The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 22, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Acheson had agreed with contentions by Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup that Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges were irresponsible and harmful to the security of the country. The Secretary said that he welcomed the Senate investigation of the Senator's allegations that there were Communists in the State Department, including the supposed presence of the top Russian spy in the country.
Senator McCarthy reportedly had told Senate investigators that he believed the FBI had trailed four Soviet spy suspects to contacts with the individual in the State Department who headed the espionage ring. He was said to have agreed that his charges would stand or fall on this claim. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee chairman Millard Tydings said that the name of the individual had already been provided previously by Senator McCarthy. He said that the Senator had offered no primary evidence to support the claim but had suggested that the subcommittee investigate it through the extant FBI loyalty files.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the Government's employee loyalty program, ruling that any Government employee could be fired by a loyalty board acting under an executive order of the President. The Court, however, found that the board had exceeded its lawful authority in banning an employee from further Government employment for three years. A dissent was filed by one of the three judges on the panel, finding the practice unconstitutional as lacking due process, in that an employee had been found disloyal without being allowed to confront accusers, without evidence and without benefit of a jury. He opined that as dismissal from Government employment for disloyalty was punishment, due process rights were applicable. The majority had determined that as Government employment was a privilege rather than a right, that as there was no property interest at stake in a Government job, due process protections were not invoked. Later, however, the Supreme Court would eliminate this analytical distinction in favor of a determination of whether a property or liberty interest was at issue—albeit nominally the analysis conducted by the Court of Appeals in 1950.
The Supreme Court granted a petition for writ of certiorari in the case, and in 1951 the Court, at 341 U.S. 918, affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals, in an opinion which, mysteriously, is not included in the online reports.
In Rome, police kept down violence in a Communist-led general strike, arresting 3,000 persons and suppressing demonstrations throughout the country. The police used blue-colored water shot through fire hoses to disperse the crowds. It left stains on the clothes of the demonstrators so that they could be identified.
Why not red?
The first four of 70 B-29 bombers supplied by the U.S. to Britain under the military aid program arrived in Marham, England, this date.
In Kosciusko, Miss., two white men, in separate trials, were sentenced to life imprisonment for their convictions for murder of the youngest of three black children, ages 4, 8, and 12, each of whom they were accused of killing. The prosecutor had sought the death penalty but the jury was unable to agree on punishment and so the court imposed the life sentence as the maximum available on each defendant. The defendants also faced potential separate trials on the other two murders. A third defendant was also to be tried in the case, a brother of one of the convicted men. The three men had believed that the parents of the three children were responsible for their arrest for burglary of the home and attempted rape of the mother the prior December. They had then escaped from jail and returned to the farm for vengeance.
In Washington, N.C., the Beaufort County Grand Jury indicted Col. C. R. Tolar, State Highway Patrol commander, on charges of reckless driving and improper use of his siren at a funeral on February 28. Commander Tolar, despite being flagged to stop by patrolmen directing traffic for the funeral, allegedly continued to proceed with his siren running. The incident caused great indignation in the county, prompting the prosecution. The commander had said that he was on his way to investigate a wreck, the report of which turned out to have been prompted only by the large number of cars stopped alongside the highway for the funeral.
The sales manager and engineer of Kendrick Brick Co. were planning to attend a state-wide sales conference the following day at the O. Henry Hotel in Greensboro.
Make sure there are no cats
A proposal was made by the Chamber of Commerce to the Charlotte City Council that the City seek title to the U.S. Army Quartermaster Depot for one dollar, appoint an authority to handle its rental and use the income for maintenance of municipal airports. Mobile, Ala., had followed this procedure.
The Federal Government granted over a million dollars to Chattanooga, Tenn., for slum clearance and redevelopment.
The Charlotte City Council asked the Federal Government to reserve $700,000 for use in proposed slum clearance and redevelopment when and if the State Legislature, next to meet in 1951, approved its receipt.
In Nashville, the Southern Baptist Convention committee selected Wake Forest, N.C., as the site of the new seminary for the Southeast. It would occupy the campus of Wake Forest College, to be abandoned upon the College's move to Winston-Salem. Charlotte had sought to be the site of the new seminary.
Parts of chapters fifty and fifty-one 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, "Experiment at Butner" tells of the State Hospitals Board of Control planning to open an alcohol rehabilitation center at Camp Butner the following May or June, with facilities for treating about fifty patients. Yet, there were thousands of known alcoholics in the state. Until the Butner facility grew substantially, Dix Hill, the State mental asylum, would continue to have to admit alcoholics, making treatment difficult for both the mentally ill and the alcoholics.
Meanwhile, attention would be focused on the new facility to see if voluntary commitment and departure would work to effect treatment. It was a necessary supplement to the health care system as private hospitals usually did not admit alcoholics for treatment. And there were not enough psychiatrists to provide such treatment to those who wanted it. Alcoholism, it offers, being considered an illness, had become a public responsibility.
"The Cost of War Goes On and On" tells of the budget for the Defense Department being 13.9 billion dollars, that of the V.A., 5.8 billion, and atomic energy, a little under a billion, more than two-thirds of the 29 billion total in the omnibus appropriations bill. Departmental and agency requests were reduced by the House Appropriations Committee by about five percent, but generally it went along with the President's recommendations.
The piece finds it unlikely that, with peace not yet achieved, the Congress would stray far from the recommendations of the Appropriations Committee.
"The Case against Chartreuse
The reason for the styling change was so that hair could match dress colors. But the piece suggests instead buying a blonde, black or brown dress.
Don't forget red—even
if red was probably considered too subversive
A piece from the New York Times, titled "Britain and American Aid", finds appropriate Congressman Clare Hoffman's proposal that 150 million dollars of Marshall Plan aid for Britain in 1950 be provided to the European Payments Union, founded for the purpose of stimulating intra-European trade through liberalizing payments. Britain remained on the fence as to whether it intended to join the Union, and the withholding would provide an incentive for it to do so, even if membership would entail a number of problems for the British.
Senator Tom Connally's proposal to cancel all Marshall Plan aid to Britain unless and until it abandoned its discrimination against American oil interests would be counter-productive, the piece finds, as Britain needed to preserve its dollars and such a policy would serve to penalize it for doing so.
The problems had long been recognized and efforts were underway to solve them, but they could only be solved, it offers, through mutual accommodation, not by U.S. fiat.
Drew Pearson tells of certain aspects of the foreign situation and American civil defense preparedness of which few Americans were aware. The future nuclear defense of Washington and other major cities would require a ring of fire stations along the end of a fifteen mile radius around the periphery of the city. The existing fire stations in the center of the city would be wiped out in the case of enemy attack. Some 10,000 to 15,000 firemen would be trained to man the stations around Washington, about 100,000 for those around New York City. He suggests that peace would be cheaper. (As the cold war would advance, "ring of fire stations" would take on an entirely different meaning, in reference to nuclear missile sites surrounding strategic cities.)
French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman had told critics of the American arms program for France under NATO that it would permit the country to defend itself against Germany, not mentioning Russia.
Europeans who were non-Communists, in reliance on Senator McCarthy, believed America was governed by Communists, while Communists hated the country, claiming it to be providing aid in furtherance of imperialism. Mr. Pearson suggests that Senator McCarthy had done a great job for Moscow, confusing the Europeans.
Senators on Capitol Hill agreed that Senator McCarthy was not doing well but was likely winning votes for Republicans. Senator Taft had said that the longer the Senator talked, the more people would believe that he had something, even if he probably did not.
In the Midwest, the drift toward isolation continued.
Some Senate leaders wanted the President to fire Secretary of State Acheson as he had lost much political favor.
Russia was planning to take over Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania. Poland was already under a Russian dictator. Moscow wanted all Americans out from behind the iron curtain.
The President, vacationing in Key West, was oblivious to his slipping foreign policy and increasing bitterness in Congress, both among Democrats and Republicans. They believed that after the 1948 election he had become boastful, in contrast to his formerly humble demeanor.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the leader of Republican bipartisan foreign policy, was ill in the Wardman Park Hotel and might never return to the Senate floor. Less responsible Republicans were running "berserk" in his absence.
The Democratic leaders wanted the President to invite moderate Republicans as Governors Earl Warren and Thomas Dewey, and Harold Stassen, to discuss the vital issues of the day.
The Red Army had additional troops and mechanized divisions now along the Yugoslav-Hungarian border, and had equipped them with maps of the Yugoslav airports and Danube bridges. It appeared that the Soviets were planning a push in the spring against Yugoslavia. Virtual war had already begun.
Marquis Childs examines the economy in terms of growth and unemployment, finding the latter figure at 4.7 million for February, expected to be higher in March but inclusive of those laid off during the coal strike. Employment figures did not reflect partial employment. Most economists foresaw a gradual rise in unemployment, as also predicted by acting chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Leon Keyserling. He had pointed to the fact that 1948 was the most productive year the country had ever had, with most forecasts of future years trying to sustain that level. Yet, even if the production level of 1948 should be maintained, he warned, there would be 10 to 12 million unemployed by 1954. His remedy was to expand the economy to provide more jobs. But he projected that productivity would fall short by three to four percent of the needed jobs.
In 1949, output was about one percent below 1948 and unemployment was 3.5 percent of employment, whereas in 1948 it had been 1.8 percent of employment.
Mr. Keyserling had found that the reason for the trend was that there was an increasing rate of production per man hour, making it possible to produce more with fewer workers. Young people had been pouring into the job market immediately after the war and pushing men of 40 or 50 out of their old jobs, rendering them unemployed.
Republicans would likely exploit the jobless rate when it surpassed five million in July, even though that rate would be temporarily burgeoned by the large influx of high school and college graduates to the job market. By October, just before the elections, unemployment would subside again. But the issue of creeping unemployment would not thereby be resolved.
Absent war, the issue, Mr. Childs predicts, would be central to the 1952 campaign, by which time unemployment would reach six to seven million, exhausting the savings and benefits of the older jobless. It was a cloud, he stresses, already on the horizon.
Robert C. Ruark, in Houston, tells of the first anniversary of the opening of the Shamrock Hotel on the outskirts of Houston, owned by oil magnate Glenn McCarthy. The previous year's dire predictions for the twenty million dollar hotel because of its remoteness to the downtown area had proved to be unfounded. Business was booming and downtown Houston was coming to the hotel.
A huge crowd turned out for the anniversary, but was more docile than the grand opening crowd which received unfavorable treatment in the press. Dinah Shore was on hand to sing for more than an hour.
Toward the end of the affair, someone said: "There must be some poor people, somewhere. Everybody can't be this rich."
A letter writer finds City Hall in need of a vacuum cleaner, in light of the fact that cars were traveling around the city without dimming their headlights and no one would respond at City Hall to his repeated letters complaining of the condition. He provides the letters he had sent to the Mayor.
Just stay at home at night.
A letter writer provides an excerpt from a piece appearing in U.S. News & World Report, regarding the desire of Western European countries to pull out of the cold war, wanting the U.S. to change its policies, absent which, the trend might be toward neutrality as between the U.S. and Russia.
A letter writer says that the American people had lost their self-respect because there was no one worthy of their respect in high office in the executive and judicial branches of the Federal Government, and the "paltry few" in Congress were eclipsed by the unworthy in the other two branches. Both FDR and President Truman had intentionally been perfidious, he suggests, and the majority of the people knew it. Thus, the 1952 presidential election presented an opportunity for a man of "shining integrity" to alleviate this betrayal.
He may have done slud into third under a high ball smashed hard into far right field.
Framed Edition
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