The Troubles of Mr. Shapiro" comments on the story regarding Maxwell Shapiro of Boston who was promised a reduction of his $142,000 tax bill by $40,000 provided he paid $10,000 to two "fixers", one of whom was the brother of the indicted St. Louis tax collector, James Finnegan, and the other a New York insurance man. The two fixers claimed to have spoken to tax collector Dennis Delaney of Boston, who was also under indictment, about fixing the tax bill and that it had been authorized. Mr. Shapiro had then called Mr. Delaney and was told everything was okay, and so he paid the $10,000 in two installments but received no reduction in his tax obligation.
The piece suggests that Mr. Shapiro might be guilty of an attempt to defraud the Government and that the two fixers appeared to have committed fraud against Mr. Shapiro, and so perhaps were all subject to indictment. It also wonders whether Mr. Shapiro had taken the $10,000 as a deduction for a necessary business expense from his income. It thus wishes to hear more about Mr. Shapiro's troubles.
"Words" tells of the bulletin of the Charlotte Merchants Association passing along the facts that the Gettysburg Address contained 266 words, the Ten Commandments, 297 words, and the Office of Price Stabilization order to reduce the price of cabbage, 26,911 words.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "He 'Slud' Home", tells of Dizzy Dean returning home to St. Louis, where he had pitched as a player, now to become the broadcaster and commentator for the St. Louis Browns baseball games.
Some of his followers insisted that he could sing "Wabash Cannonball" with the same fervor as an operatic singer. Whatever the case, concludes the piece, he had "slud" to fame through his mastery of the English language and would be welcomed home in St. Louis.
A piece from the Congressional Quarterly looks at the record of the first session of the 82nd Congress and finds that a powerful group of Southerners had controlled it. The session had begun slowly but finished fast, had turned up more public scandal and spent more money than any recent session. It produced the largest military appropriation bill, at about 57 billion dollars, since the height of World War II. The total budget was pushed to 85 billion dollars, a peacetime record. Taxes were raised to help pay for defense, sending the peacetime tax burden to a new record. A record-breaking foreign aid program was presently in conference committee. Extensive price, wage and rent controls had been renewed, along with a system of priorities and allocations for scarce materials. The nation's first universal military service bill was also passed.
Southern Democrats had formed a coalition with Republicans at the start of the session to push through new House by-laws which gave the Southern-dominated Rules Committee more power to pigeonhole bills. Only a few Southern Democrats were able to make or break key legislation. Southerners had joined with Republicans, for instance, to limit the corporate tax increase and to set a four-division limit on the number of troops the President was authorized to send in support of NATO. By contrast, most Southerners stood with the Administration in giving the President more authority to allot foreign aid money and had approved his nomination of Chester Bowles to become Ambassador to India.
The Congress had conducted more than 150 special investigations, uncovering scandals in the RFC, the IRB, and in surplus property sales and Army purchasing. These probes had slowed the progress of legislation during the first half of the year. By July 1, only 70 public laws had been enacted and not more than ten of those were of major importance. The pace increased, however, and in the ensuing three and a half months, Congress nearly quadrupled the number of measures enacted while passing 35 major bills. In addition to the appropriations bills and the tax increase, the Congress extended the Reciprocal Trade Agreements, provided famine relief in the form of a loan to India with which to purchase U.S. surplus wheat, passed a bill to provide for defense housing construction, flood relief and free G.I. life insurance.
Other bills were only partially acted on.
The Congress investigated such things as the military reserve policy, the Stabilization Board, G.I. insurance, monopoly, the power of the President to send troops to Europe, farm prices and Senatorial elections. More work was left to be done on investigations into baseball, the IRB, Communism and a resolution to oust Senator Joseph McCarthy from the Senate for false claims regarding Communists in the Government.
In the final days of the session, Congress passed 22 of the 57 major proposals of the President and partial action was taken on 12 more, while 16 requests were ignored and seven were rejected.
The session was slower than the first session of the previous Congress as both houses met for fewer days and passed more than 100 fewer bills. In the previous Congress, the Senate took an average of about an hour to pass an average bill, while the present Senate spent about one hour and 15 minutes. The previous House had taken about 25 minutes per bill while the current House took about 35 minutes.
It posits that the session might be remembered by historians for its "great debate" on foreign policy.
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Walter George of Georgia, after hearing the news that the House had initially rejected during the week his loophole-riddled tax bill, stated that it was the result of the handiwork of the CIO. In fact, labor and the big-city populations were opposed to the tax bill because of its many loopholes favoring upper-bracket taxpayers. The House vote against it was the result of an organized effort by GOP leader Joe Martin of Massachusetts, who had been able to obtain an almost solid bloc of Republican votes against the bill on the ostensible basis that Government spending should be curtailed in lieu of raising taxes, while the actual reason was to delay passage of the tax bill until the following year, so that the Democrats could be blamed in an election year for higher taxes.
The Democrats, in choosing a new National Committee chairman, were moving away from the tradition of an Irish Catholic big-city politician to fill the position, leaning toward a Southerner to try to heal the rift in the party. That was one reason why Wilson Wyatt, former Mayor of Louisville, was being pushed for the Democratic chairmanship. Westerners wanted former Congressman John Carroll or George Killian of San Francisco. The reason that FDR had started putting big-city Irishmen at the head of the party was partly because he considered them to be shrewd politicians and partly in order to obtain the big city vote, predominantly Catholic. Thus, there had been a line of DNC chairmen starting with Jim Farley, followed by Ed Flynn of the Bronx, Frank Walker of Scranton, Pa., and New York, Bob Hannegan of St. Louis, Gael Sullivan of Chicago, Howard McGrath of Providence, R.I., and then William Boyle of Kansas City.
He notes that one Eastern Irishmen for whom the President had personal regard was John Sullivan of New Hampshire, former Secretary of the Navy, whom the President regarded as extremely conscientious and not willing to accept any outside work while on the Government payroll.
The President had told trusted friends confidentially of his plan to shake up the White House staff and the DNC, and had been planning for months for the resignation of Mr. Boyle, to that end, had told him that since he had been complaining about his health, he should obtain a physical checkup, a hint which Mr. Boyle took.
Former counsel to the President, Clark Clifford, now in private practice, had been urging the President to clean up the DNC for some time, as the Committee was wasting precious campaign funds without achieving results. A meeting was held between Mr. Clifford, the President and Mr. Boyle at which Mr. Clifford repeated his claims that the Committee was poorly managed and achieving little, with which Mr. Boyle disagreed vehemently, causing the two to become embroiled in an argument, in which the President finally interceded. The decision to ease out Mr. Boyle began, says Mr. Pearson, on that evening.
Stewart Alsop tells of attending a
speech in Britain by Labor rebel Aneurin Bevan
The crowd appeared to be satisfied by this "solution" and Mr. Bevan then switched to the rising standard of living among the workers and increase in social services under the Socialists since the hard years of the Thirties. The crowd responded with enthusiasm and as Mr. Bevan finished and sat down, it was plain that he was a politician of stature, held in high esteem by his followers.
Mr. Alsop observes that Mr. Bevan was neither a would-be dictator nor the leader of an anti-American crusade, and that the latter ascribed trait among his followers had been "wildly exaggerated". There was no anti-Americanism in evidence in this meeting or present as a serious issue in the upcoming general election. But, he urges, Mr. Bevan should be taken seriously by Americans as he had become the focus of wishful thinking among a minority of Socialists, just as Neville Chamberlain had once been with a majority of Conservatives. Mr. Bevan's solution for the Middle East was no more a real solution than Mr. Chamberlain's "peace in our time" solution at Munich. Just as the Conservatives under Mr. Chamberlain had placed business as usual ahead of national security, so the Bevanites were putting "free dentures before the armed strength necessary to survival".
He posits that what was surprising was that there were so few Bevanites and that the British were united on rearming and the need to maintain the Anglo-American alliance. They knew instinctively, he suggests, that if the problems which were occurring in the Middle East continued much longer, there would be no ability to have social programs in Britain or even a tolerable standard of living. He concludes that Mr. Bevan, in all likelihood, understood this idea and that if he were ever to achieve power, he would act on that knowledge.
Robert C. Ruark tells of being quite
disappointed after achieving his lifelong ambition of being able to
play engineer on a fast train
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