The Charlotte News
Monday, March 3, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Sterling F. Green, in the first of a series of five articles about the nation's economic health based on a nationwide survey by the Associated Press, that unemployment was increasing while production was decreasing and signs of the promised summer recovery were not yet visible. There was neither pessimism nor panic in the land, but the survey had found that in every state and major city that the personal problems of 4.5 million jobless breadwinners, probably by the present amounting to 5 million, were sending chill ripples throughout the economy. The AP had interviewed a cross-section of bankers and jobless janitors, Chamber of Commerce boosters and corner storekeepers. He reports on a sampling of what they had heard: "They don't look scared, just a little surprised that getting another job is tougher than it used to be," according to an employment office director in Little Rock, Ark. "The hospital bills are killing us. I don't know if I can save the house. Last month I had a hell of a time meeting the payments," according to a former $9,000 per year aircraft worker who had been laid off in Los Angeles. "I think we're through the roughest period of repossessions, but if 800 more miners are laid off we'll have a different story," according to a bank credit officer in Butte, Mont. "A levelling of the boom but no real downturn… Unemployment is up so is employment… Iowa is a bright spot… The recession hasn't reached here yet… When the drought ended a healthy charge shot through our economy…" according to bankers and businessmen in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico and South Dakota, respectively. While factory output was down, profits had not decreased badly, with the banking and insurance industries seldom having had it so good. Total consumer income was high, while retail sales were holding up well. The utilities were still expanding even while the railroads were depositing pools of jobless men at every division point from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Me. In contrast with the hardest hit towns, there were cities in a few states where the recession was mostly something one read about in the newspapers, with the streets being full, stores busy, automobile dealers the only ones in town complaining. One Charlotte banker had remarked: "A lot of these business fellows are just crying in their caviar." No region had widespread hardship, with the bulk of unemployment concentrated in a few large industrial states and in a handful of depressed industries. But the latter reached into the mill towns, mountain hamlets and backwoods. At last estimate, New York had 426,000 unemployed, Pennsylvania, 435,000, California, 312,000, Michigan, 325,000 or 11 percent of its whole working force. Probably two out of every three of those unemployed had some income, receiving unemployment compensation. Almost 3 million unemployed persons were drawing jobless pay in February and an uncounted number had exhausted their unemployment compensation but were still without work, and had gone on relief. In steel and automobiles, supplemental employer-paid benefits had prolonged income. A 30-year old Cleveland bookkeeper in the unemployment compensation line was bitterly indicating: "Do you know what it's like to lose your income suddenly, to try to live on $30 a week? I've even tried to get a job as a stock boy at the grocery. They didn't need me." It was not just a big-city phenomenon. From Maine to the Deep South, the Eastern Seaboard was dotted with closed textile mills and apparel factories working part-time or not at all. Similar trouble was present in the sawmills and logging camps from the Carolinas to the Pacific Northwest. Slack demand and falling prices for copper, lead and zinc had hit the mountain states and spilled over into Canada, where unemployment was at its worse since the 1930's. Railroad employment had dropped to the lowest level since 1899. Coal mining, the erstwhile "sick industry" which had perked up during the big boom of 1955-57, was again ailing. The major unemployment was in the "hard goods" manufacturing industries, the backbone of American industrial might. Nearly 1.25 million factory jobs had evaporated in the course of 13 months. Mr. Green concludes that it would be easy, but inaccurate, to make the automobile industry out as the prime villain of the piece. It was the overwhelmingly dominant job producer and so far its "fancy-finned, slightly higher-priced 1958 models haven't sold well." When Detroit suffered, a lot of other places had more than sympathetic pains, the problem of auto employment fluctuation, once a Detroit specialty, having been exported to Buffalo, Los Angeles, Cleveland, wherever automobiles or their component parts were being manufactured and assembled.
J. A. Daly of The News, the business editor, reports that the advanced diversification of business and industry in the Carolinas was providing strong support for the economy in the midst of a nationwide recession, while the economic picture of the area was spotted, with some dark spots. Yet the latest statistics showed the background of the big picture to be impressive and encouraging. The economy of the Carolinas was dominated by the textile industry, though less dominant than it had been 5 to 10 years earlier. The textile industry was diversified to the greatest extent in its history. While it was curtailing moderately, many other phases of business and industry in the Carolinas were holding at high levels. Unemployment was high in both North Carolina and South Carolina, with both states paying out weekly totals of unemployment compensation to workers at high levels, many of whom had been working at non-manufacturing jobs. But unemployment was moderately less than it had been in 1954 when limited concern had been expressed regarding a recession, now being paid close attention to as the recession spread over the country. Economists were paying close attention to the velocity of circulation of money, maintained around record levels in the Carolinas. The latest statistics for January from the Fifth District Federal Reserve Bank had been impressive, with checks drawn on individual bank accounts in Charlotte totaling about 505 million dollars, a gain of one percent over January of the prior year. The Reserve Bank's statistics had also shown debits to bank accounts at ten leading North Carolina cities in January totaling over 1.5 billion dollars, a decrease of only 8 percent from that of a year earlier. The statistics also showed that debits at the four leading South Carolina cities in January had been more than 385 million dollars, 7 percent over the total recorded by the Fifth District Reserve Bank for those cities in January, 1957. The latest report from the Charlotte Clearing House gave bank clearings for Charlotte at 138 million dollars for the week ended February 26, down from 139.5 million a year earlier.
The President said this date that the U.S. was determined to exert every effort to ease the burden and threats of heavy armaments "from the daily lives of all the people of the world."
White House press secretary James Hagerty said this date that he might have something to disclose soon about the President's understanding with Vice-President Nixon regarding presidential disability.
The chairman of the House Investigating subcommittee looking at the FCC said this date that he would seek to impeach commissioner Richard Mack and that "certain Senators" who had intervened in the Miami television case were going to have to come before the subcommittee.
In Athens, Greece, some dissident members of the National Radical Union Party of Premier Constantine Karamanlis were reported this date to be reconsidering their revolt, raising the possibility that the Premier might remain in power.
In Singapore, it was reported that Indonesian rebel sources had stated this date that Menado, the capital of the rebel-held province of North Celebes, had been bombed the previous day by two planes of the central Government's Air Force.
In Kittaning, Pa., observers had maintained a close watch this date on a huge ice gorge which had backed up the Allegheny River several miles north of the town, about 45 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Near Miami Beach, Fla., theft of $156,000 in cash and jewels from a Chicago couple's hotel penthouse had been reported this date by police of suburban Bal Harbour.
In Vatican City, Pope Pius XII, in an unprecedented action this date, suspended the celebration of his coronation anniversary in "bitterness, sadness and outrage" regarding the conviction of a bishop on charges of defaming an Italian couple. The celebration was to have been held on March 12, the 19th anniversary of his coronation. The action was directed against a Florence court's verdict on Saturday against the Bishop of Prato, Pietro Fiordelli, convicted on a defamation charge brought by a grocer of the town who professed himself to be an atheist and former Communist. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, declared that members of the court may have incurred automatic excommunication for their action against the bishop, though the latter had forgiven them while he celebrated Mass the previous night in the industrial town in central Italy. His attorney was appealing the verdict. The charge had been brought by the grocer and his wife, suing for damages after the bishop had called them "public sinners" because they had married outside the church. The court had awarded the couple $672 in damages and suspended a $64 fine against the bishop.
In Prestonsburg, Ky., another victim of the nation's worst school bus accident had been recovered this date from a fork of the Big Sandy River. After 55 hours of searching, 14 bodies of students and the body of the driver had previously been found, the 16th victim having been a young girl. Large searchlights had swept the muddy waters and small boats patrolled the river as far as 4 miles downstream from where the bus had been discovered. A launch carrying Navy divers had started out early this date, crossing the river, with the divers making periodic descents into the muddy river in search of victims. The bus had been discovered 200 yards downstream from where it had gone over an embankment into the river the prior Friday morning, after striking a wrecker parked on the side of the road and veering over the embankment.
In Raleigh, a special investigating committee said this date that it was its opinion that activities of the executive director and assistant executive director of the Eastern Carolina Regional Housing Authority in the proposed sale of Seymour Johnson Homes in Goldsboro to the Housing Authority had constituted an "obvious conflict of interest." It recommended that the director and assistant director be requested to resign immediately and that appropriate steps be taken to remove them from office, if necessary. The report was provided to Governor Luther Hodges and to the County commissioners of the ten counties in the Housing Authority's territory.
Bill Hughes of The News reports from Sanford that the second trial of Frank Wetzel, accused of murdering Highway Patrolman J. T. Brown on November 5, the same day he had murdered Highway Patrolman Wister Reese in Ellerbe, for which he had been previously convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, had opened this date, with only one juror having been seated on the panel by noon. The solicitor had announced that he would seek the death penalty against Mr. Wetzel. The defendant's attorney, who had been appointed in both cases, had predicted earlier that his client would be acquitted in the current case. The testimony in the trial was expected to follow the general pattern of the previous trial held in Rockingham.
In Gastonia, it was reported that a passing motorist who had witnessed a roadside fight had been chased by a carload of men the previous night, and that during the chase, the second car had smashed through a bridge railing, killing two men and injuring four. Police said that the injured were in serious condition. The accident occurred on U.S. 321, about a half-mile south of Gastonia. One man said that he was driving down the highway when he saw two men fighting and several others gathered around, had slowed down to stop, whereupon all of the men had jumped into a car and started chasing him. He had pulled ahead after the second car twice had pulled alongside of him, passing over the bridge spanning Catawba Creek and noticing that when the second car had gotten to the bridge, its headlights had disappeared. He theorized that there had been an accident and telephoned police. The officer said that one of the injured men had admitted fighting with another of the men in the road, following an argument during a trip back to Gastonia from Clover. The man who had been chased said that he did not know why the men had chased him, indicating that speeds had been reached of nearly 100 mph. An eyewitness to the accident had been traveling south on the Gastonia side of the bridge when the first car had passed him, and recounted that the second car was "zigzagging" and had not made it through the bridge.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that City and County school consultants this date had taken a long look at the future and come up with three major proposals, a vast building program in the city, county and perimeter area to keep up with school population increases, particular attention to be paid in the projected urban renewal program to secondary school needs in the center of the city, and the building of a City-County administrative structure with an eye toward administrative consolidation before actual school board consolidation. A firm had sent both the City and County School Boards a 33-page report on building needs this date, noting that the county's white school population would exceed the city's the following year, that the 1959-60 white school population in the city would, for the first time, drop below that of the county by 19,799, to 20,169. By 1962-63, the city's white school population would be an estimated 20,071, compared to the county, with 26,938. The report added that the county program for about 3,400 new "seats" would probably provide for a maximum of two years of growth in school enrollment at the rate the County system was presently growing. It proposed the building of two new elementary schools in the perimeter area, noting that a $650,000 allotment for perimeter area schools was pending a decision on whether the area would be brought into the city and whether the schools would be under the County system. The added schools would obtain preference over other needed structures in the area, including a new elementary school between Sugar Creek Road and Statesville Road, north of the city, and a new elementary school between Wilkinson Boulevard and the new Route 29 bypass.
On the editorial page, "Is the Economy a Political Plaything?" indicates that increasingly, the politics of 1958 had resembled the politics of 1930, with Republicans denying that anything dreadful was in the economic forecast. Democratic partisans, except for a few dour conservatives, such as Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, were talking doom and gloom and demanding "drastic action".
The calculations of the political strategists appeared to be coldly mercenary, basing it on whether the party could gain more if there were an early recovery or if it reached full tide just before the fall elections, and whether pump-priming in a few selected areas would be economically more effective or whether a tax cut could be more profitable politically.
One Washington observer had said that for Republicans to back anti-recession measures would be, in effect, to admit that errors in policy in the past had created a situation requiring drastic action, something the Republicans were reluctant to do.
It finds that the President had suggested that Americans might "go buy a refrigerator" as a demonstration of fearlessness. Meanwhile, former President Herbert Hoover had called to mind one of his 1931 speeches delivered at Valley Forge, calling for courage and confidence.
It reminds that a recession was not a football game, but rather serious business which would painfully affect the calorie intake of many citizens, and so it could do without the cheerleaders, band music and half-time card stunts from the politicos. It could also do without false panaceas, vintage 1931, and the professional do-nothingness of each party's dinosaur wing, that much national effort would be necessary to cure the economic ills, with the nation definitely in a recession.
It finds that it was not signal of doom as some Democrats were claiming, but was also not a self-correcting trifle, as most Republicans appeared to feel. It was a mild recession but becoming less mild every day and likely to become worse if no action were taken to correct it. Private initiative, including the purchase of innumerable refrigerators, was as important as ever, but would be no substitute for Government action and impetus. General alternatives were already available, such as increased Government spending on civilian facilities such as schools, roads and hospitals, and/or a tax cut to provide purchasing power to individuals.
But it was not as simple as that, as the President might say in a future press conference, rather was complex, worthy of sober thought, free of bathos or bunk, and urges that the time to start thinking was "approximately now".
"Charlotte's Scarecrow: Pardon Our Sigh" finds that in 1958 it could only manage a sigh of historical relief that there would finally be a new passenger station in Charlotte, though it might have been more enthusiastic around 1929.
In the meantime, the city had suffered too much criticism because of municipal neighbors having modern facilities to greet rail passengers upon arrival, whereas the Southern Railway station in Charlotte had gone out with hoop skirts and beaver hats, or at least with hip flasks and flappers. Its presence had added a certain quaintness to the midtown atmosphere, but there had been no market for quaintness in Charlotte since the first Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. building had been erected.
Charlotte's railway station was not only uncomfortable but lacked standard equipment, was indescribably ugly and gave incoming passengers an atrocious initial view of Charlotte, identified by the Chamber of Commerce as "the spearhead of the New South".
It hopes that the tentative plans for the new station would take form quickly and that after the new station was in operation, residents of Charlotte could just pretend that they had been enjoying progress all along.
"Bacon, Bacon, Who's Got the Bacon?" indicates that if things were not bad enough already in the Administration, Washington newsmen had discovered that the Administration had a poet in the Pentagon named Edward A. Bacon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for civil-military affairs. Mr. Bacon had a few of his poems recently published under the title, Light Verse and Worse.
The New York Times had suggested that one should be mounted in embroidery behind every Defense Department desk. It read: "Every time I go to sleep/ I marvel that I go to sleep./ Things are such, that I should weep./ But, instead, I go to sleep."
It finds the philosophy all right for the Pentagon but for the Department of Commerce, which had a recession with which to contend, it recommends the work of Francis Bacon, who had written: "Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes."
A piece from the Rocky Mount Evening Telegram, titled "Realism Rampant", questions whether some modern writers were going too far in their near-obsession with the most sickening and sordid aspects of life, one critic having written of several new plays by Tennessee Williams, expressing the opinion that he had gone too far and that he was wasting his talents on hog-pen subjects.
Reaction to the new novel by James Jones, Some Came Running, had been similar, with one review of the 1,266-page book having been headed, "By Sex Obsessed", a parody of one of the previous year's hit novels, by James Gould Cozzens, By Love Possessed.
Time had titled its review of the book, "Life Is a Four-Letter Word", and compared Mr. Jones to one of the characters in a play by Mr. Williams: "James Jones is the Stanley Kowalski of U.S. letters. Bulked into the sweaty T shirt of latter day realism, he stirs raw sex, raw talk, raw emotions, and raw ideas in a crude vat of the rawest home-brewed English."
It suggests that the movement to realism had been undoubtedly an overdue reaction to some of the nicenellyism which had taken over much of Victorian literature both in America and England, and had produced in result some of the best 20th Century literature. But of late, it finds, it had gone off the deep end in many cases, though the furor being aroused by the critics had helped sales and the box office, inviting only more of the same.
"Realism, virility, and a
clear-minded willingness to look even the unpleasant
Drew Pearson indicates that the President's defense of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had resulted first from the fact that the Secretary was a sincere gentleman with whom no one could differ personally, and second from the fact that the President's brother Milton was Mr. Benson's strong champion. He indicates that the President had always relied on his brother, who had served under Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, for his farm advice.
But in the latest report of the House Appropriations Committee on agriculture, he indicates there were some interesting figures of which neither the President, nor his brother Milton, nor most farmers of the nation were aware, telling a story of what was wrong with Mr. Benson's administration of agriculture in the nation. The figures had come from the Agriculture Department and showed that between the time that Mr. Benson had taken over that Department in 1953 and the present, he had added almost 20,000 extra bureaucrats and a billion dollars in expense, not including the cost of crop support payments or the soil bank, only covering the operations expense of the Department. He provides an itemized breakdown of the figures.
He indicates that despite his sincerity, Mr. Benson had been a failure as Secretary of Agriculture because he had immediately fired the farmers' committees which had enforced the farm acreage program and substituted paid bureaucrats for them, whereas the volunteers had been paid $57 per year, chiefly for travel to attend meetings, while the bureaucrats each received $5,000 per year, not only increasing the Department's budget but tending to put policemen in charge of farm acreage restrictions, while the volunteer farm committees had done an excellent job of restricting acreage. When the paid bureaucrats had taken over, the psychology of the program had changed, which he equates to the Russian peasant who was always out to beat the Soviet inspector on the collective farms, resulting in less compliance and cooperation.
Secretary Benson had operated the Agriculture Department with an eye to helping the middleman, not the farmer, with his whole background in Washington before becoming Secretary having been with the processor and equipment manufacturer and not the farmer. He offers as illustration that in 1956-57, when Mr. Benson had moved into the hog market to support the price of pork, he had omitted from his hog-purchasing contract a clause which required packers to purchase hogs at parity prices, signing contracts with the meat packers to buy up pork, with a guarantee to take it off their hands. But he had not required them to pay the farmer a guaranteed price. Thus, they could go to the hog market and buy below parity and sell to the Agriculture Department at a guaranteed price, which was exactly what they had done. The result was that the price of hogs had gone below parity, the farmers not benefiting while the packers did benefit, and the taxpayers paid 98.6 million dollars supposedly to support the price of pork, while the price of pork simultaneously was steadily decreasing.
Stewart Alsop indicates that as the economic news darkened, he reflected on the autumn of 1954 in West Virginia when the late Senator Matthew Neely was campaigning for re-election. Elsewhere, Democrats were treating the President with kid gloves, while the Senator was regularly referring to the President as "Eisenhower", accusing him of "talking monstrous hypocrisy and nonsense", repetitively referring to his policies "as disastrous as Hoover's", "making paupers of half the population of West Virginia." In the context of the times, his campaign line had sounded almost blasphemous. He told Mr. Alsop that he had attacked the President everywhere he had spoken and had never had less doubt about the outcome of an election in his life. And, indeed, he was triumphantly elected by a large margin.
West Virginia was a one-industry state, coal mining, and coal was in the worst slump since the Depression, with there having been fewer coal miners employed in West Virginia at the time that in the worst days of the Thirties.
Mr. Alsop indicates that it was worth recalling the episode because if the current recession deepened and hardened, the effect on the President's personal popularity, prestige and capacity for leadership could take a downturn, potentially rendering him the subject of bitter personal attacks, as with former President Hoover during the early Thirties. The answer would depend in part on the Democrats. Among responsible Democratic leaders, such as Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, there was no disposition to repeat the tactics used against President Hoover. Senator Johnson was wont to say, "I've read the Constitution," with the implication being that he was fully aware that there was no substitute under the Constitution for the power and authority of the Presidency. But not all Democrats believed as did Senator Johnson, many of the party having squirmed angrily for five years under the temptation to follow Senator Neely's example, having held back only as the better part of valor.
The President seemed to be in the mood to give the Democrats the opportunities for which they had been looking, as his politically imprudent act of flying with his wife to a charm school in Arizona suggested. His mood was a key factor in the equation, with Time Magazine having called it a "baffling don't care attitude". The President, for instance, had said of the intervention by White House chief of staff Sherman Adams with the Civil Aeronautics Board "a thing I have not heard of", when asked about it. The remark appeared to mean either that he did not read the newspapers or that he did not care what was in them. The President was also displaying a growing testiness. He had always displayed a quick temper. For example, Eric Johnston, organizer of the recent bipartisan demonstration for foreign aid, had proposed to the President that he should speak from the same dinner table as former President Truman, and the President had treated Mr. Johnston much as the emperors of other times had once treated the bearers of unwelcome news, nearly taking his head off, telling him furiously that he would never break bread with such a man as the former President.
That sort of thing, remarks Mr. Alsop, was not calculated to persuade Democrats to treat the President kindly. Few Republicans were planning to campaign as "Eisenhower Republicans" during the midterm elections of the year, and if the President were to get into trouble, were not likely to rush to his defense.
He indicates that the President was still the most popular political figure in the country, but any sign of weakness might cause him to invite a ferocious attack from behind. "And a presidential mood of indifference combined with testiness could make bad trouble for the President in a period of economic decline. It would be bad trouble for the country too, for it is hard to imagine anything more damaging than a bitter, Neely-like election fight followed by two years of presidential frustration. But if the nation as a whole begins economically to resemble West Virginia in 1954, that may be in the cards."
It should be noted that Senator John F. Kennedy began his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960 in the West Virginia prmary, in a time when entry to primaries was sporadic and quite optional with few delegates won in the process, there having been a particularly sailor-salty version of his comment which circulated, that he would begin by -well taking West Virginia.
A letter from Carolina Israelite editor and publisher Harry Golden thanks the newspaper and the City of Charlotte for a "high-hearted spirit of generosity" following the fire which had destroyed the house where he lived and published. He indicates that an unlined flue amid an outside temperature of 8 degrees had destroyed his books and possessions, but had also enriched him beyond the wildest dreams of his life. The professional newspapermen across the state and the Christian clergymen throughout the South had extended a hand of fellowship such as rarely came to a man in an entire lifetime. "But most of all, the 'strangers' from Chantilly, North Charlotte, Second Ward, and Dilworth who called me to say that they held a prayer meeting of thanks that the Charlotte Police Department had restored my subscription lists, of all things!" He believes that such an outpouring of good will and good wishes imposed upon him a tremendous responsibility to justify, to a degree, that line of communication and fellowship. He indicates that a Republican Congressman had offered to send a letter to all of his subscribers, that a Democratic Senator had placed it into the Congressional Record, and a note from Norman Thomas, the Socialist leader and his friend, had stated 'I am gratified at the people of Charlotte; my grandparents are buried there; the city has good blood in its veins," to which Mr. Golden said, "Amen, and thanks from the bottom of my heart."
A letter writer indicates that after the University of Virginia basketball team had defeated the Duke team the prior Tuesday night, Duke head coach Hal Bradley had been quoted by the press as saying about ailing player Bucky Allen, "Sure Bucky could have helped us, but we are not offering that as an alibi." But after Duke, with Mr. Allen back in the lineup, had beaten UNC on Friday night, coach Bradley had been quoted by the press as saying of the player, "If we had had him at Virginia we would have never lost." The writer indicates, "Why sure, Coach, and if Joe Quigg (Carolina center) hadn't broken his leg the Tar Heels wouldn't have lost to Duke. Confess now."
It is a little bit eerily coincidental, of course, that last Thursday here in 2025, Duke's star freshman player, Cooper Flagg, sprained his ankle and was out of action for the ACC Tournament semifinals against UNC on Friday, as was another of Duke's mainstays, Maliq Brown, sidelined with a dislocated shoulder. Duke, number one in the nation and which had during the regular season fairly dominated UNC in both games, though less so in Chapel Hill a week earlier, appeared perhaps ripe for the kill. UNC was healthy and had all of its players in the lineup. At stake for UNC, potentially, was a berth in the NCAA Tournament, after something of a disappointing season as a whole, but having shown down the stretch of the season, for its last month, the ability to win the games it was supposed to win and quite handily.
By halftime on Friday, it no longer appeared that Duke was ripe for the kill, leading by 21 points, even without two key members of its lineup. It even stretched that lead out to 24 points in the first few minutes of the second half, and, candidly, we, being in need of a nap, were very tempted to take one. Barely able to keep our eyes open, we drifted as things did not measurably improve, as UNC was down 18 points with only 8 1/2 minutes left in the game, remained down 14 points with about seven minutes left in the game, remained down 11 points with under five minutes to go.
But, bearing in mind those times in our youth when amazing comebacks, even without the three-point shot available and without any time clock to limit the other team's possession, were rather commonplace with UNC, including the eight-point comeback against a decidedly inferior Duke team with 17 seconds to go in 1974, a game at which we were present, and the Far West Classic against Utah in 1967, when UNC was down 17 points with 14 minutes to go, and came back to win both of those games, we began to say to ourselves, "Well, this still can be done," remembering what coach Dean Smith would have said, even if he was a bit of a nut sometimes. (Coach Smith would join the staff of UNC coach Frank McGuire as an assistant at the end of the current season, coming from the Air Force.)
Well, back to the story of the furious comeback last Friday, in which UNC outscored a clearly depleted Duke squad during the last eight and half minutes 24 to 7, to close to within one point with 32 seconds to go. They then fouled Duke with 21 seconds remaining and its player missed the front end of the one-and-one, UNC got the ball, headed down court, fed inside to Ven-Allen Lubin, who was then fouled and went to the free-throw line for two shots, and a chance, with 4.8 seconds remaining, to enable UNC to take the lead for the first time since the early stages of the game. Young Mr. Lubin, however, missed the first free-throw, leaving everything hinged to the second one, with the chance still to tie. He made the second free-throw, but, one of UNC's players, who had been the star of the first-round game two days earlier, hitting 7 three-point shots to set a UNC ACC Tournament record for three-point shots, and having been a key to the UNC success down the stretch of the season, made a critical mistake, suddenly darting his foot over the lane boundary for a moment, a violation which, under the rules of the game, nullified the made free-throw and left the score as a one-point deficit. On the following play, UNC immediately fouled Duke, which made both free-throws for a three-point lead. UNC got the ball to midcourt with 2.8 seconds remaining and called timeout. After the inbounds play, the last three-point shot attempt to tie the game fell short, and the furious comeback had also fallen short.
Yet, the effort was not in vain, as UNC is now in the NCAA Tournament, even if an 11 seed and having to engage in a play-in game on Tuesday. We make no predictions, as that is a fool's game. But we have to say to all the "experts" who had UNC out of the Tournament in the last few days, that they might need to consider another trade than trying to look into their crystal balls and discern the future with such certain expertise, meant to impress all of their adolescent listeners. They are basing their predictions on old metrics, no longer used by the NCAA selection committee, and we were quite aware of that, feeling reasonably confident that UNC would make the field, given the competition of the "bubble" teams and their less than impressive schedules back in November and December, when UNC was playing two of the current number one seeds in the Tournament, Auburn and Florida, losing to the latter by six points, albeit a tied game with less than twenty seconds and a one-point game with under ten seconds, the final margin resulting from the need to foul in the hope of regaining possession; and also to two of the number two seeds in the Tournament, Alabama and Michigan State, losing to the latter by three points in overtime. During that same time period, UNC had lost to Kansas by three points at Allen Fieldhouse when Kansas was the number one team in the nation, after UNC had come from far behind in that game to go ahead in the last couple of minutes.
In short, it is not about "quad-one wins", a rather silly system, as we remarked before, because a quad-one in December might become a quad-four win by March, or vice versa, and the quad system depends, for its initial rankings, on a purely subjective opinion of the relative strengths of the teams and proceeds from there, with certain conferences being slighted while other conferences being favored by those very subjective factors. The ACC this year was a conference which was severely slighted and the SEC was a conference unduly weighted for strength, based entirely on the early season performances of the various teams. That is no way to run a battleship, and the NCAA selection committee wisely recognized that fact and relied more heavily on other metrics, in each of which, UNC led its competitors for the last spot in the 68-team field, notably West Virginia. It also led Xavier and Texas, which got into the field ahead of UNC. Thus, the fact is that if UNC had not gotten into the field, it would have been a severe slight, based on a non-factor being promoted by the "experts", the number of "quad-one" wins. (West Virginia's gripe is properly with the inclusion of Texas, for its weak November-December out-of-conference schedule, and not with UNC. And while about it, we suggest a new system on automatic bids for conferences with poor tournament track records, especially where the conference representative is a team with a winning percentage below .500, that such teams should be relegated to the play-in games or perhaps, in the case of teams below .500, deemed ineligible, just as with football bowl teams, and the other teams, the last four at-large teams, being seeded regularly.)
A team can achieve a quad-one win by beating a team in the top 30 in the so-called "Net" rankings on its own home floor, or by beating a team in the top 75 on the other team's home floor, or by beating a team in the top 50 on a neutral floor, obviously based on arbitrary cut lines. UNC's lone "quad-one" win came against UCLA in December in Madison Square Garden. UCLA is in the Tournament as a number seven seed, the same seed line as Kansas in a different region. In late November, UNC had also beaten Dayton, which, at the time, was a "quad-one" win, coming on a neutral floor in Maui. Since that time, that win was demoted to a "quad-two", signifying the fallacy of the quad ranking system. Again, one can beat a team and be at least partially responsible for knocking it out of quad-one status, and thus reduce the quality of the victory by having achieved the victory. Meanwhile, any team which beat UNC on its home floor or on a neutral floor would have achieved a quad-one victory at any point in the season. If those are not logical fallacies, provide us one which you might deign to believe is.
Moreover, a team can play quad-one teams at the top of the quadrant, as did UNC routinely in November and December, and lose, while some other team, as many with several quad-one wins on their resumes did, might play teams in the lower ranges of the first quadrant and win, and thus boast a quad-one win, of no greater significance than a high quad-two win. The opportunities in conference for quad-one wins are also limited for many conferences, as was the case with the ACC this season, while far more might exist in other conferences, as with the SEC this year, again because of the early season relative weightings assigned to the various teams. In the end, it is a completely subjective and nonsensical system masquerading as being quasi-objective. The "experts" need to adjust their calculi.
Thus, we conclude that UNC well deserves its berth in the NCAA Tournament, and, if we were to make predictions…
In any event, the letter writer's statement is a bit eerie, being from so far out of the past. We wish Duke good luck in the Tournament, until, that is, they face UNC in the semifinals.
As to West Virginia Governor and 2020 election-denier Pat Morrissey, who today seeks to foment a conspiratorial view of UNC's selection over West Virginia, we can only suggest that he take a look at the inclusions ahead of UNC and their weak out-of-conference schedules while more closely examining the inherently arbitrary absurdity of the quadrant system as a means for selecting teams, hence its de-emphasis in the last couple of seasons. Reliance on the quadrant system becomes to a degree a self-fulfilling prophecy in that wins over teams within a team's conference, as in the Big 12 where West Virginia is a member, which result in quad-one victories, especially where the victorious team has previously played the same opponent and lost, thus enabling the loser to conduct a play-by-play assessment of previous errors in strategy and get a leg up for the subsequent meeting, do not an impressive resume necessarily make, except in the realm where indisputable data unerringly point to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez having rigged an election from the grave...
A letter writer from Clinton, S.C., indicates that Russia was teaching the U.S. that its national economy had to be planned and not left to "haphazard hit or miss chance." He says that a news analyst had asked the question whether there was any parallel between the present recession and the Crash of 1929, says that he could respond that it was the same. "From 1920 to 1929 Big Business had it lock, stock and barrel. Since Eisenhower's been President Big Business has had another field day. It has begun to look as if what was good for General Motors is not good for any of us." (He refers, of course, to the statement once made by former Secretary of Defense, former head of G.M., Charles E. Wilson.)
A letter writer indicates that when the present postmaster had been installed in Charlotte, he had hoped to see changes and improvements, but there had only been unfair changes, with the three-cent stamp window closed, a card displayed therein referring the public to the parcel post window, where there was a congested line to obtain a three-cent stamp. He says he was advised by an employee of the post office that they could look for a "noticeable improvement", but that the public disagreed. He had read that the three-cent stamp was going to be raised to a nickel and that the airmail stamp would go to eight cents. He wonders what Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, not "Chatterfield", was doing with all the funding which went into the "pork barrel", indicating that Life and Time magazines were receiving thousands of dollars worth of service that they did not have to pay for in bulk-mail rate reductions. Yet, Mr. Summerfield continued to call for more money to move the mail, thinks that if it could not be corrected or adjusted, they should replace their Congressmen.
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