The Charlotte News

Friday, November 10, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the allies in Korea had formed a link southeast of Tokchon, in the north-central region, between the U.S. Tenth Corps from the eastern sector and the Eighth Army units from the western sector. They were forming a wall against the potential invasion of more Chinese Communist troops from among the estimated 300,000 forming across the border in Manchuria. The troops of the 60,000 already in North Korea were withdrawing into North Korea's wooded mountain region, under constant bombardment and strafing from allied air power.

Meanwhile, the puzzling lull in action continued for the fifth straight day, with only patrol action and minor skirmishes reported.

The Marines rolled unopposed to within three miles of Changjin reservoir, 75 miles south of the Manchurian border, a movement opposed actively until recent days by the Chinese. Otherwise across the peninsula, the U.N. line was about 45 to 50 miles south of the border, having previously penetrated to the border at one point and to within 15 miles at another, forced to withdraw the previous week by the Chinese Communist troops.

Bombers and jet fighters struck Communist supply lines along the Yalu River boundary, engaging in two dogfights near Sinuiju, the major half-mile wide crossing point for the Chinese troops. No losses on either side were reported.

Communist Chinese radio called their troops "volunteers".

At the U.N., the U.S., with the backing of France and Britain, was asking the Security Council to begin discussion this date of the Chinese Communist intervention in the action in Korea, with a resolution to demand withdrawal of the forces and a directive to all nations to refrain from helping North Korea. The U.S. wanted the matter addressed before the arrival of the nine Chinese Communist representatives invited to participate in the debate. Russia said that it would resist consideration of the matter until the Chinese representatives were present.

The General Assembly's Political Committee approved a Yugoslav-sponsored resolution calling for undertaking all efforts to bring about an early end to hostilities and labeling any nation interfering with that effort to be an aggressor.

American intelligence officers were hopeful that the Chinese had intervened because of the Yalu River hydroelectric grid being so vital to Manchuria and so could be convinced that the U.N. forces had no intention of either damaging them or violating the Manchurian boundary. But, they also warned, if the purpose was to save face for the Communist world, then an extended fight might lie ahead. If the Chinese did not withdraw, then damage to the hydroelectrc plants would be necessary as they would present legitimate military targets.

The Interstate Commerce Commission ordered the Southern Railway to end racial segregation on dining cars running in interstate commerce. The order was pursuant to the Henderson case decided the prior June by the Supreme Court, based on the Railway Act forbidding discrimination in service.

Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer dropped his previously attempted voluntary production control plan.

Following the midterm elections, which gave a stronger minority status to the Republicans in both houses of Congress, some GOP Senators were calling for creation of a new committee in the Senate similar to HUAC or a joint committee for the House and Senate. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, formerly a member of HUAC, had initiated the idea, and Senator-elect Richard Nixon of California said that he would suggest to Republican leaders in the new Senate that such a permanent investigating committee be created. Judging by the print, it would plainly involve smear tactics.

In Washington, a Federal Grand Jury indicted Oscar Collazo, the Puerto Rican Nationalist who had survived his chest wounds following the attack by him and his accomplice, Griselio Torresola, killed in the attempt, aimed at the President in front of Blair House on November 1. The charge was murder based on the killing of Leslie Coffelt, a White House police officer. The charge carried potentially a death sentence. He was also charged with felonious assault on the guards. While eyewitnesses said that Mr. Torresola had actually shot Mr. Coffelt, under the District's law Mr. Collazo was regarded as a member of a conspiracy perpetrated by two or more persons, with each member equally culpable for a murder occurring during the course of the conspiracy.

A major fire in the San Bernardino Mountains of California had forced hundreds to flee their homes, as it struck residential areas in the suburbs of San Bernardino, reaching two miles to Route 66, with official accounts of the number of homes thus far destroyed varying from dozens to hundreds to six. In the end, five homes were consumed and most of the injured were firemen, none seriously. The source of the fire appeared to be a power line blown down by a gale.

In the nationwide strike of Western Electric equipment installers, Southern Bell telephone exchanges in North Carolina remained unaffected.

Some of the stories in the blur on the page are available here, here, and here in clearer form, to supply your kicks.

On the editorial page, "It's Up to Governor Thurmond" tells of the inaction in the prior incident in Horry County, South Carolina, involving the refusal of the Grand Jury to indict five arrested Klansmen, including the Grand Dragon Thomas Hamilton, for the August 26 melee at a black dance hall in Myrtle Beach wherein one of the Klansmen, a Conway police officer, was killed, having resulted in further Klan violence. This time the victim was a black farmer, hustled from his home at 1:00 a.m. and beaten with a bullwhip, his two sons forced to run down the road in their underwear. They warned the farmer not to tell law enforcement. The Sheriff was running down leads, as he had in the prior incident, but thus far, there were no arrests.

There was no reason to believe, even if there were to be arrests, that the Grand Jury in Horry County would undertake action in the matter, though it involved the serious crime of kidnapping. It urges that Governor Strom Thurmond had the responsibility to act when local law enforcement broke down, as in the case of the Myrtle Beach incident. He had not done anything. He was, it offers, neglecting his duties of high office in so doing, and would be doing so again if nothing happened in the latest case.

Look, look, look, look, look. Strom, he a good ol' boy. He like a good nigga. But you get those outside agitatas, those Commies, in heya, and what you gon' do? Let the niggas take ova the Constitution and the American way of life? Strom, he protect us from dose Yankee niggas.

"Mis-Use of the Picket Line" finds the Communications Workers of America misusing the picket line to effect strike against Western Electric in a deliberate effort to halt operations of the entire Bell Telephone system, as Western Electric served the system nationwide with equipment. By establishing picket lines around the telephone exchanges, all Bell workers who belonged to CWA refused to cross. The company could not deal with the one division of CWA affected by the dispute.

The public interest, it concludes, called for a more responsible manner of use of this weapon of organized labor. The present strike might not only inconvenience the consuming public but also national defense in time of war. If the strike continued, it ventures, the Government would have to take over the telephone system, freezing wages and profits in the process at pre-strike levels.

"Is Moscow Getting Smart?" finds that the strangely sudden halt of the fighting of the Communist Chinese in North Korea since the previous Tuesday may have given the principal clue for the insurgency of the Chinese into the war, to affect the American elections adversely to the Administration. For Communists feared liberals far more than conservatives. The Truman-Acheson policy had impacted the world favorably with respect to neutralizing Communist aggression, the Truman Doctrine in Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan in Europe, the military aid program of NATO, and now the Korean war. In the U.N., Russia had been isolated and left without defenders save among its puppet satellites.

But with less support for Administration policies in Congress after the elections, which narrowed the Senate Democratic majority from twelve to two, the Republicans could now hamstring the efforts to check Communism. Already, Senator Taft had indicated a desire to pull out of Europe. And howls were being heard anew for the resignation of Secretary Acheson.

It suggests that a few hundred Chinese lives, from the Communist perspective, were a small price to pay for such results conducive to their ends. They had studied Machiavelli enough to be quite capable of such a plan.

A piece from the Durham Herald, titled "Democracy and Mr. Truman's Haircut", cites many early attempts of the philosophers to define the ideal government. A news story had tempted it to make its own definition. The President had walked unannounced into a barber shop at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco during his recent visit there to commemorate the U.N. Charter. He waited several minutes before he was recognized, at which point there was a flurry of activity to wait on the President. He said that he would wait his turn. "And he did so. So..."

It presents its definition of democracy: "A form of government under which the President of a country waits for his turn in a barbershop."

Drew Pearson tells of war mobilization administrator Stuart Symington having determined a program which consisted of asking Congress for an additional 19 billion dollars, bringing the total defense budget to 54 billion. A delay of price and wage controls would await spring while Mr. Symington cracked the whip on labor and management to keep prices down. Ford had immediately accepted Mr. Symington's challenge to avoid price increases and he was seeking acquiescence from Philip Murray, head of CIO and the steelworkers. The wartime economy could be built through plant expansion, according to the Administration, without impacting the the peacetime economy. Inflation was to be controlled through a program of heavy taxation on excess profits, as much as 100 percent.

Sam Rayburn had complained to Mr. Symington that after imposition of credit controls, car sales in his hometown in Texas had dropped from 200 in a month to five, to which Mr. Symington retorted that 200 in a town of 85,000 were too many car sales in a month. He said he wanted to strike a happy medium.

The most important part of the plan of expansion was the building of new factories, effecting a 25 percent increase in steel production, doubling aluminum production, and increasing output of electrical power. Just before Pearl Harbor a committee of experts had recommended against an increase in steel production as they feared idle plants after the war. The ensuing steel shortage then forced the American consumer to be without automobiles, refrigerators and other steel goods for the duration. Since the end of the war, steel factories had been running at full capacity.

He notes that Leon Keyserling, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, was the economic mastermind behind the new plan.

Nevada Senator George Malone, darling of the copper trust and slot-machine racketeers, had set quite a record when he hogged 61 pages of the 163-page appendix in the October 20 Congressional Record, one insert on copper being over fourteen pages long, and the shortest item containing his own statement warning that Secretary of State Acheson was seeking to oust General MacArthur.

Marquis Childs finds that for the previous six weeks or so during the "irrelevant" campaign, the politics of the past had predominated, that, with few exceptions, any discussion of the future of the country appeared forbidden. Meanwhile, the economy in time of war refused to stand still and the pressure of inflation was far more serious than six weeks earlier. Congress needed to put a check on it. The President had stated to those in his inner circle that he intended to move as soon as the election was over, but it remained unclear what he intended to do.

The issue for industry was expansion of production, with steel the center of attention as it would not expand without the Government paying for it and guaranteeing it a profit from the new plants. The Administration found this approach unacceptable and the President wanted Congress to pass a tougher excess profits tax than that extant in World War II. But one group around the President counseled a more cautious approach. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer found the remedy to be wage and price controls. Stuart Symington, head of the National Security Resources Board, favored getting tough with industry.

Mr. Childs urges that while it was probably impossible to effect party control of Congress, there should be some form of unity to meet the menace of inflation as it had nothing to do with partisanship and concerned the well-being of every American. He hopes the politicians of both parties would understand that fact.

Robert C. Ruark, in Columbus, O., still making observations about his visit to the State Prison of Ohio, finds that he had never realized how much economics affected the circumstances which put men in prison. About 90 percent of the inmates came from rude economic backgrounds. The warden said that the murderers, along with the perverts, were the best citizens in the prison, with more moral sense and intelligence than the others.

The rank and file prisoners bore the stamp of early poverty in their faces and physiognomy, but demonstrated little meanness in their countenances. There were exceptions, the embezzlers, the impassioned lover who slugged his lady love. The symptoms were the same, however, for the run-of-the-mine prisoner as he had observed in leper colonies, the plain stamp of a stigma, in this case, economic.

One case of which he was aware involved a man who had robbed several service stations, netting $300, and drew 80 years after someone was killed during one of the robberies. He claimed that he had to feed his wife and baby, and Mr. Ruark believed him. It was no defense but a reality.

Another involved a commercial artist who possessed great skill with an airbrush but was back in jail after a series of residential burglaries. He drew like an angel but the mark of early hunger was on his face.

The people who went to jail were not nice generally, as they never had much opportunity to explore what niceness was as it was difficult to be nice on an empty stomach.

A letter writer from McBee, S.C., favors allowing General MacArthur to use his discretion to use force against Manchuria and then invade mainland China, to punish the Chinese for entry to the war. He wants to use Formosa as a supply base for invading the mainland. He thinks such action would throw the enemy off balance and hasten the end of the fighting in Korea.

He warns that where one front existed now, several would later, in Indo-China and Tibet, in addition to Korea and Manchuria.

You forget the prime factor that Russia was calling the shots for Communist China and that Russia, too, possessed the atom bomb. What do you want, a twenty year war, ending in a fifteen-minute mutual nuclear annihilation? That's what some of your time thought would be cathartic, relying too much on literal interpretation of Revelations, thinking it therefore the duty of every Christian soldier to bring about its prophecy. Or was it merely warning of things past, that the future should not know as prologue?

A letter from a doctor finds it surprising that the November 6 editorial on the President's pre-election campaign speech from St. Louis had garnered so little comment from the column. He views it as lacking in dignity and statesmanship, particularly in a time of national crisis. He perceives it as the speech of a "cheap politician". It contained no praise for the fighting men and their sacrifices in Korea. He did not dare tell the people what lay ahead in the war. He thinks the head of an Administration which had turned over China to the Communists who were now fighting Americans in Korea, should have been more humble. He thinks the Administration had shown "incredible stupidity".

The fact that the President was proposing compulsory health insurance which, if passed, might mean that you will spend a couple fewer afternoons per week on the golf course would not have anything to do with formulation of your opinions on foreign policy and the President's intelligence and statesmanship, we suppose?

A letter writer from Pittsboro responds to a responsive letter to his October 31 letter in which he found TVA and public power generally to be a fraud on the taxpayers. He cites a Reader's Digest article which said that the United Utility Workers Union of America had gone on record against public ownership of power as the workers did not have the conditions enjoyed by private utility workers. This writer therefore sees the development as a trend toward socialism and that the workers would find it less than hospitable to their interests.

A letter from a doctor responds to "Doctors and Ambulances" of November 4, urging better emergency response for Wake County where a truck driver had to wait 45 minutes unaided by medical personnel following an accident despite numerous calls to the offices of doctors. He says that he contributed ten dollars per year to the Mecklenburg County Medical Society to help maintain the Medical Emergency Information Service, designed to avoid the sort of situation which occurred in Raleigh.

He thinks the editorial unwittingly discredited the medical profession and so wishes to bring to the attention of the editors the Service, operated by physicians of the community for nearly a year.

A subsequent editorial, reporting that Raleigh had undertaken to remedy the problem, had acknowledged the new Service in Mecklenburg County.

A letter from the chairman of Charlotte's "Men's Fashion Week" thanks the newspaper for its cooperation in promoting the week, especially a "colorful" report by Ida Constable regarding the show, itself.

Was she tickled pink? If so, don't tell Senator-elect Nixon.

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