The Charlotte News

Monday, November 25, 1946

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Washington, Federal Judge Alan Goldsborough had ordered John L. Lewis and the UMW to answer the following Wednesday the charge of contempt pursuant to the Court's previous temporary restraining order prohibiting for nine days the calling of a strike, and affirmatively ordering Mr. Lewis to rescind his previous declaration that the May 29 contract with the Government would be deemed void at midnight on November 20. He had remained mum. The Court stated that it would first determine the contempt citation and then pass on the merits of the injunction, whether it would become permanent. Mr. Lewis had argued that the Court lacked jurisdiction to issue such an injunction.

Two spectators had arrived nearly two hours ahead of time to witness the proceedings. Five reporters were already waiting. The courtroom doors were opened for only five minutes to allow the more than 100 reporters and some 50 spectators to enter. The hearing lasted less than an hour and there were no fireworks, just legal argument.

After going to Missouri the previous day to visit with his mother and share a turkey for her birthday, the President was back at his desk at the White House, staying only two hours in Grandview. He made the return flight in record time, three hours and 25 minutes. It usually took more than five hours to get to Missouri because of headwinds.

The United States called upon the U.N. to open discussions on the problem of disarmament.

Senator Tom Connally urged the member nations to provide their complete dispositions of troops within 30 days. He did not comment on a British proposal that the numbers be made subject to inspection and verification. An American spokesman later stated that the U.S. was opposed to such a proposal.

A proposal by Australia was in the works to censure Russia for its opposition to limited use of the Security Council veto.

In the French Parliamentary elections to establish the Upper House, the MRP had 24,751 electors and the Communists 24,544. The Communists had previously won in the Lower House.

The Supreme Court held 6 to 0 in American Power & Light Co. v. S.E.C., 329 US 90, an opinion delivered by Justice Frank Murphy, that the Government could legally scrap useless holding companies under the Public Utility Holding Company Act. The two companies at issue were American Power & Light Co. and Electric Power & Light Co., both of New York and parts of the same holding company. Justices Stanley Reed, William O. Douglas, and Robert Jackson had recused themselves from participation in the decision. The companies were said to have unfairly distributed voting power among the security holders of the holding company, Electric Bond & Share.

In another decision, U.S. v. Alcea Band of Tillamooks, 329 US 40, delivered by Chief Justice Fred Vinson, the Court upheld 5 to 3 a U.S. Court of Claims decision which had upheld Indian rights to land because of exclusive occupation thereof for time immemorial. The Tillamook Indians and other tribes in Oregon were therefore entitled to payment by the United States for taking of the lands. A dissent was filed by Justices Reed, Wiley Rutledge, and Harold Burton. Justice Jackson took no part in the decision.

In Columbia, S.C., the Governor refused to grant clemency to a man convicted of the murder of his wife in January, 1945. He had been found guilty of poisoning and suffocating her. The petition had sought reduction of the charge from murder to involuntary manslaughter, meaning negligent homicide. The lawyers sought to show that the wife often took sodium seconal tablets for pain, that when mixed with alcohol, it became potentially lethal, and had caused her death.

Her husband had buried her body and then reported her missing. The prosecution contended that he was having an affair with a blonde chemist from a Louisiana war plant.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., former Ambassador to Turkey under President Wilson from 1913 to 1916, and father of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury under FDR, had died at age 90.

The head of the North Carolina Tuberculosis Sanatorium and nationally recognized expert on the disease, Dr. Paul McCain, was killed in an automobile accident while traveling to Raleigh. He had suddenly swerved into the path of an oncoming bus after trying to correct when his car faded onto the shoulder.

Before attempting that maneuver, incidentally, always take proper lessons in advance. Relax, let off the accelerator, and let the car do the work without fighting the wheel. Also, keep focus on the direction you wish to go, and say a quick prayer. Of course, it helps to have power or rack and pinion steering which, no doubt, the gentleman's car lacked. We know whereof we speak, hydroplaning toward a red traffic light in a downpour on a Florida four-lane highway heading to Tampa, no traction in the rain whatsoever; but a quick flip of the wheel, and you are on the right shoulder, facing the wrong direction, but safe and no dents of any sort. Just a memory for safekeeping.

Pete McKnight tells of the City Council being urged by the president of the Carolina Motor Club, Coleman Roberts, to establish a Charlotte Parking Authority with the power to build and operate off-street parking facilities.

In Yokohama, Japan, a youth told a U.S. provost court that the reason for his theft of clothing was that he wanted to keep warm during the winter. He had taken 25 pairs of underwear, 22 undershirts, 11 wool sweaters, six pairs of wool trousers, six sheets, four mattress covers, and a life jacket.

Wintry cold covered the region from the Great Lakes to central Texas. In Pembina, N.D., the mercury dropped to 15 degrees below zero. Snow fell in Michigan, the Texas Panhandle, southeastern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Rain fell elsewhere.

A photograph shows a dimout of the Capitol Dome in Washington, resultant of the coal strike.

On the editorial page, "The Seeds of Destruction" discusses the blind loyalty of miners to John L. Lewis. They received $76.25 per week for 54 hours of work in six days. They did not have to work more than 40 hours but could do so voluntarily, and most did to obtain overtime pay. Their average take-home pay was $62.37 per week. Under Mr. Lewis, the miners had become the best paid industrial workers in the country. Their base wage of $44.25 for a 35-hour week compared to an average of $22.38 in 1939, and less than $10 per week within the memory of most of the miners. During the war Mr. Lewis had obtained a 65 percent increase in wages for the miners.

So it was unreasonable to expect the miners to turn on him now, regardless of the public interest. While the Government enabled, via the Wagner Act, Mr. Lewis to establish such a powerful union, it was his own effort which had provided the benefits for the union members.

The piece stresses that it does not support the tactics of Mr. Lewis but was merely explaining how he maintained his grip on the union rank-and-file. There was no reason for Mr., Lewis, even with inflation, to demand the pay increase to $76.25 for a 40-hour week. Such a wage increase would raise the cost of coal so as to make natural gas, oil, and atomic energy competitive.

By his ruthless methods, he had built the union and raised wages and benefits, but was now, by the same methods, engaged in destroying it by destroying the coal industry itself. It reminded that Americans were often victims of their own excesses.

"Roger, Wilco, Over and Out" tells of bootleggers equipping their cars with police radios so that they could get the jump on the gendarmerie of the community in delivering their goods to consumers. It predicts that it would not be long before the bootleggers were receiving all of their orders via telephone and radio dispatch.

Recently, a man had dropped by the office of the newspaper and left a card, saying, "Call John—Nothing But The Best". It was a sign of return to normalcy as before the war when bootlegging was done casually by telephone. During the war, home delivery had lapsed.

But if too much competition were to arise, it predicts, then it would be cut down by gunfire.

To eliminate this unseemly system, it was only necessary for Mecklenburg voters to vote for ABC stores. But, it concludes, it was too much for which to hope and the voters would continue to vote dry.

A piece from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "An Essay in Quotation Marks", finds American politics as confusing to foreigners as French politics to Americans. The Republicans of the Left in the Third Republic were rightist, while the Radical Socialists were neither radical nor socialist.

The "reactionary" Republicans, just elected to power, were now busy trying to refuse the Senate seat to reactionary Senator Theodore Bilbo. One of the accusations against the Democrat was that he had shown bias against blacks, vigorously supported by "leftists".

Reactionary Democratic Congressman John Rankin was being called on the carpet for star-chamber methods in his seeking, via HUAC, information from Harvard astronomer, Dr. Harlow Shapley, in the form of membership lists of two PAC's which had supported the Democratic opponent to Republican Speaker-to-be Joe Martin.

Drew Pearson reports that Judge Alan Goldsborough, who had issued the temporary injunction against John L. Lewis, had previously made a favorable ruling for Mr. Lewis and so could not be accused of prejudice. That case, decided in January, 1945, prevented a rival from running against Mr. Lewis for the presidency of UMW.

In 1944, Ray Edmundson had sought to run against Mr. Lewis, the first challenger to his rule in a decade. Mr. Edmundson had been Mr. Lewis's hatchet man in the Illinois mine dispute with the Progressive Miners—which Mr. Pearson covered the previous week. It was Mr. Edmundson's direction which had led to the deaths of 21 men in that feud. He had also helped Mr. Lewis pay the $300,000 to one mine operator to remain closed to force the Progressive Miners out of work after the employees had voted against UMW membership in favor of Progressive.

William Green knew about the payment by 1938 but, though the Progressive Miners was an AFL union, he did nothing despite his rivalry with Mr. Lewis.

In Illinois, UMW members were assessed a fee of one percent of earnings in May, 1941 to finance the $300,000 paid in 1938, but were not told the purpose. They were quite upset when the story leaked after the Treasury Department launched an income tax probe of Mr. Lewis. By the time it came out, there was nothing the miners could do.

Regardless of Mr. Edmundson's loyalty to Mr. Lewis, when he dared run against him, the Lewis dictatorship clamped down and expelled Mr. Edmundson from the union. It was an example of the tactics practiced by John L. Lewis.

Marquis Childs discusses the conferences in the Administration leading up to the contempt action against John L. Lewis. Advisers to Secretary of Interior and Coal Administrator J.A. Krug warned against sending Mr. Lewis to jail out of concern that it would make him a martyr with the rank-and-file. The strategy thus became to seek a fine against Mr. Lewis personally and a per diem fine against the union for as long as the strike persisted. Another possibility was to freeze the union funds. But in the end, there was nothing which the Government could do to compel absolutely the miners to return to the pits. The tribal loyalty for chieftain Lewis would keep them above ground until he ordered them to return.

The advisers in Washington were concerned that the President was in Florida fishing with Reconversion director John Steelman, friend of Mr. Lewis.

Many in Washington wanted the President to call a special session of Congress, but since it was the Congress turned out by the electorate three weeks earlier, it would be difficult for it to accomplish anything.

Steel workers and auto workers would suffer the most in the event the strike continued, as steel depended on coal and auto manufacture depended on steel.

The strike could also precipitate a leftist revolution in France and hasten a recession at home. The miners had not yet recovered from the 59-day strike in the spring which led to the May 29 contract with the Government now being challenged and declared void by Mr. Lewis on November 20. The miners, themselves, would suffer greatly during a prolonged strike.

Harold Ickes discusses a District of Columbia electricity rate case which would impact rates in other large cities. The issue was whether Potomac Electric Power Co. was entitled to a return of 7 percent on a surplus of 30 million dollars. The surplus came from excessive rates to customers. To exclude the surplus in setting the rates would mean a savings of 20 percent by Washington customers. As a legal principle, it would save customers nationally 10 percent on their electricity bills.

The Department of Justice appeared to be not very interested in the case, however, seeking until December 14 to determine whether to go ahead with an appeal to the Supreme Court, leading to a rumor that the President was being advised not to proceed.

The holding company for the power company was North American Co., a political factor in Missouri. John Foster Dulles's law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, served as counsel for North American. Mr. Dulles formed the strategy in the case. White House adviser George Allen had indirect connections with utilities. Two of the judges of the Court of Appeals which found for the utility were Truman appointees and were favorable to utilities. Moreover, Attorney General Tom Clark came from Texas where Texas Light & Power Co. was powerful.

If the Justice Department did drag its heels, it could be fairly concluded that it would be at the direction of the President. Politically, the Administration could not afford not to prosecute the case.

A letter from a black veteran of World War II tells of having submitted to Mayor Herbert Baxter his name as a potential member of the City Veterans Advisory Committee, but withdrawing in favor of another black veteran, Trezzvant W. Anderson.

The committee's only black member was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Mr. Anderson had served with distinction under Brig. General Benjamin O. Davis in Europe. For Mr. Anderson's contributions to literature, he had been inducted into the International Mark Twain Society, one of the few black writers to be so honored.

A letter writer finds the inflationary trend unsettling, only likely to spawn another round of strikes for higher wages. He believes it would put American democracy in a bad light abroad, with labor being controlled by dictatorial labor leaders.

On this day in 1963, President Kennedy's funeral took place. It began with a procession from the Capitol to St. Matthew's Cathedral, where the funeral service was held, and then continued with another procession across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery, where the President was buried. The event was nationally televised. Schools across the country either were closed or recessed in time for the students to see the funeral at home.

To say that it was a profoundly strange day, in addition to its mournfulness, is an understatement. It was simply incongruous with reality that a young, vibrant President, who had been so vigorous four days earlier, was being laid to rest in Arlington where, two weeks before that day, he had laid the traditional wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Added to the poignancy and surreality of the day was the fact that it was the birthday of John, Jr., and that Caroline's birthday was to occur on Wednesday.

Aside from the drone of the drums and the funeral dirge, which will always linger with those who saw the procession live, the salute, of course, of John, Jr., to his father at the passing of the caisson bearing the flag-draped casket, the upset of the riderless horse, Blackjack, and the bugler at Arlington missing the note during the playing of Taps, are the things which stand out in memory from that day. Mainly it is the drone of the drums and the dirge.

The mood was a mixture of continuing shock and some appearance of relief that at least the apparent killer of the President was now dead, with swift justice having been meted, even if through the unseemly act of murder. That was an inappropriate sentiment, but it was nevertheless one which was felt by many, and understandably so.

That, of course, was when everyone in the country, with few exceptions, understood implicitly that the assassin of the President had been Lee Harvey Oswald and that there were no others involved.

All of the concern over the identity of the assassin had disappeared by Monday and the focus was on trying to understand why and for what reason, ultimately, the nation's young leader had been struck down in such a vicious manner, the first assassination of a United States President in the memory of anyone younger than about 70.

The shock would remain for years, perhaps decades. In some ways, it still lingers.

Eight years ago, we were reading some of the original newspapers from that period which we kept in a scrapbook and still have. One of the reports from Saturday quoted John, Jr., as saying that "a very bad man" had killed his father. He was right, of course. But the questions remain, fifty years later, who, how many, and for what reasons.

Yet, no one can kill the spirit. And the spirit of John F. Kennedy still lives on.

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