The Charlotte News
Friday, March 28, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the House Appropriations Committee had said this date that lagging farm income was a major reason for the recession, voicing disappointment because no proposals were being made to bolster farm income in the marketplace. It sent to the floor of the House for debate the following week a bill to provide 3.2 billion dollars to finance the Agriculture Department activities for the ensuing fiscal year. In another action, the Committee approved $750,000 for the new Civil Rights Commission for the following fiscal year. The step was taken over opposition from Southern members of the Committee and was certain to create a battle on the floor. The Committee acted a day after the House had voted 9.5 billion dollars in new funding to run two major departments and 17 Federal agencies in the ensuing fiscal year. In approving the money bill for the Agriculture Department, the Committee said that reduced farm income was "one of the major reasons that there are an estimated five million unemployed workers walking the streets of our major cities today." It accused the Department of directing its principal efforts toward "urging farm families to obtain off-farm employment and to move off their small farms", saying that such a policy would only increase the unemployment rolls. It cited statistics which it said proved that the economic status of farmers had been lowered substantially since the beginning of the Eisenhower Administration. "The take of the middleman between the farmer and the consumer has continued to increase and the consumer has received no cash benefit." Per capita farm income had decreased from $702 in 1952 to $684 in 1957, according to the Committee. It stated that every economic recession in the country's history had started on the farm. The financing recommended by the Committee included direct appropriations of 1.4 billion dollars for regular Departmental activities, 103.9 million less than the President had requested, but 100 million of that reduction had been in the soil bank conservation reserve program which the Committee said would be restored if more farmers signed up. It also recommended an appropriation of 1.7 billion dollars to reimburse the Commodity Credit Corporation for its price-support related activities, an amount requested by the President, and authorized an amount which was 188.5 million dollars more than that requested by the President for the Rural Electrification Administration and the Farmers Home Administration to make loans for farm improvements, including installation of electricity and telephones, the loans to be repayable over 35 years with interest, 154 million of that increase having been earmarked for the REA.
House Democrats this date began consideration of emergency unemployment compensation benefits far beyond the proposals sent to Congress by the President. As the House Ways & Means Committee began three days of hearings on expanded Federal unemployment relief, chairman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas said that the Committee would consider plans to pay benefits to jobless workers who were not presently entitled to benefits of any kind. It would apply primarily to farm workers, employees of little firms exempted from the Federal-state unemployment insurance program, and other types of employment presently not covered. Of the 5.2 million estimated unemployed in mid-February, about two million were not covered by state unemployment compensation insurance. Some members of Congress, among whom were Representative Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, also wanted to write permanent revisions into the unemployment compensation program, including uniform state standards and wider coverage. Senator Kennedy, urging passage of his bill to make permanent changes, had told the Senate that temporary legislation "would do very little good and may do very great harm" through what he had called "a mere façade of action." Both the Administration and House Democrats had put forward plans for additional emergency jobless pay for qualified workers who had exhausted benefits under state laws. Both plans would be effective for only about a year. The President had asked Congress for a program providing for a 50 percent increase in the number of weeks jobless workers could draw benefits, with the time varying from state to state for up to 26 weeks. The Federal Government would be reimbursed by the states for the cost of the additional relief. The Democratic program, sponsored by Mr. Mills and House Democratic Leader John McCormack of Massachusetts, would provide an additional 16 weeks of benefits, with the Federal Government footing the entire bill.
Representative Melvin Price of Illinois said this date that France might within a week join the ranks of powers with atomic weapons. He spoke at a hearing regarding legislation to authorize exchange of U.S. atomic weapons information and materials with friendly countries.
In Washington, black leaders described as a success a one-day shopping boycott of five big downtown department stores which refused to hire blacks for sales jobs.
A group of New York union members came to Washington this date to demand a Senate investigation of their union. Capitol police, fearful of picketing, posted guards at the doors to the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct among unions and management.
In Seoul, South Korea, President Syngman Rhee ridiculed prospects of any successful results being achieved through another summit conference with the Communists.
In Moscow, it was reported that the two houses of the Supreme Soviet had turned this date to discussion of plans to surpass U.S. agricultural output, proposed by new Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
In Essen, West Germany, it was reported that most of the German Ruhr's iron and steel workers had voted to paralyze the nation's steel industry unless they received a satisfactory wage increase.
In Copenhagen, it was reported that 15 persons had been injured this date when a streetcar jumped its tracks on a bend and crashed down an embankment in the path of a 60 mph express train.
Alton Blakeslee, Associated Press science reporter, reports from Boston of Dr. Sidney Farber, director of research for the Children's Cancer Research Foundation, indicating that not a day went by that he did not have to speak to parents who had lost a child to cancer, sometimes having to speak to five parents in a single day. One patient, however, had come to them when he was 12, in 1948, with cancer of the intestines, the first patient to whom they had ever given aminopterin, an anti-vitamin drug designed to strike at that kind of tumor. Now, the man was in the National Guard and was a healthy specimen, standing 6 feet, 4 inches tall. They had kept him on the drug for years and then had a soul-searching meeting to decide if it was safe to quit giving him the drug. For four hours, Dr. Farber and other scientists and physicians associated with him had set forth their work aimed at solving the mysteries of cancer, speaking to science writers visiting research centers under the auspices of the American Cancer Society. Ten years earlier, Dr. Farber had headed one of the two institutions in the country using chemicals to battle cancer and now some 150 clinics were using those newer aids. He said that they were making progress but had to be realists, that they did not yet have the answer and there were no cures from drugs. But they could give the children another few months or even years of healthy life, which meant a lot to the parents and to the doctors. In a decade, the team had given drugs to more than 2,200 patients suffering from cancers spread through their bodies, and more than 800 had been youngsters with acute leukemia, cancer of the blood. Half had been kept alive for more than a year and 10 percent for more than 2 1/2 years. One child had been free of leukemia for seven years and four months, beginning soon after taking the anti-leukemia drug. Then he became resistant to the drug and died eight years and two months after the treatment had begun. Dr. Farber outlined some of the problems, how to learn why drugs usually lost their potency; whether the cells causing leukemia could hide in crannies or interstitial spaces within the body; and the search for new drugs, perhaps powerful antibiotics to knock down cancers. Tiny amounts of drugs occasionally made tumors susceptible to X-ray treatments, with very good results, or chemicals could sometimes shrink tumors down to a smaller size so that they could be removed surgically. There was progress, but a long way remained to go, and yet there were doctors and patients, concludes Mr. Blakeslee, who refused to surrender.
In Rochester, N.Y., seven persons, three of whom were children, had died of suffocation early this date when a fire had trapped them in an apartment house. The fire had apparently broken out on the front porch of the 2 1/2 story building near the downtown area and had swept upward, burning the front of the house and cutting off all exits. Six of the dead had been Puerto Ricans. Three persons had been hospitalized. Neighbors reported seeing occupants jumping from the second floor. Firemen had not determined the cause of the fire.
In Asheville, N.C., a man, 35, charged with first-degree murder in the rape-strangulation of a Hendersonville teenager ten days earlier, had denied this date raping her, saying to newsmen that he might have killed her but did not rape her. Police officers had questioned him most of the previous night, but they were noncommittal on what he had told them. He had surrendered to the officers in Hendersonville the previous night. He was charged in the slaying of a 17-year old Flat Rock High School senior. He was treated in the jail the previous night for a ten-day old razor slash on his left wrist. He would be kept in the Buncombe County jail for some time because of the presence there of a jail physician, whereas the Hendersonville jail did not have a doctor who made daily calls. He had been silent when asked by a newsman whether he remembered anything about the night of March 16 or the morning of March 17, when the girl had been killed. He said he did not remember how he cut his wrist.
The newspaper indicates that one of the nation's most distinguished churchmen, Dr. Ralph Stockman, noted pastor of Christ Methodist Church in New York City, would offer a six-part series starting the following Monday for Holy Week. He wrote a widely syndicated newspaper column and his "National Radio Pulpit" was heard by millions each Sunday. He wrote for people of all denominations and in addition to his church work, writings, lectures and broadcasts, taught at New York's Union Theological Seminary.
A photograph shows Bucky the Easter duck, a fuzzy, yellow duckling purchased by a Charlotte family from a local dime store the previous Easter. Sometimes, he forgot he was a duck and would not associate with other ducks, loved to nudge his young owner, Bobby, in dog-like fashion, patrolling the front and back yards and making strangers stand for inspection. On one occasion, Bucky had a chicken for a friend, but the friendship was one-sided and Bucky would stand aside while the chicken did the scratching and he would then share in the goodies. Dogs had once attacked Bucky, but a fast trip to the doctor by car had saved him. The next morning, Bucky was waiting at the car again, ready for another ride.
In Stanmore, England, 100 Royal Air Force officers and wives would eat a full course banquet this night just for practice, a rehearsal to make sure things would go smoothly the following Tuesday night when Queen Elizabeth was the RAF's guest at its 40th anniversary banquet.
In Las Vegas, actor Mickey Rooney had the flu and had to take the night off the previous night from his act at the Riviera Hotel.
In Van Nuys, Calif., three men had strolled in from the rain and forced a loan company clerk to put $3,000 into an inverted umbrella and then nonchalantly strolled out, carrying the folded umbrella.
On the editorial page, "After Five Blocks Worth of Progress" indicates that the City Council's plan to widen five blocks of East 5th Street was a start in loosening the strangling noose of congestion in the downtown area. Fifth Street had to become a major artery, but the city could not transform it magically into a major artery by widening just five blocks, that eventually the widening would have to be completed all the way to Independence Boulevard for the midtown situation to be eased to any significant degree.
It urges to stop sniveling about the
neglects and mistakes and failures of the past, and rather pick out
the nearest public officials with good ideas on traffic, with courage
and enough modesty to imitate successful experience elsewhere, as in
New York City under the planning of Robert Moses, and get behind
those traffic planners. It urges more thoughtful attention to the
midtown woes and more action
"Nikita Khrushchev Fires His Valet" indicates that the citizen who had concluded immediately that Mr. Khrushchev merely wanted a new valet by becoming Premier was not far from the core of the change in the Kremlin hierarchy. As Premier, Nikolai Bulganin had the authority to differ with Mr. Khrushchev and did so on occasion, but on major tests, he did not have the power to win. From all outward appearances, his role had been reduced to that of an errand boy and paper shuffler.
With Mr. Bulganin gone, Mr. Khrushchev had become in name what he had been in fact behind the façade of committee rule, the boss, now heading the party and the Government while his henchmen headed the Army. Those had been the offices held by Joseph Stalin, but it was not to say that Mr. Khrushchev desired to resurrect the form of Stalinist tyranny which he had denounced.
A return to Stalinism could be seen as evidence of insecurity on the part of Mr. Khrushchev and of a threatening desire among Russians for more freedom, and among the satellites for more independence. Or it could mean that he still had reason to fear the enmity of those he had deposed, Georgi Zhukov, V. M. Molotov, and Georgi Malenkov. In either case, it suggests, a resumption of Stalinism might be better news for the West than continuation of the blandly deceptive tyranny which Mr. Khrushchev presently practiced and peddled.
It indicates that unfortunately there were no signs that he needed to turn back to bare terror to find sustenance for his regime and strategies, as he had scored with his own tactics of expansionist victories which Stalin never approached. It finds that only the fiercest optimist could conclude that there was good news for the West in the victory of Mr. Khrushchev, who had denounced Stalin for his butchery but who despised him for his clumsiness.
"Do Not Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls" tells of the Interior Department scheme to impose tolls on the Blue Ridge Parkway having been laid to rest, and not even Interior Secretary Fred Seaton could shed a tear at its end, clearly pleased to be rid of the plan.
It indicates, however, that it had written the obituary before and the Interior Department had been alternately burying and resurrecting the toll plan for the Parkway since 1942. It advises future governors and Congressional delegations to keep their ammunition handy and not to forget that the Parkway had been established as a free road on land primarily donated by North Carolina and Virginia citizens with the understanding that it would remain toll-free
"That's the way it was. That's the way it is. That's the way it will be."
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "The 'Upstart Crow's' Nest", quotes Sir Francis Bacon, Viscount of St. Albans, sometime Lord Chancellor of England, putative father of inductive reasoning and the experimental method, though not the author of the plays attributed to the unlettered Warwickshire rustic, William Shakespeare, as having once said the man "that plots to be the only figure among the ciphers [becomes] the decay of the whole age."
He was said not to have been the author of the plays by Col. and Mrs. William Friedman of Washington, "just about the world's most expert cryptographers" with most of their work having been to make sense from intercepted messages which the senders did not want anyone to decrypt, having done so for the Government regarding many classified matters. But since their retirement from the Government, where the colonel had worked for the Army Signal Corps and his wife for the Treasury, they had been critically examining the various anagrams, cryptograms, acrostics, puns, metaphors and other items supposed to prove that William Shakespeare had really been Francis Bacon, or if not him, the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, Edward Dyer, or Christopher Marlowe.
The Friedmans had shown that no sane spymaster would ever communicate to his spies in the type of codes which Ignatius Donnelly and so many others after him had found or thought they had found in the Shakespearean literature. Such a code would be too liable to misinterpretation, since by applying much of the same methods to decode it, one could as easily as not obtain such results as: "I-W-Shakespeare—(or Shaxper, if-you-like)—am-the-onlie-begetter-of-these-plays-sugar'd-sonnets-and-other-poems-and-if-anybody-says-I-ain't-I'll-sue-hell-out-of-him."
It finds it coincident with what the
academic critics had been saying all along, only to find themselves
accused of a "vested interest" in defending an academically
unqualified claimant to authorship. The book by the Friedmans was
titled The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, and it suggests
that it might put an end at last to the controversy of authorship of
the plays. But it hopes not because the question
Because the repository for much of the research into the subject
Our own view, incidentally, is that the plays were written through teamwork by the players, themselves, through time, based as they were, without question, on the pre-existing Holinshed's Chronicles—which, for want of any more economic mnemonic device to aid in recalling, can be summoned to the fore by reference to the hole in a pig's eye—, and other source material, the story outlines of which were then merely set to more readily listenable prose and poesy for appeal to the mass audience of their time. When thus done and performed to produce the versions to which the greatest reception resulted, they were committed to final written text for general publication and with the consequently inherent need for a central authorship, came to be ascribed to one William Shakespeare—much as the Federalist Papers, 200 years later, written by three authors, distilled from the debates of many in Convention on the matter at hand, were ascribed only to one Publius. Whether Mr. Shakespeare was the coach of the team, having been among the players for awhile before that, we can only venture educated guess from experiential data gleaned in analogue form from observation of and participation in sport. Coach Dean Smith, for instance, who sat largely on the bench in observation in 1952, seeing through the hovering fog and smoke-laden filthy air to the craft at work on the hardwood stage before him, resulting in a championship, while having to sublimate his own inherent vanity and play only a supporting role therein, thus leading him to be imbued the more for time afforded to observe with that necessary understanding later to apply to coaching his players on the stage, having also observed in the meantime in 1957 Lord Chamberlain's Men of his alma mater in contest with the school whose players he would eventually come to coach after assisting Frank McGuire for three years, serves as a suitable exponent of the phenomenon underpinning our assumption thus conveyed.
Drew Pearson indicates that Senators in private probably resented the manner in which the Vice-President had become an absentee presiding officer of the Senate. When he was absent, a Senator had to take his place as presiding officer, which caused extra work for already busy legislators. The office of Vice-President was already costing the taxpayers more than any predecessor in history, as he had an automobile with a chauffeur, which Senators did not have, a large staff, including a colonel, a major and a press agent, and a budget of $101,925 per year, compared with $11,460 spent by Vice-President Harry Truman in his three months in the post. Yet, Mr. Nixon's absenteeism from the Senate had set a record.
Scrutiny of the Congressional Record showed that the late Vice-President Alben Barkley had worked at his job about four times more than Mr. Nixon. In 1949, when Vice-President Barkley had taken office, of the 1,125 hours during which the Senate was in session, Mr. Barkley presided for 465. In 1953, when Mr. Nixon had taken office, the Senate had met for 763.5 hours, of which Mr. Nixon presided for 163. In 1950, Mr. Barkley's second year in office, the Senate was in session for 1,265 hours, presided over by Mr. Barkley for 528 hours. In 1954, Mr. Nixon's second year in the position, he presided only 121.5 hours of the 1,109 hours during which the body was in session, meaning that he had worked at his job just 25 percent of the time which Mr. Barkley had. Mr. Nixon's record in 1955 was even worse, sitting only 47 hours of the 560 hours in which the body was in session. That contrasted with Mr. Barkley's third year in which he sat 335.5 hours of the 1,997 hours that the body was in session. In 1952, Mr. Barkley's last year in office, he had an eye operation and therefore was absent for two weeks in February, but nevertheless presided for 219 hours out of the 651.5 hours in which the body was in session. Mr. Nixon had presided over the Senate only 51 of 802 hours in 1956.
He indicates that Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John J. Parker had died the previous week, refusing ever to become bitter despite having had every excuse to do so after narrowly losing Senate confirmation in 1930 upon his appointment by President Hoover to the Supreme Court. The people who had rallied the votes to defeat him had been organized labor, headed by William Green, and Walter White, head of the NAACP. Yet instead of becoming bitter, Judge Parker had turned the other cheek and become their best legal champion. Repeatedly, he had upheld the rights of blacks and of labor as presiding judge of the Fourth Circuit.
Mr. Pearson indicates that he used to see Judge Parker when he would come to Washington for court conferences, walking through the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel unobtrusively, looking a little lonely, but not sad. He maintained his sense of humor and had gone about his everyday routine as if nothing had occurred, had taken on the drudgery of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. The late O. Max Gardner, former Democratic Governor of North Carolina, had tried to get Judge Parker, a Republican, appointed to the Supreme Court when other vacancies had occurred. Mr. Pearson says that he had written several columns urging his subsequent appointment and that after the last column, he received a friendly note from Judge Parker thanking him, but saying that he had given up all thought of joining the Court.
"So, the other day, Judge Parker, a little tired but never bitter, went on to the next world. If in that world he should meet William Green and Walter White, the men who had defeated him, he'll be just as kindly, just as philosophical toward them as he was toward their movements when in life he wrote ringing opinions in their defense."
Marquis Childs indicates that notwithstanding the assurances by Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy's office that his planned reorganization of the Department stopped short of major changes, Congressional sources, after receiving a digest of the plan, believed it would stir a political storm. If the President's message to Congress the following week on reorganization included the recommendations of Secretary McElroy, as was expected, a coalition of Republicans and Democrats would seek to bury it. Those who had seen the digest believed that the Administration was prompting a break with Republican leadership even sharper than those which had seen top Republicans vote against the White House on issues directly involving the President's leadership.
According to Congressional sources, the major points of Secretary McElroy's recommendations which would most likely prompt opposition in Congress were that all money would be appropriated to the Secretary of Defense, who would then be free to allocate it to any of the services as he deemed appropriate, a right which Congress had always jealously guarded; that the words of the present law that the three services were "separately administered" would be stricken so that the three separate departments would effectively be merged into one, at least according to Secretary McElroy's critics, with the secretaries of each service reduced to advisors to the Secretary of Defense; that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs would be provided powers so greatly increased, that he would be tending toward having the authority of a single chief of staff of all the services, with the role of the chiefs of staff of each branch thereby becoming largely advisory, in the view of Congressional opponents; and provisions of present law defining functions of the services would be removed.
Representations were already being made to the White House that if such a plan went to Congress, it would stir an angry reaction and meet with almost certain defeat. Thus, the proposal which would ultimately reach Congress would possibly be scaled down, albeit not likely because the President and his closest advisers had placed great stress on the need to overhaul the defense establishment, a view which the President had held for at least a decade and which he had put forth during his 1952 election campaign.
The argument for radical change was based on the idea that the Defense Department was not set up to fight a war, that the three services were competing for men, materials, research, development, new weaponry, and everything else, whereas in a war, such competition could never be tolerated. The proposals of the Secretary of Defense had been sent to the White House under conditions of extraordinary secrecy the prior Monday, with the document stamped "eyes only" for personal delivery to the President. But a digest based on the full report had received wider circulation.
To forestall the White House, Senator Styles Bridges, chairman of the Republican policy committee, had put forth a reorganization bill providing only mild reforms, joined by Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana as bipartisan cosponsor. In the House, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Carl Vinson of Georgia, and Republican Whip, Leslie Arends, had earlier proposed similar legislation.
While the President had recently suffered defeats in Congress, those around him who were convinced that he needed to stand up to the reorganization issue believed that his prestige as a military man, coupled with the desire for economy in administering the Defense Department, would ultimately carry the day. But, Mr. Childs remarks, it was certain to be a long day, full of the sound of battle if the President were to make the fight.
Doris Fleeson, in Sacramento, indicates that early soundings of public opinion showed Representative Claire Engle with surprising strength against his practically certain Republican opponent for the Senate, incumbent Governor Goodwin Knight. She indicates that the word was surprising because Mr. Engle was making his first statewide race and Governor Knight had spent an extremely active decade in state politics, having been Governor for five years since Governor Earl Warren had been nominated to the Supreme Court, and before that as Lt. Governor. In some polling, Mr. Engle even led by a slight margin. But his greatest drawback was that many voters said they did not know him personally.
As a liberal, Mr. Engle was in complete rapport with State Attorney General Pat Brown, who was running for governor. They would work together and be in a position to capitalize on the Democratic trend presently apparent across the nation. No such sympathy, personal or political, existed between Governor Knight and Senator William Knowland, presently in the race for governor. Governor Knight had believed that he could have been re-elected as Governor and was very unhappy when pressures from party leaders, along with warnings that he would not be financed in an effort for re-election, had forced him to switch to the Senate race. He felt certain also that Senator Knowland was taking on a touchy issue with right-to-work, to which he remained firmly committed, with Governor Knight on the record as promising to veto any such legislation, hoping to maintain the labor support he had gained by sticking to that position.
She indicates that the time had been when Californians had expected and appeared to prefer rugged individualism in their politics, but their unique cross-filing system, permitting candidates to run under both party labels, had been badly battered and was on the way out. Since Democrats held the advantage in party registration, that would be to their benefit.
The recession would sharpen the party aspect of the fall elections, a trend which Congressional Democrats were trying to harden by means of their own program to combat it. Since there were 449,000 unemployed in California the previous month, more unemployed than at any time during the previous eight years, the recession seemed certain to be a factor. The state's phenomenal growth was shown in the fact that even that large number of unemployed constituted only 7.7 percent of the labor force.
The personal ambitions of the leading California politicians also would heat up the contest. Vice-President Nixon, faced with a choice between possible loss of the state to the Democrats and possible strengthening of a presidential rival, Senator Knowland, had elected the latter as preferable to the former. Professional politicians thought it a wise decision, as Mr. Nixon would certainly be weakened in the nominating convention in the election of 1960 were his state controlled by the opposition party.
Among Democrats, it was beginning to dawn on party liberals that Attorney General Brown, if elected governor, would give them an alternative nominee to Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose liberalism they distrusted. Senator Kennedy was paving the way for a Catholic on the national ticket with a frank, far-reaching campaign. Mr. Brown, also a Catholic, had recently been asked whether he thought a Californian might be on the national ticket in 1960, and his jovial reply was: "Just say I smiled modestly."
A letter writer from St. Louis, chairman of the Committee on Correct Use of the Confederate Flag, United Daughters of the Confederacy, says that she received copies of the March 8 editorial, "Odds Favor the Beach Towel Brigade", says that there was really no comparison in the use of the battle flag of the Confederacy as a beach towel and the "proud wearing of the Gray by fraternity members at the annual hops, nor the genial use of replicas of Confederate money. None of these are the least objectionable." She says that many persons went to masquerade parties wearing the uniforms of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps, but that no one went wearing the U.S. flag, as it was a question of propriety and observance of the code which established the way the flag might be used. "The battle flag of the Confederacy must not be used as a beach towel. The manufacturer did not know the rule, which is the kindest way to explain his action."
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