The Charlotte News
Saturday, December 27, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that civilians had been warned this date to keep clear of rebel positions as the Government proclaimed an all-out drive to wipe out the insurgents, led by Fidel Castro. El Presidente, rest assured, has everything under control, per his usual steady hand on the rudder.
In Khartoum, it was reported that U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was making an official two-day visit to the Sudan, having flown in the previous night from Gaza and scheduled to fly on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he would attend the first session of the African Economic Committee, a subsidiary of the U.N.
In San Diego, a wealthy former nightclub owner, 64-year old Tony Mirabile, who had been a witness before the State Senate rackets subcommittee earlier in the year, had been found murdered this date, shot and stabbed to death.
In Heidelberg, West Germany, an outbreak of smallpox had produced its first fatality this date in that headquarters city of the U.S. Army in Europe, a 72-year old patient who had died in a clinic where four doctors and several other employees had contracted the virus.
In Zichen Zussen Bolder, Belgium, it was reported that five victims of the underground mushroom farm cave-in had been buried this date while rescue workers continued to dig with faint hope of finding any survivors. Officials said that 18 persons had been trapped by the collapse of the tunnels the previous Tuesday.
In Tokyo, it was reported that two Japanese university mountain climbers had been reported missing this date, bringing the total missing throughout Japan to 18 during the previous two weeks.
The Associated Press reports that the death toll thus far for the prolonged Christmas holiday period had reached 392 in traffic accidents, 78 in fires and 56 in miscellaneous accidents, for a total of 526, with the traffic fatality toll climbing faster than pre-Christmas estimates, as millions of weekend travelers toured the country. The National Safety Council had said that the toll was ahead of a rate which would produce the 620 deaths which it had predicted for the four-day holiday period. But it added that there was a glimmer of hope that the automobile fatalities might fall short of the all-time holiday high of 705 in a similar Christmas period two years earlier. As usual, speed and careless driving had been blamed for most of the fatal accidents. Generally fair and warm weather had encouraged many motorists to speed along the highways. The Council said that it based its hopes that no new record would be set on midnight figures which showed the toll at 345 in traffic accidents. In 1956, at a comparable time, the number of deaths had been 384. The Council said early on Saturday that figures indicated that there was a slowdown in the death rate, whereas at the start of the holiday, fatalities had risen far above a record-breaking rate. The Council had said that Friday night had been the first time since the Associated Press count had started on Wednesday evening at 6:00 that the traffic toll had fallen below the heavy pace of two years earlier.
The North Carolina death toll had mounted by leaps and bounds this date, with traffic being the major killer. At least 17 persons had died on the highways since the count had begun and seven had died in fires, plus four in miscellaneous accidents. A 17-year old Fayetteville girl had been the state's 17th traffic victim, killed the previous night when a speeding car had gone out of control and turned over on NC 24 near Autryville, with two others injured in that accident. A Fort Bragg soldier and a Robeson County girl had died in a parked car near Red Springs on Christmas night when they were overcome by fumes, found dead the previous morning. A two-car collision near Jackson in Northampton County had killed five persons, four within the same family, and another two-car collision near Coats had claimed the lives of three persons, both accidents occurring on Christmas night. There had also been three traffic fatalities reported on Friday.
In Toronto, it was reported that 33 persons had died accidentally in Canada during the Christmas holidays up to 6:00 a.m. this date, according to a survey by the Canadian Press. Of those, 23 had occurred in traffic accidents, three in fires, one by drowning and six in miscellaneous accidents. The survey had started at noon on Wednesday and would end at midnight on Sunday. Americans need to follow the Canadian driving example.
In Caracas, Venezuela, it was reported that aerial searchers were seeking this date to pin down unconfirmed reports from ham radio operators that the British balloon "Small World" had landed in the eastern part of Venezuela after a trans-Atlantic flight. The air search had begun on Friday over the jungle area of the Orinoco River delta. Amateur radio operators had reported that the balloon and its four passengers had landed near Pedernales, a Venezuelan port on the Atlantic at the northern edge of the delta. The town was just 20 miles west of the tip of Trinidad in the British West Indies. The report gained strength when Venezuela's Minister of Communications had been quoted in Caracas newspapers as saying that the balloon had landed in the country. The Civil Aeronautics Authority said, however, that it had nothing to confirm the report. It was supervising the search by a Communications Ministry DC-3, which, after searching for only an hour or two, had been forced by darkness to land at a point 60 miles west of Pedernales. The "Small World" cast-off from Santa Cruz de Turkrite in the Canary Islands, 60 miles off the coast of Morocco, had occurred on December 12. The goal had been to drift with the winds to Barbados, some 3,000 miles away in the West Indies Federation. Pedernales was about 3,450 miles from the point of departure and 300 miles southwest of Barbados. The three men and the wife of one of them riding in a gondola hung from the balloon had estimated that the trip would take three weeks, but they had carried food for three months. The 15.5 by 7.5-foot gondola was built to double as a lifeboat if needed.
In Vatican City, it was reported that Pope John XXIII this date had consecrated eight bishops, including Vatican Secretary of State Domenico Cardinal Tardini.
In Birmingham, Ala., a 12-year old boy had died unattended by a physician on Christmas night because his parents believed in healing only by prayer. The death had become known when the family made funeral arrangements the previous day. The mother of the child, who also had three other children, discussed the death of the boy with reporters, saying that it was believed that he died of pneumonia. No death certificate had been completed. The deputy coroner confirmed that the child had died without being treated by a physician, saying that any further investigation of the case would be made through the Jefferson County solicitor's office. The mother said that the boy had become overheated while fighting a woods fire and had become extremely ill on Tuesday, appearing to lapse into a deep sleep. He later suffered convulsions, but on Christmas afternoon had aroused enough to examine his presents and talk, dying in the evening. His mother said, "God put us here and he'll take us away when the time comes." Members of the church worshiped in a tent adjoining the family's home in Jefferson Park.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that five North Carolinians had died early this date as a result of home fires, four children in a family from Caldwell County having been killed when their home had burned, and a woman in Union County having been found dead of burns suffered the previous night when her clothing had caught on fire.
Bob Slough of The News reports that freezing rain during the morning had left roads in Mecklenburg County as slick as glass and had touched off at least 31 traffic accidents in which five persons had been injured.
The newspaper acknowledges contributions to the Empty Stocking Fund, which had provided Christmas to some 2,000 needy families in the city, which had arrived too late for acknowledgment on Christmas Eve, bringing the total amount collected to $19,115.41, the largest in the 27-year history of the Fund. It lists those late contributions and by whom they were made.
A report indicates that the LeGette Blythe family of Huntersville could hardly believe their eyes when three deer had walked out of the woods and across their fields, causing Mr. Blythe to put in a call to County Police Chief Joe Whitley to tell what he had seen during the morning. "And I want you to know that I've had nothing to drink," explained the well-known Mecklenburg novelist and biographer. The chief had looked at his statute books and confirmed that there was no deer season in Mecklenburg County, that it was against the law to shoot a deer at any time. So the chief had called the newspaper to spread the word. "Dasher and Dancer and Rudolph can take a restful after-Christmas stroll in Mecklenburg without fear of being shot." He said that they were deer, not reindeer. What's the big deal?
On the editorial page, "The Attorney General Devises a Gem" indicates that Attorney General William Rogers had devised a gem of retaliation against Alabama election officials who had resisted subpoenas by the Federal Civil Rights Commission to turn over voter records, following complaints by black citizens that they were being denied voter registration. He did so by proposing to remove Federal expenditures from which Alabama benefited. Doris Fleeson, in her column of this date, had attributed to him the idea that "military and other federal installations in states which defy the federal government be abandoned, moved or reduced."
It indicates that on the most rudimentary democratic principle, one citizen, one vote, no one could quarrel with quick tempers regarding the issue of black voting rights in the South and it was unlikely that the Department of Justice had a monopoly on indignation. But in the rush to discipline vagrant Southern states for the abuse of registration and ballot procedures, the Attorney General might have, it posits, lost sight of the distinction between justice and punishment and was now hawking the latter as the former.
The Department of Justice had at its command various ordinary ways to ensure that justice was done to citizens wrongly deprived of the ballot, but to dream up harsh economic sanctions against states whose electoral methods were under investigation appears to the piece practically to confess that ordinary means were bankrupt. Many foes of equality in voting and in schools had resorted to economic boycott and it had not been a pretty spectacle. It wonders whether that practice was now to be adopted officially by the Department of Justice, to which the nation looked for example of just procedures. "Is group punishment to be the new ideal of federal justice and the attorney general? Is job-making federal expenditure, for which Alabama and other southern states are as heavily taxed as states elsewhere, to be removed to spite a few blindly cantankerous poll-tenders?"
It concludes that power being the nemesis of justice, if an attorney general got a sniff of power, equity would quickly be forgotten.
The latter notion certainly holds true in 2025, and by far and away more so than at any time since John Mitchell held the office.
"Fort Knox's Big Hoard Begins To Leak" indicates that the hoard of gold at Fort Knox, which was supposed by many economic innocents to be the basis of America's wealth, had dwindled by some two million dollars worth during 1958, as reported by cash-conscious U.S. News & World Report in an article titled "Why is U.S. Losing Gold?"
Gold generally moved around as a final standard of settlement between international trade balances, since all reputable currencies, including presently the dollar, the British sterling, German marks and Swiss francs which were "hard", had more or less fixed values in terms of gold. But not since the immediate postwar era had American gold flowed abroad in such amounts. In most recent years the U.S., as the world's best-heeled manufacturer of goods which everybody desired, had found itself on the long end of the stick, while Western countries who traded with it had been hard-put to get together gold and dollars to pay the large invoices of American goods.
In simple terms, which jargon-loving economists would sneer at, the reason the U.S. was losing gold was that its customers were not buying as much during the current year. Foreign nations had felt the dip in the U.S. economy, known as the "whiplash effect", and might not have the money to spend. Another factor might be, as many suggested, the inflation of the dollar, pricing U.S. goods higher in terms of other currencies. Yet U.S. inflation had not outpaced that in most European countries. Undoubtedly, an important factor in the gold drain was that some of the idle investment money had flowed abroad, lured by the higher interest rates which for some time had prevailed in Europe.
Just over a year earlier, the British treasury, to strengthen the pound, had hiked the Bank Rate, which was its interest-rate thermostat, to 7 percent. But now interest rates were equalizing, as Europe had dropped its rate as that in the U.S. had increased. Finally, decline in world commodity prices had raised gold and dollar reserves in European countries to postwar heights, automatically "hardening" their money in terms of dollars.
It indicates that barring an unlikely run on the dollar in the world's financial markets, with investors converting dollar accounts to other currencies, the dire warnings about a softening dollar were too dire. The U.S. remained the world's strong creditor and the dollar, not gold, remained the actual basis of many Western currencies. That situation would endure as long as U.S. practices retained world confidence.
But it points out that it was to the peril of the country to ignore that the free West's economies, and that of commodity-producing countries, were geared to the U.S. economy. When the U.S. stopped buying, its foreign customers stopped buying, and gold began to leak somewhere. In the past, European gold had leaked to Fort Knox. But now, as Europe's growing economic vigor kept it healthy, it was the reverse to some extent.
"Simple Eccentricity" indicates that the routine for would-be eccentrics had once been very complicated. "You had to eat goldfish, sit on flagpoles, grow a knee-length beard," among other things, but now, all that was needed was a pair of stout walking shoes and the yen to walk a few blocks to and fro down the sidewalk, and people would likely stare.
We are not clear on what news story to which it refers.
"Just What Do They Take Us For?" finds that the Greensboro Daily News had tarried too long in the corn patch, as recently, it had informed that the Piedmont "has no real metropolis". It indicates that it had heard of the rural mystique which infected those around Greensboro, but had never known that it struck people deaf and blind. "Just what do you suppose they take us for—a field of winter wheat?"
It indicates that if they would just peer through the stalks or put an ear to the ground, they would get the message, that things had happened since the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and most of it had occurred in Mecklenburg. "Out of the cotton fields has grown a great metropolis that already towers over everything in sight. Too bad Greensboro is not in sight."
Paul Crume, writing in the Dallas Morning News, in a piece titled "It's Light-up Time" indicates that as Julius Caesar had once said, kids at present did not have the fun they used to, as most boys now could afford a pack of cigarettes when they decided to learn to smoke, whereas it had been different when he was a boy, when half the barns in West Texas were hidden in billowing clouds of blue smoke, indicating that the kids were safely hidden from the adults while practicing up on cedar bark.
One obtained the bark by stripping it from new fence posts. The cigarette one rolled from it had to be about two feet long and as large around as a softball bat, but it was capable of being smoked. Cigarettes were wrapped with old newspaper pages or full pages of the Saturday Evening Post. The magazine's pages imparted a fine flavor of old burning rags to the stinging fumes of the cedar, and forever after, tobacco smoke would taste a little mild by comparison. He suggests that it had not been exactly the thinking man's cigarette, as one did not have time to think when one held it.
If all the fence posts were stripped pretty clean, there were other substitutes for tobacco. Most kids had smoked coffee because it looked like tobacco. Coffee tended to run out the end of the cigarette if the smoker ducked his head while smoking. It could be smoked very well, however, by tilting one's head backward so that the burning end of the cigarette was in the air, provided the smoker tightly clamped the other end in the teeth to keep the whole of the cigarette from flowing into the mouth, fire and all. After a few minutes of smoking coffee, one felt seared inside to the ankles.
A buggy whip also made good smoking material because if it was chopped at the right place, it was almost the same size as a cigarette. One chopped off a three-inch section, lit it and then smoked it. He recalls that it tasted a lot like filters, without taste.
Corn silk was supposed to be good
cigarette filler, but he had never cared much for it, as it had no
character
When he had been desperate for something to smoke, he smoked dried prairie grass. The smoker had to work pretty hard to keep the fire alive and could not taste much smoke. "After all, if a man has to smoke, he can manage it somehow."
Drew Pearson, in Alaska on his annual Christmas trip to entertain American troops, has his column again written by his assistant, Jack Anderson, who indicates that Senator Lyndon Johnson, who had easily won Senate jurisdiction over outer space, had not fared so well in his grab for office space. He had felt that his position as Majority Leader had entitled him to first pick of suites in the Senate's new, marble-plated office building. After an inspection of the premises, he selected a third-floor corner suite overlooking the Capitol grounds. Proclaiming his rights as Leader, he let it be known that he had staked out the choice suite for himself. "Now, likable Lyndon is accustomed to getting what he wants around the Senate. He had no trouble, for instance, taking over the chairmanship of the headline-making, therefore highly coveted, Senate Space Committee." But he had encountered an obstacle more formidable than flying meteors in negotiating for mundane office space, bumping up against the hallowed Senate seniority system.
The chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Thomas Hennings of Missouri, had advised him tactfully that office space was always allocated according to seniority, and Senator Johnson ranked only 34th in that category. The suite he desired was first offered to Arizona Senator Carl Hayden, who had served in the body for 32 years. But the old man said that he had remained in the same office for 27 years and had become attached to it. Next in line of seniority were Senators Richard Russell of Georgia and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, both solid conservatives who also disliked change. But the fourth in seniority was Montana's liberal Senator James Murray and he wanted the same office suite which Senator Johnson had selected. The latter, being good-natured, was content to wait his turn and had accepted less pretentious quarters.
Vice-President Nixon, who presided over the Senate but was still considered a junior by older Senators, fared even worse, having been offered so little space in the new building that he had decided to keep his present office in the old SOB. The news had been broken to him by Rules Committee clerk Frank Dryden, who had to allocate to 98 Senators, 27 committees and one Vice-President the available office, having to follow seniority rules strictly, giving priority in case of ties to former Senators, Congressmen and governors. The Vice-President had told Mr. Dryden that he would not have his job, to which Mr. Dryden had said, "And I wouldn't have your job." Mr. Dryden's worst priority problem was to figure out whether Connecticut's Senator Thomas Dodd or West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd deserved first selection of an office suite, both of whom to be sworn into the new Senate on January 7 and both having been former members of the House who had entered that body on the same day. Mr. Dryden had solved the problem by looking up the population figures of each state and since Connecticut had more people than West Virginia, Senator Dodd would be given the edge.
The low person in terms of seniority would have to take whatever office space was left on January 7, that being Senator Howard Cannon of sparsely populated Nevada.
He notes that by coincidence, 21 Democrats and 21 Republicans had claimed space in the new office building, and then the election had eliminated six Republicans of varying seniority, causing a complete reshuffling, as the remaining Senators moved up in seniority and staked claims for better offices.
Soviet "dictator" Nikita Khrushchev had confided to Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey during their Kremlin conference that the Politboro once had lined up against Mr. Khrushchev by a vote of 7 to 4, indicating, "My opposition was good in arithmetic but poor in politics." In the showdown, he received all 11 votes.
Senators Russell and Byrd, speaking for the South, had assured the President the previous year that Southern states would never deny qualified blacks the right to vote. Recalling the promise of the recent Cabinet meeting, the President had remarked ruefully that the two Senators apparently did not speak for Alabama, referring to the Montgomery civil rights hearing which had discovered that qualified black citizens had been barred from registering to vote.
Although just about everyone in Arkansas considered segregationist Dale Alford, newly elected to the House, having defeated in the primary moderate incumbent Brooks Hays, was the puppet candidate of Governor Orval Faubus. Dr. Alford had told the investigating House Elections Committee that he had made up his own mind to run and that the Governor had nothing to do with it. But the investigating members had learned of a press conference which Dr. Alford had held on October 28, in which he had told reporters that he had discussed his candidacy with the Governor before making his announcement. The Committee was investigating irregularities in the election.
Walter Lippmann addresses the subject of the new Senate facing efforts to amend Rule XXII regarding cloture of debate to prevent filibusters. Under existing rules adopted in 1949, debate could be ended only when two-thirds of the entire Senate so voted. There was one exception, that being debate on amending the rules, on which there could be no cloture.
He believed that probably not more than 20 Senators in the new 86th Congress would wish to keep the existing rule as it was, with an overwhelming majority wanting to amend it, differing, however, on how far they wished to go. There were two principal choices, that debate would end upon the vote of two-thirds of the Senators present and voting, as favored by Senator Lyndon Johnson, or that within two days of filing of a cloture petition, debate could only be closed by a two-thirds vote of those present, as supported by Senator Paul Douglas, joined by such influential Senators as Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits, and Kenneth Keating, the latter two of New York. Under that proposal, if debate continued for as long as 15 days, cloture could then be voted by a simple majority of the whole Senate, or 50 affirmative votes, (counting Alaska's two new Senators, but not yet Hawaii, which would not join the Union until later in 1959). Under the latter proposal, there could be a long debate, perhaps as much as for eight or nine weeks, but in the end, 50 Senators could bring a heavily debated bill to a vote. In all probability, the proposal to be offered by Senator Johnson would prevail.
The issue behind the argument of amendment of the rules, Mr. Lippmann asserts, appeared as a constitutional question, not what the letter of the Constitution said as there was nothing in it about limits on debate, but what was in accord with the spirit of the document. The question was how large a majority must there be before debate by a determined minority could be closed. As Rule XXII was currently written, 66 Senators had to favor a particular bill before a determined minority could be overruled. Under the proposal of Senator Johnson, the determined minority could be overruled by as few as 34 Senators. But on a controversial measure where there would be full attendance, as a practical matter, the amended rule proposed would be virtually the same as the existing rule, with one primary exception, that it would not contain the indefensible provision of the existing rule that there never could be cloture on any proposal to amend the rules.
The proposal by Senator Douglas, while permitting extensive debate, would allow 50 Senators to close debate and pass a controversial bill. Having read carefully the material being circulated by Senator Douglas, Mr. Lippmann believes that his proposal had not dealt with the actual issue, however, not whether measures would be fully debated, but rather how they could be passed. There could be no doubt that eight or nine weeks of debate was quite sufficient for any measure, and that after that point, there would be no hope of anyone changing their mind by the debate itself. The real question was what to do with the minority which was not open to being converted by debate. He believes that the proposal to decide highly controversial questions by a vote of no more than a simple majority of the Senate not to be good enough.
The Constitution was not devoted to the principle that a simple majority always ruled. Regarding treaties and impeachments, the Constitution required two-thirds of those present and voting to affirm. Amendments to the Constitution, the expulsion of members, the overriding of a presidential veto, each required two-thirds of all the Senators, whether present or not. He infers that the reason for those super-majorities was that the matter under consideration was so important that a concurrence of more than half of the representatives of the states was needed. The underlying principle was that when controversial matters were decided by a majority which was too narrow, the prospect of resistance and nullification was increased. To enforce difficult laws, there should be a very large majority which concurred in them.
The issue was a hot one because the principal use of the filibuster was against Federal legislation on behalf of civil rights for black citizens. The substantial question was whether the indisputable rights of blacks could be achieved and maintained by a simple majority which overruled the South, or whether progress depended on winning the assent of the rapidly growing enlightened opinion within the South.
He also cautions that majorities were not always liberal and could be quite tyrannical. "It is a short view of history to equate simple majority rule, as does Senator Douglas, with the defense of civil rights." Mr. Lippmann suggests that the Senator might ponder, for example, the case of President Truman's emergency strike legislation which proposed to break the railroad strike by drafting the railroad workers into the Army. The House had been stampeded into passing that bill two hours after the President's veto message, by a vote of 306 to 13. But Senators Robert Taft and Robert Wagner held it up in the Senate, and after six days of debate, its sponsors were compelled to omit the provisions for a draft of striking railroad men. That had also been a civil rights case and a prime example of why simple majorities were not necessarily the guardians of civil rights.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the civil rights program which the President was expected to put before the new Congress was expected now to include a two-year extension of the life of the Civil Rights Commission, enacted in September, 1957, plus the right for the Justice Department to intervene in all civil rights cases. When the previous Congress had passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, it had been the result of a compromise between liberals and Southerners. Section 3 of the bill, which would have provided new powers of intervention in civil rights cases to the Department, had been dropped. The well-publicized frustrations of the Civil Rights Commission in obtaining voting records from Alabama officials had now made it extremely likely that a stronger bill would pass in the upcoming session.
There was no question but that the patience of many powerful people, some of whom were inclined to sympathize with the South's position, had been worn thin by the events in Alabama. The Civil Rights Act had been watered down to obtain the agreement of Southern leaders and the President had taken pains to give the South strong representation on the Commission established by the Act. Alabama's failure to comply with the Commission's orders, and the character of its recalcitrance, had done more to harden attitudes in Washington than the troubles over compliance with Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny in the school integration cases.
From both sides of the aisle, in both houses of the new Congress, there would be members eager to push a more effective Civil Rights Act and the votes would be present to pass it. That was behind the last-ditch effort which Southern members were making to maintain the filibuster rule in the Senate and the veto power of the conservative Rules Committee in the House. Although the convening of Congress was still two weeks away, members had begun returning to Washington, most of them intent on getting into the struggle which was already underway. The degree to which some important opinion in Washington had hardened against the South was obvious from the fact that serious proposals of economic sanctions against intransigent states were being made.
Attorney General Rogers had been given credit for the proposals that military and other Federal installations in states which defied the Federal Government would be abandoned, moved or reduced. Even the President, who had gone far to attempt to conciliate the South in his appointments to the Civil Rights Commission, appeared to have lost much of his patience. The part of the South which had "failed to give an inch may now find it has lost a mile."
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that secretly many Democrats, of whom he was one, admired a strong authoritarian who was able to handle himself well and make everyone stand around. Such men had been Theodore Roosevelt and FDR, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, and yet both "autocrats of the worst kind insofar as this country has such people." He finds that President Eisenhower was really much more democratic than either of the Roosevelts, more fair-minded and not power-crazy. "The two Roosevelts were excellent politicians because they knew crowd psychology and how to use it. Truman tried to be like Franklin Roosevelt and did a good job of it so far as his limited knowledge would let him." But there were authoritarians in every county seat in the country, in churches and in all phases of life, and when they were honest, would not do much harm. There were ways of guarding liberties and not allowing tyrants to seize and exercise the power belonging to the people. He says it would not do to sell liberty for security. Most people could earn some sort of living as long as they were able to work and there would always be some way to take care of those who were disabled. "Liberty is the most precious thing we have; and we should not allow an ambitious preacher to usurp it."
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