The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 4, 1952

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that on Koje Island in Korea, U.S. infantrymen and tanks this date had knocked down and burned Russian, North Korean and Chinese flags in three of the Communist prisoner of war compounds and then removed unruly prisoner leaders, all without firing a shot. At one point, a U.S. private scaled an arch at the gate and pulled down a painting of North Korean Premier Kim Il Sung.

The Communists had submitted, despite having boasted a few hours earlier that they would "fight to the death". Seventeen anti-Communist prisoners, with their hands bound, had been rescued from one compound and 75 others had been marched out of a second compound, including five Communist leaders and possibly some anti-Communists. The commandant of the camp, Brig. General Haydon Boatner, had pointed out three disobedient prisoner leaders and ordered that they and two others be placed in an isolated jail. A few teargas grenades had been thrown by the U.S. soldiers as they rushed into the compounds and later, they destroyed guard huts with flamethrowers. The effort of the operation was to obtain prisoner obedience in the troubled camp.

The Department of Defense announced that U.S. battle casualties in Korea had reached 109,159, an increase of 182 since the previous week, including 23 killed in action, for a total of 17,252, 158 wounded, for a total of 79,426, and one missing in action, for a total of 12,481.

In Berlin, an American military policeman was shot and wounded by an East German police border guard on the outskirts of the city this date, and the U.S. commander in Berlin denounced it as "barbaric and undisciplined violence by police under Soviet control." He demanded that the Russians severely punish the offender. The shooting had occurred without warning or provocation while the unidentified M.P. was on a routine official patrol in his jeep near the U.S.-Soviet zonal boundary. It was the latest in a series of incidents which had occurred of late to try to throw a wrench into the new military and political alliance between West Germany and the West.

Meanwhile, the British siege of the building which housed Radio Berlin within the British sector, begun the previous day, continued, with the German Communists inside taunting their besiegers via radio and telephone. The British had indicated to those inside that they could leave at any time, but could not return. The action had been undertaken with full knowledge and acquiescence of the French and Americans.

The White House summoned leaders of the steel industry and the United Steelworkers for a conference the following day to try to resolve the steel strike, begun in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday, holding unconstitutional the President's seizure of the industry on April 8. The strike now embraced 650,000 Steelworkers and unemployment resulting from it had climbed past 72,000. Lukens Steel Co. of Coatesville, Pa., had begun negotiation with the union on its own, involving about 4,500 workers.

Meanwhile, Senator Burnet Maybank of South Carolina, chairman of the Banking Committee, introduced a bill which would ban strikes for 120 days if they endangered national defense, set up a Presidential board to recommend settlement terms, and allow the President to seize the industry if the terms were not accepted, though not being allowed to raise wages, and providing that the Government would pay just compensation to the owners after a seizure. The measure was offered as an amendment to the expiring economic controls law, set to end at the end of the month absent a new law. Senator Taft immediately criticized the proposal, claiming it would be infinitely tougher on labor than the Taft-Hartley Act. Senator Maybank said that he knew that management would not like his proposal and that labor also would not like it, but that, in his conscience, he liked it.

Defense Mobilizer John R. Steelman issued orders intended to relieve unemployment in the textile and shoe industries, approving recommendations in the textile industry made several weeks earlier by the Surplus Manpower Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization, giving preference, in awarding Government contracts, to firms working not more than 80 hours per week in their spinning or weaving operations.

Continued absenteeism prevented House action this date on an appropriations bill to release funds for payment of overdue wages to thousands of postal and other Federal employees.

In Abilene, Kans., General Eisenhower returned to his boyhood home, after thousands of people had gathered beside the railroad tracks which ran in back of the home, some being former neighbors and others merely curious, some coming from other states to wish the General well, very few being aware of the political implications of the occasion. It was hoped by the General's supporters that a 30-minute speech during the day and a large press conference the following day would inject energy into the campaign for his nomination for the presidency at the Republican convention, a month away. The General and four of his brothers were to lay a cornerstone for the foundation of the building to house a museum honoring the World War II General, who had been Allied supreme commander at the time of the landing of the Allies on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. A parade was planned with 30 floats, the last being one depicting the General in the White House. He would then make his speech at Eisenhower Park on the outskirts of Abilene, to be televised in Charlotte over WBTV, starting at 6:00, with the ceremonies to be broadcast over WBT radio, starting at 10:00. Set your watches…

The General was, after all, every bit the captivating speaker that President Truman was.

In South Dakota, the presidential primary had taken place the previous day but the vote had not yet been finally tabulated, showing currently, after reporting by 1,821 of the state's 1,947 precincts, that Senator Taft led by 551 votes, with an estimated 15,000 votes still to be counted. There was talk of a possible recount to determine who would obtain the state's 14 delegates to the Republican convention. No write-in votes had been allowed. Many of the 225 precincts still to report were in the far western area of the state, where General Eisenhower had been running strong in the cities, while Senator Taft had been leading in the rural areas. Entering the primary, Senator Taft had 33 more delegates, according to the Associated Press tally, than did General Eisenhower, but still had accumulated only slightly more than two-thirds of the necessary number for nomination.

In the Democratic primary, Senator Estes Kefauver easily won the state's eight delegates to the Democratic convention, defeating an uninstructed slate which had planned to vote on the first ballot for Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, though Senator Humphrey had indicated that he was not running against his friend, Senator Kefauver, in South Dakota. The new Associated Press tally for Democratic delegates showed Senator Kefauver with 244 votes, to 86 1/2 for Senator Richard Russell, and 85 1/2 for Averell Harriman.

In the California primary the previous day, the 68 Democratic delegate votes went to Senator Kefauver, defeating a slate of delegates headed by State Attorney General Pat Brown, who had taken over leadership of the slate when the President had dropped out of the race on March 29.

In the Senate race, GOP incumbent Senator William Knowland, an opponent of the President's domestic and foreign policies, was re-elected, easily capturing both parties' nominations. Also in the Republican primary, Governor Earl Warren won all of the 70 Republican convention delegate votes, by a margin of 2.5 to 1.

Near Kinston, N.C., a flying instructor and two Air Force cadets had been killed this date when two training planes crashed into each other. The dead instructor was the son of Bunn Hearn, UNC's baseball coach. He had been a star infielder at UNC in 1943-44, and after graduating from the University, had become a Navy pilot, working at the Air Force training base in Kinston since it had been reopened several months earlier. One plane had been piloted by one of the cadets, accompanied by Mr. Hearn, while the other had been piloted by a cadet flying solo.

On the editorial page, "Much Ado about Little" finds that the South Dakota primary of the previous day had been blown all out of proportion by politicians and reporters alike, with the state only having four electoral votes and only 14 delegates to the Republican convention. Yet, because of the supposed psychological importance of the primary, with it being the last head-to-head contest between Senator Taft and General Eisenhower, the factions had fallen in line and campaigned hard.

The results had not yet been fully tabulated as of the previous midnight, but thus far, the Senator was leading the General by only 800 votes out of 120,000, despite the fact that the Senator had stumped the state thoroughly, while the General had only just arrived back in the country from his tour of duty as supreme commander of NATO in Europe.

It concludes that it did not really matter how South Dakota voted, as bigger events were beginning to take shape, on which would hang the decision at the Republican convention in July. General Eisenhower would make his speech this night in Abilene, Kansas, in which he might stick to principles and generalities or begin to discuss issues, as he had done in Washington the previous day when he contested Senator Taft's opposition to the UMT proposal. The campaign over the next month, it posits, would drown out such "diversionary skirmishes" as the South Dakota primary.

"One Head Rolls—Will There Be Others?" wonders whether others would follow after the commissioner of paroles, T. C. Johnson, had been fired by Governor Kerr Scott, apparently because of Dr. Johnson's support of William B. Umstead in the gubernatorial race, when Governor Scott had supported the opponent, Hubert Olive. It suggests that, alternatively, the firing may have come because Dr. Johnson had simply been an undistinguished commissioner, appearing to devote more time to politics than paroles. In recent weeks, his position taken at loggerheads to the Governor had resulted in the virtual standstill of the normal parole system. It indicates that it had never been very impressed with Dr. Johnson and his mixing of paroles and politics, and did not regret his departure from the State Government.

It informs that there had been other members of State Government who had also not followed Governor Scott's political preferences, one in particular being D. S. Coltrane, assistant director of the budget, and that if the Governor decided also to fire him, he would have some explaining to do.

"It Takes Two To Trade" tells of the U.S. in 1950 having exported 1.4 billion dollars worth of goods more than it had imported, whereas that trade imbalance had grown to 4.1 billion in 1951, and thus far in 1952 showed a rate of 5.1 billion for the year.

Traders, to get dollars, had to sell for dollars, but they had trouble getting them because when they tried to sell, American producers complained and sought more protective tariffs. The U.S., under the escape clause of the Reciprocal Tariff Act, therefore raised the tariffs and the trading country retaliated by also raising tariffs or by taking their commerce elsewhere.

The trade losses hurt the people of the Carolinas, as tobacco exports had decreased because the old European customers were looking for markets in the sterling bloc.

It stresses that trade was a two-way street and that if the country wanted others to buy its goods, it would have to let them sell their goods in the U.S. Protective tariffs prevented prospective buyers from earning dollars, thus decreasing U.S. exports, and it thus urges that such tariffs, being outmoded, should be decreased or abolished.

"Up Everest's Icy Slopes" tells of 200 men slowly making their way to the village of Namche Bazar beneath Mount Everest, most being natives of Tibet or Nepal and hardy mountain men carrying scientific and climbing equipment. They would remain at the base of the mountain while eight Swiss mountaineers continued toward the peak. A British expedition had been reported a day behind the Swiss expedition. Only during May and June were the elements accommodating to allow man to seek the summit.

Many attempts had been made to scale the peak at over 29,000 feet, but all had failed, the highest point reached by 1952 having been 27,300 feet, 30 years earlier. Many men had died on the slopes of Everest but it remained a great challenge.

It posits that the fascination for the adventure might lie in the fact that it was a pure contest between man and nature, where ideology, nationality, wealth and position ceased to count. It indicates that it would follow with vicarious fascination the ascent of the mountaineers and would envy anyone who reached the summit, attainable to only a few.

Now, they report that the trek to the summit has become so crowded during these months that the ordinary danger involved in the expedition has been made manifold by the heavy foot traffic along the single-track trail, with the result of increasing numbers of deaths in recent years during the summit approach and departure, including in 2019.

Good luck…

"No Takers" tells of Charlotte's Manley Dunaway, who had run in the Democratic gubernatorial race, having offered himself for public office for many years and so far having come up empty. In the gubernatorial race, he had polled only 4,700 votes statewide, less than one percent of the total. In his home county of Mecklenburg, he had received only 400 votes out of about 30,000 cast. It suggests that it might be better for him to stick to his real estate business in the future.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "TV Ball", wonders what would happen to college football attendance and the revenue it generated for big academic business with the intrusion of television. The NCAA had hired a national opinion research firm, which had informed it that football attendance had declined in the heavily saturated television markets where 40 percent or more of families owned a set. A big oil company had canceled its radio broadcasts of college football games, including games scheduled by Duke and UNC, in favor of televised professional games. The Radio-Television Manufacturers Association had reported spending on football admissions in 1947 to have been 91 million dollars, 106 million in 1949, 103 million in 1950 and 98 million in 1951, showing that gate receipts had increased coincidentally with the television boom, though having fallen the previous year.

It concludes that it found in those figures no hint that the game, itself, was in danger of becoming amateurized.

Drew Pearson tells of receiving copies of more secret Nationalist Chinese cables, showing how Chiang Kai-shek's Government had conspired to pull the U.S. into a third world war and how Chiang was in frequent contact with General MacArthur behind the State Department's back. The cables had been sent by the Chinese Embassy in Washington to Chiang on Formosa and had been translated officially by the Library of Congress. He finds the most amazing cable, dated December 5, 1949, to be one which indicated that the Nationalist Chinese hope of a world war "so as to rehabilitate our country is unpalatable to the (American) people." That policy apparently had been established immediately after the start of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. In a cable of July 14, the Chinese Embassy warned that they had to be patient about their plans to extend the Korean War to the rest of the Asiatic mainland, indicating that whether the Communist Chinese sent troops to Korea was of secondary importance, as the war in South Korea would be extended in any case and that the Nationalists should remain patient, awaiting whether or not it would extend to other places in Europe and Asia.

Mr. Pearson indicates that the cables were prepared jointly by the Chinese Embassy's five top policymakers, whom he identifies, reporting directly to Chiang, over the head of Ambassador Wellington Koo. They jointly signed the cables "Kung".

He quotes from the cables some of the references which showed that they were in regular contact with General MacArthur, and their reliance on him to ensure aid to Formosa.

At least one of the cables, from which he quotes, also expressed dissatisfaction with Ambassador Koo.

Raymond Moley, in the third of a series of 12 articles abstracted from his 1952 book, How To Keep Our Liberty: A Program for Political Action, tells of the American people not being willing in the foreseeable future to accept socialism, but that the danger existed that they would come to accept a series of government interventions gradually, until the aggregate was too hard to resist. He indicates that in the 20 years between 1930 and 1950, payments by Federal, state and local governments for direct relief, pensions, insurance, unemployment compensation, and other items of a like nature had increased tenfold.

He finds in this trend several dangers, the vesting of responsibility for human welfare in the government, bringing politics into the picture, such political welfare then causing the extension of benefits to increasing numbers of people in increasing amounts, resulting in large costs for distributing benefits according to want instead of needs, the increasing burden of the welfare state upon the economy being accelerated by loss of total productivity, and the moral danger of welfare dependence and the tendency to become addicted to it. Yet, despite those dangers, there was constant pressure to push the Federal government further into welfare activities.

The President had proposed a program of national compulsory health insurance, which Dr. Moley regards as "socialized" medicine. To maintain this system would require strict regulations and the elimination of the present modicum of liberty for practitioners and patients, replaced by government regimentation.

To acquire domination over the states, the Federal Government had first to seize the sources of state and local revenue. The Hoover Commission's task force on Federal-state relations had indicated that in 1890, the Federal government spent 36.2 percent of all governmental outlays, whereas in 1946, it had risen to 85.2 percent. That money came from the states. Federal power had grown through grants-in-aid to the states, enabling the Federal government to influence or control 75 percent of state activities. The size and variety of those grants had grown rapidly under the pretext of the Depression, World War II and then the Cold War. Fifty years earlier, only three million dollars was paid out of Federal funds to the states, but by 1950, it had grown to more than 2.2 billion dollars.

He finds that if the trend continued, it would ultimately erase local self-government and reduce the states to mere agents or provinces of the Federal Government, eliminating the Constitutional balance between the states and the Federal Government.

He finds that the Brannan Agricultural Plan had served to cause people to realize that, unless a method was found to restore agriculture to a permanently self-sustaining basis, there was nothing ahead for the American farmer except serfdom under an all-powerful government.

With the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, all restraints on collection of income taxes by the Congress were abolished, on the assumption that Congress could be entrusted to tax appropriately. The Framers, however, had not been so trusting and so provided for checks on the power of Congress to levy taxes.

He indicates that generally in the Roosevelt Administration and throughout the Truman Administration, there had been deliberately planned and stimulated inflation, enabled by the war and fears of it. The strategy had been to provide increasing "scope for the expansion of spending and bureaucracy, while promoting the enrichment of some at the expense of others—always because there are more voters among the 'some' than among the 'others'."

A letter writer questions how the post office and banks could do business with the public by closing on every holiday, such as on Memorial Day, a national holiday, he believes, meant for the purpose of not forgetting "how many murders we have committed."

A letter writer wonders whether politicians relied on the forgetfulness of the electorate or just had contempt for those of average intelligence. He indicates that in the previous few weeks, Senator Willis Smith had applauded the candidacy of Senator Richard Russell for the presidency, even after Senator Russell had proclaimed that he was for a voluntary Fair Employment Practices Commission, and that even if the Democratic platform contained a compulsory FEPC, he would not bolt the party. The writer indicates that it was almost the same position taken by Frank Graham when he had served on the President's Civil Rights Commission before becoming a Senator in 1949. He wonders why Senator Smith now took the same position which he had formerly attacked Senator Graham for adopting in their race for the seat in 1950.

A letter writer wonders whether the country had reached a point when international commitments, on which the country had gone to war in Korea, took precedence over the Constitution. He also comments that the adherents of planned economy had trained their propaganda guns on all who had tossed their hats into the presidential campaign, with the charge of isolationism being hurled at Senator Taft.

A letter from a Matthews minister, who had previously written condemning segregation, indicates that human brotherhood in the realm of race relations was the fundamental problem of the century in the church, the logical organization to promote equality, but having instead become a "stronghold of segregation" where "smug white supremacists" restricted freedom of pulpit expression. He finds it a curse and a menace.

He suggests that unless rights were enlarged, the future would be handicapped in terms of the pursuit of happiness. He wonders where were the prophets, patriots, and pioneers in modern religious life and what "divine agency" would lead the country across "new frontiers into the promised land of equality where segregation will be conspicuous by its absence". He regards the general welfare as requiring that everyone be color blind and that there be no compromise with segregation, "a horrible inequity that embodies mammoth iniquity."

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