The Charlotte News

Tuesday, February 28, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson told the Senate Appropriations Committee this date that he would not ever knowingly tolerate any disloyal person in the Department and did not condone the offenses ascribed to his old friend Alger Hiss, convicted recently in the retrial of his perjury indictment regarding his denial of giving secret State Department documents to admitted former Communist courier Whittaker Chambers. Mr. Acheson had been heavily criticized for saying, citing a Biblical injunction, that he would not turn his back on his old friend even in the wake of the conviction. He said that his decision was based on compassion for the tragedy of Mr. Hiss, whether or not his conviction was overturned on appeal.

Deputy Undersecretary of State John Peurifoy told the Senators that over the previous two years, the Department had gotten rid of 202 employees, one being fired and the others, 91 of whom were homosexuals, resigning while being investigated as security risks. Mr. Peurifoy responded to questioning that he believed that what was now known about Mr. Hiss made him a bad security risk and would prevent him from ever again being hired by the State Department.

The U.S. high commissioner to the American zone of West Germany, John J. McCloy, in a press conference, challenged Russia to hold free elections throughout Germany on or about the date set for elections in the Eastern zone, October 15. He said that the U.S. would take no initiative, however, to organize such an election.

In Taipei, Formosa, Chiang Kai-Shek said that the following day, he would resume the presidency of Nationalist China and the position of commander-in-chief of all Nationalist military forces, positions from which he had retired in January, 1949, just before the fall of Nanking. Vice-President Li Tsung-Jen had been Acting President since that time. Li, recovering from surgery in New York since departing China in November, had concurred with the decision. Chiang cited the recent Russo-Chinese Communist pact as motivating the urgency of his decision.

In Washington, the Government's case in the court trial of the contempt citation against UMW was winding down, with the defense ready to begin its presentation during the afternoon session of court. A defense motion was before the court to exclude prosecution evidence of the past contempt convictions of UMW in 1946 and 1948.

Congressman Claire Hoffman of Michigan introduced a bill to make unions liable under antitrust laws for any restraint of trade in commerce essential to the national economy, health or safety. A similar bill was being considered in the Senate.

The Soviet Union revalued the rate of exchange from 5.30 to four rubles to the dollar, in a sweeping reduction of prices. Beef, for instance, was cut in price by 30 percent, beer, by 30 percent, potatoes, by 10 percent, cotton textiles, by 15 percent, cognac, by 25 percent, and dessert wines, by 49 percent.

You can lose yourself, now, in the Party wine down 'ere in Russia.

The captain of the U.S.S. Missouri, William Brown, facing a Navy board of inquiry, accepted full responsibility for running the ship aground in Norfolk on the prior January 17. He said that he had placed the ship on the course which wound up running it aground. The decision, he said, was based on the belief that the spar buoys marked the exit of the acoustic range and that there was an overzealous attempt to run the range.

The chairman of the board of Burlington Industries, Spencer Love, endorsed Senator Frank Graham for re-election from North Carolina.

Sources indicated that the Duke Power Co. bus drivers of Charlotte and five other cities would accept the proposal of Mayor Victor Shaw of Charlotte for a 60-day cooling-off period while a fact-finding board considered the matter and issued recommendations for settlement of the wage and pension fund dispute. Most of the piece, along with a few others, however, are covered by the big Red Cross.

In Charlotte, coal stockpiles, primarily that of stoker coal, were slated to vanish by the following Sunday. Small nut slack coal was being used instead in domestic stokers, but even that inferior grade would not be available after Sunday.

Gosh, you can't even get the nut slack no more? What's the world comin' to?

In Oklahoma City, the leopard which had escaped the city zoo was recaptured through placing knockout drops in chunks of horse meat, enabling a noose to be placed around the drowsy cat's neck by the zookeeper. The leopard, hungry for chow, had returned to the Lincoln Park Zoo, its only home since coming from India a week earlier. The keeper estimated that the animal had ventured as far as 18 miles from the zoo during its sojourn begun Saturday. Hunters were under orders to shoot to kill during its absence.

Part of chapter six of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appears on the page as part of the serialized presentation of the book by The News.

On the editorial page, "So Much for So Little" urges giving to the Red Cross drive, the organization founded in 1864, helping thousands of persons during natural disasters, supplying food, shelter, clothing, medical aid and nursing care in the early phases of a disaster. The organization was too much taken for granted by the public, it suggests, was totally dependent on public support for its sustenance. The goal in Charlotte was to collect $105,000.

"Remedy for 'Runner'?" tells of the cost of filing for candidacy for a public position in North Carolina being one percent of the salary, or $125 for the U.S. Senate race. As a result, there were perennial candidates, as two in the Senate race for the seat occupied by Senator Frank Graham, just to get their names in the newspapers.

The British kept such persons in check by requiring candidates to post a deposit equivalent to $420, forfeited in the event the person did not receive an eighth of the vote. It suggests some similar system in the U.S. to deter entry by persons interested in nothing other than getting their names on the ballots and earning cheap publicity.

"Lobbying Bill Is Still Higher" tells of the cost of lobbying in Washington, as reported in the Congressional Quarterly, having increased dramatically from five million dollars in 1947 to 6.2 million in 1948, to nearly nine million in 1949, with the number of lobbying organizations increasing commensurately, from 149 to 206 to 256, respectively. The AMA had spent by far the most money, 1.5 million dollars. A list of the other big spenders is provided.

Many of the groups protested the legality of having to disclose their spending but did so anyway, in compliance with the Justice Department opinion that it was required under the law. It was good, offers the piece, for the average citizen to know how much was being spent and by which organizations. It finds the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act, which required the disclosures, therefore to be beneficial to the public.

A piece from the Shelby Daily Star, titled "Visitors", tells of Gaston County Klansmen paying the town Sheriff a visit to offer their assistance with some local law enforcement problem. The piece expresses resentment for the intrusion, that it implied that Cleveland County's law enforcement personnel were unable to take care of the county's requirements. It expresses dislike generally of the Klan and hopes that the Sheriff told them to "'get the hell' home and tend to their own business."

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal takes issue with the farm price-support program, that it had taken an emergency device and transferred it to normal times, resulting in waste of commodities, as the potatoes stored by the Government and winding up being destroyed or given away in recent years, resulting in wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. It does not object to the system when times were depressed for the farmer. But it did not work, it finds, in normal economic times. More imagination, it ventures, was needed from Congress to deal with regulating production to prevent surplus commodities driving down prices.

Drew Pearson tells of the farmers' revolt sweeping across the Midwest in the wake of the sliding parity scale jammed through Congress at the behest of the Farm Bureau Federation and a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats, (as a quid pro quo for Republican adherence to the same coalition on civil rights). A poll showed that 45 percent of Iowa farmers favored the Brannan plan of direct subsidies on perishables while allowing consumer prices to find their natural level in the market, with 35 percent favoring the current fixed parity plan, and the remainder undecided. In North Dakota, Senator William Langer and the Non-Partisan League were planning to leave the Republicans and support the Brannan plan. After a farmer's debate on the plan in Wisconsin, the majority of those present favored the plan after the debate, whereas only about 40 percent had favored it prior to the debate. There were other signs of this revolt as well, including support of it by Governor Kerr Scott in North Carolina, a former State Agricultural Commissioner, all of which harbingered well for the Democrats in the 1950 elections.

Behind the revolt was a drop in farm income by five to six billion dollars and a fear that it would drop further under the sliding-scale parity program. Moreover, controversy swirled around the fact that surpluses were piled up in storage while food prices remained high in the stores.

Congressman Henry Jackson of Washington, on a recent visit to the Hanford atomic plant, had registered, during his routine screening for radiation as he departed the plant, a high radiation content on his right hand. It turned out that it was only from the radium dial on his wristwatch.

Secretary of State Acheson had chided John J. McCloy, high commissioner of the American occupation zone of West Germany, for being too soft on the Germans and insisted that he tell them that the U.S. was aware of the threat of a resurgence in Nazism. He reluctantly agreed to have the State Department write a speech for him, which he then had delivered, his recent get-tough speech.

In Czechoslovakia, any sender of a letter to the West had, by a new Government regulation, to mail the letter personally and provide identification at the post office.

The American Embassy in Moscow had revealed that the Soviets were getting ready to release 120,000 Italian war prisoners and send them to Italy. All of them had been indoctrinated to Communism and were being sent to strengthen the Italian Communist Party.

Chiang Kai-Shek was deliberately using American bombs and airplanes to destroy American property in Communist China, a tactic he hoped would incite the Chinese Communists against the Americans by using American planes to kill Chinese civilians and thus interdict any likelihood of American recognition of the Communist Government. The tactic appeared to be working as the Chinese Communists had retaliated against 34 Americans stranded for eight months in Shanghai.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop, in London, discuss the British election of the previous Thursday as showing the remarkable achievement of the Conservative Party during the five-year interim since its defeat to Labour in July, 1945. The Conservatives had made an extraordinary comeback, as the Labour majority was so small that most observers expected another general election within a year. In that election, the expected final disappearance from Parliament of the Liberal Party might give outright victory to the Conservatives.

Yet, the Labour devaluation of the pound had been successful in increasing dollar reserves, even as the final British financial crisis still loomed. That was pleasing to Conservatives, who hoped the crisis would come during the Labour watch.

The New Deal and Fair Deal social changes had been far more radical and longer-lived than the changes in Britain and yet the Republicans were still in the political wilderness with dark prospects ahead. But in Britain, all of the Tories were pretty much committed to a "me too" attitude toward social change, whereas Republicans were split on the New Deal-Fair Deal. Only Winston Churchill had objected to following the socialization program of Labour. Few among the Conservatives were willing to counter him, but whenever he sought to return to the pattern of the 1945 elections, he was resisted by a united opposition within the party. Generally, the Conservatives had run on the platform of continuing nationalization while not extending it, and operating the system more efficiently than Labour.

The strategy for the Conservatives, the Alsops suggest, was outlined by the election results, that when redistribution of wealth had been accomplished to the extent that the majority was content, the path would lie open for the Tories to come to power again.

Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., schools, in the twenty-sixth in his series of weekly articles on childhood education, discusses use of audio-visual equipment in the classroom, a thing rare fifteen years earlier when only about 40 schools in the entire state had projectors whereas now there were 1,400 in use in the schools. But after the war, during which the military had used such aids to great advantage in training the men, a-v equipment had come into wide usage in the classroom, even if the incentive to learn from it was not motivated by the will to survival as in the employment of military training films.

Earlier, teachers had believed that the a-v equipment might supplant the need for their profession as only a projectionist would be necessary to teach the class from 16mm film or film strip projectors (plus, of course, someone to operate the ping narration record for same, or just to read the script and then say "ping" for the student to change the slide if the school could not afford the record player or it was broken of a day, having been smashed to pieces with a bat by one of the bad boys in class after striking out in baseball).

The schools usually rented the films, which were available on a myriad of subjects, and it was nearly impossible, in short rental periods, usually comprising only a day, for the teacher to become as familiar with the contents in advance as desired. (Fast forward the sucker and think fast.) But film strips were cheaper to rent and were often as effective in conveying the information.

They put you to sleep. We like the moompicters.

The place of these aids had been secured in the schools and henceforth, no newly constructed school should be deemed complete without making provision for them.

All you need is a plug, a spare desk, and a roll-up screen over the blackboard. Get one of the strong boys to pluck the projector from the closet in the back, dim the lights, and you're all set to have the class go down the road to a nice mid-morning snooze for twenty minutes or so.

But then they made us the a-v person in the fourth grade and we had to remain alert during the presentation so as not to burn the film if it got crunched up in the sprockets and started to flicker out the gate.

This is a bit of a tangle. Take a break. We'll be done in a couple hours.

A letter writer forwards "A Motorist's Prayer" which he had obtained from a tract distributed by Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City.

We might add one short verse:

Give thou the strength when someone,
Without license, passes in thy way,
As thou, in storied luck, brakes in time
From rhyme, to turn the other cheek,
And just say, "Hey."

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