The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 28, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that American artillery had hit Communist forces massed along the 38th parallel in central Korea. Field dispatches said that enemy troops were digging in south of the border on both the western and central fronts. Some 20,000 enemy troops had massed above and below the parallel.
On the lightly defended east coast, South Korean troops advanced more than six miles north of the parallel, occupying four North Korean towns and a border village.
Despite bad weather, allied warplanes supported the ground action, dropping napalm, bombs and machine gun fire on the enemy, hitting also the ground north of the enemy positions in a reverse scorched-earth policy.
President Vincent Auriol of France arrived in Washington on an unprecedented five-day visit of state, the first formal visit to the U.S. of a French chief of state. The primary purpose of the visit was to demonstrate the unity and friendship between France and the U.S. A military parade was presented in his honor from Union Station to Blair House, temporary residence of the First Family. Government workers were released early for the event.
In Berlin, East German Communist police opened fire on American tourists in the downtown area and U.S. authorities demanded an immediate audience with the Russians to obtain an explanation. The police had fired twelve times at four buses carrying American Army and civilian personnel on the regular Wednesday tour of Berlin, sponsored by the Army Special Services. The buses were on the border between the sectors at the time. Three shots hit one of the buses and broke a window but none of the occupants was injured.
Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson told the Senate Appropriations Committee that by 1953, the country would, if necessary, be able to fight an all-out war from the production lines, and at the same time supply more goods for the civilian economy. He sought another 51 million dollars in cash and another billion in loan authority to operate the defense mobilization program for the ensuing three months.
The Office of Price Stabilization was ready to issue price controls on about sixty percent of the food in the grocery store. Price Stabilizer Mike DiSalle said that the order would result mainly in rollbacks in prices, though there would also be some increases.
Former Congressman Joseph E. Casey, who had testified to the Senate Banking subcommittee investigating Government favoritism that he had made $250,000 from a $20,000 investment through a partnership engaged in buying ships from the Government, refused to to say who the others were in the partnership but insisted that the arrangement was above criticism. Senator John W. Bricker stated, when the subcommittee dismissed Mr. Casey, that he doubted the courts would protect his right not to testify on the matter, suggesting that a contempt action might be brought against him. Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the subcommittee, said that the possibility of contempt was a matter for the committee to consider later.
The Senate organized crime investigating committee began its final report and sought to formulate legislation to get at the underworld. Senator Kefauver had firmly insisted that the committee follow its mandate to conclude business by the end of March but committee member Senator Charles Tobey wanted to effect a compromise to continue the hearings somewhat longer. Minority Leader Senator Kenneth Wherry said that he believed that all Republican Senators favored extension of the hearings for sixty days.
In Kansas City, the St. Louis betting commissioner, James J. Carroll, was charged with failing to report nearly $57,000 in payments which he made in 1948 and 1949 to winning bettors and in commissions.
In New York, defense summation was proceeding in the spy cases of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, along with co-defendant Morton Sobell. They were charged with conspiracy to transmit atomic secrets to the Russians during wartime, including that of the Nagasaki bomb. The charges carried the potential for the death penalty. The defense argued that there was no proof that the transmission had injured the United States. Counsel sought to discredit Mrs. Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass, who had been the chief prosecution witness after he had pleaded guilty to being part of the conspiracy. The attorney said that a man who would testify against his own blood was "repulsive, revolting, is violating any code of civilization that ever existed … is lower than the lowest animal."
In Raleigh, legislation to reduce truck weight limits to pre-1949 levels was defeated in the State Senate Roads Committee. The Committee approved a new system of truck weighing stations and stiffer penalties for overloading. The State House Committee on Manufacturing & Labor threw out a bill which would have set a state minimum wage and maximum hour standard of 75 cents based on a 40-hour work week, with time-and-a-half for overtime, in jobs not covered by the Federal law.
In Charlotte, the Air Force was considering reopening Morris Field, a World War II training facility which had been given to the City and which was now housing 400 families. But if it would be reopened, the Air Force said, new barracks housing would be built and the existing families would therefore not have to move.
In Pompano Beach, Fla., grade A cucumbers were selling at the farmers market for $18.25 per bushel, above the highest price ever paid of $18, according to the manager of the market. The higher price had been caused by a shortage from cold weather.
On the editorial page, "The Iron Fist of the Rules Committee" finds that the public should be outraged by the House Rules Committee having refused to place on calendar for consideration the bill to provide India needed grain to avoid mass famine, after that bill had been approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and, as well, had the approval of the President, former President Herbert Hoover and respected leaders in Congress. India had already cut its ration for 125 million people from 12 ounces to 9 ounces per day and was having difficulty even meeting that regimen. It concludes that it was undemocratic for the Rules Committee effectively to veto the legislation, necessary to provide for humanitarian aid.
"A Muzzle for MacArthur" finds that when General MacArthur the previous Friday had stated that if the U.N. departed from its "tolerant effort" to contain the war in Korea and authorized expansion of military operations to the coastal areas and interior bases of Communist China, the latter would "risk imminent military collapse", he had crossed the line of acceptable statements for a military man and it was proper for the Administration to place a check on him. He had made negotiations with the Chinese harder by placing Mao Tse-Tung in an impossible position at home should he appear to be bowing to the General's will. Moreover, the general policy was to avoid general war in the Far East to enable concentration of military efforts on Western Europe, rather than encouraging such a war as the General's statements tended to do.
It advises General MacArthur to remember that as a military commander, his job was to carry out and not make national and U.N. policy. "If his megalomania is so advanced that he is unable, or unwilling, to see that, he should be replaced."
Within less than two weeks, he would be replaced as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway, currently ground commander in Korea.
"The Big Inflation Question" discusses the difficult task of Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson, Price Stabilizer Mike DiSalle, and Wage Stabilizer Eric Johnston. When the big defense program moved into high gear, there would be increased buying power in the country, putting new inflationary pressures on the economy.
Since the previous July, the Federal budget had managed a three billion dollar surplus, which generally was deflationary. Yet, twenty percent or more inflation was curtailing the Government's buying power for the defense build-up. The previous fall's tax hike of 4.5 billion dollars had already been consumed by inflation.
It suggests that Congress and several Federal agencies appeared more concerned about protecting special interests than saving the economy, as when the Congress exempted farm products from price ceilings until a product reached parity.
Mr. Johnston had warned that failure to tighten controls on all fronts would result in rampant inflation which would shatter the national economy. The piece finds that if this warning were not heeded, the nation would receive an economic jolt which could have serious and lasting effects on a large segment of the population.
"Interlude in State Senate" tells of the Raleigh News & Observer reporting that a State Senator had found a bill on his desk of unknown origin and requested that someone come forward to claim it. A few minutes later, however, he had announced that he had read the bill, which made mail carriers private rather than common carriers, and had no objection to it, so would place the bill in the hopper.
The piece wonders whether he might also support a bill to exempt newspaper editors from payment of taxes if someone were to leave it on his desk.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Senate Is Not Holy", finds that Senator Estes Kefauver's statement before the Senate recently that the Senate, itself, should not be immune from investigation for ethics violations to have been appropriate. Yet, it had spawned controversy within the Senate as Majority Leader Ernest McFarland expressed regret that such a statement would be made on the floor of the Senate.
The piece finds the Senators standing by their club rules that no Senator could impugn the integrity of another Senator. It urges, however, that the Senate was not a private club and needed to be responsive to the public trust and submit to investigation of itself.
Dick Young, Jr., City Editor of The News, in the second in his three-part series on the alcohol education program being undertaken in Rowan County and Salisbury through the State ABC control program, describes further the educational program which had been set up in the community. It told of alcoholism being a sickness, some finding it to be a form of mental disease while others viewed it as a manifestation of physical or mental allergic reaction to alcohol, that it was not caused primarily by the direct action of alcohol. The program was aimed at every stratum of society and every age group, starting with pre-schoolers—where the worst problems of drunkenness remained hidden behind all of the cute little toys, bottles of bourbon being secreted away inside teddy bears and tiny airplane bottles inside building blocks carefully carved out for the purpose.
The program was also being extended into the prisons.
And then to be addressed was the community enabling process through production of Cheerwine.
Drew Pearson finds that members of the Administration had become so accustomed to the smell of the sewer that they no longer reacted to it. The men below had taken their cues from the top. Whereas FDR had fired those DNC committeemen who had come to Washington to lobby, President Truman had advanced them. Ed Pauley was an example. He had been DNC treasurer and held extensive oil interests on the West Coast, but was nominated to be Undersecretary of the Navy in early 1946, supervising the purchase of oil for the Navy. The resulting controversy over his nomination, winding up in withdrawal of it, had prompted long-time Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes to resign after the President questioned his memory regarding an alleged statement by Mr. Pauley in the presence of then-Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson, later Chief Justice, that he could raise several million dollars for the Democrats from oil interests provided that the tidal oil lands contest to declare them Federal lands were dropped.
Another cue by Vice-President Truman was when he flew to Tom Pendergast's funeral after the former boss of Kansas City who had put Mr. Truman in the Senate had served a prison sentence for taking bribes from insurance companies. Then, as one of his first acts as President, Mr. Truamn fired Maurice Mulligan as U.S. Attorney for Kansas City after Mr. Mulligan had prosecuted Mr. Pendergast. He next fired Francis Biddle as Attorney General because he had refused to fire Mr. Mulligan.
When the President's personal physician, Brig. General Wallace Graham, was caught speculating on commodities at a time when it was against public policy to do so, the President stood by him. Likewise, when it was revealed by the Hoey subcommittee investigating the five-percenter contracts that Maj. General Harry Vaughan, the President's military aide, was involved in pulling strings for John Maragon and getting postwar restricted, scarce building materials for Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno, California, the President did nothing. Indeed, he had called Mr. Pearson an "s.o.b." for criticizing General Vaughan for receiving a decoration from Argentine dictator Juan Peron. Mr. Maragon had operated with privileged status in the White House for three years before being convicted for perjury on his statements to the Hoey subcommittee regarding his finances. Yet, the White House never criticized Mr. Maragon.
Mr. Pearson finds that it was therefore not hard to understand why those down below had engaged in such questionable activities as accepting mink coats for their wives or pulled strings for friends to obtain RFC loans or approved routes for Pan American and Northwest Airlines after the Civil Aeronautics Board had declined to do so. Nor was it hard to understand why certain big tax cases had been settled without criminal action or why a prominent IRB executive had been seen in the company of gambling kingpin Frank Costello.
Marquis Childs tells of a danger inherent in Congress taking over the role of the judiciary in presenting televised hearings on organized crime. As during the persecutions in New England four hundred years earlier, the puritanical audience stood in judgment of the witnesses. But in the earlier time, the Puritan at least had a semblance of a trial; not so in the televised spectacle.
He suggests that there was a reason for these televised hearings, to instill in the public a sense of the need for outcry at the local level against organized crime and gambling, that it substituted for a breakdown of local law enforcement in many cities, and even Federal law enforcement when it came to collecting taxes on gambling.
Yet, even racketeers had rights.
There was a public clamor for punishment when two witnesses contradicted one another, not recognizing that it was difficult to prove perjury, though seeming obvious to viewers.
The hearings had stirred greater activity in prosecuting tax evaders in the underworld. But as to organized crime in general, local law enforcement, which appeared wedded in many places to politics, would have to be stirred to ferret it out.
He suggests that the Federal Government should not be placed in the position of policing morals in the country, as the moral climate could only change if there was a will to change it at the local level.
Robert C. Ruark suggests that the Kefauver committee look at Charles "Lucky" Luciano's parole acquired, according to Governor Dewey at the time, because he had aided the war effort by inducing others to provide information of possible enemy attacks. But it turned out later, according to OSS head William Donovan, that no such help had been given. Another wild explanation was that he had contacts among the Nova Scotia fishermen and thus could be beneficial in anti-submarine defense. In the end, he was simply a criminal who was allowed out of prison after ten years and then deported to Sicily, then returned to Havana to try to worm his way back into the country or deal with his dope-peddling friends from that location.
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