The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 9, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, in a piece by Douglas B. Cornell, that acting AEC chairman Sumner Pike had told a press conference this date that hydrogen bomb development was "entirely in the lap of the gods", that effort was being made but that progress would only be signified by the detonation of a bomb, and the chances of that occurring were "somewhere between probable and possible." He also said that the prediction of chief of Naval operations Admiral Forrest Sherman that an atomic-powered submarine would be developed by 1952 was optimistic. Lawrence Hafstad, director of the AEC reactor program, said that there was no less emphasis on development of atomic power for industrial purposes in the wake of the Russian detonation of an atomic bomb, as announced the previous September by the President.
In Berlin, Russia said in a diplomatic note that it would agree to city-wide elections provided Allied troops would move more than a hundred miles into West Germany, to the other side of the Elbe River, in which case, it said, Russian troops would also withdraw, albeit only to the outskirts of the city. Maj. General Maxwell Taylor, American occupation chief in Berlin, said that he found little encouragement in the note, words echoed by the British commandant, the latter adding that at least the Russians had responded to the Western appeals for free elections. General Taylor said that he was consoled by the fact that the note tacitly recognized the great desire by the people of Berlin for a unified city.
The President, during his cross-country tour by train, arrived in Casper, Wyo., discussing water and land development, praising Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan for his farm plan, and scoffing at the "reactionary forces" who cried "socialism" and "regimentation".
In Washington, Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska rejoined that the farm program was an "economic monstrosity" and claimed the President was "playing politics with the farmers' problems, trying to please CIO bosses and the Americans for Democratic Action". Representative Harold Cooley of North Carolina, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, stated that the Congress's rejection of the Brannan plan the previous year even on a trial-run basis regarding certain commodities had not been altered.
Other members of Congress criticized the President's trip generally as advocating new ways of spending money and as a political stunt costing the taxpayers a quarter million dollars.
As pictured, among the President's stops the previous day was one in Ottumwa, Iowa, where children presented him with a birthday cake in honor of his 66th birthday. Whether he sought to provide solace to the 21 high school seniors of Ottumwa being held back by school officials from graduation for their poor grammar were not indicated specifically for the present, either temporally or the material manifestation of. But may be they had improvemented sufficient enough which now means they could of graduated in time for their graduation.
The House was set to add an additional 350 million dollars to the defense budget primarily for increased air power, to be included in the 29 billion dollar omnibus appropriations bill, about to go to a vote.
During debate on the measure, Congressman Stephen Young of Ohio claimed, without verification of the report, that a U.S. warship had recently sunk a "strange submarine" with depth charges off the U.S. coast. The Navy said that it had received no such report or that any foreign submarine had been spotted in coastal waters.
The Senate Post Office Committee voted unanimously to approve a resolution directing the Postmaster General to abandon his order directing the cancellation of a second daily residential mail delivery service and shortening post office window hours.
The House Ways & Means Committee cut the excise tax on cigars by 15 million dollars per year, a third of the tax collected on cigars. The cut brought the total reduction of excise taxes to about a billion dollars, considerably more than the 655 million sought by the President.
The House Labor Committee argued among themselves regarding whether to summon John L. Lewis on the issue of whether he had given secret signals to local UMW officials, as some had claimed, to induce the members to walk off the job during the recent strike, against court orders to return to work, which, ostensibly, Mr. Lewis and UMW officials had directed the miners to obey. Decision on the matter was postponed.
The Southern Railway imposed a sweeping embargo on freight, passenger, mail and express traffic, as a precaution in anticipation of a possible strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers the following morning at 6:00. Other railroads to be impacted by the pending strike also began curtailing service.
In Tokyo, thirty Japanese soldiers were reported holed up on Anathan Island, 70 miles north of Saipan, refusing to believe that the war had ended in Japan's defeat. The Japanese Government, when informed by the repatriation commission of the fact, asked relatives to write to them regarding the surrender.
"East wind rain."
Spring floods from torrential rains which had beset Minnesota, North Dakota, and Canada's Red River valley, had spread to Southeastern Nebraska, where at least one person had drowned and a dozen others were missing. The worst flood to hit Lincoln, Neb., since 1908 took place hours after the departure of President Truman during his cross-country train tour—no doubt visiting, in no uncertain terms, the wrath of the gods on the town for turning out for socialism and the godless credo of collectivism and, then, despite pouring rain at 7th and Q Streets, having the unmitigated gall to sing to him "Happy Birthday". Unconfirmed reports said that a bus carrying nine passengers, only two of whom had been found, had been swept off the road at Syracuse, Nebraska.
In Cabano, Quebec, a fire was reported raging out of control, with thirty buildings destroyed and the fire still unchecked. The town was 65 miles from Rimouski, where a fire had destroyed a large portion of the town during the weekend, one of the worst fires in Canadian history, though without producing any deaths.
In Grimsby, England, a man announced in court that he had been drunk since 1946, costing him the U.S. equivalent of $61,600, which he had acquired from the sale of his butcher shop. He was explaining to a judge why he resorted to theft of two diamond rings for which he was sentenced to four months in jail.
In Massena, N.Y., a theater
instituted a rule that cap pistols had to be checked at the door
before entering for the movie as children, following passage of a law legalizing
the pistols, had been firing them off during the cinematic
presentations
On the editorial page, "Good News and Bad" tells of the good news that the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, representing the Duke Power bus drivers and mechanics, and Duke Power company officials had accepted the fact-finding board recommendation of an 8.5 cent net increase in pay to settle the dispute which had threatened a strike of the drivers in six North Carolina cities served by Duke. The union had demanded 20 cents per hour in increase while the company had offered three cents.
But there was also bad news in that the board ignored the company's contention that profits from electricity could not be used by the company to subsidize the bus system, losing money. Thus, if true, the higher wages would produce either higher fares or reduced service to compensate for the loss. It urges therefore State legislation to protect the public better from transportation interruptions by providing machinery to resolve disputes in a smooth manner, and thus avoid the necessity of another ad hoc response, wise though it had been in the Duke dispute.
"Economy Begins at Home" discusses the attempt of North Carolina Senators Clyde Hoey and Frank Graham to get the Senate to restore a million dollars in funding lopped from the appropriation by the House for six national parkways, which originally included 1.5 million dollars, of the five million total sought by the Administration, for new construction on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Western North Carolina. But Senators Willis Robertson and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, normally advocates of the parkways, disfavored the increase as being a luxury in times of need for cutback.
Despite the relatively small amount in issue, the piece favors economy with respect to such a purely luxury item as the parkway.
But would it facilitate tourism to the extent that, on balance, there would be a benefit?
"Tragedy on the Catawba" tells of two preventable tragedies during the weekend, one in which a small, overloaded metal motorboat, with three adults and three children, had taken all aboard to their deaths, and the other, in which a small, leaking rowboat with three adults aboard sank, drowning all three.
Both accidents, it suggests, could have been avoided with greater care and responsibility exercised by boaters and swimmers on the usually calm waters of the Catawba.
Ye better warn 'em again against the naked sun bathers along the shore. That may have done been part of the problem, seeing the naked people on the shore, done got distracted, crashed their boats or hurriedly took a leaky one to get a better viewpoint.
"Enough of McCarthyism" supports the resolution of GOP Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont to bar further public hearings on the McCarthy charges, that the harm being done to the country, both in public employee morale and confidence abroad, was not being counter-balanced by any public benefit.
After the fiasco of Senator McCarthy's charges that Owen Lattimore was the top Communist in the country and was responsible for the State Department's Far Eastern policy which led to the fall of China to the Communists, claims which had not received any substantiation, the Senator now had claimed that an unnamed U.S. envoy in a European country was a "foreign agent", a charge which the editorial takes with a grain of salt. The diplomatic corps comprised the front line in the cold war and deserved better treatment. Thus, it concludes that the "shoddy exhibition" should be halted.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Weeds", discusses the perniciously obstinate recurrence of weeds and the difficulty in getting rid of them. It decides that perhaps a better method of eradication would be to plant and cultivate weeds in a particular area, away from the plants which were desirable.
Drew Pearson looks at the facts adduced regarding the shooting down over the Baltic of an unarmed U.S. Navy Privateer on April 8 by a Russian plane on the pretext that the American plane was over Latvia taking pictures of defense installations. He says that the Russians knew of the plane's takeoff and mission from the time it left its base in Morocco, that it was equipped with electronics capable of surveillance of Russian amphibious maneuvers and the flight of Russian rockets above its most secret rocket-testing area over the Baltic. The advance knowledge may have come from posting on a public bulletin board at the base the crew list and its members' ratings, showing that they were electronics specialists.
The plane was about thirty miles off the Latvian coast when four Russian fighter planes appeared as the U.S. plane headed toward the Russian base at Libau. The British witnessed the remainder of the incident via airborne radar. The Russians ordered the plane to land, whereupon the American plane put out to sea, following their strict orders to avoid having the electronics equipment fall into foreign hands. The Privateer swerved sharply and the Russian fighters immediately shot it down.
It was not clear whether any of the crew made it into their life rafts, but none of the rafts evidenced that they had been fired upon by a nearby Russian destroyer or patrol boats.
He notes that the incident, along with Russian submarines patrolling the American shore and Russian demonstrations occurring in Berlin, lent to a volatile atmosphere in which anything could happen.
After economy-minded Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia had taken on the Agriculture Department for spending taxpayer money to produce a cookbook, irate housewives among his constituents besieged his office with demands that the cookbook be distributed to them for free. He began therefore sending out copies of the cookbook with pleasant notes attached. He appeared assured of another term in Congress, despite opposition to him by the Administration, which did not want to offend Senator Harry Byrd whose foe was running against Mr. Smith.
Mr. Pearson notes that the cookbook had become so popular that it had made money for the Government.
James Marlow looks at the Fair Employment Practices Committee bill being debated this week in the Senate, setting up a five-person committee to adjudicate complaints of discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. If the employer refused the order to cease and desist in the offending practice, the FEPC would then take the matter into the Federal Courts for further determination—much as the NLRB worked. Eighteen Southern Democrats were prepared to filibuster the bill to death. To bring cloture to a filibuster required at the time a two-thirds vote of the membership, or 64 votes.
The President had also urged passage of an anti-lynching bill and an anti-poll tax bill. These measures had less opposition in the Senate but no action had yet been taken on them.
The House had passed an FEPC bill which provided only for voluntary compliance, having been amended from a bill like that before the Senate. Thus, even if the filibuster were to fail in the Senate, the bill ultimately passed would still have to be reconciled with the less strict House version.
Henry C. McFadyen, superintendent of the Albemarle, N.C., schools, in the thirty-sixth in his weekly series of articles on childhood education, tells of an operetta having been performed by eighth and ninth graders at a local school to great reception. The students had been dedicated to the presentation and the supervising teachers had to neglect their other students for the purpose. Sometimes, he wondered if it was worth such performances, given the confusion created at the school.
But the operetta had been received well by the parents and appeared worth having the participants miss three days of regular classes. The purpose was not to train actors and singers, but rather to instill confidence in the students in their own abilities, and this operetta had fulfilled that purpose.
Well, what was the name of the operetta? It's hard to hear it without a name attached.
A letter writer expresses frustration at not being confident of leaving a country behind in which her son would be able to be free, for the fact of the rapid descent of the nation into socialism and the welfare state. But with the knowledge that she had acquired that it was within her control to stop the "socialistic trend" with her vote, a vote for Willis Smith, she had renewed hope.
Good. Glad to hear it.
Lay off the booze.
A letter writer finds the editorial of May 5, endorsing Willis Smith over Senator Graham, notwithstanding its finding that Senator Graham was honest and conscientious and that Mr. Smith's campaign had falsely attacked him for supposed Communist affiliations, quite hypocritical, patronizing, and, in the end, nonsensical.
He says, "...[W]hen you minimize honesty and honor, you cast doubt upon all else that you recommend, both in this present Senatorial race and in general." He hopes that the "editorial steeple-jacking" would inure to the benefit of Senator Graham and further suggests that Mr. Smith would not express thanks for such a crabbed endorsement.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for the same editorial, hopes that many would read it, insuring thereby Mr. Smith's victory.
A letter writer, commenting on the same editorial, takes to task the piece for rendering a conundrum in its suggestion that with both Senator Hoey and Senator Smith in Washington voting similarly, the state would be better represented, albeit less inclined to the Administration's view. He first takes issue with the notion that Senator Hoey had voted uniformly against the Fair Deal, as in fact, he notes, Mr. Hoey had voted more often than not with Senator Graham.
Moreover, he finds it a dangerous concept to seek to have the voters essentially nullify, through the election of Mr. Smith, the 1948 election of Governor Kerr Scott and the selection of Jonathan Daniels for the state Democratic committee.
He concludes that the arguments of the editorial were unconvincing.
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