The Charlotte News
Saturday, October 22, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in New York, the U.N. General Assembly voted 47 to 5 in support of Western charges that human rights violations had occurred in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania. The resolution asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on whether the nations were required under their post-war treaties to carry out the provisions calling for recognition of human rights.
The Soviet Ukraine representative and Czechoslovakia's foreign minister charged during debate on the resolution that human rights violations were transpiring in the U.S. under the Jim Crow system, in Vietnam and Malaya, and the Ukraine delegate branded the charges slanders and "flagrant falsification".
So do what the 2016 Republican presidential nominee says that he plans to do after the election, sue the accusers. Of course, if you lose, there is the potential for counter-suit for malicious prosecution. And there is always the prospect that concrete evidence of truth of the accusations will be adduced as the defense to claims of slander.
An informed source reported that Assistant Secretary of State George V. Allen, originally of Durham, N.C., would be named as the ambassador to Yugoslavia. He had formerly been Ambassador to Iran.
Elmer Roessner reports of increased wages resulting from the rise in the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents, embracing a new class of workers, the payment of 2.8 billion dollars in GI insurance dividends, the prospect of payment of additional state bonuses totaling 605 million dollars, and the increase in Government worker salaries, among other things, putting more money in the pockets of consumers to enable them to purchase quality goods, not seconds, making them prospective purchasers of hundreds of items they never contemplated buying previously.
In Phoenix, five prisoners broke out of a fifth floor courthouse jail cell at 1:15 a.m. and two of them charged with murder were fatally shot in the escape attempt. Two were captured inside the building and one got away through a courtroom window. A deputy sheriff was shot in the mouth by the escaping prisoners.
In Berkeley, California, the dead bodies of two elderly sisters and their brother were found in the home where they had lived for more than twenty years, with the sisters' skulls split open from blows of a sledge hammer and the brother having died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. All had been dead for several days. The possibility of a triple murder was still being investigated, however, by police because of the twelve-foot distance of the gun from the dead man's body.
In Hollywood, actress Bette Davis, citing violence, sought divorce from her third husband, artist William Grant Sherry, taking friends and family by surprise. They had been married since late 1945.
In Durham, newly named Duke University president Dr. Hollis Edens outlined his ten-year program for the University, discussed further on the editorial page.
In Asheville, N.C., the members of the Oasis Temple of the Mystic Shrine formally rejected the proposal by the Charlotte City Council that the Shrine provide full title to its Oasis Temple property in downtown Charlotte to the City as a site for a new civic auditorium, in exchange for which Charlotte would provide a suitable new quarters for the Shriners.
In Davidson, N.C., ground was broken for a new Presbyterian church on the campus of Davidson College and the new gymnasium was dedicated, part of the "Parade of Progress" celebration of the Davidson Development Program, which had only $550,000 more to be collected of its 2.5 million dollar goal set a year earlier. Dr. John R. Cunningham, president of the College, said that enrollment had jumped from 165 during the war and 650 in 1940 to 900 in 1949, the largest enrollment in its history, necessitating the expansion of facilities.
The previous night on the campus,
First Daughter Margaret Truman had performed with Metropolitan Opera
singer Helen Traubel
On the editorial page, "Tax—Spend—Elect" finds the President to have exhibited the same quality in seeking again to raise taxes to meet the projected five billion dollar deficit for the year which had characterized his failed haberdashery in Kansas City, failure to face facts.
FDR aide, Secretary of Commerce and WPA head, Harry Hopkins, had once described the Roosevelt political philosophy by the quoted phrase of the title. Mr. Truman appeared to be following suit, with the cooperation of the bulk of Congress, bent on re-election at any cost.
It concludes: "Only a brash Democrat would have dared to succeed Franklin Roosevelt. Only a hero would be willing to clean up after Harry."
"Duke's New President" praises the selection of Dr. Hollis Edens as the new president of Duke University. He had stated in his inaugural address his dedication to continuing the University's national stature achieved in 25 years since it was transferred from Trinity College in Randolph County to the Duke campus in Durham by the tobacco magnate James B. Duke. He would stress continued concentration on development of graduate and professional programs at the University and was committed to improvement of education generally in the South.
It finds that his concept of education was well-suited to Duke and the South.
"'One to Wear and One to Wash'" tells of the Charlotte branch of the Needlework Guild of America marking its 19th anniversary of providing clothing for needy children, each member of the Guild contributing two articles of new apparel each fall, then distributing the clothing to orphanages, missions, hospitals and welfare organizations serving children. The Guild also supplied linen and money, the latter used principally to purchase shoes. Thousands of children and patients in the charity wards of hospitals had benefited from the work of the Guild's members.
A piece from the New York Times, titled "A Moral Duty Missed", tells of the House having, five months earlier, passed a bill to revise the discriminatory Displaced Persons Act passed by the previous Republican Congress. The House bill permitted 339,000 displaced persons from Europe to come to the U.S. But the Senate had buried the bill in committee until the closing days of the session and then voted finally to resubmit it to the Judiciary Committee. The old bill provided for 205,000 refugees to enter the country, but excluded cold war victims, effectively discriminating against Catholics and Jews.
Any amendment to it now was likely to be delayed until the spring, a moral disaster for the sake of Congressional convenience or laziness. The delay also required that 25 million more in aid be appropriated for the refugees who otherwise would have immigrated.
The opponents of the bill claimed that it would result in a flood of aliens in the interest of a "particular group of Europeans", connoting the opponents' prejudices.
The fact was that millions more could have been admitted to the U.S. since the war under existing immigration quotas and so the additional 134,000 under the new bill would not pose a problem.
Moreover, the existing bill refused admission to those fleeing Communism, scarcely in line with the traditional idea of America being the land of political asylum. It urges that Congress pass the revised bill the following January.
Tom Schlesinger of The News provides his weekly "Capital Roundup", telling of Congress adjourning for the session. He looks at the potential opponents for Senator Clyde Hoey, up for re-election in 1950, and Senator Frank Graham, running in a special 1950 election after his appointment earlier in the year to succeed deceased new Senator J. Melville Broughton.
It was unlikely any competitor of Senator Hoey could win.
He thinks also that Senator Graham appeared a sure bet to win the nomination, as he had the backing of the organization of Governor Kerr Scott who had appointed him.
While Senator Hoey would be re-elected, Senator Graham would be defeated in the primary by Raleigh attorney Willis Smith, whose race-baiting campaign would be managed by Jesse Helms. Senator Hoey would die in office in 1954, succeeded by Sam J. Ervin of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Senator Smith would die in 1953, succeeded by Alton Lennon, defeated in the special election in 1954 by Kerr Scott, who would then die in office in 1958.
He also looks at the race for Congress in the Tenth District, of which Hamilton Jones was the current Congressman seeking re-election.
The state's Senators had split on the confirmation of the re-appointment of Leland Olds as a member of the Federal Power Commission, Senator Graham voting for it, Senator Hoey finding him "wholly unfit" for his thinking.
Drew Pearson finds that the first session of the 81st Congress had probably passed more Fair Deal legislation than previous Congresses had passed FDR's New Deal programs, except during his first term. Its chief failing was not passing the extension of Social Security benefits and Federal aid to education, the result largely of absenteeism as the session came to a close. The prevalence of free use of military transports enabled members to take junkets to Europe and elsewhere more easily than in the past. He lists several such "surveys" of Europe being conducted by members and those doing so.
The President told his old friend, Congressman Morgan Moulder of Missouri, that the Congress could have done more with the education bill had not Congressman John Lesinski tied it up in the Labor & Education Committee which he chaired. Mr. Moulder agreed.
Dr. Vespasien Palla, who once represented the Fascist Antonescu Government of Rumania during the war, a Government which slaughtered 300,000 Jews, now represented the Rumanian Government of Premier Anna Paukev, a puppet of the Politburo. As such, Dr. Palla was in Washington and had attended a dinner for the American Society of International Law, attended by Assistant Secretary of State and future Secretary Dean Rusk, diplomats and lawyers, all of whom had applauded Dr. Palla. Though Rumania was not a member of the U.N., Dr. Palla was called upon for advice regarding the U.N.
Governor Dewey had sent his personal press relations officer, Jim Haggerty, future press secretary under President Eisenhower, to plan the special election campaign of Senator John Foster Dulles.
The utility interests had been spreading a rumor that Congressman Tom Steed of Oklahoma, a liberal, was not doing his job when in fact he was one of the hardest working Congressmen in the House.
Secretary of State Acheson had ordered aides to begin drafting a new peace treaty for Japan after Britain, anxious to get General MacArthur out of Japan, had induced Mr. Acheson to promise to form a treaty within 90 days.
Marquis Childs, in Oslo, tells of cheap hydroelectric power being available in Norway along with large iron ore deposits around Kirkenes. During the war, the ore was shipped to smelters and mills all over Europe and Norway then bought its steel from those sources at a price fixed by a European cartel. Now Norway wanted to build its own steel plant utilizing its cheap hydroelectric power. The Labor Government was pushing plans for a government-owned and operated plant to produce about half of Norway's steel needs. All other political parties, including Conservatives, had endorsed the project.
But in Europe as a whole, strong opposition had developed, coalescing around the notion that Marshall Plan aid money should not be utilized for the project, opposition believed to originate with the steel cartel in Europe, revived after the war. But some Americans also joined the chorus of critics, arguing that Marshall Plan aid was never meant for such long-term projects and would cut across the prewar trade pattern under which Norway had traded fish and their by-products for finished products from the Continent.
Meanwhile, in West Germany, goods were being taken out of rationing and industries were being re-established while Norway remained under a rationing program, seeming to Norwegians that Germany, at last, must have won the war.
The issue would be taken up before the OEEC, the cooperative economic arm of the Marshall Plan, and perhaps the case could be made against such a steel industry. But, he adds, it was not enough merely to revive the prewar European economy, bound to fail in the long-run.
Robert C. Ruark, a week after paying his devoirs to the "Sweetest Day", tells of visiting
Guy Lombardo
Mr. Lombardo kept close tabs on the
tastes of his middle-brow audience and sought to accommodate them. He
proceeded from the assumption that no one was an expert on the dance
floor
The musicians earned between $15,000 and $20,000 per year each.
The audiences, comprised of the backbones of their communities back home, always appeared pleased, considered Mr. Lombardo a special friend, as evidenced by the constant flow of autograph-seekers from the audience. Mr. Lombardo appeared happy to be there, too.
He concludes that perhaps the
popular orchestra leader's success emanated from the fact that he
refused to alter his market
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