The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 5, 1952

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the U.N. command in Korea this date indicated that 78 North Korean towns housing Communist military installations were doomed and warned civilian populations to vacate in advance of the allied air raids. At least two of the forewarned towns had already been hit, as the warning program had been ongoing since mid-July, with millions of leaflets having been dropped on North Korea by B-29's. In addition, Radio Seoul advised the civilians shortly before the attacks in the target area to leave immediately.

In the air war, the U.S. Fifth Air Force said that U.S. Sabre jet pilots had shot down this date four Communist MIG-15 jets and damaged six others in four aerial dogfights over North Korea. The enemy fighters had ventured further south than in recent months.

U.N. and Communist staff officers in Panmunjom this date agreed on the wording of a proposed armistice document, but disagreement on voluntary repatriation of prisoners remained a roadblock to concluding an agreement. After the session, the staff officers went into an indefinite recess.

Police killed six guerrillas and wounded ten of a band of 40 who had attacked a polling place about 70 miles west of Pusan in Korea, during South Korea's first direct election of a president and vice-president. Police reportedly suffered no casualties and voting resumed after a short delay. About 20 guerrillas had killed one man and burned two buildings and a home in a village in southwestern Korea the previous night, but police had driven off the raiders. It was not known whether the attack was connected with the election or just another sporadic guerrilla attack. Four candidates, including incumbent President Syngman Rhee, were seeking the presidency. The President was expected to win the election, as he was the only name on the ballot known to most voters. He had not made a single campaign speech, but his supporters had plastered walls throughout the country with his posters. Recently, the President had won a constitutional change to permit popular election of executive officers and provide for a bicameral legislature.

In Cairo, Egypt's anti-corruption drive got underway officially this date as Premier Aly Maher set up two commissions to probe bribery, graft and unlawful profits by Government officials. The powerful Wafdist Party launched a purge of its own ranks, kicking out nine members, three of whom had been former cabinet ministers, and set up a party commission to examine any complaint brought against the probity of any party member.

In Denver, a group of Republican black leaders endorsed General Eisenhower this date, causing a question to arise as to whether the General planned to change his stance regarding civil rights. The Republican group had favored a stronger stance on civil rights than previously supported by the General and made its announcement of endorsement after visiting with the General the prior day. The group was led by Bishop D. Ward Nichols of New York, presiding prelate of the First Episcopal District of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church. The General would make his first speech since becoming the nominee of the Republicans, this night in Los Angeles, at the encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The General had said, however, that the speech would not be political.

Republican campaign strategists were preparing to attack Governor Stevenson's gubernatorial administration for alleged scandals. Senators William Jenner of Indiana, John W. Bricker of Ohio, James Kem of Missouri, and Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, would be the top figures waging such a campaign, according to Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, chairman of the Republican Senatorial campaign committee. Senator Dirksen, the previous day, had called Governor Stevenson "Illinois's worst Governor since the turn of the century", after the Governor had addressed the question to General Eisenhower as to how he could "crusade" in the company of the four aforementioned Senators, and how his foreign-policy could be reconciled in the face of their positions. Senator Dirksen had responded that the Governor had taken aim at the four Midwestern Senators because they would be familiar with his cigarette tax scandal and horsemeat scandal. He also said that the four Senators were willing to meet Governor Stevenson's challenge during the campaign.

Top Democratic leaders predicted this date that the South would remain solid for the Democrats in November, despite complaints about the party platform. Governor Stevenson said that Southern political leaders had given him "heartening evidences" of the "fidelity of the South to the Democratic Party" in the campaign. Senators Russell Long of Louisiana and Theodore Green of Rhode Island said in separate interviews that the Republicans could not win a single Southern state in the fall. In Richmond, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Senator John Sparkman said in an interview that the question of the FEPC should be left to state legislative bodies. He noted that there was no specific mention in the Democratic platform of the FEPC.

Rowland Evans, Jr., tells of the possibility of another crippling national strike coming in the coal industry, as John L. Lewis served notice that the UMW contracts were ending the following month, 60 days from the date of his letter, within the contract period for serving notice of contract termination. There would therefore likely be a shutdown at the end of September of all but a small portion of the soft coal mining industry unless Mr. Lewis and the two major coal producer associations agreed on a new contract. Mr. Lewis had also served notice of contract termination on the anthracite or hard coal industry. It was likely that Mr. Lewis would demand a wage increase at least the size of that recently won by the United Steelworkers, 21 cents per hour. Currently, the minimum daily wage in the soft coal fields was $16.35, plus overtime or other extras which brought the average daily pay close to $18. Anthracite workers averaged a little over $17 per day.

Price Stabilizer Ellis Arnall was reported likely to resign his post the following day. He had been in the position since the prior February. Mr. Arnall had differed with other Stabilization officials on the question of how the $5.20 per ton Government-approved steel price increase would impact the overall economy, and had favored holding the line at a $2.84 increase. The Government had agreed to the higher increase as a means to resolve the 53-day old steel strike which was starting to impact the defense mobilization program.

In Raleigh, Governor Kerr Scott expressed the hope that the state Democratic committee would select a man to be recommended by Governor-nominate William B. Umstead to be the new state superintendent of public instruction, following the death of Dr. Clyde Erwin, and said that he would meet with Mr. Umstead later in the week to see if they could agree on a nominee.

A young mother who had reportedly intended to commit suicide by jumping from a sixth floor ledge the previous Thursday in Washington now said that the whole thing had been a hoax to obtain publicity for a Medal of Honor winner who had been credited with saving her. The woman said that she had been offered $500 to fake the jump because the World War II hero, Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, wanted publicity for his campaign for governor of Virginia. Mr. Smith could not be reached for comment, but a spokesman for him who also worked in the same radio shop, said that there was no truth in what the woman said. Mr. Smith's wife also stated that it was ridiculous to say that her husband was planning to run for governor and that she doubted that there had been any hoax, but added that he was a daring type of fellow who might be talked into something like that. Mr. Smith had won the Medal of Honor for single-handedly bringing a burning B-17 and its wounded crew safely across the English Channel during the war. In 1948, he had pleaded guilty to a charge of violating food and drug laws by misbranding a "rejuvenation" cream which he had sold to an elderly Virginia man. The woman claimed that the two men considered her a natural for the hoax because her five-month old daughter had died just a few days previously, making her a candidate for suicide. She said that she had gone along with the hoax as she was afraid of Mr. Smith's partner. She said that when she went out on the ledge, she was trying to get past Mr. Smith and return into the building, but that he was trying to block her and she was scared to death.

In Waco, Texas, authorities continued to work to determine how many persons had died in the flaming head-on crash between two Greyhound buses in the early morning hours of the previous day. Meanwhile, civilians working for the military barred newsmen and others from the morgue where the bodies were being held. The executive editor of the Waco Times-Herald had made a phone call to Washington complaining of the censorship and obtained a lifting of the ban. At least 28 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the two buses, but a pile of charred remains had not yet been identified. Only seven of the dead had been positively identified 30 hours after the wreck. Twenty-five persons had been listed as injured and all of those had been declared no longer in critical danger. Heat from the flames of the wreck had been so intense that molten metal and glass had poured in little streams across the cracked highway, and officers believed that some of the bodies had been completely cremated. An investigation of the cause of the accident was still ongoing. It was the worst bus accident to date in U.S. history.

Frank Carey, the Associated Press science reporter, indicates that if the alleged "flying saucers" being observed of late had come from outer space, they had to be manned by men with tolerant wives, as the round-trip travel between Earth and Mars or Venus, the only other two planets within the Solar System with even an outside chance of supporting life, would require nearly three years for the Martians and just over two years for the Venutians, assuming a spaceship able to travel at 25,000 mph. Venus came within 25 million miles of Earth only once every 470 days, and also was as far away as 160 million miles at its most distant point. Moreover, because of different rates of travel of the two planets around the sun, the takeoff from each had to anticipate the nearest orbit of the other by several weeks in advance.

On the editorial page, "ABC Slices Another Melon" indicates that when the members of the Charlotte City Council met the following day to fix formally the 1952-53 tax rate, they would find more money on hand than they had estimated in the new budget. A dividend had just been received from ABC funds, and the City's share would be $100,035, of which over $5,000 would go to the Park & Recreation Commission and about $24,000 would be earmarked for debt service, leaving the City about $72,000 in revenue which had not been anticipated in the budget. That would enable the Council to cut the proposed $1.55 property tax rate more than two cents, as each cent thereof represented $32,300 in revenue. The alternative was to leave the rate as it was and add the ABC dividend to whatever surplus the City might accumulate in the coming fiscal year, the latter procedure favored by City Manager Henry Yancey.

But this dividend was also pushing the ABC system to the brink of inadequate reserves, as it came from capital and surplus and was not earned profit during the prior fiscal year. It thus reduced working capital to a minimum and the ABC Board warned that it could not make such a payment in the future without jeopardizing efficiency of its operations. The piece concludes that the goose could only lay so many golden eggs.

"Ike's Friends Put Him on a Spot" indicates that until General Eisenhower were to speak on the subject again, the statement by 16 Republican officials in support of a compulsory FEPC would discourage many Eisenhower supporters in the South. Those supporting the declaration included Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Senator Irving Ives of New York, and Governor Alfred Driscoll of New Jersey. The statement had also said that the signers believed the FEPC to be constitutional and that the Democratic Party could only promise but not achieve.

The piece finds it a departure from General Eisenhower's position stated in June, wherein he had indicated that he believed more leadership in getting the states involved in civil rights, rather than through compulsory Federal legislation, was the better way. At this juncture, however, it appeared that these 16 Republican officials, on their own volition, had decided that the only way the Republicans could win was to make a play for support in the industrial states of the large black population and write off the South, as the party had done in the previous five presidential elections. The action had put General Eisenhower, it opines, in an embarrassing position, and unless he repudiated the statement, his cause in the South would be seriously damaged, whereas if he disagreed with the statement, it would hurt him in several of the large Northern states.

"Dame Nature at Her Worst" discusses the widespread drought along the Eastern Seaboard, and its devastating effects on crops and livestock of the farmers. Such droughts in the East were rare and so when they occurred, it impacted the farmers especially badly, as they were not accustomed to such conditions, as were the farmers and ranchers of the prairie states. The Government could not do much to help, other than to speed up financial aid, which had already been done in Maine and Massachusetts and the seven Southern states which had been declared drought disaster areas.

The estimated losses were 200 million dollars in North Carolina, 150 million in Alabama, 200 to 300 million in Georgia, 30 to 50 million in Kentucky, and in South Carolina, 63 percent of the corn, 61 percent of pasture land, 63 percent of hay and feed crops and 40 percent of the cotton had been damaged. Even heavy rainfall over the whole drought area would not be enough significantly to curtail these losses, as it was too late.

It indicates that the farmer had overcome many obstacles, but the vicissitudes of weather were insuperable when they turned against him. Yet, it predicts, the American farmer was resilient enough to get through this problem also.

A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Keeping Cool with Animals", tells of Business Week reporting on the styles in summer suits, saying that the U.S. "wilted collar worker" was battling through July and August with the "quiet desperation of a polar bear in St. Louis". It takes exception to the canard upon the "noble creature", the polar bear, which, it indicates, withstood the heat very well, according to the St. Louis Zoo. The Zoo indicated that animals were very intelligent, suggesting that Phil the Gorilla was not out playing 18 holes of golf on a hot day, but rather was splashing around in his pool or immersed with only his head and shoulders sticking out, or scooping up pawsful of water and letting it splash over him. Other animals also took it easy in hot weather.

It suggests that if Business Week had been referring to penguins instead of polar bears, it might have had something, because, according to the Zoo, they did not take heat very well, in consequence of which the Zoo had placed them in an air-conditioned unit.

The Zoo admonished that it was wise to watch the people and then watch the animals whenever there was hot weather.

Drew Pearson finds it no accident that the planners in the Kremlin had chosen the most hectic of all American election summers to do some of their ugliest nose-thumbing. Election years in the U.S. were always watched more closely by those in Europe who had something ominous to transmit. Currently, Russia reportedly was testing its first hydrogen bomb, and, if true, that meant that the Soviets were ahead of the U.S. in development. It was reported that Bruno Pontecorvo, who had escaped behind the Iron Curtain, was the scientist who had developed it. Such reports might be part of the war of nerves, but, if true, the development would seriously upset the balance of military and diplomatic power in Europe. The Iranian riots and the demand for the American arms mission to leave Iran were also no accident, probably instigated by Communist agents in that country. When the time came, Communist influence was likely to take hold of oil-rich Iraq, oil-rich Arabia, and strategic Egypt and the Suez Canal. Thus, the Soviets were working around Greece and Turkey and might circumvent the billions of American dollars being sent into Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine to block Russia from the Mediterranean. There had also been frenzied rearming of East Germany, spurred partly by the pushing of a West European army. It was also why thousands of German refugees were fleeing to West Germany, desiring escape from Communist conscription into the Red Army.

In addition to these factors, bad luck or American stupidity had also helped the Russians. These conditions included the economic fragility of Great Britain, which now had its own isolationist party, comparable to the isolationists led by Senator Taft and Col. Robert McCormick, except that, being labor leaders, the Britons did not belong to the same economic strata. While a weakening of the alliance with England would save the country a lot of money in aid, it would also cause it to lose airbases in Britain and would destroy the concept of European unity against Communism.

There was also a fragile situation in France, where the Marshall Plan and NATO had kept moderate leaders in power and where the U.S. had benefited from a loose alliance between the Catholic leaders of the middle, the non-Communist leaders of labor, and small businessmen of the middle. They were held together by the fear of Communism, plus the fact that the French Government could balance its budget through subsidies from the U.S. But now, Congress had drastically cut the aid going to France, with the result that it might be torn between the Communist left and the Fascist right of anti-American General Charles de Gaulle. That came at a time when the Kremlin was pushing its propaganda harder than ever and when the goal of a European army was close to being attained.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of General Eisenhower and his chief advisers having determined to give the silent treatment to both Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Jenner, primarily for the reason that both had questioned the patriotism of General Marshall, to whom General Eisenhower owed a large part of his success as a military officer. Senator Jenner had gone so far as to call General Marshall "a living lie" and "a front man for traitors", and Senator McCarthy had implied much the same thing. Both Senators were up for re-election in the fall.

Thus, the General would skip trips to Wisconsin and Indiana during the campaign.

Another aspect of the strategy would be to embrace otherwise the right wing of the party. Thus, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois had been invited to take a place in the inner circle of the campaign, despite his bitter attack against Governor Dewey at the convention and his use of a mixture of "McCarthyism and phony evangelism" in his election campaign of 1950. Senator Taft would also make several important speeches.

Meanwhile, vice-presidential nominee Senator Richard Nixon had been given the task of healing the wounds inflicted on the right wing at the convention.

Thus, the strategy was to isolate Senators McCarthy and Jenner while uniting the rest of the party behind General Eisenhower. It remained to be seen whether the strategy would work, but, they posit, the Eisenhower managers were wise to avoid the mistake made by Wendell Willkie in 1940, when he had snubbed the regular leaders of the party and leaned heavily on his amateur admirers.

The election would be determined by the ten million independents, and General Eisenhower would be best advised to remain true to himself. A great number of those voters wanted a change in Washington but would not bring themselves to vote for any candidate who embraced "Wisconsin's special shame".

Robert C. Ruark tells of Bill Murphy, an ex-naval officer, having after the war established a business called VIP, set up for the purpose of acquiring hard to obtain items, such as hotel reservations, theater tickets, refrigerators, cars, alarm clocks, etc. He went around ferreting out these items and built a business from 40 accounts up to 100 accounts, grossing a million dollars per year.

The shortages of many of the items, however, had waned and his business now relied upon such things as acquiring hotel reservations, airline travel and seats for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, set for the following June. Mr. Murphy believed it would probably be the last coronation in the lifetimes of those presently living, and accommodations were at a premium because Buckingham Palace had already reserved the best hotel space, and even sidewalk space to view the coronation ceremonies was selling for $100 per square foot.

He had rented five castles and ten manor houses to accommodate his clients, plus a fleet of 75 Daimler limousines, and some hotel space in France, from which he would fly his clients back and forth across the channel. He had made deals with several airlines to fly his clients overseas. Seats for the coronation had cost him $50 each.

A letter writer compliments the Park & Recreation Commission of Charlotte and praises the editorial on the subject appearing July 31. He hopes that the budget for the coming fiscal year would not be so drastically curtailed as had been proposed.

A letter writer from Waxhaw expresses his sincere appreciation to the letter writer of July 31 who had signed a letter "Democrat", and agrees with the writer's statements. He especially agrees on the objection to the statement by WBT announcer Grady Cole that Governor Stevenson's religion was "peculiar". He indicates that he was a Methodist and took exception to anyone who called another person's religion "peculiar". He wonders how much Mr. Cole knew about the Unitarian Church, to which Governor Stevenson belonged, finding that it was one of the finest, most sincere religions. He also indicates that he had lived in Chicago for two years while Governor Stevenson had been in office and had never known a finer Governor. He had also attended one of the largest Unitarian churches in the city, and its pastor was one of the most beloved and best-known men in Illinois. Some previous Unitarians, he points out, were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Thomas Jefferson. Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" had been a Unitarian, as had been Edmund Sears, who wrote "It Came upon a Midnight Clear".

A letter writer from McBee, S.C., finds that the Truman Administration was guilty before the "bar of public opinion" for corruption in government, inciting one group of citizens against the other by excessive aggravation of minority groups "under the guise of civil rights", trying to deprive the states of their rightful functions through "useless laws and impetuous directions", placing the burden of carrying a huge tax load on the American people, disarming of American war potential immediately after World War II and leaving the country's security in doubt, starting the war in Korea without adequate strength to back up the U.N. commitments, and pouring billions of American dollars into foreign countries for their defense without American supervision over the spending of that aid. He says that those were the reasons why he would not vote Democratic in November. He indicates that under FDR, the Democratic Party had maintained a skillful leadership at home and abroad, but that under President Truman, it had failed to carry out the will of the people and the master plan laid down by FDR. He states his intent to vote for General Eisenhower and urges others to do likewise so that, together, the country could enjoy "a garden of Eden prosperity".

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