The Charlotte News
Monday, March 10, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Lyndon Johnson had testified this date at a Public Works Committee hearing in favor of an accelerated Federal public works program, declaring: "What we want is action—not credit, not an issue. We want to get rid of the issue by putting people on jobs." He had been the first witness favoring a resolution which he and 65 other Senators were sponsoring to put the Senate on record as being in support of an acceleration of civil public works projects. He said that the resolution covered about 4 billion dollars already appropriated for such projects as dams, river and harbor improvements, and public buildings. He noted that the President the prior Saturday had announced some steps to pump new vigor into the economy, and he believed that most people would endorse those steps insofar as they had been explained, that in return, he believed Congress ought let the President know that they endorsed "the fullest practicable use of his resources to battle unemployment." The President had announced that some already-appropriated public works funding would be released, and called for extension of the time during which workers were eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. White House press secretary James Hagerty had said that a special message of the President dealing with extension of unemployment insurance benefits probably would go to Congress around the middle of the week. Mr. Hagerty replied that he did not know whether the program would require action by state legislatures in addition to approval by Congress. He added that no dates had been fixed for sending other phases of the Eisenhower anti-recession program to Congress. Senator Johnson and other Senators had introduced a second resolution to be considered by the Armed Services Committee, covering about 3 billion dollars which had already been voted for military construction projects. The Senator told the Public Works Committee that the question before them involved a high degree of urgency, that there were at least 5 million men and women unemployed in the country, with their sources of income vanishing rapidly. Senator Edward Martin of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Committee, had asked Senator Johnson whether he would favor deficit financing or higher taxes to finance pump-priming efforts, and Senator Johnson had responded that he believed that it was a matter primarily to be studied by the Finance Committee, on which Senator Martin also was the ranking Republican member.
The Miami attorney involved in providing loans to former FCC commissioner Richard Mack, who had since resigned from the Commission, allegedly to influence Mr. Mack's vote on the award of a television channel in Miami to a subsidiary of National Airlines, which the attorney in question had been representing, had failed to appear this date for a scheduled new round of questioning before the House subcommittee investigating the FCC. Subcommittee chairman, Congressman Oren Harris of Arkansas, declined to tell reporters immediately what, if any, word he had received from the attorney. He ordered a closed meeting of the committee and told newsmen that he would talk with them afterward. The attorney had not been subpoenaed but had been expected to appear voluntarily during the morning to undergo more questioning regarding his relationship with Mr. Mack. Neither the attorney nor his counsel were registered at the Washington hotel where the attorney had been staying. The attorney had appeared twice the previous week before a grand jury investigating matters relating to the FCC and was scheduled to report to the grand jury again the following day. The prior Thursday, he had provided records of financial dealings with Mr. Mack to the grand jury and had again appeared before the grand jury on Friday. The grand jury was also studying the conduct of Mr. Mack in connection with the award of the television channel to the subsidiary of National.
The President this date had nominated Democrat John Cross to be a member of the FCC to succeed Mr. Mack.
The Comptroller of the Currency this date issued a call for a statement of the condition of all national banks at the close of business on March 4.
In Singapore, it was reported that Indonesian Central Government troops had stormed ashore this date at Bengkalis on the east coast of Central Sumatra, according to revolutionary sources. They said that rebel troops had clashed with the invaders but retreated into the surrounding jungle to begin guerrilla activities. The landings had been made about 100 miles west of Singapore at the mouth of the crocodile-infested Siak River leading to the American-owned Caltex oil field headquarters. Informants said that 4,000 additional troops had been crammed aboard transports awaiting landing at Dumai, one of the two Caltex terminals evacuated this date on the advice of the Jakarta Government. Caltex had announced that it was ceasing all production in the fields of rebellious Central Sumatra and suspending operations. A spokesman for the company in Singapore said that the action was taken on the advice of the Indonesian Central Government in Jakarta. Caltex had been the first major American casualty of the economic struggle caused by the rebel attempts to bring the Jakarta Government of President Sukarno to terms. Rebel Premier Sjafruddin Prawiranegara's regime on Sumatra had recently issued an order to all foreign firms to halt oil shipments and royalty payments to the Jakarta Government. Halting oil shipments would start an economic squeeze which rebel leaders hoped would cripple the financially pressed Central Government. The three big foreign oil operators in Indonesia, Caltex, American Standard Vacuum, and Royal Dutch Shell, had not heeded the rebel order. Caltex had been chiefly affected because it had big installations in rebel territory. Standard Vacuum's refinery at Palembang was located in South Sumatra, which was controlled by a military commander who thus far had been neutral in the struggle between the rebels and Jakarta.
In Havana, it was reported that Cuba's industry and commerce was operating normally this date despite rumors that rebel leader Fidel Castro might call a general strike. Heavily armed Government forces were standing guard.
In Miami, Fla., roadblocks had been erected across every highway leading out of the city this date in an effort to capture an accused cop killer and a rapist who had escaped the previous night from the 23rd-floor of the Miami skyscraper jail. Officers warned that the men had nothing to lose and that capturing them would be tough. One of them, 32, was the accused murderer of a policeman in suburban Bal Harbour, and the other was charged with the rape of a child. They had mingled with crowds on Flagler Street and managed to escape after clambering down the side of the building on a rope made of mattress ticking. Two others who had initially escaped along with them, an 18-year old from Chicago charged with slaying a bar worker and a 27-year old held on a Federal auto theft charge, had been captured in the jail-courthouse within an hour of the escape. Investigators said that the men had sawn a bar from a window with a smuggled hacksaw blade, had made a rope of torn-up mattress ticks and inched down the northeast corner of the 26-story building in the downtown area. One of them had kicked in a windowpane at the 19th floor, possibly in a misstep while "walking" down the side of the building, and had eventually gotten into the County Criminal Investigation Bureau laboratory, where he hid after female employees who heard the crash of glass summoned help, giving himself up about an hour later. The other of the two captured individuals had been taken downstairs by guards mobilizing to check the break.
In Tokyo, it was reported that the U.S. had paroled three more Japanese war-criminal prisoners of World War II, with 37 others still in Sagamo Prison.
In Rome, 500 police occupied Rome University buildings before dawn this date to prevent protest riots by students who had been striking for more than a month.
In Madrid, it was reported that regular commercial flights to Morocco had been suspended indefinitely this date at the request of the Moroccan Government, according to Spanish Iberia Airlines.
In Naples, a storm had struck the southern Italian port city this date, ripping ships from their moorings, with one 15,000-ton cargo ship having been ripped away and pushed around by stormy winds.
In London, it was reported that Europe's cold spell had spread south this date, bringing snow showers and icy winds to the Mediterranean coast from the French Riviera to Sicily, with many roads in Britain and France being blocked by snow.
In Quincy, Mass., an estimated 10,000 men, women and children had filed past a battery of nine doctors, ten nurses and 53 clinical aides the previous day in one of the largest mass anti-polio inoculation programs ever conducted.
Bill Hughes of The News reports from Sanford that testimony in the murder trial of Frank Wetzel, accused of killing Highway Patrolman J. T. Brown on the night of November 5, the same night he had allegedly killed Patrolman Wister Reece about an hour earlier in another county, for which he had already been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, was now in its second week with the State expected to finish its circumstantial case by the following day. A jury of 11 white men and one woman would be deciding during the week the fate of the New Yorker charged with shooting the patrolman. Despite the jury having recommended mercy in the first trial, the prosecutor was seeking the gas chamber in the second case. During the morning, Bakersfield, Calif., police had testified concerning a conversation with Mr. Wetzel following his arrest there on November 19, the testimony having bogged down in detailed questioning about fingerprints found in a 1957 Ford which Mr. Wetzel had allegedly abandoned in Bakersfield. Scheduled to testify during the afternoon or the following day were FBI agents who would attempt to link the defendant with a 1957 black Oldsmobile which had been abandoned in Chattanooga, Tenn. The testimony of those agents had been postponed from the previous week by the solicitor calling witnesses out of order to allow those from scattered cities to return home for the weekend. The State hoped to convict Mr. Wetzel on a chain of evidence stretching from New York to California via the scenes of the two homicides. A Bakersfield police officer had testified on Saturday that Mr. Wetzel had told him that if he had to go back to Attica State Prison in New York, he would have "to do in three or four men". This day's testimony centered on evidence uncovered in Chattanooga regarding the discovery of the abandoned Oldsmobile on November 6, with earlier testimony having stated that the killer of Patrolman Brown had driven a similar automobile. The State had also introduced testimony concerning a Chrysler which had been stolen two blocks from where the Oldsmobile had been abandoned, with a 17-year old girl having testified that she had seen "a white man" leave the Oldsmobile in front of her home, and that he resembled the defendant, though she could not make a positive identification.
In Greensboro, it was reported that evasion of the 1953 Motor Vehicle Responsibility Act was responsible for crowded court dockets which could thwart justice. State Senator J. Spencer Bell of Charlotte, chairman of the committee which was studying the state's judicial system, in speaking before the Greensboro Rotary Club, said that there were 3,297 people in the state who used the petition method provided in the law and the consequent delay to avoid the loss of their driver's licenses. The 1953 Act had required that a driver of a car involved in an accident put up a bond or other security to protect the victim, the security to stand for one year. If he did not, it was mandatory that the commissioner of Motor Vehicles issue an order revoking the motorist's driver's license. Mr. Bell said that a study in 13 sample counties had revealed that 707 of those cases had been pending and that in about 57 percent of them, no action had been taken in the ten months preceding the study. In the High Point Division of Guilford Superior Court, 94 petitions had been pending on September 1, 1957, and about 52 percent of those had been awaiting hearing for more than a year, that in Wake County, as of August 1, 1957, 132 of the petitions were pending and about 64 percent of them were more than a year old, illustrating the delay in the cases. He said that it was impossible to fix the responsibility for the failure of justice on any single individual or group of individuals since they lacked any administrative control over court dockets of the state, but that it was hoped that the new mandatory insurance act would remove that type of case from the system.
In Sydney, Australia, a famous
aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira
In Baltimore, after a countdown of the Ten Commandments, a "rocket" had blasted off on a string of rubber bands to the ceiling of Baltimore's St. Mary's Episcopal Church the previous day. All eyes had been solemn. As the "Churchnik" had begun to smoke at takeoff because of dry ice dropped in the water, the minister of the church told his congregation: "Confirmation launches us into the flight of life and the fuel is Holy Communion." The eight-foot, silver-colored cardboard rocket had three orange fins, and bore an orange cross and the word "soul".
In Berlin, a spinster pharmacist this date had been found not guilty by a largely female jury of providing a poisoned cake to a 16-year old boy. Following a sensational five-week trial which had stirred all of Germany, the plump 50-year old Berliner stood in a packed courtroom and greeted her acquittal with a smile and a gasp of relief. The prosecution had charged that she had poisoned the boy because she was in love with his father and wanted the father's wife and family out of the way so that she could marry him. The boy had died after eating the cake brought to his home on November 3, 1956, by an unknown person and hung on the door, with a sign which read "Til", the nickname of the deceased boy. The boy had opened it in the presence of his mother, his 15-year old sister and 19-year old brother. Both boys had sampled the cake but quickly spit it out, complaining about its bitter taste. Both had rinsed their mouths and then the boy who later died had gone outside and mounted his bicycle, a few minutes later falling from it and then dying about an hour later. Chemical tests showed that both his body and the cake contained a deadly insecticide. His father, a chemist, had been working in West Germany at the time.
In London, it was reported that in a
recent week in Britain, 18 persons had been murdered, 23 attacked
with blunt instruments and 11 kicked in the stomach. The only saving
grace was that 90 percent of the victims had been Americans, according to
Vivian Milroy of the Association of Cinematograph Television and
Allied Technicians, indicating that the sort of thing had to stop,
that the way to do so would be to place a quota on American films
used in British television. He made the statements to a union meeting
the previous day, saying that he thought a ruling that 90 percent of all
television material and personnel had to be of British origin would
be about right. The recent large-scale mayhem to which he referred,
he said, had all taken place on British television between the hours
of 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., the designated Children's Hour. He stated:
"The only reassuring feature about all this was that 90 percent of the
victims were Americans. But I question whether seeing even Americans
unremittingly and continuously done to death is a good thing. Perhaps
we can do nothing about teenage violence, but we can do something
about the wholesale importation of American films. Nine out of 12 of
them are based on crime and violence. The quintessential common
philosophy among all these films is that might is right." Mr.
Milroy's union then passed unanimously a resolution urging that
henceforth American programs would be limited to 10 percent of the total
used on British television shows. The union had a membership of
8,000. That's going to make for boredom, with no murder
On the editorial page, "Racial Justice: The Vicious Circles" suggests that those idealists who had taken refuge in the quaint notion that all the Southern black needed to raise his rank in society was a court order were having some soul-wracking second thoughts at present. Some, such as author William Faulkner, were wondering aloud whether blacks were ready for first-class citizenship in the South after all.
"The arbitrary decision that the Negro is 'just like everybody else' is of course no truer than the old-fashioned idea that the Negro, by nature, is inferior to everybody else. He is, to a great extent, the prisoner of his environment, his status, his color, his lack of essential rights and opportunities.
"If he is not inferior as a man the forces that shape his presence on the southern scene are indeed inferior.
"It is easy to blame deficiencies in southern public school facilities for Negroes for the whole problem and decide that desegregation will solve everything. It is not as simple as that.
"The institutions that determine the Negro's place in society are weak all along the line—and the resulting interrelationship simply worsens the situation. Consider higher education. Consider the testimony last week of a senior at Southern University, a state-supported institution for Negroes in Louisiana: 'A person has to make a lot of special effort to get a really good education here. Sometimes it takes a lot of do-it-yourself because the teaching isn't good enough. And there is a vicious circle underway. The teachers teach poorly, and the students—many of whom go into teaching—then go out and teach poorly in the Negro public schools. Then poorly taught kids come here to study and graduate as poorly taught teachers.'"
It finds that there was more truth than fiction in that statement and that it applied not only to Southern University but to any number of colleges for blacks in the South. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had made a similar comment recently concerning the economic status of blacks: "There have not been enough job opportunities for Negroes and consequently not enough of them prepare themselves for skilled work. Thus, when better jobs become available to Negroes, not enough of them are qualified. It is a vicious circle."
It finds that the result was that the black did not "advance" and the South thus deprived itself of the full rewards of a valuable human resource, that potential talent being submerged and higher social status denied. It posits that if the situation were to be improved, there would have to be much backing and filling in the coming years, resulting in the improvement in the education of blacks as well as their standard of living and "moral fiber". It suggests that the white man had a role to fill which could not be shirked, but that it was not the white man's burden alone, that blacks had to do a good bit of the job.
Writing in the Saturday Evening
Post, former Connecticut Governor Chester Bowles, now reportedly
entering the Senate race, had reported that Montgomery's Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
It suggests that more than welfare rolls had to be improved, however, requiring amelioration of economic and human factors, enlightenment and dedication seemingly above and beyond the call of duty for many, whites and blacks alike. It finds the situation actually to be a matter of selfish, practical concern for the whole community. Blacks with limited opportunities had limited purchasing power and could contribute little to an area's progress, becoming a serious burden on a community in the end. "At the same time, available opportunities have to be used to have any value."
"A Letter from Deux Jeunes Filles" indicates that observation had taught it some time earlier that men also made passes at girls with glasses, but it is indebted to two 15-year old French schoolgirls for updating its insight into the tribal tradition of "teen age romance".
Apparently, glamour ratings could
now be assigned to boys who could use a slide rule
The previous month, the two French schoolgirls, reading an issue of Science and Life, had come across a story of Charlotte's Jimmy Blackmon, who had built a rocket in his basement and had, at one point, been invited to the Redstone Proving Ground in Alabama to launch it, until the Army decided that it was too dangerous to launch. The two girls had described young Mr. Blackmon as being "very, very bright" and had written him: "Your invention, dear friend, is really admirable. I hope that you won't laugh at us and take us for two crazy young girls, because we are very much in the right spirit. We shall wait impatiently for your answer (to their request that Jimmy write to them). Also, Jimmy, don't let us wait too long. Saturday we saw a film about America, and since then both of us have dreamed of making a trip to this magnificent country. You are very lucky to live in America, and we envy you. Receive from two small schoolgirls, dear Jimmy, our most friendly and affectionate thoughts."
It finds it stimulation for the cause of studiousness when French femininity started setting its cap for young American scientists. It suggests that Congress might even ponder it as a solution to the scientific deficiencies in the Western alliance, provided that those who wanted to study science would do so on the U.S. side of the Atlantic.
"Lively Action in the Deportment Dept." indicates that older people were constantly being reminded of the "progressive" schools in which the youngsters were being educated, and with communications growing and world horizons shrinking, the public school curriculum was also changing. Once it had been the case that a child was taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history and the like, whereas now, schools were so modern that children coming home bewildered their parents with talk of social studies, intricate sciences, and mathematics bearing unpronounceable names to the parents.
If it recalled correctly, the old report card had a space on the right-hand side where the teacher marked a grade for "deportment", but it was not enough space in the present time.
The report card being used in the Kansas City high schools had a space where the teacher could note among the students activities, truancy, aggressive fighting, theft, extortion, threats against teachers and displays of vulgarity. It concludes: "Well, maybe they don't throw spitballs anymore."
A piece from the Shelby Star, titled "Off and Gallupin'", indicates that pollster George Gallup had stated that editors ought go before Congress, finding it a new twist on where editors were often told to go. It finds it frightening because it could not imagine who would write about their accomplishments in Congress if all editors were to go there, as inevitably they would be misquoted. There were also few editors who could make sense out of the Federal budget, having a hard time balancing their office slush fund. They would also be lost trying to speak in the House or Senate, as they did not allow one to provide talks with a typewriter.
In remarks that Senator Sam Ervin had already stated an effective rebuttal to Mr. Gallup's remarks, saying that some editors would make good Congressmen and some would not. It agrees. It finds it also to figure that some Congressmen would make good editors while some could not write their way out of a paper bag. Some pollsters were right and sometimes were wrong.
It suggests that before Mr. Gallup pushed his theory further, it would appreciate that he conduct a poll of the people on the matter of editors for Congress, but advises that he had better leave the editors out of the poll, as they were liable to insist that people who were smart enough to see the potentialities of editors ought be serving in high places.
Drew Pearson indicates that when the President said the previous week that the French-Tunisian dispute was difficult, he had been diplomatic. The CIA and State Department reports sent from Paris indicated that the French military were seriously out of hand and that France faced its most serious political crisis since the time of Napoleon. Even if Premier Felix Gaillard ordered the French Army to evacuate Tunisia, it was doubtful that he could get the generals to obey. The French military was so completely out of hand that foreign diplomats in Paris, including the Russian ambassador, frequently consulted General Charles de Gaulle, the only man who appeared to have any control over the military, rather than the Premier. The President had received word from his American observers that the Premier was very much like a man sitting on top of a volcano, that if he made concessions in Tunisia, it might become the signal for his generals to revolt and install a right-wing dictatorship. The generals had even proposed an all-out blitz of Tunisia, claiming that they could take over the entire country in a matter of three days. Such a blitz would be the signal for an Arab uprising, however, against the West, extending from Morocco to South Arabia, would likely lead to the "Nasserizing" or even the "Sovietizing" of all of North Africa.
Representative Leo O'Brien of New
York had been musing over his unexpected appointment to the new
Congressional committee on outer space, saying: "I don't know
why they chose me. I don't have any constituents on the planet
Jupiter
The five million unemployed currently walking the streets and cries for bigger government programs to create jobs had not deterred the big life insurance companies from going to the Senate Finance Committee the previous week seeking a retroactive tax-cut of 124 million dollars. For nine of the past ten years, the insurance moguls had gone to Congress for special legislation to avoid paying taxes at the regular rate established in 1942. In the current year, a special tax concession, sponsored by Congressman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, had been rushed through the House but was held up in the Senate Finance Committee by Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, himself an insurance man. Subsequent testimony had revealed that the Prudential Insurance Co. would receive windfall profits of 18.5 million dollars were the special tax bill to be enacted again.
Stewart Alsop indicates that the President, at his press conference during the week, had looked and talked better than he had for a very long time, seeming "ruddily vigorous" and both alert and relaxed. But there were more questions posed about the problems of presidential succession than about any other topic, natural given the President's prior medical history.
Mr. Alsop suggests that it was not hard to understand why House Speaker Sam Rayburn and a few others were so adamantly opposed to creating what Mr. Rayburn called a new "office of acting president" by virtue of the "understanding" which had been reached between the President and Vice-President Nixon in the event of the President's disability. He supposes that the President had suffered another "episode", as recently he had a mild stroke, though only sidelined for a couple of days. He supposes that he was partially disabled but that his doctors held out some hope that before the end of his term, he might be able to resume the duties of his office. Under the understanding reached, the Vice-President would then become "acting president" while the President would presumably retire to Gettysburg to recuperate. He wonders what kind of President would be an "acting president", not really a President at all in terms of political realities. For an acting president would lack the power to hire and fire, on which his authority over the executive branch was based.
He cites three specific examples, the most obvious being the case of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, whom, should Mr. Nixon become acting president, he would want to replace, as the Vice-President had long been sympathetic to the problems of Midwest Republicans who considered Mr. Benson a political disaster. But the question would arise whether an acting president could fire someone whom the President had defended quite fiercely. Another example was White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, who had been the actual acting president during the President's illnesses. While Mr. Nixon and Mr. Adams were cordial, they were not personally close. Thus, he wonders how Mr. Nixon as acting president could function very well with someone who was not close to him personally as his right-hand man. Finally there was the example of Secretary of State Dulles, with whom Mr. Nixon was also only cordial. But every President had always wanted his own person in the crucial foreign policy post. Yet, an acting president could not possibly replace a person whom the President had described as one of the greatest Secretaries of State in American history.
He suggests that the number of examples could be lengthened, but that the point was clear that so long as there remained a chance that the President would resume his duties, the acting president would be a mere shadow of the President and the members of the Administration would be frozen in position, as would the policies they represented. The system might work for a month or two, especially if it were determined that the President would definitely return to office. But in current times, it could not be made to work indefinitely. For the times urgently required a real and not a shadow President.
He finds that there was no comfortable solution to the dilemma. Even the President had said that it was almost impossible to construct a formula which would work. The problem came down to a matter of the President's judgment and that of his medical advisors. If they were to feel reasonably certain that the President would resume his office in a brief time, then the agreement between the President and Vice-President would be adequate, though unsatisfactory. But if there were real doubt that the President could resume his duties for many months, if at all, then the only course would be for the President to resign the office and turn it over to the Vice-President.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the first 100 days of the majority leadership of Senator Lyndon Johnson during the current session had started with a bang, the Senator having apparently decided that the President had his chance and had muffed it. He began by launching a full-scale attack on the economic recession, saying that he planned not only to live up to his responsibilities as Majority Leader but also to discharge them as effectively as he could. He stated: "I am aided by a cabinet made up of committee chairmen. I have conferred with them. I think they will expedite action in an attempt to prevent the unemployment rolls from growing day by day." He said that he had conferred with the leaders of the House and had been assured by Speaker Rayburn and the Majority Leader that the House would act, and believed that the Administration could be relied on to name some of the projects to be achieved.
The press gallery had not had so much fun in years, one reporter remarking: "That fellow thinks he's going to be President in 1960." One then replied, "Heck, he thinks he is." Another quipped, "I wonder if he has a clear understanding with Senator [Mike] Mansfield in case of disability." The Democratic Whip, Senator Mansfield, was Senator Johnson's second in command, with the latter having had a severe heart attack just as had the President, both occurring in 1955. Another reporter paused in his mad rush to file statements, resolutions and schedules made by Senator Johnson to suggest, "And on the seventh day he rested." Committee chairmen who were rarely seen on the Senate floor were obediently on hand for the occasion, and one after another had risen to assure the Majority Leader that their committees were busy working out remedies for the nation's economic ills.
No Republican had risen to intimate that they would be active regarding Administration policy, one having in fact leaped on the bandwagon of Senator Johnson, that being Senator Henry Dworshak of Idaho, who had asked hopefully that Senator Johnson reassure him that he would not rely solely on the executive branch for leadership in the matter of reciprocal trade, regarding which Senator Dworshak was opposed.
The scope and strength of Senator Johnson's ambitions had long been apparent, with two questions having suggested themselves, one being whether, regarding his health, he was not trying to do too much, and the other being whether he could be effective on such a broad front, involving every major issue during the current session. After the Russians had made their breakthrough with Sputnik launches in October and November, he had taken over the satellite and missile gap as chairman of the Preparedness subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. His purely military stance on outer space had caused some unfavorable comment against him, and the orbiting of the first Explorer satellite by the U.S. also had taken some of the sting from the military aspect. Senator Johnson had then moved on to the question of control of outer space for peaceful purposes, introducing a resolution for a committee to consider that issue, and thereby became chairman of that committee.
Now, he was taking command of his party's anti-recession drive, prompting one sour voice amid the general excitement to exclaim: "Had enough? Vote Republican!"
A letter writer from Hamlet indicates that the primary duty of a political party after it had gained victory at the polls in a national election was to try to operate the Government in a manner which would help all of the people, their first duty being to the people and not to big business. By extending special privileges to big business, the Government was getting away from democracy and following a pattern of autocracy. "The more our government is centralized the easier it is for big business groups to bring pressure on the central government." He quotes Benjamin Franklin, immediately after the ratification of the Constitution, that the people ought keep their government as local as possible. He indicates that the people had not been satisfied with the Constitution as it was drafted, and, led by Thomas Jefferson, had demanded that the Bill of Rights be added. He suggests that without those added initial amendments, the original Constitution would have been ineffective, as having been merely a set of rules regulating the operation of the Government. He indicates that when things started going wrong in the country, the people blamed the President, even though the President was not to blame as he did not control Congress. Rather, the Congress, as the direct representatives of the people, controlled the actions of the President. He suggests that if there would be a better government for the people, the people had to bring more pressure to bear on the members of Congress.
A letter writer indicates that if it were permissible for the Vice-President to act as President, as some claimed, he should get busy. "Nobody else has for several years."
A letter writer indicates that it had recently been brought to her attention that the younger voters of the present time, in which category she includes those children from five years and older, were using not only bad language but filthy language. "What kind of parents do children have now, who allow their children to use such language? Or is it that the children hear it at home? If such is the case, what kind of people are they?" She indicates that not many years earlier, her brother, sister and herself had used no language which was even slightly off color, lest they "felt the strap but good." She thinks it therefore no wonder that juvenile delinquency was increasing when they began at age 5 cursing their mothers and got away with it. She finds that the children sat in front of their homes and screamed foul language to the top of their lungs and thanks heaven that it was not in her neighborhood, expressing sorrow for the people who had to listen to it and whose children had to hear it. She also pities the parents who would only experience in the future remorse and heartache. "A child that uses filthy language at the age of five, six, and on up, is heading for police trouble. It is only the first step in the wrong direction." She finds the greater pity to be that the majority of such children attended Sunday school, concluding that something was missing.
You'll have to close all the gyms and cancel all organized sporting events.
A letter writer offers her compliments to the Carolinas Carrousel directors for changing the parade date from Thanksgiving Day, so that people could now have a quiet family day. She hopes that the directors would continue to exercise good taste shown in the quality of the floats and the orderly manner in which the parade was planned and executed, as in the prior year.
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