The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 8, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy had picked a boss for outer space projects and given the new Advance Research Projects Agency its assignment of developing weapons of the future. He had also tentatively decided that the Air Force would provide crews for any spaceships of the future. Roy Johnson, 52, vice-president of General Electric, where he had been formerly in charge of electronics business, was named to head ARPA. The appointment indicated that the long-delayed Pentagon space agency finally was getting ready for business, with the development of such weapons as military satellites, antimissile missiles and space platforms. Secretary McElroy said that he was still looking for "a most highly qualified scientist" to head a group to provide technical direction to the new agency. At a press conference in New York, Mr. Johnson said that he was not a scientist or technical man, but an administrator. He estimated that it might take 18 months to two years to get the agency running effectively. ARPA was intended to coordinate space research in the Defense Department and eliminate interservice rivalry in that field. The directive of the Secretary provided that the agency might farm out particular space projects to individual services or tap the services for scientists and technicians, also authorizing it to obtain assistance from business firms, educational, research or scientific institutions.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Air Force and the manufacturer of the Atlas ICBM studied thousands of feet of taped data this date for clues to the cause of an explosion which had destroyed the missile after less than four minutes of flight the previous day. A spokesman for the Convair division of General Dynamics Corp. of San Diego said that the cause of the self-destruction was still a mystery and might not be known until completion of a thorough reading of the information, if at all. The information was recorded on tape and sent back by radio from the instruments aboard the Atlas. Some persons at the Cape had speculated that interference by a radio signal, possibly from an amateur ham operator, had caused the Atlas to destroy itself. The Convair spokesman said that the Atlas did have a destruction package in it, operated by radio. He said that there were safeguards, however, to prevent its accidental detonation and that any outside signal would have to have been on the right wavelength to cause it. If it had occurred, he said that there would be a way of knowing it from reading the tape. The missile, which cost two million dollars, had shattered into bits about 30 miles above the ocean. Before it had exploded, it had yielded virtually all of the essential data which even a much longer test flight would have provided. Air Force experts this date started the task of reducing that data to usable information. Two earlier Atlas missiles had been destroyed shortly after launch in 1957. Because of the volumes of information gained, the Air Force classed those flights not as failures but as being 95 percent successful. Only two of the five 5,500-mile range ICBM's launched to date had made completely successful flights.
In Moscow, it was reported that Soviet scientists in the Antarctic had reported this date that they had found fossilized plants in what appeared to be animal bones possibly 250 million years old.
The White House this date confirmed that former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had accepted the President's invitation to be a White House guest for several days late in April. (Whether he would walk around late at night in his kimono and slippers, as during his wartime visits with FDR, startling Eleanor Roosevelt on occasion in the hallways, was not indicated.)
The White House said this date that new Soviet Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov would present his credentials to the President the following Tuesday.
At The Hague, the Netherlands had rebuffed Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin's invitation for a summit conference and suggested the resumption of disarmament talks as a better way to restore East-West confidence.
In Taipeh, Formosa, it was reported that Nationalist Chinese Air Force headquarters this date denied a claim by Peiping Radio that Chinese Communist antiaircraft guns had shot down a Nationalist plane and damaged three others off Fukien Province the previous Monday.
Near Seoul, South Korea, 11 South Korean Army soldiers had been killed and 13 injured, two of whom seriously, when an Army truck fell from a cliff in the 6th Corps area 30 miles north of Seoul.
In Hong Kong, it was reported that the deputy chief of the Communist Chinese Army political section had said this date that Communist China would spend 23 million yuan, the equivalent of about ten million dollars, less on military expenditures in the current year than in the previous one.
In Tunis, the Tunisian Government said that French planes this date had bombarded a Tunisian village for an hour, killing five persons and wounding 40.
In Auckland, New Zealand, bad weather this date had prevented Edmund Hillary from leaving Scott Base for Depot 700 to join Dr. Vivian Fuchs and his British party on the last leg of their trans-Antarctic trek.
Bitter arctic cold had gripped most of the nation's Eastern half this date and once more had sent temperatures below freezing across the Deep South. Subzero temperatures were common over the North Central states and were below freezing as far south as Texas and Louisiana. There was little prospect immediately of a break in the widespread chill.
In Charlotte, the Weather Bureau said that the previous day's comfortable high of 63 would slide to a high of 40 this date and 36 the following day. The low during the morning was 28, but would drop to 18 by the following day. The forecast was for fair, windy and cold weather this date, clear with a hard freeze this night, and fair and continuing cold for Sunday. There would be a warming trend, however, by Tuesday.
In Decatur, Ga., a woman accused of stealing nearly $187,000 from a prosperous Decatur medical clinic was in the hospital awaiting sentence on Monday after an all-male jury had deliberated two hours the previous day before convicting her on two counts of larceny from a trust. The defendant sat slumped in a wheelchair, apparently semiconscious after a fainting spell, while the verdict was being read, with her eyes closed and giving no indication that she heard what was being said. The jury had fixed her punishment at between two and five years in prison on each count and recommended that they be served concurrently. The judge said that he would follow the jury's recommendation when he formally sentenced her. She was carried from the courthouse on a stretcher and taken to a hospital in nearby Atlanta for observation.
In Paducah, Ky., a Missouri State Trooper and a Kentucky civilian had been charged with voluntary manslaughter following the shooting of a young woman at a police roadblock the previous Monday, pursuant to a coroner's inquest conducted the previous day. Both men were freed on bond pending a trial on February 17. The coroner's jury had ruled that the young woman had died as a result of one or more large-caliber bullets fired by someone unknown to the jury. She had been shot early on Monday morning at a roadblock set up to catch two men of Redwood City, Calif., who had since been taken into custody on charges of kidnaping and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles, following the abduction of a Missouri State Trooper the previous Saturday night. Shortly before the inquest, the Missouri trooper and the civilian, along with a companion of the civilian, had been named as defendants in a $100,000 civil suit claiming that the woman's death had been the result of careless, illegal, unlawful and negligent action by all and each of the defendants. The suit had been filed by the uncle of the 24-year old victim. The brother of the dead woman and driver of the car which had gone through a roadblock, prompting the shooting, had told the inquest that he had stopped three times and waited for a signal from the roadblock, that he had driven on through when none came and had then been fired upon. The charged civilian testified, however, that the Missouri trooper had ordered the approaching car to stop and when it instead sped up, the trooper had fired his shotgun and the civilian had fired the trooper's carbine at the car. It apparently had not been determined which gun fired the fatal shot, striking the victim in the back.
In Seattle, Betty MacDonald
In Hickory, N.C., a man had confessed during the morning to the fatal shooting which had ended a wine and beer drinking spree, saying he did not know the man whose body had been found in his home the previous night. Police had charged him with first-degree murder. A detective said that the defendant had said that the two men had been drinking wine and beer together, got into a fight, and the other man had hit the accused with a chair, knocking him down in the dining room of his home, and he had crawled to the living room to get his 16-gauge shotgun. The victim then had come at the accused with an open pocket knife, and the accused had fired his shotgun, hitting the other man in the left chest. The accused, in a dazed condition, had gone to a neighbor's house and asked that someone go to his home with him, as someone was fighting over there. A man returned to the accused man's home and saw the body lying in the living room, then called police. A police sergeant said that the accused had been questioned for an hour or two the previous night, jailed to get a good night's sleep and then brought out for more questioning early in the morning, with his confession resulting less than three hours later. Both the victim and the defendant had police records.
Somebody was in a somnambulant spell down on Bourbon
Street
Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that a tug-of-war was developing over Charlotte's 200-year old Spanish cannon. The U.S. Government wanted to take "El Dominante" from its current moorings and place it in the Kings Mountain National Park. The Stonewall Jackson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which had been responsible for placing the cannon in its current location many years earlier, wanted to retain it where it was or in a new location in Charlotte. The UDC said that the cannon had been given to them and they did not like the idea of it being snatched away by the Government. We hope that all gets resolved before a new civil war develops.
On the editorial page, "The U.S. Senate Grapples with Infinity" indicates that the Senate was preparing to discuss the infinity of space and spending money on it. By a 78 to 1 vote, it had created a blue-ribbon committee of senior Senators to study "all aspects and problems related to the exploration of outer space."
It hopes that the Senate had accepted as valid the opinion of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson that "this movement into space will dominate the affairs of mankind just as the exploration of the Western Hemisphere dominated the affairs of mankind in the 16th and 17th centuries." In that sentence, it finds, Senator Johnson had captured the essential and urgent meaning posed by the current uproar regarding satellites and rockets. It was not that the Senator knew very much about space, as no one did. And not much more would be known when the satellites presently orbiting finished sending data back to earth. But the satellites had furnished proof that the frontier of space could be crossed and that explorations into the infinity beyond could begin. The Senator had recognized that virile civilizations could not turn away from frontiers. They had to cross them and it would be foolish for the U.S., irrespective of the spur of Soviet competition, to let the opportunity pass.
It suggests that there might be bitter irony in the fact that billions of dollars were to be spent on machines which would hit the moon while millions of earth's inhabitants were dying for lack of food and shelter. But nations historically had sought utopias abroad rather than building them at home, and that Afghanistanism would not change.
It suggests that in the longer view, perhaps a costly conquest of space could bring to humanity the foundations of unity and peace it had not been able to build on earth. Space was a world frontier and its exploration, if wisely managed, could produce a unifying sense of world nationalism of the sort which now was arising in nations when they were dedicated to enterprises of great scope and challenge. The "new frontier" would have some sort of direct and lasting impact on the inhabitants of the world.
The future impact would be determined in large measure by steps taken at present. If space exploration was to be merely a cosmic extension of the present dangerous competition between the U.S. and Russia, its benefits could be discounted. But if, through the U.N., it could be made a cooperative international venture, an overall lessening of tensions might result. Whether or not that could succeed, it would be to the benefit of the U.S. to propose to the U.N. that space be declared off-limits to great power rivalries. The step would restore to the U.S. the initiative in world affairs which the Soviets had claimed with the Sputniks of the prior fall.
"Space is an infinity and so are the political possibilities connected with it, but they are infinities that must be dealt with. The Senate, in response to Lyndon Johnson's leadership, has acted wisely and well in recognizing now the nation's irrevocable involvement in both infinities."
It might be noted that on this date's editorial page, there appear some of the centerpieces for the future Kennedy-Johnson Administration, and, in Mr. Pearson's column below, for the future Nixon Administration, the latter's foreign policy initiatives also being a centerpiece of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration, albeit with somewhat different stresses and in varying degrees to meet prevailing conditions. Each of those administrations can also be viewed on a continuum in terms of foreign policy and space exploration, of course, though again varying in relative stress.
"Our Handy-Dandy Guide to Editorialese" indicates its dedication to the notion that all editorial pages ought to be thoroughly understood. It had looked at Robert Paul Smith's new book, Translations from the English, to be published February 10 by Simon & Schuster, in which it appeared that Mr. Smith had decoded for general consumption the euphemisms, circumlocutions and other forms of double-talk presently in common usage in certain U.S. professions and occupational circles.
For instance, Mr. Smith had explained that when a teacher said to a parent, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that—at this stage it's the social adjustment that counts," what the teacher really meant was, "The child cannot read, write, or count beyond nine, but has stopped throwing modeling clay into the sandbox."
It had occurred to it that readers of editorial pages deserved at least the same degree of enlightenment and so it had dissected from some of North Carolina's most favored family journals a few choice examples of "editorialese" and translated them for the puzzled public.
Some of its samples: "Unquestionably" meant questionably; "Broadly speaking" meant to take a rather narrow but socially acceptable view; "Only time will tell" meant that they knew what was going to happen but were not telling; "Thoughtful people" were people who thought precisely the way the editors did; "On the other hand" meant that the editors were tired, too; "Underlying this controversy" meant that they would tell the reader, if they were not afraid he would sue; "He had a great reputation" meant if you could not say something nice…; "To be deplored" meant yes, but wasn't it fun while it lasted?
And it provides others, concluding that there would never be another formula for editorial writing quite like the one an old-time editor had used to impose on the readers, designed for politicians, going something like: "1—What did he say? 2—Who is he? 3—To hell with him."
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Roadside Wrights", indicates that in lieu of the prosaic metal lunchbox-type mailboxes in rural areas, one saw many intricately fashioned boxes.
Apparently postal officials did not object to the poetic flourishes as long as the mailbox was legally accessible to the carrier, but unofficially, they appeared to prefer the regular boxes.
Some of the creative models had real windows and doors, stoops or porches, chimneys, precisely slanting roofs made of shingles or asbestos, and some were modeled after Mount Vernon while others emulated Spanish architecture.
Perhaps the traveler would never meet the owner of the mailbox, but it was known from a glance by "the sudden burst of ingratiating difference. And best of all, this seems to be entirely a spontaneous movement. The program was not sponsored by any public beautifiers or professional uplifters."
Drew Pearson indicates that Vice-President Nixon, who had traveled most of the world since 1953, had now offered to go to Moscow, with a plan to fly to Russia during the spring and talk with Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in a general exploratory manner regarding a summit meeting. The plan would be to test Russian sincerity and see how far they would be willing to go. Instead of the ambassadorial negotiations, which Secretary of State Dulles had proposed, Mr. Nixon would conduct the exploration himself. If Mr. Khrushchev indicated that he was really ready to smooth out U.S.-Russian relations and end the cold war, Mr. Nixon would recommend a summit conference fairly soon.
State Department advisers were somewhat skeptical over Mr. Nixon's dramatic gesture, believing that as smart as he was, he might be no match for the tough, sharp-trading Mr. Khrushchev. They also remembered that Mr. Nixon had taken a valiant stab at getting dictator Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua together with President Figuere of Costa Rica, but had failed. They also saw undercurrents of Madison Avenue politics in Mr. Nixon's ambitious proposal.
But the Vice-President appeared completely serious and anxious to go ahead with the trip, apparently being impressed by the visit of Soviet Ambassador Georgi Zaroubin, who had gone out of his way to call on Mr. Nixon before he had departed for Moscow upon leaving his position.
Mr. Pearson notes that the Kremlin had made it a definite policy to warm up to the Vice-President, apparently believing that he might become President before 1960, and, if not, then certainly thereafter.
In Damascus the previous September, the Syrian chief of staff had given Mr. Pearson a prediction which he did not quite believe, predicting that Syria and Egypt would unite. In the present month, the unity had occurred as announced in Damascus and Cairo, posing some dangerous problems to the peace of the Near East. To unite effectively, Egypt and Syria would have to have common borders, and taking over Jordan would be the first step in that direction, with Israel next.
General Motors lobbyist William Simon had tried to stop the United Auto Workers from recording GM president Harlow Curtice's testimony before the Senate anti-monopoly subcommittee. The union had been recording the sessions as a service for several radio stations. Mr. Simon had protested to Senator Estes Kefauver, chairman of the committee, who offered to take up the complaint with the committee, but rather than make a big issue of it, Mr. Simon had finally withdrawn his protest.
Walter Lippmann indicates that the exchange of letters and speeches between the West and the Soviets showed a military and political stalemate not likely to be broken soon. The Soviets' statement showed nothing which would suggest that they believed they had a decisive military superiority and there was much to support the view of CIA director Allen Dulles that "they recognize that nuclear war at this time would result in devastating damage to them."
He finds the Soviets' statements to be mostly propaganda but of a pacifist nature, not designed to toughen up the people at home but rather to soften up both the West and their own people. The overall effect was a stalemate arising from a balance of terror. Each side wanted the other side to go home and each side wanted disengagement by the other side without disengagement for itself. The West wanted the Russians and their Chinese allies to go home and renounce their present spheres of influence, while the Soviets wanted the Americans to go home and renounce their sphere of influence from Japan and Okinawa to the frontiers of West Germany. There appeared to be no willingness on either side to disengage and engage in give and take, thus there being no prospect of a negotiated settlement at a summit meeting or anywhere else, likely to last until events changed that status.
In the stalemate, the Western position was that its objectives were the reunification of Germany and the liberation of Eastern Europe, to be achieved by the withdrawal of Communist forces to the Soviet Union while the NATO forces remained where they were. No serious person could believe that it was a negotiating position. Rather, it was a policy of stalemate in a divided and occupied Europe.
The Soviet position was the same, only the reverse. They wanted the West to evacuate its armies and dismantle its foreign bases throughout the world while they retained their dominance in East Germany and Eastern Europe, also amounting to a policy of stalemate, not subject to negotiation.
He finds that the reason for that policy on each side was that both sides preferred the existing stalemate to the alternative of mutual disengagement.
A reading of Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's recent speech in Minsk, and of many passages in the letters of Premier Nikolai Bulganin, made it plain that the Soviets were very anxious about the satellite empire and were profoundly concerned about maintaining their grip on it, as it could blow up if the Red Army were withdrawn.
There was a corresponding anxiety on the Western side of the iron curtain, that if the Continent were evacuated by the Russians and by the West, the NATO alliance would soon disintegrate, such that the official view was that it was better for the Red Army to be in the East than for the U.S. Army to be withdrawn from Europe. There was on both sides the unspoken belief that the threat and pressure of the other side was necessary to the morale of its own side.
Both alliances were captive to that stalemate, unable to negotiate on the main issue of disengagement, and it was an unanswerable question as to how long it would last. He ventures that it would endure until it was broken by either a decisive change in German interior politics or by a great upheaval in Eastern Europe, or by those two things occurring together. It was certain, however, that neither Mr. Khrushchev nor Secretary of State Dulles was likely to be able to break that stalemate.
Marquis Childs indicates that the executive council of the AFL-CIO, meeting in Miami Beach, was beset with a host of troubles casting a long shadow across the American labor movement. Corruption and gangsterism had been exposed on many fronts, resulting in the Teamsters Union having been expelled with a loss in revenue to the AFL-CIO of a million dollars per year. The full score of the crime-ridden unions was still to be added up, although the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management had brought to light many noteworthy cases of corruption.
Within the AFL-CIO, the struggle for power went on between the old AFL craft concept and the CIO industry-wide approach. Big labor had also suffered a self-inflicted blow, with serious consequences to the morale of the whole organization. Recently, nearly half of the AFL-CIO organizing staff had been summarily fired, coming just as the organizers were engaged in a fight to obtain recognition for their own union. So determined had been the opposition of the AFL-CIO to that union within a union that the Field Representatives Federation had taken the case to the NLRB. The opposition was based on the claim that, as field organizers, the employees actually represented management, being the personal representative of George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO.
The Wall Street Journal had put forth a sarcastic editorial quoting a statement made by the discharged field organizers: "Despite the pattern of anti-union behavior followed by responsible officials … we are nonetheless shocked by this sudden uprooting without cause of so large a number of faithful employees. If the real object of this reported move is to destroy the Field Representatives Federation, then it will prove to be an abortive move indeed."
The president of the union within a union and others active in its formation had been fired. They had been arguing for the necessity of protecting themselves from long hours of work and low-paying, responsible jobs. Timed as the discharges had been, when the NLRB was considering the appeal, the move had the appearance of the "corporate thinking and practices" against which labor had so long inveighed.
Apart from the fate of the union within a union, the sweeping dismissals, affecting many veteran and dedicated workers in labor, had produced a reaction of shock and disillusion. Coming on top of the revelations of graft and corruption, with such big labor bosses as former Teamsters president Dave Beck under criminal prosecution, the position of organized labor had been further impaired.
The question being asked both within and without the labor movement was where the idealism which sparked the rise of the dispossessed and unorganized worker had gone. To many observers, labor now seemed bent on holding past gains and maintaining a privileged position in the economy. A vast number of unorganized workers, particularly migratory farmworkers with very low standards of living, were being ignored. The same idealism which had caused men to take to picket lines, as in the organization of the UAW in Detroit, was now demanding a profit-sharing agreement with the automobile companies, the type of agreement which organized labor had opposed in the past because it linked the union too closely with management.
There was a political as well as an economic element involved, for in the 1930's, it was the fighters and idealists within organized labor who had supplied a lot of the New Deal drive in the Democratic Party. Without that drive, the party in the North would lack one of the factors which had given the Democrats national victory, and that would be important for the upcoming 1960 election.
A letter writer, director of region 5 of the AFL-CIO, comments on a February 5 editorial, titled "How To Explode Myths & Lure Industry", which had commented on a speech by G. Randolph Babcock made before the Charlotte Industrial Development Council. He says that trade unions had realized many years earlier that Southern workers were just as efficient and productive as their fellow workers in other parts of the country. On December 17, 1954, Mr. Babcock had announced to employees of his Detroit plant that they were considering relocation to Charlotte, for four reasons, the age and inefficient layout of their present building, the impossibility of further expansion in the present location, that the company did not have the money to build a new building and so it was necessary to seek a community which would build and lease for it a building at a rental which the company could afford, and for competitive reasons, they had never been able to justify paying the prevailing wage rates in Detroit and had been advised by both union leaders and industrialists to move from the area. He indicates that the editorial had stated that the Charlotte employees were actually paid more in the South than they had been in Detroit, which he finds likely since the company had last announced its Charlotte wage schedule three years earlier, and since that time the Federal minimum wage had been increased from 75 cents to one dollar per hour. The last contract between Local Union 157 of UAW and the company in Detroit had many benefits in addition to the wages paid under the terms of that contract. So he finds it logical to assume that the company was paying higher wages, after several years of paying their Charlotte employees better than they had been paying under the contract with UAW. He agrees with the editorial that there were too many of the South's salesmen who had mentioned "cheap labor" as a basis for moving south. He suggests that any employer would not be human if they did not prefer to make the final decisions relative to wages, hours and working conditions for the employees, probably a paradise for the employer in North Carolina and the other Southern states.
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