The Charlotte News
Saturday, September 24, 1949
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that, following the announcement of the President the previous day of the successful Russian test of the atomic bomb, U.S. Government officials confirmed that the U.S. had a decisive lead over the Soviets in atomic bomb technology, one high official predicting that the Russians could never catch up. It was not known how efficient the Russian device was, where it was exploded or exactly when it had been detonated.
A Rome dispatch said that Western officials had known of the blast for nine weeks. An American official hinted that the President had known of it for several days before the previous day's announcement to the public. The pro-Communist leader of the Socialist Party in Italy, Pietro Nenni, just returned from Moscow, said that the blast had occurred in eastern Siberia.
General Omar Bradley, playing golf, said that the calmer the American people received the news, the better, that it had been anticipated for four years.
The Association of American Scientists said that it would take at least two years for the Russians to develop a sizeable stockpile of bombs.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinski addressed the U.N. the previous day but never mentioned the bomb. He called for peace among the Big Five powers of the Security Council, but placed blame primarily on the U.S. for world tension, claiming that Britain and the U.S. were promoting an arms race. His statement was generally regarded as milder than in the past.
Top level security officers of the U.S. Government told Ernest Vaccaro of the Associated Press that various intelligence agencies in the U.S., Britain, and Canada had learned of the Russian explosion, with the U.S. part of the team involving the State Department and the CIA. The methods and sources were secret but there had been nothing dramatic, just hard work. The evidence, they said, was not seismographic and was complete. The President had withheld the information, even after it was certain, until after the Senate had acted on the military aid program so that it would not be viewed as politically motivated. They also confirmed that there would be no change in U.S. foreign policy as a result. There was no evidence that Russia had another bomb in its arsenal while the U.S. had many. They said that some of the German scientists which the Russians captured at the end of the war had already made substantial progress on the bomb and so it had been known that it was just a matter of time before it would be developed.
Most members of Congress responded to the test with the attitude that it had been expected for some time but also voiced surprise at the speed of the Russians' success. Opposition to sharing of the atomic secret with the British and Canadian governments appeared to vanish. Members renewed their calls for international control of nuclear energy through the U.N. and for the President to meet with Stalin. There were conflicting views on whether the test rendered arming of Western European members of NATO obsolete, with Senator Taft saying that he believed the test made MAP "somewhat silly".
Representative John Rankin of Mississippi proposed that in light of the Russian test, the nation's capital be moved inland to Kentucky. Representative John Wood of Georgia, chairman of HUAC, said that his Committee had been in possession of information for months which showed that if Russia had not obtained the secret to the bomb within the U.S. by this point, they were dumb.
Before the U.N. General Assembly, the Chilean chief delegate denounced Russia's campaign against Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia as a flagrant threat to peace. The Polish delegate had previously spoken against the Western powers, blaming the U.S. for world tension, echoing Andrei Vishinsky's remarks.
In Budapest, a People's Court sentenced Laslo Rajk, the former number two Communist in Hungary, to death along with two of seven co-defendants accused of plotting with Tito to overthrow the Communist Government. Two others received life sentences and one got nine years.
In Quebec, a man was arraigned for murder for inducing another to place a package containing a bomb aboard an airliner which crashed and caused the deaths of the man's wife and 22 others September 9. The man had taken out a $10,000 life insurance policy on his wife. The woman who had placed the package on the airplane had taken an overdose of sleeping pills but was arrested Saturday and was recovering. She claimed that she did not know what the package contained, thought it was a statue. But it was reported that she had told a taxi driver to drive carefully as she took the package to the airport and carried the package gingerly.
In Manila, a Filipino woman and five men were accused of murder as part of a love triangle by blowing up an airplane with a time-bomb aboard the previous May. The woman's husband and twelve others, including two Americans, were killed.
In Stamford, Conn., a police sergeant died in the hospital after being shot by his twenty-year old daughter because he was dying of cancer.
It was 28 degrees at Land o' Lakes, Wis., and frost was reported through the Midwest. The rest of the nation was clear with pleasant weather.
In Winston-Salem, at the conference of Western North Carolina Methodists meeting at Centenary Church, Dan Drummond, who had led the successful Forsyth County temperance fight recently against establishment of ABC stores, was to be nominated to the conference board of temperance. Also discussed was the amount apportioned from Methodist pastors' salaries for support of the Children's Home of Winston-Salem. The conference also passed a resolution protesting the playing on Sunday of the annual football game between the Charlotte Clippers and the College All-Stars in Charlotte.
In Charlotte, a proposal whereby the property of the Oasis Temple on S. Tryon Street might be deeded to the City as the site for a new municipal auditorium was being considered by officials of the Shrine fraternal order. The conditions included that free use of the auditorium would be given to the Shriners for a stated number of ceremonies each year. If accepted, financing of the structure would occur through a municipal bond.
On the editorial page, "Russia's Atom Bomb" remarks on the news imparted the previous day by the President that the Russians had successfully exploded an atomic bomb. The expectation of its development had long been factored into American foreign policy such that nothing would be changed by the news. But the timetable had always assumed that the Russians would not obtain the bomb until 1951 or 1952, and so that had to be adjusted.
The possibility of use of the bomb anytime soon by the Russians was no more likely of occurrence than previously as the U.S. still was far ahead in technology and stockpiling of bombs and the deterrent of a retaliatory strike of greater intensity was still in effect.
There would likely be increased expenditure in the U.S. on the Atomic Energy Commission and the armed services, at least as long as there was no effective international control of atomic energy.
It was not easy to determine the impact on man, whether it would produce resignation to a devastating world war of nuclear exchange or continued hope for the miracle of lasting peace. Perhaps the Russians obtaining the bomb would cause such parity that Russia would come more willingly to the negotiating table regarding control.
If there was to be any joy in living, it concludes, the hopeful course had to be taken and national sovereignty could not be allowed to stand in the way of control of atomic energy.
"Fire Hazards at Dix Hill" tells of the Raleigh Fire Chief having recommended condemnation of two buildings and certain fire safety upgrades at the State mental hospital. Many of the suggestions had already taken place and plans made for replacement of one of the buildings. Other suggested improvements were, however, deemed impractical by the Hospital Board of Control business manager. The piece suggests that, nevertheless, the recommendations ought all be implemented, that if lack of funds was the issue, then the Legislature ought be called upon to provide them as it had proved in recent years its willingness to do so.
"License to Kill" urges prosecuting to the limit of the law a driver's license examiner in Vance County who had been selling licenses for $20 apiece, mainly to black residents, when it came time to reexamine the drivers every quadrennial. The examiner had been fired by the Safety Director who had also suggested criminal prosecution for fraud and malfeasance.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Conventions and Conventions", finds no petty graft involved in paying State funds to send State officials to conventions, such as the National Correctional Conference at Milwaukee during the ensuing week, though it would cost the State upwards of $1,000. The educational value to the officials was worth the cost.
Drew Pearson tells of John L. Lewis leading the miners into a walkout because three or four Southern operators, about one percent of the operators nationwide, had ceased making payments to the miners' welfare fund. The failure to pay was not pervasive as Mr. Lewis had led the miners to believe, triggering the walkout. He did so, says Mr. Pearson, because he preferred to negotiate in the fall when cold weather approached, rather than in the spring, he had spent the welfare portion of the miners' fund so extravagantly that he needed to have more money for it, and because he wished to humiliate Philip Murray of the United Steelworkers because the President's fact-finding board in the steel dispute had recommended ten-cents per hour for welfare and pension benefits, the equivalent of that which the operators paid the miners, such that a UMW strike could produce two or three cents more for the miners' fund.
The new commander of the VFW, Clyde Lewis, had called at the White House and the President congratulated him for being the first World War II veteran to occupy the position, but said that the World War II veterans were not as full of pep as the World War I veterans. Some years earlier, he imparted, at a VFW convention in Kansas City, the World War I veterans had led a bull into the lobby of the Muehlbach Hotel and the bull had an accident on the carpet, the stain from which still remained.
The President called the First Lady "The Madam" in private conversation. Mr. Pearson imparts other brief anecdotes regarding women of Washington, including that Senator Margaret Chase Smith had become an economic expert on Maine's potatoes and knew how to cook them as well.
Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho, who had run with former Vice-President Henry Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948, visited the White House for the first time since the campaign and was greeted cordially by the President. Senator Taylor told him that he was sincerely glad the President had won. The President said that he had experienced the same type campaign in his run for re-election to the Senate in 1940 when he was not given a chance to win, but had taken his case to the people on both occasions, 1948 having been the same election on a larger scale. Senator Taylor said that he supported the President's domestic policy but remained critical of his get-tough foreign policy, to which the President responded that it was the only way to handle the Russians.
Robert C. Ruark tells of his barber in New York having once provided to Boots Adams, the president of Phillips Petroleum, a $500 haircut and shave for which he was paid $200, the trimming taking place during a trip from New York to Tulsa by air aboard a DC-3.
The occasion was when Mr. Adams, on his way from London, stopped in New York to pick up the barber for a shave and a haircut before he arrived in Tulsa. On board the plane, the barber found no hot water and much turbulence, causing him at first to demur. But Mr. Adams had insisted, told the barber to use the hot coffee. So he obliged, making brown lather and carefully navigating the facial turf with his razor.
By the time his tonsorial artistry was complete, he was halfway to Tulsa and concerned that he would be parachuted to ground. Instead, he was feted for five days in Tulsa, provided a limousine and chauffeur to escort him around to see all the sights of the city, and given a room in the best hotel in town. It had been an unforgettable experience.
The tip was $200 and with transportation and accommodations, the total came to $500.
Mr. Ruark was glad to see a few "lusty spenders" left amid the current tax structure. Whimsical extravagance had been considered an index of growth of the nation and a part of the American personality, especially in the perception of foreigners.
But lately, the country had become contemptuous of money and scattered it about the globe. The big spenders, in that instance, had used other people's money to buy their $500 haircuts for the world.
With devaluation, he wonders whether all haircuts soon might cost $500 and his friend, the barber, had been "just getting in early to see how it feels."
Marquis Childs finds the American consumer standing by helplessly as the steel industry slugged it out with the steelworkers regarding the pension and social insurance benefits which could raise steel prices, rippling through the economy.
The President's fact-finding board had reported that there were record peacetime profits enjoyed by steel in 1948 through the first quarter of 1949, reaching 157 percent of those reported in 1940-41. A large part of the profit was being used to modernize and expand plants. The need for steel in the country made this increased level of production desirable. But the board urged that the profits should be used more for dividends to the shareholders and social insurance for the workers, with the physical plant improvements financed by long-term debt instead of by profits.
Modernization would reduce the cost of making steel, resulting in yet higher profits, which should produce either lower prices or higher wages for the workers to enable greater purchasing power of products at sustained or higher prices. Lower prices would benefit everyone, but there was no organized group of consumers to lobby for that result and so it appeared unlikely. That situation thus would lead to a justifiable demand for a wage increase, some economists suggesting it to be essential for the national economy to remain on even keel—basic Keynsian economic theory, that purchasing power must keep pace with prices to enable spending by consumers to maintain the wheels of the economy greased and avoid stultification and eventually burned out bearings when profits become too concentrated in the pockets of the wealthy, whose tendency to hoard leads to a blown engine and depression.
Steel prices tended to stay up when other prices fell. Such was the case during the Depression years, leading to the breakdown of 1932-33. As steel prices remained high, farm prices had fallen, causing bankruptcy, eventuating in failure of the banks themselves, holding all of the bad paper and foreclosed properties.
If prices were reduced only in the latter phase of a severe depression, it was likely to be too late to cause anything other than a further general decline.
For the consumers to have to sit idly by as this process between steel and the workers transpired did not contribute to a belief in the democratic process and the right of individual free choice.
A letter writer objects to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath undertaking to break up the monopoly on the grocery industry enjoyed by A & P stores. He regards A & P as keeping grocery prices down and those who headed A & P as the type of people who had made the country great.
A letter from Inez Flow responds to another writer who had responded to her letter regarding her criticism of the Mayor of Monroe for supporting the campaign to legalize beer and wine sales in an upcoming referendum and criticizing the ministers who were actively opposing the referendum. She assures that she had not forgotten the days of Prohibition, but that the murder rate had actually dropped during the period in New York. And there had been fewer broken homes, "happier children freed from drunken mothers and fathers", all evidence of the success of Prohibition. She believes that "wet" millionaires had furnished the propaganda to discredit the era, that in fact drunkenness and crime had thrived afterward, to which the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had attested.
She assures that separation of church and state would continue and reminds that freedom of speech also applied to ministers, that the Mayor of Monroe, J. Ray Shute, was wrong in finding that the ministers undermined separation by their criticism from the pulpit of legalization of wine and beer sale.
"'God, the Church, and the minister' will abide to bless, with or without beer and wine," she concludes.
Some churches are using beer now as 'sblood?
A letter writer urges giving money to charity as it could not be taken with the person beyond the grave and could not buy happiness within temporal life, but could help someone else to have a better day.
Now, look heya, Massa Don, we been listenin' to some of de tings
But, you see, de lagikul fallusy of what you be sayin' dere, Massa, is dis heya: if it be a crime to have a gun, den de policeman can do dat dere, stop de man wid de gun. But if it be not a crime, den he cannot do dat dere unless he reezonablee believe dat de man be danjurus to de policeman or udders. If it be "open-carry", he cannot do dat dere unless de man wid de gun be using it danjuruslee. So, we draw de inference—dat a wurd we lurned down 'ere in de awful skuul—from what you are sayin' dat what you want, must be, is a law under which be the case dat no gunz be allowed at all. Now, we suppoat dat dere. Don't you? You and yo Foxy boys must be supportin' it or else you wouldn't be sayin' dat about de stop and frisk. 'Cause you must've tought dat out real good, 'cause you be a good tinker, Massa Don.
Now, wait just a minit, heya, Massa, on tecond tought. You not suggestin', are you, that de policeman only take de gun of de black man, cauz de black, 'cause he black, be danjurus to de policeman and hisself or somebody else? Is dat what's yous sayin'? O' maybe only de bad black man? Yeah, dat gud.
But den, how de policeman know who be good and who be bad black man?
Massa Don, dat sho is confusin' when you say tings like dat. You need to 'splain how de policeman have probabul cauz to take de gun in de stop and frisk unless de gun be a crime to have in de furst place, if de boy just walkin' long mindin' his ohn buziness. 'Splain dat dere, what diffurent about what you say and about what is? 'Cause they had dat right to take de gun from de boy who be causin' danjur faw a long time. What you sayin'?
'Cause, you must not be plannin' to take ever'body's guns, are you, right off de street in de "stop and frisk"? That's not what you sed when you talk about guns, to some peepuls
But we knows it's gonna be so nice when Massa Don be Pre'dent, 'cause he sed so and he mean
Framed Edition
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