The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 2, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Chincoteague, Va., that a Navy Neptune bomber had exploded in a great ball of fire shortly after takeoff this date and that all of its 11 crewmen had died in the crash on Virginia's Eastern Shore. There had been a sputtering noise detected, according to a witness, when the plane was only a couple of hundred feet in the air a minute after takeoff, followed by a window-rattling blast, whereupon the plane plunged to earth in a big plume of smoke, slamming into a plowed field on a farm two miles south of the Naval Air Station at Chincoteague. The plane had been headed to Cherry Point, N.C.
In Denver, it was reported that a massive, slow-moving storm had poured rain and snow over a vast area in the parched Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states this date, from Montana and the Dakotas southward through Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. Forecasters said that the system did not appear to pack the vicious wallop of a blizzard which had hit ten days earlier and snarled transportation, trapped travelers and killed thousands of cattle. Winds on the plains were not expected to exceed between 25 and 35 mph, and the heavy moisture in the snow would probably prevent severe drifting. The earlier storm had been accompanied by winds between 60 and 70 mph.
Near Omaha, the mutilated body of a 17-year old male clad in a tee-shirt and blue jeans had been dumped on a country road early this date, with one hand having been severed by burns. The chief deputy sheriff said that the youth might have been the victim of a teenage revenge killing or that he might have been electrocuted. A physician said that the teenager had died of physical and not electrical shock. The first reaction of officers was that he had been tortured with an acetylene torch. But later, the chief deputy sheriff reported that they were considering the possibility that he had been climbing a power pole and had become entangled in the hot wires. There was a burn under his armpit and his feet were also charred, but his shoes, still on his body, were less badly burned. A detective inspector said that the teenager had been questioned in connection with Omaha burglaries, but he only had a minor police record. The body had been found about ten miles west of Omaha and the severed hand was with the body. Sheriff's officers concluded that the body had been dumped on the spot where it was found, with no clues from that area having been discovered. The boy's mother said that he had no enemies and his seven siblings said that he had been in good spirits. His girlfriend told officers of a telephone conversation with the youth the previous night, in which they talked of records and dates. The boy had quit school about a year earlier and had been working off and on for a junk buyer and was to have reported to work in the early morning this date.
In Statesville, N.C., a coroner's jury had requested a grand jury investigation in the case of a 22-year old woman who was an acute diabetic and had died March 16 from lack of insulin. A physician said that the victim had died from that cause at 11:35 p.m., after earlier the same day, the woman's father had been arrested on a public drunkenness charge while carrying a box of insulin in his pocket, taken from him during a routine booking search at the jail. At the time, the father was incoherent and had cried when they had taken a nearly empty bottle of wine away from him, according to the Public Safety director. The latter said that the father had not informed police that the insulin was for a sick person. An investigation showed that the father had come to Statesville with his son, and after the father's arrest, the son had returned to their home some 20 miles from Statesville, had obtained money and returned to Statesville for more insulin. The woman's mother had given the daughter a normal shot from that supply in mid-afternoon, but the physician had indicated that she had apparently not responded because she had not had a dose for nearly four days. The doctor said that she was "nearly dead" when he arrived at around 11:00 p.m., the first time he had visited the family. After her death, the physician had posted bond for the father, and the father eventually pleaded guilty to public drunkenness and was fined.
In Raleigh, a compromise plan to deal with the issue of legislative reapportionment was expected to spark heated debate in the State Senate this date, with measures on the calendar proposed by a study commission which would change provisions in the State Constitution dealing with reapportionment. The compromise measures, which had been approved by a Senate Judiciary Committee the previous week, would increase State House membership from 120 to 130 to give greater representation to some of the state's more populous counties, but as a concession to the smaller counties, the amendments provided that no county could ever have more than two State Senators and the number of counties a Senator could represent would be limited to four. One of the amendments would make sure that the Legislature was reapportioned after each decennial census, with the present provision of the State Constitution requiring that to be done, though no reapportionment had taken place since the 1950 census. The proposed amendment would provide for a reapportionment commission outside of the General Assembly, which would reapportion the House and Senate should the Assembly fail to act in the future. Governor Luther Hodges strongly supported the compromise plan and had told a press conference the previous day that he felt it had a good chance of passage.
In Charlotte, Richard H. Brown this date announced his candidacy for re-election as a member of the City School Board, to which he had been appointed in June, 1956. He was one of three members of the Board whose terms would expire during the spring.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that Mecklenburg County's 1957 tax rate was increasing and county officials could not predict when it would stop. Officials reported that the tax rate would receive over a three-cent boost from payments to be made on newly issued bonds, that reduced ABC funds equal to at least three cents on the tax rate represented another source of revenue which would have to be increased, and that most departmental requests thus far were higher than the current approved budgets.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that parks and playgrounds, like those in the city, might one day dot the perimeter area as well. The United Community Services' special park and recreation study committee was seeking to have that occur sooner than later. The majority of the committee had spoken up strongly this date for a "Metropolitan Recreation Commission" with jurisdiction over all of Mecklenburg County. Some of the members had suggested that legislation be passed by the current General Assembly to empower counties to set up such a body, with the responsibility of seeing that rural residents were not short-changed in recreation. The present Park & Recreation Commission's authority ended at the city limits, thus unable to build parks in the perimeter area, with the result that those areas were being built up without parks.
In Boonville, Mo., a 17-year old
girl had been tapping her toe in time with the radio music in her
date's car, when accidentally her foot had touched the starter, and
the car, in gear, had proceeded forward and had struck another parked
automobile, resulting in $25 in damage. What was the song?
On the editorial page, "State Must Stop Counting Bad Ballots" finds that there was one compelling reason for repeal of the "get-Jonas bill", that it permitted the use of improperly marked ballots.
It indicates that it ought be replaced by a measure offered by Mecklenburg County and other Tenth District Democrats, under which any ballot improperly marked both in a party's circle and in an individual box on the opposite slate would be voided. It finds the proposed resolution fair and proper.
The so-called "get-Jonas" bill had been passed after long and loud argument which had not proved any conclusions. It indicates that the evidence of anti-Jonas intent on the Assembly's part was purely circumstantial, and that it could be argued that in theory the law was as fair to Republicans as to Democrats. But the law, itself, was unfair to the voter who improperly marked a ballot, as it did not void the ballot but arbitrarily assigned it to the party total and subtracted it from the individual candidate's total. Thus, the law not only disregarded the voter's apparent wishes, but also penalized the voter for an improper marking.
"It's the Citizen Who Needs Protection" indicates that bills introduced in both houses of the General Assembly would provide for appeals to the county boards of elections and then to the courts by persons claiming they had been arbitrarily denied registration by county registrars of voters, with the law at present permitting the registrar to have the final say on the matter.
It indicates that much of the support for those measures had come from legislators who appeared less interested in protecting the constitutional rights of all citizens than in getting the registrar off the hook. One of the sponsors of such a bill had indicated that by providing an avenue of appeal, the proposed statute would provide a measure of relief for the registrars.
Under present law, a county board of elections could remove a registrar from office if that person had rejected a voter without proper cause, but the board had no authority to order the deprived voter to be registered. Thus, the prospective voter deserved an appellate route when rejected, with the emphasis on protection of a citizen's right to vote rather than the registrar's right to exercise discrimination. It also favors having the new law not lessen the penalty for rejecting a voter without just cause.
"Too Many Answers Spoil the Scheme" finds that too many people seeking perfection had ruined chances for a much-needed amendment to the Constitution regarding the contingency of a disabled President.
The Administration had proposed to limit the discretion of determining when a disability was extant to the President, himself. In that case, he would designate the Vice-President as Acting President until the disability was removed. By ignoring the complex question of what would happen if the President was too ill to determine his own incapacity, the proposal had aroused strong hopes that a constitutional vacuum might at least be partially filled.
Proposals in Congress had set up various commissions and councils to determine such a disability, all of them raising political considerations, and thus making no progress toward resolution. The Administration had suggested that a majority of the Cabinet make the determination, but the Cabinet would immediately be suspected of political motivation in any such decision.
It urges that the essential aim of any such amendment ought be to provide a mechanism which would inspire trust and confidence from the people and that a council or commission might be devised with such qualifications, but an appointed Cabinet could not so qualify. It indicates that it was nice that the Administration had a plan which answered all the questions involved in presidential disability, but finds that it would be nicer to have a plan which answered the big question and had a chance of passage.
As indicated, the 25th Amendment would eventually be passed in early 1965 and ratified in mid-1967, providing for a new order of Presidential succession in the case of death, resignation, impeachment or other removal from office, for appointment and approval by a majority of Congress of a new Vice-President in that case, and for the case of Presidential disability for a temporary span of time, providing that if a majority of the heads of the executive departments or the majority of some other body as designated by legislation from Congress concluded that the President lacked the ability and capacity to carry on the duties of the President, then the Vice-President would become the Acting President until such time as the disability was removed, with the President able to indicate by writing transmitted to the House and Senate that he was presently fit to carry out the duties of his office, at which point the Congress would have 21 days to vote by two-thirds majority that he continued to have the disability.
"After Death, a Lesson in Immortality" indicates that Alan Pryce-Jones had recently stated that, logically, the novel ought to be dead, as it was "a graft from the tree of poetry, a graft stuck into the unfruitful soil of popular taste some 400 years ago and allowed to drop useless suckers or hoard up deadwood as it might."
While the novel was still very much alive, two distinguished writers, Christopher Morley and Joyce Cary, had died the previous week within 24 hours of one another, the former on Long Island on Thursday and the latter on Friday in Oxford, England. It finds the loss to the world of letters to have been tremendous, as each in his own way had contributed to the treasury of contemporary literature, Mr. Morley "with whimsical charm and lyrical tenderness," Mr. Cary "with exuberant imagination and comic disaster". Both had dabbled in many literary forms, but both had seemed more comfortable in the novel.
They had taught the critics the lesson that the novel would live as long as writers of imagination and talent were plagued by the elusive nature of truth and felt the need of broad canvas to mirror their feelings.
It concludes that Messrs. Morley and Cary had shown how it was done.
A piece from the Columbia Missourian, titled "Are Jefferson's Words Dangerous Now?" quotes from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and indicates that 13 out of 20 University of Missouri students had refused to sign their approval of the statement, without it being attributed. The small random sample of students consisted of 10 men and 10 women.
It notes that a monument to Thomas Jefferson was one of the campus landmarks, and that he would have been disappointed in the school's female students, not one of whom had expressed assent to the words, while seven of the male students had been willing to sign the document.
Various reasons for hesitation to sign had been provided, with one male student agreeing to all except the last clause of the declaration, that being: "… whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and institute new government." His objections to the final phrase was that such words might lead to the violent overthrow of the government, as it had in 1776. A coed had told the reporter that, while she agreed with the declaration, she would not sign it because she always hesitated to put her signature on anything.
Drew Pearson indicates that the previous week, a coalition of Republicans and Dixiecrats had cut down appropriations in the Eisenhower budget "like a tractor-drawn mowing machine knocking down a field of hay." Items such as a $20,000 contribution for research into radiation from atomic fallout had been cut, with Mr. Pearson suggesting that the Congressmen apparently did not know that an atomic age was at hand. They had cut $100,000 designed to revise the cost of living index, something which both management and labor found necessary in fixing wages. They had eliminated $50,000 to hire three or four women in the Women's Bureau to study the employment of older women, a problem which had increased recently. Congresswoman Iris Blitch of Georgia had made the motion to cut the Women's Bureau. They had also eliminated $100,000 for the Bureau of Veterans' Re-employment, an agency of great importance to veterans, especially since the G.I. Bill of Rights was no longer in operation.
Meanwhile, no Republican championed the Administration's budget, while some of the Democrats defended the President.
After three days of amendments, Congressman John Fogarty of Rhode Island reminded his colleagues that they had cut only 1.345 million dollars from the budget. Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio said that at that rate, in 30 days, they could cut ten million, and if they stayed for about 300 days, they could cut 100 million. Mr. Fogarty said that laws were being passed and then they failed to carry out their responsibility of seeing that necessary appropriations were made to administer them, that the amendments offered during the previous three days had been without constructive evaluation of the damage they would do. "In near hysteria you do not stop here. My friends on the other (Republican) side of the aisle have been notably conspicuous by the anemic support they have given their leader, the President of the United States. The press has been carrying stories of tens of millions of dollars of savings. Now, let us set the record straight. Let us not fool the public and let us not fool ourselves. The greatest part of the so-called savings will not save the U.S. Treasury one cent." He had gone on to point out that commitments had been made by the Government in many cases to the individual states and that if the money was not appropriated, Congress would have to return and appropriate it later.
Republicans, however, had paid little attention to the Democratic champion of the President's budget, Mr. Fogarty, and had continued their cutting, cutting a million dollars for new inspectors for the Food and Drug Administration, the chief watchdog for American housewives. Presently, the FDA had enough inspectors to inspect chicken-processing plants only once per 12 years, and could inspect many drug companies only once per eight or nine years. The agency had been seeking to curb the use of poison sprays on fruits and vegetables. It had found oyster dealers watering their cans so that the public was buying more water than oysters. It had difficulty checking the Salk vaccine because of the shortage of inspectors.
Nevertheless, Congressman Charles Jonas, the only Republican from North Carolina, had moved to strike all money for additional inspectors, winning by a margin of one vote, though a roll call would come up again this date, at which time the House could reverse him. Mr. Jonas, who was the Congressman for Mecklenburg County, had not won, however, until Mendel Rivers of South Carolina had gone to bat for the President's budget and for more protection for housewives. He had said that during the month of February, 271,000 pounds of contaminated food products had been taken off the market, and another 239,000 pounds had been destroyed by the owners under the supervision of inspectors, that six drug products had been seized because they were improperly labeled, and a bakery had been seized because the pies and cakes were contaminated with insect and rodent filth. Mr. Rivers stated that the FDA was small, while the volume of all of the foods, drugs and cosmetics had been growing in proportion to the needs of the expanding population, leaving the 300 inspectors responsible for the checking of over 62 billion dollars worth of products. He had made an eloquent appeal for funding to help inspect the food and drugs of the nation, but when the vote was taken, most of the Republicans had joined enough Democrats to vote down the new inspectors, unless the House would reverse itself on the presently scheduled roll call vote.
What is wrong with all of that? Don't you like rodent droppings mixed in with all the little sprinkles on your doughnuts? You wouldn't know it from the chocolate chips. And the insect larvae are indistinguishable from the little white sprinkles. It all blends together for a delectable dish. Think of it next time you have an otherwise insatiable desire for a fattening doughnut or two or big piece of cake or a big slice of raspberry pie.
Stewart Alsop reviews the book John Foster Dulles: A Biography, by John Robinson Beal of Time, indicating that it contained an account of what had previously been only rumored or suspected, a calculated decision by Secretary Dulles to force a showdown in the Middle East, based, undoubtedly, on interviews with Mr. Dulles, and, second, opened all of the old half-healed wounds caused by the Suez crisis, which had begun with the seizure of the canal the prior July 26 by Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, and, says Mr. Alsop, it poured great dollops of salt into those wounds. The book was thus likely to cause as much uproar as had the account based on an interview with Mr. Dulles anent his "brink of war" theory, by another Time reporter, James Shepley.
In the introduction, Mr. Beal stated that the book benefited from "personal interviews with [Mr. Dulles] which provided insight into his official actions, for which I thank him." Repeatedly, Mr. Beal described the views of Secretary Dulles with an authority which could only have come from such "personal interviews", and the book would be regarded, therefore, as a kind of personal White Paper of Mr. Dulles on his Middle East policies, unofficial but authentic.
The author described the withdrawal by Mr. Dulles of the American offer of aid to Egypt in building the Aswan Dam as a calculated slap in the face for Premier Nasser, consciously designed to bring about a showdown. It thus provided an authoritative account of one of the most amazing exercises in diplomacy in recent history.
Mr. Alsop provides excerpts which give the gist. "For Dulles, a moment of cold war climax had come. It was necessary to call Russia's hand in the game of economic competition. It was necessary to make the demonstration on a grand scale. Nasser combined the right timing, the right geography and the right order of magnitude for a truly major gambit in the cold war. Why did he turn down Nasser so brutally, without a chance to save face? Since the issue involved more than simply denying Nasser money for a dam, a polite and concealed rebuff would fail to make the really important point. It had to be forthright, carrying its own built-in moral for neutrals in a way that the ormolu of applied propaganda would not cheapen."
The book's version of the decision to force a showdown paralleled the version of the decision previously offered by former Presidential adviser C. D. Jackson. When that latter version had been made public, it had been widely assumed that it was in fact the Dulles version, and now, there could be no reasonable doubt of the fact, as Mr. Beal, being an experienced reporter, would not engage in mere guesswork to provide the Secretary's reasoning and motivation in such authoritative detail.
He had made it clear that Mr. Dulles was aware of the dangers involved in forcing a showdown: "As a calculated risk the decision was on a grand scale, comparable in the sphere of diplomacy to the calculated risks of war taken in Korea and Formosa. But his experience of sailing in diplomatic waters convinced him that the breeze would be better if he took a new and independent tack."
The ensuing chapters also clearly benefited from "insight into his official actions," and were designed to prove that the decision to force the showdown had been a brilliantly successful diplomatic coup. Mr. Alsop observes that it was uncomfortably obvious that the Middle Eastern "breeze" had not been better, but a great deal worse because Mr. Dulles had forced the showdown. But the difficulty was overcome by the device of blaming everything which had gone wrong on the nation's allies, while the Dulles policy had been "moral", and "consistent and purposeful" and the policies of the allies had been both stupid and dishonest. That theory of the crisis would be studied with considerable attention abroad in view of the authority with which Mr. Beal clearly spoke.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, notices that Vice-President Nixon, who had just returned from a three-week inspection of half the world, had referred to at least one American diplomat in a major African city as a "cornball", wondering aloud "how we ever got anything done with people like that", and expressing his disapproval of much of the country's consular and embassy staffs abroad.
Mr. Ruark suggests that apart from the wisdom of such a "popoff" to the press, he wishes to challenge Mr. Nixon's "right to know anything about anybody on a three-week junket made up almost entirely of banquets, receptions, air-travel, packing, unpacking, and possibly the constant companions of the junket—stomach trouble, lack of sleep, and nervous irritation."
He says that a person got to the heart of any matter by spending unofficial time in a place while asking questions of minor employees in such places as bars, enlisted men's clubs or junior officers' clubs, or of other small-caliber people in a position to judge. He says that he had never obtained a decent story out of a press conference, a reception, banquet, junket or from any official of major rank during his 20 years of reporting. "The hotel dick is apt to know more about what's going on than the manager, and the buck sergeant or file clerk is more apt to be correctly clued than the general or the ambassador."
He finds that Mr. Nixon must have endeared himself to all of the top brass at every one of his whistle-stops by announcing that "Americans should act normal, friendly, and natural in foreign posts, and not go overboard for pomp and formality." He finds it pretty useless in actual practice. He suggests that given the way Americans were generally disliked in many foreign lands at present, the best service which a foreign servant could perform for his country was to stop being as unobtrusively American as possible and fit himself into things as they were broadly done.
He says that he had known some consular people who learned the local language and drank tea instead of martinis when tea-drinking was indicated, while some even adopted the foreign customs to the extent of choking down sheep's eyes in the interest of politeness and good will.
He concludes by reiterating his point that neither Mr. Nixon nor anyone else could make snap judgments on anything encountered during a political tour of nine countries during three weeks.
A letter writer wants to know how a person could live 21 years as a white person and then turn out to be a black person, suggesting that anything could happen in some states such as Louisiana. He also indicates that any full-blooded Negro was a black person and wonders how long men could deny their own blood. "How long can a man hate his brother without cause? The time is not yet, but the Negro's blood is crying from the far-off battlefields, saying give to my people their freedom and I will let you rest."
A letter writer thinks that any kind of automobile inspection law was hypocritical as long as the state sold liquor and beer to people to make them drunk and cause accidents on the highways. He believes that any car, no matter how old, was "safe as long as sane, sober and safe drivers are behind the wheel of the car."
Once again, however, we remind you that if you have no brakes heading down the mountain passes from Tennessee into North Carolina, for instance, you may not make it home, regardless of how sober you might be, and had better be prepared to shift into low gear, apply intermittently, as circumstances permit, the emergency brake, and be at the ready to alight from the cab at the last second before it careers over the cliff into oblivion. Remember, it's nothing but a big hunk of tin in the final analysis, not a "tank", no matter what the advertising may say of it.
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