The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 5, 1957
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Charles Kuralt of The News, that an eight-year old boy of Charlotte had been injured critically when a tank truck had smashed into the rear of a packed Mecklenburg County school bus south of Pineville this date, with six other youngsters having been treated at a Pineville clinic and released. The third-grader, who had been pinned for ten minutes beneath a twisted back seat, was taken to Charlotte's Mercy Hospital with a possible brain concussion and broken leg. The Miller Motor Express Co. driver, 47, of Lancaster, S.C., had been charged by County police with reckless driving and assault with a deadly weapon by a motor vehicle, and released late in the morning under a $1,000 bond. The tanker, which was empty, was traveling in a hard rain when it slashed into the left rear of the bus as it made its last stop on Highway 521 before it would have proceeded to the Pineville School. The principal of the school said that there were about 63 children on the bus, but an eighth grade student, 13, a passenger on the bus, said that there were about 75, as they had been sitting three to a seat in many cases and that about ten had been standing at the time of the accident. State law provided that buses could be operated at more than capacity. The driver of the truck said that he was proceeding at about 35 mph and saw the bus in plenty of time, had applied his brakes but had slid and could not stop in time. He said he twisted the truck to the left and the empty trailer had swiped the bus and pushed it into a ditch on the right side of the road, as the cab of the truck had gone into the ditch on the left. Following an investigation, the assistant County Schools superintendent said that the bus driver was obeying all laws. The injured boy's condition could not be determined until X-rays were completed, according to a spokesman at Mercy Hospital, and he had not yet regained consciousness.
In Chicago, a young mother who, according to police, had left notes admitting that she had drowned her three children and then had sought to kill herself, was being held in a psychiatric hospital this date on a charge of murder. The bodies of the children, twin girls who were three and a five-year old boy, had been found by police in the suburban Park Ridge home of the couple. The husband had found his wife unconscious when he arrived home from work, with her head in the oven and the gas jets turned on. He had dragged her to the rear porch where he tried to revive her, and then called police and fire personnel. After the firemen had revived his wife with an inhalator, she had only cried, "My children." The children were found drowned in the bathtub, fully clothed. The police chief ordered the mother removed to Psychopathic Hospital for examination. Her husband said that she had a nervous breakdown recently, but appeared contented after returning within the previous few days from a visit with relatives in Iowa. In her note, she said that she wanted the police to know that she had done it because she could not handle herself, that it had been going on for some time, that her husband had been wonderful and would be better off without her and the kids, for she had them so mixed up that she felt they could not be straightened out, as she also could not be. Another note, addressed to her husband, said that she hoped that he could build a new future, that she had ruined their lives and that he deserved much better, that she had failed him and could not go on.
The mystery patient in Moscow, reported initially by the New York Daily News to have been Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovich, had now been positively identified as the Soviet minister of machine building and former deputy premier, V. A. Malyshev. The mystery had developed the previous weekend when a West German doctor, a blood specialist, had been summoned to Moscow to help Russian doctors treat the patient, whose identity was concealed even from the West German doctor. Mr. Malyshev had been relieved of his deputy premiership and provided a new job the previous December 25, when Russia had fired its top economic planner and set up a commission headed by Deputy Premier M. G. Pervukhin to overhaul the nation's industrial and agricultural planning, with Mr. Malyshev appointed chairman of the commission.
In Bishop, Va., mining experts planned to descend into the depths of the Bishop coal mine this date in an effort to determine the cause of the gas explosion which had killed 37 miners the previous day. Federal and state officials were joined by top officers of the fuel company, operators of the mine, in the formal investigation. The muffled explosion had occurred less than two hours after 180 miners had begun work on the midnight shift at the mine located at the Virginia-West Virginia border. Initially, because the explosion had appeared so mild to miners only a short distance from the tunnel in which the 37 miners who died were entrapped, there had been little thought of any major tragedy. But later during the morning, the company reported that there had been no survivors, after rescuers had found the first bodies about an hour after the explosion. An official of the company said that it was believed that an accumulation of gas in the mine had caused the explosion. Just two hours before the explosion, a fire boss had reported the area safe. A survivor said that it was likely that one of the dead miners had cut into gas while chipping at a seam of coal. Sixteen hours after the explosion, the last body had been brought to the surface by rescue teams composed in part of miners, who had fought their way to safety through choking dust and fumes. It was the largest mine disaster since December 21, 1951, when 119 miners had been killed in a blast at West Frankfort, Ill.
In Nashville, Tenn., construction company officials and engineers sought this date to determine what had caused a giant television tower to topple to the ground, causing the deaths of four workmen, and injuring a fifth worker, treated for shock, having just climbed down from the tower and was inside the transmitter station at the time of the collapse. The nearly completed structure had buckled in its middle on Monday afternoon and fallen into a heavily populated residential area, not striking any houses. The new 1,262-foot broadcasting tower, which would have been 1,379 feet when topped with an antenna, was being built for station WSM-TV by a construction company of Muskogee, Okla. It was constructed of a new type of steel alloy, T-1, supposed to be three times as strong as regular steel. A G.E. engineer at the scene said that he had never seen anything like it and had been in the business for 34 years, holding out little hope that they would be able to determine what had caused the collapse. One of the workers who had died had been interviewed by a reporter of the Nashville Tennessean a week earlier, having said at the time: "I would not drive a race car. Too dangerous. My job is safe because I know what I'm doing. Besides, more people get killed stepping off curbs than in my line of work."
In Durham, N.C., former Representative Thurmond Chatham of Winston-Salem, 60, had died this date in Duke Hospital after a heart attack. He had served the 5th District between 1948 and 1956, and had been the former president of the Chatham Manufacturing Co. of Elkin, defeated the previous spring in the Democratic primary for renomination by Ralph Scott.
In Rutherfordton, N.C., 12 stretcher-bearers had been required the previous night to bring out an unconscious 400-pound man, injured when an automobile, in which he was a passenger, had broken loose down a mountainside and crashed into a tree. A Gastonia painter said that his car's brake line had broken and that he was unable to stop the vehicle in its 200-foot hurtle, throwing out the 400-pound Gastonia justice of the peace and injuring the driver slightly, the driver then walking two miles to a farmhouse to obtain assistance. The justice of the peace was carried by the 12 men to the highway and then taken to the hospital, where he had recovered consciousness.
The ICC this date authorized Southern railroads to increase their freight rates by 5 percent, in response to a petition for an emergency increase of 7 percent, filed the previous November in connection with wage increases. Most of the Southern lines had told the ICC the previous day that the sought 7 percent increase would be insufficient to meet increased operating costs and maintain an adequate return, saying that they needed an overall increase of 15 percent, estimated to yield about 170 million dollars per year in additional revenue. The Southern Railway System, one of the largest in the South, and the Piedmont-Northern Railroad, operating in the Carolinas, had declined to join the petition for the 15 percent rate increase, with the Southern Railway president stating that his company felt that large rate increases reduced income by driving business to competitive forms of transportation.
In Key West, Fla., a report that a Liberian freighter with five crewmen aboard was sinking in the Florida Straits 70 miles to the west, had turned out to be a false alarm, as the vessel had been located by the Navy, in no danger and suffering nothing worse than a lost propeller, refusing the offer from a Coast Guard vessel for a tow.
In Bryant Pond, Me., it was reported
that two female bear cubs, three weeks old, had become accustomed to
people. The previous week, two men had found the winter den of a
mother bear and shot it, also killing two cubs which the men did not
know were snuggled in the legs of the bear. The hunters then picked
up the other two cubs and gave them to a couple, who were now caring
for them. The two cubs needed an incubator and so the couple had
turned an old tin bathtub upside down and inserted a 250-watt
electric light bulb for heat, preparing a formula for them comprised
of milk, water, syrup and lime water, serving it to the bears in
doll's nursing bottles. The cubs weighed a pound and a half each, and
by summer would weigh 10 to 12 pounds. The couple's year-old skunk
was disturbed by the bears, not liking their squealing and appearing
jealous. The couple also had three other bears in the barn, acquired
at the age of six months and were easier to attend. Don't let them get loose
On the editorial page, "Educational Crisis Justifies Limited Federal Aid—But No Federal Control" indicates that nothing less than emergency measures would end the educational crisis facing North Carolina, that the President's recommendation of a limited program of Federal grants to the states for school construction was the type of aid which North Carolinians had stubbornly resisted previously, fearing that Federal assistance would inevitably lead to Federal control—specifically in the area of integration of public schools.
But it finds that it was too late to fight phantoms as North Carolina and its sister states were in a position to benefit temporarily from Federal funding without accepting or permitting control of education from the Federal Government, and the opportunity ought be seized.
The Eisenhower plan was only an emergency measure designed to stimulate state and local efforts, would not deprive the states and local communities of their constitutional responsibilities to control public education, which the newspaper supported, keeping the schools close to the people such that local control would never be surrendered. The President's plan would not necessitate that surrender, being a four-year program designed to get the nation over its worst educational crisis since the beginning of the century, with direct aid amounting to 325 million dollars per year, divided among the states by way of a formula recognizing economic need and the numbers of pupils enrolled or to be enrolled in the schools. It would supply Federal funding to match state funding based on relative state income per pupil, resulting in the wealthiest states having to contribute two dollars for every dollar they received, while the poorest states would obtain two dollars for every dollar they appropriated.
North Carolina was a poor state and thus would receive under the plan a Federal contribution of 14.6 million dollars per year against matching funds contributed by the state of 7.3 million, while New York, a relatively rich state, would receive 15.7 million against its matching funds of 31.5 million. North Carolina needed the Federal funding desperately. During the previous school year, 676 obsolete classrooms had been abandoned and 1,788 new classrooms, laboratories and shops had been completed. Yet, approximately 7,200 pupils in the state were studying in classrooms which accommodated two daily shifts and another 3,700 students were attending school in temporary quarters not owned by the local boards of education and located away from the main campus of the schools. Although 2,076 instruction rooms were scheduled for completion during the 1956-57 school year, another 2,791 rooms would still be needed by the end of the year.
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County had undertaken every effort to keep up with their own needs, but the population of the metropolitan area continued to grow. Superintendent of State Public Instruction Charles Carroll had said the previous week that it was reasonable to assume that Mecklenburg would receive a "good share" of any Federal aid, and the County Schools superintendent, J. W. Wilson, had said that they needed the money and that the need was mounting.
The Federal aid per child in the state would be $13.01. Southern states would benefit most under the proposed program, obtaining most of the money at the lowest matching rates. High income states, such as California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, would obtain less than six dollars per pupil per year. The program would end in four years and afterward, it would be expected that the nation would have caught up with its education crisis.
The program represented an emergency answer to an emergent situation and, provided there were proper safeguards maintained to prevent Federal tampering at the local and state level, it posits, the program merited wide support.
"Local Salons Must Shape the Future" indicates that much of the future of the county was hidden, to be shaped by unseen forces in the "roily mists of time and circumstance". Yet, it was being shaped by things done in the present.
The five representatives of the county to the General Assembly, convening the following day in Raleigh, would have to accomplish those things to shape that future, as the county had many pressing needs which could not be met without enabling legislation from the State. Delay would delay future progress.
Extension of the city limits was a fundamental necessity for the healthy and orderly growth of the metropolitan area and it urges that the delegation ought secure passage of a measure enabling an early vote on annexation. There was also the need for substantial aid for buildings and tuition for Charlotte College and Carver College, and while there had been some aid provided by the 1955 Legislature, it had not been nearly enough, and a more energetic effort had to be undertaken by the 1957 Assembly to expand both community colleges. Practicality would suggest that the delegation should support a plan approved by the State Board of Higher Education and Governor Luther Hodges for matching construction grants.
It indicates that there was, unfortunately, no clear path toward the long-delayed legislative reapportionment and proportional representation for urban areas, mandated by the State Constitution after every decennial census, but not having been yet done following the 1950 census. Nevertheless, it suggests, the fight should be made on principle for democratic government and obedience to the State Constitution.
There was also the need for effective tools to enable rehabilitation of slum areas and urban redevelopment when conditions demanded it, and the Mecklenburg delegation ought support such a move.
It concludes that there were many other issues affecting the future of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County which would be presented to the delegation before the Assembly adjourned, but those enumerated would be required as a minimum for success by the delegation.
A piece from the Asheville
Citizen, titled "Stop Hounding Them!" tells of the
American Guild of Animal Artists of New York City having a pet peeve,
not liking the use of names of animals in a derogatory manner,
finding such expressions as "she is a cat", "he's a
wolf", "he's a snake", "she's a goose",
"she's foxy
Additionally, a dictionary definition of dog had included, "a mean, worthless fellow; a wretch." Moreover, Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" had derisively pointed out that the subject of the tone poem—written by Leiber and Stoller, not therefore "stolen" from any prior recording artist, as some latter-day superficialists would have it, you bulldog artists—, was "nothin' but a hound dog".
It concludes: "Well, doggone,
we hadn't realized how the animal kingdom had enriched the language.
What will we do for substitute expressions? Maybe
Drew Pearson tells of the Boston Globe having filed a series of affidavits with the FCC the previous week to thwart its competitor, the Boston Herald and Traveler, in its effort to obtain a television license worth 20 million dollars in advertising profits. Prior to the filing, the FCC, under pressure from former RNC chairman Leonard Hall and Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, had ordered its staff to prepare the necessary paperwork for awarding the license to the Herald and Traveler. The FCC commissioners had not even bothered to discuss the matter, with the four of them who constantly jumped whenever the RNC snapped its fingers, having simply cast their majority vote for the latter newspaper. They had disregarded the findings of the FCC's veteran chief examiner, James Cunningham, violating their own policy against concentrating news outlets in too few hands.
The Globe had then launched its protest, charging in its filed affidavits that the publisher of the Herald and Traveler, Robert Choate, had threatened to use the new television station to drive the Globe out of business. The affidavit of the Globe's president claimed that the competing publisher had sought for two years to force a merger between the Globe and the Herald and Traveler, a merger which the Globe had refused to negotiate, its counsel having advised that it would violate antitrust laws. Mr. Choate had then angrily threatened "to do his best to put the Globe out of business," and that if he won the television license, "to use his newspaper, radio station, and television station to injure the Globe if he could." In another affidavit, the Globe's treasurer quoted Mr. Choate as warning, "If I get channel 5, I may drive you out of business." In a third affidavit, the Globe's advertising director told of yet another conversation with the publisher in which he had asked him, at a Clover Club reception on March 10, 1956, when he was coming to work for the Herald and Traveler, and when the advertising director had responded that he was satisfied with his current job, the publisher had replied, "Wait until we get our TV station and see what happens."
Apparently, Mr. Choate meant that his newspaper could offer "package advertising" from its newspapers, radio and television stations at bargain rates, already operating Boston's 50,000-watt radio station, WHDH, and offering combined radio time and newspaper space to advertisers at unpublished rates.
In its petition to the FCC, the Globe had protested that "if the Herald-Traveler should be awarded a license to operate television channel 5, due to the policy of the Herald-Traveler, the power of the Herald-Traveler to promote its own business, to obtain additional circulation and to obtain advertising will be greatly increased so that [the Globe] could compete against it only with the greatest of difficulty."
The Globe was also building a new printing plant, requiring financing from the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. and the Second Bank-State Street Trust Co., and the Globe's president had said in his affidavit: "After the insurance company and the bank informed the Globe that they would furnish such financing, but before they had committed themselves other than by verbal commitment, Mr. Choate visited the officers of the insurance company and officers of the bank and attempted to upset the loans."
Mr. Pearson concludes that it would be interesting to see whether the Globe, an independent newspaper, neither Republican nor Democratic, could persuade the FCC not to award the tv permit to the pro-Republican Herald-Traveler.
A letter writer indicates that it was the month of the year when everyone began to think of spring, and when the spring election would suggest thought of who to vote for in the upcoming local elections. She suggests that it was an important and vital obligation of every citizen to vote. She wonders why the same candidates were so eager for the non-paying jobs and why there was no qualified, public-spirited citizens, who, like Mr. Smith—whoever he was—had the nerve to apply for the job of member of the City Council "without the approval of The Boys".
But there was now a woman on the City Council, and so should not you amend your statement a little?
A letter writer also addresses the upcoming local election and hopes that the mayoral race would have more than one candidate to afford the people a choice. He wants the City Council to address smoke pollution, as the chief polluters were never named. "Yet those big babies just blow the smoke in your face and no one says a word about it. Those tin smoke stacks sure put the smoke out plenty." He urges election of a Council which would take action "on this outgoing money."
A letter writer thanks the newspaper, on behalf of the officers and members of the Clear Creek Community Development Group, for the publicity given their community during the previous year, helping them to win first prize in competition with six other communities within Mecklenburg County.
A letter writer says that he believed the tail was wagging the dog in the annexation dispute, that there were 155,000 people inside the city and only 31,000 in the perimeter area, and yet no one on the City Council appeared interested in how the people inside the city felt about it, despite having been elected by those in the city and devoting their time to selling people who lived in the county. He says he would not vote for annexation unless he saw that it would reduce the tax rate for the people who presently resided within the city limits, and had seen nothing yet showing that it would. He says that the areas to be annexed were filled with young people who had children of school age and those in the city would have to build schools for them after they had built their own schools, believing that the young folks ought pay for their own schools while the old folks had already paid for the schools of their generation.
We submit that it was not quite how it worked, that there was no dividing line on pregnancy at the city limits, with the masses in the perimeter areas being the only ones given to procreativity.
A letter from Rock Hill, S.C., responds to the letter writer who had decried the failure of New York City Mayor Robert Wagner to provide an official welcome for King Saud of Saudi Arabia, finding the Mayor impudent and his statement devoid of truth. The Mayor had been reported by the Associated Press as stating that the King was "not the kind of person we want to officially recognize in New York City. He is a fellow who says slavery is legal and that in his country our Air Force cannot use Jewish servicemen and cannot permit any Roman Catholic chaplain to say mass." He challenges the previous writer to prove that Mayor Wagner's statements were false. He cites a column by Victor Reisel showing that every claim about the King made by the Mayor was true. He says that if the King's visit to the country would further the aim of peace in the Middle East, then everyone should favor the King's visit, but to call the Mayor's statements false was another matter, as distortion of the facts would not avail the King's friends.
A letter writer from Great Falls, S.C., indicates that the conferences held between King Saud, the President and Secretary of State Dulles had ended temporarily, but were expected to continue within a week, with it already being said that the talks had resulted in a better understanding of the so-called Eisenhower doctrine, seeking from Congress approval of use, if necessary, of U.S. forces, including ground troops, to resist Communist aggression in that region, and to provide up to 200 million dollars in economic and military aid to the region. He says that it was not strange to hear the Secretary boast of satisfactory accomplishments after conferences held with heads of foreign states, but that there had been no satisfactory accomplishment beneficial to the U.S. or the world in general after such conferences. He indicates that it appeared that the Administration had taken over the methods of appeasement practiced by the British for many years, leading to their downfall. He suggests that England had always been selfish or egotistic when there was a question between principle and monetary considerations at stake, that Britain had never cooperated with the U.S. in not doing business with countries inimical to the U.S. or refusing to recognize those countries which either indirectly aided U.S. enemies or were in sympathy with them, despite the U.S. being Britain's most dependable ally. He suggests that England was now reaping the consequences of its past egotism and selfishness, and the U.S. was now taking over its methods and if it did not change its policies, it would wind up in the same position as Britain, a second-rate world power. He urges that oil could not be substituted for principle, that instead of high ideals and principles, the U.S. was actually only concerned about oil and other monetary considerations, that the dealings in the Middle East had proved the fact without doubt, not working to the benefit of the U.S. or of humanity, that the Eisenhower doctrine would only lead to appeasement and nothing constructive, copying Neville Chamberlain's actions toward Hitler in 1938 at Munich. He advocates taking a firm stand to benefit all concerned without appeasement, bringing a satisfactory settlement between the Arabs and Israelis, to form a just peace.
A letter writer from Gaffney, S.C., says he wanted to address the issue of race "supremacy", that God had made all things good in the beginning, though there had been a difference between the clean and the unclean, nevertheless all being good for God's purpose. He finds the reason in Job 33:13, that "He giveth not account of any of his matters." Acts 17:26 said that God "made of one blood all nations of men." Genesis 11:6-8 said that the people all had one language and God had "changed their language and scattered them over the face of the earth." Genesis 25:23 said: "And the Lord said unto her, 'Two nations are in thy womb and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels. And the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.'" That had been Jacob and Esau, Esau being the father of the Edomites and Jacob, the father of the Israelites, with Israel having been made superior to the Edomites, though Christ had died for the Edomites as he had also for the Israelites and all other peoples. He says that salvation was for all people and the gospel was to be preached to all people, but that it had nothing to do with teaching that all people were equal in society. He says that Acts 11:14-18 concerned preaching the gospel to other nations or races, without connection to social equality. "We all know that under certain circumstances we cannot avoid, we might find ourselves in the company of other races, but not in a social way. These things are to be considered also by other races, and not desire [sic] to mix racially." He says that 30 ministers of Rock Hill must have heard and known that the "Negro's purpose is to intermarry with the white people if they are permitted to do so, for this, they have said, is their goal." He quotes I Thessalonians 5:22: "Abstain from all appearance of evil." He adds, "All people know that mixing in schools and otherwise has 'the appearance of evil,' and will bring about evil more and more."
Again, you must have gone to school in one of those one-room school houses where all grades mixed and all students had sex with one another routinely and without exception, until there was so much parental mixup within the community that no one knew whose children were whose, leading to your conclusion that going to school together results in evil "mixing". It simply does not work that way any longer in modern schools. Unlike your rural community where you grew up, schools are not the functional equivalent of brothels where you pays your money down and gets in the mix what you pays for. This societal condition, apparently, was a large part of that which was behind much of those things which you cite from the Bible, in an age prior to the advent of modern medicine, specifically penicillin. You need to keep things in context of their time and times and make room for God's miracles in the meantime, accomplished through rational thought and science, also a part of God's natural world. Or, do you put faith only in your personal vision of god, the polytheistic "gods" referenced in the opening chapters of Genesis? Furthermore, be wary of the proscription contained in Revelations against adding to the text with your own projected assumptions as to meaning based on your political issues of the moment. You have filled in a lot of garbage from your own mixed-up head, based on your own limited experience, to assume meaning from words which do not convey that meaning at all to rational people, certainly inconsonant with the overall meaning of the Bible, especially that of the New Testament.
Framed Edition
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