The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 26, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had been appointed by President Truman as the first Secretary of Defense after the bill merging the Army and Navy was passed and signed into law by the President. The Senate Armed Services Committee had already unanimously approved the appointment. Secretary Forrestal had been in charge of the Navy Department since his appointment by FDR in May, 1944, in the wake of the death of Secretary Frank Knox. He had served as Undersecretary of the Navy since 1940 when Senator Knox was appointed Secretary. He supported efficient administration and had removed admirals from top jobs without hesitation when they did not perform.
The merger bill was signed by the President at National Airport, shortly before he took off for Grandview, Mo., where his aged mother was dying. He delayed the flight that he might sign the bill before departing Washington.
The President also signed into law the bill permitting veterans to redeem their terminal leave bonds on September 1. He urged veterans to keep the bonds to prevent inflationary pressures from the nearly two billion dollars worth outstanding. The legislation nullified a 1946 law which required the bonds to be held for five years. The bill had passed both chambers unanimously. The House Armed Services Committee predicted that about half the bonds would be cashed and the remainder held to collect the 2.5 percent per annum interest. The bonds compensated military personnel for leave time not taken while in service.
Congress was set to adjourn for the year this night, leaving the way open for a special session to be called either by Congressional leaders or the President. Senator Robert Taft did not foresee, however, such a session being called. The Congress held an 18-hour session on Friday and was set to go over twelve hours this day.
The President's mother, Martha Truman, passed away at age 94 in Grandview, Mo., this date. She had been ailing from a broken hip since February 13 and the President had stayed at her side for several weeks in the spring. The President was on his way to her when she passed away at 11:30 a.m. She had been unconscious since the previous night and her condition had been critical since the previous week.
The papers of Abraham Lincoln were made available to the public at midnight this date for the first time. They had been given to the country by Robert Todd Lincoln but remained sealed by his further instruction until 21 years after his own death. The papers were said to contain nothing sensational but revealed at least 80 death threats to the President during his term. They contained the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the original of the farewell address of 1861 to the citizens of Springfield, Illinois, as Mr. Lincoln left for Washington to become President, never to return alive.
Scholars had been perusing the papers since midnight, finding nothing which implicated any of the Lincoln Cabinet in the conspiracy to assassinate the President. They found indirect references to stories which had ascribed his parentage to a man in North Carolina. But other letters referred unmistakably to Thomas Lincoln as the President's father.
In one instance, the President had responded to General Benjamin Butler who was urging summary execution of 24 deserters: "There are already too many weeping widows in the United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to this number. I won't do it."
The U.S. Army reported that nearly 14,000 Japanese had been repatriated from Soviet-controlled areas during the week ending July 20, that 5.5 million had thus far been repatriated since war's end, with another million still awaiting transportation.
In Pittsburgh, the mine bosses' union was dissolved, the union blaming Taft-Hartley for the decision. The membership would join the rank-and-file of UMW.
In Tokyo, signs were posted warning the victims of pickpockets that the pickpockets were watching them. While a police officer paused to read the sign, his pocket was picked.
In Hollywood, actress Annelle Hayes sought separate maintenance from actor Mark Stevens. The couple had been married in 1945 and were separated the previous January 15.
On the back page, Tom Fesperman describes the peculiar ways of Charlotte's jay-walkers.
In the third week of judging in the seven-week News photography contest, the previous week's runner-up won first place and the $5 prize. The first and second-place winning photos of the week are shown on the page. The winner nationally could receive up to $1,500 and the weekly local winners could compete for the grand prize of $25 after six weeks, plus the right to compete nationally.
Don't forget to submit your snapshots.
We note again that this would be the last day that Editor Harry Ashmore would hold down the fort for The News, having begun as Associate Editor October 6, 1945, becoming Editor in April, 1947. He was about to join the Arkansas Gazette as Associate Editor, soon to become Editor. After winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for his editorials on the Little Rock school integration crisis of September, 1957, Mr. Ashmore left the Gazette in 1959 and moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
While at the Center, in 1967, Mr. Ashmore and Bill Baggs, Editor of The Miami News and on the board of directors of the Center, were asked by the State Department to prepare a conciliatory letter, which they did in consultation with Assistant Secretary William Bundy and Undersecretary Nicholas Katzenbach at the State Department, to be sent through a channel directly to Ho Chi Minh. The two men had met with Ho for two hours in Hanoi a month earlier, in January, 1967, to try to pave the way for what became the Paris peace talks of 1968. Ho stated that he would participate in the talks only after a permanent and unconditional cessation of U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
A former Lt. Colonel in World War II, who served under General Patton in France, Mr. Ashmore had by this time become convinced that the Vietnam War
He felt that the effort to effect a peace negotiation with Ho was deliberately undermined by President Johnson and the State Department, as a letter was sent by the President dated February 2, 1967, three days prior to the February 5
In Mission to Hanoi, published in September, 1968, the two men asserted their belief that the reason for this duplicity was so that Senator Fulbright, a vocal critic of the war, would believe, not knowing of the Johnson letter, that Ho's refusal of the terms was based on the conciliatory letter and thus conclude that the North Vietnamese were taking the hard line. If that was the strategy, Ho's publication of the Johnson letter prevented its realization.
Mr. Ashmore and Mr. Baggs would travel to Hanoi and meet again with Ho in late March, 1968, arriving March 28. Both times, they paid their own way and acted essentially as couriers of information between the North Vietnamese and Washington, facilitating the start of the Paris peace talks, even if initially those talks bogged down because of the intransigence, as Mr. Ashmore and Mr. Baggs saw it, of the State Department hawks in imposing unacceptable conditions for ending of the bombing.
The idea for the peace talks had grown out of the Center's study of the April, 1963 encyclical of the late Pope John XXIII, the Pacem in Terris, beginning in 1964, aimed ultimately at "thawing the Cold War" through the moral imperative for peace set forth in the encyclical.
Eventually, on October 31, 1968, five days before the presidential election which saw former Vice-President Richard Nixon defeat Vice-President Hubert Humphrey by half a million votes, largely based on the objections to the war and the dissent at home in response to it, President Johnson agreed to halt the bombing of all of the North so that the peace talks could proceed during the last two and a half months of his term. The President had agreed to halt bombing in the northern provinces on March 31, when he announced that he would not seek another term as President so that he might concentrate on ending the war
Mr. Ashmore passed away in 1998 at age 81. His thirty-first birthday would be on the following Monday in 1947.
On the editorial page, "Notes on an Adjourning Congress" tells of the 1947 session of the 80th Congress being largely negative in accomplishment, without any harmony evident between the Republican majority and the Administration. Controls of the economy had been largely removed. The Congress had accomplished passage of Taft-Hartley but failed in overriding the President's veto of the tax bill on two successive occasions.
In foreign relations, there was also deadlock on some issues, though there was general agreement on the need to halt Soviet expansion. But the scope of the aid program to combat it was the subject of dispute. The adjournment had only postponed this issue coming to a head.
Politics had played a crucial role in the Congress, as the Republicans sought to discredit the President and the President took aim in return at the Congress, especially at Senator Taft.
The President had emerged with his popularity high after the vetoes of Taft-Hartley and the tax bills. His ratings were as high at this juncture of the term as were those of President Roosevelt prior to his re-elections.
Thus, the Republican hope that they might be able to cruise from the 1946 mid-term success into the White House in 1948 now appeared dashed. The 80th Congress had left thus far an unfavorable impression on the American people. Yet, it notes, the Congress was only reflective of the confused and divided attitudes of the people who had elected the members the previous November. It concludes that the 80th Congress was a comforting reminder that the government was still representative.
"Hope, Patience, and Fortitude" discusses the optimistic views that peace would ultimately prevail between East and West, as expressed recently by former Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in an editorial printed in The News and by Republican presidential hopeful Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota.
While the world picture appeared too gloomy to admit of such cheery thought, upon closer examination, the two men might have based their thinking on wise assumptions. Military commanders told of the last ditch desperation witnessed in fighting men when they knew their position had become hopeless. The Russians were exhibiting such signs in their diplomatic efforts to stall the West while they expanded in Eastern Europe, their last effort short of engaging in a shooting war. Meanwhile, America was launching a vigorous counter-offensive to try to forestall further Soviet expansion, the centerpiece of which was the Marshall Plan. Observers believed that with American military might and the atomic bomb on its side, the Russians would not risk a shooting war and so would be forced to back down.
If the Marshall Plan were to fail, the piece continues, then would prevail the chaos in Europe on which the Russians were reliant for creating an atmosphere ripe for the spread of Communism. The Soviets in the months ahead would thus direct most of their energies toward sabotage of the Plan.
"The Tenants Are Always With Us" asks whether prosperity, resting on farming ultimately, could ever be permanent when, in North Carolina, 42.6 percent of the farms were operated by tenants. While tenancy farming was an acceptable temporary means for small farmers to make a stake and ultimately become farm owners, generally it devolved to a system of absentee landlords and tenants who lacked roots, wandered farm to farm, creating a class of permanent landless farmers, ultimately laying waste the land, never able to pay off their debts to the farm owner.
The University of North Carolina News Letter had conducted a study and found that from 1940 to 1945, there was no measurable change in tenancy in the state, with an increase in the cotton region of the state in the Eastern counties, at a time when tenancy had a marked decrease across the nation. White tenants decreased while black tenants increased. Western North Carolina tenants decreased as Eastern tenants increased. There was also a decrease in farms operated by white farmers while there was an increase in farms operated by black farmers.
The increase in tenancy or the failure of it to decline was cause therefore for some concern.
Tom Lynch of The News writes of the history of prohibition in North Carolina, starting in 1700, as recounted in 1714 by an Englishman named John Lawson.
The Governour of the Colony had summoned the Indian "kings and rulers" to try to effect a peace and at the meeting, an agreement was reached that no rum would be sold to the Indians. But the rule was never strictly observed, as the Indians threatened to kill their rulers who so agreed. The Indians, continued Mr. Lawson, would get drunk at night and sometimes murder one another or fall into their fires or over precipices to their death.
Eastern Indian rumrunners carried rum to the isolated Western areas of the colony to trade with the Indians in those areas. Sometimes, the bootleggers drank their own rum while on the way to the West.
The Indians, when drunk, would dance themselves into a frenzy until they dropped, reminding, says Mr. Lynch, of the modern jitterbug dance halls.
Indians of that time believed that good Indians would have happy hunting in the next world and the companionship of attractive young women, while bad Indians would suffer cold and hunger, have the companionship only of unattractive old women, and only snakes and other such victuals to consume
He concludes that Eighteenth Century Indians were concerned with most of the same issues of which Americans presently were concerned: prohibition, drunkenness, bootlegging, bellicosity, morals, retribution for earthly behavior, and social decorum
Drew Pearson says that he had never seen a Congress so dominated by lobbyists as the 80th had been thus far. Never since the term of President Harding, in 1921-25, had there been a Congress which had so abandoned its promises and principles. He provides a score card on the various key issues.
Senator Taft had abandoned his own bill on long-term housing, which would have been beneficial to veterans. The Congress removed priorities on building materials for veterans housing.
The Congress extended rent controls with the provision for 15 percent increases on leases running through 1948, the incentive to a tenant to sign such a lease being that rent control would end the following February 29.
The real estate lobby had been influential in the Congress, but when the President urged investigation of it, he was roundly denounced by Senator John Bricker and Senator W. Chapman Revercomb of West Virginia.
And so on and so forth, down the line of issues, including failure to pass legislation to help the states increase teacher pay, slashes in appropriations for flood control and reclamation, severely reduced appropriations for rural electrification, soil conservation, crop insurance and other vital parts of the farm program, no health care bill as proposed by the President, no Department of Public Welfare as proposed by the President, military injustice whereby enlisted men convicted of minor offenses were being sent to prison, failure to pass mine safety legislation in the wake of the Centralia, Ill., disaster earlier in the year, failure to pass legislation requiring the revelation of financial records by members of Congress, and the failure to pass the minimum wage bill.
There were a few Republican bright spots: Senator Arthur Vandenberg's handling of foreign affairs legislation; Senator Styles Bridges's fair handling of appropriations; the level-headedness of Speaker Joe Martin; the losing but earnest effort of Senator Charles Tobey to pass housing legislation; and the independence displayed by Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon.
He concludes, however, that generally, the record was the worst of any Congress since the days of President Harding.
Marquis Childs discusses the parallels between Senator Robert Taft and his deceased father, former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Senator Taft had been doing the work of three men in the 80th Congress, acting as committee chairman, head of the party in Congress and Senate floor strategist. He would take his usual vacation in Quebec, according to a family tradition, and then take a trial run on his presidential prospects by speaking in California and possibly other West Coast sites during the fall. After that tour, he would assess his popularity and determine whether to take himself out of the race.
Mr. Childs says that he had been reading Henry Pringle's biography of the senior Taft and the parallels were striking. William Howard Taft had been appointed by Theodore Roosevelt after the Spanish-American War to act as consul to the Philippines, a job at which he worked tirelessly, despite it being thankless at home. The American people grew tired of the experiment in imperialism and of hearing of the problems in the Philippines. Mr. Taft nevertheless finished the job and laid the groundwork for Philippine independence, realized in 1945. His friend, TR, urged him in 1908 to run for the presidency though Mr. Taft did not want to do so initially. He believed he had angered labor too much while a judge in Ohio to be a viable candidate.
Similarly, Robert Taft had angered labor with the Taft-Hartley bill. But to the American middle class, he appeared as something of a hero.
Mr. Childs believes that the younger Taft would do well to emulate his father's determination, as would any public servant.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the 80th Congress in its first session behaving like a "blowsy chorus girl just starting on her second pint of rye." The lobbying interests had exerted substantial influence on legislation. The power lobby's influence, for example, had led to cuts in appropriations to the Federal power projects. Bonneville, its budget chopped nearly in half, was now under-maintained, its transformers being cooled with hoses.
The Rizley bill sought to deregulate natural gas. The Dondero bill sought to limit the sale of public power and remove Interior Department regulation. The Thomas bill would prevent the Government from undertaking construction of new transmission lines. The Miller bill would deregulate many utility companies.
None of the bills had yet passed, but the power lobby was planning to push for them once the 1948 election had occurred. At that point, their hope was that a conservative Congress would put the brakes once and for all on public power projects, and the public power advocates among Federal officials would be "quietly dropped down the political oubliette."
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