The Charlotte News
Friday, February 14, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Navy this date had awarded contracts for three atomic-powered submarines to fire Polaris guided missiles, two of which would be built by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp. at Groton, Conn., and a third at the Mare Island, Calif., Naval Shipyard. The first of the three submarines probably would be completed by Electric Boat. The first deliveries of the Polaris would be expected in 1960, to coincide with expected production in quantity of ballistic missiles. It had been estimated that the first boat would cost between 105 and 110 million dollars, with the cost of the next two dropping to between 85 and 90 million. A supplemental appropriation bill had been passed by Congress earlier in the year to provide 296 million dollars for starting the submarines. The Navy had asked that the initial program be expanded to a total of nine submarines. The Navy announcement said that the two yards were selected because, in the Navy's judgment, the assignments would permit the earliest possible completion dates. Rear Admiral W. F. Raborn, director of special projects in the Navy Bureau of Ordnance, said that the submarines were designed specifically for carrying and launching the Polaris missile.
In Pasadena, scientists who had designed the Explorer I satellite, recently placed in orbit as the first U.S. satellite, had disclosed the previous day at a press conference, called to report on the satellite's progress, that one more rocket motor added to the Jupiter-C missile, which had launched the Explorer, could enable it to reach the moon. The California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had formally asked the Defense Department for permission to try to orbit the moon with some future satellite, though there was no thought of trying to do so with the Explorer II, presently being rushed to completion at the laboratory. To reach the moon, a fifth rocket stage would need to be added to the four stages of the Jupiter-C, a stage to be added to the nose of the rocket, not its base. Dr. Henry Richter and other scientists at the conference said that Explorer I was performing as expected and that radio data suggested that a human could live within a satellite, as "room temperature" was being maintained inside Explorer with no significant peril from cosmic rays or small meteorites. A radio receiver, not onboard Explorer I, would be installed in the second edition. A tape recorder in the satellite would save information gathered while the satellite was farthest away from earth, and send it back on command, when the satellite was nearest earth. Because the radio would not be transmitting all the time, its batteries would last longer.
Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas this date promised full cooperation with an FBI probe of allegations that FCC commissioner Richard Mack had received "thousands of dollars" from an attorney for award of a Miami television channel to a subsidiary of National Airlines. Mr. Harris said that the subcommittee which he now chaired would call Mr. Mack to testify soon on the charges made by the former counsel, Dr. Bernard Schwartz. The latter had testified under oath that Mr. Mack had acknowledged accepting several thousand dollars from a lawyer who was active in getting a television license for a firm rated by an FCC examiner as the least qualified of four applicants. Mr. Mack had described the money as loans. The latter could not be reached for comment. A few hours after the hearing, Attorney General William Rogers had ordered the FBI to make a "complete investigation" of the matter. Dr. Schwartz had been fired by the subcommittee the prior Monday night in a dispute over the conduct of his probe of the regulatory agencies. The latter had produced from subcommittee files canceled checks totaling $2,650 which he said had been given to Mr. Mack by an attorney from Miami after Mr. Mack had become an FCC commissioner. Dr. Schwartz said that Mr. Mack claimed that the checks represented loans and that a portion of the loans had been forgiven and that some had been repaid in cash. The checks had been subpoenaed from the attorney, whom Dr. Schwartz described as having a reputation in Florida as a "fixer". He said that the attorney had represented Public Service Television, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Airlines, which had won the grant for the Miami channel in a hotly contested case. The attorney had quickly denied the allegation, calling Dr. Schwartz a "goddamned liar", stating that he had never "fixed anything" in his life and had never been employed as an attorney in the case involving the award of the television channel. He said that Mr. Mack was an old friend and that he had loaned Mr. Mack money periodically for 20 years, and had records of repayment of all of it except $250.
In Thomasville, Ga., it was reported that the President, on vacation, remained indoors by the fireplace this date, not able to golf or go quail hunting because of the cold weather.
In Tunis, President Habib Bourguiba had increased his diplomatic pressure on France this date and placed a police blockade around three French consulates, in his effort to oust the French from Tunisia.
In Algiers, French forces said this date that they had lost 22 dead and 17 wounded in two clashes with Algerian rebels late the previous day, a little more than 50 miles from Algiers.
In Caltanisseta, Sicily, at least eight miners had been killed and 64 injured this date in an explosion which had ripped through a sulphur mine.
In Chicago, firemen had rescued more than a dozen men and at least one woman this date as flames had swept through two adjoining lodging houses in the West Side Skid Row.
In Rome, actress Ingrid Bergman had returned this date, saying that she planned to be there for several days. A judge hearing director Roberto Rossellini's suit for annulment of their marriage had said that he wished to question the couple.
In Hillsboro, N.C., a predawn fire of unknown origin had gutted a high school for black students this date, with no one having been injured. The Orange County Schools superintendent estimated that damage would run between $25,000 and $300,000 to replace the building and equipment. The building had been insured for $135,000 and the equipment for $17,000. Firemen from Hillsboro and Mebane had battled the blaze for two hours, succeeding in saving nearby buildings. The firemen indicated that the 14-classroom high school had been engulfed in flames when they arrived on the scene in the early morning. During the early stages of the fire, spectators had heard explosions and the flames could be observed for miles around. The school had been attended by 409 students and was 22 years old. The Orange County Board of Education planned to meet this night to make arrangements for the students to attend elsewhere, with the superintendent indicating that a 12-classroom elementary school building was under construction and was expected to be completed and ready for occupancy in about two weeks, and might be utilized for the high school students. Well, look here, just don't place them in any of the white schools. This here is Hillsboro and not Chapel Hill, where all those Commie integrationists reside.
In Marion, S.C., it was reported that a twice postponed Klan rally would be held near Burlington, N.C., the following night, according to James Cole, the self-styled Grand Dragon of the Klan of the Carolinas. Mr. Cole said that he would attend the rally and that his representatives had arranged for a meeting site in the same area where the two postponed rallies had been scheduled to occur, in a field off U.S. 70 between Burlington and Greensboro. Mr. Cole said that he did not know the exact location. He was set to face trial in Lumberton during the term of court opening March 10 for inciting to riot as a result of an abortive Klan rally near Maxton on the night of January 18, broken up by several hundred Lumbee Indians, upset with the Klan for having burned at least two crosses on or near the property of Indians in Lumberton five days before the rally.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the head of the Motor Vehicles Commission, Ed Scheidt, had extended by two days, until midnight Monday, the deadline for obtaining new 1958 license plates, because the current deadline would expire at midnight the following day, a Saturday. Boy, bet that's a relief. Here you thought you were going to have to spend half of your day off on Saturday going to the license bureau to stand in line in freezing cold weather. You can just drive around all you want and stand in line in the cold on Monday.
Also in Raleigh, it was reported that the man selected as director of the State Ports Authority would not be hired until he made a "full and complete explanation" of allegations made against him by a Georgia State Senator. D. Leon Williams of Savannah had been selected for the post, but State Senator Bobby Lee Cook, chairman of the Georgia State Senate investigating committee, had the previous night expressed surprise at the selection, telling the Raleigh News & Observer that the Georgia Ports Authority "has been operated in a very careless manner since 1955" and that Governor Marvin Griffin had "put politics in it." Mr. Cook had also stated that testimony before his committee in Atlanta the previous day showed that Atlanta offices of the Georgia Ports Authority had been used for several years as private offices of a steamship company in which Governor Griffin owned stock. Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina, who had, the previous fall, replaced the entire membership of the Ports Authority, said that he was looking to the Authority to find out the facts on the matter.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that a political fight of major significance was brewing in the Republican Party in the state, as Ray Jennings, veteran party stalwart and state chairman for four years, found his seat in jeopardy. The state's Republican delegation to the General Assembly was pushing hard for State Senator William Cobb of Morganton to become the chairman, and he would attend the state convention the following month with strong support. A major battle was expected on the convention floor in Winston-Salem on March 8. Mr. Jennings had told the newspaper from Taylorsville this date, however, that he was aware that Mr. Cobb was campaigning, and he had not made up his mind whether to seek the chairmanship again. A letter was being circulated in support of Mr. Cobb by 14 Republican members of the State House and Senate. Mr. Jennings also had strong support among old-line Republicans and in the state's smaller counties.
On the editorial page, "Let Natural Gas Bill Rest in Peace Until Its Backers Learn Some Manners" indicates that Congress should neither waste its precious time nor further strain the public's patience by considering again the natural gas bill.
It says that it was not condemning or prejudging the effect of its passage on the gas industry or on gas consumers, but because of the lobbying tactics of its supporters, funneling campaign contributions to those who would vote for it, its passage would place a dangerous burden on public confidence in the legislative process, leaving widespread suspicion, were it to pass, that the Congress had been bought.
Its effect would be to exempt natural gas producers from utility-type regulation by the Federal Power Commission. Proponents of deregulation stated that easing of Federal controls was needed to encourage individual initiative and provide incentive for firms to seek and develop new sources of natural gas. Opponents said that the gas industry wanted to use the deregulation as a means to exact an extra billion dollars per year from consumers who would have little recourse other than to pay.
Congress had passed the bill twice, first vetoed by President Truman in 1952 as being against the public interest, and then vetoed by President Eisenhower in 1956 on the basis of the "arrogant" tactics of the the gas lobby, even though he had actually favored the merits of the bill.
It finds that since the President's rebuke, if anything, the gas lobby had become more arrogant. A Texas RNC representative, H. J. Porter, had developed a $100,000 war chest from a $100 per plate "appreciation dinner" for House Republican leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, to provide to supporters of the natural gas bill in their campaigns. There was nothing unusual about such dinners, but the contributions had been solicited as the price of getting the bill passed. Potential contributors were asked to remember that Mr. Martin had always been a friend to Texas, especially of the oil and gas-producing industries, and that to pass the bill again, Mr. Martin had to put Republican members from the Northern and Eastern consuming areas on the spot politically. The dinner had been a sellout and some wealthy Texans had bought blocks of 20 or 30 tickets, according to Mr. Porter, and had either given the tickets away or failed to use them at all.
Mr. Martin had a reputation for integrity and it was too great to be damaged by the sleazy implication of the promotional efforts by his hosts. The significance of the incident lay in the indication that a fabulously rich industry, with vast concentrations of wealth in a few states, was willing to bring financial pressure on politicians throughout the country. It was a shady matter at best and, if not repudiated, one which would impair seriously the reputation of Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn were both from Texas and both favored the natural gas bill. Two oil company lawyers and the company itself had pleaded guilty in 1956 to offering $2,500 to Senator Clifford Case of South Dakota, who had refused the bribe and reported it. It wonders whether the industry had failed to obtain a fair hearing in public, as some of its members claimed. Senate investigators had said that an industry committee had spent 1.75 million dollars in support of the bill between October, 1954 and March, 1956. An oil company's president had said that it spent $500,000 annually on its own "information" program.
It finds that all of those facts failed to suggest that Federal control had crippled the industry which professed to need new incentive to produce gas. It urges that the question ought be decided by Congress after thorough debate and study of the probable effect of the bill. Opinion in the Congress had been closely divided. The bill had passed the House in 1955, for example, by only six votes. Under those circumstances, passage at present would leave an indelible suspicion that the margin of victory had been provided by the contributions of the industry to the campaigns of certain members.
It concludes that the gas bill should not be passed until the industry gave some indication that it did not seek freedom from control as a license to gouge the consumer, an indication which was not yet apparent.
"A Real, 100-Proof Official Explanation" indicates that next time it would turn past the official explanations of the intricacies of liquor law enforcement and pay undivided attention to the simplicities of automobile wrecks and wedding vows. The "friendly crackdown" which was planned by the new State ABC chief regarding violations of the liquor laws in the clubs and roadhouses had really "looped" it.
It wonders whether the "friendly crackdown" meant that an officer could enter a swank club where mixed drinks were being served and slap the manager on the back chummily while slipping manacles on his wrists, or whether it meant that he would enter, look at a sea of bent elbows and say: "Pardon me, sir, but we suspect this sort of thing isn't quite kosher (oh, no, thanks. I never touch it) and if I should come back six months from now and see you're still mixing drinks for all these people I might be forced, in the circumstances, to well, er, run you in—if you'll pardon the expression."
It had heard that ABC officers often knocked on the doors of bootleggers before forcing them open in the wee hours of the morning. But that was a raid and not cracking down in a friendly manner. Yet the law was the same for both parties.
After that bit of confusion, it passed on to the issue of "public display" of bottles or flasks versus private display in the clubs. An ABC agent could watch glasses of water suddenly turn amber without being disturbed by it, but if a customer who could not manage to bend down under the table to pour his drink boldly poured it while sitting straight up, he was taken before a magistrate. It finds it puzzling.
The ABC chairman of Mecklenburg County, Frank Sims, said that all he knew about the "friendly crackdown" was what he had read in the newspapers.
It concludes that perhaps another bromo would be helpful and invites the reader to join it.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Bogeyman Is Kaput", indicates that the bogeyman was as ineffectual as a fly-paper in a livery stable. "The old family retainer, the ageless colored nurse, who always had a million 'hants' and spooks beneath her billowing apron is gone. The chic babysitter wouldn't know a ghost from a[n] [Alf] Landon button [from 1936], and Halloween goblins solicit for the milk fund. Several years ago, the current Little Red Riding Hood, by dint of 20-20 vision, distinguished her grandmother from a ravenous animal and shot the wolf's head as full of holes as a sieve."
It finds that if one told the child to be good, that Santa Claus might be listening, the child asked when the parents had started smoking reefers. If one were sufficiently sadistic to tell him the bad man would get him if he did not watch out, he laughed and said that Hitler was dead and that the Klan never burned crosses where they lived. If one told him that Jim Crow was cranking in the new ground, he wanted to know if this fellow is any kin to George Crowe who played first base for Cincinnati. If you told him that the ghost of Nathaniel Greene's soldiers walked at the Guilford battleground during Old Christmas, the "uppity tyke" wanted to know why the old warrior did not apply to the Veterans Administration for a pension.
"If brashness exorcised the old bogeyman, then, three lusty cheers for saucy impudence. The old family nurse was a saint of the realm. You loved her immensely, but her frightening admonitions made you a fit subject for tranquilizers by the time you started to school. Although much of today's rampant brashness is unseemly, we have prospered mightily in eliminating all the unnatural fears but the income tax man. The wolf and the spook are dead. May they long rot in hell."
That does not ring true insofar as where we lived at the time, down there next to the swamp.
Drew Pearson indicates that House Speaker Sam Rayburn loved his two nephews as his own sons, himself being without children, and one nephew was FCC commissioner Robert Bartley, whose name had come up in the probe of the agency. The other nephew was Tom Rayburn, who worked for the General Services Administration. Mr. Rayburn's sister, mother of Mr. Bartley, was very close to the Speaker and served as his hostess. Mr. Rayburn had gotten his nephew the job with the FCC, giving him in the process a fatherly lecture on upholding the public interest, admonishing him to serve the people and never to dishonor the family name.
Speaker Rayburn had a great record, to which Mr. Pearson had frequently paid tribute. He was author of the bill which gave birth to the FCC and had also authored most of the independent agencies in the Government. He had probably served the American people more constructively than any other man presently in Washington.
Mr. Bartley had actually inspired the present investigation which his uncle had recently been seeking to soft-pedal. The nephew had seen the White House pull to influence the disposal of television licenses to large corporations, large magazine chains, large newspapers and to Ambassador Jack Whitney in London, who presently controlled the New York Herald Tribune. Mr. Bartley had taken those facts to Mr. Rayburn, upset over the wire pulling and concentration of power. The Speaker, in turn, had made an impassioned plea to the House to vote $250,000 to investigate the independent agencies.
But now, the investigation had backfired and Mr. Rayburn was seeking to divert it to other channels. For in the expense accounts which were uncovered by Dr. Bernard Schwartz, recently fired counsel for the investigating subcommittee, there had been about $200 paid to Mr. Bartley by the radio and television industry for travel expenses. That was a small amount compared with the wining and dining of other commissioners by television station owners. Mr. Bartley had gone to a couple of meetings of the Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, with expenses paid, but did not go to the Bahamas as the guest of a television station owner for six days or ride around in the owner's private planes, as had FCC chairman John Doerfer.
Mr. Bartley had an excellent record as a commissioner, repeatedly dissenting from the other members, voting against the award of television licenses to big business and big magazine publishers. But the $200 in expense money had troubled Mr. Rayburn, suggesting that his nephew was being smeared by what he called "fly-specks". Backed into a corner, Mr. Rayburn had come out fighting, trying to hamstring the very investigation which he had initiated.
Normally, the subcommittee chairman, Morgan Moulder of Missouri, recently resigned as chairman but still on the subcommittee, would have issued subpoenas and handled the work of the investigation. Instead, Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas, head of the parent committee, and a good friend of Mr. Rayburn, while being a better friend of the gas and oil industry, had maintained a grip on almost every detail of the investigation, reserving the right to approve the hiring of staff, having picked Dr. Schwartz as the counsel. It was highly unusual to have the executive branch consulted regarding a committee appointed to investigate the executive branch, but that had been done in the case of the hiring of Dr. Schwartz, a Republican.
When it had come time to subpoena records from the FCC, Mr. Harris did not want to sign subpoenas, but had finally agreed to send a letter "requesting" certain records. Mr. Rayburn had at that point first intervened, as Mr. Bartley would have received one of the letters. The Speaker had summoned Mr. Harris and Mr. Moulder to his private sanctum off the House floor, and was red with fury.
Doris Fleeson indicates that with the announced retirement of Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia at the end of his term in 1959, he would be succeeded undoubtedly by another conservative, but his position as chairman of the Finance Committee would go to Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, assuming, as anticipated, that the Democrats would hold the majority in the Senate. Senator Kerr, like Senator Byrd, a millionaire and partner in Kerr-McGee, was in favor of deregulation of natural gas but otherwise had an unblemished New Deal record. He had persuaded Senator Byrd the previous year to investigate through the Committee hard money and the debt policies of former Treasury Secretary George Humphrey. He would be expected to take the Committee in a different direction.
He would likely be modest or dilatory in establishing a Kerr policy. He had inherited the mantle of former Senator Tom Connally of Texas as the Senate's toughest and most entertaining infighter. He would not be hampered by rear-guard actions from within the Committee, as its face had been changed by the change in the Senate, with only Allen Freer of Delaware, in addition to Senator Byrd, left as the only true conservative on the Committee, the remainder being New Dealers, including the Senate's only professional economist, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois.
The Republican minority was also in transition. Two of the conservatives on the Committee, the ranking Republican, Edward Martin of Pennsylvania, and William Jenner of Indiana, were retiring at the end of the current year. Of the remaining five, two were Eisenhower Republicans, Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont and Frank Carlson of Kansas.
Senator Byrd had given his wife's health, which had long been of deep concern to him, as his reason for retiring. But Ms. Fleeson indicates that an informed guess was that he also had felt the tides of change and was weary of trying to stem them. It had been a blow to him when the first Republican Administration in 20 years had accepted big budgets, deficit spending and a rising national debt. Virtually all observers in Washington believed that the trend would continue and many had suggested that the budget would rise to 100 billion dollars in short order. There was a tendency also to accept inflation as the natural price of prosperity, anathema to Senator Byrd.
She concludes that no one liked to be a national monument while still alive and Senator Byrd was rapidly becoming that, with space age pressures accelerating the process. "As an attractive, authentic person, he will be greatly missed, but his policies are already sinking without a trace."
A letter writer responds to a
Mecklenburg high school student's diatribe contained in a letter aimed at the older
generation, saying that he was old enough not to be terribly troubled
by the outburst, but nevertheless felt the need to challenge it. He
says that it was not a startling development that the world in the
eyes of a youngster was "a futile concatenation of hypocrisy,
vacuity, ignorance and intolerance, in the unhappy service of a
stifling phenomenon known as respectability
Hey, man, like, you're Squaresville. You must be on reefer or something. Nobody said anything about the stuff you mention, James Dean, Elvis and the Beat Generation, as if those three equate, when they're like squares and greasers. You, like, conflate, picking specks from hair with tweezers, mixing intervention with appeasers. Hit the road.
A letter writer from Monroe finds that some lawmakers in Congress had reached an all-time low in asininity by seeking to advance an illogical and incompatible concept that democracy had to become static to survive the threat of world communism. "The enemies of freedom, the bigots whose hate-warped minds oppose the rights of man without reservation, are appealing to the oppressed Negro to forgo his inalienable right to human dignity in order to prevent a cleft in America's illusion of solidarity at this psychological moment when this nation's prestige diminishes as a world leader." He finds the "pseudo-patriots" apparently to find the American people to be gullible in covering their reactionary tendencies with the mask of national loyalty. The nation was supposed to have fought all of its wars because it believed in the dignity of man, a fact making it worthy of world leadership. "If the rights of the Negro must be sacrificed to give vent to the white chauvinist's ego to prevent his suffering a temper tantrum because his desire of self-gratification is being frustrated due to compliance with human morality and social justice, then this type of hypocritical democracy has outlived its usefulness, for the democracy of this republic should be the democracy of all the American people, or it should suffer the fate of all nations which have shown a wanton disregard for the rights of man and the divine gift of God."
A letter from the publicity chairman of the Charlotte Jaycees thanks the newspaper and its staff for their publicity given their Founder's Day Ball and the "Outstanding Young Man" selection. He says it was the most complete coverage given the event in the history of their organization and that the ball had been a success in every way.
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