The Charlotte News

Friday, September 4, 1942

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Ed. Note:

Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble and the roar
As she dashes thro’ the woodland, and speeds a-long the shore,
See the mighty rushing engine,
Hear her merry-bell ring out,
As they speed a-long in safety,
On the "Great Rock Island Route."

--from "The Great Rock Island Route", by J.A. Roff, 1882,
as dedicated to "The Genl. Ticket And Passenger Agent."

The front page pleads for scarce scrap steel, the shortage of which was threatening to shut down the nation’s leading steel centers from San Francisco to Chicago to Youngstown to Pittsburgh. Said Office of Price Administration chief Donald Nelson, the mills in each of these major centers were threatened with virtual immediate shutdown should the scrap drives across the country not produce instanter adequate fodder for the hungry coke furnaces.

Said Mr. Nelson, bridges of the land were not safe from consignment to the scrap pile. Thus, Senator Reynolds may have been right after all: America was better off without Bridges.

Editor J. E. Dowd pledges that The News would do its part to publicize the need in the Carolinas.

Mr. Davis, yesterday's letter writer, might yet get his vengeance against the boxcar which punched and punished him so ruefully that time between here and there and everywhere, and with such a demonically insensitive little smirking grin on its face, as he sailed through the wintry marshes, lips sealed by the windy rush past his icy wall-bashed hopper-tripped gates, from north Charlotte to his unloading point at Kannapolis via the missed opportunity at Concord (prounouced in NC as Concorde, not as "conquered"). He perhaps now could get out his welding torch, light it up with a fancy cigar, and proceed to slice up the old cow-catch into little bitty orange clock-beat pieces to send her back down the haunted rails to Pitsy, from thence to become shrapnel to be fired at Nazis--just deserts for an unjust old rummy-stiff pitch-mol-buzzer.

On the editorial page, "J. Jangle Jingle" gives a boost to the upcoming Victory Belle Jingle, Jangle, Jingle Revue, the proceeds of which would be provided to supply aid to American prisoners of war and to afford entertainment to soldiers stationed in the Charlotte area.

"...Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow."

You get to read the rest today. We're busy hunting for scrap steel and jingle jangles.

Incidentally, on June 11, 1963, President Kennedy issued Executive Order Number 11111 which provided "assistance for the removal of obstructions of justice and suppression of unlawful combinations within the State of Alabama".

Executive Order Number 11118, issued September 10, provided for further assistance in aid of the same purpose.

Executive Order Number 11111 read:

WHEREAS on June 11, 1963, I issued Proclamation No. 3542, pursuant in part to the provisions of section 334 of Title 10, United States Code; and

WHEREAS the commands contained in that Proclamation have not been obeyed, and the unlawful obstructions of justice and combinations referred to therein continue:

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, including Chapter 15 of Title 10 of the United States Code, particularly sections 332, 333 and 334 thereof, and section 301 of Title 3 of the United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. The Secretary of Defense is authorized and directed to take all appropriate steps to remove obstructions of justice in the State of Alabama, to enforce the laws of the United States within that State, including the orders of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama referred to in the said Proclamation, and to suppress unlawful assemblies, combinations, conspiracies and domestic violence which oppose or obstruct the execution of the laws of the United States or impede the course of justice under those laws within that State.

SECTION 2. In furtherance of the authorization and direction contained in section 1 hereof, the Secretary of Defense is authorized to use such of the Armed Forces of the United States as he may deem necessary.

SECTION 3. I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of Defense to call into the active military service of the United States, as he may deem appropriate to carry out the purposes of this order, any or all of the units of the Army National Guard and of the Air National Guard of the State of Alabama to serve in the active military service of the United States for an indefinite period and until relieved by appropriate orders. In carrying out the provisions of section 1, the Secretary of Defense is authorized to use the units, and members thereof, called into the active military service of the United States pursuant to this section.

SECTION 4. The Secretary of Defense is authorized to delegate to the Secretary of the Army or the Secretary of the Air Force, or both, any of the authority conferred upon him by this order.

John F. Kennedy

The White House,
June 11, 1963.

Executive Order Number 11118 was identically worded except that it referred to the President’s proclamation of September 10, titled "Obstructions of Justice in the State of Alabama".

On August 13, 1963, the President issued Executive Order Number 11117, establishing an Interagency Committee on International Athletics. This Executive Order was revoked by President Nixon on March 13, 1970 by Executive Order Number 11515.

Utilizing the non-legal convention, 1,335 days in reverse was July 18, 1966, seven days after the death of Andrew McNaughton in Canada. Three hundred and sixty-six days later, John McNaughton would die in that plane crash over Hendersonville, N.C.

Thirteen hundred and thirty-five days forward from March 13, 1970 was November 7, 1973, the 11th anniversary of the concession speech of Richard Nixon after defeat in the gubernatorial election in California in 1962, and twelve days before the 110th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.