The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 14, 1950

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Russia had set aside the equivalent of 19.85 billion dollars for defense during the year, 18.5 percent of the nation's budget. By contrast, the President's budget called for 13 billion in U.S. defense spending for the following fiscal year or 30.6 percent of the budget. There was no easy comparison to determine what the Russians considered defense.

The Socialist Party of France criticized the British Labour Party opposition to the principal proposals for economic and political unification of Europe, based on the proposal by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and endorsed by the U.S. Some Senators in Washington suggested that if Britain wished to remain independent from Europe, then perhaps they could do without American dollar aid also. Prime Minister Clement Attlee, in an address to Commons the previous day, had softened Labour's opposition to the plan, creating an apparent split within the party.

Senator Robert Taft agreed to help Democrats speed through Congress any bill which would reasonably reduce excise taxes. The House stood ready to pass a tax reduction bill once the Ways & Means Committee finalized its recommendation.

Senators Harry F. Byrd and Willis Robertson of Virginia, in a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee, opposed the nomination of Martin Hutchinson of Virginia to be a member of the Federal Trade Commission, claiming it to be a political appointment and that Mr. Hutchinson, an attorney who had run in 1948 against Senator Byrd for the Democratic nomination, was not qualified. Several months earlier, the President was quoted as saying that there were too many Byrds in Congress, there being only one.

Attorney General J. Howard McGrath announced that he had filed a civil antitrust suit against the New Orleans Times-Picayune Publishing Co., charging monopolistic practices in news, advertising, and supplies. Among other things, the suit charged that the newspaper in 1933 had acquired the competing New Orleans States under certain restrictive covenants to prevent competition.

Washington's major dairies entered the fourth day of a strike by workers, but union representatives agreed to make across-the-counter sales of milk to nursing mothers, infants under two, and persons suffering certain illnesses.

What if the infants can't make it to the counter or obtain the doctor's certificate? Guess they will be like the poor little girl in the picture, facing an empty bottle.

Near Elkins, W. Va., nine airmen were killed in the crash of a B-25 Air Force plane. None survived.

In Philadelphia, a mother of three gave birth to triplets, two girls and one boy. Her husband was a railroad brakeman, disabled for nearly two years with a broken kneecap.

In Raleigh, Democratic Senate candidate Willis Smith the previous night asked voters to back his fight for "real Southern democracy", which included opposition to Federal legislation which would end segregation, socialized medicine, and the Brannan agricultural plan. He was for a voluntary good health program, the "North Carolina method of settling racial problems", and for strengthening the present farm support program.

Mr. Smith said that he had delayed his decision on whether to demand a runoff pending review of the three Supreme Court decisions handed down June 5 on racial segregation, to make sure that his announcement would not stir racial ill will. He said that the people were "too intelligent to allow the actions of a few people to cause the campaign to produce bad feeling between the races."

How's that?

In Charlotte, "The Anti-Gambling League" sent a telegram to the City Council, berating them for doing nothing about illegal gambling. The contents are presented. The police chief said that he did not know of any illegal gambling devices in Charlotte. No one knew anything about the organization. A man had come to town earlier, indicating that he intended to establish ten slot machines legally and failing to do so, would wipe out all illegal gambling operations.

The Mecklenburg County population was tabulated at 196,163 in the 1950 census, still not final, making Mecklenburg likely the most populous county in the state. It had gained 29.2 percent over 1940, when it numbered 151,826. Two comparative charts are provided of the various townships and incorporated towns, and their populations and dwelling units enumerated in 1940 and 1950. Guilford County, with Greensboro and High Point, had been the largest county in 1940.

In New York, Bing Crosby arrived from Europe and told reporters that he knew nothing about reports of marital difficulties and separation from his wife, that she was coming from California to meet him.

On the editorial page, "Penalty Against the Home Team" finds it unlikely that Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, having been previously the chairman of the DNC, would do anything about the Farmers Cooperative Exchange of Raleigh and the charge against it that it sent out a campaign letter for Senator Frank Graham in violation of the Corrupt Practices Act, preventing corporations from campaigning for Senators. The mailing was only partially devoted to praising Senator Graham and concerned also feed mills and fertilizer plants.

The piece concludes that if no action were taken, it would confirm what it had long suspected, that the Administration wanted honest and frugal elections only for the opposition.

"What About Moral Cripples?" tells of a survey of Sing Sing in New York showing that nineteen percent of the inmates were psychopaths, while the Tombs in New York City showed 25 percent in that category and Massachusetts jails, 15.5 percent. Most incurable alcoholics and sex criminals fell into the classification. Most psychiatrists agreed, however, that not many of these individuals would actually commit a crime. But they caused problems for family, friends and anyone having contact with them.

Chester Davis, in two feature articles appearing in the June 4 and 11 Sunday editions of the Winston-Salem Journal & Sentinel, told the story of a man who was regarded as a typical such personality. He had tried to commit suicide, albeit halfheartedly, nine times, had chased people with a butcher knife, broke into a woman's home and drove her into the street, setting fire to her sofa and kitchen curtains. He drank too much and used narcotics. Between 1946 and 1949, he had been committed to mental hospitals thirteen times but was not legally insane and so they could not hold him. There was no cure for him. Mental hospitals refused his further admittance, leaving him to wander in society.

The piece agrees that such a person needed to be confined but only after a foolproof method was established to assure the diagnosis was correct.

"The Happy Farmer" tells of the President having climbed onto a white iron bench on the White House south lawn and peered out as if surveying his fields. In talking to a group of radio farm directors, he reminded of Governors Dewey and Warren in 1948 posing before an upside down farm gate on Mr. Dewey's farm, earning the President some votes. He also informed them that he still listened to radio farm broadcasts at 5:30 nearly every morning.

It looks forward to the day when he might welcome a group of Young Republicans to the White House, and adds that it would be disappointing if he did not find an errant aunt in his family line who had voted for Warren Harding in 1920.

A piece from the Stanly News & Press, titled "What About Size", tells of the hope that Albemarle, registering 12,000 in population in the census, would continue to grow because some growth was necessary. But it does not want boom growth, such as 25 or 50 percent gain in a decade. The car had done much to keep down population in such communities, because of the availability of commuting to the country from work in town. It hopes instead for development of better advantages for all who lived in the community.

Drew Pearson tells of a report prepared by the Washington Metropolitan Police, turned over to the Justice Department, showing that when Howard Hughes had testified before Congress in 1947 regarding TWA war contracts, in the attempt to smear Elliott Roosevelt, Senator Owen Brewster and Senator Homer Ferguson of the committee investigating the matter, had the hotel room of Mr. Hughes bugged, picking up conversations with his attorneys. The Senators used a wiretapping expert from the Metropolitan Police to effect the tap.

The FBI shunned wiretapping except in cases of suspected espionage, kidnapping, and other serious cases. Tapping of telephones, however, was indiscriminately used by the CIA, the armed forces, and, he adds, apparently by these two Senators.

He notes that Mr. Hughes had made monkeys of the two Senators during the 1947 hearings, especially after it became known that Senator Brewster was pulling strings for Juan Trippe and Pan Am and favored a merger between Pan Am and TWA.

Senator Harry Cain of Washington had asked Chief Justice Fred Vinson at a Washington dinner whether he minded if the Senator left early as he was not feeling well, ordinarily a violation of protocol. The Chief Justice said that he did not mind at all, but then later found Senator Cain enjoying himself with Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post.

Governor Okey Patterson of West Virginia had encountered a man in a steam bath who asked him whether he was Governor and related that he was amazed that a Governor and a peasant from Russia, as he was, could sit together in a steam bath, that in his village, the mayor would have never taken such a risk out of fear of being shot. He asked the Governor whether he had such a fear but quickly added that it was a type of democracy which Europeans had no idea existed in America and he wished there was some way to impart the fact.

The President was set to name roving ambassador Averell Harriman as the overall coordinator of arms aid for Europe, making him the most powerful person in Western Europe.

Marquis Childs discusses the decision before the President whether to veto the basing point pricing bill, which enabled uniform pricing for goods by absorbing freight costs, regardless of where in the stream of commerce the goods originated, such that higher prices would not result for goods further from the market because of higher freight. The Supreme Court had previously held the system to contravene existing antitrust laws by fostering monopolies, thus requiring the legislation to create an exception.

Critics assailed the measure for creating monopolies in big business which could absorb the higher freight costs, as against small business, eliminating thereby competition and thus also hurting consumer prices.

Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, who had studied monopoly extensively and was generally opposed to it, nevertheless, supported the measure. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer was also in favor of it.

The opponents said that it shot holes through the antitrust laws to the point that there was nothing left. The Senators from the South and West, wanting to attract new industry without discriminatory freight rates favoring the East, were generally against it.

With the Democrats divided, the President could not fall back on party regularity to guide his decision.

Joseph Alsop finds that three factors were at work to prevent another world war in the near future: the incompleteness of Russia's war preparations, through 1953-54; the continuing vulnerability of Russia's primary targets to the West's superior stockpile of atomic weapons; and the inner weakness of the Soviet system and readiness of the peasants to rise up against it in the event of invasion, either of Russia, itself, or its satellites.

The latter was demonstrated at the outset of the June 22, 1941 invasion of Russia by the Nazis when peasants laid down their arms readily and surrendered in droves to the Wehrmacht, many being then taken in as soldiers in the German army. Mr. Alsop had talked to an individual in Germany who had been in the pre-war German Embassy in Moscow and a fighting soldier on the Russian front. He told of two principal errors causing Germany to lose the war: the failure to assassinate Hitler, which he, himself, had sought to conspire to effect, including involvement in the July 20, 1944 plot; and the refusal by Hitler to use the Russians to defeat Russia, based on his belief that the Russians were inferior beings.

Mr. Alsop finds the lesson instructive of how ready the Russian peasants would be to lay down arms were a Western army to appear across the border from Russia or its satellites, provoking a "Spartacist rebellion".

A letter writer thanks the newspaper for featuring industrial development in the South over the course of twelve issues, presumably referring to the Bem Price series begun on the front page the previous Monday but thereafter relegated to the inside pages.

A letter writer responds to a letter printed June 12 regarding the Senate runoff between Willis Smith and Senator Frank Graham, saying that Mr. Smith had only responded to the smear tactics of supporters of Senator Graham, calling him a Republican. This writer finds a continuing smear campaign in support of Mr. Smith, which would not make anyone proud after the campaign was over. He tells of an account by a U.P. correspondent indicating that a Raleigh radio station, presumably WRAL at the instance of news director Jesse Helms, had called, beginning at 8:00 p.m. on June 6, in a series of paid political broadcasts by the "Willis Smith Citizens Committee", for a gathering at Mr. Smith's home, to continue until he agreed to the runoff. By 9:00, about 150 people had gathered and at 9:15, after he announced he would run, they dispersed. (The same basic report had appeared in The News, also without identifying the radio station.)

A letter from the corresponding secretary of the Mecklenburg County Council of the American Legion Auxiliary, and on behalf of the Mecklenburg Poppy chairman, thanks the newspaper for its cooperation in preparing the public for Poppy Day on May 27.

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