Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a proposal to ship some of the U.S. gold to Europe as part of the Marshall Plan was receiving serious consideration by top Administration officials. The plan called for Congressional approval of a three-billion dollar stabilization fund for Europe, to be administered by the U.S. Treasury, additional to the six to seven billion dollars in gifts and loans probably to be recommended for the first year of the Plan. The stabilization fund would not be used until the Plan was well underway, perhaps by late 1948. At that point, the Treasury might use the fund to finance shipments of gold and dollars to aided countries under the Plan, as a means to back up their local currencies. The gold backing would provide confidence to the people in the worth of the currency. Neither the gold nor the dollars made available by the fund would be usable to purchase aid under the Plan.
The officials who favored the idea insisted that it had nothing to do with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin having suggested several weeks earlier that the U.S. redistribute its gold across the world to increase the buying power abroad. The U.S. had during the war accumulated a large proportion of the world's gold.
Senator Owen Brewster of Maine, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee, declared during hearings that two conflicting stories by two former Naval officers ought prompt an investigation of whether the Navy had been excessively charged for Arabian oil. One of the officers had headed negotiations which resulted in ARAMCO charging the Navy $1.05 per barrel for oil when, according to the Senator, other Government agencies were obtaining it for 84 cents. ARAMCO had allegedly represented that it was paying a 42-cent royalty to King Ibn Saud, when the royalty was actually 21 cents. The memo so stating had been prepared by one of the testifying officers, and he said that he was convinced that the figure therein was stated to him in error but nevertheless was so represented. Senator Brewster found his story hard to believe.
In the reconvened hearings on the Hughes wartime contracts, Charles E. Wilson, president of G. E. and head of the Wartime Aircraft Production Board, testified before the Committee's subcommittee, chaired by Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, that in 1943, he had sought to cancel the Hughes Aircraft contract to build the Spruce Goose and the new reconnaissance plane, but that FDR had overruled him. Industrialist Henry Kaiser and Jesse Jones, then chairman of the RFC, had brought pressure on the War Production Board to make the contracts to build the planes. But Mr. Wilson thought it silly to order the planes as they would not be produced in time to aid the war effort.
The box score on the elections is provided on the page. John Stennis held the lead to succeed deceased Theodore Bilbo in the Senate and would win that election. Racist Representative John Rankin, also a candidate, was coming in last among the five Democratic candidates in the field. Only a Republican polled fewer votes.
Democrats regained control of the State Government in Kentucky, where Earle Clements beat Eldon Dummit in the gubernatorial race.
Voters in Ohio and New York approved bonuses for World War II veterans.
DNC chairman J. Howard McGrath stated that the off-year election showed general dissatisfaction in the country with the Republican Congress. RNC chairman Carroll Reece said that the Republicans had held the line against bitter attack from the Democrats, explaining away the shift in Kentucky by the fact of Democratic registration heavily outnumbering that of Republicans.
In Southampton, England, the Queen Mary was delayed in sailing for New York because of a threatened strike of about a hundred crew members who voted to support a nine-day wildcat strike by seamen in Liverpool. Stokehold men, vital to operation of the ship, were not aboard. But it was thought that the passenger liner might nevertheless move out on the tide and await there to take on tender crew members to replace the stokers. Most of the passengers were already aboard.
In Baltimore, riot squads met the City of Baltimore as it docked, to take into custody five European crewmen who had become rowdy after being fined onboard another ship for failure to perform duties. The men were charged with assault and disorderly conduct onboard the first ship, found guilty and fined.
In Raleigh, the State Supreme Court heard oral argument on the constitutionality of the state's new ban on the closed shop, passed by the Legislature in early 1947. An employer had refused to hire a non-union worker and was fined in criminal court for the offense under the new law. His attorney argued that recourse should have been only through a civil action, though the law made violations of the act criminal offenses.
The state closed shop law affected employers not engaged in interstate commerce and thus not covered by the Taft-Hartley ban on the closed shop.
In Greensboro, one of the escapees a week earlier from the tuberculosis prison ward of the State Sanatorium at Sanatorium, N.C., had given himself up. Two companions in the escape remained at large. Continue to be alert for involuntary coughers.
Restaurants were set to comply with the determination by Governor Gregg Cherry, after consultation with his Food Committee, that eggs could be served in restaurants for breakfast on Thursdays but not at other meals. Thursdays would continue, however, without poultry.
An application had been submitted to the FCC to locate WMIT, a pioneer FM station, in Charlotte, with its proposed studios to be in the Charlotte News Building. The application also sought an increase in power for the station, from 200,000 watts to 300,000. The station was owned by Gordon Gray of Winston-Salem, Assistant Secretary of the Army and part of the group of investors who had taken over ownership of The News the previous January. Mr. Gray was also the publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel and president of its parent company, Piedmont Publishing, which owned WSJS AM and FM stations. WMIT had been on the air since 1942 as an experimental FM station and was set to serve five million listeners in seven states when its power was increased.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost half the nation's population resided in 140 cities of over 100,000 population, ripe for destruction by the atomic bomb.
Best move to the suburbs to avoid the Rooskies.
On the editorial page, "'International' to Fight Reds" tells of a wave of cheering having taken place in the House of Commons the previous Monday following the announcement that Polish Peasant Party leader Stanislaw Mikolajczyk had completed his flight to London to escape intended execution by the Polish Government. He had fled with two other members of the Polish Parliament. He was going to take the lead in a new Peasant "International", recently formed in London by Yugoslav, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Czechoslovak and Polish exiles. It presented an answer to the newly organized Cominform, Communist Information Committee, a throwback to the Comintern of pre-war days. The new organization would seek a united front with other anti-Communist parties to form an ideological war against Communism.
Several of the Peasant Party members in the Eastern-bloc countries had already become martyrs to the cause and were deeply committed to it. Czechoslovakia had been slated as the next country for a Communist coup and the Peasant Party feared for their leaders in the country.
The number of such incidents suggested that the Communists had been meeting a broader and more determined resistance than readily visible from the West and that this opposition was better organized than generally supposed. The flight of such persons to the West showed a new commitment by Washington and London to support of these freedom fighters.
"Broughton Makes Good News" greets former Governor J. Melville Broughton's announcement of his candidacy for the Senate seat filled by William B. Umstead following the death the previous December of Josiah W. Bailey, as a healthy sign of political vibrancy in the state. Mr. Umstead had served the state well thus far in the Senate and Mr. Broughton would bring to the campaign experience and a progressive agenda which would be popular with the people.
As indicated, Mr. Broughton would win the Democratic primary in the spring and then would die in March, 1949, just two months after taking office.
"Literary Uplift in Charlotte" tells of there being at least 70 assorted book clubs within Charlotte, with some 1,500 members. The piece hopes that the members would work in earnest toward obtaining a new library for the city when the matter was next presented as a bond referendum, the last previous attempt having passed by a majority but not by the required majority of those registered to vote.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Two Ways of Thinking", tells of U.N. Atomic Energy Commission delegate Frederick Osborn of the U.S. having stated to an audience at Washington & Jefferson College recently the problem he had encountered with the Russians, that they believed that the world could be made to conform to an unchanging authoritarian system, at loggerheads with the West, which believed that change was the very essence of progress.
The Russian system, says the piece, was based on a form of reaction in that no further change was contemplated. The American system favored individual freedom and such restrictions only as were necessary to prevent one person's freedom from becoming another's bondage. It required an objective mind, that for which Mr. Osborn was appealing. Truth had to be placed ahead of propaganda. He ultimately wanted the social sciences to engage in the type of critical thinking which the pure sciences had long accepted.
Drew Pearson tells of Army brass hats being engaged with the Library of Congress in a debate over keeping documents from public view, including those revelatory of military blunders. Even Civil War blunders remained classified as secret Army files. The same was true of World War I and World War II mistakes.
Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia had sought release of Army records on the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 through January 1945, the costliest mistake of the war. But the Army had steadfastly refused.
The libraries of the nation had joined with the Library of Congress to try to obtain release of these records, but had thus far met a brick wall. The American Political Science Association had proceeded similarly, also without success thus far. Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah had sought to assist the latter effort but had gotten back only hollow promises and excuses for lack of action.
Even trivial information within the documents seized in Germany after the war was being maintained in secret. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall had urged the State Department to make public certain documents seized from Germany, but the brass hats in the Army, supposedly under his direction, were objecting.
Congressman Sol Bloom of New York became upset at a New York restaurant when a basket of bread was placed before him, began lecturing the waiters on the food crisis abroad. The bread was removed.
Henry Wallace had informed intimates that he would probably support General Eisenhower for the presidency in 1948.
The abandoned State Department Building, which would later become the Executive Office Building, was now housing the President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Citizens Food Committee.
Col. Sherwood Anderson had resigned as a top intelligence adviser in the State Department, in protest of the Administration's stand on Palestine. Pro-Arab, he did not want to see partition take place.
The Administration was busy trying to remove snags from the Marshall Plan prior to its roll-out before the special session of Congress, to convene November 17. Mr. Pearson had obtained a list of the problems being assessed, which he provides.
Washington Senator Harry Cain had appeared recently at a formal dinner party in Paris wearing a soiled brown suit. He had left his tuxedo in Washington. Foreign Minister Georges Bidault pulled up a pant leg to reveal brown socks under his tuxedo.
A piece from the Washington Post tells of the history of special sessions of Congress, the one about to start on November 17 to consider emergency aid to Europe for the winter and the concomitant issue of price control having been the 26th called by a President during the country's history to that point.
The first such session had been called on March 25, 1797 by President John Adams to suspend diplomatic relations with France. The last previous session had been on September 21, 1939, at the beginning of World War II, when FDR had sought repeal of the neutrality law forbidding sale of arms to belligerents.
It provides a list of some of the other sessions and their purposes. President Wilson had called a similar special session to that being summoned by President Truman when, on May 7, 1919, he sought from Congress enactment of measures to control the rising cost of living, an effort which did not succeed.
The longest special session in the country's history had been 269 days, called in 1841 by President William Henry Harrison to consider finances and revenue. The shortest was called in 1856 by President Franklin Pierce to pass an appropriations bill for the Army, taking ten days.
President Lincoln had called the Congress into special session on July 4, 1861, regarding the outbreak of the Civil War the previous April.
President William Howard Taft, in 1911, had called a special session of a Democratically controlled Congress to ratify his reciprocity agreement with Canada, an effort which was successful, but rejected ultimately by Canadian voters.
President Roosevelt had also called a special session in 1937 for Congress to take action on the recession.
President Truman would call another special session in 1948, the last time a President has used the power granted expressly by the Constitution.
Marquis Childs, in London, tells of some Americans, primarily the isolationists of the stripe of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, wanting humiliation of Britain, which just seven years earlier had been the world symbol for undaunted steadfastness in the face of armed tyranny during the Blitz. The professional British-haters saw only the foibles of Britain during the post-war period, ignoring the successes in India and Burma, as Britain urged voluntary acceptance by those countries of the status of independent states within the British Commonwealth.
The Communists, too, wanted to divide Britain and America, in an effort to isolate America from Europe. At the other extreme in Britain were the Empire worshippers within the Conservative Party, similar to American isolationists. They wanted an economic wall erected around the Empire, which could lead to a form of Fascism.
Reasonable people in both the U.S. and Britain had to work to avoid this division as it was of utmost importance that the two countries divided but by a common language and a Revolution have a good working relationship in the post-war world.
The British and American navies cooperated in the Mediterranean, but cooperation had to take place on a much higher level if it was to be meaningful.
Both nations could learn from one another, Britain of American industrial techniques and efficiency, America of how better to exercise its economic-technical supremacy, as the British had learned falteringly over the course of 15 years following the victories at Trafalgar and Waterloo.
A letter writer tells of having seen Adolphe Menjou as a floorwalker in "The Bachelor's Daughters" a couple of months earlier and thought that he had played his part well, born for the role. A few days earlier, he had seen Robert Taylor in "Song of Russia", finding that the film did not make him wish to become a Communist. He had already viewed the Russian people as people, an idea reinforced by the movie. But he understood that it might make some Americans doubt the wisdom of using the atomic bomb against Russia and so perhaps was subversive, polluting of American resolve.
He did not like the HUAC hearings on Hollywood, equating it to a court in Nazi Germany inquiring of Jewish heritage. Those who had joined the Communist Party wished that Mr. Taylor had not joined the Republican Party.
He thinks present Communists were better than former Communists, as at least Judas tried to do the right thing in the end.
A letter from A. W. Black finds HUAC doing a splendid job, and expresses no surprise in finding the Committee on the First Amendment, which included among its members Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Danny Kaye, defending Communists by seeking abolition of HUAC. He allows that the defenders might not all be Communists, as some were probably just gullible.
HUAC, he concludes, had done an excellent job in defending national security.
A letter writer responds to a letter of October 18 which had taken this author to task for a previous letter in which he had criticized the position of the World Federalists for desiring world government through the U.N. He believes that international statesmanship ruled out Christianity and humanitarianism, thus was a dirty business. But he was also favorable to the common rights of man, not world government, as inferred by his respondent, rather to justice for all.
Quote of the day from the Arkansas Gazette, for which former News Editor Harry Ashmore had become Managing Editor in late July: "A physicist said that no two objects in the universe could be separated by more than [54 quintillion] miles. What about Colonel McCormick and Henry Wallace?"
