The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 8, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the President this date had ordered the withdrawal on
May 29 of all Federal troops enforcing school integration in Little
Rock, Ark. He said in a statement that he hoped it would be
unnecessary to return the troops at the start of the ensuing school
year in September. The orders of withdrawal had been relayed by
Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker to Maj. General Edwin Walker, commander
of the troops enforcing a Federal District Court order for
integration at Central High School since the prior September. The
statement said: "Since last September, the Federal Government
has stationed soldiers at the Little Rock high school to prevent
obstruction of the orders of the U.S. District Court. Since the
summer recess starts at the Central High School on May 28 and since
there will be no further present need for the guardsmen, I have
directed they be released May 29." He went on to say that
following that date, he trusted that local officials and citizens
would assume full responsibility and duty for seeing that the orders
of the Federal Court were not obstructed, and that the faithful
execution of the responsibility would make it unnecessary for the
Federal Government to preserve the integrity of the judicial
processes. In reply to a question, White House press secretary James
Hagerty said that he did not know how many Federal troops were still
on duty in Little Rock. The number was much smaller than when the
troops had first been deployed the prior September. The President had
deployed regular Army troops and had federalized the Arkansas
National Guard after outbreaks of violence at the high school when
black pupils had attempted to attend classes. Arkansas Governor Orval
Faubus had initially deployed the Arkansas National Guard to block
the black students from attending classes on the ground that it would
prevent further violence, following the opening days of attempted
integration. On April 28, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis had affirmed the District Court injunction prohibiting Governor Faubus from using the Arkansas National Guard to deny rights, while allowing him the authority to use the Guard to preserve law and order, and affirming the dismissal of the suits brought by two parents of white children, one of which had sought to challenge the deployment of the Federal troops to protect the black students from interference with their rights. (For those historically challenged persons, whether here legally or not, including those in the current Administration and on Fox Prop and other extreme right-wing media, who try somehow to equate the situation in Little Rock in 1957-58 to that at present in 2025 in Los Angeles, the two are not only different on their basic factual stances but are diametrically opposed in their nature. In the 1957 situation, as well as the situation in 1962 at the University of Mississippi, when, ironically, by then resigned General Walker was arrested and placed in a mental hospital for interfering with the federalized Guard and troop deployment, and in 1963 at the University of Alabama, when President Kennedy in both of the latter scenarios had federalized the respective state Guards and deployed Federal troops to ensure the peaceful integration of those two institutions of higher learning, contrary, respectively, to the wishes of Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett and Alabama Governor George Wallace, the current deployment of Marines and federalization of California National Guardsmen, without so much as consultation with California Governor Gavin Newsom—not the case at all in the prior scenarios where 10 USC 332, et seq., were used to justify the Federal deployments—, was undertaken in an effort to continue to deprive persons in this country of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process while also chilling the First Amendment rights of those desiring to assemble peaceably in protest of that continued deprivation of rights, not in furtherance of the rights of individuals admitted by Federal Court order to matriculate peaceably to schools without violent interference to their rights of Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, as were the cases at Little Rock, Oxford and Tuscaloosa. Another law was invoked in the 2025 scenario, premised on Article I, Section 8, clause 15 of the Constitution and its delegation of authority via the statute by Congress to the executive, requiring for its invocation either invasion or danger of invasion by a foreign country, rebellion or danger of rebellion against the Federal Government, or that the President is unable with "regular forces" to execute the laws, the latter being at present in issue and remaining so pending further review by the courts. The present decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel only concluded, for purposes of granting a stay of the District Court Order pending its appeal by the President, the District Court having ordered the Guard released back to the control of the Governor, that it is "likely", granting the necessary deference to the executive required by prior case law, that the President acted within his statutory authority in taking over the Guard and will thus prevail on the appeal. The case is still pending further determination on appeal potentially, by discretion, before the full en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit and then before the Supreme Court. Never, indeed, in the history of the country has there ever been a deployment of Federal troops or federalization of the National Guard by a President against the wishes of a governor of a state to deny persons their rights to engage in peaceful protest against an Administration out of control and completely forsaking the Constitution and the checks and balances afforded by the other two branches of Government, effectively quashing dissent and making the atmosphere seem pacific and without protest, as dictators typically do to suppress dissent and make things appear copasetic, with all aboard the on-time trains of Il Duce in his little red porter's cap
In Los Angeles, it was reported that the country had claimed a new world altitude record of 91,249 feet, 17.4 miles, this date, achieved in a 27-minute flight over the Mojave Desert by a Lockheed F-104A Starfighter, flown by Maj. Howard Johnson, 37, stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base, near San Francisco. He had taken off from the Lockheed facility at nearby Palmdale the previous day. The Air Force said that the altitude exceeded by more than two miles the mark of 80,190 feet set on May 3 by a French experimental Trident jet. That, in turn, had topped the altitude record of 76,928 feet achieved on April 16 by Navy Lt. Commander George Watkins of Alhambra, Calif., in a Grumman F-11F-1F, in a flight over Edwards Air Force Base in California. Joint Chiefs chairman General Nathan Twining called the Starfighter "the most advanced plane of its type ever developed." Maj. Johnson said of his flight in the Starfighter: "It is moving today's fighter pilot well out to where the sky is deep blue, turning almost black."
Nearly 100,000 aircraft workers who made some of the nation's most important missiles and bombers had stood on the brink of a strike this date until their leaders had temporarily halted the strike set to begin the previous midnight. The first of some 8,000 workers in the big Lockheed bomber plant at Marietta, Ga., had walked off the job when the midnight deadline had passed, organizing picket lines. At the nation's missile test center at Cape Canaveral, workers had also set up picket lines, but had been called back minutes later by word from Los Angeles that the strike had been postponed. Workers at plants in Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arizona would also have been impacted. Officials of the International Association of Machinists and of the UAW said that they would continue negotiating with the three major aircraft manufacturers, Convair, Douglas Aircraft and North American Aviation. They maintained their strike threat, however, despite the economic recession which had produced the country's greatest unemployment in nearly 20 years. They said that they could set another strike deadline immediately if necessary. The UAW had major talks ongoing also in Detroit, where the big three automobile manufacturers had agreed to a union request for more time to bargain. The Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. had said that they would put the talks on a full-day rather than half-day basis. General Motors had done the same thing the prior week. The automobile contracts with the UAW would expire in three weeks.
In Charlotte, work was completely normal at the Douglas Aircraft Missile Plant this date following the postponement of the strike.
In Washington, a power company official had testified this date that his company had spent $93,000 for advertising in a slick paper magazine run by a promoter in the name of the New York State Federation of Labor.
Malcolm McIntyre, Undersecretary of the Air Force, had said this date that "a space warfare capability on the part of the United States is vital to the survival of the free world."
In Berlin, Secretary of State Dulles accused Russia this date of using disarmament talk as a smokescreen to "produce a world dominated by the military power of the Chinese-Soviet bloc."
The U.S. and the six-nation European Atomic Energy Community had agreed on the draft of an agreement aimed at developing atomic power in Western Europe.
The Atomic Energy Commission had confirmed the opening of the country's long-heralded nuclear test series in the Pacific.
In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the official residence of U.S. Ambassador Gerald Drew had been heavily fired upon the previous night by unidentified persons.
In Paris, it was reported that Rene Plevin, under fire for naming a cabinet lacking the participation of leading figures, had announced this date that he was giving up on his effort to organize the 25th post-war cabinet.
In Cairo, a United Arab Republic delegation returning from West Germany this date, said that it had been promised 137.5 million dollars in loans for industrial equipment.
In Charlotte, it was reported that an Eastern Air Lines Super-Constellation had been circling Douglas Municipal Airport during the afternoon with its landing gear locked, the plane, bound for Atlanta, Jacksonville and Miami, having 58 passengers and seven crew members aboard. The nose gear had failed to retract when it had taken off from the airport in Charlotte at noon. The captain, a veteran of the airline, attempted to lock the nose wheel so that he could land for repairs, but the wheel failed to lock and he began circling the airport and running through a checklist in an effort to find the difficulty. Ambulances, crash units and fire trucks had been summoned to stand by, and thousands of people, hearing of the difficulty, had rushed to the airport, with their cars jamming the approaches to the airport until police began stopping them a mile or so from the terminal building. Eastern officials said that the plane had enough fuel to stay aloft until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. One report said that it would attempt a landing at 5:00 whether the gear issue was fixed or not. Planes with similar issues had landed successfully many times in the past. A recently discovered technique involved spreading fire-fighting foam on the runway just before the crippled aircraft was attempting to land, enabling the plane to slide on the cushion of foam. What will happen? The suspense builds. Will there be happy faces emerging or barbecue and jam spread all over the field, as the letter writer of the previous day had described the results of airplane crashes? Stay tuned… It's all up to the pilot.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a local landlady had a close brush with death the previous day when she had grasped a trailer door which was highly charged with electricity. She told the newspaper that she probably would not be alive had it not been for a man who had heard her screams and rushed to her rescue. A member of the Charlotte Life Saving Crew told her that another 30 to 45 seconds of the electric charge would probably have killed her. She was taken to the hospital the previous day, treated for severe shock and released. She said this date that she had two badly bruised arms, large blisters on her feet and was very weak. She and her husband rented trailers on Wilkinson Boulevard. She said that she had gone to the backyard around mid-afternoon to take the garbage out and walked on the wet grass, causing her feet to get very wet. While she was out, she decided to see one of the women who lived in a trailer near the house. She knocked on the door and did not feel a thing, hearing from inside the woman inviting her in. When she grabbed the door, she felt a sudden jolt. County police said some insulation of electric wires over the trailer had worn off, producing the shock.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that Governor Luther Hodges had announced this date the appointment of four members of the 12-member Board of Trustees of the Charlotte community college system. They were News editor Cecil Prince, merchant Thomas Belk, Douglas Aircraft plant manager Sheldon Smith, and Dr. Thomas Watkins, a black dentist. He noted that under legislation passed by the 1957 General Assembly, the Governor was authorized to appoint four of the trustees. The City School Board had also named this date Addison Reese, president of American Commercial Bank, and John Paul Lucas, vice-president of Duke Power Co. The County School Board had previously appointed Oliver Rowe and Linn Garibaldi, and the Charlotte City Council had appointed J. Murrey Atkins and W. A. Kennedy. The County Commission had appointed R. L. Taylor and Dr. E. A. Beaty.
Also in Charlotte, there had been a break-in at the Canteen, Inc., the previous night, with the yeggs having taken a heavy safe containing between $3,000 and $5,000 in small change, as well as making off with one of the firm's new trucks. City detectives said that the heavy safe had been lugged out of the office and loaded into a 1957 Chevrolet truck parked at the rear of the building. The truck contained about $175 in cash and was loaded with merchandise. The company operated vending machines and sold coffee, candy, sandwiches, milk and cigarettes. The manager of the company told police that the entire week's collections from Gastonia and Charlotte had been in the safe. He could not estimate its weight or the money inside, but suggested that the load would have been extremely heavy. Officers had processed the building for fingerprints but said that it appeared the culprits had worn gloves. The thieves had entered by breaking out a window on the south side of the building, then apparently had sought to open the safe in the office, as the dial had been found on the floor. When they failed, they had thrown open a sliding door at the rear of the building and loaded the safe onto the truck. Perhaps, they had viewed the previous night the episode from the town to tough to die, and got some ideas. Perhaps, not.
In Chicago, it was reported that a
person wearing a mask and a sombrero, had been running down State
Street near the Loop the previous night, pausing briefly to take a
quick look in every doorway, before being halted by police to
investigate. When asked what he thought he was doing, he said he was
looking for his black horse. One of the two officers turned to the
other and said, "This mysterious fellow's obviously just in from
the West, and we'd better take him to the station for questioning."
When taken to the station, he identified himself as Zorro. The two
officers did not believe him, as he was only four years old. He said
that his daddy had promised him a black horse and he had gone to look
for it. An hour later, a salesman arrived at the station with his
wife and three other sons, ranging in age from 1 to 7, to reclaim
their 4-year old son. The father explained that he was visiting a
friend in a Loop novelty shop when the young boy had put on the Zorro
hat and mask and run into the street. The father had run after him
but his son had disappeared in the crowd. As the family left the
station, one of the officers gave the boy a quarter and told him:
"Here, sonny, you can start saving for that horse." The boy
assured that he would get him yet. This is what happens when the
Commandante is away from the Cuartel, leaving Sgt. Garcia
In Bennington, N.H., a man of Cambridge, Mass., had hooked a big rainbow trout on Whitemore Lake in Bennington, but the line had broken, and as he watched, the fish had swum away. The man, however, jumped into the water, grabbed the retreating end of the line, and retrieved a 5 pound, 4 ounce trout, which had not gotten away.
On the editorial page, "Urgent Highway Needs Still To Be Met" indicates that Governor Luther Hodges had expressed the previous day to the Seventh Highway Transportation Congress great pride in the state's roadbuilding achievements, especially being pleased by the results of the Highway Commission reorganization which he had instituted.
It indicates that much had been accomplished with very little money and much prudent planning, enabling the state to make a considerable dent in the road problem. The Governor's plan to shake up the Highway Department's administrative machinery had been one of the major achievements of his Administration. But neither the Governor, the Highway Commission nor the public at large could afford the luxury of self-satisfaction.
For traffic was being added to the state's highways faster than facilities were being added to move the traffic smoothly and efficiently, such that there was never any "victory" in the roadbuilding race. The Governor had stated that surveys recently conducted had shown that it would require over a billion dollars to bring the primary and secondary highways of the state up to a level of service which would be ideal. But the state did not have that billion dollars handy. It did, however, have the ability to do more than it was doing, being equipped with a vastly improved roadbuilding establishment, including a refreshing statewide approach to highway planning. The public had also shown that they were receptive to enlightened leadership wherever urgent public needs were involved.
"Put away That Blunderbuss, Senators" discusses the blunderbuss bill to strip the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction in crucial areas of judicial concern, having been stripped itself of several objectionable features by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Legislation which had once been considered outrageous in a dozen or so respects was now merely outrageous in three or four.
It finds it, however, no more desirable as a result of the paring down, and that the Jenner-Butler bill still had to be regarded as an irresponsible attack on the judiciary. Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri had said that it reminded him of the infamous court-packing plan of 1937, and represented "an unvarnished attempt to intimidate the nine Supreme Court justices. Like the court-packing plan, I think that in the end it will be rejected."
As originally put forward, the bill had been designed to deny the Court jurisdiction to hear appeals in those fields where the extreme right did not trust its judgment. Now, the only area which remained among those original areas involved state regulation of admission to the bar. But large numbers of amendments would still have the effect of undercutting various unrelated decisions by the Court. For instance, the Jenner-Butler bill would prevent the Court from hearing appeals arising from Congressional hearings, aimed at the Watkins case, in which the Court had held that Congressional inquiries could not be mere fishing expeditions and had to be based on demonstrable pertinence to legislation. As the bill had emerged from committee, it would make Congressional committees the sole judges of whether an investigation was conducted on pertinent lines, through amending statutes so that the Watkins decision would effectively be overruled.
The American Bar Association had taken a dim view of such attempts to tamper with the balance of powers. Senator Hennings had correctly observed that "for Congress to limit the Court, as proposed, would establish a precedent which could be carried to a point where Congress could legislate the Court out of existence." Many deans of law schools and a number of distinguished conservative Constitutional scholars had joined the ABA and Senator Hennings in that disapproval.
The Judiciary Committee had voted approval of the bill's amended version without proper investigation and despite earnest pleas for public hearings.
When the bill reached the floor where it could receive the Senate's full attention, it trusts that reasonable minds would prevail and that it would be given the funeral it richly deserved.
"A Low Bow to the Prize
Winners" tells of Harry Ashmore
An award for national reporting had gone to Relman Morin, based on his incisive eyewitness reports of the Little Rock crisis, those reports having been featured in The News the prior September, later wrapping up the story in a five-part series published in the newspaper between October 7 and 11.
The prize for the year's best play had gone to Ketti Frings for her adaptation of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel. Mr. Wolfe, who had died in 1938, had never won a Pulitzer, himself.
A special citation had gone to Walter Lippmann, whose column was carried twice per week in the newspaper, "for the wisdom, perception and high sense of responsibility with which he has commented for many years on national and international affairs."
It indicates that it was "country-proud" of them all and congratulated them.
Ashley Cooper of the Charleston News & Courier, in a piece titled, "A True Cumpuhshashun", indicates that if tourists were having trouble with the accent of the Lowcountry, rural blacks, it provides the start of a "Dictionary of Gullah" for their information and entertainment.
Samples:
Abner—A wide street. Also, an
Abner of live oaks.
Am—The limb that fastens the hand to the shoulder.
Age —The business side of a razor, i.e., "The Razor's Age."
And so on, and so forth, down to "Doe—Door and although."
Drew Pearson indicates that the manner in which the U.S. military played favorite to big corporations against smaller companies had been illustrated recently when Frank Higgins, assistant secretary of the Army had been conferring with members of the House subcommittee on Military Appropriations, indicating that the Willys-Overland firm was doing an end-run by showing the jeep to members of the House subcommittee. But Congressman Harry Sheppard of California responded that to the contrary, his understanding was that the Army had been given every opportunity to see the new Willys jeep and that they would not even allow it a parking place at the Pentagon. Mr. Sheppard and Congressman George Mahon of Texas had made it clear that they were going to take a look at the new jeep, which had been developed by Willys at no expense to the Army, after they had learned that the Army had paid Ford to develop a new jeep at the same time the Willys Company had come up with a jeep at no extra expense, a jeep which was 1,000 pounds lighter than the wartime jeep, and had a platform body which could be folded to one side and thus adapted for landing by parachute. The Army was asking for approximately 30 million dollars to order the new Ford jeep, but members of the Appropriations Committee wanted to look carefully at the new Willys jeep before they voted on that money.
Mr. Pearson indicates it was one reason that Congressmen were loath to pass the new reorganization plan of the Pentagon proposed by the President, as they had seen too many cases in which funds had been spent with big corporations to the detriment of smaller companies which could do the job as well or better. Sixty percent of all Defense Department orders now went to 100 American companies. Members of Congress also remembered that former Congressman Ross Collins of Mississippi had once practically been forced to beat the Army over the head to make them acquire modern tanks, that even after he had inserted enough money in the Army's appropriation bill to purchase six new Christie tanks, the Army would not use that money, until finally Mr. Collins had brought the tanks to Washington and paraded them up Pennsylvania Avenue to shame the Army, which only then began work on new tanks.
Mayor Robert Wagner of New York and those who had pioneered the first Irish Airlines flight had enjoyed a great time in Ireland the previous week after they had gotten over their forced sojourn in Newfoundland. As they had been about to disembark from Shannon, the Irish stewardess announced: "Passengers will deplane in the following order. First, the Lord Mayor of New York…" He indicates that from that point on, Mayor Wagner, his father having been born in Germany, was "the Lord Mayor". He and his wife had visited Lake Glendalough, where, according to Irish legend, St. Kevin had been pursued by the wily and wicked Kathleen and where he had reproved and reproached her to such an extent that she eventually fell into the lake. Mayor Wagner embraced the pedestal of the Cross of St. Kevin, at which one got one's wish if the person could reach around it. The Mayor had done so, but did not reveal whether his wish was to be the next senator from New York.
Irish Premier Eamon de Valera, now 76, had told how he had been born on the present site of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, leaving for Ireland at the age of 2 1/2. He had helped to win Irish independence, sometimes through bloody force, but now regarded the late Mahatma Gandhi, the advocate of passive resistance, as one of the great men of the era. The Irish, he said, did not want to use force to bring about the unification of Northern Ireland, as they would be fighting against their own people. He said that Ireland was fulfilling its destiny in starting the airline across the Atlantic.
The staff of the American Embassy had given a reception for Mayor Wagner in Dublin, but had to explain that the Ambassador, Scott McLeod, was fishing in Galway. A correspondent for the Washington Star recalled when Mr. McLeod had been selling classified ads for the Des Moines Register-Tribune. The Irish did not particularly like Mr. McLeod, remembering him as the witch-hunter of the McCarthy era.
The best remembered of American Ambassadors had been George Garrett and William Howard Taft III, grandson of the late President. Mr. McLeod was also not in good stead with the Irish because of his gauche conduct, including promotion of superhighways, which the Irish did not want. One such highway would go from Shannon to Dublin, bypassing Limerick. The Irish Foreign Office intimated that Mr. McLeod was less desirable than had been Ambassadors Taft and Garrett. Mr. McLeod went to the pub near the Embassy to throw darts and try to be one of the boys. He sensed that his time was running out and was reported to be promoting himself for a job with the Swiss watch cartel.
Walter Lippmann indicates that with the recession more than nine months old, the President remained undecided as to whether to take stronger action to overcome it, being impressed that there were a few signs that the economic decline had begun to slow, causing him to be hopeful that recovery was destined to occur. Such had taken place in 1954 and so the reasoning was that it ought again.
He indicates that there was no proving that the President might not be right in those hopes, but that it was quite possible he could be wrong, for the recession was more severe than that of 1953-54 and the measures had not been taken, including a large tax cut, which had preceded the recovery of 1954. Nor were there convincing signs that there existed the type of consumer demand for automobiles, houses and other durable goods which had promoted the boom following 1954.
If the President was wrong in counting on a recovery beginning in the summer, he was taking a great risk in not setting up stronger measures before the present session of Congress would adjourn, as it would be a long while between midsummer and the following midwinter. Even assuming that the decline would end in the summer, should unemployment continue at or near present levels, it could depress public confidence if, in the meantime, there were no tax cut or long-range spending program on public works. Mr. Lippmann thinks it a situation where it was wiser to over-insure rather than under-insure the economy against what might be at best, as Business Week had said, "a sluggish, unenthusiastic recovery."
He suggests that the President might compare what he was doing now with what had been done in the recession of 1953-54, for while the earlier recession was much milder than the present one, the remedial measures had been much stronger.
He finds it enlightening to read a chapter titled "No More 1929's" from the authorized biography of Robert Donovan, Eisenhower: The Inside Story, in which it was recounted that in the earlier recession, the signs of decline were evident at the end of the summer, such that by September, 1953, the Cabinet had been warned by the Administration's economic advisers that a recession had begun. On September 22, 1953, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had announced in a speech before the American Bankers Association that the Administration would make no effort to prevent the tax reductions which, under the Korean War tax legislation, had been scheduled to take effect three months later, at the end of 1953. On that date, the excess profits tax was set to expire as was the ten percent emergency increase in personal income taxes, along with some reductions to take place in excise taxes. Thus, at the first sign of a recession, taxpayers had been assured a large relief to begin within a few months, with that tax reduction having been on the order of 7.5 billion dollars per year. Mr. Lippmann suggests that Secretary Humphrey's speech in September had not primarily meant to announce a policy to combat the recession, as he had been a firm believer in balancing the budget at a lower rate of taxation and expenditure. He may have been for the tax reduction of 1954, knowing that in the ensuing Administration budget, there would be a continuing cut in expenditures. But the fact remained that the President and Secretary Humphrey had done in 1953 what many experts now wanted the Administration to do. When the recession of 1953 was detected, a large tax reduction was announced and the tax relief had taken effect in the months before the recession had ended in June, 1954.
Mr. Lippmann also suggests that the President might also look at what had occurred in the recession under President Truman in 1948-49, before which, there had been a tax cut. That tax cut had been enacted by the Republican Congress and passed over the veto of President Truman. That tax cut plus the large public spending program which began under the Marshall Plan in 1949 were almost certainly the reasons that the recession at that time did not last very long.
He thus finds that experience indicated that in the postwar era, the recessions had been short and mild because there had been early tax relief. Since the end of World War II, the American economy had faltered three times and in the two earlier recessions, which proved to be mild and short, there had been tax cuts before recovery, and, as indicated, in the first one, a large spending program in the form of the Marshall Plan, whereas in the second, there had been a private spending boom activated by the pent-up demand following the austerity imposed by the Korean War, and financed by the extension of consumer credit and a boom in capital investment.
The present recession was worse than the preceding two and there was no tax reduction this time or public-spending program to compensate for the decline in private investment. There were no signs that there was a large pent-up consumer demand for the durable goods which were now depressed, in fact, that the opposite was evident. He thus questions whether it was wise and safe to ignore the experience of the past and continue to put off the decision to take strong measures to combat the recession, hoping that something would happen which would make them unnecessary.
Marquis Childs, in Philadelphia, indicates that Harold Stassen was out to prove in Pennsylvania that the native Minnesotan could do what the professionals said was impossible, return to the state where his ties consisted of having been president of the University of Pennsylvania between 1948 and 1953, and run successfully in the Republican gubernatorial primary. When he had formally announced his intention to run, the laughter could be heard from Maine to Florida, as regular Republicans, not only in Pennsylvania, regarded it as an opportunity to do something they had wanted to do for a long time, bury the maverick Mr. Stassen once and for all.
But now the laughter could hardly be heard, as Mr. Stassen was given a good chance to win the Republican nomination on May 20 in a three-way race against two regular Republicans, with Mr. Stassen's private polls showing him ahead by 2 to 1 among registered Republicans. He saw his task as primarily one of having sufficient organization in most of Pennsylvania's 67 counties to get the registered Republicans out to the polls. In letters to the chairmen of each of the counties, he had received an unanimous negative response, however, telling him to stay out of the race, some calling him a carpetbagger, a frequent charge in the campaign.
Mr. Stassen had been elected Governor of Minnesota in 1938 when he was 31, the youngest governor in the country at the time, and had been re-elected three times before entering the Navy. Following the war, he had moved to the national scene as a candidate for the presidency.
If he were to win the primary in Pennsylvania and then the general election in November, he would be the second man in U.S. history to be governor of two states, the other having been Sam Houston, Governor of Tennessee and then, toward the close of his career, Governor of Texas.
In many counties, Mr. Stassen now had his own chairmen who had broken away from the party organization. If that proved sufficient with the voters, then at least he was given an even chance of winning. The two regular Republicans in the primary were both respectable candidates, Arthur McGonigle, the largest pretzel manufacturer in the country who had the backing of the Republican organization, and who had done much to revive the Republican organization in that state, and the other, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, William Livengood, expected to draw votes away from Mr. McGonigle and thereby enhance Mr. Stassen's chances.
In his tireless tour of the state, Mr. Stassen was meeting the recession head-on, charging both the Democrats, with George Leader as Governor, and the Republican regulars with failing to reform the tax structure and otherwise moving to get new industry into Pennsylvania. He talked world peace and control of disarmament to college audiences. Recently, he had gone to the hometown of Joseph Grundy, who for many years had bossed the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association and the Republican Party, and, at age 95, still exerted fatherly supervision over the Republicans. At that location, Bristol, he was asked whether he was a regular Republican during a radio interview, and had responded, "Regular but not regulated."
Mr. Childs suggests that it was indeed Daniel talking back to the lions.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that when he was a boy, moral standards had been much higher than at present, wondering what had caused them to decline so swiftly. He suggests that it was the fact that women had never been given all the rights of men and that the leaders of the women promised to clean up the world and make it a better place in which to live, but had instead fallen down on that job and taken up smoking and drinking like men. He says that the church also had taken to preaching about the sins of the ancestors but very little of present sinning, that most people bragged about being tolerant in allowing sin to exist in the house next door, that they allowed foreigners to enter the country who had no more morals than a pig, that city life had caused decay in the moral fiber of man, and that the children were not disciplined anymore, as they ought to be.
He sounds like the average
Trumpy-Dumpy-Doer
Framed Edition
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