The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 5, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Constantine, Algeria, that Premier Charles de Gaulle had carried his drive for Algerian unity into the hotbed of Moslem nationalist resistance this date, but already rebel spokesmen abroad were rejecting his offer. Nationalist sources in neighboring Tunisia had said that there would be no halting of the 3 1/2-year old rebellion there. In Cairo, spokesmen for the Algerian National Liberation Front said that they could not accept the Premier's program for integrating Algeria's European and Moslem populations with equal rights and equal votes. The Front had spearheaded the revolt and demanded independence as the price of peace. The Premier had spoken for five minutes from a balcony of a theater in Constantine to a massive cheering throng of 75,000, about half of whom were Moslems. He declared that "even those who were swept up in the flame of despair", the fighters for Algerian independence, ought rally to his program. Shouts for the Premier were followed quickly by equally massive shouts for Jacques Soustelle, the Gaullist deputy and strongman of the Algerian insurrection who was not made a member of the Premier's new Cabinet. M. Soustelle, standing to the right of the Premier, waved his arms in an effort to calm the crowd, as the Premier frowned. After the speech, the Premier had been driven slowly through the streets of Constantine, which was known as a rebellious city, with nationalist fighters in the mountains just outside the city. It was the second stop on the Premier's three-day Algerian tour to establish his Government's authority over insurgent French colonists and military leaders and to launch a new drive to end the 43-month old nationalist rebellion. Later this date, he was to fly to Bone. The thousands in Constantine had cheered as the Premier declared from a flag-decked balcony, "All men here have the same rights—the same duties." The brief address had been essentially the same as the one he delivered the previous day to cheering throngs in Algiers. He had again saluted the French Army in Algeria, present to crush the nationalist rebellion, as the "determining factor in the accomplishment of this great movement" for European-Moslem integration. He had also said that all Algerians, Moslems as well as French colonists, were French, and that all would vote in three months with the French across the Mediterranean on the new constitution he was going to write for France, and that sometime after that, all Algerians would elect their own government. He indicated that France, too, was going to get a new parliament if it approved his new constitution by a referendum of the people. He said that there would be elections in Algeria as elsewhere for representatives in the public administration of the future.
House members backing a big Army looked to a roll call vote this date to add to a defense appropriations bill enough money to prevent a 30,000-man drop in Army strength. Both sides of the issue said that the outcome might be close. Except for that roll call, the House the previous day had finished its work on the biggest appropriation bill of the year, with the extra 99 million dollars earmarked for a bigger Army to boost the overall defense total to 38.4 billion dollars, 212.6 million more than the President had sought. The group favoring a big Army had won an additional victory when an amendment carrying the 99 million dollar appropriation was approved tentatively by a vote of 108 to 79. The added funds were intended to maintain Army strength at 900,000 men during the ensuing 12 months, instead of the 870,000 recommended by the President and the House Appropriations Committee. The House had also approved larger allotments than the President had requested for a speed-up in submarine and missile programs and for more National Guardsmen, Marines and reservists.
By a roll call vote of 224 to 158, the House this date eventually rejected the President's plan to cut the Army strength to 870,000 men during the ensuing 12 months, and then passed the 38.4 billion dollar defense appropriation bill.
According to Republican Congressional leaders this date, the President wanted authority to spend foreign aid money in Iron Curtain countries, but wanted it separate from the mutual security bill presently under debate in the Senate.
In Menomonie, Wisc., it was reported that a tornado had cut a 90-mile swath through four northwestern Wisconsin counties the previous night, leaving at least 25 persons dead and more than 100 injured in its wake. It had hit with full force in the small community of Colfax, where 100 houses had been destroyed or badly damaged. Of the known dead, 11 had been found in the ruins in Colfax, with at least 35 persons of that community injured. The twister had occurred just after the supper hour and had caught many families unprepared, as their houses were flattened about them. Communications and power lines were torn out and the extent of the catastrophe was still unknown.
In Detroit, the first labor dispute in the automobile industry since the UAW contracts with the big three automakers had expired, had taken place this date, when 2,000 General Motors workers in the Pittsburgh area had struck. The UAW said that there was no connection between the strike and the union's stalemated contract talks with G.M. The UAW sent two international representatives to Pittsburgh to restore production at the struck Fisher Body stamping plant as soon as possible. Pickets the previous night had shut down production at the plant. The union continued separate negotiations with the big three this date and work continued at other plants on a no-contract basis.
In New York, Max and Louis Block, officials of the Butchers Union, who allegedly had mishandled union funds amounting to more than $250,000, were under further fire for refusing to testify before a New York County grand jury.
In San Francisco, it was reported that steadily growing popular vote majorities were giving Democratic leaders added hope for a clean sweep in the November ballot there. As tabulations of Tuesday's primary elections continued, the Democrats hoped to capture the governorship and the Senate seat, as well as a majority of the State Legislature, which would be their first majority in that body in 70 years, plus gaining in Congressional representation. Senator William Knowland would face State Attorney General Pat Brown for the governorship, the Senator indicating that the primary results showed that there was a lot of work yet to be done. With more than two-thirds of the primary vote counted, Mr. Brown held a popular vote margin of half a million over Senator Kmowland in the overall tally. Under California's unique cross-filing provision, each candidate could run on both the Republican and Democratic tickets. The Republican national committeeman from California, Edward Shattuck, blamed the showing on a switch of party allegiances, with heavy Democratic registration and defection from Republicans, the greatest since the 1932 presidential election between incumbent President Herbert Hoover and FDR. Virtually all contested nominations had been settled except the Republican and Democratic races for State Attorney General, which remained in doubt, with the trend pointing toward Republican Representative Pat Hillings to contest Democratic Superior Court Judge Stanley Mosk, in 1964 to be appointed by Governor Brown to the State Supreme Court. Five Democratic incumbents had won two-party nomination for Congress and two others had won the Democratic nomination and were facing a close fight from the Republican.
In Louisville, the FBI had concluded its probe of Logan County's election returns, apparently without finding any evidence of fraud in the primary which had helped unseat Congressman Noble Gregory.
In Boscombe Down, England, Squadron Leader John Booth, chief test pilot of Saunders Roe, had been killed this date in the crash of a rocket-powered fighter plane still on the partially secret list.
Perry Morgan, associate editor of The News, had won a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University, one of 11 journalists, of whom one other was an editor, from across the nation so honored, to receive a year of resident study at Harvard. The fellowships were awarded "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the U.S. and educate persons especially qualified for journalism." Candidates were selected on the basis of their work in their particular journalistic fields, the course of study they proposed to follow, as well as other criteria.
In Lake Junaluska, N.C., the move by a bishop of the Memphis Methodist Conference to prevent ordination of deacons who smoked had brought little reaction. The editor of the North Carolina Christian Advocate and the Charlotte District superintendent had been asked about the situation in the Western North Carolina Methodist Conference by the newspaper, and the editor, a former Methodist minister, said, as he lit his pipe, that the bishop was from the North and they did not look that way at smoking "down here". The Charlotte District superintendent said that those being ordained as deacons and elders were asked to abstain from smoking, because it had been put into the Methodist Discipline in 1917, but added that no one was refused ordination because of smoking. The editor said that he believed more Methodist ministers smoked than those who did not in the South, that the statement had been put into the Discipline by the WCTU and that no one had been able to get it out since.
In Fayetteville, N.C., a marathon
talkathon had attracted a mounting list of contestants, women ready
"to prove what men had known since the beginning of time",
that there was "nothing more long-winded than a talkative
woman". The object was to see who could continue to talk the
longest. The first two contestants had already proved themselves
champions. A Fayetteville television personality, Ernie Eye, would
challenge the eventual winner. The top contestant thus far had been
talking since 7:54 the previous evening, expounding on her
experiences on the farm, aiming for the record of 28 hours, 44
minutes and 14 seconds set by another contestant, a 49-year old
grandmother. A Fayetteville secretary, 27, had begun on Monday by
talking 27.5 hours, which had beaten the record of 26.5 hours set by
an LSU coed. The contest was being conducted in an appliance store
which offered $1,500 in prizes, and the event was being broadcast
over WFLB in Fayetteville. The woman who currently held the record
said that she was confused by the glare of the lights for the
television cameras and all the people coming and going, or otherwise
could have talked for another hour. The woman currently talking had
talked through the previous night regarding household hints, canning,
courtship, home demonstration clubs, the U.N., and dairy farming. In
the early 1940's, when dance marathons had been popular, the City of
Fayetteville had passed an ordinance prohibiting them and similar
endurance contests lasting more than eight hours, but the store
sponsoring the talkathon was outside the city limits. There ought to
be a law against it—in which case, there could be no Trump
rallies, wherein His Highness, the self-determined Administrado of California
By the way, congratulations on the great trade deal with the E.U., which will jack up the cost of all European cars for Americans by 15 percent and likely cause domestic prices to jump as well. Good job...
On the editorial page, "De Gaulle: Too Late for Lamentation" suggests that those who distrusted most devoutly the messianic postures of General De Gaulle, still had to wish him well in his effort to revitalize France.
It asserts that there inevitably would be danger to the democratic traditions of France in the Premier's difficulty in separating love of country from the love of self, as he had once said: "When I want to know what France is thinking, I ask myself."
But it finds that there was no use in continuing to lament the possibility of a De Gaulle dictatorship, as the chief danger from that would probably arise from successful and popular use of the power he had been given to govern by decree for the ensuing six months. If, instead, he flopped in his effort to revitalize the country, tragedy was more a certainty than a possibility.
It finds France in a position of having to risk a dictatorship to win a few victories over forces which threatened a civil war, finding that it was not the General but rather the endlessly haggling and often impotent men of the middle who had placed it in that position.
The Premier's initial moves had been marked by wisdom and resoluteness, placing no extremists in his new Cabinet, not even the Gaullist extremists, with men from the Left, Right and Center of French politics populating it. While the representative Cabinet had no power to depose the Premier or to block his programs, the appointments appeared to represent an effort to build national unity and signified good intentions. He had moved also to reassert civilian authority over the military and had promised to support and defend civil liberties, removing press censorship.
It finds that his flight to Algeria demonstrated a proper sense of urgency in undertaking the worst problem presently facing France. The Premier had given France and the West reason for a feeling of hope and reassurance. The West, including the U.S., would have to continue to respond in like manner because he had become the hope of the West for the restoration of the unity and strength of "an old and honored citadel of freedom."
"Some Plain Talk on a Prickly Issue" indicates that during a talk to the graduating class of Pembroke College, new State Attorney General Malcolm Seawell had said of Brown v. Board of Education: "I do not like it but I know that, when that court speaks, its words become the law and remain the law until that court changes its mind or until the people change the law. We cannot select the laws which we will obey and breach those laws which we do not like."
Regarding the question of closing public schools to avoid compliance, he had said: "If we in North Carolina should close our schools we would cut our own throats—economically, politically and spiritually. Our progress would come to an end."
It indicates that he was not in the position when the state had weathered the extremist demands for closing the schools and had adopted instead the "wise and moderate course" presently being followed, but apparently he had been mindful of the fact that courage and candor were required to keep to that course. As a commencement speaker, he had to give his audience some kind of advice and he chose, opines the piece, wise and plain-spoken advice, and had distinguished himself as an official with a firm grip on reality.
We are not so entirely certain of that when he indicated that the people might change the law, when the law of which he was speaking was the 14th Amendment, on which Brown was premised. One might as well have said, "...until we start the Civil War all over again."
At least he did recognize the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, making that instrument and the laws of the United States the supreme law of the land, over any contradicting or contravening state constitution, statute or ordinance, or any act of Congress which might prove unconstitutional. It is important to realize, as apparently some people do not, especially those within the Trump camp, that merely issuing executive orders or voting by a majority does not change the Constitution or enable unconstitutional conduct. Take, for example, the 13th Amendment, banning involuntary servitude, i.e., slavery. No state, by a majority vote, could resurrect slavery, not just because it would be morally repugnant, but also because it violates the Constitution.
One cannot just dream up any old thing one wants, such as "denial of birthright citizenship", and make it into law by executive fiat or even by an act of Congress, when that fact is embodied in the 14th Amendment and would require amendment of same, along with abrogation of 160 years of decisional law under it, to change by the rather tedious and time-consuming amendment process. The last time we amended the Constitution was in 1971, ratifying the vote for 18-year olds. It is very difficult to find anything upon which three-quarters of the states will agree after two-thirds of each house of Congress has passed an amendment to the states for ratification, or an amendment is proposed by conventions in two-thirds of the states, the requirements for amendment of the Constitution.
It is supposed to be difficult so
that whimsy and vicissitudinous political winds of any given day,
week, year or decade will not seek to rule us for time immemorial—the country's great but failed experiment with Prohibition under the 18th Amendment being prime example, repealed
"Now We Know" indicates that Father Divine had been asked how he felt about nuclear tests and the race into outer space, with his reply having been reported by the New York Herald Tribune: "Well, I haven't had any special feelings about it but as it is given, whatsoever may be uppermostly in the consciousness of man or whatsoever they may endeavor, it can be done."
"Big Jim Farley Is Back in Armor" finds that the former kingmaker of FDR and the former DNC chairman and Postmaster General between 1933 and 1940, was again in New York returning to politics.
James MacGregor Burns had written of him in Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox: "He could get along with anybody … which was part of his effectiveness. He had a large limber body to insert between warring factions, and a smooth pink face that looked as if it were sanded and buffed by his intermediary's role. He was a joiner, a mixer, a glad-hander who could remember names—anybody's name."
He had split with FDR over the third term in 1940, himself initially throwing his hat into the ring at the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Winston-Salem in February of that year, and after the Democratic convention in Chicago nominating the President, had resigned the national chairmanship. Less in the limelight in subsequent years, he could often be found backstage and had remained a powerful influence within party politics in New York, retaining his contacts and friends across the nation. Charlotte knew him well as he had been a frequent visitor.
Now at age 70, he was making a bid for the Democratic nomination for the Senate from New York, his first real try for elective office in 35 years. Other Democrats who were possible contenders were New York City Mayor Robert Wagner, former Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter and Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan—the eventual nominee. Leonard Hall, former RNC chairman, had declared for the Republican nomination—eventually won by Kenneth Keating, who would win the race in the fall.
Mr. Farley had never backed away from a fight and it finds that it would be good to see him back in action, that his nomination and election would strengthen the Senate.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "'Biggest in Town for a Nickel" indicates that quite a bit of skepticism had been aroused when a New York dispatch had announced that a five-cent beer was back on Third Avenue. But then came a further report saying that the tavern keeper was doing fine with the five-cent beer, paying $13 per barrel and taking in $14 at the nickel price, with his bar lined three deep from the beginning to the end of each day.
It finds that it evoked happy days when that price was standard and competition took the form of offering "the biggest in town for a nickel". That had been before Prohibition, when taverns still had been saloons. A shot of the house brand could be had for a dime and the best could be had for a quarter or less. Good cigars cost five cents. Lunch was free, including slices of roast beef, ham, imported Swiss cheese, herring, cold cuts, etc., with mustard, horseradish, ketchup and bread, light and dark, for the customer to help himself while the bartender was busy filling half a dozen or so beer cans, called "growlers", for the boys who rushed them on a notched pole to the workmen who were building a house across the street or to those who were eating a kitchen-prepared lunch in a nearby factory.
It had been told that in Milwaukee, the growlers also were rushed to the staff of the German paper. The editor always knew it was time to go to press when instead of dipping his pen into the ink, he dipped it into the beer. It finds that it could be true because all manner of wonderful things had happened when the best of beer had been only a nickel. "Indeed, could anything be more fabulous than 'the biggest in town for a nickel'?"
Drew Pearson indicates that the Civil Aeronautics Board, after talking with pilots who had narrowly escaped collision with other planes, had put together a story of traffic congestion in the airways, getting so full of planes over some cities that they might soon be comparable to Times Square traffic jams. The CAB was studying the close calls for ideas to improve air safety, and to avoid alarming the traveling public, the reports of the pilots had not been released to the press. But he had obtained some of the highlights, showing that drastic action needed to be taken to curb military flights in commercial airways and improve ground regulation.
The CAB study, dated May 19, showed that ground control was no guarantee of safety, that a military pilot of a cargo plane had suddenly corrected to avoid collision with an airliner, reporting: "I questioned the controller as to the lack of information usually given when other aircraft are in the vicinity of aircraft being monitored. The answer was, 'You didn't request that type information.'"
A similar experience had been reported by the pilot of an Aero Commander who had almost crashed into an Air Force B-29 while approaching Idlewild Airport in New York. He said: "Idlewild advised they had no other aircraft under their control. I asked if they had other aircraft in their scope. Their reply was that they 'don't have altitudes'."
A Navy pilot, whose fighter had come within a few feet of a private aircraft, though both had been under radar control, had been surprised when the other pilot frantically contacted him, with the Navy pilot indicating that he had not seen him.
A Constellation, also under radar control, had narrowly missed a small P-24, and afterward, the disgruntled Constellation pilot complained: "Radar's performance was very disappointing as we had been in contact with them [ground control] 44 minutes. Yet they gave us no advisory of traffic."
After a DC-6 airliner had almost collided with an Air Force jet bomber 900 feet above El Paso, the DC-6 pilot suggested that the Air Force ought practice its instrument-landing approaches at nearby Columbus or Carlsbad where the air traffic was less congested, indicating that there were too many near misses in the area, especially at night.
Another airline pilot, complaining about lackadaisical ground control, had reported: "Tower advised us Cessna in area, but gave us no location. I was watching instruments, First Officer looking for Cessna, but first saw it as we began to pass underneath it. It was descending 'piggyback.' Had we continued we would have collided. We turned to right and advised tower. He didn't say much."
Another complaint was that pilots were either too busy or too apathetic to keep a sharp lookout for other planes.
He indicates that those reports and dozens like them had been accumulating for some time in the CAB files.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, tells of the unceremonious entry of General de Gaulle to the Chamber of Deputies, after which there was a short speech, followed by his unceremonious departure, with respectful but not tempestuous applause, preliminary to the vote essentially to dissolve the National Assembly and grant its powers, at least temporarily for six months, to the General as Premier.
Former Premier Paul Reynaud had once amiably remarked: "If regimes rarely reform themselves, it is chiefly because the abuses are so delicious." Mr. Alsop indicates that few deputies had not enjoyed those delicious abuses, "the complex game of musical chairs that has been French Cabinet making, that also resembled Alice's caucus race in which all contestants won a prize, the happy intrigues, the delicate trading operations conducted at the Brasserie Lipp and La Concorde, even the Chamber's elaborate ritual, so happily conducive to feelings of self-importance and so usefully full of openings for adepts in the parliamentary game. For Gaullists as well as the men of the Left, it was now time to say goodbye to all that, at least for awhile, and none of them liked doing so."
Especially among the divided Socialists, there had been a haunting memory of the vote of full powers to Marshal Petain, which had occurred under even more terrible circumstances after the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940, and had also split the Socialist Party into irreconcilable fragments. Others had asked themselves whether the moment marked the beginning of a new authoritarian regime in the country.
There had been sentimental speeches, macabre speeches, such as one by Communist boss Jacques Duclos, who had shouted "Down with dictatorship!" And there were boring speeches. But on the whole the level of oratory was exceptionally high and none were better than by the two of the non-Communist Left, former Premier Mendes-France and future Premier François Mitterrand, as well as the unpleasant but articulate fellow-traveler, Pierre Cot. All three of the latter had insisted on the same point, that it was not a free vote but a vote under duress from the Assembly's enemies.
They were making records for the present in the expectation that General De Gaulle's regime would be authoritarian and so would alienate all of the masses who were now turning to him. No one could say at present whether they were right or wrong, but one could say, as M. Mendes-France had said, that the Fourth Republic had destroyed itself by its own weaknesses and follies. The final vote was a formality; the regime had died long before the vote had been taken.
Doris Fleeson, in Brussels, indicates that businessmen handling major U.S. industrial exhibits at the Brussels World's Fair had reported that their visiting compatriots were often almost neurotic over the contrast between America's emphasis on cultural aspects and the heavy displays of capital goods by the Russians.
It was readily conceded that the Russians had more floor space and that their achievements were impressive, on their way toward automation faster than expected, though the U.S. remained better in that field. But American exhibitors contended that the American show was excellent, representative and popular. They said that when the good exhibits from American heavy industry were added to the Government's contribution, the sum far outweighed that which the Russians had put forth. The Government show was concentrated in one spot, while the other American contributions were scattered about the grounds of the Fair. The U.S. Government had acceded to the host country's request that governments concentrate on their cultural and social achievements in their exhibits. The Russians, on the other hand, had broken that rule, and had broken it again when they put their initials on all of their displays outside their own pavilion, banned by the Belgians, but who felt powerless to protest what the Russians chose to do.
For the special information of Representative Pat Rooney of New York and his colleagues of the Congressional Appropriations Committees, the same businessmen had said that while it was obvious that not too much money had been spent on the U.S. Government display, it had done fine per dollar invested.
The show played favorites among American cities, with a heavy emphasis on San Francisco, a choice probably the least likely to be resented by Americans. Washington was treated only lightly.
Americans who were not taken with their country's participation appeared to resent that the Russians gave an effect of bigness overall while engaging in a soft sell, almost cozy in effect.
"Unmistakably America captured the town the past weekend both with 'The Key' and Miss Sophia Loren and with Benny Goodman, who gave a unique concert on his own birthday in Brussels' famous old square. He 'sent' them in a blaze of vitality, a durable high mark of a fair whose remarkable attendance is only another sign of man's inexhaustible will to survive even the space age—and enjoy himself."
A letter writer indicates that public business in and around the post office in Charlotte had been for the previous five years going down, becoming worse almost daily since Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (not "Chatterfield" as this letter writer had previously mangled, intentionally or not) had taken over, finding that people paid more and got less. He finds that there was too much cutting going on within the post office at the expense of service. He says that Congressman Charles Jonas was professing to be moderate but always voted Republican on all matters and had done nothing for the public for the previous six years. He does not like the fact that the stamp windows had closed and that the parcel post windows now also sold stamps. The City had installed parking meters all around the post office with a 12-minute limit, during which one could not transact business, and there was a dollar fine for over parking. He believes things were "getting more and more on the dictator list."
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.