The Charlotte News
Tuesday, August 26, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that two Republican leaders, Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Congressman Joe Martin of Massachusetts, House Minority Leader, discounted this date the possibility of a serious break in the party and expressed their expectation that Senator Taft and his followers would fully support General Eisenhower's campaign. Both Senator Bridges and Congressman Martin conferred with the General at his new New York headquarters this date, regarding progress and problems in the campaign. Both said they believed the campaign was going slowly but "on the upgrade", and would reach a peak at the right time.
At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, a B-17 bomber had been inadvertently shot down the previous day by a new type of jet fighter during a training mission, two members of the crew having been rescued in the Gulf of Mexico this date by a Navy minesweeper. They had been on a life raft throughout the night. The Air Force was still hoping to find other survivors among the eight-man crew. The plane had been shot down by a rocket inadvertently fired from an F-86d jet fighter. The pilot apparently had mistaken the B-17 for a radio-controlled drone which was following about a mile and a half behind the B-17.
At Aldergrove airfield in Northern Ireland, a British jet bomber crossed the Atlantic and returned in slightly more than ten hours, the first such round-trip ever made in a single day. The flight also broke the record for a west to east Atlantic passage, recording a time of three hours and 28 minutes. The east to west leg, averaging 448 mph, broke a speed record, despite fighting 100 mph headwinds. The previous record, established the prior August 31, had been 483.91 mph. The maximum speed of the Canberra plane was around 660 mph, but was maintained as an official secret. The pilot, Wing Commander Roland Beaumont, was an RAF hero of the Battle of Britain, having shot down ten German planes and 32 V-1 flying bombs during the war. He had also been the pilot of the previous record-breaking flight.
The President named Tighe Woods to be the new head of the Office of Price Stabilization, succeeding Ellis Arnall, former Governor of Georgia who had tendered his resignation, effective September 1. Mr. Woods was the current rent controller.
In New York, more than 75,000 American Legionnaires participated in a parade up Fifth Avenue, expected to last at least 12 hours. The parade was part of their 34th annual convention. Among the marchers were General Eisenhower and Senator Nixon, the General marching at the head of the Kansas delegation and the Senator, marching with the California delegation. Members who had been veterans of both world wars marched in the parade.
In Charlotte, 140 production workers walked off the job at a machine works in protest of the firing of an employee who was president of a local of the United Steel Workers. The company had declined to negotiate with the employee on the union committee and the union, in response, pulled its workers off the job. They were informed that he would be fired from the plant when he showed up for work. The union had won an election on June 11 to represent the workers at the plant.
House investigators were informed this date that a top Justice Department official had approved a grand jury report vindicating the way tax matters had been handled in St. Louis in 1951, despite several officials having later been indicted for malfeasance. One official said that the Justice Department did not want to be embarrassed by the grand jury probe. A House Judiciary subcommittee was studying the St. Louis scandals, which had led to the conviction of former IRB tax collector James Finnegan on charges of misconduct the prior March 15, his case still on appeal.
Tom Fesperman of The News reports from Wadesboro that Lamar Caudle, the former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division, fired the previous year after a House subcommittee investigation of his involvement in favorable treatment of well-heeled taxpayers with tax cases pending, in exchange, apparently, for favors. Mr. Caudle indicated that he and his family had been hurt but that he could not stay mad very long and they were becoming happy again after returning home to Wadesboro, where his family had wanted to live for a long time. He said they had to return because the cost of living in Washington was five times higher than in Wadesboro. After his firing, he was out of a job and forced to live on his pension. He returned home to take over his father's house and establish a country law practice. At first, he had been unable to locate a single office in town, until the Board of Education vacated an office which he was able to afford to rent. He had placed a limit on the News interview, by saying that his family did not think he ought to discuss the previous hearings in Washington. He said that one day the truth would come out, however, but not in the newspaper. He said it would show that he had not handled a single income tax case dishonestly. He stated that the job in the Justice Department had pressures from every side every day, and that rumors were flying all the time. He was nervous, smoked a lot, and his hand shook a little. But his famous carefree grin occurred more frequently than it had during his time in Washington.
Unfortunately for Mr. Caudle, his troubles would not be over, as he would be indicted in 1955 for bribery in connection with the favorable treatment of tax cases in exchange for favors, including receipt of stock in an oil company. Matthew Connelly, President Truman's appointments secretary, would be indicted at the same time on the charges, and both would be convicted in 1956, sentenced to two years each in Federal prison. Mr. Caudle would be paroled after five months in 1960, following his appeals, and eventually granted a full pardon by President Johnson in 1965. Mr. Connelly, who was paroled after six months, was granted a full pardon by President Kennedy in 1962.
A hunch by the Washington, D.C., police chief had led to the cracking this date of a $65,000 Brinks armored car theft, less than 24 hours after a 26-year old bakery truck driver had allegedly perpetrated the crime. The suspect, who had been fired by Brinks three years earlier after working as a guard for the company, was arrested for grand theft and bank robbery. All of the stolen money was recovered when the suspect voluntarily dug it up for police, from a location in a wooded area near Glen Echo Amusement Park in nearby Maryland. An employee of the bakery company said that the suspect had returned from his regular route the day before just as calm as he could be, and also reported that he was one of the company's best drivers and one of their most trusted employees. The police chief had recalled an incident three years earlier in which the suspect's uniform had turned up in the hands of a teenage gang of hoodlums, who police believed were contemplating use of the uniform in a robbery. At the time, police took the current suspect into custody and questioned him, but found no evidence of wrongdoing and released him. Soon thereafter, Brinks fired him because of the loss of his uniform. He had then gone to work for the bakery company, but, unknown to Brinks, had retained a duplicate key to the armored car, which traveled in the same area of the suspect's bakery delivery route. When the armored car the previous day had pulled up to the Wardman Park Hotel where the four guards went inside to eat, the suspect drove up in his bakery truck and unlocked the armored car, grabbed the sack of money in small currency and drove away. He left behind $200,000 in large bills. The robbery was discovered at the next regular stop, when the guards sought to make change. The FBI was called in to participate in the questioning, but were satisfied that the suspect had nothing to do with the 1.2 million dollar Brinks robbery in Boston on January 17, 1950, the largest cash robbery in history.
In Mobile, Ala., the United Daughters of the Confederacy in that state were preparing to protest the proposed return of the U.S.S. Hartford, a 94-year old Union flagship, to Mobile Bay as an historical shrine, a move which had been proposed by the Mobile American Legion post and the Knights of Columbus council. The Hartford had been the ship on which Admiral David Farragut had invaded Mobile Bay in 1846, shouting the famous phrase, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" The UDC, however, felt it inappropriate to have the ship permanently located in the port it had once attacked, especially as it would lie almost in the shadow of a statue of Mobile's own Admiral Raphael Semmes, a famed Confederate naval hero.
Well, o' cou'se. Why you want to come down heya and humil'ate us all ova agin? Hain't we suffa'd enuff? Theya gon' be a risin' up one these days.
In Dalton, Ga., a couple named Isenhower had christened their newly born son Adlai Stevenson Isenhower.
By the weather box, after a day across the state in the low to high 50's, temperatures returned to normal for the time of year, high seventies, low eighties. Surf's
On the editorial page, "The State of Our Region's Health", a by-lined piece by News editor Pete McKnight, tells of the previous day's Raleigh regional meeting of the President's Health Commission, leaving Mr. McKnight with more knowledge imparted than he really wanted to know. Eliminating all of the detail, he indicates that the meeting suggested that the Commission was studying whether a course of national compulsory health insurance was desirable or whether to do nothing. Only one of the speakers demanded national health insurance, a representative of a group of Georgia CIO unions.
Another major area of concern was the provision of adequate medical care for all of the people of the nation by increasing the earnings of low income groups, providing the facilities and local incentive which would encourage doctors to practice in rural areas, extension and improvement of the various plans of medical insurance, especially insurance against catastrophic illness, and also education of the people to the need of medical care. There was also recognition of the fact that rural farm groups were in greater need of medical attention than the non-farm rural population. The speakers also recognized that solution of one problem sometimes created a new one.
The North Carolina medical profession was in the middle of a statewide program to develop the medical resources to the maximum degree, and some of the most progressive speakers at the session had been doctors.
There was also stress placed on the need for closer and friendlier cooperation among doctors, hospitals and insurance companies.
Finally, there had been stress on the special and growing problem of charity hospitalization, needing specialized treatment. The State commissioner of Public Welfare stated that the average charity patient remained in the hospital an average of 9.9 days, compared with 5.9 days for paying patients, largely because the illnesses of the very poor went undetected for longer periods and thus became more serious, requiring longer and costlier treatment. Expansion of outpatient clinics to detect illness in indigent patients earlier would cut down on that cost, and a system of convalescent homes to care for indigent patients could provide cheaper care for them than in a hospital.
By and large, observes Mr. McKnight, the tone of the meeting was positive and optimistic, with endorsement of the many accomplishments of the Good Health Program during the prior five years since it was established in the state, a program arranged by Dr. Clarence Poe, a member of the President's Commission, designed to obtain information for the national studies of the Commission. Primarily the meeting was a story of what one relatively poor Southern state had been able to accomplish on its own initiative and of what it still had to do to improve health care. The official record of the meeting would be printed by the Government and he finds its primary benefit to have been open discussion and refocusing of attention on North Carolina's health problems.
"A Whisk Broom Is Better Than Nothing" indicates that it had its doubts at the selection of Federal Judge James McGranery as Attorney General the prior March, but that those doubts had been resolved as he had made some constructive changes in the Justice Department in the interim. Since the departure of former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, only two of his eight primary assistants remained in the Department. The Washington Evening Star had expressed its approval of the new appointees, particularly those heading the criminal division and Office of Alien Property.
Meanwhile, a grand jury in Brooklyn the previous week had been questioning persons connected with the IRB scandals in relation to the Justice Department and another criminal division attorney had been suspended by the Attorney General pending an investigation of his outside activities. The House subcommittee investigating the Justice Department had been questioning former deputy Attorney General Peyton Ford and former Assistant Attorney General Herbert Bergson. The Attorney General was also bringing in planning engineers to reorganize the Department. It provides its commendation therefore to Mr. McGranery.
"Now the Facts…" suggests that in the future some high school students in Missouri might be listening to former President Truman educating them in history and the principles of government, as he had stated in an interview, appearing in the current issue of Look Magazine, that he would like to do after leaving office. It suggests that after his talk had finished, a student might raise his hand and ask about the "mess in Washington", to which the President might say, as he had recently indicated in response to Governor Stevenson's reference to that "mess", that he did not know of any such mess. This student might then state that he had been reading of it in the Saturday Evening Post, to which the President would state that he did not read the Post as it was almost always wrong—as he had responded to a question posed by White House correspondent May Craig, originally of North Carolina, at the previous Thursday's press conference.
It goes on in that mocking manner and concludes, sarcastically: "Give 'em the facts, Mr. Truman, wonderful idea, that library. But just let the facts do the talking."
A. V. Astin, director of the National Bureau of Standards, substituting for Drew Pearson while on vacation, tells of the sweeping scientific and technological development of the previous few decades having aroused considerable speculation on future trends, such as the availability of new tools for research and therapy out of radioactive materials. Radioactive sugars had been synthesized recently, contributing to advances in the development of artificial blood plasma and the understanding of the basic processes of blood circulation. Radioactive cobalt had been made available, permitting expansion in radiological therapy. In electronics, cheaper and better electronic devices would soon be available for both civilian and military use, made possible by the development of the transistor, supplanting the need for electron tubes and making devices in consequence much smaller. Faster and more versatile electronic computers would also be developed, taking over much of the routine bookkeeping and inventory operations, saving government and business large amounts of money.
Mr. Astin indicates that most of these developments came from past knowledge, just as the atomic bomb was the application of known nuclear physics. But in that instance, a half-century of basic work in atomic, nuclear and electron physics had to precede the development, coupled with the great necessity of war pushing forward the concentration of talent and facilities to develop the bomb in a tight time frame.
With the opening of higher frequencies on radio as a result of war work in radar, much more study had gone into the properties of radio waves at the higher frequencies, along with the development of methods and instruments of measurement of them. Tests had shown that VHF radio waves were not limited by the horizon and that they might normally be expected to be transmitted far beyond it. That finding had immediate significance in the allocation of channels to television stations.
What will they think of next?
Joseph & Stewart Alsop find that an exciting fall campaign lay ahead between General Eisenhower and Governor Stevenson. In the Eisenhower camp in Denver, there had been a great tug-of-war between the professional politicians who had garnered the nomination for the General, Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., and James Duff and Governor Dewey, and the conservative forces, represented by Senators Everett Dirksen and Karl Mundt, both of whom, though having been Taft supporters, had received high positions in the campaign advisory group. The General had resisted the conservatives who had wanted him to run as a softer version of Senator Taft, but rumblings had already occurred that he was going to be a "me too" candidate. These conservatives wanted the General to alienate the entire independent vote by fervently embracing Senator Joseph McCarthy. They also wanted him to alienate the large voting groups who had benefited from the New Deal and Fair Deal by denouncing everything which had been done in the previous 20 years. Those same politicians and prophets admitted that Governor Dewey had been beaten four years earlier for the presidency because he had lost the farm vote for the fact that the farmers believed that he would take away their gains.
Governor Stevenson had also been resisting dependence on the President, which would have made him appear as his puppet. In the choices for prime positions in his high command of new DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell, Beardsley Ruml and campaign manager, Wilson Wyatt, he had shown complete independence from the President, and may have gone too far in asserting that independence when he admitted in a letter that there was a "mess in Washington".
The Alsops believe that it was going to be an exciting campaign.
S. L. Lattimer, Jr., writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in Columbia, S.C., tells of the South Carolina political situation being confused but having the makings for a horse race between Governor Stevenson and General Eisenhower, with many undecided voters and a split Democratic Party. Delegates to the recently re-assembled state convention, by an 8 to 1 majority, had voted for an electoral slate pledged to the regular nominees. But the dissident Democrats, working under the banner of South Carolinians for Eisenhower, were seeking to obtain 10,000 signatures of registered voters to be able to place a new ticket on the November ballot.
A few days earlier, the Young Democrats had met and split on the question of which candidate they would support. Only 25 delegates had appeared at the meeting and 23 had quit, leaving the meeting to be conducted by two supporters of Governor Stevenson, those two delegates then calling another meeting for September 6 on behalf of the regular nominees.
By the same token, state Republican leaders were also split, though in agreement on support of General Eisenhower, while divided on how that support would be expressed. The Republican national committeeman had no patience for the Democrats for Eisenhower or with Republicans who would support the General on the basis of such a ballot of electors. But two other prominent Republican leaders in the state, including the state GOP chairman, wanted to join with the Democrats for Eisenhower. The General had recognized an independent who had been active in the Citizens for Eisenhower Committee prior to the conventions. That independent had consulted with two members of the Democrats for Eisenhower, after which it was announced that there had been an agreed basis for cooperation, though not explaining what "cooperation" meant.
Votes for the General cast through two tickets of electors could not be consolidated and so if the situation remained as it was, the General's votes would be split, potentially costing him the state in a close election. It was unlikely that the Republicans would join with the Eisenhower Democrats to form a coalition. But there remained the considerable activity in seeking the 10,000 signatures to place the electors on the ballot in support of the Democrats for Eisenhower. There was no doubt that the signatures would be acquired by the deadline of September 4, and Republicans were hoping there would be many more times the necessary number to use as campaign fodder to attract votes from Democrats.
A letter writer from Toronto, Canada, tells of having had imparted to him by a Canadian, publisher of "A Plan for Canada", a formula to reduce the chance of future labor strikes, whereby companies would collect union dues in equal amounts from non-union employees and add the money to wages of all employees. It would enable non-union workers to join the union without compulsion, and if they did not, not much difference would occur.
A letter writer endorses General Eisenhower for the presidency, saying he had the stamina and ability to clean up the mess in Washington, whereas he believes Governor Stevenson did not have that same ability.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., tells of an unethical political tempest in a teapot raging in South Carolina by the fact of the petitions circulating to place a slate of Democratic electors on the ballot for General Eisenhower. The writer had designed one of those petitions but was dubious of its propriety as he had no intention of voting for such a hybrid slate. He asserts that the General was the "hand-picked choice of the same old destructive double-crossing GOP machine". Senator Taft had been discarded because he pretended to have ideas and principles of his own. He believes that the Republican platform was as empty as a "desert mirage". He tells of having voted for Governor Strom Thurmond in 1948 rather than for Governor Dewey. He thinks that a Democrat voting for General Eisenhower amounted to a dishonest and hypocritical vote.
A letter writer urges taking more time in reading the Bible and in earnest prayer, which she believes would abate argument among persons and parties.
A letter written by a couple from Greensboro endorses the dog candidate for Governor in 1956.
He will bowwow you with his
upholding of the rights of dogs
A letter from four "lonely GIs in Korea" solicits correspondence from young women, indicating that they had not received a letter in quite some time.
As usual, their address is listed, should you wish to provide them some letters to read.
Framed Edition
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