The Charlotte News
Wednesday, January 16, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, in his budget message to Congress this date, indicated renewal of high tax rates, higher interest charges and a natural gas bill like the one he had vetoed the previous year because of the lobbying pressure which had been revealed regarding its passage. He urged postal rate increases which would boost the cost of a three-cent stamp to a nickel and called for Federal aid for schools, highways and homes. It was the largest spending peacetime budget and the biggest balanced budget of all time, at 71.8 billion dollars for fiscal year 1957-58. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had said that the rising budget trend "should promptly be stopped." He told reporters that he would be glad if Congress could eliminate any unnecessary costs from the budget, emphasizing, however, that he was not criticizing the budget, adding that it was the best they could possibly do at present. The Secretary said that the Treasury might ask Congress to raise the interest rate on U.S. Savings Bonds, which were paying 3 percent if held for 10 years, and would fight any and all tax-cutting proposals which would reduce revenues, that if prosperity endured and Government costs were cut, the Administration could, in a year, give some consideration to tax relief along with a further reduction of the national debt. Many of the budget requests of the President repeated from the previous year, having not passed the prior Congress.
The budget called for an increase of more than two billion dollars in military spending, but the President said that the budget would be balanced and would provide for a surplus for the third straight year. He said that two of the major guidelines he had used in drafting the budget entailed assurance of "peace, justice and freedom for our own and other peoples" and "powerful armed forces to deter and, if need be, to defeat aggression." He said that he was convinced that the defense programs and funding for their support, as recommended in the budget, would provide a reasonable degree of protection for the nation. Of the total budget, 63 percent, or 45.3 billion dollars, was for national security, including more than 38 billion for the armed forces, 4.3 billion for economic and military foreign aid, and lesser amounts for atomic energy research and development, stockpiling of strategic goods, domestic civil defense and the U.S. Information Agency. The President predicted that with continuing prosperity, the Government would collect a record 73.6 billion dollars in revenue, permitting a surplus of 1.8 billion to be applied to reduction of the national debt. He said that as a result, it would not be necessary to ask again during the current year for an increase in the permanent 275 billion dollar debt limit, temporarily raised to 278 billion.
In New York,
conductor Arturo Toscanini died in his sleep this date at age 89 in
Riverdale, the Bronx. His son said that the famous maestro had
suffered a stroke on New Year's Day and had not fully recovered from
it. His conducting career had spanned 70 years and had won him
virtually every honor which the musical world could bestow. He had
already achieved great success before coming to the U.S. in 1908 and
achieved even greater success in America. For seven seasons, he had
conducted the renowned Metropolitan Opera in New York when it had
such artists as Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba and Antonio Scotti, but a disagreement, never
explained, had caused him to quit the Met in 1915, never to return.
Subsequently, he had directed the New York Philharmonic Symphony and
the NBC Symphony Orchestra
In Aberdeen,
Miss., a 26-year old former convict, wanted by the FBI, had
surrendered to reporters rather than to authorities this date so that
he could tell his story and possibly stop some "punk kids from
starting" the way he had. He said that he was from Cleveland and
when he walked into the Aberdeen Examiner office, stated that
he was giving himself up because he was "tired of running",
saying that he was wanted in 13 states for crimes ranging from
burglary to passing bad checks. The FBI in Memphis had confirmed that
he was wanted on at least one charge of interstate transportation of
a stolen automobile. After telling his story for more than an hour to
the newsmen, he said he was ready for the authorities to be called.
He said that his trouble had been women, drinking and wanting to be a
big shot, which he said he was not. He had quit school in the seventh
grade in Fayetteville, N.C., had entered the Army but was discharged
for bad conduct, then went on a crime spree before being caught by
the FBI in West Virginia in 1950 for car theft. He had been released
from the Federal reformatory in El Reno, Okla., in 1954. With his
wife and two children, he had left her hometown in Texas after a bad
check spree, taking with them a car on which payments were inchoate. They then
followed a pattern whereby they would move into a city where they
would get acquainted with people and then start passing a quick round
of bad checks, sometimes stealing a car and money and then moving on,
repeating the process, having done so in Arizona, Texas,
Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York and Mississippi,
leaving each time, he said, "a step ahead of the law". He
had deserted his family in St. Louis three months earlier, drifted
south and by the time he arrived in Aberdeen, had decided to
surrender, indicating that he was aware
In Loris, S.C., it was reported that a family of six, apparently seeking to flee flames, had burned to death in a dwelling on the main street of the darkened, sleet-covered town the previous night. The father, the mother and four pre-school aged children had perished in the fire, across the street from the city hall, as about 20 others in the building and an adjoining structure had been rescued. The fire had been discovered shortly before midnight by a lineman atop a power pole on the main street, having been called to the town two hours earlier when sleet had interrupted power. Most of the town was dark when the lineman saw smoke in the rear of a café, where the deceased family had an apartment, with three other families who occupied the adjoining building having escaped.
Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks and the assistant secretary, H. C. McClellan, were planning to fly into Charlotte early in the afternoon to attend a special meeting of the directors of the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute at the Charlotte City Club. The Institute had been involved during the previous 15 months in a vigorous campaign aimed at promoting an agreement between the Governments of the U.S. and Japan regarding trade in textiles, whereby Japan's exports of low-cost textile products to the U.S. would be limited.
In New York, it was reported that a heavy snowstorm this date had hit much of the Northeast, which had suffered its coldest weather of the winter the previous day. The Weather Bureau in New York described the storm as "dangerous and intensifying". The snowfall had slowed trains, buses and automobiles, and caused some delays in airplane flights. Snow extended from New England to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay, in depths ranging from 3 to 8 inches. Forecasters were keeping a close watch on what they called "this dangerous and intensifying storm as it plods along its present northeasterly path." Below zero temperatures continued to be recorded in the northern parts of New York State and New England. New York City had a force of 2,000 men plowing and sanding main traffic arteries, deploying 439 pieces of sand and salt-spreading equipment. The temperature in New York City, which dropped to 3.1 degrees above zero the previous day, climbed to 20.3 in the wee hours of the morning this date and then started going back down again.
In Charlotte, the Weather Bureau forecast a 16 degree low for the morning. Cold air had rushed into the Carolinas the previous night to clear the air of an ice storm which had turned streets and highways into icy ribbons the previous afternoon and night. By dawn, the ice storm had passed from the Piedmont and had moved up the Carolina and Virginia coasts. The icy roads had caused 27 wrecks in Charlotte and Mecklenburg the previous day, injuring six persons, but for the most part, motorists had heeded warnings to remain off the streets where comparatively few vehicles were observed the previous night.
In Los Angeles, Marie "The Body" McDonald and 15 other witnesses were set to appear before a Los Angeles County grand jury this date, where Ms. McDonald was slated to tell her story of being kidnaped on January 3, held for 24 hours and then left on a desert road near Indio. Her attorney, Jerry Geisler, said that he would make her and her mother available for the grand jury, indicating, however, that because of her physical condition, he would prefer that she be called the following day instead of this date, as she had suffered bruises and had been disheveled and hysterical when found by a truck driver in the desert, having been in seclusion for the previous several days. The witnesses included her former husband, a wealthy shoe manufacturer, her current escort, actor Michael Wilding, her business manager, movie columnist Harrison Carroll, her butler, maid and nurse, the truck driver who had found her on the road, the doctor who had examined her and others who had attended her after she was found, plus police officers. The police chief had asked for the grand jury inquiry, saying that his detectives had obtained "absolutely negative results" in their investigation, unable to "substantiate or disprove" her story.
On the editorial page, "The Face of Violence Is Not Proud" indicates that there was nothing pretty about Mecklenburg violence or poetic in casual homicide, that it did not contribute to the community's rising individualism or the burgeoning of a romantic and hedonistic spirit, but rather was tragic.
The week-long series, "Murder in Mecklenburg", by staff writer Ann Sawyer, had provided emphasis to all of its abominable aspects. It had not been designed to shock people or appeal to morbid interests of readers, but rather to enlighten the community to a serious problem and appeal to the community's conscience.
Homicide among blacks, it finds, was the "mightiest skeleton in Mecklenburg's closet". In the Brooklyn neighborhood, life was pathetically cheap and in some years, blacks committed up to 90 percent of the killing in the city. It finds that it was not because they were black but rather that economic status and background were the dominant factors. Violence occurred in the dingiest poverty among blacks, in the midst of an area of decaying buildings and decaying people. They were involved with crime because they were poor. In contrast to their underprivileged brethren, upper-class blacks probably indulged in crimes of violence very little, if any, more than did upper-class whites. In that way, Charlotte was no different from any other large city.
Warden Lewis Lawes had written in his 20,000 Years in Sing Sing: "You could cut a knife through the prison population, and have a perfectly even proportion in accordance with the economic status and background of the prisoners received. The Negroes from the Harlem slums and whites from Cherry Hill, Hell's Kitchen and other ghettos were received in proportion to 6 to 1 over some groups who have acquired higher economic security."
Congressman Basil Whitener had described the situation similarly several years earlier when he had been the local solicitor, having said that he had only one case come out of Fairview Homes, the major public housing project for blacks, since he had been solicitor, but could not count the number which had originated in the poverty and disease-ridden sections of the city, that the same thing was true of whites, that the crime rate was comparable in slum areas, finding that there were just more black slums.
Complicating the matter was the fact that Mecklenburg juries were excessively lenient with black violence. First-degree murder charges were seldom pressed to the limit in cases where a black person had taken the life of another black person. Sentences were comparatively light and police investigations were not always what they should be in such cases. Meanwhile, slums festered, home life deteriorated, morals became slack, opportunities for wholesome recreation vanished as the decay spread, congestion became a way of life and a civilized community became an urban jungle.
It questions the whereabouts of the reformers amid all of the statisticians.
"Mr. Puckette Championed a Cause" tells of the death of Charles McDonald Puckette, general manager of the Chattanooga Times, leaving Southern journalism immeasurably poorer, having left an indelible mark.
He had been well known and highly regarded in Charlotte, as his daughter, Isabelle Howe, was a former woman's editor of The News and his son-in-law, Raymond Howe, a former sports editor and managing editor of the newspaper.
Mr. Puckette had started his career as a reporter on the New York Evening Post in 1908, had become city editor of that newspaper in 1916 at the age of 29, and managing editor in 1917, then joining the New York Times as assistant to the business manager in 1924, becoming in 1932 assistant to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, then vice-president of the Times. Mr. Puckette had continued in that role when Mr. Sulzberger had become president and publisher after the death of Adolph Ochs. His role had been broad, including helping in editorial, news and business operations.
When the Chattanooga Times, jointly owned with the New York Times, had needed a general manager in 1942, Mr. Puckette had been appointed, enabling him to return home to Tennessee, where he had been educated and had grown up. His leadership of the Times and his efforts to champion the cause of all Southern newspapers had been notable, having been president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association in 1955-56.
In 1944, he had written for the New York Times Book Review that because news was and always had to be the "gold coin of newspapers" and because popular journalism was the only wholly successful kind, the newspapers had every reasonable hope of looking forward to a sound and increasingly useful future.
It finds that he had left a significant mark on the profession of journalism and would be missed.
"Icy Headlines & Rioting Reminiscence" indicates that as the weatherman had been talking about the dangers of icy roads and implying the necessity that chains be placed on the tires and the furnace checked for proper operation, it had drifted back to storms of winters past and the way they had brought to the countryside sudden visions of white forests and enveloping quietness, the failure of school buses to be able to move along the roads, of extra logs heaped in the fireplace and how almost anything would serve as a sled on which children could slide off hills.
And it goes on with its reminiscence, indicating that it lasted about two minutes until it found itself hoping that this date would dawn without ice and snow, rather with a balmy breeze blowing from any or all directions. "For reminiscence, after all, warms you only on the inside."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Take It Away, Charlotte!" finds that the people of Charlotte were as concerned over being a "one-TV station" town as they were over the Civil Defense Administration's failure to make them a "critical target". It says that in the meantime it concurred heartily with the Durham Herald's analysis of "critical targets", that something else had been added for some cities to be proud of and for others to be jealous about, but it could not see why any municipality would show either attitude about being classified a "critical target" area, a distinction about which it was not inclined to fight.
The piece agrees with the Herald, indicating it would gladly transfer Guilford County's "critical target" label to Charlotte, provided the Civil Defense Administration agreed, as there needed to be a critical target or two somewhere in Charlotte's environs, outside the one-elephant jungle—referring to Vicki the elephant which had escaped from the Airport zoo into the nearby wilds of Charlotte for awhile in 1955, making the news nationally.
Drew Pearson indicates that the President had decided not to accept Prime Minister Nehru's invitation for a return visit to India, the President having told his staff that he might offend other Asian countries if he only visited India, and that he had neither the time nor the energy to tour Southeast Asia. He indicates that Prime Minister Nehru's honeymoon with the U.S. was already over, less than two weeks after the President thought he had charmed him into being a friend. But the Prime Minister was quite mad about the President not having told him during their White House conference about the new Middle East policy enunciated shortly after he had departed. The U.S. Embassy had tried to explain that the new policy had not been drafted until after the Prime Minister's departure, but the latter would not accept the explanation, having seen press reports published before he arrived in Washington indicating that Secretary of State Dulles had concocted the idea while he was recuperating in Key West several weeks earlier.
Pennsylvania Congressman Carroll Kearns had some breathtaking experiences with Hungarian refugees on the Hungarian border recently, surprising everyone by appearing with his wife on the Austrian side of the border in the wee hours of the morning to inspect a refugee camp. He said that when they had heard that he was a U.S. Congressman, he was flooded with people with stars in their eyes. He found that 60 percent of the refugees wanted to come to the U.S., and yet there was no American official on the scene to greet them and keep their hopes up, despite other countries having responded by rushing consular personnel from Vienna to border camps. But the U.S. Embassy had insufficient staff.
Switzerland had called off all dances out of respect for the Hungarian freedom fighters, according to the Congressman. Some countries, including France, had rushed buses to the Hungarian border and then announced that all refugees who wanted to go to France should get aboard. By contrast, the 60 percent who had hoped to enter the U.S. had to sit around for days without any encouragement from an American official, some making their way to Vienna, where they sought help in desperation from the American Embassy, only to be told to wait. Mr. Kearns believed that the refugees would be a ferment for the good in the U.S., indicating that he had seen an International Red Cross convoy of 35 trucks returning to Vienna following a mercy mission to Budapest, with there having been more reverence shown to the trucks than to a funeral procession in the U.S. The arrival of Hungarian refugees in the U.S., he said, could create a new reverence and appreciation for American freedoms.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, finds that the atmosphere of the Western Alliance, as discerned in Paris, was that "it stinks". He indicates that it would hardly be necessary to state that unpleasant truth, provided Secretary of State Dulles's recent trip to the NATO conference in Paris had not been followed by so much happy "burbling" in Washington, with official sources then giving the country the impression that all the damage done by the Suez crisis had been undone and that the rent fabric of the West had been patiently but successfully knitted up again.
The actual state of things at the end of the NATO conference, he finds, was better suggested by a well-authenticated anecdote concerning one of the last meetings, in which French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, wishing to support Mr. Dulles's view, had sardonically announced: "I must confess that this is one of the rare occasions when I find myself in agreement with the Secretary of State."
While he regards the French and British as foolishly self-indulgent in giving such free rein to their detestation of the Secretary, he also finds reasons to believe that U.S. policymakers were not behaving in a very grown-up manner. It had been an open secret, even before Mr. Alsop had left Washington, that high policymakers were charging that skeptical analyses of the Administration's course in the Suez crisis had been inspired by foreign intrigue, which he regards as a strong sign of their neurosis. According to another report, which might be denied but was certainly authentic, the State Department had actually taken formal action on the basis of the aforementioned neurotic theory. The U.S. Embassy in London was instructed to complain to the Foreign Office that the British Embassy in Washington was disseminating misleading reports about U.S. policy, and they wanted the British to stop it.
There were also rumblings from Washington about alleged secret documents in the possession of the State Department which, if revealed, might cause the French and British Governments to fall. Both the French and the British unanimously attributed those implied threats to Secretary Dulles.
Mr. Alsop indicates that such things had to be stopped abruptly if the Western Alliance was to be restored to any working order. The conditions for a new start had already been created by the President's declaration regarding Soviet aggression in the Middle East, though it was no substitute for a serious, detailed Middle Eastern policy to indicate that overt Soviet aggression, which they had no intention of carrying out, would not be permitted. He finds it at best a fair substitute for U.S. adherence to the Baghdad Pact, which had been so urgently requested by Turkey, Iraq and Britain, finally refused by U.S. policymakers. But, he finds, the Eisenhower declaration was nevertheless a good beginning.
He indicates that the resignation of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, tragic though it had been in many ways, might also help clear the air. But he finds that there were two requirements for a genuine new start, that the petty backbiting and self-righteous self-justification had to stop on both sides and the old relations of mutual frankness and free communication on all Western policy questions, presently broken off, had to be rapidly resumed at all levels. Since the U.S. was the leader of the West, it was up to U.S. policymakers to make the first showing of large-mindedness and generosity. Otherwise, he concludes, the Western Alliance might openly founder in the rough year ahead.
Robert C. Ruark, in Ikoma, Tanganyika, again tells of his hunt with Professor Frank Bowman and 12 Africans, plus a truck and one jeep, with their leader, Harry Selby, still down with the mumps he had contracted from his son.
Anyway, we find it all rather boring and so if you wish to read of it, you may.
A letter writer from Pittsboro indicates that he was including the part of his previous communication which the newspaper had deleted, saying that he had profound respect for the Hungarians' attempt to obtain freedom, but had none for the Voice of America, which he believes had incited the Hungarians to revolt in the belief that the U.S. would come to their aid. He finds that the U.S. was effectively therefore a participant in the human slaughter and that furthermore, the Hungarians were Nazi in their political outlook and thinking, the last to leave Hitler during World War II. He says that he had opposed the U.S. taking sides in the war between Stalin and Hitler out of the belief that freedom had no chance to emerge, wanted both to eliminate each other, is convinced that he had been right. He finds that national interest and self-preservation overrode the provisions of the U.N. Charter.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.