The Charlotte News
Monday, December 31, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. negotiators in Korea had accused the Communists this date of planning war while negotiating the truce, seeking to escape their agreement to reveal what had occurred to the 50,000 prisoners of war, most of whom were South Koreans, for whom they had yet to account. The Communists had refused to provide this information until the allies provided further information on Communist prisoners. The negotiating subcommittees on prisoners and policing of the truce remained deadlocked and would meet again the following day.
In ground action, enemy troops clung stubbornly to an allied snow-covered hill position west of Korangpo on the western front this date, in the face of a U.N. counterattack in its fourth day. Temperatures reached as low as 20 degrees below zero and the combat at times was at close quarters. The U.N. forces had been driven from the hill the prior Friday by a battalion of Chinese Communists supported by ten tanks or self-propelled heavy guns, followed by a counterattack of the allies backed by four tanks and low-flying planes, failing to extricate the enemy troops during the weekend. In the same general area, the enemy had hit allied lines at four points at around midnight on Sunday and all were repulsed.
Acting pursuant to a section of the 1950 Internal Security Act, sponsored by Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath was setting up detention camps for dangerous subversives in the country, should the need arise. Federal prison labor was working on three major installations with a combined capacity of 3,000 persons, one at a former military airport at Wickenburg, Ariz., and the others at former World War II prisoner-of-war camps at Florence, Ariz., and El Reno, Okla. Surveys were being conducted of similar unused Government facilities, including one at Tule Lake, Calif., an internment camp for 20,000 Japanese-Americans who had been displaced from the West Coast during the war. The McCarran Act gave the Attorney General responsibility for rounding up and detaining all persons likely to commit sabotage or espionage in the event of an invasion of the country or its possessions or after a Congressional declaration of war or an insurrection within the country in aid of a foreign enemy.
Search planes were looking for three aircraft which had mysteriously disappeared over the weekend, one, a non-scheduled airliner carrying 40 persons on a 190-mile trip from Pittsburgh to Buffalo, normally a one-hour trip, the second, a C-47 military transport with 28 persons aboard, taking off from Hamilton Air Force Base in California en route to Goodfellow Air Base in Texas, and the third, an Air Force F-51 Mustang fighter, which had vanished after its pilot radioed for landing instructions at Tucson. Bad weather hampered the search efforts in the areas of western Pennsylvania, the Great Lakes, and in Arizona. Meanwhile, searchers believed they had located the wreckage of a C-47 Air Force plane which had been missing since the prior Wednesday with eight persons aboard, on a flight from Spokane to Travis Air Force Base in California, located 25 miles north of Oroville.
Inclement weather appeared to be keeping the holiday death toll down across the country, with 236 persons having died in accidents since 6 p.m. the prior Friday, including 156 traffic fatalities, well below the 350 predicted for the 102-hour period by the National Safety Council.
The Atlantic storm off England and Western Europe, thought to be possibly the worst for the area thus far in the 20th Century, had resulted in the deaths of 54 persons, with 17 others missing, amid high winds along the coasts. The latest victims had been 13 sailors whose bodies had washed ashore from a wrecked freighter near Borkum in West Germany. In Britain, where winds had reached 100 mph, 12 were dead and damage was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Along the coast of Ireland, another ten persons had died, most of them fishermen. At least 15 Spanish fishermen had also died at sea. One seaman had been killed in the disabling of an American steamer, the Flying Enterprise, after rescue vessels took aboard 40 of the crew and ten passengers as the ship listed to 60 degrees, 250 miles southwest of Ireland.
In Wilmington, N.C., an explosion in a home killed a mother and her son, and injured three others, including two neighbors in a nearby house. Police had not yet been able to determine the cause of the explosion, but believed it came from an accumulation of gas, the origin of which had not been ascertained.
The New Year was ushered in amid concerns over the continuing cold and hot wars of 1951, with the leap-year ahead promising a U.S. presidential election. Tens of thousands of persons had turned out as usual in New York's Times Square while other New Yorkers welcomed the new year in churches. Many nightclubs had raised their prices for the night, to as high as $27.50 per person for a cover charge. In London, revelers would jam Piccadilly Circus, while in Paris, celebrants would attend all-night parties, the traditional "reveillons". At Cuxhaven, Germany, hundreds of Germans were planning to invade the off-limits island of Heligoland, in celebration of the British decision to forgo further use of it as a bombing practice target. Even behind the Iron Curtain, there were expected to be celebrations of the new year. Meanwhile, soldiers in Korea would be praying that the coming year would bring the anticipated truce which had been elusive during the prior six months of negotiations since July 10.
In Shelby, Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, interviewed by News associate editor Vic Reinemer, told of favoring the general program of the Hoover Commission, which had recommended methods of promoting Government efficiency and economy in the executive branch, but indicated that the committees of Congress had not been able to reach conclusions yet as to what specifically should be done regarding the recommendations not yet addressed. He believed some action would be taken in the coming session of Congress, especially with regard to the Veterans Administration and the Department of Agriculture.
John F. Watlington, Jr., was named Charlotte's Man of the Year, as selected by the seven previous recipients since origination of the award in 1944. His selection was primarily based on his Community Chest activities, as further set forth in an editorial below. Mr. Watlington was an executive with Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. of Winston-Salem, and would become its head in 1956.
In that latter capacity, he lived in
a great big mansion, just a few blocks from where we used to live, in
a little bitty space, about the size of a shoe box
In Burlington, Wis., the Burlington Liars' Club gave its annual award to a minister, pastor of the Bigger Community Church in Biggs, California—which, perhaps in keeping with the spirit of the award, is actually very small, about the size of a shoe box. The minister had told a story of a man living west of town who tried to raise watermelons during the summer but encountered bad luck because the soil was too rich, causing the watermelon vines to grow so fast that they wore the watermelons out, dragging them along the ground, such that when one of the boys of the town sought to swipe some one night, he wound up in the hospital after one of the fast-growing vines dragged him half a mile.
The runner-up, a woman from Minneapolis, told of being on the way home from berry picking, taking a shortcut through a rough cow pasture, when suddenly they heard a loud cowbell, and upon investigation, found that the mosquitoes had eaten the cow and were ringing the bell, attempting to inveigle its calf into the open so that they could eat it, too.
Sports editor Bob Quincy, on page 2-B, provides a pregame report on the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., between Clemson and Miami.
On the editorial page, "Man of the Year" celebrates the selection of John Watlington, Jr., for the honor, finding him a worthy candidate for his activities on behalf of many groups to which he belonged and to the whole community, as recounted in the front-page story. It pays special tribute to his chairmanship of the 1950 Community Chest drive and his presidency of the Chest in 1951, proceeding in both capacities with a series of preliminary roundtable discussions on the work of the Chest agencies, providing the organization with a headstart when the previous two drives began. That practice had resulted in two successful annual campaigns, following three which had failed to meet their goals.
After reciting the winners since 1944, it congratulates him on joining the list.
"The Steel Problem" tells of the United Steelworkers wage-policy committee's temporary postponement of the steel strike from this midnight until the following Thursday when the United Steelworkers convention would be able to vote on the matter. The Steelworkers might decide to submit the contract to the Wage Stabilization Board, to which the President had already referred the matter for review and recommendations, or force the President to invoke Taft-Hartley's provision for a temporary injunction of the strike for 80 days. In the past, because of his objection to Taft-Hartley which he had vetoed in 1947, the President had been reluctant to invoke the Act. If he did so on this occasion, there was no guarantee that the dispute would be any further toward resolution at the end of the 80-day period.
At stake was the United Steelworkers demand for an 18.5-cent hourly wage increase over the current average pay of just below two dollars per hour, as well as a guaranteed annual wage, a union shop, improved incentive pay plans and other fringe benefits. Thus far, management had not countered but insisted that a wage increase would produce an inflationary spiral by necessitating an increase in steel prices.
Price administrator Mike DiSalle urged that the steel companies could grant benefits without seeking an increase in prices because of the industry's 32 percent return on net worth investment, which was an increase of more than 50 percent over the average between 1947 and 1949.
The piece believes that it was hard for the public to feel sympathy toward either side, that while working in a steel mill was hard and deserved above average pay, the workers already received such pay, and that because the industry continued to make huge profits from defense contracts, laws which subsidized plant expansion, and was able to sustain production for civilian uses hardly affected by defense needs, it should not hesitate to agree to a reasonable wage increase without raising prices. It posits that neither side would be harmed by such a recommendation by the WSB and if either side rejected it, the national interest and that of every individual in the country would be disserved.
"The Half-Filled Glass of '51" tells of the year having done well by most Americans, despite higher taxes, large expenditures for defense and foreign aid, and the revelations of corruption in high places. The country had produced more than in any prior year of its history, exceeding by at least 5 percent the previous record established in 1944. Employment had reached a record high of 62.6 million Americans, who had saved 8 percent of their income, 3 percent more than during the previous year. Corporations had made an after-tax profit of about 19 billion dollars, while personal income increased by 13 percent or 29 billion dollars. Meanwhile, the consumer price index had risen by only about 3 percent since the prior February, substantially less than the increase in personal income.
The piece realizes that using the same set of facts could produce an argument for the opposite proposition, that the country was heading down the corridor of darkness and doom, but it chooses to take a deaf ear to those charges, suggesting that while pessimists would say the glass was half empty, it saw the glass half full, wishes readers therefore a Happy New Year.
So exactly why is the newspaper so heavily editorially favoring a Republican Administration in 1953?
We know the answer, but prefer to remain mum. We do not wish to offend anyone, especially not Mr. Robinson.
"A Study in Contrast" tells of an agreement having been worked out between the City of Burlington and a private property owner, whereby the City had purchased his parcel for $30,000 less than market value, a city landmark since it had first been occupied in 1904, and in return, provided him a life estate in the site at a bargain price. The reason for the unique transaction was the public need for future parking and the immediate proximity to the business district of the property in question, one of the few such open areas remaining in the downtown area.
The piece finds the foresight exhibited by Burlington to be in stark contrast with Charlotte and its traditional "timidity" in the face of long-range planning.
It should be pointed out that Burlington was and is quite a bit smaller than Charlotte and thus the piece may be comparing apples to oranges.
David Lawrence, writing in U.S. News & World Report, bids farewell to 1951, finding its conflicts not so unusual in the long-pull of human experience, recounting several episodes of conflict through history in the first years of the second half of centuries, starting in 51 B.C.—even if consistency demanded that he place the year instead as 49 B.C—, after Caesar had just conquered France following a seven-year war and had sought without success to invade Britain. He proceeds through several other '51 years, down to 1851, when in the U.S., the Mexican War had just ended and the debates on slavery were beginning which would end a decade later in civil war. Also in that year, Russia was expanding to the east and south, advancing to the frontiers of Iran, and conflicts were frequent throughout Asia, as well as in Latin America, while Canada, suffering a depression, heard demands for annexation of the U.S. A coup d'état in Paris had ended the Second Republic and ushered in the dictatorship of Napoleon III, and two years afterward, the tripartite alliance then formed between England, France and Turkey was at war with Russia in the Crimea.
He concludes, therefore, that no one could say that the country was living in extraordinary times of conflict, especially after suffering through two world wars within the previous 37 years. Man had not learned to adapt to a live-and-let-live perspective. Peaceful coexistence was only a theoretical objective which had not yet been realized. Hope, he suggests, however, lay in the improvement of the systems of communications within and between countries, offering an opportunity for spiritual power to assert itself and save the world from self-destruction. The great problem of the world was adjustment of conflicting interests and personalities. The greatest problem as populations grew was adapting representative government to those changing conditions.
Mr. Lawrence hopes that 1952 would usher in a new awareness of that challenge so that if people would devote themselves unselfishly to it, they could become masters of their own destinies.
Drew Pearson tells of the presidents of the big-three automakers having gone to Washington the previous weekend to protest an order of Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson, which would cut automobile manufacturing in the second quarter of 1952 by two-thirds, resulting in 33,000 autoworkers losing their jobs. Mr. Wilson had agreed to meet with them.
G.M. had charged Mr. Wilson with discriminating against the auto industry by cutting the allotment of steel for cars by 20 percent, while increasing the allotment of steel to the railroads by 30 percent and for the oil industry by 32 percent. Mr. Wilson had replied that the railroads and oil industry were necessary for defense and that the copper shortage was actually the primary reason for limiting automobile production. He also wanted to disperse the auto industry by scattering new plants around the country in the event of an atomic attack. That plan had been opposed by Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan and Michigan Senator Blair Moody, who argued that the technical knowledge for the auto industry was concentrated in Detroit and that new plants could be built in the Detroit suburbs to afford adequate dispersal.
He notes that UAW head Walter Reuther had charged that one cause of the defense bottleneck was the refusal of the big automakers to utilize their machinery full-time.
Some GOP leaders, fearing a repeat of Herbert Hoover's "vote buying" in the solid South in 1928, were saying that the party had its best chance in 20 years to win back the presidency and did not want the party nominee effectively determined months in advance by a small group of party hacks, that because of the peculiar nature of the solid South, a handful of black leaders plus a few white Republicans could nearly dominate the choice of the nominee. He recounts how this process had transpired in 1928.
Stewart Alsop indicates that the lasting impression he had gleaned from his recent tour of Europe and the Middle East was that, while there was less likelihood in the world of Soviet aggression and a consequent world war, there was greater likelihood of a division in the Western alliance, especially in the Middle East, which could lead to catastrophic results. While the U.S. could be proud of its role in Europe, the Middle East was being almost completely neglected, as the U.S. was not greatly influencing the course of events there. Meanwhile, the region was showing all the symptoms of the disintegration which preceded the fall of China to the Communists.
If Iran fell to the Communist Tudeh Party, it would be just as bad for the West as the country falling into Soviet hands, and if that contingency occurred, it could not be limited to Iran. Russia wanted the Persian Gulf region and it would be ideal if they could gain it without risking any manpower. He finds that unless the U.S. could end this paralysis in policy, the Middle East would become Communist.
He finds one basis for optimism in the Middle East, that the proper job could be done with the right determination by the West to do it.
CIA...
Josephine Ripley, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, discusses Mary Anderson, retired director of the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, as typifying the the great changes in the previous half-century in the status of working women in the country. She had immigrated to the United States from Sweden in 1889 and her first job had been as a dishwasher in a boarding house at two dollars per week. During her first six years in the country, she had ten different jobs and eventually had obtained a position in the shoe industry which paid $14 per week. Ms. Anderson, along with Mary Winslow, had written a book, Woman at Work, which Ms. Ripley regards as not a great book, making no pretense of being one, but which was nevertheless significant as putting forth the record of the industrial revolution which had taken place in the U.S., often forgotten amid the marvels of the mechanical age.
The book told the story of the trade unions, in which Ms. Anderson had played an important role, was also the story of the inception of arbitration as a method of resolving labor disputes, plus the personal story of a penniless immigrant who rose to success.
She regarded her greatest accomplishment to have been her work on the Hart, Schaffner and Marx agreement, because it had established arbitration as a means of settling labor disputes.
She told of changing jobs having been the only way to effect better conditions for the individual worker prior to the trade union movement. But negotiating with the employer to produce changes which impacted many employees proved the better method.
Ms. Ripley concludes that it was proper for Ms. Anderson to have her share of the credit in the battle for women's rights, as there was more to that than only the accomplishment of the vote, and also included advances in the field of labor.
Seventh
Framed Edition
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