The Charlotte News
Thursday, August 28, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Federal Judge George Moore had supplied a sworn statement to a House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Justice Department, indicating that the Justice Department had interfered with a grand jury investigation of the tax scandals in St. Louis the prior year, in that, according to the U.S. Attorney at the time, the Justice Department tax attorney had desired that a partial report be issued by the grand jury giving the tax collector's office a clean bill of health, a report which had subsequently been described by one of the jurors as a whitewash. The same attorney was now acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division and had stated to the subcommittee in testimony that he had not in any manner sought the partial report. After the partial report had been returned, the Judge had ordered the grand jury to make a further investigation, which led to the indictments of tax collector James Finnegan, subsequently convicted of misconduct in office.
Senate defense investigators stated in a report released this date that an excess of gadgets and top-level indecision had slowed military aircraft production and prevented the development of adequate air defenses for the country. The report was the latest in a series issued by the Senate Armed Services Preparedness subcommittee chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson. The report suggested appointment of a full-time production czar by the President and overhauling of present basic defense legislation to speed up aircraft production for the purpose of meeting a potential Soviet atomic attack. The same recommendations had been made the previous November by the same group, but Senator Johnson indicated in a separate statement that they had not been implemented. He said that the buildup had been slowed down by a "capacity for indecision which at times has reached amazing levels". He also reported that a production czar named by the Defense Department had not been provided the necessary authority to effect the buildup and eventually had been reduced to part-time status, when a full-time production czar was necessary. The report also called for a greater share of Federal funds to be allocated for air power and less for ground and sea armaments.
Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball this date asked the American Legion, at their convention in New York, to help keep the country strong on the seas by supporting the military's requests for appropriations. He urged that the Navy ought have four carriers of the Forrestal class under construction instead of only two. His speech had followed that of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, who indicated that in the 26 months since the beginning of the Korean War, the Army had grown from 593,000 men to more than 1.55 million. He said that more than 300,000 soldiers who had returned from Korean action had entered the reserves and that the Army would lose 750,000 men under the rotation plan by July 1 of the following year, therefore having to train 750,000 new men, which he called a "Herculean task".
The Legionnaires were set to pick a new national commander this date. A resolution which would permit non-white members to enter the "40 and 8", the Legion's honor society, was referred to the executive committee after the internal affairs committee had approved it. The resolution had not been submitted, however, to the convention for adoption.
Governor Stevenson's first two major addresses, one to the American Legion convention on Wednesday and another delivered the previous night at a Democratic rally near Asbury Park, N.J., indicated that his campaign strategy would be to emphasize that the people had never had it so good and to label General Eisenhower as a "me-too" candidate. He also stressed that the Republicans were split on foreign policy, that it was about as firm as "a bushel of eels", and criticized General Eisenhower for swallowing his principles in endorsing all of the GOP candidates running on the same ticket with him, referring to his indication that he would support all party nominees, including Senator Joseph McCarthy, though naming neither the General nor the Senator.
Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota responded to the criticism on Republican foreign policy by saying that the Governor was attempting to stand on a "bushel of red herrings", apparently referring to the President's statement four years earlier that the Republican charges of Communists in the Government, as brought forth in hearings before HUAC of which Mr. Mundt was then a member, was a "red herring".
In Richmond, Va., former Governor William Tuck resigned as state Democratic Party chairman and was replaced by a man who pledged to work for the entire ticket, state and national. The former Governor, bitterly anti-Truman, stated that he did not wish to state his presidential preference. He said that his resignation was akin to an epitaph which read: "To follow you I'm not content until I know which way you went."
Tighe Woods, the new director of the Office of Price Stabilization, stated this date that he would ask the President to lift price controls if he found that the public did not want them. He said that he personally believed that the price controls should remain in effect. The price control law was set to expire the following April 30. He said that he did not know if the President had the power to end controls, but believed that he did.
In Raleigh, the State Highway Commission refused this date to authorize increased load limits on about one-third of the state's secondary roads. Under the existing policy, 13,000-pound limits were placed on newly-paved rural roads until after they had been in service for awhile, permitting their bases to pack firmly, the limits then being lifted in many cases, and limits of 18,000 pounds per axle, the maximum on state highways, then put into effect. The Commission said that about 30 percent of the secondary roads presently had the lower limit, being removed as fast as conditions permitted.
Near Blowing Rock, N.C., a 17-year old girl died during an outing at Glen Burnie Falls the previous afternoon when she stepped on a slippery rock and fell, screaming, 75 feet down the falls. She had grabbed onto another girl when she began to fall and nearly pulled that girl down with her. She was planning to enter Woman's College at Greensboro within the ensuing two weeks.
In Mount Olive, N.C., a 13-year old boy carrying $2,500 in his pocket had left a trail of five dollar bills across Wayne County during a wild spending spree during the week, but now had returned to his quiet life on the farm where he lived. He had paid $20 for a $5 cigarette lighter, $5 for a hot dog, $5 for a shoe shine, and supplied a taxi driver with $10 for a $5 ride, telling each to keep the change. He had watched his uncle, a farmer, place the $2,500 in a bureau drawer the prior Monday after his uncle had sold some tobacco, then took the money from the drawer, called a female friend and a male friend and the three went on a road trip by taxi to Goldsboro, where the boy started buying things. Meanwhile, his father had called in the police chief to investigate. The boy still had $1,950 on him when he was intercepted and then returned to his father's custody. A charge of larceny would be lodged against him in juvenile court.
A report from Epsom, England, indicates that the town's Methodist minister, presently preaching in Alta, Iowa, under an Anglo-American exchange program, had written his congregation that he had heard so much about the chic American woman that, when he arrived in New York, he fully expected to be turning around every ten feet and giving a wolf whistle. That, however, had not happened and he honestly thought the women in London were just as attractively dressed. He also said that he was surprised to find the children of the corn belt looking "pallid and unhealthy" compared with the youth of England.
On the editorial page, "Dulles' Score: One Hit, One Error" indicates that John Foster Dulles, likely to become Secretary of State in an Eisenhower Administration, had delivered a speech on foreign policy during the week, two points of which merited further discussion during the campaign, that Soviet Communism could "be disintegrated from within" by "passive resistance, slowdowns and noncooperation", and, second, that the U.S. ought contribute to this process by being a symbol of freedom and providing moral and material support to those who sought liberty. General Eisenhower had conveyed the same idea during his speech to the American Legion.
It finds it a realistic idea, one which had not always obtained, that of support of expressions of equality and individual freedom across the world. While it might not be possible to drive Russia behind its own borders again, refusal to recognize its past aggression would encourage patriots of the satellite nations in their battle for freedom. It believes that General Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles had performed a valuable public service by focusing attention on that aspect of U.S. foreign policy.
Mr. Dulles characterized the foreign policy as "race discrimination on a global scale", saying that non-Western and non-white peoples of Asia could not be treated as "second-class expendables" if the West wanted to survive in a free world. The implication had been that the initial concentration on Western Europe had been dictated by a desire to favor European whites over non-European non-whites when, the piece posits, nothing could have been further from the truth. The primary emphasis on defense of Europe had been dictated by the fact that the West needed to keep Europe's natural resources, particularly coal and iron, out of Russian hands, that the West needed Europe's skilled labor and developed industries, that because of geographic proximity, the loss of Europe would be an immediate threat to U.S. security, that the hasty postwar demobilization had left Russia with a vast military superiority, that World War II had left a military and economic vacuum in Europe, causing Russian influence to be a greater threat there, and, finally, that the U.S. ability to help other nations was limited in that had aid been extended to the Far East to the same extent it had been to Europe, the national debt would have risen to astronomical proportions.
The piece indicates that it shared the concern of Mr. Dulles over what appeared to be relative neglect of the peoples of Asia, but that he had to understand that the first requirement had to be to the people of Western Europe, who had known liberty and would be dissatisfied with anything else, whereas many of the peoples of Asia had never known freedom. It finds that fact to have validated the first point made by Mr. Dulles but shattered the second.
"No Great Loss" tells of Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi having been defeated by the voters in the primary, no great loss to Congress. The Congressman had been cited for speeding in North Carolina the prior January while on his way to Washington and it suggests, therefore, that the state would be safer for his absence from Congress and the Congress generally better off. As head of the Veterans Affairs Committee, he had opposed constructive proposals for reorganization of the V.A., as urged by the Hoover Commission. He had ruled his Committee with arbitrary arrogance, seeking the vote of the veterans.
Should the Democrats retain control of the House, Congressman Olin Teague of Texas would take over the chairmanship, and he had distinguished himself as chairman of a subcommittee investigating improprieties under the G.I. Bill. Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, a friend of the veterans, would become the chairman should the Republicans win control of the House.
To his credit, Congressman Rankin had co-authored the bills setting up TVA and had supported reciprocal trade. But he had opposed the Marshall Plan, admission of displaced persons, and the school lunch program. He had been a white supremacist of the old school, and had recently condemned Averell Harriman as appearing to be running on the Communist platform for his stance that he would end segregation in the D.C. public schools.
It finds his defeat to be comparable to that of Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee. Both had been chairmen of powerful committees, using their power arbitrarily. Both had been defeated by Congressmen, Thomas Abernathy having defeated Mr. Rankin and Albert Gore having defeated Senator McKellar. It suggests that their successors, while not having particularly distinguished records, ought be able to improve on the records of the men they would replace.
"Laws Apply to City Officials, Too" indicates that the State Supreme Court's recent ruling that mere ownership of an automobile cited for illegal parking was insufficient evidence to hold the owner accountable, having posed a problem for municipal officials. The City Attorney in Raleigh advised the City not to issue another warrant for overtime parking unless there was clear evidence of more than mere ownership of the vehicle. He believed it was not fair to penalize the people who would voluntarily pay the citations.
In Charlotte, the City Manager and the Police Chief had been quoted as saying that the ruling would have no effect on Charlotte's enforcement of parking, that the City would rely on evidence of ownership, hold accountable the owner for a citation and if the owner contested the charge and the City could not prove the owner was the driver of the parked vehicle, the citation would be dismissed.
The piece indicates that if the City did not know the identity of the person who had parked the car, there was no justification for assessing the fine against the owner and that it was not fair to an innocent owner to force that person to prove their innocence in court. It urges that the City had to comply with the law as interpreted by the State Supreme Court, until the 1953 General Assembly had an opportunity to write a new rule of evidence to govern the situation.
A piece from the Anderson (S.C.) Independent, titled "Eisenhower's Swing through South", tell of the managers of the General's campaign having set forth the itinerary for his tour through the South and that a definite date had been set for his visit to Georgia.
It appeared, however, that he would skip South Carolina, and the piece hopes that he would not send an emissary. For it recalls that one of the last "Yankee generals" who had come to the South had been U.S. Grant and he had not visited South Carolina either, sending his emissary, General Sherman.
Len Schmitt, an attorney from Merrill, Wisc., substituting for Drew Pearson while he was on vacation, tells of his decision to run in the Republican primary for the Senate against Senator Joseph McCarthy, relating that his friends, as much appalled by the Senator's record and McCarthyism as he was, thought nevertheless that he was foolish to disrupt his comfortable life to enter a campaign against such a "ruthless adversary". Though he had a good law practice and a comfortable life, he believed that the fight against the Senator and what he stood for went deeper than his own physical comfort. He indicates that under normal circumstances, the Senator would have no chance for re-election, as voters would repudiate him were it not for another factor on which he was relying—McCarthyism.
In 1943, when the Senator had been in the military, he made $40,000 in the stock market while reporting his state income as zero, based on the belief that he was not a resident of the state, while the following year he ran for the Senate and lost. Subsequently, during his career as a circuit court judge, he had granted quickie divorces to clients living outside his circuit, who were represented by a Milwaukee law firm favorable to him. Also, a court record in a case which went to the Supreme Court had been destroyed. The fact that he had run for the Senate while still sitting as a judge, despite the State Constitution prohibiting it, caused his censure by the State Supreme Court. He had also accepted $10,000 from the Lustron Housing Corp. while serving on a committee in the Senate investigating the RFC, which had made loans of 37 million dollars to the company, receiving the money for a booklet on housing, consisting primarily of Federal housing regulations. Mr. Schmitt goes further into the Senator's personal finances and indicates that he had also sought to distort his war record, claiming that he carried ten pounds of shrapnel in his body, when, in fact, he had never been wounded. He had referred to himself as "Tail Gunner Joe" when he had served as an intelligence officer, and claimed to have enlisted as a private when he had actually shopped around for a commission.
All of that record would usually spell defeat in Wisconsin, but the Senator was seeking to cover up those deficiencies with his charges of Communism in the government. He had resorted to the technique used by propagandists of the dictators in Germany, Italy and Russia, trying to stir up fear and hysteria among the people, seeking to portray anybody who opposed him as a Communist or fellow traveler. His claims were so outrageous that people tended to believe him, the Big Lie approach of Josef Goebbels.
Mr. Schmitt concludes by indicating that he would answer every question directed to him without equivocation, that the people of Wisconsin would know where he stood on every issue, and that he would take his chances on the inherent commonsense of Wisconsin voters.
Joseph Alsop indicates that in politics, communication was the first requirement for success, regardless of the program and ideas communicated. Judged on that basis, General Eisenhower's speech on Monday before the American Legion convention in New York had been a mixed performance. In earlier days, the General had rarely failed to grip and dominate his audiences, regardless of whether he had something serious and complicated to say or something more sentimental. But as a candidate, he was not exactly the same. He had written his own speech for the American Legion and the original draft circulated among the press had been a speech "with meat and power in it". And when he appeared at the convention, he appeared as the image which America had of him and the Legionnaires responded with loud cheers. But after he began to speak, he appeared "shackled" and did not have the polished political orator's trick of building to climaxes and eliciting applause. It appeared to be a task for a General, a duty rather than a pleasure. Occasionally during the speech, he would lose himself in the delivery and the audience would respond enthusiastically, but then he would look worried and ill at ease and the audience would drift away. Mr. Alsop concludes that the speech was not a failure, telling of the country being exposed to terrible perils and appealing for a strong and united response to the Communist threat. It had been almost reassuring in its inartfulness.
Yet, he observes, it did not electrify the audience. The General's discomfort was likely the result of suddenly having to appear out of uniform as a professional politician. During the previous few weeks, he had been worked over by the professional politicians, who wanted him to take various positions which were compromises of his principles, and in the process he had been exposed to the seamy side of politics, which probably made him doubt whether it was a strength to be sincere. That, he believes, was his major handicap as he began the campaign. But the previous ten days also suggested that the General had the inner toughness which he needed.
Marquis Childs also looks at General Eisenhower and the start of his campaign, suggesting that both his supporters and those who had opposed him for the nomination were demanding practically the impossible of him, that he reconcile a divided party, something no candidate could do. Had Senator Taft been the nominee, the populous states in the East would have already been written off. Senator Irving Ives of New York had already indicated prior to the GOP convention that he would not have run for re-election had Senator Taft been the nominee.
That which the General could do was to win the support of the independents and dissident Democrats, crucial to a Republican win in the fall.
There were those in the party who wanted the General to promise that he could solve the insoluble with a simple formula for final victory in Korea, China, and all of Asia. At very least, they wanted him to criticize the Administration for not coming up with a quick recipe for victory. But the General knew too much as a soldier and statesman about world events and what was likely to happen, having too much integrity to put forward such a simple political formula just to attract votes. Republicans who hated him were saying that because he had been a partner in the Administration foreign policy, it was impossible for him to attack it. Mr. Childs regards this as a narrow view, that while the General had been a participant, he understood how difficult and lengthy the task ahead would be for the American people. That was what he tried to communicate in his American Legion speech. But between the writing of the words and their delivery, the force had gone out of the them.
He remarks that in his various roles during and since World War II, one of the outstanding characteristics of the General had been his warm confidence which he communicated to those around him, inspiring and encouraging them. That quality had made him a leader of men. But it was missing in the speech before the Legion, where he seemed like a different person, the words not being delivered with the confidence and assurance of his past performances. He appeared hesitant and unsure of himself, before an audience which was naturally drawn to him. He had not been prepared for the division within the Republican Party during his time as supreme commander of NATO, greeting political visitors who were always well-wishers.
A letter writer indicates that she had spent much of the summer in Charlotte as a guest of her daughter who had been in the city for about a year, and now was returning home to Illinois, indicating that during her visit, she had enjoyed the city very much. She liked the friendly courtesy of the people, some of whom would stop and offer her a ride while she was waiting for a bus. The bus drivers were also friendly and helpful. She says that she would look forward to a return visit in the future.
A letter writer, who had been urged by many across the state to run for governor in 1956, responds to another letter of August 19, from the man who had been labeled by some a "dog hater", indicating that he believed the writer had stated in his first letter that all dogs should be destroyed, not just strays as he had stated on August 19. He believes that the man was trying to soft-pedal the issue because he had received so much flak over his initial statement. He asserts that the previous writer did want all dogs destroyed and that it was not a Christian position to advocate. He suggests that Governor Dewey had been beaten by President Roosevelt for having made a speech against Fala in 1944, and that the President had responded with his statement before the Teamsters that September, carried around the world. Some believed, he suggests, that Governor Dewey might have won that election had it not been for the President's statement making light of the criticism of Fala and indicating that his Scotch temper simply would not tolerate it. He suggests to the prior writer, therefore, that he stop kicking the dogs around.
You should write that nice man, Senator Nixon, next month, when he gets into hot water regarding a campaign slush fund, and advise him to use the same tactic as a complete distraction to the nation. In fact, you could just tell him, "Hey, Senator, you just say, 'Please stop kicking our dogs around, including me.'" Well, on second thought, maybe you should advise him instead to say something like, "If you people in the press want me off the ticket, you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore like a little dirty dog, and so you better think about it."
A letter writer wonders if the American Legion's national headquarters had taken any action against Fascist activity, indicating that he had last heard two years earlier that the Illinois division of the Legion had sent out anti-Fascist material, but otherwise, that the organization had done nothing. He does not like it that way.
A letter from two writers from Gastonia says that they could stand a little less of "Ike and Stevenson—and a little more of Dean and Cherry," in reference to the letter writer this date on dogs, and his would-be gubernatorial campaign manager, who had previously imparted the story of Senator Vest and his "Tribute to a Dog".
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