The Charlotte News
Thursday, February 27, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that FCC commissioner Richard Mack had indicated this date that he would not resign from the Commission, and also swore that he was not "influenced or swayed" by appeals from friends in a contested television license case involving a television channel in Miami. Mr. Mack had also told a House investigating subcommittee that he was getting rid of his interest in a Miami insurance agency which had written the insurance on the successful applicant in that case, a subsidiary of National Airlines. He said that the previous Monday, he had read in the newspapers that he knew that agency had obtained the business from the subsidiary. He acknowledged borrowing a total of $4,980 since 1950 from the Miami attorney at the center of the controversy, but said he had repaid all of it except $250, and that the attorney had never attempted to use any financial obligation he owed to him to influence his actions, either privately or officially. A Republican member of the subcommittee had said earlier that Mr. Mack ought resign immediately and that if he did not, he should be removed from the Commission.
Senator William Knowland of California, the Minority Leader, said this date that Republican Congressional leaders would seek details of the understanding between the President and Vice-President on what to do if the President were to become disabled. The President had disclosed at his press conference the previous day that such an understanding existed between him and the Vice-President and was known to some other associates, but did not say what the understanding was. Senator Knowland held a press conference this date, saying that the matter would be discussed at the next White House meeting between the President and Republican leaders the following Tuesday. Senator Knowland said that Congressional leaders had been informed within the previous week or two that there was such an understanding, but that they did not know whether it was in writing or what the understanding was. He said he believed it advisable that Congressional leaders be informed as to the nature of the understanding, even though the details would not be made public. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois predicted that the Senate Judiciary Committee would agree on a proposed Constitutional amendment which would permit the Cabinet to determine Presidential inability by a majority vote.
The President this date signed a bill temporarily lifting the national debt ceiling by 5 billion dollars to 280 billion.
The Air Force told the missile-aircraft industry this date to quicken the tempo of production, warning that there would be no contracts for those firms which failed to keep pace.
Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota said this date that he would seek to question Secretary of State Dulles soon regarding the differences between Mr. Dulles and Harold Stassen regarding disarmament negotiations.
In Tunis, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba this date called on the NATO powers to intervene in the conflict between France and the Algerian rebels.
In Auckland, New Zealand, it was reported that Dr. Vivian Fuchs had only 180 miles of easy territory to cover before reaching Scott Base, with his expedition set to be the first to cross the frozen continent by land when it reached the British Commonwealth base.
In Frankfurt, West Germany, the captain of Germany's famed prewar Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, Max Pruss, this date announced plans for construction of a new 200-passenger airship to put the country back in the dirigible business. He said that the new Zeppelin was ready in blueprint and that large airships had a great future, that they were aware that the Americans were working on an atomic-powered Zeppelin. He said that non-inflammable helium gas to inflate the dirigible had been promised by the U.S. Department of Interior on condition that the airship would be used on the North Atlantic route. Mr. Pruss, 66, had been in command of the Hindenburg when it had exploded in flames while landing at Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937, killing 36 persons and ending Zeppelin trans-Atlantic service. A committee, backed by the German Zeppelin Foundation with considerable funding at its disposal, had just finished plans for the new airship, according to Mr. Pruss. It would be capable of carrying 200 passengers, plus 70 tons of freight across the Atlantic at a cruising speed of 100 mph. He added that Zeppelins were very economical to operate and that all aeronautic progress in the previous 20 years would be embodied in the new ship.
In Lakehurst, N.J., a gusty 40 mph wind had wrenched an experimental blimp from its moorings early this date and sent it bouncing into the pine barrens south of Lakehurst. The blimp, 100 yards in length, had been found largely deflated three miles away several hours later by a helicopter pilot. The Navy theorized that the rubberized fabric of the airship had been torn open by a tree. When the blimp had first broken loose in the wee hours of the morning, the Civil Aeronautics Administration had warned all aircraft over the area to be on the alert, but no flights had been grounded. Two sailors who were on watch in the gondola had jumped to safety when the blimp had broken loose. They were slightly injured and taken to a military hospital. The blimp, without its engines, had been moored at a mast for about a year and the Navy had been using it to test the effect of weather on a moored blimp over a prolonged time. In the gusty winds, something had happened to the tethering mechanism, causing it to break. Because it was in equilibrium at ground level, the blimp did not rise high into the air but was bounced through the woods by the wind.
In Bolton, England, a chartered British airliner with 42 persons aboard had hit a snow-covered mountain this date only five minutes from its destination, and a policeman at the scene said that 33 persons had perished. An injured stewardess, the only woman aboard, and the copilot had struggled through knee-deep snow to a television relay station on top of the mountain to provide the first word of the disaster. Helicopters, snowplows and mountain rescue teams sped through a blizzard to the scene. The plane had been carrying automobile dealers from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea on a one-day junket to Manchester, 15 miles from Bolton, to inspect a battery plant. The journey had only been 100 miles and lasted 35 minutes, but with visibility cut by heavy clouds and the blizzard, the plane had hit against Winter Hill and was smashed to bits, near the bleak moorlands of Lancashire and only 400 yards from the television tower manned by five engineers. The snow was so deep that no vehicle could reach within a mile of the wreckage, but bulldozers and snowplows had been able to get through the four-foot drifts, opening the way for ambulances, after the call had gone forth from the television station for help.
In Jackson, Miss., it was reported that tornadoes had hit 13 areas in Mississippi the previous night, leaving destruction and nearly 80 dead, dying and injured persons. Five of the dead were in the rural area between Richton and Waynesboro, near the Alabama border, while three were in the Farm Haven community near Canton, another near Jackson and yet another near Walnut Grove, 40 miles east of Canton. One of the victims was a woman reported to be 110 years old. The first twister had been reported in the Jackson area. A housewife said that the approach of the tornado sounded "like a million bells" and that all she could think about were her babies and family. She said that only the good Lord had saved them, that an icebox had held off the falling debris when the roof had fallen in.
In Mission, Kans., in an English class at a local high school the previous day, a question had been propounded regarding the literary merits of an essay in which E. B. White had reflected on Walden Pond in Massachusetts and the sojourn there by Henry David Thoreau. The teacher had asked what was in Walden Pond, to which a 17-year old junior had responded, "Water." The class had laughed. The boy had been found shot to death the previous night in his bedroom, the coroner indicating that it was a self-inflicted wound. He had left a note instructing his father, a tire salesman, on the disposition of his car and the payment of his bills, adding: "I see no possible future for me. Most of my trouble, as you know, has been school. They want me to write a term paper in English, do a project in business, etc." He added for his English teacher that he still thought there was water in Walden Pond. The teacher said that there was no ridicule in the laughter by the students and that he could not imagine what had gone on in the student's mind afterward, that he certainly had a future and was a "swell boy, always smiling, pleasant, adding something to your day—as he did with his answer about Walden Pond." Well, we have been to Walden Pond, and, indeed, it is full of water, in which you may see your own reflection. Nothing to get hung up about.
Donald MacDonald of The News indicates that one of Charlotte's lifelines was in grave danger of breaking, and that if it should happen, half of the city's water supply would be exhausted after only four days. To meet the emergency, the City Council had the previous day authorized an expenditure of $17,500 to provide for an urgent repair on at least one concrete pier which supported a 36-inch diameter raw water main located in a remote section of Long Creek township, the main, along with two others of lesser size, carrying approximately 20 million gallons of water during a normal day under the usual pressure conditions. It extended underground from the Catawba River Pumping Station, approximately 2 miles distant, to an exposed point where it crossed Long Creek, then returned underground, piping water for 5.5 additional miles to the Hoskins Reservoir, where enough water was kept on hand for a four-day reserve. From there, it was carried an additional 3.6 miles to the City's filtering plant on Beatty's Ford Road. The extreme weather conditions of the current winter had been blamed for undermining one of the big pipe's supporting piers, as the rains and snows had hurled torrents onto the pier and eaten away the earth beneath it. One of the sections of the concrete pipe had moved about six inches out of line as a result, enough for the utility engineer to realize the imminent danger. There was water in the pipe.
In Phoenix, Ariz., two men who claimed ownership of the moon had learned that someone else had staked a claim several years earlier. The two men, one a hotel clerk and the other unemployed, had filed a warranty deed to the moon the previous week with the county recorder, who insisted that the deed was drawn up legally. But it turned out that a man from New Orleans, who had died February 13, had filed a similar claim several years earlier in Cook County, Ill. One of the two men said that it was still their moon unless proven otherwise, which would be for the courts to decide. There is going to be a problem come 1969.
In New Britain, Conn., Mr. and Mrs. Boy of East Berlin had a girl, born at New Britain General Hospital.
On the editorial page, "ABC Roles Must Be Simple as A-B-C" indicates that the press had been accused of spreading confusion about ABC regulations and their effect on the practices of various local clubs. It indicates guilt for spreading confusion but not for creating it, as it was getting the facts from the official sources.
It was a pity that there was confusion about what was legal and what was not in the sale and consumption of intoxicating beverages, a confusion which ought be cleared up in terms simple enough for the understanding of all citizens. There were reports that local club representatives had scheduled an "off the record" meeting with ABC field supervisors to find definitive answers for such questions as whether the club locker system, under which intoxicants were stored for members and dispensed to them in the clubs, was illegal, and whether the consumption of beer and liquor on the same premises was illegal.
If reports were true, club representatives could not be faulted for arranging the meeting, as they were pertinent questions and the clubs needed pertinent answers from an official source. It indicates that if state ABC officials had clarified their views to the extent that they could counsel club officials, they ought to be ready to make public the same counsel for the guidance of everyone.
"Higher Learning: Fair Game for Debate" indicates that there was a feeling exhibited in certain parts of the press that the value of the State Board of Higher Education had to be questioned by the "great unwashed" because it was not clearly a "good thing". In theory, the Board was in fact a good thing, but even such things had to prove themselves, and the Board had thus far proved nothing more satisfying than the ease with which laudable motives could be thoroughly misunderstood.
If the current controversy vis-à-vis UNC resulted in clarification of the role of the University within the larger framework of state-supported higher education in the state, then something valuable would have been accomplished. The powers and responsibilities of the Board had never been precisely defined and so it was small wonder that some University trustees were confused. Considering the red tape and bureaucracy involved in settlement of routine University matters, and the disentangling of lines of authority required, a measure of resentment on the part of trustees, such as W. C. Harris, Jr., of Wake County, was wholly understandable.
It finds that the bureaucracy in the University system was one of the factors inhibiting the power and influence of the University in an era when that power and influence was again needed in the South. It urges that the controversy should continue so that truth and falsehood could be sorted out, and that "good things" ought be put to the test of practicality so that state-supported higher education in the state could be charted with more candor and clarity by the Administration of Governor Luther Hodges. It also urges that the air be cleared of a lot of pious pap about the sanctity of certain subjects of popular concern.
"The President, Pouts & Personalities" indicates that the President's perpetual pout regarding former President Truman had become something of an Administration hallmark, coming to the fore during the week when the President had refused to appear on the same program with the former President. The program had been designed as an exhibition of bipartisan support for the mutual security program, conceived by the Administration, despairing of its ability to push the program to approval without the help of opposition leaders.
Both Mr. Truman and Adlai Stevenson had appeared at the event, defending the Administration program and urging the Democratic-controlled Congress to approve of it. But with something of royal disdain, the President had insisted on making his speech after Mr. Truman had departed.
It supposes that the President's taste in acquaintances and companions did not permit him much truck with political types, and Mr. Truman was a politician. The White House guest list indicated a higher preference for industrial tycoons.
But the nation sometimes bore the burden of Mr. Eisenhower not being a politician, with there being traits in both the President and the former President which could benefit the other. It asserts that there was no danger that the President would be contaminated by merely shaking the hand of Mr. Truman or sharing a platform with him. Former President Hoover and former President Truman were much further apart politically than Mr. Truman and Mr. Eisenhower, and yet the two former Presidents, Hoover and Truman, accorded each other the respect and honors due former Presidents.
President Eisenhower had won much admiration for his reputed refusal to deal in personalities, but it questions whether he actually was refusing to deal in personalities.
A piece from the St. Petersburg Times, titled "Rather Have a Car or a Bath?" indicates that at the recent three-day gathering of the Women's Housing Congress in Washington, 100 housewives from nearly every state had rated a second bathroom as "the most important home improvement", even surpassing a second car. The Plumbing Fixture Manufacturers Association, one of the sponsors of the Congress, said that the motivation for the statement had been the search for bathroom privacy to reduce family tension and frustrations.
It finds it a slap in the face for the Russians, who were still struggling to get the average man set up with his first car and first bathroom.
It suggests that the Women's Congress was on the right track, finding that one could do without a car but not without a bath, as there were all types of substitutes for a car, such as buses, taxis or walking. But the nation had made the bathroom into a shrine during the previous few decades and had cleanliness drummed into it for years by the soap industry, the bathtub trust and the deodorant interests, making being nice to be near more important than just being nice.
One could sleep in one's car on a patented bed and could shave there as well, could visit drive-in movies, banks and restaurants, but could definitely not take a bath in the car. It thus agrees that there should be a second bathroom and "damn the sputniks!"
Drew Pearson indicates that former President Truman, visiting old friends in Washington, had told about his protocol problems when he dedicated his library in Missouri: "I had the ex-President of the United States, Mr. Hoover, as my guest. I also had the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Majority Leader of the Senate, the Minority Leader of the House. And I didn't know what procedure to give them or how to handle them. So I wrote Mrs. [Edith] Helm [the social secretary and arbiter of the White House during the Truman Administration] and asked what I should do. What do you suppose she wrote back to me? She said, 'You never paid any attention to protocol while you were President. Why should you worry about it now?'"
The former President had sped up his recent Washington speech so much to allow it to fall within the allotted television time that most people did not notice an indirect but deliberate crack he had taken at Senator Lyndon Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn regarding their boycott of the Democratic Advisory Committee. Mr. Truman had gone out of his way to quote from the Committee's policies in which the Senator and Mr. Rayburn had refused to participate. Mr. Pearson describes the net impression from the Democratic gathering as being that Adlai Stevenson was still above all other candidates while unable to be elected for the reason that the old-line Democratic leaders would not get out and work for him.
He provides some of the "Trumanisms" which had the Democrats almost rolling in the aisles. "This Administration is acting like an overbearing banker with a glass eye." "What are the unemployed betting on? More important what are they betting with?" "They cut out the stream pollution program. Let 'em drink dirty water, they said. The Republicans buy bottled water anyway." "This Administration had a lot of trouble getting the satellite off the ground. It had no trouble shooting the cost of living into outer space." "Whenever the press quits accusing me, then I know I'm in the wrong pew."
The Teamsters Union would not have to worry about letting former president Dave Beck live in his swank Seattle home which he had once sold to the Union for $160,000 while wanting to continue to occupy it. Mr. Beck would now live in the "big house" as the guest of the State of Washington.
Doris Fleeson indicates that First Lady Mamie Eisenhower had been a "golf widow" for the previous five years and had borne the boring chore with grace. Occasionally she had confided to a reporter that she was a little "stir crazy" during weeks in Denver, where few of her old friends remained, or in Augusta, Ga., where opportunities for feminine diversion were relatively limited. To the public, however, she had radiated cheer.
Apparently, the cold in Georgia and the card games of her husband had begun to pall the previous week and she decided it was her turn to have the kind of vacation which all women wanted. She had also declined to take a bus while her husband floated home in luxury, and wanted her sister and her friend to accompany her to Arizona to the Eve Arden trimming salon.
Politically, her timing had been terrible as the recession was now admitted and the 5 million unemployed could understandably feel intolerant of women's foibles. In addition, the Eisenhowers were being attacked from previously friendly sources and it would have been wise for them to keep their heads down as much as possible. But for years, praise had been heaped on Mrs. Eisenhower for being and doing what she was being and doing at present and few people could maintain a strong hold on reality when so pampered. The mildest suggestion that the wife of the President could be helpful, if she would, in such fields as health, education or the special interests of women and children had been treated as heresy of a peculiarly unfortunate type.
She had not been well served in the present furor by White House press secretary James Hagerty, who was apparently losing his sense of humor as the attack on the Administration increased, perhaps a victim of his press notices which had been too good to be true. His job, relatively easy when the President and First Lady could do no wrong, was now becoming enormously difficult. He was virtually the only source of news about the President, who had spoken to the press for himself only twice since the previous October 30. The frustrations of the reporters were aggravated when they were cooped up with Mr. Hagerty for days on end, never seeing the President and unable to take any soundings of their own on the situation.
The First Lady's whim to take the vacation in Arizona required the light touch from Mr. Hagerty, but instead, he lost his temper and lectured the reporters on their job, conveying the unfortunate impression that he regarded the plush Presidential airplane more as a toy than a perquisite of the job with a serious purpose. Ms. Fleeson suggests that it might be a good idea if instead of reading his press notices, he read more about some of his able predecessors who had similar problems.
On one occasion, an exasperated traditionalist among the press had remonstrated with the late Charles Michelson, the publicist for Democrats during the Hoover-Roosevelt era, about Eleanor Roosevelt's travels, one reporter saying, "You have got to tell the President that he must lay down the law to Mrs. Roosevelt," to which Mr. Michelson asked when the last time the reporter had laid down the law to his wife.
An editorial report by The News appears anent Radio Free Europe, indicating that it had been its disappointment that Rumanian Communists had never followed up on their nomination of RFE as the "world champion in meanness and lies." For a citation to that effect would have been taken as a treasured souvenir by RFE staff, who, for the previous eight years had beamed facts and truth over the Iron Curtain and by the American citizens who had provided financial support for the effort.
RFE had a shattering effect on Russian efforts to brainwash and thus subdue permanently the peoples of East European satellites. Now, while the Crusade for Freedom was campaigning for funds to continue RFE broadcasts to the captive peoples of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria, it was an opportune time to examine its effectiveness.
Russia's estimated expenditures annually were 113 million dollars in an attempt to jam the broadcasts. They also regularly denounced RFE in Communist-controlled publications and broadcasts across the satellite nations, averaging about 350 such denunciations per month during 1957. Refugees had also constantly referred to RFE as "our station" after escaping the Iron Curtain to freedom in the West.
It provides some anecdotal statements regarding the effectiveness of RFE, including a Charlotte resident who had inspected the RFE operations the previous October as the vice-chairman and treasurer of the North Carolina Crusade for Freedom, returning from his trip with the firm conviction that the Russian hold on nations behind the Iron Curtain had been weakened because the West had been able to give the citizens of those nations truthful information which Communist censorship and propaganda denied them. He said that from what he had learned from refugees, an end to the RFE broadcasts would be considered a victory for Russian propaganda and the people would feel that the West had abandoned them and the fight against Communism.
North Carolinians were being asked to contribute $25,000 to the Crusade, which it describes as an idea and action against tyranny and in defense of individual freedom, an idea which Edmund Burke had been discussing in 1775 in connection with the struggle for freedom in the American colonies when he said: "The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered."
General Lucius Clay, who had broken Russia's Berlin blockade of 1948-49 by flying supplies over it, had updated the idea, proposing to send truth over the Iron Curtain so the captive East Europeans would continue to have the will to resist the ultimate subjugation by the Soviets, that of the mind. RFE had become the world's most powerful broadcasting station with 20 transmitters, 16 of which were located in Portugal to stop Communist jamming efforts, broadcasting 3,000 hours per week in the Eastern satellites. Its program varied, including personal messages from Iron Curtain escapees to relatives and friends at home, news, music, arts, religion and education. Only in the narrowest sense could it be considered a propaganda effort, although effective Western propaganda was not something to be dismissed. It was a voice reflecting the fullness and flavor of life in the free world, a voice against which tyrants had no defense and one of the voices which eventually would topple the Iron Curtain and Communist tyranny.
"The great miracle of RFE is not the number of broadcasts or the size of the transmitters, but the uniting of people of many languages and backgrounds in the common understanding that freedom must be won for all mankind, or no man can be secure."
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr.,
asserts that in an editorial of February 19 and in the article on the
editorial page by Julian Scheer of February 20 regarding Harry
Golden, the newspaper might have lit a candle which could consume the
entire nation in short order. He says that Mr. Golden was obviously
proud of his Jewish lineage and yet was an ardent integrationist and
thought it "noble" for Southern gentile whites and blacks
to forget that they too had racial pride and the desire to preserve
it. He suggests that if Mr. Golden were honest and informed, he knew
in his head and heart that no people in history had been more ardent
believers in the broad principle of segregation than the Jewish
people. "Although riding Israelite Golden and his shifty egghead
type is a delight (some say 'sadistic' delight), I pause for a moment
to make it known that I do not delight in the fact that this 'chosen
one' has lost all his worldly possessions in a fire. Fire is sad and
serious business sometimes, and I fully share the sentiments of the
Roman poet Horace who observed, 'Your own prosperity is concerned
when your neighbor's house is on fire
Okay, fine, it was set by some numbskull such as yourself, an adherent to the late Senator McCarthy. It is nice that you confessed to arson.
The actual cause of the fire had been attributed by the fire department to the furnace in the basement having been left on while Mr. Golden was in the Northeast attending a speaking engagement. No one, save this idiot, said anything about arson. Thus, we conclude that he must be guilty.
Framed Edition
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