The Charlotte News
Wednesday, September 17, 1952
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the leading jet ace in the Korean War, Maj. Frederick Blease, had this date shot down his eighth MIG-15, after flying more than 250 combat missions in the war, the kill coming in a fight between four Sabre jets and nine MIGs near Sakchu in northwest Korea. The kill raised the total for the month thus far to 47 enemy aircraft shot down, further increasing the monthly record, previously 44, set in April. Other allied planes attacked enemy storage areas, a gold mine and a rail line, as well as three troop concentrations in western Korea and enemy front line positions in the vicinity of "Capitol Hill" and "Finger Ridge" on the central front.
In the ground war, fighting along the front continued to be light, with only small enemy probes and scattered patrol clashes.
The Defense Department announced that American casualties in Korea had reached 117,973, an increase of 736 since the previous week, the total including 18,574 killed in action, 86,756 wounded, and 12,643 missing.
Former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath told investigators for a House Judiciary subcommittee this date that no one in the Justice Department during his time as its head had delayed or prevented the prosecution of St. Louis tax scandal cases in 1951, that investigators of the Department had done all they could to cooperate with the Federal Judge carrying out the grand jury probe into those cases. He reminded that Missouri was the home state of the President and that St. Louis was the home city of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder, with oversight of the IRB, and that it would therefore have made no sense to try to interfere with prosecutions of the St. Louis cases. He said that if there were any interference, it had come from the IRB and not the Justice Department.
The Justice Department announced this date the arrest of 18 Midwest and West Coast Communist Party leaders on charges of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence, pursuant to the Smith Act. The warrants were issued pursuant to complaints made by FBI agents, authorized by the Attorney General. One of those arrested was the wife of Carl Winter, one of the eleven top Communist leaders convicted under the Smith Act in New York in 1949. She was alleged to have been the organizational secretary of the party in Michigan.
The President, in a speech to the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, stated this date that it was "a big lie" to say that he tolerated Communists in the Government, the "big lie" technique, he said, having been developed by the Communists and perfected by Hitler. He urged the voters to defeat those who employed that technique, regardless of party affiliation. He singled out for special attention those who called General Marshall a traitor—a reference to Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Jenner. He defined the "big lie" as a charge which was so frightful and horrible that no one would believe that a decent person would make it unless it were true and that it was then repeated while ignoring all proof to the contrary. He said that there was a tendency in the country at present to resort to it in order to achieve partisan and personal advantage, and that the person who resorted to it was not a good person. The President said that Communism inside the country had been badly beaten, but that it never gave up its efforts to weaken other nations from within.
General Eisenhower addressed the AFL convention in New York this date, saying that he favored "realistic" amendments to the Taft-Hartley law to eliminate provisions which weakened the rights of workers, but did not favor its repeal. He said that he knew that the law as it presently was written could be used to break unions and that it should be changed to that extent. He asserted his belief that collective bargaining, the right to strike, giving advance notice before a strike, the requirement that both sides live up to their contracts, and the requirement that union members be provided a regular report on their union's finances were all good provisions which should be retained. He also favored requiring employers, as well as union leaders, to swear that they were not Communists. He summed up his position by saying that he favored what was good for all of America with regard to labor issues.
Governor Stevenson, remaining for the present in Springfield, Ill., spoke with Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas the previous night, though the Senator avoided telling reporters the purpose of his visit. He said that he might stay until Thursday, when the Governor would leave for Connecticut to embark on his second major campaign trip. The Senator said that he was supporting Governor Stevenson in the campaign and wanted to hear some of his ideas about some of the decisive issues, particularly civil rights, Taft-Hartley and the Senate rules requirement of a two-thirds vote for cloture of debate. He said that he agreed with the Governor's position that Taft-Hartley ought be repealed, but disagreed on revising the Senate rules to provide for a simple majority to end a filibuster. He said, however, that he was in general agreement with the Governor on civil rights legislation, albeit with some reservations, stating that he was not certain of his specific ideas yet.
Senator Taft was scheduled to begin a 19-state cross-country speaking tour with an address in Springfield, O., this night, a tour which Republican campaign headquarters said placed him second only to the two GOP nominees in campaign appearances for the ticket.
Congressman Carl Durham of North Carolina, acting chairman of the joint Committee on Atomic Energy, in an interview with the Durham Herald the previous day, stated that the greatest explosion in history might soon take place at the Eniwetok atomic weapons test area in the Pacific during the fall, but declined to say whether it would involve the first hydrogen bomb.
Secretary of State Acheson was seeking immediate clarification of reports that the U.S. was sponsoring a striptease in connection with an American exhibit at the West Berlin industrial fair. He said to a news conference, with a big smile, that he had seen newspaper dispatches to that effect, that a young German girl had been hired to live in a seven-room house which would be part of the American exhibit, living there with her husband and two small children, operating American household appliances, modeling such wares as stockings, panties and bras, and undressing and showering before spectators. The Mutual Security Agency headquarters in Washington denied the reports, with a spokesman indicating that there would be no striptease of any kind, that the woman might bake a cake in her American range but that she would avoid anything resembling a burlesque show.
Is it going to be on the color tv?
Will Dick be there to show it to Nik?
The Government planned to issue an order the following day to freeze shipments of bituminous coal from many of the mines to allow accumulation of an emergency stockpile in the event of a prolonged coal strike by the UMW, appearing imminent for the following Monday.
Near Monessen, Pa., a freight train rammed the rear of a crowded school bus this date, killing four of the pupils and injuring 44 others, 13 of them seriously. In all, it was estimated that there were 55 passengers aboard the bus, which one witness to the aftermath described as appearing like a battered tin can. One of the surviving pupils indicated that he had not heard the train approaching, that it blew no whistle or sounded a horn, and only became aware of it as it bore down on the bus just before the collision, at which point he blacked out. Some of the pupils lived only a short distance from the location of the accident.
In Raleigh, an official of Duke Power Co. told the State Utilities Commission this date that even if the company was allowed to boost its bus fares in six cities in the state, it would be fortunate to break even. No opponents to the requested fare increase appeared at the hearing, and two other bus companies, one of Rocky Mount and one of Winston-Salem, also sought fare increases. Duke indicated that its losses in 1951 were 5.77 cents per mile in Charlotte, 7.07 cents per mile in Winston-Salem, 4.63 cents in Salisbury, 8.89 cents in Greensboro, 8.23 cents in High Point and 10.15 cents in Durham. It stated that had the proposed increase been in effect during 1951, the company would have earned $12,500 after taxes, whereas it had sustained a net loss of $956,844.
Ann Sawyer of The News tells of a young woman who had lived a normal life until August, 1940, when she began to experience pains in her feet after entering the eighth grade at age 13. Gradually, the pain became worse, spreading to her shoulders, arms and hands, after which she was taken out of school, despite doctors being initially at a loss to ascertain the issue. After a few months had passed, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and five specialists concurred that she would become an invalid within five years, advising that she remain in bed except for two hours per day. She had not followed the advice, but rather started doing things and going places, in 1945 becoming a switchboard operator at Queens College. In 1950, she was treated with the new drug, cortisone, and by April, 1951, was strong enough to start her high school education, without giving up her job. The prior June, she had completed 17 units of high school work and was the top student in her class of 105 students, and during the current week had become a freshman at Queens College, requiring that she finally give up her job to devote full time to her studies. She had been awarded a scholarship, in addition to receiving financial help from the Altrusa Club and Vocational Rehabilitation. She said that had she stayed in bed as recommended by the doctors in 1940, she probably would have become an invalid. She had been in a regressive state in August, 1950, after an attack of rheumatic fever had caused her arthritis to flare up again, causing her to lose weight down to 99 pounds. Then she read in the newspaper of the new wonder drug, cortisone, still in an experimental stage, and so she applied for participation in the experiment. Until that point, the only treatment for the pain of arthritis had been aspirin.
In Dayton, O., a woman claiming to be a French war bride explained to merchants that she had been in Dayton for only a few months and was bewildered by American currency, resulting in her husband having opened a checking account for her. A merchant, entranced by her French accent and petite figure, cashed her five checks totaling $166, all of which bounced. It was then discovered that Marie Ann de Debareaux, as she had identified herself, was in fact a woman of nearby Fairborn, quite American.
On the editorial page, "Another 'Mess' To Be Cleaned Up" tells of the fact that the Charlotte Fireman's Retirement Fund was headed for bankruptcy coming as no surprise, as the City Council had been so apprised in 1949 when the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill filed a report warning of the problem. It addresses possible solutions and urges that whatever the correct one would be, it would need to be undertaken without further delay.
"It's Worth a Try, Anyway" tells of Charlotte City Manager Henry Yancey having suggested to the people who lived near the old Tremont Avenue rock quarry that they let him try to fill it in with supervised garbage dumping, but that each time the suggestion had been made, it had been met with protest, probably caused by unsupervised dumping at the location in the past. The residents had asked the grand jury to do something about the quarry, and the grand jury had asked Mr. Yancey what should be done, with the result that Mr. Yancey had repeated his prior suggestion, which the grand jury then passed back to the residents.
Mr. Yancey proposed to cover the garbage with dirt as it was dumped, to retard odors, rodent and insect infestations. The piece regards his idea as the best solution for the problem and it suggests that it was worth a try, as cool weather was now approaching.
"Let Science Write the Contract" tells of the escalator clause in union contracts, providing for wages being adjustable with the cost of living, having begun with an agreement between the UAW and General Motors, headed by Charles E. Wilson, not to be confused with the Charles E. Wilson who had, until recently, been the Defense Mobilizer and was head of G.E. The contract not only adjusted wages to the cost of living but also provided for an annual hourly increase of four cents, to ensure steady purchasing power. That latter increase was based on the assumption that the nation's productivity increase, which had for long averaged 2.5 percent annually, would at least maintain that level. Following a two-year trial, the parties had adopted a five-year extension, good until 1955.
But other industry leaders were leery of forming such a contract, on the basis that it would lead to a wage-price spiral. Mr. Wilson had regarded this objection in the current issue of Readers Digest, saying that it was primarily rising prices which caused wages to increase, rather than the reverse, and that prices were primarily based on the volume of the supply of money as compared with the volume of goods and services available for purchase. He indicated that governments were often the chief reason for the rapid rise in prices, through borrowing large amounts of money from banks rather than balancing their budgets, creating an oversupply of money, much of which was used to bid for purchases from an under-supply of civilian goods, with the result that prices rose. He cited as example the rise in prices of goods between 25 percent and 200 percent since the start of the Korean War, despite wages not rising commensurately.
The advantage of the system used by G.M. and the UAW was that no time and money were lost by frequent contract negotiations and strikes, and so it congratulates Mr. Wilson and Walter Reuther, head of the UAW, for creating the system.
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "That Dangle Again", mocks the effort of those who campaigned against ending sentences with prepositions, proceeding to end several just that way:
"Technically perhaps, it's a
controversy he is on the right side of. But most folks are familiar
with a lot of things the protruding preposition is good for, being
especially handy as something to replace words they can't think of
with."
And, on it goes, blithely down the garden path, starting the whole damn thing over again each time, concluding: "Learn your grammar right first, then when you know better than, beat it up as you need to."
The problem with that rather cynical suggestion is that it allows the poseurs, who never learned their grammar in the first place, to enter the field as if they knew better, when they simply don't know whereof they speak.
Drew Pearson indicates that to understand the inside dope on the Taft-Eisenhower breakfast of the previous week, the reader had to understand the pressure brought on both men by friends and advisers. Some of the General's friends believed that the Senator's statement after the breakfast, pledging support for the ticket and declaring that the differences between the Senator's and the General's foreign policy positions were only of degree, was one of complete surrender by the General to the Senator. That had led Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon to react by withdrawing his support from the General. Some of those friends believed that a candidate had never before been so humiliated in public as when Senator Taft had told journalists that he had written the "joint" seven-page, post-breakfast statement in Cincinnati before he came to the breakfast, not even bothering to perpetuate the fiction that the two had jointly composed it. Those same people were pointing out that two months earlier, the General had left the convention triumphant, appearing to be a sure bet to win the election, only now to have policy being dictated by the man he had defeated for the nomination.
Other friends of the General pointed to the great pressures under which he was operating, with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., being so sensitive to the bitterness still held by the Taft supporters in Massachusetts that he had not included within his campaign literature for re-election to the Senate the fact that he had been General Eisenhower's pre-convention campaign manager. In Indiana, the state Republican chairman, Cale Holder, a strong supporter of Senator Taft, had reported that many of his similarly situated colleagues were dragging their feet. In Cleveland, General Eisenhower had personally found out how difficult it was to break into the Taft forces when he appeared at a private dinner, and few responded with donations to his campaign. Taft supporters were saying that Wall Street had nominated General Eisenhower and so could now finance him.
In Washington, two Taft supporters, Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Congressman Charles Halleck of Indiana, were in charge of the GOP speakers' bureau, and when Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts offered to make some speeches in his home state for the ticket, nothing had happened. After four weeks of no response, he complained, at which point Mr. Halleck assigned him to speak in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, three states solidly behind Senator Taft, where someone of Senator Saltonstall's background would be completely useless. When Eisenhower supporter Senator George Aiken of Vermont volunteered to speak, he was not provided a single engagement in New England where he would be most effective. The result of this split in the Republican Party had caused the General to yield to his advisers, including Senators Frank Carlson of Kansas and Alexander Smith of New Jersey, who counseled healing the rift with the Taft supporters, with the result that the breakfast between the General and the Senator was scheduled. When the Senator arrived in New York for the breakfast, he gave Senator Carlson the already-prepared joint statement, which was supposed to have been provided to General Eisenhower, but was not out of fear by Senator Carlson that the General might recoil in anger and create a bad atmosphere for the conference.
During the breakfast, Senator Taft congratulated General Eisenhower for taking the gloves off, that the campaign could not be won in the way Governor Dewey had proceeded in 1948. He also indicated that the heartbeat of the Republican Party was west of the Alleghenies and if that section were properly handled, the election could be won. The General was somewhat surprised when the Senator pulled out the joint statement, though they wound up agreeing on most of it, with the General penciling in some changes. Their only primary disagreement was regarding aid to Europe and the NATO armies, which the General regarded as important for blocking Communism, in reply to which Senator Taft had said that their differences were only a matter of degree and that he would support the General even if they did not see everything the same way. The General left domestic issues, however, to the Senator. The General also invited the Senator to appoint a man to the General's strategy board and invited the Senator to a strategy meeting in New York during the current week to review the General's speech to be made before the AFL convention, stating that he would defer to the Senator's views in that speech.
Mr. Pearson notes that after the meeting was over, General Eisenhower asked Senator Carlson why he had not shown him the joint statement, to which the Senator had indicated that he wanted the two to meet with fresh views of one another, causing the General to rebuff him by saying, "You would do that to me."
Marquis Childs, aboard the Eisenhower campaign train, tells of the campaign reaching a point of no return regarding the influence of Senator Taft and General Eisenhower's failure in consequence to appeal to independents and undecided Democrats, an appeal which many of his supporters had expected him to make. Instead, he had increasingly engaged in blunt and brutal denunciation of the Truman Administration, drawing cheers from orthodox Midwestern Republicans, breeding the desire for more such strong medicine.
The General would face the same dilemma confronted by Governor Dewey in 1948, whether to appear on the same platform with Republican opponents to the Eisenhower foreign policy, such as Senators James Kem of Missouri and Hugh Butler of Nebraska, a decision which might be made easier by his embrace of Senator William Jenner in Indiana.
Governor Dewey had waged essentially two campaigns following two different strategies between 1944, when he was first the Republican nominee, and his 1948 campaign against President Truman. In the first campaign, the Governor had begun by making a series of standard speeches outlining his policies, until, during a stop in Needles, California, he heard FDR's September, 1944 speech before the Teamsters in Washington, which had contained the famous quip about the Republicans even resorting to attack on Fala for supposedly having been left behind during the President's trip to the Aleutian Islands, requiring a huge expenditure to send a destroyer back for him, and that for his Scotch temperament Fala had been resentful of the false claims, the result causing Governor Dewey to change his tactics completely and go on the attack. The "me-too" label which attached to the Governor's campaign had primarily resulted from his 1948 run rather than that in 1944, when he began to run against the corruption of the Administration. The Governor lost that election to FDR by 432 to 99 electoral votes, despite it being an unpopular and unprecedented fourth term for the President, amid the belief that he was not in good health, though still during the war and having to compete against the FDR magic.
Conservative Republicans in 1952 were telling General Eisenhower that he should at every opportunity go on the attack, especially against Administration corruption, which they believed would be a successful campaign strategy. There was also the issue, which was not available in 1944, of Communists within the government. Senator Richard Nixon, the vice-presidential candidate, during his recent swing through New England, had devoted himself nearly exclusively to that topic, in most of his speeches attacking Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., of Harvard, one of Governor Stevenson's researchers and speechwriters, as a "dangerous liberal".
Mr. Childs ventures that General Eisenhower must at times wonder what he was doing, having undertaken the painstaking business of getting NATO started on track, only now to be part of an attack on the Administration's foreign policy. One could denounce the blunder of having lost China to the Communists, but, ventures Mr. Childs, it would be far more productive to stress the notion that there were perhaps four years left to save India from the same fate, than to dwell on the past which could not be changed.
Robert C. Ruark tells of Sophie Gimbel, fashion designer and wife of the grandson of the founder of Gimbel's Department Store in New York, having thrown a party for her new fall dress collection, which she claimed made women pretty rather than ugly, as had been the tendency of the French fashion designers. Mr. Ruark congratulates her and thinks her to be on the right track.
"The popular fashion magazines, where the writers use pale green typewriters to turn out pale purple prose and all the models stand spraddle-legged, have largely delighted in forcing French atrocities on the American housewife."
Ms. Gimbel had started with models who were pretty and healthy, "with their own chests and some meat on their bones", not appearing as the Paris models, who suggested "spavined scarecrows", "generally so thin that the consumption of an apple would make them resemble snakes with a gullet full of rabbit."
He concludes that it was time for women to start dressing for men instead of for themselves and that Ms. Gimbel had started a healthy trend.
A letter writer from Bena, Va., finds the Korean War "foolish" and the dominant issue confronting the American people, one which the Democrats were not in a position to meet and define in such a way as to bring its successful conclusion because it was "bolstering a false economy with the appeal for votes on the ground that we never had it so good and prosperous before." He also finds the Republicans to be about as helpless. He thinks that questions ought be put to General Eisenhower as to whether or not he had a program for ending the war.
Ask Dick. He has a plan, even though it might be secret, for everything.
This writer favors a federal union of the free people of the world, especially those bordering the Atlantic, as the only way to bring peace to the world.
A letter from Mount Airy, signed by the chairman, vice-chairman and secretary of the Committee on World Peace, Western North Carolina Conference, tells of the General Conference of the Methodist Church at San Francisco having requested the Council of Bishops to utilize existing agencies of the church to implement leadership toward peace through leadership and a crusade for world order beginning in the fall of 1953, with its objectives to include a study of the specific questions of adequate U.N. Charter revision, to make the U.N. more effective in achieving peace. It indicates that the Episcopal Church and several other churches had considered similar plans.
A letter writer congratulates the Charlotte Unitarian Church for the fact that the Unitarians had provided the third largest number of U.S. Presidents of any religious organization. He lists the denominations by the number of Presidents affiliated with each, the most having been Episcopalian, nine, second having been Presbyterian, with six, followed by four each who had been Unitarian or Methodist.
The editors note that the Unitarian Presidents were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft, and that a number of sources listed Thomas Jefferson as a Unitarian, though in fact, as President Lincoln, he had no official church membership, but preferred the Unitarians.
A letter writer from Lincolnton indicates that if the dog lover being touted for governor in 1956 were to run for the office, he wishes to make a suggestion, that because the country had been "going to the dogs" for the previous 20 years of Democratic "maladministration", he wants the candidate to "forget about the dogs and figure out some way to give the country back to the people."
The editors indicate: "Every dog has now had his day, and the dog days are over."
That's what you think. Wait until next Tuesday night and you will see that the dog days, for the entire nation and, eventually, the entire world, have only just begun.
And that little b______
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