The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 2, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, in an unprecedented break from the practices of the Jewish Sabbath, summoned his Cabinet into a top-secret meeting this date, obviously concerned with the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba, but nevertheless shrouded in secrecy, with no official able to say why the Cabinet had unexpectedly been called together. A meeting between the U.N. Emergency Force commander, Maj. General E. L. M. Burns, and Israeli Army chief of staff, Maj. General Moshe Dayan, set for the current afternoon, had been postponed until the following day, giving rise to rumors that the Cabinet was considering the withdrawal. Israeli officials, however, said that such was mere speculation. It had been assumed in Jerusalem that the postponement was to allow General Burns and General Dayan additional time to consult with their staffs regarding technicalities related to the withdrawal. General Burns had said that his organization was set up to move fast to occupy the vacated territories after Israeli withdrawal. A spokesman for the nationalist opposition party, the Herut, had demanded that Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's Government resign and order new elections because of the agreement to withdraw the forces. The Herut Party, second largest in Israel, had scheduled protest marches in Jerusalem for the following Tuesday and in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The call for the resignation, dissolution of the Knesset and new elections had been issued at a mass meeting of several thousand persons in Tel Aviv, with the party spokesman charging the Prime Minister with having agreed to "a policy of withdrawal and total surrender" without guarantees from either the U.S. or the U.N., that in case of renewed Egyptian belligerence, "the U.S. would not lift a finger to defend Israel." He declared that deputies who voted in favor of withdrawal, when the question would come before the Knesset the following week, ought be blacklisted for having committed treason. Criticism had also been heard within two small parties of the Prime Minister's five-party coalition, with the leaders of the Labor Unity and the United Workers parties having spoken of quitting the coalition because of dissatisfaction with the Gaza and Aqaba policy.
In Knoxville, Tenn., it was reported that one of five teenagers who had run away from the Camden Military Academy in South Carolina two weeks earlier and had stolen a car in Charlotte, was sentenced the previous day to two years in the National Training School for Boys in Washington by a Federal judge, after studying the probation report on the 15-year old. The judge said that he had almost become an incorrigible at the school and that they would not take him back, telling him that he could be released before his sentence was completed provided his behavior warranted it. Two of the boys had been released on a $1,000 bond each and were attending private schools near homes of South Carolina relatives, with another boy having been turned over to the Family Court in Chicago, and the fifth, to juvenile authorities in Fort Myers, Fla.
In Aiken, S.C., police were seeking two men who had held up a North Augusta supermarket owner the previous day and had escaped with $7,500, having accosted the man shortly after he had taken the money from a bank to cash checks.
At Parris Island in South Carolina, a Marine drill instructor, charged with mistreating recruits at the training center, had been cleared of all charges the previous day, after the recruit in question had stated that he considered the mistreatment to be a joke. The sergeant had been charged with forcing the 18-year old private to stuff candy into his mouth until the private had become ill. It was the third trial during the week at the training center involving drill instructors charged with mistreating recruits, with another such trial scheduled for the following week.
In Raleigh, the Joint Appropriations Committee had taken the spotlight during the week with the start of hearings on a State budget for the ensuing two fiscal years, the Committee having heard during the week from 16 State agencies seeking finds, with the big-money spenders, including the public schools, yet to be heard.
Also in Raleigh, it was reported that a committee of the State Bar Council would meet in Greensboro on March 22 to hear oral arguments on charges against a Warrenton lawyer who had been accused of fraudulent procurement of two divorces, which he said had been the fault of the two clients who misrepresented to him facts of which he had no reason to doubt at the time, and unethical conduct, involving an alleged conflict of interest in representation of both a collection agency run by his secretary and a company in receivership sold to the collection agency. The lawyer in question, who had been a former solicitor, had gained notoriety the previous year for representing alleged Communists before a subcommittee of HUAC in hearings held in Charlotte, during an investigation by that Committee of Communist influence in North Carolina. Listen heya, you don't mess around with the good ol' boys down heya with that Commonest stuff, if you know what's good for ye. Stick to representin' the good folks who don't cause problems and stir up no trouble with labor and what-not.
In Charlotte, a woman remained in hiding at an all-female boarding house this date while her estranged husband, who had allegedly held her prisoner in Spartanburg, remained at large. Charlotte police had reported at noon that her husband, who had escaped custody while hospitalized without a police guard, had not yet been found. Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn had said this date that the man was thought to be hampered by the lack of money or an automobile and that no special precautions were being undertaken to protect his wife. He reportedly had cornered his wife and a companion in Charlotte on Tuesday night and held them at gunpoint, then forced his wife across the South Carolina line and held her prisoner in his trailer in Spartanburg, from which she managed to escape, returning to Charlotte, where police had taken her into protective custody the previous day after her husband was reported missing from the hospital. He had been hospitalized for what the police indicated was a self-inflicted shotgun wound. Chief Littlejohn said that a warrant for assault and battery with intent to kill had been issued against him. Spartanburg police said that he had not been under a police guard because no warrant had then been signed for his arrest.
In Durham, N.C., pay increases for high school teachers, according to Governor Luther Hodges in a statement the previous night, had raised "too little of information and too much of prejudice and pressure." He said that the state had paid teacher salaries at a higher level than theoretically they could afford at the state level and that it could not continue under their present setup.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that only 14 of 103 male schoolteachers in the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County schools were positive that they would continue with the profession the following school year. They had been among 103 of 174 male teachers in the City and County schools who had answered a detailed questionnaire during the week, with the reason usually cited for why they might leave the profession being the absence of sufficient pay. The questionnaire had been sent out by the Myers Park Schoolmasters' Club, preceding a called meeting for all City and County male teachers on Tuesday. A majority of the male teachers said that they would not recommend the profession in North Carolina to young men beginning college, and if they had it to do over again, would not choose the teaching profession. More than half said they were not doing a good job because of preoccupation with financial responsibilities and uncertainties. Nearly all of the male teachers held other jobs, on weekends and during summers and holidays, some having as many as six outside the classroom. Nearly all of the male teachers could not make a living solely from their teacher pay. The Myers Park group was headed by Gus Purcell, a teacher and coach at Myers Park High School. Male teachers had been asked to attend the meeting at the Myers Park High School library on Tuesday afternoon to "discuss the current teacher situation and how the male teacher fits into the picture," according to Mr. Purcell. Mr. Scheer presents detail of the responses to the questionnaire. None of the teachers had favored a proposed "merit system" for determining teacher salaries, administered by school principals, who would determine the merit of individual teachers. Only 12 teachers had thought that the 9.31 percent pay increase proposed by the State Advisory Budget Commission would make a big difference in their present or future economic security, with 86 stating that it would not and five being undecided. Nearly half of the married male teachers had wives who worked and nearly all of the teachers sought summer employment, most of it in non-professional fields, with 22 working in professional fields, 14 in highly skilled labor, and 38 in low-skilled labor.
Mr. Scheer also reports of various things happening in state and local politics, including a report by Billy Arthur, former head cheerleader at UNC in the early 1930's, on the economic plight of a Raleigh legislator, who said that he carried a briefcase, and that was all, home with him each weekend, without any papers in it, only his dirty shirts, bringing back clean ones with him on Monday, carrying them in his briefcase so that he would not have a suitcase which the bellboys at the front door would snatch to take to his room, costing him 50 cents to get it out of their hands, not, however, grabbing at his briefcase.
In Los Angeles, State Senate
committee hearings on scandal magazines had been adjourned following
three days of testimony, the transcript of which would be
submitted to the County grand jury the following Tuesday for there
having been a great amount of perjury, according to State Senator
Fred Kraft, chairman of the committee. He said that they had only hit
the highlights and merely scratched the surface of a "field
rampant with abuse." He said there was a void of regulation and
control and a crying need for remedy. The State Senators had sought
information on bill collectors, debt adjusters and private
detectives, including whether detectives sold their information to
scandal magazines. The committee would recommend legislation, with
the Legislature set to reconvene the following Monday. Senator Kraft
had said that "besides Sinatra and the other man, there was a
lot more. It was loaded with perjury." There had been
conflicting testimony between Frank Sinatra and a private detective
concerning the "wrong door" raid aimed at Marilyn Monroe on
the night of November 5, 1954 in a Hollywood apartment. It had
occurred two weeks after she had obtained a divorce from former
baseball star Joe DiMaggio. Mr. Sinatra had testified on Monday that
he had driven Mr. DiMaggio from a Hollywood restaurant to the
vicinity of an apartment near which Ms. Monroe's car was parked,
saying that he stayed in his car during a raid which proved to be on
another woman's apartment. A private detective listened to Mr.
Sinatra's testimony and then testified that almost all of his
statements had been false, indicating that Mr. Sinatra had joined
him, Mr. DiMaggio, another private detective and three other men in
entering the apartment after the other detective had kicked in the
door. Turn it over to Gomer. He'll get to the bottom of what's what. And then you can get all the low-down on it from Shown N. Sanity and Maria Bottleorollawino, senior reporters for Fox "Confidential", where everything is hush-hush
On the editorial page, "Drag Racing: No Subject for Pleading" indicates that Motor Vehicles commissioner Ed Scheidt, in his testimony the previous day before the State House Roads Committee, had wasted no time with fancy semantics, saying that people who prearranged auto races on public highways were criminals and ought be treated as such.
It finds that it was, in a way, shocking language as the public was accustomed to gentler and cuter phrases, such as "motorac", combining "motor" and "maniac". They were also accustomed to exhortations of police chiefs, governors and presidents, in the fine and futile language of publicity wars against traffic killing. But it finds that if the part of the public which needed to listen did listen, it would be to the rhyme and not to the reason of pleadings for highway safety.
The Committee had listened to Mr. Scheidt. The concerns of a State Representative from Cleveland County that the proposed bill would result in branding teenagers as felons was legitimate, but conflicted with the fact that at least 28 fatalities had been recorded during the previous two years from drag racing by both teenagers and adults, while it had been deemed a misdemeanor. It thus finds that making it a felony was justified and that the bill ought be passed, with arrangements made to warn youthful racers of the penalties, as judges and juries, often soft on traffic offenders, could be counted on to show sufficient mercy. It finds that making it a felony would provide the basis for real warnings against a "particularly stupid kind of highway slaughter." It concludes that the time for pleading had passed.
"Congress Should Approve the Error" indicates that the Senate, after weeks of wrestling with its own soul and the vagueness of Secretary of State Dulles, had still reached no decision on the President's Middle East doctrine, failing to obtain even a satisfactory definition of what it was.
Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts had provided the best advice and the best definition the Senate was likely to get, saying that the doctrine was "an unnecessary error" supported only by "urgent pleas for speed and unanimity, exaggerated justifications and evasive testimony without any demonstration of critical need." He nevertheless said that he would vote for the doctrine and urge the Senate to do likewise, because defeat of it would embarrass the President and create doubt and dismay abroad.
It finds that the program therefore ought be passed for no other reason than that, having raised the issue of whether the U.S. was determined to resist Communism in the Middle East and unless answered affirmatively, the Soviets could unwisely assume a lack of determination where such in fact did not exist.
It opines that the Administration had bungled the program from the beginning, first by failure to make prior Congressional soundings and then by leaking its contents in an attempt to promote propaganda to convince Congress and the public that a major new policy was being presented. Secretary Dulles, already on poor terms with Congress, had made matters worse by threatening Congress with calamities if it did not pass the resolution quickly.
It indicates that, judged in purely political terms, the program ought be rejected, but finds that it could not be so judged because it could not be separated from the question of U.S. solidarity in opposition to Communist ventures.
The Congress had made clear the Administration's failures, and the only wise course at present, it concludes, was to rise above them and pass the program.
"It Was Too Bad about Uncle Sangfroid" finds that the current Senate bell-ringing in its investigation of racketeering influence within the Teamsters, focusing at present on Oregon pinball interests, had provided a "double-bumper, free-game shot of nostalgia", as it had been many years since it had thought of Uncle Sangfroid, in the family closet of skeletons for many years.
Before "television had caged Americans and cigarettes were two packs for a quarter", Uncle Sangfroid had been a "mellow, harmless nut", before people went around talking about psychosis and paranoia as if they had it themselves. He would entertain two or three times each week, always chunking his watch across the room "to see time fly". One day, however, something had happened. He had been to the corner drugstore and had seen one of the early pinball machines, causing him then to spend most of his time in the living room on his hands and knees being alternately both a pinball machine and a player with an inexhaustible supply of imaginary money, constantly lit as the machine.
After a week of such antics, somebody had the idea that he should replace the machine at the drugstore, and thereafter he was taking in almost $50 per week for his efforts.
But eventually, a hotshot player had a lucky run one day and ran up a score of 20,000, and Uncle Sangfroid had burned out a relay trying for more wattage, mumbled "tilt" and toppled over. They sent him back to the factory, "but he never had that old spring on the ball again. He was stripped of gear, finally, and his bulbs were taken out. Sort of unfrocked, you might say."
"Winter's Ashes Quicken Spring's Fires" finds that it was the time for dividing the ashes and going for mud. The woman of the house divided the ashes between two pails set on the uneven hearth before the smoke-smudged fireplace, and some would be saved and leeched for lye soap, some sprinkled around the lilac bushes to help fatten the birds. "The last of winter's ashes would quicken the slowly blinking fires of spring."
The boys had gone for mud, with firm instructions from the woman on where to find it along the creek. They also were to stop by the pasture spring and clean it of winter debris, then return home by the thicket of wild azaleas to make sure they were not bowed down by fallen limbs from the oaks around them. Finally, they were to break and bring back enough dogwood branches to make a new brush broom.
By nightfall, the fireplace, "rubbed with fresh white mud, gleamed whitely in the lamplight", and the broom had been made and the yard swept, the pasture spring bubbled through a clean mouth and the wild azaleas waited for another day of spring.
"The woman and the boys waited too, a little more confident by having prepared for it, that another day of spring would come."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Door of Air", indicates that a door of air which kept the outside weather out and the inside weather in marked a new milestone in the history of doors.
It recounts that the oldest known door, which had moved on bronze pivots in an Assyrian temple at Balawat some 27 centuries earlier, would not recognize the new thing as a door at all. Janus, the Roman god of doorways and, by extension, all beginnings, would not want to make the faintest start at presiding over it.
"But to us who love doors of all sorts—magic doors, forbidden doors, doors of opportunity and to the future—the door of air will be a new treasure. Perhaps it is the first building block for a practical method of building air castles, pretty puff on pretty puff."
Drew Pearson indicates that Senator John McClellan's committee investigating racketeering influence within the Teamsters, which, he indicates, had been reported by his column starting on April 30, 1956, was doing an important job, but not providing the full story on the underworld of Portland. He indicates that when "big, gum-chewing" James Elkins had been called as the prize witness, it was known that he had something of an underworld history, but not his full history or that he was trying to elect City Council member Stanley Earl as the next mayor. He was also acting in retaliation against elements which had knocked him out of the pinball machine racket, namely the Teamsters. He and his friend, Mr. Earl, would not be averse to using the hearings as a publicity effort to help them take control of Portland.
Mr. Earl, presently a member of the City Council, was assuming the role of a reformer, but he had begun his career as a bouncer in one of the after-hours joints owned by the Elkins brothers and had once been jailed for strong-arm tactics in union activities in Spokane on October 8, 1942. He had also written a strong letter seeking a pardon for James Elkins after the latter had been jailed in Arizona for assault with intent to kill.
Mr. Pearson finds that the Committee had treated Mr. Elkins gently, making only hurried reference to his sordid background, which extended for three pages, for everything from attempted murder to dope smuggling, spanning back to 1920, when he was convicted of auto theft, later entering the realm of burglary and dope smuggling. He had been arrested by Federal agents in 1932 for attempting to smuggle heroin into the country and while out on bail, had been caught by police in the act of burglarizing a warehouse in Arizona, where he and his accomplice had shot their way out of a police trap but were captured two hours later, conduct for which he received a 20 to 30 year sentence for assault with intent to kill, from which he was paroled in 1936, but was promptly re-imprisoned for becoming mixed up with a gang of warehouse thieves. The following year, he had been released into the custody of his brother, Fred, on the pledge that he would stay out of Arizona. He then went to Oregon where he was arrested for armed robbery involving the removal of slot machines. That had ended in a gunfight with the intended victims, in which Mr. Elkins had been wounded in the shoulder. At the trial, witnesses against him failed to appear, one being quoted in the newspapers as saying that he had been run out of Portland at the point of a gun. On September 11, 1938, he had picked up a shipment of heroin at the Portland Railway Express depot, after which Federal agents had arrested him. He was imprisoned at the Federal prison in Leavenworth, Kans., where he remained until 1940, then returned to Portland and resumed his underworld activities.
He was presently under indictment on a long list of counts for alleged wire-tapping and underworld activity.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, suggests that Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev represented a useful symbol of his "strange society". Despite rumors to the contrary, the "powerful, resilient, gutta percha-like man" appeared to have been strengthening his position as first among equals of the Soviet ruling collective. He finds it significant that he, as Party Secretary, rather than Premier Nikolai Bulganin, chairman of the Ministerial Council, had presented the new plan of administrative and economic reorganization to the recent Plenum of the Communist Central Committee. That made the new program a Khrushchev program.
An only slightly less major program was the new lands program, with a total investment of more than 3 billion dollars and movement of about 800,000 farm workers, also a Khrushchev program.
It thus appeared likely that Mr. Khrushchev would eventually combine the two key positions presently divided between himself and Mr. Bulganin, less likely that he would be replaced by someone else as first among equals.
Mr. Khrushchev had pacified the Ukraine with an iron hand for the late Joseph Stalin, reaching his present position in a period when no one was safe from being purged, when struggle for survival at the top had been quite literally a struggle to the death. Thus, Mr. Khrushchev had to be tough, astute and have a talent for survival.
Based on Mr. Alsop's conversation with Mr. Khrushchev for two hours recently, he had found that certain of his traits stood out. He was possessed of incomparable energy and an astonishing zest and gusto. After he and Mr. Bulganin had returned from their grueling trip to India, the exhausted Premier had to take to bed for a few days, while Mr. Khrushchev resumed his ordinary duties. When Mr. Alsop had seen him, he had just finished a rough two weeks with the Supreme Soviet, the Central Committee Plenum, changes in the Foreign Ministry, the big program of administrative reorganization, and various other tasks, but still had seemed just as exuberant as when he had first seen him toasting Chou En-lai in good humor at the Kremlin.
As he had talked to Mr. Khrushchev about foreign and domestic policy, it had become clear that he was "a cool but immensely bold gambler", with his new lands plow-up program being a tremendous gamble with the climate. The shakeup of the Soviet economic and industrial apparatus which he was presently sponsoring was also a tremendous administrative gamble. Soviet foreign policy within the Khrushchev era had also been considerably more adventurous than during Stalin's era, except at the time of Korea. Nevertheless, the stakes did not seem to dismay him in the least. Rather, he seemed quite delighted when describing the planned movement from comfortable berths in Moscow to hard jobs on the industrial front in the province, involving countless thousands of important officials, engineers and technicians. The radical character of the industrial-economic shakeup obviously appealed to him greatly.
His discussion of Soviet internal problems had been practical and hardheaded, while in contrast, his discussion of foreign policy appeared at first to have an inordinately high content of polemic and Communist "gobbledygook". Despite the distortion of some of his judgments concerning American intentions, there was sharpness, ruthlessness, and brutally realistic focus regarding the outer world. He had plainly seen with clarity all of the weak points in the Western alliance and realized how those weak points could be probed and exploited.
Mr. Alsop gleaned from the interview that it was impossible to resist the conclusion that Mr. Khrushchev was a formidable person and a very uncomfortable sort of opponent, and also that the same conclusion could be applied to Soviet society.
Frederick C. Othman, substituting for Robert C. Ruark, who was ill, indicates that they might as well be as frank about Ann Thompson as had been Senators when they called her a "bawdy house madam of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash." She had appeared in the Senate caucus room, where Senators were delving into evidence indicating that certain high officials within the Teamsters Union were involved in vice on the side.
No madam had ever been sworn to tell the Senators the truth and, he finds, madams in present times in America were relics of another age, with few of them left, explaining why there was standing room only to hear her testimony. She had looked at first glance like anyone's respectable maiden aunt, not appearing as a female engaged in the most disreputable business, at least not at first. But closer inspection had revealed a long scar on her left cheek, carefully covered with makeup. Her ears were pierced and from them dangled round festoons of filigreed gold, which glistened in the floodlights, each of which bore a cameo of a woman in purest white. She wore on her left hand two rings, one being a wedding band surrounded by small diamonds and the other a solitaire of large size. She carried pale lavender gloves and her fingernails were bright red, as were her toenails. Her shoes were made of alligator skin and so high-heeled that her progress across the carpet seemed precarious.
She told the Senators how she had been advised by a Spokane gambler to call on a Portland, Ore., gambler with the idea of establishing a chain of prostitution houses in his hometown. He had discouraged her and she had returned to Spokane. Her connection through the gamblers with the union bosses appeared very tenuous.
Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy promised, however, that he would soon adduce evidence of a direct tie between the labor leaders and madams of the same type, with two others still to testify.
Ms. Thompson had become vehement only when photographers sought to take her picture, which she did not want to occur. Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, the Committee chairman, ordered that no pictures be snapped in the room. A dozen photographers had rushed to the door to get her picture outside in the halls after she was excused. Senator McCarthy said that Senator McClellan should rule against photographing her outside the hearing room as well. But Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota had said that he doubted the Committee's jurisdiction extended to the rest of the country, with the chairman agreeing.
"So the madam teetered out on her soaring heels, but she couldn't see where she was going; she held her big, black purse in front of her face. She tried to make it to one elevator, but in vain. The crowds were too thick." She had hurried across the building to another elevator and then avoided the photographers momentarily by entering the ladies' room, applauded by women in the corridors. A few moments later, she emerged and entered another elevator, as did all 12 of the photographers, eventually making her the most thoroughly photographed madam of modern times.
A letter writer indicates that recent comments concerning the development of fine arts in Winston-Salem ought cause Charlotte residents to sit up and take notice. She finds that Charlotte had been phenomenal in its cultural development but only because of a very small group of devoted persons who had worked against seemingly impossible odds, receiving help from the City Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the newspapers. She finds, however, that such token help needed to be replaced by vigorous action. A list of proposed activities for the Chamber of Commerce, which had an excellent Fine Arts Committee, had made no mention of aid for the fine arts. She finds that the News was generous with pictures and stories about local groups, urges that fine music, art or drama could be just as exciting or appealing as a Jaycee Jollies or a Junior League Follies, which always received reams of copy. She urges Charlotte residents to wake up before Winston-Salem would become the cultural capital of the Carolinas while Charlotte was relegated to being the center of rock 'n' roll, suggesting that competition might eliminate the apathy at work in the community.
A letter writer from Asheville indicates that the U.S. Army colonel, who had apparently issued an order to American officers to cease fraternization with German working girls, had overstepped his bounds. He suggests that officers naturally sought their own cultural and mental level, and there was no need to insult German working girls. He thinks that the colonel ought give some thought to improving the quality of American officers, suffering from the delusion that an officer's uniform was a badge of superiority. He says Europeans were not so easily deluded, and a German chambermaid was a bit above a good many officers culturally. He asserts that the colonel should provide some inkling of what it meant to be a gentleman, constituting "a greater effort on the mind and will than buying a little sport coat from the better shops, talking interminably about golf and having a cultural level somewhere near Elvis Presley." He says that judging from the many officers he had seen, it could be a gracious act of condescension for a German chambermaid to bother with men with such shallow minds.
Well, now, soon enough, the premise might be tested by Elvis, himself, in West Germany, as a member of the Army. How will the chambermaids react, with perturbation or adulation?
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