The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 20, 1950
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, a conference began between France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries, aimed at working out the details of their agreement on pooling their coal and steel production under a plan proposed by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. The latter told the conference that the ultimate aim of the plan was to abolish war on the continent. The agreement would entail surrendering some sovereignty of each country to an independent supranational organization—that which would ultimately become the European Common Market in 1957 and European Union in 1993. There was some talk that Britain might ultimately join the plan, but so far the Labour Party had refused.
The Senate Finance Committee recommended increasing from $3,000 to $3,600 the maximum annual wages subject to Social Security taxes. Under the proposed bill, the top benefit would be increased from $72.50 to $80 per month. Some Committee members also wanted the base raised to $4,200, increasing maximum benefits to $87.50 per month. The bill would add about ten million workers to the 35 million already covered.
According to the newspaper Soviet Sport, a peak in Central Asia, in the Ala Tau Range in Turkestan, was named for Mao Tse Tung, head of Communist China. Another peak in the region had been recently named for Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communists, and a third for Paul Robeson.
The Turkish press reported that four former Senegalese living near the Black Sea north of Ismit, Turkey, had been arrested for cannibalism after a 12-year old boy said that he saw the men eating a 16-year old youth and that a young girl who had disappeared four months earlier had also been eaten.
Governor Kerr Scott of North Carolina was in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., to attend the National Governors' Conference to last through Wednesday, and planned to attend a Washington luncheon given for the Democratic Governors by the President on Thursday.
Secretary of State Acheson addressed the Conference saying that he was confident the State Department was clean and free from any Communist influence. He also said that the Far Eastern countries were too different from one another to be subject to a uniform Marshall Plan, that they instead would need to be addressed separately in terms of providing aid.
Both North Carolina Senate candidates in Saturday's runoff primary, Senator Frank Graham and Willis Smith, put in a full day of campaigning around the state. Mr. Smith was headed to the western part of the state while Senator Graham made appearances in Durham and Harnett Counties the previous day and remained in the eastern section this date. The following day's schedule was also to be full for both candidates.
Governor Scott would provide a statewide radio address this night from White Sulphur Springs.
Former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, who had run third in the primary and initially counseled Mr. Smith not to ask for a runoff, but was backing Mr. Smith, would broadcast a radio address this night statewide from Raleigh. You won't want to miss that. He might talk about the Hope Diamond and his jalopy.
Near Lumberton, N.C., two teenage boys were killed and thirteen were injured when a truck overturned on the Whiteville highway while hauling 24 young boys, most of whom were Boy Scouts, home from a Mormon Church-sponsored week at a Cherokee Indian reservation camp. The driver, who was not injured in the accident, said that he must have fallen asleep as he did not recall what happened until he saw that the truck had gone off the road, at which point he tried to correct, causing the truck to overturn.
In Charlotte, the North Carolina Lions Clubs wound up their three-day convention, finding that, despite the oppressive heat, it had been the largest and warmest convention in the history of the Clubs. Most sessions were in air conditioned facilities.
In Hollywood, actress and singer
Judy Garland, suspended from MGM for not showing up for several days
on the set of the movie "Royal Wedding"
You fans of Oz
In Los Angeles, a woman sought $2,000 per month in temporary alimony pending trial of a divorce suit she had filed, but received from the court $250, following her 26-day marriage prior to separation from a man whose family operated a large produce company. The price of tomatoes...
It was predicted to be hot in Charlotte on the first day of summer the following day, but the temperature had ranged between 74 and 97.1 degrees on the previous day, and a high of 92 had been predicted for the last day of spring.
On the editorial page, "The Dewey 'Retirement'" finds the announcement of Governor Dewey that he would retire from public life at the end of his current term in 1950 not surprising. Mr. Dewey had said of General Eisenhower, as a prospect for the presidency in 1952, that he would make an able and fine President. But, it asserts, it was Senator Robert Taft who actually would benefit from the Dewey withdrawal, as he had an organization already built and was busy cultivating Republican leaders all over the country, lining up delegate support for the convention. So, it concludes, while Mr. Dewey might be retiring, the divided state of the Republican Party meant that he would remain influential, at least until the convention in 1952.
As indicated, it would turn out that Mr. Dewey would be nominated to run again and would be elected in the fall to his third term as Governor, after which he would in fact retire from politics.
"Farmers and Highway Safety" tells of the North Carolina DMV commissioner explaining in the Carolina Cooperator that accidents had cost farm people in the state significant property damage and 200 lives, that more farm people than any other occupational group were killed in auto accidents, being involved in about a fourth of the accidents, with eighty percent of fatalities occurring in rural areas and three-fourths within 25 miles of home. It therefore urges farmer people, who had to drive longer distances over rural roads, to take special heed of highway safety.
"In the American Tradition" praises the Soap Box Derby and urges young boys to build their cars and enter the race.
"Swing Your Partner!"
congratulates the Charlotte Quadrille Club for winning best
performance honors at the Carolina Folk Festival square dancing
contest. Square dancing, it informs, had become popular in New York
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat , titled "Praise the Lord!" tells of freshman Senator Hubert Humphrey being grieved because of his belief that the Dixiecrats and Republicans had ganged up to kill the Fair Deal. Senator Humphrey's bill to abolish the Joint Committee on Reduction of Non-Essential Federal Expenditures, chaired by Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, had gone nowhere and he regarded Senator Byrd as a renegade for it.
The piece, however, thinks it good that the conservative Southern Democrats and the Republicans had joined forces to cut the budget for "Truman socialism" and that it was the best news heard in years.
Never mind that the bulk of the budget and resultant deficit spending was, not the result of the Fair Deal programs, but defense and foreign aid plus the basic operations of the Government, the latter regarding which Congress had been reluctant to engage in any significant paring as recommended by the Hoover Commission. The favorite sport of conservative columnists, including The News, was to criticize "socialism" of the Fair Deal and excessive spending under it, without ever showing any facts, budgetary facts, to support that spurious claim. How much did a compulsory FEPC cost, when it existed by executive order pursuant to war powers, applicable to firms holding Government war contracts, during the war? The proposed Federal aid to education bill was for 300 million dollars. How much did Supreme Court decisions ending segregation "cost" versus maintainance of segregation, with separate schools and other facilities? These were the primary elements of the Fair Deal of which the conservatives and reactionaries routinely complained, while generally supporting the extension of Social Security to uncovered workers. Where then are the facts to couple with the rhetoric of "excessive spending" for "socialism"?
The real objection, of course, derived from the effort to foster racial integration of society, actually a fiscally conservative effort, eliminating the need for duplicated and wasteful segregated facilities, many of which went largely unused, to comport with the ridiculously outmoded "separate-but-equal" doctrine.
Drew Pearson finds that Congressman John Wood of Georgia needed as much investigation as the witnesses who regularly appeared before HUAC, of which he was chairman. In addition to the other things the column had already detailed, taking a $1,000 commission for having pushed through compensatory legislation for a constituent injured in an accident with an Army truck and maintaining a long-term pre-existing servant on the Government payroll at $50 per week claiming that he performed janitorial duties at the Capitol, he also had connived to postpone the investigation of Communist activities in Hollywood. When he had become chairman in mid-1945, that investigation had been one of the first tasks on the agenda, after Martin Dies, the former chairman, had collected a stock of information on the subject. Yet, it was not until the Republicans took control of Congress in 1947 and J. Parnell Thomas became chairman, that the investigation had gotten off the ground. The reason, it turned out, for the delay was that Louis B. Mayer of MGM hired an obscure Georgia lawyer from Mr. Wood's home district, to whom Mr. Mayer paid a large fee, reportedly $25,000, for rigging it with Mr. Wood. It was denied by Mr. Wood that he received any kickback, but he had also denied knowing of the $1,000 fee given his law firm by the constituent for passing the compensatory bill.
The lawyer had written to Mr. Mayer that everything had been taken care of. Mr. Mayer had a number of high-priced lawyers in Washington he could have hired instead of the obscure Georgia lawyer, a friend of Mr. Wood.
When the HUAC investigation of Hollywood, culminating in the contempt citations of the Hollywood Ten for their refusal to disclose whether they had ever been members of the Communist Party, finally took place in 1947, it was based almost entirely on information previously collected but never acted on while Mr. Wood had been chairman.
He promises in a subsequent column to show how Mr. Wood protected Mr. Mayer when he was called before HUAC in October, 1947.
Joseph Alsop again discusses the the three to four years remaining until Russia was believed to be able to meet its full military preparedness, with a stockpile of atomic bombs along with trained manpower and air power exceeding that of the U.S., plus a superior submarine force, anti-aircraft and radar defenses.
At that point, he predicts, unless the U.S. got busy building its defenses and those of Western Europe to match, the Soviets could win, not by a war of aggression or an atomic war, but rather without firing a shot, the way Hitler took Czechoslovakia in 1938-39 after Munich, the way he took the Danzig Corridor in Poland, by marshaling enough terror that the will to resist was vanquished. At that point, the Soviets would take Berlin, Vienna, and Yugoslavia, and, after that, the entirety of Western Europe would crumble in the face of their coercion, as confidence in the U.S. would crumble commensurately. Preservation of American independence would only then come by transforming the society into a permanently armed camp.
He thus counsels ending the sabotage of Western defenses and starting in earnest to build the defense capability of the U.S. and Western Europe to match the adversary and avoid that debacle.
Robert C. Ruark finds New York City to be a rude place most of the time, with strikes of elevator operators or truck drivers able at a stroke to cripple the city and leave it hungry, trucks and buses which obeyed no traffic laws, people who hated each other with their eyes, water regulations which made it a criminal offense to use too much, presumably to be enforced by stool pigeons.
After reciting a litany of such
abusive living conditions, he concludes, however, that he would
rather live nowhere else, that despite it being noisy, smelly, surly,
congested and impatient. For it was also a city of great restaurants,
entertainment, small kindnesses, as a stranger sharing a cab in the
rain, chance acquaintances, as with a bartender or cab driver,
developing into friendships which tended to last. It made one somehow feel superior to live there as it was the Big Apple
A letter writer tells of being for Willis Smith for the Senate, finds Senator Frank Graham to be for everything for which the Truman Administration stood, as the latter intruded on states' rights and agitated race and class prejudice "in its bid to stay in power".
Don't you ever get tired of spouting groundless nonsense conjured from out your hind parts? It would seem awfully boring after a time.
A letter writer finds the editorial of June 17, equating calling Senator Graham a "Communist" and "Negro-lover" with calling Mr. Smith a "Republican" and "Dixiecrat", to be ignoring the chief exhibits in the Smith campaign of smear tactics, the unsigned fliers being circulated by Smith supporters showing Senator Graham in photographs with black persons, and other circulars designed to incite "fear and hatred between the races". He finds the calling of Mr. Smith a "Republican" mild by comparison. And no one had produced any unsigned fliers in support of the Graham campaign. He doubts that the thinking people of the state would ever forgive the Smith campaign for those fliers and that even those who would vote for him would not be proud of the memory of such tactics.
A letter writer comments on the same editorial, finds also the labels not to be at all the equivalent in level of opprobrium, also finds the candidates' stands quite different from one another, not similar, as suggested by the editorial. He says that the "Southern democracy" which Mr. Smith claimed to support was that of South Carolina's Ben Tillman and Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar, not that of Wade Hampton of South Carolina or Senator Graham. He finds that Mr. Smith was using the same tactics which the Republicans had used to try to regain power since 1936, being against progress. And, he adds, if that was a "smear tactic", then so be it. For it was not a lie, as the rhetoric used against Senator Graham.
He concludes by asking just how weak could the newspaper's editorials get in support of Mr. Smith.
A letter writer thinks Governor Kerr Scott was using the perquisites of his office to travel the state in support of Senator Graham and oppose Mr. Smith, wanted the SBI to investigate him for the practice rather than the head of State Prisons—ironically, the Jesse Helms-stimulated investigation of J. B. Moore—and urges the voters to cast their ballots for Mr. Smith to help end the reign of Mr. Scott. Even more ironically, Governor Scott would eventually, in 1955, occupy the Senate seat of Mr. Smith after winning the special 1954 Senate election following the death of Senator Smith in mid-1953, defeating Alton Lennon, the successor appointed by Governor William B. Umstead, who would die five days after the election of 1954.
Besides, he is in White Sulphur Springs and Washington during the most critical period of the campaign this week, not touring the state for Senator Graham.
A letter from Harry Golden responds to a letter writer who said, among other things, that it was dangerous for blacks to vote as a bloc. It effectively suggested that blacks could demonstrate their good citizenship by voting for a candidate who was unfriendly to them. He finds that if blacks voted for Senator Graham, then it would be because of the programs supported by Mr. Smith and his followers being antithetical to the interests of black citizens. It was true that they had no choice in the campaign which would lead to a compulsory FEPC, but at least they had a choice between a candidate who was openly unfriendly to their interests and one who was friendly and a humanitarian.
A letter from the secretary of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce thanks the newspaper for its handling of the census and urging people of the community to participate.
Framed Edition
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