The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 28, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that U.N. and Communist ceasefire negotiators clashed this date regarding the boundary lines of a ceasefire demilitarized zone in Korea, the Communists holding to their demand that it be at the 38th parallel and the U.N, to their position that it be roughly along the present battle lines. Both sides refused to budge. The atmosphere was described by the military spokesman as "cool military formality". Little, if any, progress was made in the more than two-hour session. The conference would continue the following morning.
At the fighting front, attacking U.N. troops met heavy enemy resistance on the eastern Korean front where they had been trying for three days to capture dominating high ground northeast of Yanggu. Light enemy contact had been reported along the rest of the eastern front and along the central and western fronts.
B-29s dropped 100 tons of bombs on a supply center at the port for Pyongyang. None encountered ground fire. Fifth Air Force fighters and light bombers flew 229 sorties through heavy rain and low-lying clouds. Far Eastern Air Force fliers flew 3,085 sorties during the week, inflicting about 700 enemy casualties and destroying or damaging more than 800 vehicles and 249 railroad cars.
A U.N. medal was authorized for those fighting for the U.N. forces in Korea.
U.N. Russian chief delegate and
deputy Foreign Minister Jakob Malik
In Detroit to celebrate its 250th
anniversary celebration, the President questioned the sincerity of
Communist peace efforts in Korea and said that Russia's war-like
preparations
In a speech in Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito told 100,000 cheering supporters that a threat by Russia's V. M. Molotov to destroy his movement "quickly" had not moved him, that Hitler had made similar threats during the war.
In London, special Presidential envoy to Tehran Averell Harriman laid forth the Iranian position to the British Government, including Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, anent the oil nationalization dispute. Earlier, Mr. Harriman, acting as mediator in the dispute, had said that he thought the dispute could be resolved if the British would agree to a proposal of the Iranian Government for resumption of the talks. The precise nature of the proposal had not been publicly disclosed by Mr. Harriman, but a source had said the prior Tuesday that it entailed the British accepting Iranian Government ownership of the oil, including the interests of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., and an operating company being set up, controlled by the oil customers.
Southern Democrats were awaiting word from the President on civil rights, to ignite political infighting for the 1952 presidential race. Senator Hubert Humphrey, who had introduced the progressive civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic national convention, precipitating the pre-planned walkout by the Dixiecrats, had stated the previous week that the Southerners who objected to civil rights should leave the party, causing the Southerners to believe that the President was planning to wage a battle against them. The central point of dispute was the Administration's proposed permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission to prevent discrimination in wages and hiring on the basis of race, creed or color. The President had won in 1948 without the lost 39 Southern electoral votes going to the Dixiecrats in four states and so Senator Humphrey had suggested that those Southern states were not necessary for Democratic victory.
Senator Taft told a reporter that the Republican policy committee was going to consider a proposal to try to cut out Secretary of State Acheson from heading the 8.5 billion dollar foreign aid program, as a new move to try to trigger his ouster.
After the Senate passed the economic controls measure approved by the joint reconciliation conference, the measure moved to the House where approval was expected Monday. The current law would expire at midnight Tuesday. The measure continued wage, price, rent and other controls through June, 1952 but relaxed consumer credit limitations. New price controls authorized rollbacks to pre-Korean war levels for non-farm commodities, provided cost increases in the meantime were taken into account, and also kept in place the ten percent beef price rollback but would nix two planned 4.5 percent additional rollbacks on beef. Other farm commodities could be rolled back to 90 percent of the May 19 level or to parity, whichever was higher.
In New York, the FBI arrested eight men and a woman described as being members of a three-million dollar per year French-Italian counterfeiting and narcotics smuggling ring headed by Charles "Lucky" Luciano. It was, said the U.S. Attorney's office, the largest such ring ever to come to its attention. Seven of the men had been arraigned this date after seizure the previous night of $100,000 in counterfeit bills delivered to an undercover agent by two of the arrested men at a Manhattan hotel, to have been exchanged for $22,000.
Tom Fesperman of The News
tells of some young mothers still giving away infants to strangers in
Charlotte, according to Welfare superintendent Wallace Kuralt. Mr.
Kuralt said that the illegal and dangerous practice was probably the
result of ignorance of the excellent adoption services available in
the state. The recipient was forewarned that such babies might have
congenital diseases or that the baby's intelligence might be either
so superior or inferior to the recipient family that a severe
adjustment problem
In one case, a young woman checked into a downtown hotel and offered the baby to a bellhop, who accepted it and took it home. Another young woman stopped a man on the street and offered it to a man who took it home. Another offered her baby to a garbage man who said he would like to have a child in his family. More cases involved black babies than white babies.
On the editorial page, "Atlantic Army" tells of General Eisenhower praising the fact that five European nations, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and West Germany, had formulated a plan for having a single, one-uniform, non-national army under one flag. Just six years earlier, these nations were at war in opposing camps. Now, under the plan of Robert Schuman, they were going to pool their industrial resources.
The reason for such progress was a common fear of Russian aggression, the political leadership in France supplanting that of Britain, and the prodding by the U.S. coupled with its active support by money and men.
Britain had been reluctant to join the united Europe movement on the premise that it believed in closer relations with the Commonwealth nations and the U.S.
The trend might become, it suggests, toward a military union of Commonwealth and North American forces.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, General Eisenhower was going to try to effect a supreme Atlantic political organization, a solution sought by France to the NATO political muddle, but not yet endorsed by Washington. It commends this vision but finds it lamentable that the political leadership had to rely on a general to set it forth.
"Inefficiency in Congress" finds that while Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia was all for efficiency and cost-cutting in Government, a laudable trait, he should also look to Congress which had yet to pass a single appropriations bill through both houses since the start of the session, with the consequence that all Federal agencies were now operating on the prior year's budgets.
It finds no excuse for the slipshod performance and hopes Senator Byrd would undertake to develop a more modern system for handling appropriations measures.
"Coolness—The Secret of Success" remarks on the finding in Canada by Marquis Childs that the secret of Canadian success in maintaining a stable economy appeared to be their coolness and calmness, in contrast to Washington's torrid and turbulent atmosphere which had produced continued inflation in the face of muddled controls. It suggests that Congress might have passed some workable price controls had they not longed for the air conditioned comfort of their Shoreham and Mayflower hotel rooms—ignoring the fact that both chambers in Congress were now air conditioned after improvements undertaken the prior summer.
The Charlotte City Council also, it ventures, might have devoted two more evenings to the City budget had it not been for the heat. It favors therefore that they convene in summer atop Mt. Mitchell and that Congress remove to the Maine woods or Montana glaciers.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Keeping Up with the Stalins", tells of the lavish wedding held for Svetlana Stalin, Josef Stalin's daughter, costing an estimated $900,000. And it was her second wedding. The piece thinks that Lenin would not have approved, that he had always thought Stalin too wild, not in keeping with the interests of the masses.
It concludes with a note to Stalin:
You may tempt the upper classes
With your villainous demitasses,
But Heaven will protect the Working
Girl.
Hey, you dirty little Socialist, that's missing a line: "From the dictator's daughter in a murky world."
Drew Pearson tells of the U.S. subsidizing for three years 65 percent of the food in Greece to keep its food prices down. The Greek Government had permitted inflation to push Greek food prices out of reach of the average person as it refused to pass higher taxes or other inflation control measures. The U.S. had done so to prevent the spread of Communism among a desperate people in need of food. The U.S. would supply the food at below-market prices, cheaper than Americans were paying for it. That was in addition to the two billion dollars in aid provided Greece since the end of the war.
He notes that Greek shipowners, in the meantime, had grown wealthy shipping Marshall Plan cargo after buying their ships at bargain prices from the U.S. and then charging extremely high shipping rates while paying no taxes to the U.S. and nearly none to Greece.
The Office of Price Stabilization was busy maintaining the status quo while Congress considered economic controls, meaning that the Office had come to a virtual standstill.
The IRB managed to get some laughs from irate mail received from taxpayers, such as one who wrote that the Bible said, "'—and from him that hath not .. shall be taken away even that which he hath,'" and that it was the only part "you lugs" believed in. One taxpayer claimed that he would have paid his taxes earlier but for being laid up with a "fractured uncle".
One taxpayer sent in a check saying that as he wished to remain anonymous in his contribution after not paying enough in his name, he begged pardon for not signing the check.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the Administration planning possibly to abandon control of meat prices completely if the Congress passed an unworkable economic controls bill, placing the responsibility on Congress for giving the President ineffective legislation.
But since Congress had given the President authority to implement controls in August, 1950, which he largely ignored until the early part of the year, the Congress had room to blame the President for the situation. The President had begun asking for too much control, starting in the early part of the year. Congressional leaders, including Vice-President Alben Barkley, had warned the President at that time that such extensive controls, including three rollbacks in meat prices, could not pass, that it would precipitate a flurry of amendments which would weaken controls.
Initially, the President had agreed, but then Price Administrator Mike DiSalle opted for all-out controls.
The Alsops think the vacillation symptomatic of weak executive leadership.
The lobbies in Congress, led by the meat lobby, followed by the cotton bloc, had been able to exert their will on the Congress. Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland and Senate Majority Whip Lyndon Johnson had actually led opposition to the controls legislation they were charged with leading. Thus, it was remarkable that any controls remained.
Labor had joined business in opposing consumer credit controls, an indirect method of controlling inflation. Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston had called a meeting recently of business, labor and farm representatives, criticizing each group, labor for wanting to prevent controls which would limit wage increases, the farm group for keeping controls off farm produce prices, and business for insisting only on indirect controls to limit inflation and then opposing tax increases and credit regulations as such indirect means.
They conclude that everyone had been behaving on the principle of getting while the getting was good.
Marquis Childs, in Ottawa, tells of ten billion dollars having been invested in developing new Canadian industry since 1946, stimulating a boom reminiscent of the gold boom in the mid-Nineteenth century in the Western U.S. A lot of the money came from the U.S., for the fact that, with iron and other basic resources nearly exhausted in the U.S., producers were turning to Canada. A confidence had developed in Canada as a result that it was their century. Canada's policymakers wanted to participate as a junior partner with the U.S. in leading the West.
The Ministerial Council of NATO was scheduled to hold a meeting of foreign and defense ministers in late September in Ottawa and Canada wanted to make sure that the leaders of the Western alliance knew what they were doing so that blind obeisance to their will would not be the rule of the day.
The U.S. was displeased with the rise in price of Canadian newsprint, impacting most U.S. newspapers. But Canada responded that newsprint and nickel were among its few world commodities over which it had control, while many others which Canada had to import had also risen precipitously in price.
In the total picture, such differences were minor and for citizens of each country to be able to cross the international border without a passport was symbolic of the ties which bound the two countries together.
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of the North Carolina Congressional delegation, at odds on many issues during the session, having gotten together on economic controls. One of the chief bones of contention was whether to locate a proposed Air Force troop carrier wing at the Raleigh-Durham airport or at one of the existing facilities at Seymour Johnson Air Base at Goldsboro or at Laurinburg-Maxton.
A six-week recess was in prospect starting August 15, to the delight of lawmakers.
Senator Clyde Hoey was dissatisfied with his reply from Secretary of Defense Marshall regarding the Army's removal of Dr. Ralph Brimley, superintendent of Forsyth County Schools, from an educational mission to Japan for his supposed anti-union stand after a complaint by AFL when he told local teachers he disfavored their forming a union local. The Senator sent another outraged letter to the Defense Secretary, wondering whether it was now the policy of the Army to let a labor organization dictate the appointments of well-qualified persons.
Senator Hoey's investigating committee's recent revelation of the confidence man who swindled a Greek Catholic church out of between $150,000 and $200,000 and other persons of another roughly $150,000 to $200,000 on the basis of investing the money in surplus Government rental buildings, had, according to the Senator, been a uniquely large swindler and information on the swindle had come from a tip. The committee was looking into possible tax evasion by shipowners flying flags under foreign registries and was also looking again into veterans hospital facilities to see how space was being utilized.
The State Department was becoming pessimistic about the prospects for a resolution between India and Pakistan regarding Kashmir, despite the prodigious efforts of U.N. mediator Frank Graham to effect a compromise. Both nations were making defensive preparations which did not bode well for peaceful resolution of the dispute.
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