The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 21, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Presidential aide John Steelman announced the appointment by the President of Paul J. Larsen, associated with atomic research at Los Alamos and Albuquerque, as the first chairman of the civilian mobilization office, that which would become known as Civil Defense, recently set up as part of the National Security Resources Board, which Mr. Steelman temporarily chaired.
The Defense Department announced that it was recruiting 150,000 volunteer aircraft observers to be trained by the Air Defense Command of the Air Force for readiness in the event of war.
In Helsinki, Finland's Government denied Soviet charges that the Government supplied Soviet war criminals with false documents. The statement came in response to a Soviet note of protest delivered three weeks earlier, asserting the claim that Finland harbored 300 Soviet war criminals and furnished them with false names and documents, in violation of the Soviet-Finnish treaty.
The U.S. commander in Berlin, Maj. General Maxwell Taylor—future chairman of the Joint Chiefs, starting his tenure just prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962—, ordered West Berlin police to vacate the Soviet Reichsbahn railway station rather than give the Russians an excuse to re-implement a blockade or other hardship. The U.S. had authorized the move by the police into the station on January 17 to allow it to be used for the City of West Berlin. But the Soviets then objected and threatened hardships for the people of the city if it were not rescinded. Formerly, the building had been occupied by Reichsbahn authorities, and General Taylor believed that they had used it for the purpose of venting their spite on West Berlin, as the railroads were controlled by the Eastern authorities and a strike of the West Berlin railway workers had occurred the previous spring when the Russians refused to accede to demands that they be paid in the more valuable Western marks. The building would be returned to the Reichsbahn's use.
In New York, the sequestered jury of eight women and four men had been deliberating without a verdict for 22 hours on whether Alger Hiss was guilty of either or both of two counts of perjury in his retrial on same. The jury this day had requested re-reading of portions of the instructions, including the standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt and the definition of circumstantial evidence. The previous day, they asked for re-reading of portions of the testimony, suggesting that they were giving consideration to the evidence regarding the Woodstock typewriter on which some of the stolen State Department documents given to Whittaker Chambers were transcribed. Mr. Chambers claimed that Priscilla Hiss, wife of Mr. Hiss, had typed the documents with the intent of giving them to Mr. Chambers, and Mr. and Mrs. Hiss denied that it was the case. The defense had conceded, however, that the typewriter in evidence had been used to type the documents.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., a statement by an opposing attorney that a rat was in the jury box was deemed not to be sufficient ground for mistrial. The "rat" was actually one juror brushing the leg of another causing the latter to slap his leg and jump straight up, prompting the attorney's remark.
—Yeah, Bob, think of a way we could use this story in the Senate campaign later this year.
In London, George Orwell, 48, author of Animal Farm and 1984, died following a long illness. Mr. Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, had written 1984 in between trips to the hospital.
In Houston, at Rice Institute, a homemade pipe bomb containing at least a pound of TNT exploded in a dormitory causing a thousand dollars worth of damage. Eleven students housed nearby escaped injury. Police believed that the bomb was placed in the dormitory by a person heard walking the hallways after midnight.
In Seattle, a woman saw her neighbor shot and killed in the entrance to his tavern this date. The motive was apparently not robbery as the untouched till was full.
The flood crisis in the Midwest, South and Pacific Northwest appeared to have passed as still threatening floodwaters began to recede. Weather across the country generally improved.
Columnist Bruce Barton tells of a shoeshine boy, originally from Italy, named Joe, who he had invited to shine shoes at the advertising agency where he worked. Later, Joe had come to work at the advertising agency Mr.Barton and two partners formed. When Mr. Barton one day asked him why he worked so hard with all the money he had, Joe had responded, "What's wrong with work?"
Recently, Joe had died, and it caused Mr. Barton to reflect on his question and the line, "Honest labor bears a lovely face." He says that he regarded Joe as one of his oldest and truest friends, who provided dignity to a lowly task and bore a lovely face while doing it.
Governor Kerr Scott spoke to a gathering of AFL, CIO and independent union officials, urging re-election of Senator Frank Graham, whom he had appointed the previous March to the seat after the death of J. Melville Broughton following only two months in the Senate.
In Mecklenburg County, automobile accidents accounted for five deaths the previous night, including four Marines with one additional Marine hospitalized in critical condition. In a separate accident, a woman was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
In Cincinnati, Cleo was still groggy
after undergoing surgery to remove six pop bottles
See what happens when one ingests
too much pop culture
On the editorial page, "Lighthorse Harry Rides Again" finds that President Truman's remark that former Secretary of State James Byrnes, who had recently announced his entry to the gubernatorial race in South Carolina, was "a free agent who could do as he damn pleased", to be below the Presidency, reminiscent of his reference to Drew Pearson as an "S.O.B." for his criticism of Presidential military aide Maj. General Harry Vaughan for receiving a decoration from Argentinian dictator Juan Peron.
It recaps, with anti-Wallace and pro-Byrnes adjectives in play, the flap in fall, 1946 when then-Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, with the President's approval, had made remarks in Madison Square Garden critical of the apparent "get-tough" policy utilized in the Paris post-war treaty conference toward the Soviets by then-Secretary of State Byrnes. Mr. Byrnes, in its wake, denied any "get-tough" policy and threatened to resign if Mr. Wallace remained in the Administration. Despite the President's prior approval of the remarks, Mr. Wallace was eased out. Mr. Byrnes soon followed in early 1947.
To what end this piece seeks, other than as a cheap attack on the President for free expression, happening to use a four-letter word in the process, we know not. It makes no valid point, suggests that the President was in no position to criticize, even with an oblique remark, a man of the supreme stature of Mr. Byrnes, and merely appears in furtherance of the Saturday trend in the column toward reactionary states' rights positions, of which Mr. Byrnes then appeared as a proper exponent.
Had he referred to Mr. Byrnes as "crooked Jimmy", however, the point might have been well taken.
Who was responsible for the Saturday columns, we cannot say, though we have an idea. But they were definitely of a different stripe typically from those printed during the week, whenever the subject tended, even tangentially, toward civil rights and states' rights.
"Winston Newsmen Ring the Bell" tells of Roy Thompson of the Winston-Salem Journal winning the North Carolina Press Association award for the year for reporting and features, for his six-article series on Francis Duval Smith and the "butter-and-eggs" lottery—that is numbers running. Pete Ivey, editor of the Twin City Sentinel, the afternoon sister publication of the Journal, had won editorial awards for two editorials, one on the city's slum clearance and public housing program and the other, taking third prize, regarding tuition increases in colleges and universities.
It finds the newspapers of Winston-Salem to have disproved the maxim that the primary dailies in a given market owned by the same entity could not produce quality news, and that the two had led the entire state in the direction of public crusading in news stories during 1949, congratulates Messrs. Thompson and Ivey for their prize-winning efforts.
It concludes by apologizing to readers for The News not having made a mark, for the first time in awhile, in the state awards, and promises to make amends in 1950. Its entry in the news story category for the year, it notes, was the two-part front page pieces by Tom Fesperman regarding Elmer the lovesick swan, which was carried on front pages of newspapers throughout the country the previous summer. The previous year, Mr. Fesperman had won in the category.
"Safety for Mental Hospital Patients" praises the prompt action of the State Hospitals Board of Control for asking for a survey of fire hazards in the mental hospitals across the state, in the wake of the tragedy at Davenport, Iowa, when a fire in a private mental hospital took the lives of 40 women, 39 of them patients.
It notes that a patient had admitted starting that fire by using a cigarette lighter to set fire to the curtains in her room, but finds the fact not exonerative of the hospital officials for allowing her to have the lighter while around flammable materials. (It should be noted that the patient's attending psychiatrist had found that patient's admission dubious, given the patient's history of schizophrenia and taking on her shoulders the burdens of the world, believing herself responsible for all the world's problems.)
A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Through Law to Peace", presents a proposed joint House-Senate resolution which pledged support for the U.N. and sought development of it into a world federation open to all nations "with defined and limited powers adequate to preserve peace and prevent aggression" through world law. It finds the concept to have been born in North Carolina through the United World Federalists, founded in 1941. Two North Carolinians in Congress, Representative Thurmond Chatham and Senator Frank Graham, were among the idea's strongest proponents.
It concludes that it remained for Congress to point the way further toward making the concept a reality by passing this resolution.
Drew Pearson devotes his entire column to an 1843 letter from President John Tyler to the Emperor of China, urging opening trade to Americans rather than exclusively to the British, who then controlled the world's seas with the Royal Navy, thus impressing the Chinese.
He quotes the letter and a letter from Secretary of State Daniel Webster instructing Special Ambassador to China, Caleb Cushing, on how to approach the Emperor, finds that the history lesson thus imparted served to bring matters full-circle to the present, as U.S. diplomats were departing China while Britain had just recognized the Chinese Communist Government—albeit the British without control, now, of the world's oceans.
He may be stretching a point, to teach a little arcane history, while filling a Saturday column with two long, verbatim letters from 1843.
Marquis Childs discusses the controversy surrounding the bill to create the Fair Employment Practices Commission to insure against discrimination in hiring and firing. He cites an editorial from the Mobile ( Ala.) Press as fairly setting forth the opposition to the bill, suggesting it as setting up a "dictatorial agency" to turn loose a "horde of bureaucrats to pester freedom-loving Americans". It found that it would interfere with the affairs of employers and employees, that it would destroy the "right to be let alone"—a phrase invoked by Justice Louis Brandeis in his dissent in a wire-tapping case, Olmstead v. U.S., in 1928, finding, contrary to the majority, wire-tapping to be an invasion of the right to privacy.
Mr. Childs suggests that the FEPC bill presented a necessary balancing of the right to be let alone and the rights of society to provide a remedy to certain ills which had negative results on the entire population, including the right to be free from discrimination in hiring and firing.
Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas had suggested an alternative FEPC bill, which would contain no sanctions for violations by the employer, but rather would depend on education and persuasion. Mr. Childs promises to consider in another column the degree to which such a bill would cure the problem.
We might observe that it is of dubious merit in the first instance to apply the right of privacy to employer-employee relations or to business relationships generally, as the right applies only in the contexts of that which it implies, the rights of individuals to privacy in settings where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists vis-à-vis government intrusion, the marital union and childbirth, for instance. Employee-employer relations are, by their nature, corporate affairs, not subject to privacy. They are not formed in private, nor transacted in private. They are formed by contract and carried on in the workplace. It is not like a marriage, after all. So the Mobile Press was out to lunch in its conception of the problem.
The real issue, legally, arises under the Commerce Clause, the justification for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and whether the relation sought to be regulated to prevent discrimination has a substantial impact on interstate commerce. If so, the Congress has the constitutional power to regulate such matters to avoid adverse impacts on interstate commerce. And, plainly, discrimination of any sort in employment has such an impact, rendering whole classes of people unemployed or employed at inferior wages for the same work as other employees paid more, harming the economy. It has nothing to do with "the right to be let alone". Couching the debate in those terms tends to elevate a folk argument to the position of a Constitutional argument, mixing apples and oranges.
As soon as an individual starts a business, licensed by the state to operate, and enters interstate commerce, he loses the right he otherwise still enjoys as an individual to be let alone. He may discriminate all he wants, and on whatever basis he desires, in who enters his home or place of residence, however temporary, but not as to who enters his business, open generally to the public—and that would obviously apply to a business operating out of the home, insofar as that part of the home open to the public as a business.
Even in Trumplanderkind, you cannot get around that prohibition, as it is conceptual, not based on physical space.
Nothing has changed about the Constitution in Trumplanderkind. Best be aware of that reality, Trumplanderkinders.
Nor has anything changed about the laws of physical observation, notwithstanding the obviously spatially and visually challenged Trumplanderkinders.
So the way to begin a program of
making America "great again" is to challenge, seriously,
the press evaluation of the number of people present at the
inauguration? "Stupid" is too nice a word for this
nonsense. But the new "press secretary" looks to be an
unintentionally entertaining idiot
We suggest to the White House press corps—that is, that part of it which will continue to be tied to major organs of news dissemination and not fake, Breitbart-type talking-points "news"—regularly laughing unrestrainedly and out loud in the face of these idiots until they grasp the reality that they are, except among the Neanderthalic minority of the nation, the national laughing stock already.
It has nothing to do with the press making up things, Stupid. It has to do with you, the orange-faced Idiot, who has, for the previous 18 months, uttered nothing except idiotic nonsense, causing relatively few Americans to listen any longer or attend your "inauguration" as "President".
We must treat, we suppose, Trumplanderkind as a reality tv-show, full of unintended irony and role-playing persona, led by a Moron.
Okay: There were billions upon
billions of Americans present at the inauguration, more billions of
Americans than any other President has attracted ever in the history
of the whole, entire universe. It was awesome, even awesomer than
awesome. And they all wore gold and were mesmerized by the Man at the
podium. At one point, the crowd, stretching as far as the human eye
could see, in spontaneous unison, bowed in genuflection to His
Highness and begged for mercy. At the beginning of the oratory, worthy of no single human being, reminiscent of no one save Caesar, himself, the Man spoke, by his own confession, to God and stopped the rain
These lying idiots have become so accustomed to lying to their supporters who do not read, because most of them cannot read, that they insist on lying in the face of the signboard
Joseph & Stewart Alsop recaps the first year of Dean Acheson's tenure as Secretary of State, finding his most notable trait to be that he was "outstanding", despite having to deal with various problems which his immediate predecessors, Secretaries Marshall and Byrnes, had not.
The President, who during the 1948 campaign had become suspicious of the lack of support from Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, had determined to reel in foreign policy, trimming the budget, just as the Marshall Plan was having a positive effect in Europe.
Also, the former close relationship between the State and Defense Departments had waned, as Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson challenged State on many positions, emblematic of which was Mr. Johnson's position in favor of military intervention to protect Formosa from the Communists, while State opposed. The close bipartisan working relationship with Congress on foreign policy had also dissipated, and even within the State Department, some of the most experienced personnel had left.
Thus, Mr. Acheson had to tackle a year in which world relations had been challenging with fewer tools at his disposal than his post-war predecessors. They conclude that it was no wonder that the world horizon during that year had "ominously darkened".
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina introducing the bill endorsing support of a world federation to be developed out of the U.N—as discussed in the Asheville Citizen piece appearing on the page. Twenty-one Senators and 105 Representatives supported the resolution. More were expected to support it when more facts became known about the hydrogen bomb and whether the U.S. should develop it. The bomb was believed capable of decimating an area extending to 600 to 1,000 miles. Some believed it was powerful enough to force an understanding with the Soviets on atomic control. Some believed the resolution might present the solution needed.
The Scripps-Howard Press accused North Carolina Congressman Harold Cooley of leading an effort to spend money on cotton farmers at a time when economy was of paramount interest.
The final report of the Investigating subcommittee chaired by Senator Hoey regarding the "five percenter" scheme had been delayed until this week from the previous session because Senators Joseph McCarthy and Karl Mundt thought the language of the report regarding the role of Maj. General Harry Vaughan with respect to "five percenter" John Maragon was "too light" and should be tougher in its criticism of the Presidential military aide's role in allowing Mr. Maragon access to White House influence to achieve Government contracts for his clients. Senator Hoey admitted subsequent changes in the report but said that there was no special emphasis on General Vaughan.
The Senate Rules Committee approved another year of life for Senator Hoey's subcommittee, likely next to investigate the subject of kickbacks in ERP aid.
Scripps-Howard reported that Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray would likely soon be offered the presidency of UNC. Mr. Gray was receiving acclaim for insuring that the Army's newly adopted policy against racial discrimination was being carried out by all of the top commands.
Senator Hoey said that if the coal shortage in North Carolina were as bad across the nation, he would support the President's invoking of Taft-Hartley's emergency provision to seek an injunction to end the three-day work week in the coal mines ordered by John L. Lewis.
Both Senators Hoey and Graham were following the President's hands-off policy on Formosa and mainland China.
Senator Graham declined to comment on the announcement of James Byrnes that he would enter the South Carolina gubernatorial race. Senator Hoey expressed gratification at the fact, thought Mr. Byrnes would make a good Governor.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.