Saturday, March 8, 1947

The Charlotte News

Saturday, March 8, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Republican Senators would meet on Monday night to discuss both foreign relations, in light of the scheduled Monday afternoon conference at the White House called by the President anent the issue of immediate financial aid to Greece and Turkey, and also on how to eliminate the remaining price controls on sugar, rent, and rice.

Representative Clarence Brown of Ohio urged the President to turn the matter of aid to Greece over to the U.N. for resolution, in light of the British indication that the country could no longer afford to provide aid to the troubled country. Mr. Brown did not like the fact that the process of decision-making was being transacted behind closed doors and wanted the matter opened up to the American people. He wanted the President to make public his proposal before discussing it with Congressional leaders.

When he finished, Mr. Brown took the pin out of the top of his head. It was causing him to squeak unduly.

Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, filling in for Secretary Marshall, met with the British Ambassador for twenty minutes regarding the Greek situation.

Secretary Marshall stated from Berlin that he hoped for a 40-year four-power security pact as an interim measure for resolving the problems of the pending treaty with Germany, the initial conference on which would be the primary subject of the Moscow Foreign Ministers Council meeting. He asserted that achieving such an interim pact was the primary objective for the meeting and that the pact would clear away many of the impeding issues regarding the treaties both with Germany and Austria.

The Senate Banking Committee recommended a one-year extension of controls of sugar prices and that the administration of the controls be shifted from OPA to the Department of Agriculture. Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont assured that housewives would have at least 35 pounds of sugar during 1947, ten pounds more than the previous year. Rice would remain the only food under OPA control, and legislation was being prepared to shift it, too, to Agriculture.

British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin arrived, via Brest-Litovsk, at the White Russian railroad station around noon, first of the foreign ministers to reach Moscow. Mr. Bevin, wearing a dark overcoat and a somber black homburg, said to the people of Moscow, via radio hook-up: "I am very glad to be back in Moscow again and bring you greetings from the British people to the people of Russia."

Mr. Bevin was received at the station platform by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, dressed in the steel grey uniform of the Soviet Foreign Office.

French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault was expected this night by train, and Secretary of State Marshall would arrive the following day at the earliest, as he was coming by sacred camel.

From Nanking came a report that new demonstrations had erupted on Formosa following the Governor, General Chen Yi, having announced a general reformation of the provincial administration to benefit the people. The demonstrators were said to be recently repatriated persons from Japan and Hainan Island. They shouted "down with one-party rule" and "we are against civil war". Recent riots in Formosa had resulted in the deaths of 500 persons.

Former New York Mayor and former UNRRA head Fiorello La Guardia testified before the Senate Labor Committee, favoring establishment of an American Labor Congress to unite labor organizations and then oversee the unions. Senator Andrew Ball of Minnesota accused Mr. La Guardia of seeking a labor monopoly, giving labor power which it did not have at present. Mr. Ball's bill would limit power by requiring collective bargaining only at the local union level.

But Mr. La Guardia retorted that such a system would bring about confusion and be very costly to administer. Mr. La Guardia also wanted extension of the 1943 Smith-Connally Act into peacetime, enabling seizure of vital industries to prevent strikes and cessation of vital services. He also stated his agreement with the Supreme Court decision of the previous Wednesday which upheld the contempt citations against UMW and John L. Lewis on the premise of the 1932 Norris-La Guardia Act, of which Mr. La Guardia had been co-sponsor while in Congress, not being applicable to the Government in otherwise proscribing injunctions against strikes. He also downplayed the so-called "peace agreement" between employers and unions in the building trades.

The liner John Ericsson, bound for Europe, suffered a fire causing 1.5 million dollars in damages and left its 435 passengers stranded in New York. A short circuit had caused the fire. The liner, originally built in 1928 for the Swedish-American Line in Hamburg, was taken over by the United States at the outbreak of the war for use as a troop ship. It transported about 76,000 troops on 20 voyages during the war. It was headed for Cobh, Eire, Southampton, and then Le Havre, France.

In Detroit, First Daughter Margaret Truman was confined to her hotel suite suffering from a cold. The malady might prevent her professional singing debut on Sunday night, to be broadcast via radio. She was scheduled to sing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Karl Krueger.

State Representative Harvey Morris expressed his opposition to the bill to regulate the milk industry in the face of the Grand Jury indictments out of Mecklenburg of eighteen dairymen accused of the adulteration of milk with water and selling it as whole milk. A slickered-up version of the headline could therefore have read: "Morris Favors Adulteration". He believed that the move was another aspect of centralization of government in Raleigh and charged that the Grand Jury indictments were deliberately timed to coincide with the proposed legislation. The authorities had the basis for the indictments, he said, beginning in mid-November, but had waited until March to act on it.

In Miami Beach, actress Jane Russell was sued by a nightclub owner for appearing on stage with not enough exposure, wearing neck-high clothes. He said that attendance had not been up to expectations given the lack of dress which made Ms. Russell famous, that being the neck-id clothes of the Outlaw. Her contract promised $15,000 but he wanted it reduced according to reduced attendance by diminished attention, the patrons having not been impregnated with enough enthusiasm. Ms. Russell responded that she had been unaware of the club owner's dissatisfaction with her performance under the contract.

In Chicago, a doctor specializing in geriatrics addressed the Chicago Medical Society, stating that whisky was the most useful aid a physician could use on the elderly. He liked his whisky, called it a "splendid tonic".

He was, perhaps, conventionally hanging around too much with Doc Adams, in from Dodge City.

He also recommended less food and plenty of fruit. He may also have been having too much intercourse with Carmen Miranda at the convention.

He further recommended adequate elimination—which, for the Tea Partiers, is a euphemism for Death Squads for mom and pop.

The rest of his recommendations you may obtain by following along with us at this website.

But don't let the whisky, fruit salad, and the rest of it go to your head.

A photograph tells a heart-warming story of a man, arrested in St. Louis on a minor traffic charge, having had a routine background check reveal that he was wanted by his mother, after 24 years on the run. He had run away with his nurse while still an infant. His mother, living in Portland, Ore., finally caught up with him. She was said to be ready to tan his hind parts good for taking off with that nurse and leaving her high and dry like that.

The tragedy was that the police, after locating the mother, then told him he would be locked up on the traffic charge and held incommunicado for another 20 years before he could see his mother, as other things were brought out in the background check, namely his resemblance to Orson Welles, who they thought looked a lot like Richard Kimble after adding a few pounds without the fruit salad. Unfortunately, fingerprints from Stafford, Indiana, would not be back until 1967 to resolve the dilemma. Those are the breaks.

On the editorial page, "The People Shout Amen" comments on the Supreme Court case decided the previous Wednesday, affirming the contempt citations issued in Federal District Court the previous December against John L. Lewis and the UMW, based on the inapplicability of the Norris-La Guardia anti-injunction law to the Government, trumped by the Smith-Connally Act permitting the Government to take over industries essential to the defense effort, or in this case, the reconversion effort, and to seek injunctions to prevent strikes against the Government.

The public, it informs, had reacted with glee at the decision, having become solidly opposed to the economically disruptive tactics of John L. Lewis. Labor felt betrayed by the decision.

The public still clamored for legislation to limit the power accumulated by unions. It was one of the reasons they had elected the Republican Congress. It was not based on reaction but rather a sense of fair play.

"The Buildings and the Men" indicates that the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Thomas Parran, had recently spoken to the American Medical Society, saying that buildings and doctors were the chief needs to improve medical care across the country.

In North Carolina, the proposed four-year medical school at the University would help alleviate the shortage of doctors, but it would be a long-term process. A doctor from the Duke Endowment had stated, however, that this medical school would not significantly improve the supply of doctors as many graduates would leave the state. The piece differs on the point and believes that, regardless, the state had to try to produce more doctors.

"A Pay Raise Is No Cure-All" suggests that even should the 30 percent pay raise for teachers, approved by the Joint Appropriations Committee of the State Legislature, go into effect, it would not for many years cure the woes of the state's educational system. A fourth of the county teachers and five percent of those in city schools were unqualified. It would take years to weed them out and replace them with quality teachers. Much of the reason for rural and black children performing poorly on standardized tests was the fact of unqualified teachers.

A piece from the Wilmington Evening Post, titled "The Main Chance—Missed", tells of the State House considering a bill from New Hanover County, to apply only to that County, in which Wilmington is situated, to prohibit leaving a child of seven years or less in a car without the supervision of a person of at least 14 years. The bill had been amended to prohibit leaving a child of five or under unaccompanied by a person at least 12 for more than 20 minutes.

The piece thinks that it ought be re-written again to apply only to wives leaving their husbands alone, regardless of age, for more than twenty minutes while shopping.

Just don't leave the little ones in the taxi or the Lincoln, lest they taxi and take off to Nebraska in an homburg and an humbug.

Drew Pearson discusses the continuing housing shortage among veterans and the various efforts in Congress to deal with it. In the Senate, there was the Taft-Ellender long-term housing bill, as well as other bills from Democratic Senators. But they were being held up by the Senate Banking & Currency Committee, as Senator Charles Tobey was playing politics on behalf of Senator Taft, blocking the competing bills, to await the re-introduction of the Taft-Ellender bill.

On the House side, a bill being authored by Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas of California appeared to be the best solution for encouraging the building of low-income housing suited to the pocketbooks of veterans. It was co-sponsored in the Senate by Glen Taylor of Idaho. But it was being held up in the House Banking & Currency Committee by chairman Jesse Wolcott of Michigan and there was little prospect for the bill to be heard soon before that Committee.

The Republican Congress was generally going to stall on housing and wait for private homebuilders to come to the rescue to fill the void. The foes of public housing would fight the Taft-Ellender bill in the House. The veterans organizations were conceding that the bill was condemned to failure or to be watered down to the point where it would have little impact, with it likely that the public housing features would be eliminated. But loan and mortgage liberalization, the other major aspects of the bill, might wind up being passed by the House.

"Congress apparently is perfectly willing to let the vets sweat it out in a brier patch—on the theory that it's better than a foxhole."

The new Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, Edward McGinnis, appointed by Senator "Curly" Brooks of Illinois, had informed a black war veteran, appointed also by Senator Brooks to a job in the Senate Post Office, not to eat again in the S.O.B. luncheonette after the veteran initially refused to leave the area when directed to do so by Mr. McGinnis.

Among the "Capital Chaff" items is the report that Kenny Delmar, "Senator Claghorn" on the radio and in the movies, was appearing at the birthday party being given for Senator Walter George of Georgia but became strangely and uncharacteristically tongue-tied when he got up to speak. Borrowing a leaf from Senator Claghorn, Senator Edward Robertson of Wyoming then interjected, "Don't stand there with your mouth hanging open, son—say something." Mr. Pearson muses that perhaps Mr. Delmar saw so many Claghorn clones that he could not help but be a little clogged with treacle at the sight.

Marquis Childs writes an obituary for the idea that Senator Robert Taft could effect a moderately conservative course for the Republican majority in Congress. The prospect had ended during the confirmation hearings on David Lilienthal to become chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission when Mr. Taft had sided with the reactionary opposition, led by Democratic Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, a political enemy of Mr. Lilienthal during his tenure as head of TVA. The Republicans were split between a liberal faction led by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse and Vermont Senator George Aiken, and a right-wing faction led by Minnesota Representative Harold Knutson, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee.

Senator Taft had been instrumental in getting the RNC chairmanship for former Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, who had led the party in a reactionary direction. There were so many Republicans vying for the 1948 nomination for the presidency, believing the nominee to be a shoo-in to the White House, that jealousies within the party had been disintegrative. Even Democratic Boss Ed Crump in Memphis had predicted a Republican winner for 1948.

While Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee which was holding hearings on the Lilienthal confirmation, had been fair in presiding over the hearings, at times he had been almost too patient with the members seeking to undermine the appointment and with Senator McKellar, not a member of the Committee.

The problems of the party placed a lot of incumbent responsibility on the shoulders of Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan to become a moderating force. The effort of those opposing Mr. Lilienthal appeared to be aimed at returning atomic energy to the control of the military, and the ultimate decision on the confirmation would be extremely important to the established perception of the country abroad.

Samuel Grafton, in London, tells of Britons reacting to the harsh winter, bringing a shortage of coal, with resentment toward the United States, with relatively few problems. The loan provided Britain in mid-1946 had not ameliorated that feeling. There had been a push to export coal the previous year to obtain food, and now that policy was being criticized. But had it not been done, there likely would have been a food crisis instead of a shortage of coal.

There was a seemingly deliberate effort to maintain a superficial attitude, as some complained that Britain could not afford fancy imported fruits as pineapple, and Winston Churchill had asked the public not to smoke tobacco products, also to reduce reliance on imports.

The sale of Britain's foreign investments during the war was now having an impact. A small faction of the Left were complaining, given the labor shortage, about maintaining an Army of 140,000 men, an additional 500,000 necessary to support it with equipment. There also had been a shift in attitude on the Left away from alliance with the United States toward a desire for alignment more with the poor countries of Europe, with which, it was thought, Britain shared more nearly a common destiny.

There was clearly evident a trend toward a change in the wartime unity of the Western world, a major change on the horizon in the postwar environs.

A letter writer explains the requirements for obtaining a barber's license. If you intend to get one in 1947, you might sit yourself down and read those requirements carefully.

He explains that a black barber would not be allowed to pass the examination to become an apprentice if he stated his intent, as routinely asked, to work in a white barber shop. If he told the examiners, however, that he would work in a black shop, but then went to work in a white shop, he would still have to stand for his final examination to obtain a license, and would inevitably be denied.

A letter thanks "A. W. Smith", actually referring to A. W. Black, perhaps an alias, for his letter attacking liberals as Reds. He thinks the Herblock cartoon of Thursday answered the question, that the Liberal was actually a forestaller of Communism. He thinks FDR had proved the point.

He informs that he would soon get around to telling of the even longer ears worn by the Conservative, a person who could not see beyond the end of his or her nose—or, perhaps, more faithful to the constructs of the metaphor he creates, his or her ears.

A letter from the executive director of the Kentucky Division of the American Cancer Society thanks the newspaper for its edition on the Good Health Program, presented three weeks earlier.

A letter writer wants the Legislature to busy itself removing the remaining outhouses of the state, especially those in the urban areas.

That's a hell of an idea.

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