The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 8, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve an extension of the draft for three years and provide the President authority to induct registrants between 18 and 26 as he deemed necessary. The House bill, passed May 24, extended the draft for only two years and required Congressional approval for inductions. The Senate bill had an amendment attached, put forth by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, allowing for a draftee to state in writing his desire to serve only with members of his own race. The President's policy had been to reduce gradually segregation of the armed forces. The current Selective Service Act, under which no inductions had taken place since early 1949, would expire June 24.
In New York, according to an anonymous source, a Grand Jury was looking anew into the Amerasia case, calling many of the witnesses called before the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee looking at it anew. The Senate had been focusing on finding out who had delayed the arrests in the case, with the late Secretary of the Navy and, later Defense, James Forrestal said likely to have been the person who did so.
A joint Congressional conference committee approved a 600 million dollar defense construction appropriation for the ensuing two years of projects. It eliminated 105 million dollars from the bill for family military housing within the U.S., as included in the Senate measure.
The Senate approved the previous day the displaced persons bill and sent it to the President, who was expected to sign it forthwith. It expanded by 91,000 persons the qualified European immigrants under the program to be admitted during the ensuing year.
The House Post Office Committee voted to eliminate the recent cutbacks made by the Post Office Department, including elimination of second daily residential mail delivery service.
Representative Clare Hoffman of Michigan introduced a resolution to establish an investigating committee to investigate the investigating committee looking into lobbying.
The CIO praised the three Supreme Court decisions striking aspects of segregation, and said that the Court had served notice that separate-but-equal doctrine was dead. It said that it would therefore ignore and violate, if necessary, any laws or regulations which required segregation in union practices.
William Remington, Government economist in the Commerce Department, whose dismissal had been sought by Secretary Charles Sawyer regarding reports of disloyalty, was indicted for perjury by a Grand Jury in New York, for denying to the Grand Jury that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. He had been cleared by the loyalty review board after being implicated by Elizabeth Bentley in July, 1948 as giving her secret documents during the war. Mr. Remington had consistently denied ever being a Communist. Ms. Bentley also testified before the Grand Jury. He had sued Ms. Bentley, NBC, and General Foods for defamation during a television broadcast in which Ms. Bentley reasserted the charges, eventually reportedly settling the case for $19,000.
When the Grand Jury heard him testify that he was an economist in the Commerce Department, they may have misheard him to say that he was a "Commonist" in an immersed compartment, as essentially charged by Ms. Bentley—most having apparently forgotten that even HUAC had dismissed her testimony for the most part as being inherently unreliable.
General Eisenhower, in his commencement address at Columbia University, of which he was president, said that military spending should not exceed the country's means, driving it to the brink of bankruptcy, but had to be enough to insure necessary strength. He said that the present budget was trimmed as far as it could be and possibly too far, that he would have added back about 500 million dollars for arms. He listed several problems in the society which the graduates would need to face, including elimination of traitorous corruption in responsible places, but without compromising civil rights.
A U.S. B-29 bomber caught fire and crashed into the North Sea off England the previous evening with eleven aboard, four of whom had been rescued and the remainder feared lost, as three bodies had been recovered and four were missing.
Thomas Whittemore, 79, professor at Harvard, dropped dead in a hallway of the State Department, en route to see John Foster Dulles about an unknown topic.
In Hawaii, Mauna Loa volcano was still spewing lava after a week since it had erupted with a record initial flow.
In Raleigh, the State Highway Commission voted to extend road service at twice the rate it had previously, adopting a motion to add 1,500 miles of roads per year to the State highway system.
That means we can drive to England in a couple of years.
In Greensboro, Ralph Price resigned as president of Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co., revealing that he had declined the position as chairman of the board at $50,000 per year. As reported May 31, he had initially contested the action of the board of directors of the company in electing a new president, contending that it was outside their powers under company by-laws.
In Charlotte, a fire erupted in the old W. Tremont Avenue rock quarry, keeping firemen busy throughout the day trying to extinguish the blaze, which began at 8:30 a.m. It was the most persistent fire of the many which had occurred at the quarry in recent years. City officials called a meeting to work out a plan to eliminate the quarry.
In Coventry, England, a laborer was
fined two pounds for running through the streets naked to beat the
88-degree heat. The judge told him that it was alright to run naked
in Paradise, but not in Coventry. The piece suggests that times had
changed in the 900
On the editorial page, "Mr. Smith Chooses to Run" approves the decision of Willis Smith to demand the runoff primary with Senator Frank Graham after losing to him by 53,000 votes in the May 27 primary, Senator Graham having fallen about 5,000 votes short of a majority. It finds that Mr. Smith owed the choice to run to the 250,000 people who had voted for him and to those who had contributed to his campaign.
The experts were predicting victory in the runoff for Senator Graham, but, it finds, the hard choice made by Mr. Smith was gratifying and it was to be hoped that those in the state concerned over the trend of the national government would turn out again to vote for him.
"One Study That Is Badly Needed" praises the President for appointing a committee to study the V.A. hospitalization program and make recommendations for streamlining it, an area, it finds, which needed attention to avoid the pork-barrel politics which had led to restoration by the Congress of several million dollars worth of hospitals eliminated by the President the prior year as unnecessary.
"On Getting Good Government" tells of the Asheville Citizen having found that among the six most populous counties of the state, Mecklenburg, despite a record raw turnout of nearly 27,000 voters, 17 percent of eligible voters for the primary on May 27, had come in fourth in percentage, behind Durham, at 26 percent, Buncombe, at 23 percent, and Wake, at 20 percent. Guilford was next with 16 percent and Forsyth had a 12 percent turnout. The Citizen was chiding Buncombe County citizens for coming in second in voting percentage and third in raw votes, despite being only the fifth largest county in the state.
It finds the same thing applicable to Mecklenburg, which was the largest county and had the most number of votes cast, while being fourth in percentage of voters casting ballots. It suggests that unless more people voted, they would not obtain the government they wanted.
A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Verdict Without Trial", finds that the attempt of Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to dismiss rather than suspend two employees, William Remington and Michael Lee, for alleged disloyalty was bowing to pressure exerted by Nevada Senator George Malone to clean house. Secretary Sawyer said that his action did not reflect on the loyalty of the two men but was necessary for efficient administration. But with an indictment pending against Mr. Remington for perjury, it could not help but have had a negative impact, as it amounted to a presumption of guilt.
The piece concludes that the action made a good argument for appointment of a commission to review loyalty assessments independently of the various departments.
Bill Sharpe, in his weekly "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers across the state, tells of the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem relating that Business Week had recommended placing yarn in the icebox to make it more pliable for knitting, but warns that it could not be distinguished easily from leftover spaghetti.
Surely you don't keep leftover spaghetti. That goes beyond being cheap to being a little crazy.
The Smoky Mountain Times of Bryson City, by way of explaining that the country remained primarily "grassroots" in its political orientation, informs that the American Press had analyzed Congress to find that 76 of 96 Senators were elected by rural majorities and that 54 percent of the House members came from predominantly rural counties where no community existed of more than 10,000 population, that 42 Senators and 132 Representatives came from home towns with only a weekly newspaper, and that most of the other ten states, with Senators representing majority urban populations, had small land areas and concentrated industry, as Rhode Island and Connecticut.
So that by way of making you feel better to live in a rural mountain backwater, surrounded by moonshiners, junk cars, rusty signs, and old tires?
That said, we would rather, than Senator Moonman, from our old urban neighborhood
The Smithfield Herald reports of a school girl who had a small package as she boarded the bus home, prompting a teacher to ask what it was. The child responded that she had bought a gift for her teacher but decided not to present it after she got her grades.
The Rocky Mount Telegram
favors more rocking chairs
The Sanford Herald tells of the candidate for public office who arrived out of the pouring rain in an auditorium to give a speech and found only one person present. He nevertheless gave his speech and then went up to the sole listener, thanking him for remaining through the end of the speech, to which the man responded that he was the next speaker and was waiting for him to finish.
And so, so, so forth, and so, so
Drew Pearson tells of leaders of small business, labor and farm co-ops meeting with DNC chairman William Boyle, expressing their hope that the President would veto the bill to restore the basing-point pricing system, which evened out freight charges across the country as part of the consumer price, previously held by the Supreme Court to violate existing antitrust laws. But it gave an unfair advantage to big business, especially steel and cement, which could afford to absorb the costs, and also resulted in higher consumer prices. Mr. Boyle told them that he would try to convince the President to veto the bill, deemed as important to the groups as the veto of the natural gas deregulation bill earlier in the year.
U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie had urged the President and Secretary of State Acheson to have Mr. Acheson attend a meeting of the U.N. in Geneva to try to work out an accord with the Russians to keep the U.N. from collapsing from their boycott over the refusal of the organization thus far to recognize Communist China. The President immediately refused, saying that it would be a cruel hoax on the American people, as nothing could be worked out with the Russians without first a show of parity in strength. When that transpired, he said, then perhaps a meeting might be productive, but not until that time.
Ambassador to Moscow Alan Kirk informed the State Department that a Russian general called home from Japan had been demoted and disgraced for becoming too friendly with the American and British personnel in Tokyo.
An unnamed California politician the previous week had asked one of the major news picture services whether they had a stock photo of Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas with either Henry Wallace, Paul Robeson, Claude Pepper, or Moscow. The service sent back a photo of her with Warren Moscow of The New York Times.
He notes that Ms. Douglas had declined the support of Henry Wallace in 1948, though the endorsement would have meant additional votes.
Three permanent U.S. air bases were being constructed in England, just outside Oxford University. They would accommodate B-29's, B-50's and B-36's, and have facilities for hundreds of American flyers and technicians.
Marquis Childs tells of the difference between the President's appointments under reorganization and his talk favoring efficiency in government. He had appointed former Maritime Commission chairman Maj. General Philip B. Fleming to be Undersecretary of Commerce, with primary responsibilities over transportation agencies in the Commerce Department. But General Fleming had drawn substantial criticism from Congress for allowing the Maritime Commission, while chairman, to dispense to shipbuilders large subsidies as the shipbuilders risked little of their own capital.
Under reorganization, the Commission was abolished in favor of the Maritime Board, with three members, operating in the Commerce Department. The President passed over Raymond McKeough as a member of the Board though he had been on the Commission for five years and had made repeated dissents to the types of things which Congress had criticized.
It was rumored that Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer would resign in August and be replaced by George Killion, former DNC treasurer and head of the American President Lines, in which the Government had a controlling interest from loans made to the Lines.
Regardless of good intentions, he suggests, appointment of persons who had little or no sympathy for policy or the ability to administer it could nullify those policies. The President had vetoed the Kerr natural gas deregulation bill, for instance, and then, a few weeks afterward, appointed as a member of the FPC Nelson Smith, who had recommended to Congress that the independent producers be deregulated.
Robert C. Ruark tells of the heat being on horse gambling on the East Coast. He finds the effort to expose gambling to be silly as the gambling bosses bribed local, state and national officials with campaign funds and were, in consequence, cut in on local and state administration. They could not operate without the tacit permission of law enforcement. Moreover, the moral dilemma arose whereby the state applauded gambling when it could get its share of the loot from legitimate horse parks, while frowning on the illegal operations of bookies. Also, human nature caused men to gamble and attempts at reform in this regard were futile.
Veteran gamblers could ferret out bookies with whom to place bets, no matter how hidden they were from the general public. The dedicated bettor would always find a way to place his bet.
Thus he is skeptical of the effort of the Senate to reform betting by forbidding interstate transmission of racing information and investigating gambling practices. He believes that the ban would only prompt a black market in the information, in which new hoodlums and crooked politicos would thrive, as during Prohibition.
If a major gambling kingpin, as Frank Erickson, were sent to jail, someone else would take his place. The same was true of underlings and crooked cops. He finds that nothing could be done without breaking up all of the means by which gambling occurred, a virtual impossibility. As it was, he finds that the effort of the Senate was intended to take the heat off political issues and divert attention from the President's home bailiwick in and around Kansas City, where the April murders of political operative and gambling operator Charles Binaggio and his henchman had yet to be solved.
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which An Attempt Is Made To Explain The Feminine Southern Accent:
"You'll find a woman from the South
Talks with honey in her mouth."
But if bees
begin to buzz around her lips,
Will it result, inevitably, in a solareclipse ?
Framed Edition
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