The Charlotte News

Tuesday, December 23, 1958

ONE EDITORIAL

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President's plan for a 77 billion dollar balanced budget the following year had been described by Democrats this date as unrealistic, but Republicans had called it a welcome Christmas present for the taxpayers. The President's announcement of his budget plans, unprecedented in advance of the opening of the new Congress on January 7, had indicated that defense spending would be higher and other expenditures would be "consistent with the public interest", without any general increase in taxes. The proposed budget would be two billion dollars below the current year's estimated 79.2 billion. At that level, a 12 billion deficit was anticipated for the current fiscal year, partly because the recession had cut expected Federal revenues. The President originally had forecast a 500 million dollar surplus for the year, based on lower spending, higher revenues and a proposed postal rate increase higher than that which Congress had later provided. Without providing details, the President said "reductions in total spending will be achieved in part by reason of the ending of temporary programs in agriculture unemployment insurance and housing." Part of the soil bank program and a recession-born program of extended unemployment compensation benefits were due to expire in the ensuing year. Although no general tax increase was to be sought, the President said that his budget would request higher postal rates and gasoline taxes, and some new user charges for Government services. Representative Clarence Cannon of Missouri, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee which would have first crack at the proposed appropriations, said that he was gratified at the plan for a balanced budget "but I am quite dubious about it. I don't see how he is going to get the extra revenue." Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma said that the announcement appeared to him to include "more wishful thinking than any realistic approach" to budgetary problems. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, assistant Democratic leader, commented that he could not see a gas tax increase as being in the cards and that the President would have trouble also in getting Congress to vote for another increase in postal rates.

The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this date that the cost of living in November had bounced back to its peak level recorded the previous July, rising by two-tenths of a percent between October and November to 123.9 percent of the 1947-49 base period. That equaled the prior cost-of-living record in July and was about two percent higher than November of the previous year. Ewan Clague, the Bureau's commissioner, said that greater sales of 1959 model cars at higher prices in November had been the major factor in the new cost-of-living increase. Most other groups of goods and services had advanced in price, but food and gasoline prices had been lower. The rise in the cost of living would mean a one-cent per hour pay increase for about a million workers in the steel, aluminum and meat-packing industries, whose contracts were geared to the cost-of-living index, with semiannual adjustments. Another group of 80,000 workers in scattered industries, including some municipal transportation systems, would receive varying increases under a quarterly adjustment system.

In Brownfield, Tex., four men had perished when a bottled gas truck had blown up in a shattering eruption shooting flames and steel the previous night, with an estimated 160 persons, most of whom were among about 250 spectators, suffering wounds and burns. About 45 remained hospitalized this date. Killed had been the gas truck driver, two firemen and a spectator. The fire which had caused the explosion was touched off by the collision of the bottled gas truck and a pickup truck, with the cab of the bottled gas truck overturning. Firemen indicated that the three-compartment tank on the truck had caught fire at both ends and the center tank had subsequently exploded, shooting metal and flames into the crowd, some of whom were standing in the immediate vicinity and the remainder across the highway. Twenty firemen had been alongside the truck at the time of the explosion. Residents of the small town of 7,000 had turned out to help the wounded and burned. A Methodist minister had called it "the most efficient disaster operation I ever saw." Soon, the small local hospital could receive no more injured and harried doctors and nurses had sent them elsewhere. Many injured had been taken to Lubbock, 40 miles to the northeast, and others to Andrews, Levelland and the Lubbock Air Force Base.

A report indicates that a pre-Christmas settlement of the paralyzing strikes against American and Eastern airlines appeared beyond reach this date, normally one of the busiest days of the year for the grounded airlines. Efforts of National Mediation Board officials in Washington on Monday had brought no immediate plans for a resumption of contract negotiations between American and the striking Air Line Pilots Association. The Board reportedly had sent telegrams to both sides suggesting new bargaining procedures. The chairman of the Board said that talks might begin again in a few days. There was no development in the stalemate between Eastern and its mechanics and flight engineers. A spokesman for Eastern said this date that booking for canceled flights had numbered about 31,000, the highest in the airline's history. American estimated that it would have carried about 30,000 passengers this date and on Christmas Eve. American estimated that its daily loss had been a million dollars since the pilots had walked out the previous Friday at midnight. Eastern had been grounded since November 24. Non-struck airlines, buses and railroads had expanded their facilities to try to fill the gap in the crush of holiday traffic. Serious delays in air mail deliveries were not widespread. The two strikes had grounded almost 400 planes, about one-third of the commercial U.S. airliners.

In New York, it was reported that former Metropolitan Opera star soprano Helen Traubel had said that she could never keep former First Daughter Margaret Truman on key when acting as her singing adviser. Ms. Traubel said that she had quit after three years, indicating: "I think her great fault was that she could not hear herself sing. She failed because she had no gift for self-criticism." In a pre-publication abstract of her memoirs, appearing in the January issue of Ladies' Home Journal, she said that her three years as Ms. Truman's adviser had cost her stature "in the eyes of the musical world for ever having my name connected with such a musical aspirant." She had written that she had consented to be the adviser in 1948 when Ms. Truman asked for help. She had found her voice to be "inexperienced and rather bad", adding: "My first, greatest and unconquerable difficulty with her voice was simply keeping her on key. There simply was not enough of everything—or of anything—to make her really a concert or light-opera singer." She said that she had become the adviser with the understanding that Ms. Truman would not appear in public concerts for at least five years. Soon, however, she had signed on for some appearances and after the first few concerts, Ms. Traubel had appealed to her student's father, reminding him of the agreement of about five years of study, resulting in the remainder of the concert series having been canceled. In the fall of 1951, Ms. Traubel had withdrawn completely and she indicated that when Mr. Truman had been advised of that decision by telephone, he had terminated the conversation by slamming down the receiver. Ms. Truman, who was presently the wife of Clifton Daniel, a New York Times foreign correspondent, said that she had not read the article, did not plan to do so, and would have no comment. The former President, who had once dashed off a notoriously vituperative letter to a Washington Post music critic, Paul Hume, who had provided Ms. Truman's public debut in Washington an unfavorable critique, also had no comment. Ms. Traubel stated in that regard: "After he had written his famous note to the music critic who had dared to say that Margaret had little talent, he confided to me, 'I should never have written that letter. But now [that] it's written, I'll stand by it.'"

In Wilmington, Del., it was reported that a teenage boy's snowman costume had caught fire when he lit a cigarette the previous day and he had run screaming through a clothing store, setting fire to the building. The 17-year old boy of Wilmington had been hired by the People's Clothing Store to help boost holiday business. He was reported to be in critical condition. While a phonograph had played the popular tune, "Frosty the Snowman", the boy, in costume, danced on the sidewalk outside the store. He lit the cigarette during a break in his routine and as he rushed through the block-long store, his burning costume set little fires in the piles of clothing on display. The fire had destroyed the store and damaged apartments in the three-story building, causing five people to be overcome by smoke. An assistant fire chief estimated damage to the building at between $75,000 and $125,000. An old Chinese proverb must say: Snowmen, even if sometimes portrayed with pipe, should not smoke, as the device will melt snow and destroy snowman.

Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the City School superintendent, Dr. E. H. Garinger, had said that the estimate of needy hungry schoolchildren in the City system was reliable. Meeting the previous day with the Social Planning Committee studying the problem, he had said that the Attendance Department social workers were sensitive to the need. It had been estimated that 2,000 City schoolchildren, most of whom were in the elementary grades, suffered without lunch each day because their parents could not afford to provide either a lunch in the cafeteria or even a sandwich from home. Several times during the two-hour meeting, Dr. Garinger had referred to a study of hungry schoolchildren conducted in 1951. At that time, he said, classroom teachers had reported that between 700 and 800 children were not receiving an adequate diet. A spot check of about every 26th family listed as needy had shown that half of them were not in actual need, according to the superintendent. At that time, however, the schools did not have trained social workers as it currently had. The 1951 study committee of 29 members had come to the conclusion that "there is definite evidence of a need for free or reduced cost lunches for children whose parents are unable to provide them." It had also indicated that the responsibility for determining the need and meeting it rested with the school authorities as long as Federal funds were used in the school lunch program. The superintendent predicted that the current committee findings would be the same and told members that he believed it foolish to waste time with another study. He said that the City lunchroom program would go bankrupt, however, if it fed all of the needy children. The director of the City school lunchroom program and the person in charge of City school finances also met with the committee the previous day, and the latter had said that it would require other funding to feed the needy hungry schoolchildren. During the discussion, there was some talk of increasing food items in junior and senior high schools. A standard plate lunch cost a quarter as served in the elementary grades, but junior and senior high school students had a choice as in a public cafeteria. Members of the committee would meet again on Monday to evaluate the information they had obtained from City and County officials. They probably would meet later to talk with the superintendent of the Welfare Department, Wallace Kuralt, and Anne Maley, director of lunchrooms for the State Department of Public Instruction. Just keep pushing us, daddio, with those shriveled up tube-steaks and little dried-up beans with no pork, trying to humor us with the rolls, which often are overly salted and overly steamed, the Sealtest items being about the only standard thing on the bill-of-fare which one can buy and be assured of a decent outing at lunchtime. Just keep pushing us and you are going to have a revolt on your hands that will make the average prison riot look tame. The kids who can't afford it probably are in better fettle than those who can, with this pig-slop gruel they feed us. We want top-grade sirloin, cooked exactly the way we specify, along with a choice of French fries or baked potato, and not those little shrivelly things either, which appear as wet shoestrings. And take that chicken pot pie and stick it, as it makes us upchuck just to look at it. Furthermore, please call the police to that split-pea soup. We also demand waiter and waitress service at our tables, as in the best of the private schools. Change, or else the heavens shall fall! Viva Fidel!

Bob Slough of The News concludes the series of pieces by prominent Charlotte residents regarding "The Christmas I Remember Best", instead providing "Their Best Christmas", referring to the recipients of portions of the Empty Stocking Fund, sponsored by the newspaper, a 27-year tradition which had just concluded its most successful year, with each appeal for funding having been written on the front page by Mr. Slough. He relates that he had stood in the doorway of a man's flat and looked past him and into the room. The man had put out a raw, cracked hand which was limp, almost lifeless, and said, "Come in." He waved at a chair and seated himself behind a potbellied stove. Mr. Slough had looked long at his face, finding it more than a face, mirroring more than a half-century of life, and, of late, despair and hopelessness. "His short, clipped speech was interrupted by a cough which came at short intervals and rattled through his chest. He panted as he spoke, pausing frequently to take great gulps of air into his lungs." The explanations he had given for his condition had been brief and had aptly fit his ability to give it: "Pneumonia, I'm just getting over it." The story he had told was one which had a true ring of familiarity, which Mr. Slough had heard many times in recent weeks, with only the names of his children and the individuality of the situation isolating his predicament having changed. He could provide nothing to his children on Christmas Day. Mr. Slough had seen the same pattern of life on numerous visits to such families. "The wife, weakened through years of constant struggle to rear more children than she and her husband could afford. The children, in tattered clothing, but all the father could give them. And the house, with a bed in the living room, and springs punched up through the covering on the couch, and cardboard put up at the window in an almost vain attempt to keep cold air out of the house." He indicates that it would be the best Christmas he had ever known because he knew that those families whom he had seen and many like them would be helped on Christmas Day by the Empty Stocking Fund. "A father will not be pained with a question from his child, 'Why didn't I get anything for Christmas?' A mother will not watch her little girl leap from bed and run to the Christmas tree to find nothing under it." His Christmas would be the best for he knew their Christmas would be the best.

On the editorial page, "A Santa's Sack of 10-Second Notions", instead of providing any heavy muse for the coming holidays, finding that local residents were more interested in gold, frankincense and myrrh than ballistic missiles and foreign aid or other major issues of the day, provides 14 brief comments on a potpourri of trifles, which, for their nature, you may read for yourself, as each is so brief that trying to digest any one of them would be simply to regurgitate it, and the print is quite clear. So, as the heading of the piece advises, "Reach right in and take your choice."