The Charlotte News
Monday, March 4, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had given final orders this date for immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba coast. Maj. General Moshe Dayan, chief of staff of the Israeli Army, had arrived at Lydda airport in central Israel for a meeting with Maj. General E. L. M. Burns, head of the U.N. Emergency Forces, to discuss details of the withdrawal, with the UNEF slated to take over from the withdrawing forces in policing the areas against renewed attacks. A U.N. plane had been sent from El Arish in the Egyptian Sinai Desert to pick up General Burns and take him to the airport for the conference. He had been en route when the Prime Minister issued his directive following protracted negotiations, appearing to end any possibility that Israel, resulting from divisions in its Government, might not carry out the withdrawal it had previously announced at the U.N. on Friday. A Government spokesman announced that the Prime Minister had instructed General Dayan to invite General Burns to a meeting during the afternoon "to discuss measures necessary to carry out the withdrawal of forces in accordance with the statement by the Foreign Minister, Mrs. Golda Meir." The official said that Israel was also ready to withdraw its civilian officials from the Gaza Strip, the announcement having been made in advance of a scheduled appearance by the Prime Minister before the Knesset this night, an appearance postponed to the following day, at which he was slated to reaffirm Israel's decision to withdraw from the disputed areas, entrusting to the U.S. and the U.N. its protection against a renewal of Egyptian attacks. Mrs. Meir had announced to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday that the Israeli troops would retire behind the 1949 armistice lines, but opposition to the decision within Israel had resulted in instructions from the Prime Minister to U.N. Ambassador Abba Eban to seek "clarifications" of the assurances given by the U.S. After a weekend of Cabinet meetings and conferences, informed sources said that the Prime Minister had finally obtained permission from his divided government to withdraw the troops. The withdrawal could begin during the current week. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion had ordered the withdrawal before he reported to the Knesset or held a final meeting with his Cabinet, the official spokesman indicating that the reason for the approval was that the "latest clarifications" of the U.S. position had been received and that the Prime Minister had been in talks with most of the Cabinet members. He had talked by telephone during the night with Ambassador Eban in Washington and received another long report from the Ambassador regarding his talks in Washington and at the U.N. Informants said that a majority of both the Cabinet and the Knesset had decided reluctantly to support the withdrawal promised on Friday, to avoid punitive sanctions by the U.N. and creation of a rift with the U.S. The announcement was to be followed by a Knesset debate and probably then a vote of confidence in the Government.
A House subcommittee this date had begun seeking a way to help the ailing home construction industry, with the Administration having suggested lower down payments on Government-insured loans. The Defense Department's director of family housing, John Arrington, had been called to testify before a House Banking subcommittee this date, along with Thomas Sweeney, director of the Veterans Administration's loan guarantee service. The home-building industry had sought help in halting a continuing downward trend in housing starts. One major source of difficulty appeared to be the high level of commercial interest rates which had made it harder for prospective home buyers to finance their purchases. In a move to encourage home-buying, the Administration was asking Congress to grant it discretionary authority to lower down payments on moderately priced homes financed by FHA-insured mortgages. Housing administrator Albert Cole said on Saturday that his agency would invoke the lower down payments "as warranted by conditions in the home-building and mortgage-lending industries and the economy in general." He said recommendations involving "other aspects of the housing picture" would follow in due course. The move had been applauded by the National Association of Home Builders as a "progressive step in the right direction." But George Goodyear, of Charlotte, head of the Association, expressed dissatisfaction with the discretionary feature of the plan, saying that Congress ought handle the legislation as an emergency measure to go into effect automatically on enactment. He said that the lower down payments would be brought about by more liberal loan-to-value ratios under the FHA mortgage insurance programs. Under the Administration's proposal, the FHA could make reductions of the down payment on a $10,000 mortgage, from the present $700 to $400, on a $15,000 mortgage, from $1,950 to $1,150, and on a $20,000 mortgage, the maximum, from $3,200 to $2,500.
In Cambridge, Mass., 30 MIT students
and one student from Yale had been charged this date with rioting on
the MIT campus early the previous day, with 26 of the 30 MIT students
also facing expulsion. Eight police officers had been injured in the
demonstration of some 500 students, protesting against proposed plans
by MIT to raise room and board rates. Squads of police officers had
swarmed the MIT campus and rounded up the 31 students, charging them
variously with rioting, disorderly conduct, assault and failing to
obey the orders of a police officer. They were taken to police
headquarters after their arrests and met bail ranging in sums from
$25 to $100, and were scheduled for arraignment this date. A police
sergeant said that there were two phases of the demonstration, with
15 students having been arrested in the first phase, in which
undergraduates had set fire to gasoline spilled on the road, and 16
students arrested in the second phase, for throwing snowballs,
stones, beer bottles, furniture and brass doorknobs from dormitory
rooms. One police officer complained that he was thrown down a flight
of stairs and another said that he was thrown over a five-foot
retaining wall, with a third complaining that he was hit in the mouth
by a beer bottle, and others treated at the scene for cuts and
bruises. One student had been treated at a hospital and released. All
of the students taken into custody had been suspended temporarily,
according to a police report quoting a dean at MIT. Later, the dean
of students said that the actions of the 26 students in question
probably "constituted grounds for expulsion from the Institute."
Pigs off campus...
In Bellmawr, N.J., the coroner said this date that the missing four-year old girl, who had disappeared from her yard the previous Monday, along with her puppy, and whose body had been discovered the previous day in a closet of a new, unoccupied home, had died of fright and starvation after accidentally locking herself in the closet of the home located just two blocks from the little girl's home. Her body had been discovered slumped in a corner of the closet when a six-year old girl, visiting the newly built home of her aunt, had playfully thrown open the closet door. The puppy was also in the closet, and had leaped into the arms of the little girl, apparently not suffering ill effects from the captivity. The coroner said that the condition of the closet indicated that both the girl and the puppy had been in the enclosure for some time. It had been feared that she was the victim of a kidnaping, but the coroner found no signs of violence on her body and no indication that she had been criminally assaulted. The house where she was found had been searched several times by persons among the hundreds of volunteers who joined in the search, which had included State police and FBI agents, along with the girl's parents. A preliminary autopsy showed that she had eaten nothing since she had a glass of chocolate milk the morning of her disappearance. Further tests were being made this date at State police headquarters in Trenton and the contents of the puppy's stomach were also being examined to determine whether the animal had been fed recently.
In Little Rock, Ark., an earth and rock slide at a business district building site had trapped from 4 to 12 workers this date, with two bodies having been recovered and a third man having been rescued alive, police indicating that there was little hope for the undetermined remainder of the workmen still under several tons of rock and earth. The workman freed by rescue workers about five minutes after the cave-in, had suffered a broken leg and chest injuries, telling fire and police rescue units that about four or five of his crew remained trapped.
In Mocksville, N.C., three small children, ages 15 months, three and six, respectively, trapped by flames in a four-room wooden home, had burned to death in a rural section the previous day as their 27-year old mother suffered life-threatening burns over 80 percent of her body. The fire chief said that members of the family had told him that upon the family's return to the home, the mother had placed the children on a couch in front of a stove and it was believed that she had kindled a fire and then tossed gasoline on it, causing flames to erupt and spread rapidly through the home, cutting off the escape routes. The mother, with her clothing on fire, had rushed from the home, and the father, who had gone behind the house to obtain wood, had been unable to re-enter the home because of the flames.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges this date, at a press conference, said that he felt that during the session of the General Assembly, they would have to recognize the short-term necessity of raising teacher and State employee pay beyond the point recommended by the Advisory Budget Commission, which had been 9.1 percent for teachers and 8 percent for State employees. Sentiment in the biennial legislative session thus far had built rapidly for higher increases than the Commission had recommended. The Governor added that just how they would accomplish the higher increases and where the money would come from and what subsequent adjustments would have to be made, were not yet clear. He said that he would take the lead, however, in trying to solve the problem. He said that there never had been any doubt in his mind that the recommended pay increases for teachers had been inadequate and that he had said so publicly, and wanted to emphasize that he was convinced that whatever pay increase was finally granted by the General Assembly, it would be inadequate "with reference to teachers over the long pull." He said that in his insistence that local governments take over more of the burden of school support, he had been thinking of a long-range program, but that they had sometimes to place emphasis on short-term necessity and adjust long-range plans to the short-term emphasis when dealing with governmental problems involving millions of people. He said that he did not yet have a figure in mind for the pay increases and believed that the members of the Legislature would await the conclusion of budget hearings, after seeing the needs and demands, before making up their minds.
In Geneva, N.Y., it was reported that the New York State Agriculture Experiment Station said that a tablespoon or two of honey would make a drunken person sober, as the sugars in the honey—fructose rather than sucrose—caused a chemical breakdown of the alcohol in the system, the same treatment possibly helpful in stopping a hangover, according to the report. That is quite consistent with a client we had several decades ago, who swore by bee pollen, contending that it was the only thing, including Antabuse, which had eliminated his severe dependence for decades on alcohol.
On the editorial page, "Plan Now To Ease the Big Squeeze" suggests that Charlotte residents had reason to cringe when reading the prediction of traffic engineers that within a few years, there would be no street parking permissible downtown during the day. It finds that the forecast had contained more fact than fantasy, as the midtown area had been laid out for horse-and-buggy times, with even streetcars having created a traffic problem when they appeared. Now, traffic flow had increased so sharply since 1950 that even with a peak-hour parking ban in effect, the incoming and outgoing crush was severe.
With the prediction being that the population of the city would continue to increase, there was every reason to believe that the big squeeze of urban traffic would become much worse with time, calling for long-term planning to avoid bumper-to-bumper jams into the future.
One hundred and fifty years earlier, a British court had ruled that "no one can make a stable of the King's highway," with it later determined that a stagecoach parked for an unreasonable length of time, 45 minutes, constituted a public nuisance.
Yet, in a modern city, a complete on-street parking ban was but a partial solution, as motorists had to park somewhere, posing a problem which city planners had to resolve. In a normal shopping day, 9,764 vehicles were parked on the streets of Charlotte's business district. There were private parking garages and lots, but they were insufficient even at present to take care of the crush, thus calling for many more to be built to accommodate the normal needs, with an all-day ban increasing the need much further. It urges that given the size of the problem, the City Council could not afford to wait much longer before tackling it head-on.
"Censorship as an Act of Impertinence" finds that lurid literature festered on the newsstands of Charlotte and just about every other U.S. city, with the knowledge of that fact causing frequent outbursts of righteous wrath, indignation which it believes was justified, but not always to the extent of the dangerous devices utilized by some communities, devices which could open the door to police censorship of all printed matter.
The Supreme Court, "wisely serving as a watchdog of the common good in such matters," had held unanimously that a Michigan law making it a misdemeanor to sell to any person any publication "containing obscene, immoral, lewd, lascivious language, or descriptions, tending to incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral acts, manifestly tending to the corruption of the morals of youth," to be unconstitutional for violation of free speech under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, holding that it was to "burn the house to roast the pig", in other words overbroad in its ban of literature in an attempt to protect juvenile readers.
It finds the decision to have been significant, as similar legislation had been discussed in North Carolina. It suggests that however admirable the aim of such legislation might be, it was unreasonably overbroad, reducing the adult population to reading only what was fit for children. Youth could be protected without depriving adults of their right to read whatever they wanted, with children being denied objectionable books just as they were denied intoxicating liquor. It finds pornographic material beyond the pale of toleration, but laws were already on the books dealing with that subset, which it finds ought be enforced.
"In resorting to unabashed censorship, government is indulging in an act of un-American impertinence, to say the least."
Assign it all to Gomer and the Gomerts, and they'll get right in there and get it done.
"Angling Is Stripped of Its Romanticism" finds the chief objection to science being that it robbed everything, even fishing, of its essentially poetic uncertainty, there being something quite appealing about chance and the possibility of failure in certain adventures, angling being one of them. The true disciple of Izaak Walton could achieve nobility even when he was the "empty-handed victim of the one that got away."
RCA had announced that for $275, one could "track down even the most intelligent fish with an electronic fish-finder, used on small boats." It finds that Mr. Walton would be appalled at the notion, a rude rebuttal to his theory that fishing was "so like mathematics that it can never be fully learnt." Robert Louis Stevenson had said: "There is no music like a little river. It quiets a man down like saying his prayers." It finds that such quietude would be lost with a $275 electronic finder, along with the possibility of obtaining virtue from the experience of matching wits with nature. Mr. Walton had spoken of angling in connection with the virtue of humility "which has a calmness of the spirit and a world of other blessings attendant upon it." It wonders how one could be humble about shooting fish in a barrel.
Moreover, it would cause fishermen to tend toward flabbiness and sloth, going against what President Grover Cleveland had said, that "laziness has no place in the constitution of a man who starts at sunrise and tramps all day with only a sandwich to eat, floundering through bushes … or wading streams in pursuit of illusive trout."
It concludes that RCA had little choice, that it could either destroy the plans of its monstrous contraption or let it fall into the hands of an unsuspecting Russian agent.
Simeon Stylites, writing in the Christian Century, in a piece titled "The 'Illusion' Islands", tells of a woman, whose son was stationed as a soldier in the Aleutian Islands, having been asked by a neighbor where her boy was stationed, replying, "I'm not exactly sure, but I think it is in the Illusions."
He indicates that the place seemed to have enough people living there to make a complete army, that it was a comfortable place for those who lived there, with "so many cozy nooks where one can relax in an easy chair, never any hard bumps against reality."
He lists some illusions which one could find within a few blocks of any home, starting with the illusion that keeping up with the procession meant progress, one from which it was tough to detach people, a second being the illusion that a book of 200,000 words could be condensed into 10,000 words without losing anything, one in sturdy bloom at present, the product of an age in a hurry, such that soon there would be a new race of illiterates composed of people who had never read a book in their lives except in condensed version, producing a new brain, abridged and attenuated.
"A brave, new world opens up for literature, with Homer's Iliad reduced to a sonnet, Les Miserables coming out as a Reader's Digest short, and Thoreau's Walden put on a commemorative postage stamp."
Drew Pearson, writing from St. Louis, indicates that on July 7, 1956, Federal District Court Judge Rubey Hulen had committed suicide in his backyard with a revolver, one of the few times that a U.S. Federal judge had ever done so. About a half hour after he had done so, he had been scheduled to go to the same hospital where he died to undergo shock therapy to rouse him from a deep depression, partly brought on by the trial over which he had presided involving President Truman's appointments secretary, Matt Connelly, and former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Tax Division, Lamar Caudle, of North Carolina. It had been obvious, based on the Judge's remarks from the bench during the trial and to his doctors, that the trial had weighed on him, and he had even expressed the private opinion that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. On June 14, 1956, a jury had found both defendants guilty of conspiracy to help a St. Louis shoe manufacturer evade his taxes, and on July 19, the Judge had been scheduled either to sentence them or grant them a new trial pursuant to their motion.
Mr. Pearson had discovered in St. Louis that a friend who had invited the Judge to go for a drive a few days before his death, had found him with a pad of paper and pencil seeking to write an opinion in the case, expressing frustration over how he could write a fair opinion when they had not done "any more than you or I would have done." To another friend, he had said, "I've got those poor devils on my hands."
During and after the trial, he had gone out less and less frequently and his wife said that the trial had preyed on his mind. His doctor had placed him under heavy drugs so that he could sleep at night, and for a time during the trial, his mind was such that his doctors considered giving him shock therapy. But that type of treatment for a mentally ill person caused a complete, albeit temporary, loss of memory and would have made it impossible for him to continue presiding over the trial. The shock therapy was therefore postponed until after the trial, and then a half hour before it was to begin, the Judge had killed himself.
He was considered a tough judge, not easy on defendants. He had experienced times of depression prior to the trial, but his doctors had found that it had gotten much worse just before and during the trial.
For three years, Attorney General Herbert Brownell had been probing the various activities of the close friends and officials of President Truman, with Mr. Pearson indicating that some of them needed probing, most of whom had been exposed in his column or by Congressional investigation some years earlier. But a criminal conviction in 1956 would obviously have been important campaign material in an election year. For over two years, the Attorney General had been holding grand juries in St. Louis, Omaha and Kansas City, the home territory of the former President. Most of the same officials were brought in to testify in each venue, former Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, former Undersecretary Ed Foley, Mr. Caudle, and various revenue agents. But the grand juries in Kansas City and Omaha had been unresponsive, while the St. Louis grand jury was out for blood. The Federal prosecutors finally found the case of the St. Louis shoe manufacturer, whose case, despite there having been calls on his behalf from the White House and some wires having been pulled, Mr. Caudle had sent to trial anyway, where the defendant pleaded guilty and was fined $40,000, also paying fraud penalties of $70,000. The Federal judge in the case had ruled out a jail sentence because of the man's health.
He indicates that his column had carried the full story on April 24, 1950, a story which had come from Mr. Caudle, who had been completely frank and had nothing to hide. Then, almost six years later, well after the statute of limitations had run, he had been indicted along with Mr. Connelly after they had taken the case before the grand jury in St. Louis, which he suggests would have indicted almost anyone close to the Truman Administration. The two defendants had then moved for a change of venue which was denied, causing them to have to pay the travel expenses and hotel bills of their lawyers and witnesses out of Washington, costing them all of the money they had and then some, resulting in their presently being broke.
At the trial the previous spring, part of the case had been so flimsy that it had folded up. Judge Hulen had obviously expected an acquittal, appearing so surprised at the guilty verdict that he remarked from the bench to the defendant's lawyers: "You are going to renew your motion for an acquittal and you are going to renew your motion for a mistrial." He never got to hear either motion because of his suicide.
Rather than go through a new trial, the Justice Department had placed the written evidence before a new judge out of Minneapolis, who read the evidence only, having never heard any of the arguments or the testimony, eventually sustaining the convictions and denying the defendants' motions for a new trial. Mr. Pearson concludes that the two men were to be sentenced the following day.
Stewart Alsop finds it to be nonsense to speak of a genuine revolt among conservative Republicans against the Administration's "modern Republicanism" and yet there were rumblings which could suggest trouble as time went on.
That was so despite the fact that the domestic program submitted by the Administration to the current Congress differed from the New and Fair Deals only in degree and in the conservative administrators who would govern it. Mr. Alsop suggests that had the President submitted it four years earlier, there would have been anguished cries of protest from within his own party, which had not changed fundamentally in the previous four years, still comprised of a majority wedded to the views of the late Senator Robert Taft. But aside from for-the-record promises to cut the budget offered by such Senators as Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, there had been no genuine Republican protest against the domestic program thus far.
He finds it even more surprising that there had been such solid Republican support for the Administration's foreign policy, despite the fact that foreign aid had never been strongly supported by the majority of Republicans in Congress. Nevertheless, the opposition to foreign aid came primarily from Southern Democrats. The Republicans on the Joint Foreign Relations-Armed Services Committee had voted unanimously for the President's proposed Middle East resolution, despite it calling for authority to spend up to 200 million dollars in the ensuing year on financial aid for that region. Republicans were also expected to vote with near unanimity for the resolution on the Senate floor. Only the old "lunatic fringe" of Senators McCarthy, William Jenner of Indiana and George Malone of Nevada, plus a few others, were certain to vote against it, with even Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio expected to vote for it.
Mr. Alsop finds that the reason for that support was, for one thing, that the Republicans were in the minority in both houses and thus tended to stick together with a Republican Administration. A second reason was that despite the fact that the hearts of such Senators as Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Homer Capehart of Indiana and John Butler of Maryland were perhaps still with the late Senator Taft, they had been re-elected on the coattails of the President and had told their constituents that they would be loyal to him, and thus would find it quite awkward now to backtrack on that campaign promise just four months after the President's landslide re-election.
But behind the solidarity and support for the Administration were mutterings and rumblings. In the cloakrooms, the phrase "new Republicanism" was beginning to be uttered with the same distaste reserved for the "New Deal" among conservative Democrats during the 1930's. On the Senate floor, the Republican defense of the Middle East doctrine against the onslaught of the Democrats had been tenuous at best. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland had unquestionably struck a responsive chord among many Republicans with his veiled attack on the Administration's reliance on the U.N. in foreign policy, with most Republicans receiving mail from constituents which backed the position of Senator Knowland on foreign policy and bitterly attacked the Administration's budget, mail coming primarily from influential businessmen. Much of the conservative press echoed the same type of uneasily critical attitude.
Mr. Alsop concludes that with such rumblings taking place, if the business community, to which the conservative Republicans were acutely responsive, and which had supported the President in his re-election, would ever begin to turn against the Administration, he would be in deep trouble with his own party.
A letter writer says that the most pressing problem to be faced in public education in the state was the lack of qualified teachers and the only way to attract and hold good teachers was to provide a salary commensurate with the services rendered, which he finds untrue in North Carolina with its standing being 38th among the states in salaries for teachers despite its teachers being sixth in terms of preparation. Other states were improving their salaries and making an earnest effort to pay teachers what they were worth, with Alabama going from 41st in 1950-51 to 36th in 1956-57, Florida going from 24th to 21st in the same time period, Georgia, from 42nd to 39th, South Carolina, from 46th to 42nd, and Virginia, from 36th to 35th. Meanwhile, in the same six years, North Carolina had dropped from 29th to 38th. He says that he believes, despite not being a teacher or a parent, that the schools were important enough for each citizen to be willing to pay a few extra pennies per year for quality instruction.
A letter from A. W. Black, his second on the topic, comments on the previous column of the Reverend Herbert Spaugh regarding the "crown of thorns" placed by the Romans on the head of Jesus just prior to the crucifixion, Mr. Black finding those letter writers who defended that "fiction" to be "pathetically unfamiliar with Roman history, or else blind to the contradictory character of the Gospels." He says that the Gospel according to John was not a reliable source, as it was "obviously based on hearsay" and was at variance with other Gospels in almost every detail, not having been written until the second century, too late to be considered as contemporary evidence. Nor did the author claim to be present at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, but instead had relied on the testimony of an unidentified witness in support of the statements, citing John 19:35. He finds the argument that Pontius Pilate had freed a thief and murderer and allowed the crucifixion of Jesus, to contradict the claims by other letter writers that Roman law was always dignified and fair in its application, to be "sheer sophism" proving nothing. He finds no historical record supporting the crucifixion story outside the contradictory Gospels, that of more than 40 Jewish, Greek and Roman writers contemporary with the times of the incident, none had alluded to the crucifixion of Jesus, which he insists they would have had it occurred. He also indicates that the writers of neither the Old nor New Testament claimed to be divinely inspired, and that neither did the Bible claim to be the word of God or even the word of God as written. He finds the claim that the criticism of Reverend Spaugh was "unwarranted" and that he had "a greater reserve of knowledge and wisdom" than the critics of him, to be "the sort of bombastic statement that stands in need of proof. No man, clergyman or otherwise, is immune to error, and constructive criticism in the interest of truth is never without justification."
Mr. Black must have been present
A letter writer expresses his appreciation for the fine basketball coverage provided by WSOC radio during the season.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.