The Charlotte News
Friday, February 15, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Budapest that more than 30 new arrests emerging from the anti-Russian revolt in Hungary the previous October and November had been announced this date, with apparently a number of other arrests not being listed in the public announcements. A group of 13 awaiting trial in one town about 35 miles east of Budapest had been charged with destroying the Communist Party headquarters and the Soviet War Memorial in the town. A trade union newspaper had reported that two men picked up in Budapest had confessed to a plan to kill local Communist leaders, and a teacher was reported arrested in Budapest for hiding leaflets in his apartment. The official news agency had reported a number of arrests not carried in the newspaper. Premier Janos Kadar's Soviet-installed Government apparently had completed the takeover of the Association of Hungarian University students, formed on the eve of the October 23 revolt, playing a large part in it. The Government announced that the Association had decided to join the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a Communist-controlled organization, and to take part in a youth festival at Moscow later in the year. The Hungarian Cabinet promised that it would enlarge the field open to small private shops "in those fields where Socialist small trade has shown itself defective and where it is necessary to give the people a better supply of goods." The Interior Ministry had denied a report that anti-Communist rebels still controlled a town near the Yugoslav border, Toemoerkeny. The official Communist Party newspaper said the previous day that the town of 5,000 was an "exceptionally strong mainstay" of the anti-Soviet revolt and that the "forces of counter-revolution are still holding their positions." The mayor of the town commented by telephone, however, that there were no longer any rebels holding out there.
In Clinton, Tenn., a dynamite-laden suitcase exploded in the heart of the black section of the town the previous night, wrecking a restaurant and slightly injuring a black woman and a baby. The dynamite charge, which witnesses said had been placed by a white man who then raced away in an automobile, had also heavily damaged other black-owned properties. It was the eighth, and the most destructive, blast in the town since Clinton High School had admitted 12 black students under Federal Court order the previous September. In the absence of definite clues, however, officers were declining to speculate as to whether integration of the previously all-white school was connected with the series of explosions. Police said that the suitcase had contained several sticks of dynamite and had been placed on a concrete slab across the street from a restaurant where several black people were eating. The injured woman suffered a knot on her head when hit by falling plaster and the 11-month old infant had been cut by flying glass. Neither was believed seriously injured. A nearby sandwich shop, owned by the father of a 21-year old senior at the high school who had been suspended from the integrated school on grounds that he had struck a white boy and had threatened two others with a knife on February 4, had also been damaged by the blast. Two cars owned by black residents had also been damaged.
In Savannah, Ga., a B-47 bomber had landed safely at Hunter Air Force Base this date after crewmen had extinguished flames in the tail section. One man who had bailed out of the airplane into the Atlantic had been rescued. The bomber had been on a training flight from the base when it caught fire about 180 miles east of Savannah and the crew had decided to ditch. After the man had parachuted, the pilot discovered another member of the crew was unconscious from lack of oxygen and so he headed the plane for Savannah. Four men had been aboard, and the man who bailed out had been a captain who was an observer on the flight.
In Elmdale, Kans., parishioners of the former minister of the Elmdale Christian Church, who had expanded membership in his nine months in the role, before being found out as a former prison inmate who had a 29-career in thievery, had also deserted from the Army and escaped from jail, with 20 aliases behind him, continued to express astonishment at the turn of events. The county attorney who had prosecuted him the previous Monday on a charge of illegally marrying a couple while posing as a minister, resulting in a six-month sentence in the county jail, said that the man had a "genuine humanitarian drive" and wanted to do good for people. He loved to read, sew and crochet. He had been convicted 26 times of crimes which had resulted in prison sentences. The co-owner of the newspaper said that he was "publicity crazy", that he was a good talker and very persuasive, told a lot of stories which always made him appear as a hero. The couple who had been married illegally planned another ceremony. The county attorney said that he had talked to him extensively about his past and that he had told him that he was a foundling, admitting that he had been in a lot of trouble and had lied in the past to cover up his record, for each time he had been candid about it, potential employers turned him away until it became unbearable and so he resorted to aliases, indicating that in the future, he would tell the truth. The county attorney said that he had a number of color photographs of fires, and had been present at a number of fires in the area, but denied having anything to do with them. He had managed to enroll as a freshman at Park College in Parkville, Mo., in the fall of 1955 under the same alias he had later used at Elmdale.
In Augusta, Me., an impostor who had posed as a Canadian surgeon in Korea, among other roles, had pleaded guilty this date to a charge of cheating by false pretenses in obtaining a Maine island teaching job. The native of Lawrence, Mass., was ordered bound over for trial in Superior Court. The prosecutor said that the defendant told him that he wished to have his case disposed of quickly and would waive grand jury action. The Municipal Court warrant accused the man of misrepresenting his attendance at Wagner College on Staten Island, N.Y., to obtain his teacher certificate. The desk officer at the police station said that the man had received telephone calls expressing sympathy for him from Texas, Florida, California, New York and Canada during the night, with one call coming from the warden of the Huntsville, Tex., State Prison, where the defendant had once been lieutenant of the guard, the warden offering to help him in any way he possibly could.
Dick Bayer of The News reports of a Bessemer City man, who had said he was on his way to see the State Motor Vehicles Commission, having led three police cars and an off-duty policeman on a high-speed chase before being stopped at gunpoint during the morning. The 37-year old construction worker was observed speeding and then refused to heed the siren of two officers who sought to stop him, joined by two other officers, until he finally wrecked, striking a parked car and spinning into the path of the first patrol car, at the intersection of Pecan Avenue and Independence Boulevard. The officers reported that he had traveled at speeds in excess of 80 mph and had narrowly missed children at a school crossing. A Highway Patrol officer who had joined the chase said that he had sounded his siren near the intersection of Eastway Drive and Independence Boulevard to attract the attention of a crossing school bus, which stopped in time to avoid a collision. Two of the pursuing officers had nudged the man's car with their front bumper, but he still had refused to stop, one of the officers having waved a pistol and shouted at him to halt. He finally stopped when one of the police cars swerved in front of him and the Highway Patrol officer was able to box him in from the rear. Over $250 worth of damage was done to his 1956 Plymouth sedan and the three police cars involved in the chase had received slight damage. The man was quoted by police as saying, as he was being placed in handcuffs, that he was "just tired of being shoved around". He was charged with reckless driving, failure to yield to a siren, speeding in excess of 80 mph, hit-and-run, and damage to private property. Police said that he talked incoherently when questioned at the station, and provided no reason for his statement that he was going to see the Motor Vehicles Commission. Well, he was tired of being pushed around.
In Raleigh, a bill to provide driver training and safety education in the high schools had been introduced in the State House this date, as Lt. Governor Luther Barnhardt and House Speaker J. K. Doughton had announced membership of legislative committees, completing the organization of the 1957 Legislature. The measure on driver training would add a one dollar charge to the cost of license tags of motor vehicles to raise an estimated 1.8 million dollars per year to finance the program, which would include in-car training for high school students. In the State Senate, Senator Robert F. Morgan of Cleveland County, not to be confused with Robert B. Morgan, future U.S. Senator, was appointed chairman of the Agriculture Committee. The latter Mr. Morgan, of Harnett County, would not enter the State Senate until 1959.
The Mecklenburg delegation to the General Assembly indicated its approval of higher teacher pay this date, higher than that recommended by the Advisory Budget Commission, but expressed concern as to where money for the increase would originate. The three Representatives told the newspaper that they favored increases of more than 9.1 percent, as recommended by the Commission. One other Representative and State Senator Spencer Bell had not reported for work. Frank Snepp, a freshman member of the delegation, said that he favored an increase greater than 9 percent, but had not come up with a particular figure because he said that they did not know how much money they could obtain, that the 20 percent figure which had been mentioned sounded good but it remained a matter of where they would get the money. He said that the suggested tax on food would obtain little consideration. He also said that the merit system for allocating teacher pay, leaving it up to individual school principals to determine, would also obtain little consideration because no one had a merit plan. Representative Ernest Hicks said that the 9 percent recommended increase was not quite enough, and that he did not see a way to evaluate a teacher's work efficiently and effectively under a merit plan. Representative Jack Love was cosponsor of a bill to raise teacher pay by 20 percent.
A photograph shows the principal of the Dilworth School demonstrating a "typical" day of apple-polishing by teachers to obtain positive evaluations under a proposed merit system, including on his desk plentiful apples, candy, cookies, and cake.
In Hazard, Ky., nurses who administered shots after the recent flood there had told of having at least one good laugh. Two brothers, four and five years old, had arrived for their shots, and the four-year old had asserted that he was not afraid of "no old shot", but when the needle came near, a tear fell on his cheek and an adult oath issued from his mouth. The five-year old said sternly to his younger brother: "You're not supposed to say that—say 'thank you'." The four-year old retorted: "'Thank you', hell! I'm being killed."
In Pearl River, N.Y., the local high school had installed a television camera in the study hall, connected by a closed circuit to a receiver in the principal's office, no longer necessitating the presence of a teacher to maintain order. The superintendent of schools liked the idea after a two-week trial, saying that students in the study halls no longer engaged in daydreaming but paid attention to their studies as they had never done before. Fat chance. They may be looking at the book, but in their minds, they are still gazing elsewhere, as the presence of the book is simply a clever ruse, with the necessity to turn a page every once in awhile to keep up appearances being but an unnecessary distraction to the otherwise lovely occupation of daydreaming in study halls, unless, of course, one had a test or that bane which could not be borne, an oral book report sans notes, sans intermission, sans eyes, sans everything, subsequently the same day, in which case, the diligent student could benefit from the extra 55 minutes to prepare, even if being an unwanted interruption to the otherwise preferred mental flight to the downy night, which knits up all raveled sleeves of care.
On the editorial page, "The Mint Needs Everybody's Support" finds that the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte had been neglected except by a small number of dedicated citizens who had maintained it for the previous 20 years. A drive had just been launched to attract 5,000 new members, whereas its current membership was only slightly more than 500.
The City owned the historic building and grounds, maintained them and furnished the services of a janitor. But the program of the Museum had been financed through memberships and private donations, with present funds being completely inadequate to meet present needs and to realize the Museum's potential. It was serving as the hub of Charlotte's cultural life, with its exhibitions, its concert and lecture series, its classic drama, its classes in painting, sculpture, drama and handicrafts as well as many other activities which had already enriched the community. But there was more that it could and should do, in need of a finer permanent collection, better traveling exhibitions, a broader program of art lectures, concerts and dramatic offerings, as well as more space and better implements, plus a bigger staff and the replacement of worn-out facilities.
It posits that the Mint was important to everyone in the community, that it was more than a showcase, but also a seedbed, for from its rooms had sprung ideals and esthetic values which grew and bore fruit. The community needed the Mint and it urges support of it and the new membership drive.
Give to it rather than to the NASCAR
Museum. For the latter may be part and parcel of why Republicans in
the state just chose the practical equivalent of a neo-Nazi as their
gubernatorial nominee, a big, fat boy who needs to eat fewer whoppers
and tell far less major fibs in his apparent quest to be the black
Trumpie-Dumpy-Do, failing, as with his mentor, to discern that
gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and for good reason. He
reminds us of Old Pharaoh
"Put Strong Men in Mr. Bell's Boots" suggests that Charlotte attorney J. Spencer Bell would likely ably fill the shoes of Jack Blythe in the State Senate, but wonders who would fill Mr. Bell's shoes at home in Charlotte. The County Commission had to find a member to replace him on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission as its chairman.
It finds that part-time politicians, honor-seekers or special interest representatives would not be proper for the replacement, with effective planning and zoning for orderly and healthy growth having been served remarkably well recently by the Commission and by local governments. Mr. Bell's contribution to the Commission had been his understanding of those principles and the promised community benefits of a consistent planning program, plus a willingness to defend in advance such a program, and the Commission needed another member and chairman like him.
"Jackie Moreland & the Indelible Spot" suggests that Lady Macbeth would love it at N.C. State, as the officials sought to wring out the spot of the Jackie Moreland case. State, denied open hearings on illegal recruiting charges against head basketball coach Everett Case and assistant coach Vic Bubas, now planned to try itself before "whatever collection of shadowy witnesses" it could corral.
It finds it sounding very admirable and praiseworthy, suggests that the institution might deal mercifully with itself, but that the spot on its escutcheon looked indelible. There was no real path of appeal from the judgments of the ACC and the NCAA. It finds that it would be unrealistic to suggest that instead of all the anguished wringing, State would simply wash out the spot by withdrawing from major college athletics and concentrating on the training of capable engineers and farmers of any height or reach.
It says that it suggests it was unrealistic because of a university leader in the state who had shrugged sympathetically as he had listened to an appeal for athletic de-emphasis, replying that a practical man had to face some of the facts of life, referring to the reality that university executives had no effective control over alumni pressure for big-time campus athletics. It suggests that the facts of life applied both ways, that the big-time boosters had no control over the tattletale tactics of their rivals in recruitment.
"Lady Macbeth never found a spot remover. Neither, it appears, will State."
It suggests itself as a bit of a stretch to feign reflexivity between the interspousal co-plotted murder of a king and illicit promises of payment for transportation for campus visitation and a full scholarship to a basketball recruit, unless it posits Duncan as the sport, that King eventually to be banned for a time by the NCAA in response to the overbearing dominance of tall men
Meanwhile, UNC cared nary a smidgen, no more than for lovesick pigeons, having just won their 20th straight without deficit though with several narrow misses in the shootouts.
"How Colonels Get To Be Generals" tells of something unbelievable about the way three colonels had agreed to share one general's star in the North Carolina National Guard, that having only one brigadier generalship vacant and three colonels whom the Adjutant General, John Manning, had been willing to promote, the colonels had agreed to a timetable under which each colonel would be a general for a time. General Manning said that each of the three were equally qualified.
The piece finds it unbelievable and surprising that the colonels would admit such a thing even to gain a general's star. "But politics goeth before pride. Yea, verily."
A piece from the Denver Post, titled "Heresy in Moscow", tells of a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal having written from Moscow that beginning the following year, Soviet dictators might make it possible for the average Russian to purchase such articles as furniture on time payments, a concept virtually unknown previously in Russia, with everything having been bought on a cash basis and prices high because of the scarcity of consumer goods. It indicates that it was not known why the Communist bosses had decided to embrace such a capitalistic device.
Consumer credit would be expected to whet the Russian appetite for things which had been denied them in the past, with the need for civilian goods production to be increased to meet increased demand and forestall runaway inflation. If consumer needs were to be met, there would have to be some shift of manpower and factories from military production. The bosses might be inclined to resist that trend, but civilian demand would be powerful.
While consumer credit would not turn all Communists into capitalists, or remove the threat of possible Communist aggression in the future, it would give the average Russian's life a new and interesting motivation, impelled by capitalism, which might also make it more difficult for the leaders to get the good Communist to give up a comfortable life to fight for the liberation of slave workers in America and other lands. "Installment buying could be the opening wedge for the introduction of foreign ideologies in the U.S.S.R."
Drew Pearson tells of former President Herbert Hoover warning that the present economy had some of the earmarks of the depression which had hit his Administration in 1929, running through its end in 1933. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey was also talking about a possible depression which would "make your hair curl". Thus, Mr. Pearson deems it the time to watch the organization set out to watch the stock market, the Securities & Exchange Commission. He says that things had changed around the SEC during the previous four years, that when it had been established under FDR to police the stock market, the President had appointed to it some of the best brains in the nation, with its commissioners having included present Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Ferdinand Pecora, later of the New York Supreme Court, Joseph P. Kennedy, subsequently Ambassador to England, the late Judge Jerome Frank of the U.S. Court of Appeals, James Landis, later chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Sumner Pike, later of the Atomic Energy Commission, Leon Henderson, later administrator of the Office of Price Administration, Harry McDonald, Ganson Purcell, and others. In those times, the SEC commissioners had taken the initiative in watching Wall Street without waiting for financial crimes to be committed first, taking action to prevent the crimes.
But under President Eisenhower, the SEC had started playing politics by ignoring a lengthy telegram from the secretary of the Mississippi Power and Light Co., a Dixon-Yates subsidiary, warning that the company had filed false figures with the SEC. The law which had established the Commission was the "Truth-in-Securities" Act, requiring that anyone who sold stocks and bonds had to file a truthful statement with the Commission. The secretary of the Mississippi utility said that he wanted to withdraw every financial figure and all of the data which were included in the registration statements for a proposed stock flotation of Middle South Utilities and Mississippi Power and Light, part of the Dixon-Yates combine. Yet, despite that warning, the SEC had approved the stock flotation the following day, when previous commissioners would have held extensive hearings. But the new SEC, unworried about protecting the public, had acted immediately. He concludes that the likable, inexperienced young J. Sinclair Armstrong, current chairman of the SEC, was sitting on several kegs of financial dynamite without apparently being aware of it.
Joseph Alsop, still in Kostanay, Russia, tells of the sanctus sanctorum within the city presumably being the office of First Secretary of the Communist Party Committee, Lazar Popov—presumably one of the space lasers to whom that gentlelady from Georgia once referred, but we should make no presumptions as to what was in her mind at any given time, as it was probably associated with blinking late night lights somewhere along the darkened roads of Georgia, with space vehicles lurking overhead ready to snatch her cruelly into Joe Bi-den's world. (We recommend, incidentally, as a most appropriate appurtenance for her face during the State of the Union this year, a muzzle.)
By Kostanay standards, roughly the
standards of Tombstone
Mr. Alsop had been greatly impressed by the boldness, size and apparent success of the huge Soviet industrial and agricultural enterprise shown to him during his Siberian journey, and equally impressed by the caliber of leaders of those enterprises, who were members of the party, though not functioning primarily as Communists, any more than the chairman of U.S. Steel functioned primarily as a Republican or UAW head Walter Reuther functioned primarily as a Democrat. Mr. Alsop wanted to know from them what the role of the party, itself, was in the technically complex enterprises and where Comrade Popov and his two colleagues fit into that scheme. Mr. Popov had replied that the role of the party was the role of leadership. "For example, the colossal spaces of our steppes lay waste for centuries, but now they are being plowed. For this purpose, it is necessary among other things to win the struggle to keep moisture in the soil. This is the successful offensive against nature, in which the party leads." They said that the party was the beginning and its junior branch, the Comsomols, had the opening task of organizing the movement of people to work on the new lands and in the new industries, with the party taking the leading role in that effort. The initial steps were the most difficult because everything had to be created from nothing, from housing for the people who came to populate the area to the needed cultural facilities for them. He said that the reason people traveled to such distant places was because of the care for the people by the Communist Party. (This, we take it, is much like the diaspora which led to the antebellum settlement of rather dismal, virtually uninhabitable parts of the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, for instance.)
Mr. Alsop wanted to know from them what the party's role was in the actual management of the largest local enterprise, the new Sokolovsky mines. Mr. Popov explained that the mine manager was a member of the collective, and the collective effort of the people, in which the leading role was played by the party, was the real force which permitted them to cope with their great tasks. He said that the Communist Party therefore never lost its close connection with the masses, that party members equally worked together in such industrial enterprises as the mines, with the role following the decisions taken by the collective body of the people.
Mr. Alsop concludes that such conversational eloquence "rising and falling in majestic tides" had continued for nearly two hours, with such being the answers he had received to one of the fundamental questions of Soviet society in its current stage of development.
Walter Lippmann tells of the President preparing to receive French Prime Minister Guy Mollet within the ensuing ten days, and new British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, in Bermuda, in about a month, with the simultaneous announcement of those two separate meetings no doubt to be taken as the official end of the time of hard feelings which had been aroused regarding the British-French attack on Egypt in the Suez the previous November without first consulting the U.S. He finds it good news, but a mistake to assume that the alliance would be what it had been and that there were no fundamental problems to be faced.
He suggests that in thinking about the problems, it was useful to distinguish between the U.S. alliance with Britain and France on the one hand and its partnership with them in world affairs on the other. The alliance, formalized by the NATO treaty, was a solemn and specific pact of mutual defense within the geographical area defined by the treaty, an alliance in which there had been no rift per se, still as valid and binding on the night when the U.S. had voted against the British and French action in Egypt at the U.N. as when the NATO treaty had originally been signed in 1949.
But what had broken down was the partnership which derived not from a treaty but rather the personal relationship between Winston Churchill and FDR during World War II. France had been admitted to that partnership after its liberation from the Germans in 1944. The essence of the partnership had been that in the great issues of peace and war, there would be consultation between the three allies and the development of a common policy. But when Britain and France had intervened in Egypt without first consulting the U.S. and when the U.S. had taken the lead at the U.N. in opposing that intervention, the partnership which FDR and Mr. Churchill had formed was dissolved.
The present question was to what extent a new partnership could be developed. He posits that the old partnership would not have dissolved had there not already been erosion of its basis, which had been the common peril of world war against a formidable enemy in Europe, with the war in the Pacific having always been considerably outside the partnership. During the postwar time, the area of the partnership, including Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Africa and the Atlantic Ocean, had been contracting. North of Hong Kong in the Far East, it had disappeared. It had not existed in South Asia and was presently greatly shrunken in the Middle East, with the question being whether a new partnership could be developed there, in Europe and in Africa. The Suez crisis had shown that there could not be an independent British or French policy in those areas and so common policies would have to be formulated for the stabilization of the Continent, the stabilization and neutralization of the Middle East, and for the development of Africa.
He indicates that if that could be done, there would again be the type of partnership which had been formed between FDR and Mr. Churchill, to do great things which had to be done together.
An editors' note indicates that Mr. Lippmann was departing this date for an extended vacation, with his contributions to be continued in March.
A letter writer, who says she was the mother of three schoolchildren, indicates her support for school teachers and finds that they deserved a pay increase. But she adds that most of them had husbands who could support them, such that their school teaching was more of a service for little pay than performed for their existence. She expresses more concern for the men in teaching, such as one of her neighbors who had gone to college for four years and then to summer school for several years to earn his B.S. degree, and had thereafter attended several summer school sessions to take special courses, was active in several educational associations, was sincere and intelligent. He had a family and if his wife did not work, she did not see how they could manage to live, as he earned only a little more than $300 per month, and also performed extracurricular activities at the school. She says she was indignant that the State had let its school teachers down for so long, that they needed men in the teaching profession also, who could not be expected to stay at such low salaries.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., suggests that it was time for a change in high Cabinet positions, says that no one should be allowed to serve as an official in the Defense Department who had made statements about the National Guard as had Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, who had suggested that the Guard had served as a refuge during the Korean War for draft-dodgers. He says he had always believed that the job should be in the hands of a former military man who would uphold the military forces, and finds it the price to be paid for putting in place a businessman, Mr. Wilson having been the head of General Motors prior to his Government service. He also objects to the continued service of Secretary of State Dulles for making uncalled remarks against the fighting forces in Europe of the country's allies, giving to Egypt too much deference in the Middle East situation.
A letter writer says that as a dog
lover, she was grateful to the newspaper for its "Dog of the
Week" stories, a long-needed service which brought happiness to
the readers and the less fortunate dogs of Charlotte. She hopes that
the newspaper would incorporate the series as a permanent feature of
the newspaper, such that eventually the City dog pound would need
provide only supper and overnight lodging for its guests
Framed Edition
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