The Charlotte News

Wednesday, March 15, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Millard Tydings said that investigators of the Foreign Relations subcommittee, which he chaired, investigating the charges of Communists in the State Department made by Senator Joseph McCarthy, expected to receive the Department files on the nine persons Senator McCarthy had accused thus far in four days of hearings of having Communist sympathies. Senator McCarthy had also provided the subcommittee with a list of 25 other employees who he claimed were bad security risks. He had asked for "a couple of nights of sleep" before he resumed providing other names.

The State Department had said that all of those named publicly who were still in the Department's employ had been investigated and found to be loyal. Some were never employed and others were no longer employed.

Dorothy Kenyon, who had been accused of pro-Communist sympathies by the Senator, testified the previous afternoon to the subcommittee that there was not a Communist bone in her body. Others also accused by Senator McCarthy had issued statements of denial of Communist or subversive affiliation.

The House Labor Committee voted 13 to 12 to remove the Federal aid to education bill from its day-old pigeon-hole and set April 17 for consideration of a measure for 300 million dollars worth of aid for teachers' salaries and to raise teaching standards, as opposed to the Senate-passed measure for the same amount of aid for school operating expenses, the bill which the previous day had been pigeon-holed by the same 13 to 12 vote. The new bill, as the Senate bill, did not indicate whether parochial and private schools could share in the aid, leaving distribution to the states to determine.

In Atlanta, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeals upheld the Georgia county-unit voting system, which provided greater power to rural counties than urban counties. The majority agreed, against a lone dissent, that the system was discriminatory to urban counties but found that the Federal courts lacked the ability to intervene. The dissenting Judge asserted that the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had been offended and that the issue was therefore cognizable by the Federal courts. The majority opinion cited the electoral college as a Constitutional example of tolerance for disproportionate weighting of votes based on population, dependent entirely on how the state legislatures determined electors ought be chosen. Moreover, every state had two Senators, regardless of population. The Georgia unit-voting system worked to the advantage of Governor Herman Talmadge and other Georgia politicians who appealed to rural voters during the campaigns.

Poland withdrew from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, claiming that the institutions were under the control of the U.S. It cited the refusal of the Bank to grant a 200 million dollar loan to Poland as its reason for rejecting the "so-called Marshall Plan", which it said had as its aim rebuilding of the war potential of Germany and subordination of Europe to the U.S. Czechoslovakia was also considering withdrawal from the two institutions.

The Government urged citizens to turn in known tax dodgers to receive a part of the $500,000 in rewards, and urged grand juries to step up indictments of tax evaders, as a means to make up part of the estimated five billion dollar deficit in the budget. The Government had paid out $450,000 to 97 informers the previous year, leading to recovery of 8.1 million dollars in taxes. In 1948, rewards had totaled just under $100,000 for 2.3 million in recovered taxes. The largest single reward had been in the mid-Thirties when three people split $80,000 for reporting evasion leading to the recovery of 2.6 million dollars. Many more tips came from people desiring no reward than from people who wanted one. One bride-to-be left waiting at the altar had turned in the groom, his father and other relatives. In one case, an informer was charged additional penalties for not reporting his reward money as income.

The Senate was set to vote this date on the President's middle-income housing plan, providing for a billion dollar Government credit for long-term, low-interest loans to cooperatives and other non-profit groups to aid families with annual incomes between $2,400 and $4,700 to rent or own housing.

Near Gary, Indiana, three men were found shot to death on a farm and a farm worker, in jail as either a suspect or material witness, was too drunk to talk about the slayings.

In Charlotte, Mayor Victor Shaw announced that the Duke Power Co. had agreed to assist in conducting a joint survey with the City regarding new transportation requirements, allaying, for the time being, citizen concerns over inadequate bus lines.

Three new members of the Charlotte Park & Recreation Commission were appointed by the City Council to fill expiring terms. A motion to reappoint the incumbents failed.

The member accused of hiring the man who had attempted to blow up the WBT radio tower was not among the three whose terms were expiring.

News Editor Pete McKnight, in the third of his three-part series of reports on an interview of Senator Frank Graham, tells of political observers finding that the Senator, while presently ahead in the race for re-election against former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds and Raleigh attorney Willis Smith, might soon face an uphill battle, depending on the vigor of his opponents' campaigns before the May 27 primary and the Senator's ability to meet their challenge. For instance, he answered the claim that he favored "socialized medicine" by saying that he believed in better medical care for all people but was against the President's compulsory health insurance plan, urging instead that an alternative plan, as the N.C. Medical Care program, be implemented. Regarding the claim that he could not be trusted on the race issue, he had always been a defender of civil rights but was against compulsory sanctions as part of a Fair Employment Practices Commission.

Tom Fesperman of The News tells of the arrival in town of Greek contralto Elena Nikolaidi for a performance the following evening. She spoke no English and so had to have an interpreter, services provided by a retired fruit company executive of the city.

In Cleveland, two dental experts reported that a study of 400 school children showed that stuttering children had less tooth decay than those with normal speech.

Forget about brushing after every meal and learn to stutter.

Chapter thirty-four and part of chapter thirty-six of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appear on the page as part of the abridged serialization of the book.

On the editorial page, "Trick Score Keeping" finds labor using the votes of Congressmen to determine whether they were worthy of support. To that end, the CIO had recently issued a scorecard on the members' votes from 1949. The Congressional delegation from North Carolina generally fared badly. Only Charles Deane had scored satisfactorily, along with Hugo Sims of South Carolina, while Harold Cooley and Hamilton Jones had "acceptable" records. It provides the list of results with the criteria used to grade the performance.

It doubts that any of the Congressmen would be upset as sympathy to organized labor did not figure greatly in garnering political support in the Carolinas.

But it also finds that the inclusion of support for bills such as the anti-poll tax measure and support of NATO and the continuance of the Marshall Plan in producing a favorable rating diluted the impact of pure pro-labor votes, enabling even opponents of labor to score respectably well if they also favored the other issues not directly related to labor interests. It found the scoring thus to make no more sense than rating Congressmen on their "obeisance to certain pressure groups".

"See Here, Judge Waring" finds Judge J. Waties Waring of Charleston, the Federal Judge who had held it unconstitutional for the primaries in South Carolina to disallow blacks from voting on the premise of the parties being private clubs, having said that the burning of a cross outside his home was not the work of pranksters but rather the "savagery of Southern white supremacists". He said that the state had 400 to 500 Klansmen and that the people ought wake up and demand that the Federal Government take steps to suppress such natural enemies of the American way of life.

The piece suggests that the Judge ought preserve his judicial temperament, even in the face of provocation, if he wanted to withstand ongoing efforts to impeach him.

It adds, trying to be cute, that Mrs. Waring was doing fine by talking for the family without her husband's help. Mrs. Waring had drawn criticism since the prior January for her remarks to the black YWCA of Charleston, critical of white Southerners.

"Why Hospitals Are Crowded" tells of State legislator John Umstead leading the effort for a more efficient mental institution, saying recently that the senile patients were not mentally ill but simply old and should receive care in county rest homes, nursing homes or the homes of their children.

The head of the State hospital at Morganton backed up Mr. Umstead, but said that he could not simply send the patients back to relatives who did not want them.

Nothing was being done about the problem and the piece agrees with Mr. Umstead, that some other form of housing ought be found for the senile patients.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "No Ketchup, No Defense", objects to a court martial by the Army of two enlisted men for refusing to pass the ketchup to a sergeant. It wonders how the Army would train soldiers to act properly in combat if it could not induce them to pass the ketchup, as wars were not won on table manners. Furthermore, the country could not fight a war with sergeants who could not get the ketchup passed by simply looking at the bottle.

Simple solution: Add green food coloring to the ketchup, to avoid suggestions of subversive leanings by passing it.

But then you have the problem of the mustard, also.

Drew Pearson tells of the President trying to persuade Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray, one of the best Secretaries of the Army in U.S. history, to remain in the Government as new chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission for at least a year, rather than assuming his duties immediately as president of UNC.

The House Ways & Means Committee had determined in a secret meeting that the fairest way to cut excise taxes was to make a 50 percent across-the-board cut. Some of the more oppressive taxes, as on baby oil, might be eliminated completely. In a recent discussion of the taxes, Congressman John Dingell of Michigan wanted to know whether talcum powder should not be given the same priority as baby oil, but several members protested that men as well as babies used the former. He responded that men used it on one extremity while babies on the other, but originally, it was for babies only.

Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, an oil millionaire, was trying to get natural gas exempted from Federal regulation through genial techniques of persuasion, even using the Bible in support of his arguments.

His fellow lobbyist was Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas, though not as smooth in his technique, abruptly asking one opponent of the Kerr bill what he meant by fighting it. The opponent said that he believed an unregulated natural gas industry would mean a monopoly, against consumer interests. Senator Johnson responded that steel, aluminum, and automobile production were monopolies but natural gas had many independent producers. But, says Mr. Pearson, about ten producers produced half of the natural gas in 1947 transmitted in the pipelines of the five producing states.

He notes that Senator Kerr had an estimated 100 million dollars in natural gas reserves and an annual gross income of twelve million dollars.

Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland had switched from being an Administration opponent to a fervent supporter, hoping to assume the mantle of the Democratic nominee should the President decide not to run in 1952. Even if he did, he hoped to become the vice-presidential nominee as he was confident that Vice-President Barkley, at 73, would not run again.

Joseph Alsop, in Frankfurt, West Germany, tells of the Soviets having long ago begun to rearm East Germany, while the West was just beginning its arms aid to Western Europe. The Russians were kept largely out of sight, despite having an occupation army of 250,000 men. The Volkspolizei were the noticeable force, youth recruits being trained to lord over the civilians as the Prussian army of the past. The force was no joke or newspaper rumor. The first paramilitary units had appeared within the larger mass of ordinary East German police two years earlier. The paramilitary parts were then separated out in September, 1949, given a purely military character and were presently likely formed into a respectable militia.

The effort included the training of officers or NCO's by Soviet officers and former German officers who had been indoctrinated to the Soviet system, and organization into tactical units, with troops to be trained under them, to form a German army of at least eight to ten divisions, to be ready by spring, 1953.

The overall effort was to bring about German unity on Soviet terms. He concludes that the U.S. was being foolish in the meantime to allow Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to deceive the American people into believing that the defense economizing measures could be undertaken without any loss of military strength.

Marquis Childs tells of having returned from Florida to Washington and felt as the pit ponies used in mining shafts, resistant to leaving the pits when allowed out into the daylight but then even more resistant to returning. After basking in the sun in Florida, Washington now appeared to him as the mining pit to the pit pony.

He hopes the President would be able to get some rest in Key West. But he seemed to carry his own atmosphere with him wherever he went. The old cronies traveled with the President and provided the atmosphere. Save for his terse statement declaring intention to proceed with research in nuclear energy, the President had remained silent in the face of the controversy surrounding the hydrogen bomb as well as regarding the mounting war scare of the people.

But more troubling than this concern was the threat to American freedom from those seeking to have an absolutely secure state. Representative Howard Smith of Virginia had introduced legislation as part of the National Science Foundation bill,stutter to provide the FBI with gestapo-like powers to destroy academic freedom. Senator Karl Mundt was pressing hard for the Mundt-Nixon bill, requiring registration of Communist organizations, undermining political freedom. Such men appeared to distrust freedom and to be motivated by panic. While they believed they were saving the nation, in fact, they were putting in place a stockade enshackling the entire citizenry.

Robert C. Ruark tells of single mothers lobbying for a tax deduction for childcare while they were at work, thus far resisted. Yet, men could take a business expense deduction for hiring a secretary or taking a friend to lunch while discussing business. The women, he says, were correct in their outrage. But in New York and in Congress, there were bills pending to provide such a deduction. The Congressional bill, sponsored by Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana, would apply to single mothers, but not to the working wife. Mr. Ruark supports the effort.

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