The Charlotte News
Tuesday, October 26, 1954
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles had turned his attention to the problem of Communist threats to free Asia, after firmly ruling out new talks with Russia regarding the future of West Germany. He arranged to join the President and the rest of the National Security Council in a special meeting at the White House, the subject matter of which was secret, but informants had indicated would probably deal with the Communist threats against Southern Indo-China and Formosa, as well as other Asiatic trouble spots. At the first ever televised and radio broadcast Cabinet meeting the previous night, Secretary Dulles had told the President and the Cabinet that Russia's drive to divide Western Europe's anti-Communist nations would fail, and also indicated swift rejection by the U.S., Britain and France of Russia's formal bid for a new round of conferences aimed at uniting Germany and arranging nationwide elections on Soviet terms. He said that he hoped that now that they had created the basis for a strong and solid Western Europe, with the admission of West Germany to NATO and its rearmament approved, there could be a new basis for discussions which did not exist at present. He had also forecast swift ratification of the military agreements with West Germany by France, which had previously killed ratification of the previous European Defense Community unified army concept.
Samuel Lubell, in another of his series of articles on the midterm elections, indicates that nearly every national election was dominated by some great issue which raged in the country and which, when finally resolved, shaped the national trend which determined the outcome. During the 1952 presidential election, the main conflict had been the clash between the desires of voters to see the end of the Korean War and their fears that a Republican victory would produce another "Hoover depression". Wherever one had gone two years earlier, angers and frustrations over Korea were observed to be stronger than the dread of economic collapse, foreshadowing the outcome. In the present campaign, no single issue was being put forth with such force or fury. Mr. Lubell had encountered a great deal of profanity among voters two years earlier, which was now absent for the most part, except among farmers, whose anger was directed at Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, finding otherwise many voters having given little thought to the election. Despite that apathy, he had found one issue, the economic adjustment since the end of the Korean War, to be brought up in every community he examined. Most indicated that while some unemployment and lower farm prices would be acceptable as part of the price of peace, others believed that even a mild economic downturn was reason for another change in Congressional leadership. He found that the side people took usually reflected their own personal economic status, while occasionally there were exceptions. One woman, whom he found digging up potatoes, after she and her husband had been forced to give up dairy farming and he had gone to work as a truck driver, had told him that she strongly still supported the President and despised President Truman for leaving "all that debt and mess" behind, that the President could not change everything at once and that the country would have to pay a hard price before things would be straightened out. Across the road, another wife of a farmer said that she would be ready to vote for the President again, but that she and her son were voting Democratic in 1954 because milk prices, while having to come down some, had gone down too far. The economic adjustment debate appeared to be running against the Republicans, losing part of their voting strength from 1952. Yet, Mr. Lubell had found that there were more contented than disgruntled people in the country.
The White House said this date that the President would like to make an 11th hour campaign swing through critical states, being urged by some Republican leaders, but had made no final decision on the matter. In his televised and radio broadcast Cabinet meeting the previous night, he had remarked that unemployment had dropped by 40,000 to a new total of 2.7 million, below three million for the first time during the year, that being a major issue in key industrial states during the midterm elections. White House press secretary James Hagerty said that a decision on whether to make such a campaign swing, with the elections a week away, would be made within one or two days.
Senator McCarthy this date charged Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, who had been chairman of the six-Senator select committee which unanimously recommended that the full Senate censure Senator McCarthy, along with two other unnamed members of the committee, believed to be vice-chairman Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado and Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, with having a prejudice against the Senator. He made the charge in a letter sent to Senator Watkins, indicating that the three had not disclosed to Vice-President Nixon that bias before the latter had appointed them to the committee—actually only a formal appointment as the decision on membership had been made by the Democratic and Republican leadership in the Senate, with those recommendations then passed to the Vice-President. It was the first time Senator McCarthy had accused members of the committee of having a bias, though he had previously mentioned that he believed Senators Watkins, Johnson and Ervin to be against him. Senator Watkins declined comment, saying that it was improper for him to argue the matter before the full Senate had an opportunity to consider the select committee's official report.
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index had dropped to 114.7 percent of the 1947-49 average, a decline of three-tenths of one percent, its lowest level since the previous April. The decline was attributed principally to lower prices for most foods, primarily fresh fruits and vegetables, coffee and eggs. The cost of living index was four-tenths of one percent lower than a year earlier and six-tenths of a percent below the October, 1953 record of 115.4.
In Salerno, Italy, it was reported that rainstorms and roaring landslides had ravaged the ten miles of coastline between Salerno and Amalfi, killing more than 150 Italians and leaving scores missing or buried beneath crumbled homes in a dozen cities and towns. At least 62 bodies had been found in the mud-choked streets of Salerno, which had barely recovered from the World War II battle ensuing when Allied troops had stormed the Italian mainland. Up to 100 in the city remained missing, but most of those were believed to be safe. No foreign casualties had been reported thus far, as almost all of the tourists who flocked to the region during the summer months had gone home.
In Trieste, Italy took over the city this date in a celebration marking the end of nine years of occupation by the U.S. and Britain, with wind and rain washing out a series of ceremonies scheduled for the formal change of command. Nevertheless, a cheering throng of citizens of the city broke through police barricades when Italian Army, Navy and Air Force units marched into the city for the first time since World War II.
In Nice, France, it was reported that airplane wreckage had been sighted high in the French Alps, as part of the hunt this date for a missing U.S. Air Force C-47 transport, but helicopter crewmen who had investigated that site had found it to be the weathered remains of a smaller plane. The plane had disappeared during a flight on Sunday from Rome to its base in Manston, England. An extensive search continued.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that at a meeting in Charlotte of the Parks Committee of the State Board of Conservation & Development, members had learned this date that it would cost more than a million dollars to bring state parks up to the level of Morrow Mountain and Hanging Rock, both considered the finest examples of the state's parks. The superintendent of State Parks had submitted a report calling for 1.3 million dollars in improvements to the remaining state parks to bring them up to that standard, with the largest single earmarks having been more than $44,000 for Crabtree Park and $24,000 for Reedy Park, both near Raleigh and Durham. The Committee during the morning was determining whether to suggest that more parks be brought into the system or whether to delay that action until permanent improvements could be made to the existing parks.
In Charlotte, a fireman from Kannapolis was driving by the Southern States Fairgrounds this date when he noticed what he believed to be smoke emanating from the windows of one of the permanent buildings and immediately turned in a fire alarm, prompting trucks from two nearby stations to respond. But before the trucks arrived, two County police officers arrived on the scene and realized that the smoke was actually insecticide fog and turned back the firemen.
On the editorial page, "The United Nations Is the World's Best Hope for Peace and Security" indicates that it was nine years earlier during the week that the U.N. had come into legal existence, in a time when hope for international brotherhood "flickered bravely in the postwar darkness." In January, 1946, the U.N. had met in London and the international picture began to look brighter for a time, until the Persian delegation denounced the Soviet military intervention in Azerbaijan and demanded an investigation, prompting denunciation by the Soviets of the British armed intervention in Greece and Java, eventually prompting the Soviets, at a subsequent meeting in New York, to walk out of the U.N. Assembly based on the Persian question. At that point, the honeymoon was over for the U.N. and the trouble had begun.
In nine years, the U.N. had not solved all of the world's problems, as there remained great tension amid active nuclear testing by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and there were hot wars still in remote corners of the world. But the U.N. had also not failed completely and remained in a state of evolution. Armed conflict had been halted in many major trouble spots and, through the efforts of the Security Council, at least four little wars had been stopped before they had become big ones, including controversies between India and Pakistan, Indonesia and the Netherlands, Israeli and Arab groups, and border incidents in Greece. In Korea, military units from 17 nations had fought under the U.N. flag, repelling Communist aggression and saving South Korea from Communist tyranny. The organization had attacked hundreds of other problems in fulfilling the provisions of its Charter, by employing "international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all people." Those efforts included feeding the hungry, saving the children of disaster, finding homes for refugees, battling disease, protecting human rights, attacking illiteracy, improving technical skills, stabilizing currency and halting traffic in drugs.
Yet, there was still no unanimous acceptance of a world rule of law and still no agreement on disarmament or any trustworthy political controls over the manufacture and use of atomic and hydrogen weapons. It ventures that the problems could be solved only if men of goodwill continued to struggle earnestly for solution and that such would come by support and strengthening of the U.N.
It finds the U.N. to be the most important step of the century, following on the failure of the League of Nations to halt war, of achieving that which was in man's enlightened self-interest, elimination of warfare. The U.N., despite its imperfections, was a foundation on which to build. It finds the words of President Eisenhower regarding making the U.N. "not merely an eloquent symbol but an effective force" to be the best answer to the minority who still subjected the U.N. to vicious and irresponsible attacks. It finds support for the organization to be the cornerstone of U.S. policy and the best hope for peace and security, that its support by the U.S. could not be passive, that improvements should be made and a re-examination undertaken of the Charter to determine whether any changes would increase the chances for establishing a just peace among nations. It posits that the principal task was to improve the basic machinery of the organization, the type of adjustments necessary probably being those contained in the Vandenberg resolution of June 11, 1948, which had called for elimination of the veto by the Big Five permanent members of the Security Council regarding questions of either the admission of new members or the peaceful settlement of disputes. The resolution had called also for further attempts at clarification of the Charter and using its provisions for collective security and the reduction of armaments.
"Gobbledygook: Image and Idea" tells of the Post Office Department having announced a sweeping overhaul of the Postal Manual, which had been reduced from 4,000 pages to a mere 268, with Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield having stated that it had restored the use of simple English.
Meanwhile, Time reported that British officials were beginning to "gowerize", meaning to state in simple words what was meant, adopted from Sir Ernest Gowers, author of The Complete Plain Words. Mr. Gowers, a retired civil servant, had been tired of phrases such as "prices are basis prices per ton for the representative-basis-pricing specification and size and quantity." He decried such unnecessary adjectives as "acute crisis", superfluous adverbs as in "definitely harmful", and overuse of abstract words, such as position and situation. It adds that he could have included also the Pentagon's favorite word, posture.
It finds that the attempt to revive plain English was remindful of the Federal Security Agency's satirical elaboration of President Roosevelt's famous line: "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." The elaboration was: "It is evident that a substantial number of persons within the continental boundaries of the United States have inadequate financial resources with which to purchase the products of agricultural communities and industrial establishments. It would appear that for a considerable segment of the population, possibly as much as 33.3333 (*) of the total, there are inadequate housing facilities and an equally significant proportion is deprived of the proper types of clothing and nutriment. (*) Not carried beyond four places."
It suggests that the FSA had been trying hard at that time to discourage gobbledygook, but it remained rampant. It wishes Mr. Summerfield and Mr. Gowers the best, while knowing that the job was bigger than both of them.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Lost: 940,000 Years", indicates that atomic scientists at Columbia University had developed a method of determining by radiation the age of rocks, fossil plants, bone, mummy cloth or other objects of interest, but could only work in two time scales, one below 60,000 years and the other from one million to five million years. Up to 60,000 years, the slow breakdown of Carbon-14 into nitrogen provided an accurate laboratory calendar, but from that point to the one million-year mark, aging could not be determined by nuclear physics.
It suggests that it should not be disconcerting as human beings also maintained a certain amount of individual uncertainty regarding their age, with women tending to avoid counting birthdays after about the age of 19, while at around age 65, became a little proud of their age. In between, however, there was a guessing game. It indicates that it could not provide the physicists with any clue to the missing 940,000 years in their time scales, but suggests that "any 20th-century princess who would like to baffle archaeologists of 5,000 or 6,000 years hence" might, in addition to calorie-counting, avoid taking any Carbon-14.
Drew Pearson provides some quick looks at the Pennsylvania election picture, where the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lloyd Wood, was a turkey farmer, and the Democratic candidate, George Leader, was a chicken farmer. The low price of eggs was figuring heavily in the farm vote, and for the first time in 20 years, a Democrat was given a real chance to win in that state, because of unemployment, especially in the coal regions, plus graft in Governor John Fine's Administration. In addition, when Congress had voted to increase old age pensions, the Fine Administration had proceeded to reduce the state's contribution to old-age pensions by the amount of the Federal increase, causing anger among older voters. The result was that it was likely Pennsylvania would send more Democrats to the House.
He next covers the election picture in Michigan, where the so-called "General Motors Administration" in Washington was the major issue, followed by the political strategy of former Chevrolet dealer, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield. G.M. had given Chrysler such stiff competition that Chrysler had closed down early to bring out its new models, and other companies had followed suit, with Mr. Summerfield having begged the automotive industry not to retool for its new model year until after the elections, so that temporary unemployment would not increase just before the elections. But G.M. competition was too much and so they had disregarded his pleas, which was why Detroit was facing its worst unemployment at present. The Postmaster General had also maneuvered to put Pat McNamara, the Democratic candidate for the Senate, into the race, maneuvering to have the AFL and the Teamsters place him in the Democratic primary to offset the late Blair Moody and his powerful CIO support. But after the death of former Senator Moody, Mr. McNamara had united the CIO and AFL to gain the support of both organizations and might ultimately win the race against Senator Homer Ferguson.
In Oregon, Senator Guy Cordon was running paid advertisements in the American Legion newspaper attacking the military record of his opponent, Richard Neuberger, accusing him of having obtained a "soft, safe job in the service where he could continue his profitable writing career", accomplished through political connections. Meanwhile, his supporters portrayed Senator Cordon as a "real veteran" who had served as state commander of the American Legion. Mr. Pearson indicates that a check of the latter's military career, however, had revealed that he had been in World War I for only two months and two weeks, serving 15 days beyond the Armistice of November 11, 1918, while Mr. Neuberger had been in World War II from July, 1942 until August, 1944, serving much of the time in Alaska. Senator Cordon had not even given up his job as county tax assessor during his 85-day training period in the Army.
Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had ordered all of his subordinate secretaries to take an active part in the election campaign, which Mr. Pearson ventures might have been in response to the backlash to the Secretary's dog comments in Detroit regarding the unemployed. But Secretary of State Dulles had suggested that his subordinates remain out of the campaign. He notes that White House aides had expressed the desire that Mr. Wilson had also remained out of the race.
Republicans had spent about $50,000 for last-minute television and radio advertising to save Congressman Francis Dorn of Brooklyn, opposed by former Congressman Don O'Toole.
The Senate Internal Security Committee, chaired by Senator William Jenner of Indiana, had considered bringing former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to Washington for cross-examination just prior to the election, but had finally decided against it as it would alienate New York City voters and mean certain defeat for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Senator Irving Ives, against Averell Harriman.
Stewart Alsop, in Detroit, indicates that incumbent Republican Senator Homer Ferguson, by the consensus of opinion in Michigan, would win re-election. Mr. Alsop had conducted a poll of editors of newspapers in the state which syndicated the Alsops' column and with few exceptions, they believed that Democratic Governor G. Mennen Williams appeared on the way to winning re-election by a comfortable margin, but with enough ticket-splitting to allow Senator Ferguson to win in a close race. The editors had warned, however, that the situation could change prior to election day, and, indeed, the picture had already changed.
Early in the summer, former interim Senator Blair Moody, backed for the Democratic nomination by both the CIO and Governor Williams, had died and Patrick McNamara, backed by the AFL, became the nominee by default. It was then believed that Senator Ferguson would easily win, being a good campaigner with a solid conservative record, plenty of funding and the support of nearly every newspaper in the state. As a former supporter of Senator Taft, he had few enemies among the Taft Republicans while also having endeared himself to the Eisenhower faction by becoming a leading proponent in the Senate of Administration-backed legislation, visiting the White House every week to advise the President on national policy. Furthermore, Michigan had only elected two Democrats to the Senate since the turn of the century, and the Senator had the natural advantage of being the incumbent.
Thus, despite Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson having made his dog comment with respect to the unemployed, Senator Ferguson should have been easily winning. Yet, he appeared to be running scared, exerting an inordinate effort toward re-election given that his opponent was largely unknown.
While Mr. McNamara was a likable person, he was an awkward campaigner and frankly admitted that he hated campaigning. Governor Williams and the CIO, while Mr. McNamara said they were now all for him, had been reluctant to accept him as the nominee and still only backed him half-heartedly. But with 300,000 unemployed in the state, nearly 200,000 of whom were in Detroit, with milk prices down 30 percent or more among the farmers, and with small business bankruptcies abnormally high, Mr. McNamara had a good chance.
At least two of the editors polled by Mr. Alsop said that things had never been better in their areas, and in Detroit, things were apt to get better with the new model cars coming out. One editor had remarked that the Democrats were indulging in wishful thinking and that the political pattern, twisted out of shape in 1952, was simply returning to normal.
Yet, there was no doubt that the Republicans were scared because of the statistical facts plaguing the state. Moreover, the Republicans had not determined how to deal with the problem, wavering between the claim that the economic troubles were a mirage conjured by Democrats and the conflicting claim that the country prospered only during Democratic-inspired wars.
As always, independent voters would decide the election and they were not particularly resentful about the relatively mild economic downturn, but were apprehensive about the future. They wanted to be told convincingly that the Administration was determined to prevent any repetition of the Depression of the 1930's, and thus far, the Administration had failed to convince them that such a determination existed, which Mr. Alsop concludes could prove a costly failure.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the midterm election campaign had a somewhat different look from that of about six months to a year earlier, when it was believed that Senator McCarthy would be campaigning furiously in all of the key states, with the issue of McCarthyism hotly disputed between the parties. Instead, Senator McCarthy was not in the campaign at all and was busy preparing his defense against the censure resolution, hearings on which would begin November 8, after the bipartisan select committee had unanimously recommended the censure, with estimates of the votes the Senator would have against the censure ranging between only 15 and 26 among the 96 Senators.
The prospect of the censure had comforted some of Senator McCarthy's opponents who assumed that he was therefore on the way to the oblivion which had awaited others who had sought power through sensational headlines. While they could be correct, she notes that the Senator and his ardent followers had a strategy of their own to prevent that from happening. One reason the Senator had refrained from entering the campaign, according to some of his Midwestern supporters, was that a private poll made by the Senator's followers around the country had shown that Republicans would suffer a worse defeat than even the most optimistic Democrats were predicting, at which point Senator McCarthy and his supporters would rise up on November 3 to blame the exclusion of him and the soft-pedaling of the Communist issue for the Republican loss.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that control of the House would be decided in 113 marginal districts, 79 of which were presently Republican and 34, Democratic, with the current House consisting of 218 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with one independent and four vacancies. The Democrats had 181 safe seats and the Republicans had 140 considered to be not actively contested.
The Quarterly had found that the Democrats had the edge on winning control of the House because they started with 110 solid seats in the South, because only one time in the previous 50 years had the majority party gained in the midterm elections, and because politicians agreed that such issues as unemployment, farm problems and fights over public versus private power would have local impact in key House races.
The Quarterly found that 52 of the races were tossups, with the other 61 involving the party presently in control having the edge in a contested race. Politicians generally agreed that the economy within the marginal districts was an important factor. With the exception of the 1952 election, Republicans had not been able to make inroads in the large cities and Democrats held very few farm districts outside the South.
The Quarterly found that of the 113 marginal seats, 89 were in labor surplus or metropolitan areas or both. Democrats were stressing unemployment as the major issue and in those 89 districts, the degree of distress would likely determine the outcome.
In determining the marginal districts, the Quarterly had looked at past voting patterns. Most of those districts had been determined by a vote of 55 percent or less in 1952. Two years earlier, there had been 91 such marginal districts, 48 of which were controlled by Republicans and 42 by Democrats, with one independent. Of those same districts, 67 were listed among the 113 marginal seats in 1954. Of the 24 from 1952 not considered marginal in this year, Democrats held 20 of the seats, Republicans held three and the independent, the other. Most political observers agreed that those districts would not be marginal in the current election, usually based on local conditions.
While the latest Quarterly survey had added ten districts to the marginal list, 12 districts rated as safe on September 10 were now on the October 15 marginal list. Seven of those were in the East and five in the Midwest. Chances for any pickup in the South for the Republicans had diminished, with the South's marginal districts dropping from 9 to 7. There was no change in the meantime in the West, which had 27 marginal districts.
A letter writer indicates that Secretary of Defense Wilson needed a retriever to pick up the statements he had dropped and should remember that it was much harder to get the foot in the mouth if the lip was buttoned. The writer indicates he had voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
A letter from the executive secretary-treasurer of the North Carolina State Industrial Union Council and the CIO representative for the region affirms their support for the United Community Campaigns for 1954, and officially endorses the united way of giving and planning for community services. They urge CIO members to participate as citizens and trade unionists in the volunteer work of community service organizations and urge all citizens to cooperate in the charity drives.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.