The Charlotte News
Monday, February 25, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date, in a worldwide radio broadcast marking the 15th anniversary of the Voice of America, told the Middle East nations that the menace of international Communism "could smash all the hard-won accomplishments overnight." He noted that in the face of that menace, he had asked Congress to approve his anti-Communist program for the Middle East, indicating his belief that the well-being of the people of that region required the nations there to build up and strengthen their economies and institutions, progress which the U.S. wanted to see. He said that for that constructive work to go on, the countries had to be free from the menace of international communism, and so the U.S. was giving those countries the assurance that if such a danger developed with which the U.N. could not deal and a threatened country sought help, it could count on the U.S. He made no mention of the current crisis precipitated by Israel's refusal to withdraw its forces from claimed Egyptian territory but appeared to have that situation in mind when he said that "a principal source of order in the world … is the United Nations," as the U.N. had issued repeated demands that Israel withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba, which Israel had thus far ignored without adequate guarantees of protection against future commando raids by Egypt and blockage of use of the Suez Canal. The President said that just as the U.S. supported the independence of separate nations, it also supported just as vigorously "the practice of settling the inevitable disputes between these nations under the principles and procedures of the United Nations." He said that along with the history of the U.S. and its Declaration of Independence and thus its support of self-determination and human dignity among other nations, there had to be "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."
The U.S. and Israel appeared close to agreement this date on a formula by which Israeli troops would be withdrawn from the disputed territory without U.N. sanctions, with the question remaining, however, as to whether Egypt would also agree. U.N. action would also be necessary for some of the points which Secretary of State Dulles and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and to the U.N., Abba Eban, had discussed during a three-hour meeting at the home of Mr. Dulles the previous day. They had divided the problem into U.S. and U.N. aspects, and had then issued a joint statement which provided hope for the prospects of resolution of both sets of issues. It said that Ambassador Eban would report the remarks of Secretary Dulles to Jerusalem immediately and that he would remain in close touch with the State Department. The Ambassador was expected next to confer with U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in New York. The conference with Secretary Dulles had taken place after Ambassador Eban had flown back to Washington with new instructions from Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Officials indicated that the U.S. would continue its silence in the U.N. regarding the question of imposition of sanctions against Israel for the failure to withdraw. Meanwhile, the U.N. postponed, at least until the current afternoon, scheduled debate on the Arab-backed resolution calling for punitive sanctions against Israel. The U.S. could provide Israel more time to work out a full solution either by seeking further postponement of the debate or by withholding announcement of its own position for several days while the debate proceeded.
At the U.N., the General Assembly's morning meeting was canceled after Secretary Dulles had met with Ambassador Eban, with an afternoon session still on the schedule for debate of the sanctions issue. The sanctions resolution had been prepared by the 27-nation Asian-African bloc and was sponsored by Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Sudan, calling on all U.N. members "to deny all military economic or financial assistance and facilities to Israel" until it had withdrawn from the disputed territories. An Asian-African diplomat said the previous night that if Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., told them that Israel was willing to withdraw, they could consider further delay, but if there was no indication of withdrawal, there was no reason not to press the resolution.
In New York, French Premier Guy Mollet arrived early this date for urgent talks with the President regarding the Middle East crisis, Mr. Mollet telling newsmen at Idlewild Airport that he wanted to make it clear to the world that friendship between the U.S. and France was "still alive". He declined to comment on France's opposition to the proposed sanctions resolution against Israel, indicating that he was "hopeful" that a satisfactory resolution could be reached to the crisis. His trip originally had been planned to patch up French-American differences stemming from the British-French invasion of Egypt the prior November 1 without first consulting the U.S. The conference was to be followed shortly by a conference between the President and new British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, billed as the beginning of a final reconciliation between the Western Big Three. Premier Mollet told newsmen that he could not make any statement on the Middle East situation until he had conferred with the President, a conference being scheduled for the following day. He said that he would stress in his conference with the President the need for building Europe, to link it closely to Africa, to keep peace alive, and that France had been for nearly two centuries the faithful ally of the U.S. and did not intend to change its mind or heart in that regard.
The Administration had recommended this date that about 2.5 million employees, mainly store workers, be included under the one dollar per hour Federal minimum wage law, presented by Secretary of Labor James Mitchell to a Senate Labor subcommittee, proposing in prepared testimony that the law be broadened to include employers conducting at least a million dollars worth of business per year and employing a minimum of 100 employees. He had not proposed any increase in the minimum wage and had not suggested that the additional workers to be covered should come under the law's provisions for overtime pay. The current law covered about 24 million workers and an additional 20 million were outside the purview of its interstate commerce clause. Secretary Mitchell said that two million workers in large chain stores and "giant single-unit department stores and other large retail establishments" would be the main groups covered by the proposed plan for additional coverage. The plan would also cover 65,000 employees of city transit systems, 15,000 telephone employees, 90,000 seamen, 50,000 employees of the largest hotel systems, 30,000 employees of large taxicab companies and some 200,000 employees in about 100 construction businesses. It had been many years since coverage of the minimum wage law had been broadened, though the minimum wage itself had been increased. The AFL-CIO had urged that Congress extend coverage to nearly 10 million of the 20 million workers presently excluded. The Fair Labor Standards Act provided generally that workers should be paid a specified minimum wage plus time and a half for hours worked beyond 40 each week. A House committee was to begin hearings on March 1, and it was anticipated that expansion of minimum wage coverage would be passed during the current session of Congress. The AFL-CIO had indicated that if coverage was extended during the year, it would press the following year for an increase in the minimum wage to $1.25 per hour.
A Pacific storm, with winds up to 158 mph, had hit the West Coast during the weekend and killed three persons, flooding part of an Oregon city and grounding transoceanic air traffic. Warm moisture-laden air from the Gulf of Mexico had spread into the Midwest and had brought relatively mild temperatures to the remainder of the nation. Continued rain was in prospect for the West Coast this date, but without the high winds. The winds had blasted part of Washington state the previous day, melting snow on the slopes along the Bowder River in eastern Oregon and flooding about 40 homes in Baker, a community of 9,500. In northern California, a 600-foot stretch of U.S. Highway 101, the main north-south artery, was blocked by a mudslide of between eight and ten feet deep, stranding more than 500 motorists at Willits. A terrific gust of wind had felled a 125-foot fir tree near Grants Pass, Ore., and killed two foresters, while a falling pine tree had killed a woman in Monterey, Calif. The torrential rains had posed a minor flood threat to the Russian River resort area, about 55 miles north of San Francisco. As far south as Los Angeles, a quick downpour had flooded lowland parts of the city for a brief time on Saturday. A Pan American Airways liner had ridden the tailwinds of the storm from Honolulu to San Francisco in a commercial aviation record-breaking time of six hours, four minutes.
In London, it was reported that the libel suit of Jaime Ortiz-Patino, wealthy Bolivian tin heir, against the London Sunday Graphic, had come to an abrupt halt this date, as his estranged American wife, who had been assisting the defendant, changed her mind and refused to testify, with counsel for the newspaper indicating that it could do nothing more than withdraw the defense that the story about the turbulent marriage had been justified. The jury then awarded the plaintiff the equivalent of $56,000. The defense attorney said that the newspaper now accepted completely the fact that the affections of the plaintiff for his wife had carried with them "no abnormality or perversion of any kind." Apparently, the wife had intimated such to the newspaper in its published story. The case had made headlines in British newspapers with testimony of alleged sadism on the part of the young husband and alleged drug addiction on the part of the wife.
Charles Kuralt of The News continues his series of articles, this being the second, regarding the production of moonshine in the state, beginning with the lines: "Oh, they call it 'that old mountain dew'/ And those who refuse it are few…" He reports that with legal liquor prices on the rise, those who refused illegal white lightning were becoming fewer in the state, as North Carolinians, according to law enforcement officers, guzzled the stuff at a faster rate than at any time since Prohibition. New stills were appearing in patches of woods from the mountains to the sea, with the assistant supervisor of the Federal Government's efforts to control bootlegging in the state indicating that there were plenty of places where no one saw anything wrong with moonshining practices. He had been on the job for 16 years and had a giant map of Wilkes County in the hill country, the traditional capital of North Carolina moonshining, hanging on the wall of his Charlotte office. He said that in some of the rural communities, those who were not bootleggers were their customers and that they could not find out anything from anyone, that the way they discovered the stills was to go into the woods and look, with chances being that they would come upon one. The finer points of moonshining comprised a complex science handed down generationally, with master distillers existing in the hills, whose reputations rivaled community-conscious bankers in the city. Anyone could load vats with cornmeal, water and yeast, build a boiler, a distiller, a doubler and a cooler, and develop thus a still. But to age the mash just the right length of time, to stoke the fire hot enough to build up a decent head of alcoholic steam, while not being so hot that it scorched the mash, to drain the cooler properly after the steam had condensed into clear liquid, required a finer touch developed through time and generations. A labeled photograph shows a moonshine operation captured in Iredell County by the Alcohol Tax Unit agents of the Treasury Department, showing by number each component of the still, producing 100-proof corn liquor which sold at retail for $10 per gallon.
In Otisfield Gore, Me., a 35-year old woodcutter and his great grandmother-bride of 79 had been married in a simple ceremony the previous day at the bride's home in the village. But as the newlywed husband had wood to cut and his wife, housework to perform, they took no honeymoon. The minister had been five minutes late, and after ten more minutes spent waiting for the groom's boss to arrive, the ceremony had proceeded, with the boss arriving halfway through it. When the ceremony was almost completed, the best man, who was the bride's son-in-law, handed the Methodist minister a second ring, with the minister saying that he had not realized there would be two rings, then started the ceremony all over again. The bride was a widow of ten years and four of her ten grandchildren had witnessed the ceremony. The groom had been divorced two years earlier, had met his new wife the previous year while boarding with the family, indicating to news photographers that he had proposed the prior Christmas, the bride indicating that she was lonesome and thought that they would be good company for one another and so accepted. The groom said that they were in love, that they were both lonely, and that it was "an ideal marriage". To clarify the somewhat confusing opening sentence of the story, the bride was a great grandmother, but not the great grandmother, as the sentence implies, of the woodcutter. We do not wish to convey a misleading impression of the union and thus disseminate a posthumous libel of some sort. We hope that the bride did not decide to poison her much younger husband and that the husband did not seek to drown her in bathtub gin.
In Niort, France, it was reported that after many months of bitter internal strife, the nearby village of Ste. Maxire now had a new bell, but the mayor, a stubborn man, had refused to witness its christening ceremony. The matter had begun when the old bell developed a crack and the priest asked the mayor to pay for repairs, which the mayor refused to do. Local parishioners contributed and soon there was enough to purchase a new bell, named by the parishioners "Françoise Dominique", but the priest announced that it would not ring for official ceremonies. The mayor, accompanied by the town criers and eight members of the town council, stormed the church and took the bell, locking it in the town hall. Angry members of the flock rallied behind the priest, many believing that the toll of the Angelus three times per day was the sole indication of time, and so wanted justice. The mayor finally surrendered the bell and the christening ceremony was held without the mayor. The bell now tolled the Angelus, but many of the parishioners feared that peace was not present to stay in the town. Not with all the moonshining going on.
On the editorial page, "Bonfire Is Built but Who Has a Match?" indicates that a legislative bonfire had been kindled for the state's politics-ridden State Highway and Public Works Commission, but that exceptional courage and audacity would be required before the General Assembly actually applied the match. Identical bills to revise completely the managerial structure of the state's 70,000-mile road system had been introduced in both the State House and Senate the previous week, with the proposed legislation being to replace the present 14-member Commission with a seven-member body whose chief administrator would be a director of highways instead of the present chairman. The director would be a career official, appointed by the Commission, with the approval of the Governor.
At present, one highway commissioner was appointed from each of 14 divisions and the chairman was named by the Governor from the state as a whole, with each commissioner having substantial authority over the roads in that division, with the unfortunate result that highway operations and practices differed between divisions. Also, each commissioner automatically became a political power of no little importance, in the past, highway divisions having often been operated as little political baronies within the state. The smaller body would abolish those baronies and provide for a more unified operation throughout the state.
Roads would have a better chance of being built in accordance with the state's overall needs rather than on the basis of local pressure and influence—such as the well-known "roads to nowhere" or roads of strangely meandering rights-of-way, as had been charged against former Governor, now-Senator, Kerr Scott. Highway employees would be prohibited from partisan political activity under penalty of suspension, demotion or discharge. It finds the reform necessary, a more enlightened statewide approach to road-building and maintenance being urgently needed.
It indicates that the state had the most extensive highway system under state jurisdiction in the entire nation, exceeding the combined mileages of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, containing twice as much mileage as the combined systems of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York, suggesting that it was thus ridiculous to leave its management at the mercy of competing, part-time commissioners with special geographical interests.
Roads needed to be planned and maintained in accordance with the state's overall best interests and long-range development, difficult under the present system. Because of the political power contained in the 14 highway divisions, reform would come only with great difficulty, but reorganization had to be achieved if the state's future road needs were to be served on a thoroughly sound and reasonable basis.
Lots of new roads and lots of new schools, and everything will be real cool, like, daddy-o.
"Old Injunction for a New Legislature" provides the original legislation in 1789 setting up UNC, with the wherewithal to maintain it having been a problem ever since, the intervening time having made one big difference, that in 1789, the state had everything to gain and nothing to lose by establishing the University, while in 1957, the state had everything to gain and everything to lose by not preserving and sustaining it.
At stake was UNC's high rank among the nation's universities and its effectiveness at home as the state's center of teaching and research—not to mention basketball—, the source of specialized services which placed knowledge to work on the community level for the betterment of all North Carolinians. The greatest threat, it finds, would be the loss of faculty members, which UNC called a "steady loss" to other universities willing and able to pay salary increases of as much as 50 percent. Meanwhile, the University was seeking a 10 percent increase in faculty salaries, while also needing more funding for libraries, research and equipment—including a much larger arena than Woollen Gymnasium—, the minimum necessities for preserving the University's capabilities and sustaining the pride and inspiration which generations of North Carolinians had found in the institution.
It finds that it was still, as had the original founding legislation provided, "the indispensable duty of every legislature" and particularly the present one in 1957, "to consult the happiness of a rising generation and endeavor to fit them for an honorable discharge of the social duties of life…"—and the ability to say that their class that year was Number One. It concludes that the University had to be provided the support it needed.
"On Singing a Song of Sixpence, Sadly" indicates that the first public official to attempt a humorous approach to the income tax was said to have been William Pitt, who had been mobbed in the streets of London. It suggests that it should have been a lesson to the IRS, but, according to Time, an IRS agent had reasoned recently that it would be a good idea to "add a light touch to the annual tax chore" by adopting an official tax song, similar to a cigarette commercial, to place the citizenry in a good mood about taxes.
Under consideration the previous
week had been a new tune turned out by Irving Caesar, who had written
"Tea for Two"
It suggests that there were some things which the Government could not sugarcoat, such as death and taxes. The citizen was left with only the alternative of fighting fire with fire, and it proposes its own anthem, "I Want My Woe To Show", of which it supplies its lyrics: "Income tax is almost due/ And this makes me today/ A wretched charter member of I.O.U.S.A./ Should I grin and bear it?/ Should I hip hooray?/ Not as a charter member of I.O.U.S.A." (It seems the second line should have been something like: "When in Rome, do as they do".)
It indicates that for all it cared, the IRS could return to its old singing commercial of the early Eisenhower years: "How much did you make?/ How much did you spend?/ Whattaya got left?/ Mail it in!" We thought that was popular during the confiscatory war years.
A piece from the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, titled "A Hot Foot for Starlings", indicates that it was a pleasure to report that after years of frustration, researchers had developed a starling repellent which appeared to work, consisting of a gelatinous substance called "Roost No More", which, when sprayed on the roosting places of the birds, drove them away with a noxious odor and stinging of their feet.
It had been used at the January 21 inauguration of the President in Washington, sprayed on 50 trees along the route of the inaugural parade, with the result that there had been no complaints of starlings in the vicinity before or during the ceremonies. Washington authorities had thus recommended that it be used again. It retained its potency for about a year, and when roosting birds got it on their feet, they carried it to other roosting places, making the bird a transmittal agent of the substance.
Many types of devices had been developed to deter the presence of starlings, including balloons, guns, firecrackers, traps, bells, whistles, electric shocks, and, the previous year, use of a recording of the shrieks of a starling when held by its legs upside down, to frighten the birds from the Archives Building, the latter device having worked pretty well, but having to be played so often that it was not practical, getting on people's nerves. The repellent spray appeared to work much better.
But it warns that the starling
Drew Pearson indicates that the inside story about the President's hurried return from Thomasville, Ga., where he had been quail hunting and golfing as a guest of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, was that chief of staff Sherman Adams had warned him that a revolt regarding the Middle East crisis and the refused withdrawal of the Israelis from Egyptian territory was forming in Congress, that a resolution might pass in both houses condemning sanctions against Israel unless the President returned to take personal charge of the situation. Such a resolution would not only tie the Administration's hands vis-à-vis the U.N., but might endanger the entire legislative program in Congress, the so-called "Eisenhower doctrine" for the Middle East, whereby the President sought advance authority for the use of American forces, including ground troops, to rebuff any aggression by Communist forces in that region, and to spend as much as 200 million dollars during the ensuing year on financial aid to the region.
Initially, the President wanted the 27 Congressional leaders to come to Thomasville to meet with him, but when Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had replied, "The American people are under the impression that Washington is still the capital of the United States," the President returned. He blew off steam privately against Israel and what he called the "Jewish lobby", giving no hint of that later as he met with Congressional leaders, although appearing unusually discouraged and depressed.
He had opened the conference by reading a prepared statement reviewing the Israeli situation at present, coughed occasionally, apologized for laryngitis and turned the discussion over to Secretary of State Dulles, who then outlined the situation similarly to what had been reported in the press. He said that he found it hard to put into words that a little nation of the free world, Israel, which everyone wanted to protect, was at the same time guilty of aggression into the territory of another nation. He said there was nothing the U.S. could do to prevent sanctions against Israel by the U.N., that the only course available was for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba, that unless that withdrawal occurred quickly, the situation would worsen. He stated: "A flicker could start and develop into a flame. If Israel doesn't withdraw, guerrilla warfare might break out and you can't tell where it would stop." He indicated that even the Soviets might be drawn into the fight.
After he had talked for about 20 minutes, a Senator interrupted, asking whether it was true that what the Secretary had been saying was a polite way of expressing the notion that the Administration would support U.N. sanctions against Israel, to which the Secretary replied that the U.S. would not seek sanctions, but that it was difficult to see how sanctions could be avoided. Senator Johnson then told Mr. Dulles that he did not think he had been responsive to the question and repeated it, to which Secretary Dulles responded that it was the policy of the U.S. to support the U.N., Senator Johnson, however, remaining unsatisfied and again repeating the question. Secretary Dulles responded that if the majority of the U.N. believed that sanctions ought be imposed, the U.S. would support that position. Senator Johnson then asked whether that did not place the U.S. in the role of supporting a double standard, referring to the fact that sanctions were not being brought against Russia for the Hungarian bloodbath of the prior November. Secretary Dulles said that he did not believe that was the case, as the question of sanctions had never been raised in the Hungarian matter.
U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., then took over the discussion for about 30 minutes, discussing the maneuvering and manipulation which had been ongoing inside the U.N., for the most part, a technical discussion. He said that he had delayed action on a U.N. resolution as long as he could, to give the U.S. time to bring about a voluntary withdrawal of Israeli troops from the disputed areas, but that he could not delay much longer, as soon the cease-fire agreement would expire and then anything could happen, that Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser might make trouble, probably with the assistance of Russia.
Stewart Alsop indicates that the report of his brother, Joseph, of his interview with Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had been pored over carefully by the Government's Soviet experts, agreeing that the most important words were those in which Mr. Khrushchev had spelled out the Soviet price for withdrawing the Red Army from the satellite nations. He was more specific in that regard than any Soviet spokesman had ever previously been, indicating that in return for withdrawal of the Red Army, "Western European countries would also withdraw their troops stationed in the territories of other Western European countries. The United States would also withdraw its troops to American territory from Europe and Asia, and along with that would go the liquidation of all foreign bases."
Mr. Khrushchev had therefore demanded the liquidation of NATO, it having always been the assumption that it would be part of the price for withdrawal from the satellites. But he had also demanded, in effect, the total liquidation of the U.S. power position, not only in Europe but also in Asia, requiring the withdrawal of U.S. forces everywhere, from Greenland to Okinawa. Another part of his quid pro quo was that the Western powers would recognize the Communist regimes as permanent, "to accept this, as a believer would say, as something given by God." The implication was that even after the Red Army had withdrawn, the Soviets would claim the right to use force to prevent the overthrow of the "God-given" Communist regimes. Mr. Khrushchev's statement had thus greatly strengthened the negative side in a vitally significant subterranean debate which had been ongoing within the U.S. Government, centering around the questions as to whether it was worthwhile to attempt seriously to negotiate with the Soviets on their terms for withdrawal, and if so, the price which the U.S. and the West might be prepared to pay for such withdrawal.
The debate had been subterranean because the subject was as internationally sensitive as it could be, one discussed repeatedly by the President and members of the National Security Council. The immediate impetus for the debate had been provided by the Hungarian uprising of the prior October 23 through November, an uprising which had proved that the Red Army, and only that, held the Soviet satellite empire together, that the only hope for the satellites therefore was in withdrawal of that Army, and that failing such withdrawal, further uprisings within the satellites were probable, especially in East Germany, involving the risk of world war.
Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin's letter of November 20 to the President, when the Hungarian revolt was at its height, had further stimulated the secret debate, proposing, at least by implication, a mutual 500-mile withdrawal from a demilitarized zone in central Germany. But such a withdrawal would have taken U.S. forces out of Germany and thus, for all practical purposes, off the Continent, though also taking the Red Army out of most of the satellite areas. A minority within the U.S. Government, primarily Harold Stassen and State Department policy planner Robert Bowie, had contended that it suggested that the Soviets might be in a mood to negotiate seriously about mutual withdrawal. Outside the Government, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan, who still possessed enormous influence with the foreign service professionals, had also argued that the time had come to "study the various possibilities for … withdrawal of both Soviet and American forces from Central and Eastern Europe." The President had been impressed by those arguments, but the Pentagon was violently opposed, and ultimately it was decided to hold the matter in abeyance.
Mr. Khrushchev's statement, however, appeared to have ended the debate, perhaps once and for all, for his price was not withdrawal of American forces only from continental Europe, but rather withdrawal of all American forces from Asia and Europe, back to the continental U.S., not a serious basis for negotiation, nor intended to be. Mr. Alsop concludes that if there had ever been a time when a new approach to world settlement had been possible, the time appeared to have passed.
The New York Times, in a non-bylined piece, indicates that Representative Carl Durham of North Carolina, who had dealt for a decade with problems of mass destruction through nuclear weapons, looked back wistfully to days when he had dispensed soothing syrups for babies as a pharmacist, now opening hearings the previous week as the new chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, of which he had been a member since its establishment in 1946. At age 64, Mr. Durham was beginning his tenth term in the House, having served 35 years in elective office, many while still working behind his prescription counter, having been on the Chapel Hill Town Council, the district school board and for many years as a commissioner of Chapel Hill.
He had worked primarily behind the scenes, in committees and cloakrooms, during his time in the House, speaking from the floor only infrequently, doing so on those rare occasions with "a drawl combined with clipped words that leave Yankee reporters unsure of their notes." He was credited with having a strong influence in helping former President Truman decide to develop the hydrogen bomb, at a time when commissions and committees were split on the question. Along with the late Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut, who had then been chairman of the Joint Committee, and a few others, he had urged the former President to go ahead with the development of the thermonuclear weapon before the Russians would do so.
Mr. Durham had become interested in nuclear energy in 1946 while a member of the old House Military Affairs Committee, when legislation to establish controls on atomic energy had been under consideration. At that time, Congress had set up a joint committee to police the program. The Military Affairs Committee had before it a proposal that the Atomic Energy Commission be left primarily to the military, a proposal on which Mr. Durham had balked, fighting the proposal in committee and losing, as well as on the House floor. He was then appointed as a member of the Senate and House confreres assigned to settle differences between the two versions of the bill, wherein he and Senator McMahon had won their position to have the AEC become a civilian agency.
Mr. Durham was also a top-ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.
He had garnered a reputation in Congress as being either independent or stubborn, or both. Yet, even when he differed with other members of the North Carolina legislative delegation, there were no signs of acrimony. He had signed the March 12, 1956 Southern Manifesto on segregation, criticizing Brown v. Board of Education and vowing to use all lawful means to overturn it.
It indicates that throughout his public life, he had not lost his memories of the prescription counter, working in a drugstore while making his mark at UNC, after preliminary studies at Manndale Prep School, graduating from the School of Pharmacy in 1917, then entering the Navy the following year as a pharmacist's mate. After World War I, he had become interested in politics, handled a few campaigns at regional levels, entered local politics and then eventually decided to run for Congress in 1938. He contended that the prescription counter was one of the focal points of any town or city, where people brought their joys and troubles, where an 18-hour day became routine, plus calls in the night from mothers with ailing babies requiring syrups for coughs and croup.
He had said recently that the routine had trained him for the long hours he now put in as a Congressman. He had little time for hobbies but had an interest, as a smoker from tobacco country, in collecting and taking care of good pipes, also being attentive to auction sales of antiques, of which he had purchased quite a number. When he returned to his large brick home in Chapel Hill, he was an outdoor enthusiast, having a yen for hunting. Recently, he had shot a wild turkey which looked, when spread out, almost the size of a hound dog. He had been born in 1892 on a farm in Orange County, around Chapel Hill, and in 1918, had married his wife, Margaret, of Guilford County, who had since died. They had five children and eight grandchildren.
A letter writer finds that those who entered the Postal Service had only to pass the required examination, while not having acquired the necessary training for the job, as he had gleaned from the fact that he had to return repeatedly mail for mishandling. He suggests that if there were any more cuts in the Charlotte Post Office, the mail would be delivered weekly instead of daily, indicating that he received the mail on Monday or Tuesday which should have gotten to him by Saturday, finding it to be not a case of neglect but rather post office workers having more work than they could properly do. "The man in the big chair in Washington does the big dealing and the public gets the punishment."
A letter writer indicates that his friends told him that the Federal Government loan for construction of an addition to Memorial Hospital would require that it be integrated or have a wing for black patients, wants to know if that information was true, and if so, believes the public ought be informed fully before any vote would be taken on bonds for the purpose.
The editors note that an administrator of Memorial Hospital said that the proposed expansion was designed to care for all of the medical needs of the community insofar as their board of commissioners could foresee.
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