Thursday, January 10, 1946

The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 10, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Chicago, police were now looking for a former employee of a nursery home who had worked within two blocks of the home of the six-year old girl whose body was found dismembered on Monday after being kidnaped from the family home on Sunday night. The ladder used to abduct the little girl from her bedroom was identified as coming from the nursery. The little girl's father, however, stated that he had seen the ladder leaning against the house in the same location during the day before the crime.

The primary inculpatory evidence in the Lindbergh kidnapping had been that a wooden rung from the ladder used in the abduction matched wood from Bruno Hauptmann's attic.

The man now being sought in the child's killing had been discharged from his employment because of "questionable habits" and was formerly a mental patient as well as a practicing North Side dentist—whether the latter two positions being held simultaneously not being made clear.

It was not safe.

The two janitors were still being held for questioning in connection with the crime but were set to be released under writs of habeas corpus issued the previous night by a judge. Both men had undergone lie detector tests, though the results were not disclosed.

In London, the first U.N. session came to order with the 51 member nations being represented. Prime Minister Clement Attlee welcomed the delegates and stated that the nations had before them the issue of life or death in the determination of control of nuclear energy. The Big Three foreign ministers conference in Moscow had determined to turn the secret over to the U.N. under certain contingencies regarding assurances of security.

Though not reported on the front page, the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal heard the evidence this date against Julius Streicher, Hans Frank, and Hjalmar Schacht.

The Detroit News reported that the President's fact-finding committee would recommend an 18 percent wage increase in the G.M. strike, equivalent to a 20 cents per hour increase in wages. G.M. had reportedly offered such an increase and UAW had turned it down. The board acted on the basis of what G.M. could afford to pay without price increases, based on 1941 production levels.

Some 7,000 telephone operators were expected to walk off the job in New York the following day in a sympathy strike with 17,000 striking Western Electric workers. It was the first step in a nationwide shutdown of telephone service expected as part of the sympathy strike. Some 8,000 telephone installers nationwide had walked out the previous day. In all, 263,000 telephone workers could join the strike.

The Senate named a special committee to be chaired by Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado to investigate the demobilization process in the wake of what Senator Johnson had called a "near mutiny" in Manila, when the 8,000 to 10,000 enlisted men publicly protested the slow process of discharge and transportation home.

The National Association of Homebuilders informed the President that 30,000 builders were prepared to build a million homes annually as long as they were able to obtain sufficient materials and labor. At present, they were building 20,000 units per month but anticipated being able to increase the rate to 80,000 units late in 1946. The statement also asserted that the Government estimates of the need for five million new homes was too high.

The National Carbon Company announced its acceptance of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's price for the war plant National Carbon had operated in Charlotte during the war for the Army Signal Corps. The plant was expected to employ about 500 people during peacetime operation.

Hal Boyle reports from Manila of the shantytowns abounding in the city, one of the most unusual being within an ancient Chinese cemetery. The occupants were homeless Filipinos who had fabricated rude bamboo and palm-thatch shelters between the tombs. Some of the occupants were being paid to trim the trees and lawns around the tombs of the wealthy.

Mr. Boyle describes the ornate and elaborate tombs which the Chinese had constructed to house the dead, some with two rooms, one reserved for the living to sit and partake of a meal, with their departed in the adjoining room.

In one cemetery, two Filipino boys with a guitar serenaded romancing couples until paid to sit on a tomb further away.

On the editorial page, "How Low Wages Work" tells of a conference being called in Durham by the AFL and CIO to discuss the advantages of the proposed 65-cent minimum wage and how it would impact North Carolina.

The editorial points out that it would have a broad impact, helping to improve the relatively low standards of living and education across the board in North Carolina. About 60 percent of homes in the state, it points out, had no running water. Over a quarter of the population had less than a fifth grade education, compared to half that rate for the nation. The income even under the proposed minimum wage would be but $1,350 per year, still $600 short of the estimated necessary income to live "very modestly".

Prosperity in the South and in the state, it underscores, could not be built on low wages.

"Routine Examination" reports of Representative Charles Halleck of Indiana coming to the South for a duck-hunting trip and telling reporters that the Solid South of the Democrats should be changed, but lacking knowledge of how to do it. He could not foresee Northern Republicans fusing with Southern Democrats. The only time they joined was when it became necessary to stem "radical moves in the administration".

The piece concludes that the South was good for stemming radical moves and duck-hunting, and, according to Mr. Halleck, little else.

"Is the Race on Now?" comments on the rumor out of Londonderry from a British scientist that the Russians had developed their own atomic bomb, one more powerful than the U.S. version. The President had responded that there was no intelligence to support the claim.

It questions who could prove or disprove the claim, even if the Russians claimed to have a bomb. Would they display it for the world to see? Then other nations might so contend.

It suggests that the war of nerves could become a chain reaction which could lead to world destruction.

The only solution was for joint international, fool-proof control.

"And even if we cling to the belief that we can lick the world in an atomic bomb race, how many Americans want to live in a time like that? Do we want to encourage the development of a third World War?"

A piece from the Textile Bulletin of Dave Clark, titled "These Dangerous Universities", compares the probable influence of fascism on a young William Joyce, "Lord Haw-Haw" of South Carolina, just executed as a traitor at Wandsworth Prison in London the previous week, while he attended as a young man London University, to the same influence from the other side of the political spectrum upon the young students attending the University of North Carolina, some "small group" of whom believed in "socialism and communism".

These Chapel Hill professors preyed upon the young and immature minds of the students and any effort to remove them from the faculty resulted in outcries of "academic freedom" and "freedom of speech"—terrible, nasty communist and socialist notions.

Many of the students so influenced shed their new ideas in time, but some, as "Lord Haw-Haw", retained them.

The implication is clear: the way to eradicate these radicals is to hang them from the highest goddamned tree in the state.

Hang these bastards, and their communist professors, too. Hang them all.

Show them the American Way, and that we will not tolerate communism and socialism, any more than the Socialist British tolerated Fascism.

Maybe hanging is too honorable a death. Drawing and quartering would be more fitting.

Drew Pearson comments on three events which had raised the G.I.'s frustration to the boiling point the previous week: the announced slowdown in demobilization by the War Department; the admission by Secretary of War Robert Patterson that he did not know that overseas veterans stopped accumulating discharge points on V-J Day; and the announcement that low-point men in Europe might start coming home sooner than high-point men because of the essentiality of the skills of the latter. The G.I. saw this change as suggesting that the Army placed a premium on inefficiency.

Adding fuel to the fire was the attendance by President Truman of a dinner for General Hap Arnold at an officers' club at Bolling Field. The brass hats had ordered the entire club secured to protect the President, preventing officers and their dates from entering on Saturday night.

Mr. Pearson next relates of comedian Vic Oliver, son-in-law of Winston Churchill, now divorced from Mr. Churchill's daughter. Shortly before the divorce, Mr. Oliver had visited Mr. Churchill at 10 Downing to seek his aid in patching up the marriage. At dinner, Mr. Oliver had leaned over to his father-in-law and inquired as to who he thought would emerge from the war as the greatest leader. Prime Minister Churchill abruptly replied, "Mussolini." When Mr. Oliver asked why, he responded that it was because he "had the good sense to shoot his son-in-law."

Finally, he imparts of the effort by OPA to resolve the slow production of the textile industry in turning out men's clothing for the fact of ceilings on woolen and worsted material. He indicates that profits, however, on these clothes were 12 times the pre-war profits and civilian clothing profits were twice that from military clothing. Yet, the woolen mills wanted further adjustments in prices before turning out more fabrics for returning veterans.

He notes that General Patton would have never stood for making profits on returning veterans. His family owned one of the world's largest woolen mills.

Willard Waller, in a piece from The American Mercury, discusses the fact many veterans who had fought in the war were coming home bitter and were in large part justified in their bitterness. Ask a wounded veteran what had happened to his face, and he was most likely to retort with some dark quip, such as, "A land mine exploded in my face, lady. What happened to yours?"

When celebrations were taking place on and after V-E Day, the wounded veterans back home looked on with disdain and dismay, believing the mood out of place when their comrades still remained overseas fighting in the Pacific.

Mothers and wives had a hard time relating to their veteran sons and husbands. Said one mother, her son did not want to talk about the war but it was the only thing he was interested in talking about.

The veteran showed his bitterness toward civilians at home who appeared to him to have been interested only in turning a fast buck during the war while he fought in the trenches of Europe or in the water-engulfed foxholes of the Pacific. The average civilian did not distinguish men who wore ribbons worn for taking "a boat ride" from those who received medals for their bravery in combat.

But Mr. Waller reminds that the veteran had fought out of a sense of idealism and patriotism , a sense which would return if he were treated well and provided a chance for a good job by the civilian population. If neglected, or discriminated against in industry, if given the run-around, he could, however, become dangerous in years to come.

Marquis Childs sets forth his fourth column in succession on nuclear energy and the debate regarding its control, whether to be internationalized or retained by the United States, together with Great Britain and Canada. He stresses the unlimited authority held by General Leslie Groves when he directed the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb. There was no limit on the amount of money to be spent on the project and he held absolute power over its personnel.

Mr. Childs cites the case of a young scientist, name withheld, who had come under suspicion while working on the bomb and was suddenly placed on 1-A draft status. Other scientists protested and he was removed from 1-A status because of his vital war work. But shortly thereafter, the status was renewed and he was promptly drafted and put through basic training five times, until on the verge of cracking up. Eventually, the director under whom he had worked in the Manhattan Project protested and he was transferred to the South Pacific. The scientist's work had been of utmost importance and he had to be replaced by one of the country's top physicists.

In another case, a scientist working for Westinghouse was persuaded by General Groves to cancel a trip to Moscow the previous June to attend the scientific congress, because he knew too much to take the risk of inadvertently divulging information. Another scientist, a Nobel prize winner who worked for G.E., was also prevailed upon to cancel the trip, but was able to convince the Army that he did not know enough about the bomb to pose a hazard and so was permitted to go.

Samuel Grafton explores the tendency among opponents of continued price control to declare it to be an impingement on freedom. The critics, in their attempt to end the priorities and price control system, played upon the trait of Americans to prefer freedom over organization.

But freedom in this instance, he warns, could turn sinister when inflation would begin in the wake of removal of such controls.

"Freedom is a lovely word, and a dear slogan, but when suddenly the girl with the grave sweet face and the uplifted torch takes the form of a dealer who wants a dime for an orange, as happened recently, or a dollar for a dozen eggs, as may happen someday, one wonders whether she hasn't changed somewhat since the days when we first fell in love with her."

The quote of the day comes from Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho, cowboy singer who would run as vice-president with Henry Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948: "At last the time has come for world government. We should surrender enough of our sovereignty to insure world peace."

A letter writer compares the Pearl Harbor investigation by the joint Congressional committee to the second and third acts of Shakespeare's King John, in which is stated the line, "Mad world, mad kings, mad composition."

He believes that a more fitting investigation could be had by examining those Americans whom the Nazis had marked as "friendly" during the war and by determining how civilization tolerated the rise of such barbaric systems as were the Nazi and Japanese regimes which started and waged the war.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.