The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 19, 1953
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 12 South Koreans and a Turk had been freed this date by the Communists, with some of the South Korean prisoners having said they were held against their will, contradicting the Communists who claimed that all 13 repatriated prisoners had originally refused repatriation but had changed their minds. No Americans were among the 13, but South Koreans in the group said that they had seen some Americans at Kaesong in a special facility for about 320 allied prisoners whom the Communists claimed had refused repatriation, with the Communists having said that about 20 of those had been non-Koreans, not specifying whether any were Americans. It was the first delivery of such allied prisoners whom the Communists claimed had changed their minds. One returned South Korean soldier said that he had seen about 400 such prisoners at Kaesong, including Americans, and that most were men who were being forcibly detained, while there had been some who had elected not to repatriate. He said that the Communists had told the allies that he had refused repatriation, but that the actual reason was because he was "uncooperative". The U.N. Command had returned 15 Communist prisoners who had changed their minds about repatriation.
The President was returning from his six-week vacation in Colorado this date and was preparing for a series of talks on Administration policy for the ensuing month in various parts of the country. He would make a major, nationally televised and radio broadcast political speech on Monday in Boston Garden at a Republican rally and would make speeches also in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas, with a farm policy speech likely on October 15 before the Future Farmers of America in Kansas City.
In Chicago, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois said this date that the President was rapidly cleaning up a "scandalous mess" which the Democrats had left "studded with Communists", calling the Truman Administration "one of the most riotous, reckless, scandalous Administrations in the history of the republic", his way of replying to statements made by Adlai Stevenson and former President Truman earlier in the week at the Democratic meeting in Chicago. (Sounds like that refrain in the 2016 presidential campaign regarding "draining the swamp", which, during the last four years, has become swampier than at any time in the entire history of the country, the bottom becoming so foggy that it is no longer visible for the fact of obscurantism having been the theme of the outgoing Administration, mercifully for the country finally retired by the voters this week to an unceremonious end, though not yet recognized as an incident of reality by the Fearless Leader and his cult followers, still practicing the standard program of alternative fact-spin to the point of strait-jacketed lunacy. Look on the bright side, Trumpies, you can now don white robes and follow your Leader into the mountains where he can daily brainwash you at little rallies, and you can brainwash each other further by convincing yourselves that everybody around you believes, just as you, that he is the greatest Leader since Abraham Lincoln or Jesus Christ, as you will, and that the 2020 election was "stolen" because no one showed up at the opposition's speeches while the great multitudes came to partake of the Koolaid at the Leader's pep rallies—or, you can cast your little red hats upon the waters and begin to realize that you were sold a bunch of crazy talk and gibberish made up on the spot, bearing little or no resemblance to facts, for the last five years, and begin to wean yourselves from that craziness and return to reality. The choice is yours; no one will force you, as we live in America, where anyone can believe anything they damn well please, and, within certain limits, can say anything they damn well please, though that does not necessarily mean that what is believed and said is based on fact or reason. Suit yourselves, but know that people will tend to make an appraisal of you in time by the ideas and words you express and the reasonableness with which you express those ideas and words.) Earlier in the Republican meeting, Secretary of Interior Douglas McKay told a gathering of women and Republican state chairmen that the Federal Government had no "divine right" to develop the nation's power resources and that the Administration would provide states and local communities a voice in such projects.
In Augusta, Wisc., Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson told farmers this date that he had not become the Secretary to sit idly by wringing his hands while letting the farmers be squeezed by lower farm prices and high fixed costs. Addressing the National Plowing Contest, he said that the Administration would do everything in its power to enhance farm prices during the current fiscal year, using existing law. He was replying to Democratic criticism voiced at the Chicago meeting earlier in the week.
Talk is cheap, bud. Put your shoulder to the plough and demonstrate that you are capable of handling the job. Shut up and go to work. Go milk the cow and hoe the row.
Congress was working on its second trillion dollars in appropriations during the previous 82 years. Since 1872, when the House Appropriations Committee began keeping yearly statistics on appropriations, Congress had appropriated 1.162 trillion dollars, more than half of which was for the military and more than half of which had been appropriated during the previous decade. The all-time high had been 147 billion dollars, appropriated during the first year of U.S. participation in World War II, 1942. Only once during the previous decade had annual appropriations exceeded 100 billion dollars, that having been 101 billion in 1951, after the start of the Korean War in mid-1950. In 1908, appropriations exceeded a billion dollars for the first time, and had never dropped below that mark since, reaching 18.8 billion dollars in 1917 and 27 billion in 1918, coincident with the participation of the U.S. in World War I, dropping to 6.4 billion in 1919 after the November 11, 1918 Armistice. It remained relatively low until 1939, at the outset of World War II on September 1, when appropriations reached 11.4 billion, climbing to 57.7 billion in 1941, then to 147 billion in 1942, followed by 114.5 billion in 1943, dropping precipitously further to 67 and 69.8 billion, respectively, in 1944 and 1945. Appropriations dramatically had dropped off in 1946, to 35.7 billion, where they remained more or less until rising steeply in 1951 and then dropping somewhat to 86 billion in 1952, and then to 54.5 billion during 1953.
Maj. General Lewis Hershey, director of Selective Service, had said in a CBS radio interview the previous night that he expected "material increases" after the start of the 1954-55 fiscal year in the draft, perhaps to as many as 50,000 to 60,000 men being called up each month. The present rate, he said, was about 23,000 draftees per month, probably to be maintained through the following June 30. General Hershey said that the number of men completing two-year tours of duty would create the new need.
In New York, Dr. Marek Korowicz, a Polish diplomat who was seeking political asylum in the U.S., had eluded armed guards and slipped out of his midtown hotel to telephone an old friend from the Polish underground, thereby escaping Poland's Communist-dominated U.N. delegation. He sent identical letters to the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, saying that he could not work with two other members of the delegation, who did not in any way represent the people of Poland, but served only the Soviet regime in Poland. He was the author of about 20 books and a former professor of international law at the University of Kraków. He said he had only distant relatives in Poland and therefore did not fear reprisal for his actions. He said he had been deeply moved by a speech two days earlier by Secretary of State Dulles to the General Assembly, just starting its present 90-day session. Dr. Korowicz was the fourth Polish national to flee to the West during the previous six months, the others having been two Polish jet pilots who flew their planes to West Germany, and a Polish interpreter in Korea, the latter of whom had only recently sought political asylum.
In Charleston, S.C., the Coast Guard said this date that five survivors of a missing B-29 weather reconnaissance plane had been rescued from life rafts in the Atlantic Ocean about 200 miles east of Savannah, Ga., and that rescue operations were still underway. The plane had gone down in stormy weather during a weather reconnaissance mission between Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah and Bermuda.
Ann Sawyer of The News, as further set forth in an editorial below, describes the conditions of mental patients being housed in the Mecklenburg County jail, stressing the story of a young woman, 24, who was held there for three days, being combative towards staff and refusing to eat that which was provided to her. She had not assaulted anyone or violated any law, but the court had declared her insane. Like all such persons, her initial custody was consigned to the county jail. It was this particular person's third institutionalization. Ms. Sawyer provides statistics on those who were thus institutionalized, as further explored in the editorial below. The patients were checked by a staff about every 20 minutes and were placed in private cells when they were "real rough" and sometimes handcuffed, but were placed with other prisoners when not deemed violent. The young woman in question had become destructive and so her cell was stripped bare of all furnishings and she was housed alone. When the doctor left her, she had babbled curses at him, and he shook his head helplessly.
An organized effort was being made to solve the problem of placing the mental patients in the jail, undertaken by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Ministerial Association, working in conjunction with the Medical Society, the Mental Hygiene Clinic and local hospitals. The need had been recognized in 1940 at the time Charlotte Memorial Hospital had been built, and it was hoped then that a psychiatric unit would be established, but the hospital administrator informed that they had never been able to obtain personnel for the unit, leaving the county jail as the only repository for the initial intake of patients, awaiting transfer to a state institution. The chairman of the civic affairs committee of the Ministerial Association said that it would probably be several months before the problem was permanently solved.
On the editorial page, "Support Grows for Judge Parker" indicates that editorial support from around the nation, including from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the New York World-Telegram and the Wall Street Journal, from each of which it quotes, was accumulating for appointment by the President of Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge John J. Parker to replace deceased Chief Justice Fred Vinson, who had died on September 8. It urges that the President could do no better than to appoint Judge Parker to the position.
Of course, the President, very shortly, would appoint Governor Earl Warren, who had been regarded all along as the leading candidate for the position. Among those mentioned, no one could be conceived of having done a better job during his tenure, which was supposed to last, by his retirement in June, 1968, only 15 years, but wound up lasting longer because of the Strom Thurmond-led filibuster of President Johnson's appointed replacement, the elevation of Justice Abe Fortas, and the appointment of Federal Judge Homer Thornberry of Texas, winding up giving President Nixon his first appointment, that of Judge Warren Burger to become Chief in 1969, followed by the resignation of Justice Fortas, disgusted with the process, providing President Nixon with his second appointment, eventually being Federal Judge Harry Blackmun, after his first two successive appointees to the position, Federal Judges Clement Haynesworth and Harold Carswell, were each defeated, primarily based on their judicial records which appeared sympathetic to racial segregation, a problem which had also beset the 1930 nomination by President Hoover of Judge Parker to the Supreme Court, and, no doubt, was why he was passed over by President Eisenhower in 1953 and subsequently, when the President made four other appointments during his eight years in office, which included John Harlan, William Brennan, Charles Whittaker and Potter Stewart.
"Let's Get Them out of Jail" indicates that since the beginning of the year, 113 mental patients had been put in jail in Mecklenburg County, an average of one every 54 hours, slightly more than half of whom remained there for one to five days, with the remainder for longer periods, ranging up to several months, persons of both races and sexes and of all age groups. Reporter Ann Sawyer, as indicated on the front page, had underscored the failure of the state to provide adequate facilities for its feeble-minded children and mentally ill adults, with there being an absence of local facilities for their temporary custodial care pending admission to a State institution.
The jail physician had commented that despite Charlotte being a church-going city, it still put its sick people in jail.
The piece urges voting for the 22 million dollar bond issue on the ballot on October 3, which would provide enough money for two new 1,200-bed hospitals for feeble-minded children, and extensive renovation and expansion of four such hospitals for adults. It comments that since the state had been shocked out of its apathy by the 1942 report of the late Tom Jimison, once a reporter for The News, after his participant-observer self-admission to the mental hospital at Morganton for a year, a great amount of improvement had been made to facilities and treatment for the mentally ill within the state, that the bond proposal would not complete the job but would provide the state a system of mental institutions which would fill most of the needs at the current time.
"The Reds Learn a Valuable Lesson" finds that the current prison agitation and rioting among the prisoners in Korea who were not desirous of repatriation to their Communist homelands was a salutary lesson to the Communists, who had stimulated violent riots in the U.N. prison compounds during the course of the war to try to generate propaganda regarding alleged mistreatment of Communist prisoners. The first two or three such riots had worked to that end, until U.N. commanders developed effective counter-measures to prevent such uprisings.
Now, the prisoners transported to the custody temporarily of Indian troops in the demilitarized zone for 90 days, permitting the Communists during that time to try to talk them into returning to their homelands, had rebelled against their former Communist masters, taunting and throwing stones at Communist observers. It finds that both the Indian guards and the Communist observers could now report that Russian and Chinese Communism did not look so good to those who had escaped it and had a taste of the free world in the meantime.
"Stephenson's Fate a Warning for Others" indicates that Warren L. Stephenson, who had acknowledged to House investigators that he had sought to obtain $2,000 per month as a fee from a California manufacturing firm for exertion of influence on policy desired by that firm, had been removed from his positions within the Republican Party, including being a member of the RNC committee for the District of Columbia and the district finance committee, as well as being replaced as secretary of the Republican Club of the district. He had also lost his special White House pass which had once entitled him to be a part of the planning of the Eisenhower inauguration.
The piece finds it fitting punishment as a way to deter others from likewise trying to peddle influence, and believes it reassuring that the new Administration was not tolerating influence peddling, which had been a subject of Congressional investigation in the Truman Administration.
A piece from the Baltimore Evening Sun, titled "Satellite Humor", tells of one of the most popular anecdotes in Eastern Europe having derived from Czechoslovakia, involving a man living next door to a brick factory, such that every day when he rode to work, he asked himself why none of the bricks were being used to rebuild the town, a large part of which was still in need of repair after the war. One day he had asked the foreman of the factory why the bricks were not being used on the town, to which the reply was that the bricks were for export to Rumania in return for wheat, at which the man said that at least they could be assured, therefore, of eating better. But the foreman replied that the wheat was being transshipped to Poland, in return for which Czechoslovakia was receiving hides. The man said that they could use more leather for shoes, to which the foreman replied that the shoes would go to Russia, for which Czechoslovakia received in return charcoal, which was used, in turn, to fire the bricks.
Drew Pearson publishes a letter from a returning prisoner of war, Capt. Roger C. White of Monroe, La., commander of Company C, 38th Infantry, 2nd Division, who was just released after 27 months in a Korean prison camp in a little village on the Yalu River. He had also served two years in a Nazi prison camp during World War II, before liberation in 1945. He asks Mr. Pearson in the letter to consider publishing it. Mr. Pearson finds it worthwhile enough to do so. In it, Capt. White indicates that he had enclosed a check for $500 to be contributed to CARE, the private children's fund to feed and clothe children overseas, stimulated to do so by seeing the starving children of Korea during his captivity and immediately after his release. He indicates that millions of Koreans had died during the war, and among them had been 300,000 children, that there were presently hundreds of thousands barely staying alive. After eating a hearty steak and ice cream shortly after his release, he had wandered the streets and had seen an emaciated girl of about seven years of age, accompanied by her little baby sister or brother strapped to her back, digging in a garbage can for food. It was then that he decided to provide his contribution to CARE.
Mr. Pearson notes that $500 was a lot of money for a soldier to spend out of his meager pay, and hopes that others would follow Captain White's example.
Stewart Alsop indicates that the President and his chief advisers had decided to trust the people with the hard underlying facts of the national situation in the nuclear age. They had not yet firmly decided on what would be revealed in "Operation Candor", a series of reports to be broadcast weekly between October 4 and November 15 by various members of the Administration, starting and ending with an address by the President. There had been disagreement initially on what should be revealed, though there was agreement that it was an illusion to suppose that simple numerical superiority in atomic and hydrogen bombs were for the country any type of security and that the people needed to be apprised of that fact. The second theme was that the Soviets would soon have enough air-atomic capability to inflict a crippling surprise attack on the country. The disagreement was in the details.
Those familiar with the project found its weakness to be that after those first two themes would be broadly treated, it would trail off into some meaningless reassurances that the U.S. would make more and better bombs than the Soviets. It would not be enough merely candidly to state the facts, but a firm national policy for dealing with those facts had to be established, for instance on the national investment necessary for an effective air defense against atomic attack, in turn requiring decisions in the Administration regarding from whence the necessary revenue for such a defense program would derive. There was also the necessity of determining whether it was worth attempting further negotiation with the Russians on control of new weapons. Those decisions were difficult, made the more complicated by the approaching October 4 initiation date for the program. But if those decisions were not made in advance, the program would likely degenerate into a meaningless seminar in which the facts would be obscured and the basic issues fudged.
On balance, however, "Operation Candor", concludes Mr. Alsop, appeared to be headed in the right direction to give the American people the facts and thereby forcing the Administration leaders to face the meaning of those facts and to make the necessary decisions which the facts would demand, a long delayed and disregarded process.
Parenthetically, it might be very wise for President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect Harris, both of whom we congratulate on their victory in 2020, to have such an "Operation Candor", ready to move into place on January 20, to apprise the people of the candid facts regarding the coronavirus pandemic and the new Administration's policy with regard to ameliorating it, especially given the great divide in the country with respect to appreciation for its danger and the continuing cavalier approach to both social distancing and the wearing of masks by a large segment of the population, ultimately the cause of its continued spread among all of us, with proper stress on individual responsibility and the notion that government safeguards are for the benefit of all, not some conspiracy to deprive people of their basic rights.
We realize fully, given the state of ignorance and disregard for basic science which is evident throughout a large subset of the population, most evident among those who supported the outgoing Administration and its Fearless Leader, that such a task will be formidable, without the inevitable backlash, similar to that which is seen in a junior high school setting among early adolescents when discipline for their own good in the form of certain basic rules of interpersonal conduct are put forth, even if in purely advisory fashion with minor demerits imposed for infraction.
But with the bully pulpit of the White House, a cooperative Democratic House, and, hopefully, dependent on the two outstanding critical Senate seats at stake on January 5 in Georgia, a tied Senate, with organizational control to the Democrats, order in the country might be imposed through the states by the simple expedient of funding or not for critical state programs, depending on the desirable level of cooperation to be had by all of the states, whether they happen to be organized by Republican administrations and legislatures or by Democratic ones. As we know, the power of the purse can be a powerful tool to effect desired state policy. It would be wise to use it in that manner to save potentially hundreds of thousands of lives, which yet could be lost to the pandemic if not arrested very soon. Unfortunately, the current Administration, with its vacuum of leadership at the top, has done little or nothing to bring about that national cohesive compliance in an effective manner. If there was ever a need for cohesion among the states in any policy, it is this one, as diseases do not respect any boundaries, state, national, international, or interpersonal, if not governed by basic rational conduct on the part of individuals.
The new Administration, from which we have hope of great things occurring for the first time in four years, will have certainly the goodwill of the great majority of the population in its initial stages, just as FDR did at the start of the New Deal in 1933. Only if there is sloth in this first major test of its ability to govern effectively will that goodwill diminish. If the results produce reasonable catharsis for a beset population, in both health and the pandemic's concomitant negative economic impact, that majority will expand into receptiveness for all other policies which the Administration will put forward over the next four years. The reaction to the pandemic will have its built-in need for cooperation if approached correctly, not as schoolmasters imposing iron disciplinary will like prison wardens, or drunken sailors, as the current Administration has been more apt to do, but rather taking a middle approach which uses that bully pulpit to ingratiate goodwill and obtain thereby desirable conduct, in part through the provision or withholding of aid to the states in other areas unrelated directly to health, dependent on their willingness to cooperate, to establish the program determined to be best for compliance conducive to health.
Obviously, the country has the means at present for dissemination of policy in ways which it did not have in 1953, then limited to four major television and radio networks. But in that earlier time, because of that limitation, there were also limited means by which the population obtained its information, magazines, newspapers, radio, television and the less reliable word of mouth, obviously not the case any longer and for several decades, since the advent first of cable television and then the internet. Thus, it is going to be necessary to coordinate that information dissemination to ensure that there is relative cohesion, delivering a consistent and coordinated program through which the pandemic will be attacked, woefully lacking in the leaderless current Administration, which has been all over the place on the pandemic since February, 2020, with the Fearless Leader mainly engaged in covering his tracks for purely political reasons.
We wish the new Administration coming to office on January 20 Godspeed, as we all will benefit from new and effective leadership exercised from the top, for a refreshing change.
The necessity to get a grip on this disease and of responsible, informed, cohering communication of how best to ward it off is a matter of national survival at this point, as well as individual survival, as much or even more so than was the case during the Cold War, of which no one would need educate President-elect Biden, who served in the Senate from 1973 through 2009, before becoming Vice-President for eight years. A similar, coordinated effort in the country will need to be undertaken to get everyone on the same page and rowing together down the same river, while inducing those trying to row upriver, against the mighty current which is nature's force, to reflect and refrain.
Every one of us must do our fair share or else face continued disaster as individuals and as a country. It is quite okay, if you are in line at the supermarket or elsewhere, and are encountered by someone who is not respecting social distancing, to remind, gently and politely, that person, with smiling eyes above the mask and a friendly wave, not done as if warding off Count Dracula with the cross, with words to the effect, "I think they want us to remain six feet apart." All of us remember doing something of the sort when some of our fellow children in school misbehaved, without being unduly offensive in the process. Through use of that common sense approach, and, hopefully, with good graces, goodwill, and fair winds in store, every road will rise to meet us as a nation.
To those who are very disappointed, and especially to those who are bitterly disappointed and charging fraud at the polls and the like, when the smoke clears, you will begin to realize that not only is not all lost, not only is there no realistic fear of "socialism" overtaking the country, but that democracy in its true sense, unlike four years ago when the popular vote winner was deprived of the Presidency by the fact of the anachronistic electoral college, has prevailed, with full and accurate counts of the votes of everyone who cast their ballots timely and appropriately having occurred, without any hint or evidence of any election irregularities or artifice on any scale which would affect the outcome in any state, indeed, probably less so than in any election in our history, for the very reason that voting was legally made relatively easy in most states in this election of elections, taking place amid a national pandemic causing the deaths of some 240,000 Americans—approaching the number of Americans who lost their lives during nearly four years of World War II. Things will get better if we let them.
It will need to start with substantive information dissemination, which President-elect Biden has promised to begin next Monday with the appointment of a committee of experts and scientists to study the coronavirus and its social impact, as well as its economic impact, and the best methods by which to get it under control finally, which he has also promised will result in a program which can be implemented, beginning immediately on January 20. In the meantime, we all need to start using our basic common sense and stop gathering, maskless, without social distancing, no matter what the occasion or cause, be it protest or celebration or sporting event. We are, quite naturally, social beings, and to be forced by the necessity of health into a state of virtual isolation is not in accord with our normal state. But with recognition that it is only temporary, just as were the sacrifices imposed for much longer periods during World War II and during the Cold War, we shall get through it together. In those earlier times, there was no internet, personal computers, and other means of approaching both business and sociability outside of direct, daily interpersonal contact, such as we have now.
It is always worth the effort to go back and read some things from the past, with realization as to how people of earlier generations got through these various challenges to their individual and collective survival. Perhaps, start with Daniel Boorstin's The Image, and proceed to other things, perhaps Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, maybe even taking the time to peruse, for its flavor, the first newspaper ever published in America, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, from Boston in September, 1690, as referenced by Mr. Boorstin, and skip nuts on the radio and on the television, who will only waste your time selling you products which will prove utterly useless to your basic survival.
Voting is fundamental to our democracy and record numbers of our citizens have cast their ballots, whether in person, by drop-off or by mail, during the past 4 to 6 weeks. The decision is in as of Tuesday, and no one has voted illegally, after the deadlines imposed by each state, with every vote still being counted, despite the election having been called by the networks and other major news organizations based on the relative population of votes known still to be outstanding in each critical state. Now, we must get on with the process of trying to get control of the disease besetting us, and once done, then and only then return to normalcy. Just as when we were little and, provided we had responsible parents, were taught not to open gifts before the appointed date for doing so, as that spoiled the surprise and the element of celebration of the particular occasion for which the gift was being given, we cannot return to normalcy ahead of schedule, before the disease is under control. An effective and safe vaccine will be available soon enough, after the scientists and medical personnel have tested it and made sure of its effectiveness and safety for all of us. In the meantime, practice common sense and, by example, thereby lead others to practice common sense as well. Guns will not protect you and your family from the coronavirus. It creeps into your home without being seen or heard, if you let it in by being rebellious to mask-wearing and social distancing on the notion that it is a Gov'ment conspiracy. It isn't.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, indicates that numerous Republicans were positioning themselves for Congressional contests on the belief that 1954 would be a Republican year—which it would not be.
In the Illinois Senate race, for example, in which incumbent Senator Paul Douglas was up for re-election, Representative Fred Busbey, a favorite of the Chicago Tribune regarding the issue of Communism, and Representative Harold Velde, HUAC chairman, were Senate hopefuls. The latter, however, was from Pekin, Ill., the same hometown as the other Senator, Everett Dirksen, and so would likely not be the choice for the other seat.
The Republican high command in Washington wanted Governor William Stratton, who had succeeded Adlai Stevenson after defeating the Democratic Lieutenant Governor Sherwood Dixon in the 1952 election. Governor Stratton had been, prior to Pearl Harbor, an America Firster who had loaned his franking privilege to Nazi propagandist George Sylvester Viereck, who had used it to send out thousands of propaganda speeches against Britain and the interventionist cause. But Mr. Stratton had managed during the gubernatorial race the prior year to put that past behind him. As Governor, he had vetoed a bill which would have provided for a system of loyalty investigation and surveillance in Illinois, one which Governor Stevenson had previously vetoed. He was also credited with standing up to the trucking lobby, and had, with the help of the Republican Legislature, obtained passage of a reapportionment bill which had long been sought.
There were also rumors that Senator Dirksen would accept a high Federal appointment, perhaps as Secretary of Labor, which would open the opportunity for Governor Stratton to resign and be appointed to the vacancy, giving him a headstart for the Senate election. Doubters, however, believed that he would be a neo-isolationist, opposing most of the President's foreign policy. That latter bloc was showing increasing power and coherence in Congress, with the apparent intention of taking over direction of party policy. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana was initiating a move which would provide committee chairmen in the Senate working control of the Republican policy committee, and if it succeeded, the srength of the policy position of the Senators opposed to the President's policy would be measurably increased. Senate Majority Leader William Knowland of California, who had consistently supported a policy of cooperation with allies in both Europe and Asia, would then be left in a lonely state.
Robert C. Ruark, in Tangier, tells of the African free port city and its former postwar Arabian Nights quality having largely disappeared through the influx of money. It was an internationalized zone, "one of the last few havens for ruffians and bravos with an ax to grind against any throat that came along." After the war, some had entered the smuggling business, a few had attempted piracy, while others worked in drug trafficking and still others, in war surplus, most of which appeared destined for Iron Curtain countries. But now, there were increasing numbers of banks, skating rinks, bowling alleys, new, modern hotels, new apartments, more bars, neon lights, shops full of different types of goods, huge cars, nicely dressed women, traffic jams, tea-dances, and American clubs. There were about a hundred banks for a relatively small population, and the business district had expanded into the mountain wilderness. The great influx of money had killed off the freebooting in large part. The town had been sterilized as Mr. Ruark had once known it and there was very little opportunity at present, either illegally or legally, because those who had established themselves had cornered the real estate and commerce markets. There were millionaires present who had arrived with only a small amount of money, one step ahead of the law as recently as six years earlier.
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