The Charlotte News
Saturday, April 12, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that Government troops had killed 18 rebels in an air and ground attack on a sugar mill this date outside the town of Sagua la Grande near the northern coast of Las Villas Province, with seven rebels having been killed there the previous day. About 200 rebels fighting for Fidel Castro against the regime of El Presidente Fulgencio Batista had swept into the town the previous day and barricaded themselves in a school. Reliable reports said that the rebels had landed on the southern coast of the Province three weeks earlier and pushed toward the town, about 30 miles northeast of Santa Clara. A Cuban Army fighter plane had swooped down on the rebels with bombs, and they had fled before Government reinforcements from Santa Clara. But the insurgents in their flight had burned two electric power plants, four or five gasoline tanks, a small lumber mill and two railway baggage cars. It was the latest major outbreak in the total war declared by Sr. Castro. The previous day, rebels had raided the copper center of El Cobre, 12 miles west of Santiago, and touched off a dynamite explosion in a warehouse. Santiago, itself, heart of the rebellious Oriente Province, had been quiet under the heavy guard of El Presidente's men. Rebel raiders from their strongholds in the Sierra Maestra had invaded El Cobre before dawn, reportedly burning the city hall but departing after residents had pleaded that further burning would destroy the town, one of Cuba's most holy places. As they left, they had set off dynamite charges. Reports on the uprising in Santiago indicated that it was more widespread and tenacious than the one which had quickly been put down in Havana earlier. The Santiago death toll was placed at 17 rebels and two Government troops, with no estimate of the wounded. Just prior to noon on Wednesday, women had swarmed into downtown stores passing out leaflets calling for a general strike. Police had rushed in to reopen the businesses after lunch but few employees had returned to work. Rebels raided the telephone company and killed a censor. Traffic had vanished and by nightfall, sabotage and bombings continued throughout the blacked-out city. A downtown area for blocks was turned into a battleground for two hours. Rebels raced through Santiago hurling gasoline bombs at Government forces and official buildings. After motor patrols had run down and shot rebels on Thursday, the police and Army claimed that the situation was under control by noon.
In Cambridge, Mass., the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory reported that Sputnik II, the giant Soviet dog-carrying satellite launched the prior November 4, was expected to come to earth in a glow sometime this date. It provides a timetable of when and where the satellite would pass in its dying passages, visible in a fiery trail produced by the friction of re-entry to the atmosphere. Nothing suggests that it would be visible over North Carolina. Poor, little Laika. You were a good soldier and Cosmonaut Number 1, Comrade.
In Washington, it was reported that former President Truman was back in the nation's capital for the 13th anniversary of his having become President in 1945 at the death of FDR from a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga. He would appear this night before a banquet held by the American Veterans of World War II, providing a foreign policy speech. The former President would be 74 the following month and, remarks Associated Press reporter Ernest Vaccaro, had changed quite a bit from the man who had gone prayerfully to the White House 13 years earlier to beseech the prayers of Mrs. Roosevelt in carrying out his duties. He finds that nearly eight years of the Presidency and the applause of fellow Democrats had given him increased confidence, and even a trace of cockiness, having become one of the most sought-after speakers on the political stage. He arrived in Washington the previous day and planned to stay until Monday, when he was billed as the first witness before the House Banking Committee in hearings on legislation to fight the recession. Congressional Democrats were hoping to obtain political hay from his views on the economic situation, with the chairman of the Committee speaking of his "great capacity for decision and for leadership in time of crisis." In talking with newsmen the previous day, Mr. Truman had indicated that he was cool to the idea of a tax cut and challenged the view of some Administration officials that a public works program might be inflationary.
In Port of Spain, Trinidad, Lord Hailes, the British Governor-General of the new West Indies Federation, the previous day had named the prospective nation's 19 Senators, giving control of the upper house to the Federal Labor Party.
In Taipei, Formosa, it was reported by the Nationalist Chinese Government that Japan and Nationalist China would resume on Tuesday a trade conference broken off in anger the previous month after a Japanese trade agreement had been concluded with Communist China.
In Paris, Premier Felix Gaillard had met with his Cabinet this date to decide whether France would take its Tunisian dispute to the U.N. or acccept a good offices solution, which might touch off a right-wing revolt.
In Baghdad, official Iraqi sources said this date that a countrywide drought and a growing locust menace might lead to loss of wheat and barley crops worth millions of dinars.
In Chicago, police had revealed that lie detector tests had indicated that a burly young construction worker, 24, had guilty knowledge of the unsolved lake-front bludgeon-slaying of a female sunbather in 1956. The man had appeared in criminal court on another case the previous day, and the first assistant State's attorney had said that two persons had made at least tentative identifications of him in connection with the slaying. The chief of detectives revealed the results of the lie detector test while the man was appearing in court on the other case. The 50-year old victim had been beaten to death on July 22, 1956 by a bare-chested man who pounced on her from a clump of bushes while she had been sunbathing alone in Lincoln Park. A man who was an apartment dweller helplessly observed the assault through binoculars from his 15th-floor living room while watching sailboats on the lake, and was one of the persons who had observed the man in question in court. The prosecutor said that the witness reported that the man in question "looked like a man" whom he had seen beating the victim. At least one other person who had been called to court to view the man identified him as the man whom he had seen approaching the victim, as the witness and a companion had driven past the scene on nearby Lake Shore Drive, seeing the scene from a distance of about 100 feet, five minutes before the murder occurred. The man who conducted the polygraph said that the suspect had been quizzed about the dismemberment slaying the previous August of a 15-year old girl for which he was presently in court, and had flunked three questions during the test, including whether he had killed the 50-year old victim who was sunbathing, whether he had beaten her, and whether he had dragged her into the bushes. The prosecutor emphasized that the identifications and the lie detector test results had not established a case against the man, and that police merely wanted to question him further, that a strategy conference on the case might be held early the following week.
In Daytona Beach, Fla., a Marine corporal was killed and three others injured this date when their car hit a low spot on the beach.
In Manning, S.C., a diving team from the Charleston Naval Base was preparing to search a five-foot deep area of nearby Lake Marion this date for the body of a 60-year old man of Bloomington, Ill., a prominent contractor, after he had tumbled from a small boat and was lost less than five hours before his son, a lieutenant on leave from the Air Force, was to have been married in a formal church wedding to the daughter of the Manning school superintendent. The ceremony had been held as scheduled, but the nuptials had taken place privately in the bride's home instead of at the Presbyterian Church, the wedding having taken place in a subdued atmosphere of sorrow. Witnesses on shore had heard the father of the groom crying for help after tumbling into the water, but were unable to reach the spot before he disappeared. The sheriff said that the outboard motor on the boat had been pulled out of the water, indicating that the man was trying to make an adjustment and had lost his balance.
In Newton, N.C., it was reported that one man had been killed and four persons critically injured in a pre-dawn two-car collision near the Catawba-Lincoln county line. At noon this date, the four injured victims of the accident were still on the critical list in the hospital. No major surgery had been required and the four had undergone X-rays. A Highway Patrolman who investigated the accident said that from initial investigation it appeared that one of the motorists had been distracted for an instant as his car left the center line of the road and collided with the other car, with no evidence that brakes had been applied on either vehicle.
In Charlotte, in a mass trial in U.S. District Court regarding narcotics charges, eight residents of North or South Carolina, including a doctor from South Carolina, fined $10,000 and sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence, were given fines or prison sentences. Narcotics agents told the court that an examination of the doctor's records had shown more than 9,000 morphine tablets not accounted. The defendants had been charged with conspiracy to purchase, sell and dispense narcotic drugs. Two of the defendants, both of Charlotte, were sentenced to five years in prison each. One defendant from Cowpens, S.C., received 18 months. A woman was fined $1,000 and received a three-year suspended sentence. A man was given a two-year suspended sentence, and another woman was sentenced to three years. One woman had her case dismissed and two others also received suspended sentences. One other defendant received a judgment suspended and another was being held in custody pending disposition of his case.
Also in Charlotte, a 39-year old woman had died from carbon monoxide poisoning early this date when the rear of the car in which she was riding jammed against a ditch, according to County police. An Air Force sergeant had died from a similar freak accident early on Thursday morning, when his car's exhaust pipe had become jammed in the side of a ditch. Stop struggling trying to extricate the vehicle from the ditch, turn off the engine, and start walking. It is mid-April, and the weather is nice. Enjoy the stars.
Julian Scheer of The News
reports that Ed O'Herron, for awhile the top dog in Mecklenburg's
legislative delegation, had become the forgotten man in local
politics, or at least it so appeared. His drugstores, Eckerd's—from which, wisely, one school night in early 1965 while purchasing some school supplies, we chose not to purchase "The Early Beatles", realizing upon examination of it for the first time that we had all of the songs
Mr. Scheer might have carried the bad-luck matter yet further, into the mystery and alleged curse surrounding the Hope diamond, owned at one point by Marie Antoinette before she lost her head, four days after the founding of the Carolina Blue at UNC, the first state university, October 12, 1793, which has as one of its mysterious honorary orders that of the Golden Fleece, that diamond having been purchased eventually in 1911 by Evalyn Walsh McLean, whose husband, Ned, had inherited the Washington Post, then was expected to have passed the diamond by inheritance to her daughter, Evalyn, who had married Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina in 1941, the man who thought that every immigrant posed a danger to democracy and public safety, statistics and facts to the contrary notwithstanding, as always the case with demagogues looking for handy scapegoats on which to blame all of society's ills and thereby obtain a ring from the roundabout
In Los Angeles, a coroner's jury had found the knife slaying of Johnny Stompanato justifiable, but the big question still remained as to what would happen to Lana Turner's teenage daughter who had stabbed him fatally out of fear that his verbal threats to her mother would wind up in violence. Ms. Turner had been the star witness the previous day in the proceeding, providing detail of fierce arguments and threats which preceded her daughter's fatal wounding of Ms. Turner's boyfriend, a known underworld figure according to police. The daughter, 14, remained in Juvenile Hall because the coroner's verdict was not binding on the Juvenile Court, which would hear her case privately on April 24. Legal sources agreed that it was not likely that the court would decide to try her as an adult on a murder charge, but stated that it could. Most likely the matter to be considered at the April 24 hearing would be whether the daughter lacked proper parental supervision. The district attorney under California law had no legal jurisdiction in juvenile cases, but had been quite outspoken, saying that it appeared to him that the daughter never had a real home either with her mother or her father and he thought it was about time that a proper home was found for her. Sympathy was almost universally with the youngster. Ms. Turner, sobbing almost to the point of collapse, had told of the stabbing the previous Friday night, saying that Mr. Stompanato had told her he would cut her face or cripple her, and that if it went beyond that, he would kill her, her daughter and her mother. She said that after that, she was walking toward the bedroom door and Mr. Stompanato was right behind her, that as she opened the door, her daughter entered and stabbed him. She said that it had occurred so fast she never saw the blade, thought that her daughter had merely hit him in the stomach. During the hearing, the daughter and the other girls in Juvenile Hall had been watching "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", a four-year old movie made by MGM, the studio which had made Ms. Turner famous.
In Dallas, Tex., it was reported that a man said, as he dashed into a drive-in grocery store five minutes before closing time, "Looks like I'm here in time." He then pulled a pistol and forced the clerk to hand over $225.
On the editorial page, "The Cuban Rebellion Will Be Renewed" quotes from Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro, regarding the future of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista: "If Batista loses, he loses for good; if I lose, I will just start over again."
At present, Sr. Castro appeared to have lost, as the "war" he had been proclaiming for months against El Presidente had failed to come to fruition when he made a determined effort to launch it during the current week. In reality, he had nothing to lose as his "army", more like a band of marauders, was largely unarmed, without supplies or equipment. Sr. Batista, on the other hand, had everything to lose and despite his well-armed Army, acted as if he was on the verge of losing it.
It indicates that the only army in Cuba capable of deciding the contest were the people themselves and that the real weapons of Sr. Castro were his appeals for that army to rally under his leadership to overthrow Batista. Against that weapon, Batista had no defense except strict suppression, which bred growing sympathy for the rebels. And so Batista could not win, could only postpone losing, having done so by scrapping the paper rights of the Cubans. Citizens who killed strikers were immune from prosecution and jail awaited any employee calling for a work stoppage. Anyone striking would lose their job, as would any judge who ruled against a Government official or agency. "Thus are dictatorships forced to reveal their nature."
Unfortunately for the Cubans, they faced the difficult decision of whether to stick with a dictator who, along with the level of graft and corruption, had also raised living standards, or whether to risk their lives for the victory of a rebel chieftain who could be their deliverer, or merely another dictator. It concludes that the Cubans had the power to decide by force who would govern them, but not how they would be governed.
"Behind the Smile of Mikhail Menshikov" indicates that Secretary of State Dulles had provided a stern test for the imagination recently by disclosing that as a student at the Sorbonne, he had rioted in the streets of Paris, not recalling what had prompted him to do so. His point was that student demonstrations regarding political issues had, at most, transitory effects.
It finds in the story another point, as no one would have suspected that the solemn man, known over half the world as a naysayer to wishful hopes for peace, had once run around the streets shouting for some forgotten cause in a foreign land. Appearances were deceiving and it is sorry to have been deceived by the appearance of dourness on the part of Mr. Dulles, finds it good to know that he had not always had to weigh every word and action for its possible effect on the world's balance of power.
Unfortunately, Mr. Menshikov had made no confessions about his past as a Russian diplomat, and so his appearance was continuing to deceive many Americans. The new Ambassador to the U.S. had arrived flashing a smile which might have been made in Hollywood, shaking every hand in sight, doing quite well in erasing the dark image of Soviet diplomacy left in the wake of the previous diplomats to the U.S., V. M. Molotov, Andrei Gromyko and Andrei Vishinski. After being entertained by Mr. Menshikov at the Soviet Embassy recently, a group of Republican women from Ohio had remarked to Washington society reporters: "I'm in love with Mike… I think he's sincere and really trying for peace... He's a doll."
Eric Sevareid of CBS had reported:
"During the war, American diplomats had to negotiate over UNRRA
funds with a Russian named Mikhail Menshikov. They described him as
follows: 'Very tough, shrewd, sullen; trust to nothing.' A shorter
time ago, a Russian ambassador named Mikhail Menshikov appeared in
Ceylon to negotiate in a multi-nation economic arrangement. Reports
sent back to the State Department described the man as follows:
'Dour, heavy-handed, suspicious; avoids the social life; kept his
delegation
It concludes that Comrade Menshikov might be "a doll", but obviously he was not what was referred to as an "ever-loving doll".
"The Mirage-Makers Are Villains, Too" finds that if gloom-and-doom pessimism was bad for what ailed the country, half-baked mirages were worse. The nation had first been assured by the economic oracles that an upturn in the economy would take place in March, and when that failed to occur, the forecast was changed to April. Later, many of the experts had picked July as the turning point, and now, the smart money was riding on October.
All of it was guesswork, even if educated. When the miracles did not come to pass, the result was greater bewilderment, uncertainty and disillusion. Thus far, the Administration's wait-and-see policy had yielded nothing. The populace became somewhat pessimistic about the view and blamed politicians with an axe to grind. Senator William Knowland and Representative Joseph Martin, the Republican leaders in each house, had stated that there was no justification for any segment or section of the nation to bog down in pessimism. It had been quickly pointed out to both that the pessimism was being spread not so much by politicians as by those who made up the business indices, such as the Departments of Labor and Commerce and the National Steel Institute, who had the most pressing reasons to look on the bright side of things.
It finds the pessimism not effectively countered by predictions of upturns by certain dates, predictions more than a little bit affected by heady political hopes and dreams.
In retrospect, the Administration had handled itself much better during the recession of 1953-54, simply setting aside the "tight money" policy immediately and telling the public that if the business barometer continued to drop, there would have to be a tax cut. But now, the gamblers in the great numbers game of the economy, were merely transmitting their fatal edginess to the citizens.
"Eternal Youth" indicates that it had guessed that a "little old lady" was approaching 80 when she had stopped by a Charlotte bookstall during the week, remarking excitedly on finding a paperback issue of the "pungent" Peyton Place, and demanded to know if the paperback was "unexpurgated". After being assured that it was all there, she happily purchased it and proceeded on her way.
She had, no doubt, seen the movie during the previous year and was enthralled with the prosecutor, who, soon, would be the leading landholder in the State of Nevada, with three sons, each of a different mother who had died in childbirth, each having been, however, in recent times, engaged in troubling behavior, including the eldest, who was torturing Chinese railroad workers in California before returning to the Ponderosa to start the tv series in 1959, this after the largest of the three had, just two weeks earlier, stolen some jade chess men and some $200 from Hey Boy's uncle, who ran a laundry in San Francisco. Nevertheless, they received due process, which would be more than Hey Boy would get in the Trump era, were he discovered to be a foreign national without a passport or living on an expired work or student visa and accused of any sort of crime, no matter how justifiable, or maybe just because he was Chinese and voted for the Democrats. He would disappear, as did those in the Soviet Union who contested the ruling regime, or perhaps wind up as his brother had at the hands of the eldest brother of the Ponderosa, living under an assumed name, before returning as the prodigal to savor the cooking of Hop Sing.
Ernest van den Haag, writing in The Fabric of Society, asks why Brooklyn was so much richer and bigger, more literate and educated, but less productive culturally than Florence, indicating that Dante, by cheapening his product or making it easier, could not have gained success and prestige as present artists might. Had he renamed the Divine Comedy "Florence Confidential", the number of copies sold would not have risen much, as there was no mass-market for anything, good or bad. He had not been tempted to write for Sports Illustrated, or to condense his work for Reader's Digest, or to adopt it for the movies. He had no chance to write television scripts or commercial jingles, Saturday Evening Post stories or newspaper columns.
But now, the alternatives and temptations were real. The society might not treat the creator of great works of art much worse than he had been treated in the past, but treated the creator of popular art so much better that the inducement became almost irresistible. There were some who insisted on being themselves, but the temptations were infinite and infinitely disguised, and insinuating. The psychological burden of isolation was crushing. Isolation had drawbacks affecting creation, impairing the ability and will to communicate when there was no public. The defense against the temptations of popular culture used much of the energy needed for creating.
"The artist who, by refusing to work for the mass market, becomes marginal, cannot create what he might have created had there been no mass-market. One may prefer a monologue to addressing a mass meeting. But it is still not a conversation."
Drew Pearson indicates that there were two interesting buildings in Washington, both of which dealt with the financial arteries of the country, contrasting strangely in architecture, personnel and activity. One was the Federal Reserve Board on Constitution Avenue, where bank presidents from all over the country met to consult on the economy of the nation. An air of discrete conservatism pervaded its halls. The Board decided therein to tighten interest rates the previous year, which, in the opinion of many economists, had brought on the present recession.
On Second and D Streets, the Securities and Exchange Commission was located in a building built during the war, planned to be torn down after the war. In the makeshift building, the hottest place in Washington during summer, an understaffed and overworked Commission passed on the stock and bond issues which meant hundreds of millions of dollars to the American public. Wall Street lawyers departed their comfortable offices in New York in the morning to fly to Washington to appear before the SEC and caught a late afternoon flight back to New York, bringing with them their overpaid, overstuffed publicity men.
The SEC staff matched wits against them to protect American stockholders, a staff cut down to the most miserly budget in history. And yet, the SEC had to pass on more stock issues than ever before, regarding more proxy fights than had ever previously occurred.
The SEC, which had been written into law by House Speaker Sam Rayburn during the Roosevelt years, had once boasted such outstanding public officials as later Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the late Jerome Frank of the Court of Appeals, Joseph P. Kennedy, later Ambassador to Britain, Leon Henderson, later head of the Office of Price Administration during the war, and Justice Ferdinand Pecora of the New York Supreme Court. Now it was the stronghold of the Eisenhower Administration.
Vic Cramer, one time ace trust-buster of the Justice Department, was going to clam up when he testified before the antitrust committee chaired by Congressman Emanuel Celler, regarding the telephone monopoly. Mr. Cramer knew all about the fixing of the telephone consent decree, but was not going to cooperate with Congress.
The grand jury probing the FCC and the case of resigned commissioner Richard Mack was weak, with some of the grand jurors not understanding what it was about and ready to do what the U.S. Attorney wanted them to do, with the probable result that there would be no prosecutions.
The Harlem Globetrotters, who had gone with Mr. Pearson to North Africa to entertain U.S. troops the prior Christmas, would stage a big game at the University of Maryland the following week with the College All-Stars. Attorney General William Rogers would open the game by tossing up the ball.
The FCC had delayed for four months in blessing the sale of the Kansas City Star's television and radio stations.
And speaking of the major grocery store chain food profits and high consumer food prices coupled with low farm prices, as set forth in his column of the previous day, undoubtedly leading to the need to cut corners in obtaining a balanced diet out of restricted family food budgets...
Walter Lippmann finds that following the most recent propaganda round, the U.S. position was that it did not want to suspend nuclear weapons testing and did not, in the near future, want to hold a summit meeting in which the President would confront Premier Nikita Khrushchev. He finds it a difficult position to argue in a world terrified by the nuclear arms race and hoping compulsively that a summit meeting might be its solution.
Secretary of State Dulles, who had to argue the official U.S. position, was talking like someone who knew that the best he could do was to fight a delaying action, avoiding a decisive commitment on the tests and on the summit meeting.
The crucial question had to do with the basic Soviet position, that whether, having just completed its own series of tests, its objective was to prevent the U.S. from holding its forthcoming tests. He finds that it could not be that simple for such a maneuver could easily be defeated by proposing to suspend U.S. testing after the completion of the forthcoming tests. Another possibility was that the Soviets were aware that the U.S. intended to go on testing, as had been indicated by Dr. Edward Teller, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss and most of the Pentagon, as well as Secretary Dulles, and so was proposing to cease the testing knowing that the U.S. would not follow suit and that the Soviets could then continue their testing. The other possibility was that they did not intend to cease testing but were relying on being able to cheat by holding undetected tests.
Mr. Lippmann believes that the Russian position was founded, not on gimmicks and propaganda tricks, but rather on their estimate of the overall balance of power in the world as between the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc. To suspend nuclear testing was to freeze the development of nuclear weapons, and if that were done at present, the world balance of power would favor the Soviets. They knew that they would not be attacked and had, or were about to have, ample weapons to neutralize any military pressure on the Communist bloc. They also had superior military power consisting of conventional forces and existing nuclear weapons as against any of the countries on their periphery.
In the West, there was no prospect that the democracies would support a combined military establishment comparable with that of the Soviets, save with the development of cheap nuclear weapons to replace massive armies. For that reason, Mr. Lippmann believes that there was a determined resistance inside the Western governments to interfere with the evolution of nuclear weapons, feeling acutely their own responsibility in case war would break out.
He finds that there would be a risk in suspending nuclear testing and freezing the development of nuclear weapons, but that there was also a risk in continuing testing, that the armaments race would continue and intensify, with no certainty that the Soviets would not move ahead in that field as it had in rocketry. There was no built-in guarantee that Dr. Teller and Admiral Strauss could create nuclear armaments which the Russians could not exceed or at least match, as when the Russians concentrated their efforts on a particular military objective, they were quite formidable.
He advises that there had to be a weighing in the balance of the risk of freezing the development of nuclear weapons against the risk of intensified competition in the development of them. He finds it a fundamental issue and that the country was entitled to have it explained and debated. Even as propaganda, such debate would do good, more so than the notes and press conferences at present. It would show the serious people of the world that in such major issues, the U.S. knew how to be candid and serious.
Joseph Alsop, in Dearborn, Mich., tells of meeting with Henry Ford II and Ernest Breech, in charge of guiding the destiny of the Ford Motor Co. Mr. Ford was the inheritor of the Ford empire and had the look of shrewd practicality to be expected in a self-made man, whereas Mr. Breech had begun life as the son of a blacksmith and had started his upward climb as a cost accountant, yet allowing an occasional visionary gleam to illuminate his conventional executive briskness.
The topic was the problems of the automotive industry, which governed the American economy, in a time of disturbing economic pause. Mr. Breech had led off the interview with a short historical review culminating with the point at which the postwar seller's market had turned into a buyer's market. He said that when they had sold eight million cars in 1955, it had made the whole industry believe that perhaps the ten-million mark would be reached soon and so everyone decided that more new plants were needed than were actually necessary and started building those plants. Thus, one problem was over-expansion.
Mr. Alsop had asked whether a change of public taste away from the automobile as a symbol of prestige might have been a contributing factor as well, and both men reacted sharply, with Mr. Breech indicating that perhaps buying habits were changing in the sense that Americans at present wanted a lot of other things than only good automobiles, but that they still wanted to own better cars, that the young who were just buying their first homes in suburban developments were not very different than he had been when he had, with pride, brought home his first medium-priced car.
When asked whether it was the rising price of cars which had caused the reduction in sales, the reaction had again been vigorous, with both men indicating that the rise in price of everything from credit to labor had gone into the price of a car, with the price of labor being by far the most significant. Mr. Ford said that there was a limit to the economies one could achieve with greater efficiency. Mr. Breech added that they could not continue to throw away complete factories to build better ones, and since 1955, had been unable to absorb the wage increases and so had to pass them on to consumers. The steel industry, and every other industry from which they bought, had passed on wage increases, and that during the current year, there was no doubt that many consumers decided to keep the car they had because they did not feel like paying the price of a new one.
Mr. Ford interjected that many people were more influenced by simple loss of confidence in the business future of the country, to which Mr. Breech readily agreed, reciting all the developments which had impaired confidence, from the contraction of industrial investment the prior spring through the President's stroke, and including the launch of the Sputniks the prior fall. Both men believed that the time had come for strong government action to restore confidence and forward economic movement. Both were convinced that the best thing would be a generous tax cut, which the Ford economist, Theodore Yntema, had said would make "the depression vanish like mist under the sun." Mr. Breech said that the only thing they could do was adjust their business to the volume they had, unpleasant, but that they had to get their business on a sound basis or be in trouble.
Mr. Ford agreed, as there was no other business which gambled as the automobile business did, with a lot of money at stake in doing so. He meant the gigantic gamble of rolling out new models each year, designed and finally approved fully two years before the cars reached the dealers, so that the 1959 Ford, for instance, would reflect decisions made in 1957. A major change of model was reputed to cost 200 million dollars, but no figures were given on that cost. Mr. Breech said that a mere face-lift of a car presently cost twice what the first postwar Ford model had cost the company. Yet, it was not so much the money as the time lag between the decision and the roll-out of the new models which seemed to trouble both men regarding their gamble.
Mr. Breech said that the decision for the new cars had been made 18 months earlier and the only question left was how many of them they could sell six months from the present time. Mr. Ford agreed, and on that note, the meeting ended. Mr. Alsop departed thinking that in an economy as vast as that of the U.S., that which seemed to be control centers might not really control and yet imposed on those who occupied them a staggering burden of responsibility boldly borne.
A letter writer finds that to some people, life in North Carolina had become cheap, especially lives of police officers. He suggests that perhaps some soft-hearted taxpayers ought petition the legislators to discard the gas chamber and in its place install a hall of entertainment for killers, especially cop killers, whom he regards as the most despicable of incarnate fiends.
A letter writer congratulates the newspaper on the editorial "This Little Issue Went to Market", regarding the court reform program in the state. He finds that reform of the courts without reforming the bar was akin to pumping air into a flat tire without fixing the puncture, finding the courts to be simply an arm of the political system. He says that the bar was counting on J. Spencer Bell and his committee to make recommendations to the General Assembly regarding reform, but that there would be no adequate reform unless some candidate for the Legislature had the courage to seize the issue. He regards reform of the bar to be long overdue and should be an integral part of reform of the administration of justice. He says that the editorial regarding the reform of the court system would be a source of strength to all candidates with a sincere interest in adequate reform.
A letter from the president of the Mecklenburg County chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America, Inc., expresses appreciation to the newspaper and its staff for the time and effort extended on behalf of their recent drive for funding, that they had been able to locate new patients who had not known of the services and care available in the area, and had a successful campaign.
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