The Charlotte News

Friday, July 9, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee appeared ready to approve this date a plan under which it would wait to see what occurred regarding the prospect of admission of Communist China to the U.N., a position which Senator William Knowland of California, the Majority Leader, appeared to endorse, indicating that he forecast a favorable vote on the measure in the Committee, temporarily chaired by Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey, who concurred in the favorable forecast. The amendment would be part of the 3.5 billion dollar foreign aid bill and would include a statement of opposition to admission of Communist China, plus a request that the President, in the event of such admission, issue a statement to Congress on the implications to U.S. foreign policy from such admission, and any recommendations of the President. The stance conformed generally to the President's view of the matter, and was quite different from Senator Knowland's previous statement that the U.S. should withdraw all funding from the U.N. in the event of admission of Communist China. There appeared to be bipartisan support for the position.

Assistant Secretary of State Thruston Morton had written a letter to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee stating that if Communist China were admitted to the U.N. or to any of its ten specialized agencies, it was axiomatic that there would be a re-examination of policy regarding the U.N. in light of circumstances then existing, but that the State Department opposed any Congressional resolution calling on the Government to re-examine its policy regarding the U.N. in that event, as it would tacitly assume the eventual admission of Communist China, which the State Department considered unlikely at present.

Considerable progress was reported this date in the secret efforts to negotiate a resolution to the three-day strike of workers at the atomic plants in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and in Paducah, Ky., before resorting to an injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act to order the end of the strike regarding wages. Some 4,500 workers at the two facilities had struck pursuant to the call of the strike by the union. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had met early during the morning at his office with CIO president Walter Reuther, reportedly arranged at the latter's request, and attended by the president of the striking Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers union and a top union official from Oak Ridge. Meanwhile, the three-man fact-finding board appointed by the President proceeded with closed meetings, aimed at producing a report by July 20, at which point the President, at his discretion, could direct the Justice Department to seek the injunction.

The Senate Agriculture Committee, by a vote of 13 to 2, this date approved of a general farm bill containing many features opposed by the Administration, with Committee chairman Senator George Aiken of Vermont indicating that he had voted to send the controversial measure to the full Senate because he was confident that it would approve a bill acceptable to the President. Senators John Williams of Delaware and Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, the latter having been Secretary of Agriculture under President Truman, had voted against reporting the bill to the full Senate because of their opposition to several parts of it. By an 8 to 7 vote, the Committee rejected requests by the President and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson for a flexible system of price supports and approved a one-year extension of the rigid 90 percent of parity supports for wheat, cotton, corn, rice and peanuts. Senator Aiken said that he would ask the full Senate to substitute for that latter provision a flexible support range of between 80 and 90 percent. The House had voted for a flexible program of between 82.5 and 90 percent.

The House Post Office Committee this date voted to recommend a 5 percent pay increase for a half million postal workers, carrying a minimum of a $200 per year increase, a proposal backed by the Administration. The bill would also authorize the Postmaster General to overhaul the postal job and salary schedules and send the reclassification plan to Congress by the following March 15.

In St. Paul, Minn., nearly a million casualties could be anticipated in the twin cities area in the event of a "saturation" atomic or hydrogen bomb attack, according to the Minnesota civil defense director, with an estimated 300,000 killed.

In West Palm Beach, Fla., an Air Force lieutenant colonel had been killed this date while he slept by six bullets, which a detective said had been fired by the former common law husband of the officer's wife, the former husband being held in custody. The detective said that the accused had cut a hole in the front screen, unlatched the door, entered the bedroom where the couple slept and started firing from the foot of the bed, then departed the house and met police as they arrived, telling them that he was the man they wanted, providing a full statement on the shooting. He said that he had arrived in the town from New Mexico only an hour before the shooting and had not intended to shoot the man but had blown his top when he saw the officer and his former wife in bed together. The woman said that she had lived with the assailant as his wife in California from 1948 until 1953, and she and the lieutenant colonel had been married the previous year in Florida. No charges had yet been filed, pending further investigation.

In Miami, Fla., police extended their search this date for the kidnaper, rapist and killer of a seven-year old girl who had been found dead two days earlier after being found missing from her grandparents' residence during the wee hours of the morning for four hours. The police still had no definite suspects, and had sent out an order to pick up a teenage boy who had disappeared from his home shortly before the kidnaping, about two blocks away from where the victim had been kidnaped, that boy having been involved in another case of child molestation.

In Redwood City, Calif., a seven-year old boy pretending to be a calf, died the previous day after his brother, ten years old, snagged him with a lariat attached to a riderless horse which dragged him 500 feet to the corral.

Following a five-month tour of England and Europe, evangelist Billy Graham returned to his home state of North Carolina and to his hometown of Charlotte, greeted at the train station during the morning by a small but faithful following, then spending time with his parents. While at the train station, he told reporters that they had witnessed a spiritual drought but were sure that there was a spiritual awakening across Europe, that the closer they got to the Iron Curtain, the less fear of Russia had been evident. He said that people must fear the sin they had in their hearts rather than the hydrogen bomb. He had spoken to members of Congress and with the President before catching an overnight train to Charlotte. He and his family would leave for their home in Montreat during the afternoon and he said he had no plans before a series of meetings at Vanderbilt in Nashville, starting August 23.

In Corn, Okla., twin brothers had identical grades in high school and both wound up as valedictorians of their class, each therefore reciting half of a valedictory address.

In Saginaw, Mich., an Army captain, who usually received a $50 uniform allowance, received a check by mistake for $23,928, which he said was not so bad except that they had transposed two letters in his name so that he could not cash it. That was just as well, as had he cashed it, knowing of the erroneous amount, he could have been accused of fraud and theft.

In Hastings, Neb., following a heavy rain, a farmer complained that he had 110 percent runoff, 100 percent water and 10 percent farm.

On the editorial page, "One Down and One More To Go" indicates that dedication of Charlotte's multi-million dollar air terminal the following day marked the turning point in a nine-year battle for air supremacy of the Carolinas and was a triumphant affirmation of the community's ability to meet the challenge of the future with foresight and action.

Now, a new, modern rail terminal was one of Charlotte's major transportation needs, but a reasonable way to meet that goal had yet to be devised. It suggests that Charlotte take a leaf from New Orleans and build its new terminal and finance a track relocation project through the issuance of revenue-producing bonds, which would combine tax-free advantages of municipal bonds with annual rentals guaranteed by the railroads sufficient to pay both the operating expenses of the new station and retire principal and interest. It suggests that the city attack the predicament with the same vigorous determination it had used to solve its air problem.

"Stiffer Statehood Law Unnecessary" finds that a constitutional amendment proposed by Senator George Smathers of Florida, which would make it tougher for territories to become states, should be placed in the same category as the previously defeated Bricker amendment which would have restricted the treaty-making power of the President by making the ratification process more cumbersome.

Under the Constitution, states could be admitted to the union by a simple majority vote of both houses and the approval of the President, whereas the amendment offered by Senator Smathers would require approval of two-thirds of both houses and three-fourths of the states, the same requirements for ratification of constitutional amendments. The Senator argued that states should have a voice in the matter of admitting new states as the new states would dilute the voting strength of existing states.

The piece regards it as a spurious argument because the Senate, for years, had overridden the will of the people regarding admission of new states. Hawaii had been seeking statehood for more than 50 years, and Alaska for nearly as long. Both territories had voted for statehood, and both Democratic and Republican convention platforms had, since 1944, included a plank favoring statehood for both territories, even if Republicans had hedged a bit on Alaska in their 1952 platform. The House had repeatedly passed measures by substantial margins providing statehood for both territories, but in the Senate, statehood legislation was regularly bottled up in committee or otherwise stymied. Thus, it urges, if Senator Smathers wanted to further the ends of democracy, he should press for action in the Senate on those bills. It also finds that the addition of new states did not diminish the influence of voters in the existing states, as Senator Smathers contended, even if a few states would have their House delegations decreased by one member to enable representation for the two new states. While the addition of four new Senators would theoretically decrease the power of each state's pair of Senators by about four percent, the strength of the Federal system, and thus the people within it, lay in the expansion of the union. It indicates that if the Founders had decided to exclude new states, the North American continent would probably have become a patchwork of small nations, as was Europe. It finds that there was sufficient existing safeguard against unwise admission of new states and that there was no need to clutter up the Constitution with such an amendment as proposed by Senator Smathers.

"Whaddya Know—Hornets Are Buzzing" gives praise to the Charlotte Hornets minor league baseball team's relative success under new manager Ellis Clary, who had won fame in Charlotte as a player in 1938 and had spent 20 seasons in the majors and minors, moving the team from eighth place to sixth place during his brief tenure, winning 6 of 11 games. It warns that the club might yet fall backwards, but for the first time in several months, the city had shown a genuine interest in the Hornets as a result of the relative success. They were playing this night and the following night at home at Griffith Park, and it recommends going out to see the game to relieve the summer doldrums.

A piece from the Dayton Daily News, titled "No Paunch for Cupid", indicates that a parking lot attendant in Atlanta had fallen in love and reduced his weight from 307 pounds down to 180 in the course of eight months, winning the affection of his beloved and marrying her.

It proceeds to celebrate the fete in poetic form, concluding: "Address to him each new appeal for lines of sabre-jet or eel: 'Ah, Eros, winged and wily imp, take pity on his human blimp: Draw taut thy heart-aimed bow and launch the dart destructive of the paunch!'"

Chester Davis of the Winston-Salem Journal has an abstracted feature article presented, in which he explains that John Motley Morehead had the vision that UNC could lift itself to the heights of academic greatness by virtue of its own bootstraps. Mr. Morehead voted Republican, was a Baptist, and contemplated many different ideas from various viewpoints. His grandfather, of the same name, had been elected Governor of the state in 1840 and 1842, and his father had been a scientist and scientific tinkerer.

Mr. Morehead had risen via acetylene gas through the ranks of the Union Carbon & Carbide Corp., eventually devoting his wealth to the University, first building the Morehead Bell Tower overlooking Kenan Stadium, then the Morehead Planetarium, conceived in 1938 and finished and dedicated in 1949. At the suggestion of his nephew, John L. Morehead of Charlotte, he had endowed a scholarship program for the University, patterned on the order of the Rhodes Scholarship program, except for rising undergraduates. The program was established in late 1945 via the Morehead Foundation, headed by John L. Morehead, tasked with establishing the planetarium and the scholarship program.

The elder Mr. Morehead was convinced that 10 percent of the people did the thinking for the entire population and that the best way to improve the lot of the entire population was to encourage education of individuals who demonstrated promise of becoming part of that 10 percent who did the thinking. The primary purpose of the scholarship program, however, was to take youth of distinction who showed promise of future distinction and provide them with a full scholarship to the University, that they would enrich and raise the standards of the institution.

Mr. Davis explains how the Morehead scholarships worked, with only qualified schools able to make nominations, including all accredited high schools within the state and several junior colleges and prep schools. Academic achievement was not the only criterion for receipt of the scholarship, rather all around desirability was to be the determining factor, with only males being considered.

Chancellor Robert B. House of the University at Chapel Hill indicated that they looked for three qualities, two facts and one choice, intelligence, character, and imagination being the qualities, with the two facts being achievement, in both academic and extracurricular activities, and physical health and vigor, and the promise being that there would be future distinction in patient judgment, imaginative originality and sound reasoning.

The program had begun providing scholarships in 1951 and thus far, 42 Morehead scholars had been named, with the goal being 80 to 100 scholarships awarded each year. There was criticism of the program in that some boys who needed financial help had been passed over in favor of boys who could afford to go to any school they wanted to attend, Mr. Davis citing one such example. He finds, however, that the criticism missed the point, that Mr. Morehead had created the program for the purpose of helping the University rather than individuals.

There had also been some questions raised as to whether the program could succeed in selecting distinguished leaders of the future, with one man having said to Mr. Davis that in awarding a Morehead scholarship, the trustees sought well-rounded and well-balanced boys, but he wondered whether such boys would provide the leadership for the future. Mr. Davis acknowledges that there were many instances of poorly balanced youngsters who had "wandered their lopsided way through college and then gone out in the world and made names of glowing distinction for themselves", such as Thomas Wolfe. There were also the late bloomers who did not set the woods on fire in high school, but later contributed greatly to the nation. But, he concludes, if the net were cast wide enough, a sufficient number of the nation's top high school and prep school graduates would be swept into it that a group of future leaders would result, and, in any event, scholars of that category brought together at one university would help raise the entire perspective and status of the institution.

Educators tended to agree that high schools within the state were largely second rate and there was a danger that the University would tend to be pulled down by such students routinely being admitted. Mr. Morehead was too proud of the University to tolerate any dilution of its standards and intended to search the nation for the cream of the crop among the youth, convinced that such boys would attend the University only if it were truly a top-flight school. He believed that the University would respond to that challenge.

It might also be noted that Morehead scholars were required to maintain a minimum grade-point average or lose their scholarship during the course of their four years at the University. As we recall, that minimum standard was a 3.0 or "B" average. Women were admitted to the program for the first time in 1975. Some overlooked students, we recollect, would fain vouchsafe, with a shrug of the shoulders, that they did not need any more head.

Drew Pearson indicates that as Senator William Knowland of California had announced just after midnight on July 1 that Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska had died, the Senate adjourned for the night, reconvening the following morning, not following the tradition, however, of adjourning for one day following the death of a Senator, with Senator Knowland then providing a brief tribute to Senator Butler, after which Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Minority Leader, paid tribute to Senator Knowland for his stand taken the previous day that if Communist China were to be admitted to the U.N., the U.S. should withdraw all funding from that organization, saying that he supported the Majority Leader in the notion that the Government should not have its hands tied with regard to Communist China or anything else and that he welcomed Senator Knowland's statement. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon returned to paying tribute to Senator Butler, moving to recess, while saying he did not agree with the sentiments expressed by both the Majority and Minority Leaders regarding Communist China and the U.N., that he did not believe in the growing attitude that if the U.S. could not have its own way in the matter, it should withdraw from the U.N., that he, also, was against admission of Communist China to the U.N. but that going it alone would invite a third world war. At that point, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, one of the most distinguished members of the Foreign Relations Committee, questioned the wisdom of setting foreign policy via a two-minute limit on debate, as Senator Knowland had imposed at the outset, that it was a complicated subject which needed more than two minutes per Senator to express, indicating that he believed that it would evidence political immaturity for the U.S. to withdraw from the U.N. in the event of admission of Communist China.

Afterward, Mr. Pearson relates, Senator Johnson had scolded Senator Fulbright for the speech, to which Senator Fulbright stated that as the Minority Leader, Senator Johnson had no business supporting the Majority Leader without consulting other Democratic Senators. Senator Johnson replied that he did not support Senator Knowland, but, comments Mr. Pearson, the record indicated that he had. Mr. Pearson concludes that thus ran the debate on "the most important Senate move toward isolation since Senator [Albert] Fall of New Mexico had threatened to go to the White House and remove the bed clothing from the stricken Woodrow Wilson to ascertain his condition during the debate over the League of Nations."

Marquis Childs, in Chicago, indicates that the Congressional campaign in Illinois promised to bring focus to issues crucial for both parties, with Senator Paul Douglas running for re-election against Joseph Meek, who had been director and chief lobbyist for the Illinois Federation of Realtors, made up of 10,000 business operators. Mr. Meek had said that if he were to succeed in defeating Senator Douglas, then Adlai Stevenson would be eliminated as a Democratic presidential candidate in 1956, as then "the smart Democrats would desert him like rats leaving a sinking ship."

Mr. Childs regards that statement as having considerable objective validity, as such a defeat within Mr. Stevenson's home state, where he had been Governor between 1949 and 1953, would not help his chances for renomination, as other Democrats who supported other candidates for the nomination would seek to exploit such a defeat as indicative of weakness, especially if Mr. Stevenson, as he had offered to do, would campaign for Senator Douglas.

Senator Douglas had been one of the Democrats who had led the fight against giving the tidelands oil to Texas, California, Louisiana and other states, and there was a rumor that Texas oilmen would invest up to five million dollars to try to defeat the Senator. If these Texas billionaires were to succeed in helping Mr. Meek achieve election and thereby damage Mr. Stevenson's chances of gaining the 1956 nomination, they would thereby eliminate a more conspicuous enemy than Senator Douglas. During the 1952 campaign, Governor Stevenson had indicated support for retention by the Federal Government of the tidelands oil, an issue regarding which Governor Allan Shivers of Texas had repudiated the Democrats and helped to carry Texas for General Eisenhower. Senate Minority Leader Johnson was said to have his sights on the Democratic nomination and the Texas billionaires would be happier with him than with Governor Stevenson.

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