The Charlotte News
Wednesday, October 1, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at Cheju Island in Korea, U.S. guards killed 45 Chinese prisoners of war and injured 120 others in the process of quelling a riot this date. The prisoners had been celebrating the third anniversary of the inception of the Communist Chinese regime when some 500 fanatics attacked about 80 of the guards with stones, rocks, clubs, tent poles and improvised weapons. The majority of those who had been killed or wounded had been shot, and two American soldiers had been slightly injured. Many details, according to a spokesman for the Prisoner of War Command, were still lacking. It was the second largest prisoner riot announced by the Army, the riot of the previous February on Koje Island having resulted in the killing of 80 prisoners. About 6,400 hard-core Chinese Communists were maintained in various camps around Cheju City on the island. In addition, there were another 13,600 Chinese captives who had indicated they would resist repatriation to China. The camp commander had ordered that no demonstrations occur on the anniversary, anticipating problems, and when he saw the demonstrations forming, had issued orders via loudspeaker that if they were not stopped, force would be used to effect compliance. When the prisoners refused to obey the order, two platoons of U.S. infantry entered the compound to restore order, at which point the riot began.
In the air war, the allies launched a massive attack of 48 B-29s on a chemical plant located only 40 yards from the Manchurian border, in one of the largest air raids of the war by B-29s. The enemy responded with only "meager to moderate" ground fire.
On the ground, Chinese Communists were celebrating the third anniversary of the founding of their regime, including the display of the body of a dead American soldier before one forward position.
The Air Force announced this date from Korea that 30 allied planes had been lost to all causes during September, seven of which were jets shot down during air battles, which had cost the enemy a record 62 MIG-15s destroyed, eclipsing the record of 44 set the previous April.
General Eisenhower this date, in a speech prepared for delivery at Flint, Mich., accused the Administration of crushing bipartisan foreign policy by trying to take all the credit for the good things and blaming Republicans for the bad things. He included Governor Stevenson in this attempt. He promised that if he were elected President, he would cooperate with Democrats and make them "real partners" in working out basic foreign policies. In calling forth the memory of deceased Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, he said that his fervor had been "so contagious that he ended once and for all the old American belief in isolationism." He was embarking on a 28-state tour, which held the possibility of 361 electoral votes, 95 more than needed for victory. The General had been greeted by 50,000 persons the previous day at the State Capitol in Columbia, S.C., introduced by Governor James Byrnes, who urged a clean-up of the "mess in Washington". It was indicated that the General originally had plans to capitalize on the statement by General Walter Bedell Smith, CIA director, that he assumed there were Communists in most Federal agencies, including the CIA, but had relented to avoid compromising the security of the country or the Agency. A spokesman for the RNC in Washington said that neither the Committee nor the General intended to make a "political football" out of General Smith's statements. Meanwhile, General Smith had backed down some from his original statement, issuing another which said that what he had really intended to say was that any intelligence agency had to be constantly vigilant and would be "criminally negligent" were it not to operate on the assumption that Communists had been able to penetrate.
Governor Stevenson, speaking to some 200 leaders of volunteer units from 37 states assembled in Springfield, Ill., for a major political rally, indicated that the Republicans were making a "ludicrous" claim that they could easily end Communist penetration of Federal agencies.
Representative Harold Cooley of North Carolina said this date that Governor Stevenson had informed him that it would be impossible for the Governor to campaign in North Carolina, that he had been trying to fit the state into his itinerary but had been unable to do so. Mr. Cooley had been a guest of the Governor in Springfield.
The President dedicated the 108 million dollar Hungry Horse Dam near Columbia Falls, Montana, accusing General Eisenhower of turning against such projects after learning the Republican Party line. He accused the General of talking "like one of the lobbyists of the private power monopolies", stating that if he were elected, "it will be a long time before you see another structure of this kind"—while capturing the gist of the President's remarks, not precisely verbatim. The President made additional remarks on the functions of government in nearby Kalispell in a high school gymnasium after viewing the Dam.
Another Gallup poll appears, taken just prior to the expense fund controversy regarding Senator Richard Nixon, showing some gains by the Democratic ticket since early September, with 53 percent preferring General Eisenhower to 39 percent for Governor Stevenson, with 8 percent undecided. When the leaners were included, the result was 55 percent for the General and 41 percent for the Governor, with 4 percent remaining undecided. Based on party preference, Republicans were favored by 47 percent and Democrats by 39 percent, with 14 percent undecided. On September 21, the results had been, including leaners, 51 percent for Republicans and 42 percent for Democrats, and on September 5, 51 percent for Republicans and 43 percent for Democrats, compared to 51 percent for Republicans and 44 percent for Democrats presently, including the leaners. It indicates that it would be a couple of more weeks before the effects of the Nixon incident would be known. In every election since 1936, Republican strength had diminished in October.
The House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Justice Department said, in the second chapter of a report released this date, that former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had shown "no enthusiasm" for a clean-up of the Department and instead had "appeared to wish to delay and frustrate investigation". The first chapter of the report, released the prior Monday, criticized Mr. McGrath's appointment of Newbold Morris to head the campaign to clean up the Government and questioned his good faith in doing so. Mr. McGrath replied earlier in the week that the report was "beneath the dignity of men who cared to be honest and honorable". This date's installment indicated that Mr. McGrath had exhibited "a deplorable lack of knowledge of the Department he was supposed to administer." It also criticized other appointments he had made, including one deputy Attorney General whom investigators had found had failed the District of Columbia Bar examination three times and the Virginia Bar examination once, before finally being admitted to the Tennessee Bar as a non-resident. It also said that he had shown little interest in purging the Department of "wrongdoers and incompetents" and had given little aid to Mr. Morris in his efforts at house-cleaning.
In Hickory, George F. Ivey, 82, brother of merchant J. B. Ivey of Charlotte, died of a heart attack around noon this date at his home. He was president of the Southern Desk Co. of Hickory and was the founder and former president of the Ivey Mills of that town. He had graduated from old Trinity College, forerunner of Duke, and had been active in Hickory civic affairs.
Dick Young of The News tells of needed municipal improvements requiring 8.7 million dollars in additional bond revenue, an estimate prepared by City Manager Henry Yancey at the request of the City Council. He details the breakdown of the needed improvements, which would be placed on the ballot in December at the same time of the bond referenda regarding school and library improvements.
Not mentioned on the front page, as would usually be the case, shoved off apparently by politics, the 1952 World Series got underway this date in New York, with the Yankees
On the editorial page, "McCarthyism—Truman Style" finds it inappropriate for the President to charge General Eisenhower with "blunders" and having done "a great deal of harm" to the nation's postwar foreign policy, in having recommended after the war a friendly policy toward Russia. It suggests that if it was a "blunder" for the General to have recommended that policy, it was a blunder for FDR and President Truman during the war, including the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. It also finds that if he had done such harm to the postwar foreign policy, it was strange that the President had subsequently appointed him chief of staff of the Army and then supreme commander of NATO in early 1951. It suggests sarcastically that the President had not apparently discovered the problem until the current political campaign. Earlier in the year, the President had told newsmen that he thought the General was doing a superb job in Europe and that he would not relieve him unless the General asked to be relieved.
It finds that the President had sunk to the "low level of such irresponsible" Republicans as Senators McCarthy and Jenner, using the same tactics of "hindsight and misrepresentation". It suspects the effort would boomerang with the majority of "thoughtful Americans who realize that most of us let our hopes for peace color our judgment of our wartime Soviet allies and led us to credit them with the same peaceful intentions that we held."
No, as indicated, he was merely responding in kind to the Eisenhower tactics of claiming "blunders" which had led to Korea, "blunders" in which he had participated and policy which he had approved while chief of staff of the Army and while supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. That is what the President was saying. So, if you accuse the President of using the tactics of Senators McCarthy and Jenner, you must place a ditto beside General Eisenhower. But, we understand that you are an "independent newspaper" which is completely unbiased, so unbiased, in fact, that it would never occur to you that you might be biased.
We do not, however, accuse you also of being drunk, as was plain regarding, for instance, such Republican spokespersons as Senator McCarthy and Clare Boothe Luce—as well as Robert C. Ruark on most days. But we nevertheless reserve the right to disagree with your editorials and do so, especially when they are unfair and omit key points.
"It's Time To Step up the Truth Campaign" indicates that during the previous several months, the Korean truce negotiations had consisted of short meetings followed by long recesses, without progress. The prior Sunday, the U.S. chief negotiator, Lt. General William Harrison, Jr., had made a new proposal regarding prisoner exchange, the issue which had been the sticking point for many months preventing a truce. The Communists were scheduled to deliver their reply a week hence.
It finds the proposal fair and practicable, in that all prisoners would be allowed to choose whether to repatriate or not and that prisoners would be traded by being brought to the neutral zone, turned loose and allowed to walk to the side which they chose, thereby eliminating any advance head count regarding who wished to repatriate and who desired to remain, a bone of contention for the Communists.
It was unlikely that the Communists would accept the proposal, and if they did not, it urges that the U.N. and U.S. should undertake a propaganda barrage to the world, informing of the truth of the proposal and that the Communists had turned it down. It was an example of good faith U.N. negotiations and, if rejected, another example of Communist faithlessness with the people they claimed to represent.
It urges greater funding for information dissemination to foreign countries, and that, in the meantime, it could be handled by regular briefings provided by the Secretary of State or one of his staff members, which would provide good listening not only for Americans but also those overseas.
"Ike Seeks To Lift a Political Mortgage" tells of General Eisenhower having again entered the South the previous day, at Columbia, S.C., in a bid for that state's support in the general election, a state which had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Apparently, it indicates, he had been successful before the 50,000 gathered at the State Capitol to see and hear him.
It finds it strange when the Republican presidential candidate could enter the South three times and receive warm welcomes on each occasion, as normally the South was ignored by Republican presidential candidates. The Southern political atmosphere, however, was changing, as the voters adopted a greater degree of independence. The ties which had, for nearly 90 years since the Civil War, bound them to the Democratic Party had been loosened as the party policies had become more progressive under FDR and President Truman, and industrialization in the region had produced a new state of mind—as completely paradoxical as those two juxtaposed concepts are.
The number of voters willing to vote for Republicans for the presidency had increased since 1940, when FDR chose to run for an unprecedented third term, and Republican strategists believed that their numbers were now sufficient to put several Southern states in the Eisenhower column.
It indicates that since it was an "independent newspaper", it welcomed that growing spirit of political independence throughout the South. But an increase in the number of Southerners who voted Republican in presidential elections only, it suggests, was not enough to establish a lasting two-party system in the region. The Republican Party had to be strengthened at the grassroots, at the precinct and county levels. In Louisiana and Texas, the Eisenhower forces had supported new and more aggressive factions which could become forces in the political structures of those states. In North Carolina, the Republican Party was making a bid for representation in Congress, but in South Carolina, the organization was so weak that its followers had been asked to vote for a slate of electors under the rubric, "Democrats for Eisenhower", a slate endorsed by the state Republican organization over the normal Republican slate of electors.
It indicates that one of the most formidable challenges for the General, should he win the general election, would be to establish a party organization in the South which would pose serious challenges in state and local elections. It concludes that if those who cheered him the previous day in Columbia voted for him, it would be a "miraculous victory".
The General would not carry South Carolina, albeit losing it by only 1.5 percent or 5,000 votes, but would carry Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida, with the remainder of the Southern states going to Governor Stevenson, splitting the electoral votes in the region, with 57 going to the General and 89 to the Governor. The problem for Governor Stevenson would be that those would be the only states in the country which he would carry. In 1956, when the Governor again would be the Democratic nominee, the electoral map would become even narrower for him in the region, as he would win only 73 electoral votes, adding Missouri, but losing Kentucky, West Virginia and Louisiana, plus one faithless elector in Alabama, in addition to Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee, lost in 1952. That was so despite the concern and unrest evidenced in the region in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ordering the desegregation of public schools with "all deliberate speed" in 1954 and 1955.
Apparently, Southerners did not at that juncture attribute the result to the appointment by President Eisenhower of Governor Earl Warren as Chief Justice, replacing deceased Fred Vinson in 1953, the billboards urging impeachment of the Chief Justice not springing up until the early Sixties, the boobs apparently thinking that Chief Justice Warren was an appointee of President Kennedy—as most of them could neither read nor write or at least were functionally illiterate. And, of course, it is true that, regardless of the appointment of Chief Justice Warren, who worked dedicatedly to effect a unanimous decision, the progress of decisions since 1937 regarding educational desegregation had been such that Brown was only a natural consequence in the line of progression, especially after Sweatt v. Painter, ordering the desegregation of the University of Texas Law School in 1950 for the failure of the State to show the State's provision of a substantially equal law school for blacks within the state, though not yet striking down as unconstitutional the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, enunciated in 1896, as would Brown on the basis that in 58 years the doctrine had not achieved its separate-but-equal goal, the requirement for it to pass muster under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.
"A Single Standard of Morality" indicates that since the issuance of a Senate Agriculture Committee report on the embezzlement of some ten million dollars worth of grain stored for the Commodity Credit Corporation under the Federal farm price support program, it had noted some curious editorial comment on the matter. Despite the report stating that there was "no evidence" reported to the Committee that any CCC personnel had personally profited or engaged in criminal activity in the embezzlement, many newspapers had criticized the failure of the Agriculture Department to set up an inventory inspection system to make such embezzlement virtually impossible.
It indicates that the Committee's recommendations for such an inspection system should be carried out. But the newspapers who had editorialized on this point had ignored a more serious topic, the ethics and morals of business, as the embezzlement had been undertaken by the private warehousemen who were storing the grain under contract with the CCC, and did not involve personnel of the latter agency. The warehousemen had removed the grain from the warehouses and sold it, planning to purchase more grain at lower prices and replace it later, after making a fast dollar. It indicates that private businessmen who profited at the expense of taxpayers deserved the same censure as Government employees doing so.
Drew Pearson, in his continuing look
at the candidates' finances, having started with Senator Nixon on
Monday, indicates that General Eisenhower's income taxes, when and if
they were finally released to the public, would contain some small
and interesting enterprises of which the public was unaware. There
was nothing wrong about these investments but one did not normally
associate them with a five-star general. He had stock in the
Charm-More
The only embarrassing thing, he indicates, which would be in the General's income tax returns, in addition to the capital gains tax treatment regarding the million dollars he had received for his wartime memoir, would be the tax deduction on his house received while president of Columbia University. He received the latter tax break after writing to the Treasury, basing it on the fact that the University required him to live there. But the Treasury had not permitted waiters, waitresses, bellhops, chamber maids and other personnel who were required to live in hotels to deduct their meals and lodging. Nurses who had to live in hospitals were given more favorable tax treatment than waiters, though only after a long fight with the Treasury.
Charles Oliphant, who had resigned from the Treasury after bitter criticism from Republican Congressmen, had approved the favorable tax treatment for the General in both instances.
Mr. Pearson notes that the General had received in regular Army pay $15,751, plus three aides or stenographers, and a car, in addition to his salary at Columbia.
When the General's train had come
into Maryland recently, the General had been tipped that Edward
Grammer, on trial in Baltimore for murdering his wife, before putting
her in a runaway automobile, would seek to subpoena the General as a
character witness. Telegrams were sent to Maryland officials, and its
Secretary of State found an old law which provided that a person
did not have to testify as a character witness if signing an
affidavit that he or she did not know the defendant. The General
signed the affidavit and thus avoided having to worry about being
subpoenaed. (We still believe that this incident involving Mr.
Grammer was portrayed in one of those cop shows or some movie to
which we have linked in the last couple of years, but have yet to
place it. We shall let you know when we come upon it. The relevant
point, of course, is whether the program was aired before or after
the alleged murder. If before, it adds to the premise that television
mysteries and violence was
Friends of Senator James Kem of Missouri were planning a last-minute sneak attack on opponent Stuart Symington, planning to charge that the latter had once been convicted for theft of an automobile in Baltimore. The facts were that Mr. Symington, at age 17, had gone for a ride with two other boys in a car belonging to their next-door neighbor, at which point the boy who was driving ran the car into a ditch, causing the owner to get mad and accuse the boys of theft, resulting in a fine of $25 each. The owner, when he learned that the incident might be used against Mr. Symington in the Senate race, wrote a letter indicating that Mr. Symington's father had been one of his closest friends and had, along with the parents of the other boys, paid the bill in full, that the incident had only been a prank and that it was absurd to raise it 34 years later. Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Symington had really tried to clean up Washington.
Stewart Alsop, in St. Louis, finds it difficult to explain to an outsider the American political situation as found in Missouri, where Stuart Symington, former Secretary of the Air Force, was running for the Senate against Republican incumbent James Kem. Mr. Symington had won the nomination over the opposition of the President, despite the fact that he supported Governor Stevenson in the election and supported the internationalist policies of General Eisenhower, whom he admired. Senator Kem, by contrast, had consistently opposed everything for which General Eisenhower stood, including in the Senator's vote against ratification of NATO. Yet, General Eisenhower, during a recent trip to St. Louis, had endorsed the Senator, who was gladly grabbing onto the General's coattails.
The Senator was hopeful that General Eisenhower would sweep the country and sweep the Senator back into office with him. He also hoped that by attacking Mr. Symington as a "blood-soaked war profiteer", a "golf-playing crony of Communists", and the chosen agent of British international bankers, he could sow so much confusion among the electorate that he would be re-elected.
The first two charges were based on Mr. Symington having owned stock in the Emerson Electric Company, of which he had been president, stock which he sold when he entered public life, to avoid charges of favoritism. A Communist had once headed the union local dealing with Emerson, leading to the second charge, though Mr. Symington had no choice but to deal with him on union matters when he headed the company. The third charge stemmed from the fact that he had once rented a house from a British banker, and, according to Senator Kem, had become the chosen instrument to punish the Senator for his "pro-American" record, when actually the Senator had never dealt with the British banker. The charges were part of the special technique utilized by Senator McCarthy to confuse voters. Mr. Symington had been so ambushed by the barrage of charges that he was finding it difficult to respond and maintain his focus on the issues, the design of the technique. Mr. Symington had even declared that it was the last time, whether he won or lost, that he was going to run for anything.
Mr. Symington would win the election and serve four terms in the Senate, as well as running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, receiving the endorsement of former President Truman over Senator John F. Kennedy.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that the Congress had authorized a record-breaking 5.8 million dollars or more for investigations by its committees during 1951 and 1952, about one-seventh of which was allocated to combating subversive activities. At least 236 special studies had been made, of which more than 150 had begun during the first year of the Congress. Members had conceded that this Congress had exceeded all others in the number of probes and the amount spent on them. The House matched nearly dollar for dollar the Senate probes, allocating 2.8 million dollars, the same amount specially allocated by the Senate, which, in addition, had other regular committees, such as the Small Business Committee, such that the total amount was about six million for both chambers.
The House authorized $500,000 for HUAC and the Senate, $355,800 for the Judiciary Committee's Internal Security subcommittee, in addition to another $282,000 for the entire Judiciary Committee. Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, combined, were authorized to spend $945,800, of which $308,000 was provided for the House Committee.
The two Armed Services Committees had been authorized to spend $560,000, of which $410,000 went to the Senate Committee. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was granted $90,000 and its House counterpart, $75,000.
Not all of the authorized funding had been spent and the final accounting would not be made until the beginning of the next Congress at the start of the following year.
The special investigations covered several topics, from Far Eastern policy to domestic distribution of obscene books. They produced numerous reports, some bills and had a bearing on passage of new laws.
Members of Congress had been critical of the body's exercise of investigatory functions. Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, for example, complained that the Senate was spending ten times more for special investigations than a decade earlier and indicated that economy should be applied to their own operations.
A letter writer indicates that for 20 years, the Republicans had kept alive the myth that the Democrats were bad business and financial managers, but now Senator Richard "(My boy)" Nixon had revealed a financial structure which, by comparison, he finds, would make the late Harry Hopkins appear as the "financial wizard of all time". The Senator had said that he owed $38,000 when he earned, including his $2,500 per year expense allowance, $15,000 from his Senate salary, with no other outside income. The writer estimates about $1,500 per year in interest and that his assets included only $4,000 in life insurance for himself, none on his wife or children, and a dog named "Trixie". (He leaves out the 1950 Oldsmobile and the cloth coat, and, of course, the dog's name was actually Dixie.)
He concludes by asking: "Where is the Republican banker or business tycoon who would turn over the management of a peanut-stand, let alone the United States of America, to Senator Nixon?"
He appears to augur the Presidency of Gerald Ford and his brilliant "W.I.N." buttons, which went over so well with the electorate in 1976, a kind of negative pregnant to 1968's "Nixon's the One", leading, of course, to the election of a peanut farmer, whose eventual perceived inability to whip inflation now or bring home the American Embassy hostages held in Iran would prove his undoing. Anyway, you had to be there...
Incidentally, for the full accounting again, here it is:
When we came out of the war, Pat and I—Pat during the war had worked as a stenographer and in a bank and as an economist for a Government agency—and when we came out the total of our savings from both my law practice, her teaching and all the time that I was in the war—the total for that entire period was just a little less than $10,000. Every cent of that, incidentally, was in Government bonds.Well, that's where we start when I go into politics. Now what have I earned since I went into politics? Well, here it is—I jotted it down, let me read the notes. First of all, I've had my salary as a Congressman and as a Senator. Second, I have received a total in this past six years of $1,600 from estates which were in my law firm at the time that I severed my connection with it.
And, incidentally, as I said before, I have not engaged in any legal practice and have not accepted any fees from business that came into the firm after I went into politics. I have made an average of approximately $1,500 a year from non-political speaking engagements and lectures. And then, fortunately, we've inherited a little money. Pat sold her interest in her father’s estate for $3,000 and I inherited $l,500 from my grandfather.
We live rather modestly. For four years we lived in an apartment in Park Fairfax, in Alexandria, Va. The rent was $80 a month. And we saved for the time that we could buy a house.
Now, that was what we took in. What did we do with this money? What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you, because it is so little, I suppose, as standards generally go, of people in public life. First of all, we've got a house in Washington which cost $41,000 and on which we owe $20,000. We have a house in Whittier, California, which cost $13,000 and on which we owe $3,000. My folks are living there at the present time.
I have just $4,000 in life insurance, plus my G.I. policy which I've never been able to convert and which will run out in two years. I have no life insurance whatever on Pat. I have no life insurance on our our two youngsters, Tricia and Julie. I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car. We have our furniture. We have no stocks and bonds of any type. We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect, in any business.
Now, that's what we have. What do we owe? Well, in addition to the mortgage, the $20,000 mortgage on the house in Washington, the $10,000 one on the house in Whittier, I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., with interest at 4 1/2 per cent.
I owe $3,500 to my parents and the interest on that loan which I pay regularly, because it's the part of the savings they made through the years they were working so hard, I pay regularly 4 per cent interest. And then I have a $500 loan which I have on my life insurance.
Well, that's about it. That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much, but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours.
I should say this—that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.
One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me too. We did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from the Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the 6-year old, named it Dixie...
A letter writer from Laurinburg quotes the Gettysburg Address-like introductory remarks of Charles Jonas, Congressional candidate for the district, during the visit the prior Friday to Charlotte of General Eisenhower, and indicates that it was the distant ancestors of Governor Stevenson who had written Mecklenburg's "revolutionary resolutions" of May 20, 1775, the date adorning the State flag—of doubtful provenance.
He recommends an article in The State Magazine by Chalmers G. Davidson from August 16, indicating that Colonel Hugh Brevard, a direct progenitor of the Governor, had distinguished himself at the Battle of Ramsour's Mill in Lincolnton while serving in the State militia.
A letter writer responds to a September 23 editorial, "A Miner's Motivation", in which, he claims, misleading statements were made regarding mine safety relative to other nations. He indicates that the West Virginia Workmen's Compensation Department, in the largest bituminous coal producing state, had shown that during the period of 1941 to 1950, the average accident rate for coal mining was 18.1 per thousand employees, while the rate of accidents for road and street construction employees was 22.3. He then provides several other such statistics from other industries, showing that coal mining was 20th on the list in terms of frequency of accident rates. He says that the 40 cents per ton paid by the mining companies to the welfare fund of the miners represented a "direct insult" to coal consumers, asserting that it assured the coal miner of a pension when he retired and accident benefits in the case of injury, without any direct contribution by the miner. He asks whether the readers of The News contributed to the editors' retirement.
But since the contribution was based on the amount of coal mined, the miners did indirectly contribute to the fund, and it provided an incentive to mine more coal for every hour worked, thus theoretically increasing the production of coal and thus reducing prices to the consumer. For your analogy to be applicable, readers of the newspaper would contribute on the basis of each newspaper purchased, which, effectively, they, in fact, did.
A letter from the chairman of the Aviation Committee of the Chamber of Commerce responds to an article published in the newspaper September 22 by Vic Reinemer, the associate editor, based on an interview with columnist Robert C. Ruark, and making reference to the "pigsty" airport terminal. He indicates that efforts were being made to clean up the Municipal Airport and rejects Mr. Ruark's opinions. He also rejects his opinion that Charlotte was the most "Yankified" city in the South, finding that he would not wish Charlotte to be "any more like than Charlotte already is" any other city in the U.S., England and Europe, where the writer had previously traveled. And he goes on…
A letter writer from Rockingham indicates that he had tried to get a 1944 tax refund check from the IRB, without success, and complains that unless it were investigated by a newspaper, it might drag on for another eight years, as the IRB claimed it had been sent out and returned.
The editors respond that the Greensboro office of the IRB had responded that because of the large volume of mail, they were behind in answering letters and in getting checks re-mailed to taxpayers, once returned. They had indicated that the taxpayers would receive those checks and apologized for the delay.
A letter writer from Statesville complains about everything from the national debt to Alger Hiss, high taxes and the high cost of living, finds it time for change, and so recommends a vote for "a general to direct the generals", "IKE".
What does IKE stand for, International Kommies for Eisenhower?
Framed Edition
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