The Charlotte News
Friday, November 9, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a morning session of negotiations in Korea regarding the ceasefire had gotten nowhere, prompting the U.N. negotiators to call off the session as useless. The Communists would not budge from their previously communicated response regarding the ceasefire buffer zone being established consistent with present battle lines but not subject thereafter to alteration without mutual consent of the two sides, a condition unacceptable to the allies for it enabling the remaining issues to finalize a ceasefire to drag on indefinitely, absent pressure for immediate resolution by allowing for the line to be established by the battle lines extant at the point of final resolution.
In air action, allied warplanes shot down three enemy jets and damaged two others, while all allied planes returned safely to base. Two aerial duels had been fought, involving 52 American jets against 50 enemy planes, one of the few times the sides had met on roughly equal terms.
In ground action, as temperatures fell to 17 degrees, Chinese forces engaged in small predawn attacks against allied positions near Yonchon and Kumsong in the western and central fronts, respectively, but the enemy troops appeared more interested in staying warm than launching an offensive. Generally, daylight activity was confined to exchanging artillery and mortar fire.
In Paris, at the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador Philip Jessup called a press conference at which he challenged the Soviets to begin immediate talks at the U.N. regarding disarmament instead of waiting until June, as they had indicated the previous day, subject to conditions which were completely unacceptable to the West, requiring, among other things, a ceasefire in Korea within ten days and evacuation of all foreign troops within thirty days. Also, a formal complaint to the Assembly was registered by Yugoslavia, that Russia and its satellites were trying to drive the people of Yugoslavia to the point of making war on Marshal Tito.
Senator Zales Ecton of Montana said this date to the press, after witnessing an atomic test in Nevada on October 30, that atomic weapons were now capable of use on the battlefield against the Communists in Korea if necessary. He was pleased with the progress of atomic weapons research.
In New York, longshoremen ended their 20-day wildcat strike after a New York fact-finding board reached an acceptable agreement during the predawn hours. It had been the costliest strike to that point in history in the world's biggest port, with 114 ships tied up at the peak of the strike. Boston had been the only other port completely shut down by the strike, while other East Coast ports had been affected sporadically.
CIO president Philip Murray was re-elected to the post for the 12th successive year at the annual convention in New York. He said that CIO-AFL merger was premature but favored cooperation between the organizations. The UAW secretary-treasurer drew applause from the convention when he said that after examining the record of General Eisenhower, he could see nothing which would indicate his acceptability as President.
The House subcommittee looking into two tax cases out of North Carolina again, for the fourth straight day, questioned the IRB agent from Charlotte, but it was not disclosed what the testimony regarded.
Another Gallup poll appears, indicating that the President's approval stood at only 29 percent, versus 55 percent disapproval and 16 percent undecided. A month earlier, his approval had been at 32 percent, and a year earlier, 36 percent, whereas at the beginning of the current term in early 1949, it had been 69 percent. Respondents who disapproved gave four primary reasons, that he was not big enough for the job, that he allowed too much graft and corruption to take place, that the cost of living and taxes were too high, and that the Korean situation was a mess. It notes that, as would be shown by a subsequent poll, the popularity of the Democratic Party was considerably higher than that of the President. It also reminds that he had during his six years in office repeatedly staged political comebacks. Those who expressed approval gave as their primary reasons that he cared about the working man's interests above all else, that he stood up and fought for the working class, and was for the poor and against the rich.
In Winston-Salem, J. T. Joyner, Jr., announced his candidacy for the 1952 race for the State Secretary of State, based on his friend, Secretary of State Thad Eure, having indicated his intention to enter the gubernatorial race, with Mr. Joyner's candidacy being contingent on the outcome of the May Democratic primary.
In Los Angeles, a man without hands was arrested after he had robbed a market of $243 by threatening the clerk with a plastic toy revolver pointed through a hole in his right coat pocket, apparently holding the gun with his mechanical hand. The market owner, suspecting that the gun was a toy, gave chase and apprehended the man until officers could arrive. He had lost his hands, he told police, a year earlier when they were caught in a punch press he was operating while serving time for bank robbery in Folsom Prison.
In Schenectady, N.Y., a 17-year old
boy who had been ordered by a judge to shave off his goatee as a
condition of probation after conviction for being involved in a crap
game for which he was fined $25, initially had refused to shave on
the ground that his appearance was his business, but was finally
convinced to remove the goatee by his high school principal to avoid
the prospect of going to jail. And you know what they do
On the editorial page, "The Curtain of Secrecy" finds understandable the secrecy surrounding the records of income tax fraud investigations until an indictment was rendered, but, given the scandals uncovered regarding IRB collectors receiving bribes to delay or sidetrack investigations, that the public's right to know what was going on behind closed doors with regard to investigations of persons accused of committing tax fraud was sufficient to override the necessity of secrecy. The public had the right to know "when the fish are slipping off the hook."
"U.N. May Be Splitting Hairs" finds that it would be better to go ahead and accept the ceasefire proposal made by the Communists and end the fighting in Korea, despite the fact that the U.N. negotiators believed that the current terms offered by the Communists would cause the ceasefire talks to drag on indefinitely in terms of resolving the remaining issues, administration of the ceasefire, exchange of prisoners, and a determination of statements to foreign governments.
The piece recognizes that the concerns were valid but believes that ending the fighting should be the paramount concern. The fact that the U.N. negotiators had won the concession from the Communists regarding the establishment of the present battle lines as the buffer zone, even though not subject to further alteration based on further fighting, and therefore effecting a de facto ceasefire, was sufficient.
"Weekly Editors' Outlook for '52" provides the results of a nationwide poll of editors of weekly publications conducted by Publishers' Auxiliary, regarding the 1952 presidential election, finding that the 2,000 respondents favored General Eisenhower while believing that Senator Taft would obtain the Republican nomination, and therefore, in the end, that the President would win. Forty percent believed that the President would win re-election, while 25 percent believed that General Eisenhower would become the next president, and only 20 percent, that Senator Taft would win. No other candidate received a significant vote. By the same token, only 8.6 percent personally favored the re-election of the President, while 30.4 percent wanted General Eisenhower to win and 27.1 percent, Senator Taft.
Of the respondents in North Carolina, the editors, by 66 percent to 22.2 percent, believed that the President would win rather than General Eisenhower. The South Carolina editors similarly believed that the President would win. No North Carolina editors gave General MacArthur a chance and only 2.8 percent foresaw a victory by Senator Taft. Twenty-five percent wanted General Eisenhower to win, while 20 percent favored the President and 13.9 percent, Senator Paul Douglas, followed by Senator Taft at 11.1 percent. In South Carolina, 38 percent favored the General, while 9.5 percent supported Senator Taft, and none wanted the President.
The piece thinks that the editors' conclusion was correct that the President would win the election, as it reflected the thinking of the majority of the public, despite the popularity of General Eisenhower. If that were to occur, it ventures, the two major parties would be responsible for providing the country a President they did not really want by the fact of party control of the convention process. It regards that prospect as "unhealthful" and hopes the parties would institute preferential primaries and act according to their mandate.
Of course, that latter process, insofar as the Republican preferential primaries in 2016, gave us a "President" who no one really wants, at least outside of a bunch of nuts and hypocritical Republicans who have decided to go along with the nuts to get along, that they might have their way in stacking the Federal courts, damning the while the will of the country's clear majority two years ago and obviously now, as evidenced by the results of the 2018 midterm elections. But try to explain any of that to one of the dummies who supports the "President" because they have seen him for years rule with an iron hand on "reality television" and believe him thus to be the consummate deal-maker, think it just grand whenever he fires someone or issues edicts, which is becoming practically a weekly event, just as on his former show. The only thing these dummies know how to do is to wave little signs, smile, yell "lock her up", damn the mainstream meteor, and put on little red hats, a truly pathetic lot.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, entitled "Women Drivers", tells of the American Automobile Association having conducted a survey, as summarized in the New York Times, which found that women drivers learned to drive more quickly than males and drove better, with fewer accidents. Men drivers had 2.8 accidents for every million miles driven, whereas women drivers had 1.7, with accident costs for males being more than twice that of women. The study had shown that the principal driving error for males was excessive speed, whereas for females, it was turning.
Only 27 percent of the drivers in the country were female, suggesting that when the woman driver tried to make up her mind which way she was going to turn, she was followed most probably by a male driver, who, if he was smart, would stop the car completely while she made up her mind. Most of the time, it concludes, the male driver did just that, which was why the females did not have more accidents, the only consolation it can derive from the otherwise dismal statistics.
Drew Pearson tells of former White House court-jester George Allen, also a friend to General Eisenhower, after having played bridge with the General during his recent visit earlier in the week to Washington, had informed that he did not badger the General about politics but just played cards and joked with him, adding that if he were to go out on a limb, he would say that the General would announce his intentions on around the second ballot of the convention. The General had intimated to a friend during the visit that he believed Washington was due for a housecleaning, suggesting that he would lean toward the Republicans, but also saying that he sided with the Democrats on foreign policy and that if the Republicans were to nominate Senator Taft, he would consider running against him as a Democrat.
The President had told the new DNC chairman Frank McKinney that his loyal friends had let him down in some instances and so Mr. McKinney had his complete confidence in doing what was necessary for the party in cleaning house.
The Republicans had prepared an eight-page research pamphlet providing 27 case histories of officials linked directly or indirectly with the IRB scandals. He quotes from its talking points, intended to be used on the hustings by the Republicans during the campaign season ahead. The former number-two man at the IRB was the first on the list, but the pamphlet was careful to point out, to avoid defamation suits, that he had requested reassignment the previous August because of health issues and had not been charged with anything.
Mr. Pearson notes that his column had begun investigating the IRB three years earlier and was the first to expose the tax scandals which had led to the dismissals of two collectors in New York and San Francisco.
Marquis Childs, in Sasabe, Ariz., tells of the expensive effort by the Government to prevent Mexican cattle from overrunning the border to avoid competition with U.S. beef. Fears of hoof and mouth disease, the rationale for control, had subsided, as the issue had been largely eradicated in recent years.
The American Cattlemen's Association was considered to be the most powerful single lobby in the country, as demonstrated by having prevented price controls on beef. They also had managed to keep the Mexican competition down. The costly border control effort was accomplished by horseback and airplanes and any cattle which wandered across the border was promptly destroyed.
To maintain Mexican goodwill, American dollars were purchasing Mexican cattle, the meat from which was then canned and shipped to Europe under the Marshall Plan. That had helped cattlemen in the South, but had adversely affected a lot of the ranchers in the northern part of Mexico.
No one believed that the border would be opened for movement of cattle into the U.S., another demonstration of the strength of the cattlemen's political pull. Yet, the cattlemen continued to regard Washington as the seed of all iniquity and the center of a plot to ruin and destroy them.
Robert C. Ruark, after seeing an advertisement in Life, is reminded that modern gadgetry had so freed the American housewife from the chores of old that she now had plenty of time to conjure up slights in the home, putting pressure on marriages as she demanded that the husband perform the simplest household tasks, such as crawling from a warm bed to turn up the thermostat in the morning before alighting to a cold house.
Meanwhile, the young son was too busy to do chores, "out investigating marijuana for his kicks".
"The age of the package, the shortcut, the improvement, the gimmick, the time-saving whizzeroo has implied mainly just one thing: it is not necessary to do it for yourself. Let something else, or somebody else, do it for you."
A letter from the president of the Charlotte Symphony Society, Inc., expresses her appreciation to the newspaper for its assistance in providing coverage for the 1951-52 Symphony season, and especially thanks News reporter Mack Bell.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for presenting the column of Dr. Herbert Spaugh, which the writer says he reads constantly.
A letter from A. W. Black—long
absent from the page though once a prolific
correspondent—finds the current "lyrical hodgepodge" which
was being played on the radio as music and entertainment to be
indicative of lack of human appreciation for the finer things.
Typical of the fare was "Hill Billy Star Time" and "G.
I. Time", which was a "conglomeration
A letter writer from Campobello, S.C., says that after writing several letters to the newspaper, he was retiring from the practice and would make this missive his last. He says that he was proud of the progressive city of Charlotte and wishes that George Washington could see it in 1951 to supplant his negative impression gleaned as President in 1791. He also expresses the desire that the people of the two Carolinas would take more interest in political affairs, that while talking a lot about democracy, in the last election, only about six percent of the eligible electorate voted in the two states. He urges the people to go to the polls.
Framed Edition
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