The Charlotte News
Friday, February 22, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that officials in Washington had said this date that the U.S. would agree to Israel's request for further talks on withdrawing its forces from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba area, after it had rejected the previous day the President's newest appeal that Israel withdraw, still indicating its need to have prior guarantees against Egyptian attack. Premier David Ben-Gurion added, "We hope the door is not closed to further discussions," and stated that his Government would "make a further effort to reach an understanding with the United States." There was evident disappointment in Washington, but not much surprise at the rebuff to the President's public appeal on Wednesday night. Officially, however, the U.S. withheld its reaction pending a detailed study of the Prime Minister's declaration to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The President and Secretary of State Dulles were awaiting a new message from the Prime Minister in response to the President's latest personal appeal, also delivered Wednesday, with that reply apparently being brought back to Washington by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Abba Eban, expected sometime the following day. Jerusalem reports had said that Ambassador Eban was carrying new instructions for talks with U.S. Government leaders.
Representative Frank Osmers of New Jersey said this date that a compromise proposal offered in the dispute between the Army and the National Guard favored the Guard. A House Armed Services subcommittee had been considering an Army order requiring six months of active duty for all new enlistees, effective April 1, a proposal opposed by the Guard for its recruits under age 18 1/2, the minimum draft age, contending that the order would cost the Guard heavily in terms of enlistments. The subcommittee chairman, Congressman Overton Brooks of Louisiana, had announced the previous day a proposal to end the dispute, a principal feature of which would allow the Guard to provide recruits under 18 1/2 with only 11 weeks of training, continuing until June 30, 1958, at which point the six-months rule would go into effect for all. The president of the National Guard Association had promptly endorsed the proposal, with minor reservations. Mr. Osmers, a World War II veteran who generally had supported the Army position, said in an interview that the proposal was "more or less an expression of the National Guard point of view," and that he was inclined to oppose the idea even if the Army agreed with it. The first reaction from the Army to the proposal of Mr. Brooks had been displeasure, saying that the plan would "defer the necessary training so far in the future that it would not correct the training need that now faces the National Guard and the Army." The Army contended that at least six months of basic training was needed to turn a recruit into a soldier, training required of Army reservists but not of National Guardsmen. Two other members of the subcommittee had also disassociated themselves from the proposal of Mr. Brooks.
In Norfolk, it was reported that the last obstacle to settlement of the East Coast longshoremen's strike had been removed early this date when Hampton Roads longshoremen and shippers had agreed to a new contract, following a lengthy session of nearly 12 hours and following earlier acceptance in Baltimore of a general wage pattern providing a 32-cents per hour wage increase over a three-year span. Settlement of the Hampton Roads dispute had been delayed because of several local issues, but the two sides had finally agreed during the morning, and the back-to-work orders had been issued at 10:00 a.m. The failure to reach agreement previously in Baltimore and Hampton Roads had kept some 45,000 longshoremen from the job, despite a master contract having been worked out in New York the prior Sunday night.
In Detroit, it was reported that a black seamstress, who had moved into a previously all-white neighborhood, said that she was going to stay in her $10,900 home despite demonstrations against her and against the white woman who sold her the property. She told newsmen the previous night that she was a firm believer in prayer and had prayed to God that everything would be all right. Nightly demonstrations against her and the former owner of the home had been called "a disgrace to our community" by the Reverend John Coogan, a Jesuit priest and chairman of Detroit's Commission on Community Relations, also head of the sociology department at the University of Detroit, issuing a statement criticizing "area leaders" after the acting director of the Commission had reported that the demonstrations were "beginning to take on serious proportions." He said that perhaps the most humiliating phase of the situation was "the slowness of area leaders to show the social responsibility called for to oppose and rebuke such ganging up against decent citizens." The woman had moved into the neighborhood February 1, after which initially there had been no trouble. She had noted the first sign of hostility on February 4 when a woman had yelled at her, "Oh, those damn niggers." On February 6, a stone had smashed the window of her front door, and more stones had been thrown at the house two days later, breaking a dining room window. Mass demonstrations had begun 11 days earlier in front of both her home and that of the woman who had sold it to her. A front door window was broken at the latter woman's home. Police, however, said that the demonstrators were, for the most part, orderly and no arrests had been made. The black woman said that she had become alarmed a week earlier when she was told of a threat that they were "going to put something in the fuel oil tank" at the house. She said that she was about to give up, that her relatives had left and she did not want to stay in the home alone. She said that she had thought it over and had begun to pray. She had concluded that she intended to stay and was expecting proper protection from the police. She said that a few people in the neighborhood had been friendly. She eventually hoped to open a sewing shop. She said she did not intend to cause trouble when she moved into the neighborhood and had been taken by surprise, as the real estate broker had not informed her that it was an all-white neighborhood.
In Raleigh, a group of State House members, including Representative James Vogler of Mecklenburg County, joined this date in introducing a bill to provide school teachers with pay increases averaging 19.31 percent, a measure which was strongly supported by the North Carolina Education Association, embodying the same increase requested by the State Board of Education. The NCEA director of lay relations, Claude Farrell, said that the proposed increase would cost the state $22,823,145 during the ensuing two fiscal years, not including increased retirement funds. Governor Luther Hodges and the State Advisory Budget Commission had recommended pay increases for teachers averaging 9.1 percent, in addition to their regular pay increase based on experience. The proposed new legislation would provide a pay schedule for A certificate teachers ranging from $2,900 to $4,100, and for teachers with graduate certificates, a schedule ranging from $3,300 to $4,500, while teachers with other types of certificates would receive the increases averaging 19.31 percent.
In Tarboro, N.C., officers said this date that two young men had admitted staging armed robberies in North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee the previous week, implicating a third youth, who was being sought by police. The two had admitted robbing a rural store near Tarboro of $200 on February 14, a rural storekeeper near Richwood, W.Va., of $39 the prior Sunday night, and a rural store of $1,900 near Milan, Tenn., on Monday night. The pair had turned themselves in to Rocky Mount police, telling the officers that they had heard they were looking for them and wanted to know who would identify them. The previous night, officers had recovered $658 where the pair said they had hid it, in a frozen ham at the home of a relative. They told police that they had thrown three pistols into a creek in Nash County the previous day and had dunked the robbery clothing into a water-filled sandpit in the same county.
In Youngstown, presumably, Ohio, a young mother had thrust her three-year old daughter through a window to safety on a porch roof early this date just before flames had swept an upstairs bedroom, killing the woman, her husband and their two infant sons, ages 18 months and two months, respectively. The three-year old daughter had escaped death by seconds, telling firemen that her mother had wrapped her in a blanket and pushed her through her bedroom window onto the roof of a porch. There is no indication of the cause of the fire.
In London, Queen Elizabeth this night officially declared her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, a British prince, Prince Philip. He had been popularly known as such but had not yet been provided the official title. He had been born a Greek prince but had renounced his title prior to his marriage to Princess Elizabeth before she had acceded to the throne after the death of her father. Until this point, Edinburgh had been number 30 on the roll of nobility, with the eight-year old son of the royal couple, Prince Charles, being first after the Queen, followed by the royal Dukes, Gloucester, Windsor and Kent.
In Mobile, Ala., two women entered the infirmary at the same time during the week, one giving birth to a boy, and the other to a daughter less than 12 hours later. The first young woman, 17, was the daughter of the second woman, 37, meaning that the latter's husband had become a father and grandfather on the same day, while the mother had become a mother and grandmother on the same day, and the younger woman had become a mother and a sister at the same time, while the mother's newborn had become a daughter and an aunt.
In Los Angeles, a facsimile of Joseph Stalin had walked the busy midtown streets without causing much of a stir. Actor Maurice Manson, a striking double for the late Soviet ruler, playing the title role in "The Secret Diary of Joseph Stalin", had emerged from a big limousine the previous day at Seventh and Broadway, heart of the midtown area, strolled for several blocks, wearing an exact replica of Stalin's marshal uniform, complete with hammer and sickle on the epaulets. There were a few double-takes among the passersby, but most looked at him as if Stalin were seen every day on the streets of L.A. At one corner, he had inquired of a policeman as to how he might find the FBI, saying, with a feigned Russian accent, that he had just arrived from Russia and did not know his way yet, the policeman replying that he did not know the location but asked him to wait a minute while he looked up the address in his map book, then courteously provided the directions, at which point Mr. Manson thanked him in the Russian accent, and the officer went back to his whistle. Mr. Manson then stopped at a news vendor and asked for a copy of Pravda, the news vendor replying that they were not allowed to carry Russian papers, not even the Daily Worker. As he walked toward Pershing Square, hangout of winos, hobos, outdoor checker players and soapbox radicals, he was accosted by an habitue "who was well along on the grape", saying: "Hey, buddy, how about buying another serviceman a drink? I was in the first World War." Mr. Manson had replied that he drank only pure Russian vodka, to which the wino had replied, "Let's go, that's the best kind." One toothless old-timer had ambled up and shook the hand of Mr. Manson, saying: "It's old Uncle Joe Stalin. Here I come all the way from Pittsburgh and meet old Uncle Joe Stalin the first day. You're all right, Joe." An evangelistic habitue with flowing hair had yelled out: "Stalin, it is not too late. Kneel down with me and repent." Mr. Manson departed quickly.
On the editorial page, "Israel Must Have Survival Insurance" finds that the President's warning to Israel in his speech to the nation two days earlier had to have been the result of a difficult and conscientious choice between unhappy alternatives, but had been the wrong choice because it met the test of neither fairness nor practicality.
Cairo, no doubt, was celebrating and there was talk of warmer appreciation of the proposed Eisenhower doctrine for the Middle East, with the Arab nations doubtless convinced that the U.S. did not favor Israel's aspirations over those of the Arabs. Yet, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had not seen fit to make any concessions to the Arab-Israeli peace, and without such concessions in the form of enforceable guarantees of Israel's security, sanctions against Israel would be a dangerous violation of the international morality which the sanctions were designed to support.
It agrees with the President that the U.N. "must not fail", but indicates that it could not succeed for long by imposing its judgments on Israel in the interests of an Egyptian dictatorship which had flouted U.N. resolutions and had not indicated any change in its attitude by way of deeds.
It finds that in shrinking from its old allies after Britain, France and Israel had invaded Egypt the prior late October and early November, the U.S. had upheld a single standard of world morality at the expense of a large strain on the American sense of fair play, a strain multiplied and the single standard lessened by the President's proposal. It finds the Administration still wading through the central issue, as put by Neil Stanford in the Foreign Policy Bulletin, that "either Israel must agree to commit national suicide, or its Arab neighbors must accept it as a permanent political entity."
It concludes that unless the U.S. was ready to provide guarantees that Israel would remain a permanent state, it had no right to force Israel to give up the small survival insurance it had won.
"Save Bigger Board for Bigger Program" indicates that City Council member Martha Evans, lacking support for her campaign to place a woman on the Park and Recreation Commission, had borrowed a page from FDR in his effort to enlarge the Supreme Court in 1937, suggesting that the size of the Commission be increased from seven to nine members to enhance the chances of a female appointment.
It indicates that while her motives might be pure, there had to be a better way to achieve her aim, that changing the size of the Commission should be pursuant to the recommendations of the Allen Organization, as outlined in its recent survey, in accordance with which recreation services could be increased along with the size of the board. It finds that until the Council was ready to go along with the Allen report and make recreation a joint City-County operation, any adjustments were probably inadvisable. The report had recommended a Commission of 12 persons, four citizens appointed at large by the County Commissioners, four appointed by the City Council, a representative from both the City and County school systems to be either a board member or a superintendent of schools as the respective boards of education decided, plus the chairman of the County Commission and the City Manager ex officio, with it having recommended also that the Commission should include women and persons from both races.
It indicates that in following that recommendation, Mrs. Evans would achieve her aim and the whole metropolitan community would have a recreation program planned and maintained on a more economical and efficient countywide basis.
"Freedom Depends upon Both Kinds" indicates that to the utter dismay of old-school academicians, it was becoming increasingly fashionable to take George Washington's birthday lightly, frequently regarded as just another legal holiday or an excuse to feature cherry pie on a luncheon menu. Among the fathers of the country, Thomas Jefferson had a larger following, with it being argued that Mr. Jefferson was the truer connoisseur of American freedom, having said: "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force can destroy, but not disjoin them."
It regards such comparisons as understandable but unfortunate, as both men were giants, each in his own way contributing much to the making of the republic, and without both, the grand experiment might have been a horrible failure.
It indicates that it was true that President Washington had not been an intellectual, nor a political philosopher or endowed with the gift of felicitous prose as was President Jefferson. He had been a stern and rather skeptical aristocrat, but nevertheless capable of fierce passions, unselfish devotion and high moral integrity.
General Washington had taken a ragamuffin army of farmers and molded them into a fighting force which braved eight freezing winters and exhausting summers to humble the most successful empire of the times. Afterward, he bid a curt farewell to Congress to take his "leave of all the employments of public life." He was then called back from rural life to become the nation's first President. According to historian Douglas Southall Freeman, the only question he had was, "Is the good of the country at stake?" His platform had been simple: "If I know myself, I would not seek or retain popularity at the expense of one social duty or moral virtue."
"America's destiny rode with this intrepid squire, this large, cool aristocrat of stern and tenacious spirit. Freedom depends upon his kind, too."
"Hazy Crystal Ball" indicates that former President Herbert Hoover had said recently that he could detect signs of a depression, the same Mr. Hoover who said on October 31, 1932, that if the Democrats won the election "grass will grow in the streets of 100 cities … weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms. The churches and schoolhouses will decay."
A piece from the Manchester Guardian, titled "Hiking Shoes for Geese", tells of an expression hardly ever heard in current times, "Dew your father shew geese?" It had its origins some 60 years earlier when roads were neither so hard nor so full of traffic as they now were, when it had been not unsual to see flocks of geese driven along the roads of the eastern counties, feeding on the wayside grass and drinking from ponds on their way from Holland. Geese-buying had been a thriving business and dealers would go to the Continent and purchase 3,000 or 4,000 geese between them, and later the men would go and fetch the flocks home. In preparation for the journey, the geese would be shod by being driven through compounds of tar, sawdust and sand two or three times until a pad was formed on their feet, not causing the birds any suffering. They were then shipped in open boats to England, landing at Dovercourt, and though a few might not have survived the journey, most did and suffered no ill effects.
Upon landing, they set out on the walk home, with ten miles per day being the average distance covered and the whole journey taking over a week. During the night, the flocks would lie in a field and the men would lodge at a nearby inn. When each driver reached his destination, he drove his flock away from the main one, while the rest went on their way. Geese were sold after they had been fattened and were probably purchased for Michaelmas by those who believed in the old saying that "he who does not baste a goose at Michaelmas will want for money all the year."
These things are good to know. Perhaps then, the desperate might not be driven to such dissolute lengths that they wind up with the gander sauce after depositing their stolen loot in a frozen ham or even in a frosted pumpkin.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senate ire against Secretary of State Dulles was more white-hot than against any other Secretary of State in recent history, not merely smoldering in private but also flaring in public. Many Senators, both Democratic and Republican, believed firmly that the vacillating policies of the Secretary presented a grave danger to the nation and that it was doubtful if the distrust of those policies could be changed as long as the Secretary remained in his post. There had been a time when Senator William Knowland, the Minority Leader, had been so brusque and brutal in his Foreign Relations Committee criticism of Secretary Dulles that Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas had gone to the defense of Mr. Dulles. But now, Senator Fulbright was caustic and severe in his criticism also. There had been a time when Southern Democrats, usually sympathetic on foreign policy, had been tolerant of Mr. Dulles, but that time also had past.
He presents the cross-examination of Secretary Dulles by Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, in which the latter virtually called the Secretary a liar, asking him whether the President had the power to send troops without Congressional authorization, showing him a State Department document indicating that he did have such power. Secretary Dulles had responded that he was not prepared to answer the question in the abstract, at which point Senator Long interrupted to ask whether President Roosevelt had the right to put troops in Iceland during World War II, to which Mr. Dulles responded that he did not know. Senator Long said he was certain that the Secretary had given some thought to the matter, but Secretary Dulles said he had never thought about that particular point. Senator Long had subsequently read that part of the testimony to his fellow Senators and told them that it was a falsehood and that everyone in the committee room knew that it was not true. Senator Long asked the Secretary whether, in his judgment, Thomas Jefferson had the right to send American forces against the Barbary pirates, to which the Secretary had said that he did not know. He had then asked whether President Truman had the right to send American forces or any power to send American forces into Korea, to which Secretary Dulles had said that he had never studied that as a lawyer. In commenting to his fellow Senators, Senator Long said that if he recalled correctly, Mr. Dulles had been in the State Department at the time when President Truman had committed troops to Korea, perhaps working on the Japanese peace treaty, and he said he never thought about a matter on which he was regarded to be an expert. "That is the kind of answer we got, day after day, until we finally gave up trying to find out what this is all about."
Mr. Pearson indicates that a dramatic and amazing story of how fighting men could drop the taking of human lives to rescue children was being related in the new movie, "Battle Hymn", released the previous week in Marietta, O., hometown of Col. Dean Hess, the primary subject of the movie.
John J. Parker, Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in his Brotherwood Week address to a meeting in Charlotte of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, begins by saying that the doctrine of brotherhood was not a mere sentimental matter but rather a "profound philosophy of human relationships taught by Protestants and Catholics alike and going far back into the teachings of the Jewish people long before there were any Protestants and Catholics." It was based on the concept that there was one God, "the loving father of all mankind, and that we all are his children and of equal value in his sight. Democracy is but the recognition of this great truth: for democracy, my friends, is not a mere form of government. It is a philosophy of life … based upon the worth and importance of the individual man." It believed that "institutions exist for men, not men for institutions, and that the happiness of the poor and the humble is of as much importance as the happiness of the great and the proud." The country came into existence proclaiming that philosophy as its "confession of faith." The country was great, not because of its armed forces, its cities or its culture, but because it still believed in the sovereignty of the individual and the open door of opportunity for everyone. The fundamental rights of every individual as embodied in the Bill of Rights made America great, "and these are but the application in the realm of government of the principles of democracy, the spirit of good will and brotherhood, and of equal opportunity under the law."
But it had to be remembered that freedom lived not in a written document, but in the minds and hearts of the people "just as the music of a symphony is not in the written score but in the understanding of the men who play the instruments. Freedom, if it is to live, must be and remain a vital force in the life of the community. Freedom of thought and freedom of speech must be preserved; all men must have equal rights of the law; and equal opportunity under the law must be given to all men without regard to race or religion or color and other circumstance."
It was easy to forget that fundamental faith of America, to compromise principles and "do a little evil in the hope that some good may result; and it is so hard to stand four square for the truth, when it conflicts with our cherished prejudices." It was easy enough to believe in freedom of religion for Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians, but the test was whether it was believed for Moslems or infidels or atheists, easy enough to believe in freedom of speech for Democrats and Republicans, but the test was whether it was believed for socialists and communists and others who believe in a philosophy which was hated. "Unless speech is free for everybody, it is free for nobody. Unless it is free for error, it is not free for truth. And the only limitations which may safely be put upon that freedom are those which forbid slander and libel, obscenity and incitement to crime."
He had learned while serving on the Nuremberg tribunal the importance of those guarantees of personal freedom, that when freedom of speech and religion had been suppressed in Germany, the concentration camp had flourished overnight and a reign of terror had begun. He had also learned the deadly danger inherent in racial prejudice and hatred, the means by which the Nazi party had come to power, through a campaign of hatred of the Jews, unleashing savage forces which could not be controlled and which led to deeds of which every German was ashamed.
"I shall never forget the anguished testimony of Hans Frank who had been Governor General of Poland at the time that three million Jews were murdered in the Polish concentration camps. Asked by Mr. Justice [Robert] Jackson about this, Frank replied, 'I have a deep feeling of guilt there. A thousand years will pass and the shame of Germany will still not be erased.'"
Free men everywhere had to unite for the protection of freedom, with unity at home with those who shared the common belief in the fundamental philosophy upon which the democracy was based and with those of other nations who shared that belief and were threatened by the false philosophies of communism and the ambitions of the Soviet oligarchy. The basis for unity was human brotherhood. It required cessation of thinking about things which divided people and thinking on those which united, ceasing to think about the things not liked about those who did not agree on all things and thinking about things liked about those people, "particularly about the things for which we are indebted to them."
He indicates that if Christians were tempted to yield to the prejudice of anti-Semitism, it had to be remembered that Christ and all of the apostles were Jews and that the Jews had provided the Holy Scriptures, the New Testament as well as the Old, and the ten commandments, which were the basis for the present moral code. If Protestants were tempted to harbor prejudice against Catholics, it had to be remembered that it was the Catholic Church which had kept the Christian faith alive during the dark ages and preserved it for the regeneration of the world, and that in recent persecutions of the Christian faith by Nazis and Communists, it had stood "like a rock against the oppressor." And if Jews or Catholics were tempted to harbor prejudice against Protestants, it had to be remembered that the Protestant religion had played a great part in achieving free government and recognition by the government of the inherent rights of the individual. "All of us, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, have had a great part in the building of the free civilization of the West, and none of us should ever forget it."
He finds that the same spirit was needed to approach the racial tensions present in the South, that white people in the South ought acknowledge with gratitude the important part which black people had contributed to the development of the section, and black people ought remember that they had "received the benefit of the white man's civilization" and "made greater progress than Negro people have ever made anywhere else at any time in the whole history of the world. For three hundred years we have lived here in the South together in peace and friendship with each other. As far as we can see in the future, we shall be living together here in the South; and people of both races will accomplish more and will be happier if they will think upon the good qualities of each other rather than occasional grievances, and will approach their problems with the determination to settle them in the spirit of good will and mutual understanding."
He counsels approaching international relationships in the same spirit, that the time had passed when the United States could live to itself, as almost overnight, the world had become one great community, with any part of it being reachable within a few hours of time and communication within seconds. "A bombing fleet from another country could destroy half our great cities before we became conscious that we were even in danger. The only hope of civilization is the acceptance by the nations of the earth of the principle of brotherhood for which this order stands; and to carry to them the gospel of brotherhood is the outstanding mission of our great country. England held the umbrella over our civilization for a hundred years after the Congress of Vienna; but England's power is largely gone and we have had to take our place as the guardian of the civilization of the West. England protected civilization by building a great world empire."
The U.S. could not build an empire and remain a republic. One of the great yearnings which had come out of World War II was for a world order based on law, justice and righteousness rather than selfishness and force, opening the way to preserve civilization by establishment of a world order based on the same principles on which the U.S. Government was founded.
He closes by reminding of two passages from the Bible, one from the writings of St. Paul to the Gentiles, saying: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." The other was from Jesus: "To whom much is given of him much also is required." He reminds that America had come through World War II with its strength unimpaired and with wealth as given to no other nation through time. He could not accept that they were given to the nation for its own selfish use and enjoyment, but rather in the providence of God so that it could lead in preserving God's greatest gift to man, the gift of human freedom, and not only by creating armaments but by building up the wasted places of the earth and enabling free men in other lands to live as God intended. "Only in this spirit of brotherhood can we exercise with success the leadership of the free nations with which we have been entrusted."
If parts of his address sound out of place in present times, overly ethnocentric while well-meaning, it has to be recalled that it was 1957, with the year-long Montgomery bus boycott only two months in the past, Brown v. Board of Education finally decided as to its implementation regimen less than two years earlier, and thus the inception of the modern civil rights movement, despite it having been ongoing largely through the efforts of the NAACP, sensing the opening in the New Deal, for the previous two decades in the courts, having only recently reached the society at large.
But just as presentism cannot be practiced on the past without recognizing the full societal context in which the past transpired, along with that which had preceded generationally, the present cannot be steeped in pastism, as, for instance, appears evident in 2024 in the Florida schools, apparently ready to teach, with the endorsement of the Governor, that slaves "benefited" in the country under the "peculiar institution" which was slavery. Becoming reactionary is no solution to current problems of interracial perception, caused primarily by ignorance of the experience of others, a failure to recognize in each basic humanity, which harbors within it blindness to reality rather than any actualized view of how things are between most individuals, when divested of the darkest intrusions on their personal lives by occasional stories of untoward occurrences, the subject of unduly and unhealthily preoccupied focus, made to seem of increscent threat to the sanctity of their homes by the magnification drawn to them through repeated reporting, in competition to get the story out, in far greater societal saturation therefore than in earlier times, when "life was slow" or at least seemed so by comparison, for the fact of reportage then being communicated only either by the town crier, and thence by word of mouth, or by the local printing press, requiring the slower process of reading through the stories, with the added benefit of being able to give them more considered thought and discussion and thereby place them in some perspective before heading off with a bellyful of fire to the local council meeting, ready to burn down someone's home or institute teaching in the schools designed to provide some fancied panacea for a perceived general problem which in fact is likely limited to a few individuals in the community, only tending then, through the plan for broader address of the problem, to spread the limited malady as a viral infection rather than meet it with an appropriate remedy specific to the individuals giving rise to it, finding out the origin of the problem in the mind and filling in the missing element with education appropriate to the exigent omission of understanding in the individual, who, in younger years, in all probability, chose the convenient daydream of a spring afternoon by which to escape the present weight of the day, pursuing it to ends unforetold and unwanted when manifested in reality, rather than engaging in diligent pursuit of the social studies at hand, learning from the mistakes of others rather than via hard knocks. That is a quieter form of prevention, less given to glorification of the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing purveyor of a "final solution" to the problem at hand, but one far more salutary to all in the end.
In any event, the institution of slavery was not a benefit to anyone, whites, blacks or mulattoes, as any discerning understanding gleaned from contemporaneous accounts of it, not from modern vanity books of one sort or another, would impart. Yet, it is a part of U.S. history, just as the conceptual basis for the institution, to enslave others to do the unwanted work of a society and then to rationalize the subjugation morally by conjuring some osmotic "benefit" to the underclass being enslaved, had derived from its place in world history spanning back to Biblical times and must be addressed to achieve any full understanding of the development of the country through time and its place in world history. The suggestion of benefit from it hearkens back to the accounts of illiterate, or at least functionally illiterate, preachers who sought to justify the institution by citing Scripture as revealing it as the will of God, assessments tainted by self-interest to appease the community masters who supplied the local preacher's table, not obtained from any objective, scholarly exegesis of the particular Scripture being read or its intended literary allegory, with the overall message of the book borne in mind as a general guide to avoid rationalization of present behavior plainly condemned as being not conducive to convivial communal relations, though desirable for the continued pleasure of the individual—not dissimilar in manner to proper interpretation of the Constitution, never forgetting to include its overarching Preamble and its imperative of "We, the people" to "promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity", and the Supremacy Clause, when trying to squeeze, through some hocus-pocus "historical analysis", dragging into the present in whole-cloth Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century concepts of justice and fairness in the process, a states' rights interpretation, more derivative of the Articles of Confederation and the Confederacy than of the Tenth Amendment, out of plain language intended to pull through time, in gradualism, the contrary human eventuality, with a result more of self-regulation by individuals than the constraining heavy hand of a governmental entity, whether local, state or Federal, needed for resort when some individuals, including some in government, fail to understand the conceptual basis of the society.
A letter writer says that sometime earlier there had been a big rally ongoing in Charlotte to fix the sidewalks, but it had been shut down. Holes in the sidewalks were covered with at least two inches of water on rainy days and he had found that it was much better to walk in the streets than on the sidewalks. He urges the City Council to stop wrangling about where to park cars at the Coliseum during ball games and devote a couple of minutes to the people who had to walk and do their shopping. He views it as a disgrace.
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