The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 8, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Cape Canaveral, Fla., that the Navy had tinkered with its Vanguard satellite test rocket this date in a launching race with the sun. As long as the sun was up, the Navy, by its own restrictions, still had an opportunity to launch its fourth Vanguard test vehicle and put into orbit the 3.5-pound satellite in the nose of the rocket. But the previous day, the Navy had to postpone the scheduled Vanguard test while it tended to what it called minor technical troubles and waited for the weather to clear. The combination of those two factors had taken up too much of the daytime hours such that the Navy countdown was running into the night and so it was decided to wait. It was not known why the Navy had selected only daylight hours for launch. The 72-foot Vanguard rocket had been plagued by bad weather in recent weeks, including repeated rains on the launchpad the previous night. Two previous Vanguard launches had not been successful, the rocket having blown up on the launchpad after rising four feet on December 6, and another Vanguard having broken in half and was deliberately destroyed February 5 after functioning well to about 20,000 feet in altitude.
In Naha, Okinawa, a U.S. Marine transport plane, carrying 25 persons, and a single-seat Marine fighter-bomber had collided the previous night as they were preparing to land, plunging into the ocean as a ball of fire. Navy search parties had recovered three bodies this date and sighted other bodies, debris and wreckage in the water. U.S. ships and planes searching for possible survivors with the help of Okinawan police and fishermen had been hampered by rough water and reefs in the shallow sea. The control tower operator said that one of the planes had radioed to him shortly after dark, and a few minutes later, the operator had seen a flash in the sky. A witness said that he saw three distinct flashes, while other witnesses said that they heard a terrific explosion and saw a ball of fire falling to the sea.
The General Accounting Office said that the Air Force, in closing down a supply depot in Morocco, had left secret equipment such as radar sets and bomb sights out in the open, accessible to prospective bidders. The GAO report had criticized the close-out operations at the depot, indicating that some equipment was left deteriorating in the open and that the depot had perhaps twice as much stock as the 144 million dollars worth which the Air Force thought it had in beginning the close-out operations. The GAO report provided to House Speaker Sam Rayburn on February 28 had indicated that there was still some waste involved in closing out the depot, supposed to be closed by July 1, with U.S. bases in the area to obtain supplies from depots elsewhere.
The Eisenhower Administration and the Democratic-led Congress pushed job-creation actions this date amid reports that unemployment had increased the previous month to more than 5.1 million.
In Paris, despite deep-seated parliamentary discontent with the Algerian policy of the Government, the National Assembly voted the previous night to intensify the war against the Algerian rebels.
Near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a crowded commuter train hurtling through darkness and rain the previous night had rammed two other trains halted because of storm damage to a signal system. Wooden passenger cars had been splintered and scattered along the tracks in the hamlet of Santa Cruz, about 35 miles north of Rio. About 60 persons were reported killed and 60 injured. Hundreds of men from a nearby air force base and the attendants of more than 30 ambulances had sought to rescue the trapped passengers from the debris. Screams and prayers could be heard from those who were trapped. By morning, rescuers had found 36 bodies and had sent survivors to hospitals. The crash was described as one of Brazil's worst. In 1952, two electric trains had collided head-on on a bridge over the flooding Pavuna River, killing 102 persons and injuring about 200.
In Port Said, Egypt, it was reported that eight persons, including an American, had been killed and 18 injured the previous night when an Egyptian airliner had crashed in a marshy lake after a sandstorm had closed airports in the area. The American was identified as a 63-year old man from St. Paul, Minn., whose wife was also seriously injured. The twin-engine plane was en route from Athens to Cairo when the worst sandstorm in years had blown up. Most of the other passengers had been residents of Egypt or Greek seamen flying to Port Said to join their ships at the northern end of the Suez Canal. Four of the five crewmen had been killed in the crash and the other dead included a Greek seaman and two passengers not immediately identified.
In Cincinnati, a 32-year old woman told police that she had shot a 29-year old man in Chicago the previous February 10, had stuffed his body in a trunk and shipped it to Memphis, claiming that she had acted in self-defense. He may have been threatening to ship her to Kalamazoo.
In Raleigh, a prisoner sentenced to life was shot in the leg after he slashed a guard at Central Prison the previous day with a knife. He would undergo a psychiatric examination, according to the Prisons director.
In Salisbury, a schoolteacher, 26, of Shelby, had been killed this date when the car he was driving turned over. The Highway Patrol reported that he had apparently been driving at a high rate of speed and had lost control of the vehicle.
In Charlotte, two Georgia men, charged with kidnaping and armed robbery, waived their preliminary hearing in City Recorder's Court this date and were bound over to the Superior Court without bond. The men had been arrested the previous day by Union County officials after hiding in a swampy, wooded area about ten miles south of Monroe, after allegedly having kidnaped a Charlotte used-car salesman on Wednesday night, tying him to the studding of a house under construction, gagging him, and then fleeing in a stolen automobile. The two men had appeared similarly dressed in court and upon inquiry from reporters, one of them snapped, "Clothes don't mean nothing." Police had tracked the men with a bloodhound until it was spent in the wee hours of the morning, and they had then run deeper into the woods.
In Greenwich, Conn., a mother had given her life early this date in a vain attempt to save two of her children who had been trapped in a burning house. A third child was saved when she jumped from a porch roof and was caught by a passerby on the ground. The mother, her son, 15, and her daughter, 12, had all died in the fire. The husband and father, 45, had survived after a desperate plunge through a downstairs window, receiving several cuts from flying glass. Investigators said that the mother had pushed the surviving daughter, 13, to safety on the porch roof and then had gone back for the other two children, her body having been found in a sewing room off the master bedroom, and the children's bodies having been found in separate second-floor bedrooms. The cause of the fire had not yet been determined.
Bill Hughes of The News reports from Sanford regarding the trial of Frank Wetzel, accused of the murder of Highway Patrolman J. T. Brown the previous November 5, the same night another Patrolman, Wister Reece, had been killed allegedly by Mr. Wetzel, for which he had already been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. This date, the State had pressed its circumstantial case against Mr. Wetzel, introducing evidence to place him at the scene of the slaying of Patrolman Brown, which had occurred about an hour after the murder of Patrolman Reece in a different county. The prosecution had stretched into its fourth day of testimony, with a new phase being entered this date as a white Chrysler temporarily had taken the spotlight from a black 1957 Oldsmobile which Mr. Wetzel was supposed to have been driving at the time of the killing of officer Reece. Chattanooga police had testified about the break-in of a Chrysler garage about a block from where the Oldsmobile had been abandoned. A police lieutenant said that a white Chrysler had approached as he and another officer had been examining the Oldsmobile, and then the Chrysler had sped away. Although it had never been adduced in the earlier trial in Rockingham, Mr. Wetzel was accused of stealing a Chrysler and later wrecking the car after ditching the Oldsmobile in Chattanooga. Another witness this date, a young woman, 17, of Chattanooga, said that she had seen a white man get out of the Oldsmobile near her house, having then awakened her mother, who had also testified, both having reported the incident to the Chattanooga police. Although the teenager had been unable to identify the defendant, she agreed that the man leaving the Oldsmobile resembled the defendant. Bakersfield, Calif., police had testified this date about Mr. Wetzel's arrest there on November 19. Thus far, the prosecution had established that Patrolman Brown had been killed by the driver of a black 1957 Oldsmobile, that Mr. Wetzel was driving such a vehicle at the time of the killing of Patrolman Reece, who had stopped him for a speeding violation, and he had been linked with the car found in Chattanooga the night after the shooting, that car being significant as found inside was a .44-caliber Magnum revolver, believed to have been the murder weapon involved in the killing of both Highway Patrolmen. The defense attorney the previous day had developed inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony of the man who had testified that he had been picked up by Mr. Wetzel as a hitchhiker and had heard the fatal shot fired by Mr. Wetzel at Patrolman Reece, as he ducked out the other side of the vehicle and hid in a ditch after Mr. Wetzel had grabbed a gun from the glove compartment, a gun which resembled the .44 Magnum found in the abandoned car. FBI fingerprint evidence was slated to be developed to link Mr. Wetzel with the stolen items found in the abandoned Oldsmobile. The trial would be continued on Monday.
In Lincolnton, N.C., Republicans of the Tenth Congressional District, meeting there the previous day, had named incumbent Charles Jonas as the party's candidate for re-election to the seat. He was the only member of the Republican Party in the North Carolina Congressional delegation and one of only nine from the South.
In Chicago, 16 firemen with extinguishers and axes had rushed to a corner of City Hall the previous day when smoke had filled the area, but they had arrived too late. A clerk had already extinguished the blaze with a cup of water. A bucket of sawdust used by janitors for sweeping floors had been destroyed after someone had dropped a cigarette into the bucket, apparently thinking it was sand. Damage was estimated at between three and four cents.
In Topeka, Kans., a thief who had broken into a novelty shop had taken only two plastic whistles, two bags of marbles, two balloons, a plastic noisemaker and a yo-yo.
On the editorial page, "The Tenth District Deserves Better" indicates that rumor had it that the Democratic Party would not field a candidate against Representative Charles Jonas in the 1958 House race in the local Congressional district. Unless an "outsider" were to challenge the incumbent, it appeared that re-election to the seat would be won by him by default. There was not even a present intention by Democratic chieftains to seek out worthy candidates or provide their blessing to an outsider if they consider that person unworthy.
It was the expressed feeling of many Democratic leaders in Mecklenburg County that Representative Jonas was unbeatable. It suggests that if it were true, it amounted to a confession of party weakness, a condition which no amount of organizational window-dressing could conceal. Fear of defeat by Mr. Jonas was not a valid reason for failing to put him to the test.
It opines that vigorous debate of issues supplied the very lifeblood of democracy and that Mr. Jonas would be the first to agree. He was the Republican Party's tried and true warrior and should meet the best which the Democrats could muster in the Tenth District in a fair and open contest such that the electorate would be given a choice between strong candidates.
It concludes that the challenge rested with the Democrats, that in conceding the race to the Republicans in 1958, they would be conceding their own political impotence in a time of great decisions and calls to greatness.
"Odds Favor the Beach Towel Brigade" indicates that South Carolina legislators had denounced as a smear on the memory of Robert E. Lee the manufacture of beach towels emblazoned with a Confederate battle flag design.
It suggests that the venting of their ire made the honorables feel better in all likelihood but also probably increased the sale of the beach towels, as the public passion for personal use of the symbols of the Confederacy appeared to be almost as intense as South Carolina's devotion to the substance of it. It finds the craze appearing to be out of reach of even the most vigorous legislative denunciation.
A fraternity sanctioned by some of the South's oldest universities had members who showed up at the annual hops wearing pseudo-Confederate uniforms. It suggests that it could be argued that such youths who would not know a goober pea if they saw one had profaned the memory of the Confederate soldier about as much as the beach towel manufacturer. "Johnny Reb attended few, if any, dances on the way to Gettysburg."
Some Southern chambers of commerce ran off Confederate money for use as stage gimmicks. It questions whether censure was due the G.I.'s who had charged Japanese pillboxes with a U.S. rifle in their hands and a Confederate flag under their undershirts. There were also high school basketball teams who styled themselves "Rebels" but were not.
It fears the war for the sanctity of Confederate symbols was lost. It shows a photograph of a gentleman wearing a Confederate-type cap passed out as a party favor at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce dinner, the person being Senator Richard Russell. It questions whether anyone wanted to accuse him of smearing General Lee's memory.
"Jazz Came from the Carolinas, Too" indicates that followers of the fortunes of an art form known as American jazz had recently been informed that Dixie's claim to Dixieland was tenuous, with only one Southern city, New Orleans, turning out musical performers of any worth, at least according to an expert who saw the remainder of the region as a Sahara of mediocrity.
In the minds of the jazz historians, the Carolinas' main claim to musical fame appeared to rest with such ricky-ticky, non-jazz influences as Kay Kyser, John Scott Trotter and the late Hal Kemp.
It begs to differ, indicating that artisans in any area of American culture were where you found them, jazz being no exception. Among the old-timers had been singer Chippie Hill and trumpeter Bubber Miley, both of Charleston, S.C. Among the swing stars had been alto saxophonist Tab Smith of Wilson, N.C., clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton of Dillon, S.C., guitarist Freddie Green of Charleston, trombonist Sandy Williams of Sommerville, S.C., trumpeter John Best of Shelby, trumpeter Cat Anderson of Greenville, S.C., alto saxophonist Willy Smith of Charleston, pianist Eddie Wilcox of Method, N.C., and guitarist Jimmy Shirley of Union, S.C.
Among the modernists of jazz were
trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie of Cheraw, S.C., pianist Billy Taylor
Among jazz-influenced folk artists
were singer and guitarist Josh White
It thus concludes that the defense rested.
"Massive Retaliation" indicates that when the Army had lost its Jupiter-C rocket during the week, the London Star had stated on the front page its concern in the form of a rhyme: "I shot a rocket in the air;/ It buzzed away I know not where./ Let's hope and pray it missed the pate/ Of him who can retaliate."
It indicates that if the source of the earth tremors around Wilmington were not discovered soon, Coastal Carolina might mobilize. "And then, Cape Canaveral, look out!"
Joseph Wood Krutch, writing in the Saturday Review, in a piece titled "Put the Hobby Horse Back", indicates that hobby horses were hard to come by for the fact that the play school consultants had decided that a hobby horse did "not develop the group spirit." The youthful rider was likely to gallop off on an adventure of his own, instead of adjusting himself to the common denominator of his group.
It posits that Americans once were supposed to have been admirable individualists, but it now seemed to be taken for granted in some quarters that Americans ought not to be. It suggests that lives of great men might remind people that quite a few of them started going their own way while young, growing up "unadjusted" such that some were abnormal to the point of being geniuses. For all anyone knew, the whole unfortunate business may have begun with a hobby horse which did not "develop the group spirit".
It suggests that the best answer to totalitarian promises of material welfare was a chicken in every pot, but that if society wanted to encourage a distaste for the atmosphere of totalitarian society, then perhaps the first slogan should be: "Two hobby horses in every nursery."
The recipe against the condition is
certainly not that proposed by the Trump cadre, two chickens in every
garage and pot in every car. For how could anyone have invited a
reporter into a conference between high-level officials planning an
attack on a foreign terrorist outfit without there having been
plentiful pot or something intoxicating flying
Drew Pearson indicates that Alabama State legislators had made a pilgrimage to Washington during the week to lay before Congress the critical situation confronting cotton farmers in the Southeast. In the words of one cotton farmer, acting as a consultant to the State legislators, imparted to the House Agriculture Committee, the farmers were more demoralized than ever before, finding "farm labor gone, their tenants vanished or barely existing, their plows rusting, their tractors down, their mules converted to dog meat, their fields vacated and lying idle, their rural communities disappearing and their country homes, churches, and schools standing vacant like corroded monuments to haunt the memory of what once was a cherished and respected way of life."
The causes were low prices and a gigantic 55 percent cut since 1953 in the number of acres allowed to be planted in cotton under Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson's "flexible" price support system. As the nation's cotton surplus mounted, the acreage planted in cotton was being cut. Meanwhile, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and North and South Carolina had borne the brunt of the decline, while the acreage of such Western states as California, Arizona and New Mexico had fared proportionately better. That was because a state's share of the national cotton acreage was based on the average acreage in the preceding five years, and with poor cotton farmers in the Southeast abandoning the soil for city jobs, Alabama's allotment, for instance, had decreased, penalizing farmers remaining on the soil. Some individual allotments had been cut by as much as 70 percent since 1953, in contrast to the national acreage decrease of only 35 percent.
The consultant who had testified said that the plan of Secretary Benson reckoned in terms of states and counties, ignoring the fate of the individual farmer. The result was that in Alabama, 125,000 farmers had signed up with the State Employment Service for off-farm employment. One tractor dealer had reported that he had sold 60 tractors in 1955, only 32 in 1956, and just 14 in 1957, and that most of the latter number had been repossessed when farmers could not make the payments. Ginners, bankers, crushers, farm laborers, fertilizer manufacturers, warehousemen, and cotton merchants were all impacted.
According to Maynard Layman, the farm editor of the Decatur Daily, the solution was not in moving farmers off the land, but in more marginal farmers, not fewer. He said that it did not solve anything for farmers to sell out and move to the city, where they merely added to unemployment rolls and created all kinds of social problems. Moreover, in many cases, it was impossible for a man who had been a farmer all of his life to make the shift to city life at the age of 45 or 50.
The farm representative had told the Committee that pestilence had been visited upon the land of cotton and he proposed as a solution that an increase in cotton acreage allotments, not across the board by state, but just enough to guarantee every farmer his historic share of the nation's production be implemented, along with a Brannan-type plan for cotton, whereby all American cotton would be sold without price supports at the normal level. By letting the price seek its own level, cotton would be able to compete better with nylon, dacron and other synthetics. Instead of price supports, farmers would receive direct production payments to the extent necessary to raise their income to parity with industrial workers.
Mr. Pearson notes that the soil bank program had not helped, that a total of 70,000 Alabama farmers had been frozen out of the soil bank pay for insufficient soil bank funds, many of whom after they had sold their implements. Even if Congress appropriated more soil bank funding, it would not help the thousands of laborers and tenant farmers whose jobs disappeared whenever an acre of land went into the soil bank.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the public record of a President's appointments did not completely describe his activities, but was strongly revealing of the extent to which he saw people outside the executive branch who were independent of his mood and favor in a manner which his appointees could not be. She finds it a truism that the President was largely insulated from common life, as the White House staff provided for his food, shelter, service and transportation. From the moment of his election, the staff walled him away from people and the ability to leap over that wall without wasting his energy on non-essentials was his greatest problem.
February was normally a dull month legislatively in Washington, as Congress was a slow starter and by mutual consent trimmed its calendar to help partisan political shows honoring former Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson and Jackson. Yet, in the current year, it had undergone mounting pressure for a summit meeting, the start of defense reorganization, the initiation of the difficult foreign aid and reciprocal trade campaigns and a deepening recession.
The public record of the President scheduled during February, as verified by the White House, contained no Senators except for Republican Senate leaders at two Monday conferences and only four Representatives except for House Republican leaders at those two conferences. No members of Federal regulatory agencies, all of which were under heavy fire from a House subcommittee, had called on the President. He had met with the National Security Council on three occasions, with the Cabinet and the press twice and with the chairman of his Economic Advisory Council on one occasion.
Secretary of State Dulles, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and Dr. James Killian, his scientific advisor, had called on the President twice. The Vice-President, the Secretaries of Labor, Defense and Agriculture and the Attorney General had called once
Ten days had been spent on vacation in Georgia with its long detour home via Arizona so that the First Lady could attend an Eve Arden slimming salon.
She provides the daily calendar from February 1 through 28.
Joseph Alsop, in London, indicates that the shift in the British theory of Soviet purposes was a principal fact of the new, post-Sputnik world scene. The officials of the British Foreign Office and the service ministries had not changed their view of what the Kremlin was seeking, or their estimates of the means which the Kremlin might employ to attain those aims. But an apparent majority of the public and most of the press, plus large numbers of members of Parliament, were operating on a novel theory, important to analyze.
He indicates that there was no official spokesman for the theory and so it remained misty and hard to pin down, but one approach which was helpful was to examine the foreign affairs debate which had taken place in Commons just after Prime Minister Harold MacMillan's return from his tour of the empire. He finds the most interesting part of the debate to have been the "unhappy speech" of Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, denounced as a shocking failure by many Conservative politicians and almost the entire Conservative press, with had called for him to resign the following day. Mr. Lloyd was no great orator and on the particular occasion seemed to have been tired when he took the floor. But the pedestrian performance was not the apparent basis for the disappointment, rather it having been his refusal to indulge in undue optimism about the many serious problems confronting Britain, especially those pertaining to negotiations with the Soviets.
Mr. Lloyd had reflected the prevailing opinion of his expert advisors, while bitterly disappointing the great numbers of people in the country who longed to be told that everything would be all right. Mr. Alsop suggests that if his speech had opened more hopeful perspectives of possible agreement with the Soviets and a summit meeting, or relaxation of world tensions, etc., he might have mumbled every word and still received cheers at the conclusion.
He regards four discernible strands to be woven into the new British tendency to want to hear and believe only what was pleasant regarding an unpleasant world situation, one being economic. With magnificent determination, the British had been making an effort which was beyond their means throughout all of the 13 post-war years, but no British politician would seriously advocate continuing that effort by purchasing guns instead of butter, for in peacetime, British politicians very much resembled American politicians. The excessiveness of the British effort had been recognized, as indicated by the reception of Peter Thorneycroft's explanation of his resignation as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He indicates that when one could not make the effort to ameliorate an unpleasant situation, it was always comforting to believe that the situation was not as unpleasant as it appeared.
Another strand in the tendency was the bitter aftermath of the follies of U.S. policy before and during the Suez Canal crisis in Egypt. The prevailing British view of Nikita Khrushchev was very much: "I could not love thee, dear, so much, hated I not Foster Dulles more."
A third strand, which he deems important, was the remarkable public relations job which Mr. Khrushchev had done, having gone far to persuade the Western allies in Europe that there had been a real and deep change in the Soviet system since the death of Joseph Stalin, making the Kremlin seem less menacing to the West.
The fourth strand he identifies, which he deems perhaps the most important, was the strange, acidly solvent effect on opinion of the nuclear nightmare in which humanity currently lived. Until the Sputnik had been launched the prior October, all except the experts continued to operate on the assumption that the comfortable familiar, everyday world had not been greatly altered. Hydrogen bombs or not, the Sputnik illuminated the altered landscape, showing that the nuclear nightmare was a reality and the comfortable, familiar, everyday world was the dream. Having seen that nightmare with opened eyes, the British were reasonably determined to avoid a war involving the hydrogen bomb at almost any cost, no longer hoping to avoid war by the old British method of maintaining a stable balance of power. Doing that had to be an American responsibility and so the British hungered for negotiation just for negotiation's sake and a parallel optimism about the Kremlin was now stronger in Britain than in any other Western power, despite the fact that Britain was most directly menaced by the Kremlin's unremitting attempt to cripple the West by well-aimed flank attacks.
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