Wednesday, May 30, 1951

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, May 30, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that heavy rain and determined enemy fighting slowed the allied advance in North Korea this date. U.N. troops had, however, advanced to within twelve miles of Kumhwa, Communist base in central Korea, and had seized another crossroads six miles above Inje on the east-central front after a 1.5 mile gain in the face of heavy enemy fire.

At Tokyo headquarters, General Matthew Ridgway said that the enemy had been severely defeated in their spring offensives but remained determined and capable of all-out battle. Since the start of the offensive on April 22, he reported, 10,000 enemy troops had been captured as prisoners and desertion had become a serious problem. More heavy fighting, he said, could be expected.

Zero air visibility cut allied air sorties to 126.

Chief of naval operations, Admiral Forrest Sherman, testifying before the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees this date, said that he believed the U.S. could win a general war but that it was one the country did not want. He said that he hoped for an effective U.N. blockade of Communist China but believed the U.S. should not undertake it alone. He also said that he supported the Administration policy on Korea and opposed that of General MacArthur, and believed there was a good chance of ending the fighting on terms advantageous to the allies. He said that he had urged that General MacArthur be visited in the field by a five-star general before his firing.

Informed sources in London said that Britain, the U.S. and France had agreed to send a note to Russia in an effort to end the deadlock in negotiations over the agenda for the proposed Big Four Paris conference of foreign ministers. The Soviets, through Andrei Gromyko, were insisting that NATO be on the agenda, a point unacceptable to the three Western powers. The response expressed a continued hope that the meeting could be arranged but said that the agenda should be neutral in character, not including items which could be used for propaganda.

A representative of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. was due for the first time as an observer at deliberations of the nationalization board in Tehran, regarding the issue of liquidation of Britain's 53 percent interest in the firm. The company had been given an ultimatum either to help Iran nationalize the oil or be taken over without consultation. British oil experts were working on a plan to provide Iran formal ownership of the company's assets in exchange for compensation and continued British control of production and marketing. Premier Mohammed Mossadegh reportedly informed British Ambassador to Iran Henry Grady that the Government did not intend to take over the oil properties by force but insisted that Britain had to turn over the holdings to Iran.

This 83rd annual Memorial Day honored the dead of past wars, as soldiers in Korea paused to mark the occasion in the new U.N. cemetery at Pusan. South Korean President Syngman Rhee attended the ceremony and throughout stood bareheaded in the rain. The President, aboard his yacht on a short vacation cruise down the Potomac, was represented by White House aides at ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetery.

The National Safety Council predicted that 100 persons would die in traffic accidents during the 30-hour period beginning at 6:00 p.m. the previous day. By noon this date, 36 had been killed, 22 of whom had died in traffic mishaps.

In Norfolk, a crowd gathered to honor the remaining few living Confederate veterans of the Civil War. Erle Cocke, Jr., national commander of the American Legion, delivered an address in which he urged quick resolution of dissension in the nation regarding the firing of General MacArthur and that those who took sides on the basis of politics or personalities were serving the Communist cause. Only two of the remaining twelve veterans were present for the ceremony at the Elmwood Cemetery. Both men were 105.

A reenactment of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac would wind up the program on Saturday night.

Who wins?

CIO secretary-treasurer James Carey said in a prepared statement to the Senate Banking Committee that the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were trying to bribe labor to join in scuttling price controls and then "share the loot" with big business. He said that the CIO emphatically had rejected such an offer.

In Easington, England, all hope had been abandoned for rescue of 62 remaining trapped British coal miners buried 900 feet below ground following an explosion the previous day. The total death toll would be 80, including one rescue worker who died in an attempt to save one of the men. One of the men had been rescued but later died. It was the worst mine disaster since the National Coal Board had been formed in mid-1946.

In Indianapolis, the 35th annual Memorial Day 500 auto race was being run, with Lee Wallard leading at the halfway point, at record speed, 127.2 mph. The previous record was set the prior year by Johnny Parsons at 125.8 mph. Only 22 of the 33 starters in the race still remained.

Stay out of the draft for the duration of your college career, even if last in your class: How long did it take Mr. Wallard to complete the 100 laps to the halfway point in the race? What was his average speed per lap? Was he drafting?

On the editorial page, "'Open Covenants … Openly Arrived At'" agrees with the City Council move, proposed by Councilman Basil Boyd, that, henceforth, the meetings cease having executive sessions prior to the public hearings. It finds that the people's business ought be transacted in the open, enabling properly informed debate and permitting the public to assess the performance of the elected officials.

Moreover, it points out, North Carolina law made private sessions illegal, requiring that all sessions of a city governing body's meetings be open to the public.

"Teen-Agers and Marijuana" finds that use of marijuana by young people of the city was neither widespread nor nonexistent. Superior Court Judge Hoyle Sink had called the previous day for a broad investigation of narcotics traffic in the city but had not thereby intended to suggest an epidemic of drug use. No one knew how much use was occurring but Judge Sink had said that there were more than 40 sources of marijuana supply in the city. The piece agrees that the time was appropriate for such an investigation, before a chronic problem developed in the city.

Experts had found that marijuana was not physiologically habit-forming but could become a stepping stone to use of harder drugs, usually heroin. The marijuana peddler usually also acted as a conduit for heroin, as there was not much profit in marijuana, with "reefers" selling for a quarter apiece—the same price as that of a cab ride anywhere in the city under the prior week's now abrogated ordinance to provide added transportation during the bus strike. Heroin was more expensive and a tolerance to it was developed quickly, requiring larger doses to achieve the same high.

You will soon learn of the newest addictive drug, having all the attributes of hard-drug addiction, television. You have to get more and more titillation from it to be satisfied. Bring on the vicariously experienced ultra-violence in greater and greater waves to make one feel more secure and comfortable in the understanding that after all, though it could have been, it was not you who endured that horror-story today, either of fictional creation or out of the news.

"The Reds Take Another Beating" finds encouraging the news from Italy that Premier Alcide de Gasperi's Christian Democrat Party and its allies had won the majority of seats in the municipal election in Milan, the nation's second largest city. It also led in Genoa and Venice, as well as in Bologna, center of Italian Communist strength. In the provincial councils, Communist representation was reduced to one-third and Communists lost heavily also in town council elections where they had been in control since 1946.

This type of victory achieved in Western Europe through Marshall Plan aid was cheaper and more permanent than a military victory. It hopes that Congress would remember these election results when the foreign economic aid package was being voted on for the coming fiscal year.

"Take a Bow, Mr. Post" congratulates the biweekly Cleveland Times of Shelby and its editor and publisher Ed Post, Jr., upon its tenth anniversary of publication. It had good news coverage, impressive typography, and an excellent editorial page with literary quality which often excelled many larger newspapers.

It also finds remarkable other small newspapers in the state, the Franklin Press of Weimar Jones, the Southern Pines Pilot of Mrs. James Boyd, the Chapel Hill Weekly of Louis Graves, and the Smithfield Herald of Tom Lassiter.

It hopes that the Cleveland Times would grow older while losing none of its youthful vigor displayed on its editorial page during its first decade.

An editorial from the Greenville (S.C.) Piedmont examines the ongoing case of Briggs v. Elliott in Federal District Court in Charleston, wherein the plaintiffs were seeking desegregation of Clarendon County public schools. It says that the N.A.A.C.P. lawyers, led by Thurgood Marshall, would have no difficulty in proving that the black schools of the county were inferior to the white schools.

But they were also seeking to show that "separate but equal" facilities, as required under Plessy v. Ferguson since 1896 to pass muster under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection clause, was a false and flawed concept which could not be achieved in segregated facilities. They would contend therefore that South Carolina and the 16 other states which mandated segregation by law were in violation of the Constitution based on segregation per se being discriminatory.

The State's lawyers would admit that the schools were not equal, that, based on property valuation, black schools were worth 11 million dollars while white schools were worth 70 million. They would also contend that the State had made substantial progress, however, in black education and that in some instances, black schools were superior to the average white school and some superior even to the best white schools in a given county. The defense attorneys would also point out that it would be difficult to change existing views on integration and that years would be required to obtain public adjustment.

Black teachers were classified and paid on the same basis as white teachers in South Carolina, and black children for the first time would be transported to school under the new statewide busing program. Black schools would also receive priority in improvement and construction.

The piece suggests that the State should have prepared to meet the problem five years earlier, foreseeing the handwriting on the wall in Supreme Court decisions since 1938 with Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, and continuing through 1950 with the Sweatt v. Painter decision, holding that the State of Texas had failed to supply a substantially equal instate law school for black applicants and thus that the University of Texas had to admit qualified black applicants to its Law School, though preserving for the time being the principle of Plessy, not reaching its contested Constitutional validity. The Supreme Court had been acting gradually, first addressing segregation in graduate and professional schools and acting state by state, to give the public time to adjust.

It concludes that no one could predict the outcome of the case when it reached the Supreme Court but that the "thinking people" of South Carolina would hope that "separate but equal" doctrine would be upheld and that "equal" would become a reality.

As indicated, that antiquated notion, having failed to become a reality in 55 years by 1951, would be rejected when Briggs reached the Supreme Court as part of Brown v. Board of Education, decided in 1954, ultimately ordering in 1955 that desegregation of public schools take place "with all deliberate speed". Briggs initially, in early 1952, had been remanded by the Supreme Court to the lower court for further findings on a report the lower court had ordered the State to prepare anent progress made in making the schools equal, the three-judge District Court panel having found them unequal but also ruling that segregation per se was not unconstitutional, the latter point being the basis for direct appeal to the Supreme Court in 1951 by the plaintiffs, which the Court essentially held was premature.

Drew Pearson tells of the meat packers putting the squeeze on the retailers and wholesalers by forcing them to buy at above the 53-cent per pound ceiling for choice cuts, raised openly in defiance of which by the packers to 57 cents in April, or not receive any meat at all and be forced out of business. Another wrinkle was to force the wholesalers to buy meat which was hard to sell, such as sausage, in order to receive any beef at all.

Congressman Kenneth Keating of New York had become the newest Congressional champion of big business. He had helped P. G. & E. in California by sponsoring an amendment to kill the urgently needed Government-owned power lines. He had also sponsored a bill urged by big-business lobbies which was aimed at crippling anti-trust laws. It would undercut a plan passed the previous December, originally proposed by former President Herbert Hoover when he was President, that the Clayton Anti-Trust Act be strengthened to prevent acquisition of assets in the course of mergers, such as factories and equipment, creating unfair competition. Mr. Keating had voted for the measure, but when it was time to appropriate money so that the FTC could enforce the law, Mr. Keating changed course, sponsoring the amendment to cancel $245,000 in enforcement funding, an amendment which passed, rendering the law a nullity.

Marquis Childs tells of reports that Tibet had fallen under the Communist yoke from China, a significant loss to the non-Communist world. He recalls an interview he had with Prime Minister Nehru of India the prior October in which the Prime Minister had said that he doubted the Communist Chinese would move on Tibet as it had too many problems at home in solidifying its control of China.

At that time, he had been telling Washington the seemingly contradictory line that the Communist Chinese would enter the Korean war if the U.N. troops went further north in North Korea, advice received in Washington with some skepticism.

He had been right about Korea but wrong about Tibet. Tibet was of strategic importance as it looked down on India and Pakistan and permitted the Communists to menace the border areas where they were already strongest, keeping those areas from the non-Communist world.

Prime Minister Nehru had made confusing statements at times, producing consternation in Washington, contributing to the delay in the loan of surplus grain. But India needed U.S. help in that regard to prevent starvation and the bill finally appeared headed for approval. Everything needed to be done which could be within limits to aid India, to keep it in the free world, especially in light of what had occurred in Tibet.

A piece from Editorial Research Reports tells of wage increases being indicated for hundreds of thousands of workers resulting from revision in basic wage policy by the revised 18-person Wage Stabilization Board. A new regulation would replace the one adopted by the first incarnation of the Board, which had limited wage increases to ten percent above those prevailing in mid-January, 1950. The new regulation would likely provide for a flexible wage ceiling. The piece provides the chronology of events which gave rise to replacement of the unsatisfactory regulation.

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