Monday, September 3, 1951

The Charlotte News

Monday, September 3, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. command said this day that the Communists might be "deliberately" delaying the Korean ceasefire talks in an effort to blackmail the rest of the world at the Japanese peace treaty conference, set to begin the following day in San Francisco. Meanwhile, full-scale fighting appeared ready to begin again, with the prospect that the negotiations would not be renewed.

A late bulletin reports that General James Van Fleet, commander of the U.N. ground forces, said that he believed the Communists would settle for the current battle lines as the boundary for the demilitarized zone, per the demands of the U.N. negotiators. He also said, however, that the Communists had used the seven weeks of negotiation to build up a striking force which could put 800,000 men into battle

Meanwhile, in the air war, Communist fighter planes struck from cloud cover in hit-and-run strafing attacks on allied ground troops on the east-central front, one of the planes having been identified as a Russian-type Yak-9 fighter, the others not being identified for their speed. Allied warplanes continued to hit Communist supply routes in northwestern Korea.

In the ground war, allied troops attacked along a 30-mile front and achieved grudging gains against heavily resisting enemy troops in the east-central front.

The President left Washington for San Francisco to attend and address the opening ceremonies of the Japanese peace treaty conference, set to start at the War Memorial Opera House at 9:30 p.m. the following day. His speech would be the first coast-to-coast broadcast via television.

The U.S. was seeking support for the treaty from the 48 nations outside the Soviet-bloc attending the conference. Western diplomats did not venture any predictions as to what Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and his 38-member delegation would do at the conference. The principal problem was shutting off debate and holding a vote on the treaty, should the Russian, Polish and Czech delegations attempt a filibuster. The signing of the treaty was scheduled for the following Saturday.

Prime Minister Joseph Stalin said that the Soviet-Chinese alliance was "unbreakable", in a statement appearing on Pravda's front page, along with a message from Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung congratulating Stalin, the Russian armed forces and the Russian people on the sixth anniversary of the defeat of Japan, and also reaffirming the alliance with the USSR.

Congressman Roy Woodruff of Michigan said that he thought Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ought resign and that if he did not, the President ought request his resignation, as Justice Douglas was, according to the Congressman, giving "aid and comfort to the foes of the United States and democracy". He cited Justice Douglas's recent statement in San Francisco recommending that the U.S. recognize Communist China as a means to split China from Russia, reasoning which the Congressman found "incredibly warped". Justice Douglas had said that the view expressed was entirely his own and did not represent the Administration, consistent with a statement made by Senator Tom Connolly in response to statements by Senator Herman Welker of Idaho, seeking to tie the statements to the Administration. Senator Connally had also recommended that Justice Douglas keep his thoughts on foreign policy to himself.

On Labor Day, labor leaders across the country praised unity among labor against Communism and its contribution to defense, while warning Russia that the Kremlin would be bombed if new Communist aggression occurred, the latter statement having been issued by George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL.

Off Montauk, N.Y., the Coast Guard and State police said they held out little hope of finding many of the 18 persons still missing and presumed dead after a fishing boat had capsized in stormy weather on Saturday, accounting for a presumed loss of 37 lives. Nineteen had survived. The boat had carried 54 amateur fishermen and a crew of two on a Labor Day weekend fishing junket.

Near Clinton, N.C., one crew member died in the flames of an Air Force A-26 which crashed and burned in the woods early this date, while three other crew members parachuted to safety. The plane had been on a routine training flight from Dallas Love Field to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

As of Monday morning, 328 persons had been killed in traffic accidents since 6:00 p.m. Friday during the three-day Labor Day weekend, with the count to continue until midnight. An additional 75 persons had died in drownings and 57 others in miscellaneous accidents, leaving the total at 460. The president of the National Safety Council indicated that the toll might exceed the estimated 390, unless motorists started home early and were patient.

Near Monroe, N.C., three persons were killed and eight injured in an automobile accident the previous afternoon, one of the dead having been a pastor of a church in Westville, South Carolina. A witness reported that the car driven by the other driver had entered the highway at a speed of about 75 mph before striking the car in which the pastor and his family were riding. The driver of the other car had also been killed.

In Lake Charles, La., a former World War II paratroop chaplain said that he would challenge the Calcasieu Parish district attorney to indict him for defamation along with a crusading newspaper editor if it turned out a letter which he and two other clergymen planned to issue that night were not true. The managing editor of the Lake Charles American Press and four others on the newspaper had been recently indicted on charges of defaming 16 Parish officials and three admitted gamblers in the newspaper's anti-gambling campaign. The charges also included defamation against the district attorney for his being described in the newspaper as engaging in "legal double-talk". The reverend said that if the editor was guilty of defamation then so were he and the other clergymen.

In Charlotte, William T. Buice, 66, vice-president and general merchandising manager of J. B. Ivey & Co. and president of the Charlotte Merchants Association, died in a hospital following a heart attack at his home the previous day. He had been associated with Ivey's for the previous 23 years. The department store would be closed the next day because of his death.

The box at the top left tells of Joseph and Stewart Alsop offering a $100 prize to the reader who could identify the historical parallel to the country's present crisis, and refers the reader to the editorial page—only, there being no column on the editorial page this date by the Alsops. Guess you will have to find it in another newspaper if you want that prize money.

If we win it, we plan to buy a new car, or maybe a helicopter.

On the editorial page, "Charlotte's Street Needs" tells of the City Council having a grave responsibility to the people to proceed with long-range street improvements according to an intelligent, coordinated plan, such as that drawn up by the Planning Board, the Council's agency for planning for the city's future. It lists the eight projects which the Board had said were the most urgent. It hopes that the Council would formulate a logical and orderly plan for the benefit of all.

Build the subway and high-speed bullet train from the suburbs, and from Manteo to Murphy.

"Evita, the Good and Faithful Wife" finds the tears of Evita Peron which she had shed in renouncing her candidacy put forward by the Peronista party for the vice-presidency of Argentina on the same ticket with her dictator husband, El Presidente Juan, to be "just as phony as the original 'demand' that she run." Two weeks earlier, a huge mob of loyal and fanatical supporters of El Presidente, "the shirtless ones", had assembled per their instructions and proclaimed the husband-and-wife ticket. The dictator appeared appropriately reluctant to accept the responsibility of another six-year term, and his appropriately obeisant wife pretended to be tremendously flattered that she was wanted as vice-president, but then on Saturday, tearfully gave her sad rejection.

A recent story by Drew Pearson and other informed articles in national newspapers and magazines had hinted that the reason for the rejection was the refusal of a group of key Army officials to accept Evita or any other woman as vice-president of Argentina. It was said that they told Juan of their objections and that he had acquiesced, realizing that without the Army's support he could not remain in office. Thus came the dramatic radio broadcast of her decision to renounce the "high honor".

The piece finds that Evita's speech had all the "double-talk of the usual police state propaganda" and that her utterances amounted to "bosh". She had not just won the "heart of the workers", as she proclaimed, but had also won control over their destinies, and they knew it. That was why they behaved as told.

In fact, she had only bowed to the Army's wishes, but would be de facto vice-president in any event.

Oh, no, this is such "fake news" by a fake news organization. Sob for the Bitch and her S.O.B. husband. They have the interests of the people at heart.

"Hold the Applause" tells of the Congress having required in the Independent Offices bill that personnel be cut by 10 percent in the ensuing fiscal year, which would result, if followed, in a 675 million dollar savings to the taxpayers. But it was too soon to celebrate, as not until the end of the fiscal year would the cut necessarily be realized. In 1950, the Congress had approved two deficiency bills totaling about 1.5 billion dollars at the end of the third and fourth quarters.

A piece from the Southern Pines Pilot, titled "They're Not Hot or Bothered", describes how nature provided early morning sounds during the summer.

That's a hell of a way to fill some space on a hot summer day.

Maurice Tobin, Secretary of Labor, substitutes for Drew Pearson, returning from Europe, celebrates Labor Day by telling of labor and management largely working together through collective bargaining to resolve disputes over wages and conditions, avoiding strikes and loss of manpower. Since 1935 when the Wagner Act had been passed, it had been the public policy of the Government to encourage labor and management to engage in collective bargaining, a policy which developed over a half-century. In 1937, 58 percent of all strikes dealt with questions of union organization and recognition, whereas in 1950, only 19 percent regarded such issues. In 1950, the number of man-days lost through strikes in the country had been only one half of one percent of the number of man-days worked.

The newspapers covered the strikes more than the resolution of disputes, because the strikes were the exception to the rule.

He praises the workers and management for having been reasonable in their cooperation and informs that over 80 percent of union contracts provided for arbitration. He thus awards Drew Pearson's traditional laudatory brass ring on the Merry-Go-Round to labor and management this day.

Marquis Childs uses Labor Day to discuss the labor movement and its special-interest group attitude to get all that it could out of the "national grab bag". That was becoming more evident as inflation was becoming harder to bear for the average American, as the 15 million unionized workers had managed to keep pace with inflation, primarily through the elevator clauses within such contracts as that obtained by the U.A.W., providing for increases in wages with the cost-of-living index. But as the workers kept pace, the unorganized, such as policemen, firemen, teachers, those living on pensions and small, fixed incomes, were unable to do so, causing resentment. Inflation was being fueled by these union increases in wages, which the unions justified on the basis of record-breaking corporate profits.

Individual unions had become specialized pressure groups to obtain special gains regardless of the effect on an industry or the whole economy, a myopic approach, especially as the movement continued to restrict the power of unions acquired during the previous 20 years. The passive approach to special interests by the Government had led to a policy by default which invited inflation. In the long run, that could prove disastrous not only to the nation but to the pressure groups, themselves.

Robert C. Ruark discusses the proposed code of conduct by Senator Estes Kefauver regarding Congressional investigations, proposing that committees, before launching into such investigations, provide notice to those witnesses summoned to appear that they were being investigated and the grounds for that investigation, so that they might have counsel present and be prepared to respond to questions.

Mr. Ruark thinks that it was unfair to have witnesses called before television cameras in a Congressional hearing, where the witness was compelled to testify or face contempt. When the conclusion of viewers often hung on the appearance of the witness and the steadiness of their voice, it would not be surprising to find those who simply were camera shy and stammered and stumbled because of the fact. Furthermore, there was no recourse available for slander. He indicates that, in consequence, he had never been too keen on Congressional investigations as being a strong weapon of democracy, usually only producing noise and outrageous charges which were thrown out in the hope of hitting a mark.

The Kefauver crime investigating committee, while having as its targets loathsome characters, had been a case in point. Senator Kefauver's remedy, however, would only rob committee investigations of their shock value and thus tend to emasculate the potency of the investigation. He finds that the whole business of Congressional investigations to be either a possible injustice to the individual when the committee was functioning sharply, or in the realm of futility if a code, such as that proposed by Senator Kefauver, was imposed.

A letter writer from Fayetteville finds that when an Atlantic Coast Line train had a wreck, it made the front pages of the newspapers, whereas when a Cape Fear Railroad train tore up Government property and injured military personnel, nothing got into print. On the same day that the ACL had a wreck near Dunn, N.C., the Cape Fear had torn up two Government kitchen cars and injured five men at Fort Bragg. The latter was able to make large sums of money off military traffic but paid no damage when it had a wreck. He thinks it time for the Government to look into this arrangement.

A letter writer responds to the "Pitchmen of the Press" series of articles from the Providence (R. I.) Journal, appearing in The News between August 6 and August 22, analyzing the radio programs of Drew Pearson, Walter Winchell and Fulton Lewis, Jr., and the columns of Westbrook Pegler, and takes issue with the previous two letter writers criticizing the series, saying he finds it to have been both entertaining and instructive. He says that he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Lewis while visiting Washington some 15 years earlier, and that his wife and two daughters were friends of his family. He had found Mr. Lewis to be a young man "brimming over with enthusiasm". During the same two weeks, he also became acquainted with Mr. Pegler, at least indirectly, as, by coincidence, a movie was playing in the theaters, "A Day at Camp", and a large sign outside the theater announced that it had been filmed in a nudist camp, something to which the writer experienced revulsion for it being exhibited in the nation's capital. He therefore sat through it twice, getting "angrier by the minute", then wrote a blistering letter to one of the Washington newspapers, complaining of the matter. While it was never published, as he waited for it to appear, he began reading the editorial page and became acquainted with Mr. Pegler's column. He recalled one letter writer having stated something to the effect that Mr. Pegler should be required, like the famous skunk of Manchester, to go to church and sit in his own pew. He thus felt instantly drawn to Mr. Pegler, as the writer's sentiment explained the way people thought of him, as well.

He finds that the previous writers had taken a too limited view of the job of newspaper editors, that it was not their role only to glorify such persons as Mr. Pegler and Mr. Lewis and their concept of Americanism, but also to provide critical analysis thereof.

A couple of weeks earlier, he says, he had written to an editor about his visit to the annual convention of the American Sunbathing Association and all the nice people he had met there, but his letter was not published. He addresses specifically the prior writers and says he did not get mad, but realized the editor knew that there was so much happening in the world, readers would not care anything about his weekend at camp. And so he concludes that they should allow the editor a bit of freedom to provide the readers their nickel's worth.

A letter from "The Rice Paddy Gang", a group of soldiers somewhere in Korea, explains that they were "seven lonely GI's here in Korea" hoping for some reader to solve their problem of not getting much mail.

A letter writer finds that reading Dr. Herbert Spaugh's columns had been very helpful, and says that he and several other readers thought his pieces the best part of the newspaper.

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