The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 7, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that members of Congress, including Senators Robert Taft and Owen Brewster, criticized the British recognition of Communist China. Representative Mike Mansfield of Montana said that the recognition of Communist China was Britain's business but that he believed critics would use it as a reason to attempt to reduce ERP funding to Britain. Senator Styles Bridges said that the President's statement which indicated no military action would be taken to defend Formosa against the Communists was a "cowardly, groveling action".
In Tokyo, the consensus of opinion among U.S. military officials was that Formosa was doomed to fall to the Communists without U.S. military support.
The Chinese Nationalists announced the completion of mining of the approach to Shanghai Harbor, in advance of the approach of the American merchant ship Flying Cloud, defying the blockade of Shanghai as it sailed from Hong Kong for the Communist-held port.
The twelve-nation NATO council approved unanimously the previous day the blueprint for resistance to Communist aggression and now only the President had to approve the plan to initiate the billion-dollar arms program authorized previously by Congress for Western Europe. One hundred million dollars had thus far been allocated from the money appropriated, pending approval of the plan.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas asked the President the previous day to undertake swift action to end the three-day week in the coal industry and order resumption of full production. The President promised to review the situation. The President previously had stated that the three-day work week did not create a sufficient emergency to trigger the injunction provision of Taft-Hartley. Some members of Congress had accused him of fiddling while the people were freezing. Senator Wayne Morse, a former law professor, had said that Taft-Hartley only applied to strikes, not economic hardship.
The President's call for legislation to provide for more liberal Federal loan terms was in conflict with a proposal by Senator Taft to end most Federal lending.
A state of emergency was declared throughout the Midwest as hundreds of people were made homeless by rising flood waters. Ice storms struck parts of the South.
Columnist Bruce Barton tells of two recent New York Times headlines: "ECA Wants New Unit to Set USA World Economic Policy"; and, "No Bath! No Shave on Friday! 'Waterless Day' in New York!" He finds that the first headline meant that since members of Congress had been to Europe, there were many embarrassing questions for ERP officials and so ERP wanted the State Department to appoint a committee headed by General Marshall to report on the success of the Marshall Plan and the need for continued aid. The second headline recognized a failure at home to provide adequate funding for sufficient clean water, even in the face of a drought in the East.
He says that he was not an isolationist but was recognizing the hard facts that the country was spending so much abroad that it had not enough at home for medical care and schools. A strong U.S. was the only hope for the world and the Russians hoped that America would undermine its own economy while providing for the rest of the world.
He finds that it did not make sense for the politicians to tell the people that they were the strongest country in the world but that they could not afford enough money to provide for a daily bath.
In Davenport, Iowa, at least 28 women had died in a fire at a private mental hospital, and the coroner said that the death toll would likely rise to 37. Thirty-one other patients were treated for burns or injuries. Barred windows had blocked the exit for many of the patients.
The Russian Orthodox Church celebrated Christmas during the previous two days, despite it being 22 below zero.
Donald MacDonald of The News tells of a man looking for the bus station in Charlotte, entering the building which he thought to be the right place and asking a man at a window to sell him a ticket to Pineville. He awakened the next morning in jail for public drunkenness, as the building he had entered was police headquarters.
On the editorial page, "Ten-Year Platform—IV" again looks at the program outlined on the front page by Tom Fesperman of The News the previous Monday, consisting of ten goals for Charlotte during the ensuing decade, this time stressing consolidation of City and County Government services to the maximum extent feasible.
The Institute of Government in Chapel Hill had made a feasibility study of consolidation and was issuing reports on various departments. In some areas, as health departments, the evidence would suggest consolidation, while in others, as schools, the benefits would be less apparent.
It suggests that the residents give each report careful consideration, and if the result was streamlining of City and County government functions, the people would be served well.
"Dangerous 'Toys'" finds parents irresponsible for letting young children who were not mature enough to handle BB guns have them. As the report on the front page of the previous day had indicated, two dozen children had suffered eye injuries, two with total loss of vision in one eye, from being shot with BB guns in Charlotte since Christmas.
It finds no fault in the children who shot the guns because they did not know any better. The police could do little until an accident occurred and then could only take away the guns until the parents claimed them. The piece thus exhorts parents to remember that BB guns were dangerous toys in the hands of children.
Listen here. If you hain't got
yourself a BB gun, you is not a man. Nothin' better than killin'
birds
"A Costly Mistake" suggests that John L. Lewis had done much to damage members of the UMW by his strikes and short work weeks during 1949, hurting the individual miners more than the operators. It criticizes the miners' blind obedience to his will at their own expense, that the lost days of work, 89 of 156 days since July, 1949, would not be made up by the benefits to be achieved.
"Research Must Be Fascinating" tells of a friend in Wisconsin having sent along a study conducted at a Wisconsin farm, entitled "Weights and Capacities of Udders from Dairy Heifers of Different Ages". The piece provides some of the interesting findings and concludes that Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan might propose bras for the cows as a result, would not know the proper size were it not for the invaluable study out of Wisconsin.
It proves the old adage that it is important to respect the rights of udders to be protected that you may receive the milk of udder kindness.
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Robert
Taft having gloomily predicted that the GOP would not recapture
Congress in 1950, would have to await the 1952 elections—a
correct prognosis for the ailing patient. The Republican Senators had
caucused to determine whether to draft a statement of principles for
the 1950 elections. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., normally opposed
to such a statement, reluctantly agreed to it because of all the
publicity attendant the expected statement, that the public might
assume that the Republicans did not want to do it if it did not
happen, and that both parties had enunciated their positions in the
party platforms anyway. Senator Eugene Millikin warned that if the
statement appealed only to the big contributors of the party, then it
would take the GOP back to the antediluvian
In the end, the Senators agreed to appoint a committee to help draft the statement and therefore it was clear, he concludes, that the 1950 election campaign had started.
David Lilienthal had postponed his resignation as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from December until February 15 to acquiesce to the President's desire that he prepare a new international control plan for atomic energy to supersede the Baruch plan, premised on the obsolete notion of the Soviets not obtaining the atom bomb until 1954. The new plan would be submitted to the U.N. in the spring.
In an attempt to forecast what would occur when Stalin's dictatorship ended, State Department chief planner George Kennan was studying the fall of the great dynasties back through time to the Byzantine Empire.
U.S. banking and business leaders wanted Congress to put a reservation on continued ERP aid, that before any more money would go to Britain, the British Government would have to stop paying off its debts with borrowed dollars. It had been indirectly using ERP funds to pay debts to such countries as Egypt, India and Pakistan.
He notes that British officials of the Exchequer were in favor of putting an end to debt liquidation, though the Foreign Office was not.
Marquis Childs discusses the exhortation of the President in his State of the Union message for renewal of bipartisan foreign policy and the resistance thereto and retreat toward isolationism increasingly by some Republicans, especially Senators Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska and Arthur Watkins of Utah. The mainstay of Republican bipartisanship in foreign policy had, for the period during and since the war, been Senator Arthur Vandenberg. But he was now recovering from surgery and would not be available when the Republicans met in February to formulate principles on which to run in the mid-term elections.
In response to both Senators Wherry and Watkins claiming that policies had been formulated secretly, committing the Republican Party to policies which the party had never approved, Senator Vandenberg had written a letter to both Senators, telling them that when he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, he had openly expressed his views as being his own and not those of the Committee, that he had invited questions from Republican members when the Truman Doctrine of military aid for Greece and Turkey was under consideration in 1947, that he had never placed any gag on debate—and, indeed, adds Mr. Childs, Senator Watkins had talked for several hours on the Senate floor without surcease.
Senator Vandenberg could chuckle, he concludes, regarding the irony of some of his colleagues talking of keeping out of world affairs for the sake of economy, while at the same time having recommended that the U.S. send the Navy to hold Formosa from the Communist Chinese. The Senator was confident and serene and it may have come from his firm belief that there was no other course open to America than participation in keeping order in the world.
Robert C. Ruark, on the island of Molokai in Hawaii, tells of visiting the remote leper colony at Kalaupapa, made famous by Father Damien. The remaining inhabitants would be the last patients and the colony would be closed when they died away.
A new hospital had been established for treatment of Hansen's Disease, as leprosy had become known, at Pearl Harbor where all new cases were sent.
But Dr. Norman Sloan, chief physician at Kalaupapa, still believed that leprosy was contagious and that patients ought be segregated from the general population, contrary to the accepted modern practice of the previous few years. The doctor thus continued the atmosphere which led to a feeling of doom when one entered the colony.
The sufferers of the disease at the new hospital, by contrast, lived on bright, fresh wards and Mr. Ruark found them "almost pathetically pleased" with their surroundings. They were upbeat and wished him a Merry Christmas as he departed.
He reflects that 6,000 years of prejudice had been removed with the announcement that no more admissions would occur at Kalaupapa.
Tom Schlesinger of The News provides his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Senator Frank Graham opposing the FEPC bill, to the disappointment of many of its supporters around the country, albeit entirely predictable to those who knew his record. He had stood firmly against compulsory powers and sanctions of the Federal Government being applied to State legislation. He had said that he was firmly for the principle of fair employment through voluntary cooperation and would vote against it in any other form.
Senator Graham favored the anti-poll tax bill and the anti-lynching measure. His stand as a member of the President's 1947 Civil Rights Committee had been basically the same as author of the minority report, which favored elimination of segregation but opposed a Federal law mandating it. It had asserted that Federal aid to the states should occur as long as there was no discrimination in the distribution of funds.
But he also would not likely join the Southern filibuster of the FEPC bill as he felt it unfair to cut off the people's right to have a vote on the measure.
The seemingly paradoxical stances caused many to find him naive while others thought it a new approach to politics. Most said that he was still the champion of the downtrodden and misunderstood.
House Ways & Means chairman Bob Doughton of North Carolina had said that there was little or no chance of the President's tax increase passing the Congress and that if the Government could collect all the taxes owed, it could just about balance the budget.
Representative Hamilton Jones of Charlotte had returned to Congress from Charlotte two hours before the opening the prior Tuesday, still saddened by the UNC loss to Rice in the Cotton Bowl, to which he was forced to listen by radio. It was unlikely that he would have opposition in the Democratic primary in the spring.
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