The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 20, 1952
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Communist prisoners of war were rioting in the Pusan camp this date and that two minor revolts had erupted in the Koje Island camp, where two major riots had occurred in recent weeks. One Communist POW had been killed and 85 injured at Pusan. One American guard had suffered a minor injury in the melee of clubs and fists, though no shots had been fired by the armed U.N. guards. The two incidents at Koje Island were resolved without violence. In one incident at the latter location, 400 women prisoners of war and civilian internees were involved, and in the other, a sitdown strike by prisoners at a hospital and their prisoner-doctors had occurred. The new commander at the camp, Brig. General Haydon Boatner, had used firmness and persuasion to settle the matters. The prisoners at Pusan had been previously screened and found to be opposed to Communism and to repatriation to North Korea or China. The pro-Communist prisoners had been retained on Koje Island. The Army command indicated that the specific part of Pusan in which the riot had occurred was a mixture of pro-Communist and anti-Communist prisoners. A group of about 1,000 inmates had refused an order from U.N. authorities to come out of the compound for transfer to another compound.
U.N. truce negotiators this date accused the Communists of "seeking every vicious means" to block the armistice because of their "fear of the truth". An especially bitter 62-minute session had taken place this date regarding repatriation of prisoners, the sole issue remaining to effect the armistice. The delegations would meet again the following day. Lead U.N. negotiator, Vice-Admiral C. Turner Joy, getting ready to leave the negotiation team shortly to become head of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, said that during the 10 1/2 months of negotiations, he had not heard such "vicious, degrading propaganda as that thrown" at the U.N. this date. He again stated that the U.N. would not repudiate the humanitarian principles on which the voluntary repatriation of prisoners was based.
The President said this date, in an address at West Point celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Academy, that Russia's desire to dominate the world was obviously unchanged, but that he believed that the country was well on its way to preserving freedom "without paying the frightful cost of world war". He said that the Communists had utterly failed in their objectives in Korea, which had been to shatter the United Nations, instead making the latter stronger and more vigorous, showing that it could and would act to defend freedom in the world. He urged that the West had to remain alert and ready to meet treachery or renewal of aggression should it come. He indicated that the U.S. would never accept the Communist demand for repatriation of all captured Communist prisoners, in derogation of their desires not to be repatriated, that such would be "a betrayal of the ideals of freedom and justice" for which the country was fighting, that the country would not "buy an armistice by trafficking in human slavery". He admitted that the Communists had built up their strength in men, tanks and planes since the truce talks had begun nearly a year earlier, but that the U.S. also had consolidated and increased its strength in that time, and that the situation generally in the world had improved.
The President signed the bill raising the pay and allowances of military service personnel by nearly half a billion dollars per year, intended to offset higher costs of living.
Rowland Evans, Jr., reports that the three big railroad unions were studying a labor peace plan which the White House hoped would end a three-year dispute between the unions and the railroads. Presidential assistant John Steelman had provided the proposed contract the previous afternoon to the three unions, the Engineers, Firemen and Conductors Brotherhoods, and they had accepted it quickly. He had also provided the proposal to the railroads. The proposal would provide for a 37 cents per hour increase in pay, of which 12.5 cents was already being paid under the Government seizure of the railroads, which had occurred in August, 1950. There were also other provisions in the proposal, which are detailed in the story.
Congressman Bob Sikes of Florida called the recent $10 per ton price increase on Canadian newsprint "a matter of greed". Two large Canadian newsprint producers raised their prices by the Canadian Government's permitted $10 increase, resulting in the highest newsprint price in history. The price would vary according to the section of the country to which the newsprint would be delivered. In New York, for instance, the increase brought the total cost to $126 per ton, whereas in Charlotte it would be $130 per ton. It was the second such price increase within a year and compared with a low of $40 per ton during the depression years of the early 1930's and the previous high of $120 per ton in the early 1920's. It would add about 50 million dollars per year to the cost of American publishers, already facing cost difficulties in publishing daily newspapers. It was anticipated that publishers might seek eligibility for a price increase from the Government Office of Price Stabilization. Price administrator Ellis Arnall told the Canadian Government, in response to the price hike, that 749 American daily newspapers had disappeared within the previous 20 years because of consolidations, mergers and failures, suggesting that they were harming their own market.
In Raleigh, 500 North Carolina merchants, at the 50th annual convention of the North Carolina Merchants Association, voted to oppose the extension of the Government controls over prices and wages beyond June 30. The president of the Florida Merchants Association told the group that the recent victory in the Florida primary by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia over Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee was "the first real setback of the Fair Deal program", and that Senator Kefauver represented "the system we now have in Washington which could become more dangerous because it could inherit under him more capable leadership than it now has". Come again.
These guys just don't like Democrats.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports of a survey of newspaper editors' predictions, as conducted by The News, having indicated that William B. Umstead was leading Judge Hubert Olive in the gubernatorial primary race set for May 31, based on the responses of 27 editors. Mr. Umstead was believed to be leading in 37 of the state's 100 counties, while Judge Olive was leading in only two. The race was so close in four counties that either man could win, and predictions had not been received in the remaining 57 counties. In the 37 counties where it was believed Mr. Umstead was winning, the editors reported that he would likely take those counties by a large majority.
In Greenville, S.C., police swore out a warrant for a Charlotte resident for armed robbery of over $16,000 from a finance firm in Greenville the previous Monday. The police were still trying to locate the man, whose relatives indicated that he had not been home in about a week and was believed to be in South Carolina. An automobile used in the robbery was located two hours after the robbery in a parking lot, and contained a pistol used in the robbery and a money bag from the robbery, which had been split open, still containing checks and money orders, but missing $1,793 in cash.
In Charlotte, an irate insurance salesman elected to serve a jail term rather than pay a fine and costs of court for speeding, which totaled $17.80. He had been found guilty of speeding 55 mph in a 40 mph zone on Wilkinson Boulevard. If he did not pay the total fine and costs, he would have to remain in jail 18 days at one dollar per day credit. The man said, however, that he did not care whether he had to stay in jail for six months, he would not pay the fine as a matter of principle. He did not deny that he had been traveling over 40 mph at the time he was caught, but stated that the arresting officer had used "poor discretion", because he was going about 55 mph at 4:30 a.m., when there was no traffic traveling in either direction on the road. The officer had admitted, he said, that he was not driving recklessly or endangering anyone else. He regarded, therefore, the officer as a "bonehead", and stated that he had his good name to consider.
In London, a woman was awarded a divorce this date because her husband insisted on doing the housework, taking over her role as a housewife, including shopping and cooking. The husband, a butcher, said that he thought he was a much more efficient housekeeper than his wife. The court granted the divorce decree on grounds of cruelty, stating that it had been the custom that it was the wife's duty and privilege to run the house.
On the Feature page, columnist Earl
Wilson tells of former bandleader Artie Shaw
Dr. W. C. Alvarez has yet another series on health, "How To Live with Your Allergy", though not appearing apparently in The News. We won't follow along daily with this series, but if you have an allergy, then you can read it on your own. If you happen to be allergic to old newsprint
On the editorial page, "Mecklenburg Madness" finds that the Mecklenburg County Democrats had leaped without looking when, on the previous Saturday, they had met in their county convention and followed the advice of former Governor and Senator Cameron Morrison in supporting a resolution "instructing" the North Carolina delegation to support Senator Richard Russell of Georgia at the state convention in Raleigh the following Thursday.
It finds Senator Russell a good candidate for the presidency and the best qualified among the Democrats presently in the race, but believes that the state delegation ought be permitted to go to the convention uninstructed, that it would be appropriate to endorse the Senator if they wished, but going to the convention instructed to support him would take away their bargaining power, which was the whole point of Senator Russell being in the race.
"One Little Vote" tells of heavy voter registration in Mecklenburg County during the previous three Saturdays when registration had been open, but that fact not necessarily being a harbinger of a heavy vote in the coming primary, as every year, millions of Americans who were properly registered failed to vote. It stresses that one vote could swing elections, citing the 1948 presidential election, in which Governor Dewey had lost Ohio and California to the President by approximately one vote per precinct. Had the 25 electoral votes each from Ohio and California gone to Governor Dewey, neither candidate would have earned a majority in the electoral college, throwing the election into the House. Because the election had been deemed in the bag for the Republicans, it was believed that many people had simply not bothered to vote.
It also cites the 1916 presidential election between the incumbent, President Woodrow Wilson, and his Republican opponent, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who had resigned his seat to run. Similarly, in that election, had one vote per precinct out of 3,807 of California's 5,000 precincts gone to Justice Hughes, President Wilson would have lost the election in the electoral college.
It concludes therefore that one should never underestimate the power of one "little" vote.
And, of course, we have to add to that exhortation the result in 2000, where a little over 500 heavily contested votes in the state of Florida determined the outcome of the election in the electoral college for Governor George W. Bush over Vice-President Al Gore, despite the latter having won the nationwide popular vote by a half million votes.
We make no comment on 2016, for the simple remedy there for 2020 is to make damn sure that the Russians don't influence our voting again, either through propaganda broadcast as the "American way" out of Texas and other "real American" venues, or more directly by infiltration of computer systems and targeting of key precincts in key states, as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
"In the Interest of the Community" expresses the hope that Dr. James A. Jones, pastor of the Myers Park Presbyterian Church, would elect to remain in the community and decline an appointment as pastor of an Atlanta church, based on his solid record of contributions to the community at large.
"New Trend in Medicine" tells of two ostensibly unrelated stories regarding medicine, one from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where medical students were being assigned to visit selected families to act as "advisory middlemen" between patients, doctors and hospitals. The other story came from Jerusalem, where the Hebrew University worked closely with Hadassah in training young medical students, and because of the great influx of immigrants since May, 1948, it had been deemed essential that the medical student think in terms of public health as well as private practice, and so a part of their training was in service at public health and social welfare institutions.
It indicates that doctors with foresight had long realized that the segregation of medical students in laboratories and classrooms hindered their full development and limited their awareness of their duties as citizens, when medicine, of all the professions, needed understanding, sympathy, and socially-conscious practitioners. It finds in the two stories an encouraging sign that the profession as a whole was moving in that direction.
An editorial from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "Sensible Judge", praises Charlotte Juvenile Court Judge Willard Gatling for making public some of the facts surrounding the teenage girl who had set three church fires the prior month, indicating that the policy in Raleigh of keeping juvenile matters confidential disserved the public interest, as the secrecy did not protect the individual juvenile as much as it did the parents who were often responsible for the misconduct of their child. In the Charlotte case, the court had indicated that the girl came from a broken home and that the behavior had resulted from the failure of her parents. It indicates that if such an occurrence were hushed up in Raleigh, no one would know what had caused such aberrant behavior. It hopes, therefore, for a trend toward disclosure to the public of the proceedings and rationale for findings in juvenile delinquency cases.
An editorial from Life looks at the role of the South in the upcoming election. It indicates that Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota had never gotten off the ground with his "hopeless scheme" of merging the Republicans and Southern Democrats, but that he might be right when he stated that the key to the country's political future was in the South.
The Southern Republican party, which was particularly prone to failure, had suddenly become quite active because of the contest for delegates between General Eisenhower and Senator Taft. In Texas, the organization Republicans were for the Senator, but the people appeared to prefer the General. The state had no primary, however, and so Texas Republicans had been fighting it out during the previous two weeks in precinct and county conventions, with the result that a series of rump meetings, bolts and standoffs had resulted. The same pattern had developed in Louisiana.
The Southern Republicans were fighting in part for patronage, with the hope that they would finally be able to elect a Republican President, to show who controlled the state machines. In another part, they simply felt very strongly for their particular candidate.
Next to Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, General Eisenhower was probably the favorite candidate among Southerners. Republicans understood that he could make inroads in the South to provide the Republicans strength where they had none previously. They had the choice to bid for the black vote, which had been growing rapidly in numbers while losing interest in the Republican Party since 1932 when FDR was elected. If the Republicans supported the Fair Employment Practices Commission, they might garner some of the black vote in the process, even though it would likely not hasten black equality, as that could only be achieved in the places where blacks lived and worked. Advancements in recent years had largely been the result of state and local achievement, both in the North and South. For the Republicans to exert a strong Federal hand, however, would lose them the support of many Southern whites who favored racial progress and whose work was essential to it.
A second approach would be for the Republicans to write off the black vote and attempt some new variant of the Mundt scheme, basing such a coalition on states' rights. But no Southern Democrat appeared interested and it would be certain death in the long run for the Republicans to do so, especially if it involved them becoming as conservative as the Dixiecrats on the subject of civil rights.
A third approach appeared to be the best, developing a strong Republican organization in the South which would stand for "legitimate states' rights", but which would also fight within the states for more progress toward racial equality. For that purpose, the established Southern Republican machines were almost useless, as they were uninterested in winning local elections, enlarging the party or working at politics more than once in each four-year cycle.
In most of the Southern organizations, the incumbents were for Senator Taft, while the rebels, for General Eisenhower. It suggests that if the latter won, they might settle into their patronage machines just as had been the case previously. But that game was about played out, for the South was still changing fast. Some of the Republican organizers for General Eisenhower in the South claimed that if the General were elected, the Republican Party as it had been known in the South would be swept away and a two-party system supplanted in its stead. The local battles, suggests the editorial, in Louisiana and Texas were portentous of that great reform.
It concludes that the new Southern middle-class and the Republican Party needed each other, and that Southern blacks needed real two-party rivalry for bargaining strength. It indicates that if the Southern supporters of General Eisenhower could bring that goal nearer, "more power to them".
Drew Pearson discusses a letter sent by the former Democratic National Committee budget officer, William Bradley, who had just resigned his position, in which he complained about chairman Frank McKinney's large expenses incurred while conducting business on behalf of the DNC. He told of one instance in which Mr. McKinney had charged $750 for handling his yacht, and another in which he had paid $2,175 to a photographer for taking pictures of the chairman. Mr. Bradley had sent the letter to two influential Democrats, Jonathan Daniels of Raleigh and Molly O'Riordan of Boston, itemizing the chairman's large expenses. Mr. Pearson publishes the letter.
Mr. McKinney had responded to the DNC executive committee by indicating that $40,000 which he had sent to Cook County, Illinois, had not been, as reported, for the purpose of cutting down the vote of Senator Estes Kefauver in the Illinois primary, but rather had represented the Cook County half of its Jackson Day dinner proceeds, customarily shared between the local and national committees. He indicated that his $10,500 of personal expenses for three months in 1952 had covered trips totaling 23,000 miles and attendance at nine Jackson-Jefferson Day dinners. He said that he had entertained big contributors on his yacht and had raised $32,000 for the party in doing so, and that the trip to Florida had actually cost him $4,800, for which he charged the DNC $1,720. Regarding the photographs, he said that there was a large demand for photos of him but that he had used some of those photos personally and so later reimbursed the Committee a thousand dollars. He also indicated that he was running the Committee for 21 percent less than the budget of the previous year, despite it being an election year. He also said that Mr. Bradley was upset because he was out of the DNC.
Based on his defense, the DNC executive committee gave Mr. McKinney a new vote of confidence.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss Attorney General-designate James McGranery, a Federal District Court Judge, and the recent revelations during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as elucidated by Richardson Dilworth, a Democratic leader in Philadelphia, from which Judge McGranery hailed. Mr. Dilworth had testified that during the summer of 1939, when King George and Queen Elizabeth had visited the U.S., an Irish revolutionary, Sean Russell, had come to the United States with the intention of assassinating them, before being picked up by the FBI. The Clan Na Gael, an extremist Irish group, then sought to intervene on behalf of Mr. Russell, to gain his release on bond, working through then-Congressman McGranery. To that end, they raised $5,000 in bail money and deposited that with Mr. McGranery as surety against the bail bond.
Mr. Russell had left the country and in 1941 the Clan Na Gael wanted the bail money back. Though there was no proof of Mr. Russell's whereabouts in 1944, the bail bond was released, removing the only pretext for Mr. McGranery holding the $5,000 of surety money. The Clan Na Gael became increasingly insistent on the refund and no less than seven lawyers had applied, at different times, to Mr. McGranery for it. One of those lawyers, Thomas Vizard, testified that in 1945, Mr. McGranery had offered to pay half of the money to Clan Na Gael and keep the other half for his time and expenses. By that point, Mr. McGranery had been appointed to a high Justice Department position, then was named to the U.S. District Court in 1946. Because no one was eager to sue a Federal Judge, none of the lawyers pressed further the Clan Na Gael claim, until the Clan retained Mr. Dilworth, who brought suit against Judge McGranery in 1948.
At that point, Judge McGranery claimed that the $5,000 he had been holding had been the property of the Philadelphia chieftain of the Clan, who had died in 1940. But Mr. McGranery at that time had never made an offer of repayment to the man's estate. Eventually, the court in the lawsuit ordered Judge McGranery to repay the $5,000 to the Clan, less $1,200 of expenses he had incurred.
Mr. Dilworth, in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, characterized the matter as a "shabby" attempt at "misappropriation". Judge McGranery did not dispute the essential facts, but apprised the Committee that Mr. Dilworth was a member of the Americans for Democratic Action, to which chairman Senator Pat McCarran took great umbrage, ultimately minimizing the effect of Mr. Dilworth's testimony.
In addition, another witness, who was one of the most respected leaders of the Philadelphia bar, testified that Judge McGranery was a "legal ignoramus" who totally lacked judicial temperament, in one case having been reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals for having denied the right of counsel to a defendant in a criminal case, and in another case, grossly confusing the nature of "reasonable doubt" in his instructions to a jury. Evidence was also offered that he had sought to avenge the fact that Mr. Dilworth had represented clients to recoup the $5,000 less expenses for Clan Na Gael.
The Alsops posit that it was likely Judge McGranery would be confirmed, given the attitude of Senator McCarran toward Mr. Dilworth. They indicate that the reason Judge McGranery had been appointed Attorney General was that he had been a good friend and neighbor to the Trumans in the early Forties, another crony appointed to a high position. They conclude from the testimony, however, that it was unlikely he could be counted on to do much cleaning up of the Federal Government, which he had indicated would be "as easy as pie".
Mr. Vizard representing the Clan suggests an entirely separate scandal...
Robert C. Ruark tells of having a great distaste for Harry Gross, the bookie who was testifying against New York City police officers for having taken his bribes to look the other way and ignore his gambling activities. Yet, Mr. Ruark believes that a certain commendation was due Mr. Gross for having testified against these officers and thus gotten rid of a few bad apples. Typically, when such corruption was exposed, the officers would simply be retired to a nice pension or transferred to some other civic duty. In this case, the officers had been fired, just short of the time they would have been eligible to receive their pensions. He finds it poetic justice of an unusual nature.
"The administration of the law is a long and tortuous process. In the cop business we are not electing Miss America, nor is a bad cop entitled to anything but a just return on the investment of his sins."
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