Tuesday, January 15, 1946

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 15, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that 200,000 members of the CIO United Electrical Workers union in sixteen states across the country had gone on strike against G.E., Westinghouse, and General Motors. The strikers included 57,000 women and 25,000 salaried and white collar workers, the latter claimed by the union to be a first in joining with labor in a major strike. The union was demanding a $2 per day increase in wages.

Westinghouse had offered a 15 percent pay increase for an additional 4 hours of work per week, for an average weekly earnings of $60.72, including time and a half for the overtime. Hourly wages would be $1.38. The average wage paid to males was $1.35 including overtime and $54 per week.

Westinghouse claimed an operating loss during September, October, and November of 1945. Its November profit of $464,000, it contended, spread between the 90,000 employees would provide $5.17 per month to each employee, $36.83 short of the $42 per month in demanded increase in wages.

The AFL Meat Cutters Union ordered a strike of some 75,000 members to begin just after midnight this date.

A major bituminous coal mine explosion in Welch, West Virginia, had left 192 dead or trapped while 75 had managed to escape. Children in a school 500 to 1,000 feet from the mine were injured by the blast when glass shattered.

In live testimony this date before the joint Congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel stated that he believed that he was misled by the Navy Department into an understanding that no imminent attack on Hawaii was likely. He asserted that he was not provided with all relevant information which the Navy Department in Washington possessed with regard to the likely targets of attack, that he should have been told to be on alert for a hostile overseas raid, that had he been so advised, he would have implemented a plan to ambush the Japanese strike force while still at sea, that the message of November 27 which told him to transfer planes to Wake Island and Midway caused him to believe that an air attack on Hawaii was not "imminent or probable", and that the Army and Navy were aware that long-range reconnaissance from Oahu would only be flown in the event that an attack were considered imminent. Had he known what the Army and Navy in Washington knew, he would have ordered his ships to sea, but instead kept them in port where he assumed that they were safer from air attack.

At Nuremberg, not covered on the page, the war crimes tribunal heard further evidence regarding the orders not to provide aid to survivors of German U-boat attacks, hearing testimony to this effect from a U-boat captain.

Army chief of staff, General Eisenhower, told the House Military Affairs Committee that the reason for a slowing of demobilization was to prevent the Army from becoming non-existent by July 1, as it would have at the rate of demobilization extant in the fall, 1.2 million men per month. The Army intended to meet the goal of a maximum strength of 1.5 million men by July 1. By April 30, every man with 45 points or 30 months of service would be discharged or on the way to separation centers, and by July 1, all with 40 points would be in that status. At the present 50 points or 42 months of service were requisite to obtain regular discharge.

Southern Senators stated that OPA would be allowed to expire at the end of the fiscal year as scheduled if OPA placed price ceilings on cotton. OPA had issued a statement indicating that it would reserve authority to do so if made necessary by conditions.

Hal Boyle, still in Manila, tells of Gracie the dancer at the local U.S.O. who performed during crap games, chanting "to the wandering dominoes like a Voodoo medicine lady."

The U.S.O. would spend a week or ten days in Manila before traveling on to other areas of the Pacific to entertain troops on a regular circuit.

A photograph of Albert Einstein appears on the page, after he had testified before the Anglo-American Commission in Washington anent the issue of Jewish immigration to Palestine.

On the editorial page, "Missouri Compromise" comments on the trend of the Administration toward raising price ceilings to permit wage increases being demanded by labor. The President had been reported to be in agreement with a $4 per ton rise in steel prices, despite OPA director Chester Bowles wanting to hold the line at $2.50 per ton.

Business Week had put the situation starkly in disjunctive terms: either there would be more workers on strike in this month in history in the country than at any other time, or there would be price increases. But, it continued, price increases would only buy time, to try to promote increased production and consequent equilibrium between demand and production, which ideally would enable competition to keep prices down. If that condition did not prevail, however, a crisis could still result.

So, with compromise and postponement of the crisis, the wage strikes appeared on their way toward resolution, at least for the present, promising, with luck, industry heading toward capacity production by the end of January. It would be good news for workers, as wages would be at or near parity with wartime wages for eight fewer hours worked, and for industry, as the stock market was responding positively. But for consumers on fixed incomes, it would mean higher prices, and thus a reduction in net income.

The piece therefore comes back to its title, calling the process another part of President Truman's compromising attitude for which he was gaining a reputation, contending that it was not statesmanship or good business, and, in the end, it predicts, not even good politics.

And, with the loss by the Democrats of the House, predictable in any mid-term election, coupled with the surprising loss of the overwhelming current 57-38 majority in the Senate all in one fell swoop in the coming November election, it would be so.

"A Welcome Visitor" remarks on the visit of Winston Churchill to the United States to take a six-week vacation in Florida, hoping that the sun would do him good as the world could not spare him. It remarks that because he was still a Member of Parliament, he would have to be diplomatically silent about that which the piece calls the nation's "fatal drift that is costing America its rightful place in the world."

Mr. Churchill, of course, would make a considerable ripple on the world stage while in the United States, with his "iron curtain" speech of March 5 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. So, he would, after all, not be too quiet, as he had been for the most part since his loss the previous July in the first British general election in a decade, giving Labor a huge Parliamentary majority.

"The Happy Politician" finds the lot of most politicians unhappy in these days, save for those who could pigeon-hole each new problem as it arose. One such man was Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, planning at age 68 for two more terms in the Senate.

While most Democratic Senators were in limbo over the President's proposed universal military training, Senator Bilbo was solidly opposed, not because of its unpopularity, its apparent obsolescence in the nuclear age, its huge expense, or other such practical concerns, but rather because he decided that if "Negro boys" were drafted into the Army and allowed "to shoot craps and drink liquor around the barracks for a year, they won't be worth a tinker's damn."

So, it was decided on the basis of a familiar principle to Mississippians, and all who opposed Senator Bilbo were Communists anyhow.

"It's a pleasant, relaxed way to politick, and it explains The Man's quite reasonable expectation of serving in the Senate until he is 80 years of age."

Unfortunately for Mr. Bilbo, fortunately for the citizenry, he would not make it, dying in office in the first year after being re-elected to his third term as Senator, in August, 1947, albeit amid controversy after being refused his seat by Senate colleagues on the basis of his racist rhetoric.

A piece from the Spartanburg Herald, titled "South Carolina's Voting", discusses its belief that South Carolinians ought be free to vote as they believed and not compelled by Democratic Party rules, formally or informally imposed. It had been the case until 1928 that a voter who wished to participate in the Democratic primary election had to sign a pledge to support the Democratic national ticket as well as the state ticket in the fall general election. Because of the disfavor of many Democrats in the South to Al Smith's candidacy, that rule had been thrown out.

Still, however, in the one-party state, Democrats informally determined how the citizenry would vote in the general election, and the Democrats nearly always supported the national ticket. The Herald supported a secret ballot to end the practice.

Drew Pearson tells of the Mead Committee inspecting the Naval Base at San Juan, Puerto Rico, finding everything ship-shape. But then the entire presentation was spoiled when an enlisted man, the mess boy, slipped a sheet of special instructions issued by the captain of the base into the lap of Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, which had every detail of the day set down in an effort to impress the Senate entourage.

The same committee visited the Army air base at Greensboro, where G.I.'s were put to work on Sunday, their normal day off, to provide the Senators with the impression of intense activity. But before that, the men had been working only a few days per week.

Another case involved present Undersecretary of War Kenneth Royall of North Carolina who, while serving as a Brigadier General, had been called the previous spring before the Mead Committee to testify regarding a report that the Army air corps had shipped a large number of obsolete bombs to Europe, which wound up as surplus. He had been asked about one bomb and told the committee truthfully that there was no surplus of that bomb in Europe. But later, he confided to staff that he had misled the committee, for if asked about another type of bomb weighing five pounds less, he would have been forced a surplus to confess.

When a member of the committee learned of the omission, he said that it reminded of the story of the railroad signalman who was asked whether he was waving his lantern at the time a car the train had hit. He said that he was, but later told a friend that it was a good thing by far that he was not asked whether at the time the lantern was lit.

Marquis Childs comments on the struggle to avert the steel strike, now postponed while negotiations were ongoing. He reiterates that which had been covered the previous week by Drew Pearson regarding OPA director Chester Bowles seeking to limit price increases to $2.50 per ton while being undermined in that effort by John W. Snyder, director of the Office of Reconversion.

The small producers of steel had told Mr. Bowles that they needed price increases more than the large companies because they lacked the ability to diversify in other areas which remained profitable under price ceilings.

But, remarks Mr. Childs, price increases would ultimately provide an edge to the large companies which could increase their power in the industry.

Samuel Grafton remarks on the post-war inflation which had begun to occur, citing a threatened June rise of 18 cents per pound in the ceiling price of butter. At that price, two pounds of butter per week would cost a family wage earner five hours of a wage increase of 7.5 cents per hour, as offered by one large company to its employees. The Wall Street Journal told of tactics being used to circumvent ceilings, such as the used car dealer who advertised a used truck and a bird dog for $350 more than the ceiling on the truck, and, after the deal, the dealer could re-purchase the bird dog for $15.

Slowly, but surely, the ceilings were under attack, from the steel industry to the meat industry. It could yet be halted with food subsidies and looking to determine which corporations had the wherewithal in profits to pay higher wages without a price increase.

O. J. Coffin, chairman of the Department of Journalism at the University of North Carolina, writes an obituary for Pete Murphy, State legislator and State Speaker of the House from Salisbury, "'the dangdest poorest politician in the state—never listened a whole half-hour in his life.'" He was well read but a poor poker player, never missed a football game at his alma mater, U.N.C., where he, himself, had starred on the gridiron.

He was often quoted as having stated in 1928 that he did not want "any man who won't vote for Al Smith to vote for me," a statement which resulted in his defeat.

He eschewed profanity.

Once, in his first appearance in the Legislature, right out of Chapel Hill, he had risen to speak, addressing a colleague as "the member from Halifax", whereupon he was corrected by the chair, asking him to address the member as "the gentleman from Halifax", whereupon Mr. Murphy stated, "that damned nigger from Halifax."

Perhaps, too much Ratafia.

Yet, during his last session as a legislator, he helped secure appropriations for the North Carolina College for Negroes at Raleigh, (now, North Carolina Central University), to insure that its facilities were equal to white institutions of higher learning.

Mr. Coffin explains that Mr. Murphy was never a baiter of anyone, black or white. "He simply went his own gait, which took him as frequently as possible by way of Chapel Hill, and would not stand for being crowded."

All's well that ends well, we suppose.

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