The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 21, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Joseph McCarthy told the press that he had provided to Senate investigators the name of the man in the State Department whom he considered to be the top Russian espionage agent in the country and had been the one-time boss of Alger Hiss within the espionage ring in the Department.
Senator Millard Tydings, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating Senator McCarthy's claims, stated that neither the Senator nor anyone else had yet provided any evidence that anyone in the State Department was a Communist. The Senator had accused nine persons thus far of being pro-Communist or bad security risks, and had given 106 other names to the subcommittee for study.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and chairman of the Civil Service loyalty review board, Seth Richardson, had expressed concern over having to give up their records for examination by the subcommittee members, as the President was seriously considering.
Senate Minority Leader Kenneth Wherry, speaking in Lincoln, Neb., criticized Secretary of State Acheson for "undermining our national economy and losing the peace." He accused him of appeasing Russia and being the "idol of the left-wing", to the extent that the President was afraid to fire him for fear of losing leftist support in 1952. The speech appeared in furtherance of Republican efforts, including that of Senator McCarthy, to obtain the resignation of the Secretary. Other members of Congress criticized Mr. Acheson for allowing Valentin Gubitchev, convicted with Judy Coplon of conspiracy to commit espionage, to leave the country and return to Russia in lieu of serving his fifteen-year sentence, to which Ms. Coplon was also sentenced as an active term. An anonymous Republican said that it would be better for the party's political fortunes if the Secretary remained on the job.
The House Appropriations Committee approved by a vote of 27 to 8, along strictly partisan lines, an omnibus appropriations bill of 29 billion dollars, in addition to the expenditures fixed by law and foreign aid. The budget represented a billion dollars less than that proposed by the President, but some Republicans wanted to reduce it by another billion. The bill would go to the floor the following week.
Congressman Ralph Church of Illinois, 66, collapsed and died during a Congressional committee hearing this date.
In China, the Nationalist capture of Sungmen by a commando raid had stimulated confidence that other such raids would prove successful against the Chinese Communists.
Three men in Alaska were believed, based on eyewitness accounts from railway passengers, to be headed out to sea on an ice floe in Cook Inlet. But no one had been reported missing. Searchers were looking in the area of the sighting.
In Des Moines, Iowa, a paroled bank robber killed himself after killing his wife hours earlier and then seeking unsuccessfully the aid of a fellow ex-convict to throw the body in the river.
In Fresno, California, a fourteen-year old girl was shot to death by her twin sister using a .22-caliber rifle, in a fit of apparent hatred. The sister told police officers that she did not intend to attend the funeral, that she had hated her sister since age four because "she was stupid and acted like a nut", and would kill her again. She said that she supposed that they would institutionalize her for awhile and then execute her. Under California law, however, she could not be executed as a juvenile but could be sent to the girl's correctional facility or committed to a mental institution. She had told a probation officer the day before that she had enjoyed her best night of sleep in six years, and appeared to enjoy big meals. The judge ordered an examination of her sanity.
Democratic chairmen in eight Western counties of North Carolina were angry that their recommendations for county election board members had not been followed by the State Board of Elections, and threatened to contest the decision in court. Governor Kerr Scott had said the previous day that drunks were propped up around polling places and that some polls had armed officers present to intimidate voters who might vote against the political machine in each county. The chairmen found these to be vague insinuations, designed to muddy the waters and that the Governor was behaving as Stalin.
The President was planning to address a Democratic rally in Chicago on May 15, as a part of a cross-country speaking tour in support of Democrats in the midterm elections.
Parts of chapters forty-seven and forty-eight 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, "Crucial Council Decision" tells of the decision before the City Council whether to request the Federal Government temporarily to set aside for Charlotte some of the 200 million dollar fund allocated for slum clearance and redevelopment, until the 1951 Legislature could approve of its receipt, defeated in the 1949 Legislature. Redevelopment was important for the long-term growth of the city, cutting down on crime in areas which contributed little to the tax base of the city. National figures showed 20 percent of urban areas were considered to be slums, with 45 percent of the local government costs going to police those areas, while they contributed only six percent of the revenue.
"Reorganization Moves Ahead" tells of the President having sent 21 new reorganization plans to Congress, recommended by the Hoover Commission, which would become law in 60 days if not vetoed by a two-thirds majority of one of the two houses.
One of the recommendations, abolishing the Maritime Commission and turning over its functions to the Commerce Department, was likely to create intense opposition as shipbuilders would oppose it. Railroads would likely oppose giving more authority to the chairmen of seven regulatory commissions and less to the I.C.C. Television and radio would likely oppose giving more power to the F.C.C. chairman. Likewise, the President's proposed abolition of the general counsel for the NLRB, a position created by Taft-Hartley, would also draw fire.
The editorial favors the non-partisan recommendations of the Hoover Commission over the special interests and suggests that the burden of proof ought be on the latter to disturb those recommendations.
"Abuse of Committee Power" finds that it was unlikely that the House sentiment in favor of the Lodge amendment, proposing a Constitutional amendment to make the electoral vote proportional to the popular vote, was strong enough to enable passage after it had already passed the Senate. The amendment was pigeon-holed in the Rules Committee and it was unlikely to get to the floor.
Northern Democrats and liberal Republicans had determined that the amendment, if ratified, would give more power to the South and thus greater strength to conservative Democrats in Congress.
The piece finds it too bad, as the amendment was bipartisan in its impact and long overdue to rectify the anachronism of the electoral college. It would encourage both parties to become national in scope by requiring them to campaign all over the nation and not only in the larger cities of electoral-rich states.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal, titled "Who Stood Not on the Order", tells of the local solicitor, Malcolm Seawell, having reacted when a Klan leader showed up to recruit members, giving him 24 hours to get out of the judicial district or face indictment for disturbing the peace. The Klan leader left.
The piece also praises Chief Frank Littlejohn of Charlotte for standing up to the Klan and suggests that such action would deter any increase of an otherwise dearth of Klan activity in the state.
Actually, maybe it was better for there to be more Klan activity, ugly as it was, to challenge leaders, content with complaisance with the status quo, to understand that all was far from well in the society in terms of racial progress, especially among the more violent-tending lesser lights of the white community, that supporting in one breath continued tolerance for segregation while in the other condemning the Klan was an incongruence which, as surely as nature abhorring a vacuum, could not long last in a democratic society.
Drew Pearson tells of an American journalist having asked Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia Vladimir Clementis the previous December about a rumor that a purge in the Czech foreign office would soon take place, and his response that it was nonsense, that he wished the foreign press would report on the many advances under Communism. But now Mr. Clementis was out, probably to pave the way for Russia to take over Czechoslovakia, as in Poland.
Congressmen Bob Rich and Les Arends and Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers lamented the plight of the average citizen, having to pay taxes on such things as baby oil, wedding rings, shaving lotion, razors, and cosmetics. GOP Representative Hugh Scott had composed a verse about the problem and explained in the last line that it was why parents voted Republican.
Senator Hubert Humphrey had charged that Senator Harry F. Byrd's Economy Committee was wasting rather than saving money, had not even met in two years. In response, Republicans and Dixiecrats came to Senator Byrd's defense, attacking Senator Humphrey, who was then left to respond to a nearly empty chamber, as the Byrd defenders, at the urging of Senate Minority Leader Kenneth Wherry, filed out. Undeterred, Senator Humphrey defended his position with facts and offered to debate Senator Byrd at any time.
Senator Humphrey then complained to the White House that he was left stranded by his fellow Democrats to wage this battle alone, despite White House complaints about Senator Byrd's obstructionist fiscal tactics.
The powerful oil and power lobbies were grooming Senate candidates years ahead of elections to oppose Senators who opposed them. They had gotten Governor Fred Aandahl of North Dakota to commit to run against Senator William Langer because of Senator Langer's opposition to the oil companies on the tidelands oil bill. The Governor had favored returning the tidelands oil to the states which would have then leased it to the big oil companies as in the past. Senator Langer was also opposed by the Governor on the power issue, the latter against creation of the Missouri Valley Authority to produce cheap public power.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the proposal to the British by Secretary of State Acheson the prior September that the final treaty be drawn with Japan and to that end having developed a proposal, but nixed by the Defense Department. The proposal was that diplomatic means be used to reach agreement among the pro-Western majority of the Far Eastern Commission, difficult for the fact that Australia and the Philippines feared a resurgence of Japanese industrial power. Then, once accomplished, the Soviet Union and Communist China, provided the latter would, as likely, be recognized by a majority of the Commission, would be invited to a treaty conference. If the Soviets attended, they could be outvoted; if not, the conference would proceed anyway. An agreement would be worked out with the Japanese providing for the retention of American bases on the islands.
It was this latter point to which the Joint Chiefs and Undersecretary of Defense Tracy Voorhees objected, on the ground that American bases could commit the U.S. to the defense of Japan in the event of war and that Japan could not be defended within the limits imposed on the defense budget by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson.
General MacArthur supported the State Department proposals and communicated that support to the Joint Chiefs.
The matter was thus left vulnerable to exploitation by the Soviets, as the Western allies and the U.S. Government, internally, were at odds. There was consideration of appointment of a special ambassador to sort matters out, possibly General Walter Beedle Smith, former Ambassador to Moscow.
The dispute between State and the Pentagon likely would go to the National Security Council and then to the President for resolution. It was likely that the President would back Secretary of State Acheson. But until the problem was resolved and a treaty finalized with Japan, the occupation, with all its attendant problems, would have to continue and no effective American policy anywhere in Asia could proceed.
Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., schools, in the twenty-ninth article in his weekly series on childhood education, encourages parents to visit the school of their child to understand better how it operated. At the same time, he was glad that only few parents did so, as visitors on school grounds tended to disrupt the atmosphere. His hope was that the parents could peer into the classrooms without anyone being aware of the fact. But as such was impossible, the wide gap between students and parents persisted.
Now they have the little hidden hatpin cameras and microwave ovens for spying, and so you can do that. What about wiretapping the classroom in 1950? You could also use one of those robots.
He says that in his school, some students had five different teachers and some parents could not name one of them.
In some schools, teachers visited the homes of students and such was helpful in bridging the gap. But it was also time consuming for the teacher to visit so many homes of students, perhaps thirty to forty in the elementary grades, and 140 for the high school teacher with multiple classes in a given subject.
He recommends as a middle course attendance by parents of P.T.A. meetings, concerts, plays, receptions and other such activities at the school.
Each year at graduation, though he could name all of the 120 seniors at his school, he could barely recognize half of the parents, as many had never been in the building previously. He suggests that part of the blame was his own, part that of the parents, and that if more effort had been put forth on getting to know one another, more could have been done for the students.
Yeah, that's true, especially for
those who wind up on death row or skid row or kill their twin sister
with a rifle because they think she acted like a nut
A letter writer criticizes the position of the newspaper on slum clearance and redevelopment, as stated in "Nothing to Lose in This Deal", appearing March 13. He thinks it represented excessive spending of 200 million dollars at a time when the Government was facing a five billion dollar deficit. He regards it as pork barrel politics.
A letter writer finds Secretary of State Acheson's recent seven-point peace proposal to Russia to convey an attitude of "petulant truculence" rather than being a statement of foreign policy. He prefers losing face in negotiations with Russia to a death struggle between the two powers.
A letter from the director of the Charlotte Mint Museum of Art critiques Kenneth Whitsett's mural entitled "Gold", adorning the North Tryon Street Branch of the American Trust Company, finds it to have fulfilled the objectives of such a mural and compliments both the artist and the company for commissioning the work, to which artist Dorothy DeLaney and writer Legette Blythe had also contributed.
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