The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 27, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Berlin, East Germany's Communist youth paid homage this date to Russia's war dead, as part of their celebration of Whitsuntide. West German police patrolled the Western sectors on high alert. There were only a few minor incidents reported amid general calm in the city. Three East German police abducted a German from the American sector and fired on Western police with their carbines when the latter gave chase. Another similar incident had occurred the previous night, but was interrupted by British police as two Communist youths were pushing a political refugee into an Eastbound elevated train. Some fourteen deserters fled from the Eastern police to the Western sectors.
In Detroit, Representative John Lesinski, considered one of labor's champions in Congress, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 65. He had served eighteen years in Congress and chaired the Education and Labor Committee. He had opposed Taft-Hartley.
In Hartford, Conn., the jury in the
libel suit brought by entertainers Larry Adler
Columnist Bruce Barton tells of a friend who had recently reported sadness over receipt from the Treasury of a check for a thousand dollars on the maturity of a 1940 savings bond, which he had hoped would take him to Florida in 1950 when he purchased it a decade earlier. But now he no longer had any desire to go to Florida, or to the Kentucky Derby with the proceeds of a second matured bond, causing him to be sad.
Mr. Barton, at age seven, had spent a summer with a farmer and his wife who worshiped money and constantly reminded him of how much various things cost.
He finds that thrift was a pleasing virtue but also an ugly vice.
John Ruskin had told the story of a man on a sinking ship who so wanted to take his money with him that he strapped on his money belt laden with gold as the ship was going down, and promptly sunk to the bottom. Mr. Ruskin had wondered whether, as the man was sinking, he had the money or the money had him.
In North Carolina, about a half million Democrats went to the polls in the special Senate primary this date between Senator Frank Graham, Willis Smith, and former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds. Six Congressional races were also being contested. The turnout was heavy and early across the state. The record turnout for a primary had been 516,000, set in 1936. The campaign between Senator Graham and Mr. Smith had been one of the most bitter in the state's history and, according to predictions, would get worse if a runoff were necessitated for want of one candidate polling a majority. Mr. Smith had claimed that Senator Graham's various memberships through the years on committees which appeared on the Government's subversive list and his support of the "socialism" of the Fair Deal implied a sympathy for Communism.
Voting in Mecklenburg County also appeared fairly heavy, with about 20,000 voters expected based on early polling. There were 46,000 registered voters in the county. A noontime precinct-by-precinct tally is provided.
In Callender, Okla., the Dionne quintuplets, who would turn sixteen the following day, were not yet permitted to date boys, according to their father, and had no interest in doing so at present.
On the editorial page, "Setting the Record Straight" takes to task the publicity man for Willis Smith, Hoover Adams, for his deceitful ad appearing in The News, in which it was suggested that a committee of which Senator Frank Graham had been a member in the mid-Thirties had been involved in trying to get American youths to go to Moscow to study Communism under Russian teachers, when actually it had been designed to provide American educators an opportunity to observe educational methods in Russia. In addition to Mr. Graham, Dr. Harry Woodburn Chase, former president of UNC, Edward R. Murrow of CBS radio, Hallie Flanagan of Vassar, Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago, and philosopher John Dewey had also been members.
The piece finds the effort to have been perfectly appropriate for the purpose of better understanding Communism.
It concludes that there were real issues in the campaign to be addressed and that such deceptive ads only distracted from those issues.
You appear not to understand the fact that most of the supporters of Mr. Smith could barely, if at all, read. What's your excuse?
"James Addison Jones" tells of the death at age 80 of a man who rose from poverty to wealth in the construction industry in Charlotte, having established J. A. Jones Construction Co. in 1894. During the late war, the company had been involved in defense projects in the Canal Zone and across the country, and after the war had been responsible for projects at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Richland, Wash., atomic energy installations.
"Mrs. Cameron Morrison" pays tribute to the late wife of the former Governor and Senator, who had just passed away the previous day in Charlotte and had been active in the community despite being a shy and retiring person, especially in her later years.
"Of Birds and Flowers" tells of the Manchester Guardian's "Country Diary" by "J.K.A." and "R.M.G.", regarding the flora and fauna of England, the former concentrating on birds of the parks and suburbs and the latter, concerned with the rural life around Yorkshire, inclusive of all animals and flowers.
It says that its opinion of the
column, however, was akin to that of the little girl who gave a report
on a book about pen
Drew Pearson tells of the President informing the Democratic Congressional leaders that Secretary of State Acheson, in his London conferences, had performed brilliantly and was the best Secretary since Charles Evans Hughes. He said that Secretary Acheson would make a tour of the country to explain what he had accomplished.
Supreme Court observers found that Justice Tom Clark was showing great promise while Justice Sherman Minton had been a disappointment, both about to end their first term on the Court.
The twelve Nazi SS men who had been convicted of the Malmedy massacre of 350 defenseless American POW's in December, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, had still not been executed, thanks to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his contentions that they had been railroaded through coerced confessions. No shred of evidence, however, had turned up in a Senate investigation of the matter to suggest that they were not guilty as charged.
Political scouts in Wisconsin reported that if Senator McCarthy had been running for re-election in 1950, he would be beaten.
A third black member of Congress, Theodore Spaulding, a Republican, appeared likely to come from Philadelphia in the fall election. Congressmen Adam Clayton Powell of New York and William Dawson of Chicago were the only black members at present.
Mr. Pearson has saved all of his short snippets for the week for this one column and the bulk of it therefore defies summary.
Marquis Childs tells of a Western European ambassador recently taking a tour of the Western U.S. and finding vast acceptance of the notion that a third world war was inevitable, only the time being subject to question. That feeling ran contrary to the optimism expressed by the President following his Midwestern and Western tour earlier in the month. Another world war would mean the end of Western European civilization as it was known, with military estimates suggesting that such a war would continue for up to twenty years and devastate Europe.
So, he finds that it was time to determine who wanted war between the U.S. and Russia. The first group were the Nationalist Chinese who believed that a third world war, in which the U.S. would be victorious, would restore Chiang Kai-Shek to power in mainland China. They believed that the third world war had already begun and that the sooner the U.S. realized it and became directly involved, the better. They were supporting the McCarthy attacks on the State Department in an effort to discredit American Far Eastern policy. Their immediate goal was to prevent recognition of Communist China in the U.N.
The exiles from Eastern and Central Europe also wanted a third world war in the hope that defeat of Russia would enable them to return to their homelands. Many of them were brave and noble, but suffered from naivete in their political beliefs, clinging to the past. Atomic bombs could not be used, as they believed, for strategic advantage without killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including their fellow countrymen.
Another general class of persons who would like such a confrontation were the military men wishing a preemptive war. The group appeared small, primarily the theorists in the Air Force, favoring a first nuclear strike while the U.S. still held nuclear superiority.
A third general class were the former Communists and Trotskyites along with other anti-American groups, including former Communist officials who had been ousted from power. He leaves this last group for treatment in a future column.
Robert C. Ruark tells of baseball player Ted Williams having recently made an obscene gesture at Boston Red Sox fans who were razzing him, finds it emblematic of sports generally in the time. Ty Cobb and Ben Chapman, he recalls, had gone into the stands after such unruly fans. Leo Durocher had broken the jaw of a heckler, to the delight of many.
He finds that persons in the public eye only needed to cater to their fans so much before a line could be drawn.
Frank Sinatra was criticized when he was seen associating with gangsters while he was being promoted as a youth leader and political force, but since he had gone back to concentrating on his singing, was being left alone. A Supreme Court justice who hung around nightclubs was only hurting himself, just as a ballplayer who hung out with bookies.
He had seen Joe DiMaggio take abuse from fans with dignity and regards it as no privilege of fans to heap such abuse on any player or performer.
He concludes that an apology tendered by Ted Williams was likely dictated by the club owners and was completely insincere, but did not matter because the fan who opened his big mouth in gratuitous insult was asking for a "mouthful of knuckles".
Tom Schlesinger of The News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of the last minute consensus on Capitol Hill giving a plurality of the vote to Senator Graham in this date's primary, necessitating a runoff—an accurate prediction.
Senator Clyde Hoey was ready, if reluctant, to have his subcommittee undertake the investigation into homosexuals in the Government. The Senator believed that they posed security risks for being subject to blackmail. He said that Senator McCarthy of the subcommittee would not serve in any such inquiry as it had been his charges which spawned the investigation—ironic as that would eventually become, based on his subsequent staff.
North Carolina had 136 persons naturalized as citizens in 1949, compared to 21,174 in New York, and 66,594 nationally.
Paul Green's drama on the career of George Washington, to be presented as part of the Sesquicentennial celebration of the nation's capital during the summer, was to be titled "Faith of Our Fathers".
North Carolina ranked second to Texas in number of farmers, giving Congressman Harold Cooley, chairman of the Agriculture Committee, a lot of weight on farm issues for two reasons. A new, alternative farm plan to be proposed by Mr. Cooley and Oklahoma Senator Elmer Thomas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was therefore anticipated with eagerness. Neither supported the Brannan plan.
Senator Graham was against the Brannan plan, as attested in a letter to him from former Secretary of Agriculture, now Senator, Clinton Anderson of New Mexico.
The House Ways & Means Committee, chaired by Robert Doughton of North Carolina, was still looking for revenue to make up for the billion dollars in cuts of excise taxes which it had approved. It was believed that corporate taxes would have to make up the difference to avoid the President's veto for not balancing cuts in revenue with either new revenue or cuts in spending.
Senator Hoey said that he would have opposed the full 35 million dollars appropriated for the President's "Point Four" technical assistance program to underdeveloped nations, even had he known that North Carolina's Capus Waynick was to be appointed temporarily to administer the program.
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