The Charlotte News
Monday, May 28, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that enemy resistance had stiffened this date as U.N. troops pushed deeper into North Korea after taking the war's largest bag of enemy prisoners, as 3,000 surrendered on Sunday after 2,000 had surrendered the prior week. Most had been captured in a trap 25 miles wide and ten miles deep in the area of Hwachon reservoir, Inje and Hwachon. Ground commander Lt. General James Van Fleet said that the Chinese Communists had lost their nerve and quit when it became apparent that they could not crack the U.S. Second Division. With isolated exceptions, the enemy was in full retreat. General Van Fleet said that it did not mean, however, the end of the war.
South Korean forces entered Sakchang, 4.5 miles north of the 38th parallel and ten miles west of Hwachon. An allied task force moved ten miles beyond captured Inje into North Korea but was turned back by an enemy roadblock near Hangye, nine miles north of the 38th parallel.
Air Force chief of staff General Hoyt Vandenberg testified to the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees that, as the Air Force was operating at present on a shoestring budget, it could not afford to adopt the plan of General MacArthur to bomb Chinese supply bases in Manchuria. He also asserted his belief that a negotiated settlement could be obtained in Korea without such bombing. He said that if the full weight of the Air Force could be brought to bear on Korea, a chance of forcing the Chinese to negotiate was good, but that to do so would potentially render the Air Force unable to respond elsewhere should the Soviets attack. He told Senator Lyndon Johnson, in response to questioning, that he would want double the present strategic Air Force before adopting the MacArthur strategy. He said that he had agreed with the Joint Chiefs' orders to General MacArthur not to bomb north of the Yalu River in Manchuria and also concurred in the decision to remove the General from his commands.
General Vandenberg said that the U.S. was presently safe from enemy air attack but that it might not be in the near future after the Soviets had developed their long-range air force and had stockpiled more atomic bombs.
At the U.N., chief Soviet delegate Jakob Malik, through a spokesman, said that there was nothing to rumors of Soviet peace feelers to the U.S. regarding Korea.
General Eisenhower conferred at length with Army chief of staff, General J. Lawton Collins, who had flown to Europe for a two-week inspection tour.
In Rome, Premier Alcide de Gasperi's anti-Communist Christian Democrat Party coalition took a lead over the Communist opposition in the first trickle of returns following the weekend municipal elections.
The Supreme Court, in R.C.A. v. U.S., 341 U.S. 412, upheld the FCC ruling approving the CBS mechanical color television system. Justice Hugo Black delivered the 8 to 1 opinion, from which Justice Felix Frankfurter was the lone dissenter. It gave CBS the nod over RCA's electronic version, holding that the FCC had not abused its discretion in rendering the decision after hearing the evidence on each version. The CBS version required a $50 adapter to watch color shows in black and white over existing sets, whereas the RCA version required no such additional equipment.
There's going to be a lot of noise in the living room from now on with that whirring at the back. Get loud speakers.
Of course, for those too young to recall color television
Not reported on the page, the Court decided a more significant case for its long-term implications, Hoffman v. U.S., 341 U.S. 479, holding that a person with a long history of underworld ties could not be held in contempt for refusing to answer certain questions before a grand jury, which the Court deemed potentially incriminating as providing potentially the link in the chain to a conviction for a criminal offense, reversing the Federal District Court which had held the petitioner in contempt. Justice Stanley Reed dissented from the 8 to 1 decision delivered by Justice Tom Clark.
A spokesman for the car dealers asked Congress to provide more liberal credit terms to car buyers.
In Tallahassee, the Florida House of Representatives was considering a resolution introduced by a former staunch supporter of Governor Fuller Warren that he be impeached for willfully disregarding his duties and ignoring evidence of lawlessness. The resolution included ten counts. A vote of two-thirds of the House would suspend the Governor from office pending a trial in the State Senate. No Florida Governor had ever been removed from office by impeachment though one had been twice tried, in 1868 and 1872.
In Hackensack, N.J., Joe Adonis was sentenced to between two and three years in prison and fined $15,000 following entry a couple of weeks earlier of his plea of no contest to State gambling charges. Four of his accomplices, who had also pleaded no contest, received similar sentences. Each had faced a maximum of eighteen years and an $18,000 fine. Rumors had circulated that they would receive, pursuant to a plea bargain, only 18 months.
In Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets celebrated their 17th birthday. Happy Birthday five times. Their parents gave each a camera.
In Charlotte, Tom Fesperman of The News reports that the local taxi situation, in the wake of the bus strike the prior week, had become hopelessly tangled when four of the city's cab companies chose to ignore the City Council emergency order to charge only flat-rate 25-cent per passenger fares. Each of the companies was continuing to operate on a metered basis. The Police Chief had ordered the ordinance to be obeyed or else, but no arrests had yet been made.
The City Council called a special
session for the afternoon to consider ways of providing public
transportation during the strike. Councilman and former Mayor Herbert
Baxter said that he believed Duke Power Co. should provide temporary
service by Thursday morning under their contract with the City. He
said that the buses must roll and roll
On the editorial page, "Taxicabs and the Bus Strike" finds that the City Council ought take immediate action this date to straighten out the controversy over taxi fares after it had ordered a flat-rate 25-cent fare to go into effect at noon on Saturday, and to refrain from hasty action regarding the bus strike.
Yellow Cab had obtained an injunction exempting it from the ordinance and now it appeared all of the companies were again operating on a metered basis, ignoring the ordinance. Thus, the ordinance, designed to take up the slack of lack of buses, should either be repealed, enforced, or changed this date.
The City government, it offers, had an obligation to restore the bus service and to act wisely and calmly to stay within its legal powers.
"The British Viewpoint" tells of British Ambassador to the U.S., Sir Oliver Franks, having recently explained in a radio broadcast the common interest of the U.S. and Britain, saying that Britain, with one-third the population of the U.S., had 23,000 men fighting in Korea and a total of 220,000 stationed in nineteen foreign countries. Britain had conducted universal military training of boys over 18 for the prior two years. He pointed out therefore that such facts were why the British became annoyed when their contribution to Korea was brought into question by Americans.
He also pointed out that Britain's recognition of Communist China was not implying approval of that government but rather recognizing the fact that the Communists had gained control of the mainland and thus that it would be wise to try to get that government to work in cooperation with other nations. It was hoped that the nationalist tendencies at work in China would cause a turning away from Mao Tse-Tung, especially as Russia would seek to turn China into a satellite. It was hoped that the same spirit which had caused Yugoslavia to resist such an effort would also prevail in China such that it would enter relations with the West.
Ambassador Franks had said that one would get the impression that there were nothing but differences between Britain and the U.S., but that in fact, since the war, the policies of the two countries had been much the same. The piece thinks it a point worth keeping.
"Uncle Sam's Double Standard" finds the Federal Government's request that local and state governments curtail their issuance of bonds for inessential services to be humorous, as the Government was continuing to borrow money for some of the same purposes. West Virginia had recently issued a bond to pay a bonus to veterans. It had been suggested that the state should not do so. But, as Business Week had pointed out, the Federal Government was paying about ten times the same amount to veterans in the form of insurance refunds.
When states and municipalities issued bonds, they were set to be repaid on a definite schedule. That was not the case when the Federal Government borrowed money.
"Progress Elsewhere" tells of four cities, East St. Louis, Wilmington, Del., Columbus, O., and Phoenix, Ariz., having approved or begun construction on municipal-owned parking facilities to alleviate downtown parking problems. It concludes that such progress was being made everywhere, except Charlotte.
Drew Pearson tells of Stuart Symington taking over as head of RFC, trying to reform the agency after the Senate Banking subcommittee's investigation of Government influence exerted in providing loans to business. He explores an example which had occurred during the Roosevelt years, between Secretary of Commerce and RFC administrator Jesse Jones and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The vice-president of B & O took Mr. Jones in a private rail car to St. Louis during the Christmas holidays of 1943, then suggesting a plan whereby B & O would enter receivership, though it was making good profits, so that it could default on its RFC loan for 87 million dollars made in 1939 and due to be repaid in 1944, when B & O had a net profit of 110 million dollars after taxes. B & O that year also bought back 30 million dollars worth of its bonds, though they did not have a maturity date until between 1948 and 2000. The diversion of money, as the receivership, was done with the approval of Mr. Jones. The Senate Banking & Currency Committee investigated the matter during the Republican Congress in 1947 but made no final report.
Mr. Pearson says it was only part of the history of the second largest loan in RFC history, which had been lying unattended since 1947. It was one of the many matters which Mr. Symington would now have to tackle.
Stewart Alsop tells of the National Security Council, with the concurrence of the President, having reached a decision that the U.S. wanted a negotiated settlement in Korea based on partition along the 38th parallel. Such a settlement would have no condition attached regarding Formosa or admission of Communist China to the U.N. U.N. observers also would have to be admitted to North Korea to insure that the Chinese Communists had withdrawn. A probable condition would also be the creation of a demilitarized buffer zone between the two sections.
Recently, Pravda had supported the proposal of Colorado Senator Edwin Johnson that peace be achieved by partition at the 38th parallel, though Izvestia and the Chinese press found it to be an "imperialist camouflage". Nevertheless, the Pravda line was encouraging to the West and signified that the Soviets were changing their position, opening the door to settlement negotiations.
There would be two stages to such negotiations, the first to be held in secret, which, if successful, would require the Soviets to force the Chinese puppets into line. At that point, the second, formal stage would start, in which the settlement, the terms of which would already be agreed, would then be publicly ratified.
No one was predicting that such would transpire, as a number of things could intervene to interrupt the positive approach recently taken by Moscow. But there was at least some hope of a negotiated settlement in Korea.
Robert C. Ruark tells of his family having had a four-dollar steak which was tough and skimpy of meat while defense manufacturers were charging from 110 to 200 percent more for goods than during World War II. He admits that he was not knowledgeable of economics but could tell, as could most consumers, that something was amiss. Meanwhile, the National Association of Manufacturers wanted all controls removed and a Federal sales tax on everything except food. Washington still had not gotten inflation under control, taxes were high, and the country was fighting in a "bush-league war".
A letter from a doctor in Altadena, California, tells of annual deaths from tuberculosis having decreased in North Carolina from 2,158 in 1934 to 949 in 1948, during his tenure as State Health Officer of North Carolina. Typhoid fever patients during those same years fell from 464 to 62, and the incidence of other diseases also fell.
Yet, feeblemindedness and insanity had not decreased. They were also contagious as they could be passed genetically to children. He advocates use of the State's sterilization law to prevent passing on of such conditions. It had been used in 2,538 cases, only a small fraction of the total incidence.
Well, half the state 's crazy. It had to be to elect Willis Smith Senator. It got even worse, obviously, by 1972, by then perhaps reaching as high as 60 percent crazy. So, maybe the doctor had a point.
A letter writer responds to a letter suggesting that the country could achieve unity if the President stepped down and took Secretary of State Acheson with him. This writer says that surely the previous writer was not so naive as to believe that a President ought step down merely because of criticism from the press and public, that if such were the case, President Washington would have resigned when Rufus King of Massachusetts called him a traitor. Other great Presidents would have followed in this course as well.
In the editorial the same date, titled "Easy as Pie", the newspaper had lamented the way in which Eva and Juan Peron had taken over Argentina, by shutting down all criticism, taking over the independent press, and promising the people pie in the sky. He suggests it as a "trench coat" complex, that the masses became excited at the sight of a trench-coat wearing dictator. He suggests it might be part of the complex of desire for self-destruction as well.
The President should step down only upon either not running for re-election or losing, the way things took place in the country, short of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
A letter from the president of the Charlotte Woman's Club thanks the newspaper for its courtesies during their convention of the N.C. Federation of Women's Clubs in late April in Charlotte.
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