The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 14, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that five South Korean patrols, without opposition, had entered Seoul this night and raised the republican flag over the old capitol building. The enemy continued its mysterious withdrawal all along the 70-mile front.
In the central sector, a tank-led thrust by the U.S. First Cavalry Division proceeded four miles northwest of Hongchon, 55 miles east of Seoul, a stronghold of the enemy until the latest allied offensive. The crossing of the Hongchon River carried the offensive to within 18 miles of the 38th parallel.
Elsewhere, the enemy fought only rearguard delaying actions on the east-central front.
Senator Joseph McCarthy said in a speech before the Senate that the U.S. had to help build up Western Europe before the Russians perfected guided missiles to stop planes carrying an atom bomb. He also called for integration of Spain, Japan, Nationalist China and West Germany into the anti-Communist defense program. He charged that the "fantastic" order of the President the prior July to deploy the Seventh Fleet off Formosa had freed the Chinese Communists to kill Americans in Korea. He blamed a State Department "clique" for selling out Nationalist China and tying the hands of General Eisenhower in Europe the same way the clique had General MacArthur in the Far East.
There are Comm-mmm-mmmunists
everywhere
Gambling kingpin Frank Costello
Republicans of the House Banking Committee blocked a quick vote regarding a 90-day extension of rent controls set to expire at the end of March except in localities which had opted to extend them by three months.
A Republican effort in the House to block the President's plan for RFC reorganization was thwarted, as Southern Democrats joined in resisting the effort. The vote was 201 to 196 against the reorganization proposal but it required a constitutional majority of 218 to kill the plan.
Senator Clyde Hoey's five-percenter inquiry reopened, with Government officials summoned for inquiry into influence peddling and other shady operations regarding acquisition of defense contracts.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., Senator Arthur Vandenberg was reported to be near death. He had been in ill health since late 1949 and had suffered a relapse in late February.
Management representatives were reported to have rejected the efforts of Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston to effect a compromise plan for reshaping the Wage Stabilization Board, by doubling its membership from nine to eighteen and appointment of a new chairman to replace Cyrus Ching. Organized labor, its three representatives on the Board having walked out following the order to impose wage restrictions at ten percent for the period 1950 through mid-1951, was reported to have been favorably disposed to the plan.
Feuding was ongoing between the executive officers of the Textile Workers Union of America.
News correspondent John Daly reports that local TWUA representatives had been alerted that they were probably going to receive orders for a general strike throughout the South's cotton and rayon industry, starting at 6:00 a.m. Friday.
Millions of persons in Northern Europe were rocked by an earthquake-like shudder lasting five or six seconds, which some thought might be an atomic explosion occurring in East Germany. The shock had been followed by a giant blast of wind. Seismologists speculated that the epicenter was either in the Eifel Mountains of West Germany or in Thuringia in East Germany. West German officials had ordered an exhaustive investigation of the incident. A German earthquake expert at a Soviet-controlled earthquake center said that it was the strongest earthquake ever recorded at Jena in East Germany but, without stating the reasons, ruled out that it was from an explosion.
On the editorial page, "That 'Will for Accomplishment'" tells of an unnamed speaker before a local civic club opposing the President's Point Four program for technological help to underdeveloped nations. She had based her opposition on her assertion that those nations had done nothing to help themselves, had not shown "the American will for accomplishment".
The piece finds that such thinking was not, as promoted, realism but rather chauvinism based on blindness, ignorance and selfishness. Too often that will, which included pushing the Indians from the lands of their ancestry onto reservations and bringing slaves to America to cultivate the land in the harshest climes, could be used as propaganda by Communism and rephrased as the "will for dominance".
The speaker had been sorry for the American taxpayer, not the people of underdeveloped countries, as she had claimed, terming such aid to be "sentimentalism". The piece wonders whether it was sentimentalism to be concerned about lack of educational facilities in Indo-China, lack of medicine and hospitals in Guatemala or lack of food in India, finds it Christian humanitarianism, not sentimentalism.
It questions whether it was part of the "will for accomplishment" to stockpile food and bury the nation's gold while millions starved, finds it instead "sadistic selfishness".
The program was also practical as it eliminated the seeds which allowed Communism to grow.
"The Cost of Illegitimacy" tells of the cost to the county of illegitimacy running to $100,000, a fourth of the annual aid for dependent children. But among blacks, illegitimacy had decreased from 37 percent in 1938 to 17 percent in 1951. To reduce the cost, the rate had to be reduced, through education and raising economic and moral standards, especially among the poor and ignorant.
It concludes that the fault of illegitimacy lay with the parents and not the child and that aid therefore to these children had to provided without reservation.
"Who's a Re-pub-li-can?" tells of South Dakota Senator Karl Mundt coming to North Carolina to urge a coalition of Southern Democrats with Republicans to defeat President Truman's "forces" in 1952, saying that he would not be embarrassed to work closely with Senators Clyde Hoey and Willis Smith of North Carolina, Richard Russell of Georgia and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, in effecting such a coalition.
The piece wonders whether the Republicans of the western part of the state, who had long been gerrymandered into powerlessness, were having the last laugh.
"The Perils of the Hunt" tells of 12 million licensed hunters and an unknown number of unlicensed ones having been hunting during the past season, with 400 deaths reported, or about one in 30,000. Many safety devices had been tried but none seemed to work. Red protective clothing was one such device, but seventeen of eighteen killed hunters in Michigan had been wearing red clothing of one type or another. Connecticut had come through the season without any fatal accidents despite licensing 40,000 hunters. It leads the editorial to question whether New Englanders were so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of William Prescott's Bunker Hill order not to fire until they could see the whites of the Redcoats' eyes that they were more careful in their hunting practices.
Just go on out yonder in your truck, throw a lasso and rope yourself a deer, take it home to the garage, take your hammer and beat its brains out. That's the way to do huntin' right.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Here's to 'Baldy'", tells of a man described in the New York Herald Tribune who worked from dusk to dawn sweeping refuse from the streets of Morningside Heights in New York, covering 60 block fronts each night, all without pay while subsisting on $13 per week from the Welfare Department. He shaved his head and thus was called "Baldy". He became upset if someone threw down a cigar butt on his immaculately kept streets. Some heckled him by throwing garbage out of their windows. But he swept it all up.
The piece, while admitting that the man might be nuts, found him encouraging nevertheless in a world in which most people had their hand out to the Government rather than offering to contribute.
An editorial from the Durham Herald discusses Western policy over the prior two years, having the aim of achieving a balance of power. The great national debate, it posits, had been regarding means rather than that basic policy. Two methods could be employed to achieve parity with Russia, building up Western strength or weakening Soviet unity.
General Matthew Ridgway's new offensive in Korea had thus far proved successful and defenders in Indo-China could take heart from it, while John Foster Dulles's mission to Japan to lay the groundwork for a treaty had been successful. General Eisenhower had rallied the spirit of Western Europe. Tito was growing stronger by the hour. America's rearmament also was proceeding apace.
In the satellite countries, the increasing hostility toward the Communist leadership appeared to bear out the premise of Joseph C. Harsch's 1950 book, The Curtain Isn't Iron. Joseph Stalin in his recent Pravda interview had issued no threat of aggression, save his gratuitous prediction of Communist victory in Korea, and the blunt British diplomatic note had been published in the Russian press, breaking the general blackout of such criticism.
Despite these turns of events, the West had to remain watchful, especially in Germany, to avoid a political vacuum being left which could be filled by Russian propaganda. Yet, the West would be disserved if it allowed suspicions to overrule judgment in rejecting all efforts by Russia to achieve peace. Whereas "appeasement" had acquired a bad connotation after Munich, horse-trading was an old American tradition. The West, it ventures, was now in a position to dicker over peace terms without loss of dignity.
Drew Pearson, still in Rome, finds Italy a good test subject to determine whether the Marshall Plan would work, as intended, to enable countries to get back on their feet so that they might help themselves, or whether it was to become an indefinite crutch. American aid had been provided Italy since the end of the war, Italians were well disposed to America, and Communism was in a bad state in Italy, all for which the Marshall Plan was considerably responsible.
Few European countries, save England and Scandinavia, imposed significant income taxes on their citizens. Most had balanced their budget through Marshall Plan and other forms of American aid. That chiefly benefited the aristocracy of Italy and the 500 families of France, who for years paid virtually no taxes. Italian taxation was regressive, hitting the small farmer and worker the hardest.
The Marshall Plan in Italy had been exploited by the wealthy and the fact fed Communist propaganda. ERP administrator Leon Dayton disagreed with Ambassador James Dunn regarding this policy, as the former began telling the Italian Government that it needed to do something about housing, land reform and even taxes. He also withdrew ERP money from a private Italian club, the Fascist headquarters, and Rome's fancy new railroad station. Mr. Dayton warned publicly that any government which ignored the problems of the needy might find itself, as Mussolini, strung up from a lamppost. At that point, Premier Alcide de Gasperi demanded an apology. Ambassador Dunn called in Mr. Dayton who then apologized, but wrote on the second page a reaffirmation of his belief that the needs of the people had to be met with the aid money. Mr. Dayton also continued to make public speeches to that effect.
Mr. Pearson concludes that the aid money would do no good until the governments of Europe eliminated the problems in which Communism thrived and imposed reasonable taxation. Housing and land reform, as a result of the controversy, were now going forward. Italy had also adopted a new tax measure which approximated an income tax. He regards it as a significant step as it promised Italy the largest revenue in its history in 1952.
Marquis Childs discusses the public power versus private utilities controversy, with political power having lined up behind the public interests, placing pressure on Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman. He had felt obligated to name a private power company executive, Clifford McManus, to be administrator because there was fourteen billion dollars in investment in private power versus two billion in public power. Mr. McManus then declared that there was a power shortage in the Pacific Northwest and that therefore defense industries could not be located there. That brought down the wrath of Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Warren Magnuson of Washington, as well as Congressman Henry Jackson of Washington, among others, who saw the ruling as a block to further power development in the region.
Next, Mr. McManus ruled that the farm co-ops had to submit their plans for expansion to him for approval, including work on rural lines and generating units already started. The head of the Rural Electrification Administration made a counter-proposal, that total allocation of materials be fixed by Mr. McManus for rural lines and then the REA would make individual allotments to projects around the country, assuring that scarce materials would go to those areas where they would contribute most to farm production and, thus, the nation's food supply. Secretary Chapman would make the final decision and had indicated that he would sustain Mr. McManus on the basis that if he turned part of the program over to REA, he would have to turn a greater part over to the private interests, allowing the whole program to get out of control. He would ask Mr. McManus to name a deputy from public power, but it was doubtful that such an appointment would placate the cooperatives and the political interests behind public power in the Northwest and elsewhere.
He finds it to be another example, along with the dispute between labor and management on wage stabilization, of the defense emergency cutting into the political area staked out by the Fair Deal.
Joseph Alsop, in Berlin, tells of the city being an island amid the surrounding slavery of the Soviet zone of Germany, with several personalities and aspects. Above all, it was a chink in the Iron Curtain through which could be seen that which was not visible from Washington or other Western capitals. He finds that the first thing to be seen through that chink was a store of mothballed Soviet tanks, indicative of war preparation. Until recently, Western intelligence had believed that the Soviets had no reserve armor west of the Vistula River. Its twelve armored divisions were constantly wearing out, with the tanks in training or on maneuvers. But then it was learned of the mothballed tanks in warehouses, causing reassessment of Soviet armor.
A permanent fuel stock had also been built up in underground storage tanks at the East German airfields. Stocks of ammunition and spare parts for air and ground forces had also increased. There were also crated engines and air frames necessary for 450 to 500 jets in East Germany.
Were America undertaking half as much preparation in West Germany, he suggests, the Soviet claim of American warmongering would be justified. He promises to discuss in a subsequent report what the Soviets had and had not done during the previous year.
A letter from the secretary of the Union County Citizens League in Monroe wants to focus attention on the conditions of black citizens in Union County. Recently, the city government had enacted measures to improve conditions in Monroe, including appointment of a full-time nurse, acquisition of a former USO center as a community center, and street improvements in certain areas, including installation of street lights in the rear of the high school. He says that increase in crime, especially among blacks, required more police officers in those sections of the town. No black officers had been hired as in Charlotte, though it had been discussed for some time. There was also inadequate fire protection and trash collection. It was to be hoped, he says, that the schools would be equalized without NAACP intervention.
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