The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 2, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that allied negotiators this date rejected a Communist proposal to restrict behind-the-lines inspections during a Korean armistice to three Communist and three U.N. ports of entry. The allies had proposed inspection at 12 ports of entry on each side.
The Communists had still not responded to the U.N. proposal to begin work immediately on the final item of the armistice agenda, the recommendations to belligerent governments.
Staff officers completed a second reading of the U.N. blueprint for supervision of an armistice and agreed on a number of minor changes. U.N. staff officers insisted that each side be allowed to rotate 40,000 troops per month, a proposal which the Communists said they would consider, the Communists having earlier proposed a ceiling of 25,000 per month. They had also been unable to reach agreement on which side would hold five islands off western Korea, the U.N. having agreed to withdraw from most North Korean coastal islands. The U.N. agreed to end its demand for neutral inspection teams to have free access to an area within 30 miles of each port of entry, instead proposing that a specific area be created for each port.
The subcommittee working on prisoner exchange had made no progress at all this date. This subcommittee and the staff officers discussing truce supervision would meet again the following day.
In the air war, unidentified planes bombed and strafed allied front-line troops in central Korea at around noon this date, but it was unknown whether they were enemy or friendly planes. Three South Korean soldiers were slightly wounded in the two attacks at Kumsong. In other action, 18 American Sabre jets damaged three enemy MIG-15 jets in a 30-minute battle against 50 enemy jets this date over northwest Korea, in the vicinity of Sinuiju. There was no report of any allied losses. The Fifth Air Force said that it had lost 14 planes during the week ending on Friday, two fewer than the record for one week, 13 of which having been destroyed by enemy ground fire and the other, having crashed after a mechanical failure. There had been no allied losses in air battles and during the same week, one enemy jet had been destroyed and two damaged.
In ground action, a tank-supported allied patrol clashed briefly this date with Communists on the central front, but otherwise the fronts were quiet.
In Paris, the Big Three Western powers insisted this date that there could be no discussion of Korean political problems until an armistice was signed. Russia had demanded immediate full-scale debate on the matter within the U.N., as indicated by Soviet delegate Jacob Malik to the joint political, economic and social committees. The Big Three representatives stated that bringing this issue before the U.N. would only interrupt and postpone the ongoing discussions in Korea. In the end, as indicated in a late bulletin, the Western powers won a postponement of any such debate until after signing of the armistice, at which point the General Assembly would discuss the future of Korea.
Mr. Malik also charged before the joint committees that the U.S. had used "toxic gases", dropped by American planes on January 9. A spokesman for the U.S. delegation denied the claim, stating that it was an old accusation that had been previously denied.
Outside the meeting place, demonstrators hit delegates with eggs, tomatoes and anarchist pamphlets, the latter stating "Politicians—gossips—windbags" and "Enough talking!"
The Senate Internal Security Committee summoned career diplomat John Carter Vincent for a fourth day of testimony in an open hearing which he had requested for the purpose of denying charges that he was a Communist. The inquiry thus far had centered on the period of 1944-45 when Mr. Vincent had gone to China as an adviser to then Vice-President Henry Wallace and later as head of the State Department's Far Eastern Office. In the latter capacity, he had a hand in framing American policies for both China and Japan. He had clashed repeatedly with Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan and committee counsel over his failure to recall some details in response to questioning by the Committee.
Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina said this date that he still objected to one part of the President's IRB reorganization plan, that permitting top Bureau officials to select regional tax officials from any part of the nation instead of confining those appointments to the districts involved. Secretary of Treasury John W. Snyder had assured the Senate Expenditures Committee the previous day that such selections would take place only from the geographical area indicated. Senator Hoey, however, wanted this provision written into the legislation, saying that the Secretary and the Civil Service Commission would not always be in office. The proposed plan could not be amended by the Congress, however, and Senator Hoey said that he did not know whether his objection in this regard would cause him to vote against the plan.
Newbold Morris, newly named by Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to head the Government clean-up campaign, would begin his investigation the following Monday, with the Justice Department being his first target regarding the recently uncovered delays and frustration of tax fraud prosecutions.
Former Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, 77, had improved somewhat, according to his doctor, after having been seriously ill with complications from a former arthritic ailment. Called routinely "the old curmudgeon" by the press for his playful jousting with same in deliberate sesquipedalianism, Mr. Ickes, who had served under FDR in the same capacity throughout the twelve years before the President's death, and continued to serve under President Truman until February, 1946, would die the following day. He had resigned after he felt slighted by the President stating neutrality on the question of accuracy of Mr. Ickes's recollection of the statements he attributed to former DNC treasurer Edwin Pauley versus that of Mr. Pauley, which had arisen in the confirmation hearings of the latter as Undersecretary of the Navy, Mr. Ickes claiming that Mr. Pauley had said in September, 1944 that he could raise several million dollars for the 1944 Democratic campaign chests from West Coast oilmen if the Administration would drop its stance on Federal control of tidelands oil. Then director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, Fred Vinson, who in June, 1946 would be appointed by President Truman to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after the death of Harlan Stone and at the time of the confirmation hearings was Secretary of the Treasury, had also been present at the time of the conversation and remembered the subject of campaign funding coming up but could not recall what was said. Mr. Pauley denied phrasing his statements such that there was any quid pro quo expressed or insinuated in relation to the tidelands oil question, in which Mr. Pauley had a personal stake. Eventually, after the resignation of Mr. Ickes, Mr. Pauley would withdraw from the nomination process after it became clear that he would likely not be confirmed. The President and Mr. Ickes later repaired their differences.
Senator Hubert Humphrey indicated that he would enter his name in the Minnesota Democratic presidential primary of March 18, to act as a surrogate for the President in case he decided to seek the nomination. He said that he agreed with the President's statement two days earlier that he did not need to enter any primaries to capture the nomination but said that, in his own opinion, the primaries were "very desirable". A slate of delegates pledged to the Senator as a favorite son candidate had been filed the previous day. On the Republican side, slates of delegates were filed in Minnesota for General Eisenhower and General MacArthur. A slate had already been filed for former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana predicted that General MacArthur would win the Republican nomination should a convention stalemate occur between the supporters of General Eisenhower and Senator Taft, but said that he favored Senator Taft for the presidency and General MacArthur for the vice-presidency.
The Federal Government moved to try to settle the strike of 16,000 AFL truck drivers, tying up shipping in Southern and Midwestern states. Truck drivers in the Chicago area were virtually halted by a walkout of 4,000 AFL dockworkers. Both groups were members of the Teamsters Union. An agreement had already been reached with the Central State Drivers' Council, representing some 2,000 drivers in 12 Midwestern states. Government mediator Cyrus Ching called meetings in Memphis for Sunday to attempt to reach a resolution in the eleven affected Southern states. The Federal mediators were also trying to end the truckers' strike in Ohio and the dockworkers' strike in Chicago.
In San Francisco, Federal Judge Oliver Carter ordered a Federal grand jury investigation to determine if the San Francisco Call-Bulletin had printed news stories which obstructed justice. The newspaper had printed an article in the previous day's edition which linked Federal Judge George Harris to a Carmel, California, land development plan which it said was promoted by a deputy collector of internal revenue, the culmination of a series of articles in the newspaper regarding the Federal tax collectors. Randolph Hearst, publisher of the Call-Bulletin and son of the late William Randolph Hearst, told the Associated Press in response to Judge Carter's action: "It's all right with us if they want to investigate us. We print the news as we see it." The Judge had not stated specifically how the newspaper might have obstructed justice, but referred the grand jury to a section of the Federal criminal law defining obstruction and confined them to investigation within the parameters of that statute.
It was, incidentally, this same Federal Judge who would, in 1976, preside over the Federal bank robbery case, alleged to have been perpetrated in conjunction with members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, against Patricia Hearst, daughter of the same Randolph Hearst who was in 1952 publisher of the Call-Bulletin, which would cease publication in 1965 after being purchased by the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner.
Should Ms. Hearst's initial attorney have challenged Judge Carter for cause, as potentially having a bias against the Hearst family for having directed the grand jury in the earlier case, assuming anyone recalled the fact 24 years later? Should Judge Carter have disqualified himself, or at least, to the extent recalled, made the facts of the prior case known to the U.S. Attorney and defense counsel? (There was no Federal peremptory challenge available at that time.) Did the passage of time attenuate any taint?
As we previously indicated, we
attended a few sessions of that 1976 trial, having to wait outside
for several hours, sometimes in the rain, starting at around 5:00 a.m. at the Federal
Building in San Francisco, to obtain a seat in the courtroom for
about 20 minutes, sometimes as late as 3:00 p.m. But, it was worth
it. We got to see the famed F. Lee Bailey
In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the
local Groundhog Club stated that at 7:52 a.m., the groundhog
On the editorial page, "Attention: County Residents" tells of the residents of Chapel Hill being concerned with the same issue facing Charlotte and the Mecklenburg County Commissioners, zoning of the rural areas around the edges of the town. In a meeting the previous week in Chapel Hill, there had been no direct opposition to zoning, but many people wanted first to read and study a proposed ordinance before it was passed and the Board of Aldermen had agreed, prompting Louis Graves, editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly, to write a front-page editorial, from which it quotes.
Mr. Graves provided the anecdotal experience of a man who had built a home just outside the corporate limits of adjoining Carrboro a few years earlier, only to find giant gasoline and oil tanks being erected on an adjoining lot owned by a wholesale oil dealer who was preparing to conduct his business there, to the ruination of the private homeowner's property value next door. The homeowner then asked an attorney whether he had any legal recourse and was informed that he did not. He and the nearby homeowners eventually joined together, however, and arranged to purchase the lot, paying also the oil dealer the cost of removal of the tanks. Mr. Graves indicated that had there been a zoning law, separating business and industrial zones from residential zones, the homeowners would not have needed to undertake this latter course.
The piece agrees with the editorial stance of Mr. Graves and suggests that planning and zoning for the Mecklenburg metropolitan area would ensure well-regulated urban growth and protect residential property values from damage through encroachment by nearby nonconforming uses.
"No Cynic, but a Realist" finds that the President's candor sometimes produced unexpected dividends, such as his comment two days earlier regarding presidential primaries being "eyewash", perhaps driving home to the American people the truth that they had no real voice in the nomination process of candidates for the presidency. It finds that it could not term the President a cynic, as had Harold Stassen for making this comment, as it had essentially editorialized to the same end. It was simply a fact that the conventions were controlled by a handful of party leaders and if the nominee happened to be a popular choice among the people, it was coincidence rather than an intended result.
It favors the proposal by Senator Paul Douglas to have preferential primaries in all 48 of the states.
Sorry to inform you but you will
have to wait until 1976, the Bicentennial
"Old-Fashioned Congress" tells of an efficiency expert from Cleveland having been assessing Congress, to recommend some ideas for alleviation of some of the inefficiency, for instance, suggesting electric voting equipment be installed in the House, after finding that the body spent more than a month of each session just shouting their votes and answering quorum calls. He also recommended a "rule of relevancy" for the Senate, as it spent months of time discussing matters not pertinent to pending legislation. Members of Congress did not delegate private legislation to appropriate administrative or judicial authorities. The previous year, the Congress had passed 255 public laws and 411 private laws. It had also abandoned the omnibus money bill reform and returned to the method of passing each appropriations bill separately, causing a lot of delay and preventing Congress from being able to keep track of how much money was being spent in total.
The efficiency expert also recommended home rule for the District of Columbia, to relieve the Congress from the burden of governing the District. He favored cloture by majority, preventing filibusters. While these two recommendations were fraught with political difficulties, his other recommendations were not and could be adopted with a savings of time and money, increasing the efficiency of Congress.
"Let the Patriots Rest" tells of Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan comparing Senator Taft, and his ill-fitting clothes and awkward speech to that of Abraham Lincoln. It finds such comparisons meaningless. The prototype often cited for General Eisenhower was General Washington, but it wonders whether the latter would approve of the entangling alliances which General Eisenhower favored. Andrew Jackson was supposed to be the archetype for President Truman, but it wonders whether President Jackson would have approved of President Truman's foreign aid policy. And it wonders further whether President Lincoln would approve of Senator Taft's multi-million dollar campaign.
It suggests that the country's earlier statesmen should be allowed to rest without carrying the burdens of their contemporaries, that the latter ought be able to stand on their own and "fit into their own clothes."
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Complicated", tells of the State of North Carolina issuing 25 different types of license plates in 1952, one for public officials, one for the Highway Department, one for judges, one for private passenger vehicles, one for taxis, two types for buses, one for a private truck, one for farm trucks, one for common carriers, one for trailers, one for the National Guard vehicles, one for automobile dealers, one for motorcycle dealers, and one marked "P" for Permanent. The latter was the one which the piece wishes it could have. It wonders why life on the road had to be so complicated.
F. A. Behymer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells of the origin of minks and mink coat production. Some came from Missouri, from a mink ranch in the hills a distance away from Beaufort, from which a batch had just been sent to New York to be converted into coats. He tells the history of the man who owned the mink ranch, Lester Van Leer. If you wash to have a thorough understanding of Mr. Van Leer and the pelting process of minks becoming coats, you may read the piece in some greater depth.
He concludes by indicating that at that time, minks were a big business in the U.S., with 2,027 ranches in the country in 1950, producing enough pelts, with foreign importation, to provide one coat for every 2,094.2 women recorded in the 1950 census, provided they could pay the retail price of up to $30,000 per coat or between $450 and $3,500 for a cape. The pelts brought the mink ranch $35 each and it took about 75 pelts to make up a mink coat, as the furriers used only the backs of the matched pelts in dark brown, silver blue, breath of spring silver and lighter Aleutian, or a brownish blue, the outer for brown and the under blue. Remnants were used for scarves and trimmings.
The reason for the piece was the recent news of the influence peddling supposedly at work in the coat obtained for a discounted $8,450 by Mrs. Merle Young, the White House stenographer, and, likewise, that obtained at wholesale for $2,400 by Mrs. Lamar Caudle, wife of the fired head of the Justice Department's tax division.
Quite frankly, we don't give a damn. Anyone who wears a mink these days is obviously an idiot.
Drew Pearson finds parallels between the present and World War II in the battle between civilians and the military for control of the U.S. economy, though less dramatic in the present context. Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett was supposed to be leading the military side at present, along with Jack Small, chairman of the Munitions Board, but instead were the targets of the military in a quiet effort to remove economic controls. The Joint Chiefs were not behind this effort, as it was being led by the procurement arm of the military, which spent two-thirds of the national budget and therefore was capable of wrecking the economy. Their present tactic was to go over Mr. Lovett's head to the director of the Budget. Meanwhile, the military was over-ordering with almost no regard for the economy, for instance, ordering more nickel than was in the entire world supply. Such was the reason for high taxes and inflation.
Congressman Edward Hebert of Louisiana was busy keeping the military toes to the fire regarding surplus spending, receiving bipartisan support from Congressman Jack Anderson of California, a Republican. Senator Lyndon Johnson was also doing an excellent job in curtailing military waste. He provides an example in which Congressman Hebert had saved the taxpayers $455,000 in the Navy's purchase of water-distilling machines.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop relate of the Soviet Union outproducing the U.S. in modern combat planes by a substantial margin. The air war of the future would be fought with jet-powered planes and the Soviets, during the previous year, had, according to the most reliable estimates, produced MIG-15 jets at the annual rate of between 5,500 and 6,200, compared to U.S. production of the older F-84 at around 500 and the F-86 in the very low hundreds. The MIG-15 had outperformed the F-84 in combat operations in Korea, rendering the latter obsolete, while the newer F-86 was considered the only American plane capable of holding its own against the Soviet jets. But by the end of the 1952, rate of production of F-86's would not have reached even 1,000 per year, while Soviet production was still increasing. By the end of the year, the Soviets would have a six-to-one advantage in jet fighters.
As to jet bombers, the Soviets also had an advantage, with an annual production rate of about 750 medium bombers, with about 450 in actual combat groups. The previous year, the U.S. had produced fewer than 50 B-47 jet bombers, the only U.S. jet bomber in production. The British had produced one such jet bomber, which had crashed. During the ensuing year, it was anticipated that 300 B-47's would be produced, plus a few British jet bombers, still only representing about half the Soviet production of the same type airplane.
The same intelligence sources reported, however, that Soviet radar and control and interception systems were still inadequate, leaving an opening for the older B-36 prop-engine bombers, with jet assists and re-fueling capability such that they could reach Russian targets. In addition, the Soviet jet bomber was believed to have a short range and the MIG-15 was known to have a very short range, efficiently operating only at very high altitude and in reasonably clear weather. The Soviets were only beginning to produce all-weather fighters, an area in which the U.S. probably had an advantage, as well as in aircraft for ground support.
In sum, the picture was disturbing, indicating that the Western alliance was far behind the Soviets in modern combat plane production, the heart of war strength, and that the West would remain behind for some time to come.
In another column, the Alsops indicate that they would deal with why this discrepancy had occurred and what could be done to remedy it.
Marquis Childs indicates that a reason for having a new Republican administration was to provide the party so long out of power with the responsibility of office, having for 20 years been stating prescriptions for what ought to be done, both at home and abroad. Such advice from the outside was easy, but from the inside, things were more complicated.
The Middle East was a prime example, in relation to which, in December, 1950, the National Security Council had been given the task of working out a coherent, comprehensive policy, and yet a year later, that assignment had not been completed. It had been found impossible to reach agreement on an overall policy statement which would guide responsible officials in making daily decisions, leading to ad hoc planning, resulting in confusion and conflict. The tendency was to blame the National Security Council for the problem rather than the mechanics of the decision-making process. Others contended that the opposite was the case.
The matter was similar to that which had occurred with respect to China, with decisions being delayed until it was too late to help the Nationalist cause. Similarly, time was running out for the Middle East. There had been no consensus regarding what to do about China and those who had sought to take the lead were now being vilified.
The next President would need to maintain the security of the country and as much of the free world as could be saved with it, in the face of violent change sweeping the world. At that point, a new President, such as Senator Taft, might regret having tossed the whole conduct of foreign policy into the political arena.
Framed Edition
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