The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 24, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that General MacArthur, visiting Seoul, had ordered the U.N. forces to cross again the 38th parallel, while offering to discuss peace terms with the Communist Chinese commander in Korea. Proclaiming victory in South Korea, he said that everything was going well at the front, with no heavy ground fighting and that the enemy was continuing to withdraw. Most of the remaining enemy resistance had been eliminated south of the parallel by the previous day's 3,300-man parachute drop.
The U.N. forces established a new battle line twenty miles north of Seoul in the wake of the paratroop landing.
The Army announced that its command in Germany would be instructed to begin enlisting refugees from iron curtain countries for five-year enlistments, after which, provided they were honorably discharged, they would be accepted for U.S. citizenship.
Marine sources informed that the Marines hoped to be the first military service to develop a plan for releasing reservists called back to duty to fight in Korea, with a projected plan calling for releases to begin during the summer and the return of all Marine reservists who so desired to civilian life by the end of 1952. The plan could be canceled if world developments worsened. All services had been planning release of reserves until the prior October when the Chinese Communists entered the Korean war.
An Iowa beer distributor testified before the Kefauver organized crime investigating committee that he had been contacted by a medical doctor, whose name he divulged only reluctantly, to post $30,000 in bail for the Gargotta brothers who at the time were accused of robbery, later dismissed. One of the brothers, Charles Gargotta, had been killed along with politically connected Charles Binaggio in April, 1950 in Kansas City in an apparent underworld shooting.
In New York, three men, one of whom was armed, had sought entry at 4:25 a.m. to the apartment of gambling kingpin Frank Costello, who had recently appeared before the Kefauver committee and informed them before a nationwide television audience that he kept between $40,000 and $50,000 in his strongbox at home. They had forced two elevator operators at gunpoint to take them to the floor of the apartment. The men then departed after being informed by the operators that Mr. Costello was not at home and then ringing the bell and receiving no answer.
The meatpackers union signed an agreement with Armour & Co. which extended an exisiting wage agreement six weeks, deferring action on the threatened strike. The agreement would be extended to the other major packing companies.
Planes continued to search the Atlantic 450 miles west of Ireland for survivors of a missing Air Force transport with 53 persons aboard. A report from a B-29 told of seeing flares and wreckage or several life rafts in the water in the vicinity of the location from which the plane had last sent a radio signal before disappearing.
In Jerusalem, record numbers of pilgrims attended services and visited shrines in the drought-ridden Holy Land during Easter weekend.
In Buenos Aires, El Presidente Juan Peron announced that Argentina had discovered a new method of producing atomic energy and that it would be put to use on a large scale in power plants and other industrial applications. El Presidente did not disclose the method but said that it was similar to the way the sun produced atomic energy—a method which scientists had said was impossible to replicate on earth.
This revolutionary discovery is why, today, Argentina is one of the world's major atomic energy producers.
In New York, a seaman attended a party in Upper Manhattan, then joined several others on the roof of the six-story building to cool off. He wandered too close to the ledge and fell off, hitting two fire escapes and a clothes line on the way down but suffered no injuries.
In San Francisco, Fluffy, a lifetime Marine, was sworn in as a corporal after seeing action in Korea.
Not on the page, the finals of the Eastern and Western regionals of the N.C.A.A. Basketball Tournament would occur this night in New York and Kansas City, respectively. In the Eastern regional, Kentucky would nip Illinois, 76 to 74, while in the Western regional, Kansas State would overwhelm Oklahoma A&M, 68 to 44. The championship game between Kentucky and Kansas State would be played the following Tuesday night in Minneapolis, following the consolation game, which would begin at 9:00 p.m. EST. Plan to stay up late therefore on the East Coast, as the game will not be over before around 1:30 a.m. That was so that they could be sure to attract the primetime radio audience.
On the editorial page, "The Aging Electorate" tells of gerontologists explaining that within twenty years the nation would have more elderly voters than young voters and that with that changing demographic would come the potential for bloc voting, with the elderly more susceptible to demagogy, resulting in class legislation.
Dr. Frank Dickinson, speaking at the Southern Conference on Gerontology, proposed that the vote thus be denied to those over 65. The piece finds this suggestion anti-democratic and a negative approach to an issue in need of positive thinking.
The better approach, it ventures, was found in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report on the role of management in providing security for workers, proposing active participation by management in formulation of a national policy on the increasing elderly population.
Esso had suggested that with the correlation between conservatism and advancing age, the country was reaching the apogee of radical change in the government's economic system, with security being more important to the elderly than radicalism. It proposed that if industry could convince the elderly that it was doing something concrete about the future, "socialistic remedies" would wither for lack of support. It had formulated a plan to provide retirement income for its workers based on productivity.
It concludes that these latter two approaches were more sensible than that of Dr. Dickinson.
"This Is What War Means" presents a photograph from the Acme Service showing a Korean mother with her young child who had collapsed from exhaustion, while the mother carried on her back all of their belongings. It finds it the portrait of human misery which, rather than bombs, bullets, soldiers, strategy and flashing steel wings, defined war.
"A Rogue's Gallery of Verses" seeks to put into verse its impressions of the Kefauver hearings. Example: "The pretty Mrs. Hauser, nee Hill,/ Who, allegedly, has been through the mill,/ Told of life with Bugs Siegel/ And claimed it was legal./ 'My hand was ne'er caught in the till.'"
Don't give up your day job slinging hash, for your verse is the Sing Sing sing-song of a slob pushing trash.
A piece from the Arkansas Gazette, titled "First You Catch the Hog", finds Arkansas ham to be the Cartier of ham, compared to the more promoted Virginia ham or its competitors from Missouri, Kentucky or Iowa. But the Arkansas product was more rare, locatable only by discrete phone calls and a trip up an unpaved road.
Drew Pearson, in Paris, tells of the French Government being in a quandary on whether to release from prison Marshal Henri Petain, 96. He did not want to be released because he did not want to be around his wife and had all of his needs met in the old fortress on a health-resort isle where he was imprisoned. When his wife came to visit him, he had instructed the guards that he did want to see her, but eventually, after they importuned him to do so, he allowed that he would see her for only four minutes, then feigned lack of recognition of her, bragging later to the guards that he had accomplished his purpose in only two minutes.
French Communism was not losing its membership and force as was Italian Communism because French Communists were not such committed party members as were the Italian Communists. French Communists did not store secret caches of weapons. Many French workers had become Communists under pressure from shop stewards and were not Communists at heart. Likewise, many farmers voted for Communists because they were perpetually against government. Also, the Marshall Plan was administered differently in the two countries, with the aid being promoted well in Italy such that the average person knew from whence it derived, whereas it was not the case in France, where money was poured into the factories which helped employment but did not readily connect with the average worker as a benefit from American aid.
Marquis Childs tells of the acceleration of rebuilding of the nation's defenses, with more contracts placed during the first twenty days of January than in the latter six months of 1950. Nearly 20 billion dollars worth of contracts were now committed. Delays had been caused by such things as a textile strike which prevented woolens from being purchased by the Government. Inflation had also beset the program with twenty percent of the items sought for defense being knocked out by 20 percent inflation.
Talk in Congress had again turned to economy as it would soon be asked by the defense establishment for a third supplemental increase in the defense budget, this one probably for ten billion dollars. It would serve as a test of American resolve in defense. Arbitrary meat-axe cuts by Congress would send a contrary message to the world of return to the old complacency.
Joseph Alsop, in Berlin, tells of Germany being the key to Western Europe's defense, with the proposed Big Four foreign ministers conference to be a major turning point in East-West relations. No one took seriously the Soviet notion that they would propose a serious peace plan. Their purposes in pressing for the conference were to delay decision on the German contribution to NATO, a matter on which they had been successful, as well delaying and disrupting the Western alliance generally.
Washington was concerned that the Russians would propose a general withdrawal of occupation troops from Germany and unification on the basis of free elections, a proposal which would at first be attractive to Germans. For Russia, it would mean temporary loss of their key province. For the Western allies, it would mean loss of a strategic position, hampering or permanently disrupting Western rearmament.
But Russia needed the vital uranium source in East Germany. Andrei Gromyko, at the Big Four deputies meeting in Paris to plan the agenda for the proposed conference, had stressed German demilitarization rather than German unity. The East German leaders had made a special effort to define "free elections" as the type of farce which would deceive no one and would not receive serious consideration at a Big Four meeting. It was likely therefore that the Russians would not make the proposal for German unity and free elections in exchange for demilitarization.
But there were other tactics which the Soviets might use to disrupt Western unity which he promises to discuss in another column.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of members of Congress looking forward to their Easter break with some fear of having to explain to their constituents why they had delayed in the universal military training bill. Most of the mail had come from frantic parents not wanting their 18-year old sons sent to war.
Senator Clyde Hoey said that it would not be likely that anyone under 18 years, nine months would be sent into combat, while Senator Willis Smith admitted that he had not intended to vote for the bill but changed his mind when told that it was unlikely that a great number of 18-year olds would be drafted.
The two Senators split on the four-million man ceiling for troops, with Senator Hoey finding it unnecessary and tipping to the Russians how many troops the country had, while Senator Smith believed that Congress could return to the issue later and so voted for the ceiling.
Another hot topic would be the RFC investigation. Senator Smith found the people's confidence in their government to have been shaken. But Senator Hoey did not think RFC necessarily ought be abolished, as the agency had made money for the Government. He favored reorganization to eliminate the demonstrated favoritism on loans.
Congressman Charles Deane had assured his constituents that the Laurinburg-Maxton Air Base would be activated but it had still not been approved, with the Air Force favoring the Raleigh airport for its proximity to greater housing. The Air Force had agreed to look further at the matter as the Government had already invested nine million dollars in the Laurinburg-Maxton facility and a nearby housing project was planned.
Senator Hoey and Congressman Hamilton Jones would likely be quizzed about the prospect of location of the new Air Force Academy in Charlotte.
Better learn to ski.
Senator Hoey, who did not smoke, backed up Congressman Robert Doughton, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee who also did not smoke, urging that the proposed cigarette tax not be approved because tobacco was a necessity of life.
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