The Charlotte News
Friday, April 18, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko this date had accused the U.S. of sending planes armed with atomic and hydrogen bombs across the polar region toward the Soviet Union. He said to a press conference that a protest against the "provocative flights" was being sent to the U.N. Security Council, indicating that such flights were "unheard of in times of peace" and that the Kremlin demanded their immediate cessation as they carried the danger of worldwide atomic war. He said that the Soviet Union had sufficiently strong nerves and its armed forces could, if necessary, deliver a crushing retaliatory blow to any aggressor. He expressed "profound indignation" of the Soviet Government that such flights were being launched at a time when the Big Four powers were finally entering diplomatic talks aimed at convening a summit conference. He said he had not brought up the Kremlin protest at meetings of the three Western ambassadors summoned to the Foreign Ministry during the previous 24 hours to discuss a summit conference. French Ambassador Maurice Dejean had said earlier that the talks with Mr. Gromyko were "preliminary in nature". Mr. Gromyko met the ambassadors individually, seeing U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson the previous day and Patrick Riley of Britain and M. Dejean during the current morning. The latter said that he could not say that negotiations had actually started. Mr. Gromyko said that he could not accept the position of the Western powers for diplomatic talks as presented in a three-power note on Wednesday. It suggested that the Kremlin was standing pat on its position that talks on the diplomatic level ought be limited to setting the time, place and composition of a foreign ministers meeting preliminary to a summit meeting. The Western powers wanted to discuss East-West problems at the diplomatic level. Mr. Gromyko said that the Soviet Government felt that talks on a diplomatic level could drag on for months or even years, and that the Soviet Government wanted a summit meeting as early as possible.
House Democrats this date got behind a billion-dollar emergency unemployment relief program to provide 16 weeks of added jobless pay benefits for most of the nation's unemployed workers. The plan, to remain in effect until June 30, 1959, would be financed by the Federal Government and would apply to both workers presently covered by existing state unemployment programs and many who were presently not eligible. Proposed rules concerning the latter group, however, had not yet been decided. In its tentative form, the measure called for 16 weeks of added benefits for insured workers who had compensation rights under state programs, the same number of weeks for uncovered workers who were not eligible for state benefits, with the payments to be financed by the Government in conformity with the existing level of benefits provided under state programs, with no change in state standards. Unemployment benefits varied from state to state in amount and duration. Workers coming under the program were paid from an insurance trust fund created for employer payroll taxes. Domestic and farm workers were not presently eligible, as were not employees of tax-exempt concerns with fewer than four employees.
The Government had loosened another notch in its curbs on the nation's money supply with twin actions by the Federal Reserve Board this date. For the fourth time in five months, it reduced its discount rate, from 2.25 to 1.85 percent, becoming effective this date in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, with the seven other Federal Reserve districts expected to follow suit. The Board also reduced the amount of reserves which certain banks had to maintain against demand deposits. The following Thursday, the Board requirement would be cut from 17 percent to 16.5 percent at reserve city banks located in most other large cities.
A House subcommittee started its final moves this date toward deciding who was elected in September, 1956, to represent Maine's first Congressional district.
Frank Carey of the Associated Press reports of Navy scientists suggesting that the armed services ought consider using middle-aged men as radiation shock troops to protect younger servicemen from genetic hazards following a nuclear attack. Men in their 40's and even 50's would be utilized for roadbuilding, radiation cleanup and other jobs in areas or on ships contaminated by fallout soon after an attack, while many of the younger servicemen would take temporary cover in radiation shelters. The idea was based on an idea first put forward by Dr. Eugene Cronkite, a former Navy radiation specialist presently working at the Atomic Energy Commission's Brookhaven laboratory in New York. The idea was that exposure to cancer hazards by the middle-aged men would carry less risk of long-term effects, with the prospect that they would be able to live close to normal life-spans and die of something else before cancer had time to develop. The Navy researchers said that before any such idea could be put into practice, it would first have to be determined whether men in the older age groups could cope physically with the kinds of jobs they would be required to accomplish, including, perhaps, some combat tasks. They said that there was preliminary evidence that it might be possible, provided oversized waistlines were trimmed by special diets.
In Buck Hill Falls, Pa., the U.S. response to Russia's announcement that it was halting nuclear testing had been inadequate, according to a religious leader this date, director of the Commission of the Churches of International Affairs. He said that the U.S. ought limit, halt or forgo the nuclear tests in the Pacific during the spring if continuing studies produced a revised estimate of their importance or if the Soviet Union showed readiness to proceed with a sound disarmament program. He also advocated for a cutoff date for testing through an agreement among the nuclear powers, with provisions for inspection under supervision by the U.N. He further advocated for establishment of a nuclear test agency to supervise and determine the tests needed for peaceful uses of atomic energy.
In Tokyo, the lower house of Japan's Diet this date unanimously adopted a resolution urging immediate cessation of nuclear weapons testing and production by all powers having atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Also in Tokyo, the secretary-general of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi's Liberal-Democratic Party said this night that the Japanese Diet would be dissolved during the current month, probably by the following Friday or Saturday.
In London, it was reported that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer this date had presented a check for 50,000 marks, the equivalent of $11,900, toward rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by German bombs during World War II.
In Niagara Falls, N.Y., a soft-spoken but firm-jawed Indian chief had walked a narrow path this date between the surging power of material progress and the turmoil of politics among his own people. Elton Black Cloud Greene, head chief of the Tuscarora Indians for 11 years, was seeking a way to the type of Indian diplomacy for which his Iroquois ancestors were justly famous. The Power Authority of the State of New York was seizing 1,383 acres of Tuscarora land under a state law which had only been passed a week earlier. The land was to be part of a storage reservoir for the 600 million dollar Niagara redevelopment project, already underway. The price, according to the law, could be decided later. In fruitless negotiations the previous winter, the Power Authority had offered the Tuscaroras $1,000 per acre and the tribe had refused. The chief had said that they held sacred to their hearts the small reservation they had left in their possession. It consisted of 6,248 acres and its nearly 700 residents either farmed their assigned plots or worked in nearby businesses or industries. The Tuscaroras had successfully turned back the state's surveyors, with a young dissident who reportedly yearned to be chief at the head. He and one other Indian had been arrested on charges of unlawful assembly, while a third was charged with disturbing the peace, and a white man, a member of the surveying party, had been charged with third-degree assault based on a complaint from an Indian woman.
In Geneva, Switzerland, Britain threw its support this date behind a U.S. proposal for extending the limit of territorial waters from three nautical miles to six.
In Warsaw, Poland, rising waters of the Bug and Narew Rivers had continued to flood large areas of eastern and northeastern Poland this date, with the Polish Red Cross expressing fear of epidemics.
In Monte Carlo, Monaco, young Prince Albert of Monaco, 36 days old, had received his first decoration this date, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Grimaldis, the highest honor in the country, presented by his father, Prince Rainier III.
In Springfield, Vt., it was reported that a 20-year old woman, who had vanished from the Smith College campus on November 9, 1956, had returned home this date in answer to the hope of her father, a U.S. Attorney. Newsmen were not permitted to talk to the young woman, and her father declined to discuss the whereabouts of a 21-year old male restaurant worker whom his daughter had been dating and who had disappeared at the same time. Because of recent publicity surrounding her missing status, she had finally decided it was necessary to eliminate further anxiety on the part of her parents and friends regarding her safety. Her father said that she had not yet decided whether she would live in Springfield or return to Boston, having been a sophomore at Smith when she vanished. The young man who vanished at the same time was a parolee from a Colorado reformatory and two days after the young woman left college, an investigation showed that he had rented a car, later found in a public garage in Boston. The young woman's typewriter had later turned up in a Boston pawn shop and a man answering the description of the person who disappeared with her had pawned it for $35. A nationwide alert had been issued for the two for more than a year. Another young woman from Vermont had vanished from the campus of Bennington College in 1946, but had never been found.
In Sydney, Nova Scotia, police searching for a masked gunman who had robbed an express train mail car as it sped toward Sydney the previous day, had arrested a 41-year old man and announced recovery of the stolen goods this date.
In New York, the late Mike Todd's estate this date was estimated unofficially at between three and five million dollars. He had left half of it in trust for his widow, actress Elizabeth Taylor, and provided the other half to his son.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that a new, late-model ambulance, worth between $3,500 and $4,000 when equipped, would be given to the Charlotte Life Saving and First Aid Crew by the Exchange Club of Charlotte, the president of the Club having made the announcement of the proposed gift this date, indicating that such a gift had been a project of the Club for the previous six months. The tragedy of the drowning of two youngsters in a waterhole during the week had highlighted the need for the equipment.
J. A. Daly of The News reports that Piedmont Natural Gas Co. of Charlotte had announced this date that it had embarked on a large additional financing program to obtain funds to meet urgent needs for expansion of facilities serving 14 communities in North Carolina and South Carolina. The new financing included the issue of 3.5 million dollars in bonds and the issue of 51,183 additional shares of common stock, priced at $15.25 per share.
In Idaho Falls, Ida., Yellowstone National Park superintendent, Lemuel Garrison, said that 91 persons had been injured by bears in 1957.
On the editorial page, "Kerr Scott: Uncommon Man" laments the death two days earlier of Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina, who had thought of himself as a common man. It says that he was, but at the same time was a most uncommon common man, "one with the sure knowledge of the sources and uses of power in a democratic society." It finds such men rare, but from their ranks had come great and lasting influences on American politics.
His time had been short in the U.S. Senate and thus there was no time to assess accurately his record. He would be remembered mainly for his vigorous, constructive and controversial career as Governor of the state. It was in that role and the way he used the office that he embedded himself in the hearts of his "branchhead boys" and in the structure of state politics. He tended to bait corporations and other interests, not having one speech for rural audiences and another for city people. He could be blunt, biting and sarcastic, and his ways were highly unsettling to groups accustomed to more predictable and malleable political types.
But the record showed that the Senator was a doer rather than a destroyer, being more for the farmer and other low-income groups whom he deemed "forgotten" than against the groups he was prone to taunt. Much of what he favored, he accomplished.
His gubernatorial Administration had built a tremendous network of paved roads, consisting of 14,180 miles, and improved another 14,000 miles, and spurred public utilities to expand their services in rural areas. He pushed big construction programs for schools and other state institutions and raised the pay of schoolteachers and other state employees.
He had also fractured a few shibboleths, which spoke well for his courage and determination to introduce new vigor into the state's political and social bloodstream. He had named the first female to the Superior Court, Judge Susie Sharp—subsequently named to the State Supreme Court by Governor Terry Sanford, who would succeed Governor Luther Hodges in 1961. He had also named the first black person to the State Board of Education, Dr. Harold Trigg, and had appointed a thoroughgoing liberal idealist, Frank Porter Graham, at the time president of UNC, to the Senate following the death of J. Melville Broughton after only two months in the office in early 1949. Senator Graham, however, had been defeated in the 1950 Democratic primary by Willis Smith. All of the appointments, however, had stirred a new and refreshing interest in state politics and government. Mr. Scott not only had new ideas for the state but tested them directly by putting them into effect.
It indicates that perhaps in the realm of ideas was where he had made his most lasting contribution to the state, as the novelty of a paved road wore off even in the most sparsely settled rural area. The desire for recognition and attention was as strong among groups as among individuals, and it was a political fact that farmers and other low-income groups had been largely forgotten in the state until Governor Scott remembered them by word and deed, bringing new unity and strength to democracy in the state.
It indicates that he was not the greatest Governor the state ever had, but had been one of its best and would be sorely missed. "His courageous and candid spirit will remain a moving force in North Carolina for years to come."
"Ready Rescue Team Must Be Provided" indicates that an efficient, adequately equipped rescue agency might have saved one of the two boys who had drowned in a deep mudhole during the week, according to the chief of the volunteer Charlotte Lifesaving Crew, which had tried to save the children.
It urges that the possibility and the future need of such a service made provision of it imperative. The present service was quite disorganized and the unpaid volunteer crew were of necessity scattered at their homes or places of business, with their equipment also scattered. Their current operating budget was $1,000, supplied by the City, which could provide more, and the County could also begin helping or the United Appeal could make a contribution. The rescue units might be attached to the City and County police forces rather than relegated to a volunteer group.
The present service was inadequate and both City and County governments had a responsibility to see that the inadequacy was removed as soon as possible.
"A Little Lad Who Learned Too Fast" indicates that a little lad of its acquaintance was welcoming spring with all the fervor of a lazy hound facing a plate of fresh hamburger, having been asking when the fireflies would be around, when fish would be biting, when marble games would be resumed, etc. He had flown kites instead of rockets when the wind was high and continued his collection of obsolete cut-out planes and battleships, talking at times of starting a stamp collection. He asked no questions about the intricacies of missiles, nuclear science or bacteriological warfare.
He was retarded
He tossed it, but added a little lingo before it left his hand: "Seven… Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… One… Blastoff!"
"Once we fondly hoped he'd come home this spring with a frog in his pocket, but odds are he won't be able to accommodate a frog and a Geiger counter too."
Whatever the case may have been with the budding rocket scientist, Wally, in the spring of the eighth grade, disliked girls and was not going to take algebra until the next year, not, apparently, much of a rocket scientist, maybe a train engineer.
Weimar Jones, writing in the Franklin Press, in a piece titled "Backfire", says that he hated the practice of tipping, thought it all wrong economically, morally and personally. What it once had been, a gratuity for extra-special service, had been corrupted such that now it was in the nature of a holdup, as a tip was expected, virtually demanded, regardless of the quality of service.
Like most people, he usually went along as it was the path of least resistance and least embarrassment. But on a recent trip, the worm had turned. At the conclusion of a restaurant meal, he put down the customary 10 percent tip for a light meal, much too light of a tip, apparently thought the waiter. Mr. Jones and his wife had gone only a few steps when the waiter approached him, as though returning an article he had forgotten, and returned his tip, saying, with contempt in his voice, "You left this."
For once, he had the courage and presence of mind to rebel, saying, "Why, so I did," smiling with gratitude for the return. As the waiter's eyes opened wide in surprise, he stuck the money in his pocket and walked away.
As we have recounted before, once, in a darkly lit restaurant in Chapel Hill more than a half century ago, we thought we were leaving a suitable tip of a quarter and a dime for a meal which cost about $2.75. But as we got to the cash register, the waiter stepped brusquely up and said, "Here, if this is all you're going to leave, keep it." Somewhat taken aback, we looked closely at the two coins he returned and realized that we had left only a nickel and a penny. But, like Mr. Jones, because of the waiter's effrontery, we took the coins back and stuck them in our pocket, saying, "Okay, thanks." We did not bother to explain the innocent mistake.
Drew Pearson indicates that U.S. diplomats had rubbed their eyes the previous week when they had read a cable from across the Atlantic indicating from Secretary of State Dulles, "Please inform which dish of cockroaches broken." The cockroaches had been shipped to Brussels as part of the cold war between the East and West, and to some extent were to prove that the U.S. could raise bigger and better bugs than were raised behind the Iron Curtain. Three shipments of cockroaches had been sent to Brussels, two injected with aureomycin, and a third batch of larger ones, fed with vitamins, healthier and more virulent than any Communist bug.
Though housewives regarded cockroaches as parasites, cockroaches themselves had parasites. The first two batches which had received the aureomycin had their parasites killed, interfering with their digestion and making them puny.
But the displays of cockroaches had been crushed en route to Belgium and the cockroaches had been killed, resulting in the cable from the Secretary of State. The Secretary automatically signed every cable coming from the State Department and so it was doubtful whether he actually knew much about the competition of the cockroaches. In any event, the problem was taken to the National Academy of Sciences, which had no replacements for the dead bugs, and rush orders were made to the University of Minnesota for three dozen additional cockroaches. Until they arrived, Americans at the Brussels Fair would have to resort to colored pictures to show the achievement of the American cockroach in the battle between East and West.
IRS officials were getting chuckles out of a story about two clergymen and a revenue agent who had died at the same time and approached the heavenly gates together. After looking them over, St. Peter had first beckoned the tax collector into heaven and later admitted the two clerics. The latter were puzzled and somewhat affronted, one of them complaining that they had always thought they had led exemplary lives, exhorting their fellow man to do good and abide by the Bible, thus wondering why the layman took precedence. St. Peter agreed but indicated that the revenue agent "has scared hell out of more people than both of you together."
Texas Governor Price Daniel was running so scared for re-election that he almost had become a friend of the people.
Senator Lyndon Johnson and his family rode coach when they flew from Texas back to Washington.
Rumanian Minister Silvia Brucan was practicing what the State Department preached, people-to-people friendship. Rumania was completely open to American tourism and the Rumanian dance ensemble would tour the U.S. the ensuing fall, with the minister, himself, set to become better acquainted with the U.S. by taking a trip to the West Coast.
Walter Lippmann indicates that French politicians, who had engineered the fall of the Government of Prime Minister Felix Gaillard, appeared to have decided to blame the U.S. for their inability to stop the rebellion in Algeria, their argument being that the rebellion would have been crushed by this point but for the fact that the guerrilla bands had been supplied and supported, aided and abetted, across the long frontier with Tunisia. Instead of aligning itself firmly with France in demanding that Tunisia close the frontier and abandon the rebellion, the U.S. had remained friendly with Tunisia and thus enabled it to refuse to yield to France. Thus, in the eyes of those French politicians, it made the U.S. conspirators against the vital interests of France.
In the second stage of "intoxication", those politicians believed that U.S. failure to support them unreservedly was the result of sinister purposes, that the U.S. desired to oust France from North Africa and from the oil and minerals of the Sahara, to establish an American empire in Africa. That, remarks Mr. Lippmann, was the Communist line, but that did not matter much, were it not the line also being taken by the extreme Right.
The answer to the second charge was that with all its human frailties, the U.S. was not that stupid, knowing that the French North African empire, far from being desirable, was a heavy and thankless liability. The reason the U.S. was using the influence it had to induce a negotiated settlement was that it dreaded the consequences in the event there were no settlement.
Under the U.S. view, Jacques Soustelle and his Rightist friends were preparing a disaster in which the U.S. would inevitably be involved, though it did not wish to be. If the Rightists were to come to power, they would not be able to close the Tunisian frontier by any pressure which could be put on the Tunisian Government. The latter was not strong enough, did not have the troops or the political solidarity to close the frontier. M. Soustelle and his friends could do so only by re-conquering Tunisia, in which case they would incite the whole of North Africa. If that were to happen, it was anyone's guess as to what would be the repercussions inside France. No one could reasonably suppose that the French wanted a wide extension of the interminable war.
The French who had asked the U.S. to give them its unqualified support in the Algerian war were asking the impossible, as that war had gone on for many years, with no end in sight, a war which could not be brought to an end by military means, with the attempt to reach a military decision more likely to spread it to Tunisia and to Morocco than to end it in Algeria. Mr. Lippmann urges that the U.S. could not allow itself to be entangled in such folly.
The U.S. was thus bound to be partisans for a negotiated settlement for Tunisia within a negotiated agreement for North Africa and the Western Mediterranean, with the key to such a settlement being the proposition that as the political grievances of the North African countries were satisfied, their economic, social and cultural affiliations with France would cause them to insist on remaining within the French sphere of influence. Once national and political pride were satisfied, geography and economics would determine the issue.
Doris Fleeson tells of Governor Robert Meyner of New Jersey being a leading Democratic presidential possibility for 1960, having survived an important challenge to his leadership but not out of the political woods. The returns in the U.S. Senate primary showed that he did not have command of the state party organization to the degree commonly supposed. The returns plus the nature of the primary campaign showed also that he faced a major job of reconciliation with labor, which was an important source of Democratic power in the state. Both were vital to him in any contest for the presidential nomination, as a candidate needed nearly solid backing from his own state organization for any hope to win the nomination.
The influence of labor in a national convention would spread over the delegations generally, especially among Democrats who sent so many labor delegates from all parts of the country. New Jersey labor in particular had influence with what labor-minded delegates would do in the New York and Pennsylvania groups. Many New Jersey Democrats opined that the Governor's man, former Representative Harrison Williams, Jr., had won the Senatorial primary only because State Conservation commissioner Joseph McLean had entered the race over the Governor's opposition. Mr. McLean had run a poor third but had garnered 60,000 votes, while Mr. Williams had won over Hoboken Mayor John Grogan by about 14,000 votes. It was now being said that Mr. McLean had gotten his foes chiefly from Mr. Grogan and not Mr. Williams.
Mr. Grogan, president of the National Shipbuilders Union, had received the endorsement of the state CIO-AFL. Mr. Williams, who had a pro-labor record in the House, could confidently expect labor's backing against Republican Representative Robert Kean, an easy winner in the Republican primary.
New Jersey was traditionally Republican and part of Governor Meyner's appeal nationally had been his ability to attract voters from both parties for two terms. What would happen in the fall race between Mr. Williams and Mr. Kean would be in part the result of recession trends during the fall, but for the present, Mr. Williams was the underdog.
A friend of the Governor believed that he had shown indecisiveness when rival ambitions and Hudson County difficulties had appeared, whereas he ought to have gotten the party leaders together and cracked a few heads. The Governor had finally named Mr. Williams as his choice and gotten 19 of the state's 21 leaders to go along. His difficulty was that populous Hudson was among the missing two.
Bernard Shanley, the former appointments secretary to the President, appeared in a Groganesque role in the Republican primary, losing to Mr. Kean by 24,000 votes. But various state experts believed he would have won had not Robert Morris, former chief counsel to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, siphoned off over 72,000 conservative Republican votes.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain,
thinks it a pathetic thing that the 14-year old daughter of Lana
Turner had to stab a guy fatally in the stomach to make a Damon
Runyon story come alive, but it pointed up a Runyonesque
The victim, Johnny Stompanato, was a gigolo and a hood, former bodyguard for Mickey Cohen. He says that if he were Mr. Cohen, he would re-fire the guy retroactively, as he was not, obviously, much of a bodyguard if a 14-year old girl could stab him in the stomach.
He recounts some of the other hoods and their fates, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel, Willie Moretti, Al Capone and the "gay kids from the St. Valentine's Day massacre", whom he suggests must be having an endless amusing conversation, wherever they were. He says that the hoods were a pathetic lot, having a peasant's yen for respectability, being invariably kind to their children, indulging their wives and keeping their ersatz-blonde mistresses discreetly apart from the family. "They pant for affection and rarely get it unless they buy it—and then they don't want it very hard." They lived in constant fear, regardless of how big they were, because a man could not always be bulwarked by gun-toters, having to go to the barbershop or to the bathroom, and "any 20-buck punk can knock him off."
A letter writer says that, like J. R. Cherry, Jr., he admired honesty on the part of Secretary of State Dulles or any other public official, believed that Mr. Dulles was a "fine, decent American citizen whose patriotism and loyalty can never be doubted." He indicates that even in the courts, a smart lawyer could make the plain unvarnished truth sound so ridiculous that a confused jury might seriously consider convicting the victim of a vicious murder if such a person were present by proxy. He finds that Secretary Dulles was not the only person who confused the populace. North Carolina Representative Carl Durham had stated in a speech the prior Monday that 184 Russian submarines had been counted off the East Coast of the U.S. during 1957, some of which had been photographed by the Navy. But on Tuesday, Navy officials at Norfolk disputed the statement and indicated that no Soviet submarines had been confirmed off the East Coast. While the letter writer believes that both Mr. Durham and the Navy were telling the truth, people in foreign countries might not understand that the truth, like fresh milk, could easily become contaminated. He suggests that if Mr. Dulles were seeking employment at his age presently, he would find few openings, with his serious illness having further handicapped him. The socialists of Communist propaganda, he finds, overmatched him as badly as would Rocky Marciano in physical combat. He urges that the American people were entitled to a strong, vigorous and capable man to represent them in foreign lands.
A letter writer indicates that he had read with interest the letters published recently from two writers, both criticizing the Charlotte police for citing them for speeding when they insisted they were going the speed limit or less. He says that neither of the writers was listed in the telephone book and so he had his doubts of their veracity. He asserts that if such a thing had happened, a letter or phone call to the chief or captain in charge of the Police Department would put a stop to it immediately. He advises instead cooperation with the Department to have a much better city.
The editors note that to the best of their knowledge, the signatures of the two letter writers had been valid.
Framed Edition
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