The Charlotte News
Friday, January 31, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had told Republicans that they could campaign on a "five years of prosperity" platform despite the current business recession. Speaking to a breakfast sponsored by the RNC, he said that the economy would pick up later in the year because it remained basically confident, being "a period of consolidating the gains of recent years. Many people are paying off installment debts. Many businesses are trimming inventories. The economy is catching its breath for a new advance after the fast expansion of recent years." The meeting had been closed, but excerpts from his address had been released for publication. Vice-President Nixon had made a luncheon talk to the same group, which had been called together to take stock of Republican chances in the midterm elections. The President's prescription followed much the same line as his January 20 Chicago speech, in which he had hit at "pessimists" who said America was weak, asking the people to push out their chins and say that the country was strong and would grow stronger. The President did not predict a Republican victory in the Congressional elections, saying, "Republicans have never sold American free enterprise short—and never will."
Governor Robert Meyner of New Jersey this date said that amateur administrators and politicians in the Eisenhower Administration had caused many of the nation's present difficulties.
Frank Carey, Associated Press science reporter, indicates that the U.S. had disclosed this date that it was working on the development of nuclear counter-weapons designed to destroy intercontinental and other aggressive missiles. The disclosure had been in the 23rd semi-annual report of the Atomic Energy Commission to Congress. Referring to its previously announced weapons tests at Eniwetok the following spring, the AEC said: "The forthcoming series will advance the development of weapons for defense against aggression whether airborne, missile-borne, or otherwise mounted." It was the first official mention of efforts to neutralize missiles with nuclear warheads, despite earlier hints of same. Presumably, in the Eniwetok tests, the AEC would mount an atomic bomb or an hydrogen bomb as the warhead of an actual missile to test the effective scope of the blast at theoretically interceptive ranges. On other aspects of its work, the AEC had reported that important gains had been made in the previous six months in the field of nuclear weapons, especially small weapons for defensive purposes, and weapons designed "greatly to reduce the radioactivity remaining after detonation"; that maximum exposure to radioactive fallout from the previous year's "Plumbbob" tests in Nevada by localities near the site had all been below the acceptable level, including tests conducted in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah; that average levels of radioactive strontium, a potential producer of bone cancer in the bone structure of Americans, had increased during the previous year, but that the average was still far below the recommended maximum acceptable level; that the use of radioactive isotopes was saving industry an estimated 500 million dollars per year, representing the equivalent of a 7 percent annual dividend on the more than 7 billion dollars in tax money which the Federal Government had invested on atomic energy plant and equipment between 1942 and 1958, indicating that radioactive isotopes were ray-emitting atoms which industry used in the form of gauges, flaw-detectors and other applications; that agricultural use of isotopes had continuing gains with improved management of crops and livestock diseases and pests; that considerable progress had been made in the diagnosis and localization of brain tumors with the use of radioactive iodine and, more recently, that there had been encouraging results with certain other radioactive materials in that application, with radioactive arsenic having shown particular promise. It had also referred to new test methods being used in the 1957 Nevada tests, in which some nuclear devices were suspended from a balloon or placed deep underground, the report indicating that the use of captive balloons to lift the experimental device to an altitude sufficient to prevent the detonation fireball from reaching the ground had appreciably reduced the local fallout of radioactive materials, and that in the underground test, all radiation had been prevented from escaping.
Another report indicates that the possibility of using nuclear explosives for excavation, such as a super-dynamite, was also being studied by the AEC, with a primary emphasis given to the potential excavation application. It indicated that the underground test held at the Nevada test site the prior September 19, to determine the feasibility of underground testing of weapons, was expected to provide information which would be of interest to the project. It said that a tunnel had been dug horizontally into a mesa and at its end, it was bent in almost a complete circle, into which had been placed a nuclear device of known low explosive yield at the tunnel's end, so that the detonation would seal off the nearby main tunnel with rocks before radiation products could escape, the objective of the experiment, to contain all radiation, having been achieved.
In Scottsbluff, Neb., Charles
Starkweather, who had been caught on Wednesday near Douglas, Wyo.,
following his murder spree involving 11 victims, killed by gun, knife
and clubbing, had made an oral confession to all of the murders,
stating, "I always wanted to be an outlaw." The local
sheriff at Lincoln said that Charles was "cool as a cucumber"
as the two sat in the backseat of a car on the first leg of a journey
back to Lincoln, the hometown of Charles, where the murder spree had
begun the prior December 1, with the killing of a service station
operator, then becoming rampant during the previous week, during
which ten victims had been killed. He was charged with first-degree
murder in Lincoln, where seven of the 11 victims had been slain. The
sheriff said that Charles had asserted that his 14-year old
girlfriend, Caril Fugate, who was with him during the week, had
nothing to do with the killings. Three members of Caril's family, her
stepfather, mother and baby sister, had been among the victims, the
first to be discovered and the first to have been killed in the prior
week. She also was facing first-degree murder charges in Lincoln. The
sheriff related that Charles, speaking freely and without a sign of
remorse, had told him: "I always wanted to be a criminal, but
not this big a one. I didn't mean for it to be this bad. I wanted to
be somebody. I wasn't mad at anybody." The sheriff said that he
had told him that he "just had a hatred that built up in himself
and that since he was a kid he wanted to be an outlaw." The
sheriff said that he had never seen "a more vicious and mad
killer who could talk so cool and collected." The sheriff did
not give all of the details about what Charles had said in their
128-mile ride to Scottsbluff from Douglas, where Charles had
surrendered after a chase and gunfire by police officers. (It does
not indicate whether any of the officers during the return trip
tossed Charles's hat out the window, or whether he was wearing a hat,
it appearing doubtful, as none of the reports so indicate. Had he
stolen a hat from the Ward house in Lincoln, none of the officers
would have tossed it, as it would have been a valuable piece of
evidence connecting him with the scene of the murders, taken into
custody during booking. Caril would admit in her post-arrest
statement within a few days, however, that she had taken a jacket
from the Ward house, which she had been wearing at the time of her
surrender, before Charles had fled at the roadside murder of his last
victim, a traveling salesman. Neither Charles nor Caril,
unfortunately, was really a very bright bulb
In New York, the Police Department was posting patrolmen at 41 schools to cope with an increase in violence among teenagers, the action being prompted by the rapes of two school girls, one in a school building, and the stabbing of two other girls, as well as various outbreaks of delinquency and the suicide of a school principal at a school beset by student violence. Both white and black teenagers had been involved in the disorders. A dispute between school officials on one side and a Brooklyn grand jury and a judge on the other, meanwhile, had exploded in vituperative charges and counter-charges, sparked by the principal's suicide, with school officials having indicated that a grand juror had threatened an indictment against the principal after a white girl at his school had been raped by a black teenager. The superintendent of schools said that a Kings County judge had referred to him in the presence of another school official as "arrogant, pompous, and swell-headed." The judge denied the charge and demanded that the 70-year old superintendent produce a witness to support the statement. The grand jury, probing the schools, was congratulated by the judge for bringing to light "this horrible, miserable mess that is now called our public school system."
In Newport, R.I., Robert R. Young, railroad magnate and Newport summer resident, following his suicide recently, had left all of his property, valued at more than 6 million dollars, to his widow, according to his will filed in probate this date.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Mao Tse Tung of Communist China had fired three non-Communist ministers from the Cabinet. They had been under severe attack for criticizing the Communist regime.
The D.C. Court of Appeals, by a 5 to 4 vote, this date had upheld the contempt of Congress conviction of Harry Sacher, a New York defense attorney in Communist causes.
In Raleigh, whiskey produced by Glenmore Distillers was "banned" for 60 days in the state, but consumers in Mecklenburg County and many other areas would not know it. The so-called ban prohibited the State ABC Board from selling Glenmore products to local ABC units. But most larger units had a 60-day supply on hand and consumers could buy it until the stocks ran out. The ban did not prevent the ABC units from selling the existing stocks during the 60-day period.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that it cost two dollars to find out, but they had found out whether two cars could park as cheaply as one in Charlotte, finding that for the same penny, two cars could be parked in a space usually thought for one car, in this instance both Volkswagens. But they had to remove the bumpers from each vehicle to make it work and had to search assiduously for a spot large enough, it still having taken some maneuvering to get both cars into the single space. After the cars had been parked, a patrolman scratched his head and placed a call to headquarters, saying that they were not going to get him mixed up in the situation, not knowing whether to give both cars a citation when the meter expired, or only one. A lieutenant arrived and he ruled that if both cars were parked within the white lines, they were parked legally, but that if time were to run out, both would receive citations. As the meter had run, the officer wrote a citation for each borrowed Volkswagen. The newspapermen had measured dozens of spaces in the downtown area and had found only one which measured 25 feet in length, to accommodate the two Volkswagens, and the officer told them that if they checked back during the afternoon, they would find the white lines on the space repainted, that he intended to call the City traffic engineer, Herman Hoose, right away. It would have made a good ad for the little bug.
On the editorial page, "Let's Keep Summerville as Coroner" urges retention of coroner Dr. W. M. Summerville, despite his announcement of plans not to run for re-election. He had told the newspaper that if they could not obtain a replacement, he would not leave, indicating that his only reason for running in the past had been that he would hate for the county not to have a pathologist as coroner.
It indicates that when Shakespeare had said "murder will out", he had not conceived of the myriad ways which had been found to commit the homicidal act. In some North Carolina counties, even fairly obvious murder had gone undetected because of inept and untrained coroners. A coroner in Wilmington not many years earlier had described as natural the death of a woman who, when her body had later been exhumed, was found to have died of a bullet in her back. One of the four husbands dispatched by the notorious Grandma Doss had been a North Carolinian, but his murder was belatedly discovered because of the suspicions of relatives, not because the coroner had detected foul play at the time of his death. Those cases and others like them had spurred the General Assembly to a half-hearted effort to remedy the defects of the coroner system.
It finds that by virtue of the versatile talents of Dr. Summerville, however, Mecklenburg had been in the enviable position of having a coroner system which worked exceptionally well and the county should not part with those talents willingly.
"The U.S. Satellite: It Must, It Must..." indicates that public notice had been given during the week that Sputnik II would be visible around sundown in the sky over Charlotte, that it had not acted on the notice, preferring to sit inside and keep fingers crossed for the technicians who were trying so desperately to launch the first U.S. satellite.
There had been two failures by the Navy to get the Vanguard off the ground, while the Army sought to lift off its Jupiter-C and prove that it could have launched a satellite three years earlier, all the while as Sputnik II continued to orbit the globe since November 4.
There were also political pressures at stake, as the Republicans, should they continue to be unable to point to a U.S. satellite in the sky in the very near future, could suffer a slaughter at the polls in November, with candidates prepared to take full credit for the launch if it were to occur. It indicates that when the launch would finally take place, the politicos would be rushing before television cameras and proclaiming the feat proudly. "The thing must—it simply must fly before the polls close."
It finds it strange that the politicians were at the mercy of the scientists when not long earlier, some of them had been attempting to dictate to scientists the exact areas in which their minds could function.
It shares the sentiments of a woman who had watched an Air Force missile shakily begin its ascent and then shouted: "Go, baby, go!" Yet it reminds the nervous candidates that when the U.S. satellite did finally fly, it would be the beginning and not the end of the contest. The U.S. would remain in second place and it remained to be seen when it might obtain parity with the Soviets, being dependent on the politicians in Congress. It hopes that the glory they sought would not blind them to their task in the current session in preparing the U.S. to fulfill its responsibilities to the future of freedom.
"The Political Teapot Refused To Boil" indicates that there once had been a young lady named Martha, a good, hard-working young girl whom everyone seemed to like, and one day, she had met a young man who had no worldly goods but with whom she fell in love. He then fell in love with her and they got married. The young man worked hard and rose quickly in his work, while the young lady learned to darn and mend and raise children, clean house and cook. They were a happy couple and, as the years passed, fortune smiled on them. The young man had run for political office and won, continued to climb, and one day found himself governor of a great state. His young lady still cooked and darned and raised children, but she learned to do something else, to pour tea.
It finds it too bad, for tea-pourers were often disliked by non-tea-pourers. So one of the latter wishing to be one of the former, decided that he had to do something and decided to call her a nasty name, a Republican. It was a vulgar thing to do, but the young lady continued quietly to pour tea, and as far as the piece understood, would live happily ever after.
We also haven't the foggiest as to what the piece is trying to say.
"Mr. Burpee & the Ladies Will Succeed" indicates that it and four million other Americans were indebted to David Burpee for sending along the 83rd edition of his firm's seed catalogue, easing the burden of a cold, gray postman on a cold, gray morning and its own apprehensions of an interminable winter. "It is a deep gloom indeed that cannot be lightened by leafing through the technicolored contents of a compendium devoted to descriptions of sweetpeas and dahlias, morning glories and nasturtiums, corn, tomatoes and marigolds."
Mr. Burpee had to have confidence that millions of people would place billions of his seeds into the soil, thus assuring the beauty of lawns and gardens and the solvency of his business, and it wishes him and his fellow seed merchants success.
The ladies around Charlotte had formed more than 100 garden clubs, and when the list was read, there was a soft trace of poetry, for instance in the Dawn 'til Dark Garden Club, the Till and Toil, the Swinging Hoe, the Hoe and Hope, and the Merry Hearts clubs. The names demonstrated that the ladies were intimately acquainted with the requirements of gardening, and it finds that with the help of Mr. Burpee, they would be bringing spring into bloom. It suggests that uncivilized males ought be able to look forward to lots of shirt-sleeved leisure in the days ahead.
A piece from the Redwood City (Calif.) Tribune, titled "Anyway, U Win", indicates that Burma's spokesman at the recent UNESCO conference had the discouraging name U Thant—future Secretary-General of the U.N., but that the Republic of Korea had sent to the U.S. Ambassador Yang You Chan.
"Whether we Chan or Thant, Burma concedes us the victory. Her ambassador for the United States is U Win."
Drew Pearson indicates that it was the week of the birthday of Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, son of a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who had pioneered the atomic submarine for the U.S. He indicates that if one read the still secret Gaither Report and studied the lag in American defenses unearthed by the Senate Preparedness subcommittee chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson, one would find that the one weapon in which the U.S. was definitely ahead of Russia was the atomic submarine. He indicates that the reason for the lead was the persistent Naval officer who had buttonholed his superiors, bothered fellow officers and kept hammering home the idea of an atomic submarine until it was built. As recently disclosed in the subcommittee hearings, Admiral Rickover's idea had received such a lukewarm reception in the Navy, still somewhat wedded to the battleship at the time, that he was given as an office an abandoned ladies' room after the wartime Waves had subsided.
He had almost been eased out of the Navy five years earlier. In 1952, Mr. Pearson had reported that a Naval Selection Board had passed him over for promotion, meaning that in one additional year, he would be retired. When Mr. Pearson had published that fact and called it to the attention of then-Secretary of the Navy Robert Anderson, the latter had stepped in and with what amounted to an order that then-Captain Rickover be promoted, he had become a Rear Admiral.
Now, however, he again faced the prospect that he would be dropped under Navy rules, as he had to be promoted again during the current year. If he was passed over, he was out of the Navy for good.
He had been born in Poland, had come to the country as a boy, worked to help his father run a tailor shop in the slums of Chicago, and when he got to Annapolis by appointment of the late Congressman Adolph Sabath, born in Czechoslovakia, he was out of step, including at all the social events at the Academy, which counted with the Navy brass.
He was especially out of step when he began demanding that the Navy build an atomic submarine, with most of his superiors believing him crazy, not believing that an atomic submarine could be possible for another quarter century. But he persisted in being out of step and a few of his superiors, notably Admiral Earle Mills, then head of the Bureau of Ships, and Admiral Chester Nimitz, had supported him.
He was at cross-purposes with Rear Admiral Albert Mumma, one of the Navy's best submariners and a highly competent officer. The latter had been promoted to be head of the Bureau of Ships, in charge of building all ships, including atomic submarines, and it had been when Captain Rickover had been clashing with Admiral Mumma in the days when an atomic submarine was still simply a concept of the captain. At that time, the latter had been given the office in the former ladies' restroom. Now, with the big Naval race with Russia to build an atomic submarine which could launch a missile from underwater, with Russia having an underwater submarine missile, the Comet, while the U.S. had none, the U.S. was rushing work on the Skip Jack, an atomic submarine which could launch the Polaris missile.
Admiral Rickover had been asked by the counsel for the Johnson Preparedness subcommittee about the Polaris missile, with which he indicated that he was not involved, though he knew of it. He said that he was only involved in supplying components for the Skip Jack submarine and had nothing to do with the submarine, itself.
Walter Lippmann indicates that the U.S. was now engaged with negotiating with the Russians on how there could be negotiation with the Russians. White House press secretary James Hagerty, during an appearance on "Face the Nation", had made a statement contributing to the confusion regarding the subject, saying that the President meant that he was "ready to meet in a summit meeting" with Nikita Khrushchev, provided Secretary of State Dulles and the other foreign ministers could "agree on what we can discuss." Until that point, it had been assumed that the President's position was that there would be no summit meeting until Secretary Dulles had negotiated agreements which could be approved, leaving the summit meeting between the two heads of state only to approve agreements on some of the major issues which had already been negotiated at the lower levels. Mr. Hagerty had gone on to say that "they did not have to reach agreement" even on the areas of discussion, for "as the President said, we would merely like to know what we would like to discuss."
Thus, it sounded as if the President was prepared to go to the summit meeting with nothing more agreed on than a list of topics that the Russians and the U.S. would like to discuss, but Mr. Hagerty could not have meant that as it directly contradicted Mr. Dulles. Mr. Hagerty's off-hand remarks on the program were not a state document for which he could be held strictly accountable, but there was some plausibility in believing that he had reflected something like the spirit of the President's personal attitude as distinguished from the letter of the official line from Mr. Dulles.
The basic issue was whether to negotiate at the lower levels and then meet at the summit, or to meet at the summit and then negotiate below. There were two schools of thought on that point, the orthodox school representing not only Mr. Dulles but also former State Department planner George Kennan, President Heuss of West Germany and the great majority of professional diplomats and experienced observers in foreign affairs. They distrusted and disliked spectacular meetings at the summit, except to celebrate agreements reached quietly down below. Another school believed that the only way to promote fruitful and serious negotiations below was to give them a push from the summit, thus wanting to hold a meeting at the summit in the hope that it would cause substantial negotiations to begin below. Their argument was that in dealing with a dictatorship such as the Soviet Union, nothing could be initiated and nothing decided except by the small oligarchy at the top. Until the leading members of the ruling oligarchy could make personal contact with the man at the top with whom they had to negotiate, they had to depend on their complicated and wooden bureaucracy, not merely for their information on the outside world but also for their understanding of what the information meant. They wanted to hear in a face-to-face meeting with the President personally what the American policy really was, not forced to depend on reports at the ambassadorial level, written presumably in bureaucratic jargon and with the stereotypes of the party line.
There was a case to be made for what might be described as a brief, preliminary exploratory meeting at the summit for the purpose of initiating serious diplomatic negotiations below. Mr. Lippmann indicates that it appeared to him to be a strong case but not a conclusive one, for there might be ways of dealing with the central point of the argument without the risks and disadvantages of an improvised meeting at the summit.
Doris Fleeson indicates that House Speaker Sam Rayburn had been "at the borning" of every regulatory agency of the Government except the ICC, and considered them one of his most valuable legacies to the people. Of late, he had become convinced that they were now dominated by people who were out of sympathy with their objectives and did not understand how to make them function in accordance with the will of Congress, therefore had decided it was time that the House take a new look at them.
Mr. Rayburn did not like special investigating committees, with experience having suggested to him that they were instigated by publicity seekers for publicity purposes. It was therefore arranged that a subcommittee ought investigate the regulatory agencies. Representative Morgan Moulder of Missouri was picked to head the subcommittee, and he had chosen Dr. Bernard Schwartz, professor of law at NYU, to be its counsel, with the House having provided it a budget of $250,000. The subcommittee had been slow to start, now breaking into the news with bleak but clear implications from a subcommittee source that it was somehow desired to spare the FCC from embarrassment. The Speaker's nephew, Ross Bartley, was a member of the FCC.
The subcommittee had refused to start public hearings with a memorandum from Dr. Schwartz, stressing unethical conduct, such as personal favors received from industry members on the part of the FCC commissioners. Instead, the subcommittee majority had voted for a "general survey" hearing which would bring in heads of six Government agencies, including the FCC. The Schwartz memorandum was promptly leaked to the New York Times.
In back of that not unfamiliar pattern of events was a story of personality difficulties and misunderstandings. The Speaker and the chairman of the parent Committee, Oren Harris, had wanted a probe which went to the heart of the matter, wanting all independent agencies manned by ethically sensitive persons, willing to have any such failures discussed in the course of the hearings. The Speaker was determined not to have what he termed privately "a fly-specking scandal story," being aware that the power of economic life and death over major industries was vested in the regulatory agencies which he had helped to create. He apparently felt that the approach of Dr. Schwartz was not sufficiently fundamental.
Experienced members of Congress had suggested a technical reason for the present dispute, believing that no investigating committee did a proper job when it was dominated by counsel instead of the chairman. They liked and respected Representative Moulder, but they had noticed that he did not work very hard, suggesting that he had not given Dr. Schwartz the firm direction necessary for such an enterprise. Ms. Fleeson finds that no hearings in many years had created a greater social and economic potential than those projected for the Moulder subcommittee, with its task appearing to have been greatly complicated, though Representative Harris, who was also a subcommittee member, had promised to proceed at full gallop on the project.
A letter writer from Mooresville thinks it a crying shame that the citizens of the state had in their midst a man such as J. R. Cherry, Jr., and did not send him to Washington. "Why, with his brains, he could do for us poor working folks what old Moses did for the children of Israel—lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land. Not only is our foreign policy caving in, but our domestic policies also." He indicates that former President Truman had not been a hypocrite, that when he was for something, he was for it all the way, and while he had been in office, the Commies did not take an inch of ground anywhere in the world, that since then, they had been taking here and there and were on the verge of taking over all of India. President Eisenhower had stopped the Korean War, but anyone could have stopped it by appeasing the Commies, giving back the territory the allies had captured. He points out that former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had stopped Hitler several times, and in the end, there was a great cost to pay, with the next world war to be a thousand times worse. He again reiterates that it was a shame to have in their midst a person who could cure all of their ills, suggesting that the editors start a campaign to get Mr. Cherry to Washington to put "those stupid idiots in their place."
Back in 1948, the students at UNC, during his undergraduate years, had promoted him as a presidential candidate, and so Mr. Cherry was accustomed to the adulation.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that while he had been recuperating from the flu recently, he had become involved in the "fiasco" regarding pay television versus free television, finding that pay-TV would be welcomed by many during the soap opera time slot, taking over much of channels 3 and 9. He finds that channel 3 had taken a great step forward when Arthur Smith and his "popcorn balls" came on in the early morning, finding it a great boon to radio stations locally. He suggests that if viewers were willing to pay money to watch a pay program, the present quality of "free" television had to be "stinkeroo". He says that he would have gone broke had pay-TV been on the air during the previous three days, that free television followed the old rule that one got what one paid for and finds it debatable as to whether the electric bill for an average free-TV hour was adequately repaid in B entertainment, even if a rich uncle gave the person the set and if the purchaser had bought it on time payments.
B TV? It must be time for...
Had Charles and Caril perhaps watched that
show the previous week, rather than the Friday "Thin Man" episode
titled "Unlucky Lucky Number
Correction: It is available
NASA's Gemini IX mission, incidentally, splashed down on June 6, 1966. You know what that means
So, the detectives will still be asking what the significance is of 610 or June 10. We suppose it could have something to do with "Leave It to Beaver", or in keeping with the cast of the episode in question from January 24, it might be viewed as pertaining to the story this date out of the AEC, looking down the road to the future. That begs the question of how it might relate to Charles and Caril. Perhaps, Charles was radioactive to the extreme.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.