The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 6, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that allied tank columns had devoured the main Communist defense lines south of the 38th parallel this date and moved ahead against Chinese resistance, which had stiffened with the advent of the Chinese lunar new year, "The Year of the Rabbit" in the revolving nomenclature of the new years. U.N. air, artillery and naval attacks had laid the groundwork for the land attack, which encountered about a thousand enemy troops in the northern outskirts of Changbong, 52 air miles east of Seoul. The Chinese committed tanks to the action for the first time in the war.
In the western sector, a daylong battle, the stiffest fighting of the day, took place northwest and northeast of Anyang, nine miles south of Seoul. It was estimated that the two allied columns killed 700 enemy troops and wounded another 800. In the central sector, American troops cut a hole through a Communist battalion on the Hoengsong-Hongchon road, permitting South Korean troops then to move through the gap to a point 25 miles from the 38th parallel, the northernmost thrust of the allies thus far during the thirteen-day limited offensive.
At the U.N., Russia proposed to name the U.S. as an aggressor for the President having sent the Seventh Fleet to protect Formosa and the claimed bombing of Manchuria by American planes, a proposal doomed to failure, as only the Soviet bloc would approve it. The same proposal had been defeated in the Security Council the prior November.
The House Armed Services Committee appeared to favor a compromise on the draft of 18-year olds, whereby they would be given six months of basic training before being committed to combat duty, meaning that few would see combat before age 19, the present minimum age for the draft.
Selective Service director Lewis Hershey told the Committee that were present military induction standards reduced to those extant during World War II, between 200,000 and 250,000 men could be reclassified from 4-F to active service based on failed physical testing and another 85,000 could be recovered based on presently failed mental testing.
Active duty calls were going to be issued to 80,000 Air Force volunteer reservists to meet the revised Air Force manpower of 971,000. The Air Force "volunteer" reservists were in the same status as Army inactive reserves.
Many of the switchmen for the railroads who had called in sick had returned to the job this date, as the strike ended in New York and many returned in other large Eastern cities. But there was not yet any general return to work. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota said that there was reason to be optimistic that settlement was imminent.
Traffic on the Southern Railway through the Carolinas continued to be restricted by the strike, while the bottleneck in Washington's Union Station and freight yards had eased considerably.
The Post Office restricted air parcel post to two pounds because of the strike.
In Las Vegas, the fifth atomic bomb test in eleven days at the Nevada test site had been felt as two separate shocks. Police reported that windows in two automobile showrooms were splintered by the shock waves and that they were the the most severe waves yet among the tests. Hundreds of people had taken to the highways for a clearer view of the flash. There were no reports of injuries.
Just a little cancer down the road with which to deal.
In Los Angeles, 300 miles from the test site, windows rattled at UCLA and in residences, 24 minutes following the visible flash, as the sound traveled more slowly than the light. The flash was picked up by television cameras through a fog and relayed to viewers. Scientists said that the bomb's sound waves might be felt as far away as a thousand miles under the right atmospheric conditions. The flash was seen as far away as Oakland, 450 air miles from Las Vegas.
Air France announced that all 29 persons had perished aboard a plane which crashed Saturday in the French Cameroons.
Brisk winds blew snow and cold across the upper Midwest this date, with blizzard conditions prevailing in the eastern Dakotas and temperatures falling well below zero. It was expected to be 25 below in northwestern Minnesota by morning. In northwest California and western Oregon, rain fell, flooding about 10,000 acres in Northern California adjacent to the Eel River. Flood waters also menaced Columbus, Miss., from the Tombigbee River.
In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott said that he believed that the nation's steel shortage would not hamper the State's road-building effort for at least the ensuing year. He said that in some places roads were being built without bridges, to be completed later. In response to a question, he said that there was "some virtue" in the idea of bringing black institutions of higher learning under the Consolidated University or allowing them to form a separate greater university.
The State Senate Judiciary Committee approved a measure to prohibit lewd and indecent talk over the telephone to a woman.
In Salem, Mass., playwright Eugene O'Neill was hospitalized, though his condition was not serious.
On the editorial page, "The Trains Are Running in Russia" finds the current switchmen's strike on the railroads to be about the most irresponsible union action the nation had ever witnessed. The Army was technically directing the railroads since the Government takeover the prior year to avert a strike which imperiled national security in time of declared national emergency.
The strike had been settled in Government mediation but the union repudiated the agreement, mainly because of dissatisfaction with technical rules. The remaining differences appeared therefore capable of resolution.
The head of the union had urged publicly the "sick" switchmen to return to the job, but there was the possibility that behind the scenes, he had given different orders. There was little which could be done to end the strike other than to bring public pressure to bear on the matter.
The piece reminds the strikers that the trains were still running in Russia and across Siberia, carrying arms to the Communist Chinese soldiers fighting American troops in Korea.
"Taxes and Luxuries" finds that most people became hopelessly confused when talk turned to taxes but sat up and listened when the new tax bill proposed by Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder called for an increase of 3 cents per package on cigarettes and a cent and a half on a gallon of gasoline. Thus, the people for the first time the previous day, when the Secretary laid out the specific proposals for achieving the ten billion dollars in additional tax revenue proposed by the President to place the budget on a pay-as-you-go basis with respect to the large expansion in defense spending, began to realize how the defense effort would impact their personal lives.
It finds the President's approach essentially correct as the proposed increases in excise taxes would affect the price of luxury items rather than necessities, while the proposed increase in individual taxes would siphon off excess purchasing power, reducing inflationary pressures, and the increase in corporate taxes would place a fair share of the burden on business.
But, it finds, the 71.6 billion dollar budget still contained many items which could be cut sharply or eliminated completely. Liberal Senators Paul Douglas of Illinois and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had joined Senator Harry F. Byrd's traditional remonstrations to this effect. It urges cutting out Government luxury before asking the people to cut out luxury for the sake of defense, that the people would go along with the latter if the former were first accomplished.
Yo.
"Eisenhower's Contribution" finds General Eisenhower to have brought order out of chaos with his recently completed two-week tour of the Western European capitals to determine each country's ability to contribute to the common defense of NATO, but that its long-range impact would depend on the faithfulness with which the country would follow the path he had laid down. The words of his speech on February 2 to the nation had been clear in their assertions of confidence and encouragement, words which had already had a profound effect on the citizenry and on Congress, which had suddenly fallen in line behind the Administration's European policy.
It concludes that because of General Eisenhower's leadership, the same forces in Europe which had resisted Fascism now appeared ready to combat any Russian aggression and in a much quicker time frame than anyone had previously thought possible.
A piece from the Carlsbad (N.M.) Current-Argus, titled "Curse on Newspapers", tells of a group of women representing a militant religious cult having placed a curse on the New Mexican, the Santa Fe newspaper, for adverse publicity regarding their spiritual leader. It finds the curse kid stuff compared to the ordinary headaches with which a publisher and editor had to contend daily, as misspelling the name of a prominent local social leader or pied type at press time.
Drew Pearson tells of an important debate ongoing in the Pentagon to determine whether the country would continue to build up a land army and thus whether to continue drafting more married men and eighteen-year olds to fill the quotas, whether such an army was necessary to win a war or whether a large air force would suffice. Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley and Army chief of staff General J. Lawton Collins both favored a large Army. The Air Force countered that the country could never approach the numbers of Russian and Far Eastern Communist armies, that the only chance for victory was in a superior Air Force and other modern weaponry. The National Security Council was also debating the issue, with National Security Resources director Stuart Symington favoring a large Air Force and tactical weapons complement, a position opposed primarily by Secretary of Defense Marshall, who favored a large land Army, a position also favored by the President.
The outcome of the Nevada atomic tests might settle the issue. The scientists were reported testing atomic artillery shells, which could render the Russian Army's artillery obsolete, obviating the need for a large American land army.
The President had conducted a private conference on taxes with the House Ways & Means Committee which had not been so friendly as reported in the press, there having been major differences over Government controls and the Administration's proposed piecemeal tax increase program, with ten billion dollars now in increases and 6.5 billion later. The Republican members wanted to cut Government expense in non-defense areas by cutting staff, to which the President had testily remarked that too many cuts could compromise vital Government operations, the Government budgets already having been cut to the bone. One Republican Congressman objected that the President had proposed from whence the ten billion would come but not the 6.5 billion in additional revenue, suggesting that it would have to come from lowering the exemptions on poorer taxpayers by $100 and increasing their tax rates. The President stressed that it was up to the Committee to decide those issues, that he had not asked for lowering of personal exemptions.
Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina was determined to push through the Legislature a 75 million dollar school program, much of it for black schools, with a sales tax to finance it, plus complete reorganization of State Government. Mr. Pearson suggests that he would probably succeed as so many people loved him, while the remainder feared him. He notes that the former Secretary of State and War Mobilizer would probably not accept the invitation to advise the State Department but would stick to governance of South Carolina.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of defense mobilizer Charles E. Wilson having the formidable task of making up for lost time in rebuilding the defense of the country under conditions which passed for peacetime. His goal was to increase production by 15 to 25 percent, which he could accomplish either by a business-as-usual approach, that of full mobilization as in wartime, which would entail destabilizing the economy, or the one he had chosen, to lift the entire national economy to the level whereby enough would be produced for both defense and civilians needs. He had calculated that if the country accepted temporary controls and the Congress passed the necessary stiff tax increases and credit controls, the job would take about eighteen months to accomplish.
It sounded easy when he explained that American production had increased by as much as five times during the war, between 1940 and 1945, and by 50 percent since the war. But, the Alsops assert, there would be nothing easy in fact about the task. Mr. Wilson would have a hard job ahead, for which his birth in Hell's Kitchen had prepared him. If he could not do the job, they conclude, no one could.
Robert C. Ruark finds nothing constructive having been accomplished in the Government's wage and price control policy, that politics had governed the actions of the Government thus far to the point that it was skittish about imposing the necessary controls to curb inflation, as much as 50 percent since 1945, and increase production for defense. The potential for economic depression coming out of the downturn in production after the war had been replaced by economic boom. The Administration had attempted to keep everybody happy but at the eventual expense of each, resulting in ruinous taxes and a half-wrecked currency, without much to show from the sacrifice.
He favors rationing to go along with price ceilings and wage controls, so that the resultant scarcity of goods would not be hoarded by a few. But the Government was avoiding it like the plague. He favors "a little action that makes more sense than a sugar tit for everybody."
You need to stay out of those morose, cynical bars, looking for the vicarious substitute in the nipple of the bottle. People like the sugar tit. We are a topless country, always have been.
A letter writer condemns the railroad switchmen's strike as playing to the Communists, without sympathy for the fighting men in Korea. He favors, instead of use of time-consuming court processes to seek injunctions and contempt, use of Army doctors to examine the switchmen for their claims of sickness.
How do you propose to do that? Go to their homes in uniform and demand that they drop their pants and submit to inspection? The railroads ain't the Army, bud, where the errant malingerer can be sent to the brig or given a psychological discharge.
A letter from a Bladenboro minister thanks The News for again publishing in serial form Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Story Ever Told, as it had the prior year in the weeks leading up to Easter, the republication to begin in the next day's edition.
A letter writer from Greensboro, field secretary for the Children's Home Society, expresses appreciation on behalf of the board of directors for the publicity provided by The News to the Society's Christmas Fund drive, with contributions from around the state having totaled $31,000, only $6,000 short of its goal for the fiscal year.
A letter writer asks the newspaper to publish the relative amounts of taxes paid by black citizens compared to those paid by white citizens for the public schools and urges that segregation was more than a tradition, implying that it was also an economic drain on the citizens of the community.
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