The Charlotte News

Thursday, February 2, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President stated at a press conference that the United States would stand by its position of demanding tight international inspections before agreeing to international control of atomic weapons.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg had suggested that the President let the world know that the U.S. was prepared to stop work on the hydrogen bomb, production of which the President had just approved, provided all such weapons could be outlawed. The President responded that he did not intend to use the H-bomb as a basis for negotiations on control.

The Senate approved the proposed amendment to the Constitution for changing the electoral college to provide for proportional determination of electoral votes from each state based on the popular vote, but it still required two-thirds approval by the House before being sent to the states for ratification.

The President dodged a press question on the subject which implicitly suggested that he intended to run again in 1952, saying that he did not think the amendment would be in place by then. He also suggested that Pennsylvania Governor James Duff, who had suggested that the Republicans ought draft a statement of party principles which was "broad and not exclusive" for a party "not of privilege" but "hard hitting and not timid", had better join the Democrats as the statement better described the party. The President also said that he was doing everything he could to try to pass the FEPC bill.

In Berlin, the United States was considering counter-moves against the Russian restrictions placed on transportation from West Germany into Berlin, finding that the action had violated the agreement ending the Berlin blockade of 1948.

In Tokyo, new chief of Naval operations, Admiral Forrest Sherman, said that the Far Eastern Fleet would be maintained at maximum strength in the face of expanding Soviet submarine power in the region. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar Bradley, and chief of the Air Force Hoyt Vandenberg said that they knew of no plans to strengthen land and air forces in the western Pacific. General MacArthur, the previous day, had urged strengthening of those defenses. The Joint Chiefs were touring Japan's defense facilities and consulting with General MacArthur.

Northern and Western coal operators accepted the 70-day strike truce proposed by the President while his fact-finding board made recommendations, to be delivered in 60 days. John L. Lewis said that he would reply by Saturday. The President had sought resumption of full production in the mines by Monday, which the mine operators said they could meet. Meanwhile, the Northern operators left the negotiations with UMW, begun the previous day, saying that negotiations had been terminated. The President had not yet ruled out action to seek an injunction pursuant to Taft-Hartley if necessary.

From Amsterdam came the report that a KLM cargo plane with seven crew members aboard crashed in the North Sea off the Netherlands coast, apparently killing all aboard.

In Hammond, Ind., a man celebrated his 42nd birthday and his employer, a public utility, gave him a raise and a promotion. Later in the afternoon, however, he was electrocuted when a switch was turned on accidentally. A buddy who was coming to his rescue died, apparently of a heart attack.

In New York, the butler of Billy Rose was being held as a material witness in the theft of $100,000 worth of jewels and furs from the showman's apartment the previous Thursday night. The butler was the only person present at the time of the robbery, accomplished by three men while Mr. Rose and his wife attended As You Like It on Broadway.

Heavy rains and sleet caused new flooding along the Ohio River and also fell from Texas to New England. It could be that the weather will continue the rest of the year.

In Portsmouth, Va., following the release from the mud the previous day of the U.S.S. Missouri, on which the formal surrender of Japan was executed September 2, 1945, it was discovered that a 12-foot gash had been ripped in its hull when it ran aground 15 days earlier.

In Punxsutawney, Pa., the groundhog of Gobblers Knob showed himself briefly without showing also his shadow, indicating an early spring on the way. It was the first time in 50 years of watching that the groundhog had failed to see his shadow. Yet, the weather appeared to assure six more weeks of winter. Actress Colleen Townsend, "Miss Weather Prophet of 1950", was on hand for the ceremonies.

Meanwhile, a rival woodchuck at Quarryville, Pa., also failed to see his shadow, confirming the prophecy, as reported by the head of the Quarryville Slumbering Lodge of Groundhogs. They had invited Fred Waring to lead the three-piece Lodge band and named Professor Einstein as an honorary member. Their shadows apparently also failed to show.

On the editorial page, "That Parking Meter Contract" tells of four members of the City Council having refused to reconsider their decision to purchase 200 of 400 parking meters at a price higher than recommended by the City Manager, thus overspending by $2,300 that which could have been spent had all 400 meters been purchased at the cheaper price.

The City Manager saved the city many times his $10,000 salary each year, while the majority of the Council, in this one action, was throwing away nearly a quarter of it. The Mayor had also opposed the purchase of the higher-priced meters.

It hopes that the residents would enjoy using the new, expensive meters and would treat them with loving care.

Chop their heads off and hang 'em high from the trees for everyone to see for miles around.

"A Whopping School Bill" tells of school consultants recommending that the City spend fourteen million dollars over the ensuing five years, meaning, if past ratios of spending held true, that the County would probably need to spend seven million on its schools. That total dwarfed previous estimates of the needs of the community.

The experts also foresaw the need for additional construction during the period 1956-1962. (Don't forget them bomb shelters. You need the bomb shelters in 'ere, with the little tins of crackers.) That latter construction would bring the total outlay to thirty to forty million dollars.

The News, in its recent ten-point prospectus for the coming decade, had estimated ten million dollars for school construction and improvement. But the planners forecast an estimated population of 250,000 to 300,000 by 1970. The City was experiencing gradual recession near its heart as populations left for the suburbs. Those two problems, plus increasing birth rates since the war, made planning for the future difficult. But the City School Board was to be commended, it concludes, for looking ahead and trying to plan for the contingencies of the future.

Better get the parking spaces arranged for the jet cars and atomic airplanes by 1965 or you'll be caught looking again.

"Sabotage and Subterfuge" finds the Communications Workers of America likely not to enjoy public support by engaging in its planned tactics for strike, which included deliberately jamming telephone exchanges with calls and having two-thirds of its membership, not eligible to strike until a March 1 contract expiration date, nevertheless refuse to cross the picket lines of the other 100,000 members scheduled to start striking on February 8.

"Comment on an Editorial" takes issue with the following editorial from Waterbury, Conn., reprinted for its provocative content, indicative of the viewpoint of another region of the country, anent the recent comments by Mrs. J. Waties Waring critical of Southerners. The piece disagrees with the editorial's findings on the matter with regard to white Southerners but agrees with its opinion regarding blacks generally. It also opines that Mrs. Waring's remarks had undermined much of the positive work of her husband, the Federal Judge from Charleston who had held that the South Carolina primary system had to be open to black voters. It finds the attitude of Mrs. Waring not to exude "spunk", as the below editorial found it, but rather to be irresponsibly throwing a wrench in the civil rights work at a critical time.

The piece from the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican, titled "Parlor Town Tradition", tells of Mrs. Waring being from Litchfield, the "Parlor Town". She had been in the news of late for having stated, in an address at the black YWCA of Charleston, that white Southerners were "morally weak and decadent", while having praised Southern blacks for "building and creating".

Eli Whitney and his cotton gin and Harriet Beecher Stowe and her novel, many believed, had started the Civil War. Both hailed from Connecticut, the latter also from Litchfield.

It finds that Mrs. Waring had made an apt observation, that whites in the South appeared "shuffling toward the rear exit" while blacks had reached the "threshold of long denied opportunity".

But, it cautions, such had better not be uttered in the South unless possessed of the same kind of spunk as the women of Litchfield.

Bill Sharpe collects his "Turpentine Drippings" for the week, various snippets from newspapers across the state.

The first, from the Montgomery Herald, tells of Eleanor Roosevelt, in her book, This I Remember, finding (at page 330) Mrs. M. E. Tilly of Atlanta especially praiseworthy as a Christian woman for her dedicated work against lynching. The piece thinks it a prejudicial remark by Mrs. Roosevelt against Southerners, suggestive of there being numerous lynchings still in the South such that Mrs. Tilly was presented as a one-person FBI.

That's the old Southern defensiveness coming back in there.

The Zebulon Record recounts the story of a man in Asheville wearing a barrel down the street, prompting a passerby to ask if he played poker, whereupon the man responded that he did not but had spent the night with some fellows who did.

From the Black Mountain News comes the story of the groom, at the conclusion of the marital vows to his bride, having been so nervous that he turned to the preacher and kissed him.

And so forth, and so on.

Drew Pearson finds that since Secretary of State Acheson had issued a statement in support of his old friend Alger Hiss, the Congressional corridors had been abuzz with the so-called Frankfurter "red-hots", regarding the Supreme Court Justice's recommendations of Mr. Hiss and Mr. Acheson and others for key positions in the Government.

Mr. Pearson notes that Justice Frankfurter, placed on the Court by FDR in 1939, had once demanded that he be jailed for writing about the Supreme Court in less than laudatory terms, that he had found the Justice's opinions generally disappointing, and so had no great love for him. But he believes that in the sense of fairness to Justice Frankfurter, he should review these "red-hots" for whom the Justice had been responsible in bringing to Washington.

During the Hoover Administration, he had been responsible for the appointment of Joseph P. Cotton as Undersecretary of State, one of the finest State Department officials in twenty years. Another good recommendation had been James Grafton Rogers as Assistant Secretary of State. Tommy Corcoran, ultimately FDR's brain truster, first came to Washington during the Hoover years at the recommendation of then-Harvard law Professor Frankfurter. He had also helped Thomas Thatcher, President Hoover's Solicitor General, gain the appointment.

He was solely responsible for FDR's appointment of former Secretary of State Henry Stimson as Secretary of War in 1940. He had also helped in the appointment of former Republican vice-presidential nominee Frank Knox to be Secretary of the Navy in 1940. Robert Patterson's appointment as Undersecretary of War was solely the result of Justice Frankfurter's recommendation.

Among the others he had recommended were Francis Biddle as Attorney General; David Lilienthal as head of TVA, then later, appointed by President Truman to head the AEC; the late Wiley Rutledge, nominated in 1943 by FDR to the Supreme Court; John J. McCloy, as Secretary of War, now High Commissioner of the U.S. occupation zone in Germany; James Landis, former head of the Securities & Exchange Commission, director of civilian defense and head of the Civil Aeronautics Board; Ben Cohen, one of FDR's brain-trusters, now a delegate to the U.N.; Lloyd Garrison, former chairman of the War Labor Board during the war; James Rowe, the second in the chain of command at the Justice Department for many years; and David Niles, as assistant to FDR and the only holdover remaining in the Truman Administration.

He concludes therefore that it was only fair to review the whole list of recommendations by Justice Frankfurter rather than picking on the one or two more controversial ones.

Marquis Childs discusses the Ohio Senate race, important for its implications to Senator Robert Taft's chances to become the 1952 Republican presidential nominee.

The Democrats were likely to nominate a machine, pro-labor candidate who almost assuredly would fail. Many Republicans believed that the President wanted Senator Taft to win and go on to become the nominee, as it was believed that he would be the weakest Republican candidate.

Senator Taft recently had written an indignant letter to Mutual Broadcasting Co., accusing it of purveying lies on a program hosted by Frank Edwards, sponsored by the AFL's Labor League for Political Education. Mr. Taft wanted time to reply. Such was unusual, as the other side of the labor question more often protested the statement of network commentators.

Money would be plentiful on both sides in the campaign. The unions would contribute heavily to the Democrat and the large Republican donors to Senator Taft. The emphasis on the Democratic side would be getting out the vote. He concludes that if Senator Taft could be beaten by the most likely Democratic nominee, Joe Ferguson, then the GOP was indeed in bad straits.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the flap which had arisen regarding Secretary of State Acheson having refused to turn his back on his old friend Alger Hiss, despite his recent conviction for perjury. Mr. Acheson said that he was following the precepts of the Bible, that the least should be visited in sickness and not cast off even in prison.

The Alsops find that his compassion for an old friend could hardly be faulted or seen as an endorsement of Mr. Hiss's innocence. He could have simply said, as many in his position did, "no comment", especially as many wanted to see Mr. Hiss suffer.

The matter, while not bearing great weight on world affairs, underscored the fact that Mr. Acheson was the ablest and most disinterested of the President's top-level advisers. There were many within the Administration who deserved attack, as the Defense Department issuing grossly misleading optimistic statements on the U.S. defense position, serving to deceive the public. But Mr. Acheson was the one being hunted down while these mediocrities were let alone or even praised.

They suggest the trend as a repeat of the Harding period of "normalcy" during the early 1920's, one which could destroy the country.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.