The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 20, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Olen Clements, that ten enemy planes had been shot down or damaged this date by the allies as both propeller-driven and jet planes took part in a dogfight for the first time in the war. In all, 98 planes were involved on both sides as the action took place 15 miles south of the Manchurian border. During the previous four days, the enemy had suffered 28 planes damaged or destroyed. The Fifth Air Force said that nine were shot down, another probably shot down and 18 damaged. There were no figures available on U.N. air losses, if any.
On the ground, the North Koreans
suddenly abandoned
In Tehran, negotiations of the oil dispute between Iran and the British, regarding seizure of the oil interests in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., had broken down the previous night. The Iranian Government had refused a British offer of payment for the oil interests. Premier Mohammed Mossadegh ordered his Government to take full authority over the company and the British called home their peace mission sent to negotiate. The Premier promised to keep the oil flowing and not to shut off the oil, as favored by extreme nationalists in the country. Foreign Minister Herbert Morrison told Commons that the British would appeal to the International Court of Justice at The Hague for advice on provisional methods to protect its oil.
Maj. General Patrick Hurley, former Ambassador to China, testifying before the joint Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, said that the State Department had surrendered the principles for which the country had fought during World War II and called for an end of the policy of appeasement.
General MacArthur declined the invitation of the joint committees to rebut testimony of other witnesses on the basis that he believed it was not in the public interest to do so. He said that some of the testimony did not accord with his recollection and record of the events and that he was in disagreement with many of the opinions expressed. He added that the full facts had not been elucidated regarding his relief from command in the Far East because of the President's orders silencing pertinent witnesses as to the President's part in the matter. General Hurley had made a similar statement.
Secretary of Defense Marshall asked Congress to approve as quickly as possible a 6.5 billion dollar military building program, dictated, he said, by the current international tension. He said that the Defense Department would soon ask for 4.5 billion dollars to start the program and rush it toward completion within two years. More than 1.5 billion dollars worth of the projects, more than a billion of which was for the Air Force, were classified as secret.
Two aerial photographs of the Government's hydrogen bomb plant at Ellenton, S.C., were released for publication this date and appeared in the Washington Times-Herald after being withheld for nearly a month since they were taken May 24 by a Times-Herald photographer and scheduled originally for publication May 29. The building resembled a wagon wheel with six spokes extending from its hub.
The seven-member Senate expenditures subcommittee, chaired by Senator Clyde Hoey, issued a report that it had found a "vicious job-selling market" involving Federal Government positions in Mississippi. It said that the practice resulted from the DNC invoking political reprisals against Mississippi Democrats who bolted from the Democratic ticket in 1948 to support the States Rights ticket of Governors Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright. A small group had extorted money from those seeking postal jobs, but the practice, the subcommittee found, had ended. There was no evidence that the DNC received any of the money. Prosecutions, the report said, might follow regarding the selling of jobs. The subcommittee, in addition to Senator Hoey, was comprised of Senators John McClellan, Herbert O'Conor, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, and Karl Mundt.
The Senate crime investigating committee of Senator O'Conor sent a third request to Governor Fuller Warren of Florida to testify before the committee in Miami and threatened further action if he did not provide satisfactory response by noon the following day.
The President named UNC president Gordon Gray as the director of a new cold war strategy board designed to coordinate psychological warfare. The board members would be Undersecretary of State James Webb, also of North Carolina, Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, and CIA director Walter Bedell Smith. Mr. Gray was not a member of the board but would organize a staff to carry out the board's work.
In New York, the FBI arrested at their homes 17 of 21 Communist leaders indicted for violating the Smith Act. The other four were not at home. The indictments contended that those arrested carried on the conspiracy to teach or advocate the overthrow of the Government by force or violence with the eleven Communists who recently had their Smith Act convictions upheld by the Supreme Court.
In Chicago, 900 striking United Airlines pilots and co-pilots ignored the U.S. Mediation Board's order to end the "illegal walkout". The pilots said the directive was "ridiculous" and constituted "tweedledee, tweedledum hocus pocus". The strike halted all commercial non-military flights of the airline and grounded 132 transport flights from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Operations of other airlines were not immediately impacted.
On the editorial page, "Mr. Truman in the Briar Patch" tells of Governor Kerr Scott being one of the first to predict and advocate the renomination of the President in 1952. Jonathan Daniels, North Carolina's DNC representative, had now added his voice to the chorus. The piece thinks they might be correct that the President would run again and be nominated, perhaps even re-elected.
It suggests that as long as the Republicans followed the path laid down by the McCarthys, Wherrys, Tafts, and Hickenloopers, they were making the prospect of another four years for the President the more likely. It suggests that sensible Republicans begin to assert leadership to avoid that "calamity". The President's foreign policy had been appropriate but the rest of his Presidency, it finds, was mediocre, his Administration being involved in too much influence-peddling. Otherwise, it predicts, the President might "scamper through the briar patch" to another term.
"Queen Charlotte on Display" tells of Samuel Lubell writing an article on Charlotte for the Saturday Evening Post, finding present in the city a universal feeling that whatever would make the city bigger would mean a brighter future. It finds that the article would be a boon to tourism and commerce as millions of readers could not help but be impressed by the glowing review, while also presenting a people with a good sense of humor, self-effacing about the city's many eccentricities and foibles. It presented the city as a good place to live and work.
Does that include the Sugaw Creek area?
"The Parking Meter 'Concession'" finds it inappropriate for the City Council to consider a proposal to place advertising on parking meters, even though it could generate $11,000 per year in revenue. For, it suggests, it would be just as wise to place advertising on the City Hall lawn or on the sides of police cars and fire trucks. Also, the proponent of the proposal, the City Solicitor, had an interest in the concession.
"The Frankenstein of Football" tells of five college football coaches in North Carolina, including Carl Snavely of UNC, having said recently that they wanted the platoon system in football abandoned as the days of large squads were gone. They cost too much to maintain and the talent pool from Pennsylvania had been fully mined and exhausted. The piece, while equating the shock of such a recommendation to hearing that Hoagy Carmichael had destroyed all copies of "Stardust" or that Walt Disney had throttled Mickey Mouse, thinks it a good proposition and says it would welcome a return to individual heroics on the field when the old college try had been the rule of Saturdays rather than who had the heftiest tackles and the greatest number of halfbacks from Altoona, Pa.
A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Light on Lobbyists", tells of the prospective investigation by Congress of the China lobby and the extension of the investigation likely into other foreign lobbies operating in the country to drum up support for their governments, thus violating Federal law preventing a foreign government from spending money to influence U.S. legislation. It suggests that a joint Congressional committee comprised of House and Senate members would serve well the purpose and could do more than merely Justice Department prosecution, as it could propose new legislation to deal with the problem while exposing a larger area of misconduct.
Drew Pearson tells of President Galo Plaza Lasso of Ecuador, the first American-born head of state in Latin America. His father had been President of Ecuador but was in exile when the younger was born in Greenwich Village. Galo Plaza had been educated at the University of Maryland and the University of California, where he played football. He earned a degree in dairy farming at Maryland and then pioneered a successful dairy farm in the Ecuadoran hills. He became Minister of Defense just at the outset of World War II, setting the unheard of policy in Latin America that the Army had to remain out of politics, threatening to fire the generals if they did not obey the directive. He served as Ambassador to the U.S. during the war and became President in 1948. He had followed the strategy employed by President Truman in 1948, taking his campaign to the people.
He had stressed economic reform rather than social reform, asking his old friend Nelson Rockefeller to send experts to study the products which the country could best produce, resulting in fast-growing rice production. His policies had begun to pull Ecuador from its position as the poorest and most disease-ridden country in South America. He had remained one of the few leaders in Latin America to remain in power for his full term without resorting to armed force or suppression of civil liberties.
Marquis Childs discusses economic controls as the June 30 deadline for extension approached. There were indications that the Administration had told Congressional leaders privately that a one-year extension would be adequate rather than the two years publicly being sought by the President. But such an extension would please no one as organized labor was fighting for stronger controls and business organizations wanted all controls lifted.
Inflation was said to be just around the corner, but automobiles, televisions, refrigerators and other such consumer goods were piling up in the showrooms and warehouses. The reason cited was Regulation W, put forth by the Federal Reserve Board, limiting installment plans to 15 months and requiring down payments of one-third on cars and 25 percent on household appliances. The President had said that he had no objection to relaxing the regulation and the Administration man on the Board, James K. Vardeman, was seeking to convince the other Board members to do that. The majority, however, were resistant. Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson was opposed to change of the regulation.
UAW president Walter Reuther had said that the regulation hurt the individual consumer while the large borrowers were flush with credit. Mr. Reuther also opposed a freeze on farm parity prices because he saw it as foreshadowing a freeze on wages. Philip Murray of CIO was trying to drum up support for tightened controls.
Mr. Childs concludes that each special interest would likely continue to fight hard to maintain an even keel with the rest.
Robert C. Ruark tells of psychiatry being used as a gimmick by the sleep industry to promote various types of pillows and mattresses, with signs to match.
One such sign asked whether the pillow was too buxom, to which Mr. Ruark takes immediate offense, saying, "It so happens I LIKE big pillows."
He finds such inquiries as whether the husband fell asleep too quickly or at the wrong time to be "double-barreled accusation of built-in guilt of homicidal carelessness and overweening callousness."
He favors rapping one's self gently
on the head with a bottle of bourbon until the eyes began to blur,
then being carried to bed, placing the head on the pillow, opening
the mouth and beginning to snore. He pulled all the blankets off his
wife and thrashed wildly about, kicking, swinging arms and grinding
his teeth. He says that in this way, he had been sleeping
successfully for years without going to a clinic to learn how to
relax
But how do you feel when you wake up in the morning—or perhaps in mid-afternoon?
A letter from Kelly Alexander, president of the North Carolina chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., responds point by point to R. F. Beasley's editorial the previous Monday advising against desegregation of public schools. Mr. Alexander finds that Mr. Beasley's advice that the white-run schools under integration would not hire black teachers for the children to be unlikely but that even if it did occur, there were worse things than losing jobs in the fight for equality.
He finds Mr. Beasley's suggestion that if the two races were to "amalgamate" the few pure whites left would still consider themselves the superior race to be an argument not worthy of him, that it was a red herring designed to obfuscate the real issue, exposing black American children to the same public facilities of health, education and welfare to which other American children were exposed.
He thinks that Mr. Beasley was seeking to uphold a principle which was immoral, unjust and undemocratic, forcing upon black children at their most impressionable age an oppression coming from the realization of their inferior status in the society, denying them the educational advantages available to other children. He concludes that it was that principle with which his organization found fault.
Well, now, that's different. All Mr.
Beasley was against was that amalgamatin'. As long as you people
agree not to amalgamate when you come on ova heya to school in
Mon-roe, it ought to be okay. But if you all start into amalgamatin', or, for that matter, formal
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