The Charlotte News
Thursday, January 9, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the President this date had given Congress an
eight-point "safety through strength" program for dealing
with the Russian threat in space, as part of his State of the Union message delivered in person this date to a joint session. It included
defense reorganization to unify control and end interservice
rivalries. He said that America's military strength at present was
great and provided a powerful deterrent to war, but that the dangers
the U.S. faced were real and that unless it acted wisely and
promptly, "we could lose the capacity to defend ourselves"
and to deter a Soviet attack. He said that the country could make no
more tragic mistake "than to concentrate merely on military
strength", which he believed could lead to an age of terror. He
believed also that Russia's massive economic offensive against the
U.S. and the rest of the free world also posed a great danger. He
said that the nation's first need was to assure that military
organization sped rather than hindered the functioning of the
military establishment, that there had to be an acceleration all
along the line, including protection and further dispersal of U.S.
striking forces, plus more adequate warning facilities in case of
attack, continuation and strengthening of the mutual security program
of foreign aid, and extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act,
among the eight points he referenced. The address was carried
nationwide on both television
In Hong Kong, an American mother was reunited this date in Shanghai with her son who was imprisoned for life by the Communist Chinese on espionage charges. She had not seen him in 11 years. She said that she felt wonderful and that her son was looking very good. He had been held by the Communist Chinese since 1951, was a 38-year old former businessman in Shanghai. Another mother had also seen her son in a prison at Peiping, according to a news agency report from Peiping, and she said she had found him "very fit and in good spirits." She and her younger son had visited the prisoner for two hours. He had been imprisoned since 1952, serving a life sentence on espionage charges. The Chinese Red Cross, which was handling arrangements for the visits, had driven the latter mother and her other son to the prison in an American car. They had been read the prison regulations which forbade discussion of the sentence or of life in jail. They were then taken into a small reception room with whitewashed walls and a marble-topped table. During the reunion, a prison official stood by while an interpreter made notes on the conversation, and pictures were taken. He told his mother that he spent much of his time reading and asked for more books. His mother said that they had taken to him candy, cigarettes, fruitcake and fresh fruit, that no clothes had been brought because her son had said he did not need any.
In Havana, 80 Cuban fishermen aboard 16 boats, who had been feared lost in a storm off the northern coast of Cuba, had been found safe this date at Anguila Key.
In Philippeville, Algeria, a rebel mine had derailed 20 cars of a train this date on the line to be used to bring Sahara crude oil to the Mediterranean port.
In Kunsan, Korea, an airman was sentenced this date to three months at hard labor and a fine of $90 for the fatal shooting of a Korean girl at a bomb dump he had been guarding.
In London, Atlantic gales this date had driven a British submarine and a motorship aground, disrupted trans-Atlantic plane flights and killed at least three persons. All three of the deaths reported had been in Scotland. The captain of a fishing trawler was washed overboard, and a man and his wife had been killed when a brick wall was blown over and crashed into their home. There was heavy snow on the Continent in alpine regions and some Alpine passes had been blocked, with motorists warned of avalanches.
In Hollywood, Barbara Ann Burns, 19,
daughter of the late comedian Bob Burns
In Fond du Lac, Wisc., a burly factory worker who said he was jealous, admitted the previous night that he had shot and killed his former fiancée and her male companion the previous day, had then slept a few hours and then gone rabbit hunting. He made the admissions in a signed statement to police while held in the county jail with no charge having yet been filed. He had interrupted a lie detector test he was taking at the State crime laboratory in Madison and told the Fond du Lac county district attorney that there was no need to continue, that he had done it. His fiancée had been shot four times in the face and her companion had been struck in the head by three bullets. Their bodies had been discovered the previous morning in the male's car parked in front of the fiancée's apartment. The former fiance told police that after work he had encountered the couple in the wee hours of the morning and chatted with them for several moments before opening fire with what authorities believed had been a .45-caliber automatic pistol.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Rockingham that the witness who had testified the previous day in the trial of Frank Wetzel, accused of first-degree murder of a State Highway Patrolman, Wister Reece, also accused separately of the murder of another Highway Patrolman, to be tried separately, had spent a grueling three hours on the witness stand as the State's star witness and had emerged from the courtroom the previous night weary and disheveled after the 12-hour session of court. He had positively identified Mr. Wetzel as the driver of the vehicle from whom he had hitched a ride, until the car was pulled over by the patrolman near Ellerbe, at which point Mr. Wetzel had pulled a revolver from the glove compartment, emerged from the vehicle, fired a single shot, and then reentered the car and took off, with the witness having in the meantime exited from the car on the other side and hidden in a ditch. On cross-examination, the defendant's lawyer had gotten the witness to admit that he received five dollars in Washington from a pervert who had "felt of" him. He had also admitted not looking Mr. Wetzel straight in the face during their time in the car and had admitted that his identification at Central Prison in Raleigh, where Mr. Wetzel had been kept pending trial, had largely been based on a voice identification, his certainty of which was cinched for him by Mr. Wetzel's pronunciation of the word "Bible".
Bill Hughes and Mr. Scheer further report that during the trial this date, the State had tied Mr. Wetzel to an abandoned stolen car found in Chattanooga, Tenn., from which four fingerprints had been lifted by the FBI, matching those of Mr. Wetzel. A thumbprint on a North Carolina license tag allegedly stolen in Madison, N.C., and three prints on an electric razor adapter found in the abandoned car the night after the murder of the patrolman, had matched the prints of Mr. Wetzel taken at Raleigh's Central Prison, according to a fingerprint expert who testified, a 17-year veteran of the FBI. He said that the four prints had compared exactly with those of Mr. Wetzel taken in prison. The car abandoned in Chattanooga was the same one which the State contended Mr. Wetzel had been driving when the patrolman had pulled him over on November 5 and shortly thereafter was fatally shot. Among items found in the car had been a number of pistols, rifles and ammunition which a store owner in Pennsylvania had said had been stolen from his store sometime during the night of November 3. One of the pistols had been a .44-caliber pearl-handled magnum, which the store owner called "the highest powered revolver made anywhere in the world." The store owner said that he had fired the gun two or three days before it was stolen, cleaned it and removed the bullets. The State considered the evidence primary as it was generally believed that the bullets which had killed both of the patrolmen could have been from a magnum pistol. Testimony regarding the killing of the other highway patrolman was also slated to be presented, though the murder charge in that case, arising in a separate county, was not at issue at present.
Lindsay Warren, one of North Carolina's best-known political figures, had announced this date that he was stepping out of retirement to return to the political arena. The former Congressman, who had also served 13 1/2 years as U.S. Comptroller General, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the State Senate.
On the editorial page, "The Mayor Keeps Faith with a Vision" finds that Charlotte Mayor Jim Smith had presented the citizens with a series of New Year's resolutions which could and had to be kept. Some of the 15 points he had raised were new, some old, but all were designed to add to the strength and substance of the city. It goes through some of the 15 proposals, indicates that a combination of strong leadership and civic enthusiasm had made Charlotte a shining symbol of Southern progress and a wonderful place to live and work, but indicates that it could not remain that kind of place without vision and effort, commends Mayor Smith for keeping faith with the vision of all of those who had built the city.
"Tar Heel Justice: A Boat Awash" indicates that Governor Luther Hodges had paused significantly in his annual report to the people, on the problem of judicial reform, indicating that the state had the means to make a long overdue and substantial improvement in the administration of justice in the courts of the state and that it must not let the opportunity fail.
It finds that the Governor could not have chosen a more deserving subject for public concern. It suggests that when a boat was already awash and almost swamped, the immediate remedy was not to add more oarsmen or new oarlocks, that the water had to be bailed out and the leaks plugged, and if it still was not seaworthy, the hull might have to be redesigned.
A committee of the North Carolina Bar Association was at work on the problem, headed by Senator J. Spencer Bell of Mecklenburg County. It indicates that the administration of justice in the state was far from perfect and it was confident that Senator Bell and his colleagues would provide appropriate remedies without tampering with the jury system or suggesting that any fundamental rights be abridged in the interest of efficiency.
"Charlotte Shares Mr. Dowdy's Honor" praises the honor accorded George Dowdy, executive vice-president and general manager of Belk Brothers Co. in Charlotte, in being named president of the National Retail Merchants Association in New York the previous day. The late David Ovens of J. B. Ivey & Co. had been named president of the Association in 1934, becoming the first Southerner to head the organization.
Mr. Dowdy was one of several Southerners who had gained national prominence in retail merchandising since the mid-Thirties. He had succeeded Richard H. Rich of Atlanta as president of the Association.
It indicates that Mr. Dowdy was one of the South's outstanding practitioners in a demanding field and had been active in the Association for many years, was past president of the Charlotte Merchants Association and of the North Carolina Merchants Association, and was president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce in 1955. It reiterates that Charlotte was proud of him and proud of the honor he had brought to the community.
A piece from the Norfolk
Virginian-Pilot, titled "When You Say That, Don't Smile",
indicates that Senator Lyndon Johnson had said in a recent interview
that the nation's missile program needed the supervising hand of some
"sundowners"
It indicates that the term was as salty as the Senator had implied. For as Naval men used it, it was closer to describing a cantankerous than an efficient captain. Leland Lovette, in Naval Customs, Traditions and Usage, a standard work, had defined it thus: "Derived from the strict captains who once required that all officers and men be aboard by sunset; now used for a martinet or a strict disciplinarian." John Noel, in Naval Terms Dictionary, defined it similarly as: "An unreasonably strict disciplinarian; a martinet."
It finds that the exact origin of the term was unknown but the Lovette version was the popular one. Sea-story tellers believed that the term originally meant a captain who rejected the Old Navy regulation of knocking off ship's work at 3:30 p.m., with supper being spread on the decks half an hour later.
Gallagher, foremastman in the Iroquois, in Room To Swing a Cat, a book which Frederick J. Bell, a Norfolk native, had written while being a Naval lieutenant, had described a captain who seemed to fit the term "sundowner". Gallagher had fallen overboard during a midwatch and was rescued by a boat, brought aboard dripping wet, but his reception was to be ordered triced up and given a dozen lashes with cat-o'-nine tails. The captain had explained that the punishment was earned "because you left the ship without permission."
It indicates that Senator Johnson was persuaded that there was a place for the sundowner.
"Where so much power is vested
in one man, the personality of the captain determined the happiness,
the smartness and the efficiency of everyone on board,"
according to Mr. Bell. "He could be ruthless, quick to punish,
and hold the respect, if not the love, of his crew. But if he showed
indecision, or lost his wits in a tight spot, then his usefulness was
over, for while a crew would stay with a driver, a sundowner
Drew Pearson indicates that another important purge was due in the Eisenhower guided missile program, missiles czar William Holaday. The Administration was trying to entice Carter Burgess, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former president of TWA, to replace him. Mr. Burgess had a good record in both the Defense Department and at TWA, but finally had crossed wires with TWA owner Howard Hughes.
The exit of Mr. Holaday would climax a steady stream of missile experts who had either resigned or been fired, or otherwise come in conflict with the Administration. They included Trevor Gardner, the missile executive for the Air Force who had resigned in protest against the Administration's slow progress in missile development; Col. John Nickerson, who had protested against alleged favoritism toward General Motors by former Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, and had been court-martialed; Eger Murphree, special assistant for missiles, who had also left, having been in charge of Esso Standard Oil's gasoline experiments with the Nazi cartel I. G. Farben to withhold vitally important gasoline patents from the U.S. during the war; and Lt. General James Gavin, the top Army missile expert who had recently resigned in protest over the program.
He indicates that a new police-state method of using income taxes to pry into the lives of prospective jury members had New York attorneys up in arms. Income taxes were supposed to be private and it was a punishable offense for any tax official to leak information regarding tax returns. Until the time of the late Senator McCarthy's investigations, that restriction had applied to other Government agencies also. But when Frank Costello, one time king of the gambling world, had been on trial for income tax evasion in New York, his attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, had suspected that the Government had been probing into the tax records of jurors. He asked blunt questions and the U.S. District Court judge in the case ruled that he could get the answers, despite the strenuous objections from the Government. Mr. Williams had found that the Justice Department had asked the Treasury for the tax returns of 200 prospective Federal jurors and examined them to see whether they were favorable to the Government, whether they had high or low incomes, etc. On the basis of the returns, Government attorneys had classified the prospective jurors and managed to select for the jury those favorable to the Government's position. The jury had convicted Mr. Costello, who was now appealing on the basis that his wires had been tapped for three years, that the jury had its income taxes examined by the Government, and that a mail cover was placed on his mail for the purpose of interviewing anyone who wrote to him. The New York Bar Association had filed a brief supporting Mr. Costello in his appeal and New York lawyers were pointing out that if the jury was under income tax scrutiny, it was likely to have felt intimidated and voted with the Government for a conviction.
Marquis Childs indicates that there was a sharp difference of opinion within the Administration over what was likely to occur with the economy during 1958 and what to do about it. The official view was that of Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, who had predicted a "mild dip" and then an upturn. The contrary view was that the year was likely to see a continuing decline unless measures far more drastic than any presently contemplated were quickly undertaken.
Since the previous September, Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had been warning in Cabinet meetings that trouble lay ahead of a more serious nature than the Cabinet had recognized. With the aid of the able staff of economic analysts within the Department of Labor, Secretary Mitchell had taken a reading of what the sharp cutbacks in defense spending, on top of the tight money policy, were likely to produce. But so intent had been the President on cutting back from the unauthorized rate of military spending of 42 billion dollars per year to 35 billion, that the warning had gone unheeded.
The nation's leading economists agreed with the view of Secretary Mitchell over that of Secretary Weeks. At a meeting of top-level economists in Philadelphia during the holidays, all had been in agreement that the economy would continue to decline in 1958. When future Federal Reserve Board chairman Arthur Burns, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, called for some optimism, no hand had been raised at the meeting.
The figure for unemployment at present was believed to be about 3.8 million, and by the end of the current month, with certain seasonal influences, it was expected to rise to about 4.5 million, compared with 2.8 million two years earlier.
For March, the total unemployment might be as high as 6 million and if it reached that level with Congress in session in an election year, the drive for a tax cut would be almost irresistible. Although the Administration was strongly opposed to any reduction in taxes, the pressure might be too great to resist.
A further decline in the economy would have one beneficial effect, that it would help to bring down prices, with the outlook for the year being for an end of the continuing inflation of the previous year. But there were unknowns greater than the knowns. The slight rise in the cost of living at the end of 1957 had been attributable to the increase in the cost of automobiles. But since new car sales were slow, dealers would soon begin to offer discounts again, and that would likely eliminate that factor. The freeze in Florida in December had caused a sharp increase in the price of citrus fruits, and that could be reflected in the January and February consumer price index. The following fall, with a large crop of hogs coming on the market, the price not only of pork but also of all meats ought drop. The end of the year might see a fairly marked decline in the cost of living.
There was almost as much controversy over the meaning of what was occurring to the economy as over what the future held. The official view in the Administration was that it was a readjustment, a pause, with the certainty that when it ended, the economy would move on to new heights. Various expressions had been used to describe it, one being a "rolling readjustment on a high plateau", having a slightly humorous sound as the adjustment had continued to roll.
But economists from the New and Fair Deals, such as Leon Keyserling, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, had taken a more serious view of what was taking place. Added weight had to be given to their opinion because at least six months earlier, they had been saying that what was occurring was more serious than anyone had officially admitted. In the view of Mr. Keyserling, the trouble was that the capacity to make goods outstripped the ability of people to buy them. Prices and dividends under that analysis had been rising faster than wages. From January, 1956 to November, 1957, industrial production had declined by 2.8 percent, according to Mr. Keyserling, while prices had risen 4.5 percent.
It suggested the nature of the big economic controversy of the year. Labor was already saying that wages had to go up so that the mass of consumers could buy the goods of industry, while industrial executives replied that past wage increases had caused inflation and brought on the economic decline. The dispute, which was fought out on the picket lines in strikes already visible on the economic horizon, would have a lot to do with what kind of a year 1958 turned out to be.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that he had been regarding the offspring of his friends lately with apprehension not unmixed with pity, since it appeared that the teenage male was being house broken before he was barely weaned, indicating that his natural sympathy was with the male.
He had heard that going steady now started in the early teens and progressed toward the grave. Females, he had been told, chose the haberdashery, preached against smoking and even took over the male's allowance, doling out dimes on a budget basis. The Youth Research Institute had said with some alarm that "the strange part about all this is that the boys fight fiercely for independence from parental control, and then in many cases will turn around and meekly hand hard-won victories over to their girlfriends."
He recommends fighting to retain independence, that even if girlfriends attempted to buy the male's ties, the male should wither them with caustic comments on their sloppy appearance, and show up in neckwear so atrocious that they would plead with the boy to burn it. He says it was known as a Mexican compromise.
He had heard that females were reversing nature's ancient law which had it that boys chased girls, as most of the predatory activity was being initiated by females at present.
He concludes that going steady was unhealthy, reminds that once a male was married, they were going steady the rest of their life until a divorce, and then the whole dreary process would start over again. "A little variety in the young buck stage might prevent you from a session with the lawyers, later." He would soon have been married 20 years the coming August, implies that he always obeyed his wife when she alerted him that dinner was ready. "That's what happens when they catch you too young."
A letter writer from Clover, S.C., indicates that with the Rockefeller Report indicating how to reorganize the military, implying vast revolutionary changes generally, and as other foundations appeared to settle the country's problems, from segregation to education, he questions whether it was time to become realistic and add to the customary three branches of government a fourth, the foundations.
A letter writer from Clinton, S.C., quotes the Bible from the story of Cain and Abel, indicates that if the U.S. did well, it would be accepted, that if not accepted, "there is a screw loose somewhere. At the present time, never has America been so rejected."
A letter writer says that in considering the outlook for the year, the one thing outstanding was relief from traffic congestion, the one necessary requirement for the year. He suggests that the most dangerous local proposal was school consolidation, as well as for a County office building across Fourth Street when there was ample room for a building to be connected with the present courthouse. He says that voters had elected County officials to handle the business of the County in the interest of the people who paid the bills, and had they wanted lawyers to operate the County business, they would have been elected. He advises doing what was in the interest of the people.
A letter from Jerry Ball, who had recently been raised in the air on a crane aboard a platform to play piano for several hours to raise money for the March of Dimes, lists several businesses, and The News and the local radio and television stations as having been instrumental in service to the March of Dimes campaign. He expresses gratitude for the tremendous response of those who had contributed generously to the campaign at Independence Square when he had gone "up in the air".
Yesterday, there appeared a piece on the editorial page on scapegoating for the national security lag in missile and satellite technology in 1957-58. It is apropos to note in that regard that the once and future "President" meanwhile here in 2025 was working assiduously in the last couple of days to produce a scapegoat for the fires besetting Los Angeles and its surrounding territory, the worst, most destructive in that city's fiery history
But that was not the issue. The problem was that a conflagration of historic proportions had taken place which overburdened the system of firefighting, beyond what could be sustained under any set of circumstances for which preparation could have been realistically arranged adequately within acceptable budget constraints for contingencies inconsonant with historical precedent. ("You want us taxpayers to pay money for what, which has never occurred in history? you lefty crazies.")
In fact, it was the case that the Santa Ana winds, the "devil winds"
The actual problem with the water system, however, was only that the gravity-fed reservoirs could not be replenished fast enough to supplant the water being used at unprecedented rates to fight the numerous individual fires sparked across the community. It was not literally absence of water resources. To complicate matters, the backup of airdrops of water brought in from the sea was unavailable as long as the high winds persisted because the water drops would be dissipated and the effort wasted.
There is, in short, no one person or body of persons on whom to place blame for this one, any more than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was responsible for the hurricane damage besetting his state or North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper was responsible for that affecting his state.
Man lives amid nature and cannot control it absolutely. He is not powerless against its many efforts to eliminate him from the face of the earth, but he cannot make contingency plans or be held responsible for every last possibility which nature holds for him in its steady rampaging campaign to conquer and extend and replenish itself, alike the naturally hungry animal it represents by analogy. To blame a governor or a mayor or any other single person, politician or even body of same, is a fool's play, signifying ignorance of science, nature and the place of man living in it, not in control of it.
Those, however, who ignore nature's ways, who doubt man's plain adverse impact, increscent since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, in accelerating any naturally occurring climate change, do contribute to the Los Angeles fires, as surely as if an individual arsonist through time and the chain of events leading to them, as well to the more frequently occurring hurricanes of high magnitude arising out of the turbulent Atlantic. If you continue to drive unremittingly a gas guzzler
Bear it in mind when you are seeking a scapegoat for the human misery laid out before all of us. It is certainly the climate-change deniers presently prominent among only Republicans, the "drill, baby, drill" shortsighted morons—not even recognizing that there has been more domestic oil production during the Biden Administration than in that of its predecessor—, who are plainly more responsible for the arrangement of conditions leading to the fires and greater incidence of fierce hurricanes than earlier, for the melting of the Arctic ice sheets and consequent raising and warming of the ocean, leading to the fiercer winds, than anyone else among us, for they lead the lemmings who follow breathlessly every word they utter as gospel, who truly, in their heart of hearts and nutty guts, believe them to be omniscient and omnipotent, over the cliff into Never-Neverland, dragging the rest of us down with them.
President Carter, though ruefully mocked at the time, having learned the proper adult lesson from the OPEC crisis of 1973-74, understood and presented a proper example for the American people, in keeping with his human rights agenda, eschewing the "royal Presidency" of his predecessors, to cut back on energy consumption, starting in his personal conduct in the White House and the White House motor pool, considered, however, in the end by 1980, a part of the "malaise", the "misery index", to be supplanted by "morning in America"—yippy, ki yi, yippy yi yeh, and shoot 'em up.
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