The Charlotte News

Tuesday, March 9, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Inter-American Conference, the U.S. gained ground the previous day with its plan for united action to halt Communism in the Western Hemisphere, with five Latin American nations, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Honduras and Nicaragua, providing support for the new "Dulles Doctrine". Haiti also call for anti-Communist action which was "not in conflict with the principle of nonintervention". Secretary of State Dulles had canceled a speaking engagement set in Philadelphia for the following day to continue his personal oversight of the progress of the resolution to try to eliminate Communist penetration in Latin America. Discussion of the issue in the Political-Juridical Committee was expected to take several additional days. The U.S. resolution would call for the 21 American republics to consult and act jointly against Communist seizure of power in any of the American states, just as they were now pledged to repel jointly invasion by a foreign aggressor, essentially a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The proposal would also provide for disclosure of identity, activities and sources of funds of persons spreading Communist propaganda or traveling in the interests of the Communist cause. Mexico had submitted an amendment to expand such joint action to all forms of totalitarian intervention in the Americas. Secretary Dulles, in answer to the question posed by Guatemala's foreign minister as to what Communism was, said the previous day that it was a "far-flung clandestine political organization which is operated by the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", and that one of its aims was to bring parts of the Western Hemisphere under its control. Brazilian Foreign Minister Vincente Rao said that he would prefer to speak of "Soviet interventionism" rather than Communist penetration, and that intervention by one American nation into the affairs of another should not be undertaken on the basis of anti-Communist action. The Nicaraguan Ambassador to the U.S. said that his nation also rejected any intervention by one American nation in the affairs of another, but that joint action against foreign ideas threatening peace and harmony on the continent did not amount to intervention. Mexico's position remained unclear. Its Foreign Minister, Luis Padilla Nervo, said that his Government rejected the idea that the mission of watching over national institutions had become a question of international character, subject to collective action, rather that each nation should be the judge of what subversive activity within its territory was, according to its own laws and constitution.

The President had selected Vice-President Nixon to provide the reply to charges made earlier in Miami Beach by Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for the presidency in 1952, that the Republicans were using "slander, dissension and deception" to try to win the midterm elections. Senator McCarthy said that the selection of the Vice-President was an excellent choice, but that he still wanted NBC and CBS to give him free radio and television time to respond to what he had called a "vicious attack on me personally" by Mr. Stevenson, whose address had been carried by those two networks, one via television and the other via radio. The Senator said that he was delegating to no one the authority to defend him. Meanwhile, the two networks had refused his demand for equal air time, but had agreed to give the Republican Party as a whole a 30-minute rebuttal period the following Saturday night. Senator McCarthy said he might take the matter up with the FCC, a member of which was his friend, Robert E. Lee—precariously riding Traveller at his advanced age. RNC chairman Leonard Hall said that Mr. Stevenson had "impugned the Eisenhower Administration" and so he had sought the equal time on radio and television to reply. One informed source said that the strategy was to get Senator McCarthy out of the headlines and get the Republican Party story as a whole across to the American public. CBS had announced that it was honoring the request of Mr. Hall and therefore would deny Senator McCarthy's request. NBC followed suit.

This night, on the CBS program "See It Now", narrated by Edward R. Murrow, the latter would present the story of Senator McCarthy, from a script drafted by Fred W. Friendly of CBS, chronicling his rise to power in the Senate based on charges of Communism within the Government during the previous four years, devoting the entire 30-minute program to the matter, and offering at the end Senator McCarthy the opportunity to respond, which the network would then allow, with Senator McCarthy again charging that he had been slandered, this time by Mr. Murrow, proceeding later in the week, on the radio program of conservative commentator Fulton Lewis, to present charges suggesting that Mr. Murrow was sympathetic to Communism based on an association arising during 1935. And away we go...

Many viewers probably would wonder who had the worst 5 o'clock shadow, the Vice-President or Senator McCarthy, both of whom resembled the ordinary stereotype of a first-time bank robber, sweating and stumbling their way through a robbery or during their getaway.

In New York, an anonymous telephone caller, who reportedly spoke with a Spanish accent, told security guards at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that "something terrible" would happen to Senator McCarthy during the night, after the Senator had checked into the hotel the previous night. The threat was reported to city police and a city patrolman was sent to the hotel to join the security guards in an all-night vigil outside the Senator's room. The caller had hung up before the call could be traced. There was no indication whether the Senator had been informed of the threat and the night manager at the hotel refused to discuss the matter. The caller reportedly had asked to speak with the Senator and believed that an employee on the phone was the Senator, telling him, "You'd better get out of the hotel—something terrible is going to happen." The Senator was planning to meet this date with investigators for his Investigations subcommittee.

Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont said in a speech before the Senate this date that Senator McCarthy was "doing his best to shatter" the Republican Party "by intention or through ignorance". He said that the Senator belonged to a "one-man party named McCarthyism, a title which he has proudly accepted". He said that the Senator's search for internal subversion was diverting the nation from external troubles to an "extent dangerous to our future as a nation", that the dangerous attack was from without, not from within, that the world appeared to be arming for "age-long warfare between God and the devil", split between Communist and non-Communist camps. He asked what part Senator McCarthy was playing in that battle. "He dons his war-paint. He goes into his war-dance. He emits his war-whoops. He goes forth to battle and proudly returns with the scalp of a pink Army dentist." The reference was to the recent case of the Army Reserve dentist, whom the Senator had accused of Communist ties because he had, some 14 months earlier, refused to answer questions before the Senator's subcommittee regarding whether he had ever been a member of a subversive organization, and was thereafter promoted and honorably discharged, prompting Senator McCarthy to charge those responsible with Communist sympathies, and that Brig. General Ralph Zwicker, who had been the immediate commander over the dentist, was unfit to wear the uniform of the Army as a result of protecting supposedly the persons who had been responsible for the promotion and honorable discharge by refusing to answer the Senator's questions on the matter, acting under orders from superiors. That had led to the Senator's confrontation with Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens, who had issued orders to General Zwicker and another general not to respond further to summonses by the Senator, because he had "abused" Army personnel during the hearings. Senator Flanders also wanted to know to what party Senator McCarthy belonged and whether he was a "hidden satellite" of the Democrats, to whom he was furnishing so much material for "quiet mirth", that it seemed his Republican label was not stuck on very tightly when he was doing his best to "shatter that party whose label he wears". He said he found much to praise and much to deplore in McCarthyism, that the praiseworthy part was the "vigorous and effective house-cleaning" which it displayed.

Senate Republican leaders called a meeting this date to discuss steps to try to make committee procedures during investigations fair to everyone, following in the wake of the dispute between Senator McCarthy and Secretary Stevens. Democratic Senators Paul Douglas of Illinois and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had the previous day introduced a bill to established by law "a code of fair play" for Congressional investigations, indicating that the approach by the Republican leaders of persuasion rather than legislation had amounted only "to a pious hope that committees will reform themselves." Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, chairman of the Republican policy committee, was set to report to the committee regarding his survey of existing committee rules and to discuss possible improvements with individual committee chairmen. Senate Majority Leader William Knowland of California had said that each committee had the unquestioned right to accept or reject any suggestions growing out of the study. The President, at his press conference the previous week, had said that Congress had responsibility for seeing that its committee procedures were fair and proper, and that Senator Knowland had assured him that a code of fair procedure was being undertaken by the Republican leadership.

The Army announced that it was forming a new armored division, its third, to be maintained somewhat below the normal strength of 14,756 men forming such a unit. Organization of it would begin June 15 and it would be based at Fort Hood in Texas, with no commanding officers having yet been chosen and no numerical designation having been made. Such a division, at full strength, had 350 tanks. The two existing armored divisions were the 1st, at Fort Hood, and the 2nd, stationed in Europe.

In New York, subpoenas were served on 111 Puerto Ricans in New York and Chicago the previous day, in a sudden move connected with the shooting by four Puerto Rican nationalists on March 1 of five Congressmen in the House, wounding one of them seriously, though all five were now recovering satisfactorily. Rosa Collazo, the wife of the surviving attempted assassin of former President Truman on November 1, 1950, presently serving a life sentence after commutation from death by the former President, was among nine persons subpoenaed in New York. All four of the arrested persons accused in the shootings at the Capitol had admitted membership in the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, stating that they had performed their act on behalf of Puerto Rican independence and the desire to call attention to it. The subpoenaed witnesses in New York would be called before three grand juries investigating the local activities of the Nationalist Party, while in Chicago, the witnesses would be questioned in connection with laws governing conspiracy to overthrow the Government by force. Puerto Rican voters had repeatedly defeated plebiscites which would have granted them independence from the U.S. Puerto Rico had commonwealth status with the U.S.

Also in New York, the former first deputy fire commissioner of the city during the administration of former Mayor William O'Dwyer, and who had been imprisoned for extortion and sentenced to 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison, had sought a reduction of his term, apparently in exchange for talking about graft which had occurred during the O'Dwyer Administration. He had been convicted of masterminding a 1.5 million dollar shakedown of fuel-oil burner installers seeking fire department permits. He had sent a 77-page handwritten letter to the State Court of Appeals, the highest tribunal in New York. Neither the Court nor the Manhattan District Attorney would reveal the contents of the letter, received February 18. The sentencing judge in March, 1952 had split the sentence into three parts based on various extortion and conspiracy charges, saying that he would reconsider parts of the sentence if the defendant would talk freely to the District Attorney before the end of the first two years. The District Attorney had sought in vain to get the defendant to tell who had received the greatest part of the shakedown booty, which allegedly was at the rate of $500,000 per year for three years.

Also in New York, hundreds of independent longshoremen picketed at the Federal Courthouse against a move by the NLRB to cite for contempt the independent International Longshoremen's Association for refusing to adhere to an order not to strike, seeking both civil and criminal citations against the Association and three of its local officers, including a fine of $100,000 if the union did not end its seven-day long blockade of the waterfront trucks within the ensuing 48 hours, plus an additional $25,000 fine for each additional day. The march began with about 100 men and wound up with about 500. The Federal District Court the prior Thursday had issued a temporary restraining order against continuation of the blockade, but rebellious ILA members had quit work in protest against the court injunction the prior Friday. The ILA had been ousted from the AFL the previous September for failure to cleanse itself of racketeering elements and was fighting with the AFL-ILA, set up by the AFL, for certification by the NLRB as the bargaining agent for the longshoremen.

In Chicago, a six-year old boy, missing for nearly six hours and hunted by more than 150 persons, had been found the previous night stuck in the chimney of an outdoor fireplace 30 feet from his home. He had been stuck there for about 5 1/2 hours and when discovered, was taken to a hospital suffering from exposure, shock and bruises. Temperatures had been a little above freezing during the time he was trapped. He had apparently dropped feet first into the chimney while playing in his own backyard sometime late in the afternoon.

In Los Angeles, a man complained that his wife had irritated his ulcers by cooking nothing except highly-spiced Mexican foods, that he was in consequence too ill to work, and so was seeking a divorce plus alimony from his wife, to whom he had been married since 1930.

In Norman, Okla., a device installed recently on parking meters as an experiment, called a "Traf-o-teria", an aluminum box which would receive parking tickets plus a fine of 50 cents, which would double after two days, was generally a hit with the public. The police chief said that it would help in enforcement of the city's traffic codes. He said that women had previously been reluctant to come to the police station to pay fines for parking and so they would give the tickets to their husbands who then likely would forget to pay them, whereas now with the new device, women were paying more than were men, with collected fines having totaled $400 during the first month of the program, a 135 percent increase over the previous month's collection. The police chief said that sometimes nasty notes would accompany the ticket, or chewing gum, match covers or the like.

In Frenchburg, Ky., a 19-year old boy had said, "The darn thing is leaking," as he saw a man whom he thought was a customer for his moonshine approach his still the previous day. It turned out that the prospective customer was in fact an agent for the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, who proceeded to destroy the 50-gallon still, confiscate the 100 gallons of mash and 50 pounds of sugar, charging the operator with illegal manufacture of whiskey.

On the editorial page, "Two Tough Tasks in Caracas" indicates that Guatemalan Foreign Minister Guillermo Toriello had addressed the Inter-American Conference by complaining of past U.S. "dollar diplomacy" and use of the "big stick" through deployment of the Marines in Latin America, complaining about unjust attacks on Guatemala as harboring Communists and being rife with Communists in its Government, specifically directing the complaint against Secretary of State Dulles's insistence of placing on the conference agenda the issue of penetration of Communism into the Western Hemisphere, which Sr. Toriello took as an affront to Guatemala.

It finds the speech to have been well-received by the Conference, not because the Guatemalan Government was in fact pro-Communist, but for other reasons important to an understanding of Pan-American relations and the problems the U.S. faced now that it was refocusing its attention on the Western Hemisphere. South Americans became emotionally upset when old tales of U.S. exploitation and intervention were revived, even though understanding that the U.S. had long ago given up such tactics. But they also realized that relations between the U.S. and Latin America had deteriorated in recent years, since the latter days of the Roosevelt Administration, after Secretary of State Cordell Hull, revered in South America for inaugurating the Good Neighbor Policy, particularly the reciprocal trade agreements, had retired for health reasons in November, 1944. Latin America realized that the primary reason for the country's seeming indifference was its current preoccupation with areas where Communism was a more immediate threat, and that therefore the best way to draw the attention of the U.S. was to have Communism as a threat.

The U.S. was hoping to reestablish good Latin American relations at the conference and to diminish the threat to the Panama Canal and to the rest of the Hemisphere presented by the Communists in Guatemala, tasks which would be difficult of accomplishment. Secretary of State Dulles's modernized Monroe Doctrine, a warning to Russia to keep out of the Western Hemisphere plus offering U.S. economic aid for Latin America, had been the first definitive statement of Administration policy regarding the area. While promises of more technical assistance and private investment, plus continuation of Export-Import Bank loans and postponement of the wool tariff increase, would be appealing to Latin Americans, they would likely wait to see what the wool and economic blocs in Congress would do with those proposals before embracing them.

The doctrine of non-intervention was paramount regarding Latin America because the U.S. had refused to adhere to that policy in the past, until it was formally adopted at the Buenos Aires Conference in 1936, where it was said that "no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another", and then was stated in stronger language in the Charter of Bogotá in 1948. Any attempt to infringe on that doctrine would be perceived as a return to the old form of American imperialism.

The resolution introduced at the conference by Secretary Dulles did not name Guatemala or call for any kind of international investigation, but only mildly requested that Communist domination or control of any country in the Western Hemisphere would justify "appropriate action in accordance with existing treaties". The existing treaties provided for an immediate meeting of the American states to agree on measures to be taken for the common defense and for the maintenance of peace and security in the hemisphere. The U.S. action, it suggests, proceeded from a recognition of the delicacy of U.S. relations with Latin America, that if they could be convinced that the country was showing a renewed interest in the region, the Communist threat there would be reduced, worth more than "a hopper full of stern resolutions".

"Lennon's Solution for M'Carthy Problem"—which has little or nothing to do with the Beatles—indicates that within a few hours after former Governor Kerr Scott had made his speech in Charlotte, opening his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat occupied by Alton Lennon, criticizing the abuses of Congressional investigating committees, Senator Lennon had reiterated his formula for ending "one-man rule" of such investigations and the "headline parade" coming from them. His solution was that committee rules should be changed to prohibit one-man investigating committee sessions—which Senator McCarthy had been holding from late the previous summer through the fall, after Democrats had walked out of his subcommittee over protests of his one-man rule over hiring and firing of staff. In addition, Senator Lennon proposed that persons coming before committees would have the right to counsel and to cross-examine the committee witness accusers, that the rules should be changed to require at least two members of the majority party and at least one of the minority party to be present before any committee hearing could be held, and creation of a joint Senate-House committee responsible for eliminating subversives, rather than the present system of numerous committee investigations devoted to that end.

The piece finds that the first, second and fourth proposals had great merit, and should be adopted, while the proposal that two members of the majority party and at least one of the minority party be present, would permit the minority party to block any investigation which might prove embarrassing to it simply by instructing its representatives to boycott the hearings. It finds that the Lennon proposal exposed the basic fallacy in the arguments of those who wanted the President to grapple with Senator McCarthy in the latter's form of gutter politics, as the President could do nothing more than place pressure on a recalcitrant Senator, that only each house of Congress could discipline its own.

It ventures that the Senate thus far had shown little concern for its reputation as the greatest deliberative body in the world, and so it doubts that Senator Lennon's proposal, as good as three points of it were, had any chance of adoption.

"The Abandonment of a Principle" indicates that the Alsops, in the piece on the page this date, said that the President would stand firm against Senator Walter George's proposal for an increase in the personal income tax exemptions, though it had been reported in the current issue of Business Week that the President would agree to some reductions in excise taxes. The Alsops said that the President believed it was a matter of principle, that it would be wrong and irresponsible to provide large tax cuts during the year and thus increase the national deficit, while Democrats were also standing on principle in supporting Senator George's proposal to increase personal exemptions by $200. The Democrats argued that the best way to get the national economy going again was to grant individuals tax relief and thereby increase their purchasing power, that deficit financing was better than a major recession.

It ventures that in politics, principles were often flexible, as the President believed it would be all right to provide U.S. business some 1.5 billion dollars in tax relief even though it meant increasing the deficit by that amount, while beyond that, tax reduction was counter to his principles. It says it did not want to put a wet blanket over both schemes, but that if principles were truly at stake, it would be better to have no tax reduction at all. The President had predicted a budget deficit of 2.9 billion dollars, which Senator Harry F. Byrd believed was optimistic and that the actual deficit might be double or triple that amount without any tax cuts except those which had gone into effect early in 1954, and that any additional cut would only increase that deficit.

It indicates that for most of the previous 20 years when the Democrats had been in power, the Republicans had been highly critical of deficit financing, and that since 1938, the most influential Southern Democrats had formed a coalition with the Republicans to fight for a balanced budget. It finds the idea a sound principle of government at all times except during a critical national emergency, but that both parties, including the Southern Democrats, appeared to be abandoning that principle to dangle attractive tax cuts before the voters during the midterm election year.

Drew Pearson indicates that the dispute between the President and Senator McCarthy had obscured a lot of other things happening in the world, some of which were just as important. One was the indignant, though unpublished veto by French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault of the American proposal that the U.S. train native Indo-Chinese troops. When the proposal had first been made to the French, M. Bidault told the U.S. Embassy that as long as French troops and not Americans were fighting and dying in Indo-China, there would be no American training program. The Pentagon was taken aback by the reaction, justified on the belief that sending in U.S. troops of any type would provoke the Communist Chinese to enter that war, as they had in Korea. Meanwhile, it was reported that at a secret meeting in Peiping, the Russians and Chinese promised heavy armament and troops to the Communist guerrillas fighting in Indo-China, and all indications were that it would eventually fall to the Communists.

Senator McCarthy was looking for a new chief counsel for his Investigations subcommittee, and Roy Cohn, currently holding that position, was slated to be fired because the Senator needed a scapegoat and because the heat from the White House had been too great, as well as that from other members of the subcommittee. The Army had maintained a record of Mr. Cohn's telephone conversations on behalf of Private G. David Schine, obtaining favors from the Army for him. Senator McCarthy was trying to find a lawyer of the Jewish faith to replace Mr. Cohn, to offset any charges that his firing of him was anti-Semitic. Mr. Pearson relates that in a meeting with the Senator and Mr. Cohn at a Washington hotel one day, Arnold Forster, secretary of the Anti-Defamation League, had been greeted with the salutation from Mr. Cohn: "How are all the ___ ___ Jews in New York?" Mr. Forster had responded, "Fine, I had dinner with your father last night."

Former Vice-President Alben Barkley was expected to announce during the week that he was prepared to make a comeback to Washington at age 76, by running for the Senate seat which he had vacated to become Vice-President at the end of 1948. Political observers in Kentucky believed he would win the race, as Kentucky had come to love him as much as it did bourbon and racehorses. Senator John Sherman Cooper was one of the most popular Republicans in Kentucky, though traditionally a Democratic state. During the Civil War, the political line had separated Kentucky's eastern mountains from the pro-South midlands, and the state had been divided politically ever since, and so it was likely that Mr. Barkley would again go to the Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson had called a Democratic caucus for the first time during the Congressional session, which had begun in early January, whereas ordinarily such a caucus was held at the beginning of each session. The Senator had avoided calling a caucus, instead opting for individual tete-à-tete with other Democratic Senators, out of concern that those opposing him would stage a rump revolt. Meanwhile, he had been complaining privately to colleagues that his hands were tied by conservative forces in Texas, such as oilman H. L. Hunt and the so-called Shivercrats, those who followed the line of Democratic Governor Allen Shivers, who had been pro-Eisenhower during the 1952 campaign. Senator Johnson believed that if he antagonized those forces, he would arouse opposition against his own re-election in the fall. The Louisville Courier-Journal, one of the leading Democratic newspapers in the nation, had asked Senator Johnson editorially, along with his assistant, Senator Earle Clements of Kentucky, which was more important, the Democratic Party or Texas opposition to Senator Johnson. It said it appeared that the Democratic leadership in the Senate was more interested in conducting the party for the benefit of Senator Johnson rather than for the benefit of the nation.

The President's chief economic adviser, Dr. Arthur Burns, had complained privately to the President that the Republicans, not the Democrats, were about to frighten the country into a depression. He pointed out that the economic symptoms were plain, that the average businessman recognized that the country was going through a slight recession and that by denying there was any slump, Republican speakers around the country were giving the impression that they were trying to cover something up, more apt to cause an economic panic than the Democratic "gloom-and-doom" speeches.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop, as indicated by the above editorial, discuss the tax revision efforts ongoing in Congress, with Democrats united around the proposal of Senator Walter George of Georgia to increase personal exemptions for all taxpayers and their dependents, while the President, based principally on the advice of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, was poised against the George proposal, as conveyed to 60 key Republican Representatives the prior Thursday from close Congressional districts by Vice-President Nixon, who told them that the George proposal had to be defeated at all costs. The Vice-President said that the President intended to provide a nationwide broadcast via television and radio regarding the matter and would seek to convince the people that the resulting deficit from the George proposal would be harmful to the economy and generate a large deficit. He said that the President was aware that it was difficult to stand up to the Democrats on that type of issue during an election year, but that it was often good politics to do what was unpopular if the voters could be convinced that what appeared good for them was actually bad in the long run. He stressed that it would be far better for them to stand with the President, who was popular with the people. He said that he knew that the proposal would likely pass the Senate and so it would be up to the House to defeat it, that the President could not veto the whole tax bill.

More than 20 House Republicans had put in their own bills to increase tax exemptions, but despite that, House Speaker Joseph Martin believed that the Republicans could be whipped into line.

The Democrats were equally confident. Senator George had been convinced to sponsor the bill by Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Minority Leader Sam Rayburn, as his sponsorship gave the bill an aura of conservatism and respectability.

Even so, the $200 increase proposed by Senator George, from $600 to $800, would cause the loss of 4.3 billion dollars in revenue, resulting in a deficit of around seven billion dollars, while the alternative proposal of a $100 increase in the exemptions would result in a 2.3 billion dollar revenue reduction. Secretary Humphrey and the President were adamant that the first Republican Administration in 20 years could not resort to such large deficit financing. The proposed increases in the exemptions would also result in between four and seven million people not having any income tax responsibility, which the President and Secretary Humphrey also opposed on principle.

The Administration had proposed a 10 percent tax credit on dividends, principally to benefit people with large unearned incomes, a proposal which the Democrats believed would be helpful in the campaign, so that they could say that the Republicans opposed giving a poor man with four kids a tax break while handing over $90,000 to the person earning a million dollars or more per year. The Republicans justified the tax credit on the basis of stimulating the economy, as risk capital had tended to dry up.

The Alsops venture that there were excellent reasons for the Administration's proposal, but that the political risks were great in an election year. They venture that perhaps the Vice-President's theory was correct, that it was good politics sometimes not to provide the voters with what they wanted if they were aware in their hearts that they should not have it.

Beatrice Cobb, writing in the Morganton News-Herald, tells of the national discussion over high coffee prices, reaching Congress, with the rise in prices having apparently not reached their apogee. She says that she had read an article which said that the best grades of coffee would rise to at least $1.25 per pound, resulting in hundreds of homes switching to tea.

She indicates that during the Civil War, both coffee and tea, except for the improvised varieties, were practically unavailable in the South at any price, as they were imports. She imagines that they were also scarce and very high-priced even in the North. She had heard her mother remark that for years during and even after the war, sassafras tea had been the only hot drink available with meals. Her mother had described it as "insipid stuff" and could not understand how anyone could drink it. Sugar had also been scarce and high-priced, leaving only molasses as a means of sweetening. Many Southern families during the 1860's had subsisted on near-starvation diets and so the absence of tea and coffee were probably the least of their worries.

She says that an old history book she had been reading, authored by John W. Moore, published in 1882 and used in the schools at the time, said that the pay of Confederate soldiers in the ranks had been between $15 and $17 per month in Confederate money and that during the latter days of the war, flour had sold for $800 per barrel, meat, for three dollars per pound, chickens, for $15 each, shoes, for $300 per pair, coffee, for $50 per pound, and tallow candles, for $15 per pound. The knowledge that their families were suffering back home had weakened the morale of the Confederate soldiers and caused hundreds to desert. Mr. Moore had said, "Many a hero turned his back on scenes of his glory, incurred personal ignominy and sometimes the punishment of death, for desertion." He cited one case of a man who was tried by court-martial for desertion, who had declined representation by a lawyer, stating as his only defense that his wife had sent to him a letter, which he handed to the trial judge, from which the piece quotes, in which the wife had said that unless the soldier came home, his family would die, that their son had awakened crying the previous night, complaining about being hungry, and that their daughter was growing increasingly thin. While the military court had been moved to tears by the letter, they had no recourse but to find the prisoner guilty and sentence him to death. They accompanied the sentence with a recommendation for mercy, and General Lee finally had pardoned him. Afterward, he had been killed in battle.

She recommends that if Congress found any fraud or tampering with the markets to be responsible for the increase in coffee prices, then drastic action should be undertaken and economic controls imposed. She enjoyed two cups of coffee during breakfast, but could learn to do without it if the price went too high. She indicates that if people reduced consumption for a few months, the prices would likely begin to drop.

H. Clay Ferree, writing in the Winston-Salem Journal-Sentinel, indicates that a 12-year old boy, when asked by his mother to define "prejudice", had said that it was when one hated someone before knowing him. He thinks the definition quite appropriate, as prejudice was a judgment made before the facts were known, prejudging individuals or groups on the basis of sweeping generalizations, such as that Jews were crafty or the Scotch stingy, or that blacks were inferior. Such group stereotypes were usually unfair, irrational and fictive. Sometimes, whole groups were stigmatized with notoriety by the facts surrounding a real or fictitious individual, such as Fagan in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist or Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice or Simon Legree in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Prejudice, as fear, he says, was not innate but acquired.

Psychologists had shown that very young babies had no fear of such things as hot stoves or snakes. They had to be taught to fear and avoid such things. The same was true of prejudice. Young people learned to hate through their elders and the teaching was seldom deliberate. Everyone lived within their cultural groups and attitudes were colored by that thinking. The outsider was usually alien and suspect. But when one encountered an individual of an outside group, he was usually pleasantly surprised to find that there was no hell and brimstone surrounding him or her.

He quotes from W. J. Cash in The Mind of the South: "The simple man … is apt to see whatever differs from himself as an affront, a challenge and a menace," that mere contact did not always assure tolerance, that it did so only when one was educated to tolerance.

Mr. Ferree indicates that many people were trained to suspicion and distrust of differences, that what was similar to one's own group was considered good and what differed from the group mold or pattern was evil. Contacts with other groups helped if there was fair mindedness and amenability to the spirit of friendship and good neighborliness.

He concludes that in the present time of "national hysteria and social tension", it was more important than ever that Americans in every group and walk of life make an "earnest effort to understand and appreciate the ideals and aims of those in groups different from their own." While contacts might not cause tolerance in every instance, there was reason to feel that all Americans would work together better when they knew each other better.

The full context in which the brief quote above from Cash appeared, discussing the general attitudes of returning American soldiers from the Western front in 1919 after World War I, is the following:

Contact with other peoples is often represented as making inevitably for tolerance. But that is true only for those who have already been greatly educated to tolerance. The simple man everywhere is apt to see whatever differs from himself as an affront, a challenge, and a menace. And though the soldier might sometimes find something in his allies to admire and even to like, not to say a great deal more to jeer at with more or less good-natured contempt, yet what he was most likely to bring back from contact with Catholic, unpuritanical Gallic civilization, and with the perversely upside-down Englander—what he was most likely to bring back for diffusion among the general population was not tolerance but a heightened sense of the rightness and superiority of his own way, and a heightened fear and dislike of all difference. And by so much as his pattern was more simple and unvaried, as he was more trained to suspicion and distrust of difference, as he was less accustomed to contact with alien persons and ideas, this was probably more true of the Southerner than of other American soldiers.

As in the North, so also in the South all this hate and fear issued, in part, in fear for the nation as such, and in hate for whatever was felt or imagined to threaten it. What I have just said about contact with the allies certainly held true here, too, mutatis mutandis. That is, the contact of the Southern soldier with the Yankee soldier, of the Southern population at large with the Yankee soldiers in the Southern cantonments, had renewed their awareness of the old line of cleavage. At the same time, however, their feeling of the common bond with the Yankee as against all outsiders, the sense of the nation and mystical loyalty to it, had been tremendously enhanced. And so the militant and intolerant "Americanism" propaganda by such national confraternities (themselves of course the product and embodiment of the common national fears and hatreds) as the American Legion and the Patriotic Order of Sons of America, with their "Red perils" and "alien menaces," nowhere found more receptive soil than in Dixie.

But in the South it did not stop with generalized concern for the nation. Characteristically, the stream of fears and hates generated by the war and conditions in the Western world poured back within the frame of the South itself, fixed upon Southern themes and translated itself into Southern terms, met and merged with certain rising fears and hates native to the old Southern pattern, and so contributed to the renewal of a concern like that which had reigned in the years before 1900—a concern which fixed itself precisely on the line of the old Southern patriotism and the will to the preservation of the ancient pattern. —from Book Three, Chapter II, "Of Returning Tensions—and the Years the Cuckoo Claimed", Section 15, pp. 301-303, Knopf, 1969 ed.

As pointed out previously, The Mind of the South achieved, especially in the North, a wider readership around this time than at any time since the original year of its publication in 1941, presumed to be because of the pending decision in Brown v. Board of Education, prompting Knopf to issue the first paperback edition of the book in 1954. Mr. Ferree obviously found in it something pointed to say, as any astute student of history would, to the current times pervaded by the suspicions of McCarthyism. On the very next page of the book, for instance, Cash said: "If the Yankee manufacturer, long accustomed to labor unions, could be so wrought upon by fears that he could without conscious hypocrisy, though of course not without the unconscious cunning of interest, see even the lumbering AFL as at least dangerously close to being Red, then it is readily comprehensible how the Southern cotton-mill baron, remembering unhappily its occasional forays into his territory, should get to see it as the flaming archangel of Moscow, itself—why the organs of the Southern trade, such as the Textile Bulletin [of Dave Clark] and the Manufacturers' Record, promptly set up the formula: labor organizer equals Communist organizer."

And, expanding that latter formula of invidious perception, some 60 pages later in the book, at pages 362-63 of the same edition: "And when to all this was added the fact that the Communists had succeeded in horning into the situation at Gastonia, of course the strikes were doomed. After that catastrophe had been allowed to happen, the AFL union hastened to come upon the stage, and nowhere else did the strikers have anything to do with the Communists. But that made no difference. Probably it would have made none in any case, in view of the fact that labor unionism was already strongly linked up in much of the popular mind with the idea of Red and alien menaces. But Gastonia did serve to clench the matter, to fix solidly in the minds of the great mass of Southerners the equation: labor unions + strikers = Communists + atheism + social equality with the Negro—and so to join to the formidable list of Southern sentiments already drawn up against the strikers the great central one of racial feeling and purpose; and, in fact, to summon against them much the same great fears and hates we have already seen as giving rise to the Ku Klux Klan."

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