The Charlotte News
Friday, November 7, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via William C. Barnard, that that the largest U.N. guns had hit enemy positions on the central front this date and the artillerymen claimed that they were winning the battle of the hills. Allied officers said that about half of the 200 Chinese field artillery pieces around "Triangle Hill" and "Sniper Ridge" had been destroyed or damaged. As the big artillery pieces fired, the first snowfall of the winter began, causing infantrymen of both sides to huddle in bunkers and foxholes, leaving the ground fighting on the front to only scattered patrol clashes. Associated Press correspondent John Randolph, at the front, reported that allied artillerymen believed it would take about ten days to destroy the enemy guns, provided the enemy remained and continued to fight. On Tuesday, the Chinese had fired about 23,000 rounds of artillery fire, reduced to 11,000 rounds on Wednesday and 4,000 rounds on Thursday, with even less fire reported on Friday. Some Chinese artillery pieces were protected by log and earth parapets up to 23 feet thick, while others were hidden in tunnels and caves, and so the allied artillery could not do the entire job of destroying them. Air Force attacks, with searching napalm and big bombs, could take care of the rest.
The U.S. Eighth Army Quartermaster stated that the Army was completely equipped for the winter ahead, in sharp contrast to the early winter of 1950-51, when allied soldiers suffered because of late arriving supplies of cold-weather equipment. The equipment included new winter boots designed to prevent frostbite, which had plagued the Eighth Army during its first winter of fighting.
It was being speculated in
Washington that despite the fact that the Atomic Energy Commission
had made no announcement, the U.S. may have exploded the world's
first full-scale hydrogen bomb
Jane's Fighting Ships, Britain's authoritative naval yearbook, said that the Soviet Union's submarine fleet remained the world's largest, although the same size as a year earlier. It reported that the U.S. Navy's force was the largest peacetime fleet ever maintained by any country, as large as all the other navies of the world combined. The U.S. submarine force of 200 vessels, however, was not as large as the 370 afloat in the Soviet force, with 120 others under construction.
In Augusta, Ga., President-elect Eisenhower began sorting through his mail and drafting plans for the conferences to be held with the President during the ensuing two weeks. He planned another round of golf for the afternoon, after he had played a round the previous day. Though it was only his second full day of vacation, he planned to return to work immediately, according to an aide. Thus far, no one had been mentioned for Cabinet posts.
A series of photographs on the page shows six prominent Republicans who were being named as possible Cabinet appointees, including Governor Dewey, as either Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, RNC chairman Arthur Summerfield, as Postmaster General, Senator Irving Ives, as Secretary of Labor, Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, as Secretary of Commerce, Governor Earl Warren of California, as Attorney General, and Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, as a possibility for Secretary of Agriculture.
Democrats were ahead in four of the five undecided House elections, and some of the remaining contests might not be determined for several weeks. If the present trend continued, the House would be comprised of 221 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with one vacancy following the death of Democratic Congressmen Adolph Sabath of Illinois, and one independent seat. The fifth undecided House race had been decided this date in favor of the Democrat.
In Michigan, Governor G. Mennen Williams appeared certain to win his bid for an unprecedented third term in office. He was the only state Democratic candidate to survive the Tuesday landslide for Republicans. The Republicans indicated the possibility of demanding a recount if the final vote showed a margin of less than 10,000. The Governor's current lead was 7,600.
At noon this date, the Associated Press reported that, with 142,182 of the nation's 146,370 precincts reporting, General Eisenhower had accumulated 32,995,688 votes to Governor Stevenson's 26,549,961, giving General Eisenhower 55.4 percent of the vote.
Republicans were set for a possibly bitter fight over the floor leadership in the Senate in the coming 83rd Congress, with Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire having spread the word that he would rather be president pro tem of the body than Majority Leader. Senators Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Homer Ferguson of Michigan, William Knowland of California, Homer Capehart of Indiana, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa and Everett Dirksen of Illinois were also in the mix. It was likely that Senator Taft would have a large say in who became the Majority Leader. Senator Richard Nixon, the Vice-President-elect, said that he would resign his seat before the new Congress met on January 3, to give Governor Earl Warren an opportunity to appoint an early replacement for the sake of seniority.
The next time he would resign a post would occur under very different circumstances.
Statistics going back nearly 100 years suggested that the mid-term elections of 1954 were likely to result in the Republicans losing their narrowly won majorities in both the House and Senate. With only one exception, in 1934, the dominant party in Congress had lost seats in off-year elections since 1858. The exception had occurred in the middle of FDR's first term as the Administration fought to end the Depression. In the 1946 mid-term elections, the Democrats lost control of both the Senate and the House. With a majority of only one seat in the Senate and two seats in the House, it was even more likely that control would shift again in 1954.
Many Southerners, who had received their jobs through the help of the Democratic Congress, would be going home in January, and many Southerners who were current chairmen of committees would be forced to surrender their gavels to Republicans.
Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, the only daughter of FDR, would be married the following Tuesday to Dr. James Halsted of Los Angeles. It would be her third marriage. Her second husband, John Boettiger, had committed suicide in 1950 by leaping from a New York hotel window. She had been divorced from her first husband in 1934.
In North Carolina, two large forest fires were burning out of control in Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests in the western part of the state and the tiny village of Tellico in Macon County was threatened. Firefighters had started backfires in an effort to stop the blaze short of the village's 20 houses. More than 100 firefighters were rushed into the Tennessee Gap section near Rosman to battle a fire which had swept over 700 acres by mid-morning, and some of them had been diverted from trips home after fire duty in Tennessee for two weeks. In northern Georgia, near the North Carolina border, another large fire was raging in the Chattahoochee National Forest. The situation throughout the Southern Appalachians was termed "extremely critical" by Government officials. The Nantahala fire had been purposely set in three places. A careless smoker was blamed for a fire which ignited south of Asheville. Another fire in the Yadkin River bottomland just west of Lewisville near Winston-Salem was being battled by firefighters, many of whom were volunteers. Dozens of fires had already swept through the Carolinas from the mountains to the coast. Weather forecasters had predicted a general rain for Monday. Asheville had gone through a record 27th consecutive day without rain. High winds blew smoke from the fires in Tennessee and Kentucky. Some 30 fires burned in South Carolina the previous day.
State authorities were planning to close or postpone hunting seasons because of the fire danger, though an official said that he expected no action because there was no point in closing the woods to the hunters while leaving them open for industrial and recreational purposes. Authorities appealed to the public to be careful handling matches and cigarettes.
You had better send a special note along to Sgt. Joe Friday, L.A.P.D.
In some Midwestern and Northern states, a light snow fell and temperatures dropped well below freezing in some areas, as winter weather moved in from the Rockies.
In Louisville, Ky., a husband and wife drove to the husband's place of work during the morning, with the wife set to return home with the car. On the way, the husband received a ticket for running a red light, and on her way home, the wife received a ticket for an improper turn, from the same two officers.
In Suitland Manor, Md., after rent controls had ended on September 30, the Owners Association said that tenants whose leases forbade pets, though not enforced in that regard since the construction of the apartments in 1941, would have to get rid of their dogs or suffer a $25 per dog penalty, prompting the pet owners to protest and consult an attorney, who said that the tenants could be evicted if they refused to obey the lease.
Thank ye, thank ye very much for that story with a point.
In Inglewood, California, a breakdown at the telephone office occurred, causing service to be cut off for an hour. Callers placing coins in payphones could neither complete their call nor obtain their money in return. But when operations were restored, all the money which had been deposited in the boxes suddenly came tumbling out. Most of the people on the receiving end, according to the telephone company, had been honest and called the company, then redeposited the coins.
That was another good non sequitur.
Don't slip on any banana peels
On the editorial page, "Who Elected Ike, and Why" finds that the independent voters, far more numerous in 1952 than previously, had done more to elect General Eisenhower than any other single group. They had firmly rejected a policy of reaction as well as that of radicalism. The President was repudiated, while many of his faithful followers were not. For every radical who had been defeated, one could find a reactionary who, despite General Eisenhower's helpful presence on the ballot, had also been defeated. In New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts, the Democrats had lost House seats and had picked up a Senate seat in Massachusetts, despite General Eisenhower's majority of about 13 to 10 in each of those states.
Kansas had gone Republican by more than a 2 to 1 margin, but its previously solid Republican Congressional delegation now had a Democrat. In Montana, Washington and Missouri, three liberal Democrats, Congressman Mike Mansfield, Congressman Henry Jackson and Stuart Symington had won Senate seats, respectively, from isolationists Zales Ecton, Harry Cain and James Kem. The three states, however, had voted Republican in the presidential election for the first time since 1928, and in the case of Missouri, since the turn of the century. Illinois had voted overwhelmingly for General Eisenhower, and yet the Democrats picked up a House seat there. They lost only one House seat in Indiana.
In 1928, Herbert Hoover had a 100-seat House majority elected with him. In 1932, FDR had a 186-seat House majority, and after his 1936 landslide over Governor Alf Landon, only 89 Republicans remained in the House. Despite General Eisenhower's landslide victory, the Republicans picked up only one Senate seat and, at the latest count, had only a House majority of two seats.
It finds that the results were in line with the moderate philosophy of President-elect Eisenhower and undermined claims of the Old Guard Republicans that the voters had repudiated the many Democratic accomplishments of the previous 20 years. It suggests that the results should be a warning to the Republican Party to consolidate those accomplishments and support the moderate positions of President-elect Eisenhower, who had saved many of them from defeat.
Senator Taft, shortly after the election, had sought, in a televised statement, to claim a major share of credit for the Republican victory. To that, the editorial says "poppycock", that even his brother, Charles, had failed to win the gubernatorial election in Ohio from the incumbent, Frank Lausche, despite the fact that General Eisenhower had won the state by a margin of 4 to 3.
It concludes that it had been the independents who elected General Eisenhower, despite the record of his party, based on their like of the General and dislike for the President, despite the record of his party and the ability of Governor Stevenson.
"A Different View of Inflation" tells of economist Sumner Slichter's approach to resolving the problem of inflation, as presented in Business Week, suggesting that decreasing employment and production or checking collective bargaining, tending to increase wages faster than production rose, while accepting more imports from other nations, enabling them to earn dollars rather than having to be sent aid, all could combine to check inflation. He suspected that the country would, instead, choose to maintain employment and production, continuing inflationary pressure, keeping demand ahead of supply.
Continuation of that program, he believed, would produce moderate price increases of 2 to 3 percent per year. While that would cause considerable economic injustice to persons holding insurance and pensions plans, it could be compensated through alternative investment in stocks and real estate. Meanwhile, the gains in maintenance of high employment and high living standards, made possible by rising prices, would partially offset those injustices.
"A Tale of Two Cities" tells of an editorial in the Richmond News Leader which pointed out that 50,000 people of Richmond had voted on election day. Later it turned out that the figure was actually 48,500, 29,300 of whom had voted for General Eisenhower and 19,233, for Governor Stevenson. The population of Richmond in 1950 had been 230,310, meaning that 21.3 percent of the total population had voted on Tuesday.
Charlotte's population in 1950 had been 134,042, of whom 54,062 had voted in the election, equating to 40.3 percent.
It suggests that one reason for the city's better voting record had been the get-out-the-vote drive, producing a total registration of 64,676, of whom 83.6 percent had voted. It suggests that the News Leader might wish to take a look at the relatively poor participation and determine whether something else was not wrong.
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Our Underpaid Officials", tells of an inconsistency in America's devotion to democracy, that the people lacked sufficient respect for the politicians they chose to pay them adequately. Inflation had been worsening their lot. U.S. News & World Report had dramatized this problem by showing figures on the 1939 salaries of Federal, state and local employees, and their 1952 salaries, adjusted to 1939 purchasing power. The real income of the Governor of Illinois, for example, had fallen 56.1 percent in the prior 13 years. Other gubernatorial and mayoralty positions suffered the same fate. The piece provides a table for the President, Supreme Court Justices, members of the Cabinet and Congress, and other Federal judges and agency heads, showing their 1939 salaries, their 1952 salaries, adjusted to the 1939 equivalent after taxes. All had shown declines in real purchasing power, except for the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House, whose salaries had been boosted considerably in the 13-year interim.
Schoolteachers, with an average 1952 salary of $3,450, were better off than in 1939 when they received $1,441 per year.
It suggests that such a situation created temptations to accept private monetary aid, as had been the case with Senator Nixon and former Senator Curly Brooks of Illinois. It also caused such funds as Governor Stevenson had created in Illinois to supplement the pay of those coming into public service from the private sector, in order to induce persons of ability to accept positions.
It indicates that these problems should not be exacerbated by low salaries, especially in the expensive atmosphere of Washington. The temptation toward improper conduct was real and should be removed to the extent possible.
Drew Pearson indicates that the President had fairly definite ideas regarding what he wanted to do after leaving the White House, prime among which was to take a leisurely trip around the world, visiting Europe and returning the visits of heads of state who had called upon him while President, and to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the following June 5. Complicating those plans was the health of his 90-year old mother-in-law, who had, unknown to the public, been living with the President and Mrs. Truman during most of their time in the White House. Mrs. Truman had been adamant in refusing to leave her mother for a long trip outside the country, as long as she remained in poor health. Another concern was finances, as the President had not been able to save during his seven years in the White House. One or two Embassies had considered whether he might be entertained as an official visitor at the expense of their governments.
He wanted to visit India, Japan and various Asiatic countries, and some consideration had been given to his making a series of speeches on the peaceful goals of the American people. A good part of the world had been sold by Russian propaganda the idea that the U.S. wanted war. The State Department believed that the President might be able to refute that notion with great effect. Consideration had even been given to having a whistle-stop tour abroad to promote peace.
The President had told friends that after his trip around the world, he would like to do some lecturing at a university and some writing on history. William Howard Taft, after he had left the White House, became a professor of law at Yale—and later, in 1921, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Harding. Hints had been dropped around the capital that the President should be appointed as a delegate to the U.N. Mr. Pearson indicates that no matter what he did, he was looking forward to enjoying himself after returning to private life.
Among the President's Cabinet members, Secretary of State Acheson would return to his law firm, as he was financially in difficulty. John W. Snyder, the Secretary of the Treasury, had been promised by the President help in finding a job, having turned down Bank of America four years earlier. Secretary of Labor Maurice Tobin would return to his Boston law practice and perhaps later enter politics again. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer would return to Cincinnati. Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett would return to his Wall Street firm, having served as a Republican in Democratic Cabinets since during the war. Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson, the first non-political appointee to that post, would return to the private sector, and thousands of postal employees "would celebrate his exit".
General Mark Clark had sent the Pentagon an ultimatum that more replacements had to be rushed to Korea or he would keep his front-line soldiers past their rotation date. He objected to releasing combat veterans and replacing them with troops without experience in combat. The Army generally complained that the manpower turnover was so rapid that as soon as new men were trained, they had to be released and the Army had to start all over again. As a result, the Defense Department the following year would probably ask the new Congress to lengthen the time which draftees had to serve.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried recently to phone Britain's atomic bomb genius, Sir William Penny, and was told by the Prime Minister's secretary that the telephone company said that Dr. Penny's phone number was too secret to give to anyone.
The British were so far ahead of schedule on jet production that they were selling jet fighters on the commercial market, with Brazil having already contracted to buy 70 such jets.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that the triumph of General Eisenhower had been a personal one, that when he had found himself as a political campaigner, he was able to convince the public that he would be a capable leader in bringing about peace, as he had been in war.
In the Senate races, the only Republican candidates who had run significantly ahead of the General had been Senator Irving Ives of New York and Senator-elect and former Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, both of whom were moderates in the mold of General Eisenhower. Among the Republicans who saw things differently from the General, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin received 200,000 votes less than the General and a weak Republican presidential candidate might have cost the Senator re-election. Senators William Jenner of Indiana, George Malone of Nevada and one or two others of that stripe had unquestionably been carried to victory by the General. Senators James Kem of Missouri, Harry Cain of Washington and Zales Ecton of Montana had lost in their bids for re-election.
The one blemish on the General's record of pulling along Senators with stances similar to his own was the failure of re-election of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts, who lost primarily because of the "brilliant campaign" of Congressman John Kennedy, who strongly appealed to the same "fringe Democratic and independent groups" who had always elected Senator Lodge in the past. The malice of the "Neanderthal Massachusetts Republicans", who held it against Senator Lodge that he had fought to secure the General's nomination, had been at best only a secondary factor in the election.
That case did not alter the general rule that the extremists, violent partisans and demagogues of the Republican Party had shown weakness in the 1952 elections. Even the party as a whole could not claim great strength, the General having shown the strength and pulling power.
The Alsops posit that the voters responded to the General's quality of leadership. It could not be said whether he would measure up to those expectations as President, as the tasks of civilian and military leadership were very different and only George Washington and Andrew Jackson had, in the history of the country, been able to perform both roles with great success. During the closing part of the campaign, however, the General had "acted with the authentic power of an American political leader in the grand style". His election promised a united country and, they suggest, it was hard to believe that with the General at its head, it would not "somehow win through".
Marquis Childs tells of several high-ranking military and civilian officials in defense soon to need replacement. Joint Chiefs chairman General Omar Bradley, chief of staff of the Army General J. Lawton Collins, and chief of staff of the Air Force, General Hoyt Vandenberg, were all set to retire the following summer. The Joint Chiefs, together with Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and the deputy secretary, had worked out the figures for the new defense budget, believing that they had cut everything possible to achieve a 40 billion dollar level, 12 billion less than had originally been sought and 7 billion less than Congress had appropriated.
There was also the question of the status of General James Van Fleet, the commander in the field in Korea, for his having sent a letter during the campaign to General Eisenhower, in which General Van Fleet had expressed to his superiors the need for faster training of South Korean units, a request which the Pentagon had denied. The President had been furious when he learned of General Eisenhower's receipt of a copy of the letter, which the General had used in Chicago. It remained to be seen whether the President might dismiss General Van Fleet, as he had General MacArthur in spring, 1951 for insubordination. Were that to occur, it would further confuse the problem of Korea, which had already become a political football during the campaign.
A letter writer from Mooresville thanks the newspaper for its editorials and articles and publication of letters to the editor during the course of the campaign, asserts that it had been very fair in that regard. She says that she had favored General Eisenhower, but also liked to hear what the other side had to say.
A letter from four writers prefers Plan "A" as the proposed highway shown in a picture in the newspaper. They also support a plan to make an archives building and park out of the Hill School building and grounds.
A letter from the Queens College director of teacher training comments on the editorial regarding the shortage of elementary school teachers in the state, indicates that more trained elementary school teachers were needed and suggests that the prospective teacher wanting a liberal education as well as a professional education in preparation for teaching should attend Queens College, which allowed for a good liberal education during the first two years, while also meeting state requirements for certification of teachers over the course of the entire four years.
A letter writer states that General Eisenhower had not only been the Republican candidate for president but also "the candidate of all good Americans". He suggests that people of all walks of life had combined "to replace those amoral opportunists who, for the past ten years, have been leading us nearer toward a dictatorship." He regards the record of the Truman Administration and its domestic and foreign policies to have been the primary issues in the election, and the "inexcusable Korean War, corruption in government, high taxes, waste of money, traitors in government, influence peddling, and the commission of unconstitutional acts", other problems.
Hal de man
Framed Edition
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