The Charlotte News

Friday, October 24, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that President Truman had determined to call a special session of Congress, to be convened November 17, for the purpose of considering emergency aid for Europe, to tide it through the winter until Marshall Plan aid presumably could be implemented. The President was scheduled to speak to the nation on the subject this date at 10:00 p.m.

Representative Charles Halleck of Indiana, House Majority Leader, claimed that the President had broken faith with the Republicans in Congress by not consulting with them before calling the session. He said that the President, in meeting with the Republicans the previous day, had instructed them of his decision, rather than asking for their views. He also objected to the President shifting the emphasis from foreign aid to rising prices, on the belief that the President was attempting to make a case for renewed price control.

Representative John Taber of New York, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, stated that he was not sure that Italy and France needed 642 million dollars of emergency aid, as proposed by the President.

In response to the call for the special session, the prices of wheat, corn, and oats plummeted to the permissible limits on the Chicago Board of Trade. In New York, cotton fell $1.65 to $3.25 per bale by mid-morning.

Bernard Baruch testified to the Senate War Investigating Committee that the Government had repeated the mistakes of mobilization made in World War I and consequently had cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars in mobilizing for the late war. He said that he had appeared before Congressional committees while chairman of the special committee set up by FDR in 1935 to study mobilization, and in that capacity had made recommendations based on his experience in World War I, but those recommendations were not implemented.

At the U.N., in the context of the debate on Russia's proposal to outlaw "warmongering", Turkey formally accused Russia of "psychological aggression" and warmongering, as well as interference in Turkey's internal affairs, trying to turn the people of Turkey against the U.S. for its aid program under the Truman Doctrine, and the Russian people against Turkey.

Moscow announced that Nikolai Novikov had been replaced as Ambassador to the U.S. by Alexander Panyushkin. Mr. Novikov had been in the post since the previous year, succeeding Andrei Gromyko, assigned to the U.N. State Department officials said that they did not foresee any change in Soviet policy as a result.

Senator Robert Taft, having completed his Western tour with reported last-luster reception, had nevertheless determined that his support was adequate to throw his hat into the ring for the 1948 Republican presidential nomination.

In London, at least 31 persons were killed and 63 others injured when a crowded suburban electric train crashed into the rear of another train in a dense fog near South Croydon Station. It was Britain's worst rail accident in two years.

The chairman of the flue-cured marketing committee announced from Henderson, N.C., that in light of the statement of the British Government that it would ban imports of tobacco, all sales of flue-cured tobacco would be suspended as of October 28. Flue-cured prices had declined in the wake of the British announcement.

Bar Harbor, Maine, and six other summer resort communities nearby were virtually wiped out by the wind storm which swept through the area, causing an estimated 26 million dollars of damage. Two hundred to three hundred homes in Bar Harbor were destroyed by wind and fire as the town's 3,500 residents evacuated. The business center remained intact.

Washington was preparing to celebrate its sesquicentennial in 1950 as the nation's capital and playwright Paul Green of Chapel Hill had been asked to write a pageant for the event.

In Baltimore, a police vice-squad captain saw a man suspected of being involved in the policy rackets duck into his bathroom and leave, whereupon the captain peeked inside to find a woman sitting in the bathtub taking a bath, whereupon he instructed her to give him the slips or else he would slip his hand down where he believed the policy slips to be. She complied. The defendant was found guilty and fined $100 plus costs. The case against the woman was dismissed.

Furman Bisher reports of the Rock Hill High School football team in South Carolina having won 25 games in a row under coach Walt Jenkins, aiming for number 26 at Gaffney.

On the editorial page, "We're Gaining on the Airmail" tells of the efforts of Senator Clyde Hoey and Congressman Hamilton Jones having resulted in an investigation by the Post Office Department into the circuitous routing employed by the Post Office to deliver airmail to the Carolinas, such that Charlotte customers were receiving it typically in about the same time frame as regular mail, though customers paid five cents for the airmail service, compared to three cents for the ground service.

The piece points out that an airmail terminal in Charlotte had been closed by the Post Office a year earlier, not recognizing the centrality of Charlotte as a commercial hub in the Carolinas.

"It's Time for Slum Clearance" tells of 12,000 families in Charlotte living in substandard homes, and slums being created faster than they could be replaced. The City's Housing Authority had rendered a report on the two-year building program to provide housing for low-income families and war veterans, telling of housing having been provided for 3,800 persons in that time and thus proceeding apace.

The local program demonstrated that private funding had to supplement Federal spending on public housing for it to be a success in eradicating slums.

"Late for the Special Session" comments on the President's late decision to call a special session of Congress, questioning whether he had waited too long to avert disaster in Europe. The Moscow press had latched onto the late call by declaring it to be indicative of the tenuous nature of the Marshall Plan and that the Soviets would exert their efforts to see that it failed. The Soviets were thus convinced that the program would fail, based on waiting too long to implement it.

The Communist world hoped that the U.S. would soon enter a depression, encouraged in the belief by the futile attempts to curb inflation. The need to check inflation was centermost for the Marshall Plan to succeed.

The Truman Administration had come tardily to recognition of this fact, but, the piece believes, it might be a matter of being too little, too late. The President, scheduled to speak this night, would need give an exceptionally strong address to rally the people behind the program he had enunciated for voluntary action to curb inflation and conserve food.

A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Raise Your Eyes, America!" tells of the complaint around the world being heard repeatedly about Americans since the turn of the century, that they had become so materialistic, so prosperous, that they had also become primitive and irresponsible, did not understand their proper place in the world, to lead and lead vigorously.

It posits that what was needed was a new dream for Americans, such as that which had opened the American West from the beginning of the Nineteenth century. It quotes of this dream from Bernard De Voto.

America, it concludes, had to "raise its eyes". For there was "still a chaos through which it must carry that complex ideal of Thomas Jefferson's."

The new frontier…

And the piece was correct. Without the "vision thing" and the courage to continue it, irrespective of mockery and slings and arrows at its heart, there is no central focal point around which the average American can determine the path to walk. Too many paths presented as choices lead ultimately to a disintegrated nation traveling in too many disparate channels, Balkanized as much as Europe during the greater part of the Twentieth century. But that "vision thing" seems now to be considered passe and even ludicrous, old-fashioned, as much so as singing in harmony, no matter the cadence and instrumentation in accompaniment. It is supplanted by the new monotonous dissonance of cynicism, which leads only to degradation and headless horsemen.

Drew Pearson tells of the meteoric rise of Capitol Hill lobbyist from San Antonio, Ralph Moore, a grain speculator who bragged that he never had to bribe anyone to get his way, but showed them how to make "a little money", provided he trusted the contact. Mr. Pearson recounts his interview with him.

Several of the Senators speculated on grains, though he had not handled the transactions. The secretary of Senator Pass the B's Pappy O'D. of Texas had made quite a lot of money speculating through Mr. Moore, presumably on behalf of his boss. And the secretary had reciprocated by funneling customers to Mr. Moore whenever vis'tors from down home wanting to make "a little money" come up 'ere to Washin'ton to visit with P. the B. Naturally, Mr. Moore charged them a fee.

He entertained Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma routinely at various hotels, bringing along some various women to the hotels for Mr. Thomas's conversational engagement.

Mr. Moore had held a dinner at the Mayflower Hotel for Senators and Congressmen on May 18, 1945, aimed at dismantling OPA, a dinner which he trumpeted as one of his great successes. His big money began to roll in only after the death of price control.

He had worked for the right-wing American Democratic National Committee in 1944 and continued his connections with "reactionary chain-publisher" Frank Gannett and his Committee for Constitutional Government.

He told Mr. Pearson that he would make several thousand dollars for him quickly without it costing him a cent, provided he would "go easy" on his subject. But Mr. Moore did not trust the interviewer, believed he might put the offer in the paper.

But the chickens were possibly about to come home for the man who boasted of more friends on Capitol Hill than anyone else, as he had breached a well-known rule prohibiting trying to influence prices directly through press releases placed in the boxes of the journalists in the newsroom at the Agriculture Department. The press releases were bullish on fats and oils, with a view to causing their price to rise, and cited U.S. Government officials as being in support of the opinion, all misleading information cloaked in quasi-official guise. The Department of Agriculture had referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.

Marquis Childs, in London, assesses the general mood in England regarding the Labor Government and its austerity program, finds it divided and bitter on the surface, particularly with respect to the feeling that America had abandoned its wartime promise by FDR that lend-lease aid would continue for 12 to 18 months after the war. But underneath that attitude lay surprising unity among the people, coalescing in a general support of the Socialist Government, believing that the Tories could not gain the support of the workers and so, while not achieving the post-war goal of prosperity on which it had been elected in 1945, was still seen as the better of the two choices.

He recounts the process whereby King George VI traditionally read before the House of Lords the agenda of the Government for the coming year. Among the items was the proposal to limit the power of Lords, which was, Mr. Childs posits, probably an effort to pave the way for socialization of the iron and steel industry in 1949, to go along with coal, nationalized at the beginning of 1947. Some Laborites, such as Aneurin Bevin, Health Minister, believed iron and steel nationalization would occur in 1948, but the prevailing opinion was that it would be a year away.

Some Conservative Party leaders believed that the reaction to such nationalization would lead to a call for a general election in which the Tories would acquire such increased support that a coalition government would be forced. Most, however, believed that even if such an election were held, Labor would prevail with enough popular support to continue a government, albeit with a smaller majority in Commons. And the Labor victories in the record number of bye-elections in the country were indicative of such support.

Joseph Alsop, in Trieste, tells of the Congressional delegations heading home from Europe after an inspection tour during the summer, that the information gleaned would likely prove better than the perfunctory nature of the members' public statements, such as Representative John Taber's revelation that he had learned from the Greek press all about Stalin during his tour of Greece.

The problems of the Congressional junkets of the past had not recurred despite the fact that 200 members, some who liked their drink, had toured Europe. The members had demonstrated a new sobriety both literally and figuratively, had sought to learn everything they could about the situation. While the hard-line isolationist group would continue to be unconvinced of real crisis, the moderates, those who had gone along part of the way with aid for reconstruction, had been deeply affected and joined the interventionists to form a working majority when Congress reconvened. The isolationists tended to adopt the purblind view that there might as well be another war and get it over with.

Yet, it was only logical to spend billions on peace rather than many times that amount on another war, one which would likely lead to the collapse of Western civilization.

A letter writer praises the recent editorial and articles on the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and urges the citizenry to support the Orchestra for its fine work.

A letter from a doctor presents an open letter to Dr. Hubert Haywood, chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee of the State Hospitals Board of Control, praising the editorial of October 3 anent the suggested memorial to the late Tom Jimison, who had died in September, 1945, for his singular contribution by way of his series of articles presented in January and February, 1942, exposing the deficiencies of the State mental hospitals from his first-hand experience as a voluntary patient, or "inmate" as he preferred to call it, in the Morganton facility, detailing a virtual nightmare for most admittees, with woefully inadequate facilities, diet, trained staff and treatment.

The doctor was confident that the "brilliant eccentric", a lawyer, defrocked Methodist minister, former reporter for The News, with a self-confessed drinking problem, had acted as statesman in the establishment of the machinery which had led to the current improvements during the gubernatorial Administration of Gregg Cherry.

He urges the Committee to follow the advice of the editorial and set up some memorial to Mr. Jimison.

Apparently, as we have commented, that was never done. Far be it from officialdom to name any ward or wing or building or what have-you for some "brilliant eccentric" with a drinking problem.

A letter writer thinks that "Dewey and a Duet, Perhaps", on October 21, was the "silliest thing" the nameless writer had ever read. The writer says you could bet that the New Deal lovers were hating the fact that Adolphe Menjou was fighting Communism.

"We are having our trouble today because little crack pot FDR was stupid enough to say yes to dear Stalin."

Of course, The News did not like "those actors!" For they were Americans, as the letter writer, a Republican.

Well, does that not go without saying? All Democrats are Communists and all Republicans are true Americans. We know that.

The person adds the directive not to publish the author's name, as he or she does not want anyone to know that they were stupid enough to read The News.

But you did read it. Ergo, you must be stupid enough.

A letter from the secretary of the Mecklenburg County Employ the Physically Handicapped Committee thanks writers Emery Wister and Nancy Brame of The News for their support of the Committee's efforts in their reports on same, its campaign having taken place between October 5 and 11. The publicity given the campaign had led many more employers to call the Committee seeking placement of certain types of handicapped persons for jobs in their businesses, doubling the number of placements made during the campaign drive of the previous year.

She notes that the letter was transcribed by a blind stenographer.

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