The Charlotte News
Tuesday, December 17, 1946
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the United States and Britain had demanded that the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission approve the U.S. plan for control of nuclear energy. Russia wanted more time to study the latest proposal, having rejected the American plan during the summer. The plan called for control, eliminating manufacture, possession, and use of atomic weapons via treaty, and establishment of an international authority to oversee inspections to insure compliance. All existing stockpiles of atomic bombs would be destroyed. Violations would be determined by the Security Council without resort to the veto power.
That was a good idea and we are glad that they forthwith adopted it and assiduously oversaw it, or there could have resulted a real mess on the world stage for the next 43 years. There might have even been imminent nuclear war by, say, 1962.
Former Congressman William B. Umstead of Durham was continuing to appear as the likely appointee to complete the unexpired term of deceased Senator Josiah William Bailey of North Carolina. It had been reported that the appointment had already been offered to him by the Governor and that he was considering whether to accept it. Because he had plans to run for the gubernatorial nomination in 1948, it was believed that he might turn down the appointment.
The Senate seat was up for re-election also in 1948, with a contest likely with former Governor J. Melville Broughton. Governor Broughton would win that election, but then would die just two months after assuming his seat as Senator. Frank Porter Graham would be appointed in 1949 by Governor Kerr Scott to serve during the ensuing two years. Dr. Graham would lose in 1950 to Willis Smith, his campaign being managed by Jesse Helms. Mr. Smith would then die in office in 1953, succeeded by Alton Lennon, appointed by Governor Umstead—who would win the gubernatorial race in 1952, then die in late 1954, succeeded by Lt. Governor Luther Hodges as Governor. Governor Scott would then win the ensuing election for the Senate seat in 1954, and then, himself, would die in office in 1958, succeeded by B. Everett Jordan.
In 1954, the other Senate seat would also suffer a death, that of Senator Clyde Hoey, whose successor, appointed by Governor Umstead, would be former Congressman and North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Sam Ervin.
It was likely the result of the curse of the Hope Diamond brought to bear on these offices by former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, who chose not to run for his third term in 1944, facing a stiff challenge from former Governor Hoey. Senator Reynolds's recently deceased young wife, Evalyn Walsh McLean, had been heir to her mother's famous jewel.
Run that gauntlet correctly six months from now without looking and you can have the jewel for your very own. There will be a test given in Washington at the Smithsonian. Be there.
An attorney for Senator Theodore Bilbo testified to the Senate War Investigating Committee that he and three other friends of the Senator had met in 1940 to raise $3,000 to pay back a loan of Senator Bilbo. They paid the money to a New Orleans businessman because he was threatening to turn the note over to Senator Bilbo's opponent in the 1940 campaign.
In Chicago, a 15-year old boy plunged a butcher knife into the back of the 50-year old fiance of his mother to keep her from being choked to death. It was determined that he properly acted in defense of his mother. He had initially tried to ward off the attack, but the man continued to strangle his mother until she was turning blue. The woman's first husband had been killed by gangsters in 1939.
She ought hang around with a little better company.
In Waynesburg, Pa., a 15-year old boy was sentenced to life imprisonment for the "thrill" slaying of a 63-year old woman who had befriended him. He had stabbed a butcher knife into her back. The boy, an orphan, upon hearing his sentence, cried that he wished the judge had given him the electric chair.
In Wind Gap, Pa., stones slid down a quarry face, killing one employee of the Bolger-Heller Slate Company and injuring another. The rocks had been loosened apparently by frost.
In Baltimore, a two-seater airplane took off on its own from the Municipal Airport and flew for twenty minutes before crashing into Chesapeake Bay six miles away. An attendant was spinning the propeller when the engine cranked and sped on its way before he could arrest it.
Katherine Lawrence of Chester, England, continues her series of six articles, begun the previous day, regarding her impressions of Charlotte during a visit to the city with her brother. She had been present in Charlotte for three weeks, had developed a sense of belonging and acceptance by the people she encountered.
She liked the pattern of life in Charlotte. The women she had met used the same English as those in England and concerned themselves with the same everyday domestic problems.
The people were very hospitable, always asking her and her brother to have dinner or go for a ride.
The city was a busy place, with crowded sidewalks downtown. She enjoyed going in a drug store and ordering from the fountain the largest ice cream they sold, then holding out a handful of coins, the denominations of which she had not yet learned, and letting the proprietor collect from among them the amount she owed.
She was preparing to explore Charlotte during the week and would report of her findings.
The Empty Stocking Fund needed money to provide Christmas for a three-year old boy, recently orphaned when his mother had died. He wanted Santa Claus to bring him a red wagon for Christmas. The Fund was determined to provide
The Fund was now up to $5,063.00, enough to provide each of the 2,000 needy children of the community with a toy worth $2.53. You can soon afford an album
On the editorial page, "The Passing of a Paradox" examines the life of Senator Josiah William Bailey, just deceased two days earlier at age 73. He had been a prohibitionist who nevertheless supported actively Governor Al Smith, a wet, in his 1928 presidential race against Herbert Hoover.
His own opponent in 1930, when he was first elected to the Senate, had been incumbent Senator Furnifold Simmons, an ardent conservative who had bolted the Democratic Party in 1928 rather than support Mr. Smith. Mr. Bailey had been defeated for the gubernatorial nomination in 1924 because he was considered too radical, having been a passionate supporter of William Jennings Bryan. Ten years later, Mr. Bailey was labeled a reactionary by members of the Roosevelt Cabinet.
He likewise followed a checkered course during the New Deal years, supporting some aspects, vehemently opposing others. He had voted against confirmation of Henry Wallace in early 1945 as Secretary of Commerce, but then later wrote a report in praise of his leadership in the Department.
In 1936, he joined other conservative Senators to call for a balanced budget and a return to free enterprise. But in 1946, he introduced a bill to encourage new industries in the South, a bill which some liberals believed was the most progressive Federal legislation ever aimed specifically at the region.
Mr. Bailey considered himself to be a Jeffersonian and did not like the encroachment of government on civil liberties. But he also understood that civil liberty in an industrialized state meant largely the freedom to starve to death. Thus, a measure of Federal control had to be exerted over free enterprise.
He appeared never to have based his decisions on purely political considerations. He would likely be determined by historians to have been a man of limited vision, but also one of intelligence, courage, and integrity.
"The Issue Is Bigger Than Bilbo" comments on Senator Bilbo's denial that he received even "a damned dollar" of the $25,000 which came to his campaign committee from war contractors in the hope of receiving contracts. It was his only defense to the claim of graft.
Robert Gandy had been called by Senator Bilbo as a witness to testify that he had been paid off by the Bilbo people on behalf of Wall Doxey, to gain Mr. Gandy's support in the runoff election after Mr. Doxey had defeated him in the first primary. The practice was described as a Mississippi tradition. Mr. Gandy contended that the $25,000 was for that purpose.
Regardless of the custom, enough evidence had been adduced of influence peddling in Mississippi, accepted by Senator Bilbo without question, that it warranted his expulsion from the Senate. Every Senator who would vote for his retention invited suspicion that he, too, was involved in unethical dealings.
"The GI Democrats Gain Stature" tells of the platform of the GI Democrats formed in a convention held in Charlotte. It was no great departure from the regular Democratic ideals, with the exception of championing the vote for 18-year olds, itself not a radical concept.
The Young Turks were not radicals, as some of the Old Guard had suggested them to be during their formation period in the summer. They had a long way to go before becoming a power within the state and the odds were that they would eventually be absorbed by the regular Democrats. But they could neither be ignored as a force for change.
A piece from the Atlanta Journal, titled "The Height of Bigotry", comments on the San Francisco Board of Education being threatened with a lawsuit by a parent for allowing a kindergarten to teach a Thanksgiving song in which God was thanked for "
The piece finds the case silly, that the Bible should not be excluded from public education on the basis of the doctrine of separation of Church and State. If the society had reached that point, it opines, "then our education has not yet begun."
Drew Pearson tells again of Attorney General Tom Clark's efforts to promote the protection of civil liberties for minorities in the country. Having been largely responsible for the Committee on Civil Rights, he was now sending a special train through the states to educate the people of their history since the Founding. The cars were originally intended to display the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation. The collector who had the Emancipation Proclamation proposed that the whole train be devoted to such historical documents and he would help finance it. In each state, a special car would be added with that state's most precious documents. They would also leave behind in each locality copies for educational purposes.
He next tells further of General MacArthur's message to the War Department banning reporters of certain publications from touring Japan. One reason for the New York Herald-Tribune being banned by General MacArthur was that Herald-Tribune correspondent Lewis Sebring, Jr., had covered General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific campaign from 1944 onward and then written a book on it. In it, he told of General MacArthur's luxurious mansion in Hollandia and dissected the claims of the General to heroism, focusing on his publicity campaigns to promote his victories.
The book had not yet been published as Thomas Y. Crowell had gotten cold feet, as had Doubleday & Co.
Another Herald-Tribune correspondent, Frank Kelly, had also aroused General MacArthur's anger.
He next reports of the continuing backstage maneuvering of John L. Lewis and publishes a letter he had received from a UMW organizer who worked directly under Mr. Lewis's brother, Denny. He told of being ordered to beat up or even murder an organizer of the rival CIO. Employees of the union did not stay around long as they could not abide the iron-fisted tactics or the poor pay.
Marquis Childs comments on the new role of Henry Wallace as an "apostle of hands-across-the-sea" to the British. Having been critical of British imperialism, he had congratulated R. H. S. Crossman, a Member of Parliament, for his having successfully staged a Labor Party revolt against the policies being championed by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. Those in revolt had been surprised that Mr. Wallace had become their ally, as Mr. Crossman opposed a two-bloc world, one dominated by the U.S. and the other by the Russians, a view which Mr. Wallace had appeared to accept as an inevitability. Eventually, the revolters sent a tepid reply to Mr. Wallace, albeit reluctantly, a reply which said little.
Mr. Wallace was also being cautious about forming any alliance with this group, as his viewpoint was very different. They supported the Labor Government generally, even if they disagreed with some of its specific policies. Mr. Crossman's resolution to criticize Mr. Bevin's policy received no votes in Commons. Moreover, 73 percent of Britons favored a policy of standing up to Russia, but 58 percent supported a similar policy toward America.
Mr. Wallace, no longer in office and with questionable standing within the Democratic Party, occupied a very different status from that of Mr. Bevin or Mr. Crossman. As editor of The New Republic, he had a forum in which to express his ideas. There were men in Parliament who saw the world through a "rosy haze of idealism". But many others had learned the pragmatic realities of the world.
Samuel Grafton writes from Mexico City with regard to the new Government in Mexico of Miguel Aleman and the scramble to obtain jobs with little work attached to them, so-called "bones" of patronage, bringing with it graft, which Mexicans accepted as part of politics.
Mexicans enjoyed talking about death. Some theorized that the preoccupation was handed down from the Aztecs, who had 20,000 sacrifices per year, scooping the heart from the one on the altar with one stroke of a knife. To sit alone at one of the great pyramids as evening approached was to feel the inconsequence of personal life, lending therefore the attitude toward death displayed in the country.
The bullfight also was a manifestation which brought home the inevitability of death and the manner in which it should be faced. He had missed the corrida which was said to have been the best in twenty years. Garza, the Mexican, was fighting bulls with Manolete
Mexican parties exhibited gaiety, while Mexican music was always sad. Perhaps it was, he suggests, the result of economic progress being consistently blocked so that the spirit of the people was forced inward toward friends. The foreigners who attended these parties appeared, with their sense of security, possessed of a "thin, tight smile."
A letter writer named Whittington—whether related to Dick Whittington not being indicated—comments on the editorial from Saturday on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, suggesting that the Duke and Duchess had appeared bored when the author had seen them during the war in New York.
A letter responds to "The Differential Is Still With Us", appearing Friday, regarding the differential in wages paid to Northern and Southern textile workers, saying the piece had left out the fact that the cost of living in New England was substantially higher than in North Carolina. Also, the state lacked fuel and metals as natural resources, and suffered from discriminatory freight rates.
The editors respond that they did not neglect the cost of living differential but had found it no longer to obtain, that in Boston food prices were actually a little cheaper than in Charlotte, that disparities in rent were usually based on the quality of the accommodations. Furthermore, the South had the resources for cotton textile manufacturing which the North lacked. Freight rates also had been equalized with regard to hauling of textiles.
A letter from the general industrial agent of the Southern Railway offers some statistics on what employment of 150 people did for the benefit of the community.
A letter from "Three Disgusted Sailors" stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, offers their addresses because they worked in the Navy post office and found themselves getting no mail
Their addresses are there for you. Get your pens out and send the boys some encouraging mail
Framed Edition
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.