The Charlotte News

Friday, March 3, 1950

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President would ask Congress this date for the power to seize and operate the coal mines, as a remedy for the ongoing strike which UMW had sought to end and in consequence had been found the previous day not to be in contempt of the Federal temporary restraining order of February 11 ending the strike. The court, meanwhile, issued, pursuant to Taft-Hartley, an 80-day injunction to end the strike, ordering the miners and operators to bargain in good faith in the interim. But the court continued to lack the means of enforcement as long as UMW ordered the miners to return to work without their compliance.

Arthur Krock of The New York Times reported that John L. Lewis claimed that the nation's health and safety were not imperiled by the coal strike, that there was enough coal to meet the nation's needs if fairly distributed.

In London, the Labor Government announced that it would not retreat from its planned nationalization of the iron and steel industry, as had been rumored, despite only a seven-seat victory in Commons in the elections of the previous week.

France agreed with the Saar to give the occupied region more autonomy in return for control of its rich coal mines for the ensuing 50 years. France still retained power over the region's foreign relations and military security. France promised the border areas, still claimed by Germany, complete autonomy at the end of 50 years. The title "Republic of the Saar" was given the region by the pact, which was still subject to the final Allied peace treaty with Germany. France had detached the region from Germany after the war and provided the Government a form of political autonomy while still economically linked to France.

In Rangoon, Burma, U.S. Embassy officials announced that the beating death of a 67-year old American missionary nurse had occurred after torture by Burmese bandits. Ten natives had been killed with her during an ambush of their car along a road two miles from a point of safety. The bandits kidnaped the woman and took her into the jungle after saying that they wanted a ransom for her safe return. Kidnapings in the area had been occurring often in recent months.

The Veterans Administration said that it was firing 7,800 employees nationwide because it lacked the money to pay them.

According to the National Safety Council, 2,430 persons died in traffic accidents nationwide in January, 1950, compared to 2,340 in January, 1949. The South Central states had five percent fewer accidents than the previous year and the Pacific states, 27 percent fewer.

The reductions were attributed to use of a better toothpaste in the mornings before driving to work than had been widely used in 1949.

In North Carolina, the mayors of the six cities, including Charlotte, affected by the dispute between Duke Power Co. and its bus drivers would meet to try to resolve the impasse encountered in the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen's reluctance to agree to terms of appointment of a fact-finding board, after agreeing in principle to the proposal.

In Manchester, N.H., in the trial of the doctor accused of first degree murder for the euthanasia of a terminally ill cancer patient, it was disclosed by the defense in its opening statement that the defendant would testify in an attempt to show that the patient was already dead at the time he injected air into her veins. During the prosecution's case, the claim had been corroborated by a doctor who attended the patient before the arrival of the defendant at her bedside. But the chief prosecution expert claimed that death had resulted from an embolism caused by the injection of air. The defense was going to claim that the amount of air the doctor injected was 28 cubic centimeters, not the 40 cubic centimeters claimed by the State. The defense case was about to begin, following denial by the court of a motion for directed verdict in favor of the accused, such a motion typically claiming that the prosecution had not, as a matter of law, offered evidence of one or more elements of the offense.

In Rensselaer, N.Y., a woman who had left home a week earlier, thinking that she had cancer, returned to her husband and three young children, still not convinced that she was not suffering from the disease. She had gone to Oklahoma to stay with her brother, who convinced her to return to her family.

In Pennsauken, N.J., a group of girls at the local junior high school were instructed to write themes on their ideal home, prompting one student to write that after she was married, she would have a love seat in her living room and that it would be used.

By whom?

Part of chapter nine of The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler appears on the front page as part of the serialization by The News of the book.

On the editorial page, "Wire-Tapping Fiction" tells of the Washington Post having set the record straight regarding the claim by a former FBI agent in a letter to President Truman that FDR in 1941 had approved limited wire-tapping of those involved in espionage and kidnaping. The former agent had used the claimed directive as a justification for the current practice in such limited cases.

But the Post had tracked down the original correspondence and found that FDR had only been responding to a letter from former Congressman Thomas Eliot, seeking the opinion of the President on wire-tapping legislation then pending before Congress, never passed. The President had responded that, generally, wire-tapping was unacceptable and that legislation allowing such limited use as in kidnaping cases and espionage would be the only permissible exceptions. That was a far cry from actually condoning the practice and issuing an order allowing it, as claimed by the former FBI agent. President Roosevelt had only remarked on permissible legislation never passed, and, indeed, said: "As an instrument for oppression of free citizens, I can think of none worse than indiscriminate wire tapping..." He had condemned the proposed legislation as then written for going too far.

"Charlotte Gets Another Industry" welcomes Kroehler Manufacturing Co., which had recently announced that it would build a plant for the manufacture of upholstered furniture in Charlotte, employing about 200 persons. It thanks the Chamber of Commerce for attracting the company.

"Of Banning Books" tells of the director of the Charlotte Public Library assuring that the library did not ban books for their content or subject matter and only refused to carry a book for its being poorly written or being distributed for a profiteering motive. The statement came in response to complaint that the library had banned Paul Blanchard's anti-Catholic best-seller, American Freedom and Catholic Power. But the Library had three copies of that book, as well as many books which were strongly pro-Catholic.

The piece suggests that there was no more odious practice in a democracy than to ban books and so finds the director's statements reassuring.

"Cortisone and ACTH" tells of The New York Times science editor, Walter Kaempffert, the previous Sunday having deplored the confusion prompted by two opposing medical opinions being offered anent the value of the two new wonder drugs in treating arthritis and rheumatism. The Arthritis and Rheumatism Foundation favored their use and believed the various side effects would not be a problem when more was known about the drugs. The Council of Pharmacy of the AMA, however, had condemned their use because of the side effects, which included abnormal hair growth, diabetes, rashes, high blood pressure, swelling, round faces, and mental damage.

Both organizations, the piece asserts, ought know whereof they spoke and the public, caught in the middle, would eagerly await the final determination before embarking on use of the drugs, available only by prescription.

There are more "Turpentine Drippings" presented, for the second day in a row, though these snippets from newspapers from around the state are not ascribed to collection by Bill Sharpe. One from the Smithfield Herald tells of a little boy in the second grade who was assigned memorization of a Biblical verse, "Be not afraid, it is I." After careful rehearsal in front of his mother such that he appeared to have it down, he then went to school and pronounced: "Don't be scared, 'taint nobody but me."

The same newspaper told of Mrs. Blow not using her full name for it involving five names before her married surname, one for each of the mother's four closest friends and her maiden surname.

The Moore County News tells of handling a highway "'petroleum' with such grace" that they could not suspect him of not being on their team.

The Fuquay Springs Independent informs that dried berries were once the largest industry in Winston-Salem, before tobacco had come to town, so much so that the Greensboro to Winston train was known as the "berry train", picking up sacks of dried blackberries at the destination. One company had a $50,000 annual business in dried fruit.

The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem tells of a preacher at the First Presbyterian Church explaining the symptoms of love: stardust in the eyes, funny things running up and down the spine, and an itch you couldn't scratch.

He left out the heart palpitations and the sudden inability to speak.

Drew Pearson devotes his entire column to a reprint of a satirical column drafted by the Circus of Saints and Sinners of New York, regarding his dispute a year earlier with Maj. General Harry Vaughan, the President's military aide, for the decoration of the General by Argentine dictator Juan Peron, prompting the President to refer to Mr. Pearson as an "S.O.B." The mock piece, written in the persona of Mr. Pearson, finds the initials to mean, however, only "Sweet Old Bungler", and has Mr. Pearson apologizing to the General profusely and General Vaughan trying hard to get the President to accept the apology, to no avail.

And it goes on, making reference to the various scandals which Mr. Pearson had exposed involving the General, including the pressure placed on the Housing Expediter to provide favorable treatment to the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno, California, in acquisition of postwar building materials reserved for veterans, the five percenter scheme involving John Maragon and steerage of Government contracts through the juice provided at the White House by General Vaughan, and the free freezers Mr. Maragon arranged through a perfume importer for General Vaughan to give as gifts to the First Lady, then Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, and others.

Marquis Childs discusses the proposed Lodge amendment to the Constitution to make the electoral votes proportional to the popular vote in each state and the objection being registered to it by the Americans for Democratic Action, though garnering the support of Senator Hubert Humphrey, national chairman of ADA, and most of the liberals in the Senate among the 67 Senators who voted for it.

In the House, the bill was sponsored by Congressman Ed Gossett of Texas, a reactionary on civil rights, and he forthrightly proclaimed it as a means to end "irresponsible control and domination by small organized minority groups within the large pivotal states", naming blacks, Jews, and the radical wing of organized labor as those beneficiary groups under the electoral college system.

Senator Taft opposed the amendment on the basis that in a close national election it would eliminate the chance of a Republican victory. The ADA opposed it on the ground that it would give too much power to the South.

The proposed amendment had less chance of passage in the House.

Mr. Childs offers that something clearly needed to be done to change the antiquated convention of the electoral college, but suggests that perhaps the Lodge amendment was not the best remedy, that an alternative proposed amendment sponsored by Senator Homer Ferguson, abolishing the electoral college while retaining the unit-rule system and providing that if a candidate failed to receive a majority, the matter would be settled by a combined vote of the Senate and House, would be the better answer.

Robert C. Ruark tells of sounding out opinion from several doctors whom he knew regarding the first degree murder case against the Manchester, N.H., doctor for euthanasia of a terminally ill patient by injecting air into her veins. The opinions were unanimous that the 40 cubic centimeters of air alleged to have been injected would not have been enough to kill a person, at least a person not already dying of some other cause, in the instant case, cancer.

Furthermore, the standard practice with terminally ill patients was to leave barbiturates and opiates within arm's reach, sufficient to enable the patient to end his or her life if desired.

If anything, they said, the doctor only hurried by a short time that which would have occurred amid great pain a little while later.

The woman who had fatally shot her father in the head as he lay in the hospital dying of cancer had been acquitted. So, Mr. Ruark suggests that it was all the more reason why the doctor, exercising professional judgment, also should be acquitted, as he had not even clearly ended the patient's life. He views therefore the whole matter as generating excitement about little or nothing. Indeed, those of the medical profession whom he knew were remarkably unexcited about it.

A letter from Mayor Victor Shaw of Charlotte thanks the newspaper for its editorial congratulating him for coming up with the proposal which worked to postpone the threatened bus strike by Duke Power Co. drivers. He defers to two others for having arranged the meeting which led to the acceptance of the temporary ten-day truce.

A letter writer says that he was certain that the Missionary Baptists of America, of which he was a member, could not be proud of "our little swearing President with his swagger and poker games." He urges "the good people of America" to stand up and fight the President's "Socialist Welfare State", before they found their liberties gone. He implores God to save the country from the fate of Great Britain.

A letter writer notes that the man accused of hiring the person who had allegedly tried to blow up the WBT radio tower, but for intervention by the police who were aware of the plot, had not resigned his post on the Park & Recreation Commission. He urges the newspaper to urge the City Council to take action to remove him.

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