The Charlotte News
Monday, January 26, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Richmond, Va., that the Legislature would meet in extraordinary session on Wednesday to seek new defenses for the state in its battle against integration in the public schools. Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., had called the special session on Sunday night, six days following the courts having dealt a knockout blow to the "massive resistance" laws which had been enacted by the Legislature in 1956. Without those laws, under which nine schools had been closed, the state was powerless to prevent or delay integration where it had been ordered by Federal judges to begin no later than February 2 at the start of the winter semester. The Governor had indicated that he would offer the Assembly only a stopgap program designed to meet the most immediate problems, when he would address the State Senate and House of Delegates in joint session on Wednesday at noon. The Governor said that he still planned to appoint a committee of legislators to formulate a long-range anti-integration program. He declined any hint as to the specific measures he would recommend, saying that "it would serve no useful purpose" to disclose whether he would offer a plan aimed at staving off integration in Arlington and in the localities where closed schools might have to be reopened on a racially integrated basis, those in Norfolk, Charlottesville and Front Royal. In Arlington, plans had been made to appeal to the Supreme Court the order made by a U.S. District Court judge that four black students be enrolled at Stratford Junior High School for the semester starting February 2. The local school board attorney had said on Sunday that he would confer with a representative of the State Attorney General on this date or on Tuesday. In Norfolk, where 10,000 pupils had been affected when six schools had been shut down the previous fall, a decision might come this date as to whether the schools had to be reopened. The City Council had voted to deny operating funds to all grades above the sixth, effective early in February. That move, which would close white and black schools, was to be challenged this date before a U.S. District Court. In Charlottesville, where two schools with 1,700 pupils had been closed, the school board had been told by its counsel that it had to reopen the schools "within a reasonable time." Similar advice had been given to the Warren County School Board, whose 1,000-pupil Warren County High School had been closed.
In Montgomery, Ala., former Circuit Judge George Wallace, who had withheld voter records from the Federal Civil Rights Commission, would have to answer this date for his defiance of a Federal Court order to comply. He could receive anything from a reprimand to a jail term and a fine. His fate lay in the hands of his former law school classmate, District Judge Frank Johnson, Jr. Mr. Wallace, whose term on the bench had expired, had returned to practicing law in his hometown of Clayton. He was now forced to show cause why his conduct in giving the voter records of Barbour and Bullock Counties to hurriedly summoned grand juries in his court rather than to the Commission, had not amounted to contempt of court. He was under orders to make the records available to the civil rights investigators examining complaints that blacks in those and other counties had been denied their voting rights. Agents eventually had gained access to the files through the grand juries, but Judge Johnson still cited Mr. Wallace for contempt, saying that the latter had failed to comply with his order and had used devious methods to make the voter records accessible. The contempt citation had come two weeks earlier. Mr. Wallace's term on the bench had expired a week earlier and his brother, Jack Wallace, had succeeded him. Mr. Wallace had run unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary against present Governor John Patterson the prior spring, coming in second. (Famously, he had said, according to press accounts, that he would never again be "out-segged" in an election—which was sometimes reported as "out-niggered". Indeed, he would not be in 1962. He later denied having ever made such a statement.) When the Commission had subpoenaed him and the records for a hearing on December 8 and 9, he had refused to attend. A firm supporter of states' rights and segregation, Mr. Wallace had contended that the Commission had no right to examine the records in the two counties, saying that the files had been impounded since October 28 and November 21, respectively, for the grand jury probes of voting irregularities. Three weeks earlier, faced with a second order by Judge Johnson, then-Judge Wallace had called the juries into session on a few hours of notice and handed them the records in question. In turn, they had allowed the Federal investigators to examine them.
The Administration's plan for a four-year extension of the draft law had received a potent push from Congress this date, when chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Carl Vinson of Georgia, said that they had no choice but to extend the draft, that without forceful inducement, military ranks would be emptied far below the necessary strength. He expressed the hope that there would be no hesitancy on the part of any member of his Committee to meet their responsibility in that regard. Mr. Vinson's remarks had been prepared for the start of hearings on the Administration's bill to keep the Selective Service Act in effect until July 1, 1963. The measure would also extend the draft of doctors, the existing suspension of manpower limits for the armed forces and provisions aiding servicemen with dependents. Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Finocane had been slated to spearhead the Pentagon's case, but there appeared no heavy opposition in the House. Many said that they disliked the draft but felt it necessary under the pressure of the cold war. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had recommended that the draft law be extended for only two years instead of four, saying that because of the present fast changes in military technology and manpower needs, Congress ought take a new look at the law at least every two years.
Floods still menaced some areas in five eastern and central states this date, but waters from swollen rivers and streams were receding in most sections and the worst of the mid-winter flooding appeared temporarily to have subsided. The chief problem for the thousands hit by the previous week's floods in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Indiana was the huge cleanup effort. The Red Cross had estimated that more than 22,000 families had been affected by the floods, with thousands of others forced temporarily from their homes. Cold air, with snow or rain, spread from the central plains across the northern half of the country, adding to the inconvenience of flood victims. In Ohio, one of the states hit hardest by flooding, the Ohio River was the last of the state's waterways still threatening further flooding. At Cincinnati, the river had edged up to 55 feet, 3 feet above flood stage. The Weather Bureau predicted an expected 57-foot crest to be reached at around midnight this night, but only minor damage was expected unless fresh rains would cause it to rise above the 60-foot mark. Floods in Ohio had caused an estimated damage of 100 million dollars in 76 of the state's 88 counties. In western Pennsylvania, the cleanup effort was in progress, many roads having been reopened and public transportation returning slowly to normal, with schools and industry planning to resume operations as soon as possible. At Meadville, Pa., the ice-choked French Creek had returned slowly to its banks and some of the 2,000 persons who had evacuated had moved back into their homes. Efforts continued by demolition experts to blast openings into huge ice jams which had kept about 10 percent of the city of 25,000 underwater for five days. At Pittston, Pa., rescue workers had finally halted the flow of water from the Susquehanna River into a mine shaft where 12 men had been trapped since the prior Thursday, but few believed that the men would be found alive. The major job of pumping out the tons of water which had poured into the mine was expected to continue for two more days. Thirty-three other miners had escaped the prior Thursday. The coldest weather this date below zero, was confined mainly to the upper Mississippi Valley and the upper Great Lakes region, but some zero-temperature weather had been reported along the Canadian border as well. It had been 17 below at Lone Rock, Wisc., compared to 16 above 24 hours earlier. Temperatures were 20 degrees lower this date than the previous morning throughout most of the cold belt. It was a little warmer in the Gulf states, with temperatures between eight and twelve degrees higher than a day earlier. Skies were fair with little temperature change from Texas westward to the Southwest desert region.
In Vatican City, it was reported that Pope John XXIII would convoke a great assembly, the 21st Ecumenical Council in the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church, to seek unity of the Christian forces of the world. Return to the fold of the Eastern Orthodox Church's 129 million members had been seen as a prime object of the conclave, but there were great obstacles to any formal reunification, particularly the Roman Catholic dogma that the Pope was supreme and infallible in matters of faith and morals. Reaffirmation of the Church's stand against Communism could be another major subject of the Ecumenical Council, the first since 1870. Pope John already had expressed grave concern with the plight of Catholics in Communist countries and particularly in Communist China, where the regime had been trying to foster a national Catholic Church which denied allegiance to Rome. The Council would bring together Roman Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops from all over the world in what might be the most immense gathering in Christian history, with more than 2,500 eligible to attend. Representatives of other Christian communities, in addition to Roman Catholics, were likely to be invited to attend as well. The 77-year old Pope had announced his intention to convene the Council on Sunday after a mass in honor of the conversion of St. Paul, the Roman Jew and persecutor of Christians who was struck to the ground on his way to Damascus. The Vatican announcement said: "Regarding the celebration of the Ecumenical Council, this, in the thought of the Holy Father looks not only to the edification of the Christian peoples, but is intended as an invitation to the separate [Christian] communities to seek unity which so many desire in all parts of the world."
In San Francisco, it was reported that the only sedition trial to come out of the Korean War, which Congress had never declared, would begin this date with the selection of a jury in Federal District Court. The case had taken almost 3 years to reach the trial stage. John W. Powell, 39, and his wife Sylvia, also 39, both of San Francisco, and Julian Schuman of New York, had been indicted as defendants in April, 1956. Mr. Powell had published a magazine in postwar Shanghai, the China Monthly Review, and had continued to publish it after the Chinese Communists had come to power in 1949, with his wife and Mr. Schuman as associate editors. All three had returned to the U.S. in 1955. They were charged under the Sedition Act of 1917 with conspiring to obstruct the war effort and incite mutiny among U.S. forces by circulating copies of the magazine in the U.S. The Government alleged that the conspiracy consisted of the publishing of charges that the U.S. had waged germ warfare and obstructed truce negotiations, a conspiracy because, according to the Government, the defendants knew that the reports were false. Mr. Powell had been born in Shanghai but was educated in the U.S. at the University of Missouri. During World War II, he had worked for the Office of War Information in Washington and in China. His wife, originally from Oregon, was a postwar UNRRA worker in Shanghai. Mr. Schuman, from Boston originally, was a radio correspondent in Shanghai before he had joined the staff of the Review. Defense efforts to obtain evidence and other maneuvers had delayed the trial.
In Juneau, Alaska, an Eskimo carpenter and a lawyer had been dominant figures as the new state's first Legislature had convened this date. But a former FBI agent, who did not seek the job, would have to guide the legislators. Hugh Wade, 57, Alaska's Secretary of State and acting Governor, had grasped the reins of what was believed the strongest executive type state government when Governor William Egan had become critically ill. They had been the only elected state officers. The former FBI agent, who had come to Alaska 26 years earlier, faced the arduous task of outlining the administrative program of the new state's government. In messages to the Legislature, Mr. Wade would attempt to pad the skeleton of Alaska's streamlined Constitution. Behind him would be two other Democrats, Eskimo William Beltz, 46, and Warren Taylor, who had come to the state 50 years earlier and had first served in the old territorial Legislature in 1933. Mr. Beltz had been chosen on Sunday at a pre-legislative caucus as Senate president, and Mr. Taylor was named Speaker of the House. Governor Egan had remained on the critical list following emergency surgery for an abdominal ailment at a Seattle hospital after he had become ill a few hours after his inauguration on January 3. The task before the legislators was enormous, with speculation on the length of the first session having ranged from three months to as much as a year. First on the agenda would be the reorganization of a maze of more than 50 agencies, departments, commissions and boards which had been established during Alaska's nearly 100-year history as a Territory. They were to be squeezed into no more than 20 state departments. The initial recommendation likely would call for no more than a dozen. Simultaneously, work on establishing the state's first court system had to begin. In the statehood act passed the previous year, Congress had limited to three years the duration of the present Federally sponsored courts, currently Alaska's only judicial system. The legislators would also have to deal with other matters, including salary scales for the Governor and Secretary of State, both of whom had run for office without promise of exactly what they would be paid. The legislators would have to talk about their own salaries also as they were temporarily serving without pay.
In Kansas City, Mo, it was reported that a 43-year old man had dashed into a smoke-filled home on Sunday night to rescue his sister but had become trapped in a second-floor closet. Overcome by smoke, he was carried out by a fireman and revived. His sister turned out not to have been in the house as she had left when the fire had been discovered.
Bob Slough of The News presents the first of a series of articles examining the state's juvenile court system, its origins and deficiencies, reporting that the system was characterized by a lack of uniformity which created a hodgepodge of juvenile court proceedings. In one county, a juvenile judge with years of training as a practicing attorney heard cases in a court which operated with the efficiency of a legal machine, being provided with a study of the child's background giving the judge knowledge of the condition of the child's home and the psychological behavior pattern of the child. Before the hearing in the court, the judge thus had much of the information needed to arrive at a sensible decision which would be in the best interests of the child. But in another county, a man with no legal training and little time to spend on such matters, heard juvenile cases with no background information on the child. He would usually decide the case in one of three ways, patting the delinquent child on the head and telling him to sin no more, giving the child a severe reprimand, or sending him or her to a training school. If the judge patted the child on the head, there would probably be no follow-up investigation, as most of the 100 counties of the state had no probation services in their juvenile courts. Basically, the philosophy of the juvenile court laws were sound, but the manner in which communities took advantage of those laws left much to be desired. As one veteran juvenile court judge had put it: "Unfortunately, many people feel the court is dealing with little people. Therefore, we should have a little court." He said that it was one thing wrong with the system. In six counties, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Gaston, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake, domestic relations courts heard and decided juvenile cases. Those courts were created because the counties took advantage of a state law permitting the operation of them. But 91 other counties in the state had not taken advantage of the law and in those counties the clerks of court, by law, served as juvenile judges. A survey of the National Probation and Parole Association had revealed that the majority of the clerks of Superior Court serving as juvenile judges for their counties indicated that their other duties had become so heavy that they were unable to devote a sufficient amount of time or attention to their duties as juvenile judges. Many of them were well qualified to serve as clerks of court, yet not suited by temperament, training or previous experience to serve as a juvenile judge. That did not mean that the clerks had not served devotedly and without conscience as juvenile judges. Many who had done the best job they could as juvenile judges were the first to admit that pressing duties and lack of experience prevented their performing what they considered to be an adequate job. In the majority of the counties where the clerks served as judge, the juvenile courts had no special quarters or hearing chambers, and many held private hearings in their own quarters. Most of the clerks reported that they had no clerical personnel except for their regular staff and no special provision for maintaining juvenile records. Juvenile court judges participating in an NPPA survey expressed the most concern over the inadequacy of direct, "on the spot" services, in the form of courts and probation services for children in trouble. The NPPA had asked 85 judges what they thought were the major needs in connection with the present system of juvenile courts in North Carolina and over half had mentioned "better probation service" for both prehearing studies and supervision. Thirty-eight had listed the need for "a separate" or "special" court for juvenile and family cases, or "a separate juvenile court system". The six domestic relations courts in the state provided service but for only 21 percent of the state's population. Mr. Slough winds up the first installment by asking why should not the child in a poor eastern county of the state have the same opportunity for justice as a child in a county which had a good juvenile court system and whether the child in the poor county was not entitled to the same rights as the child in the more wealthy section of the state.
On an inside page, the first in the five-part series on murder in the U.S., by Dr. Ralph Binay, criminologist and former director of the psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing Prison in New York, indicates that a murder was commited in the country once every 45 minutes, examining the causes of it and what might be done to prevent it. Was it, in this instance
Had the ICE tactics today being used been employed by immigration enforcement officers in the Nixon Administration around, say, 1973, would they have entered John Lennon's residence without a warrant and dragged him into the street without his clothes on the pretext of needing to capture and deport a domestic terrorist, to show that "no one is above the law" and to hell with court orders from "radical, leftist judges" to the contrary? Such is the case with many today and it is a very poor commentary to have to say that the current regime in 2026 makes the Nixon Administration appear as ultra-liberal, fastidious in its respect for the Constitution, as clean as a hound's tooth, by comparison.
On the editorial page, "The Very Dry Wit & Early Pessimism" indicates that the banter about Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina as a vice-presidential candidate at the press conference of Governor Luther Hodges on Thursday could be called an exercise in the supreme art of political indirection, as 1960 was still a long way off to be dealing in names except out of pure speculation.
It finds that the question of whether or not the Democratic vice-presidential nominee would or could be a Southerner was a timeless one. Senator Ervin thought not but Governor Hodges had been quick to disagree with him on that point, saying, "I think his dry sense of humor got a little too dry that time."
Two tendencies in national politics could be marked as bearing on the question. By 1960, chances were that the vice-presidential nomination, second only to that for the presidency, would be the stuff on which many a senatorial, as well as gubernatorial, dream would be made. There had once been a fable about the woman who had two sons, one who had run away and the other had become vice-president, and "neither was ever heard of again." But that fable had faded under Vice-President Nixon. Under the twin influences of his own ambition and President Eisenhower's incurable whiggery, Mr. Nixon had given the office dimensions it had never before had, having become the shadow side of the Presidency. As the President's duties had grown more complex, the Vice-President's role would grow with them as would the prestige of the office.
On the other hand, it finds that the expansion of the vice-presidency would continue to ripen as a political plum and would be less likely to be held out as a mere symbol or sop to restive tempers of Southern Democrats. Senator Ervin was on the right track, it finds, in that those in the "national" party were increasingly inclined to read Southern Democrats out on civil rights and would, consequently, for political reasons, be less inclined to go along with a Southerner for the vice-presidency.
Those two currents had come at an
inopportune time, with Dixiecrat sentiment running again high and the
need thus acute to steer the party away from another breakup, both
for its own political good and for the good of accommodation on
touchy issues in the country. The precedent of Southern
vice-presidential nominees on the Democratic ticket stretched back to
Senator Alben Barkley, in 1948, having gotten the nod from President
Truman, and to Vice-President Truman, himself, in 1944, if one
wanted to include Missouri in the South. In 1960, it finds, it would
face a test for survival. (We don't mean to interrupt it on a roll, one which, while appearing valid in early 1959, would get flipped into the ditch at the side of the road in 1960, but it appears to forget Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, nominated and elected as Vice-President under FDR in each of his first two terms, as well as President Woodrow Wilson, who, while having been president of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey before being nominated in 1912 for the presidency, had been raised in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina, the son of a Presbyterian minister, in consequence of which he began his collegiate studies for a year, before transferring to Princeton, at Davidson College outside Charlotte—where for a time in that year he fell under the charms and spells of the apparently very charming salesmanship of fellow classmate Thomas Dixon, Jr., of Shelby, the latter eventually receiving his law school training at the famous Dick and Dillard Law School in Greensboro, N.C., which apparently taught its acolytes how to warp the Constitution to effect post-bellum white su-premacy under color
It indicates that its sentiments were with Governor Hodges on the matter, that Senator Ervin's apprehensions might have reason, "but the fancy of dry wit should not lead to such early pessimism."
"It's Essential to the State's Progress" finds that the "North Carolina way" regarding segregation was gaining support throughout the South because its doctrine of preserving the schools had been established early in the process, with the state's leaders recognizing that what the state did agriculturally and industrially depended in large part on what the state did educationally and that economic progress did not flow from closed schools.
Cooler heads in states threatened by chaos recognized that point also. Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, had said recently to his fellow Georgians: "The tragedy of the present dilemma is that the South, as a region, seemed on the verge of what might be called [an economic] breakthrough. What will happen in the years ahead none may say. But that public education should be in danger of abolition in perhaps four or five states is a tragedy the cost of which may not be estimated… North Carolina, anticipating that a climate of order and a continuation of schools will be helpful, has just announced the construction of a new research center near her three great universities—Duke, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State. Local banks and corporations raised about 1.5 million dollars to speed its establishment. North Carolina is looking forward to using her universities to assist new business. She is not confronted with the possibility of closing their doors. Indeed, the appeal to new industry will be: 'Come to North Carolina; the children of your workers and executives will attend excellent public schools. The full research assets of three great universities will assist you with your problems…'"
It concludes that North Carolinians could be certain that "a climate of order and a continuation of schools" would not only be "helpful" to the Research Triangle but essential to the state's progress generally.
"Dr. Root & the Flapdoodle Market" indicates that in history there had always been a big market for flapdoodle. Surveying the market at present, it cites the case of Dr. E. Merrill Root, pedagogue of Earlham College in Indiana, who devoted his waking hours to finding Marxism in American history textbooks. He claimed that Americans were being brainwashed by a cabal of historians, which in his view linked almost every famous publishing house in the country. The historians of the cabal included Walter Johnson, the biographer of William Allen White, who had recently endorsed the view that the American Revolutionary War was of a dual nature, against the British Crown and against the "upper classes" of colonial America. At that point, according to Dr. Root, he had entered the realm of Karl Marx, talking of "class warfare". In the romantic view of Dr. Root, there was no such thing in colonial America and it thus could not possibly have been a factor in the Revolution. Colonial America had been a benevolent brotherhood where coastal merchants and farmers had grown wealthy, where primogeniture, that is the automatic passing of the estate to the eldest son, land speculation and an established church had not riled the unfortunate because they had accepted their fate with the solidity of 13th Century serfs.
When the Revolution had erupted, small upland farmers were only playing in innocent fun when they drove rich Tories to Canada or when they staged whiskey rebellions and Regulator movements. When Alexander Hamilton had exclaimed, "Your people, sir, is a great beast," all republicans and democrats across the land had risen up and called his name blessed, in the view of Dr. Root. The latter wanted people to assume that until Marx had enunciated his peculiar theory of class warfare, no such thing as a feeling of envy existed and that every historian who read it into American history was a dupe of Marx.
It wonders what people who were concerned about that grave problem ought do about it, perhaps shoot the historians? "While we rack our already-infiltrated brains for an alternative, we would urge Dr. Root to move on to American literature."
It finds that Henry David Thoreau had refused to pay taxes to the Concord capitalists and had also written of "civil disobedience", and thus was probably in the pay of the First International. Then Dr. Root could turn to nursery rhymes. "What about Little Red Ridinghood, professor?"
"We may be saved yet."
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Health Club Cometh", suggests that the astute future historian might trace the nation's progress in terms of the gallivanting bathroom, that the jump from the wooden tub to the future's "health room" was relatively hasty, but that a lot of water and science had been spilled in the barefooted procession from water closet to toilet, to bathroom, to health room, including distressed detours to such atrocities as the powder and little girl's rooms.
The health room was said to contain a sunken pool in which a large family could bathe simultaneously. There was supposed to be an electronic laundry which would wash, press and dry in ten minutes, and utter harmonic chimes, a variable health vibrator, a power-operated towel cabinet, a three-dimensional television, a walk-through shower which would wet, soap, cleanse, dry and scent with one motion, and an automatic dispenser of health drinks.
Eddie Guest had once opined: "It takes a heap o' livin' to make a house a home." Now, it took a heap o' groceries and stacks o' mortgage papers. In the future, it would take a heap o' house just to hold a health room. It finds that there was no reason why a child ought leave the health room until he was able to vote. Without doubt, the candidate of the future would not mention one-room schools and log houses and would tax memory or credulity by alluding to little houses behind big houses. "But just to show he's a regular kind o' guy, he'll speak glowingly of the old toilet at the homestead, the poignant old alcove that contained only three permanent fixtures."
Drew Pearson indicates that a new farm bill, which would make Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson howl with anguish, was being written by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, representing the wheat and corn farmers, and by Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia, representing the cotton and peanut farmers. Those two opposing Democrats ideologically were teaming up during the week to write the farm bill which would slash farm surpluses, slash the production of large farmers, and, they believed, help small farmers. They hoped to do it by tightening acreage controls, sharpening market regulations and reducing subsidy payments to large farmers. Under the formula, Senators Talmadge and Humphrey hoped to work out a strict limit on the production payments of any single farmer, which would discourage large farmers from overproducing and pare down the 6 million dollars which the taxpayers were presently paying for the farm subsidy program.
The strange alliance between the two was something of a political miracle. "One is a rootin'-tootin' champion of civil rights, the other a filibusterer against civil rights." But when they teamed up to write a farm bill, it was certain to pass.
They had been brought together the previous year by a farm speech by Senator Talmadge which Senator Humphrey had liked and congratulated his colleague, remarking that their ideas were not far apart and suggesting that they might work together on farm legislation. That had been followed by a friendly exchange of letters. Now, they were ready to work together on the details of the farm bill which would have the the official Democratic label. In that, they had the private blessing of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana. They would be opposed by Secretary of Agriculture Benson, but Democratic leaders intended to take the initiative away from the Administration on farm policies as well as in the areas of defense, labor and housing.
Congressional leaders had pricked up their ears at rumors that Llewellyn Thompson, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, was more favorable than the State Department regarding the visit of Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, and had promptly summoned the Ambassador to closed-door sessions before the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees. They had received some important views on Russia, but Assistant Secretary of State William McComber had sat listening in so intently that Ambassador Thompson, if he had divergent views from his boss, Secretary of State Dulles, had not expressed them. He had reported that consumer demands of the Russian people were forcing the Soviet high command to a position of partial disarmament, saying: "Anastas Mikoyan clearly indicated this in his talks with President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles. Mikoyan himself, I am convinced, favors at least some disarmament and so do the other top leaders, including Khrushchev. However, it is a situation that is being forced on them. Russia cannot continue to carry the lead of consumer goods production demanded by its people, plus an all-out armament program. There will have to be a cutback somewhere and it looks like it will be made at the expense of arms production." In addition to "economic pressures" for disarmament within Russia, the Ambassador said that he thought that Mr. Mikoyan felt that "neither side could win" in a hot war and that Russia, therefore, had decided to concentrate more on improving its living standards and less on military spending. He also indicated that another encouraging hope for peace was the emphasis which Russia had been placing on education, that the more people were educated, the more they wanted to better their living standards and live in peace. He added that there had been some criticism of the new education policy under Premier Khrushchev on the basis that students ought be afforded even more time for classroom studies, indicating that many Russian educators believed that the part-school, part-work routine, which was compulsory for most students in Russia, was lowering educational standards and had strongly demanded a full academic schedule without requiring talented students to work part-time in industry.
Joseph Alsop compares an earlier time in Britain when there were Whigs and Tories to the present in America. In that earlier time, the great Tory chieftain, Lord Derby, had bewildered his own followers and enraged the opposition by stealing the main item in the Whig program. When a simple-minded Tory had mumbled something about party principles, Lord Derby had replied: "But don't you see that we dished the Whigs?" In the current scenario in Washington, he finds Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson's new civil rights move to be a "beautiful Whig-dishing operation", in which the political strategists of the Administration were the Whigs and Senator Johnson had dished them very thoroughly.
Within the Administration, a hard fight had been ongoing for many weeks about the type of civil rights legislation which the President ought send to Congress. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell, reportedly supported by the Vice-President, had pleaded hard for a "strong" civil rights bill, meaning the type which would be enthusiastically welcomed by the NAACP but could not pass the Congress. Mr. Mitchell had argued that the Northern black vote could only be won for the Republicans in 1960 by an ultra-strong bill.
The new White House chief of staff, General Wilton Persons, had opposed the inclusion of any civil rights bill in the President's legislative program and had also been supported by at least one influential member of the Cabinet, Secretary of Treasury Robert Anderson. The latter two had argued that the President could not affront the Southern conservatives with any sort of civil rights bill, when he needed their help badly to keep the budget balanced.
In the middle of the debate was Attorney General William Rogers, who argued for a moderate bill solely aimed at helping him solve his problems, specifically, giving him subpoena power to strengthen his hand in the effort to protect black voting rights in the South. He wanted broader powers to deal with law-obstructing mobs, including powers to take legal action against the organizers of such mobs, and he wanted to continue and to strengthen the Civil Rights Commission formed pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
The President, who had a horror of playing politics with civil rights, had finally taken the advice of Mr. Rogers and was thus getting ready to send that type of bill to Congress, when Majority Leader Johnson had briskly risen in the Senate and offered a Rogers-type bill of his own, albeit with many differences in detail, including particularly a scheme for a conciliation commission which had originally been proposed by Benjamin Cohen. The Justice Department said that the Johnson bill was not nearly as good as the White House bill would be, but the bill which Senator Johnson had offered and the bill which the President was preparing to offer were broadly identical in character, thus determining its political impact.
Mr. Alsop finds something wonderfully comic in that spectacle of Senator Johnson, "the grand panjandrum of the Democrats", confidently taking the words out of the President's mouth before he had spoken them. He also finds something dazzling in the new move by the Senator, a Texan and the protégé of the Senate's Southern oligarchs, daring to offer a civil rights bill almost as strong as the bill which the Republican Administration was planning to offer. If the Senator made the move, one could be virtually certain that there would be Southern filibuster and that, in itself, was proof enough of the virtuosity of Senator Johnson.
But it was easy to forget the reassuring part of the matter, that the Johnson-Eisenhower-Rogers approach to civil rights was a practical approach, designed to serve a noble purpose and to achieve a great end. The Senator could not have made his move if he had not been sure that the President would refuse to play politics with civil rights and would not have made his move if he were not a big man who thought about bigger things than dishing the Whigs, despite his enjoying dishing them when he could. "One can enjoy the joke, in fact, but above all one must cheer the results."
Doris Fleeson indicates that when Senator George Smathers of Florida had told a Democratic victors dinner in Washington recently that the country would feel a lot more secure with Senate Democratic leader Johnson in the White House, Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who had just been larding Senator Smathers with the very best butter, abruptly stopped smiling. A table of California notables, all in favor of Adlai Stevenson, had visibly bridled. Associates of Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts looked stricken and later they reproached Senator Smathers, saying, "Jack won't like this."
Senator Johnson had ignored the whole thing and, in a brief and gracious speech, had devoted himself to the greater glories of his party.
Senator Smathers now denied that anything more than standard operating politics was involved in his remarks, and she acknowledges that it was a poor Senator who had not been proposed at some point by a kindly colleague for the highest political office. There were no signs at present of a presidential organization for Senator Johnson and, if it should appear, its spokesman would not be a Southerner. Nor was so brilliant a tactician likely to attempt a formal onslaught on a difficult objective when he was weak on so many flanks, having had a heart attack in the summer of 1955, in addition to his oil and gas lobby baggage, and civil rights. Senator Johnson belonged with Adlai Stevenson, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri and Governor Robert Meiner of New Jersey in the category of floaters. She posits that they could not set the pace of the 1960 presidential contest for various and different reasons but could only ride the political currents as gracefully as possible. If the pace-setters knocked each other out or aroused controversies that they could not later resolve, party peacemakers would then give weight to the claims of the floaters.
At present, the pace-setter was Senator Kennedy, who had to accept the risks of that role to overcome the disadvantages of his youth, his relative inexperience and his pioneer position as a candidate who was a Catholic. She finds the risks harsh and if he did not fill the bases every time at bat, it would be said that he had fallen behind. He was an inevitable target of those who favored others and also would be expected to enter state primaries which had been the political graveyards of many hopeful candidates.
The primary calendar did not begin auspiciously for him, as the first for the first time was in Vermont. While Senator Kennedy ought carry it easily, it had only three electoral votes. He ought do as well in the New Hampshire primary the following week, but its four electoral votes would be compared to the 11 of Minnesota, which on the same day would surely go to native son, Senator Humphrey.
The Humphrey forces were presently said to be in conversation with Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan on how best to cut down Senator Kennedy in the Wisconsin primary. Each of the two potential and temporary allies figured that he could hold the farm vote and get a fair share of labor, but feared dividing their strength against the attractive Senator Kennedy.
In 1956, she points out, the great primary prize had been California. But that had already been ruled out of bounds for 1960 by the Democrats in honor of favorite-son Governor Pat Brown, in the hope of giving him immense bargaining power at the convention.
A letter writer finds that the appearance of Republican Congressman Charles Jonas at the Chamber of Commerce dinner the previous week where Senator John F. Kennedy was the featured guest, and his non-appearance at the national meeting of Republican women held in Charlotte the prior week reminded him of a traveling goat. The goat was shipped by train, with its destination written on a tag hung around its neck, causing the baggage man to become agitated when he discovered the tag missing. "The goat," he explained, "done et up where he's going!"
A letter writer passes on the good work of the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness, in its North Carolina Committee, indicating that their religious school housed a non-sectarian kindergarten. He had observed some ladies from the Society giving the children eye tests from charts which did not require reading. He had observed also eye tests given by three of the Society's leaders visiting Charlotte and had learned from them the amazing things which the Society had done, that it was a non-profit which had voluntary personnel who received training from a specialist nurse from the national office. There were 57 kindergartens in Charlotte, many being church kindergartens, and all were serviced by the Society, that between April and November the children's eyes were tested. At the Cherry Point Marine Base, 226 children had been tested. All of the funds for the Society came from contributions and membership dues ranging from a nominal sum upward from those willing to advance the work.
A letter writer from Salisbury indicates that the country could stand pat as long as the Russians could, until their people blew up in their face, that they had told more big lies than ever except in the Middle Ages where lies had become the order of the day for the nobles and clergy to remain in power. Russia had 30 million slaves who had committed no crime except not believing in Communism. He finds that no one had any reason to find fault with socialism, but all believers in democracy hated autocracy and tyranny. The West did not want to harm others as it tried to please itself, but did want to do as it pleased as long as it bothered no one else.
Translated to current times, we would have to find that Trump follows implicitly the lying strategy the letter writer outlines. Trump adores Putin, a former Communist and KGB agent. Trump likes Communist China and Communist North Korea for their authoritarian decisiveness and lying propaganda methods of enslaving their people. Trump, thus, is a Communist sympathizer and therefore so is Fox Propaganda and all of the other sycophants bowing at his altar. Chew on it, stupid little Trumpie, just like the goat of the parable chewed up its identification tag.
Once again, we advise, for your own salvation, you had better find out who
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