The Charlotte News
Saturday, December 8, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that U.N. negotiators had made another unsuccessful effort to break the continuing deadlock regarding policing of the truce in Korea, after the Communists again rejected every key U.N. proposal for supervising the armistice. After five hours of debate, during which tempers had flared on both sides, the two-man subcommittees appeared no closer to an agreement than at the beginning of the session, but some observers expressed hope that a compromise would soon occur. The negotiators would meet again the following day. A spokesman for the U.N. subcommittee said that much of the day had been spent discussing the status of U.N.-held islands off North Korea and the makeup of a proposed armistice commission, with the end result a "complete stalemate".
In the air war, U.N. and enemy jets engaged in five air battles over North Korea after clearing skies brought a return to action following a one-day cessation. The U.S. Fifth Air Force said that two Communist jets were damaged and that the enemy complement had vastly outnumbered American Sabre jets, none of which had been damaged. Earlier in the afternoon, 60 MIGs had met 15 Sabre jets over Sinanju for about 10 minutes, but none on either side could get into position to fire. Late in the afternoon, Thunderjets hit an enemy supply area south of Wonsan in eastern Korea, dropping bombs, rockets and napalm.
The ground front was quiet, with the only action of any size being an early morning thrust by a reinforced enemy company on the central front, southwest of Kumsong, which the U.N. forces repulsed in a three and a half hour battle.
Over Japan's inland sea, a U.S. Air Force Flying Boxcar transport plane crashed, with three crewmen killed, one rescued and a fifth missing. The crash brought to 30 the total number of possible deaths in three widely separated crashes of American military aircraft in the previous two days, including the two mentioned the previous day, one of which, the B-29 with 16 aboard, had crashed in the sea between the Azores and its destination on Bermuda, and the other, a C-47 with ten aboard, had hit a peak in southern France, the latter wreckage having been found without survivors while the former had been located but with rescue efforts hampered by high seas.
The Defense Department set a February draft call at 55,000 men, 41,000 of whom would be for the Army and the remainder for the Marine Corps. The number was 4,650 fewer than the January call.
According to a Washington Post report, the President was considering, as part of his determination to clean house in the Government, assigning J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate the matter, and also the appointment of a team of well-known lawyers, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, to prosecute any Government officials charged with wrongdoing. The White House had no comment on the story. Meanwhile, the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax prosecution scandals took the weekend off.
Another Gallup poll appears, this one assessing the quality which spouses most admired in their marital partners, with the married male respondents having ranked first a good disposition, followed by understanding, then loyalty, and wives responding that faithfulness was the chief quality, followed by kindness. Tables of the responses are included along with a series of anecdotal quotes from certain respondents, one of whom bitterly stated that she had no particular quality in mind about her husband at present, as he had skipped the country.
In Leaksville, N.C., a man who had been sentenced to a five-year term on an assault charge in 1929 and had escaped from prison camp near Raleigh in 1932 after he had been sent to water a mule and put the ass in the stable, had been found in his home town, in the immediate vicinity of which he had been staying for the previous 19 years, with his name on his mailbox beside the road. He had also served on several juries in local courts during the interim and had even appeared as a State's witnessed in at least two criminal cases, one involving a murder. One judge had even praised him for his service as a witness. He had confided in his wife before they were married that he had escaped from prison in 1932, at which time he had 11 months remaining on his sentence. The eight children he had fathered and reared since that time had no knowledge of his past. His wife believed that an angry neighbor had turned him in and he was now back in Raleigh, awaiting his fate. The Sheriff of Rockingham County, wherein he had been sentenced, as well as other officers, county commissioners and prominent citizens of the community, had all joined in urging that he be forthwith paroled.
In Raleigh, N.C. State College chancellor John Harrelson indicated that he was conferring with student leaders and administrative officials in an effort to organize the students to prevent recurrence of the demonstration at the school the previous night by some 300 students who had hurled rocks and caused a large traffic jam for the 10,000 patrons seeking exit from the ice-capades show held at William Neal Reynolds Coliseum on the campus. Four arrests had been made in the riot but no one was hurt and no serious damage reported. Police had used teargas finally to disperse the students, the second demonstration in as many nights, the first having caused a large traffic jam on Thursday night, also among the patrons of the ice-capades show, which would continue through Tuesday night. Many motorists the prior night reported that air had been let out of their tires by the students.
We thought that air-letting only
went on over in Fuquay-Varina on Academy Awards night. They should be
shot
Chancellor Harrelson stated that as far as he could determine, the protest centered on allocation of student seats for State basketball games and the high rental cost of the Coliseum for college dances. He said that it was unfair of the students to have sought to act by mob rule and that they had done so without first complaining to college officials. He thought the Coliseum was being operated as efficiently as it could be and that the students received good seats for 31 cents for the basketball games, and that while the rental costs for college dances might be a bit high, they were in the process of trying to work that out. He added that the firing of State's coaches earlier in the week, presumably in reference to football coach Beattie Feathers and his assistants, apparently had nothing to do with the protest.
Thirty-one cents? We had by far fewer seats at UNC available than they had and UNC gave those away to students for free, provided you were willing to go sit in the stands for a few hours at a time—or days as the case might be depending on opponents—to await orderly distribution on a first-come, first-serve basis—or you could be smart, as were members of the service fraternity on campus, and usher at the games and thereby not only gain entrance for free but also without wasting time due more properly to studies by having to sit in line for tickets.
In Van Buren, Me., a woman of St. Leonard, New Brunswick, had, at age 33, given birth the previous day to a daughter, and, two hours later, her 17-year old daughter gave birth to a son.
At that sustained rate through time,
the newest born of that family would today relate to the mother as a
great-great-great-great grandmother in a mere 67-year generational
span. Let us hope they slowed the romancing down a bit for the sake
of stemming the exponential expansion of the population explosion. At
two offspring per generation per offspring
In New York, actor Gary Cooper
In Vicenza, Italy, Carlotta, belonging to a 41-year old merchant, handcuffed with her body a would-be thief, who sought to steal two leather bags from inside the merchant's convertible, and held on until police officers arrived with regular handcuffs.
On the editorial page, "The Guns and Butter Fuss" tells of Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas, head of the defense preparedness subcommittee, having criticized the Defense Department, saying that the country did not have the military hardware for which the defense schedule called and that civilian production had been provided too much priority. In response, Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson had said that in short order, the country could supply both "the guns and the butter".
The joint Defense Production Committee, headed by Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina, had taken a position backing Mr. Wilson and disagreeing with Senator Johnson, saying that defense planners had accomplished the "unprecedented feat of striking a happy medium between military preparedness and a healthy national economy".
It was a fact that delivery of defense material, particularly airplanes, guided missiles, tanks and electronic equipment, had been behind schedule, which the defense planners indicated was the result of overly optimistic schedules in the first instance. It suggests that the disagreement between the two Congressional committees likely arose from their different conceptions of schedule fulfillment, as both had before them the same facts, causing public confusion when they came out with different statements.
The average American was relatively unaffected by the defense effort, although paying higher taxes for the defense budget and paying more for food and the like at the counter. But consumers were still receiving their food, television sets, refrigerators, new cars, etc., unlike during World War II after early 1942. It concludes that as long as the country had so much "butter", it could not expect gun production to expand overnight.
"Corporation Philanthropy Pays Off" tells of the tax code making possible tax-free donations to non-profit educational, scientific and welfare organizations to the extent of five percent of net corporate income, enabling large corporations thereby to avoid part of their tax liability through donations which cost the shareholders only a certain percentage of the ostensible face value, equal to the difference between 100 percent and the percentage tax bracket in which the corporation fell. Big corporations could therefore make cheaper donations than smaller ones, because of the difference in tax brackets.
A study by the Russell Sage Foundation had found, according to the New York Times, that corporate gifts during 1948 by corporations with less than a million dollars in assets averaged 1.3 cents on each dollar of profit, whereas corporations with assets ranging between a million dollars and 100 million dollars contributed an average of .8 cents per dollar of profits, while corporations with more than 100 million dollars in assets contributed at the rate of .3 cents.
Some companies had established worthwhile projects. For instance, the Bulova Watch Company, one of the few corporations which gave substantially five percent of its net income to such organizations, operated a foundation which accepted only disabled veterans, who were then trained as watch repairers. The Sears Roebuck Foundation presented breed livestock to clubs of farm youngsters, thus improving and diversifying the nation's animal herds and raising cash income for these youths. The Ford Foundation, under the directorship of former ERP administrator Paul Hoffman, gave millions to social studies and economic development.
It encourages those who were in a position to make such philanthropic contributions to reappraise their donation policy, to enable wise and generous giving which could redound to the benefit of the corporation while also supporting worthy causes, reducing the load on Government subsidies.
"Boykin Escapes" refers to a transcript of a speech by Representative Frank Boykin of Alabama on the page this date, regarding his great and good friend, Lamar Caudle, a speech made prior to Mr. Caudle having been fired by the President after revelations by the House Ways & Means subcommittee, and at about the time the first revelations by the subcommittee were occurring. Mr. Boykin had sought to stop the prosecution of two Mobile, Ala., tax cases, which were prosecuted to conclusion by Department of Justice attorney John Mitchell and determined deputy Attorney General, Peyton Ford; but, because of Congressional courtesy, Mr. Boykin thus far had not been called to account regarding his efforts in the matter, and until that happened, it suggests, the people would be unfulfilled.
"Unionized Yuletide" tells of the NLRB having ruled 3 to 1 that an employer could not reduce a customary Christmas bonus to union employees without consulting the union.
The piece agrees that unscrupulous employers could withhold bonuses to try to get even with unionized employees, but also finds that since the bonus was, by its nature, a voluntary payment and not a negotiated benefit, the employer ought have that unrestricted right. And if the unionized employees wanted to restrict that right, they could put the bonus into the contract.
It therefore finds that the ruling by the NLRB was typical of the Board, as it reminded often of a baseball player who rounded the bases, forgetting to tag third.
No, you need a basketball analogy for Christmas time. They reminded of a basketball player who checked into the game without first checking at the scorer's table and thus earned a technical foul for his team, or, fell for the old sleepy-eyed routine, late in the game, of throwing the ball inadvertently to the opponent when the opposing player threw up his hands in signal of his readiness to catch it.
But, of course, as with many sports analogies, just as the one which the piece selects does not fit very well the situation at hand, neither do those basketball analogies.
Perhaps, it is more akin to the officials calling the bulk of the touch-fouls against the visiting non-conference opponent to achieve better feelings among the conference coaches to obtain more officiating jobs into the future.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "The Night", counsels readers to go out into the night and accept it on its own terms, even during dark winter nights, walking a country road and thereby seeing and feeling the winter night light "alive in its own proportions". Though the insects and the owls were gone, the night was not silent, as the wind would blow and the leaves would scuff along the road, as an oak tree rustled crisply and the grasses sighed. "There is the soft, intermittent whisper in the high tops of the elms. And the towering hemlocks murmur among themselves with a voice quite different from that of whispering pines."
"You walk, and you see and you
hear, and it is ancient knowledge re-remembered. No night is quite so
dark as it seems, once you explore
As indicated in the above editorial, the transcript of a speech by Congressman Frank Boykin of Alabama, delivered November 14, is presented regarding a defense of his friend, Lamar Caudle, formerly Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division. The speech extols his virtues.
In juxtaposition is a statement issued by Congressman Cecil King of California, chairman of the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating Mr. Caudle and others regarding slow prosecution of tax cases and bribing of public officials to bring about that sloth. This statement summarizes the testimony provided by the Chicago attorney who described an attempted "shakedown" by gambler Frank Nathan, who had supposedly offered, for $500,000, to use his "connections" in Washington to protect the attorney from "tax problems", this statement of Mr. King making it clear that there was no evidence of any such actual connections in Washington, but also stating that Mr. Nathan had been able to give the appearance of having such connections because Mr. Caudle had maintained a "constant and public, social and business relationship" with Mr. Nathan, something of which Mr. Caudle was forewarned by close associates within the Government, would pose a danger of the appearance of improper influence.
Mr. King concludes that the outcome for Mr. Caudle and others proved "an object lesson in vicious influence seeking" and pointed up the fact that such persons as Mr. Nathan thrived on any public official who was "more interested in high living than in his own and his Government's reputation."
Drew Pearson pays tribute to IRB agent Robert Cox, who had stuck to the Mobile, Ala., tax fraud case and made sure that it carried through to completion and conviction, despite the inevitable likelihood that he and others engaged in prosecuting the case were offered Christmas presents and other bribes to look the other way. Others who had helped to collect $700,000 in back taxes and put the two tax-evaders in jail were Andrew Tully, former U.S. Attorney in Mobile and several Mobile citizens who preferred to remain unnamed.
Mr. Pearson relates of his own investigation into the Mobile cases, having begun in 1949 by calling on the chief assistant to Lamar Caudle, who had known nothing about the case, but pulling up the case record, found that it had been closed in summer, 1949 on the basis that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. John Mitchell, who had recently testified before the House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the tax fraud prosecutions, had been one of the Justice Department representatives who participated in a conference which made that determination, but by December, 1949, had decided that there were grounds for prosecution. Mr. Pearson, after the discussion with Mr. Caudle's assistant, then, in November, 1949, sent Jack Anderson of his staff to Mobile and Birmingham to investigate further, the result of which was that Washington was warned that the Pearson column was investigating, whereupon, following another conference in early December between Mr. Anderson, Mr. Pearson, Mr. Caudle, his assistant and Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Mitchell did his about-face regarding prosecution of the case. Mr. Pearson and Mr. Anderson had informed them of the whereabouts of the two tax evaders' bookkeeper, the books of whom having disappeared when the IRB first began looking into the case. Mr. Caudle had regarded the suggestion of use of the bookkeeper's testimony in lieu of the actual books as a splendid idea and then phoned Mr. Pearson several times in the ensuing weeks to explain that the case was moving forward.
Mr. Pearson notes that there was no question that Congressman Frank Boykin of Mobile was not pulling every wire he could to stop the investigation and prosecution of the case, and he promises to provide another case summary where Mr. Boykin had likewise sought to stop an investigation.
Stewart Alsop, in Tehran, tells of an impending economic collapse in Iran, of which everyone present was aware but nevertheless ignoring, proceeding as if the disaster were not present. For the previous several months, the Government of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh had been living off the fourteen million pounds sterling which previously had formed the reserve backing for the Iranian currency, used now as a substitute for the lost oil revenues since the nationalization of the oil industry and consequent refusal of the West to purchase the oil. The result eventually would be mass unemployment and misery in the cities, where the large number of Government officials would lose their jobs, as well in the oil field areas, where the 70,000 oil workers would suddenly find themselves without the means to earn a living.
Such an economic disaster would nurture the resurrection of the outlawed Communist Tudeh Party, the only real organized and disciplined political force within the country. That would occur at the same time when the internal security forces, including the army, would be tending to disintegrate for lack of pay. Some in the country believed that the Tudeh Party would then undertake a coup d'état, much along the pattern of Czechoslovakia. Others thought that it was more probable that a gradual and orderly shift to the Soviet orbit would occur in Iran.
The forthcoming elections in the country were expected to be less foreordained than previous elections in the country, urged along by the fact that Premier Mossadegh was assured of victory anyway. But some of the Tudeh Party members, wearing transparently false masks, would be elected to the Iranian parliament in all likelihood, giving the party a legal toehold which it thus far lacked, and allowing it therefore to gain power gradually in the midst of the coming economic crisis.
The Premier was anticipating that the U.S. would come to the country's aid, and he was using the technique of a threat of the country's economic debacle otherwise as the blackmail. Mr. Alsop finds the technique extraordinarily effective as it had placed the Anglo-American allies in a complex dilemma, seeking to thwart a Soviet takeover, the prevention of which would require a strong Anglo-American policy for Iran.
Marquis Childs, in Belgrade, tells of American experts, including members of Congress, journalists, American club women and others, moving across Europe in unprecedented numbers, with Belgrade being a prime stop on the itinerary, for Yugoslavia being a Communist country, but also one which had departed from the Soviet sphere at its own peril.
Marshal Tito was the major attraction in Belgrade and the visitors from the West gauged their success by whether they could obtain an audience with him. These visitors would then quiz the country's leader with a directness which often startled him, but nevertheless took the interrogation in stride. Congresswoman Edna Kelly of New York, during her visit with Tito, had sat in glum silence until the end of the conference, at which time she stated that although she had supported aid to Yugoslavia in the past, she no longer could, in good conscience, in the future. These visitors wanted clear, unambiguous answers, and when the answers provided ambiguity, they became disturbed and unhappy.
An American military mission which would soon arrive in Yugoslavia would have the objective of getting more information on the real status of Yugoslavia's armed forces, a job which would not be easy, as proven by the conference between Tito and Congresswoman Kelly. Americans could only say that in their best judgment Tito would fight no matter where the Russian aggression might be directed, whether toward Yugoslavia or elsewhere in Western Europe, as he was quite aware that should the Soviets attack successfully in Western Europe, it would only be a matter of time before they or their satellites also attacked Yugoslavia. These observers believed that the Yugoslav forces were as good as their largely outmoded equipment allowed them to be.
He concludes that no one could say whether the relatively small amount of aid, including bank loans, to be provided to Yugoslavia, which would amount to about 200 million dollars, would be justifiable, but the risk was even greater in areas of Western Europe where the will to resist was less evident.
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