The Charlotte News
Thursday, April 24, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that key members of the House had expressed doubt this date about the President's military reorganization plan despite the President's new assertion at his press conference the previous day that the plan would not permit over-concentration of military power. Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy was called back for more testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, which the previous day had instructed him to be prepared to answer more questions from members who said that they were concerned that the plan might lead to a single staff. Representative Porter Hardy of Virginia said that he was scared "plum to death" by the President's proposal. The President wanted among other things to increase the powers of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and to expand the joint staff, a group working under the Joint Chiefs.
The U.S., Britain and France called on Russia this date to begin group diplomatic talks immediately to establish an agenda for a summit conference and plans for a foreign ministers meeting to precede it.
In Rome, the Italian Defense Ministry confirmed this date that counter-intelligence men had arrested Aleksandr Solovyev of the office of the military attaché of the Soviet Embassy. A spokesman said that the man was found in possession of documents which obviously had been gathered by an espionage organization.
A Senate subcommittee prepared this date to put the finishing touches on a military pay increase bill described as "rather liberal".
Senator William Knowland of California said that he would introduce this date a new water projects authorization bill stripped of 28 projects to which the President had objected in vetoing an earlier measure.
Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma said this date that he resented Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield's statement that elimination of the five-cent letter stamp from the postal rate increase bill was "an unconscionable raid on the Treasury".
The President planned to fly to Augusta, Ga., the following day for a long weekend of golf and rest, with his expected return to Washington early on Monday afternoon.
In Fort Campbell, Ky., military authorities had announced plans this date for another mass airdrop on Saturday, three times as large as the one which had occurred the previous day, in which five paratroopers had died and 137 had been hospitalized. The Saturday jump would involve more than 4,000 men from the famed 101st Airborne Division, comrades of those who had jumped to their deaths across wind-swept drop zones the previous day. The public information officer said that the remainder of the exercise would continue as scheduled. The exercise, called "Eagle Wing", was a two-week maneuver designed to prepare the men for instant battle. The spokesman said that the Saturday jump would be spread over eight drop zones on the 88,000-acre reservation astride the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The men of the 502nd Battle Group, involved in the previous day's drop, would not participate. Treacherous and gusty winds, ranging on the ground up to 8 knots at the time of the jump, had turned the exercise the previous day into unexpected tragedy. The victims had been among nearly 1,400 participants, the victims having been dragged across the rough drop zone by billowing parachutes which they were helpless to deflate. None of those hospitalized were believed to be in serious condition.
In Newport News, Va., explosions and flames this date had destroyed 12 oil and gasoline storage tanks in the Esso Standard Oil Co.'s two million dollar, 22-tank plant. No estimate of the loss at the 25-million gallon capacity plant was available. Three firemen had suffered minor injuries. The acting fire chief believed that there was an even chance of containing the fire to the present area and saving the remaining tanks of the Hampton Roads facility, depending on there being no change in the prevailing light southwest wind. Several of the tanks so far untouched contained high-octane gasoline and diesel oil, with one containing a small amount of alcohol. The danger was not so much that flames might spread to those tanks but rather from explosions caused by heat from the burning tanks. The cause of the blast the previous night had not yet been determined. A boiler room foreman had told newsmen that he had seen an electrical arc from a transformer atop the boiler moments prior to the blast. The explosion occurred as a tanker was unloading 36,000 barrels of gasoline and 18,000 barrels of diesel oil at the pier of the plant.
In Maubeuge, France, four children between the ages of five and 11 had been killed this date by an explosion, presumably of a wartime bomb they had found in a field behind their home. Two other children, ages seven and 13, had been injured.
In Providence, R.I., it was reported that some 60 female spinners at the M&F Worsted Co. had ended their wildcat sitdown strike the previous night and left the mill, where they had remained since Monday.
In High Point, N.C., it was reported that police this date had identified a mystery bandit, whose record included a prison sentence and desertion from the armed forces. The man had been shot to death on Tuesday evening by the wife of a service station operator, attacked in the couple's front yard, as the assailant clubbed the husband repeatedly with a rifle butt. The man was hospitalized with a skull fracture. Police said that the identification of the assailant remained uncertain, and would have to await confirmation by his fingerprints.
In Boone, N.C., it was reported that a man who had told the arresting officer he had dropped from outer space, was sentenced the previous day to between five and ten years in prison. The police chief said that he had arrested the man with a bag of burglary tools on the roof of a department store two months earlier and had been told by him that he had dropped onto the roof from Sputnik II, denying that he planned to rob the store. He was convicted of attempted robbery.
In Charlotte, a man who was being held by a grocery store cashier for swiping a box of baby pants, had broken free the previous night and run through a plate glass door. County police said that a cashier at the store had gone to the back to ask the man to hand over the baby pants, and at first he had denied having them, and then they fell down his pants leg. Employees at the store called the police while a cashier and another man held the individual. Officers said that the man had sought to borrow some money to pay for the pants and when he could not, he broke free and ran through the glass door.
John Borchert of The News, indicates that evangelist Billy Graham had called off his August whistle-stop tour of the Carolinas, reducing it to a weekend, August 22 through 24. The director of the Billy Graham Crusades had told the newspaper that a change of plans following the San Francisco crusade, which would open the following Sunday, had brought about the cancellation. The director said that the evangelist wanted to be in top physical condition for the Charlotte crusade and that the additional work in California would take him into early August, and so he would need extra time to rest before the opening of the crusade in Charlotte. The San Francisco crusade would be televised on Saturdays over WSOC-TV, channel 9 locally. That crusade would extend into early June. The Charlotte crusade would start September 21.
Emery Wister of The News reports that Daylight Saving Time would go into effect the following Sunday, moving clocks an hour ahead in many cities and states of the country. But Charlotte and North Carolina did not observe the change and so the effects would be felt only slightly. Airline schedules would be little changed and network radio programming would air as usual. In the current year for the first time, network television programs would be little changed. Programs would be taped and played so that they aired in the same time slot as usual. Radio networks had been doing that for several years. Only live events, such as ballgames, would change times of broadcast.
In Lendinara, Italy, Mimi Rosetto, 56, regent gypsy queen of central Europe and the Near East, had died this date in her tent, surrounded by the elders of her tribe. Her followers insisted that she be taken from the "exile of the hospital" on Monday night when it became apparent that she was sinking. Three days earlier, she had stopped responding to antibiotics for a kidney ailment. After puffing regularly on her clay pipe and taking hourly slugs from her bottle of plum brandy in the hospital, she lapsed into a coma. Since that point, she had spoken only a few words and a spokesman said that she had not designated a successor. The tribal council of elders would begin meetings to consider candidates. Storm winds and rain had lashed the queen's tent and those of her followers during her final night. Her bed had been ringed by 13 candles, symbolizing her ebbing life, as a local priest administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. She was queen of gypsies of Hungarian origin, members of 15 tribes, whose numbers were unknown as many of them resided behind the Iron Curtain. Her kingdom spread over most of central Europe and the Near East and she was considered the most famous of gypsy rulers.
In Winston-Salem, it was reported that for many years, the Republican ballot used in North Carolina primaries had been printed on paper varying from subdued red to sickly pink, but this year would be green. Republicans had complained that the red-tinted paper suggested Communism to many people.
In Windsor, England, a cold had forced Queen Elizabeth into bed on her doctors' orders. The Queen had celebrated her 32nd birthday the prior Monday.
On the editorial page, "Two-in-One Tax Bills? Now's the Time" indicates that regarding the question of consolidation of tax departments for Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, the City Council was passing time better left unpassed. A single tax office would offer the public considerable and immediately apparent rewards in convenience, economy and efficiency.
Yet, some members of the Council appeared to be approaching the issue with the wariness of a fox terrier facing his second porcupine.
Most citizens would not be satisfied for long with anything less than the most efficient, effective and convenient form of revenue system and would not support indefinitely two political systems with duplicate facilities and two public servants for every public function.
As the Chamber of Commerce had pointed out, there was an opportunity in consolidation to eliminate 46,497 extra tax bills, the same number of expense envelopes and some $3,190 in postage.
"Will Democrats Mind Their Business?" indicates that the Democratic Party in Mecklenburg County obviously needed new life, infusion of grassroots sentiment and some discussion of its chronic inclination toward listlessness.
It needed those things at the precinct meetings, as citizen interest and citizen organization were the only means of sustaining party strength and party purpose.
It suggests that Democrats who had or wanted to have pride in their party should attend the precinct meetings of May 3, that if they did not attend, someone else would.
"How To Get Ahead" indicates that possibly the sexiest call to duty in military history had been issued by Lt. General Arthur Trudeau, chief of research and development of the Army, indicating: "History, like a fascinating woman, only bestows her favors on the bold and the strong; never on the bashful and the weak. Let's tighten our belts and set our jaws—all together—not to recede, not to mark time… Awake, America. Advance!"
It indicates to the General that while the bold would be seducing history, it had it on good authority that the meek would be inheriting the earth.
"That 'Silly Bauble' Sails On & On" indicates that the Administration had called the first Soviet satellite launched the prior October 4 a "silly bauble", but it kept sailing into the President's press conferences. Recently, he had been inveighing against "sputnikism" and urging Americans not to become "sputniky" about their problems. His repeated use of the phrases appeared to involve a mixture of defensiveness and derision toward the uproar which had followed the Soviet triumph, as well as some fondness for the dreamy complacency which the uproar had fractured for a moment.
It finds it interesting to note that following the uproar and the outbreak of "sputnikism" in the U.S., the Administration had undertaken several actions, including a sharp increase in the defense budget, a reorganization plan for the Pentagon, reversal of cutbacks in research programs, the dispersal of Strategic Air Command bases, a program to encourage training of more scientists, the appointment of a science advisory committee to advise the President, an increase in the tempo of certain weapons development projects, and had recommended the creation of a civilian space agency.
It wonders whether those things were undertaken merely to please an excited public or whether "sputnikism" had pushed the Administration toward decisive actions which it had complacently delayed. It finds that the spot of the Sputnik would not wash out, no matter how much the President deplored the excitement which it had caused. (Which brings to mind the worsted weavers of Providence, R. I., having ended their wildcat strike...)
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "A Boozy Bird Story", indicates that the Shelby Daily Star had stated that the secretary of O. Max Gardner, Jr., had called to report that he and his family were finding a one-legged Baltimore oriole fascinating as he maneuvered around their patio, and that they had birdfeeders in the yard which had probably lured the handicapped bird to a free feed.
It readily accepts the veracity of the report, not only because of its source but because of a corroborating experience around the writer's house several years earlier. One morning in early spring, a one-legged robin had shown up in the backyard and not only stayed through the summer but returned for a short time the following year. It had been amazing to see the way he handled himself despite his handicap, hopping about on the lawn as sprightly as any two-legged birds, landing on ground or limb without any obvious difficulty, balancing perfectly and rearing back on his one leg to pull a worm as effectively as though he were firmly planted on two.
It wonders whether anybody in Shelby had seen a drunk robin, as it had, with a witness to prove it. A year or so earlier, the one-legged robin had shown up when they were living in a place which had a wild cherry tree in the yard, and they first noticed the robin when he was gorging himself on the then overripe cherries. They must have begun to ferment, as the first thing they knew, the robin was swaying on the limb and showing distinct signs of inebriation, it becoming more evident with each visit to the cherry tree. Eventually, the bird could no longer make it back from his perch in an adjacent tree. They placed hands near him in case he lost his balance, but he remained aright, and after about 40 minutes, the effect had worn off to the point where he could get to another tree and finally disappeared into nearby foliage.
They observed the wild cherries as long as they remained and saw no other exhibition of intoxication among the birds.
Drew Pearson indicates that the late Senator Kerr Scott would be remembered in Washington for his unselfishness, having been one of the few Senators willing to sacrifice seniority for a cause which did not help him personally. After the Hell's Canyon bill had been bottled up in the Senate Interior Committee for two years, the result of a deal between Senator Russell Long of Louisiana and Senators Guy Cordon of Oregon and Henry Dworshak of Idaho, Senator Long had agreed to vote against Hell's Canyon if the other Senators would vote for tidelands oil. Senator Long had left the Interior Committee for the Finance Committee and the advocates of Hell's Canyon looked for someone who would be favorable to them to take his place, but could find no suitable candidate willing to sacrifice seniority. Senator Richard Neuberger of Oregon talked to various Senators and finally approached Senator Scott, asking him to leave the Public Works Committee to join the Interior Committee. Senator Scott asked why he should do so and it was explained that they needed someone who would help them vote the Hell's Canyon bill out of committee, where it had been blocked for two years by a single vote. During that two years, explained Senator Neuberger, the Administration had gone ahead with plans for a low dam by the Idaho Power Co., and if they did not move fast, the greatest power resources remaining in the nation would be gone forever. Senator Scott agreed to do so and it was how the Hell's Canyon bill, following two years of delay, had finally been voted out of committee.
The current week marked the tenth anniversary of the founding of Israel. Only a day after it had declared its independence, seven Arab nations attacked it on three sides. King Farouk of Egypt was so sure of marching into Tel Aviv that he had a stamp printed featuring his picture, underneath of which was "Tel Aviv". The King and the Egyptian Army never got to Tel Aviv. The Israeli Army eight years later would have gotten to Cairo had the President and Secretary of State Dulles not intervened in the Suez Canal crisis of October-November, 1956.
He indicates that the fiery determination which had stopped the seven Arab countries in 1948 and routed the Russian-armed, vastly superior Egyptian Army in 1956, was the secret of Israel. It had been a nation built on the suffering of the exiled tribes of Israel, built in the dream, nurtured during 20 centuries, that one day Jews would come back to a home of their own, built as a living memorial to the six million Jews who had been exterminated in the gas chambers of Hitler.
All of that was behind the dedication, the determination, the pioneering spirit which had made Israel. He says that one had to venture to Israel to understand it, to see the bulldozers pushing rocks eroded since the days of Abraham, millions of such rocks, pushed aside so that the crops could be raised in little patches of clean soil underneath, or boys and men and women painfully picking up the rocks and putting them on stone fences to line the little patches of soil being cultivated to feed the sons of Abraham. One had to see the trees, millions of them, imported from similar climates in Australia, contributed by Jews from all over the world, carefully planted along the roadsides and highways.
Walter Lippmann indicates that there was not yet any popular pressure for stronger measures to stem the recession than those presently being taken by the Administration. But it did not follow that a tax cut and larger public works programs should not be prepared in case of adoption, as business cycle remedies did not respond quickly and the sooner adopted, the less strong they needed to be.
In the upswing in the economy between 1955 and 1957, authorities had waited too long to check the inflationary trend of consumer credit, capital expenditure, wage and price increases. It was probable that the Government had already waited too long before acting against the recession which had begun the previous summer. During the prior fall, when the slump was already evident, the Administration had been cutting down expenditures in the Defense Department. He regards the moral to be that public opinion was not a sound basis for management of the business cycle. When the inflation of 1955-57 had been underway, the politicians and the public had resisted measures to restrain credit and the rise of the wage-price structure. When the cycle turned after mid-1957, the politicians and the public were demanding retrenchment which would have been suitable 18 months earlier. He suggests it as a working rule that for successful management of the business cycle, the responsible authorities had to be ahead of public opinion and prepared to take measures which would not be popular until their delayed results were experienced. Authorities could not wait to be pushed but had to lead, whether to deflate a boom or to reflate a slump.
He suggests that the economy was at a point where a turn for the worse was a real possibility and so it was only prudent to anticipate it. It might be the case that, as Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks and the President had hoped and believed, the recession had reached its bottom and that within a few months, the recovery would be underway. But it could also be true that the bottom had not been reached and that if the Administration's policy was to wait and see, the economy might sink into a deeper bottom from which it would be harder to rise.
He indicates that in earlier times when banks were often in trouble and faced with a run by depositors, the best way to stop the run was by a powerful guarantee of the bank's solvency such that no one wanted to withdraw their money. He regards the same principle as being applicable to the current phase of the recession, that to say that prosperity was just around the corner was less likely to restore confidence than would be the case if the Administration and the Congress placed in operation such strong measures that confidence in the maintenance of employment and of profits was restored.
He posits that there were at least two reasons for believing that the bottom might not have been reached, one being that there was no good reason to suppose that there would soon be a rise, instead of the present decline in investment in plant and equipment, that unless there were a reasonably prompt and substantial rise in private capital expenditure, there was no good prospect of a recovery without compensating outlays of public capital in defense and public works and subsidized housing and other facilities. The second reason was that there were many signs that, regarding depressed durable goods, consumers were in a mood to save their money and make do with what they had, to scale down their debt, to buy used products and keep their assets as liquid as possible, because they were afraid of unemployment, of part-time employment, of declines in retail purchases and profits. Economists had warned that a decision by consumers to cut their debts rapidly could lead to dangerous deflation.
And if the consumer was worried about losing a job, there was no use in preaching confidence or in expecting someone to purchase an automobile they did not have to have. To restore confidence, the Government needed to be seen as preparing to do as much as required, perhaps more, to reflate the economy.
In the debate about those matters, there was an underlying issue of economic philosophy, with some believing with the classical economists that a recession was a necessary readjustment after inflation in prices, wages and debts, a painful readjustment, but one necessary to the ultimate health of the economy. On the other side, there were those who believed, as did former Fed chairman under FDR and during the first three years of the Truman Administration, Marriner Eccles, that it was humanly and politically impossible for a modern democratic society to endure and tolerate the severe depression which would really "readjust" wages, prices and debts. Mr. Lippmann regards the latter as being correct. As Mr. Eccles had said, it was better "to accept the present price, wage and debt structure," to support it by reflation, than to take the risks of a "readjustment" by a depression.
Doris Fleeson indicates that no Democratic politician had not predicted two things, that Vice-President Nixon would take power at the White House sometime prior to the 1960 presidential nominating conventions so that he could enjoy the advantages of incumbency well before entering the campaign itself, and that he would initiate instantly great activity on civil rights designed to eliminate the Eisenhower record of lassitude on that issue. The President's health would furnish the excuse.
Democrats were satisfied that the
instinct for self-preservation which had led the Republicans to draft
the President in 1956, despite his health problems, would operate
again to place irresistible pressures on the President to make way
for the Vice-President. By his own actions, the Vice-President had
made it plain that he planned to win the election through his appeal
to minorities in the pivotal states of the industrial North and East,
plus California
Knowing that fact, the Democratic Congress was a silent partner in the White House apathy on civil rights. The Civil Rights Commission, appointed by the President pursuant to the 1957 Civil Rights Act, was still not functioning, and the President had not named a staff director until February 20. Since that point, Southerners in Congress had stalled the confirmation and Commission appropriations, amid silence from both the White House and Democratic leaders.
Meanwhile, the rioters of the previous fall in Little Rock, Ark., were happily going about their segregationist business, with none of them having been convicted yet of any crime. They had been arrested for contempt of a Federal court order but then had been turned over to state courts for trial, where they were turned loose with what almost had amounted to good conduct medals. The previous week, Attorney General William Rogers, an intimate friend of the Vice-President, had laid the groundwork for blaming Democrats for that outcome. He had been warned by Arkansas Gazette editor Harry Ashmore, formerly editor of The News, that the segregationists in that city were daily growing bolder, bullying the local school board and boycotting all persons and enterprises deemed unfriendly. Mr. Rogers had said that he was helpless, that Congress had discarded that provision of the Civil Rights Act which would have enabled him to act.
The federalized National Guard remained on duty in Little Rock, and, though it was denied officially, it was widely understood in that city that they had orders never to arrest anyone, only to take any disturber of the peace to the school principal, a prescription for inaction.
On July 29, tension would again focus on Little Rock when the state accepted or rejected incumbent Governor Orval Faubus in the Democratic primary, where a victory would be tantamount to election in the one-party state. By defying the Federal power the previous fall, Governor Faubus had become the hero of segregationists, and was counting on them to break the re-election jinx on Arkansas governors. He was being opposed by a law-and-order candidate, Judge Lee Ward of the Chancery Court, a former state commander of the American Legion, who opposed integration but was calling for rule of law. The deadline for candidates to enter the primary closed in the current month and thus far only the Governor and Judge Ward had entered. (In response to the entry to the race by Judge Ward the previous Saturday, Governor Faubus had been reported to have said, "He will make the Arkansas Gazette the official spokesman for all of us.")
Governor Faubus would remain in office through 1966, when he retired.
A letter writer says that she had felt uneasy when she had first read an editorial recently on the Mint Museum Drama Guild, believing that someone would be ruffled by it. And, indeed, a letter writer had written on April 21 in protest. She says that her chief objection to that letter was that it did not appear to represent the Little Theater properly. As far as she knew, the Little Theater representatives did not pit themselves against the Guild and were likely not tempted to use the word "arty" in connection with the Guild. In fact, she points out, there was a frequent overlap of personnel between the two organizations. She finds it distressing that there was lack of sympathy with groups which went to various lengths to raise money. The Little Theater members, to whom she had informally spoken, appeared extremely modest and pleasantly surprised at their organization's untroubled financial condition, and the fact inured to the benefit of all cultural groups in Charlotte. She indicates that those who put on plays, whoever they were, did the community a major favor and, historically, there had never been a quarrel between light drama and heavy drama.
A letter from the director of public relations for Johnson C. Smith University expresses appreciation to the newspaper for its coverage of their recent Founders Day program and the inauguration of Dr. Rufus Perry as president.
A letter writer indicates that she had been a constant reader of the newspaper for a decade and thought it the best evening paper in the South, that she was 21, the mother of two children, and about to vote for the first time. She says it ought be the duty of every person to vote upon reaching the age of 21. She had carefully studied the three men in the Congressional race and decided to cast her vote for incumbent Representative Charles Jonas. She urges those her age to register and vote.
Framed Edition
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