The Charlotte News
Tuesday, January 3, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 1956 session of the 84th Congress had convened this date, with the legislators gathering in an atmosphere of post-holiday joviality, but were already jockeying over such important questions as the number one issue, the farm program, plus tax reduction, foreign aid and highway construction. The Democrats, in control of both houses, were talking anew about investigations, and House Democratic Whip John McCormack of Massachusetts said that he thought the Democrats ought center their investigations on "control of government by big business," indicating that the Administration was dominated by big business and that he believed the public ought to know the extent to which big business had taken over. The President would send his State of the Union message, to be read by clerks, the following Thursday, and it was tradition that no legislative business would be transacted until after that message had been delivered. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the Senate 49 to 47, and 230 to 203 in the House, with two seats in that chamber being vacant, previously held by Democrats. During the session, both parties would seek to establish a record which would win votes in the general election the following November.
The President was scheduled to return to Washington the following weekend, and at present, had no scheduled personal appearances before the Congress. The biggest unanswered question of the moment was whether the President would run for a second term, given his heart attack of September 24, having provided no hint of his intentions, not expected before mid-February.
In Paris, the national elections which had been called by Premier Edgar Faure on a gamble that they would produce a strong, stable government, had produced only the prospect of more years of shaky coalitions, with a more powerful bloc of Communists having been elected to the National Assembly, along with a new obstructionist faction, the anti-tax followers of Pierre Poujade. It appeared from the outcome that a Socialist, rather than a leader of any of the large parties, might become the premier as a result of the balloting. The moderate parties controlled a majority, but it was so split between party alliances headed by Premier Faure and his arch-rival, former Premier Pierre Mendes-France, that it was unlikely they could produce a coalition government. Together, the two factions controlled about 350 of the Assembly's 544 seats. The Communists had taken 151 seats, the largest bloc controlled by a single party, and the Poujadists had elected 49 deputies in their first test at the polls. Premier Faure's right-of-center alliance had won about 193 seats and the Mendes-France left-of-center group, which included 88 Socialists, had taken about 156 seats.
In Columbus, O., an estimated 100 police officers had moved in to break up mass picketing at the Columbus Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant this date, and violence had ensued, with one man having died, possibly of a heart attack after a beating, according to an officer of the International Union of Electrical Workers, and at least seven others having been injured, with 86 arrested, including 12 women, charged with violating a December 1 court order limiting pickets to six per gate, and also charged with instigating a riot. At least one car had been overturned at each of the plant's five gates, and police cars had been stoned and clubbed in the predawn darkness, as the anticipated violence finally burst out in the early morning during a previously planned mass demonstration to protest the company's back-to-work movement in the strike, which had started as part of a national walk-out against Westinghouse on October 17, the two unions involved seeking a 15-cent hourly wage increase. Average pay for members of the two unions averaged $2.10 per hour prior to the strikes, and they had rejected a company proposal for a five-year contract, which the company said would provide a minimum of 23.5 cents per hour in pay increases over a five-year period. The company reported that more than 1,700 of the 4,300 normally employed at the plant had returned to work.
In Pasadena, Calif., six persons, five men and a girl, had died while attending the Tournament of Roses festivities the previous day, the girl having collapsed while walking toward the parade line, dying of natural causes, and three men believed to have died from heart attacks, one man dying of a cerebral hemorrhage and another collapsing and dying beside his car following the Michigan State vs. UCLA Rose Bowl game. The local emergency hospital reported treating 121 persons, recording nine heart attacks, two strokes, 41 fainting spells, 47 miscellaneous illnesses, 17 falls and three traffic injuries, plus five bruised in fights.
Traffic deaths had set a new record for a three-day New Year holiday weekend, though far lower than the Christmas holiday record of the previous week. Including delayed reports, the death toll was recorded at 356 from traffic accidents, 72 from fires and 72 from miscellaneous accidents, with the overall total being 500. The previous record for traffic fatalities during a three-day New Year holiday was 317, with the overall death record having been 433, both established in 1953-54.
In Raleigh, Dr. J. Harris Purks might be named director of the State Board of Higher Education at meetings to be held the following day. He was presently acting president of the Consolidated University.
Donald MacDonald of The News
tells of an enraged husband having shot and killed his wife's male
companion shortly after midnight this date, in what police had
described as a "love triangle" slaying. The deceased had
been killed in a parking lot of an all-night grill, having been shot
as he emerged from the car in which he had been sitting with the
assailant's wife, the killing having occurred at about 12:30 a.m.,
with the assailant having hidden himself in the trunk of his wife's
car, suspecting that his wife was meeting a lover. The killing
occurred at the Merita Grill on W. Trade Street, and the assailant
had used a combination rifle-shotgun, part of which was a .22-caliber
rifle built over a .410 gauge shotgun, with the victim having been
shot once in his left side just below his left arm. The assailant
waived a preliminary hearing on the murder charge in City Recorder's
Court during the morning this date, after a detective testified to
the events which led to the shooting. He stated that the assailant
admitted hiding in the trunk of the car and waiting until the victim
had sat down in the front seat of the car with the man's wife. There
had been about five cars parked in the lot at the time and witnesses
remained at the scene until officers arrived. The victim was
separated from his wife and they had a 12-year old daughter. He had
been a member of Cole Memorial Methodist Church and was a veteran of
World War II, was employed in the display department of Sears. The
assailant further described the shooting to the newspaper, saying
that a friend had tipped him off about the victim giving his wife
five-dollar tips at her job as a waitress at another grill, and had
promised to get his wife a doll for the couple's little girl at
Christmas, saying that he was able to get it from Sears at a
discount. The couple had a five-year old daughter and a 14-month old
baby girl. He said they had never had any trouble until lately, that
she had been working late, sometimes until 2:00 a.m., and that he had
been keeping the children until his mother-in-law had come to stay
with them. He said, in response to a question, that he could not say
how he felt about his wife at present, given what he now knew. He and
his wife talked with an attorney and then posed for a newspaper
photographer and television cameramen. The wife said through her
attorney that she did not have any statement, other than that she had
"made a mistake". She asked that photographers not
photograph the 1953 Ford which she had driven to the grill where the
shooting took place. (The police need to investigate that request, as
it is highly suspicious. What was the issue, maybe a moonshining car?
Enquiring minds want to know.) The couple had been married for eight
years and had come to Charlotte from Winston-Salem nearly eight years
earlier. The husband was a construction worker. Will he walk, be
convicted of voluntary manslaughter based on heat of passion with
insufficient cooling time—the fact of his secreting himself in the
trunk with the weapon, however, posing a major problem for that
contention—, or will he be convicted of murder? How would you
adjudge him?
We forewarn, in looking ahead, that, as with any tale of mystery, there is a surprise twist at the end, and not the twist you might expect even as a surprise, not one, in other words, which could form the basis for an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" without offending sensibilities
On the editorial page, "Death in a North Carolina Prison" indicates that on December 10, a former Fayetteville hospital administrator had died in Wake County jail 19 hours after he had been committed there on a public drunkenness charge. The County physician had listed the cause of death as a "certain heart attack", but no coroner's inquest was held, and the body had been taken by a funeral home, at which point official concern had ended. A physician who had examined the body at the funeral home at the request of the man's mother, however, said that death may have been caused by complications resulting from an untreated wrist fracture and urged that a postmortem examination be performed to resolve the matter.
It urges that it ought be the concern of all North Carolinians. The Raleigh Times had reported that during the 19 hours of his detention, the deceased's jailers had exhibited cruel, if not criminal, negligence. The Times had interviewed a cellmate of the deceased, who had later been acquitted of the charge on which he had been held, stating that the deceased man had made a dozen unheeded pleas for medical treatment of his broken wrist between the time of his admission and a few hours before he died. The cellmate said that on one occasion, a jailer had told the deceased man that he would be placed in a rear cell where he could not be heard if he did not quit hollering for a doctor. He recounted that during the wee hours of December 10, he had asked a jailer to get a doctor for the man, but the jailer had not responded, and about two hours later, the man had died, after struggling to catch his breath. About that time, a trusty had come to sweep the cell, and he summoned the jailer, with the deceased continuing to lie there until the jail doctor had arrived about ten minutes later. The doctor did not touch the body, but he and another man had stood over it and talked, until finally the "funeral men" had carried the body out.
It suggests that it brought up ugly memories of the death of 18-year old Eleanor Rush, who had been bound, gagged, locked in an isolation cell of Woman's Prison and left to struggle until she had broken her own neck. The previous August, a man in Central Prison's hospital ward had been left to bleed slowly to death from self-inflicted razor blade slashes, despite having made two previous attempts to kill himself and being moved to the hospital ward for closer supervision.
The piece asks whether it was North Carolina justice, "1955-model", finding it part of a picture, and hopes that the reports of the Times would seep into the conscience of the state and thereby make it impossible for any future prisoners to seek a doctor and have no doctor come until it was too late. It urges that the reports should prompt new efforts to assure humane treatment for prisoners or inmates of every type of State institution and if they did not, it would be "an indelible blot on North Carolina's reputation."
"Dixie's Negro: A Wasted Resource?" indicates that black people were part of Southern culture, for whom the region was responsible, as with all other groups. It finds that even those who despised blacks would admit, if reluctantly, that they were an important factor in the South's economy, though it was not always admitted that blacks would contribute more to the economic well-being of the region as they received better education, better political, economic and social opportunities.
There were approximately 10.5 million blacks in the South, representing a major manpower potential, but throughout most of the Southern states, they were not contributing what they should because the full use of the resource was not being made.
It indicates that the most regrettable part of the situation was the difficulty which many intelligent blacks had in securing a higher education. The National Scholarship Service and the Fund for Negro Students, sponsored by the Fund for the Advancement of Education, had undertaken the task of seeking to expand opportunities for black students in higher education, seeking to discover more persons qualified to attend college in the region and encouraging those students to develop their abilities, providing them with information and assistance in obtaining college scholarships and financial aid when needed. It was known as the Southern Project.
According to Benjamin Fine, one of the nation's leading education writers, the organization's search in the South had uncovered a surprising number of black students of college ability, that in two years, some 500 students had been provided aid. In so doing, the Project had greatly increased the number of Southern black students enrolled in colleges, increased the number of information and testing facilities for future black college students and increased professional and public awareness of an important portion of the nation's hidden manpower reserve.
It indicates that trained manpower was needed in the South and across the nation, and that with sufficient education, blacks could help meet that need, benefiting the entire economic community. It concludes that the aims of the Southern Project rose above prejudice and were more akin to national and regional self-interest.
"Numbers Racket a la Russe" indicates that the Soviet claim of a ten percent cut in defense spending was merely a propaganda tool to demonstrate to the world their peaceful natures, but had employed fantastic numbers composed of sums and percentages padded with artificial values and plenty of hidden expenditures to accomplish that feat. Even the Soviet finance minister had admitted that comparisons with previous years were misleading because of changes in the Soviet economic climate.
It finds that the West could take little comfort in percentages which scarcely meant anything, reminding it of Richmond News Leader editor Jack Kilpatrick's story about the university professor who was giving a lecture to his class, indicating that the annual capacity of the Mississippi River was six hundred million, five hundred thousand, at which point a student had raised his hand and asked whether the professor was referring to gallons, barrels, or cubic feet, to which the professor, after rummaging through his lecture notes for several minutes, stated that his notes did not say, and continued with his lecture.
Somebody was apparently listening to Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians during Christmas.
And Mr. Kilpatrick, by the way, should have had more complete notes, himself, on an occasion
A piece from the Carlsbad (N.M.) Current-Argus, titled "The Vanishing Male", tells of eugenist Helen Spurway having suggested to London medical circles recently the possibility of parthenogenesis as a means of human reproduction, meaning doing so without the male contribution to the equation.
After she had made the suggestion, three women had stepped forward to claim virgin births, and their offspring would be given elaborate blood tests and skin tests to determine the accuracy of the claims, as Britain's medical journal, the Lancet, was taking the subject seriously, musing that a "rare event which is hard to prove is likely never to be reported at all if it is also 'known' to be impossible… Possibly some of the unmarried mothers whose obstinacy is condemned in old books may have been telling the truth."
It suggests that the payoff would be that almost certainly the offspring of parthenogenesis would be female, since the ovum would contain only female chromosomes.
It concludes that it only stood to reason that a woman would be figuring out a way of eliminating the male from the human scene.
An exegetic question, with perhaps
teleological overtones, might be posed as to whether, if one or more
of the claims of the three women were proved, it would imply the
Second Coming, and if so, is it the entire Trinity this time? If only one was proved accurate, would the three be invited to appear on "To Tell the Truth"?
Drew Pearson tells of Juscelino Kubitschek, President-elect of Brazil, the country's best friend in South America, having arrived in Washington this date, comparing him to Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio for his descent from a Polish immigrant, as Mr. Lausche had descended from Slav immigrants, and, like the Governor, had worked his way up from the bottom. His father had died when he was a boy and he had worked his way through school while supporting his mother, persevering with his education, studying surgery, and becoming one of Brazil's most successful surgeons, but then having gone into politics, first as a mayor and later as a governor in 1950. At 54, he was a dynamic moderate politically and liked to be known as a "conservative-progressive". Brazil had 60 million people in an area larger than the U.S. He would take office on January 31 for a five-year term, following his visit to the U.S.
During his campaign, the new President had promised that his administration would strive for three major objectives, expansion of electric power facilities, better communications, greater food production and better transportation to deliver farm products to consumer markets. It was estimated that, because of poor transportation and lack of storage, about 40 percent of the food raised on Brazilian farms never reached consumers. The new administration would promote the building of more silos and food warehouses with Government help.
He had been supported during the campaign by the Brazilian Labor Party, founded by the late President Getulio Vargas, and the Social Democratic Party, which had helped put Sr. Vargas back into the Presidency in 1954 after his ouster by the military in 1945.
The new President estimated that his five-year program would require 500 million dollars for the purchase of equipment and machinery, most of which would be purchased from the U.S. He had said that the money to pay for the program would come from private Brazilian investors, foreign investments and Government loans which he hoped to obtain from the U.S. He had pledged to continue the fight for the "national unity" of Brazil and had urged all of his countrymen to forget personal rancor for the good of their country, responding to reports that his foes would seek to set aside his election through a military coup. He had said, "I need peace to work and to let all Brazil work."
A correction is necessary to Mr. Pearson's column regarding his reference to Brazil being the best friend of the U.S. in South America, neglecting to mention the obvious candidate for that role, singlehandedly representing all of Latin America, the indomitable El Presidente Jose Jimenez
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of it having been exactly ten years earlier that their first column had appeared in a handful of newspapers, finding it "an odd experience, entertaining in a way and sad in another", to review their first-year scrapbook of columns and to note how times had changed and how they had not.
Their first column had begun, "The most conspicuous single fact in Washington today is Harry S. Truman," and had concluded, "It is still an open question whether Truman can master the job." They regard it as still an open question, which would likely remain so for many more decades. They review some of the columns which had followed and the names which appeared therein.
That which they find standing out most among the old clippings was how little the really important things had changed. The cold war had started ten years earlier, though not fashionable to admit it at the time. The third column they had written had noted that the nation was "without a basic policy for dealing with the basic problem of current international relations—the new Soviet imperialism." They find it almost as accurate at present as it had been ten years earlier.
A few weeks later, they had written in another column that the weakness of American foreign policy had arisen from "the unwillingness to use our vast economic power to the full and with all energy, in order to cure the terrible ills which weaken all nations in Europe and Asia and thus encourage Soviet expansionism." Toward the end of 1946, they had engaged in over-optimism, which had not been repeated frequently since, having said: "The Soviet foreign policy which has plagued the whole world seems to be in process of basic revision. It is too early to cheer, but not too early to hope." Just a few weeks later, they found that it had been too early to hope, and still was.
They had written a great deal about the new weapons making possible "that war between the continents which must haunt the imagination of every informed and imaginative man." Despite small wars and great crises, missiles, jets and hydrogen bombs in the interim, there had still not been a nuclear war. They urge that as long as the country maintained its guard, hopefully there never would be.
The previous Thursday, Premier Nikolai Bulganin had boasted to the meeting of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow that the Soviet armed forces would soon have an intercontinental ballistic missile. They had not yet tested such a rocket, which could carry an hydrogen bomb warhead from a Russian launching site to an American target. They state that such rockets would unavoidably produce atmospheric and other after-effects, which could be detected by appropriate devices around the world, and the fact that there had been no such detection probably had led to the private complacency and public untruth which had characterized the Pentagon reaction to the news from Moscow.
The Russians had regularly telegraphed their development of weapons, boasting of them as soon as they were confident that they had solved design problems in preparation for a test, just as V. M. Molotov had stated that the Soviets had an atomic bomb about a year before their first test of it in August, 1949. The same sort of thing had occurred in advance of their first hydrogen bomb test. Thus, the Alsops find it only prudent to expect that sometime within the ensuing year or so, the Soviets would successfully test an ICBM, quite properly called "the ultimate weapons".
That would not come as a surprise, as the Alsops had previously disclosed that official U.S. intelligence forecasts sometime earlier had placed such a test probably in 1958. But the official U.S. forecasts had invariably underestimated future Soviet achievements in weaponry by at least two years, meaning that the ICBM would likely be ready for testing during the current year.
When Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had taken office in 1953, he had sought to cancel the U.S. long-range missile projects, which he had denounced as "visionary". He believed the armed services were spending outrageous sums on research and development, pointing out that General Motors, of which he had been president, spent far less as a percentage of its income for such purposes. The Alsops suggest that it might sound like a joke, but that it had actually happened that way. Fortunately, Secretary Wilson had finally been persuaded not to cancel the long-range missile projects, but he had caused them to be shelved for all practical purposes for the first two years of the Administration.
The so-called Killian Report had revealed an acutely dangerous situation regarding the substantial Soviet lead in missile development. Some months earlier, the National Security Council had voted to give overriding first priority to missile development and the Pentagon was now going "all-out" in that direction, to the extent that the Wilson-led Pentagon was capable of going "all-out" regarding any field of weaponry. Very important breakthroughs had already been made, but yet only a few days before Mr. Bulganin had spoken, Secretary Wilson had publicly stated that it would probably be about five years before the U.S. could fire an ICBM, leaving a gap of between three and four years between the first U.S. test and the likely occurrence of the first Soviet test.
They find that the fateful prospect had hardly caused a ripple, however, in the country because of public ignorance and self-interested official "pooh-poohing". They believe the whole country should be up in arms and so promise a series of reports in their column regarding the meaning of that and other current changes in the vital air-atomic balance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., finds that three letters which had been printed on December 10 had summed up "some very important truths that are of good consolation to anyone that wants to stay in the human race that God placed them in at the beginning." He finds one of the writer's views on true democracy, however, to be somewhat off, that it was not accomplished through representation of any body of people, but by the popular votes of all of the people. He found that the letter writer was wanting dictators to choose things for him, that he was trying to build up the justice of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, "which has made an effort to deprive him, and all the other citizenry of the nation, of their freedom and rights to choose by democracy (the voice of the people) whether they will be a pure race or an ungodly, adulterated nation of race mongers." He finds that another writer of the same date, who was black, appeared not satisfied with being black, questions whether she really was black, quotes her as asking why blacks should not comingle with whites, mentioning that several races of people did so. He says that he would tell her why, that "in the first place it would be the greatest act of adultery that the world has ever heard of. In the next place there is as much difference between a full-blooded African, and full-blooded white American, as there is between day and night."
A letter from the city commander of the Salvation Army thanks the newspaper and the hundreds of people who had sent checks to the Salvation Army Christmas Fund, and to the thousands of people who had put money into the kettles on the streets. He also thanks the radio and television stations and other newspapers for making it possible for them to carry on their good work among the needy and unfortunate. He pledges their best efforts to merit the continued support and good will of all of the people of the community.
Tenth Day
Framed Edition
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