The Charlotte News
Monday, July 30, 1951
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist and U.N. negotiators met at Kaesong for more than three hours this date, the longest session yet, but made no progress in the Korean war ceasefire talks, remaining deadlocked on where to establish a ceasefire demilitarized zone, the allies wanting a 20-mile wide zone along the present battles lines, most of which were north of the 38th parallel, and the Communists demanding that a 12.5-mile wide zone be established along the 38th parallel. The two sides agreed that the war would continue during the talks.
Allied warplanes, meanwhile, hit Pyongyang in one of the strongest air attacks of the war, though not the largest, with 405 sorties. Weather forced other planes to turn back. The capital of North Korea was chosen because it was one of the few targets which could be reached through heavy cloud cover. Three allied planes were lost, two of which, Marine Corsairs, from a midair collision.
Allied troops took the hill above Yanggu, which they had sought through five and a half days of heavy fighting. Along the rest of the front, allied patrols reported only light enemy contact.
The Congress passed the final version of extended price, wage, rent and other economic controls and the bill headed for the President, with existing controls set to expire the following day at midnight. The House passed the reconciled bill by a vote of 294 to 80 after the Senate had passed it on Friday. House Speaker Sam Rayburn said it was a "workable bill" and better than he thought they would pass. It did not give the President the powers he had sought, such as the authority to build defense plants, impose a beef slaughtering quota or curb commodity market speculation. It extended controls through the end of the fiscal year.
Senators Homer Capehart and Burnet Maybank introduced a bill to permit slaughtering quotas, saying that they did not feel it necessary to prevent a black market in beef but that since the matter was controversial, it deserved hearings.
The House Appropriations Committee approved a stop-gap appropriations measures to keep the Government running through the end of September. None of the regular appropriations measures for Government agencies for the 1951-52 fiscal year had yet cleared Congress. The stop-gap measure maintained the 1950-51 budgets for the nonce.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed to allow the Armed Services Committee to act jointly with it in determining a recommendation on the 8.5 billion dollar foreign military and economic aid measure. Some Senators, including several Republicans and Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, believed that the military rather than the State Department ought control the proposed aid as 6.3 billion of it was for military aid.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved three long-pending nominations to the Subversive Activities Board, but took no action on a fourth nomination.
Atomic Energy Commission chairman Gordon Dean said at a press conference that the U.S. was planning further atomic tests but declined to say where they would take place.
The commander of the Detroit Tank Arsenal, Brig. General David Crawford, was relieved from his command and reprimanded by the Army for accepting favors from contracting companies, as he had admitted in testimony to a Congressional committee on July 23. Secretary of the Army Frank Pace said that General Crawford's work as commander had been excellent but that he had failed to meet the high standards of an Army officer in converting to his own use Government material in the construction of pleasure boats and in transporting personal property at Government expense from Detroit to his home.
Lt. General Albert Wedemeyer, who had helped shape World War II military policy in both Europe and Asia, retired from the Army.
In London, Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison announced, after weekend talks with special U.S. envoy Averell Harriman, that Britain would send to Tehran a Cabinet mission, to be led by Richard Stokes, Lord Privy Seal, to resume discussions of the oil nationalization dispute with Iran. Mr. Harriman flew back to Tehran to consult further with Iraniain Premier Mohammed Mossadegh.
In Milan, Italy, a 20-year old American girl was in custody "for reasons of public security" after she had come to Italy to renounce her U.S. citizenship and marry a Catholic priest, a former missionary in China whom she had met in her native Chicago where he had previously come seeking to become a U.S. citizen.
Near Wingate, in the area of Charlotte, two men were killed and another critically injured when two trucks collided in a fiery crash early in the morning of this date. Both of the men who died had been employed by the Davey Tree Service of Charlotte. The Davey truck struck a Jocie Motor Lines tractor-trailer truck from behind as the latter, en route to Fort Bragg with Army cargo, was proceeding at about 30 mph in a pouring rain. It was believed that the Davey truck's gas tank exploded.
On the editorial page, "North Carolina's Income Tax" explains that the reprinted story on the page from U.S. News & World Report had not been critical of North Carolina's State income tax, as had been the impression conveyed in the exchange between reporters and Governor Kerr Scott at a recent press conference. Rather, North Carolina was cited as an example among eight states and D.C. which did not allow deductions for Federal income tax, as North Carolina, at 7 percent, had the highest tax rate among those states. But the piece also pointed out that because state income taxes were deductible from Federal taxes, the impact of higher state tax rates was negligible.
The few North Carolina taxpayers earning over $200,000 would have left only $38 less from a $10,000 raise than would a taxpayer from Connecticut, with no state income tax, and $33 less than the same earner in North Dakota, with a higher state tax rate of 15 percent, but which permitted deduction of Federal taxes.
The point of the piece was to confute the contention made to Congress by Roswell Magill, former Undersecretary of the Treasury, that higher-bracket tax rates acted as a disincentive to greater earnings after a certain point and so discouraged greater productivity for being confiscatory, potentially, combined with state and local taxes, exceeding a hundred percent of the raise. The higher rates could not cause taxes to total more than the raise, as the state and local taxes were deductible from Federal taxes, meaning that the highest combined tax rates were around 95 percent of the additional earnings.
But higher Federal income taxes in the upper brackets did threaten risk capital, thus preventing growth. Moreover, the high income taxpayers under the proposed across-the-board 12.5 percent tax hike on individuals would not generate much additional revenue, about 400 million dollars, the same amount obtained from taxes on gambling.
It concludes that the remedy for reducing income taxes lay not in reduction of state income taxes, as they did not significantly impact the final tally, but rather in reduction of Federal taxes.
"Americans in Need" tells of the Red Cross, for the first time since 1938, having to solicit public support for its relief efforts in the Kansas, Missouri and Illinois flooding of two weeks earlier. More than 45,000 families were impacted and over 17,000 persons were homeless, with more than 40,000 in need of food. The national goal was five million dollars and Mecklenburg County's share was $8,000. It urges the public to give to this worthy cause.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Ask Any Housewife", tells of the newly formed House-to-House Installment Companies organization, which had as its object stopping the local and state bans on door-to-door salesmen after the Supreme Court had upheld a ban in Alexandria, La.
The piece recommends that if the organization wanted to endear itself to the average housewife who answered the door to such salesmen, then it would support restrictions against the annoying, pushy salesmen who repeatedly called on the same households while engaging in high-pressure tactics and offering false reasons for their sales.
As indicated in the above editorial, a piece from U.S. News & World Report examines state income taxes versus Federal income taxes and concludes that state taxes did not change appreciably the total tax bill because of their deductibility from Federal taxes.
Drew Pearson informs that Generalissimo Francisco Franco had told U.S. Senators who visited the Spanish dictator that he would not make any commitment for Spain to contribute troops to the defense of Western Europe and also would not commit to restoration of civil liberties in Spain, despite the latter, especially freedom of religion, being a condition laid down by the President for the newly contemplated liaison between the U.S. and Spain.
Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin had blurted out, "Franco, we're with you 100 percent." He had also reached around the back of King Paul of Greece to shake hands with the wife of Jack Peurifoy, doing so, he later confided, so that he could slap the King on the back. Senators Guy Gillette and Brien McMahon had closed in on him when they met Pope Pius, for fear that he might try to slap the Pope on the back.
Several Republicans had defended Secretary of State Acheson from the attempts by the GOP policy committee to deny him his salary. Chief among them were Representatives Frances Bolton of Ohio, James Fulton of Pennsylvania, Donald Jackson of California and Jacob Javits of New York. Congressman James Patterson of Connecticut was opposed to this "backdoor approach" and urged that if there were proper grounds for removing the Secretary, then they should say so and proceed toward that end.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop, finding the prospects for peace in Korea again hopeful, relate of how imminent a third world war was during the brief period of cessation of the talks when both sides refused to budge from their positions regarding discussion of withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea being part of the ceasefire conference agenda, the Communists adamantly demanding its inclusion and the allies just as adamantly determined to keep it only as part of the post-ceasefire negotiations with higher political authorities.
As Americans blithely went about their summer activities, oblivious to the danger, the two sides were at the brink. The American policymakers were skeptical of the sincerity of the Communists in calling for the ceasefire negotiations, saw it as possibly only a ruse to buy time to enable building up their forces after they had suffered badly in their two spring offensives.
The enemy was now believed to have 300,000 troops in the front lines, the same number in reserve, an air force of over a thousand jet fighter-bombers in Manchuria, substantial artillery and an armored force estimated at between 200 and 600 tanks.
While the U.N. forces held the iron triangle, this greatly increased enemy force constituted a serious threat, especially so should the U.N. forces relax in the face of the ceasefire talks. It appeared that the enemy might be willing to fight to preserve the withdrawal issue, giving rise to the danger of world war.
But, they find, the reaction to the danger was the significant point. There remained the problem of being lulled into complaisance by the prospect of peace in Korea, halting Western rearmament, that which the Soviets wanted to accomplish. "And then will come the time for the sleepers to be cheaply and safely destroyed."
Robert C. Ruark, in Tanganyika, finds that, despite finding the occasional snake in the bed or scorpions in the shoes, the local attitude toward women was to his liking. The men sat around drinking wife-made beer all day, eating and sleeping, while their multiple wives, bought cheaply from their fathers for between 15 shillings and four or five pounds each, acted as servants to their husband. The wives were delighted when the husband presented them with a gift of leather tongs with which they could better carry their loads on their shoulders, rather than on top of their heads.
Refunds could be had if the wife continually ran away or refused to work, even after being slapped around by the husband with impunity.
"I tell you, this Africa is strictly a man's country. I may set up shop here permanently, and if Mama is very good, I will buy her some of those carrying straps. She looks sort of silly lugging my trunk around on her head."
Stay there, please, and stop writing
home these columns. Better yet, take your Fall by the snake or with your bare bodkin your quietus
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