The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 5, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page—devoid of war news for the second day in a row and the third day of the week, the least war news reported on the front page since the war had begun on June 25, 1950—, reports that Nathan Feinsinger, chairman of the Wage Stabilization Board, in a desperate attempt to prevent the scheduled strike of 700,000 steelworkers set to begin the following Tuesday, attempted this date to bring together industry and union officials to try to negotiate a resolution to the wage-price dispute. He would not state whether he had the power to alter the Board's recommendations, which had included a 17.5-cent per hour wage boost plus other benefits, leading to the steel industry demanding a $12 per ton price increase to compensate for it, well beyond the two dollars per ton allowable under existing price controls law. Negotiations had collapsed the prior Thursday and the union promptly served notice on the steel companies and the union locals that it intended to go forward with the strike as scheduled. Separate meetings with the two factions were scheduled for this date, but Mr. Feinsinger did not indicate when he expected to be able to bring the two sides together. He said that he had one simple instruction for both sides, and that was to "settle it".
The U.S. this date offered before the U.N. Disarmament Commission subcommittee, studying the possibility of a census and verification of all armed forces and weapons, including atomic weapons, to allow U.N. inspectors to check the location and size of all atomic energy installations as a first step in such a world census of armaments. The Soviets were insisting that a ban of the atomic bomb had to be the first step in control of arms. They had objected to the plan of conducting a census on the basis that it would provide espionage data for British and American intelligence. The U.S. delegation said that the new plan changed the old atomic control plan put forward by Bernard Baruch in 1946 by including some measure of atomic inspection during the first stage of control, rather than only in the latter stages. The new plan called for five different stages of ascertainment and inspections of installations and arms.
Newly appointed Attorney General-designate James McGranery, awaiting confirmation by the Senate, said that he would rely on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to conduct the investigation into any wrongdoing by Government personnel, and that he did not know yet whether there was any governmental wrongdoing to investigate. Meanwhile, Congressman Harold Velde of Illinois claimed that while Judge McGranery had been an assistant Attorney General, he had "whitewashed" the Amerasia case, which had involved the illegal possession of secret Government documents during the war. Judge McGranery said in response that he had ordered all of the evidence presented to a grand jury and that in the end, two of the six persons arrested by the FBI had been fined while charges against the others had been dismissed, that there had been no effort at any whitewash. In Dallas the previous night, Senator Joseph McCarthy said that he would have "a great deal to say" on the Senate floor about Judge McGranery's nomination.
Meanwhile, former corruption investigator Newbold Morris, whose firing earlier in the week by former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had led to the latter's forced resignation, said that the President had carried out with enthusiasm every proposal he had made with regard to New York corruption, and that he would return the following week with recommendations for the White House regarding further clean-ups. He also said that he would return to the job on the condition that the President would make a personal request of him to do so and that there would be a public statement from the entire Cabinet approving his investigation and promising to provide complete cooperation in it.
Michigan Republican leaders were reported to have agreed on a slate of ten at-large delegates to the Republican national convention in July, evenly split between Senator Taft and General Eisenhower. In addition to these delegates, there would be 36 district delegates selected from the state.
In Iowa, Eisenhower forces had achieved a surprising victory in its state convention by winning 15 delegate votes to nine for Senator Taft, with two neutral delegates expected by the Senator to vote for him.
Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had apparently made a formal bid for New York's 90-member delegation, with the state convention set to convene on April 22, after which the state's delegates would normally be unpledged.
For the June 3 California primary, the deadlines for filing as candidates having expired the previous night, Governor Earl Warren, Harold Stassen and a "free choice" slate would appear on the Republican ballot, while Senator Kefauver and a "free choice" slate headed by State Attorney General Pat Brown would appear on the Democratic side.
In Idaho, Republicans would select 14 delegates this date. General Eisenhower had a substantial lead over Senator Taft in the fight for delegates in Kansas.
The House approved, by a vote of 200 to 55 the previous night, an appropriation of just over a billion dollars for the State, Justice and Commerce Departments and the Federal Court system for the coming fiscal year, after record cuts of the State Department budget by almost a third, cutting most deeply into the Voice of America budget, slashing it almost in half, to 86.5 million dollars. Republicans and Southern Democrats formed a coalition to make the latter cuts. Republicans had criticized the Voice of America as ineffective and poorly managed.
The House voted nearly 2 to 1 the previous night to prohibit the Government from setting up a diplomatic mission at the Vatican without Senate approval, but did not prohibit the President from having free rein in renewing relations at any time through a personal representative.
The Communications Workers of America were still threatening a telephone strike in 43 states, set to begin on Monday morning, after the union rejected an offer by Michigan Bell for wage increases of three dollars to seven dollars per week, regarded as setting the pattern for wage agreements in Ohio and Northern California, and eventually the entire Bell System across the country.
An IRB official said that the Federal tax on gambling was a failure as a revenue producer, having produced a little over two million dollars in four months, but was eliminating gambling as a profession.
In New York, the attorney for gambling kingpin Frank Costello, who had been convicted in Federal District Court the previous night for contempt of the Senate after his refusal to testify the previous year before the Kefauver crime investigating committee, indicated that he would seek a new trial because of changes in the jury at the conclusion of the case. The judge had ordered the removal of two jurors just before the jury began deliberations, without stating reasons for doing so. One of the two jurors, the foreperson, had commented to the press that she was informed that there was an allegation that she had received a bribe of $250 to influence her verdict and deadlock the jury, which she vehemently denied. The judge in chambers indicated that the matter had been inaccurately reported but still did not explain the reason for the dismissals. The two jurors were replaced by the two alternates. The jury had deliberated 5 1/2 hours before rendering its verdict, which carried a maximum of 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Mr. Costello said to the press after the verdict that he had nothing to say. A previous jury had hung, in a vote of 10 to 2 for conviction.
In Havana, Fulgencio Batista, having previously been El Presidente of Cuba during the early Forties before seizing power in a military coup on March 10, was sworn in the previous night as the new El Presidente, succeeding Carlos Prios Socarros, presently in exile in Mexico, deposed by Sr. Batista on the rationale that he would perpetrate a "phony revolution" on April 15 based on foreknowledge of his imminent defeat at the polls in the upcoming national elections of June 1.
In Queens in New York City, a
twin-engine C-46 Curtis Commando cargo plane, owned by U.S. Airlines,
fell into a densely populated neighborhood of the Jamaica section,
killing at least six people after plunging through a two-story frame
house, with fragments being hurled into two other homes and a
cruising police car, killing a police inspector and three persons
within the structures, as well as the two-man crew of the aircraft.
The plane had been attempting an instrument landing at Idlewild Airport in Queens during rain. The sound of the crash
could be heard a mile and a half away. A passenger on a bus a block
from the crash site said that the plane did not sound as if it was
having motor trouble and had gunned its motors, apparently trying to
gain altitude just before the crash
In Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, a total of 233 persons had been killed by tornadoes during the previous two weeks, and new storms had cut through Louisiana, Alabama and northwest Florida the previous day, leaving seven dead, 65 injured and more than a million dollars in additional damage. In Arnaudville, La., four members of a farm family were killed, with an additional 24 persons in the town injured and 20 families left homeless. Three others had been killed and 32 injured in the New Orleans area, as winds reached hurricane strength at 90 mph, possibly as high as 200 mph after measuring instruments had failed. Flying bricks had injured two persons in Mobile, Ala., and beach homes were flattened by a tornado at Panama City, Fla.
On the back page of the newspaper appears "Modern Parables", the weekly column of Fulton Oursler, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, a narrative of the New Testament, and The Greatest Book Ever Written, a narrative of the Old Testament, recently serialized in the newspaper, this date's entry to the column telling the story of Bill, a "miracle of the Korean War".
On the editorial page, "Memories of Yesterday" tells of being reminded from the recent controversy stimulated by UNC Board of Trustees member John W. Clark and from leafing through the recently published Fifty Years of the South Atlantic Quarterly, of the 1903 controversy stimulated by Trinity College Professor John Spencer Bassett, when he had said in the October, 1903 edition of the Quarterly, which he edited, that, aside from Robert E. Lee, Booker T. Washington had been the greatest man to come from the South in a hundred years. The statement had led to calls for his removal from the Trinity faculty, amid protests that academic freedom would thereby be suppressed.
Josephus Daniels, as we, coincidentally, pointed out at the time the Clark controversy was being reported and commented upon in The News, had, in his capacity as editor and publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer, berated Professor Bassett for his stand on the issue and campaigned for his removal from the Trinity faculty.
The piece quotes from Walter Hines Page of North Carolina, future Ambassador to Great Britain in the Wilson Administration and partner in the Doubleday & Page publishing firm, in his letter to Professor Edwin Mims of the Board of Trustees of Trinity, saying:
"I envy every one of you this chance. It isn't once in a lifetime that the issue is so clearly drawn—the supreme issue of free speech: the very bottom thing in a democracy. The Negro question is one thing, and in comparison with free speech a very little thing. If this fight is won and the college should be closed on account of it, it would be the most important event in the history of North Carolina in our time; for free speech and free teaching will be won for all time to come there."
It points out that recently, Arthur Edens, president of Duke University, had reasserted the principles of academic freedom at the point when Senator Joseph McCarthy had threatened to hold Duke responsible for an unflattering study by a Duke professor anent Senator McCarthy's charges of Communists in the Government. And shortly thereafter, at the time of the Clark controversy, president Gordon Gray of UNC had reminded students, faculty members, alumni and the general public that academic freedom was still the rule at the University.
It adds that shortly after those statements, John Clark's brother, Dave, had published in his Textile Bulletin an editorial regarding a recent Supreme Court decision, presumably Adler v. Board of Education, which had upheld the Constitutionality of a New York law which forbade the hiring and permitted the firing of any State employees, including teachers, who were found to be members of organizations which advocated the overthrow of the government by force or violence, as the law permitted a hearing according due process to anyone so impacted. In the editorial, Mr. Clark had asserted that college professors had been using their classrooms "for Communist and atheistic propaganda" and had been protecting themselves by claiming freedom of speech, finding now that the Supreme Court had put an end to these "fake claims", that the time had come to move "one step further and prohibit the use of lecturers for propaganda purposes" directed at college students. The piece concludes by asking what was propaganda.
"Take Your Choice" applauds the joint efforts of Queens College, WBT radio station and the League of Women Voters in sponsoring ten political debates as part of the "Take Your Choice" program. Three Congressmen and a Congressional candidate had already appeared on the program and Senators Russell and Kefauver were scheduled to attend, with Senator Taft also expected. Programs were scheduled to present the state's gubernatorial candidates and the candidates for the local House race. It finds it an educational approach, enabling the electorate to make a wiser choice in exercise of their right to vote.
"See What the Queen Says,
Howard" remarks on the testy exchange between the President,
press secretary Joseph Short and now-former Attorney General J.
Howard McGrath at National Airport the prior Wednesday, as they
awaited the arrival of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. It suggests
that the Attorney General, in whining that he was being attacked
because of his national origin and religion, that is, Irish Catholic,
and then suddenly departing the job, was a kind of refugee, a cause
in which the Queen had shown great interest, along with other social
problems. It suggests therefore that the Queen might be able to give
the former Attorney General some advice
A piece from the Dothan (Ala.) Eagle, titled "'You All' Is Upheld", finds that mocking outside the South of the usage of the term "you all" was diminishing after a long educational process in which it had been explained that the term meant to refer to more than one person.
It points to a woman from Dallas, Texas, who had conducted a campaign to justify the term through letters to the editor, in which she pointed out that "you all" was used many times in the Bible. She had cited books, chapters and verse, included in the piece, if you are interested. She had quoted one such example: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." The piece concludes: "This should hold 'em for a while."
But that would be pronounced "you
all", with emphasis on "all"
And, furthermore, the Dallas woman's
interpretation of the words of the English version of the Bible,
assuming they were taken down literally as spoken, was based on
translations of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. So whether
there was actually any "you all", or the equivalent in
those older languages, in there somewhere is highly speculative. The
acceptable English is to use "you", or, in certain parts of
the country, "you's"
Moreover, it is rarely pronounced
"you all" in the South when so used, but rather "y'all"
Emery Wister of The News informs of the new 88-passenger Super-Constellation which had been placed into service by Eastern Air Lines, making trips from New York to Miami and New York to Houston, but unlikely to arrive in Charlotte any time soon. He asserts three reasons for the latter fact, that the big planes were economical only for long trips, whereas flights out of Charlotte were 1,000 miles or less, that the runways at the Charlotte airport could not withstand the consistent weight of these planes which, fully loaded, would carry 108,000 pounds, whereas the present Constellations weighed between 93,0000 and 94,000 pounds, and that the highest available octane fuel at the airport was rated at 100 while the Super-Constellations required 115 octane.
He explains that the current asphalt runways at the airport were about 10 inches thick, with a base of 4 inches, that the new runway to be constructed would be 10.5 inches of concrete on a sub-base, and might be able to handle the larger plane. For now, however, the runways might be able to accommodate one or two of the Constellations per day, but Super-Constellations would have to be limited in takeoff weight to 93,000 pounds.
Mr. Wister explains that the airplane cruised at 300 mph, 25 mph faster than the regular Constellations, and carried a crew of six, was divided into three compartments, one of which was a lounge, and was 18 feet longer than the regular "Connie". When the Government released to the commercial airlines the jet-turbo engines, the larger plane would be able to fly at 500 mph.
Drew Pearson tells of Nathan Feinsinger, head of the Wage Stabilization Board, having recently told a Senate labor-management committee in executive session that he would resign his post if the Senate adopted an amendment proposed by Senator Everett Dirksen, aimed at weakening the WSB by taking away its dispute functions. He predicted that if done, there would be a wave of strikes in some, and possibly all, industries. He warned that the amendment would break up the board and that it was not practical to have such a board comprised only of public members.
Mr. Pearson finds the best Republican crack following the President's announcement a week earlier of his intention not to run for re-election to have been, unattributed: "The first time I ever heard of the sinking ship deserting the rats."
Senator Owen Brewster of Maine had, for many years, been the chief lieutenant in the Senate to Senator Taft's leadership, but now, after Maine delegates had gone two-to-one for General Eisenhower, he appeared to be getting ready to shift his support to the General.
General Eisenhower appeared to be taking seriously the advice of columnist Walter Lippmann, when he suggested that it was becoming uncomfortable for the General to remain in the Army while campaigning for the presidency, and that he ought come home.
Senator Richard Russell of Georgia had become so suspicious of the support by his former Senate colleague, Claude Pepper of Florida, a liberal, that he had called Senator Pepper and asked him what he was doing, to which the former Senator, defeated in 1950 by Congressman George Smathers, replied that he was going to use the political machine in Florida to support Senator Russell. The latter did not like it much but could say little in response.
Democratic machine leaders, who, until recently, were dismissive of the campaign of Senator Estes Kefauver, were privately conceding that he would take more than half, and possibly all, of the delegates from Ohio. Though still the junior Senator from Tennessee, he was receiving positive remarks and even tentative support from conservative Congressmen who were friends to Senator Russell, such as Jamie Whitten of Mississippi and E. L. Forrester of Georgia.
Washington's Cherry Blossom Queen was to be selected by an Air Force cadet, instead of the usual Cabinet officer, but the candidates still came from among the daughters of Congressmen and top Government officials.
Marquis Childs finds that after the Wisconsin primary, won by Senator Taft without General Eisenhower being on the ballot, his political stock had risen to the point where he remained a contender for the Republican nomination. Yet, Governor Earl Warren's polling of 255,000 votes was impressive, especially considering his ineffectual organization in the state and left-over delegates supporting him. The Governor had come to the state only three times, whereas Senator Taft had campaigned quite actively across the state.
Senator Taft had also won the write-in vote in Nebraska over General Eisenhower and over Senator Robert Kerr, the latter of whom was on the ballot.
Former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, he suggests, should pack it up and go home, as he had done poorly everywhere, even in his home state.
The Republican Party had been shown to be split nearly down the middle and it perhaps portended trouble for the general election in November. Senator Taft's brother, Charles, was running for governor in Ohio, against the regular state machine, as something of a liberal with independent views. He had recently pointed out that a Gallup poll had shown that voters between 21 and 29 stated their party preferences as 41 percent Democratic, 24 percent Republican and 35 percent independent. He suggested it was not a poll which inspired overconfidence among Republicans, as a majority of only those over 50 counted themselves Republican, and only by a narrow margin, with 23 percent still saying they were independents. He believed that it showed the Republican Party had to engage in public education if it expected to win any elections.
Mr. Childs indicates that the Taft Republicans were deeply loyal to the candidate, but it appeared sometimes to be blind loyalty, and there were not enough such Republicans to elect a president.
Robert C. Ruark remarks again of Ambassador to Mexico William O'Dwyer, former Mayor of New York, finding him essentially on the lam in Mexico, escaping a grand jury investigation in New York regarding the many scandals in the police department and other parts of City government during his tenure as Mayor and District Attorney, in relation to payoffs by organized crime and gambling interests to look the other way. He asserts that Ambassador O'Dwyer was using his position to avoid having to come back home to face the music, and finds it disgraceful, hopes that the President might soon fire him.
He adds that he had recently gone to Mexico and that it only took 15 hours to fly there, that Ambassador O'Dwyer, therefore, could easily fly north to appear before a grand jury. He notes that while in Mexico, he had met the Ambassador and he had been quite gracious, even though by all rights, he suggests, he should have socked Mr. Ruark in the face. One of the Ambassador's State Department assistants had even thrown a party for Mr. Ruark, replete with press and photographers, and the Ambassador allowed it to go forward. He indicates that as an Ambassador, Mr. O'Dwyer was quite capable, one of the best Ambassadors the country had, but also finds that such a position did not give him license to take sanctuary from law and order, being careful to add that it was not necessarily the case that Mr. O'Dwyer was, himself, involved in criminality just because many of the people who had served around him were going to jail.
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