The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 6, 1947
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Argentina was planning to take an aggressive role against the major powers in its refusal to break relations with Franco in Spain, and its effort to reopen the Italian peace treaty, when the U.N. reconvened September 16. Argentina was the only U.N. nation not to break relations with Franco, had even sent a new Ambassador to Madrid. Eva Peron, dictatrix, had just received decorations from the Fascist dictator the previous month. Argentina was also in opposition to the major power veto on the Security Council.
Observers believed that the move was an attempt by Argentina to take the lead from Australia as representative of small and medium-sized nations and to obtain a seat on the eleven-member Security Council to replace Brazil, whose term on the Council was set to expire in 1947.
Some European delegations refused alteration of their positions taken at the U.N. Charter Conference in 1945, that Argentina should not be a member of the organization for its pro-Fascist stance during the war, still plaguing it.
In Athens, Greece, negotiations on a coalition Cabinet between the Royalists and Liberals were approaching conclusion. It had been agreed that Themistokles Sophoulis, leader of the Liberals, would be Premier, and current Premier Constantin Tsaldaris, leader of the Royalists, would be Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister.
Three British transports, carrying 4,400 Jews who had sought immigration to Palestine, arrived in Hamburg, the passengers destined for camps near Luebeck. They had refused to exit the ships at port in France during the period July 29 to August 22, after being warned that they would otherwise be returned to Germany.
In the Floresta de Gaves suburb of Rio de Janeiro, the President escaped possible serious injury when the limousine in which he was riding skidded during a slow drive up a muddy mountain road, causing the left rear wheel to slide over a retaining wall, two feet from the precipice of a cliff. The limousine had been forced to stop suddenly when the motorcycle escort leading it became bogged in the mud. The President jokingly invited reporters and photographers to help free the car from the predicament, in aid of 20 officers pushing. The President and Ambassador William Pawley remained inside the vehicle while it was being put back onto the roadway. Chief of staff Admiral William Leahy got out of the car. The President was on his way to a luncheon with Ernesto Fontes, wealthy business man.
In Pittsburgh, efforts to settle the wildcat strike of railroad workers in four plants of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, involving 15,000 workers, remained unsettled, with a prediction that resolution might not come quickly. The strike was said by both A. F. Whitney, head of the Railroad Brotherhoods, and by the National Mediation Board in Washington to be unauthorized. G. M. suggested that the ripple effect from the strike on the automobile industry could be severe.
Procter & Gamble announced a two-cent drop in the price of Crisco, and Lever Brothers cut the price of Spry, another shortening, by 5 percent. Durkee Famous Foods cut the price of its oleomargarine by five cents per pound.
More grease for your pan for the buck, and more for your hair.
In Laconia, N.H., a 20-year old textile mill worker was charged with the murder of her father the previous Christmas, after she led investigators to his body buried under boards of a sheep pen on the family farm. She admitted the shooting, occurring December 21, following an argument over her failure to meet her father at the railway station. She had contended in the interim that he was still at sea as a merchant seaman. She said she had not received a telegram he claimed to have sent to meet him at the station.
Don't worry about that. Everybody makes mistakes.
In Gary, Indiana, the City School Board stood firm on its policy banning segregation of schools, despite a mass boycott of 85 percent of the student body at the Emerson High School and two-thirds of the lower grades school. The School Board decision had permitted 38 black children in grades one through six to enroll at the Emerson School.
A similar boycott had occurred in early November, 1945 at the Froebel High School in Gary, in protest of the principal's policy of admitting black students to the school, prompting Frank Sinatra to visit and make an appeal to the students' better angels, an appeal not received well by the Crisco Kids
Burke Davis of The News continues his series on the mentally ill of the state, with emphasis on Mecklenburg County, tells of a young man brought to the county jail because his family considered him dangerous, though he had not been violent or threatening. But he had disturbed his wife by his sleeplessness and restiveness at night, wanting to drive off in the car.
He was plainly crazy. Get him some help somers.
He would be kept at the jail until a decision was made by doctors as to his condition.
Well, look, he's got to be crazy. He wants to go driving at night? Nobody but crazy people do that.
The jail averaged about a dozen mental patients per month. Some stayed a few days, others a few weeks. Some were calm, others were violent.
One woman had torn up the linoleum floor in her cell. Another had jumped to the top of her cell onto the cot. One man tore up his bedding and placed it in the toilet, flooding the floor.
Sounds like college.
Most of the patients, he reports, recovered completely.
It was still possible for family members to put in jail someone in the family they simply did not want around.
He recommends a satisfactory hospital system to relieve the stress on jail facilities.
Director of the Welfare Department, Wallace Kuralt—father of journalist
The piece suggests that the County build a small receiving hospital for such patients. Though the County jailer contended that the patients did not appear to suffer ill effects from being jailed, it was clear that they needed a hospital.
Dick Young reports the headline story that City Manager Henry Yancey had announced that a $1,000 shortage had been detected from the collections of Charlotte's parking meters
Mr. Yancey had removed responsibility for collection from the Traffic Signal Division and placed it with the City Treasurer, L. L. Ledbetter.
The total revenue for the previous fiscal year from the meters had been $143,000, $7,000 short of the projected amount.
Maybe a Robin Hood was at work, giving to the poor New Dealers.
Just like the One would say, "We're going to give it to them, now, the same way they gave it to us."
In Hollywood, actress Marie (The Body) McDonald
In Los Angeles, the inmates of the women's county jail were looking forward to a concert by pianist Jose Iturbi
Let us hope that it would be as Locksley and not turn into a linoleum-ripping riot.
On the sports page, Furman Bisher reports of the Central High School football team substituting spirit for talent, and its success being dependent upon the proxy who had to play more than one position.
The News Amateur Photograph Contest ended after eight weeks, with the selection of the grand prize winner for his snow scene
Three runner-ups, also eligible for the national competition, received $10 each. All four winners are displayed on the page, including that of Ms. Place, who placed this time. The winner had placed three times previously. Whether any of them had a show in the offing was not stated.
On the editorial page, "The Future of Prohibition" again comments on the commitment of the drys to continue to fight for prohibition in Mecklenburg despite what they regarded as a temporary setback in the June referendum which implemented the ABC system.
A recent survey by American Magazine reported that 25 million Americans could not buy liquor legally and ten million could not buy beer.
But most of the dry gains had come in agricultural areas of the nation, with only three states, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi, being completely dry. There was no evidence of dry gains in urban or populous areas.
During World War II, according to a study by Yale, drinkers increased by 35 percent, from 43.5 percent of the population in 1940 to 60 percent in 1945.
The challenge increased for a program of intelligent regulation, education, and medical treatment for alcohol abusers.
"While the Price Spiral Goes On" comments on the report that prices in New York were predicted to reach a $1 a pound on meat and butter, short of "consumer resistance". It hopes that consumer resistance was not being held back by the expectation of Congress and the Administration preparing to step in to check inflation through renewal of controls. For Congress was only just now getting around to investigation of high prices.
It promised to put on a show across the country, as the joint Senate-House Committee on the Economic Report planned a tour, beginning September 15, to keep it in the headlines until the fall.
A part of the Committee would visit Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Atlanta, to study the price picture on various commodities, textiles, metals, and other goods. Another portion of the Committee would tour the Midwest and range into the South, including Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Little Rock, and Birmingham, looking at automobiles, steel, farm machinery, flour, meat, and other food prices. Still another part would tour the West, beginning in Denver in October.
The result would be many disagreements, to be won by the Republicans for their majority on the Committee and each subcommittee, each of which was composed of a four to two majority. And their findings would have no effect on prices in 1947.
The Administration could continue, ineffectually, urging industry to cut prices voluntarily, or attempt to restore price ceilings, which was not practicable politically. It was undertaking anti-trust prosecutions for price-fixing, but those were expected, for their inevitably slow process, to have little impact on prices.
A slight drop in meat prices was expected by late fall, but another rise was also predicted by the spring.
It concludes that it was a good time for the consumers to show a little resistance.
"Export Blow to North Carolina" tells of economic observers looking forward to the slump in exports as foreign countries' dollar reserves dwindled, the experts believing that the domestic market would then take up the slack and benefit production and prices.
North Carolina, however, found it difficult to share in the excitement. The Greensboro Daily News had suggested that the state would take a major blow from the reduction in exports, as tobacco production was down 20-25 percent and that the next year's crop would need be reduced likewise because of the anticipated reduction in exports. That translated to half of the profits from tobacco being lost from a crop the previous year bringing in a half billion dollars.
What if one farmer had control of all that? He'd be rich.
Peanuts and cotton were also to be adversely affected.
It further offered that even if the Marshall Plan were implemented and injected dollars to Europe, it was unlikely to improve the plight of tobacco during the coming year.
The piece stresses that the situation demonstrated how dependent America was on foreign export and how the worldwide economic crisis therefore impacted the American economy. It was likely to result, it concludes, in a recession, before readjustment in American supply and demand could fully take place.
Da'ter, you best git the gun out, cause we gon' have ta shoot all our provender for dis year.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Sentinel, titled "Another Officer Runs Amok", comments on the spate of police brutality evident in the state during the summer. It includes as being among the incidents the slaying of the Cherryville Police Chief by the Highway Patrolman, the beating of the escaped prisoner by three Highway Patrolmen who resigned in result, the killing of a black man, suspected of theft, by a Durham policeman a few months earlier. It adds the report from Dunn that a constable shot a tear gas gun into the face of a man he had arrested for being drunk, destroying one of the eyes of the man and endangering his life.
It suggests that the incidents underscored the need for better care in selection of the state's law enforcement officers. Men of quick temper were unsuited to the job. Such care did not imply softness but rather intelligent and human enforcement. For to employ persons who would haphazardly enforce the laws and injure citizens in the process would only wind up costing the State and municipalities money in lawsuits.
It concludes that such law enforcement was necessary to avoid "Nazi or KKK hoodlumism" in the administration of justice.
O' course, that there is when ye get ye a new Senator, maybe one named Jesse, who can get them judges appointed who'll white-wash the whole thing for ye and then you can hire whoever the hell you want, cause them lib'rals ain't gon' tell us down heya what to do. You know?
Gon' be a risin' up one these days. Yessuh. If you ain't got no friends on the po-lice, how the hell you gon' live a free person?
Call us white-trash, will ye? We got some friends on the po-lice though, and also on the bench. Do you?
Drew Pearson tells of an ongoing feud between General Harry Vaughn, military aide to the President, and the President's brain truster Clark Clifford, having reached a crescendo just prior to the President's departure for the Inter-American Conference in Rio. General Vaughn was jealous of Mr. Clifford's closeness to the President while Mr. Clifford did not like the high-handed tactics and rude associates of the General, who brought in such characters as John Maragon, the former Kansas City bootblack who had gotten the President's ear regarding aid to Greece.
The latest problem arose when General Vaughn worked out the President's itinerary for his trip to Brazil, at which point Mr. Clifford stepped in and rearranged it, to the ire of General Vaughn, who laid out Mr. Clifford in unrepeatable language, essentially telling him to plan the President's trip in hell. Mr. Clifford ignored the attack and planned the trip anyway, which General Vaughn contended was exactly as he had in the first instance.
Mr. Pearson notes that both men were from St. Louis.
He next informs of a row brewing between the New York Yankees and Senator Ed Johnson of Colorado, getting ready to retire and become head of the Western League in Minor League Baseball. Mr. Johnson wanted to found a minor league club in Kansas City, Kansas, just across the river from Kansas City, Missouri, which already had a Yankees farm club, giving the Yankees exclusive minor league rights within ten miles of the city. Senator Johnson was planning to bring a lawsuit contending anti-trust violation by the Yankees. It would require that the Supreme Court set aside its former ruling, authored by Justice Oliver W. Holmes, that baseball was not in interstate commerce and thus beyond the reach of Federal anti-trust laws.
The American Legion had an internal debate regarding its National Housing Committee report, a Legionnaire contending that it had been dictated by the real estate lobby, and favoring the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill. The leader of the committee believed the bill's provision for Government-subsidized housing to be a type of socialism.
Mr. Pearson notes that a real estate group, prior to the previous American Legion convention, had sent a circular urging members to contact Legionnaires and make sure that they would vote according to the group's interests when they reached the convention.
Marquis Childs, in Essen, Germany, writes of the heart of industrial Germany in the Ruhr being the key to the Marshall Plan, according to residents of Essen. The coal and steel of the Ruhr were key components of the pre-war European economy, with 400,000 tons of coal per day being produced. Since the war, the highest output was 240,000 tons. Twice it had reached that point and then tumbled because of food shortages. The British supervisors of the Ruhr believed that more food would lead to higher production of coal.
General Lucius Clay, American military governor, was hoping to raise the caloric intake to 1,800 per day, still 200 below the minimum healthy diet. But he had been informed recently that the highest level which could be achieved was 1,650 calories.
The British informed that the key to production was transportation. Even if 300,000 tons of coal could be mined each day, it could not be transported. Presently 1.25 million tons were sitting above ground for want of transportation. The piling up of the coal deterred the miners from greater effort at production.
But the Americans were critical of the British effort, positing that they were looking for an excuse for their failure of management. The Americans were wont to point out that the British had 20,000 personnel while the Americans had only 4,000 in the occupation zone. The Americans admitted, however, that the British were nearly always better prepared with the facts.
Ten percent of the mines in the Ruhr were destroyed during the war and 25 percent were severely damaged. The wife of the miner could not buy a spool of thread to mend her husband's work clothes.
The time was coming, he asserts, when the Ruhr mines would have to be rehabilitated, a costly investment. But unless it were done, the Ruhr mines would permanently render low production. It was one of the urgencies which the Marshall Plan faced.
Victor Riesel again stresses the clean tactics of the International Association of Machinists, which had undertaken a refreshingly open sunshine policy with respect to journalists. The Machinists had 624,000 members and was run by the dues paying rank-and-file. The union was closed only to Communists, fascists, Nazis and others promoting a totalitarian philosophy.
The leadership received only modest salaries, the president getting $12,000 per year. The union constitution provided that the officers had to retire at 65, and on a modest pension.
All power in the union not specifically given to the officers belonged to the rank-and-file. Important issues and election of officers had to be determined by secret mailed ballot. Such factors made the union unique among the larger unions. Walk-outs had to receive approval by 75 percent of the membership impacted by the work stoppage.
No member could be expelled without a trial, from which appeal could be taken to the international president.
Mr. Riesel stresses that John L. Lewis had not allowed any such freedom within the UMW.
Stewart Alsop tells of President Truman's task when he would return from his cruise from South America on the battleship Missouri, that he would face not only the world crisis but the formidable job of putting together a viable coalition in the Democratic Party for the 1948 campaign. The latter job would not be easy for the decay in local Democratic organizations all around the country.
New York had suffered in the previous year's election from the gubernatorial campaign of Thomas Dewey, leaving the Democrats splintered on the left. The most powerful Democrat in the state, former Governor Herbert Lehman, was said to be sore at the President, in part perhaps because the President had not appointed him to be the American representative to UNESCO, after Senator Arthur Vandenberg blocked the appointment of former Attorney General Francis Biddle for the position. Whatever the cause, Governor Lehman had threatened publicly to criticize the President for not taking a stronger stand in Palestine. Such criticism could have a disastrous effect on the Democratic prospects in New York.
The State chairman, Paul Fitzpatrick, and the the former national chairman and Bronx boss Ed Flynn were so concerned that they were seeking to placate Mr. Lehman.
In Pennsylvania, the party was also split, between the Lawrence faction and the Guffey faction, which Mr. Alsop equates to the Capulets and Montagues for the display of mutual animus. In Ohio, the supporters of former Governor Frank Lausche were at war with the regular Democratic organization, with Mr. Lausche threatening to run again. In Massachusetts, Boston Mayor James Curley, jailed for wartime graft, was receiving kind treatment from Republicans and was expected to repay the sentiment in kind. In California, there was a split along the lines of former State Attorney General Robert Kenny and Elliott Roosevelt on the one hand and Ed Pauley on the other.
And over the whole scene there was cast the impending threat of a third party candidacy of former Vice-President Henry Wallace. Though repudiated by all of the labor leaders, he appeared determined to lead a campaign for the extreme left of the party, "the woolly-minded, the lunatic fringe and the Communists."
Some of the Democratic leaders were talking of drafting General Eisenhower as President Truman's running mate in 1948, with Secretary of State Marshall leading the campaign to induce the General to accept.
Moreover, with the resignation of Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Hannegan being imminent, a battle raged as to whether his successor would be lightning rod Gael Sullivan, vice-chairman. The Southern Democrats did not want him; nor did the close assistants to the President, General Harry Vaughn, James K. Vardaman, and John Steelman. The latter group preferred Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson to lead the party. But Mr. Anderson wanted to be the vice-presidential candidate. Another candidate, Sam Jackson of Indiana, was thought not acceptable to the President. Mr. Sullivan was supported by Mr. Hannegan, Attorney General Tom Clark, and Mr. Fitzpatrick and the other Northern bosses. He also received the support of labor leader William Green of AFL and A. F. Whitney of the Railway Brotherhoods.
If the President selected Mr. Sullivan, it was an indicator that he would stick with the old democratic coalition of labor and the left. If otherwise, it would demonstrate his desire to pacify the increasingly restless conservative wing of the party. It would, suggests Mr. Alsop, not be an easy choice.
A letter tells of Freedom Park in Charlotte no longer meaning freedom but death to songbirds. Because the poison which killed the worms which were killing the grass had poisoned the birds. And the birds were man's greatest aid in keeping the insect population under control.
He thinks it all symbolic, hopes it was not prophetic: To kill an enemy, they were poisoning a friend in an area dedicated to freedom.
He compares it to the effort to eradicate subversive, liberal activities in the country to eliminate the threat of Communism by resort to undemocratic means. The Congress had authorized the loyalty tests in the Federal Government to root out suspected disloyal personnel, and had prevented under Taft-Hartley union officers from Communist association for the union to participate in collective bargaining.
Universal military training was motivated by the desire to inculcate militarism in the youth of the country.
He questions therefore what the country was being saved for.
"'Hail to the[e,] blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert!'
"You were the spirit of democracy; must you now die to kill a worm?"
A letter from A. W. Black attacks the previous letter which had taken issue with Mr. Black's attack on the letter from the Jewish War Veterans suggesting that they be used as a U.N. force to substitute for British troops in Palestine, who the group recommended be evacuated forthwith at U.N. direction. Mr. Black had written previously that the British forces were maintaining order in an otherwise chaotic situation between Arabs and Jews.
The previous letter writer had responded that the Jewish right of immigration had been established by the British Mandate in Palestine created in 1922. Mr. Black contends that the Anglo-American Commission report of April 20, 1946 had stated that Palestine was not to become a State for Jews of the world. He believes therefore that resort to the old League of Nations Mandate was beating a dead horse.
Yet, it was pursuant to the Mandate that the British remained in Palestine. And the same report to which he makes reference recommended that the Mandate be followed in facilitating immigration of Jews "under suitable conditions", a policy not being followed by the British, that which had created the problem and stimulated Jewish underground violence against the British.
It was not, he opines, the divine right of Jews to have Palestine as a homeland, as that removed it from the realm of political realism into that of religious mysticism. The Romans had dealt the final blow to the Jewish homeland under Julius Severus, he informs, "and no human power can put humpty dumpty back together again."
Thus spake Mr. Black.
But the Anglo-American Commission report stated: "The National Home is there. Its roots are deep in the soil of Palestine. It cannot be argued out of existence; neither can the achievements of the Jewish pioneers."
A letter responds to Samuel Grafton's September 3 column in which he had stated of his concern of the hypothetical roadside incident in which the out-of-work New Dealer came upon the well-heeled German scientist employed at Wright-Patterson Air Base on the development of new jet and rocket technology, and, after the New Dealer begged and received a dime, the German went on down the road back to his nice job.
This writer thinks Mr. Grafton to have misascribed the term "liberal" to his theoretical martyr, that he was a New Dealer, not a true liberal, as was The New Republic. That person would use the Chicago Tribune only to wrap a present for President Roosevelt to send to him in Warm Springs on his birthday. He concludes that "never the twain shall meet."
But President Roosevelt had been dead nearly two and a half years, and he had spent his last birthday on his way to the Yalta Conference, not in Warm Springs.
What's your point?
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