The Charlotte News
Monday, January 19, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had sent to Congress this date a 77 billion dollar budget forecasting a spending cut of nearly 4 billion dollars and a precarious surplus of 70 million. He called it "a confident budget" which assumed a surge of prosperity. He said that the budget aimed to restrain inflationary forces which "cheapen our money and erode our savings." He also said that it paved the way for a tax cut "in the reasonable foreseeable future." No tax cuts had been proposed for the present. To achieve the first balanced budget in three years, the President was asking Congress to boost the postal rates and gasoline taxes and also wanted some loopholes plugged. Democrats in Congress were critical of the budget. Senator John Sparkman of Arkansas said that he found it hard to believe that Congress would increase gasoline taxes or postal rates to achieve a balanced budget. House Speaker Sam Rayburn said that he hoped for a balanced budget, but added that he did not see much chance for it under the President's proposals. The Republican House Minority Leader Charles Halleck praised the budget, which he said would provide for a strong defense and for progress in meeting human needs, as well as a prosperous and expanding economy.
The Pentagon, in asking for 40.945 billion dollars in the budget, said that it would allocate 800 million dollars more for missile production and missile research than in the present year. Missile costs had not been itemized separately, but the President had said that missile programs were costing nearly 7 billion dollars in the current year. In addition to defense spending, the newly created NASA would be provided a budget of 280 million dollars, compared with 153 million in the current year. The budget did not reflect a trend toward easing of tension in atomic armaments. The President said that in light of the American offer to suspend weapons testing, the budget contained no money for such tests. The military budget of 40.9 billion dollars was 145 million higher than estimated spending for the current year. The President said that it would bolster the defense of the country against possible attack and enable its forces to respond more quickly and vigorously to any emergency. The manpower of the armed forces would be little changed at 2,520,000. It was the first year since the end of the Korean War that substantial cuts in military manpower had not been proposed. The President said that the Communist bloc was following a policy of deliberately and constantly probing free world positions to test the free world's determination to resist.
A table containing the breakdown of the budget is provided.
The President's economic message to Congress this date accompanying the budget had forecast record national output and income for 1959, called for national self-discipline to avoid inflation and Government controls, indicated that a balanced budget was "the most important step", and had given assurance that tax relief was "foreseeable".
In Washington, Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan met with the State Department's top foreign trade official this date in a renewed effort to break down U.S. barriers against the sale of strategic goods to Russia. He was accompanied by Ambassador to the U.S. Mikhail Menshikov to begin his final round of talks with Deputy Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon in the mid-morning. He was scheduled to follow up with a second trade session with Commerce Secretary Lewis Strauss in the mid-afternoon. Between those two conferences, he was due at the National Press Club for a last question and answer session with reporters. On Sunday night, he had renewed on a nationwide radio and television network the Soviet demand that the Western powers withdraw from West Berlin, describing as "impossible" a suggestion that the Soviet proposal for a "free city" in West Berlin be broadened to include Communist East Berlin as well. He would depart for Moscow by way of New York on Tuesday following his coast-to-coast tour of the United States, during which he had urged increased U.S.-Soviet trade in a series of meetings with bankers and businessmen.
In Buenos Aires, it was reported that Argentine security forces this date had arrested more than 200 leaders of a crippling wave of strikes which the Government called a Communist-Peronist putsch. The arrests had been made in raids before dawn as President Arturo Frondizi was en route to the U.S. on a good will visit in which he was expected to bid for help to pull his country out of economic chaos. He told reporters before departing the previous day that the Government would take firm measures to deal with the strikers, accusing some unions of trying to take over the Government. Diehard followers of exiled dictator Juan Peron had been urging workers toward open revolt. One target for the arrests was the Communist Party's headquarters. The crackdown had been launched in an effort to break the mass walkout which had paralyzed most industry and commerce and vital sectors of transport, such as domestic airlines, shipping, buses, streetcars and taxis. Soldiers stood guard to keep subways and trains running.
In Norfolk, Va., a three-judge Federal court this date had struck down Virginia's school closing law, a keystone in the state's wall of massive resistance to classroom desegregation. The statute was ruled unconstitutional by the court after it had resulted in the closure of nine white schools in three Virginia communities when local school boards had enrolled black pupils the previous fall. In the opinion, the court said that insofar as the statutes in question "effectively require a continuance of racial discrimination, they are patently unconstitutional." In holding the state law unconstitutional, the court had not directed the reopening of the six closed white secondary schools in Norfolk. The massive resistance forces had taken still another beating in an action by the Virginia Supreme Court sitting in Richmond, which decided 5 to 2 against the Administration of Governor J. Lindsey Almond, Jr., in an action testing the validity of the payment of tuition grants for private schooling and related statutes. It was not immediately clear how the latter court ruled on school closure and funding cessation laws, but since they were directly involved apparently, they had also fallen with the tuition payment statute. The delay in the specific ruling on the other statutes had been caused by a holdup of the court's formal opinion as well as the dissenting opinions of two justices. The Chief Justice, John Eggleston, announced the court's decision tersely to a crowded courtroom, remarking only that in the case of Attorney General A. S. Harrison, Jr., against Comptroller Sidney Day, a petition for mandamus had been denied with two justices dissenting, that action having requested an order forcing the Comptroller to pay the tuition funds. Involved in the friendly suit before the High Court were the state's school closure law, funding cut-off, tuition grant laws dependent upon the school closing and funding cut-off, and the so-called "Little Rock" laws which would close any school patrolled by Federal authorities and which would authorize the governor to close any school faced with actual or threatened disorder.
In Montgomery, Ala., Governor John Patterson was sworn in this date, issuing a warning to Alabama blacks in his inaugural address that continued pressure for integration would mean closure of their schools. He promised to use every power to keep the schools segregated and appealed to blacks to turn against "the agitators of your own race whose aim is to destroy our school system. If you do not do so, and these agitators continue at their present pace, in a short time, you will have no public school system at all." He said that if the schools were closed, they might never be reopened in their lifetimes and that their children would suffer the consequences. "Our race problems will never be solved by court decrees, injunctions and federal troops. They will be solved only through mutual understanding and good will between the races without outside interference and agitation." He had a less honkified manner of speech than George Wallace, but the rhetoric was almost as honky.
In North Conway, N.H., it was reported that 16 terrified teenage girls had been injured, one seriously, when they had gone sliding dizzily down an ice-glazed ski trail on 3,000-foot high Cranmore Mountain the previous day. The trail had been closed to skiing as hazardous. None of the girls had brought their skis, but in a frolicsome mood, they had decided to try sliding. Almost instantly, they gained speed beyond their control and were thrown around trees, brush and rocks as they plummeted 100 yards down the steep, icy trail. About an inch of glare ice left by freezing rain had encrusted a foot of snow. When found, the girls were strewn about the trail, bruised and bleeding, some unable to stand. Because vehicles could not negotiate the mountain, men skilled in mountain climbing had donned spiked and hobnailed boots to reach the injured girls. The rescuers built fires to keep them warm until they could be transported on toboggans almost a mile down the mountain to an ambulance and to a hospital. The most seriously injured of them was a 16-year old girl who suffered pelvic and lumbar fractures and bladder injury. Five of the girls were held in the hospital for less serious injuries and ten others were treated at the hospital and released. They were among about 200 members of St. Patrick's Catholic Youth Organization of Lawrence, Mass., who had gone to the ski resort on the parish's second annual winter sports party. They had ridden to the top of the mountain on a skimobile, sightseeing because the ski trails had been closed as too dangerous.
On the editorial page, "Who Should Run Charlotte's Airport?" indicates that a proposal to turn Charlotte's Douglas Municipal Airport over to an independent commission to operate ought be packed away in mothballs again. It had made its last public appearance in March, 1955 and had wisely then been rejected by the City Council. During the previous four years, no compelling reasons had been adduced as to why its decision ought be reversed.
It finds that airport problems could not and should not be considered separately from the general problems of the city. The responsibility for the operation of the airport was where it properly belonged, with the City Council, receiving help from a special advisory committee of interested citizens. That committee made recommendations and then the Council acted on them, a satisfactory arrangement through the years, as the committee had done a creditable job of diagnosing airport needs, one of its greatest accomplishments having been the present terminal which was completed in 1954.
To divorce the airport from the responsibility of elected officials could prove detrimental to the best interests of the community. The North Carolina League of Municipalities agreed, indicating to the newspaper sometime earlier that the city had the city manager form of government, conceived to be the most efficient form of municipal government because it eliminated the unnecessary division of responsibility and authority and placed all administrative operations under one administrator, indicating that efficiency would never come through the division of municipal functions, but only through stronger and more coordinated efforts under the single guidance of a duly elected City Council.
It finds that it had made sense, that commissions tended to be too remote from the people and their ideas and that a duly elected City Council was directly responsible to the public.
"May Science Come Easier to the GOP" indicates that RNC chairman Meade Alcorn appeared serious about a crash program for reviving the Republican Party. But after every election day catastrophe, of which the previous November midterms had been only one, Republicans began to talk of changing the party. In the first years of the Eisenhower Administration, Republicans talked of "modernization" and injecting new ideals to the party.
Mr. Alcorn's proposals, it believes, were not so much directed at changing ideals as at changing techniques, assuming that the present need was more for "modernization" of political machinery. He appeared to invoke the need for science, but in politics science came hard, especially to Republicans. In the past, the theory of "modern" Republicanism had been attractive, but in practice, even modern ideals were forgotten and a peculiar kind of irrationalism, crystal ball-rubbing, elixir-searching, magic wand-waving, settled in, as had been the case the prior November.
Mr. Alcorn's new blueprint was to change the image of the Republicans as the "big business party", which he regarded as being false. The piece indicates that perhaps it was false and perhaps with candor it could be discarded, but the electorate had heard the previous December that the Democrats were radicals, dedicated to the ruining of "free enterprise", shot through with "Reutherism", and in states where it had been possibly suicidal to do so, Republican candidates had stubbornly made the "right to work" laws the principal issue. Perhaps it had been financially advantageous, but it had given to the people no inkling that the Republicans had really become a party of inclusive interests.
Mr. Alcorn said that Republicans had to "mount a severe and prompt attack on the mistakes of the opposition." That was always the function of the minority party as it had to criticize. But in November, Vice-President Nixon had been criticizing the Democrats for the Truman-Acheson foreign policy. The people were not ninnies and knew that the Truman Administration had retired from Washington in early 1953. One of Mr. Alcorn's difficulties would be to get his party to quit the age-old and hackneyed outcries, which was not criticism or political science.
Mr. Alcorn reportedly mentioned "burying" party factionalism, perhaps the gravest challenge to Republican science, for they had left ousted House leader Joseph Martin waiting in the cold alone, save for a chauffeur and an old Cadillac. There were Senate Republican liberals squirming in their seats under the whip of new Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. "The fights of which these warriors are victims will be hard to bury."
Democrats would hold with the idea of a scientific Republican Party, scientific in outlook, scientific in technique, even one of Robert Taft conservatism. But such a party would not be evoked from a crystal ball, nor would it be fashioned until the Republicans rid themselves of the irrationality of the 1958 Congressional campaign.
"With No Crack, It Would Just Be a Bell" indicates that amateur historian M. O. Anderson, superintendent of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, had said no to an offer to have the crack in the Liberty Bell repaired. The same London foundry where the bell had been produced was now offering to repair it, though it had tolled the knell of George III's Empire in America and then had fallen silent forever with a gaping crack in it, as every patriot was aware.
But not every patriot was an amateur historian with the stern and admirable whimsy of Mr. Anderson, who had told the foundry that the crack was more important than the bell, that it was a history in bronze, a single glance at which gave the casual historian more essential revolutionary history than all the books in the Library of Congress. It was that tiny flaw in the historic piece, not the piece itself, which excited people.
It indicates that a square yard of sidewalk on South Tryon Street in Charlotte would mean nothing except that the passing Mecklenburg resident knew that in the mud beneath it, Jefferson Davis had sunk his foot when he learned of the assassination of President Lincoln. It was not the mere fact that Lord Cornwallis had camped at Buckhorn, but that he was snowed in and that somewhere in an old house, a dying British soldier had written his name in blood on the wall.
It indicates that it would take consumer goods new, but not historical relics made over, as they should remain tarnished and cracked. No one would dare repaint the Parthenon in Athens to its original hues or would repair the parchment of the Declaration of Independence or render smooth Plymouth Rock.
"It is the flaw, the quirk, the oddity, that counts. If the Mecklenburg Declaration could be seen, interest would wane to nothing overnight."
A piece from Capper's Weekly, titled "Knife Cleaner", indicates that it was baking day and the new maid and her mistress were having a busy time, with the lady saying to the maid that they should see if the cake in the oven was baked, directing that the maid stick a knife in it to see if it came out clean. In a few minutes, the maid returned, saying, "The knife came out wonderfully clean, so I've stuck in all the other dirty knives, too."
Drew Pearson indicates that when Senator Lyndon Johnson had challenged the President that he should lead or be led, he really meant it. Almost immediately after reading the State of the Union message, the Senator had begun charting his own course of leadership, possibly one of the most important developments of the year because ordinarily the Congress waited for the White House to lead. The Senator said to friends that he planned to have a public housing bill on the President's desk by February 1 and that they had to do something about the old people, as the cost of living had gone up while their income had remained stagnant, indicating "their neglect is a crying shame". He had ticked off a list of important problems facing the nation on which he planned action. Among them was juvenile delinquency, indicating that he hoped that Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri would work further on that problem. Another was the growing trend toward monopoly, which Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee would explore further. Another was a labor bill. He said: "The Senate can't just sit back and criticize. We've got to be constructive. If the Administration isn't going to give us any leadership, we'll have to give them some new ideas. We want to get some of the best men from the colleges, from business, from science to advise us."
The Senator was particularly worried about the stymied state of affairs with Russia. During the height of the filibuster fight, while he was successfully seeking votes for his side, he was also on the phone urging that top U.S. leaders be included in the Eric Johnston dinner for Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan. He said that they had a great chance to show Mr. Mikoyan what the U.S. was like and that the State Department was not doing much about him and so they should make sure he saw the right people. As a result, some of the top leaders in Congress had attended the dinner.
It was no secret that the deposed Republican House leader, Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, had been hurt deeply when Republicans had voted to throw him out of the leadership role after 20 years of service. What Representative Martin had told the President, when the latter sought to conciliate him on the telephone, had remained a secret. He reveals that it was that the President hoped that he would continue to come to the leaders' meetings at the White House every Tuesday, as they needed his "sagacious advice". Mr. Martin had replied in polite but clipped tones that he would decline because it would not be right for him to attend the meetings now that he had been thrown out of his job and no longer enjoyed an official position of leadership. Mr. Pearson notes that friends of Mr. Martin were convinced that, in addition to the White House, former Governor Thomas Dewey of New York had a hand in throwing him out as Republican leader.
It was no secret that Senator Johnson had held out choice committee assignments as bait to win new Senators to the Southern side in the fight to save the filibuster. His right-hand man in the backstage wheeling and dealing had been Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana. After one backstage huddle, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, leader of the anti-filibuster forces, had wrapped an arm around Senator Mansfield's shoulder and told him: "We have no committee assignments to offer, Mike. We have nothing to offer except an opportunity to serve our country."
Secretary of State Dulles, apprehensive about Democratic attacks, had been courting Senator Johnson like a high school senior in June, seldom making a move without phoning Senator Johnson.
Marquis Childs indicates that at midnight this date the first half of the second term of President Eisenhower would come to a close, meaning that, pursuant to the 22nd Amendment, any successor to him by way of death or resignation would not be able to run for more than one term—ironically the situation which faced President Gerald Ford after succeeding to the Presidency upon the resignation of President Nixon in August, 1974. Mr. Childs indicates that while all lame-duck presidents under the American system of fixed terms of office had been under a serious handicap, few had found themselves in the situation confronting President Eisenhower. Because of the crushing defeat in the midterm elections the prior November, the Republican Party had been reduced to a small fraction in both the Senate and the House and those fractions were themselves divided, with the President's support having dwindled among both conservative and liberal Republicans.
His State of the Union message had largely been a reiteration of the budget-balancing theme, with the addition of yet another commission to tell the nation where it was to go. With the budgetary deficit of 12 billion dollars in the current fiscal year, the Administration had proclaimed a balanced budget for the following fiscal year. But the likelihood was that it would run another deficit, perhaps as high as 9 billion dollars. While there would be an attempt to place the blame for that deficit on the Democrats, the party in power in the executive branch would inevitably reap the consequences.
Serious critics of the Administration's defense policy were saying that the "missile lag" would shortly leave the country in a precarious condition and that the "delicate balance of terror", as it had been aptly called, would tip against the security of the country.
But those external troubles for the last two years of his Presidency were not as serious as the fact of his increasing isolation, a fundamental complaint of the activist members of his Cabinet who believed that it was imperative to do something other than to demand economy and a balanced budget. His intimates, numbering about six men with whom he regularly played golf and bridge, had sought to avoid any mention of current problems when they were with him. Somewhat the same attitude was prevalent among members of the White House staff, who were so dedicated that they discounted all criticism, which in any event rarely reached the President. They provided a layer of insulation for an executive. Even with an earnest desire to keep open the channels of free exchange with the world outside, the prisoner in the White House had an inevitable struggle. For a President who was bored or indifferent or simply tired was hopeless. The degree to which those immediately around the President discounted the mounting chorus of criticism was extraordinary. It had been coming of late from loyal Republicans with a growing concern over the drift of events, but was put down either to ignorance or prejudice.
In a Cabinet meeting some months earlier, members had referred to the adverse report of a Communist frequently critical of the Administration. The color in the President's face had deepened and he said with an edge in his voice, "Well if you've got time to read that stuff, you must not have much to do." Those close to him said that at present he lost his temper far less frequently than earlier, simply refusing to be so engaged. The impression was of a man serving out a sentence with all the stoicism he could muster. But the world did not stand still and the Presidency was at the heart of the American system. Mr. Childs indicates that it was the somber determination of those in the official family looking ahead to the last two years of his Presidency.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that the Federal program for clearing away slums, which marked its tenth anniversary in the current year, was having trouble with its legal guardians. The Administration wanted to give the program less Federal help and the Congress wanted to give it more. Standing in the background were the nation's mayors seeking more Federal help, indicating that they could not clean up the slums on their own.
Charlotte, as with dozens of other cities in the country with slum problems, had a vested interest in the outcome of the coming Congressional battle. The size and shape of future Federal aid was at stake. Since 1949, North Carolina had received or been promised 5.141 million dollars in Federal funds for slum clearance.
Out of 1.35 billion dollars which Congress had authorized since 1949, only 24 million dollars remained and the rest had been spent or promised. Cities were seeking Federal clearence money. As of December 31, 1958, applications for Federal money totaled 583 million dollars, of which 179 million had been approved, mostly because of limited funding. The Administration conceded that more Federal money had to be authorized, but it had made clear that it wanted to loosen and then cut the Federal apron strings on the slum clearance program. Pending bills reflecting the Administration's view called for appropriation of an additional 100 million dollars to continue the program between the present and the end of the current fiscal year. What the Administration wanted on a long-term basis had not been announced, but it was certain to be more modest than the proposals by the Democrats.
A bill introduced by Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, chairman of the Housing subcommittee, called for 2.1 billion dollars over six years for slum clearance, compared with 1.3 billion to be spent over six years under a program supported by the Administration in 1958. In addition to appropriating less money, the Administration in 1958 had recommended reduction of the Federal share of slum clearance projects from two-thirds to half.
The cities wanted a ten-year program of 100 million dollars per year. Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania had introduced a bill to carry out their recommendations, contending that the cities could not raise the necessary funding to do the job. Less Federal money, according to the Senator, meant less slum clearance.
There was no question that the slum clearance program would get more money, the only question being how much and whether the President would veto a bill calling for more money than he wanted.
The program had undergone few policy changes since 1949. Basically, the city bulldozed away a slum area and put in such facilities as sewer and water lines, then sold the cleared site to a private developer so that he could erect new houses and shops. The difference between what the city paid to clear the site and the money it received from the developer represented the net loss. The Federal Government paid two-thirds of that net loss on projects which met its requirements. Although 1.326 billion dollars had been promised to cities for slum clearance projects, only 157 million of that amount had been spent because of the long lag between the time a project was approved and actually completed.
In all, 668 slum clearance projects in 41 states, the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Puerto Rico had been approved by the Federal Urban Renewal Administration. Of those 668, only 18 had been completed since 1949. Despite the Federal pump-priming, slums were cropping up faster than they were being cleared away. The outgoing administrator, Albert Cole of the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, predicted that the tide would turn by 1970, but said that it would take another 1.35 billion dollars in Federal money.
Congress appeared willing to appropriate far more than that for the second ten years of the slum clearance program. Its efforts in 1959 to authorize a generous allowance for the program was shaping up as one of the major battles over the budget.
A letter writer wonders why everyone was so upset because the Cuban rebels were cleaning up their own home town. He indicates that he had read about murder and brutalities committed under El Presidente Fulgencio Batista and his pal, dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, to which Sr. Batista had fled in exile on January 1. He suggests that the U.S. seemed to think that those two were "jolly good fellows". He thinks that Washington politicians thought that Sr. Batista and Sr. Trujillo were really good guys, after all. He indicates that he was against killing and murder but it ran against the grain when folks sat around and joked while one team was getting hacked up, and suddenly found it bad taste to do that sort of thing when the tables were turned.
A letter writer from Clinton, S.C., indicates that the Cuban situation was going the way of all the rest, that Sr. Castro was not going to do like Sr. Batista and abide by the wishes of the U.S. Some in Congress were already beginning to call for some kind of reprisal against Sr. Castro. In China, the U.S. had called for reprisals and China had gone Communist. In the Near East, the same thing had happened. He indicates that the U.S. played right into the hands of Russia. "Don't buy sugar from Cuba. Make it tough for Castro and Castro will turn to Russia. And then we will have a Russian satellite 90 miles from the United States."
A letter writer thinks that there was an overload of talk about union activities in Charlotte, most of it in connection with the City policemen. He advocates letting the City Council handle the matter along with the City Manager, but to keep the Teamsters from organizing City employees.
A letter from the chairman of the Jaycees' 1958 Christmas Shopping Tour expresses gratitude for the publicity which the newspaper had given the Tour for the children of Thompson Orphanage and Alexander Home. He indicates that the tour had been their most successful to date and they appreciated the part the newspaper had played in helping them to raise the necessary funds to enable the children to experience the joy of giving to others. He thanks specifically Charlie Kelly for accompanying them on their Shopping Tour and taking pictures of the children as they selected gifts for their friends. He wishes a Happy New Year and again expresses thanks for the support of their projects and organization.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that Latin America did not seem to have learned the lesson of democracy very well, that there was a revolution going on there all the time. He thinks it would be a good idea for some of the major foundations, such as Ford, to finance about 1,000 fellowships for Latin American bright boys to American colleges where they could have a real chance to study democracy and see how it worked. He says it was hard on the common people who had to go through a war of some kind in each generation because of rival candidates who wanted to rule a country. Politics was cheaper and a better plan.
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