The Charlotte News
Friday, January 4, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the new 85th Congress began business this date with a showdown in the Senate regarding the effort to stifle filibusters against civil rights legislation and other measures. The House stood in recess while the Senate was embroiled in a fight initiated by a coalition of Northern and Western Democrats, along with Republicans, to rewrite Senate rules regarding filibusters. A similar attempt four years earlier had been defeated by a vote of 70 to 21, and while advocates at present contended that they had mustered more strength than originally anticipated, they were far from proclaiming victory. In addition to most Southern members, Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader, and Senator William Knowland, the Minority Leader, opposed the effort. Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and 30 other Senators had offered a motion the previous day to take up for immediate consideration the adoption of rules for the new Congress, the sponsors having included 16 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Senator Johnson promptly moved to table the motion, and an agreement had been reached to bring the issue to a vote at 6:00 p.m. this date following debate, allowing each side equal time. Senate Rule 22 required the votes of 64 Senators, or two-thirds of the entire membership, to bring cloture to debate on any measure. The supporters of the effort to change the rule conceded that their only hope was to obtain agreement for adoption of new rules by majority vote at the start of each new Congress and that the old rules did not carry over. Opponents argued that it was contrary to precedent, that the Senate, with only a third of its membership elected every two years, was a continuing body with continuing rules. In the Senate, a tense situation had occurred at the start of the session the previous day because newly elected Democratic Senator Frank Lausche of Ohio had intimated that he might be willing to vote with Republicans to organize the Senate, but in the end, had voted for Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona to become the new president pro tem, elected by a vote of 49 to 46, with Republican Senator Jacob Javits of New York not voting.
Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana called on the President this date to provide Congress with an estimate of the "costs and of the dangers" involved in the President's proposal for thwarting possible Communist aggression in the Middle East. A member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Mansfield said that the President ought provide the information when he appeared before a joint session the following day. The Senator had made the statements in an interview regarding the request for standby authority to use U.S. military forces in the Middle East in the event of possible aggression there. The President would seek, in an unusual Saturday session of Congress, advance authority to use U.S. military forces if he believed such a move was necessary to block Russian intrusion to the Middle East, and to authorize the spending of 400 million dollars over a two-year period beginning the following July for economic aid to nations in that region. Thus far, there had been little overt opposition to the proposals, with some observers indicating that the authorizations were needed to fill a power vacuum left by destruction of British and French influence in the region in the wake of the Suez Canal crisis. There was hostile reaction to the proposals from sources in Arab Syria and Egypt, as well as in Communist Yugoslavia. In Damascus, the chairman of the Syrian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee called the plan "a plot engineered by the imperialists." In Cairo, a newspaper published an article saying that the President's request involved a method "rejected by all the peoples of the world". In Belgrade, the Communist newspaper said that by adopting the plan, the U.S. would risk appearing in Arab eyes "as an heir to the colonial powers".
In Phoenix, Ariz., a wealthy California couple was en route to the city this date to try to adopt six children orphaned in the worst train-car accident in U.S. history. The couple from Burbank had obtained tentative approval of the adoption from the aunt of the children, and a California official said that he saw nothing in the state's law to prevent the adoption. The aunt had been caring for the six children of the parents killed in a December 17 accident at a Phoenix railroad crossing, which took the lives of 12 persons in all. The aunt said that she wanted to see the California couple have custody of the children, insisting that they be kept together and reared as Roman Catholics. She said that it would be hard for the children to leave them but that it would be better for them than to have to be separated. The ages of the children ranged from three through 11. In Sacramento, an attorney for the California Social Welfare Department said that the Department would make a study of the California home and determine whether the aunt had legal custody of the orphans.
In Miami, an unidentified yacht had sunk in waters off the Bahama Islands this date and a nearby fishing boat had picked up six survivors. A Coast Guard search plane had found the yacht early in the morning off Royal Island in the Bahamas, 38 miles northeast of Nassau and about 200 miles east of Miami, with the survivors clinging to the mast, which protruded above the water. A raft was dropped and the plane then found the fishing boat and dropped a message providing the location of the sunken craft.
In Van Nuys, Calif., actress Marie (The Body) McDonald had vanished from her home early this date, and police were investigating the possibility that she had been kidnaped. Her mother, who lived in nearby Woodland Hills, had told police that she had received a phone call shortly after midnight at her home, from a young male speaking in a nervous voice, saying that they had Marie and that no harm would come to her if police were not notified. The mother had then called the police and rushed to her daughter's home in Encino, finding the front door ajar and lights on in her bedroom. The three house servants were sleeping. Soon after the call to her mother, Ms. McDonald's husband, a wealthy shoe manufacturer, had also received a call, saying that they had his wife and that if he wanted to see her alive again, he should not contact the police and that they would contact him later. A handwritten note, not in the actress's handwriting, had been found in her mailbox, stating not to call the police and that she would not be hurt "to get money", that they would be in touch later. Police said that it was too early to tell whether it was a kidnaping. Actor Michael Wilding, former husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, had been Ms. McDonald's escort in recent months, and he told police that he had visited her the previous night but had left at about 7:00. He said he had gone to dinner with Lana Turner and Lex Barker, and friends said that he had told them that Ms. McDonald had gone to a party and he had not gone with her. He had been in the company of a couple of newspapermen in Beverly Hills until about 2:00 a.m. Later, he had called from his home and arrived at the McDonald house about an hour later. A police officer, who had gone to Ms. McDonald's home, said that there was no sign of a struggle in the house, that the television was on, the front door open and the telephone off the hook. Officers said they were skeptical about the situation. What do you think happened?
In London, labor columnist Victor Reisel, blinded by an acid attack in New York the previous year, was visiting the city for several days and planned to visit an eye specialist. He said after his arrival the previous day that the specialist could help him, but could not give him back his sight. He also planned to talk with British trade union leaders.
In Camden, S.C., a hillbilly guitar player whom a high school bandmaster of Camden considered "a friend", was under arrest this date, accused of masterminding the midnight attack on the bandleader the previous week. South Carolina police had charged the 39-year old man with conspiracy against the state's civil rights law, and five other men had been arrested, with one charged with conspiracy and the other four with the beating of the bandleader, which caused him to be admitted to the hospital. The bandleader's wife said that the accused man had been a long-time acquaintance of her husband, director of the Camden High School band and a bassoon player in the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. She said that her husband considered him to be a friend, and that he was still not mad at the men who had beaten him, instead pitying them. She said he did not know any of the other men. The bandleader was now confined to his home, recuperating from the flogging, during which he had been tied to a tree by four masked men and beaten with a board for allegedly "making a pro-integration speech two or three years" earlier. He had stopped to fix a flat tire on a lonely South Carolina road, when the men stopped, kidnaped him and took him to a wooded area where they proceeded to beat him. They told him that he would have to leave town immediately or that his house would be burned down. The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division agents who had arrested the six men were commended by Governor George Bell Timmerman the previous day. The men were being held on bonds ranging from $3,000 to $4,500, and the chief of SLED said that some of the six men had signed statements admitting their guilt, while one, whom he did not identify, admitted being a member of the Klan. None had a previous criminal record.
In Charlotte, voters would decide the following day whether to tax themselves for their children's education, with two bond issues on the ballot, the principal one being for 5 million dollars for construction of new schools in the heavily populated perimeter area of the county and additions to existing schools. The second would transfer the City's bond indebtedness to the County, raising the indebtedness limit for the County from 5 percent to 8 percent of assessed property valuation, enabling the County to issue up to 20 million dollars more in bonds after a further vote. The County School Board chairman had spoken for all school officials in saying that if it did not pass, they might have to send the children to school "in caves." That might be fun. You could study first-hand the ancient cave drawings and learn how man first communicated, as his stalags sought to reach upward while also being a downgoing.
Also in Charlotte, City Coach lines this date received approval from the State Utilities Commission to increase its fares on buses from four tickets for 50 cents to seven for $1. The auditor of the company said that the new rate would probably go into effect by mid-week. The SUC had said that the company could put the higher rate into effect on five days' notice. The company's regular 15-cent fare for a single ticket would not be affected.
In Milwaukee, the president of the Weber Wakesha Brewing Co. suggested that the biggest thing in brewing during the previous 500 years was to have spiked beer with cola, punch or Collins flavors. He said that confirmed beer drinkers probably would not touch the stuff, called Sassy, asserting that the taste for beer was like a taste for olives, acquired. The brewery had begun production of the new product, which was a blend of regular malt beers with additional flavoring added to the usual hops.
In Dallas, Tex., the husband of Jayne Mansfield sued for divorce, alleging that she had caused him "pain, anguish and distress", and that he was willing to pay any reasonable amount for the support of their five-year old daughter. The suit said that they had been married in May, 1950 and separated in January, 1955. Ms. Mansfield had won an interlocutory decree in Los Angeles from Mr. Mansfield the previous October, and said she had no idea why he would do such a thing, indicating that she hoped he had fun.
In Memphis, Elvis Presley, 22, reported this date for a pre-induction physical examination at the Army Recruiting Service, with a sergeant indicating that it would probably be six months to a year before he would be called up for service, provided he passed the physical examination.
Charles Kuralt of The News tells of a tall, gaunt textile worker from North Belmont, whose shoulders were bent by debt and trouble, having made up his mind to sell his eye as it was the only thing he had worth selling and a blind person might be able to take it and see again, leaving him with one good eye and possibly enough money to do the things he had to do. He had to pay a year's worth of fuel bills and doctor's bills as well as move his wife closer home from an Albemarle nursing home. Chances were he would not be able to find a buyer, as an official of the North Carolina Eye Bank had told the newspaper this date that no such organization in the country paid for corneas, usually obtaining them through wills after a donor had died, and even then, only accepting them when provided for free. The man in question had begun considering the matter during Christmas. He was blue and started looking around for something to sell, not owning any furniture or car, with his friends in the same fix, all being textile workers. Then it came to him that he could get along with just one eye in his mill work. The man was 53 and had been married for 35 years, with six of his children having died before they reached the age of seven, with only one surviving, at age 15. His wife had been in a nursing home since 1950 and he believed the doctors could do something for her if she were in a Charlotte hospital. He had read in a newspaper that a man had sold his eye and he could not think of anything else since. He had talked to his doctor, who said that it might be done, that it was up to him. He earned $32 per week and had kept hoping that things would work out, but they never had. He was resigned, after hearing from the official of the Eye Bank, however, that this plan, too, would not work out.
On the editorial page, "The Catcall as a Prelude to Progress" indicates that political breast-beating about the condition of Charlotte was neither hateful nor hurtful, provided it served as a prelude to progress. Rather it was the impotent hurrah and smug complacency foreshadowing decay against which the city had to guard.
There had been tart exchanges between Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every and City Council member Herbert Baxter during the week, scolding in tone, while both sought to prevent decay. It finds that as long as municipal officials were vying with one another to promote the city's improvement, the vitality of the community was healthy, that the reverse had to be feared.
Mr. Baxter had presented a seven-point list which accurately reflected the enormity of the needs of the city, including adequate hospital facilities for both white and black citizens, expanded recreation facilities to keep pace with growth, beautification of Sugar Creek, a new traffic acceleration plan, rezoning, correction of duplicated street names, and "bread-and-butter" items, such as more water, sewer and street expansion.
It finds that the Mayor's selection of the expansion of Memorial Hospital as the primary project for 1957 had perhaps overshadowing significance, as it presented the most serious challenge to the city's ingenuity, with few plans for civic progress having ever faced as many barriers as the proposal for a new wing to the hospital. Additional beds for white patients were urgently needed, but more desperately needed were additional hospital facilities for the city's black citizens. It finds it not to be a problem of race but of health, as health needs for one race could not be separated from health needs of the entire community. The Mayor and Mr. Baxter were in essential agreement on the importance of that project and it would take all of the officials' best efforts to achieve it. It finds ways and means available which could be made manifest through leadership.
"The Sphinx & the Filibuster: No Change" finds that the latest in a long series of renewed fights over the filibuster in the Senate was so much sound and fury, that its significance did not lie in the chances for success, as change to customs in the Senate was only a bit faster than changes to the face of a sphinx. The significance was that the fight appeared to be over the passage of Federal civil rights legislation and only incidentally regarding the filibuster, which had been an effective instrument of minority opinions of all types for a long time. Northerners who would outlaw it would concede readily that it had served their own liberal purposes in the past, and Southerners who would defend it would admit that the Southern minority had used it to prevent full justice for black citizens.
It finds it doubtful that the value or effectiveness of civil rights legislation was a sufficient price to pay for eliminating the last refuge for minority opinion. The majority, it suggests, could not always be right, and when it was right or when it had reached studied convictions, it would prevail eventually over delaying actions, including the filibuster.
It offers that the Senate was the only place where the South had not lost the Civil War, as the filibuster had been a potent weapon in keeping the Senate on the side of the South, despite inferior numbers. But it was a two-edged weapon which, when used excessively or unwisely, could isolate the user from all sympathies of the majority, a dynamic already working against efforts of the South to explain its special problems to the nation.
"Southern senators girding themselves to defeat anti-lynch legislation by use of the filibuster must ask themselves whether the winning of this battle may not be losing the war for states rights."
"No Pity Needed for Working Reporters" finds that State Department reprisals provoked no pity for three American newsmen traveling in Communist China against the Department's wishes, as at least they would be using their eyes and ears to render reports, providing the salve to any wounds inflicted by the Department's irritated policymakers. They would send back to Americans some small view of the Chinese millions swallowed up by Communism, seldom seen by Americans.
It urges that the newsmen would be performing their function specifically and that of the free press in general to obtain news and print it, subject only to good taste, truthfulness and the needs of national security. It asserts that none of those considerations supported the State Department's ban on travel, which boiled down to trying to make the press an instrument of Government policy of non-recognition of China. That was incompatible, however, with a free press, as the policy was an expression of a moral judgment and the reporter was concerned with the need of the people to know facts. The deeds of bandits, as well as of martyrs, had always been embraced by the need to know and it finds it unfortunate that the State Department had also adopted a policy of non-recognition of that fact.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Why the Rush? Golfers Don't Ask", indicates that non-golfers had to wonder every now and then what motivated the President's urgent, almost frantic, compulsion to fly from Washington to Augusta, Ga. Recently, he had been in such a hurry to depart that he hardly stopped for the press photographers, and within an hour after reaching Augusta, had been on the golf course.
It suggests that probably not any of America's millions of weekend golfers would wonder why he had been in such a rush, as even an ordinary golf course was a refuge from toil, "the most pleasant and relaxing kind of man-made geography that exists, bar none."
The Augusta National Golf Club was all of that and then some, having been founded by professional golfer Bobby Jones, one of the giants of the sporting world during the 1920's. It was anything but a social club, having no tennis courts, swimming pool, dance floor or cocktail lounge, offering only one of the finest golf courses in the country, where the Masters Tournament was held each spring. It finds that to have been the attraction for the President. Augusta was also a wonderful place for the duffer to dream. The President or the weekend golfer might hit a birdie on one of the holes where the masters would, and the fact that the duffer fell apart the rest of the day would be immaterial, because on that one hole, he would have done as well as the best of them. The dream of stringing together a series of such holes was what drove people back, including the President.
But were there enough holes in the course
Drew Pearson indicates that the President had not received a very happy reaction from Congressional leaders regarding his plan for guaranteeing peace and building up the Near East, when it was one of the most important and constructive plans he had ever proposed. Mr. Pearson offers a suggestion through which he might obtain more Democratic support, finding that former President Truman would be his best potential ally to support the plan, as he had worked out the same plan while President, much of the Eisenhower plan being identical to that of the former President, who still believed sincerely that the plan was the way to prevent war. If President Eisenhower asked Mr. Truman to support the plan, he would doubtless agree to do so. But the President did not like Mr. Truman.
In visiting with the former President the prior February in Kansas City, Mr. Pearson had asked him what he thought the dangers of war were, with the former President having replied: "There is one great danger—down here in this corner of the Mediterranean," pointing on his globe to the Suez, nine months before the fighting had started there. He said that the Russians were after the 400 billion barrels of oil in Arabia and thus had provided arms to Egypt. He added that the U.S. could have outmaneuvered the Russians with his plan of development. He said that he would have first siphoned water from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea, which was 1,300 feet lower than the Mediterranean, and would then dig a canal between them, with the rush of water dropping 1,300 feet supplying electrical power for all of the industries the region needed. He said that he would make Israel the industrial country of the Near East and then let the Arabs raise crops to feed Israel and themselves, their cousins. He said that they were all Semitic peoples and did not have to fight. Pointing to the globe, he said that Iraq had once been a Garden of Eden, before Tamerlane and his Mongol hordes had swept in and destroyed the irrigation system of the Tigris and Euphrates. He suggested that the West could rebuild it and it would pay for itself within a few years, making the region one of the bread baskets of the Near East. "So," he said, "with Israel supplying the industry and Iraq supplying the food, you bring a sound economy and cooperation and peace back to this part of the world. That's the way you prevent war."
Mr. Pearson suggests that with the former President pitching in to support President Eisenhower's plan, there could be a return to some semblance of the now long-forgotten bipartisan foreign policy. But President Eisenhower would have to ask Mr. Truman personally, as the former President was quite bitter over the manner in which he had never been invited to the White House since he had departed on January 20, 1953.
Walter Lippmann suggests that it would be a mistake to shape U.S. policy in a way which forced, or appeared to force, the Middle Eastern countries to make a public and definite choice as to who would be their protector, as between the Soviet Union and the U.S. He indicates that the natural line of their policy was to avoid being aligned irrevocably with either side, and then to play one side against the other so as to profit by the competition between the great powers. Any declaration of policy made by the U.S. ought take into account those positions. He urges that the best the U.S. could hope for in the Middle East was that the Arab countries would remain unaligned and in the middle. He finds it thus not only misleading but almost mischievous to continue to say that, after the collapse of British authority in the Middle East, leaving a power vacuum which the U.S. had to fill.
For the U.S. could not play the role which Britain had once played as the paramount military power in the region and controlling power in Egypt, as well in most of the other Arab states. Britain had ceased to play that role and the role no longer existed for anyone to play.
He finds that there were two general conceptions about the Middle East, one being that the region was the stake in the great conflict between the Soviet Union and the U.S., meaning that anything the U.S. offered to the Arab states as military protection or economic assistance would carry with it the implication that they would have to make their choice between the U.S. and Russia. The other way to think about the Arab countries concerned the balance of power within which they remained independent and unaligned, the approach which best reflected the realities of the military situation in the region and the true national interests of the Arab states.
He suggests that there was a stalemate extant between the Soviet Union and the U.S. whereby both were deterred from intervening. The warning against Soviet intervention which the President was asking Congress to provide him with authority to make by way of the threat of military force, put into words one side of that mutual deterrence, while the other side was that the U.S. also was deterred from intervention with its own forces, as the U.S. had to assume that the Soviet Union would react to such an intervention. Because that stalemate prevented overt intervention, the field was wide open to propaganda, subversion, bribery and intrigue.
When the British and French had sought to intervene in the Suez, they had found the U.S. and the Soviet Union aligned against them. Beneath all the moral and political reasons avowed for that alignment, there was at bottom the Soviet-American deadlock which neither nation dared to see broken.
He posits that the factors to be kept in mind were that the natural line of the Arab states was toward neutrality, which should be respected and encouraged, that the Soviet Union and the U.S. were mutually deterred from overt intervention, that in that condition, the Middle East was highly unstable, without authority outside the region or within the region which could establish and maintain order.
He concludes that the U.S., therefore, could not rule out the possibility that the disorder at some point would be such that it was recognized as a menace to the peace of the world, and that if so, the time might come when the U.S. would have to conduct talks with the Russians about the possibility of arranging stabilization through neutralization in the Middle East.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that the President's political intentions remained the biggest behind-the-scenes question for Republican members of Congress, wondering whether the President would conduct a purge within his party after seeing it lose its second successive bid for legislative control. The President had pledged to "work industriously and incessantly" to establish "modern Republicanism" as the philosophy of the party. He had declared that the election results had to convince even "a certain group" of Congressional Republicans "that some change in the understanding that the general public has of the Republican Party is necessary." The question remained as to how the President intended to make that change.
The 1958 midterms would be the last election in which the President would lead the party, as by 1960, there would be a new presidential nominee. Among the 21 Republican Senators up for re-election in 1958, there were eight who posed something of a special problem for the President, including Senators Barry Goldwater of Arizona, William Jenner of Indiana, Roman Hruska of Nebraska, George Malone of Nevada, William Langer of North Dakota, John W. Bricker of Ohio, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and Frank Barrett of Wyoming. During the 1955-56 sessions of Congress, the support score compiled by the Quarterly for those Senators had been below the average for Senate Republicans, with all eight having been among the 15 Republicans who had voted to cut off funds for the President's foreign aid program and none of the eight having announced plans for retirement.
It wonders whether they would change their stands to bring their positions into closer alignment with those of the President or whether the President would reconsider his previous policy of non-intervention in Republican primaries and support for all Republican nominees. In 1956, the President had used his personal prestige to influence the character of the Republican Congressional delegation in two ways, backing the nomination of "modern Republicans" in states where there were no incumbent Senators seeking re-election, with such candidates as John Sherman Cooper, Thruston Morton, Jacob Javits, Dan Thornton, Douglas McKay and Arthur Langlie all being encouraged or persuaded to run.
By chance or design, the President's personal campaigning had helped only "modern Republican" candidates for the Senate, having stumped for the six listed above and for Senators Thomas Kuchel of California, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, George Bender of Ohio and James Duff of Pennsylvania, each of whom had been above average in support of the President's program.
The four Republican Senators who had been below average in their support were Homer Capehart of Indiana, Milton Young of North Dakota, Francis Case of South Dakota and Herman Welker of Idaho. In each case, the President had not appeared in those states to support any one of those candidates. The President had not, however, intervened directly in any contested Republican primaries except where his support for Douglas McKay had been based on incorrect information that the latter had no opponent. Most of the President's predecessors had dabbled in state primaries, with a mixed record of success.
Woodrow Wilson in 1918 had opposed Democratic candidates in three Senatorial and two House primaries, and four of the five had been defeated. In 1930, Herbert Hoover had helped Representative Carroll Reece of Tennessee win his primary, but had been unable to save him from defeat by an independent Republican in the general election. FDR in 1938 had planned to purge ten Democrats, but only one, Representative John O'Connor of New York, had actually been defeated. Harry Truman had helped defeat Representative Roger Slaughter of Missouri in 1946 but could not stop the nomination of Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri in 1950.
It concludes that the President probably would not attempt any such purge. On October 12, the President had said that the most he could say about a statement which suggested that Senators Malone, Jenner and McCarthy had no place in the new Republican Party, was that they did not agree with him on many things, but that there were no national parties in the U.S., rather 48 state parties which determined who belonged to those parties, indicating that there was nothing he could do to suggest that a given candidate was not a Republican.
A letter from A. W. Black says that he never ceased to be both amused and exasperated by religious protagonists who zealously sought to convert everyone possible and yet invalidated every precept of their premise by the nature of their inconsistent conduct. He finds that there were those who were ostracized in certain clubs and organizations based on religious beliefs contrary to Christianity and yet there was pretended willingness and unselfish desire to live and associate with them on the basis of heaven forever. There were those who melodramatically feigned abhorrence of segregation and discrimination, proclaiming the theoretical homogeneity and equality of heaven, while surreptitiously or otherwise objecting to and conveniently avoiding association with their racial opposites at every opportunity. He suggests that the sort of preaching out of both sides of the mouth constituted hypocrisy and explained in part why millions of people were disdainful, indifferent and "contempetious" of religion, marking another milestone toward the ultimate decadence of Christianity.
We do not dare place "sic" behind "contempetious", as Mr. Black was never wont to get through any letter to the editor without at least one such neologism, this one obviously some sort of conflation of "contemptuous", "tempestuous", and "contentious", maybe with the onomatopoeia of the yap, yap, yapping of a chihuahua, all rolled up neatly in one crabcake
Eleventh Day of Christmas
Framed Edition
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