The Charlotte News

Friday, October 18, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Byrnes, in his scheduled speech this night at 10:00 p.m., might hit back at former Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace for his criticism of the Byrnes "get-tough" approach to Russia, as Mr. Wallace had stated on September 12, leading to his being fired September 20. Mr. Byrnes would seek to refute the Soviet propaganda which claimed the U.S. was trying to encircle Russia and refute also the Wallace contention that the newly enunciated policy was one of "toughness". The speech would center on Soviet-U.S. relations, not the Paris Peace Conference.

The President would address the opening of the U.N. General Assembly the following Wednesday, October 23.

The Turkish Government replied to the second demand of Russia on September 24 for joint control of the Dardanelles, flatly rejecting the proposal. The proposal contradicted the 1936 Montreux Convention and, in Turkey's view, would have meant Russian bases on Turkish soil.

Thomas Reedy of the Associated Press tells of two letters, one to the German people and one to Emmy Goering, which Hermann Goering reportedly wrote, telling of his plan to commit suicide under the watchful eyes of the prison guards. The contents were not disclosed.

Guards had found contraband usable as suicide tools ten times during searches of the defendants since the start of the year. Emmy Goering told of her husband saying to her during their last visit that he had no poison. Prison officials believed that Goering swallowed the vial while sitting on the toilet in the darkened corner of his cell. Robert Ley had hanged himself in his cell without detection in like manner. Only the legs and feet of the prisoner were visible at that time.

Julian Wilson reports of his participation in the search in the wilds of the Wulai Mountains in China for a missing B-29 and its crew, which had crashed in March, 1945.

He tells of the Lolo villagers being as curious about the Americans as they were of them. They scrutinized the Americans and pinched their skin, before treating them to a feast. They had not been previously aware of the end of the war.

The Lolos had been encouraged by the Chinese to grow opium and through it had acquired weapons. They apparently never bathed.

The chief's house had a three and a half foot high entrance, with no windows. He slaughtered a chicken and goat in front of them and then cooked them both.

They slept on straw mats placed on hard ground. A rooster tried to sit on Mr. Wilson's head. All in the party acquired fleas.

The fairly attractive women were not shy about being at the beck of the men.

When a Lolo died, his body was given to a priest who handled the burial in secret.

Further talks took place at the White House regarding the removal of price controls. Flour, bread and other bakery products were likely next to have release. Coffee ceased to be under control. So were jams and jellies, men's white handkerchiefs, and other items uptight.

The embargo on Mexican beef was lifted. The largest amount of livestock in ten months arrived in markets, as prices dropped $1 to $10 per hundred-weight.

In Chicago, commodities markets fluctuated wildly with the influx of livestock. Hogs were slightly higher in price and cattle, slightly lower. Egg futures dropped a ha'penny per dozen.

Cotton prices in New Orleans and Chicago also fluctuated.

Textile World, a cotton trade publication, stated that cotton had entered a dangerous time, reminiscent of 1919-20 when prices dropped by 50 percent and production dropped rapidly in consequence. Costs of cotton production had risen 60 percent and labor by 20 percent above the levels of a year earlier. Costs had risen in the previous year as much as in the entire six years of the war, now 150 percent higher than in 1939. It said that supply would likely not exceed demand, because of pent-up wartime demand, until mid-1947.

The Southeastern OPA administrator in Atlanta resigned over differences with Washington regarding administration.

The search continued for the robber who made off with a portion of the jewel collection of the Duchess of Windsor during her visit to England with the Duke, their first since 1939. The haul was valued at $80,000. Some London papers had estimated the value at a million dollars or more. The Duke stated these rumors to be false.

A reward of $8,000 was offered for recovery of the jewelry. A list of the stolen items is provided, in case you run across them being fenced or pawned. Call Scotland Yard, Supreme Headquarters of a ramified investigation.

In Binghamton, N.Y., a 72-year old woman suffered a broken leg in a scramble of 400 women seeking to purchase scarce soap chips and shortening at a local market. The market offered 120 cans of shortening and 250 packages of soap chips. Make sure you have plenty to avoid a broken leg in the melee.

In Los Angeles, actress June Haver, 20, was reported to have signed a movie contract for $2,250 per week. She had entered the movies four years earlier at $75 per week.

On the editorial page, "A Precedent from Pineville" tells of the Charlotte residents complaining about the location of the planned abattoir and the new cross-town boulevard, that which would come to be known as Independence Boulevard, everyone realizing the need but no one wanting these projects to disturb their neighborhood.

It cites the neighboring community of Pineville as example of what was termed a "calm and sincere" protest to the City regarding the planned building of a sewage plant in their community. It recommends more such calm and sincere protest.

"The Fortunes of Theodore Bilbo" asserts that the effort to unseat Mr. Bilbo from the Senate should content itself with the more practical bases and not try to assert Constitutional grounds regarding the manner of his election. Most Southern states, it remarks, including North Carolina, had vestiges of unfair practices when held up to the light of day.

But Mr. Bilbo's alleged receipt of $25,000 for providing a war contract, and his not paying more than $72 in income tax in any of his years of public service while able to build an opulent mansion in his hometown, raised serious ethical questions for the Kilgore Senate Investigating Committee, which was about to begin its investigation of the Senator.

It hopes that he was sufficiently over his throat ailment that he could respond.

It would turn out that Mr. Bilbo was suffering from cancer and would die the following summer.

"A Look into the Republican Future" tells of the GOP offering a negative approach to government, promising to undo the New Deal and abolish Federal agencies set up under it which interfered with business. By analyzing the platforms of the Republicans from 1944 and 1946, a policy statement of Republican Congressmen signed in December, 1945, and a statement on foreign policy from April, 1946, Editorial Research Reports, Inc., in Washington had developed a list of what to expect from a Republican Congress.

There would be strong support for the U.N., while reorganizing the State Department to weed out "un-American" employees. Support would be given, through the U.N., to Poland and "oil rich" Iran, and for unrestricted immigration to Palestine by the Jews of Europe.

The GOP would support foreign aid to nations in need and self-determination for smaller states, with rejection of big-power domination.

Taxes would be arranged to allow expansion of business. Economy would be stressed in Government spending, with promises of reduction in the number of employees and reduction of the debt.

Price control would be ended, with rents regulated by the states. The minimum wage would be 65 cents.

There would no government interference with collective bargaining. There would be government enforcement of contracts, compulsory cooling-off periods in labor disputes, prohibition of secondary boycotts, and fact-finding boards in utility disputes.

There would also be no Federal interference with state social security and the Congress would support state control of offshore oil.

They would vote for a two-term limit amendment to the Constitution for the presidency, an equal rights amendment, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, an anti-lynching law, and an anti-poll tax amendment.

There would be no Government competition with business.

The piece notes that the findings included many generalities amounting to no more than campaign promises.

Drew Pearson writes an open letter to his younger brother Leon, in Paris, informing him of the state of the country, "meat-mad" and angry at President Truman, to the point where the President had surrendered. He expresses sympathy for the President. But the result might prove inflationary.

The country had eaten more meat during the war than prior to it. He recalls childhood when meat was served no more than three or four times a week, being too expensive. Chicken was a delicacy, served only on Sundays.

When Herbert Hoover ran for President in 1928, he had promised a "chicken in every pot". It got him elected. Now, President Truman had provided chicken and turkey, and nobody liked him. They wanted beefsteak.

Mr. Pearson had taken a trip to the Midwest the previous week and all anyone talked about was meat. Not Russia or the Paris Peace Conference.

He feared that the things which had made the country great, selflessness and patriotism, had slid into the backwash.

Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, an automobile dealer, had introduced an amendment to the OPA bill, raising profits for automobile dealers, allowing them to pass on price increases to consumers rather than absorbing them. Other Senators and Congressmen with special interests performed likewise.

He concludes that it was the way of it, a year after the war and the sacrifices by fifteen million veterans.

He signs the letter, "Your—at the moment very pessimistic—Brother Drew."

He adds as a "P.S." that he was planning to run for Congress on a platform of providing a side of beef for every deep-freeze and two deep-freezes in every garage.

Harold Ickes comments on the verdict of the all-white jury acquitting 23 of 25 defendants in the Columbia, Tenn., race riot of the previous February. He suggests that the attempt to equate the result with "approximate justice" was faulty.

Four police officers were shot in the black section of Columbia. To have convicted all of the defendants would have been an obvious sham and so convicting two appeared as a compromise. Justice, however, could only be done if the State Commissioner of Safety, Lynn Bomar, also was brought to justice.

Through the night of the incident, white men drove through the black section firing guns indiscriminately, in response to a fight between a white shopkeeper and a black woman and her son, regarding a refund on repair work on a radio. The white shopkeeper had fallen through a plate glass window during the fight. In response to the subsequently formed mob firing in the neighborhood, black residents fired back in self-defense.

Mr. Bomar, the following day, sent in soldiers and police to keep order. But vandalism and beatings continued to take place. A hundred black residents were arrested and held incommunicado for a period of 3 to 8 days. During their incarceration, the prisoners were beaten and intimidated. Two were shot to death.

Mr. Bomar had his men, without warrants, breaking into black homes and businesses, and asserted during testimony at the trial that the next time, he would also likely not have a warrant. He also testified that he had placed his foot on the neck of one of the defendants while in jail and told him that if he tried to get up, he would kill him.

Mr. Ickes favors prosecution of Mr. Bomar under the Federal Civil Rights statute, allowing prosecution of any person who, while acting under color of state law, willfully deprives a person of a Constitutional right or other protection afforded by the laws of the United States. He remarks that it was being applied to Police Chief Lynwood Shull in Batesburg, S.C., for the blinding, also in February, of Sgt. Isaac Woodard as he tried to go home from his military discharge via an interstate bus and was beaten by the police chief during an alleged argument on the bus in which, the chief claimed, Mr. Woodard was drunk and reached for the chief's billyclub, assertions disputed by Mr. Woodard and witnesses.

Mr. Ickes hopes that Attorney General Tom Clark would proceed likewise against Mr. Bomar for his clear violation of the the defendants' Constitutional rights in the Columbia case.

Samuel Grafton posits that by forcing the President's hand to release price controls on meat, the Republicans had handed the liberals an issue for the fall election. Now, while there would be plentiful meat in the butcher shops, only those able to afford the higher prices could partake of it. Previously, everyone was on the same footing when there was no meat.

The GOP was urging that no wage hikes should take place commensurate with the higher prices on food.

He defines liberalism as a philosophy which holds that the problems of the society should not be solved at the expense of the poorest members. It was the very basis of the New Deal, spreading the difficulties, both agriculturally and industrially, among the entire society.

But the meat situation now placed on the table the entire issue again and promised a return to the pre-Roosevelt era. It promised a situation in which the continued unemployment of a few million Americans could keep down inflation.

The solution might be in the Government buying meat and distributing it at lower prices to those who could not afford the retail prices.

"The great wheel turns, as American conservatism, the most primitive and unsophisticated conservatism in the world, resolutely follows that obscure destiny which forces it forever to solve one crisis at the expense of a greater, to pay three for one, to buy a day of ease at the cost of a year of unrest."

A letter remarks on the October 11 letter relating additional facts about the Old 97, before its celebrated final wreck near Danville. He remarks that one of the two canaries which the previous writer had heard were on the train and had survived the wreck was being shipped to the current writer.

He had a girlfriend in another state who was fond of his cousin's canary because of its beautiful song. So he wanted to send her one for her birthday. The two birds were ordered by a local Greensboro china shop for him from Baltimore, one being a song bird and the other a show bird.

The shock of the train wreck, however, took away the song bird's song. But the shop owner treated the bird over the course of several months until it recovered its song on a Sunday, just before his girlfriend's birthday. So he sent it to his friend and she was quite pleased.

But, about a year later, the wind blew down the cage and the family cat devoured the bird.

"So you see 97 was an unlucky train indeed."

But it was in fact the wind, not the Old 97, which gave the bird to the cat.

A letter solicits gifts for the support of the Oxford, N.C., Orphanage which cared for over 300 children.

A letter writer thinks Congress ought outlaw the Communist Party as being anti-Christian and atheist.

Well, if they could do that, pal, then they could also outlaw Christianity. So be careful of that for which you wish.

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