The Charlotte News

Wednesday, April 4, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that an allied task force had driven four miles north of the 38th parallel this date in the western sector of Korea, against heavy enemy resistance from mortar and artillery fire encountered near Topyong, but pushed ahead. Another allied force nearby drove two miles north of the parallel in the Yongpyong area. The allied forces stretched along a ten-mile front and withdrew at nightfall under heavy fire.

In the central front, earlier reports said that a patrol had driven across the parallel and routed Chinese troops from two hills, probing the outer fringes of the Chinese buildup, which was said by intelligence reports to consist of about half a million troops.

American Sabre jets destroyed one Russian-built MIG-15 jet and damaged two others in a dogfight near Sinuiju along the Manchurian border. Other allied planes flew 270 sorties against enemy supply lines and ground forces.

The Senate appeared poised to approve its resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that while the President ought consult with Congress before sending more troops to NATO, it approved the four additional divisions currently being contemplated for service. The resolution was an advisory opinion only and did not carry the force of law. Senator Richard Russell said that the expression seeking approval of Congress for more troops was okay for home consumption but not for export. Senator Tom Connally said that the expression did not help the resolution but would not kill it.

Selective Service announced that freshmen in the upper half of their class, sophomores in the upper two-thirds, and juniors in the upper three-fourths would be deferred from the draft during their undergraduate years in college. They could also obtain deferment by scoring 70 on an aptitude test. Seniors planning to go to graduate school would be deferred for a year, provided they were in the top half of the class or scored 75 on the aptitude test.

Better hit the books, boys, and those of you in the bottom half of the freshman class, find out what "deferment" means.

Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson told the joint Congressional watchdog committee on mobilization, chaired by Senator Burnet Maybank, that inflation was the nation's greatest problem but could be controlled.

The White House, via press secretary Joseph Short, described as "entirely misleading" an article in Collier's by Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer and former assistant to FDR and press secretary just prior to FDR's death in April, 1945, in which he said that President Truman favored changing the system of Congressional tenure to election of members of the House for four-year terms in the same quadrennial election as the election of the President, plus term limits of twelve years for members of both chambers. Mr. Short said that the President, for whom Mr. Daniels had also served in 1945 as an assistant and on whom he had written a biography, wanted it known that Mr. Daniels was not authorized to speak for him.

The strike of 40,000 Southern textile workers of the Textile Workers Union of America, about 25,000 of whom worked in the two Carolinas, continued, as the dispute over a sought 13-cent per hour minimum wage increase to $1.14.5 per hour remained unresolved.

In Raleigh, the Board of Trustees of the Greater University voted 48 to 15 to accept the recommendation of its executive committee to admit qualified applicants to graduate and professional schools without regard to race or color when the programs to which admission was sought were not provided by the State to the racial group of which the applicant was a member.

Saying he was opposed to eliminating segregation in the public schools generally, Gordon Gray, president of UNC, had urged adoption of the resolution to accord the law of the land.

State Representative C. Wayland Spruill of Bertie County said the action would "cause bloodshed" in the state. He and Dave Clark of Charlotte, John W. Clark of Greensboro, and John Kerr, Jr., of Warrenton, a former State House Speaker, led the opposition on the Board to the resolution.

The Trustees also voted to instruct the State Attorney General to file a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, seeking review of the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeals, ordering admission to the UNC Law School of Floyd McKissick and three other qualified black applicants on the basis that the N.C. College for Negroes Law School at Durham was not substantially equal to that of UNC, following the Sweatt v. Painter decision of the prior year.

In installment three of Dale Carnegie's How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, he tells how to cut office worries in half. He relates of a partner and general manager of publisher Simon & Schuster in New York who eliminated three-fourths of his conferences spent worrying about various matters by first ending the conference procedure and then making a new rule under which everyone with a problem had to submit a memorandum to him identifying the problem, its cause, its possible solutions, and the writer's suggested solution. It had resulted in his associates rarely coming to him any longer about their problems because in answering the questions of the memo, they had discovered their own solution without consultation. Mr. Carnegie tells of another business friend who had used a similar technique to reduce his business worries while doubling his income.

As pictured, the mother of Mitchell Red Cloud, a Winnebago Indian from Friendship, Wisc., received posthumously the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to her son for his valor in protecting his fellow soldiers during a battle in Korea. Three others also were awarded the highest medal conferred for demonstration of valor in combat.

On the editorial page, "Denial of Democracy" tells of the State Constitution providing that after each decennial census, the General Assembly was to alter the Senate districts to make them as nearly as possible equal in population. The present Assembly had not fulfilled this duty and there was no provision in the law to make them do so. It finds it anti-democratic, hearkening of Stalin or Hitler. For majority rule was supposed to govern in a democracy; but in this case, the majority had no say.

"Hoodlums in Business" tells of the Wall Street Journal abstracting from the Kefauver hearings on organized crime the facts surrounding several members of organized crime who had gone into legitimate businesses. The piece lists several such men and their businesses, as Frank Costello who owned a kewpie doll manufacturer, an ice-cream stick manufacturer, Dinky's Products Co., and a portable "ray-cooker" manufacturer. (The kewpie doll company was probably named Kinky's.)

"Policy operator" Peter Tremont owned a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Chicago.

Frank Erickson, imprisoned bookie, had a part interest in the Park Avenue and 59th Street Corporation of New York City, and also operated a theater, probably named "Groovy Movies, Inc.", and stores.

William Molaskey, lumped in with gangsters and gamblers in the Kefauver report, was one of the largest stockholders in Western Union.

Morris Dalitz, the Cleveland representative of Charles "Lucky" Luciano's dope ring, held $100,000 worth of stock in Detroit Steel.

Max Zivian, viewed by the Journal with suspicion, was vice-president of that latter corporation.

Miami Beach real estate was swarming with racketeers.

The piece views the information as important. While there was no way to keep organized crime out of legitimate business, it was appropriate to keep the spotlight on them.

"Rebirth at Butner" finds the Butner Youth Rehabilitation Center near Raleigh to have done an excellent job in rehabilitating youths who had gotten into trouble. Only four of 68 who had returned to society had gotten into trouble again, compared to a national recidivism rate of 75 percent and a statewide rate of 80 percent. The core philosophy of the Center was to instill in the youthful first offenders the desire to do the right thing, which most of them genuinely wanted to do. It posits that the young men emerging from the Center might well be better citizens than most of the population.

There were now plans to open a similar facility in Goldsboro for first-time black youth offenders and additional such centers were planned for first-time white youth offenders.

The Legislature had been wise in 1947 in passing a law to segregate first offenders in the prison population, and in 1949, passing the law to set up the Butner facility. It suggests that more such wisdom should be present in the General Assembly to continue the effort and provide for more funds for Butner and other such institutions planned around the state.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "Best Things in Life Are Not Duty Free", tells of Norway having donated to Hampstead Heath in England sixty tons of snow for its scheduled ski-jumping competition. But then the customs officer insisted that a duty had to be paid on it, eventually arriving at the sum of $60 to $90. The residents did not think a duty ought be imposed on snow and so refused to raise the bounty. Eventually the snow began to melt in the storage shed and the customs officer relented and released it to the town.

Meanwhile, it snowed. The ski competition went forward.

Drew Pearson tells of various canards circulating in Washington from time to time, such as the one which had been around during FDR's tenure that he was insane and had to be chained to his bed at night, one news agency relaying it to its thousands of customers. The latest was that Secretary of Defense Marshall had entered his dotage and was unable to come to his office more than half the week. In fact, as Mr. Pearson personally attests, he was alert and worked six full days per week. He adds that while he was skeptical at first of a career military man becoming Secretary of Defense, he had laid aside those concerns as Secretary Marshall had removed his uniform and was conducting himself as the civilian head of a civilian agency.

Shortly before the strike in Southern textile mills, Senator Taft had delivered an angry outburst, endorsed by Senator Richard Nixon, against the Senate Labor Committee majority report on union busting in the Southern textile industry. Senator Taft had been the chairman of the Committee in the 80th Congress when Taft-Hartley was passed over the President's veto. The present Committee had found that Taft-Hartley had been violated by the Southern mills in an effort to crush TWUA. Senator Taft said that the majority report was one-sided and slurred the South, that there was no evidence presented that the average Southern worker was not just as self-sufficient and independent as those in the North, but acknowledged that there was a wage differential between the two sections. He said that the Committee had apparently concluded that the Southern textile industry could not be organized by TWUA without Congressional order, seeking to transform a law giving rights to workers to one imposing a duty to join the union.

Mr. Pearson says that a rumor had circulated that he had sold out to Pan American by allowing Pan Am to fly him to Europe. He corrects the rumor by informing that he had paid his own way, but wholly endorsed the trans-Atlantic service of Pan Am and thinks that if their lobbying efforts were as clean as their service, they would be in good shape.

The Senate Small Business Committee was planning to investigate the Civil Aeronautics Board for trying to regulate small airlines out of business.

Price Stabilizer Eric Johnston had urged tighter controls on farm prices and wages.

The President had come to the conclusion the previous fall that price controls ought be implemented but balked when Bernard Baruch came out for price controls, as the President's dislike for Mr. Baruch led him to avoid the appearance of following his advice. A member of the Council of Economic Advisers, Leon Keyserling, had also opposed implementation of controls during that period on the basis that inflation would help drain off excess purchasing power and its competition for goods, services and materials needed for defense.

Marquis Childs discusses the delay in sending U.S. troops in support of NATO occasioned by the continuing debate of the Senate resolution and concurrent resolution of the House and Senate that it was the sense of the Senate, and under the concurrent resolution, the House, that troops should be sent and that, while urging the President to obtain Congressional approval before sending additional troops, the Congress did approve of sending four divisions in addition to the two already present in Western Europe.

Mr. Childs indicates that it was now the intention of the Administration to go ahead and begin sending the troops once the Senate resolution passed and not to wait on the concurrent resolution. That would mean the first division of troops would not arrive in Western Europe until around mid-May and then it would take another three weeks to transport them to West Germany, their eventual destination. Next would come an armored division in June and then the two additional divisions, possibly National Guard units, in the fall.

It demonstrated the difficulty and delay in planning and executing policy in a time of peril for democracy. Transport ships were tied up in Korea and the ships to transport troops to Europe could not be placed on reserve. Thus, only when the troops were ready to be shipped could the ships be prepared.

The same was true on the issue of sending surplus wheat to starving India: Congress was dragging its feet, with the bill tied up in the House Rules Committee.

Robert C. Ruark tells of being sick and confined to bed at home, drawing the empathetic attention of the family, the household help and even the dogs, when generally he was ignored. Now that the breadwinner appeared to be in potential peril of dropping dead, everyone was concerned. He says that he was happy, therefore, to be sick, that it had enabled him to catch up on his sleep from 1941 and his dreams. At one point, no less than five lovely ladies had been tending to him, with his wife's permission.

A letter writer takes issue with the March 23 editorial, "Come Now, Mr. Green", for its finding that the rich were being soaked with taxes while the lower and middle income groups had it relatively easy. He lists the yearly expenses of an average person earning $3,000 and finds that at the end of the year, that person had a deficit of at least $50, if not more, assuming he bought any luxuries. He asks rhetorically therefore whether it was not better to earn $75,000 and pay $50,000 of it in taxes.

A letter writer responds to earlier letters on Senator Taft's visit to Charlotte and says that he had personally exchanged correspondence with the Senator, who told him he had nothing to do with planning his itinerary in Charlotte but would have his staff look into the plans to have him speak only to a private dinner.

The principal blame for not having the Senator speak before a larger group of the public was borne, he says, by the "Lenoir Dynasty" of the Republican Party, a faction who appeared not to understand political procedure.

He appears to be referring to the Broyhills of Broyhill Furniture Company.

Seventeen years from this date, fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would be assassinated at around 6:00 p.m. while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., present in that city to support a municipal sanitation workers strike. Dr. King, only 39 years old at the time, was an incalculable loss to the spirit and the conscience of the country and his like will be long in coming again.

His loss would be compounded just two months later when Senator Robert Kennedy was fatally shot in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, just after winning the California primary for the Democratic presidential nomination on June 4.

As with 1963, 1968 would be a year filled with expressions of hate. It is important never to allow such expressions to despoil society and its efforts at progress but rather to give cause for positive inspiration out of such tragedies, as, in many cases, these three deaths did, to work within the political and economic system to produce its adherence more closely to the ideals set forth in the Constitution, to which the society, by its founding principles, is always aspiring, in furtherance of the inspired and idealistic work of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy and Dr. King.

Though it has been 50 and 55 years since those ineffable events transpired which ended those lives, with much occurring in the interim, some good, some bad, some in between, it does not seem so long ago for many of us.

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