The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 6, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that Israel had begun withdrawing its troops from the Gaza Strip and the Aqaba Gulf Coast this date. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had crushed opposition within the Knesset to the withdrawal, winning overwhelming votes of confidence. He said that there would be peace "if the United States and other powers will keep their promises to us," but that if they did not keep their promise, "shrinking before the Egyptian dictator's threats" which would not allow Israeli shipping in the Aqaba Gulf, there would be no peace. Israeli suspicion that the U.N. Emergency Force planned to restore Egyptian administrators within the Gaza Strip had interrupted the flow of matériel from the strategic area for a few hours, with authoritative reports indicating that the withdrawal was resumed, however, during the afternoon. The Israeli Army announced that an Arab civilian and an Israeli soldier had been killed and two Israeli soldiers wounded during an outbreak of sniping and attempted looting. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion took aim at Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in his speech before the Knesset, preliminary to the vote of confidence, which had overwhelmed the opposition, consisting of the Nationalist Herut, the Communists and the Conservative General Zionists. The Knesset had rejected a series of anti-Government motions by majorities ranging between four to one and better. A no-confidence motion put forward by Herut had lost by a vote of 84 to 25, and a Communist motion had lost 114 to 6, while a third motion condemning "the Government's withdrawal from its Gaza and Aqaba decision" had been defeated 85 to 24. The Prime Minister reiterated Israel's rejection of the Egyptian-Israeli armistice of 1949 as the basis for the future status of the Gaza Strip, regarding the armistice as null and void on the basis that Egypt had violated its terms by continued belligerency. He referred to a statement made to the U.N. the prior Friday by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., as being a factor in Israel's hesitation during the prior weekend as to whether to continue with the withdrawal, which had been announced by Foreign Minister Golda Meir the previous Friday.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating the infiltration of racketeering and organized crime within the Teamsters Union, currently focusing on Portland, Ore., a nightspot operator, Nathan Zusman, had testified this date, denying that he was "an expert on prostitution", confuting testimony given the previous day by "Big Hel" Helen Hardy, an admitted "call house" madam, who had nevertheless refused to provide her occupation to the Committee—despite having a name which seemed to befit her reputed occupation. She had testified that Mr. Zusman had helped her establish a house of prostitution and was given a share of the profits, that she had received assurances that she could operate in Portland without fear of prosecution by District Attorney William Langley. Other witnesses had testified that Mr. Langley was linked with Teamsters Union officials and underworld characters seeking to control the profits in Portland vice. Counsel for the Committee, Robert F. Kennedy, had asked Mr. Zusman whether he was an expert on prostitution, to which he replied: "I wouldn't be married 16 years to the same woman if I was," then, upon being asked again by Mr. Kennedy to answer the question, said flatly that he was not. His voice had pitched increasingly higher as he denied other allegations made by Mrs. Hardy, including that he had assured her that she could operate without fear of raids from Mr. Langley. Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, member of the Committee, observed, paraphrasing Shakespeare, "Methinks thou does protest too much." "Big Hel" Helen Hardy said that Mrs. Helen Smalley had opened the place of prostitution in Portland in July, 1955. Mr. Kennedy had asked Mr. Zusman whether he had ever talked about prostitution with either Helen Hardy or Helen Smalley, to which he responded that he had not, demanding that a lie detector test be provided to both him and Mrs. Hardy—no doubt, to determine who was the more hale and hardy. Outside the hearing room, Jerry Griffin, Washington attorney for Frank Brewster, president of the 11-state Western Conference of Teamsters, had announced that his client was going to answer all questions before the Committee. No date had yet been set for his testimony. When will Helen Ready testify? It might be noted, to settle any questions which might be posed by reporter May Craig, that it was not established whether Mrs. Hardy or Mrs. Smalley were trading in interstate commerce, needing to have a substantial impact on same to fall within the purview of the Commerce Clause.
In Conway, S.C., it was reported that Horace Carter, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor, had been called before a North Carolina judge in Whiteville this date regarding a hearing on his reasons for ignoring a subpoena issued by a Horry County, S.C., grand jury, which had opened hearings the previous day regarding charges by Mr. Carter's newspaper that certain sheriff's deputies were placing pressure on Horry County amusement and café operators to switch companies from which they procured jukeboxes. Mr. Carter had made the charges in articles written for the Loris Sentinel, one of several newspapers operated by him out of Tabor City, N.C. Instead of answering the subpoena, Mr. Carter had sent a letter to the grand jury in which he had indicated that "all of the evidence available is not in the proper form. If you would consider a postponement until the June term of the Court of General Session, I shall be happy to appear before your body and present all the facts at my disposal." When he had failed to appear, a court order had been issued and Mr. Carter was taken briefly into custody, ordered to appear before the Superior Court in Whiteville this date. Three policemen, an attorney and three amusement operators had appeared before the grand jury the previous day, and some 40 additional witnesses were expected to testify. The sheriff, in defense of the charges leveled at his deputies, said that his department had "nothing to hide."
In Kershaw, S.C., it was reported that a magistrate of nearby Flat Rock had said this date that he had been served with a State Supreme Court order that he desist from further action in the flogging case of Camden bandmaster Guy Hutchins, which had been scheduled for trial before the magistrate following a grand jury's refusal to indict on the more serious charges placed before it, reducing the matter to a magistrate's court offense. A magistrate in Camden had granted a motion for change of venue, placing the case before the Flat Rock magistrate, who was the brother of an attorney defending the four accused men. The State Supreme Court order had directed the magistrate not to take further action until a show-cause hearing before the Supreme Court could occur the following Monday, when the magistrate would be asked to show cause why the restraining order should not be made permanent. The magistrate said that the circuit solicitor had told him that he had obtained the order because he had no other course in the matter except to seek relief from the State Supreme Court, the solicitor having criticized the grand jury's action, stating that the men were either guilty of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature or they were guilty of nothing at all. He had sought indictment on the more serious charges, carrying a maximum 10-year sentence, but the grand jury had reduced the charges to simple assault, which had a maximum penalty of $100 in fines or 30 days in jail. Charges of conspiracy brought against two other men in the case had been dropped completely by the grand jury, based on a conspiracy to deprive Mr. Hutchins of his civil rights. The solicitor announced that he would again seek indictment of the men on the original charges at the June grand jury meeting. An editorial below also deals with the case. A cry had developed in Camden from the mayor and the local citizens over what the mayor had called "a breakdown of the administration of justice." The mayor had said the previous night that copies of a petition demanding better law enforcement for the community had begun to circulate, having been drafted by people "too scared to speak out before" but who had become "sick and tired" of the lack of enforcement of the laws.
In Mahwah, N.J., police had worked through the night questioning school friends of a 15-year old girl who had been the victim of a gory rock slaying in a dead-end lovers lane on Monday night. The county prosecutor said that police were hoping that the children might be able to give some leads to the crime, which police described as the work of a sadist. The police said that they had not yet developed any leads. The prosecutor said that the young honors student may have been picked up in a car by a friend while walking home from a homework session at a schoolmate's house. Her battered, half-nude body had been found by her father the previous morning following an all-night search. She was discovered lying face down in a gravel pit by the lovers lane, with her head crushed down the middle by a rock and her sweater, still covering her arms, having been ripped from the rest of her body. Her nose and jaw had been fractured, but according to the chief county medical examiner, she had not been raped. Three bloody rocks, one weighing 25 pounds, lay close to her body and tire tracks led into the pit and then out again. Her father, a truck driver, vowed to find the guy who had done it, saying that when he found him, he would "tear him limb from limb". He had begun looking for his missing daughter when she failed to return home from a fellow student's home a half-mile away, after having gone to study German lessons for a test the following day. After daybreak, her parents noticed her scarf on a street, and the father then followed the trail of his daughter's clothing to her body.
In Raleigh, committees of the State House and Senate had this date adopted compromise amendments and then provided favorable reports on controversial legislation to reorganize the State Highway Commission, with the House committee having been told that the amendments had the support of Governor Luther Hodges and the Highway Commission. Under the bill, the Highway Commission membership would be cut from 15 to 7 and the state would be divided into geographical areas, with the amendments providing that one or more commissioners would be assigned to each, responsible to the public generally and individual citizens regarding highway matters, with the commissioners to be appointed from different areas of the state, representing the entire state and not a particular area.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that after strongly worded remarks aimed at "putting a stop to this thievery", Recorder's Court Judge Basil Boyd this date had ordered Charlotte's two accused "shotgun bandits" held under bond totaling $100,000 each after ordering them held for trial in Superior Court. The two defendants had waived their rights to a preliminary hearing and did not take the stand during the Recorder's Court session during the morning. Police said that both had admitted robbing two Charlotte City Coach Lines bus drivers, a service station night manager, and a grocer in holdups which had occurred during the previous three weeks. They had also confessed to locking the grocer inside the store refrigerator, from which he had finally escaped. The black spectator sections of the Recorder's Court had been packed to overflowing during the morning when Judge Boyd had issued his verbal blast at crime, saying: "We've got to start putting a stop to this thievery. Why, that poor man could have frozen to death inside of 30 minutes. It's just fortunate he had strength enough to break out of there. Let 'em give a bond of $25,000 in each case." Each defendant was charged with four counts of robbery with firearms. He had made similar comments in an earlier case during the morning, regarding a man accused of storebreaking and larceny, stating that it had gotten to the point where a person in Charlotte could not get to sleep at night without having his place of business broken into, or without standing a chance of "being robbed by some hoodlum". He had ordered that defendant held under a bond of $10,000.
In Chicago, it was reported that in
Ghana
In Santa Fe, N.M., Governor Edwin Mechem had signed a "billy goat law" which took freedom from goats which they had enjoyed since the days of the Spanish, the bill making it unlawful to let goats stray at large in towns and villages.
On the editorial page, "The Theater That Plays Only Tragedies" indicates that the world had apparently succeeded in turning the clock back four months, as the invading Israelis were expected to withdraw from Egypt to a place behind the 1949 armistice lines from which they had emerged in a swift assault on the Sinai Peninsula the prior October.
It indicates that the world might sigh but without relief, as the withdrawal would not open rosy vistas of peace and tranquility in the Middle East, but would only reveal in sharper, more foreboding outlines the basic Arab-Israeli conflict which had prompted the invasion in the first place. It would also more sharply define the increased U.S. obligation to press for settlement of the conflict.
At U.S. insistence, Britain and France had ceded their positions of military influence in the region, and by withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, also at U.S. insistence, Israel would give up its capacity to counter Egyptian raids on Egyptian soil. As a result, the U.S. had become the leading actor, rather than the behind-the-scenes prompter, on an international stage which to the present had featured only tragedies.
The President had justified threats of U.N. economic sanctions against Israel by saying that the U.N. "must not fail", and the Israeli withdrawal would keep the U.N. from failing, but would not represent a victory, as the bloodshed of the previous four months had been only a tragedy within a larger tragedy.
The U.S., whether acting on its own or under the aegis of the U.N., would now become the keeper of the peace and defender of order in the Middle East, confronted with such confounding questions as free passage in the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, a permanent settlement between Arabs and Israelis, the ambition of Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the designs of the Kremlin in the region. It posits that the U.S. had to find solutions and that if it failed, it would do so at its own direct peril.
"How Mob Assaults Can Become Simple" indicates that there had been much idle wonder expended regarding the grand jury's reduction of charges against four of six men accused of beating bandmaster Guy Hutchins of Camden, S.C., after they had accosted him on the road as he stopped to change a flat tire, kidnaped him and taken him to a wooded area where they flogged him, based on the claim that he had made pro-integration statements at a Lions Club auxiliary meeting, a contention which Mr. Hutchins had denied.
The grand jury essentially had said that the law, as related to the accused, was that they might be guilty of simple assault and could be tried for same, an offense punishable by not more than a $100 fine and 30 days in jail, but were probably not guilty of aggravated assault and battery and could not be tried for that charge, for which the maximum punishment was ten years in jail as a felony.
It suggests that while that might be the law based on the grand jury's action, it was not justice, or if it was, it was not the type of justice under which citizens could go about legitimate pursuits without fear and under which people could breathe and speak freely. It says it had no idea whether the accused or others had seized Mr. Hutchins on the highway, tied him to a tree and beat him with boards, but suggests that it has a firm idea that whoever committed the act in a free country ought be found guilty of something more than simple assault, that if such acts were held to be "simple" they would become routine.
"Mecklenburg Has a Righteous Cause" indicates that the case for a separate solicitorial district for Mecklenburg County was based on need rather than egotism. The county's heavy criminal caseload and the fact that full-time supervision was required for efficient administration of justice demanded the creation of a separate district for the county.
But some North Carolina legislators had the idea that Mecklenburg simply wanted to be alone, a supposition not supported by the facts, which would be the duty of the Mecklenburg delegation to sell to the Legislature.
The 1955 General Assembly had reworked the court districts, giving Mecklenburg a district to itself, a proper move, but the Assembly had neglected to make the necessary changes in the solicitorial districts, with the result that Mecklenburg still shared a solicitor with Gaston County. It indicates that State Senator Pat Cooke of Gaston had expressed during the week sympathy for the idea of a separate solicitor for Mecklenburg, a hopeful sign and one which ought stir the Mecklenburg delegation to an even greater burst of righteous vigor.
"Dred Scott, a Century Says, Was Right" indicates that from the cotton fields and clapboard shacks of plantation slavery to the present, the road through history of American black people had been "a painful, twisting road." It had run a dark course laden with vivid images—slave ships off the Carolina coast, work songs in the Georgia sun, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. It led past Wilmington, N.C., where the Red Shirts had burned houses, past Greenwood County in South Carolina where White Caps hanged blacks, past Tuskegee in Alabama where Booker T. Washington had lived and worked, and past Detroit, where Ralph Bunche had been born.
A hundred years earlier, on March 6, 1857, the road had touched bottom with the Supreme Court delivering its Dred Scott decision, in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had reduced Dred Scott and every member of his race to their lowest level of human dignity, a chattel. But since that time, the march of American blacks had been upward.
Dred Scott had been the son of slaves, who had lived for a time in the free state of Illinois, believing that made him free, thus claiming that he had the right to sue for his freedom in Federal court. But Chief Justice Taney had condemned him to continued bondage, stating: "The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks and laws long before established and were never thought of or spoken except as property… They had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in political or social relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…"
It finds that the Civil War had essentially reversed Chief Justice Taney, and this centennial of the decision found the American black still at the center of a national controversy, "still an American dilemma." But at present, "not even the most dedicated racist could think of the Negro as a piece of property without rights. And not even the most impatient Negro can look back down the path to March 6, 1857 without marking the long strides his race has taken toward equality under the law."
A piece from the Santa Fe Magazine, titled "Anatomy Lesson", indicates that a small boy had been asked to write what he had been taught about the human body, indicating: "Our body is divided into three parts, the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the lungs, lights and heart. The abdominal cavity contains the bowels of which there are five: a, e, i, o and u."
Drew Pearson regards Senator Matthew Neely of West Virginia, who had spotted a point which the Administration did not like to have spotted, while hearing the testimony of Stewart Coleman, head of the Middle East Emergency Oil Committee, before a Judiciary subcommittee, Senator Neely having accused Mr. Coleman of wearing two hats, representing both the Government and the oil companies as a long-time executive of Aramco and now vice-president of Standard Oil of New Jersey. The Senator also pointed out that Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had not sold his stock in the M. A. Hanna Co., consisting of 482,256 shares of common stock of Standard of New Jersey, valued at $26,885,722. He also pointed out that the Hanna Co. owned 187,500 shares of Seaboard Oil, valued at $11,671,875. The Senator wanted to know whether it was not a moral conflict of interest and speculated regarding the President having spent a vacation on Mr. Humphrey's plantation in Georgia recently, at the very time when the Middle East crisis required vital decision-making.
Mr. Pearson indicates that Senatior Neely might have gone further to probe the possible effect of oil on U.S. foreign policy, by looking at the fact that George Allen, close friend and bridge playing partner of the President, had also been present at the Secretary's plantation, having been chairman of the Yemen Oil Development Co., that Christian Herter, the new Undersecretary of State, was indebted to Standard of New Jersey for his wife's fortune, that the law firm of Secretary of State Dulles represented Standard of New Jersey, and that former Undersecretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., had been an executive of Union Oil, which was interlocked with Gulf Oil, which got its oil from the Persian Gulf.
He concludes that they were all honest men, but that it was hard for even the most honest public officials not to be influenced by subtle economic pressures.
Doris Fleeson focuses on Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and his recent efforts against the President's Middle East resolution, designed to grant him authority to use U.S. forces, including ground troops, if necessary, to counter Communist aggression in the region and to spend up to 200 million dollars in financial aid to the region in the ensuing year, the opposition suggesting a new direction for the Senator. He was the brain trust of the predominant Southern leadership in the Senate, such that what he said ought to be done and usually was.
In previous years, he had followed, without publicly questioning, the internationalist leadership of Senator Walter George of Georgia, who had now retired, and it had not been anticipated that Senator Russell would so quickly break away from Senator George's pattern, but now appeared thoroughly disenchanted with what the President and Secretary of State Dulles were doing and the effects they were trying to create.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn usually responded when asked about a knotty problem: "Do you want it with the bark off?" If the answer was in the affirmative, the questioner usually got the unvarnished truth as the Speaker saw it, something which Senator Russell was now doing in the Senate and at White House conferences, having told the President that he should explain his Middle East policy to the country and had said of the efforts of the Senators to get Secretary of State Dulles to explain his Middle East policy, that it was like "wrestling with a moonbeam in a dark room".
What Senator Russell did was important because of his position within the leadership in the Senate, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee and ranking majority member on the Senate Appropriations Committee. But Ms. Fleeson indicates that it also should not be forgotten that his exceptionally acute political intelligence had earned that status.
When Senator George had been succeeded by new Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge at the beginning of the year, it had been obvious that Senator Russell would have to maintain a much closer eye on Georgia than he had previously, as the comfortable tie with Senator George had been substituted by a challenging relationship with a spokesman for what Georgia had become since Mr. Russell had been its pre-New Deal Governor between 1931 and 1933. Senator Talmadge had campaigned against foreign aid, making his first Senate speech against it, but Senator Russell was emerging as the leader of a sustained attack on the whole foreign aid concept. In doing so, he had struck directly at the President, Secretary of State Dulles and their whole concept of how to run foreign policy. According to Senator Russell, the Administration no longer knew best or should have its way. He was attacking the legend which had served previously to keep the Congress in line, with the Senator apparently believing that the President's reputed antenna to the American people was no longer functioning.
She concludes that the peril to the President was that the politicians would agree, as they usually had with Senator Russell.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that within the ensuing few weeks, the Administration would open its campaign to revise the Taft-Hartley Act, which had been heavily criticized by labor since its enactment in 1947 over former President Truman's veto, thus far having remained virtually unchanged. In recent years, the attacks had changed from favoring outright repeal to requests for revision to make it easier on labor.
The President, from his first State of the Union message on February 2, 1953, had said that "experience has shown the need for some corrective action and we should promptly proceed to amend the Act." On January 11, 1954, he had defined what he had meant by "corrective action" when he had sent 15 proposed revisions to Congress, none of which had gotten out of the talking stage. He was expected to repeat most of those proposals in the current year.
The 15-million member AFL-CIO still wanted revision of the Act, but had not yet drafted a bill of its own, instead sending some suggestions to Secretary of Labor James Mitchell, awaiting what would happen with them. Secretary Mitchell had not tipped his hand beyond admitting that there had been some agreement between labor and management on revision regarding the Act's application to the building trades, the first joint recommendations on which there had been agreement. The leaders within the building trades contended that the construction industry deserved special treatment by the Act, indicating that it was not practical to put a carpenter who worked on one job for two months under the same rules as a permanently employed toolmaker. The building trade unions thus wanted the right to sign a contract with a construction firm before a project began, meaning that all the workers hired for the project would be represented by the union whether they liked it or not, whereas the existing Act forbade such advance arrangements.
The proposed revision theoretically would still give the construction firm the right to hire men for the job, with the union contract stipulating the pay and other working conditions. But in practice, the union usually would do the hiring and send the required number of workers to do the job, a closed shop arrangement since the union would pick only its own members, a practice which the existing Taft-Hartley law forbade, permitting a union shop under which a non-union person could be hired by management but who had to join the union at the plant within 30 days after beginning work. The leaders of the building trade unions also wanted that time period cut to seven days because of the temporary nature of the work.
The President had repeatedly endorsed revision of the Act to conform to those recommendations, limiting the special consideration to the building, maritime and amusement industries, and the prospect for Congressional passage of those changes was now better than for any other amendments.
Labor could not count on either the Administration or Congress to eliminate the right-to-work laws through revision of Taft-Hartley. Secretary Mitchell said that he would not push for such a revision and there was no indication that any group in Congress would do so. The Act had been interpreted to allow states to forbid union shops within their borders, and 17 states had done so.
The Administration's 1957 recommendations were expected to favor labor on "union busting" under the Act, secondary boycotts and making employers file non-Communist affidavits, as required by union officers. The existing Act gave management the right to fire workers who struck for more pay or other economic concessions, and the fired workers could not vote on what union ought represent the employees at the plant. The union leaders believed that section to be a "union busting" weapon, that management could provoke an economic strike, petition for the NLRB to hold a representation election and then permanently replace enough of the striking workers to assure that the vote would go the company's way.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, recommends having a fever ranging between 102 and 104 or higher for relief from the "confusions of the dreary world", also curing insomnia and acting as a means to effect weight loss. He had encountered an African bug and entered into a "blissfully fuzzy state of complete immunity to the world's toils and troubles", sleeping about 20 hours per day. The diagnoses had included everything except pregnancy, with one doctor from Nairobi claiming that it was caused by the bite of a tick, while another, in Spain, believed that a tiny serpent had invaded his body and built a cocoon or cyst within his digestive apparatus, wanting to conduct surgery to catch the snake. He had emerged from his haze long enough to scream a violent "no" to that latter suggestion before lapsing back into his "pale, pink dreams."
He had found that a person could sleep as comfortably on his stomach as on his back and it appeared he was going to spend his life in a semi-somnolent condition, having arrived at the conclusion that he had contracted one of the rarer types of malaria, to which a cure was unavailable until the U.S. Navy had arrived in the nick of time.
He was now able to concentrate on the prospect of war in the Middle East and was no longer sleepy, did not have to change his bed four times each night because of sweat having made each successive bed uninhabitable.
At one point in his stupor, he had asked for a magazine and was given an issue of Vogue, which stressed female hat fashions, which, having looked at it again after emerging from the fever, made him wish that the fevers and chills had been responsible for his memories of the pictures.
He closes by describing new slim sizes with 23-inch waists, no chins, colored a kind of saffron, for male columnists during the year, with hair and toenails to be worn long and a slight glaze in the eyes denoting happy memories of things past. "By cracky, that was a pretty pink angel. Another week of delirium Africanus and I bet I'd have caught her."
A letter writer comments on a report in the newspaper that a New York Ph.D, George Lawton, had said that heart disease would go the way of polio, says that he would like all disease conquered but finds it not so simple, opining that polio, heart disease, cancer, tuberculosis and other major diseases would never be banished until God did so. He finds that the Bible told what to do in James, chapter 5, and 2 Chronicles 7:14, while billions of dollars were being spent trying to find some way other than God's way. He thinks that the polio vaccine was making millions of dollars for those who had discovered it and if he were to submit to being vaccinated, it would mean that he could not trust God to keep him from any of those diseases. He says that prayer and faith in God was all the protection he needed, that a Christian could believe he could trust God for salvation and so wonders why he could not trust God for his health. "And I believe that if God wanted slow poisoning in our drinking water He would have put it in Himself…"
He apparently in his last sentence is referring to fluoridation.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.