Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Italy and the
United States had signed a pact under which Italy would receive
temporary foreign aid for the winter. The pact had already been
signed by France and Austria and included certain
Congressionally-mandated stipulations on use of the aid.
In Paris, Premier Robert Schuman emerged victorious in a vote
in the National Assembly on his anti-inflation measure, on which he
had staked his Government. The Assembly passed part of the measure
despite coalition opposition by the Gaullists and the Communists.
Five further votes on amendments of the measure would occur Monday.
An unstated number of Marines from the Second Division would
depart Morehead City, N.C., for the Mediterranean. It was believed,
based on the size of the ship, that about 15,000 men would be
included. They were bound to join the carrier Midway and
other ships in the Mediterranean, some of which were in Greek waters
and others in Italian waters.
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee turned 65, celebrating
his birthday at his country home, Chequers.
Republicans planned to put forth a quick tax-cutting bill and
a short-term foreign aid measure at the start of the new session of
Congress.
Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson said in a radio
address the previous evening that by spring Americans would be
asking for a return to meat rationing. He believed that high
demand, not speculation, was driving meat prices upward.
The worst winter storm thus far, blanketing the Eastern half
of the country in snow, had subsided. At least 16 had died in New
England from the storm.
In Nevada City, California, a woman, dubbed the "kiss of
death" slayer, was seeking a new trial following her conviction
for murder, based on the allegation that two jurors had been
intimidated.
In Winston-Salem, N.C., a 16-year old was charged with
killing his parents on New Year's Eve. The boy, held in custody,
expressed no desire to attend the double funeral. He had run away
with his girlfriend to York, S.C., to get married. The youth said
that he had quarreled with his father regarding some missing money
from the latter's wallet. He shot both of them with a rifle.
Tom Fesperman of The News tells of the formation of
the United Labor Political Committee in North Carolina, uniting AFL,
CIO and several independent labor unions for the purpose of
supporting selected candidates. The piece provides the names of the
officers elected for the organization.
Dick Young of The News tells of a recommendation by
the City health officer to be made to Mayor Herbert Baxter to defer
for six months enforcement of the ordinance banning sale of "country
buttermilk" in the city.
Don't leave home without it.
P. C. Burkholder would undoubtedly be enthused by the move.
Charlotte booster C. O. Kuester unveiled a plan to establish
the Mecklenburg Historical Society for the development of a drama
depicting the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of
Independence, May 20, 1775. Membership would insure a $50,000
working fund for the project.
There should also be a drama depicting the landing of the
Martians, we think, the previous July.
A photograph notes the first puppies to arrive in Charlotte
in the New Year, four little Chihuahuas, posing with their proud
mother.
On the editorial page, "Marshall, Man of the Year"
comments on the selection by Time of Secretary of State
Marshall as its Man of the Year for 1947, the selection being based
on the person with the greatest rise in fame and the greatest impact
on the news. Time, recognizing that the Marshall Plan came
from no one man and had been impelled by events, nevertheless found
Secretary Marshall to be the single individual who symbolized the
action.
The piece finds it not surprising that the public was slow to
understand the significance of the Plan but found it remarkable that
Senator Taft and Henry Wallace were criticizing it. They did not
appear to realize that if the country failed in the commitment to
rebuild Western Europe, it would vacate its position of world
leadership and leave a vacuum in Western Europe to be filled by
Communists.
"Just Babies—And Women" suggests that all of the
augury of the future had predicted peace for the year and prosperity
through the year 2000. But the pundits of Wall Street and the
President's Council of Economic Advisers had relied on traditional
financial indicators, whereas two principal indicators of future
prosperity had been omitted: women and babies.
The year of 1947 had seen the highest birth rate in history,
at 26.2 per 1,000, a gain of 50 percent over the prewar rate of 18.
The country's population was estimated at 145 million and growing
rapidly.
It had been a hundred years since the birth of the equal
rights movement for women. In that century, women had achieved the
right to vote and racked up the bulk of the wealth of the country,
with some estimating as much as 70 percent of it under female
control.
Of the 54.7 million women over age 14 in the country, about
17 million were in the workforce. Of those, 1.5 million had young
children. About 5.8 million families, 15 percent, were headed by
women.
There were fewer marriage-eligible females between 20 and 44
than males in the same age range.
The figures all added up, it concludes, to less freedom for
the male, "more courting and domesticity, more babies and more
business and peace for a long time to come."
"Relax, Take It Easy for '48" references an article
by Dr. Peter Steincrohn from the January issue of American
Magazine, advocating less stressful living to ease the
likelihood of heart trouble. The number one killer of Americans was
high blood pressure. It was most evident in those who harbored
grudges against another individual, those inclined to worry, brood, or
engage in jealousy, hard-driving businessmen, habitues of racetracks
and prize fights, and those who bet large amounts of money
generally.
It thinks that the primary force impelling hypertension in
1948 would be the political excitement in the election year.
Everyone would need be his own doctor for the coming ten months. It
advocates seeing the other side's good points to alleviate high
blood pressure.
You mollifying coddler. Why the hell would we want to do
that?
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled
"Long Road to World Government", tells of a Gallup poll
finding that 56 percent of Americans favored making the U.N. a
super-state with power to control the armed forces of all members,
including that of the U.S. The percentage exceeded that registered
by the British, 50 percent, Swedish, 47, and Dutch, 44. Only
Canadians, at 59 percent, registered higher approval.
To make this leap would require two-thirds Senate approval
to ratify changes to the U.N. Charter. And after a national debate
on the subject, the piece ventures, the numbers lending approbation to such a surrender of sovereignty would likely move
decidedly downward. If it were ever to be achieved, it would have to
be done in incremental steps, as with the plan to have international
inspections of nuclear energy facilities after sharing the atomic
secret. Thus far, Russia had balked at that step.
The Congressional Quarterly tells of
prospective legislation to be put before the second session of the
80th Congress. Attorney General Tom Clark was getting ready to ask
Congress to strengthen the law to assure equal rights for everyone,
to supplement the post-Civil War statutes, some of which remained on
the books but many of which had been repealed between 1876 and 1909.
Mr. Clark wanted the penalties increased against those depriving
others of civil rights and revision generally of the statutes.
But most
observers agreed that before any action could be had in this area, the prospect of Senate filibuster had to be
lessened or eliminated by amending the rules to provide for cloture of
debate by something less than the currently required two-thirds
majority. Three proposed rules changes were pending to make it a simple majority.
(The rule would ultimately be amended to a three-fifths rule in 1975, after variations between a requisite two-thirds of the membership and two-thirds of those present.)
There was a growing sentiment to define the powers of
Congressional committees, in the wake of the Hollywood Ten citations
for contempt before HUAC in October and the Howard Hughes hearings
before the Senate War Investigating Committee in August and
November.
Bills were pending to prevent racial and religious
discrimination in employment. Anti-lynching bills were pending, as
were anti-poll tax bills, the latter having been passed four times
by the House only to be blocked in the Senate by filibuster. Other
bills also were aimed at eliminating discrimination in the country,
such as by withholding Federal funding where segregation was
practiced in state institutions.
There were bills pending to outlaw the Communist Party.
Chairman of the HUAC legislative subcommittee, Congressman Richard
Nixon of California, had voiced the opinion that outlawing the party
was an oversimplification of the problem and that a new bill would
need be written in the next session, which might require
registration by Communists as foreign agents and full publicity of
Communist-front organizations and their policies.
Drew Pearson tells of Congress getting ready to enact a third
tax reduction in the previous year; but this time, it was believed
that the President would sign it rather than exercise the veto as he
had on the first two bills. But his approval would be contingent on
the bill providing relief for lower bracket taxpayers. During the
holidays, the House Democratic leaders gathered together to work out
a draft of a Democratic tax-cut proposal. He provides the highlights
of the plan, based on an estimated net surplus of four to five
billion dollars, before the European aid program was included. Under
current tax rates, there would be about three to four billion in
surplus in 1949 as well, inclusive of the Marshall Plan aid.
The President wished that it were not an election year but
remained hopeful that differences with the Congress could be
eliminated.
Congressman Ed Hebert of Louisiana had been recently assigned
to HUAC and promised to keep quiet for the first couple of months,
until he became acclimated. Mr. Pearson quips that with the
loquacious chairman J. Parnell Thomas and ranking Democrat John
Rankin at the helm, Congressman Hebert would have little trouble
remaining mum.
A bill would be introduced by Congressman Leroy Johnson to
clear up the military pension problem, which had allowed officers
with partial disabilities to draw full pensions in addition to
civilian job pay. The new bill would base the pension on fitness for
a civilian job.
Samuel Grafton discusses the third-party candidacy of Henry
Wallace, finds Mr. Wallace to be divorced from the reality of the
American people in pushing for peace through abandonment of the
Marshall Plan and substituting for it the notion of getting along
better with the Soviets. The message, he asserts, had about as much substance as the campaign against sin by the late President Coolidge. It avoided the central problem that the
American people were genuinely fearful of Russia. If Mr. Wallace's
plan were put into effect, it would result in the country being
ripped apart. He wished to make over both America and Russia, but
nothing realistically could be done to effect such a change. He
offered nothing concrete in replacement of the Marshall Plan, which
presented itself as a reasonable and peaceful means of stabilizing
Western Europe to resist Soviet expansion.
James Marlow, in a second piece of a three-part series on the
outline of the Marshall Plan, tells of the basic design of the 17
billion dollar, four-year program to rebuild Western Europe, that
the 16 recipient nations could establish again their own industry,
especially coal and steel. Food was the basic building block, for it
enabled the miners to mine more coal, providing coal to feed the
steel plants and thus to build farm equipment and other essentials
for a thriving economy. For the present, Western Europe was in sore
need of coal as its traditional suppliers, Britain, the Ruhr, and
Poland, were not providing much. Thus, it depended on the U.S. for
importation of coal.
The 16 nations had agreed to increase their coal, steel, and
food output, provided America could prime the pump. But even in good
times, Western Europe had never been self-sufficient in food and had
to import much of its supply, so would have to continue receiving
food from the U.S. and a few other countries in the Western
Hemisphere. With farm machinery and fertilizers, Western Europeans
hoped to be able to produce more food. But even by 1952, the 16
nations did not expect to be eating as well as before the war.
Western European industry had always relied on outside raw
materials, cotton, wool, lumber, paper, rubber and oil. It could
then manufacture goods and pay for imports with exports.
The entire puzzle was an interlocking plan which required the
stimulus of American aid to get the ball rolling.
