The Charlotte News

Thursday, April 10, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that for the fifth consecutive day, the truce negotiators in Korea made no move toward effecting the armistice, merely meeting and adjourning after a few minutes, this date's session lasting only six minutes, the entire previous five sessions accumulating to a little over 30 minutes. The lead negotiator for the Communists had stated on Thursday that they had no objection to moving the truce supervision negotiations from the subcommittee back to the staff officers, if it was desired by the allies. The allied spokesman said that they had no objection, as long as the Communists did not. Yet, neither side said they wanted to make that move.

During the session, the only thing that the lead Communist negotiator said was, "I agree," regarding a suggested recess until the following morning. The six-minute meeting was the third longest during the week.

Allied infantrymen basked in the spring sunshine this date as U.N. aircraft hit Communist supply lines and installations in North Korea. Ground action continued to be light, an Eighth Army briefing officer indicating that this date's ground action had been one of the most inactive since mid-February. The temperature had risen to above 80 degrees for the first time during the year on Wednesday and it continued to be warm on Thursday.

The Eighth Army announced that U.N. ground forces had caused 2,680 Communist casualties the previous week, including 1,388 troops killed, 1,124 wounded, and 48 taken prisoner.

Admiral Lynde McCormick, taking over this date officially as supreme Allied Atlantic commander and as such, a co-equal commander under the NATO set-up to General Eisenhower, stated that the present level of forces in the NATO command introduced risks which were unacceptable. He insisted that greater effort by the NATO nations was necessary to build up the forces required to maintain control of the high seas and coastal waters of the 14-member nations. He said that the combined international naval force would not be proportional in size to the navies of potential enemies, but that there was no defeatism on the part of the Allies either, that their willingness to undertake such concerted action had provided a feeling of buoyancy.

The Soviet Union had replied negatively to the Big Three Western powers' suggestion that a U.N. commission be established to investigate the possibility of free German elections, instead suggesting the creation of a Big Four commission to write a peace treaty for all of Germany.

Former Government corruption investigator Newbold Morris told a House Judiciary subcommittee this date that he had heard that many Cabinet members had been prepared to quit rather than answer his questionnaire regarding outside personal income. He said, however, that his investigation had never gotten off the ground, and so he could not help the subcommittee to search for corruption. He indicated that upon his appointment in early February, he had been hamstrung immediately by Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, who, the previous week, had fired him. The former Attorney General, forced to resign the previous week by the President, had blocked, said Mr. Morris, all of his appointments to his investigating staff by ordering a loyalty check run on newcomers, a check which would take up to six months.

The steel industry encountered a new setback in its court fight against Government seizure of the steel mills, as lawyers for the four major companies, Bethlehem, Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube and Jones & Laughlin, were unable to convince a Federal judge to hold immediate hearings in their suits to seek an injunction of the seizure. The judge indicated that because of court rules, he could not expedite the suits, as the rules allowed 20 days for the defendant, the Government, to respond.

The President, in a press conference, refused comment on a statement made on a television and radio show broadcast nationwide by the president of Inland Steel, that the President had seized the mills in a "corrupt political deal" with the United Steelworkers. Philip Murray, president of the union, said that the statement was "a malicious and deliberate lie" and an insult to both the President and himself. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, who had been designated by the President to run the mills for the time being, said that pay rates and working conditions would remain under the seizure as they had been prior to it.

The President asked Congress this date to remove an estimated 22,000 postmasters, customs collectors and U.S. marshals from patronage positions and put them under the Civil Service system.

The President had hinted this date at his press conference that he might state his preference for the Democratic presidential nominee prior to the national convention. He said, in response to questions regarding his preference being Governor Adlai Stevenson, that he had at present no preference to state. He also indicated that he would support whomever was nominated by the Democrats. He said, when asked whether he favored Senator Hubert Humphrey providing the keynote address to the convention, that the choice was up to DNC chairman Frank McKinney. He also refused to confirm or deny reports that General Eisenhower had already resigned as supreme commander of NATO, and might be returning home therefore to campaign for the Republican nomination in a few weeks. The Washington Evening Star had published a story this date which said that the General's resignation was already at the White House, that the General had expressed his desires to resign to Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett the prior week during a telephone call, and then had sent the necessary paperwork to Washington.

In Pittsburgh, a riot erupted in a picket line during the fourth day of the telephone workers strike, following scattered instances of other disturbances. One union member had been hospitalized and four had been jailed on charges of inciting to riot. The riot had reportedly erupted when a picket called a female switchboard operator a name after she had walked through a picket line of a hundred men. "No, now, you just don't call her that, buddy." But for the most part, the scene was orderly. Negotiators in Detroit, a key city in the telephone dispute, prepared to resume talks to try to effectuate a resolution. Across the nation, many telephone employees were staying away from work, respecting the picket lines, but management indicated that calls were proceeding as usual.

Tom Fesperman of The News indicates that a union official had stated this date that Southern Bell's Charlotte employees would leave the job during this afternoon, to walk out for the second time in two days, as picketing was scheduled to resume at 3:00 p.m. The Bell employees had left their jobs the previous day at 1:00 and had gone to the Armory for a meeting, called to discuss plans for honoring the Western Electric picket lines in front of the telephone exchanges. The walkout had lasted five hours and was regarded as a demonstration only, according to the union local spokesman.

News editor Pete McKnight, provides the second in a series of articles he was writing during his trip abroad, ultimately to tour the Middle East. This piece describes the air trip from Lisbon to Rome via a Constellation. He indicates that he had flown over some of the most spectacular scenery in Europe, but had missed much of it because the plane flew too high, it was cloudy, and for the reason that his seating companion during the Lisbon to Barcelona leg of the trip had been a gregarious Spanish textile man. During his trip from New York, he had been seated next to the editor of the Asheville Citizen and they could see about as far as the end of the wing, as they had been seated right over it. (That is where the goblins play with the motors.) On this trip, he had asked Pan Am to change their seats, both of them then winding up with aisle seats, so that neither could see out the window. The other editor, Don Shoemaker, had sought bravely to carry on small talk with a woman from Brazil, utilizing a combination of English, French and "Buncombe County patois". His own seating companion had the U.S. presidential election figured out, that the President would win again.

Are you now an air tour guide? Where's the beef, or at least the Kosher salami and matzo?

In Pensacola, Fla., an unexplained blast had shaken a 15-mile wide area the previous day, shattering windows and jarring plaster from ceilings in several homes. It was similar to a blast which had occurred three years earlier and also had never been explained. The Air Force tested new weapons at nearby Eglin Air Force Base, but officers there said that they were unaware of any heavy explosives being tested at the time of the blast.

Pretty clear it was a couple of them Martians down 'ere.

As pictured, in Malden, Mass., a two-year old girl had told callers seeking to talk to her mother, that she was not at home, not bothering to tell them that she had locked her mother in the back hall and refused to heed her pounding to be released. Eventually, firemen responded to the residence and unlocked the door.

That little girl 's in for a red-bottomed whoopin'. She probably has that little boy's shoes, too.

On the editorial page, "Point Five" tells of Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court having suggested during the week that the country promote peasant revolutions in countries receiving Point Four technical assistance. He said that without the means to establish democracy in those areas, the country was "only underwriting the status quo" and perpetuating the conditions under which Communism thrived. He favored establishment of a "Point Five" program, to extend the American revolution of social justice. He had cited the fact that in the Middle East, 80 percent of infants died before they were one year old. Such infant mortality could be eliminated by a proper technical aid program.

Some people believed that what the Justice was suggesting would be meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, and that the cost would be prohibitive. It responds to that criticism by indicating that the country already meddled in the politics of other countries whenever it aided and propped up regimes which would otherwise fall. The country did not always prop up the right people.

It posits that land reform, enabling farmers to own their farms rather than having to lease them from landlords at high rates, was the key to winning foreign markets, influencing the citizenry of foreign lands and preventing Communism from taking hold. Too often, the aid being supplied other countries merely flowed to the wealthy landowners, whose political and economic control of the country was nefarious.

While land reform had been a part of the U.S. since its early days, starting with the Homestead Act, translating that to foreign lands raised cries of socialism. It suggests that it would be more economical to press for a coordinated reform program presently than to spend vast sums of money for military purposes later. It urges that the times required revolutionists from foreign lands, trained by the U.S. in the principles of the greatest revolution, "that of freedom", who would apply the principles learned in the U.S. within their countries, though perhaps utilizing variant methods.

It suggests that the Soviets would fear such a program more than the atom bomb, as it would remove the impetus for the people to follow Communism.

It concludes that it was the road to peace.

"We're Sick Too" regards several witnesses who were supposed to testify befor the subcommittee investigating the tax scandals, but had been able to avoid giving testimony because of claimed health issues. The prior Monday, the subcommittee had postponed for two weeks the public testimony by Joseph Nunan, Jr., former IRB commissioner, after the subcommittee had been apprised of the fact that he had entered the hospital.

It suggests that it was also sick, "sick and tired of a subcommittee that lets itself be bamboozled."

"A Victory for Taft" discusses the victory of Senator Taft in the Illinois primary the prior Tuesday, having won apparent control over 48 of the 50 Republican delegates to the convention, though they were not bound by the popular vote results. The Senator had polled about 75 percent of the Republican vote, though running only against Harold Stassen on the ballot. The results suggested that there was more support for Senator Taft in that state than in Minnesota or Nebraska, where the internationalist candidates had won more votes than the Senator and other candidates tending toward isolationism.

On the other hand, General Eisenhower had received about 135,000 votes in Illinois as a write-in candidate, with no organized write-in campaign. It suggests that had the tables been reversed, it was hard to imagine Senator Taft receiving that kind of a vote total as a write-in candidate, especially if, as was the General, not even in the country. It finds, therefore, that the results showed the vote-getting potential of General Eisenhower.

In the Democratic contest in Illinois, Senator Estes Kefauver was the only candidate entered, and he had won about 80 percent of the votes, but would probably not receive any delegates, as they would go to favorite-son Governor Adlai Stevenson, who, though not on the ballot, had received a substantial number of write-in votes. The party establishment in the state also would steer the delegates toward the Governor, who had won renomination, running unopposed.

It finds that the results showed again the need for a nationwide primary.

"More Power to 'Em" tells of a long-standing feud having been in the works between conservative Dave Clark, editor of the Textile Bulletin, and liberal Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. And now it was erupting again, though no one knew why. It ventures that perhaps he had obtained an advance copy of Alexander Heard's new book, A Two-Party South? which had hit the stands on April 5, bearing a quotation from Mr. Daniels regarding Mr. Clark, that he was "…the reactionary editor of a little textile journal who is not only opposed to civil rights but who was also quite as violently opposed to the abolition of child labor."

Mr. Clark had retaliated in the Textile Bulletin by saying "there are many so-called Democrats who would not hesitate to sell the South 'down the river' if it would benefit them either politically or financially."

"There are newspapers such as the Raleigh News & Observer who would not hesitate to do the same if it would add to their political prestige."

It suggests that maybe Mr. Clark was sore at the News & Observer for its opposition to placing any States Righters on county election boards. It concludes that whatever the case, it wished more power to them both as there was nothing like a Dave Clark scrap to add zest to an election year

A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Gallantry", tells of Senator Clyde Hoey, while presiding over a committee hearing, having elicited the business address of a "shapely shipping operator", Olga Konow, and then motioning to Senator Joseph McCarthy, a bachelor, saying that some of the members of the committee wanted Ms. Konow to include her telephone number.

The piece quips that Senator McCarthy did not need telephone numbers when he could easily whip such numbers as "207 Communists in the State Department" out of thin air at any time.

Drew Pearson tells of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands having been a hit during her visit to the country, and especially with the President. At a farewell dinner for her, she said that historians would record the President and Secretary of State Acheson as doing more than any other two men during the era to halt the spread of Communism to Western Europe. The President said in response that he wished that he could be around to read those history books.

General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had recently written a book, probably, suggests Mr. Pearson, the most penetrating book about the war, which General Eisenhower had not especially liked. General Eisenhower was also upset with General Bradley for determining that General Eisenhower's deputy, General Albert Gruenther, would not succeed him as NATO supreme commander, but would instead take over command of Army ground forces in the U.S., replacing General Mark Clark in that capacity, who would be sent to succeed General Matthew Ridgway as supreme commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, after which General Ridgway would succeed General Eisenhower as supreme commander of NATO. Dutch Foreign Minister Dick Stikker believed that General Gruenther was a brilliant diplomat and soldier, and had told Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett that British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery would happily serve under General Gruenther.

The wife of Vice-President Alben Barkley wanted him to run for the presidency, as did one of his daughters, while another, the wife of the nephew of General MacArthur, was opposed to his candidacy, that at age 74, it would wear him out.

Singer Marian Anderson, he notes, had received her greatest tribute, when the late Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes had invited her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939, after the DAR had refused to allow her, because she was black, to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington. On this coming Sunday, Easter, Ms. Anderson was invited to sing again at the Lincoln Memorial in honor of Mr. Ickes, but had declined on the basis of a prior commitment to appear on the Ed Sullivan television show. Present Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman had begged her to appear and even offered to fly her on a special plane from Washington to New York in time to appear on the show later that night, but she continued to decline, saying that she had to attend rehearsals. Mr. Pearson suggests that a $2,000 fee might be her inducement. Secretary Chapman had finally agreed to switch the date to the following Sunday after Easter, and Ms. Anderson had agreed. (He does not note that it was initially Eleanor Roosevelt who had extended the invitation to Ms. Anderson to sing at the Memorial, and Mr. Ickes role, at least, presumably, based on what was reported at the time, being custodian of the national parks, was to extend the official invitation. But we were not there, and Mr. Pearson was.)

The President's strategy for stopping Senator Kefauver appeared to be breaking down. He had sought to put favorite sons in every state primary and then have the delegates thus selected directed to the candidate of the President's choice at the convention. But the strategy was being defeated by the energy shown by Senator Kefauver, generating a great deal of popularity, enabling him to accumulate so many delegates that he might be hard to stop. The point which the party chieftains were missing was that the people wanted someone who could genuinely clean up corruption in the country, and Senator Kefauver, after his itinerant hearings across the country in 1950 and 1951, culminating in televised hearings in Washington a year earlier, had catapulted him into that category.

Two persons involved with Newbold Morris, one directly and one indirectly, had expected to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had expected such an appointment for some time, but his resignation from his position had been forced by the President the prior week after he had fired Mr. Morris for being too eager to clean up corruption, by issuing his questionnaire to all top officials which probed the sources of their outside income.

The other such person was Judge Learned Hand, who had recently retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals as one of the greatest judges in recent decades. He was the father-in-law to Mr. Morris. Judge Hand was a Republican and so had been virtually precluded from appointment during the prior 20 years—not quite an accurate statement, as FDR had appointed sitting Justice Harlan Stone as Chief in 1941 at the retirement of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Justice Stone having been originally appointed to the Court by President Coolidge, and President Truman, in his initial appointment to the Court, having appointed Republican Senator Harold Burton to replace Justice Owen Roberts, who had originally been appointed by President Hoover—in the days when Presidents, and the Senate leadership assigned the job of confirmation, did not try to rearrange the rules on an ad hoc basis to satisfy their fancies and play politics so much with the Supreme Court, or at least sought to strike a balance and not play it to the hilt, as do some Presidents and some Senate leaders these days, forgetting, conveniently, that this third branch of Government, historically, is supposed to be independent and above the whimsy of transitory politics and political pressures by vocal lobbying groups of one sort or another, as framed in the Constitution, thus providing all Article III Federal judges lifetime appointments.

He tells of Attorney General McGrath having had while in office a fine record in antitrust suits and in civil liberties, and having never flinched at taking cases against big business or placing the power of the Justice Department behind religious and racial minorities. He suggests, however, that the Attorney General had not made the Court in part because he had spent so much time waiting in the wings for the appointment that he had let the Justice Department go to pieces in the meantime. He expected to be appointed at the retirement of Justice Stanley Reed, who was expected to retire for health reasons, but then recovered.

Marquis Childs tells of long-suppressed political ambitions now coming to the fore after the President's announcement on March 29 that he would not run again for the presidency. Among Democrats, it was believed that Governor Adlai Stevenson had the best qualifications for the job. But unless he got into the campaign soon, he would be left out. The available time window for entering the race might not be more than another two to three weeks. DNC chairman Frank McKinney had said in a television interview that the nomination would not be given to anyone on a silver platter.

Governor Stevenson was being encouraged to attend a dinner in New York being given for Averell Harriman on April 17, arranged by Democratic Party leaders in New York as a tribute to him. Mr. Harriman, presently head of the Mutual Security Administration, was being discussed by his friends and admirers as a potential dark horse candidate for the nomination.

New York Democratic leaders, however, were supporting Governor Stevenson for the nomination and those planning the dinner for Mr. Harriman had indicated that they had obtained an informal acceptance from the Governor to attend the dinner, but only as Governor of Illinois and not as a candidate for the presidency. Most of the other presidential candidates in the party would be present at the dinner, including Vice-President Alben Barkley and Senators Estes Kefauver, Brien McMahon, and Robert Kerr. Senator Richard Russell might also attend. All of them would be selling their political wares to the managers of the largest bloc of Democratic delegates.

There was a trend among younger voters, most of whom were Democrats, in moving toward General Eisenhower, a trend which might become widespread by July when the parties convened. It could mean the shift of a large segment of voters on whom the Democrats had relied for victory for 20 years.

Robert C. Ruark discusses the recent crash of a C-47 commercial transport plane into the Jamaica section of Queens in New York, killing several people on the ground when it crashed into an apartment building.

He suggests that death had a strange way of choosing its victims, especially true when an airplane crashed into a populated area. He had noticed that a person had been killed on a golf course recently by a service plane which had gone out of control, and the pilot did not even realize he had struck someone. Another person had been killed by a sports plane while standing on the flat top of a Mexican pyramid.

He points out that in earlier days, death by being kicked by a horse was not uncommon, and people still broke their necks in bathtub accidents or simply falling out of bed.

Most of the time, it seemed that the innocent bystanders were the ones who were killed, as automobile accidents accounted for thousands of such fatalities each year. Yet no one seemed to pay much attention to such deaths.

The public had come to understand and take in stride death from ship and railroad accidents, but had not yet seemed to become accustomed to air accidents. He asserts that society could not call a halt to progress simply because of such accidents. He believes that the closing of Newark Airport after the three plane crashes in its vicinity, and the consequent burden placed on LaGuardia and Idlewild, had been shameful and dangerous. All airports were too close to cities and it would defeat their purpose to make them more remote. If enough airports were closed because of accidents, it would put a halt to progress in air transportation.

According to the Daily Worker, the Communist Party had taken a lot of glee in these occurrences. He finds that the Newark Airport had been closed because of "hysteria, design and stupidity, but people still get accidentally killed. And always will."

A letter from a minister in Matthews suggests that the U.S. Constitution was not a static instrument of enslavement, but was a flexible document to be applied by each generation in a "broad, liberal, latitudinous manner, so as to promote the general welfare of the times." He urges that in the context of the Constitution not being in need of amendment to eliminate racial discrimination. He indicates that it was desirable to have bold judicial opinions "in tune with the trend of history, untainted by the malodor of ancient magnolia blossoms." He posits that segregation was presently as much of an evil as had been slavery prior to the Civil War.

He indicates that most people had a reasonably good attitude toward their fellow humans, in contrast to those who wanted to perpetuate a "reactionary caste system", those latter persons able either to advance with the times or be repudiated. He finds a political party which would approve of segregation to be undemocratic and that any church which tolerated it was "pagan in relation to the precepts of Jesus who taught that all men are brothers."

He agrees with Federal Judge J. Waties Waring, who had recently retired from the Federal bench, and his judicial desire to eliminate racial segregation—Judge Waring having issued a dissenting opinion in the previously decided Clarendon County case in South Carolina, Briggs v. Elliott, in support of the NAACP's position that the white and black schools were so unequal that continued segregation, per se, was unconstitutional, eventually to become subsumed in 1954 under Brown v. Board of Education, which essentially adopted the position set forth by Judge Waring in Briggs.

The letter writer urges that only complete democratic equality would satisfy the economic, social, political, and religious urgencies of the present generation. He decries segregation in the public schools, in hotel accommodations, in dining facilities, in public transportation and in every other area of human relations. He also wants laws abrogated which forbade interracial marriage.

He states in conclusion that it was his hope that there would be "amalgamation of the races", and that if he was perceived as a traitor to his native South, his only defense was that he was an American.

A letter writer responds to an editorial appearing on March 31, "Senator Taft's Voting Record", reprinted from the Chapel Hill Weekly. He suggests that the Senator had sound reasons for opposing the things listed in the piece, such as Lend-Lease, the sale to Great Britain in fall, 1940 of the 40 old destroyers, the seizure of Axis ships which had not been at war, and the 1940 draft and its extension. The writer suggests that all of those things had been contrary to American and international law or to well-established American principles, and that the Senator had recognized them as "subterfuges adopted by an administration which wished to lead us step-by-step into a war while at the same time protesting that our involvement in such a war was unlikely."

He goes on quite a way down the road, beyond the reach of ordinary minds, concluding that he saw no isolationism in the positions of Senator Taft, that instead he simply did not "use the New Deal formula of 'Give me a billion quick'" and did not "attempt to build up a crisis in order to bolster a failing domestic economy." He wishes more power therefore to the Senator.

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