The Charlotte News
Thursday, January 17, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in New York, assistant to the President, Harold Stassen, this date had branded as "fraudulent" a telegram reportedly having been sent by him to members of the RNC, urging its members to "keep the future of the Republican Party and country safe from the Nixons and Knowlands." The telegram had been disseminated by Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, a former chairman of the RNC. Mr. Stassen said that he had sent no such telegram and had authorized no such telegram and was starting an immediate investigation to find out who was responsible for placing his name on it. Mr. Reece said that the telegram had originated from Stamford, Conn., and that he knew of other members of the RNC who had received an identical message. Two other House members, Congressman Clarence Brown of Ohio and Congresswoman Cecil Harden of Indiana, who were also members of the RNC, however, said that they had not received the telegram. Mr. Reece said that the telegram, marked "confidential", read: "The time has come for liberals to take a stand. Let's keep the future of the party and country safe from the Nixons and Knowlands. Let's elect Meade Alcorn chairman and really clean up the mess." Mr. Alcorn was a Connecticut Republican leader and had figured in speculation regarding a new chairman to succeed Leonard Hall, who had announced his resignation, effective February 1.
The U.S.S. Nautilus, the world's first atomic submarine, would soon undergo its first refueling after logging more than 55,000 miles in two years of cruising, according to a Navy announcement, indicating that the refueling operation would occur in the spring, utilizing special equipment and techniques, handled by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp. This date marked the second anniversary of the beginning of the submarine's first voyage.
In Eastbourne, England, a prosecutor contended this date at a preliminary hearing, in which a doctor stood charged with murder, that a 1,000-pound check, the equivalent of $2,800 in U.S. currency, had disappeared at the inquest of an elderly patient of the doctor, charged with having deliberately drugged a woman to cause her death and obtain bequests through her will. The prosecutor was attempting to show that he was also responsible for the deaths of two other wealthy patients in the same manner and for the same purpose, having deliberately made them dependent on drugs and then administered overdoses. Murder charges, however, had only been filed in one case involving an 81-year old widow. The inquest verdict the previous August had been suicide, but the prosecutor contended that the doctor had driven her to kill herself by giving her large quantities of dangerous narcotics. The prosecutor said that the doctor had received the check on July 17, six days before the woman's death, and had asked his bank to give it special clearance into his account, as he had known that the patient probably would kill herself the following weekend. The prosecution produced a coroner's officer who testified that the check had last been seen lying on a table during the inquest hearing. The prosecutor then called a bank cashier, who provided evidence regarding the day when the doctor had brought in the check for clearance. The defense attorney objected to the cashier's testimony on the ground that the checks might not be the same, but the five magistrates hearing the case allowed the cashier to continue his testimony. A female druggist testified that the doctor had prescribed dangerous drugs for the dead woman's husband, who had also died, four months before his wife. The druggist had produced a bundle of 20 prescriptions made out by the doctor for the husband between March, 1955 and March, 1956. But under cross-examination by the defense, the druggist admitted that some of the prescriptions did not contain dangerous substances. The preliminary hearing was in its fourth day to determine whether there was probable cause for binding over the defendant for trial.
Gas explosions in Kansas and Illinois had killed three persons each, with a fourth person missing in the explosion at Peoria, Ill. An explosion in Liberal, Kans., had destroyed a compressor station of a gas line company, causing service to be cut off to a large portion of the Midwest.
In Wendell, N.C., three small children had burned to death this date in a fire which destroyed their farm home, with witnesses indicating that they had been left at home alone while their parents had transported an older child to school, and that when the parents had returned, they found the home engulfed in flames with no chance of saving the children, ranging in age between 18 months and five, the mother having had to be restrained from entering the house. No cause of the fire is indicated.
In Goldsboro, N.C., a large fire in the heart of the town's business district the previous night had virtually destroyed two stores and caused considerable smoke damage to two others, having lasted for six hours until the wee hours of the morning. The fire chief was investigating the cause of the fire.
A week-long cold wave had eased up some in the Midwest this date but in the East, more record-breaking cold had occurred, with no general relief from the longest cold snap of the season across the Eastern half of the country appearing imminent. The temperature hit -12 in Youngstown, O., a new all-time low, and records for the date were also broken in Harrisburg, Pa., with a reading of two degrees above zero, in Pittsburgh, at six below, in Parkersburg, W.Va., at nine below, in Columbus, O., at seven below and at Cleveland, at six below. Elkins, W. Va., had hit 14 below and Big Savage Mountain in western Maryland had recorded the same temperature. Zero temperatures were recorded as far south as Tennessee.
Emery Wister of The News
tells of winter having brought snow and sleet again this date to
Piedmont North Carolina, with flurries having fallen in Charlotte
during the morning and afternoon, while the bad weather was
concentrated in the Winston-Salem area, where three inches of snow
was anticipated. Forsyth County schools had been closed, while
Winston-Salem City schools had remained open—a helluva note which we
remember experiencing several times before consolidation, especially
troubling when your mama taught in the County system, and you had to
trudge to the City school, probably about 20 miles away, in all that
horrid slush on an icy morning with your face frozen. Schools in
Burlington and Alamance County had reopened during the morning after
being closed the previous day because of ice on the streets and
roads. Snow flurries had been reported during the morning in Lenoir,
Salisbury, Statesville, Burlington and Gastonia. The Weather Bureau
predicted occasional freezing rain during the afternoon, expected to
end by nightfall, with "light snow" predicted for the
following day. There were 55 mph winds from the northwest blowing
10,000 feet above the earth, which meant that the clouds would be
blown out to sea within a day or two. All will soon be halcyon bliss, ending your lachrymose state of slush-trudging, from which, if your mama is properly empathetic, you will be excused for the day as "sick", enabling you to stay home to read a nice book or two on the state of the world
J. A. Daly of The News reports that the Government had accepted the Japanese Government's proposal to limit exports of the low-cost Japanese textile products to the U.S. to 250 million square yards per year, according to an announcement presented to members of the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute's directorate, meeting in special session the previous day in Charlotte, the announcement having been made personally by Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks and assistant secretary Harold McClellan. The ACMI, in a formal statement, described the announced program as "basically sound and workable", adding that they believed the plan deserved a trial. The U.S. textile industry had advocated for a ceiling of 200 million yards per year and the Japanese industry originally had suggested a limitation of 270 million. The agreement would extend for five years and included all specified limitations on each of several types of textile products.
Several members of the North Carolina delegation to Congress had found serious objections to provisions of the Japanese Government's agreement on the limits of the exports, but Congressman Charles Jonas, the only Republican member of the delegation, had described the agreement as the result of a lot of hard work on the part of many people who had been trying to work out a difficult problem. Senator Sam J. Ervin condemned the entire procedure adopted by the Administration "in its maladministration of the provisions of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in respect to cotton textiles." He said that under the procedure, the Administration was delegating to the Japanese one of the sovereign powers of the U.S. Government, to regulate the commerce of the nation. He pointed out that textile production in the country already was exceeding demand and believed it "economic folly" for the executive branch to encourage the importation of textile products.
In Monte Carlo, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, the former Grace Kelly, had informed a press conference this date that if their first child were a boy it would be named Gregoire, and if a girl, Caroline.
On the editorial page, "Statistical Skeletons Haunt Our Schools" finds that as more modern school buildings had replaced the old one-room schoolhouse, the inadequacies of which had been obvious, the new modern plants had obscured the need for more construction.
Governor Luther Hodges had appointed a citizens' Committee for Better Schools, which it finds a meaningful action. Its chairman was Holt McPherson, editor of the High Point Enterprise, who was a friend of education and would make the committee a positive force in defining the problems and taking them to the people. But his advocacy for the Pearsall Plan, which had resulted in two amendments to the State Constitution authorizing payment of vouchers out of public funds to enable students to attend private schools rather integrated public schools and to permit local school units to close their public schools by local vote, had called into question his interest in a better future for all school children. The piece indicates that whatever its shortcomings, which were considerable, the Plan had been established as a fact by an overwhelming majority of the people in the referendum on it the prior September and there was no need now for public opinion to be divided in meeting educational problems separate from desegregation.
Statistics showed that the state was 46th in the number of pupils per teacher, 41st in the amount spent per pupil for education, 34th in average classroom teacher salaries, among other poor statistics. Of some 2,700 teachers who had left the public school system in the 1954-55 school year, only 7 percent of them had retired. UNC president William C. Friday had warned that the lure of higher salaries and benefits elsewhere was threatening also the college faculties.
It indicates that what those statistics meant in terms of short-changing the youth of the state had to be as plain as the broken windows and sagging doors of a little red schoolhouse, being equally serious. It suggests that North Carolinians, having seen the problem, would tackle it.
"Fiscal Policy Must Be Streamlined" finds that the President's budget proposal for fiscal year 1957-58 was admirable in purpose but questionable in design, that in an era of unprecedented prosperity, a balanced budget was a desirable goal, but an even worthier goal was a balanced economy in which both tax reductions and an end to the deficit spending could be achieved, while making every reasonable effort to resist inflation.
But the new budget was hitched to current inflationary trends, with revenue estimates for the following fiscal year being about 5 percent above the current year and 11 percent above the previous year. Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, it posits, had gotten to the heart of the matter the previous day when he had observed that the small estimated surplus and debt reduction hung on two shaky premises, an increase in postal rates and continuing increases in revenue from inflated corporate and individual income taxes.
It finds that historic compulsions had governed the making of the new budget, just as they had governed the making of every recent budget, uppermost among which having been the necessary regard for safety in a world of struggle, necessitating high cost for defense and foreign military and economic aid. But it urges that the times also demanded adjustments in taxes for individuals and small businesses, concluding that the President had provided a sturdy fiscal basis, but one which needed tinkering in its specifics.
"Mr. Dulles' Big Supply of Spectres" finds it unfortunate that Secretary of State Dulles had always seemed to have a ready answer for portentous questions, having indicated in response to a Senator's question: "If the [Eisenhower doctrine] resolution passes, there is very little likelihood" that U.S. troops would have to fight in the Middle East, but that if it did not pass, there was a "very great likelihood" of that possibility.
It finds that crying "wolf" was one way of shoving legislation through Congress, though it opines that the particular legislation was necessary to begin filling a critical vacuum of power in the Middle East. But the manner in which Secretary Dulles continually raised spectres to repeated crises was hardly calculated to abate Congressional suspicion of his objectivity or create confidence in his future appeals for Congressional support. Just prior to the invasion by the British and French of the Suez the prior November 1, Mr. Dulles had said that there was "good news from the Middle East".
Now, the Administration was seeking from Congress a blank check on military action and a freer hand in providing aid to that region. It suggests that the obvious need for at least the military authority should not obscure the fact that Congress was being asked to cede a large part of its power and responsibility in declaring war to the executive branch, suggesting that such questions deserved calm and objective consideration.
It finds that the strategy appeared to be to project a united, long-term determination to protect the Middle East rather than to suggest that the country was at the brink, as Mr. Dulles had previously advocated as a form of foreign policy during crises, with an itchy trigger finger.
"He Carved Beauty out of Sound" laments the death the previous day of Maestro Arturo Toscanini at 89, finding that no other maestro had possessed his remarkable touch, providing "ethereal, shimmering texture to all music—Italian, German, French, American." It finds that in the works he had conducted, he appeared to raise the senses of the audience to a condition of insight in which art was newly created and newly communicated. His fierce artistic integrity was his most famous trait, as he demanded and usually got perfection from his musicians. He would no more compromise with his ideals than he would change a note in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.
He had loved his native Italy
It indicates that his contributions to music would live forever in the hundreds of superb recordings he had made with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which he had led for 17 years prior to his retirement in April, 1954.
"As long as music is performed,
men will speak reverently of the Parma tailor's son who gave millions
brief glimpses of the lineaments of art, truth and beauty
A piece from the Plainview (Tex.) Herald, titled, "Dinner on the Grounds", indicates that those who did not know what "dinner on the ground" meant had missed one of the finest social concepts to which the country had become habituated. It indicates that in the vernacular of those who understood what the term meant, hearing a table "groan" was an expressive term, meaning good grub and plenty of it, extraordinary victuals, produced by the best cooks in the countryside, different from the culinary art practiced in commercial establishments which advertised that they were "famous for food".
It says that dinner on the ground made one's mouth water, as it entailed pickles, which were homemade, invites the reader to compile their own list and revel in the thoughts of such food.
Flies, mosquitoes, fire ants and every other manner of nuisance. Why it puts forth such nonsense in the middle of a frigid winter is not quite fathomable.
Drew Pearson indicates that now that the President had informed his staff that he would not accept Prime Minister Nehru's invitation to visit India and now that former President Truman had provided his strong support to the President's Middle East doctrine, he suggests that it might be time for some presidential reciprocity by asking Mr. Truman to undertake a goodwill trip to India and Southeast Asia. American prestige in Southeast Asia was not good and U.S. envoys in that region had been urging the State Department to send a high-ranking American as a goodwill ambassador to the area.
He indicates that Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had received a tremendous reception when they had visited India, Burma, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but nothing had been done by the U.S. to counteract their success. Secretary of State Dulles had made a trip to the area, but with little or no benefit, the Burmese Government having even refused to let him land on their territory.
He tells of Mr. Truman having taken a trip on his own to Western Europe and received a tremendous reception, making a lot of friends for the U.S., as he had a knack for reaching the average person in a way which sold democracy. He had also been the first President to initiate the Marshall Plan and the Point Four Program, which had helped to save Asiatic countries from Communism in the postwar years.
But when Mr. Truman's name had been mentioned around the White House, it brought forth sour remarks from President Eisenhower, who had been bitter toward Mr. Truman since the 1952 campaign when the then-President had criticized General Eisenhower's handling of Russian affairs in Berlin immediately after V-E Day in May, 1945. But Mr. Pearson counsels that the President ought learn that a lot of things which happened in the heat of a campaign had to be forgotten afterward, and that he would provide a real boost to the free world's fight against Communism if he were to send his predecessor to Asia on a goodwill mission.
Walter Lippmann tells of a paradox in the economy, that while it was the most productive of any economy ever, it was also not productive enough for the demands being made on it. With full employment, there was not enough labor and with basic industries at full production, there were serious shortages in critical goods.
The economy could not produce all which consumers wanted to buy, plus all which the corporations wanted to spend and borrow for capital goods, plus all which the Federal Government needed to spend on defense and its welfare measures, plus all which the state and local governments were being pressed to spend on schools, hospitals, roads, recreation and other public works. Although the economy was growing prodigiously, it was not growing fast enough to keep pace with the growth of the population, given the rapid rise in what Americans had come to expect as their proper standard of living and with the expanded commitments and responsibilities of the U.S., at present the only real great power in the non-Communist world.
The situation raised two major problems of national policy, on the one hand the problem of combating inflation, which was managing the supply of money and credit so that the total demand for goods and services was maintained in balance with the supply, and on the other, the problem of how to allocate the reduced supply of credit as between the stronger borrowers, such as the large corporations, and the weaker borrowers, such as the home builders, and as between public borrowing and private borrowing.
Mr. Lippmann posits that the President had shown in his budget message that he was quite aware of the primary problem, how to combat inflation, with the Federal Government being able to spend less than it took in as revenue and to budget for surplus rather than to produce a mere balanced budget. But not much could be done with the budget to combat inflation. The new budget was expected to show only a small surplus, even in extraordinarily prosperous times. The best the Government could do was to keep expenditures from rising as fast as they might, but with the growing population and public needs at home and abroad, there was no prospect of reduction in public spending.
The real burden of combating inflation lay with the Federal Reserve Board because of its power to expand or contract the volume of money which banks were able to lend. The Fed had been using its power with great courage and true public spirit, the result being the tight money policy, to which the country owed the fact that the inflationary rise in prices was being held to moderate proportions. But as the tight money policy took effect, the second problem arose of allocation of the reduced supply of credit among the various interests who wanted to borrow.
That allocation was made by the financial markets, and as the supply of credit was less than the demand, the price of credit was rising. It meant that those who could afford to pay the most received the most credit. Credit was expensive and scarce for the weaker interests, such as small businessmen, families in need of mortgages and state and local governments needing to borrow for public works.
Although the President had not specifically so stated, Mr. Lippmann suggests that it was fair to assume that the problem was in his mind when he spoke in his budget message of the need for a broad inquiry into the adequacy of financial institutions. There was much complaining in Congress on behalf of farmers and businessmen about the allocation of credit between them and the large corporations. The problem of allocation was posed even more sharply for the states and localities which needed to issue bonds for schools, roads and other public works. They were encountering a great burden from the high interest rates caused by the tight money policy.
Arthur Levitt, the Comptroller of New York State, had pointed out that the cost of borrowing to finance the building of schools had nearly doubled since 1952, a fact which interfered with the ideal theory that the localities ought meet public needs, such as construction of schools, hospitals, low-cost housing, roads and public recreation.
It was easier to pose the problem than to solve it, but it was clear that inflation had to be resisted, thus keeping the supply of credit lower than the total needs and desires of private interests and public authorities. But having done that, he concludes, the question had to be examined as to whether, in the competition of the financial market, the public interest in schools and other public works was being adequately met. If not, as it was almost certainly not, then there would have to be remedies.
Robert C. Ruark, in Ikoma, Tanganyika, continues his saga of his safari, which, if you desire, you may read on your own, as it continues to be most boring. If you have seen one yawning lion, you have seen them all. Go to sleep...
A letter writer from Springfield, Mass., indicates that the current arms race between East and West appeared to indicate the general belief that it would be accomplished by weapons of destruction and terror. He urges recollection of the words of the "Blessed Virgin Mary to the three children of Fatima, Portugal, in 1917: '… If my requests are granted, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will scatter her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be destroyed … but in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.'" He says that many spiritual writers believed that it was the time of the anti-Christ mentioned in the Scriptures and that before his forces would be defeated, mankind would be forced to undergo suffering as it never had before, indicating that the Venerable Anna Catherine Emmerich had mentioned in her writings that the anti-Christ would come about 40 or 50 years before the year 2000, concluding that it was good to reflect on those things occasionally.
We note that he may be here, and his name is Trump. Think about it, Trumpy-Dumpy-Doer.
A letter writer hopes that everyone would give to the March of Dimes campaign against polio, which had begun on January 1. She says that she felt sorry for the little crippled boys and girls who could not run and play like other children, suggests that those who had children and grandchildren who were normal should stop and thank God for that fact.
Framed Edition
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