The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 8, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the Department of Agriculture and the Citizens Food
Committee of the President ended poultryless Thursdays and issued a
new call for the public to eat more chicken
The poultry industry pledged to
reduce by one-third its broiler chick quota by January 31 and its
baby chick production by seven percent
One wise-cracker in Ithaca, N.Y., started a campaign to collect "hens for Harry" and "leghorns for Luckman", in reference to Charles Luckman, chairman of the Food Committee, sending several crates of chickens to the White House and the Committee.
That must have been hugely funny to the Europeans living on 1,500 calories per day, Mr. Chicken Farmer.
The Department of Agriculture announced a program to purchase 50 to 60 million pounds of the current flue-cured tobacco crop in the United States, to offset the announcement by Britain that it would no longer accept imports of American tobacco, part of its program to alleviate pressure on its dwindling dollar supply. The announcement had stemmed a precipitous fall in tobacco prices. But Secretary Clinton Anderson admitted that the program might fail because Britain had not yet agreed to a condition for the Government purchase, that it would buy the consigned tobacco when Britain re-entered the market.
Senator Homer Ferguson, chairman of the War Investigating subcommittee, continuing its hearings into the Hughes Aircraft war contracts to build the Spruce Goose and the F-11 surveillance plane, refused a request of Howard Hughes to question directly his own witnesses. The request was posed by Senator Claude Pepper of Florida, a Committee member. A request that Mr. Hughes be allowed to dictate his questions to a stenographer was likewise refused. He was, however, permitted to write out questions in long-hand. Mr. Hughes was present at the hearing and listened to testimony through an earpiece because of a hearing problem.
Members of the United Steelworkers at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. in Nashville, Tenn., voted to go on strike to try to get the company to bargain in good faith with the union and obtain a 30-cent per hour wage increase for the 1,700 workers represented by the union.
Eight Bethlehem Steel shipyards, where workers had been on strike for 136 days, had settled with the Marine and Shipbuilding Union, involving 22,000 workers in New York, Boston, and Maryland.
In Rockford, Ill., a young farmer, who was rebuffed in his advances toward the wife of a neighbor, killed the husband and forced the woman to ride with him for over a hundred miles through Northern Illinois. Eventually, she was able to grab the man's pistol and, after smashing several windows of the car during a struggle, fled unharmed. He made no attempt to run after her and left the scene in the smashed car. He had also killed the woman's father.
Argentina's Foreign Office agreed to the appointment of Porfirio Rubirosa as the Dominican Republic's Ambassador to the South American country. Sr. Rubirosa was married to tobacco heiress Doris Duke the prior September 1, his third marriage.
At Ludington, Mich., the Jupiter, a disabled freighter on Lake Michigan, was being towed out of "the graveyard of ships" by the Coast Guard cutter Sundew. The freighter was no longer in danger, as long as the tow line held.
In Chicago, a six-year old girl purchased a doll for almost $6 in suburban Evergreen Park, returned to the store to purchase another doll, handed the manager two ten-dollar bills. The manager expressed surprise at her riches, at which point the girl produced another ten-dollar bill from her lunch pail, then showed the astonished woman a thousand-dollar bill, whereupon the manager took the doll from the little girl, who began crying and inquired whether she lacked sufficient funds for its purchase. She then transported the little girl, in the first grade, to the school superintendent who called her mother and the money, which had apparently fallen from a hidey hole in the home, was returned. The little girl was disappointed that she did not get her second doll. The money all looked the same to her and she asked whether it was not all green.
That slutty manager.
A flour mill at Mt. Ulla, N.C., containing 15,000 bushels of wheat, was destroyed by fire. Other structures containing 50,000 bushels were undamaged.
Emery Wister of The News tells of the weatherman having predicted a heavy frost, the first of the season, for the next morning, ending the extended Indian summer. The temperature was predicted to reach a low of 34. It was the first time since 1941 that no frost had been recorded during October. The morning low was 49 this date and reached 53 by noon.
Elimination of the grade crossing on W. Trade Street was the first item on the agenda of the Charlotte Planning Board, set for hearing on Monday afternoon at 4:00. Be sure and attend and get your crossroads right.
Sports writer Steve Pappas, the News expert on high school football, suggests on the sports page five players for the annual Shrine Bowl, the North Carolina high school all-star football game to be held in December in Charlotte.
We were dead on the money, by the way, in our prediction for this week, and so will stick with the same score for next week, 42-35.
Two photographs show scenes from
Sadie Hawkins Day at UNC in Chapel Hill. Johnny Clampett of St.
Petersburg, Fla., played Marryin' Sam, who hitched Sadie, a.k.a. Maggie, and Li'l
Abner during halftime of the feetsball game the previous day, while
the Moosicians
On the editorial page, "Charity Slows Down at Home" tells of the Community Chest drive having come up $30,000 short by its original deadline, most of the shortage occurring in the special gifts division, where the big money was usually donated. The County division also was short by $9,000. If required, the drive would continue through the following week to reach the goal.
"Young Laughter in Chapel Hill" tells of the campus Communist leader at UNC having appeared before the International Relations Club, providing a speech which charged the U.S. with backing Fascism around the world, adding that the country ought be able to get along with Russia in peace when it had done so during war. He drew both rebuttal and laughter from the student audience, the latter reaction occurring when he suggested that the Soviets would change their policy if given half a chance.
It concludes that as long as such a speech provoked laughter, there was no concern that Chapel Hill was harboring a viper.
They might have sent him over to
State where he would have felt more comfortable in their farm
collective
Incidentally, UNC won 41-6 this date.
"Time Was No Healer"
tells of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky having taken exception to a
jazz arrangement of his "Firebird Suite"
But, it reflects, Mr. Stravinsky
himself had gone through a phase of disrepute as a musical
revolutionary. His dissonant "Rite of Spring"
In time, the musicognoscenti came, however, to accept
"The Rite of Spring"
It suggests that if the low taste in
music being displayed had gotten him down, he might therefore take
solace
A piece from the
Manufacturer's
Record, titled "Our Grass Grows Greener
Drew Pearson, aboard the "Friendship Train", which was his invention, as it pulled out of Los Angeles to garner food for Europe during its cross-country trek to New York, tells of it representing the participation of the average American in the country's foreign policy. No longer was it something distant, but now was made tangible and capable of receiving contributions from average Americans. While the train was only a token, it represented the sacrifice of individual families in forgoing meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays, thus was an important token of American friendship to the struggling people abroad.
The Italians had given parades for
receipt of sixteen tons of Russian wheat in 1946, the equivalent of
one boxcar
The present food on the train would be distributed by two American relief organizations in France and Italy, and they would seek to make it known to the people from whence it had come.
The new instrument of foreign policy
fit the American mold of friendliness when visiting abroad, quite
different from the Russian Government which had left behind a trail
of resentment wherever it exerted itself. The Russian people were
friendly, but were not in control of their Government. The present
foreign policy of friendship was as simple as baseball, to hit where
the other team had no fielding
He lists several contributors to the
train in California. Schoolchildren in Sacramento collected money on
Halloween to buy food for the train. The Screen Actors Guild had
given a car of evaporated milk
Fortunately, there was no attempt to contribute orange juice in non-concentrated form.
Stewart Alsop tells of the agreement between Russia and the United States at the U.N. regarding the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states having caused a sigh of relief that at last the two powers had agreed on something. But the American proposal that the British would leave by July 1, 1948 presumed an orderly transfer of power.
The Mufti of Jerusalem, however, was determined to interfere with those plans, having plainly warned that any Arab who accepted leadership under such a plan or otherwise cooperated with it would be assassinated. And his threats were usually not regarded as idle. He was now being financed by King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and by King Farouk of Egypt. Yet his primary support came from remaining Nazi financing which he had extracted from Germany before it had been seized by the Allies. He also had a large cache of gold in Iraq and a large account of Swiss watches in Switzerland. With the riches and dedicated triggermen, his influence was paramount in the Arab world.
The objection to creation of a Jewish state in Palestine stretched beyond the Mufti and his followers. Recruitment of anti-Zionist Arabs in Baghdad, unofficially sponsored by the Iraq Government, was going well.
The problems had caused observers to doubt that the Anglo-American oil pipeline could be completed, as it could too easily be cut by the Arabs, impacting shipment of oil to Europe under the Marshall Plan.
Russia was also planning to provide aid to the Arab world to curry favor. One shipment of arms to Latakia in Syria was said already to have been received via Danzig. At the same time, Communist agents-provocateur had been sent to the Jewish sections of Palestine from Rumania.
James Marlow of the Associated Press addresses the issue of Communism and the First Amendment, asks whether it was right to try to outlaw the Communist Party in America or cause problems for its members merely for exercising freedom of speech and thought, whether in so doing the country was not engaging in destruction of its own freedom under the Constitution, limiting that freedom only to those who thought and spoke in an approved manner.
And, of course, the question he raises always has to be posed whenever someone or some group, no matter how official they may be, seeks to undermine the basic liberty recognized as inherent, not granted, by the Constitution. It is the most un-American thing one can imagine to try to deprive, by chilling or otherwise, the right of anyone to exercise freedom of thought and speech. And most especially speech with which that someone might vehemently disagree and find opprobrious, indecorous, or subversive. Without it, our entire system of freedom disappears, as we have no means to debate publicly issues, such as the fitness of such bums, who try to curtail our freedom, to serve in public office despite taking corporate bribes and then covering it all up by going after and marginalizing the whistle blowers.
Samuel Grafton tells of shortages of
meat, either for lack or high price, having undergone a change in
typical reaction, from having to have it to saying to hell with it.
Scarcities had become a kind of bore. Recently, a couple of his
friends had bragged of getting new suits off the rack rather than paying
high prices for tailor-made articles and waiting six months to have
them made. That scenario would not have occurred a couple of years
earlier. It had become chic to tell the purveyor of scarce items to
take a hike.
Cabbies, always the first to get the straight dope, reported of the theater crowds going home after the show, rather than to the clubs.
Auto dealers told of taking orders four years ahead, as cars would be scarce until 1951. The Wall Street Journal, however, differed, stated that there would be spot deliveries by spring.
Housewives were hoarding sugar, but with the feeling that it was not really necessary for its plenty.
The whole business, he thinks, foreshadowed a political change, just as the insatiable desire for meat in 1946 had led to the end of price controls in the fall and swept the Republicans into Congress. But it was unclear what form that change would take.
"Put it all together, and I
wonder if the seedbed for demagogy hasn't been well spaded, and if we
hadn't better keep an eye out for the palooka with an easy, tricky,
and emotion-releasing solution for all problems, such as, for
instance, hanging dissidents from the nearest lamppost
Answer: No, but passers pass whene'er they fast too much
Framed Edition
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