The Charlotte News

Monday, April 14, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Andrei Gromyko charged before the U.N. Security Council in New York that the new Truman Doctrine was being re-shaped at the last minute to try to make it appear that it was not unilateral and had the imprimatur of the U.N. He referred to the amendment proposed by Senator Vandenberg that the aid to Greece and Turkey was not intended to bypass the U.N. and could be vetoed by it if the U.N. General Assembly or a majority of the Security Council deemed that the aid was unnecessary for being supplanted by U.N. aid. Mr. Gromyko viewed the proposal as only underscoring the unilateral nature of the aid.

In London, Henry Wallace declared that he would go on speaking out for peace wherever people would listen. He objected to the criticism leveled at him at home, as there was no war on, which avoided any proper accusation that he was affording aid and comfort to an enemy. He was not amused by the criticism from various Senators and Congressmen. The BBC was criticized in British newspapers for providing time to Mr. Wallace.

HUAC chairman J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey stated that Mr. Wallace was in violation of the 1799 Logan Act, prohibiting citizens from dealing with a foreign government on any matter in dispute between the two countries, and should in consequence be charged under it by the Justice Department, subjecting him to a fine and three years in jail. He stated that HUAC planned no action, however, as it was the responsibilty of the Attorney General to do so.

Representative John Rankin of Mississippi concurred.

Mr. Wallace was not dealing with any government at all. He was merely exercising freedom of speech. But this pair of idiotic dingbats did not understand that because they could not think or see beyond the ends of their noses.

The hypocrisy is immediately apparent in the absence of such voices a year earlier when Winston Churchill provided his warning of the "iron curtain" having descended over Eastern Europe, in his speech delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

Stock market prices fell 1 to 7 points, the largest slide so far during the year.

General Motors offered a 10 cents per hour raise to its workers and agreed to a 15-cent per hour increase for 30,000 electrical workers.

The Senate Labor Committee approved a bill to allow injunctions to prevent national strikes and to establish a Federal mediation board, independent of the Labor Department.

There was no word of any progress in talks between the telephone workers union and Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach, seeking to reach a settlement in the week-old nationwide telephone strike.

In Southampton, England, the Queen Elizabeth had run aground, but was in no danger of going under.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., a pastor pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and loitering at a bawdy house, paid a $25 fine and resigned his pastorate. He and seven others had been arrested by police during a raid conducted early Sunday. The raid occurred in response to a stone being thrown at an officer from the building.

The Board of County Commissioners had chosen Saturday, June 7, as the date for the referendum on controlled sale of liquor through ABC stores.

An Episcopal reverend stated that he had lived in a county with controlled sale of liquor, and the dry conditions in Charlotte were far worse in encouraging drink. Three ministers, inclusive of the Episcopal minister, voted against a Ministerial Association resolution to oppose the referendum.

The Reynolds "Bombshell", a converted A-26 bomber, owned by manufacturer Milton Reynolds of Chicago, reached Shanghai on its round-the-world flight. It was over halfway through its 20,000-mile route—or 45,000, depending on who was calculating the distance, the latter meaning an average air speed of 692 miles per hour, nearly Mach I the whole way, perhaps a possibility, provided they were passing through steel most of the time.

The crew, which included Mr. Reynolds, said that they expected to break the record by at least 26 hours, completing the flight in 65 hours, provided weather held.

On the editorial page, "Statistical Record of Progress" tells of the State Planning Board finding that average income increase in North Carolina had been 110.1 percent as against 80.1 percent for the nation in 1945. Some of the new prosperity was from the war and would inevitably dissipate in its aftermath. But permanent gains had been made.

The cities had far greater income than the rural areas, and establishing closer equality was a challenge for the future, as the cities and farm communities were still linked together in developing progress.

"Four Constitutional Amendments" tells of the four new amendments to the State Constitution to be proposed at the next election in 1948: an increase in salaries of legislators from $600 to $1,200 per session; repeal of the requirement for a majority of registered voters to pass non-essential bond measures; an increase in the limit on authorization of county taxes for general purposes, from 15 cents to 25 cents; and repeal of limits on counties and municipalities contracting debt based on the amount of debt retirement during the prior period.

The editorial supports all four proposed amendments.

"The Campaign Against Cancer" comments on the modern recognition of the disease as a real danger, free of the old superstitions which had previously surrounded it. Treatment had been vastly improved. Nuclear fission had carried the potential for treatment even further, with extensive research being conducted in that area.

The American Cancer Society was conducting its annual drive for funds during the month of April and the piece urges contribution. The goal was $16,425 for the county.

A piece from the New York Times, titled "An Affirmation of Faith", tells of the coming of spring, when good husbandmen ventured forth to do the plowing in good faith. As he sowed, so would he reap.

It concludes: "Faith is the anchor of life—and plowing is an affirmation of faith."

Drew Pearson returns to the topic of John L. Lewis having in 1937 paid a Springfield, Ill., mine operator to close his mine so that the rival Progressive Miners union which had organized that mine would be forced to fold. He had paid the operator for the purpose about $300,000 from the UMW treasury. While Mr. Lewis reported the expenditure, the recipient operator did not report the income. But Mr. Lewis nevertheless helped him make it appear as a loan. The Treasury claimed that there was evidence that the purported loan was merely to aid the operator in evading the taxes and avoiding prosecution for same, and that Mr. Lewis was involved in a conspiracy to evade. FDR had wanted the case set aside, however, in 1943 to avoid problems with the UMW during the war. So it was.

The State Department, he next reports, had found the Declaration of Independence to be too radical to send along to Nepal, together with the Constitution, for education in American democracy.

Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder had told the President that there would be a reduction in prices at U.S. Steel, with which he was supposed to have an inside track. But the reduction did not materialize.

Paul Porter had replied to a question as to why the President had dispatched him and fellow Kentuckian Mark Ethridge, publisher of the Louisville-Courier Journal, to Greece to study the situation, by saying that only feuding mountaineers could understand the Greeks.

Marquis Childs recapitulates ground already covered the previous week by Joseph Alsop in his column, re the four factions within the Senate Labor Committee. He views the matter as a chess game of politics, untimely for the fact of the coal strike and the telephone strike, causing the nation to need effective immediate legislation which the President would sign, not a bill which the President definitely would veto, as the Republicans appeared poised to deliver, banking on either overriding his veto or, failing that, using the block of the bill by the President against him in the 1948 campaign.

Joseph Alsop discusses the President's special Cabinet meeting the previous week on rising prices and what to do about them. The stimulus for it was the fear that inflation would lead to a recession or depression by the following fall. The Administration would therefore be actively encouraging business to reduce prices during the coming months.

The Federal Reserve Board reported that in 1946 the cost of living index had risen from 129.1 to 153.1, nearly as much as during the four years after Pearl Harbor, providing a cost of living 50 percent higher than before the war in Europe in 1939. Consumer demand and full employment had fed the higher prices through early 1947. As a consequence of the spending, savings declined from 38.9 billion dollars in 1944 to 18.8 billion in 1946. Consumer debt nearly doubled in 1946.

But the prosperity was mainly enjoyed by industry which had its largest profits in history, 12 billion dollars for 1946. Industrial wages had risen to $1.18 per hour. But the 30 million unorganized workers of the country, half the work force, did not share in that prosperity, with average base pay believed to be around 70 cents per hour. Thus, the higher prices could not be paid by this latter half of the work force.

The remaining vestiges of credit control were not rigorous but were necessary to restrain buying. Yet, there was pressure afoot to remove them. The Administration had warned that the price reductions recently made by automakers would not have likely occurred had credit controls been removed.

It was for these reasons that the Administration was anticipating an economic setback by the fall.

A letter retreats to the Civil War and its aftermath to belittle the Yankees, states that the Southerners had bucked up amid suffering and rebuilt.

But he believes that as long as foreign aid would go to countries, the people would not undergo such hardship and therefore would continue not to work. He especially opposes aid to Turkey for it having been the object of seven Crusades.

A letter from failed Republican Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder comments that it was no wonder that the Civil Aeronautics Board had not approved an east-west route through Charlotte, as the proposed truck lane through the city was so circuitous and disturbing of neighborhoods, causing the razing of many good homes, that it was a disaster. He says that the traffic death rate had doubled during the previous year and that the new route would undoubtedly increase that death rate.

A letter also opposes the new proposed cross-town boulevard, to become Independence Boulevard, and instead recommends improvement of city streets.

A letter writer proposes having all of the State sales tax go to fund higher teacher salaries. She also opposes the liquor referendum on controlled sale and the building of a new auditorium while there was a housing shortage.

By the way, as long as some college students who are athletes are griping about their poor, poor athletic scholarships which do not pay them properly and do not enable them to eat at times, we got to thinking. We have decided that since college students who earn, say, a 3.0 or better in any given semester, or whatever the honor roll qualification might be at the particular school, and also when they graduate, raise the level of the college or university in the eyes of the raters in any given year, thus enabling the college, over time, to increase its tuition costs, we have to wonder why it is that such students should have to pay to go to college. The college or university should be paying all of these good students, including back pay and reimbursement of tuition and room and board and meals to all students who graduated, and so much money per semester or quarter for those who earned a 3.0 or better out of a possible 4.0, meaning a solid "B" average. Double bonuses should obviously go to those who graduate either with honors or Phi Beta Kappa, or triple bonuses in the case of both—though at our school, we happen to know from personal experience, you could not get into Phi Beta Kappa as an honors student midway of the senior year, even though you qualified with the required G.P.A.—grade point average for those not familiar with this arcane nomenclature—because, at the time, it was a routine practice to give honors students "incompletes" at the end of the first semester, the student being unable to avoid that result, and Phi Beta Kappa, in its infinite wisdom at the time, banned automatically any student from the award of its key should the student have had an incomplete on their record. We are aware of this fact from a personal phone call once in 1975 to the Phi Beta Kappa representative on our campus, on behalf of a friend, mind you, not ourselves, who had so qualified but for receipt of an incomplete in the honors program.

We also believe that such students, in order to have their pictures appear in the yearbook, should be awarded compensation for the use of their likenesses and names, being scholars of merit and raising thus the level of the university in the eyes of others, and raising thereby the marketability of the institution over time, bringing in better professors, enabling better facilities, etc.

Moreover, we believe that such students should be contractually assured of jobs in the marketplace, jobs which enjoy at least the compensation provided to athletes who graduate and go into the professional sports, with like multi-year contracts awarded to those students. Failure to meet these contractual requirements would automatically subject the college or university to reimbursement to each such student for that amount which he or she should have received upon graduation, based on their G.P.A. and class rank.

We think, therefore, that students ought all qualify as "employees" of the college or university and should be forming unions to make these demands, else go on strike.

For, in the end, if the college or university is going to pay entertainers to come to school to play ball, entertainers who have the option of getting a degree or not, going to class or not, working hard at their studies or not, and receiving scholarships which pay their way in tuition costs and room and board, as well as assure them all sorts of other perquisites, including free tutoring and such, plus, as now proposed, some form of salary and payment for use of likenesses, then we think the above should also apply. For, last we heard, colleges and universities are learning institutions for the benefit of students, not for the sake of entertaining the nation with athletic prowess.

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