The Charlotte News
Friday, February 9, 1951
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the American Task Force Myers had moved to the south bank of the Han River near Seoul this date and maintained its position, as allied artillery, advancing quickly three miles against little opposition, again shelled the city. The enemy casualties inflicted during the limited offensive, which had begun January 25, had now reached 61,000, the primary goal of the mission rather than to take territory. The ratio of enemy-to-allied losses was calculated several days earlier to be at around 100 to 1, suggesting around 600 allied casualties if that ratio had held in the meantime. The latest Defense Department list of casualties reported two killed in action. Task Force Myers had no opportunity to inflict casualties, as the enemy had fled or already been killed in the area. The weather in the sector had turned bitterly cold.
General Matthew Ridgway, who observed the action, said that his troops might not attempt to retake burned-out Seoul.
Other armored task forces were within two miles of Seoul. Another reached to within six miles of Inchon and then withdrew for the night. The enemy was putting up a substantial fight only in the rugged mountain country of the central sector, where South Korean troops encountered about 3,000 North Korean soldiers, and in the western sector.
On the east coast, South Korean forces occupied Kangnung, 17 miles south of the 38th parallel, after the town had been bombarded for days by allied naval units.
The Senate Defense Preparedness subcommittee, chaired by Senator Lyndon Johnson, appeared ready this date to accede to the Department of Defense recommendation to lower the draft age from 19 to 18 after conferring further the previous day with Secretary of Defense Marshall. Senator Johnson said that only two points remained unresolved, whether the length of service would be extended from 21 to 27 months or, as being debated, 24 months, and the continuation of the policy allowing the National Guard and reserves to accept 18-year old volunteers, earning thereby exemption from the draft.
The Office of Price Stabilization ordered a system implemented of "slaughter quotas", in an effort to forestall black markets on meat. It would limit slaughterers to the same proportionate share of animals they had killed the prior year and ban new slaughterers from entering the market unless they could demonstrate public need.
Head 'em up, hold 'em out.
The rail strike had practically ended and all mail service was restored to normal. The Army's threat to fire striking switchmen who had been calling in "sick" had been credited with ending the strike, after the President had directed the Secretary of the Army, operating the railroads, to take whatever action was necessary to end it. The Army had coupled the order with a pay raise retroactive to October 1. In Chicago, where the strike had begun, all striking railway workers returned to work.
Rail service, both passenger and freight, would return to nearly normal in Charlotte this night, as the last of the freight embargoes were being lifted.
The President's jab the previous day at the heads of the railway brotherhoods, accusing them of abandoning their agreement "like a bunch of Russians", and at the Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright, for its "asinine report" regarding a Presidential aide's alleged pressure on RFC to make loans, plus the President's dare to Congress to cut his 71.6 billion dollar budget had fueled rumors afresh that he intended to run again in 1952. A White House statement after the press conference at which the President smilingly made the statements clarified that his simile regarding the railroad strike referred to the heads of the unions rather than the striking railway workers themselves. The heads of the three unions issued a statement saying that they were "badly shocked" by the President's comparison of them to Russians. They said that they hoped for the same vindication had by the Marines after the President, late in 1950, had compared their propaganda to that of the Soviets.
The unexpurgated, privately communicated version of the remark probably was: "bunch of goddamned Roosky sons-of-bitches".
Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois said that the subcommittee headed by Senator Fulbright was not trying to reflect on the President in its report on RFC problems. Senator Fulbright denied that he had left town to avoid a meeting with the President on the matter.
A Federal grand jury in Washington indicted the "Peace Information Center" of New York and five of its officers for failing to register as a foreign agent. The Center had been the chief sponsor in the U.S. of the Russian-backed Stockholm Peace Petition, regarded by the State Department as a Soviet trick to obtain atomic control without proper international inspections. The indictment charged the organization with acting for a Cominform organization. The five indicted included the mother of William Remington's former wife, who had testified against him at his trial, which had just resulted in conviction for perjury two nights earlier and his sentence the previous day to the maximum term of five years in prison.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York delayed its decision regarding whether to grant permanently appellate bond to Mr. Remington, but continued in effect the bond pending its final decision.
In Raleigh, a bill was presented to the State House to eliminate runoff primaries in many state and Federal elections, including that for Congressmen, Senators, and Governor, provided a candidate received at least 45 percent of the vote cast rather than requiring a simple majority.
The State Senate passed a bill and sent it to the House which would prohibit issuance of a driver's license to an illiterate person who would reach age 16 after July 1, 1952.
You done what?
Big red octagon means "no-go" and yellow triangle means, "maybe-maybe not, after looking real hard". Rectangles with numbers mean "go faster than you are". Follow the arrows, otherwise. We don't need no read.
A mass of cold air covered most of the nation, with the worst of it besieging the area from Minnesota to Maine, but there were signs of a break on the Western edge of the front. In upstate New York, at Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks, the mercury dropped to 39 below zero and 25 below in Clinton County. New York City and Newark recorded 11 degrees. In Chicago, it was a chilly seven below.
On the editorial page, "Weakness in 'Cotton Bloc' Case" finds no sympathy for the Southern Congressional bloc which sought to remove all restrictions on the price of baled cotton. Thus far, the Government had placed no control on the price of raw cotton but had set a ceiling on the price after it left the farmer, having the same effect at the farm as a control on the raw product.
The argument of the cotton bloc in Congress had four basic problems, which it outlines, and then concludes that raw cotton prices should not be allowed to run wild as textile products were crucial to the national economy and could not be allowed to rise unchecked during the national emergency.
"The Army's Railroad Order" finds that the order for railroad men to return to work or face dismissal, unless able to show that they were genuinely unable physically to do so, to have been inevitable. It predicts that the striking workers would obey the directive as to do otherwise would place them in sympathy with the country's enemies, with which they were not in fact.
It finds the President's comparison of them to Russians, by their having run out on the December 21 agreement reached in Government mediation, to have been accurate, if ill-considered.
It quotes with approval from former Senator Frank Graham, who had recently told a government-labor-contractor conference in Anchorage, Alaska, that ultimately the people had to make the industrial machine work, that Government regulations were not enough.
The railroad workers stood on the economic front line of the nation's defenses and their decision had to be governed by their individual consciences, whether to support their nation's defense or hinder it.
"The Cause Is Just" tells of the State Senate bill to provide Highway Commission funds to the cities for building and maintaining roads having passed two hurdles in committee but predicts that it might face a tougher time in the House. It again summarizes the reasons why it was just for the funds to come from the State rather than the localities, based on the revenue going to the State Highway Fund being primarily from city residents paying gasoline taxes and license tag fees. Moreover, the money in the Fund was sufficient for use in building and maintaining the city streets.
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "At Last the British Pay for Trafalgar", tells of the British Government having paid to the hero of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson, and to his heirs in perpetuity, a pension of 5,000 pounds per year. By 1947, the total amount disbursed had reached a million pounds, with the last of the recipients being elderly great-great nephews, the last of whom having passed away recently at age 90. There were no more living relatives and so the British Government could, at long last, after 145 years since the Battle of Trafalgar, consider the debt to Admiral Nelson paid in full.
Drew Pearson tells of "Jiggs" Donahue, the attorney who had convicted West Coast longshoremen leader Harry Bridges for not telling the truth on his citizenship application, becoming the chief price control enforcer. Mr. Donahue had found himself, however, in bad straits insofar as physical facilities, his office having been moved and his mail lost in delivery, with his new office not even yet having a telephone. He said that he guessed he would have to receive his mail by carrier pigeon. Mr. Pearson predicts that when he became established, he would do a superb job of enforcement against price chiselers not following the regulations.
Senator Wayne Morse
The RFC was forced to disclose to the public how much alcohol its rubber reserve had purchased from a specific supplier, and its price. The average price for alcohol was 91.34 cents per gallon, but RFC's rubber reserve was paying between 90 cents and $1.25 per gallon. The consultant used by RFC to make the purchases worked for the big supplier to the reserve.
The allied combat troops in Korea were showing signs of exhaustion, with the result that the Army was sending small groups on ten-day passes to Japan.
The rate of typhus among enemy troops was high, and the U.S. Army was now dusting Korean civilians with DDT to kill typhus-carrying lice.
Two recently captured units of the Chinese army reported that 30 to 50 percent of their army in Korea suffered from frostbite or trench foot.
The U.S. Army was sending 40,000 more reservists to Korea as replacements.
Army chief of staff General J. Lawton Collins privately stated that the Army would be strong enough in 12 to 18 months for the U.S. to get tough in diplomatic negotiations.
Marquis Childs tells of optimism running high in the Republican Party for their prospects in 1952. They had a gimmick which they did not have when optimism was also running high for 1948, that being Senator Joseph McCarthy and his big smear tactic. Senator McCarthy had received almost as much applause at the gathering as had Senator Taft.
The Democrats, meanwhile, were in a pessimistic mood, as their hold on labor had been weakened, with labor leaders complaining that the defense program had been turned over to big business. The Administration was run by cronyism, with the President rewarding friends and punishing enemies, the result being that administrative competence had declined in certain agencies, including the RFC, the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Federal Power Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Foreign Service. Mr. Childs finds it illustrative of what was wrong with the Administration.
Putting the GOP optimism together with the Democratic decline and decay meant certain victory for the Republicans in 1952.
Yet, he restrains his certainty of the result by recalling a piece he had written in the period leading up to the 1948 election, finding then that the President was surely going to be defeated. Perhaps, therefore, he allows, it was only a repeat of that earlier cycle.
Robert C. Ruark finds mothers to be the reason for the hesitancy of Congress to go along with the Department of Defense recommendation for the drafting of 18-year olds. The mothers did not object to drafting their married sons, with or without children, because that son was already lost to the mother, "the property of some other dame, of whom Mama is already jealous".
He finds the 18-year old to represent the smallest price society could pay in the draft, because he had not yet formed his position in society, was rarely married or had children, and was not employed yet in a serious capacity. Yet, he was a man in body, was amenable to training and less sensitive to danger than an adult with responsibilities. Moreover, 18, he asserts, was not appreciably younger than 19, the current minimum draft age.
Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II, had joined the Army at 18 and remained under 21 at V-E Day. Squabbling over the difference in age was, he finds, hair-splitting.
Military pay could not easily support a wife or family and so did not easily accommodate the married soldier, leaving the wife to work, return to her family, or live a life of penury.
He concludes that sending young married men, veterans, or non-veterans with dependents, to war before sending 18-year olds would work an injustice, and it was one instance therefore when the "mama lobby" ought haul in its horns.
A letter writer from Campobello, S.C., says that he had always been in favor of higher wages, supports the labor leaders for achieving those higher wages for organized workers. But he also says that the country had reached its limit in wages, as they resulted in higher prices which then produced a vicious cycle of inflation and need for higher wages yet again to keep pace with the rising cost of living.
A letter writer takes issue with a previous letter writer who had attacked the Chiang regime in Formosa for its graft and corruption and had suggested, based on the statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury, that most Christians in Communist China preferred Mao to Chiang. He finds that no matter what one thought of Chiang, he was the duly elected leader of China and had been forced from the mainland by the Communist Chinese. He asserts that it was therefore the duty of the U.S. to support him.
A letter from the president of Piedmont & Northern Railway Co. praises the Business Review and Progress edition published the prior Wednesday by The News, says that he thoroughly enjoyed it.
A letter from the minister of Myers Park Presbyterian Church thanks The News for republishing in serial form Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Story Ever Told, and also praises the book, itself.
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