The Charlotte News

Wednesday, August 13, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Homer Ferguson, chairman of the War Investigating Subcommittee which had investigated the Howard Hughes war contracts the previous week, said that it would be up to the full Subcommittee as to whether the hearings would delve into the issue of the charge made by Mr. Hughes against Senator Owen Brewster, chairman of the full committee, that in February he offered not to conduct the hearings provided Mr. Hughes would agree to merge TWA with competitor Pan American Airways. Senator Claude Pepper, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee, said that he believed the next step in the proceedings ought either be taken by the Justice Department or the full Senate.

Howard Hughes, tired and unshaven, took another shot at Senator Brewster after returning from Washington to Los Angeles, following the Monday adjournment of the hearings until November 17, as the Subcommittee sought again to locate John Meyer, publicity agent for Mr. Hughes. He thanked the press and public for their support during the ordeal.

The President gave his best wishes to the U.S. delegation as it departed for the Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro. The delegation included Secretary of State Marshall, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, and U. N. Ambassador Warren Austin. The President was scheduled to visit and provide a speech to the conference. The conference was follow-up to the Chapultepec Conference held in Mexico City in 1945, at which a plan was drafted for Western Hemispheric solidarity through military and political cooperation. The Rio conference had as a goal to write a formal treaty for mutual military defense.

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad charged in full-page ads that some railroads were deliberately slowing down freight cars, which held up the shipment of bushels of food which lay rotting in the fields. C & O claimed that eight routes between California and Chicago were involved.

The heat wave which had brought 100-degree temperatures across the Midwest was expected the next day to subside into the 80's, as a mass of cool air was heading toward Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio.

In Wilmington, N.C., C. A. Fink of Salisbury appeared bound for re-election as president of the North Carolina A.F. of L. at its 40th annual convention.

In Charlotte, Superior Court Judge J. Will Pless stated that Charlotte's murder rate was bad and that the only way to curtail it was for juries to convict and judges to hand out stiff sentences. He sentenced a man found guilty of manslaughter, after being charged with second degree murder in a knife slaying, to ten to fifteen years in prison.

Burke Davis tells of an Episcopal priest of St. Martins Church and a leader of Alcoholics Anonymous in Charlotte having just returned from a month-long session at the Yale School of Alcohol Studies in New Haven, Conn. The seminar was scientific in nature, neither wet nor dry in its approach. The priest said that he learned that alcoholism was a disease and of its operation physiologically on the body and mind. He counseled that alcoholics needed patient understanding and expert treatment, hoped that Charlotte would form a committee to study the topic. The educational director of the Allied Church League, a resident of Shelby, also attended the seminar.

In Lumberton, N.C., the wife of the Rowland farmer and merchant whom she allegedly sought to murder through a hireling who worked on the farm, collapsed as she headed to court to begin her trial. The trial was thereupon postponed until the September session of court.

She apparently fainted after stepping from the family's new cream-colored car. The couple had recently reconciled and gone on a second honeymoon at the beach. The farmer a few days earlier had stated that he had no hard feelings and wanted no retribution for the shooting of him in the chest on May 11 while he was sleeping. At the time, he had arisen and chased the hired gunman from his bedroom, foiling the plot to have his would-be murder appear as a suicide.

The two children, Patricia and "Sonny Boy", sat on the grassy plot outside the courthouse while their mother was being tended by a doctor.

Just a typical American family scene which occurs every day in our country, in almost every family, sooner or later. It is good to see that they reconciled and that a happy ending is forthcoming.

Why, even the hired hand will probably be back on the farm in no time helping the farmer pick the tobacco.

In Chicago, a man was robbed, bound, and gagged on North Clark Street in a rough section of the city, populated by strip joints, saloons, and flophouses. A man had jumped on the running board of the victim's car as he drove down the street, held a gun to his head and ordered him into a nearby alley where three other men lay in wait. After the robbery, he entered two bars barefoot with his chest bare and his hands still tied, asked for help and was ordered to leave. After freeing his hands, he was able to get one bartender to listen. The bartender gave him a nickel to call the police. The man was president of an engineering firm. The robbers got away with $20 and a $200 diamond ring.

In Oakland, California, Sheik W. Abdurrahman Lutz, a former Marine, claimed to be Grand Mufti of the Western United States, after he had become a convert to Islam in Saudi Arabia in 1942 while employed by an oil company. He had been impressed by the charity of the Arabs, who shared their small incomes with others. He said that the Western Moslem community, numbering 1,500, most living near Sacramento, had named him Grand Mufti. He still went to movies and had milkshakes, but could not partake of pork or alcohol.

In Easton, Pa., a heated debate transpired at the Town Council meeting anent whether the town would have lights along 4th Street at Christmas.

The Charlotte Soap Box Derby winner was ready to roll on Sunday in Akron, Ohio, in the national race, pitted against 133 other entrants.

See, he has that streamlined job going for him. Must have used the fiberglass or the airplane dope. You have to cover the gaps in the planks or the wind resistance will just stop you cold.

On the editorial page, "Two Hopeful Progress Reports" tell of the encouraging economic reports in Purchasing and Mill & Factory, the former telling of the trend in quality of materials being up and the latter, that productivity was increasing and was set to rise even further in the coming year. Moreover, union leaders were starting to see labor's outlook as a function of increased productivity. The signs portended a period of relatively peaceful labor-management relations ahead and a strong economy.

"Hoover Reads the World Signs" reports that former President Hoover had celebrated his 73rd birthday the previous Sunday by expressing a restrained hope that there were better times on the horizon for the U.S. and Western civilization than during the previous year, that the movement to isolate Russia was making progress. He said that a year earlier there were members of the Communist Party within the Cabinets of four of five governments outside the Soviet sphere, whereas presently there were none.

But, the piece reminds, in China, Communist aggression was still ongoing. Reports from Greece and the Balkans were that Communists were threatening new aggressive action. Communist threat to Italy and France remained real. Also, the move to isolate Russia was intensifying Russian opposition. If the country were to depend on power to stop Soviet aggression, as counseled by Mr. Hoover, it would only hasten the road to war. A broad program of reconstruction would be more conducive to peace. It was time, it posits, for the Marshall Plan to begin forthwith.

"Cramer's Challenge to Textiles" tells of a tribute to the late Stuart W. Cramer being planned on the grounds of the Institute of Textile Technology at Charlottesville, Va. The memorial would add an auditorium to the Institute, costing $100,000, to be funded by Cason Callaway, textile manufacturer of Georgia. It was a fitting honor for a pioneer in textile manufacturing during the 1920's, stressing research and education.

The Callaway Institute had also arranged to build a library, another important contribution, in Southwest LaGrange, Ga., as a memorial to the late C. W. Coleman, welfare and education director for the Institute from 1916 to 1938.

A piece from the Washington Post, titled "A Note on Modish Man", tells of men's clothiers undertaking a drive to see that wearing apparel would return to being occasion-specific. But suits would be in short supply for another year because of a shortage in workers in the men's clothing industry and pent-up demand. More demands would be placed on clothing when the G.I.'s received their early terminal leave checks from the Government in September. But the failure to have anything to wear would at least keep men home from parties, lectures, teas, musicales, and the like.

Drew Pearson, to begin his vacation the following day with a mystery reporter taking over for him in his absence, undoubtedly his former partner Robert Allen, concentrates on getting a few things out of his system.

He compliments the California Commission on Living War Memorials for stressing the ideals for which the country fought rather than the weapons of war. R. M. Davis of West Virginia, a coal miner, was inspiring West Virginians to think about ways of winning the peace. And he mentions others in a similar vein.

He offers correction to his previous report that Dr. Margaret Chung had been sailing to Europe with Virginia Hill, girlfriend of the recently murdered Bugsy Siegel, shortly before the time of the murder. Dr. Chung had sailed instead to Honolulu, where she was doing a good job among the men of the armed services. Billy Wilkerson, who sailed at about the same time Virginia Hill did, was no longer associated with Mr. Siegel, contrary to that previously asserted in the column, had been apart from him for some time. He was sailing to Belgium for a motion picture convention.

He corrects also the misimpression some readers got that Col. Clarence Young, on the C.A.B., and formerly with Pan Am, was subservient to the interests of his former employer. He reports that he was independent and fair-minded.

He tells of Elliott Roosevelt having flown 89 missions into enemy territory aboard an unarmed reconnaissance plane and that his unit had 90 percent casualties, one of the reasons he was seeking a faster plane from Hughes Aircraft. Those facts had been brushed over during the Brewster-Ferguson investigation. (On one of those missions, on August 12, 1944, Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., son of former Ambassador Kennedy, was killed while piloting an experimental B-17 designed to crash by radio control into a target after the pilot and co-pilot parachuted to safety. The plane, in this instance, detonated early, not long after takeoff, as Col. Roosevelt flew in the trailing photo reconnaissance plane.)

Mr. Pearson advocates converting houses maintained in Washington by Pan Am and TWA for lobbying into veterans housing.

He remarks that the Brewster probe into Howard Hughes and his war contracts had done a disservice to all special investigations, most of which had served salutary purposes. The public wanted a fair investigation of lobbying. The War Investigating Committee could obtain records from the War Department which would relate of Pan Am and certain Latin American dictators, that Pan Am received 100-million dollars to build airports in Latin America during the war. The Brazilian Government also received 100 million. He provides the dates of the reports.

"All of which proves that Washington bickering remains about the same, and will probably continue about the same when I get back to Washington in September."

Paul W. Ward, in the ninth in the series of his articles for the Baltimore Sun, titled collectively "Life in the Soviet Union", tells of the movie industry in the U.S.S.R., like everything else, run by the Government, under the baton since spring, 1945, of I. G. Bolshakov. He had trouble in 1946-47 obtaining approval from the Communist hierarchy for his production plans. Then, exhibition of several of his features was forbidden for ideological reasons. He was also chastised by the Government for wasting money, but 14 million of the claimed 23-million ruble loss by the movies came as a result of banning the pictures. But some of the banned moompicters might be shown outside the Soviet Union.

He relates that as guests of the Government, he and his entourage were shown a new Soviet film, "Soloist of the Ballet", a boy-gets-girl picter. It appeared to be probably for export only, as the Russian publication "Culture and Life" had declared that "tear-jerkers, detective stories and pandering to the base emotions of backward people" were alien to the Soviet cinema, requiring significant themes. It deplored the trend toward presentation of old literary and dramatic works on film. It also found the low comedies preferred by the people to be unfit for Russian audiences. Sixty foreign films, it reported, had been shown in Russia during the previous six months.

It suggested that Sergei Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible, Part II" had been banned for its "cold, dispassionate historicism". Notwithstanding the fact that Ivan as Czar had, with his bloody purges, given the name "Red Square" to the area outside the Kremlin, "Culture and Life" contended that the film did not show his progressive nature engaging in the class struggle. The Communist Party charged that the film treated its subject instead as "a band of degenerates like the American Ku Klux Klan". Mr. Eisenstein was said to be re-cutting the film to suit the Government.

Pavel Nilin's "Big Life", though initially well received, was also banned for not showing the deeds of the Bolsheviks on behalf of the people.

The Communist Party had allowed in 1947 only one film on a pre-war subject, to be about Taras Shevchenko, the 19th Century Ukrainian poet. The few comedies on the schedule had "social ideas".

Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the likelihood of the President having to call a special session of Congress by December to consider the intensifying crisis in England and Europe was now better than even, though the President preferred to avoid it.

The Paris Conference, at which the nations of Europe, excluding the Soviet bloc which chose not to attend, were preparing their needs for aid, expected to be submitted by September. The Harriman, Nourse, and Krug committees, appointed by the President to study the country's ability to underwrite the loans to Europe, were also expected to have their reports ready in September. The finished plans would then, in October, go before the respective Senate and House foreign relations committees for approval after four or five weeks of hearings. Thus, debate of the bills could begin no earlier than the end of November.

The month intervening the new session could prove crucial in the emergency and so a special session now appeared prudent. It would afford the Congress time to debate the subject without distractions of other business and insure a speedy course of the legislation prior to the holidays.

The President, they remark, had little flair for political leadership and Secretary of State Marshall confused political leadership with public relations. And so, for all the good sense of the Marshall Plan, still the country was not focused on it with sufficient knowledge and attention.

A letter writer who had written in mid-July complaining of overcrowded buses in Charlotte, finds the City Council's action in the interim to be salutary but, with only 15 new buses promised by Duke Power by November, it was not enough to do more than replace the old ones, would not enable new routes and more buses as needed. He favors opening the field to other carriers if Duke Power would not improve the lines sufficiently to relieve the overcrowding.

A letter writer states that the key to rebuilding Europe lay in rebuilding Germany. And that was why Russia took away industrial equipment from its occupation zone, to keep Europe from rebuilding so that it would be susceptible to a Communist takeover. The writer supports the Marshall Plan but also realizes that Germany ultimately had to be allowed to become productive again to insure its long-term goal of revitalizing Europe and making it self-sufficient.

A letter writer disagrees with The News on its rendition of the origin of the name "Dog Days". He says it started at least three decades previously when the dogs along the River Nile became violent at the first full moon after the earth began its northern movement. The Egyptians had thus named the time "Dog Days". He warns that dogs were more dangerous in this period and the dew was more poisonous.

Don't drink the dew, especially if it be from the mountains or comes to you in the afternoon.

The editors note that the Dog Days for 1947 had ended on August 11, according to the Weather Bureau.

That's a relief. You can go back to kicking the dogs squarely where the moon does not shine. They won't mind.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>--</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.