The Charlotte News

Friday, September 19, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that White Russia's chief delegate, Kuzma Kiselev, took up where Andrei Vishinsky, Soviet Deputy Foreign Commissar, had left off the previous day in his criticism of the United States for supposed warmongering. In between, the Argentine delegate had defended the U.S. against the attack. Mr. Kiselev said that the atomic bomb could not be controlled indefinitely by the United States and that "the atomic bomb of one side may be answered by the atomic bomb of the other side."

The Soviets were seeking to add to the General Assembly agenda a resolution to curb "criminal" war propaganda issued by the U.S., specifically naming nine Americans as "warmongers". The U.S. stated it would not seek to block the addition of the proposed resolution.

One of the named "warmongers", former Pennsylvania Governor George Earle III, said that Mr. Vishinsky was right if he meant that Mr. Earle advocated using the atom bomb on Russia; for he knew that as soon as Russia acquired the bomb, it would use it on the U.S. He cautioned that in atomic warfare, "the first punch wins".

Another identified "warmonger", Representative Bryan Dorn of South Carolina, described the label as a "base, malicious type of Russian propaganda". He stated that he had never called for bombing of Russia, but wanted an Air Force capable of carrying "the armed might" of the country to Russia or any other part of the world which threatened U.S. security. He also said that the country was thankful for Russia's valor and contribution to the war. Mr. Dorn had been a member of the 9th Air Force in Europe.

Speaker of the House Joe Martin claimed that he had sources who informed him that the situation in Europe was not so critical that it could not await solution until January when Congress would reconvene, and hence there was no necessity for a special session of Congress.

The President would arrive in Washington the following day from his trip to the Rio Inter-American Conference, having already reached Norfolk via the U.S.S. Missouri, and was expected immediately to consider whether to call such a session.

The hurricane which had passed over South Florida with winds up to 120 mph and then moved northwest into the Gulf of Mexico during the previous two days, wreaking havoc as it went, had hit hard at New Orleans during the morning hours, with winds still at 90 mph, heading north to Baton Rouge and Arkansas, expected to reach Little Rock by midnight with winds at 55 mph. Sixty percent of a black housing project in New Orleans was reported destroyed and several of its residents injured. All power in the city was out. Water poured over the seawall from Lake Ponchartrain and flooded an area three blocks deep from the waterfront.

The storm had passed through coastal Alabama to Biloxi, Miss., snapping piers and producing a tide ten feet above normal, while on its path to New Orleans.

It was believed that Gulf Coast casualties and property damage exceeded the toll in Florida, where five were reported killed by the storm and property damage ran into the millions.

In Japan, flooding in the Kanto Plain was thought to have killed as many as 2,000 people. The flooding extended over Northern Honshu, prompting evacuation of northern Tokyo.

Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and Herman Eberharter of Pennsylvania remarked that the Ways & Mean Committee was behaving as a star chamber in depriving even members of the Committee from knowledge of what was being considered on tax revision, being undertaken by a special tax study group appointed by chairman Harold Knutson of Minnesota.

Senator Robert Taft, speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on his Western tour to determine his viability as a presidential candidate for 1948, stated that he favored leveling prices and wages at a point 50 to 60 percent above those of 1939. He accused the President of following a program of planned inflation. He was resigned to prices being above pre-war levels because wages had risen so far. He favored an increase in the minimum wage from 40 cents to at least 60 cents per hour. He criticized the "totalitarian school of thought" of the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party, dominated, he said, by the CIO PAC.

In Chicago, for the second successive day, grain prices fell sharply and corn hit the eight-cent limit, primarily the result, according to observers, of the buyers' strike. The cost of food was at its highest peak in the country's history. Dun & Bradstreet reported that retail prices rose but slightly during the previous week.

Albert Goss, master of the National Grange, favored return to controls on the use of grains should voluntary conservation fail to permit large shipments abroad.

In Baltimore, turkey was 55 cents per pound while hot dogs cost 57 cents per pound. Sales of butter, at 89 to 97 cents per pound, had fallen 45 percent.

On the editorial page, "Charlotte's Lucky Number Is 13" tells of the number representing the projects listed for the city by Mayor H. H. Baxter. It feels it appropriate, as suggestive of the city not fearing omens and bad luck. The realization of the plan could begin with an original Committee of 13 and then expand to 1,300 or even 13,000.

It neglects to remind that Charlotte was first in freedom, and that there were thirteen original colonies in the Revolution.

Thus, if you think thirteen is unlucky, you must be either a terrorist or a furrin tourist.

"A Boost for the Tar Heels" tells of Holiday Magazine presenting a feature on North Carolina, with over a hundred photographs, covering subject matter from the Lost Colony to UNC's star football player, Charlie Justice. Jonathan Daniels had written the commentary. Charlotte only merited one photo, but it thinks Charlotteans need not carp. The state would benefit nationally from the publicity, attracting tourists and giving industry and agriculture a beneficial promotion.

It ventures that Mr. Daniels was also trying to teach North Carolinians of their state and the need to improve facilities offered tourists, both hotels and restaurants, of which there were a dearth of inviting exemplars.

"Salute to the Quartermaster" tells of the Quartermaster Depot in Charlotte about to begin its final official Army task, that of registering the graves of the war dead of North Carolina and Virginia. If the entire facility were declared surplus, then the graves registration unit would be wiped out, as well as cancelling plans for tobacco storage by the Commodity Credit Corporation.

The solution was to declare part of the property surplus, while allowing Army and Government functions to proceed to conclusion in the rest of it, thus accommodating the private warehousers desirous of use of the facilities for storage.

It urges that residents would not forget the work of the Quartermaster transacted from Charlotte during the war and that it would always be welcome as long as it had the nation's work still to accomplish.

A piece from the New York Times, titled "Old American Custom", remarks that Senator Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma, just back from an inspection tour of Europe, was correct in denouncing professional American "bellyachers", given the harsh conditions extant in Europe. A basic meal in London cost $12, he reported; an only slightly better meal in Paris went for $28.

But he took the custom too seriously, as, the piece suggests, it was merely a way of letting off steam in America to bellyache, clearing the decks, as it were, for battle. Even if it were to become Utopia, Americans would still bellyache, if for no other reason, that there was nothing left about which to bellyache.

Drew Pearson tells of the recent spate of Justice Department anti-trust cases not amounting to much, being dusted-off cases prepared 13 to 24 months earlier by former anti-trust chief in the Justice Department Wendell Berge. The action against the real estate lobby only sought and obtained indictment of the real estate boards, not the individual moguls, and so gave pause in deterrence to no one. That against Eastman Technicolor was another action, prepared 18 months earlier, and the tire price-fixing case had been planned by Mr. Berge two years earlier.

The new anti-trust chief was John Sonnett, a poetic dresser but not so in action, who had successfully handled the injunction contempt case against John L. Lewis before the Supreme Court. He had been promised a private sector job at the banking firm of Dillon, Read. He had been an aide during the war to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, a former partner in the latter firm. That made it improbable that he would bring the delayed actions against that firm and other Wall Street firms for engaging in price-fixing. He swore nevertheless that he intended to do so.

The RNC had changed its mind in seeking Hal Leyshom, executive editor of the Miami News, as its new publicity man, after he reminded that he had worked for Governor James Cox, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1920, and had worked for the publicity chief of the DNC during the war.

Averell Harriman was seeking to jump-start the Marshall Plan by having 5,000 American economic and technical experts demonstrate to the Europeans techniques in efficiency and how to allocate raw materials, in an effort to get their economies going at a productive pace. He notes that the first thing the Greek Government had done with its U.S. aid money was to buy a large consignment of neckties—perhaps to hang themselves in a Panama hat during an earthquake there, or under other precarious circumstances.

Senator Francis Green of Rhode Island had become the first Senator ever to sponsor a black cadet to Annapolis. The man's name was Reeves Taylor of Providence. Several members of the House had sponsored black cadets, but none had ever graduated.

California Governor Earl Warren was still spurning any entreaties to run for the presidency. Friends stated that he wanted to be Attorney General in a Republican Administration.

Thanks to Australia's Herbert Evatt, the U.N. General Assembly could consider the Greek and Balkan situation, irrespective of "Mr. 'Gro-veto'".

He credits Loy Henderson of the State Department with forcing the coalition Cabinet in Greece between the Royalists and Liberals.

Samuel Grafton tells of a surprisingly large contingent of conservatives favoring a buyers' strike. One reason for its popularity among them was that it placed the cost of readjustment on the poor, a buyers' strike having the same effect on individuals and families as a depression, only undertaken voluntarily.

He finds no great social differentiation to be made between Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" and Senator Taft's "Let them eat less". The New York City Department of Health had reported that pregnant women were suffering already from consuming less meat and milk in the buyers' strike.

And such was occurring in boom times, not depression economy.

The buyers' strike was no substitute therefore for price controls. If the strike were to succeed, it would be disastrous for the economy, leading to unemployment because of depressed sales and profits. It was thus not a progressive program.

Under price controls and farm subsidies, all of the taxpayers shared the burden in proportion to their wealth, as in the war. Under the buyers' strike, however, the poorest members of society shouldered the greatest part of the burden. Thus, those suggesting it should be thanked for nothing.

Stewart Alsop, back in Washington from Rome, discusses an idea for dealing with Italy's economic crisis, previously set forth in the column, now receiving currency among officials in both Washington and London, that being to apply the remainder of the British loan proceeds, 400 million dollars, to the needs of both Italy and France. Those funds had been frozen recently because the British could not meet the Sterling conversion restrictions on which the loan was conditioned.

Italy had sought convertibility of its Sterling balance into dollars from Britain on the basis of 24 million in a lump sum and six million per month thereafter. The State Department for the nonce remained mum on the matter, until it could gauge the British reaction.

The reason for the idea was that Congress was apparently not going to act on the Marshall Plan before winter, and that would be too late to stave off disaster for both Italy and France, leaving Western Europe to the Communists, that which the Plan was designed to prevent.

The Sterling held by France and Italy was useless unless the British would convert it to dollars. Britain had recently implemented a program of non-convertibility to conserve the low balance of dollars they had remaining from the 1946 3.75 billion dollar loan. But if the remaining 400 million were partially unfrozen to allow for conversion of the Sterling to dollars, then Italy and France could purchase wheat with the Sterling and alleviate for the nonce their approaching crises, giving time for the Congress to act and the country to hear full debate on the merits of the Marshall Plan.

The unfreezing of the loan under these circumstances would be legal, as Britain would thus be able to meet the restrictions imposed by the loan, i.e. conversion of Sterling to dollars.

But the problem lay in the reaction in Britain, where to free the proceeds for use of Italy and France rather than to aid Britons would be quite unpopular among the heavily rationed populace, especially given that Italy, a former enemy, would be one of the recipients.

A letter writer responds to the letter seeking differentiation between liberal and "liberal", a distinction suggested previously by this writer. He seeks to clarify.

As to whether The News was liberal or "liberal", he believes it depended on point of view, but concludes that The News was "generous".

A letter writer responds to a letter which had suggested that liberals were afraid for their own hide. He retorts that he was a liberal and not afraid when he volunteered for the Army during the war, as he had also during the Spanish Civil War and at the time of the attack on Ethiopia by Mussolini's forces.

The effort to put the quietus on Communism had advanced to the point of depriving Americans of their freedom and civil liberties. Reactionaries in the country feared Americans' love of liberty, not Communism, as it was the former which prevented their setting up a Fascist dictatorship in the country.

A letter writer responds to failed Republican Congressional candidate P. C. Burkholder, who had written that there was confusion in the country for the previous 14 years from the New Deal, not from the current Republican Congress.

This writer thinks it rather deriving from the $2 pork chops and dollar-per-pound butter as well as from the renascence of Herbert Hoover as a prophet, even if still one of doom.

He had wondered whither Mr. Burkholder after he had predicted that release of all controls on the economy and election of a Republican Congress would lead to unrestrained prosperity.

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