The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 15, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that House investigators would hear the following week an FCC member's defense against charges that he had accepted money from a lawyer in Miami in a contested case involving the award of a television channel to a subsidiary of National Airlines. FCC commissioner Richard Mack the previous day had said that the charges were "without foundation", and a few hours later, plans were announced to hear him testify before the committee either the following Wednesday or Thursday. The chairman of the subcommittee conducting the investigation, Oren Harris of Arkansas, said that before Mr. Mack would testify, the subcommittee expected to hear from four men linked with him in testimony regarding the award of the channel, those having been summoned to testify the following Tuesday. Dr. Bernard Schwartz, who had been fired as the subcommittee's counsel the previous Monday, had testified the prior Thursday that Mr. Mack had acknowledged accepting "thousands of dollars" from a Miami lawyer in the award of the channel. Dr. Schwartz said that the lawyer represented Public Service Television, Inc., which had won the grant of the channel from the FCC the previous year after a contest with three other applicants, in which Mr. Mack had voted with the majority in the four to two decision. Dr. Schwartz had produced canceled checks totaling $2,650 and said that Mr. Mack had claimed that those checks represented loans from the attorney, quoting Mr. Mack as telling a subcommittee investigator that some of the loans had been forgiven and some had been repaid in cash. Mr. Harris said that the attorney and three other persons from Miami mentioned by Dr. Schwartz were being asked by telegram to appear on Tuesday, one of whom had been named by the latter as a "leading Miami political figure" who was close to Mr. Mack. Another was a judge whom Dr. Schwartz said was a member of a law firm which had represented Public Service and that the third man was a member of the same law firm and a director of the company.
In Miami, the socially prominent attorney named by Dr. Schwartz as having arranged the payments to Mr. Mack, had an estimated annual income of $130,000 and a peculiar knack for becoming involved in headline-making controversies. The previous year, he had been a major witness in the impeachment trial of a Miami circuit judge. He had branded as a "big lie" any inference that he exerted pressure on Mr. Mack to obtain the channel, calling it "pure damning by implication", having been quoted earlier as calling it a "goddamned lie". He asked whether others would not be "upset and worried" if they were "bandied in headlines and called a fixer", saying he was extremely tired of the situation.
In Thomasville, Ga., where the President was vacationing, White House press secretary James Hagerty announced that Harold Stassen had resigned as the President's disarmament adviser to run for governor of Pennsylvania. Mr. Hagerty said that the decision had been Mr. Stassen's and that he had not been asked to resign. In accepting the resignation, the President expressed his deep regret that Mr. Stassen was leaving after their five-year association. In recent months, Mr. Stassen and Secretary of State Dallas had been at odds regarding disarmament policy, with at least one high Administration official indicating that the President had determined that Mr. Stassen had outlived his usefulness. In the summer of 1956, he had become embroiled in a controversy by seeking to oust Vice-President Nixon from the ticket, but had eventually backed away from the effort.
In Paris, the French Cabinet this date decided to pay damages to the civilian victims of the previous Saturday's French bombing of a Tunisian border village. Tunisia said that 79 persons had been killed, including 31 women and children, and that 130 had been wounded.
In Singapore, it was reported that Sumatra's rebel anti-communist colonels this date had proclaimed a provisional regime for all of Indonesia, choosing a former governor of the Bank of Indonesia as the new Premier.
In Hong Kong, a Communist newspaper reported this date that two Nationalist Chinese espionage agents had been executed in Canton. It said that the two joined the Nationalist espionage organization in Hong Kong in 1956 and had been assigned to collect information and expand underground operations in Canton. They had also been ordered, according to the account, to bomb a movie house the prior October 10, but had been arrested before they could do so.
In Chicago, windows had been shattered but no injuries reported the previous night after a homemade bomb had exploded near the home of two black families who had recently moved to a predominantly white block. A police lieutenant said that it was the third instance of violence at the building.
In Burlington, N.C., Klan leader James Cole, declaring that the Klan in North Carolina was now operating "completely underground", planned to hold an "evangelistic" meeting near Burlington this night instead of a Klan rally as previously advertised. Mr. Cole, from Marion, S.C., said that Klan officials had written the Federal Civil Rights Commission in Washington, asking for an investigation of state and county officials on grounds that the Klan was being denied police protection for one of its rallies. He referred to himself as a Southern Free Will Baptist minister and said the previous day that North Carolina officials had deprived Klan members of "our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly." He said that the new Civil Rights Commission had been asked by them to investigate Governor Luther Hodges, the North Carolina Highway Patrol and the Robeson County sheriff's office, stating that he thought it was "a good place for the Commission to begin." A Klan rally led by Mr. Cole had been broken up near Maxton, N.C., on January 18 by a group of Lumbee Indians, angered by reports that Klan activities in the area were intended as warnings against race-mixing, which had included two cross-burnings on or near the homes of Indians. Mr. Cole had been indicted by a Robeson County grand jury for inciting to riot on that occasion and was presently free under a bond of $1,000. The former carnival pitchman said that he would speak near Burlington "as an evangelist" this night on the subject, "The Truth about Maxton". He said that no more Klan meetings were planned in North Carolina until full police protection was promised. You can probably get your weight guessed at the Krusade this night, if you ask him real nice.
A surprise snowfall had covered the Carolinas this date as the Weather Bureau called for an additional accumulation of three inches by nightfall. It was the sixth snow of the winter in Charlotte. It had begun to accumulate in the early morning, but then changed to sleet and rainfall in the afternoon, causing many morning traffic accidents. City Police officials reported about 12 morning accidents and warned motorists to drive safely this night as freezing temperatures threatened to cover all roads with ice as the predicted low was 25. Sleet was expected to mix with the snow and rain this date, with clear weather moving in this night.
John Borchert of The News reports that Charlotte Rabbi E. A. Levi of Temple Israel had criticized the apathy of Charlotte citizens and the City Government regarding recent bomb attempts at two Jewish temples, one in Gastonia and one in Charlotte. He said the previous night that "the Charlotte community should take a lesson from Gastonia", where a $1,000 reward had been offered for the capture of the man or men responsible for the attempted bombing of that city's Temple Israel on February 10. He said that the Charlotte City Council and organizations in the city had done nothing after the November 11 bombing attempt at Temple Beth El in Charlotte. He said that Gastonia had treated the bombing there not as a Jewish problem but as a community problem. He had spoken at the weekly late evening service at Temple Israel, saying that he refused to become a "second-class citizen", that the bombing attempts were not "a problem for Jews alone. If a Christian community becomes un-Christian, then it is a problem for the community at large." He said that Jews were not entirely blameless in the attitude of indifference, placing blame on "those Jews who wanted to keep the matter of the Temple Beth El bomb attempt quiet as much as I blame the community." He said that if such a bombing attempt had been made at one of the large Protestant churches in the city, the citizens "would have been up in arms and the newspapers would have carried big black headlines." He said that Jews should not fear man, but instead should fear God, stating that they might be responsible for the bombings because they had been derelict in the covenant made between God and man.
In Charlotte, in the second half of the 21st annual Shrine Bowl football game at Memorial Stadium the prior December 7, a touchdown had been scored and the extra point attempted. The ball had been kicked into the grandstands but had never been thrown back, apparently retained by fans, according to a report by the newspaper at the time, the first such ball lost in 21 years. A 14-year-old musician and freshman from Rockingham had read the paragraph and knew that he had the ball, given to him by an elderly man who had caught it. He wrapped the ball and sent it with a letter of apology to the newspaper's sports department, which forwarded it to the proper Shrine officials. This date, the chairman of the Board of Governors of the Shrine Bowl had sent the boy a letter, expressing appreciation of the officials for what he had done, telling him that it had been delivered to the office of the Shrine Bowl, where it would remain on display "in honor of a very fine young man".
J. A. Daly of The News reports that the state's shores might be hiding vast quantities of petroleum, suspected since 1925, causing a great amount of money to have been spent in thus far unsuccessful "wildcat" drilling in the Morehead City and Hatteras areas. Nevertheless, new interest had been revealed of late by men regarded as representatives of unidentified corporations of the oil industry. Several experts of late had visited an N.C. State geologist at Raleigh, Dr. J. L. Stuckey, and they had also spent time quietly studying the land indications along the coast from Morehead City to Roanoke Island. The Fitzpatrick interests of Fort Worth, Tex., had a lease which required drilling of 12,000 feet of holes within a two-year period or the lease would be forfeited. Dr. Stuckey had reported that none of those holes thus far had been drilled. The revival of interest in the state's petroleum potential had been intriguing Dr. Stuckey somewhat, at a time when aluminum interests were engaged in broad planning for future development of the reportedly tremendous reserves of aluminum ore in the Spartanburg-Shelby-Rutherfordton-Tryon region of the Piedmont Carolinas. Only a few years earlier, a great volume of processing of lithium ore had been started in the Bessemer City-Kings Mountain region of North Carolina, and that lithium was presently helping meet the needs of missile development as well as the multitude of newly developed needs for civilian industry. Dr. Stuckey said that the "renewed interest on the part of oil company representatives visiting this office is a reminder that important developments in natural resources are coming from time to time in our state." He appeared to remain confident that petroleum was stored by nature far underground along the eastern and northeastern coast of North Carolina. He said he had suggested to Standard Oil Co. that they drill offshore where there was relatively shallow water. The experts had replied that before they would undertake such drilling, they first had to learn how to beat the threats of the violent storms off the coast in the Hatteras and nearby areas. Dr. Stuckey said that the storms probably could tear up drilling rigs anchored in the area, but that in time, that danger could be overcome. Twenty-one unproductive holes had been drilled in the North Carolina coastal plain, with nothing having been done after the first one in 1925 until 1947, and then for several years drilling had been rather active in that region. Well, that is not particularly surprising for an area, the lower heel of the state, formed in the shape of a shoe, which had been the largest tar-producing area in the world for quite some time. That is, after all, where the state actually got its nickname, not from some apocryphal story about Gettysburg or the Revolutionary War around New Bern. But the latter stories sound better, and so they have stuck.
In Reno, Nev., a gunman had taken $50 from a bartender the previous day and then asked for the contents of a large jug at the back of the bar, to which the bartender had protested, explaining that the money had been given by patrons for a crippled children's fund. The gunman had refrained from touching the jug, which had contained between $300 and $500.
It probably goes to show that wine and oil
In Los Angeles, police believed that two jail escapees who had held a family captive for 24 hours and then fled in a stolen sports car were still in the Los Angeles area this date. Be on the lookout for any sports car.
Also in Los Angeles, actor Michael Wilding and a London divorcee and interior decorator had arrived by plane the previous day following their Wednesday night marriage in Las Vegas.
In Midvale, Utah, two young pals, both nine years old, could not seem to get together for birthday parties. When one had celebrated his eighth birthday the previous year, the other had come down with a case of the measles the day before the party and could not attend. And when the other had his ninth birthday the previous day, the first had come down with the measles and so could not attend.
On the editorial page, "How Russia Enlisted Almost Everybody" indicates that Representative Francis Walter's gall had again become a major embarrassment to the Congress, having been best known as the nation's leading voice for the exclusion of foreigners from the haven of "huddled masses, yearning to breathe free." He was also the current chairman of HUAC, "a hangover from scarier times when listening for things that go bump in the night was a national obsession."
The seven-part annual report of HUAC had been released and it had not quite said that the President was under the Kremlin's influence, but had implied same, saying that anyone who favored modification of the present Immigration and Nationality Act was a tool of the Communists. It stated: "The Communist Party … has mobilized all of its resources to render ineffective the Immigration and Nationality Act… Although various non-Communist organizations have advocated amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act and other legislation concerning the security of the United States, the overwhelming mass of testimony and exhibits obtained by the Committee on Un-American Activities demonstrates that the spearhead of the overall drive for mutilation of this legislation is the Communist Party and its affiliates… Many of the proposals made in the Congress of the United States for major changes in the Immigration and Nationality Act … coincide with the expressed objectives of the Communist Party."
It added that "the Kremlin has succeeded in enlisting, at a conservative estimate, more than a million Americans" in the effort to liberalize restrictive legislation. The piece points out that the President had led the Administration's fight to liberalize the Immigration and Nationality Act, having asked that Congress revise it in 1953, 1955, 1956 and 1957, calling the Act, which had been vetoed by President Truman and enacted over his veto, "discriminatory". The previous year, he had sent 20 separate requests to Congress for correction of its "serious and inequitable restrictions."
Yet, it doubts that the President was in the pay of the Kremlin. The 1956 Democratic Party platform, the party of Representative Walter, had stated: "The Democratic Party favors prompt revision of the immigration and nationality laws to eliminate unfair provisions under which admissions to this country depend upon quotas based upon accident of national birth…" It wonders, therefore, whether the Democrats had also been enlisted by the Kremlin. The 1956 Republican Party platform stated: "We support the President's program submitted to the 84th Congress to carry out needed modifications in existing law."
No major revision of the law had yet been enacted, still being a restrictive, discriminatory, dehumanized piece of legislation. Representative Walter, however, felt it necessary to resort to the smear tactics of the Communists themselves to protect his sacred legislative preserves.
It concludes that with the President, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party all enlisted by the Kremlin, it appeared that "the only 100 proof bottled-in-bond American left" was Mr. Walter. "And sometimes we think even he…"
"Bring Us Men to Match Our Buildings" begins with a quote from Charles B. Fairbanks, that "buildings are books that everybody unconsciously reads." It indicates that the effect of Charlotte's new Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. Building on the browsing public was as cheering as a collection of John Keats.
"It stands as an exuberant symbol of both the past and the present. Wachovia's success as a successful participant in the building of the New South made the structure possible. It is a reflection of past growth, past progress, past development. But its size, its sleekness, its lustrous modernity also make it the symbol of the dynamic future of Charlotte, the South and, incidentally, Wachovia itself." It finds that, architecturally, the building was "a wondrous statement in steel and glass and concrete of Charlotte's potential."
The Western pioneer had urged to bring men to match its mountains, and it it urges bringing men to match their buildings, "Men with empires in their purpose,/ And new eras in their brains."
Whether the Wachovia building
constructed in Winston-Salem in the mid-1990's shared some of the
similar symbolic content stated by the piece was the subject of much
debate by locals. If so, the title would not have been very complimentary to management being situated in Winston-Salem. In any event, it did not elicit comparisons to the
poetry of John Keats, more reviving of references
"Mr. Vinson and the Art of Plain Talk" finds it an exceedingly talkative session of Congress in which things were apt only to get louder. One reason was that it was an election year and the urge to make immortal movements of the mouth muscles was thus strong, with another being that there were so many tempting targets for investigations, causing the members to trip over one another in an effort to array themselves with righteous causes. The situation had become so confused that there had been demands for an investigation of one investigating subcommittee, that being the subcommittee investigating the FCC and other regulatory agencies.
But, it finds, some of the talkative Congressmen were saying something, such as Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who had produced a particularly plain piece of talk recently in assessing the aims of his Committee's probe of the defense establishment, saying: "We're going to squeeze this lemon dry for once. I have been here for 44 years and I have been chairman of different committees for 24 years and I have done investigating before. But this is going to be a sure-enough squeezing investigation to get all the facts and be constructive and beneficial. We are going to make this fight now because we can't be any longer classified as being in a defenseless position. If we are, we have to correct it. We are not concerned about anything but doing one thing, and that is doing a good job."
It finds Mr. Vinson's statement to commend itself as gospel to any citizens seeking to learn about his Congressional committee and what it was doing, as a precept to those Congressional committees which did not know what they were doing or what they ought be doing.
A piece from the Milwaukee Journal, titled "Five Hundred Apples a Day", indicates that a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University was seeking to discover whether there was any truth in the old saw that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." The professor had arranged for 500 students to agree to eat one apple per day and another 500 to avoid eating apples in all forms, including hard cider. The following year, the three-year test would end and the professor would seek to determine whether the apple-eating group was any more prone to sickness than those who abstained.
The medical profession apparently was unworried about the possibility that the experiment would put doctors out of business, but, it ventures, apple growers ought be happy, for even if the professor did not prove that apples were good preventive medicine, he would at least have assured the consumption of 547,500, apples by the 500 students, whom, it bets, would not have eaten a fraction of that number otherwise.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was one of the most versatile, toughest scrappers in the Senate. One day the previous week, he had awakened, shaved, had no breakfast and appeared on the "Today Show" with Dave Garroway, then attended a Senate prayer breakfast at which he preached a sermon, "Peace through Disarmament". He quoted from Matthew, chapter 5, "Blessed are the peacemakers," Isaiah, chapter 2, and Micah, chapter 4, "Beat their swords into plowshares," and from Matthew 26:52, "Then Jesus said unto him, 'Put up again thy sword into its place, for all they who take the sword shall perish with the sword.'" The Senator said that Asia feared the U.S. as much as it feared Russia, indicating, "We are not convincing the world that we are peaceful."
Senator Henry Dworshak of Idaho called it "a remarkable sermon for one of the toughest fighters I know."
After the prayer breakfast, Senator Morse had gone to his office, where House Speaker Sam Rayburn was waiting for him on the telephone, saying that he understood that the Senator had some of the stolen documents out of the Moulder subcommittee investigating the FCC, stating it half-jokingly, to which the Senator responded that he did not think the description "stolen" was correct, but that he did have some documents. Those documents had been provided to him by the fired counsel for the subcommittee, Dr. Bernard Schwartz . The Speaker said that he would send the Marshal for them, to which the Senator responded that he believed that under the current Administration, he had better send the Army, eliciting laughter from the Speaker.
Mr. Pearson indicates that arrangements were made to have Senator Morse be at his apartment to deliver the documents at 12:30 p.m., and when he arrived, the lobby appeared full of photographers and Congressmen, including Representative Oren Harris of Arkansas, chairman of the parent committee, and John Flynt of Georgia. Photographers asked the Senator whether he would carry out the documents so that they could take a picture of him, to which he responded that they were too heavy for him to carry. Mr. Harris asked the newsmen to retire so that he could talk privately with the Senator, telling the latter how Speaker Rayburn, who had first proposed the investigation, had held a conference with Mr. Harris during the morning and stated that the "country is all stirred up" but that he was going to give them an investigation "such as they have never seen before. I don't care if it's the executive branch of the Government or the Congress. We are going to investigate. We are really going to bring out the facts." Mr. Pearson notes that Mr. Harris had been dragging his feet in any effort to conduct such a probe.
Mr. Flynt had interjected that the committee had eight former district attorneys and that they knew how to investigate. Mr. Pearson says that the two Congressmen had not said so, but that it was obvious they had in mind the fact that Senator Morse had already announced that he would introduce a resolution to seek a special Senate investigation of influence-peddling and finagling inside the independent agencies, should the House committee not do its job, as former counsel Schwartz had charged. The Senator did not say that he would withdraw his investigation.
Mr. Harris had been curious as to the time when the Senator had received the secret documents, and the Senator told him that it was shortly before midnight the previous night, at which Mr. Harris looked disappointed, as he knew it was before and not after Dr. Schwartz had been served with a subpoena to produce the documents, and so could not be found in contempt of Congress. He had asked the Senator how Dr. Schwartz could have handled all of those papers, to which the Senator responded that he had not, that he had nothing in his hands, that two newspapermen had carried the documents for him. He was referring to the fact, says Mr. Pearson, that Mr. Pearson's assistant, Jack Anderson, had advised bringing the documents to the Senator for safekeeping and that the other newsman was Clark Mollenhoff of the Des Moines Register-Tribune.
Marquis Childs, in Detroit, indicates that in that city there was an underlying uneasiness, not deriving entirely from the fact that one out of every eight workers was without work. Detroit had always led economic developments, even in the depths of the Depression, and unemployment in mid-January, according to the Michigan Employment Security Commission, was 12.4 percent of the labor force, somewhat more than double the national average. The other automobile manufacturing areas of Michigan had also been hit, and total unemployment in the state was estimated at 320,000, 11 percent of the workforce.
Mr. Childs had talked with industry, union and government officials, and almost without exception they stated that they did not anticipate a business upturn, as predicted by the Administration for the following summer. Some had opined that the level of employment would hold where it was, while others believed that unemployment would increase.
Economic analysts of the UAW were saying that only an immediate sharp tax reduction, increasing take-home pay by lowering the automatic deduction for Federal income tax, would be sufficient to prevent the decline. Industry spokesmen were more cautious. Harlow Curtice, president of General Motors, said that a tax cut would be beneficial, even though he could not help but realize that such a cut would throw out of balance the Eisenhower budget for fiscal 1959.
For a considerable time, Detroit had a hard core of unemployment up to 100,000, and in the previous 18 months, it had gradually increased. But from December 15, 1957 to January 15, 1958, an abrupt change had taken place which had gone far beyond the most pessimistic projections of the State Employment Commission. The production of passenger cars had declined by 24 percent in the manufacturers' initiated mass layoffs, which were followed by smaller-scale recalls, curtailment of working hours and a considerable number of short-term shutdowns in production. Companies which supplied the major automotive manufacturers were beginning to be hit also. A fairly large supplier had done some calculations and found that his company could fill all existing orders in nine days of operation each month, requiring a drastic cutback of overhead and the unpleasant necessity of firing or furloughing salaried employees.
The most apparent reason for the problem was that the new cars were not selling. According to unofficial estimates, Ford sales for January had gone down by 30 percent, Chrysler by 34 percent, and GM by 11 percent. American Motors, with its smaller, more economical cars, had actually increased by 26 percent. As a result of the lag in sales, the inventory of new cars had increased by about 110,000 to well over 800,000 in the new year, 20 percent higher than in January, 1957.
Automobile industry executives, in their testimony before the anti-monopoly committee chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, stated that higher prices had nothing to do with the slump in sales, indicating that lack of confidence in the economy despite very high income levels, was the issue. One vice-president of G.M., Edward Ragsdale of Buick, complained in a recent interview that the newspapers were giving too much attention to pessimistic outlooks. Walter Reuther, the president of UAW, stated that high prices, high profits and lack of consumer purchasing power were at fault, proposing a plan for splitting a percentage of the company profits as a bonus to workers and a rebate on each car at the end of the year to buyers.
Mr. Childs indicates that it was only a preliminary skirmish in a struggle to come in the months ahead between the powerful forces of big industry and big labor for which Detroit had become a symbol. That prospect explained the uncertainty in the country. It had become inevitably political, with 73,273 workers exhausting their 26 weeks of unemployment benefits the previous year, averaging $36 per week, prompting Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams to send a message to the State Legislature calling for a variety of moves to help create employment. But that was only a preliminary skirmish, as no one in Detroit doubted that in the Congressional elections in the fall, the recession would be the major issue.
Face fact: It's the crop of ugly cars for this year, with their four-eyed front ends. While the full-sized Rambler had four, the new American had only two, paying homage to tradition, even if a little bulbous looking. But then so were the older cars from the Forties.
Walter Lippmann indicates that French Prime Minister Felix Gaillard had accepted full responsibility on behalf of his Government for the bombing of the Tunisian border town recently, expressing regret that civilians had been killed, but insisting that the bombing was an active "legitimate defense" and that the Government "does not recognize culpability in this affair."
Mr. Lippmann finds that it had closed the door on what might have been a way out of the matter by disavowing the violence caused by the local commanders and giving assurances that it would not be repeated, in which case there might have been hope that the French-Tunisian conflict could have been limited to local actions along the border, with the two governments, in Paris and Tunis, not immediately and directly involved. But now, there was not much hope for that result, as there was a conflict between France and Tunisia spreading to all of the critical points, such as the naval base at Bizerte, where the French-Tunisian national interests met.
It made the U.S. position quite difficult, caught in a bad squeeze between its oldest ally, France, the keystone of the U.S. strategic position in Europe, and a new friend, Tunisia, which, of all the Arab countries, was the most genuinely interested in remaining within the Western sphere. If no way could be found to work harmoniously with Tunisia under its present Government led by Habib Bourguiba, then the prospects for a good relationship between North Africa and the West were not good.
Secretary of State Dulles had described U.S. policy in his press conference on Tuesday as essentially muddling through and hoping that neither side would ask the U.S. to take a decisive position. He was hard-pressed and entitled to seek to buy time, such that it was understandable that he would hope that he could continue to muddle through in North Africa. The alternative to that stance was difficult and dangerous, considering the temper of the times in Paris and the Arab world.
Mr. Lippmann suggests that it appeared very much as if the difficult course, though dangerous, might nevertheless be safer than the policy of muddling through a conflict which was becoming so bitter and irreconcilable, with the alternative being to take the line that the Algerian war was a danger to the peace of the world and that all suitable diplomatic measures had to be undertaken to mediate and compose that war. It would be a very unpopular position in many parts of France for the U.S. to take, but as the North African conflict spread, it would likely not be possible for the U.S. to remain strictly neutral and uninvolved. M. Gaillard's Government was heading into great trouble, and as the conflict deepened and spread, it would appear increasingly intolerable that a professed ally as the U.S. would also be a professed neutral in such a conflict as France was involved. He opines that the wisest and safest thing probably to do would be to grasp the nettle firmly and to say firmly that the time had come to negotiate a political settlement in North Africa. It might well be a signal act of friendship toward France to open the door through which the latter could go, were it free from internal entanglements which prevented it from acting in its own highest interests.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that the Government ought be more concerned about unemployment, with 8 percent of the people out of work, amounting to about 5.5 million—actually currently estimated at 4.5 million, possibly to rise to 5.5 million. Yet, they were calling it a breathing spell amid prosperity, which the letter writer believes might result in a depression were it not dealt with soon. He believes there should be less golf and more business in the Government. "Washington is the capital, not those golf links in Georgia."
A letter writer says the postal service in Charlotte was on the downgrade, indicating that the Postmaster General, Arthur Summerfield, not "Chatterfield", had given the public a raw deal and the people he had in charge in Charlotte did not know what it was all about. During his many visits to Berkeley, Calif., which had a population of around 100,000, he found that the post office had three parcel post windows and a regular stamp window, whereas Charlotte had two parcel post windows with stamps, and would soon not have a stamp window, with one window doing double service if the postmaster could get away with it. He finds it high time for the public to step forward and demand a stamp window to be opened throughout the day, that if a California city two-thirds the size of Charlotte could have three parcel post windows and a regular stamp window, then the same thing should occur in Charlotte. He wonders where the Chamber of Commerce was and wants to wake up the city boosters and see what could be done.
But what was the volume of mail in Berkeley compared to Charlotte? Perhaps the residents of Berkeley, being part of a larger urban area than Charlotte in 1958, had a couple of windows' worth more mail to send to someone, somewhere. Some may have been Commie agents sending critical missile location data to Ensenada for relay to Moscow.
A letter writer expresses appreciation for the newspaper's editorials, indicating that the editorial page was "among the soundest and clearest editorial pages in the state."
Here, incidentally, is some of that "sob and slob"
Framed Edition
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