The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 3, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in the ground war in Korea this date, a group of Communist Chinese riflemen had sought to penetrate U.N. defenses along a five-mile sector of the western front during the predawn darkness, but were repulsed by allied artillery. No estimate was given of the number of enemy casualties inflicted. On the eastern front, U.N. troops had reported about 1,000 rounds of enemy artillery fire and mortar shells falling on their positions.
The Eighth Army reported that it had inflicted 10,501 enemy casualties, including 5,012 killed, during May.
The U.S. Fifth Air Force reported that overcast skies and rain had hampered the ability of fighter-bombers to strike at enemy rail and supply lines.
U.N. supreme commander General Mark Clark and Eighth Army ground commander, General James Van Fleet, toured the front this date in light planes.
The steel strike, in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling the previous day that the President lacked authority to seize the steel industry, had resulted in the complete shutdown of the industry this date. The President, meanwhile, weighed his options for further action to resolve the dispute which had persisted for six months and was now hampering defense capability. He had three options, to wait and hope that the two sides would resolve the dispute, to invoke the 80-day injunctive provision of Taft-Hartley, or seek from Congress special legislation to deal with the matter. There was no comment from the White House regarding the dispute, the President's intended course, or the Court's decision. Both the industry and the United Steelworkers suggested renewal of contract negotiations, but no one had yet put forth a date for doing so. Members of Congress had generally applauded the decision by the high Court.
In Berlin, British military police erected a barbed wire barricade around the Russian-operated Radio Berlin this date, catching a guard of about 20 Russian soldiers inside the building, which stood in the middle of the British sector. The British and German police guarding the building said that those inside could exit but could not re-enter. The British troops were ordered to "meet force with force" if anyone tried to interfere with the siege. The Russians did not attempt to make their customary morning change of the guard. The action had been undertaken by the British after consultation with American and French occupation officials, apparently in retaliation for the actions of the Communists in recent days, having taken over small areas lying just inside the Russian occupation zone but which had been previously administered by the West. The radio station under British siege had been in operation since the fall of Berlin in 1945 and was the Communists' loudest voice in Germany.
Senator John Williams of Delaware told the Senate this date that a man had collected nearly half a million dollars from the Government through "devious methods" while he had owed three-quarters of a million dollars in income taxes and penalties. The Senator had earlier named this individual as having employed Joseph Nunan, former IRB commissioner, to help him fight Government tax claims and having been successful in having his $792,000 tax case pigeonholed in the files of the Justice Department. An effort to prosecute the man for having failed to file a tax return had been dropped in 1948 a few weeks after he had hired Mr. Nunan. He had collected the nearly half-million dollars from the Government for running an institute in Miami, designed to teach veterans how to butcher poultry and other meats, but had padded his books to run up the bills of the school beyond what was actually incurred, a report of which the Treasury Department had apparently ignored. The man, according to Senator Williams, was finally indicted after he had been exposed by the Senate in late February of the prior year.
Congressman Ezekiel Gathings of Arkansas told a House Commerce subcommittee, opening an investigation of radio and television, that necklines on the dresses of television actresses had been raised since the industry had adopted a television code during the spring, but that he doubted it would solve all of the problems of undesirable and offensive programming. He specifically objected to Dagmar's previously plunging neckline, but noted that it had changed for the better lately. Congressman J. Edgar Chenoweth of Colorado asked him how low had it gotten and how high had it gone, to which Congressman Gathings, somewhat flustered, replied that he thought the "waistline" was a little higher. The Congressman was the sponsor of a resolution which led to the investigation, insisting that programs adhere to standards of purity, just as in food, that "programs be fit for human consumption".
Hey, buster, if you're eating the programs, you have a serious problem. Get some help… Those tubes in the back of the set are bitter tasting, from the mica, we threpe.
General Eisenhower, in a meeting with reporters at the Pentagon, indicated this date that he had always favored a strong Air Force and was convinced that air power would remain dominant in any future war, but also stated that anyone who believed the foot soldier could be eliminated from war needed to show him how that could be done. A few minutes after the press conference, he bid farewell to the Army and doffed his uniform to begin his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency.
In South Dakota and California, primaries were taking place this date to select delegates from both the Democratic and Republican parties, while in Alabama, a primary was being held only for Democratic delegates, as was the case at a convention in Maryland.
The current Associated Press tally of Republican delegates had 420 for Senator Taft and 387 for General Eisenhower, with 604 needed to nominate. The Democratic total was 150 for Senator Estes Kefauver, 86 1/2 for Senator Richard Russell, and 85 1/2 for Averell Harriman, with 616 needed to nominate.
In Ironwood, Mich., rescue workers searching for five entombed coal miners reported hearing faint tapping sounds from the coal pit, raising hopes that one or more of the men might still be alive. They had become trapped the previous afternoon 2,900 feet below ground when tons of earth and rock had caved in on them. The county mine inspector expressed doubt that any would be found alive, barring a miracle. Eight miners who had been working in the area of the cave-in had managed to escape through a hatchway, and only one had been injured, with shock and bruises. Work at the mine, owned by Republic Steel, had been scheduled to cease the previous night because of the steel strike.
In Charlotte, Superior Court Judge William Bobbitt announced this date that he would ask for a runoff primary in his contest for a vacant seat on the State Supreme Court, against Superior Court Judge R. Hunt Parker, who had received 119,000 votes to Judge Bobbitt's 103,000 in the initial Saturday primary, albeit with neither achieving a majority in the six-candidate race. The other four candidates had received a total of 210,000 votes.
It was still not determined whether Roy Rowe would seek a runoff in the race for lieutenant governor against Luther Hodges.
In Aberdeen, Scotland, an outraged
town council rebuffed an offer by an all-girl bagpipe band from the
University of Iowa
Oh, me laddie, you obviously don't
know middle America at all. Why, they'd be cuttin' ye a record in no
time flat and you'd be on the charts under the moniker, "The
Highland Kibooies
In Jackson, Miss., only one 106-year
old man showed up for what might have been the last reunion of
Confederate veterans. It was indicated that later in the day, one
other veteran
On the editorial page, "One Good Precept Deserves Another" regards the Supreme Court decision in the steel case the previous day, finding it to have been one of the most "momentous decisions" of the time, resolving the issue regarding separation of powers, which it regards as having been seriously impaired during the previous two decades for the combination of there having been two strong Presidents, weak Congresses, the Great Depression and a World War, followed by a struggle for survival between democracy and Communism, coupled with public apathy.
The Court had found that, absent statutory authority provided by Congress, the President lacked any inherent authority under the Constitution to seize a private industry in a national emergency, at least absent some imminent attack on the country or like crisis in a situation where Congress had not provided a remedy, that Congress had, when debating Taft-Hartley in 1947, expressly rejected an amendment which would have authorized such seizures, and that the Article II powers of the President, insofar as legislation was concerned, were limited to recommending laws to the Congress and vetoing undesired laws passed by the Congress, that Congress had the exclusive power to make laws.
It finds that Justice William O. Douglas, in his concurring opinion, had zeroed in on the true danger of such a seizure, by warning that while the President had good intentions in his seizure of the steel industry in the current situation, trying to effect a wage increase while keeping the steel industry producing for the national need in time of war, another President in the future might utilize the same power to prevent such a wage increase, curb trade unions, and regiment labor as oppressively as industry believed it had been regimented by the current seizure.
In the wake of the decision, the United Steelworkers had immediately called a strike, and it was unclear when the steel industry would be up and running again, prompting the Government to ban shipment of steel to consumers so that the available supplies on hand would be reserved for military purposes. The President was left with the alternative of using the 80-day injunction provision under Taft-Hartley, but the piece urges against that action, as the matter had already been before the Wage Stabilization Board, which had made recommendations which the steelworkers accepted and the industry had rejected absent a large per ton price increase in steel, an increase rejected by the Government under existing price controls for the high profits of the industry being able to absorb the recommended wage increase. It did not appear, therefore, that an 80-day injunction would do any good in terms of resolving the dispute, with the strike having been postponed by the union repeatedly since the contract had expired at the first of the year.
Some believed that Congress ought to pass legislation to provide the President with the power of seizure. The piece prefers to let the matter simmer for awhile, in the hope that, eventually, the steel industry and labor would succumb to public pressure and their patriotic duty to continue to fight against the potential encroachment of Communism, and reach a resolution on their own. It urges that it was time for good labor-management relations and collective bargaining in good faith.
"Judge Bobbitt Should Call for Runoff" urges Judge William Bobbitt to call for a runoff with Judge R. Hunt Parker in the contest for the open seat on the State Supreme Court. Neither of the two leading vote-getters had achieved a majority necessary to avoid a runoff, and while it understands the reason why Judge Bobbitt was reluctant to seek the runoff, it offers that he had an obligation to those who had campaigned actively for him and believed that he was the best man for the position. It indicates that he had the better chance of winning as many of the votes for the other four candidates in the race would likely go to Judge Bobbitt in the runoff. As indicated on the front page, he had called for the runoff.
"John Dewey" laments the
death of the philosopher who had a profound influence
Drew Pearson tells of the facts underlying the prisoner crisis on Koje Island boiling down to the natural desire of U.S. military men to handle prisoners with as little manpower as possible, as it had always been the American policy to do, with the best troops saved for the front. As a result, mostly South Koreans had been used as guards on the island, operating under a relatively small number of Americans. Since it was impossible to escape from the island, no one worried very much about what occurred, including the fact that there was considerable fraternization between South Korean guards and North Korean prisoners, with the South Koreans carrying messages, clothing and supplies back and forth to the mainland. The situation had not become serious until the U.N. began screening the prisoners to determine how many of them wanted to repatriate.
Governor Fuller Warren of Florida had made national headlines by campaigning against the Senate crime committee, once chaired in 1950 and early 1951 by Senator Estes Kefauver. But for all of Governor Warren's bluster, he had underworld ties which had only half been publicized. Three persons had testified under oath that they contributed more than $400,000 to the Governor's campaign in 1948, while he had sworn in an affidavit that his total campaign contributions had been a little more than $8,800, with total contributions limited by state law to $15,000. One of the contributors, who admitted donating more than $100,000, was the known boss of four Florida dog-racing tracks and an old-time associate of such hoodlums as John Patton and Frank Nitty. He explains in some detail this individual's profiting through contacts with the Warren administration.
Governor Warren had also appointed as a special investigator a man who was charged by the Senate crime committee with helping Chicago racketeers Jacob Guzik and Tony Accardo. The Governor had not seen anything suspicious about the sudden wealth of two Florida sheriffs who were accused by the Senate crime committee of receiving payoffs for protection.
Raymond Moley, in the second in the series of 12 articles abstracted from his 1952 book, How To Keep Our Liberty: A Program for Political Action, finds that the threat to personal liberty by an ever-growing and grasping government had arisen over a long period of time, with the most important factor being the perversion of what had once been called "the progressive movement" in the early years of the 20th Century. Lincoln Steffens had been the most colorful historian regarding this movement of protest against poverty and injustice in the midst of enormous wealth and concentration of private property. The protest had been against corruption in government, seeking through legislation more control by government over economic life and provision of social services for the underprivileged. Theodore Roosevelt joined and became the leader of the movement, in the process, as President, enlarging Federal power and using it to fill what he called a "twilight zone" between Federal and state authority with regard to business.
But in more recent years, progressivism had moved far beyond that original scope, under the assumption that because a small amount of government intervention had proved remedial of some of the evils of capitalism, more of the same was needed. He finds in that extension a present danger. He indicates that the writings of George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Harold Laski and others had caused thousands of Americans to develop sympathetic awareness of socialism, resulting in a point of view impacting all learning and literature in the previous 50 years. Early in the century, under the leadership of Charles Beard, James Harvey Robinson, Carl Becker and others, history had been rewritten, with emphasis on economic and social factors and developments. Their writings adopted a materialistic interpretation of history, some of which had developed from Karl Marx, with roots also in more remote philosophers and historians.
This new movement's viewpoints permeated the texts being studied in both colleges and the secondary schools. John Dewey had been the philosopher and prophet of the movement.
While the Constitution was a protector of individual liberties, the previous 12 years had demonstrated that it could also be interpreted to admit socialism to the country without formal amendment, as had been asserted by the late Justice Frank Murphy in the Schneiderman case of 1943.
He posits that a wide avenue for such socialism came from the phrase "general welfare", expressed twice in the Constitution, once in the Preamble as one of the purposes of the Constitution, and in Article I, Section 8, providing Congress the power to levy and collect taxes to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and "general welfare". He suggests that, while in context, the phrase pertained to the general welfare of the nation as a whole, it had been interpreted to mean that every individual or group had to obtain all the "welfare" they wanted.
He also finds a trend among the so-called "liberal" Justices of the Supreme Court to arrange the rights of life, liberty and property in an order of descending importance, with that trend being attacked by some of the Justices, including the late Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, as well as by retired Court of Appeals Judge Learned Hand. He regards the trend as violative of the tradition that these three basic rights were equal and indivisible, whereas the present Court had rendered the right to property in a subordinate class. (He does not recognize the point, however, that also under the original traditions of the country at the Founding, and for more than 70 years thereafter, human slaves were considered personal property of their masters, not entitled to the rights as citizens.)
He next regards the income tax amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, providing no limit to the power of Congress to tax individual and corporate incomes.
He finds these trends to have been breaches of the original Constitution, in the interest of statism, making it clear that the answer to the trend toward super-government could not come through the courts, but rather had to be expressed politically.
He
finds the New Deal to have been a "fortuitous combination of
many theories", eventually, after two or three years, primarily
characterized by the Administration opting for more Government
spending
Joseph Alsop, in New Orleans, again looks at the Republican delegate selection process, this time focusing on Louisiana, having already considered the "theft" by the Taft supporters of the Texas delegation from the majority Eisenhower supporters. Senator Taft's representative in the state was national committeeman John E. Jackson, who had ruled Republican politics in Louisiana for a little less than 20 years.
Contesting his Old Guardism was John Minor Wisdom, who supported General Eisenhower for the nomination, and had captured the New Orleans organization in a legal primary the prior January. He had then intervened in the spring selection of delegates to the national convention, with his delegates voting down those following Mr. Jackson by large majorities in six of the eight Louisiana Congressional districts, giving the General nine of the eleven district delegates in the state, plus the likelihood of obtaining the four at-large delegates to be named at the state convention.
Mr. Jackson, employing the same methods Mr. Alsop had described as occurring in Texas, ignored the ballots of the pro-Eisenhower delegates and nullified their victories, rigging the state convention to seat only his own minority delegates so that a pro-Taft delegation would be sent to the national convention. No one doubted that the Louisiana delegation was the product of Mr. Jackson's efforts rather than the majority will.
In Louisiana, up to 150,000 voters cast their ballots for Republicans in national elections, while the number of registered Republicans had steadily declined under Mr. Jackson's stewardship, to the all-time low of 1,500. He disapproved of any attempt to transform the voting Republicans into registered Republicans, such as by nomination of Republican candidates for state office, for registration in large numbers would dilute his authority. As things were, he could gather Republicans in a small room for the purpose of choosing 15 Republican delegates to the convention every four years, ensuring the continuation of his power. It would not win votes in Louisiana, but could obtain patronage rewards in Washington should a Republican President be nominated with the help of Louisiana's 15 delegates.
Former
RNC chairman, Congressman Carroll Reece, was the most active of the
Old Guardsmen who wanted the Southern Republican Party organizations
to continue in this manner
He concludes that in one respect, the Louisiana pattern differed from the Texas pattern, in that in the latter, there had been a strong surge for General Eisenhower, whereas in Louisiana, there was no such popular movement, despite the fact that it had defeated Mr. Jackson's primacy. Louisianans were not ready to register as Republicans in large numbers, as had the Texans. The Louisiana battle had been on a very small scale, involving only a few hundred people. In two other respects, the Louisiana pattern resembled that of Texas, first that Mr. Jackson's pro-Taft delegation had been named in arrogant defiance of the majority will in the state, and that Mr. Jackson, like Henry Zweifel of Texas, typified the bizarre Southern leadership which the Republicans needed to discard if they wanted to end their 20-year drought in presidential elections. He finds, therefore, the decision at the national convention in July as to which Southern delegations would be seated to be the most serious the party had ever faced.
A letter writer from Abilene, Texas, wonders what the soldiers in Korea thought of some of the young college men who were able to avoid the draft by getting an education, in the process of which participating in pantie raids. He thinks that the soldiers in Korea would find it disgusting behavior and suggestive of "a country of morons". He says that he had never served in Korea but had served two years in Europe during World War II, and believed that such college men should be put into uniform and sent to Korea, to permit the soldiers who were already there to come home.
Framed Edition
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