The Charlotte News
Wednesday, September 10, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that South Korean infantrymen had recaptured "Capitol Hill" in a night bayonet charge and then repulsed two Chinese counter-attacks at daybreak this date, with a U.S. Eighth Army staff officer indicating that the South Korean troops were on the hill to stay. After five days of close-quarters fighting for the hill on the central front, troops of the Capitol Division had killed or wounded at least 2,300 Chinese troops, nearly the equivalent of an enemy regiment. Fighting for the hill had produced the heaviest enemy artillery barrages of the war.
Fifth Air Force pilots had knocked out 100 Communist supply trucks, the highest score since early June, and had helped to soften Chinese defenses before the fight to take the hill. After 70 sorties over the hill by fighter-bombers, U.N. artillery began pounding the hill crest and enemy approach routes with a heavy barrage. Facing enemy artillery shelling, the South Korean riflemen had inched their way up the rocky slope, and in a final charge with bayonets, cleaned out the last of the Chinese on the crest shortly before midnight, following a four-hour fight.
General Eisenhower told cheering Republican campaign workers in Washington this date that the desire for a change underlay the enthusiasm for his candidacy which he had encountered across the country. He said that there was no question that the overriding issue of the time was peace, but that it was not as uppermost in the minds of the people as the desire for a change. Campaign aide Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas told reporters that he expected to talk with the General during the afternoon regarding a potential meeting with Senator Taft in the near future. Senator Richard Nixon, the vice-presidential candidate, along with his wife Pat and their two children, were on hand to greet the General when he arrived at the airport.
In Indianapolis the previous day, the General had said that when Governor Stevenson, as the "hand-picked heir", wanted no part of the Administration's "heirlooms", there was no reason for anyone else to want them either. He had been interrupted by applause 45 times. He said that he had gone into politics because "no American can stand to one side while his country becomes the prey of fear-mongers, quack doctors and bare-faced looters."
You had better sit down and have a long talk about those things with Dick.
Governor Stevenson was campaigning through California, having stated in San Jose this date that the Democratic policy was based on "a belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." He ridiculed the Republicans for "approving our program during an election year". About 2,500 persons had lined the station platform as his special train pulled into San Jose, the first of eight stops scheduled this date. The Governor said it was the first whistle-stop he had ever made, among many firsts during the campaign. The previous night in San Francisco, in a speech broadcast nationwide over television and radio, he had spoken about foreign policy, placing himself solidly behind the Truman policy. He said that he did not think war was an inevitable part of the contest between freedom and tyranny, that 85 percent of the budget was allocated to defense and that it was the Soviet Union which fixed the level of U.S. defense expenditures and thus the country's tax rates. He said that General Eisenhower's ten-point program did not contribute much to the foreign policy discussion. He also said that he believed that the country would later look back at Korea as a major turning point in history for having led, not to another war, but to the first historic demonstration of an effective system of collective security. He assured the country's friends in Asia that America would never seek to dominate their political and economic development. The Governor had dispensed with the first four or five minutes of quips which had usually begun his speeches, and instead appeared grimly serious throughout, also omitting his usual concluding ad-libs.
Senator Joseph McCarthy had won the previous day's Republican primary in Wisconsin by a landslide, saying that he regarded the victory as an endorsement by the people of his campaign to rid the government of subversive forces. He promised his complete support to General Eisenhower and pledged to voters that he would continue his efforts to root out Communists from the government. His primary opponent in the race, Leonard Schmitt, said that the Senator had won through "an amazing and fraudulent hoax" perpetrated on the voters. He predicted that when the full truth came out, many people would recall their support of the Senator with shame. With about 90 percent of the precincts reporting, the Senator led with over 450,000 votes to 182,000 for Mr. Schmitt. The Senator would face Democrat Thomas Fairchild, former State Attorney General, in the November election.
Senator Taft indicated in Cincinnati this date that he was delighted with the victory the previous day of Senator McCarthy. The Senator said that he did not endorse Senator McCarthy because he did not interfere in other states' primaries, but did approve of his accomplishments in rooting out Communists and subversion in the Government.
Another Gallup poll appears, showing the Democrats and Republicans running close together in Congressional voting preference among respondents, with a slightly larger number indicating preference for the Republicans to control the next Congress. The outcome was 50.5 percent for Republican control and 49.5 percent for Democratic control. The story indicates that Congressional preference had been a good predictor of political sentiment in 1948, as the final survey had shown that 53 percent favored Democratic Congressional control to 47 percent for the Republicans, against actual results of a nationwide vote of 53.7 percent Democratic to 46.3 percent Republican in the Congressional elections. The last poll conducted during the 1950 mid-term contests had shown 51 percent preference for Democrats and 49 percent for Republicans, against an actual outcome of 50.3 percent for Democrats and 49.7 percent for Republicans. The Republicans would need to win 19 seats more than they had won in 1950 to gain control of the House.
Wholesale food prices had posted their sharpest overall drop in nearly 2 years, according to the Dun & Bradstreet food index, dropping from $6.70 the previous week, which had been the high for the year, to $6.60 during the current week, 2.8 percent below the $6.79 of a year earlier.
James Turner Pritchett, 63, industrial and civic leader, and former mayor of the town of Lenoir, N.C., died this date in that town of a heart attack which he had suffered the previous Saturday while playing golf. He had attended UNC as an undergraduate and had attended law school both at UNC and at Wake Forest. He had been an Army captain during World War I and later commanded an American Legion post in Lenoir, where he was also a prominent lawyer.
In Charlotte, a gray-haired old man, 63, whose arrest record, according to police, was as thick as a mail-order catalog, was apprehended this date by police after he allegedly tried to sell barbiturates to a 15-year old Charlotte boy. Police said it was the 119th time he had been arrested and that he had spent about half of his life on the roads or in jail. He had numerous counts of drunkenness, vagrancy, solicitation of crimes against nature, begging, and larceny on his record. He was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor in the instant case.
In New York, show producer Billy
Rose bowed out of the year-long mud-slinging battle with his wife,
Eleanor Holm, and gave her a separation, leaving it to the court to
set alimony. He withdrew his divorce case, charging his wife with
adultery with five men, saying, in what he said was a loose paraphrase of in-chambers advice from the trial judge, that a man had no chance of winning in
a fight with a girl. His wife's attorney, Louis Nizer, said that he
considered Mr. Rose's withdrawal and abandonment of the charges with
an apology to have been a complete surrender and vindication of Mr.
Nizer and all of those whom Mr. Rose had unjustly charged. Mr. Rose
said that he expected to face a criminal libel action brought against
him in California by the widow of bandleader Ben Bernie and that when
he did, "a lot of people had better start running". Mr.
Rose's attorney, Arthur Garfield Hays
In Santa Monica, California, a woman's house caught fire while she was away the previous day and damage was estimated at $800. Neighbors had rescued her Welsh terrier, Duffy, from the burning house and then summoned firemen. When the woman returned, she discovered that all of Duffy's fleas had vanished. She concluded that apparently the fleas had suddenly considered Duffy to be a very bad risk.
On the editorial page, "Good Day for the Old Guard" tells of Senators Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, Harry Cain of Washington, and Arthur Watkins of Utah, all having won re-nomination for their Senate seats. Meanwhile, Senator William Jenner of Indiana had welcomed General Eisenhower to that state, appearing on the platform with him and introducing him to the radio audience. The General indicated that he believed that Senator Jenner and Indiana's Republican Congressmen would support the program he would present to Congress if he were elected President.
It wonders, looking at the voting record of Senator Jenner and others like him, what type of program on which they would agree. It suggests that the Senator and the General had likely not changed their diametrically opposed views, but that there had been an effort in Indiana to coalesce, at least temporarily, the two factions of the party, albeit with the Eisenhower wing having made more concessions for the sake of harmony than had the Old Guard.
The primary opponent of Senator McCarthy, Leonard Schmitt, had said in conceding to the Senator that his renomination had been "an appalling thing". The piece concludes that Wisconsin voters, by an overwhelming majority, had "signified their faith in a fraudulent demagogue", and that by doing so, they had increased the burden for all Republicans. It had been a good day for the Old Guard, but a sad one for those who had looked forward to constructive changes from the Republicans.
"The 'One-Party Press'" tells of Governor Stevenson speaking in Portland to a group of journalists, indicating that the majority of newspapers supported the Republicans, and finding it interesting that the editorials in those papers were concerned about the survival of a two-party system, while he was concerned about a two-party country being serviced by a one-party press.
The piece provides a table showing that in the previous five elections the number of Democratic newspapers ranged between 39 percent as a high in 1932, down to 15 percent in 1948, inversely proportional to Democratic voters in the country in those five elections. Meanwhile, the number of newspapers supporting the Republican nominee had risen from 49 percent in 1932 to 65 percent in 1948. It finds that it was not abnormal for the press to prefer the Republicans, when it was recalled that newspapers were businesses and that many businessmen appeared to prefer the Republican Party, with those business views sometimes being expressed on the editorial pages.
It suggests that if the Republicans were to achieve power for several years, they would make enough mistakes and display enough corruption to cause many presently Republican newspapers to desire a return by the Democrats to clean up the Republican "mess". The Republicans had not been in a position to make so many mistakes as the Democrats had for the prior 20 years. It was certain that if they did achieve such opportunity, they would be criticized by the press as much as had been the Democrats. It reminds that such criticism was one of the main functions of the press, and that without it, there would be poor government. It suggests that the minority Democratic press would survive as long as the minority Republican Party, and that nothing would add more to membership in the Democratic press than a Republican victory in the fall.
"Throw the X,?&:!, Ike" indicates that when General Eisenhower's teleprompter had lagged behind his speech in Indiana, he had stumbled and said "go ahead" two or three times, still without response from the teleprompter. Finally in exasperation, as broadcast over the radio, he had appeared to utter under his breath a naughty word, saying "____, I wanted him to move it." The teleprompter finally proceeded and the General carried on with his speech, taken from Ecclesiastes, "There is a time to keep, and a time to cast away."
It suggests that it was time to cast away the teleprompter and urges him to throw "the ________ thing now!"
Why do you delete all the expletives? That makes it worse, because it takes the imagination then to fill it in with something other than "durned", "dangnabbed", and "carnsarnit", you know, with that Dick language.
"A Good Way To Get at TB" tells of a plan at work in Mecklenburg County to conduct X-rays of everyone over the age of 15, in an effort to detect and prevent tuberculosis. The previous year, 79 new cases had been reported in the city, and 27 persons had died from the disease. The Charlotte Board of Health strongly favored the program of X-rays. It would require the approval and cooperation of local citizens and would cost about $25,000, with the local tuberculosis association having pledged several thousand dollars. It was hoped that the United Appeal and the heart, cancer and tuberculosis associations would put up the rest.
The piece indicates that the program was worthwhile and urges that it be implemented.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Mr. Romany's Laugh", tells of Marcelino Romany, the Puerto Rican delegate to the July GOP national convention, who had provided some levity at a particularly tense time during a battle on the floor and made a splash in the press. He had since benefited from being the object of laughter, as his law practice was booming, with scores of new continental clients with legal business on the island. It concludes that electronic communications had made "Romany" practically a brand name.
Drew Pearson tells of General Eisenhower quietly shaking up his staff of political advisers, easing out RNC chairman Arthur Summerfield from the inner circle, as well as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who was back home facing an uncertain fight for re-election against Congressman John F. Kennedy in the fall election. The General's top adviser at present was Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, who had paved the way for the General's victory in the New Hampshire primary. Others in the inner circle were Ralph Cake, former Republican national committeeman from Oregon, Senator Fred Seaton of Nebraska, Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, Robert Burrows, former national committeeman from New Hampshire, and Ed Birmingham of Wyoming, a wealthy rancher and former partner in the Dillon, Read banking firm.
The reason for the demotion of Mr. Summerfield was his ineffectiveness in lining up Old Guard elements in the Midwest, still bitter over the defeat of Senator Taft for the nomination. As a former Taft supporter, Mr. Summerfield had been expected to convert Taft supporters into supporters of the General, but he had only partly succeeded. His desire for power and grandeur also had not endeared him to the General. He had contended that the proposed Southern tour by the General would be a waste of time, generating no electoral votes. The General had responded that he was running for president of the whole country, not just the North, and that he was going to make the trip even if he did not pick up any electoral votes from doing so.
When Democratic national committeeman John Anson Ford of California met with Governor Stevenson at the Democratic conference the previous week in Denver, both men had recalled a previous meeting in Springfield, after Mr. Ford had led a battle at the convention for Senator Estes Kefauver, in which Mr. Ford had asked the Governor whether a story was true that he had visited President Lincoln's home in Springfield and sat in his chair. The Governor had responded that it was true, that he sat there, turned out the light and meditated for about an hour, saying that when a man was confronted with an overwhelming responsibility, he gained comfort in realizing that someone else faced a similar situation, and in realizing that President Lincoln had relied on some power other than his own to help bear it.
The most important decision made at the Denver meeting between Governor Stevenson and the Democratic leaders from eleven Western states had regarded Senator Estes Kefauver, with the Governor promising to champion the Senator's liberal principles and to do all he could to enact them into law.
Marquis Childs tells of General Eisenhower, in his farm policy speech the prior Saturday, having sought to appeal to the farmers in a way which Governor Dewey had neglected, winding up losing by narrow margins to the President in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio, costing him the election—actually, had he carried all four states, casting the election into the House, for still being two electoral votes shy of a majority, the question then becoming whether it would have been decided, as presumably it would have been under the Constitution's mandate, per the Twelfth Amendment, that an "immediate" vote take place should the electoral college fail to reach a majority, by the outgoing Republican House, with 29 of the 48 state delegations controlled by Republican majorities, or by the incoming Democratic House, with 26 Democratic-majority delegations, the Congress being responsible, per Article II, Section 1, for determining the date on which the electors meet to vote, that being determined prior to the election by the sitting Congress, both houses having been Republican in 1948.
The General had gone beyond the meaningless Republican platform on farm policy and indicated that he favored full price supports rather than 90 percent parity and also extension of supports to perishable farm products not presently covered. The farmers might not have appreciated the General suggesting that they had been tricked in 1948 by falling grain prices manipulated by the Democrats, implying that they were too simple-minded to have understood the maneuver. But by taking a positive stand, he had foiled the Stevenson strategists who believed that he would continue to attack the Administration, seeking to loop the Governor into its legacy.
At the same time, many of the General's advisers warned him that while trying to appeal to Democrats and independents, he could not alienate the Old Guard.
Meanwhile, Governor Stevenson promised much the same thing to the farmers, and in his Denver speech, had sounded much as the General might have sounded had he decided to cast off the weights of his divided party, the Governor saying that he did not intend to "put on a show of politics as usual". He indicated that honesty was the best policy and that the people wanted to know about him and his views. Mr. Childs views that stand as Lincolnesque, as was his injection of humor into his speeches, though as controversial as had been the same tendency of Mr. Lincoln, winding up, however, one of the elements of his popularity.
Robert C. Ruark tells of the American Medical Association's Journal being upset about the effect of television violence on the moral and mental health of the nation's young. He finds it undoubtedly true but believes that the subject matter of the programs did not bend the character of the young one way or the other in most cases, as the youthful brain was fastened to violence from a very young age, regardless of exposure to media presentations. He finds that Grimm's fairy tales and Bulfinch's mythology were every bit as horrible as some of the programming on television.
He believes that the sin of radio, television and the comic book was that they turned children into escapists before they actually had anything to escape, and replaced active play with vicarious play.
He noticed that some parents used television as a purposeful disciplinarian, enabling the children to watch on condition that they performed certain desirable, socially utilitarian tasks.
Yet, he believes that the children
of his youth were just as given to reading trash behind the barn,
while being out in the yard and engaging in devilish designs
A letter from a teacher of a Bible class at the Glenwood ARP Church indicates that she had, for many years, thoroughly enjoyed the editorials within the newspaper, but wanted to challenge the September 5 editorial which had been addressed as an answer to a letter from the Men's Bible Class of Hawthorne Lane Methodist Church seeking the religious backgrounds of the candidates, indicating in response that the particular religious views of the candidates were none of the newspaper's business. She begs to differ, asserting that it was quite important for someone running for the presidency to have Christian ideals, and that it was the business of sincere Christians to determine whether they did. She believes that if Christians were not concerned that General Eisenhower was not affiliated with a Christian church, it had to be the result of callous indifference to the country's spiritual welfare. She doubts that any candidate not affiliated with a Christian church could, as a previous letter writer had indicated, lead the country out of the mess it was in and place it where it should be.
A letter writer replies to a letter of September 5 in which the writer had indicated that her family's dog, Duke, had been a godsend to the family while the father was in the hospital. This writer says that he knew that there were a lot of different species of dogs and that he was sorry for the writer whose father was in the hospital, causing her to have to live alone with her best friend, Duke. He says that he had owned dogs but had never regarded them as his best friend, and "if dogs were ever man's best friend it was when Adam was in the Garden of Eden, with Eve, and there were no other men on earth to be his best friend. Consequently he had to choose the dog."
Are you trying to suggest that Eve
was a dog?
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that sometime in 1951, columnist Erich Brandeis had said that the people not only wanted to know what was wrong with the party in power but also what the party which wanted to come into power was going to do and how they would go about doing it. She believes that an accurate statement and that the Republicans had not had any recipe for effecting change when they were last in office, that they would be embarrassed, if they were to win in November, to find that some of their own party members had been involved in the "mess" in Washington. She suggests that while President Truman might not have been the best President the country ever had, he was also not the worst, and that the Democrats presently had a fine nominee, with ability and integrity.
A letter writer from Concord tells of the dog lover who was being promoted for the gubernatorial nomination in 1956 having been a good friend, who had loaned him over $100 to pay for his hospital bill several years earlier. He wished all of his friends to know that he was not the person of the same name from Lincoln County who had recently stated in a letter to the editor that he would not vote for the dog lover for Governor in 1956—the same writer who writes above anent Eve having been a dog. He says that he would definitely vote for him, his "long-time friend". His entire letter is written in capital letters—apparently so that dogs could read it without squinting.
A letter writer from Kings Mountain expresses doubt that General Eisenhower could clean up the mess in Washington when FDR and President Truman had been unable in 20 years to clean up the mess left behind by President Hoover. He says that he would vote his way and not the way of someone else, and, at age 70, did not intend to get off a donkey's back and straddle an elephant. He urges loyalty to Democrats.
A letter from an Army private in
Korea indicates that he would appreciate it if the newspaper would
put his address in the letters column so that some girls
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