The Charlotte News

Monday, August 25, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Argentina had agreed at the Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro that all 20 nations of the conference could act to stop force exerted by any nation within the Western Hemisphere, whether deriving from an intracontinental or extracontinental source, reversing its previous insistence that the doctrine only be applicable to extracontinental aggression. A compromise was reached whereby steps would first be taken to resolve the situation by consultation with the aggressor nation.

Agreement had been reached, according to a source, on two-thirds of the provisions of the treaty to be formed at the conference for mutual defense of the Western Hemisphere.

Canada was not represented at the conference but the confreres agreed that the treaty would be left open for the Canadians to ratify at a later time.

At the U.N., Russia demanded that any data to be collected on troops and arms of the 55 member nations include atomic bomb stockpile information. The failure of any agreement thus far on the matter came nearly a year after Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov had proposed in October, 1946 that the member nations should undertake global arms reduction.

In Athens, Greece, the Liberal Party refused to join a new Government under Constantin Tsaldaris, leader of the Royalist Party. He was trying to form a new coalition Government in the wake of the fall of the Cabinet on Saturday. He had promised not to appoint any Cabinet Minister to whom objection was raised by the Liberals.

Three American soldiers had been released unharmed after twelve days of detention by the Russians in the northern zone of Korea. They reported that they were not subjected to close questioning but were maintained under armed guard. They had walked into the Russian zone beyond the 38th Parallel by accident, without seeing the marker. They believed it had been obscured by a Korean section-hand having hung his coat over it. Primary questioning concerned why they had stepped over the line.

In Tokyo, three witnesses testifying before an international tribunal, trying 25 Japanese wartime leaders, laid blame on the late Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto for originating the plan to attack Pearl Harbor and averred that he had threatened to resign if the plan was not put into effect.

In Littleton, N.C., three versions emerged of a beating allegedly sustained by a prisoner at the hands of law enforcement officers after he had been recaptured the previous Thursday following an escape the prior day from a prison camp where he was serving a six-year sentence. The prisoner claimed that three Highway Patrolmen and a Littleton police officer took him into the woods and beat him with saplings and a cartridge belt. The Sheriff and other officers said that the man was not beaten at all, though he had displayed bruises across his back. The County Solicitor stated that information he had obtained revealed that the man was handcuffed to a tree and beaten, and, in consequence, he planned to issue warrants for three or four officers. The SBI had been assigned to the case by Governor Gregg Cherry and they reported that there was enough evidence to warrant further study.

The daughter of the slain Cherryville Police Chief intended, according to her attorneys Sam J. Ervin and Frank C. Patton of Morganton, to swear out a warrant for murder against the Highway Patrolman who had killed her father the previous week following a traffic stop for weaving, after which the Chief allegedly charged the Patrolman with a knife, stabbed him on the arm, at which point the Patrolman shot him five times.

It was right outside the Frontier Deli.

The Solicitor of Cleveland County in Shelby drew up the warrant, and a preliminary hearing was set for September 5, at which time it would be determined whether there was probable cause to go before the Grand Jury with the case. The Solicitor speculated that the widow's attorneys would seek to show that there was excessive force in the shooting and possibly that a pre-existing grudge against the Police Chief colored the Patrolman's judgment.

At the coroner's hearing the previous week, at which the Patrolman was determined to have acted in self-defense, the Chief was quoted as saying that he would die before he went with the Patrolman, as he was the Chief of Police of Cherryville.

The story is not cheery.

Burke County officers were seeking a man who had allegedly murdered his father late Saturday. His mother said that he came to their home drunk, and became angry at his father for trying to convince him not to kill his two brothers, one of whom he had already fired upon twice on Saturday.

It was just a little family disagreement, common to most families.

Congressman Fred Hartley of New Jersey stated that the Act which bore his name, Taft-Hartley, did not have enough enforcement teeth to prevent nationwide strikes and that he intended to try to remedy the problem in the next session. The provision allowing for Government injunctions only prevented a strike for 85 days. He wanted an anti-trust violation provision in the bill, to criminalize such strikes.

The NLRB ruled 2 to 1 that a company in New York had to reinstate eight employees who were members of the Fur & Leather Workers, despite its head being an avowed Communist. The matter appeared to present a test case for that part of Taft-Hartley which allowed a company not to recognize a union with one or more officers reasonably believed to be Communists.

The annual conference of the North Carolina chapter of Christians and Jews opened at Wildacres in Little Switzerland with about 50 delegates attending. The first speaker was to be Dr. Douglas Kelley of Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, chief psychiatrist at the Nuremberg trials and author of 22 Cells in Nuernberg. Subsequent speakers would include Ralph McGill, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, and Thomas L. Robinson, publisher of The News.

A tropical storm out of the Gulf of Mexico had hit Galveston, Texas, and impacted Houston and Texas City, the latter still recovering from the nitrate explosion of April 16. The storm hit Galveston with 70 mph winds the previous afternoon, causing several casualties, at least one death, and property damage.

The Midwest heat wave received relief with a cool front out of Canada and some rain. Because of the rain, September corn futures in Chicago fell the limit of eight cents before rallying slightly.

Tom Lynch tells the story of more plentiful men's clothing, to become even more so in years ahead. The story is on page 1 of Section II, should you be without sufficient duds.

On the editorial page, "British Socialism's Big Test" discusses the Labor Party's nationalization program in England, which thus far had extended only to the Bank of England, communications, air transportation, and the coal mines. At the beginning of 1948, the electrical utilities and the transportation system as a whole would come under the umbrella of nationalization.

The Economist had estimated that productivity generally in the country had increased by 10 to 20 percent since 1938. But 80 percent of that industry remained in private hands and the greatest strides were accomplished in industries not nationalized, for instance, steel. Moreover, the work force had only increased by one to two percent since 1938 while unemployment was virtually non-existent, meaning that parts of the marginally larger work force were inevitably of lower quality.

The Socialist goal by the end of the current fiscal year was production which would raise exports by 40 percent over 1938, requiring a further speed-up program in industry for workers already on reduced rations.

Coal production was well below 1938 output, albeit with ten percent fewer miners. The railroads also suffered from a manpower shortage and obsolete equipment. More coal, power, and transportation were needed to save England and Socialism.

The piece concludes that the same spirit which had thrived during the evacuation of Dunkerque in June, 1940, would have to prevail again for England's economy to recover.

"Ominous Reports from Greece" discusses the fall of the Coalition Cabinet in Greece the previous Saturday, producing an urgent situation which might require the sending of American troops to maintain stability in the troubled country. The guerrillas in the north numbered about 20,000 and were now better equipped and trained than before the spring offensives launched by the Government to try to eliminate the guerrilla bands. About 75 percent of the Government forces, numbering 120,000, were administrative personnel, not assigned to fighting tasks.

At very least, the U.S. would need divert more of the 350-million dollar aid package to military equipment.

At the U.N., the American position was to carry the Balkans border watch commission issue before the full General Assembly following Russia's veto of the matter in the Security Council. Failing approval, the U.S. had indicated an intention to proceed with other friendly nations to meet aggression with force—a position being interpolated by the piece, not actually articulated by the United States, limiting the issue to establishing the border watch commission whose only function was to observe and issue reports to the Security Council on any incursion of the Greek borders.

The piece concludes that force was increasingly the only option left to prevent Greece from falling to the guerrillas. Abandoning Greece, it suggests, would mean loss of the Middle East to Russia and rendering the U.N. a nullity.

"Food for Europe and Prices" tells of Harvard economist Dr. John D. Black reporting that the 18 million tons of food sent abroad in 1946 constituted only five percent of the country's food supply, and consisted mainly of wheat, which was being produced in abundance, the largest crop in history. The country exported a third of its wheat but only two percent of its meat. Food constituted about a quarter of the country's exports, the same ratio extant in 1929.

Lester Velie, writing in Collier's, told of the 60 million employed Americans and their families consuming 26 percent more beef per person and 21 percent more pork than prior to the war. They were consuming 28 percent more chicken, 20 percent more milk and cheese, 30 percent more oranges and lemons, four times more canned juices and vegetables, and 30 percent more coffee.

The heavy rains which had reduced the corn crop meant that wheat had been utilized for feed for livestock, leaving less for export.

Republicans in Congress thus might seek to reduce the export of food. But if that were to occur, then it would take away an important support for the domestic farm economy, as well as depriving the needy nations of Europe, on whom the American foreign policy depended.

A piece from the Nashville Banner, titled "One Hour Per Week?" tells of the average man spending 23 days per year at the dinner table, 100 hours per year in shaving his face, 27 years of his life in bed, and six hours per week reading the newspaper.

It offers the statistics to bemoan the fact that so few were willing to spend an hour per week in church.

Robert S. Allen, substituting for his former partner Drew Pearson, tells of the Bureau of Mines getting ready to release a report on the mine disaster of July 24 at Frankford, Ill., in which 27 miners lost their lives in a gas explosion. Howard Lewis, John L. Lewis's brother, was the superintendent of that mine. The UMW leader was strangely passive on this occasion, unlike the Centralia, Ill., disaster of March 25, after which he accused the Government of "murder" for negligent operation of the mines. This time, he called the disaster "an act of God". Both State officials and UMW officials, after consultation, went to great lengths to white-wash the disaster as unpreventable.

But the Bureau of Mines report would belie that explanation, saying that the explosion could have been averted with proper safety measures intact and that non-permissible equipment, such as spark-throwing drills, had been used in the mine in violation of Federal standards.

He notes that the unsafe conditions still largely prevailed in the mine and that Mr. Lewis could close the mine down based on this fact. Taft-Hartley specifically so authorized.

He next imparts of the President bestowing the Medal of Merit on David K. Niles, last of the FDR staff personnel on duty at the White House. Mr. Niles had then bussed the various women on hand for the ceremony. All of the ladies submitted to being bussed. Mr. Niles explained that it was the reverse of the French tradition.

Presumably the ladies were moved across town—without there being chaos in result.

The American Legion Convention in New York was set to have a behind-the-scenes battle regarding veterans housing. The rank-and-file were upset that the housing committee had not pushed Congress to adopt long-term housing legislation in the previous session and charged it with bowing to the real estate interests. Both the committee and the real estate lobby had vigorously opposed the Taft-Ellender-Wagner housing bill during the session. The rank-and-file had rejected this position in six states.

The Congressional Directory, published twice yearly, containing biographical data on Congressmen, had omitted Senator Kenneth Wherry's previously included notation that he had been an undertaker for 20 years in Nebraska before entering public service, and was the only undertaker in Congress. The omission followed derision for his being the "Merry Mortician".

Paul W. Ward, starting the fourth and final week of his series of articles from the Baltimore Sun, titled "Life in the Soviet Union", continues his discussion of the Communist decree which had reduced the already low Russian standard of living by raising prices of food rations by 180 percent while raising wages only 20 percent. The Government had authority to raise or lower prices without reference to production and distribution costs and could change wages without reference to labor productivity or supply and demand. The decree was made necessary, according to the official Soviet explanation, by the drought of 1946 in the Ukraine and other parts of the U.S.S.R. But agricultural experts contended that bumper crops in other areas had offset the drought-affected areas.

The actual reasons, it had been theorized, were to soak up war savings of the people to enable capital investment by the Government in heavy industry pursuant to the five-year plan, to induce white-collar workers and women to take factory jobs, and to reduce food consumption during the winter to build up Government grain stocks.

The elimination or curtailment of rationing was designed to bring about an end to the system in 1947, to allow for a "single price" system. Some families, as a result of the decree, suffered as much as a 500 percent increase in ration prices.

There was no public discussion of these changes in advance of the decree. Nevertheless, the average Russian had found no fault with the Government for the action, only with the effects it had. The Government, faced with the choice between the immediate needs of the people and the long-range goals of the Communist Party, had opted for the latter.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of a decision by the "spavine political hacks" who now comprised the Maritime Commission, headed by Admiral W. W. Smith, to cancel private charters on Government-owned vessels at the end of August so that freight rates would be raised. The rates had gone down because of the number of ships in operation. The Commission had been pushed in this direction by the shippers who did not like the low rates and claimed that they were losing money. But the loss was only on paper, as the Government was underwriting about 90 percent of the loss.

The rise in freight rates would impact the cost of goods and create inflation, something which the Administration was trying to fight. Moreover, it would impact the cost of foreign exports. Coal, badly needed in France, would rise dramatically in price because shipping was about 60 percent of the cost. A similar ratio applied to grains.

The counter interests, in the Commerce Department and the State Department, had, however, managed to prevail upon the Maritime Commission not to go through with the plan. The Alsops comment that it proved the rule that the country always, in the end, managed to save itself, but that it would be cheaper to do so sooner.

A letter from a cab driver suggests that some correspondents seemed to believe that taxi drivers were all born criminals. He says that they were constantly being checked and had to display their proper identity to the public. He thinks the public expected too much perfection from them and that their mistakes were made in public, thus magnified beyond those who worked in offices. The public, he ventures, should not be constrained to believe "everything that some pen-happy penman may write."

They're all perfect. No argument. Greatest people alive on the planet. End of story.

A letter writer thinks that Rex Thomas's piece in the newspaper which reported that the Civil War was still costing the South over three million dollars per year served only to keep the fires of hatred burning in the South. Three million, she posits, was nothing compared to the cost of World War II.

Presumably, the reason for the expenditure was for the pensions of Civil War veterans' widows, as virtually all the veterans were gone by this point.

A letter writer calls attention to Cuba's complaints about the American State Department and asserts that it was good to call attention to the fact that the emperor had no clothes. He hopes that all of the smaller nations would clamor for their independence, politically and economically.

A letter from "Hot and Bothered" thinks it sapient advice to erect a large thermometer on the Independence Building, to bring about missing uniformity in measuring heat in the city. It should, the author cautions, have an iron cap to prevent the mercury from overflowing.

A letter writer tells of German war atrocities and urges that the U.N. establish a world police force to keep Germany from repeating the fact, as after the failed League of Nations was formed following World War I.

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