The Charlotte News

Monday, February 6, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President invoked Taft-Hartley by appointing a three-man board to study the coal strike and work slowdown and provide a report within one week. That left open the possibility that the President, within a few days after the report would issue, would seek an 80-day court injunction to stop the strike, which had now spread from the original strike of the captive steel mines to between 360,000 and 400,000 miners as of this date. Coal production had stopped to a trickle. John L. Lewis had suggested the prior week that the miners would not obey a court injunction if it issued.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover testified this date in executive session to the Joint Atomic Energy Committee regarding the arrest in London on Friday of Dr. Klaus Fuchs for giving atomic secrets to the Russians in 1945 and 1947. Associate director Clyde Tolson and assistant director L. B. Nichols also appeared. Senator Styles Bridges demanded a search in "high places" for anyone in the U.S. who had contacts with Dr. Fuchs.

In London, Kenneth de Courcy, editor of Intelligence Digest, who had predicted the previous January 5 that the Russians would detonate successfully an atomic bomb on January 7 or 10, 1949, stated that, based on his sources behind the Iron Curtain, the Russians had already developed three hydrogen bombs and exploded one of them. He said that the Russians would detonate eleven more nuclear bombs on March 3, at latitude 40 degrees, 20-30 minutes north by longitude 80 degrees, 10-20 minutes east, placing it at the approximate border between the Soviet Republic of Kazakh and Sinkiang Province in China.

In Stuttgart, Germany, the High Commissioner for the U.S. zone of West Germany, John J. McCloy, delivered a speech reprimanding West German officials for criticizing Western allies, telling them to stop agitating over such things as the dispute with the French over the Saar, and demanded a pledge that Nazism would not again rise. He said that the primary mission of the allies was not to provide aid to Germany but to see to it that it returned to a self-sustaining state. Mr. McCloy had just returned from Washington. West German officials had been pushing for relaxation of controls by the Western allies.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop, appearing on the front page, discuss contributions to the two major political parties showing that the big contributors were turning from their traditional benefaction of the Republicans to the Democrats, causing Republicans to do some soul-searching. The GOP had brought in only $260,000 against 1.6 million by the Democrats. Jack and Harry Warner, Sam Goldwyn, Jr., and Marvin, Nicholas and Joseph Schenck had been among the major contributors to the Democrats from Hollywood. On Wall Street, the contributors included Emil Schram, president of the New York Stock Exchange, and Robert Young, president of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. They list numerous others as well who had contributed generously.

In Chapel Hill, the Board of Trustees of the University unanimously elected Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray of Winston-Salem to be president of the Greater University. Mr. Gray had told them that he would enter on the duties of the post no later than September 1, and as soon as the Department of Defense could spare him.

In Fayetteville, Judge Henry Stevens was being touted as a middle-of-the-road candidate for the Democratic primary race between Senator Frank Graham and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds.

In Los Angeles, potential hit-men tried to kill mobster Mickey Cohen but again missed, for the sixth time. A fuse bomb had blown out the bedroom where he normally slept, but he was out of the bedroom in another part of the house at the time, looking for whoever had set off the alarm system. Most of the damage was to his expensive wardrobe.

In Akron, O., a theater manager canceled a showing of "Under Capricorn" with Ingrid Bergman because of adverse public reaction to the birth of her out-of-wedlock baby with director Roberto Rosellini, while her divorce was pending. In its place was "And Baby Makes Three".

A photograph appears of a 68-year old man from Gaffney, S.C., and his 25-year old wife of one year and their new baby, his tenth child. He had advertised a year earlier for a wife. He was some kind of a nut. And she was worse.

On the editorial page, "Secretary Johnson's Speech" does not like the "lick hell out of Russia" speech given by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson at the University of Virginia the previous week, finds him sounding more as a street corner bully than a responsible official of the Government.

He had not explained how the U.S. intended to meet the threat posed by Russia's long-range snorkel submarine which could lob nuclear warheads into the coastal cities of the U.S. Or how the big bombers would get by Russia's radar network, interceptor planes and guided missiles. Or how the concentration of cities and industry in the U.S., which afforded better targets than their more diffuse counterparts in Russia, would be changed or offset. Or how a nuclear fight could transpire in Western Europe without also killing allies.

"Signs of the Times" discusses the prediction by education experts that Charlotte's population would increase to 300,000 between 1970 and 1980, and the consequential necessity of advance planning for the commensurately increased population of students. It finds that investment in real estate would hold out the benefit of great profit as such growth took place, causing the consultants to urge immediate purchase of school sites to be needed in 1962 and later, to save money for the taxpayers.

"Paul Green and Sibelius" tells of North Carolina's playwright Paul Green having sought out aging Finnish composer Jan Sibelius to write the music for Washington's Sesquicentennial Celebration, the script for which Mr. Green was writing. A Washington Star music critic had complained that the effort to attract such a composer might be considered an affront to all American composers.

It ventures that Mr. Green was probably well aware that many American composers could write from the heart music better suited to a celebration of American history than could any composer of Europe, no matter how celebrated, that he was likely responding to the idea that the international reputation of Mr. Sibelius would bring publicity to the celebration. It concludes that Mr. Green would likely prefer to forget the whole episode.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Safety Note", finds that a report out of the regional meeting of Democrats in Raleigh, appearing in the Greensboro Record, had raised an ancillary point about safety on the highways. It told of Vice-President Barkley having received a Highway Patrolman's escort from the Virginia line to the meeting, after which he told of his new wife pushing him to drive over 80 mph the whole way from Washington. The piece suggests that the highway laws were for the bigshots as well as for the average citizen and that the Highway Patrol should not be complicit in the violation of traffic laws.

Tom Fesperman of The News tells of the resigning chairman of the City Board of Health in Charlotte, Dr. Monroe Gilmour, having favored urgent consolidation of the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County health departments. He imparts the arguments for doing so.

Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Emanuel Celler of New York chairing an investigation into monopolies, his committee having received an FTC report revealing that du Pont had teamed up with G.M., U.S. Rubber and Libbey-Owens Ford Glass Co. to form the most potent industrial combine in the country's history, becoming a government unto itself. He provides several income statistics on the combine.

At the staid National Republican Club of New York, assembled at the behest of RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson to write a resolution, which read that the U.S. Government should not compete with private industry, a younger member questioned whether that resolution meant that the Government should get out of the TVA and public housing. The initial response was a resounding yes. The resolution, however, after an ensuing debate on the topic, was defeated.

Rev. James Montgomery, 87, gave his last prayer as chaplain of the House after 29 years of doing so every day.

The good humor of a Missouri dirt farmer helped to push through the Senate the bill to abolish the discriminatory tax on margarine and the prohibition on selling yellow-colored margarine, as he was a guest on a radio program with Senators William Fulbright and Alexander Wiley, on opposite sides of the issue. The farmer, O. W. Chandler, cracked, "Why don't we forget about color and feed the cows garlic and onions, so we can tell butter by the smell?" After the Senators laughed heartily, he added that they could have butter be cut in rectangles and margarine in triangles. The next day, that was written into the bill and it passed.

Which is why, to this day, all margarine sticks are triangular.

Marquis Childs, in Lansing, Mich., tells of G. Mennen Williams, having been swept into office in 1948 by the Democratic tide, thanks, in the case of Michigan, largely to the labor vote, preparing for his re-election campaign in 1950, with his chances appearing good in a usually Republican one-party state. One of the penalties of such short terms for governors of many states was that they had to begin a new campaign scarcely before they had settled into their first term.

Three previous Democratic Michigan governors since 1933 had served only one term each, after being swept into office by FDR landslides. To avoid that fate, Governor Williams would need to broaden his base to include at least some of the farmers of the state. For the present he had to battle against a Republican Legislature. But he was possessed of great charm and energy and so, if he could strike a balance between his labor support and other potential supporters, he might be able to transform the Democratic Party in his state.

Robert C. Ruark tells of having seen in recent days two television programs, stressing the Twenties. In addition, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" had been revived as a play and was popular on Broadway. The "March of Time" had just completed a feature on the jazz decade, called "The Golden Twenties". Young girls were starting to adopt the Twenties close-cropped hairstyles again. Arthur Godfrey had re-popularized the ukulele. Sophie Tucker's popularity had enjoyed a rebirth, as had that of the coonskin cap. Prohibition jokes were also funny again.

He could not understand the nostalgia for such a decade which brought Prohibition and its many problems to the society. He suggests that perhaps the H-bomb had driven everyone back to "the comfortable silliness of the jazz age." He finds on reflection, however, that it was not such a bad era, as the atom was but a "little bitsy" thing and hydrogen was "something you sprinkled into the oxygen when cooking up a mess of water."

The so-called "lost generation" of the Twenties was too young for World War I and too tired and feeble for "WW Twice", "couldn't care less about getting fried to a turn by the H-bomb in WW Triple."

Much of the lost generation, he concludes, were engaging in small portions of rebellion while all the time having little about which to be upset. Perhaps their awareness of the "New Lost Generation" had driven them to retreat to the "old Lost Generation". It was comforting as against the idea that a scientist could "stir too much hydrogen into his neutrons and blow us all back, away past the Charleston, the Bunny Hug, and even the Minuet."

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