The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 6, 1949

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the State Department called upon the Dutch to provide "concrete demonstrations" of its intention to satisfy "the legitimate aspirations of the Indonesians for self rule." The U.S. made it clear that it was not accepting as final the Dutch "police action" which had taken over Java and Sumatra from the Indonesian Republicans.

The White House reported that public response to the President's State of the Union message the previous day had been 20 to 1 positive in the 200 telegrams received as of the morning of this date.

Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois, to become Senate Majority Leader when Senator Barkley would be inaugurated Vice-President January 20, stated that the Democratic majority would move with "all convenient speed" to enact the President's social, economic, and labor legislation. Most Democratic lawmakers wanted the program to be passed in the first hundred days of the second term.

Republicans foresaw threats of national bankruptcy from the President's program and criticized the President's proposal for Government-built steel plants as "socialism". Generally, however, Congressional reaction to the State of the Union appeared to forecast passage of most of the President's program.

Legislation was introduced in the Senate by Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, chairman of the Labor Committee, to repeal Taft-Hartley and revive the Wagner Act. The only change his bill would retain from Taft-Hartley was the increase of the NLRB from three to five members.

The Republicans named Senators Irving Ives of New York and Margaret Chase Smith of Maine to its policy committee. Senator Ives had been a leader in the unsuccessful revolt against Senator Robert Taft becoming again the chairman of the committee. Both Senators were considered to be among the liberal Republican wing. Senator Eugene Milliken of Colorado, who had also opposed the Taft leadership, was also named to the eleven-person committee.

New North Carolina Governor Kerr Scott was inaugurated in Raleigh this date as the state's 90th Governor, urging in his inaugural address a 15-point program, including that the Legislature modify the "harsh" closed shop ban—just upheld the previous Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court as Constitutional—, passage by the Legislature of the statewide liquor referendum, a minimum salary for teachers of $2,400 for those with "Class A" certificates, and a state minimum wage law for occupations not covered by the Federal law. He pledged efficient State government and reorganization as needed to achieve it. He wanted a rural road program to enable school buses in rural areas to operate every day of the year. (That'll be the day.) He also favored the State Good Health Program for building new rural hospitals, improvement of mental institutions, and the four-year medical college at UNC. Generally, he favored investment in better schools, better roads, and better health care facilities in the state.

Outgoing Governor Gregg Cherry welcomed the new Governor to the Executive Mansion in the morning, telling him, "Come on in and bring your merchandise."

Dick Young of The News tells of Charlotte municipal officials hailing the Governor's speech as holding out beneficial programs for the city, such as doubling of the State's highway appropriations for city street maintenance, giving $180,000 additional money to Charlotte for the next fiscal year. The State would also release under the Governor's program certain privilege licenses, meaning that the cities could collect the fees instead. Generally, the Governor had advocated a more proportionate division of State revenue between the rural areas and the 75 percent of the state's population which was urban.

In Berlin, the Army told the Harnack House club to stop excluding G.I.'s or possibly lose Federal funding. Some of the members began planning in response to make the club private. Others believed that such a move would be financially impractical. The club's members included 400 military officers and 700 civilians.

The Rocky Mountains and Western Plains states continued to dig out from the blizzard hitting the area earlier in the week. No new snow was reported and temperatures were in the 20's across the Dakotas and Nebraska. For the third straight day, sub-freezing temperatures were recorded in the California and Arizona citrus belts, causing losses to the industry estimated at 20 million dollars. In Los Angeles, the mercury stood at 32, having been at 31 the previous day. Flood waters from rain-swollen rivers affected Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Heavy rains fell from the Carolinas northward into New England, threatening more flooding.

Buckle up.

On the editorial page, "The President's Message" finds that only a reactionary or incurable optimist would have expected anything different from the President's State of the Union message the previous day. The President was keeping his campaign pledges on which he was elected, to continue and expand the New Deal. Nothing more nor less was to have been anticipated.

The piece recognizes that it was the era of Big Government on which the people depended for a whole range of services, individual and collective. Conservatives believed that, following the Depression, the people had forgotten that a large central government, no matter how well-intentioned, was inefficient and would eventually become oppressive.

The President departed from the New Deal philosophy to the extent of suggesting that the country pay as it went, taking the politically unpopular and so courageous stance that taxes be raised to avoid deficit spending.

We pause to note that your friendly Republican tax-slasher is the primary reason for the huge debt the country carries from its inevitable defense spending since World War II. It is not, dumbbell, the "tax and spend liberals". You're an idiot who does not understand at all how the country works while claiming to be the world's greatest patriot. To what? Your individual pocketbook? Go ahead and vote for those lying idiots again, stupid, and see again and again and again precisely and exactly what will happen, as if it never happened before. They tell you what you like to hear in the winter and spring regarding the push-button ad hoc social issues over which the President has exactly no authority to effect change, and then where do they run like hell in the fall and after you elect them? That's right, right into the arms of their old buddies, Big Business. They promise smaller government and reduction of taxes, but for whom? What happens in their deregulated state with small corporate input to the collective revenue? Who winds up broke, bankrupt, or in foreclosure?

Who in fact gave you smaller, more responsive government in recent times? That's right, stupid, President Clinton and President Obama. Remember? It was the economy...

Or are you too stupid to remember anything except where you left your arsenal of guns to protect you from the Gov'ment?—which is actually an unwitting euphemism for unregulated Big Business which preys on and derives its profits from morons like you.

We get mighty tired of you. Why don't you move to a Fascist state in South America where you would be happier and fit in much more fluidly with the rest of the peonage? Then you wouldn't have to worry about building a wall to keep out immigrants.

The piece questions the wisdom of some of the President's social program, which it thinks made more sense during the Depression. But, of course, the cost of that program was but a skimption compared to the cost of foreign aid and defense and the basic operation of the Government. So what, Mr. Editor, other than proving yourself once again an obnoxious conservative who tries to cuittle the readers with silly arguments, is your point?

We are tired of you, too, constantly plumping for small government in a modern age when that was an oxymoron, provided the country did not wish to shrink back into a time of isolationism, against which you regularly inveigh, in the jet and rocket age of atomic weaponry. You cannot effectively have a strong defense, a small government, and low taxes. They are inconsonant with one another.

If not, when, exactly, during the Republican years of control of the White House, all 36 of them in the past 67 years, have we had that wonderful thing they promise? If the country stops social spending and spends its entire budget on Government operations and defense, what do you think will happen other than a Fascist state, the model for which was the syndicalism of Mussolini's Italy, a state devoted to big corporations to maintain an active military apparatus and sustain one despotic party in power? Is that a difficult thing to grasp?

"Balanced Government" tells of outgoing Governor Gregg Cherry having valued debt reduction in the state above all other achievements during his four-year term. He had also earmarked 100 million dollars of budget surplus for permanent improvements in the state.

The piece agrees with his assessment and finds that his fiscal responsibility had served the state well. Financial solvency in conduct of state government, it offers, was as important as it ever was. It was necessary to get out of debt during boom times or it would never occur. The Cherry administration had also expanded government services while retiring the debt.

But the states, unlike the Federal Government, do not have to pay for the common defense, other than as contributions in taxes to the Federal Government. Clear? Do you understand how these charlatans confuse you every four years with talk of lower taxes and smaller government while promoting strong and ever-growing defense to "re-establish" America as a respected force in the world? That combination isn't going to happen, pilgrim, because it can't happen, fiscally and logically. They know that but they hope that you don't catch on, at least not until long after you elect them.

"A Good Citizen Departs" laments the departure of Dr. E. William Noland to accept a professorial post at the University of Iowa. In his two short years in Charlotte, he had been an asset to the community, serving in various civic organizations, including the Community Research & Development Council and the Better Business Bureau.

"Mob Action in Randolph" tells of a mob of men, some wearing crude masks, having descended on the Randolph County jail intending to "see" a black prisoner jailed for shooting a local white farmer and livestock dealer. Fortunately, the accused had been transferred to another county. But the men insisted nevertheless on talking to two other black prisoners who were in the jail, to which the Sheriff acquiesced. Eventually, help arrived, summoned by the Sheriff, and the mob dispersed without incident.

The piece questions when Southerners would realize that they could not take the law into their own hands, that it was up to the judicial system to try persons accused of crime. It says that the Sheriff would have been well within his authority to have jailed the men for trespassing and that in the future, law enforcement ought take such actions to deter formation of vigilante mobs of the type.

Well, now, listen here, smarty-pants city boy. There's a town in Randolph County called Liberty. Why the hell do you think they call it that?

Drew Pearson reprints a scathing letter which actor Robert Taylor had written to HUAC after his testimony in the fall of 1947. He had concluded: "There's nothing any of us are going to teach them in Washington that the FBI didn't know five years ago. Maybe it's easier to call twenty friendly names from Hollywood than to have a look at the FBI files! Maybe it's better publicity for the home-state electorate, too!"

Important leaders did not get to see the President because they did not ask to do so. The President greeted people from all over the country on a daily basis when they showed up. He sometimes reached out to experts for advice. He had seen the head of Schenley's Distillers who had campaigned actively for Governor Dewey, but had not until recently invited Harold Ickes to the White House after he visited the President the previous fall and mended fences, actively campaigned for him. Mr. Ickes, he says, had not called and demanded to see the President as had the head of Schenley's and others of similar status trying to warm up to the President after his victory.

Senator Kenneth McKellar was angry at new Senator Estes Kefauver, both of Tennessee, for not cooperating with him in recommending appointments of Tennesseans to Federal jobs. He also charged that the new Senator had done nothing to re-elect the President. Senator Kefauver countered that he had no intention not to cooperate with Senator McKellar and that he had campaigned for the President since his opening speech. Senator McKellar then sent a letter to the President contending that Senator Kefauver was claiming to have helped him in the election and that the claim was false. He even offered that Senator Kefauver had admitted to him that he had only mentioned the President's name in passing in his opening campaign speech. He also said that he understood that Senator Kefauver was circulating a report that the White House had ordered that only Senator Kefauver's recommended appointments would be considered. Senator McKellar then sent a letter of his own correcting the record. The President responded that he had been in politics too long not to understand the true record.

Mr. Pearson notes that Senator McKellar had done little to support the President beyond belatedly endorsing him and that Senator Kefauver, anxious to appease his elder colleague, had voted for Senator McKellar as Senate president pro tem.

Stewart Alsop tells of research taking place in California which could surpass the atomic bomb for a breakthrough in scientific understanding of life. Under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission, the research was trying to duplicate photosynthesis, the storage by plants of the sun's energy, the foundation for life. It would permit artificial production of food, not dependent on weather and favorable soil conditions, to feed burgeoning world populations. Carbon 14 enabled tracing of the photosynthetic process, as being explored by Dr. Melvin Calvin and Dr. Andrew Benson at the University of California. Dr. Calvin had reported that the whole process already could be controlled in simple water organisms as algae. Seaweed could thus be made to produce fat, proteins or carbohydrates in great quantities.

The London Economist had reported that when the research was complete, it would be possible to set up factories to produce by artificial photosynthesis the basic food components, bypassing green plants, to produce sugars, carbohydrates, and proteins. Food could therefore be produced on an assembly line basis.

Still, it remained only a theory, just as the atomic bomb had been a theory in 1939 when Albert Einstein warned FDR that the German scientists were hard at work on making the theory into a reality. A Manhattan Project to develop the artificial food theory was thus suggested to make it come to fruition in four to five years.

A good case could be made that food was the basis, ultimately, for international politics. Such ability as conceived in the laboratory regarding food production could, for instance, strengthen greatly the hand of the United States in dealing with China and India, where huge populations desperately needed food and better diet.

"Regrettable though it may be," the research therefore of the two scientists might become more important in time, Mr. Alsop asserts, than a whole plethora of diplomatic speeches and negotiations.

Marquis Childs suggests that the Democrats of the 81st Congress had to do much better in the eyes of the American people than had the GOP-controlled 80th Congress. The outcome by fall 1950 would determine the shape of things to come for some time.

So much had taken place since the previous spring, when the Democrats had been split asunder and the Republicans seemingly assured of victory in the fall, that it was mind-boggling. Even Vice-President-elect Alben Barkley, as Senate minority leader, had complained then that the White House did not consult enough with leaders on Capitol Hill. The White House was determined not to allow that intra-party feuding and disconsolation to recur. Now there would be regular Monday morning meetings between the President and Congressional leadership.

Nevertheless, many on Capitol Hill feared that the meetings would devolve to an empty gesture. Some were planning to suggest to the President bi-weekly or weekly evening meetings to afford frank and free discussion of issues.

While the President initially had depended on his decade of service in the Senate and established friendships to maintain a working relationship with Congress, the opposite had proved true and it would not be easy for the Democrats to build anew a bridge. Many of the President's campaign promises, as on civil rights, stirred rancor among some fellow Democrats, and Republicans would be lying in wait to exploit the inevitable dissension when it became manifest.

The Democrats could no longer blame the postwar environment in need of adjustment to peacetime as a basis for excuse for lack of performance, as in the 79th Congress. Now, they would be on their own and need to produce.

A letter from State Representative John Regan disagrees with the editorial of December 27, which had decried his effort to introduce legislation to require State employees to take a loyalty pledge and oath of non-affiliation with the Communist Party. Mr. Regan assumes the editorial writer was an alumnus of UNC for the piece's stated assumption that Mr. Regan was trying to slap down UNC with such a bill. He says that he was an alumnus of Appalachian State Teachers College, a state-supported institution, and that it was his purpose to make such a law applicable to all state institutions. He says that he believed it was time for everyone in the state to take a stand for or against Communism.

Oh, stop trying to sound "fair-minded". You're just another Fascist pig trying to promote yourself with the people who want to feel secure from the bogey-man at night, curled up in their blankets and downy-soft comforters, having to have someone, a Frankenstein monster, preferably therefore someone with a superior education whom they could not understand very well, hence easily accommodating their Frankenstein mold, to use as a scapegoat for all their problems, someone "threatening" their sanctity and sanctimonious barnyard droppings about nothing of real consequence, whether they could be "safe" in their homes.

If the Commies don't get you, that stupid gun you have to protect yourself from the Commies probably will, unless you slip and fall in the bathtub and crack your skull open after a long weekend drunk in the meantime.

The editors note that the author of the editorial was a graduate of Davidson College—indicative of it having been written by Pete McKnight.

A letter writer from Chester, S.C., who had been trapped for two hours on a ledge of the sixth floor of the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta in December, 1946 at the time of its devastating fire, which killed 119 persons, reminds that "in the mad rush for money the American people forget all about the safety of human life until the tragedy occurs and lives are destroyed or forever made permanent cripples."

A letter from the commander of the Wilson Beatty VFW post no. 9736 thanks the newspaper for its support during 1948, as the VFW celebrated in 1949 its Golden Jubilee Anniversary.

Another pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, this one "giving a fundamental cause of emotional upsets:

"Too much frustration
Inspires agitation."

But too little agitation
Precipitates ennui and stultification,
Which then causes palpitations,
Leading on to frustration.

We hope that you had a nice Epiphany yesterday, or today, in 1949.

Get ready. We shall catch up with you again, Leapers, in less than two months. And the slow one now will later be fast, operating with all convenient and deliberate speed.

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