The Charlotte News

Wednesday, February 2, 1949

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Prime Minister Stalin, stating that his health did not permit travel to Washington, had offered to meet with the President east of the iron curtain, in Leningrad, Moscow, Kaliningrad, Odessa or Yalta within Russia or in Poland or Czechoslovakia. The offer was relayed through journalist Kingsbury Smith. Through press secretary Charles G. Ross, the President responded that he was willing to discuss peace at anytime, but that it should be done in Washington.

The Norwegian Government stated to the Soviets through their Ambassador that it would consider joining the North Atlantic Pact, but said it would not grant bases to foreign powers unless it were attacked or threatened with aggression. It said that concerns for its security had prompted the move.

The chairman of the NLRB, Paul Herzog, told the Senate Labor Committee that the Truman Administration's labor bill would override the state bans on the closed shop.

The House Ways & Means Committee approved by a vote of 17 to 8 restoration until June, 1951 of the old reciprocal trade law. The bill gave the President the power to reduce duties by up to 50 percent below those imposed at the beginning of 1941.

In Washington, the treason trial continued of Mildred Gillars, alleged to be "Axis Sally" who held forth on the radio with enemy propaganda from Berlin to demoralize the Allies during the war. A German actor refused to take the oath on the Bible, but was sworn in by affirmation, to which the defense attorney objected because the witness had said he did not believe in rewards or punishments after death and was thereby disqualified. The judge deferred decision on the witness's competency to testify. The actor had played a role in a dramatization, "Vision of Invasion", in which it was alleged that Ms. Gillars participated. Another actor had testified the previous day of the defendant's participation in the radio play, one of the alleged acts of treason.

Tom Fesperman of The News reports of a statewide health insurance program which would cover the health care costs for the indigent and low income individuals, those with income of $2,000 per year or less, being ready to be placed into effect in the state within a few weeks. It only needed approval by the executive committee of the North Carolina Medical Society. The plan was an extension of Blue Cross hospitalization insurance.

Dick Young of The News tells of a report by the State Department of Tax Research indicating the disproportionate burden of State taxes borne by the urban resident compared with that of the rural dweller.

Tom Schlesinger of The News tells of problematic bells out of synchronization at Charlotte's Central High School, causing classes to be dismissed in ragged fashion, until a solution occurred to a veteran attending classes at the school. Three buglers among the students, one for each floor of the school, were enlisted to replace the bells until they could be fixed. Reveille began the first class and taps closed the last one, with Work Call, Call to the Post, and other calls in between.

In Punxsutawney, Pa., the Groundhog saw his shadow on the snow of Gobblers Knob and thus six more weeks of winter was forecast. Phil, it says, had warned against reliance on the impostors given to mendacity at the Slumbering Lodge of Groundhogs at Quarryville in eastern Pennsylvania.

That's who "Mr. X" was this week, Punxsutawney Phil.

A woman had found her lost watch by placing in The News a classified ad offering a reward. The newspaper urges readers to do likewise if they had lost something.

Some could use a new mind.

On the editorial page, "Farmers Get Off Light" tells of the State Department of Tax Research finding that half the state's population was rural, that 28 percent of gross income went to farmers, and yet only 8,610 persons employed on farms, out of 500,000 total taxpayers, had filed income tax forms and the tax they paid was only 3.3 percent of the total revenue paid in taxes. Farmers also paid only a third of the sales tax.

Such figures suggested the unbalanced burden on city dwellers to pay for schools, roads, and other services. It finds it unfair for the urban population to have to shoulder such a disproportionate load.

"Social Hygiene Day" informs of the day being set aside so that one could contemplate the fact that one out of 47 people in the country had syphilis and that many others had gonorrhea. The fact, it finds, was shameful, as superstition, fear, and ignorance contributed to the spread of the social diseases. Penicillin treatment was quick and easy but too few partook of it because they were not aware of the symptoms and did not understand how the diseases spread or where to obtain treatment.

Men in military service had learned a lot about venereal diseases through the Government's educational program but millions of others, especially young people, remained in the dark. It recommends education through the home, the school, the church and the community, as well as effective laws and law enforcement.

"A Judicious Selection" compliments the Mecklenburg County Democratic executive committee for its selection of Jack Blythe, brother of recently deceased State Senator and DNC national treasurer Joe Blythe, to become the Democratic candidate in a special election on February 12 for the empty seat. The piece suggests that he would be an able State Senator.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Equality of Good", cites a sentence in the President's inaugural address which deserved attention: "We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God." While the principle had been put to the test since the Founding with the institution of slavery and other conventions based on inequality, social institutions, it posits, would develop more quickly "toward a just and compassionate equality of good when our starting point is God and not imperfect humanity."

Drew Pearson tells of thousands of French gifts having been deposited at the railroad station at Gare D'Orsay, near Quai D'Orsay, for the Merci Train in thanks for the November, 1947 Friendship Train of food and clothing for the winter before the Marshall Plan was fully implemented. He relates again of the gifts which were coming to America.

Changes to the proposed labor bill had taken place at the White House at the last minute. The primary alterations were striking of the strong injunction clause against strikes which adversely affected the nation's welfare and the cooling-off period between notice of a strike and the inception of the strike being raised from twenty to thirty days. He provides the story of how the changes came to be.

Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until August, 1943, tells of an urgent reorganization needed in the State Department more than anywhere else in the Executive Branch, as it was operating at its lowest level of efficiency in 40 years. The last previous reorganization had occurred in 1937. The reorganization undertaken by Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in 1944-45 had entailed only a facelift in the physical plant of the Department and renaming of a few bureaus and divisions. Things became worse under both Secretaries of State James Byrnes and George Marshall. The latter had been an able and efficient administrator as Army chief of staff during the war but administration of a war machine was very different from establishing an efficient foreign office.

The Secretary had to be an integral part of the Department or its morale suffered.

Secretary Marshall's attempt to reorganize the Department on the model of the General Staff was disastrous. Former War Department officials and Army officers without experience in foreign diplomatic affairs were appointed to important positions.

He regards as sound the Hoover Commission recommendations that two Undersecretaries and eight Assistant Secretaries be appointed and that decentralization of authority take place, with each Assistant assigned to a region of the world. He also believes that the recommendation to have the Department administer the information and intelligence services was justified.

He disagrees, however, with the Commission's recommendation that the military occupation of Japan and Germany remain separate from the Department. Nor did he agree that the Secretary of State should defer in certain situations affecting foreign policy to Cabinet-level committees.

He gives kudos to the diplomatic service, contrary to the image of bunglers painted in the press. He thinks that the trend toward replacing able, experienced diplomats with military personnel or political appointees to have been a great mistake.

New Secretary of State Acheson had taken a leading part in drafting the report of the Hoover Commission and so was in a good position to obtain from Congress prompt action on the recommendations. The Congress also had the most enlightened foreign relations and foreign affairs committees to serve in many years.

James Marlow discusses one of the key provisions of the new labor law being debated, whether to allow injunctions of a strike. Under Taft-Hartley, the Government could seek an injunction against a strike for 80 days if it endangered the welfare of the country. But at that point, the union was free to strike if no resolution had been effected in the meantime.

The proposed new law would give the President authority to request, without injunction, a union to withhold striking for 30 days, during which time mediation would transpire.

Mr. Marlow provides the familiar arguments on both sides, for and against the Government having injunctive power. He suggests that the only way to insure that a strike would not adversely impact the general welfare would be to have the power to seek permanent injunctions, in turn necessitating compulsory arbitration lest the employer string out the union indefinitely at the same wages.

Stewart Alsop examines Josef Stalin's recent response to journalist Kingsbury Smith regarding Russia's condition for removal of the Berlin blockade, that the West postpone the creation of the West German state long enough for the Big Four Council of Foreign Ministers to meet again to try to resolve the German issues generally. It was deemed significant that he did not this time include any condition regarding a single currency in Berlin, the previous roadblock to resolution of the blockade.

The U.S. had recently proposed to the U.N. a formula for resolution of the currency issue, whereby the West would control trade and currency in the Western sectors of Berlin and Russia would control trade and currency in the Eastern sector. It also called for high level negotiations to establish a single currency and a single freely elected German government of Berlin.

The Russians originally had wanted control of Berlin and, secondarily, political and economic control of the Western zones of Germany. The surprising success of the British-American airlift had provided a strong bargaining position for the West and prevented the Soviet strategy from working. The blockade had caused havoc within the German Communist party and the Western counter-blockade had made the Soviet zone an economic and political liability. Thus, it was not unreasonable to assume that the Soviets were beginning to doubt that the sought prize of control of Berlin was worth any longer the drain on resources. They appeared willing in consequence to settle for the second prize, postponement of creation of the West German government.

Such would not mean any basic change in Soviet policy toward Germany but it might change Russia's emphasis, to try to demonstrate to the West its sincerity in desiring real settlement of Germany.

Samuel Grafton, no longer carried by The News, discusses the news of lowering prices supplanting that of inflation which had been so prevalent since the war. Now, the ten dollar bill which he had left in his summer suit when he hung it up would buy 15 pounds of meat, whereas it would only have bought ten pounds during the summer. But also, hundreds of thousands of workers were now unemployed as a result. Businesses were now being forced to sell at prices which were not related to the costs of production of their product. Thus, cutbacks in personnel had become necessary and business used deflation to argue against wage increases for those still employed. The decline in prices therefore was not conducive to the kind of cheer one would expect.

Such was how the initial phases of deflation appeared. He thus wonders whether the primary question facing the nation was not the North Atlantic Pact or the President's proposal for investment in underdeveloped nations but rather who would pay for the deflation.

He deems it a significant question as deflation usually took from those who had the least. If a person lost his job, he was effectively being taxed all of his income, less the small unemployment benefits he would receive, to pay for it. But the person who was already flush would benefit from deflation as his money had greater purchasing power.

Deflation, therefore, he concludes, ought be considered, in the "relatively enlightened year of 1949", a national crisis, in remedy of which its cost ought be borne by the entire population, proportionate to the ability of each individual and entity to bear it.

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