The Charlotte News
Monday, October 6, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via George McArthur, that that U.S. Marines had fought for six hours in bloody fighting amid Chinese Communist artillery and machine gun fire this date in a futile effort to recapture an important hill position on the western front in Korea, reaching near the crest but unable to overtake the stubbornly held enemy positions, and finally withdrawing. It was estimated that the enemy lost 150 men killed or wounded. Most of the fighting the previous night and this date centered on the western front, with only patrol clashes elsewhere.
In the air war, U.S. Sabre jets and enemy MIG-15s engaged in two fights over North Korea this date, with four MIGs damaged. The largest Naval airstrike in months had occurred the previous date, dropping bombs and napalm on an enemy supply dump.
It had been discovered through aircraft camera footage that another MIG had been destroyed in September, making the record total 63 destroyed.
Lookouts aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Walker off Korea spotted North Korean work parties trying to clear debris of a bomb-wrecked train near Songjin recently and fired its five-inch guns in their direction, causing them to flee. When they returned, the Walker again fired its guns, causing the troops to scatter. An ensign suggested flashing the searchlight on the beach, and that also caused the workers to flee for cover. The destroyer's captain then sent a message to a nearby Canadian destroyer indicating that a searchlight flashed toward the shore caused the workmen to scatter and so he was conserving his ammunition, planning to run them to death. He added that he requested the services of two Indians and a blanket to furnish smoke to go with the flashes.
A member of the 40th Division in Korea, a squad leader in the anti-tank and mine platoon of the 160th Infantry Regiment, was in an enemy minefield when he spotted the tripwire for a mine and worked his way toward the explosive, dug it up and prepared to insert a pin used to disarm mines, at which point an eager buddy ran up to help, slipped, and fell against the detonating mechanism, just as the corporal was inserting the pin, preventing the mine from detonating.
General Eisenhower continued his campaign tour into Washington State this date, having scrapped his "no personalities" tactics and, according to aides, would be henceforth ripping into President Truman as he had done in Fargo, N.D., on Saturday. The General spoke in Spokane briefly in the morning and then visited Ephrata, Wenatchee, where the President had been heckled on Thursday, and then Everett, Wash. He would deliver a major speech in Seattle this night, expected to outline his views on reclamation and power development, something which the President had been criticizing, claiming that if the Republicans came back into power, such development would halt and public power development sold to private interests. The General reportedly was angered by the attacks by the President against him for being a "front man" for special lobby interests, saying that he had been shot at by real artillery and "was far too old to be greatly disturbed by noisy but harmless blanks" fired by the President. He termed the President's charges "sound without substance, promise without performance, howls without harmony", prompting laughter from the audience. He said, "Now the whole is blended into a raucous din and jangle led for seven years by the drum major of the Administration's band," who asserted that "the Democrats must march to the weird clatter he inspires, but his hand-picked lieutenant shows definite signs of annoyance, even disagreement." He suggested that Governor Stevenson had gone so far as to "imply that the drum major has made a mess of things", suggesting confusion among the Democrats. He said, "Now we are getting an educated accent welded onto the old Democrat demagoguery." It represented a new "give 'em hell" tactic by the General, and his aides were delighted with the reaction of the Fargo audience.
The President, continuing his whistle-stop tour through Utah, asserted this date that the Republican Party appeared unable to "see or understand what it takes to meet the menace of Communist aggression and subversion." At Brigham Young University in Provo, he said that the Democrats could take credit for the U.N., the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Japanese peace treaty and the Point Four program of assistance to underdeveloped areas, that there had been a lot of Republican help on those programs for awhile, but also a lot of Republican opposition, and that if the Republican opposition had prevailed, he had no doubt that France and Italy and almost all of Western Europe would be under Communist rule presently. He asserted that General Eisenhower had swallowed "isolationism whole". He denounced the Republican claims of "government by crony" as "sheer poppycock and politics". In Salt Lake City, he was greeted by a crowd estimated by police at between 2,000 and 3,000 persons. At nearly every stop, somebody in the crowd would yell "give 'em hell, Harry".
In Springfield, Ill., Governor
Stevenson announced this date through his campaign manager, Wilson
Wyatt, a campaign schedule which would carry him 15,000 miles across
23 states prior to November 4, election day. The schedule included
eight nationally broadcast radio and television transmissions. Mr.
Wyatt also said that he believed the President's whistle-stop tour
was helping the Governor's campaign materially, as the President was
pointing out the facts. He said the Governor would continue to talk
sense to the American people and not talk down to them, and would
rest his case on that. He said that the General's plan to supply
canned answers to local questions via spot announcements, to be
broadcast during the last three weeks of the campaign on television
and radio, smacked of "selling Ivory Soap
In New York, 23 Columbia University professors declared this date that there were sharp differences between the funds of Senator Nixon and Governor Stevenson, and that Senator Nixon had set a "vicious example". The committee said that it made its analysis because of "the tendency of some newspapers to equate the two funds". The distinction, they said, was that the fund of Senator Nixon consisted of money for his political expenses paid by a small number of men, whose identity the Senator knew. The money in Illinois was paid by a large body of anonymous donors into the party campaign fund, from which it was distributed by the Governor to a few State employees who had been recruited from the private sector at severe salary cuts. The committee included both Republican and Democratic supporters, and dismissed Governor Stevenson's fund as an "unfortunate" method of providing "adequate pay" to employees, while finding the Senator's fund "a rash act", opening the door to a sense of obligation to private interests. The report stated: "It is an elementary rule of public morals that no government officer should accept gifts or extra compensation from sources which may be affected by his official action."
The Justice Department, according to the House Judiciary subcommittee investigating the Department, had recovered only $300,000 of allegedly fraudulent World War II contracts totaling 21 million dollars. The fraudulent overcharges had been referred to the Department four years earlier by the General Accounting Office and, according to the subcommittee, the Department had taken an excessive amount of time in moving to recover the money, terming the handling of the cases "shameful". Former Deputy Attorney General Peyton Ford was held directly responsible for the delays and others in the Department were criticized. The chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Frank Chelf of Kentucky, stated that an examination of FBI files in the 1946 Kansas City vote fraud case had disclosed no new or startling evidence, indicating that he made the statement in fairness to Supreme Court Court Justice Tom Clark, who had been Attorney General at the time in 1946 when the vote fraud case occurred. (Get down to cases and investigate the final game of the 1946 World Series.)
In Moscow, Georgi Malenkov opened the 19th All-Soviet Communist Party Congress the previous night with an hours-long denunciation of the U.S. and its "bosses", whom he said were bent on world domination and war with the Soviet Union. It was the first such party Congress in 13 years.
Moscow radio had broadcast the reading of the text of a speech, and it took five hours and 15 minutes of air time to complete the 25,000-word reading. It was the second such speech within a week, Prime Minister Stalin's equally long speech having been read to listeners the previous Thursday.
A European center for nuclear research was to be built in Switzerland near Geneva, according to the unanimous decision by representatives of ten European countries forming the European Council for Nuclear Research, meeting in Amsterdam.
Striking AFL elevator operators in Chicago this date accepted a settlement proposal by the Building Managers Association, and a union spokesman said the operators would return to work as soon as possible after six days of strike. It was the first such strike in the city's history, idling 400,000 office workers in the Loop.
The Housing & Home Finance Agency authorized this date 100 additional housing units for Fort Bragg, N.C., each of the two-bedroom units to rent for a maximum of $50 per month to military or civilian personnel of the fort.
Near Laurel Hill, N.C., three men were killed the previous night when their automobile collided with a Seaboard Air Line passenger train at a rural crossing.
In Charlotte, an enraged driver, who
police stated was jealous over his former girlfriend, ran down and
struck a man with his automobile three times on the prior Saturday
night. The victim was listed in fair condition and police had
arrested a man named Sue, charging him with assault with a deadly
weapon with intent to kill. A witness had informed police that the
victim's car had accidentally collided with the vehicle driven by the
suspect, and when the victim got out to discuss the accident, the
suspect backed up his car and attempted to run over the victim. The
man sought to get away, but the enraged driver pursued him in his car
over the sidewalk and into a yard, where he knocked the victim down.
He then circled the yard and drove over him twice more. A young woman was reported to have been in the victim's car at the time and was also injured in the initial accident, but it is unstated whether she was the former girlfried who was the object of the assailant's jealous rage taken out on the victim. The real problem may have been his adopted alias
In the fifth game
In Korea the previous day, American soldiers listened by radio to the game, as Yogi Berra came to the plate and proceeded to a count of two balls and two strikes with two out in the bottom of the 11th, with the Yankees trailing by the final score. Just as the windup of the pitch came, Armed Forces radio in Tokyo broke in to announce resumption of their regular schedule, never bothering to impart who won the game.
On the editorial page, "And What about the Middle East?" tells of both candidates and their surrogates on the campaign trail having ignored the seething Middle East in their discussions of foreign policy.
It indicates that there were in the region forces of religious controversy, economic unrest, social upheaval, and political revolution which expressed themselves in the form of fanatical nationalism, respecting no authority except mob rule or the iron fist. The region would be of great strategic importance even without its huge oil reserves, as it was the historic crossroads for invasions. Its access to the Mediterranean and possession of medium bomber bases along its coast made it strategically important for military planning of the free world. Oil made it even more significant, as it had been said that oil would determine the final outcome of a third world war.
Yet, despite this strategic importance, the U.S. had pursued a hesitant foreign policy toward the region. It had supported Israel in its continuing struggle for survival, but because of relations in Europe and elsewhere, had been unwilling to adopt a bold, realistic policy toward the Arab states, for fear of offending either Britain or France and their interests in the region.
Russia, however, while concentrating on Europe and the Far East, had not neglected the Middle East, with Soviet agents having been deployed to stimulate the move toward nationalism by offering a better life under Communism, while building hatred toward the West.
Nevertheless, neither candidate had made any statements regarding the region. It suggests that discussion of the region might not translate to political capital, as little had happened for which credit could be taken or blame made. It posits, however, that it should not be excluded from the debate over foreign policy, that it should be used to educate Americans regarding the breadth of the nation's responsibility and also to allow the struggling people of that region to know that the country was aware of their plight and that they could count on its help in their struggle to be rid of political and economic bonds and become free, progressive societies.
"'Physician, Heal Thyself'" tells of some Virginia doctors having come up with a prescription for their profession at the State Medical Society meeting in Richmond, adopting the motto of the title as its theme, with speakers suggesting critical examination of the profession's own actions as an antidote to "socialized medicine" and government infringement on the profession. The retiring president of the Society had criticized his fellow physicians for their failure to show enough personal interest in the patient and his family, for charging too much for medical services, for professional false pride in refusing to examine schoolchildren or speak to PTA groups, the failure to denounce the "chiselers" and "black sheep" of the profession, and a selfish interpretation of the principles of medical "ethics", some doctors using "ethics" to keep other doctors from "encroaching" on their practice.
The editorial finds this kind of straight talk good and salutes the president of the Society for making it.
"Rep. Jones Should Declare Himself" tells of incumbent Congressman Hamilton Jones telling audiences that Republicans were after him. He apparently was planning to distribute a recent News story showing that he had voted with the Administration less than half the time during the previous session of Congress and was hoping to receive pro-Eisenhower Democratic votes.
But he had yet to declare his support for the Stevenson-Sparkman ticket and the piece thinks that, in fairness, he ought do so, explaining, if he was not supporting the Democratic ticket, why.
"Seasonal" tells of it being fall on the calendar but winter, politically. It was not a pretty season politically, as honest and reasonable men were likely to say things which they did not truly believe. "He who seeks the truth receives opposite judgment from men whose wisdom and candor in Summer he respects." Then would come a new administration and reason and accuracy would be more highly regarded, until the next election cycle. It finds solace in the fact that the period of distortion and vilification was seasonal. "Spring, tra la, will come, eventually."
But, according to Senator Nixon, spring is when you tell them what they want to hear, before running like hell back to the center in the fall. But, we suppose, we are mixing the political seasons with the actual seasons of election year. The year after the election, Mr. Nixon can always be trusted as the nice man he is, a scholar and a gentleman, a teller of truth.
A piece from the Detroit Free Press, titled "Behind Caudle Was Clark", finds that the continuing testimony of the former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the criminal and tax divisions at different times was not making him appear in any better light. It finds it revealing that he had been something of a dupe of his boss, then-Attorney General Tom Clark, who had become a Justice of the Supreme Court in 1949. The story being told by Mr. Caudle made it appear that Mr. Clark had not only permitted cases involving persons facing prosecution on tax and price control violation cases to be quietly dropped, but had actually encouraged the practice.
Mr. Caudle had cited a specific instance of a North Carolina lumber dealer, in trouble over a price control violation, which Mr. Clark, then-Assistant Attorney General, had instructed Mr. Caudle to sidetrack after Clyde Hoey, representing the accused lumber dealer before he became a Senator in 1944, had talked to Mr. Clark. Other pressures had come directly from the White House, with a former Truman aide, David Niles, asking for consideration for persons facing criminal charges. Mr. Caudle had also brought Mr. Clark into the Kansas City vote-fraud case of 1946, admitting to the subcommittee that he had called off the FBI after a preliminary investigation of the election scandal, which had climaxed in the Kansas City courthouse safe being blown open and evidence stolen. Mr. Caudle also said that when the matter had been investigated by a Senate committee, Mr. Clark had refused to allow Mr. Caudle to testify.
The piece concludes that much of the corruption which appeared to come out of the Justice Department had to be laid at the doorstep of Justice Clark and that the best which could be said for him was that he was carrying out the wishes of the Truman Administration. It finds that his elevation to the Supreme Court had been, therefore, "an affront to the people of the United States for which President Truman must answer."
Drew Pearson, in Los Angeles, indicates that when General Eisenhower had announced the previous week that he would publish his income tax returns, it had been presumed that Senator Nixon would do likewise. But just two hours after the announcement by the General, a statement was issued by Nixon headquarters that he would not do so. Because of Governor Stevenson's and Senator Sparkman's complete financial disclosures for the previous ten years, and the promise that the General would do likewise, Senator Nixon was now in a position where the public had a right to ask more questions concerning his financial position than the brief details which he had given in the nationwide telecast of September 23 had disclosed. At that time, he had stated that the law firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher had cleared his financial dealings. But that law firm handled some of Senator Nixon's biggest and most active donors to his expense fund, including Jack Garland and the Garland Estate, and the Union Oil Company, of which Herbert Hoover, Jr., was a director and owner of shares worth 1.2 million dollars, and also was one of the two largest contributors to the fund. Senator Nixon had also stated that Price-Waterhouse, the accounting firm, had checked his expense fund and provided him a clean bill of health. That firm, however, had been caught in great discrepancies in checking the accounts of the McKesson-Robbins Drug Co. and was forced to pay the stockholders $500,000 because of their oversight. The firm, in the case of its checking of the Nixon fund, had also issued a disclaimer that they had not had time to examine all of the fund. They said that they had examined only one fund handled by Dana Smith, the tax attorney who had arranged for the fund, which led to the conclusion that there was at least one other fund.
Mr. Pearson suggests that persons being hauled before Congressional committees, such as former Assistant Attorney General Lamar Caudle and former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, could never have gotten away with such self-appointed accountants without bringing howls from Republicans.
He indicates that neighbors of Senator Nixon in the Whittier area claimed that the family fortune had picked up considerably since Mr. Nixon had been elected to Congress in 1946. A year after his election, the family had bought a farm in York County, Pa., purchased in the name of Mr. Nixon's parents for an unknown price, and used for awhile as a weekend getaway by the Congressman. His parents did not care for the climate and moved back to California, but still owned the farm. Mr. Nixon helped his father obtain a job as a postmaster in a small town near Whittier, around the time he was elected to the Senate. It only paid about $600 annually, but it was located near the Nixon grocery store, and thus helped the family business. The Senator's brother Don had just opened a new drive-in restaurant near Whittier, replete with palm trees, an orange grove, and tables under the grove. One could order food through a microphone and then pick it up and go out to eat under the orange trees. The set-up probably had cost over $100,000.
The Senator's home in Whittier was a modest bungalow on which he owed more than he had stated in the broadcast, but it was difficult to understand how he was able to afford two houses purchased at about the same time, paying $20,000 down on his $41,000 home in Washington. The agent who sold him the home said that he paid $20,600 in cash, required under Federal regulations in effect at the time. The home was well furnished, at a cost of at least $5,000 and probably more, as some of it was Chinese furniture. (Any ping-pong tables?)
Mrs. Nixon, writing in the Saturday Evening Post of September 6, had said that while running for Congress, her husband was so broke that sometimes there was not enough money with which to buy stamps to mail campaign literature. Yet, five years later, on a Congressman's salary, he was able to afford two homes, one of which had the large down payment in cash.
Normally, the public would not be concerned about such matters, but the highly unusual expense fund given by wealthy businessmen, many of whom did business with the Government, the reason for which having been, according to some of the contributors, to help with Mr. Nixon's living expenses in Washington, gave rise to suspicion, as the Senator had stated in the broadcast that none of the money had gone for his personal use, but was only to cover expenses such as mailing matter to constituents. The Senator, however, had originally stated to columnist Peter Edson, who had first broached the issue of the fund with the Senator, that he could not have afforded to purchase his home in Washington without the fund.
Mr. Pearson indicates that another column on the candidate's financial background would soon follow.
Hey, he earned everything he got. Leave poor Richard alone.
Marquis Childs, in Detroit, tells of UAW president Walter Reuther and others urging the Stevenson campaign to talk more from the gut and less from the head, to ensure the turnout of votes traditionally going to Democrats, workers and minority groups. Mr. Reuther was especially urging getting down to cases on the basic issues, taxes, high prices and Korea. He urged that on taxes, Governor Stevenson ought to stress the record of the 80th Congress which had passed a tax cut worth $70 to the average worker earning $2,500 per year and $47,000 for someone earning $200,000 per year. He urged the Governor to cite the Republican record in opposition to measures which would check inflation. Regarding Korea, he urged that part of the blame could be placed on John Foster Dulles for making commitments for the U.S. to remain in South Korea, while General Eisenhower, as chief of staff of the Army, had recommended the withdrawal of American troops from the area.
Mr. Childs observes that for the scrupulous Governor Stevenson, it was a strong prescription, as he understood the tangle of forces at home and abroad which had led to the inevitability of use of large-scale American forces in Korea and the resulting heavy toll of casualties. Yet, only such a strong prescription which was easy to understand would bring out the vote. Mr. Reuther had stressed that labor was not a true bloc vote, that they would vote for the candidate who provided assurance of programs benefiting labor and the whole country. In the end, it was not a question of which way the large city precincts would vote but whether they would vote at all.
Stewart Alsop, in Philadelphia, states that most Philadelphians believed that Pennsylvania was the key to the national election and that Philadelphia was the key to Pennsylvania. He finds the view valid, as it was difficult to see how General Eisenhower could win the election unless he took the 32 electoral votes from Pennsylvania. FDR had carried Philadelphia by majorities of around 200,000, enabling him to carry the state, but President Truman had carried Philadelphia only by 7,000 votes in 1948, resulting in the loss of the state to Governor Dewey by 150,000 votes.
Governor Stevenson could win the state if he maintained the President's strength in Democratic Pittsburgh and did no worse than the President elsewhere in the state, while carrying Philadelphia by a much larger margin. The Governor started in Philadelphia with greater advantages than had the President in 1948. For one thing, former Vice-President Henry Wallace was not on the ballot, having siphoned off 55,000 votes from the President in the state in 1948, thus reducing the margin needed for the Governor to win to about 100,000. Philadelphia had a Democratic administration for the first time in 67 years as a result of the unprecedented defeat of the Republican machine which had controlled huge chunks of votes, but was now considered by Republicans to be in horrible shape. Democratic leaders in the city believed that the Governor could carry the state by 100,000 to 150,000 votes. Even Republican leaders believed that the Governor would improve on the President's narrow margin of victory.
Another factor was that the black vote was more solidly Democratic than ever before. Republican leaders such as Governor John Fine winced when they saw pictures of General Eisenhower chatting amicably with Southerners such as Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina, and believed that the General's strategy of entering the South made the job of holding key Northern states much more difficult.
The statewide Republican organization, like the city machine, was also in a weakened position, with there being talk of a large protest write-in vote for Senator Taft by those unhappy with the outcome of the convention. Others would simply not vote.
These factors suggested that the state might be in the bag for Governor Stevenson, in which case he would likely be elected. But no one was yet making predictions. The Democratic organization, both at the state and local levels, was nearly as badly split as its Republican counterpart. Governor Fine's personal machine was working smoothly and he had 48,000 employees whom he could hire or fire at will. Most of those employees would be expected therefore to vote Republican.
A letter writer finds both candidates in the national campaign to be good men but also finds their speeches and those of their surrogates to leave her confused, as too much time was spent finding fault and not enough on the central issues.
A letter writer from Pittsboro takes issue with the editorial, "Ike's Surprising Switch on UMT", finding its criticism of General Eisenhower regarding his switch on the UMT issue from supporting it to opposition, consistent with that of Senator Taft, not to be well taken, as the General was now making the campaign interesting and not simply rubber-stamping Administration foreign policy. He thinks the General was making good sense.
A letter writer from Spindale finds that Senator Taft's complaint about "creeping socialism" was reflective only of his philosophy that the rich should be made richer and the poor, poorer. He indicates that socialism had nothing to do with Soviet Communism, indicates that he had seen the birth of liberal socialism in 1896 and its "amazing results" in 1912 and 1922, that free men could live under capitalism or socialism. He finds that General Eisenhower had been completely taken over by the Old Guard of the Republican Party and if elected, would be a "helpless tool". He thinks that the Republicans had produced "do-nothing" Presidents anchored in the Old Guard and suggests that perhaps Governor Stevenson could point the way to progress, that at least he would not be captive of a long dead philosophy.
A letter writer from Raleigh, on behalf of the State Nurses' Association, expresses appreciation for the editorial of September 9, "The Size of the Nursing Problem". She indicates that the facts communicated by the piece had been known by nurses for some time, but making those facts public was important in obtaining a remedy for the nursing shortage.
A letter writer from Concord indicates that the "left-wing Fair Dealers" were trying to "smear Nixon with petty charges that just don't hold water."
He indicates that the expense fund was not unprecedented, and had been collected for Senators for a long time—though not citing a single example and running counter to the statement in this date's column by Drew Pearson. He also says that there was no contribution of more than $500 and that the contributors came from different occupations, sounding to him not as bribe money. Moreover, the fund had saved the taxpayers money because most of the expenses it had covered would have otherwise been covered by the Government expense allowance or franking privileges.
The question we have is whether the watergate could hold the charges and whether they were actually "petty".
Framed Edition
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