The Charlotte News

Monday, April 25, 1938

SIX EDITORIALS

The furniture truck had the green light, and was proceeding on its way soberly and unconcernedly when--crr-r-ash!--a police car collided with it full tilt. This happened Saturday night about 7:15 at Sixth and Church, and fortunately no one was injured. But if the truck had been a light car...

The rural police car was said to have been chasing another car, for what reason the account did not state. We hope it was for some serious offense like robbing a bank or a holdup or murder. For any lesser offense, the police would have been guilty not only of using exceedingly poor judgment, recklessly risking their own and other people's lives, but of violating a law that really matters in order to punish the infraction of another that probably was more or less unimportant. Sometimes the better part of police valor is to let the crooks get safely away.

It was the head of one CIO union--Murray of the Steel Workers--who said candidly of Homer Martin and the heads of the UAW that they lacked discipline in the ranks. That was why, after the union had reached an agreement with General Motors, strikes and "quickies" continued almost unabated despite an agreed procedure for the conciliation of grievances.

Whether or not this essential discipline has been instilled in the United Automobile Workers of America, the next day or so should disclose. Buick employees and Chevrolet employees have voted one-sidedly to pull strikes. Homer Martin says that "we have a contract with General Motors and we will live up to it. The UAW also has a constitution and we will live up to it."

That seems to state the issue pretty definitely. A strike at either of these plants will be a strike not only against the company but against the union, will show if labor, having won the right to organize against its employers, is still disorganized within its own ranks.

About the only rational explanation which can be put forward for Mr. Chamberlain's handing over of Spain to Mussolini and surrendering British mastery in the Mediterranean is that he hoped thereby to split the Rome-Berlin Axis and halt Adolf Hitler in Central Europe. He pretends, indeed, that he believes that the Italian dictator will presently get out of Spain, but it seems incredible that he is actually such a dope. And one hesitates, too, to believe the cynical story which is going around that what Mr. Chamberlain is really playing for a share of the Spanish swag for his business pals in the "City."

But how well calculated his scheme is for the achievement of his Central European aims we may judge from today's dispatches. At the instance of the Hitler Government, the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia have demanded (1) complete autonomy; (2) complete "equality"--which in the peculiar Nazi jargon actually means "mastery"--with the Czechs in the general government, though they (the Sudetens) are only one-fifth of the population of the country; and (3) the abrogation of the Czechoslovakian treaties with France and Russia and "friendship" with Germany, "which has played wolf to the Czechs for a thousand years--or, in short, the complete Germanizing of Czechoslovakia in all but the name. And what ultimate chance even the name has of surviving we can guess from the fact that Hitler's ally, Hungary, at the same time goes whole hog and demands the outright dismemberment of the Czechoslovakian country.

Mr. Chamberlain's digestive system seems to be definitely in for the dismal prospect of having somehow to get the best of a hat. For he promised to eat one if his agreement didn't achieve his ends.

In the monthly review of English business published by Barclays Banking, Ltd., London, there appears this statement:

This carries us back to 1930 and a December day when President Hoover told Congress that--

Both these explanations are valid, of course. Business conditions here have a considerable effect upon England, just as England's do upon us. And yet, it strikes us as grimly ironic or something that England should be paying back Mr. Hoover's pessimistic reference some seven and a half years later. The old world brought on the depression, according to Mr. Hoover, but according to Captain Wallace the new world is prolonging it.

Mr. George B. Ross, of Jackson Springs, Moore County, is an aspirant for Congress over in the Eighth District. And his literature informs us that the "R" in his name stands for Romulus, and that he is the son of Romulus Rudolphus Ross and Ellen McCulloch Ross, that he was born on a farm, that at A & M College (now State) he was "familiarly known to all" as "George," then as quickly as he got out of college he built a house with "running water, heat and lights," and cleared 800 acres of land for a "farm," that he is a Sunday School superintendent, that he owns an "interest in the railroad from Jackson to Cameron and both truck and passenger franchises in Eastern Carolina" as well as peach orchards, farm and timberland, etc., etc., that he has been active in politics, beginning as a justice of the peace and that he will support the "President of Our Nation" and the "principles of the New Deal that make life more secure in... homes."

From all of which we deduce, among other things, these:

1--That there is nothing like a campaign for bringing out middle names.

2--That it is still good stuff in North Carolina politics to have been born on a farm.

3 --That college boys named George are sometimes called George by other college boys.

4--That it doesn't hurt a candidate in North Carolina to have been a Sunday School superintendent.

5--That he can even survive having been a justice of the peace.

6--That Mr. Ross is pretty well-heeled.

7--That he wants to be elected.

The 50th round of the scrap between the Appalachian Electric Power Company and the Federal Power Commission took place last week. It was the power company's, by a wide margin. A Federal District Judge turned down the commission's petition to enjoin the building of a dam on the New River near Radford, Va.

Litigation over this dam has been going on, to our knowledge, for four years, maybe longer. Nobody contends that the New River is navigable, but the Federal Power Commission claimed authority over the project on the hypothesis that damming of the New would affect the navigability of the Kanawha. A question of fact is involved, and yesterday's decision was that, as a fact, the Kanawha's navigability would not be affected.

The comparison between Virginia's New River case and North Carolina's Tuckertown case is almost pat. Nobody contends that the Yadkin is navigable in its upper reaches, but the Federal Power Commission does contend that it becomes navigable at some point after it reaches South Carolina and acquires the name Pee Dee, and a dam at Tuckertown would affect that navigability.

And we daresay that North Carolina's subsequent experience with the Tuckertown dam will bear out Virginia's with the New River dam, and that four or five years from now the Yadkin will be meandering in and out of all sorts of courts, getting nowhere at all.