The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 28, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Governor Thomas Dewey, favorite to repeat as the Republican nominee for the presidency in 1948, had endorsed universal military training in an address in New York at Madison Square Garden to the American Legion. He believed it necessary to maintain an adequate military establishment, in turn necessary for preservation of the peace, seemingly "further away than ever", with scenes "hauntingly like those which followed the First World War." He also reaffirmed his support for advancement of the U.N. and hope for bipartisanship in support of foreign policy.

In Athens, Greece, Demetrios Maximos, who had stepped down as Premier on the previous Saturday, had been re-selected as Premier, after the failure of Constantin Tsaldaris to obtain majority support for a new Cabinet.

As final touches were being placed on the Inter-American treaty to come from the conference of 20 nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro, the President was scheduled to fly with his family to Rio to speak to the Conference the following Monday. The President would personally sign the new treaty.

The U.N. Security Council rejected a Brazilian proposal which had sought resumption of British and Egyptian negotiations over the retention of British troops in Egypt and the future of the Sudan. Poland cast the deciding vote on the issue, the only opposition vote on the matter, which failed of a majority by abstentions. The U.S. had supported the proposal.

Presidential assistant John R. Steelman stated that Administration policy was that national survival depended on sharply increased spending for scientific research.

A Federal Grand Jury in Washington issued indictments against the National Association of Real Estate Boards and the Washington Real Estate Board, for anti-trust violations for fixing commission rates on real property transactions in the District of Columbia, alleging that brokers' commission had uniformly risen by 25 to 50 percent since February, 1943. The action came pursuant to the enunciated policy of Attorney General Tom Clark to investigate price-fixing activity in the housing, food and clothing industries.

In Tokyo, Brig. General R. E. Starr fled irate housewives, upset over an Army directive that all pets had to be removed from Army apartments and billets by the following day at noon. Unfounded rumors that otherwise the pets would be killed had caused the housewives to seek out the General, whom they said then fled down a hallway in retreat.

In Chicago, a 60-year old woman told police that she had killed her husband with a hammer and hacked up his body with a saw, dumping the parts in the Chicago River. Her husband, a former mental patient, had, she claimed, sought to choke her. The hands of the man had been found in the river. According to her son-in-law, both she and her husband were heavy drinkers who continuously quarreled.

In Crestview, Ala., a Polish war bride was not indicted for shooting to death her husband, a Staff Sergeant in the Army. She had claimed that she shot him because he took their 16-month old infant son from her and sent the child to the husband's relatives in Kentucky.

So in at least one county in Alabama in 1947, if your husband did that, it was quite alright to murder him. The Grand Jury was said also to be seeking a turntable by which to effect installation of a new light bulb in the ceiling fixture of the Grand Jury room.

In Shelby, N.C., counsel for the accused Highway Patrolman in the alleged murder of the Cherryville Police Chief after the former had stopped the latter for suspicion of drunk driving, and the latter had charged the Patrolman with a knife, stabbing him on the arm, said that the Patrolman would not waive a preliminary hearing in the matter set for September 5 to determine whether there was probable cause to proceed to the Grand Jury on a warrant sworn by the Chief's daughter, witness to the homicide on August 19 in Kings Mountain.

In Lincolnton, N.C., a 23-year old man was bound over to Superior Court on a charge of arson for setting fire to the Aspen Street School Saturday night, after a finding of probable cause by the Justice of the Peace, following testimony that the man was seen at the school just before and after the blaze began.

In Kinston, N.C., 800 students boycotted the opening day of classes at the Wheat Swamp Consolidated School in Lenoir County for the district school committee decision not to rehire the principal of the school for a third term. The Superintendent of the county ascribed the low turnout of students, 118, to the fact of the late tobacco harvest taking place.

Tobacco took precedence over education in Lenoir County, because if you hain't got no cigarettes, what the hell good's a education for?

School officials stated that average attendance the previous year was 419 out of 500. A meeting of parents had taken place the previous Tuesday night to make plans for the boycott, attended by numerous men and several women in support of reappointment of the female principal.

In Winston-Salem, the water supply was diminishing, 105 inches below the top of the dam. Mayor George Lentz had called a meeting to determine action on water conservation. No indication is presented by the Compleat Report as to the reason for the high consumption. Perhaps, the citizenry was unusually thirsty because cracks in the earth's crust had been generated by the Martians who landed at Roswell.

In Charlotte, a long-awaited street lighting program began, with Duke Power starting installation of the new illuminating devices after approval two years earlier, delayed by post-war shortages of materials. Candlepower of lights would be increased from 250 to 400, and on eleven heavily traveled arterial streets, to 600. In the downtown area, lamps of 1,000 and 600 candlepower were being used.

There were some 2,000 streetlamps presently in operation in the city, costing $50,000 annually to operate and maintain. The new lamps numbered 157.

Putting 600 or 1,000 candles in one little spot would render the same light, theoretically, as just one streetlamp downtown. And then you would have to employ a candle lighter to keep the 600 or 1,000 candles lit in each location every night, all night long. So the program was definitely in furtherance of economy.

A program of placing concrete street signs on corners and increasing the arc of the corners also was being inaugurated. A thousand such markers had already been placed, but many had not yet the names of the streets stenciled upon them, making it hard to discern thus from the markers where in the hell one was.

You might need one of those 1,000 candlepower jobs to see the handwriting on the street corner.

It bears propinquity to our recollection of having to ask our mama on one occasion during early days of the first grade on what street we lived, as our address at that time was only stated in relation to the name of the apartments in which we lived. They did have at the time on the corners the concrete obelisks, resemblant in miniature to the Washington Monument, in turn to the Egyptian archetypes, displaying the name of the street, but we could not read, even under 1,000 candlepower, and thus had no means by which to discern the name of the street on which we resided, making it difficult therefore to impart this information when asked for regurgitation of it, an embarrassing predicament in which to find ourselves.

The simple answer was the "Hole in the Wall", but we understood that to be a closely held family secret, not for disclosure to the general public or for ascription to our mama.

Handbags, underwear, and jewelry were important components of women's fashion accouterments for the fall season, as featured in the Woman's Section, on pages 2-B through 6-B, inclusive.

On the editorial page, "Tax Relief in Debt Reduction" remarks of Congressman Charles B. Deane of Rockingham having visited Charlotte and mentioning his justifiable alarm at the size of the national debt, one of the major issues confronting the second session of the 80th Congress. He supported the President's vetoes of the tax cut passed by the Congress.

He had expounded on the subject in the Congressional Record, stating that the debt was 34 times larger at 258 billion dollars than taxes on incomes over $5,000, 27 times larger than that on income under $5,000, and that the interest on the debt ran to the entire budget for any prior year save 1920, 1921, and 1934. He also pointed out that future taxes would be higher if the tax cut were implemented presently. The Republicans' enunciated goal of debt reduction of 6.9 billion dollars could be achieved under existing taxes, saving 115 billion dollars in interest over a period of years. Current high taxes were not hampering production as proved by the record production figures since the end of the war.

The piece agrees with Mr. Deane's analysis, but finds that 1948 election-year politics would likely impel supporters of the tax cut to try a third time to push it through Congress.

"Marshall Secures American Base" tells of U.S. foreign policy having achieved a major victory at the Pan-American Conference in Brazil, with the approval by the twenty attending nations that aggression against the Western Hemisphere, whether intracontinental or extracontinental in origin, would be met, under the premise of self-defense, by the use of joint force of the agreeing nations.

It came at a propitious juncture for Secretary of State Marshall, undergoing criticism in the press for not engaging in more public relations to gather support for the Marshall Plan in Europe and other aspects of the U.S. foreign policy.

The success at the Conference demonstrated that, while he might lack the public flare exhibited by Secretary James Byrnes, his predecessor, he did not want of the skills necessary to achieve diplomatic results.

The instant case was within the parameters of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, allowing for provisional self-defense of member nations until such time as the U.N. could take action in a given situation.

The success followed in the tradition of the Latin American Good Neighbor Policy established by FDR.

"Home Rule Issue in the Primary" tells of Mayor Henry Powell of Henderson, addrssing the 38th annual conference of the N.C. League of Municipalities, urging mayors to get involved in the gubernatorial race. The piece assumes that meant getting behind State Treasurer Charles Johnson, early favorite, and, assuming his victory, questions how much a Governor could do for cities and counties in the state, as the Legislature held the purse strings. And the weight of influence in the Legislature was with the Eastern counties at the expense of the West. Moreover, if Mr. Johnson should lose—as he would—, then the Home Rule movement would lose along with him should it back his candidacy.

The piece expresses suspicion for a candidate such as Mr. Johnson who on the one hand supported Home Rule, at least when speaking in the Eastern counties, which would cut against machine politics in the state, while on other being the candidate of choice of the state Democratic machine. The editorial wonders whether Mr. Johnson would exhibit the same fervor for Home Rule when he spoke in the Western counties.

A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Crusader and Founder", tells of a tribute, at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Christians and Jews being held at Little Switzerland, N.C., to the late former Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Heriot Clarkson, who had founded the mountain resort.

It quotes from Mr. Clarkson telling of emergence of Tar Heelia from a rural backwater into a progressive commonwealth, the "good roads" initiative having been key to this change. When he had heard about the spot in the mountains 29 years earlier from some cattle drivers, it had been in the wilderness.

A piece from the Congressional Quarterly discusses housing, that while a probe was set to take place in Congress, housing enjoyed the biggest boom in twenty years, albeit with most of the construction coming in the suburbs and small towns, rather than in the inner cities. Only Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Seattle had appreciable gains in residential housing the previous month. California, New York, and Texas each reported the largest amount of new construction during the first half of the year. Alabama and Tennessee registered the most complaints of shortage. Each of the latter five states were represented on the joint Committee to investigate housing.

The battle beween Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin over organization of the Committee demonstrated the battle lines which would be drawn in the investigation, the latter Senator having represented the building interests in his leadership role in the battle to release rent controls.

The building industry was starting a campaign to limit exports of building materials, as it feared that the Marshall Plan would increase those exports, which now remained a small percentage of the building materials available in the country.

The Committee had a budget of $100,000 and a life through the end of the 80th Congress in early 1949. It would concentrate on how to alleviate the shortage and the role which Government should play in that effort.

It would be limited, however, by the absence of statistics on housing, no longer being published or collected by the Government because of cuts in appropriations by the 80th Congress to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Robert S. Allen tells of the British planning to remove their 12,000 troops from Greece, leaving the job to the few hundred troops of the U.S. forces present. Supplementing the American troops in Greece would be costly and ultimately borne by the War Department.

Recently, Wilson Wyatt, former housing czar, had, along with some Democratic Senators, made a call at the White House to discuss Democratic politics. The President complimented him for a speech in Chicago at which he had asserted that a third party would play into the hands of NAM and the Communists. Mr. Wyatt stated that he thought the Democrats had an excellent chance in 1948.

The backers of Governor Thomas Dewey's re-nomination for the presidency were bothered by the MacArthur-for-President drive starting in Wisconsin, where former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen had promised to make a concerted effort in that first Republican primary the following spring. If Mr. Dewey should be defeated, he could find himself in the same predicament as that which forced Wendell Willkie to leave the race early in 1944 after being defeated by Governor Dewey in the Wisconsin primary. Several Republican leaders in Wisconsin were backing General MacArthur who was claiming Wisconsin as his home state, intending to retire in Milwaukee.

He notes that leading Wisconsin newspapers had attacked the MacArthur candidacy as backed by reactionaries.

An article in Collier's, to be published the following day, charged that loose-lipped Army and Navy brass had helped to sink universal military training.

Dr. Henry Kessler, pioneer in using stumps of amputees to manipulate prosthetic limbs, had published a book on the subject, Cineplasty. (Mr. Allen had lost an arm in the war.)

One of the most sought books at the Congressional Library was Reilly of the White House, a lively account of life in the Executive Mansion during the Roosevelt era. Also popular were Our Fair City, expose of boodlers and misrule in America's cities, (edited by Mr. Allen), and The Island War, a history of Marine Corps battles in the Pacific, by Frank Hough.

Paul W. Ward, in the 22nd of his series for the Baltimore Sun, titled collectively "Life in the Soviet Union", tells of the role of the MVD or secret police in Russia in maintaining isolation of the citizenry from non-Communist influence. The MVD had reached a state not dissimilar to the analogous agency existing under the czars. The requirement of quarantine from extra-Soviet ideas extended to the MVD itself. When the members traveled abroad, they were maintained in closely controlled colonies, as were Soviet diplomats.

The MVD objected to trade between Russia and any foreign country for its interference with isolation. Such a policy conflicted with the Kremlin's need for binding Russian satellites through trade agreements. In the past, the satellites, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, and Rumania, had enjoyed a better lifestyle than Russia by relying on trade with Britain, Germany, and France. While Russia probably could absorb the countries' raw materials, it could not provide in return the machinery which formerly was obtained from the West.

Russia could supply land reform, dividing large farms into little ones to obtain peasant votes. But the system reduced farm production and lowered living standards. It also produced a demand for farm machinery which Russia could not satisfy.

If the current five-year plan were realized, an unlikely prospect based on prior performance, then the Soviet Union still would only be producing by 1950 less than a third of the steel produced in the United States in 1940, only 35 percent as much pig iron, sixteen percent as much crude petroleum, 40 percent as much coal, and 45 percent as much electric power.

Quality also suffered in Russia as the supervisory personnel had been eliminated with the elimination of the middle class. The country, said one foreign engineer, needed "50,000 good foremen."

Marquis Childs, writing from Berlin, tells of the once proud Herrenvolk of the city now being reduced to pulling and pushing carts while their children played among the ruins of the once great city. The attitude of the German populace vacillated between sullen bitterness and servility.

The Russians had provided amnesty in their occupation zone to all former members of the Nazi Party, provided an individual could show that membership had been initiated to maintain a job or pension. Given the practical inability to prosecute thousands upon thousand of Germans, the same was inevitable in the American zone, but the Russians had done it first. The Russians contended through propaganda that de-Nazification was not being pressed in the other zones.

The Russians had counted on having all of Germany as their prize after the war, that Communism would triumph out of ruin and despair. Shortly after Potsdam in July, 1945, the Russian Vice-Foreign Commissar, Andrei Vishinsky, had remarked to an American diplomat that soon all of Germany would be Communist. But even in the Russian zone, the Soviets had encountered resistance to inculcation of the Communist ideology, a fact which puzzled them, causing blame of "Fascists" for the failing.

It was a critical time in the American occupation effort and major decisions had to be made, without further compromise. American Military Governor, General Lucius D. Clay, had performed his role heroically under impossible circumstances.

Mr. Childs promises several columns to follow on General Clay.

Herblock....

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