The Charlotte News
Saturday, August 25, 1951
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert Eunson, that no response had yet been made to General Matthew Ridgway's message of rebuke to the Communist leaders, accusing them of "insidious propaganda" in terminating the ceasefire talks in Kaesong because of alleged incursions by the U.N. forces of the Kaesong neutrality zone, including the latest charge of U.N. bombing of Kaesong, charges which General Ridgway stated had no basis in fact at all. He left it to the Communists to resume the talks, adding that the U.N. negotiating team were willing to do so as soon as they received word of assent from the Communists. The message was directed to North Korean Premier Kim Il Sung and commander of the Communist Chinese forces, General Peng Teh-Huai. No reply had thus far been heard via Communist radio broadcasts.
In the air war, 35 U.S. B-29s, for the second time in more than a year, bombed the Communist supply port 20 miles from Russian territory at Rashin, meeting no antiaircraft fire or enemy planes in the process and all returning safely to base.
The Senate Investigation subcommittee this date ordered a full investigation of the RFC loans made to the American Lithofold Corp. of St. Louis and any possible connection it had to William Boyle, DNC chairman, following reports by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Mr. Boyle had received payments from the company at the time it had received the RFC loan, payments which Mr. Boyle said were the result of legal services he performed, having nothing to do with the loan. Senator Richard Nixon of the subcommittee told a reporter that he assumed the subcommittee would call Mr. Boyle as a witness, along with certain other Government officials. Chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Clyde Hoey of North Carolina, said that there was no effort to prejudge the case but that the subcommittee would seek to develop the facts and clarify the situation.
The Senate Finance Committee the previous day had cut about 800 million dollars from the House-passed 7.2 billion dollar tax increase bill and still had several important phases to consider. It had agreed to recommend increase of personal income taxes by about 2.4 billion dollars per year, 438 million less than that approved by the House. The Committee was scheduled to meet again in an unusual Saturday session this date. Chairman Walter George said that the committee would first consider corporate taxes, which the House bill had increased by more than 2.8 billion dollars. It would then look at excise taxes.
Senator Tom Connolly, chairman of the joint Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, said that he would support a further 300 million dollar cut in economic foreign aid. The joint Committees had recommended the previous day that overall economic and military foreign aid be cut to 7.5 billion dollars from the Administration's recommended 8.5 billion. Seventy percent of the proposed cut had been from economic aid and Senator Connolly said that he wanted to restore the remaining 290 million dollar cut in military aid and instead reduce economic aid by a full billion dollars.
Industry members of the Wage Stabilization Board stated that competition among economic groups to keep pace with one another was leading toward "national bankruptcy". The observation came in the wake of release by the Government the previous day of a record-breaking cost-of-living index and the news that Safeway Stores, Inc., was seeking to obtain higher price ceilings on key grocery items. The industrial members agreed with the labor and public members in approving a regulation to allow employers to provide automatic pay increases commensurate with cost-of-living increases, but the industrial members warned that these "escalator arrangements" were not based on "sound, economic principles" and could quickly lead to "great dangers".
Near Fort Bragg, N.C., two men suffered possible serious injury this date as part of a 2,600-paratroop jump into "combat" during joint Army-Air Force war games in Southern Pines. The men suffered back injuries and two other men had suffered leg fractures, while others were bruised. Medical officers said the casualty rate was surprisingly low for the mass jump.
Soldiers were equipped in the exercise with the latest version of the Army helmet, as pictured on the page.
In San Francisco, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, speaking at recommissioning ceremonies of the U.S.S. Iowa, one of the world's largest battleships, called the Navy's mothball fleet the "cheapest insurance ever offered the American people". He said that the cost of building that ship in 1951 would have been 250 million dollars, whereas the original cost had been half that much. The Iowa had carried FDR to the Casablanca conference in November, 1943 and had been in mothballs in San Francisco since March, 1949. It would be the fourth and last of its class to return to sea duty, the Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin having already been recommissioned.
In Wondervu, Colo., lightning touched off a dynamite charge at a dam construction project the previous day, killing nine men and injuring nine others.
In Oakland, California, FBI and Civil Aeronautics Board officials were opening their investigations into the crash of the United Airlines DC-6B airliner which had struck a hillside in Decoto, a nearby farming community, in the previous day's early morning hours, leaving 50 passengers and crew dead. Ultimately, the CAB investigation would determine that pilot error had caused the crash.
In Los Angeles, a former Earl Caroll showgirl claimed $25,800 was due her for services as a doctor's "housekeeper companion". She said that she had gone to her former home in Louisville, Ky., and returned to Los Angeles to find that the physician-employer no longer wanted her in the house. Two days later, he had sent her $200, but she thought her services were worth $20,000, and the complaint added an additional $5,000 on the claim that the doctor had induced her to submit to a surgical treatment against her will in 1949, as well as $1,000 worth of appliances which she claimed belonged to her.
She may wish to consult with actor Lee Marvin.
In Hoo, England, the Miss Hoo beauty contest had been won by Marion Highley, who would now compete for the Miss Kent contest. Hoo was rooting for her, highly, to come in first.
On the editorial page, "The Speeder and the Drunk Driver" tells of the latest report from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles having supported the premise that the speeder, rather than the drunk driver, was the primary cause of death on the highways. Between January and March 1951, 262 drivers had been involved in 202 fatal accidents which claimed 239 lives, and drunk driving had been a factor in only sixteen of those accidents, whereas speeding had been a factor in 68. The Department was not attempting to minimize the problem of drunk driving, which it still considered a major cause of accidents. But progress was being made in curbing the incidence of drunk driving by stricter enforcement of the laws.
It favors stricter enforcement also of the speed laws, which had shown positive results in the states of Pennsylvania and Connecticut, the latter of which having demonstrated good results from a point system for repeat offenders. It hopes that the 1953 Legislature would address the issue.
"Memo to Charlotteans" comments on efforts in three cities, Buffalo, N. Y., Milwaukee, Wisc., and Evanston, Ill., to remedy problems of downtown parking, by way of suggesting that the Charlotte City Council was remiss in not being willing to spend $3,500 to conduct a study to determine whether there was a parking problem within the city.
"An Annual Legislature?" tells of the former Speaker of the North Carolina House, State Representative Kerr Craige Ramsey, having suggested recently during a speech in Kannapolis that the General Assembly meet annually instead of biennially. He pointed out that part of the problem with the existing gap in sessions was that it was difficult to predict two years in advance what fiscal contingencies would take place.
But if the Assembly underestimated revenue, the State's flexible appropriations system began to operate, under which the Governor and the Bureau of the Budget had wide latitude to transfer funds between the budget divisions, and if that did not cure any shortfall, the Governor was required to reduce expenditures so that deficits would not occur. The Governor also had authority to call a special session. If the Assembly overestimated revenue, the result was a surplus. While State employee salaries did not keep pace with the cost of living in a two-year period, the Legislature traditionally provided retroactive increases.
It concludes that the need for annual sessions was therefore not so great and that any such change might cause the Legislature to become a professional body, rather than being limited to only the three months of service every two years as under the current system. The Legislature also might pass twice as many bad laws as it did currently. It had been a highly successful institution and it favors not monkeying with that system.
"Hi Yo Silver (Gulp)" tells of divided opinion in Washington, as observed in The New
Republic, over whether the 82nd Congress should be known as the
"Horse Meat Congress" or the "Dog Food Congress",
says it votes reluctantly for the former title. It finds horse meat
making a comeback, as sales had been reported increased a hundred
percent in the Bay Area of California, where pony-steak
Consumer Reports had pointed out, however, that horse meat was not inspected, as much of it was sold through pet shops not equipped to handle meat. In California, only one of nineteen licensed horse meat slaughtering plants was Federally inspected. It agrees with Consumer Reports that such plants be inspected, given the popularity of late of horse meat. It quips with equanimous equinity that if meat prices continued to rise, the cowboys would have to start riding steers and herding horses into the stock cars. It concludes that at that point, vegetarianism would be a likely option.
Whinnn will such regulations be passed?
Drew Pearson, who would begin his two-week vacation after this column, writes from Munich that the Czech Communists had adopted apparently the same strategy toward the "Winds of Freedom" balloon operation as the U.S. Army had toward the Japanese balloons of death which had floated across the Pacific during the war, that is, silence. The Army had censored all news of the balloons from Japan reaching the U.S. mainland for fear of alerting the Japanese that their launch had been successful, despite the fact of thereby causing risk to the lives of many Americans who were unaware that these balloons carried bombs—with the result that five children and their mother had been killed while on a picnic in Oregon after having innocently approached the strange balloons to find out what they were.
The Czech Government had remained
silent about the balloons launched recently over Czechoslovakia, with
the aid of Mr. Pearson, carrying messages of friendship and freedom,
apparently either not wishing the West to know that they had been
hitting their target or awaiting word from Moscow to determine what
the proper response should be. Since the balloons had been launched
from only ten miles distance from the Czech border, it was likely
that all of them had hit their target, carrying some 15 million
messages. The balloons were calculated to burst at an altitude of
30,000 feet
He tells of chief credit for the operation belonging to C. D. Jackson of Time, Life and Fortune, on loan to the Committee for Free Europe, performing an important job in beaming broadcasts into satellite countries from the two radio stations in southern Germany. He relates again of the mechanics of how the Friendship Balloons came to be, starting in the previous spring and then launched August 13, an effort to supplement the radio broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, the latter in the process of having its budget severely cut by Congress. The balloon program was a private operation and was a small effort in reversing the lead which the Soviets had in the propaganda war.
Marquis Childs tells of military men at the Pentagon taking a pessimistic view of the prospects of a Korean truce, after having been optimistic in the initial stages of the peace talks. They now believed that the Communists would drag out the talks at least until the end of the Japanese treaty conference in San Francisco, starting September 4. The primary reason for the change in attitude was the change in the Communist propaganda line being disseminated over North Korean and Chinese Communist radio. Shortly after the announcement by Jacob Malik that the Russians were amenable to a ceasefire conference, the propaganda line had changed from being condemnatory of supposed American atrocities against civilians in Korea, to slowly dropping these charges completely from the broadcasts as the talks continued. But of late, the Communists had renewed the charges in the radio broadcasts. Consequently, many in the Pentagon believed this change to indicate imminent renewal of hostilities by the Communists in full force and ending of the talks.
It was a persistent line in Communist propaganda throughout Asia that the U.S. regarded Asians as inferior people who could be liquidated by atom bombs or napalm, and the effectiveness of this line could not be ignored.
There were at least two weaknesses in the U.N. approach to the talks, the first being the limitation of the talks to military topics only, eliminating from the table any discussion of political issues, producing rigidity which had made agreement all but impossible, and the second having been Secretary of State Acheson's testimony in May before the MacArthur hearings that the U.S. would be amenable to establishing a ceasefire line at the 38th parallel, enabling the Communists during the talks insistently to take that position. Pentagon officials, however, had viewed the 38th parallel as an indefensible line from a military viewpoint and were convinced that the U.N. forces could advance further north to a better position, an offensive which had taken place by late June when the discussion of a ceasefire conference began.
He finds that not only in the Korean talks but also in other recent moves, there had been in evidence an American attitude of increasing rigidity toward Russia, matching Soviet inflexibility. It was preventing recognition of the weaknesses with the Communist position, resulting in failure to take advantage of them. It was akin to looking in a mirror when addressing the Soviet Union and then asking how the U.S. was doing, coming back invariably with the answer that it was fine, a dangerously reflexive mode of communication.
He concludes that essential to successful negotiations was the creation of an area of maneuverability to meet changing circumstances as they arose.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the lack of enthusiasm among the American people for the prospect of a presidential race in 1952 pitting the President against Senator Robert Taft. If the President were to seek the Democratic nomination, he no doubt would receive it. And if Senator Taft were not opposed for the Republican nomination by General Eisenhower, then he, too, would likely become the nominee.
But in a July Gallup poll, measuring relative popularity in a hypothetical race between the President and Senator Taft, 42 percent picked the latter, while 37 percent picked the President, as 21 percent indicated a preference for neither. A couple of weeks earlier, another poll indicated that in a hypothetical race between Chief Justice Fred Vinson as the Democratic nominee and Senator Taft, the former polled 43 percent, the latter, 37 percent, while 20 percent said they wanted neither.
It was plain enough that the President's popularity was weak in the country, the only question being whether he would enter the race or enable another Democrat to be the nominee, probably handing the nomination in that case to Chief Justice Vinson. The Alsops regard, however, the likelihood of the President running to be substantial. They make room for the fact, however, that in order to retain his authority to the end of his term, he had at least to give the appearance of running.
Even Democrats close to the President, for instance George Allen, were hoping that General Eisenhower would be sufficiently disgusted with Republican foreign policy that he could be convinced to run on the Democratic ticket. The desire to have the General be a candidate was so pervasive within both parties that it communicated, the Alsops posit, the longing in the country for leadership which was worthy of America. A race between Senator Taft and the President would not likely satisfy that longing.
Parenthetically, as Chief Justice Vinson would suddenly die in September, 1953, had he been the Democratic nominee and been elected, speculation arises as to who would have been his choice for the Vice-Presidency. Senator John Sparkman of Alabama would be the choice of Governor Adlai Stevenson after he became the Democratic nominee in 1952, but that selection was based primarily on the attempt to balance the ticket with a Southerner who was opposed to the 1948 Dixiecrat movement and yet would not alienate Southern voters. Fred Vinson was originally a Congressman from Kentucky and was perhaps conservative enough in his own right that he would not have needed to worry about having a running mate who was also conservative, but rather would have sought balance in the opposite direction to appeal to Northern Democrats and liberals among independents.
Southern voters, however, might have been turned off by the trend of the Supreme Court toward requiring integration under the leadership of Chief Justice Vinson, a perception which was valid. At the time of the Chief Justice's death, oral arguments had already occurred in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, and had to be heard again after his death and replacement by new Chief Justice Earl Warren.
There was quite a bit of speculation afoot in 1951 that the public schools of the country would soon be ordered integrated by the Supreme Court, and that speculation only increased in 1952 when the Court provided cert. to Brown, which sought overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal doctrine. Thus, had Chief Justice Vinson been the Democratic nominee, he would likely have run into tough sledding against General Eisenhower, perceived at the time as an advocate of states' rights, though ironically, of course, appointing as Chief Justice, in the first nine months of his term in office, Governor Earl Warren, who was credited with forming the unanimity of the Court behind the Brown decision in 1954 to overrule Plessy and order desegregation of the public schools, though that result, even if not unanimously adopted, would likely also have occurred had Chief Justice Vinson lived.
Tom Schlesinger of the News, in his weekly "Capital Roundup", tells of Department of Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman having called for an intensification of exploration of mineral deposits and expansion of the mining program to make the country self-sufficient in strategic metals and minerals, impacting the Western North Carolina counties of Avery, Mitchell and Yancey in terms of mica production, vital in radio and radar manufacture. During the war, these mines had provided a cheap source for mica but afterward the renewed availability of a superior grade of foreign mica caused the shutdown of most North Carolina operations. That was so despite the Commerce Department having estimated that two-thirds of the capacitors used in radio and radar had been made from the domestic grade of mica, the performance of which had been rated satisfactory. Currently, the General Services Administration was investigating the matter, and Congressmen Hamilton Jones and Woodrow Jones, in whose districts the North Carolina mica was located, were hoping for renewed prosperity from this mining operation.
In a poll of Washington press and radio correspondents conducted by Pageant magazine, five out of six thought Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois was the best Senator, while 75 percent thought Senator Joseph McCarthy the worst. Two years earlier, Senator Taft was voted the best, now coming in fourth best and fourth worst. Senators Estes Kefauver and Wayne Morse, were second and third, respectively, and Pat McCarran and William Jenner, second and third worst. Neither of North Carolina's Senators were ranked in the top ten or the bottom ten.
Congressman John Kerr of North Carolina, chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee studying the rivers and harbors appropriations, had issued a report showing 800 million dollars of waste by the Army Corps of Engineers because of bad engineering and coming to Congress for appropriations without having first established a clear idea of a particular project's needs. Much of the increase was the result of unforeseeable increases in materials and labor costs, but at least 30 percent, according to the report, was the result of bad engineering.
The Senate Rules Committee had approved increases of from five to fifteen cents for plate lunches in the Senate Restaurant, such that blue-plate specials with sirloin steaks would now cost Senators $3.25, whereas previously they had been $2.50. For clerks and other office help, the 85-cent special was now more than a dollar.
The National Capitol Park Service
had been called upon to use insecticides to cure the chirping
Fifty years ago, on August 26, 1968, the four-day Democratic National Convention would commence in Chicago, arguably the most controversial political convention
And the rest, as they say, was not silence
Framed Edition
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