The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 20, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence on the Teamsters Union, Frank Brewster continued his testimony this date, indicating that the union had made a campaign contribution to Governor Goodwin Knight of California and had later interceded with the Governor to get Charles Tate of Seattle appointed as San Francisco's port director, with the amount of the contribution not immediately disclosed. Mr. Brewster had opened the line of questioning which led to his testimony regarding the campaign contribution to Governor Knight and the appointment of Mr. Tate. Mr. Brewster had testified the previous day that he had bought a pair of binoculars at a Seattle store for Mr. Tate, and began this date's testimony by saying that he wanted to correct his statement of the previous day, indicating that he had bought the binoculars with the intention of giving them to Mr. Tate because the latter was a friend of the Teamsters, but that he was not sure that Mr. Tate had ever received them. He also testified that the union had made a $2,000 campaign contribution when Mr. Tate had run for port commissioner in Seattle in 1954, to which Mr. Tate was elected, but no money was appropriated for the position. Robert F. Kennedy, counsel for the Committee, asked Mr. Brewster whether he had spoken with Governor Knight about a job for Mr. Tate in San Francisco, to which Mr. Brewster had replied that he believed he might have written a letter but was not sure, that he may have talked with the Governor and he believed they had discussed the qualifications of Mr. Tate. Later in the session, Committee investigator Pierre Salinger, future White House press secretary for President Kennedy and future Senator from California, would provide testimony regarding his examination of accounting records pertaining to Mr. Brewster, anent the sale of a stable located near Santa Anita Racetrack in Los Angeles in which Mr. Brewster and another man were equal partners but upon its sale, Mr. Brewster had achieved a profit of over $44,000 while his partner had a loss of just under $41,000, and another transaction in which Mr. Brewster had paid on behalf of the Teamsters a $750 motel bill in Milbrae, Calif., for his jockey and his trainer, marked down in the union ledger as officer and delegate expenses, when he admitted neither man was associated then with the union, for which Mr. Brewster the previous day had no explanation. (The El Rancho Motel, by the way, still exists near the San Francisco Airport, in case you want to stay there and reenact the transaction for old times' sake. It has played host in the past to Vice-President Nixon, Joan Crawford, Robert Young, Lou Costello, and Groucho Marx, who, when asked in August, 1962 how he felt about having Mr. Nixon as his new neighbor, commented that he would rather have him there than in Washington. Whether, incidentally, Mr. Nixon was with Ms. Crawford at the time, as he would be in Dallas on November 21-22, 1963 for the Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Association meeting, is not indicated. Apparently not, as the Vice-President was there in 1954 and Ms. Crawford did not become the principal celebrity promoter for Pepsi, as a member of its board of directors, until 1959. "ORTSAC": "Mannlicher": "Ehrlichman": Earl Warren: Warren Earl Burger: Don't forget it... Haldeman did not, amid Mr. Nixon's "comedy of errors".)
In Tucker's Town, Bermuda, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had flown in this date for urgent talks for four days with the President regarding the Middle East crisis and half a dozen other world issues. The President, winding up a week-long cruise for his health, was due six hours later. One of their primary purposes would be to rebuild the British-American partnership which had been a cornerstone of the free world alliance since the end of World War II, a partnership which had been virtually wrecked by the Middle East crisis of the prior fall after Britain and France had invaded Egypt on November 1 without prior consultation with the U.S. Diplomats had said that top priority in the talks would be the most urgent aspects of the Middle East crisis involving Israel and Egypt. The Prime Minister was expected to ask the President to exert more vigorous and determined American leadership, as the British had been reported as feeling that American policy had been lacking in decisiveness and had depended too heavily on the U.N. Other Middle East problems slated for discussion included the operation of the Suez Canal and relations with Egypt and Syria, the Arab states most closely linked to Russia. A review of Western relations with Russia, the prospects for further freedom pressures in Eastern Europe, the strength of NATO and the possibility of modification of the trade embargo with Communist China were also likely to be topics.
In Linden, N.J., flammable solvents had exploded and killed three persons at a vitamin plant of Merck and Co. early this date, with 11 others injured, one seriously. The company spokesman said that internal pressure which had built up inside a still probably had caused the blast, which caused thousands of dollars worth of damage.
In San Francisco, two persons had been killed in a fire in a frame apartment building this date, and another person was taken to the hospital in critical condition, while six others had suffered from smoke inhalation. Firemen had rescued many of the approximately 40 occupants by ladder, as the building had no fire escape. The blaze was believed to have started in the middle of the first floor, but its cause had not yet been determined. The acting fire chief estimated damage at $25,000.
In Fargo, N.D., four persons had been killed and two others had suffered burns in a fire which had destroyed a residence on the north side of the city early this date. The husband of the dead mother, along with a daughter, 13, had escaped from a second-floor window of the two-story frame house. Two of their children had also perished. The husband did not know the cause of the fire and all four of the dead had been found in the same room.
In Raleigh, a joint State Senate-House committee this date heard arguments for and against bills which would reshuffle the state's solicitorial districts and increase their number by one, increase the salaries of solicitors, and prohibit them from engaging in the private practice of law.
In Charlotte, Ernest Foard, a Charlotte native and a general contractor for the prior 30 years, announced his candidacy for the City Council, his first bid for public office.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that the City School Board this date had approved "the idea" of merging the City and County school systems, agreeing unanimously to study consolidation with a view toward bringing it into effect within the ensuing few years. The action was prompted by a resolution passed during the week by the County Commission, requesting school officials to investigate the possibility of merger.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of hearing an original song of spring composed and sung this date by 20 first-graders, which went: "Pussy willow, soft and gray,/ We are glad you came today./ When you whisper in my ear,/ Then I know that spring is here." Spring officially had arrived in Charlotte during the late afternoon and the lyrical ode to the season had set the mood for a bright day. Down the street, a 65-year old man trimmed an East Boulevard yard, to him the first day of spring meaning eagerly growing grass on the lawns of a score of homes which he kept beautiful. He had paused for a moment, leaned on his lawn mower and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. A fireman meanwhile washed a deputy fire chief's bright red car at the 4th St. firehouse. Out that way, the city turned into "a picture as bright and colorful as Grandma Moses at her best." The trees were budding and the bushes were red, yellow and pink, and pale jonquils lined walks and flowerbeds. Lawns were neatly manicured and house painters appeared everywhere to be trying to match the spring neatness. It was spring everywhere except for the meatpacking plant in which a man worked, where it was constantly freezing, indicating that it was winter there all year round. (Perhaps the house painters ought join with the meat packing plant workers and figure out a solution to the problem of Mr. Hoffa.)
Beginning Monday, a feature would start in the newspaper, titled "Keeping Our Sanity", exploring the new thought in the field of psychiatry and mental health, written by Howard Whitman and consisting of 12 installments, beginning with "Time to stop coddling neurotics", the remainder of which it also lists. The piece indicates that there was a revolution in psychiatry at present and Mr. Whitman was the man to inform readers about it, as he was one of the best-known writers on social problems, with some of his better-known books being Terror in the Streets, a study of crime after World War II, A Reporter in Search of God, a study of present-day religious beliefs, and Let's Tell the Truth about Sex, which had won an award of merit from Parents' Magazine.
As promised the previous day, on the sports page, sports editor Bob Quincy had flown to Kansas City to cover the national semifinals and final of the NCAA basketball Tournament, in which number one and undefeated UNC, at 30-0, was one of the last four teams standing, along with their semifinal opponent on Friday night, Michigan State, number 11 in the final Associated Press poll, number two Kansas, with Wilt Chamberlain, and their opponent on Friday, defending national champions from 1955 and 1956, but currently unranked, the University of San Francisco. The UNC basketball team had departed this date for Kansas City, and Governor Luther Hodges had wished them well, telling them to "bring home the bacon". He would fly to Kansas City for the games on Friday afternoon. Will they do as the Governor bid them or will they turn a porker? Stay tuned.
On the editorial page, "Annexation: The Target & the Timing" tells of the Mecklenburg County delegation to the Legislature having caucused, without State Representative Jack Love, who had announced that he would oppose annexation, and had determined to consider postponing the date of an election on annexation and the effective date of any such extension of the city limits which might be approved by the electorate, with a final decision to be made the following Monday.
It finds that the goal of annexation had not been mischievously transfigured, that despite some incidental anguish on the part of its impatient proponents, chances for orderly extension of the city limits could be enhanced by a strategic delay. It was unlikely that the proponents could pilot the necessary legislation through the General Assembly in time to mount a suitable campaign prior to the April 29 municipal primary, and so it would be safer to delay the election on the matter.
Moreover, it would be better to have the target effective date delayed so that city services to the perimeter residents could begin ahead of the arrival of City tax bills, and avoid thereby one of the chief arguments against annexation. The City Council had proposed an effective date for the beginning of 1959 and some delay would not be unreasonable, provided annexation could be accomplished in time for the newly expanded population to be announced in the 1960 census. It thus finds a change in the timing of annexation to be justified for achieving the larger goal.
"Gas & Peace" tells of Charlotte having another gasoline price war, causing prices to be reduced by as much as a nickel per gallon. It wants peace, but not at any price, suggesting that peace would be fine at that price.
"Ramon Magsaysay: Grief without Fear" tells of Americans rightly feeling kinship with and constant sympathy toward the Philippine President, who had just been killed in an airplane crash during the week, his death costing the nation a devoted friend and the underdeveloped nations of the world, a source of inspiration. He had also been a friend of his own people. As one countryman had put it, he had brought to Manila's Palace "the sweaty smell, clean breezes, plain honesty and basic goodness of the small towns and barrios of the Philippines." He had constantly been out among his own people, with his desire to improve their lot having brought the nation a long way toward all of the freedoms of a genuine democracy.
"They have come so far that grief, instead of fear, was the first U.S. reaction to the news of Magsaysay's death."
"An Immortal Man Grows a Tulip" tells of the girl child of the house cutting along the dotted line of white paper to produce a paper tulip, as the man of the house, smiling indulgently, had lectured her on the need for neatness and care, dampening briefly her enthusiasm at her achievement. But she had asked about colors anyway and the man suggested red because he had planted Red Emperors along the front walk, explaining to her how much painstaking effort was required to produce a perfect real tulip.
He pointed out that to improve the poor soil, he had hauled dirt from the woods partially to replace it, that dirt consisting mainly of rotted leaves from thousands of trees. Then holes were dug to the depth prescribed by a horticulturalist and in the bottom of them was placed bone meal made by grinding up the bones of animals, on top of which was placed a tulip bulb imported from master growers in Holland, at which point the hole was covered, and in time, the tulip had come up and bloomed. He then invited the girl to look at his tulips, which were perfect.
"Welcome, spring! It is the only time a man can play God and get away with it."
It, with a little help from Alfred Hitchcock, suggests another possible solution to the problem of Mr. Hoffa.
A piece from the Washington Daily News, titled "How Big Is Too Big?" tells of a banker it knew having a shiny, nearly good-as-new 1929 Studebaker which he kept in a beautiful mosaic-decorated $10,000 garage, claiming it was the newest comfortable car which would fit the garage and that he was not going to ruin its masonry just to get a modern streamlined automobile.
The piece wonders what a person might do, however, if they did not have such a 1929 Studebaker and still had a prewar garage in which the newer cars would not fit, with their tail ends hanging out. It indicates that since 1937, the American car had grown in length by about two feet, from 15 to 16.8 feet in 1937 to the present 17 to 18.5 feet. Metered parking spaces were generally 22 feet in length. Thus, in 1937, a motorist had between 5.4 and 7 feet to maneuver before smashing into another car while parking. Now, the motorist only had between 3.5 and 5 feet of leeway.
It suggests to Detroit placing a limit on the size of cars, with a rule imposed like the one in the battleship industry which prevented the construction of any ship which would not pass through the Panama Canal, only applied in this case to the American garage.
Don't worry. The Ford Falcon, the Chevrolet Corvair, the Plymouth Valiant, the Pontiac Tempest, and other compact cars, will soon enough follow the gas-conserving lead of the Rambler American, stimulated by the proven demand for the import market of Volkswagen, in producing smaller cars which would fit the old garages just fine.
Drew Pearson indicates that the inside story of the negotiations pursuant to which Israel had agreed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba led to the conclusion that Israel had been given one of the biggest double-crosses of modern diplomacy. He relates that around the middle of February, the Administration, worried over the position in which it found itself regarding the pending U.N. vote for sanctions against Israel, had Secretary of State Dulles request of French Premier Guy Mollet, as soon as the latter arrived for a visit in Washington, his help in solving the impasse. In the ensuing negotiations, the French had suggested that instead of getting a flat guarantee from the U.N. or Egypt that the Egyptian Army would not return to the Gaza Strip, Israel might base its withdrawal on a series of assumptions which would be approved in advance by the U.S. and France.
Israel had been adamant that the 26-mile wide Gaza Strip could not again become a military base for raids on Israel, pointing out that Gaza had never been a part of Egypt but rather had been a part of Palestine and that its unnatural borders resulted from the fact that the Israeli Army had been halted there by Britain and the U.S. when the Israelis had pushed Egypt out of Palestine in the war of independence in 1948.
As a result of the French suggestion, a series of "assumptions" were drawn up by Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir, one "assumption" being that the civil and military administration of the Gaza Strip would be exclusively by the U.N., and another being that the U.N. administration would continue until there was a peace settlement. Those and other assumptions were studied carefully in writing and agreed to by Secretary Dulles, after making six or eight changes in the wording, which Israel then accepted. It had also been agreed that after Mrs. Meir had made her U.N. speech outlining those assumptions, U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., would speak and describe the assumptions as "reasonable". When Ambassador Lodge had spoken, however, he had called the assumptions "not unreasonable" rather than "reasonable", and had gone out of his way to emphasize that Egypt could exercise control over Gaza. That had led to the Israeli Government almost reversing its position and not withdrawing from Gaza, when an emergency meeting of the Israeli Cabinet read over the terms, was flabbergasted that the U.S. had reneged on the previously agreed terms of withdrawal, and debated reversing their position.
Stewart Alsop tells of Civil Defense Agency head Val Peterson having been the first civil defense official to take a hard look at the nature of nuclear weapons, delivering an assessment to the President and the National Security Council in 1953 that it would take an expenditure of 32 billion dollars to produce a serious civil defense program. He had summed up his findings by saying, "The cities are finished." With that conclusion, he had set about trying to develop a plan by which at least some of the population of the cities could be saved through a two-hour lead time to enable evacuation in the event of a nuclear attack. He had been assured by Air Force experts that a forward detection system could provide that advance warning time.
Then, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss had belatedly reported on the phenomenon of radioactive fallout from the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, covering some 7,000 square miles. That finding had thrown Mr. Peterson's evacuation plans into a cocked hat, as the evacuees would be killed in the countryside by noxious fallout, causing Mr. Peterson to have to develop a new plan.
His next plan involved fallout shelters, focusing on St. Louis as a trial city. He posited that if the population of St. Louis were in fallout shelters capable of withstanding a pressure of 30 pounds per square inch, about 60 percent of them, according to Mr. Peterson's experts, would survive an attack involving a hydrogen bomb. Without the shelters, virtually all would die. Thus, saving 60 percent of the urban population of the country in case of nuclear war appeared to be a useful objective. But the more Mr. Peterson and his staff looked at the problem of providing shelters for the urban population, the more complicated and expensive the plan became.
To take care of a whole city, there would have to be a shelter every two or three blocks and the people would have to live in the shelters perhaps as long as a month to avoid the lingering effects of radiation after a detonation. They would thus have to have sanitary and medical facilities within the shelters, as well as food and water. Otherwise, Mr. Peterson had concluded, "they would eat each other up." The elaborate shelter network would cost over 30 billion dollars for the nation, according to the estimates prepared by Mr. Peterson's staff. Thus, the NSC had put the plan into the category of "file and forget".
Mr. Alsop indicates that the decision might be correct, with only Switzerland and Sweden having a serious shelter program and none existing in the Soviet Union, the latter having apparently concluded that better security would be provided by aircraft and missiles, probably a correct decision.
But the decision to file and forget the Peterson plan meant that in case of all-out nuclear war, not only the cities but the people as well were finished. The President recently had said that "the likelihood of any nation possessing these great weapons … using them in an attack grows less, I think, every year … because, as I see it, any such operation is just another way of committing suicide."
Mr. Alsop suggests that the President might be right but that his remark had suggested the question of whether the U.S. was wise to base its military power nearly exclusively on the great weapons which might never be used. He concludes that the futile outcome of Mr. Peterson's four years of "peering into hell" suggested that "The New Normalcy", as Time Magazine had described the national complacency at present, was different from the "normalcy" on which Warren G. Harding had successfully campaigned for the presidency in 1920 as the desired place of return.
Doris Fleeson tells of Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine having encountered an old acquaintance in the sensational story that Jimmy Hoffa had sought to bribe an attorney for the Senate Select Committee to obtain background documents. He had been indicted by a grand jury with Hyman Fischbach, an attorney who had once been counsel for Congressional committees. Senator Smith had encountered him in the context of a lawsuit she had filed for libel in May, 1952 against a sleazy book, U.S.A. Confidential, which she had won with a settlement of $15,000 and an agreement that the publisher would run paid advertisements in the Maine newspapers saying that the story had been a mistake. The settlement had come only after Senator Smith had been examined for two days prior to the trial by the publisher's attorney, Mr. Fischbach.
That had come during the heyday of Senator McCarthy, when he was being received at the White House, against which Senator Smith had formulated her "Declaration of Conscience" which she had read on the Senate floor, earning her the silent treatment from the White House and in other timid quarters. Mr. Fischbach had taken her to task over her voting record, demanding that she justify voting contrary to the way Senator McCarthy had voted.
The book in question had suggested that Senator Smith was an associate of and sympathizer with Communists, pro-Communists and fellow-travelers, with the theory of Mr. Fischbach apparently having been that any deviation from the McCarthy line would prove the allegations.
He had said in his pleadings that the Washington columnists admired Senator Smith as much as they detested Senator McCarthy and that the columnists were "left-wingers" exerting a "dominating and controlling influence" over Senator Smith.
Senator McCarthy—who now had only about a month and a half to live—, was a member of the Senate Select Committee presently investigating the Teamsters. Mr. Hoffa's attorney was Edward Bennett Williams, who had twice represented Senator McCarthy, once during the censure proceedings against him in December, 1954 and again in an action brought against the Senator by Drew Pearson. She indicates that Mr. Hoffa's reputation in labor had never been "something to delight his mother, but he was supposed to be astute and careful in the extreme. His present troubles belie that reputation."
She concludes that Mr. Hoffa was not the first person to discover that the Federal Government was quite different from city and state politics, that while "the fix" was not impossible in Washington, it was a lot harder.
A letter writer indicates that the City Council had, in the Cotswold zoning case, effectively pointed out to the citizens of the area that it proposed to annex "just what kind of government they may expect once they are within the city," one in which the "almighty dollar", in the form of selfish business interests, was mightier than the expressed wishes of the vast majority of the affected citizens and the reasoned opinion of a planning commission whose function was to zone property for the welfare of the people and not just a few of them. He finds that in the Cotswold case, the Council had a great opportunity to rise above petty politics, but instead, four members of the Council, the loudest proponents of annexation, had flown in the face of parents pleading for the safety of their children and protection of their property, such that it was not surprising that many Cotswold residents who had previously favored annexation now wished to have as little to do with the City of Charlotte as possible. The Council had changed the letter writer's mind regarding the wisdom of agreeing to annexation.
A letter writer from Washington, who had served in the Marines between 1910 and 1945, finds that the present crop of 17 and 18-year old boys were not qualified to be Marines, mentally, physically or morally, believing that they were generally evading the probation officer by joining. "Crybabies are recognized in the Marines just as 'homesickness' is recognized and the training is designed to make these boys men. However, men like those who were 'slapped' by the drill instructor and cried, eventually land in the 'slop shoot soldiers' category." He recommends that the fathers of those boys who had cried with "their darlings" ought take them home, but believes they would not because they knew that the probation officer was waiting. He says that the new commanding general at Parris Island was a recognized soldier and would not tolerate abuse, but neither would he have any stomach for a "cry baby".
A letter writer indicates that the legislators in Raleigh were still taxing the people to run a welfare department to pay mothers for the upkeep of their illegitimate children, finds it like all of the other taxes forced on the people when the law was not enforced on its violators. "If each person who brings illegal children into the world would be forced to spend five years in the pen for their adultery the people would not have to be taxed to keep them up."
She does not seem to understand that the prisons were also run by the taxpayers' money, that the Eighth Amendment requires certain minimum standards of care for the prisoners in the charge of the state or Federal Government, and that her "solution" would not provide for the children, unless her "solution" included killing the children off to avoid having to pay for their upkeep with their mothers in prison for five years for adultery.
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