The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 11, 1953
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Robert B. Tuckman, that U.N. and Communist staff officers this date were seeking to complete a draft of the armistice agreement, as South Korea again boiled over with new demonstrations protesting the truce. Three of the five U.N. Command negotiators left Munsan temporarily, as lower-level staff officers worked on details of the truce agreement in secret sessions at Panmunjom. The staff officers divided into two groups to speed the work, each meeting for almost two hours during the morning and returning for an afternoon session. One group was reported to have been working on a revision of the truce line, and the second group was believed to be working on the details of the prisoner of war exchange, to be known as "Operation Big Switch".
You may want to be a little chary in telling the prisoners, especially those who had been in stir for most of the three years, the name of that operation, as some of the Americans and those who speak fluent English might get the idea that there is some electricity involved somehow. We suggest "Operation Big Exchange", or simply "Big X".
South Korea's Cabinet, meanwhile, reaffirmed on this date that it would refuse to accept the proposed armistice, with President Syngman Rhee openly disagreeing with President Eisenhower on the matter. President Rhee said in a statement that he could not agree with the President's point that a truce in Korea would be advantageous to the country, that the truce on its present terms meant "death" to Koreans. He cautioned Koreans, however, against "unruly conduct" and an "unfriendly attitude" toward allied personnel working on the truce. The Korean National Assembly called on President Rhee to curb the Government-sponsored demonstrations to avoid "unnecessary violence" between the people and allied troops. The Assembly proposed an alliance with Nationalist China in Formosa, with some of the legislators talking about a military alliance. It adopted a resolution calling on the U.N. Command to scrap the present truce plan and start over.
South Korean police at Pusan said that a U.S. soldier had slightly wounded two Koreans among a mob of students who had tried to halt an Army bus, it not being known whether the shooting had been accidental or deliberate.
Demonstrations of chanting thousands in Seoul were more orderly than earlier in the week, when crowds had charged U.S. Army compounds, thrown rocks and shouted, "Yankees go home!"
In the ground war, Chinese troops, in nearly regimental strength, broke through a mainline allied position on the central front this date and fought off bitter counter-attacks from South Korean forces, occurring southeast of "Outpost Texas", said to be serious by an Army spokesman. To the west, troops of the 15th Regiment, U.S. Third Division, resisted six Communist attacks northeast of Chorwon, as an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Communists struck U.S. and South Korean positions along the front. The Third Division reported killing and wounding about 600 of the enemy. The enemy had fired 20,000 artillery and mortar shells into the American lines before and during the assaults, and two enemy tanks fired high-velocity shells into American positions.
In the air war, allied fighter-bombers hit the enemy along the east-central front during the morning, following up on predawn bombing raids by B-26 bombers.
Speaking in Riverdale, N.D., the President, appearing before a crowd of about 5,000 persons at ceremonies marking a stage of completion of the Federally-financed 350 million dollar Garrison Dam, said this date that the Federal Government had to work in partnership with state and local governments and private industry to develop the nation's resources. He singled out several members of his Cabinet and, in a sideswipe to the Truman Administration, said that such people assured that there were not going to be "any tax scandals or unwarranted pardons or racketeering". (Unfortunately, the Vice-President and Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan were not along to hear the speech.) The President had made a major speech the previous night in Minneapolis, and after the Riverdale speech, left for Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where he would deliver an afternoon address at the convention of the National Federation of Young Republicans. Presidential aides said that the Mount Rushmore speech would be the opening salvo in the President's drive to increase Republican margins in both houses of Congress in the 1954 elections.
Gut luck...
Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson said this date, replying to several questions posed in writing by Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, that the country presently had 152 air wings on hand and available for national defense when Navy and Marine aircraft and units were evaluated as Air Force wings. He said that using that basis, the total defense program which the President called for, actually amounted to 176 wings by July 1, 1956. The Secretary also said that the Russians had not started an all-out war because they knew that all of the might of the U.S. and its allies would be united against any such aggression.
The Air Force indicated this date that a recall order had been issued for all 37 C-54 transport planes it had leased to commercial airlines, indicating an intent to end the lease agreements, providing no explanation other than that the Air Force needed the airplanes. Some operators speculated that the action reflected Administration demands for economy. Air Force rental fees of the planes had been criticized in Congress as being too low.
Representative Ray Madden of Indiana said this date that he would push a proposal for a Congressional investigation regarding whether atomic tests in the Nevada desert had anything to do with the rash of tornadoes which had struck the country in recent weeks. The Weather Bureau, the Atomic Energy Commission and some leading members of Congress insisted that there was no evidence of any such connection. But Representative W. Sterling Cole of New York and Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, both senior members of the joint Atomic Energy Committee, said that a public inquiry might help to clarify the question, though indicating that atomic scientists had assured them that the tests had no effect on the weather. The chairman of the Committee, Representative Dewey Short of Missouri, told journalists that the issue was beyond the Committee's authority. The Weather Bureau reported that 249 tornadoes had been recorded during 1953, possibly a record for the 35 years during which such data had been maintained, the average having been 109 tornadoes during the first half of each year. A Weather Bureau spokesman said, however, that an improved tornado reporting service might partially account for the larger total.
It's them Martians.
In Charlotte, Thomas M. Glasgow,
chairman of the group which sponsored Bible classes in Charlotte's
school system, issued a statement which defended the courses as being
consistent with the Constitution, that there was no violation of
separation
School officials of the City and County remained quiet on the subject, with only one City Board of Education member having taken a definite stand, saying that she could not see any objection to the classes, as they were optional. She said that her two sons had elected to take the classes and had found them valuable.
Tom Fesperman of The News
tells of residents of many towns and cities in North and South
Carolina having been dragging away trees, replacing plate-glass
windows and awnings and generally straightening up in the aftermath
of a severe windstorm which had swept across the two states late the
previous day, bringing little rain but high winds up to 70 mph,
albeit not sustained. Large trees had fallen, striking automobiles
and houses throughout the Piedmont and in Winston-Salem, one such
tree had injured a 15-year old girl. In the Twin City, there was a
brief tornado scare, with reports of an ominous funnel shape
appearing
In London, Queen Elizabeth
officially celebrated her 27th birthday this date, causing one of the
biggest traffic jams in memory. First aid teams were required for
several hundred persons who had fainted or were injured in the dense
crush around the Horse Guards parade ground where the Queen, seated
on a horse named Winston, received salutes from the color guard. She
had actually been born on April 21, but the Commonwealth and Empire
celebrated her birthday
You people are crazy.
A slight earth tremor shook the
Innsbruck area of the Austrian Tyrol
On the editorial page, "A Threat to Conservation" indicates that for many years, the livestock men of the Pacific Northwest had railed against Federal public land policy, some of which had been ill-conceived, as overlapping jurisdiction had required cattlemen whose herds grazed on public lands sometimes to have to apply to Federal agencies in three different states to obtain permission to move their herds over the public lands of one state. The increased power provided the Secretary of Agriculture under the recent reorganization would enable the Secretary to eliminate the duplication.
Some of the livestock men, however, were not satisfied with reduced bureaucracy and wanted permanent rights in the public lands. Montana's only Congressman, Representative Wesley D'Ewart, had introduced a bill which would allow the stockmen to convey their grazing permits to whomever they wished, denying the Federal Government its authority over granting those rights. The bill had the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
It indicates that the issue was of primary concern to Westerners, but should be of interest also to all conservationists, as the Congressman's bill represented an extreme approach which would nullify rights which conservationists of both parties, from President Theodore Roosevelt onward, had found advisable to vest in the Federal Government. Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay had denounced the bill as a "lousy" measure, with insufficient safeguards for the public interest. It hopes that his fortitude would increase in proportion to the pressure which would be placed on him by those who coveted parks and forests.
"Another Horton Case?" wonders whether the case of David Lee Shillinglaw, former commander of the Illinois American Legion and founder and president of a Chicago investment banking firm, appointed by the President as U.S. Representative on the U.N. Social and Economic Council, sponsored by ultra-conservative Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, might turn into another case of loyalty-check stultification, as encountered by Mildred McAfee Horton, head of the Navy Waves during the war and president of Wellesley College, whose appointment to the same Council in May had been sidetracked by the finding that she had joined the Federal Council of Churches. Mr. Shillinglaw's appointment had now been placed in the same limbo, and Senator Dirksen had withdrawn his sponsorship. For it had been shown that Mr. Shillinglaw had been a member of the Institute of Pacific Relations 17 years earlier, an organization, two years earlier, which had been branded as subversive, despite its many reputable members, such as arch-conservative Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan.
It indicates that if the Administration wanted to salvage what was left of morale among Government employees and maintain persons with inquiring minds interested in government service, it needed to clear up both of those cases promptly, with an honest admission of error being better than silence.
"Once More the Moderates Squeeze By" indicates that a pro-Western coalition had again passed the supreme test of a general election in Italy, but by a margin so slim as to hamper seriously its effectiveness. Premier Alcide De Gasperi's centrist coalition missed by three-tenths of one percent a popular majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, which, had the popular majority been achieved, would have automatically provided them, under a new law, 64 percent of the seats. The coalition would, nevertheless, have slender pluralities in both houses.
Unlike the Republicans in Congress, the Italian centrist parties did not receive support from their opposition, divided between the Communists and fellow travelers on the left, receiving 35 percent of the popular vote, and the monarchists and fascists on the right, who had polled 13 percent. Those two sides might work together, but would not work for the centrist ruling coalition. Thus, if the Premier lost favor with a few of his current supporters, he could become powerless to prevent a totalitarian takeover of the Government.
The narrow victory did, however, allow the West some more time to try to shore up NATO. If extremists were to come to power in any of the key NATO countries, West Germany, Britain, or France, the entire Western European defense structure might be imperiled. The U.S. had to proceed with caution, however, in helping the moderate governments, as too much diplomatic intervention into domestic political affairs would be usually resented by voters. U.S. Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce had recently stumbled during the lead-up to the Italian elections, indicating that if the centrist coalition were not re-elected, the U.S. might cut off aid to Italy, a statement made without the prior approval of the State Department.
It indicates that through the expansion of trade, the offering of technical assistance, and the extension of friendship, the U.S. could do much to strengthen the fabric of democracy in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. It also indicates that the U.S. could take a lesson from the fact that 94 percent of the eligible voters in Italy had gone to the polls, a record which the U.S. could never hope to approach.
"Note of Sympathy" indicates that, as Senator Taft had explained earlier in the week, he was merely turning over the floor duties of the Majority Leader to Senator William Knowland of California, but would maintain his title as Majority Leader and would continue to attend weekly legislative leadership sessions with the President at the White House and Republican policy meetings. Meanwhile, he was hopeful that his hip ailment would respond favorably to treatment.
The piece hopes so, as the Senator's experience in domestic matters and the respect in which he was held by members of his own party, plus his alert mind were important assets for the Republicans, who held the majorities in both houses of Congress and controlled the White House. The Senator also had great influence among the Republican Old Guard, who, thus far, had given the President many headaches, but had not run away with the Government.
It indicates that it had deep sympathy for the Senator in his physical discomfort and hopes for his rapid and complete recovery.
As indicated, the Senator actually was suffering from cancer and would die from it at the end of July.
A piece from the Christian
Science Monitor, titled "The Ancient Game of Baseball",
indicates that in New York, librarian Robert Henderson, who
disapproved of the American folk tale that baseball had begun in 1839
with Col. Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y., was retiring. He had
shown that the game had originated in England as early as 1700, as a
game called "rounders"
In 1838, The Boys' Book of Sports
revised the rules of the English game, and arranged the bases in a
diamond configuration, with the players running, Jimmy Piersall
fashion, counterclockwise
It concludes, therefore, that the game went back considerably further than 1839, at least as a juvenile pastime, on which wives of fans possessed varied opinions as to whether it still belonged in that category.
"It's another illustration of the point that in human events truth is not only stranger than fiction but more complicated."
We're not gonna play unless you promise in advance not to hit us in the head with the ball.
Drew Pearson indicates that modern statesmen had a disadvantage vis-à-vis historians, in that the latter could look to hindsight and did not have to predict the future. He indicates that he was going out on a limb to predict that historians, a few years hence, would count certain current events as taking the country downhill in the continuing cold war. The first such event was Prime Minister Churchill's buildup of new Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov. If it were not for Mr. Churchill, it was unlikely that the Russian people would even know who the Premier was, as V. M. Molotov and L. P. Beria had been keeping him under wraps, scarcely allowing his name to appear in the Moscow newspapers of late, depriving him of power over the Communist Party and the secret police. But Prime Minister Churchill's continued proposals for a Big Four meeting, which would include Mr. Malenkov, had dragged him into the spotlight and made him appear as a great man, with Russian reaction having been that if the West demanded him, Russia would provide him.
Right after the death of Stalin on March 5, it had been doubtful whether Mr. Malenkov could remain in power for long, with U.S. experts indicating that if the U.S. left Russia alone, Stalin's successors were certain to self-destruct through internal dissension. But Prime Minister Churchill had consistently built up the new Premier, in part because he wanted to go out of office in a blaze of glory, in another part because he wanted to outperform former Prime Minister Clement Attlee at the peace table, and partly because he wanted to keep the Conservative Government in power. He had proposed the conference, even though he knew that it would get nowhere and could only lull the country's allies into false hopes for the end of a cold war which Russia was not prepared to give up.
Mr. Pearson notes that if Mr. Churchill had proposed a meeting with Mao Tse-Tung of Communist China, it could drive a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese and perhaps build up Mao as another Tito, but his proposal to meet with Mr. Malenkov merely made Mao more dependent on Mr. Malenkov.
The second historical event which he believes historians would view negatively, involved the campaign promises of the previous fall, which had placed the Russians in a more favorable bargaining position regarding the Korean truce, as they knew that General Eisenhower had talked a lot during the campaign about settling the war, meaning that he would have to deliver. Premier Malenkov needed a truce more than the President, who only needed it to back up his campaign promises, while the Russian Premier needed it to keep himself in power. Armed riots in Czechoslovakia, unrest in Poland and Hungary, worry over desertions from the Red Army, plus the constant observation by Molotov and Beria, made a Korean truce imperative for Mr. Malenkov.
Mr. Pearson believes that the Russian Premier would come out of the talks echoing the same phrase which Leon Trotsky had uttered after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918, that being that there was "no peace, no war."
The third current event which would probably be viewed by historians as discouraging was the diplomatic defeat when Britain had refused to renounce its recognition of Communist China, despite British troops in Korea fighting against Chinese troops. That provided the Soviets with an opportunity to divide the U.S. and Britain against one another. "And with the help of the McCarthys, the Kremlin has done this to perfection."
He indicates that it was politically understandable that former Labor Prime Minister Attlee had not broken with China, but when Prime Minister Churchill had followed Mr. Attlee's lead, going even further in urging a meeting with Mr. Malenkov, he was in effect "acting as the gravedigger for the Empire he had vowed not to liquidate."
The fourth such fact was the strategy of General MacArthur, as historians were likely to say that he had been correct in saying that if the country became involved in the Korean War, it had to win it. But they would also blame the General for some of the gravest military blunders in recent history, the failure of U.S. troops in Japan to be well-trained and ready for the hostilities when they had erupted in mid-1950, the error of sending U.S. troops toward the Yalu River on the Manchurian border, where they had been decimated by the Chinese and forced to retreat in November-December, 1950, the failure to have proper liaison between the 10th Corps and the Eighth Army commanders in that push, and the faulty intelligence which had indicated that there were no Chinese Communist troops in the area of the Yalu River, when in fact it was teeming with them. The defeat, shortly after General MacArthur had assured that the boys would be home by Christmas, 1950, had been the worst blow of the entire war. Historians were likely to present it as the turning point in a war which had been nobly conceived to prevent Communist aggression and protect little nations, but ending with the aggressor still being boastful and belligerent and the little nation, South Korea, protesting that after three years of war, it was being sold out in the peace.
Mr. Pearson could not possibly predict, incidentally, that in the year 2020, "historians", at least as to the cheap whores who present themselves as such on the tv regularly to impress their book publishers and coffee-table book buyers, would be most concerned anent names on buildings and statuary in the parks, promenades and on campuses, with little or no heed paid to substantive facts, as if people actually pass by such statuary and names and say, "Look thar, that building thar's named fer Woodra Wilson, the racist. We think we'll be racist, too." We shall address President Wilson and Princeton University on some other day, when we have more time. But he was most assuredly not any "racist", as anyone who actually reads the history of the time of his Administration in his public papers would know. Just as with FDR and President Truman, he had to deal with and, to an extent, appease, Southern conservative Democrats, many of whom were racists, both at the state and Congressional levels, if he wanted to get anything done as President, at a particularly crucial point in history, with the start of World War I in August, 1914, and the U.S. eventually joining the A.E.F. in April, 1917, with the peace he had outlined in his Fourteen Points having been crucial to the perpetuation of the peace, the Republican rejection of the Fourteen Points and the Harding "return to normalcy" having led inexorably to Mussolini, Hitler and World War II. We have not been terribly impressed with Princeton's academic prowess for a good many years, anyway. One of these days, you college administrators are going to need to wake up to the notion that Wicked-pedia is compiled largely by a bunch of teenagers who haven't developed critical sense enough regarding history, having lived through so little of it, sufficient to understand changes in people's opinions with time, and that those opinions and beliefs, as with anyone's opinions and beliefs, are molded in the context of the times in which they live, and that Wicked-pedia, and its comparable sources on the internet, cannot be deemed reliable accounts of history, good only to check dates and the spelling of names, some of those dressed up in such fancy to the point of being butchered. Stick to the tried and true and stop bowing to a bunch of cheap vandals, whose "politics", to the extent they have any beyond anarchy, are founded on ignorance, not even "ignorance of the educated" in most cases, just old-fashioned ignorance. Anyway, we shall deal with it later. The very reason we have Trump for the last four years is largely the result of reaction to the activities of these same anarchists back in 2015-16. They are up to the same tricks again. Who are they? We have no idea. And neither do you. Probably, neither do most of them. They are just out there screaming and yelling like banshees for something they call "change", while not having the foggiest notion of what it is they want, or how to get there, other than, apparently, by the abolition of the world as it exists and has existed for time immemorial. You cannot enforce beliefs and opinions or eradicate prejudice by yelling and screaming at people, with a stupid little smart phone in your hand, made in China by slave labor, or by setting up people to appear as "racist" in carefully provoked and edited circumstances, all in the hope of getting that big hit on YouTube to obtain a million views and start earning the big bucks from the little smart phones made with slave labor in China. We know it has been a tough year. But setting people up to appear as "racist" is not going to serve anyone in the end. We also note that calling some white women "Karens" is a racially offensive stereotype, the equivalent of "Sambo" in the old days, and is quite divisive, not in the least intended to heal race relations. Wake up and look in the mirror, smart-phone wielder.
Despite Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson's assurance that the Communist Air Force was strictly "defensive", the truth was that Russia had four times as many jet bombers as the U.S., with both countries having approximately 1,100 long-range non-jet bombers.
Secretary of Treasury George Humphrey was so considerate of his Government chauffeur that he insisted on driving his own Buick to keep after-hours engagements.
Congressional secretaries were planning a weekend outing in New York City, where they would take in a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs at the expense of the Imperial Sugar Co., having lunch at the Hotel New Yorker as guests of "an anonymous gentleman from Texas."
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that distorting history appeared to be the most popular indoor sport of the era, and that the Korean War had been the most distorted event recently, thus in need of setting down some basic facts about it. They indicate that it had achieved its main purpose in the view of the U.S. Government, which had an unambitious goal of not losing anything by entering the war on the side of the South Koreans, while not entering would have risked substantial losses. Former State Department planner George Kennan, who developed the Truman policy of containment of Communism, had prepared a memorandum, prepared the day after the Communists crossed the 38th parallel, June 25, 1950, and presented it to Secretary of State Acheson.
In the memo, he presented the danger of inaction in Korea, that an early collapse of the resistance to Communists in Indo-China could result in the eventual absorption into the Soviet sphere of Thailand, Malaya and Burma, the probable triumph of the Huks movement in the Philippines, acute danger to Japan's stability and a certain invasion of Formosa. In addition, a showing of U.S. weakness in the Far East would have caused widespread and uncontainable repercussions in the Middle East and in Europe. All of the weaker nations would have adopted a policy of "scuttle-and-run". In the end, the Western Alliance formed under NATO would have come apart and the most strategic points in the free world would have been lost to the Soviets. The U.S. would have been faced with the same choice the British had at the time of the Munich Pact in 1938 with Hitler regarding the Sudetenland, the choice between making the best terms possible with a more powerful enemy or fighting a war of despair on the worst terms imaginable.
The Alsops posit that avoidance of such disastrous consequences had to be considered a worthy object, despite the Korean War having been discouraging as a venture. In that sense, it had been successful.
Many had suggested that the country should have set a bolder goal than mere avoidance of disaster, maintaining that once the country had entered the war, it should have imposed a reasonable Far Eastern settlement by force of arms. No one could suggest that maintaining the status quo was a reasonable settlement.
The prospect that the viewpoint of Senator William Knowland of California, Joint Chiefs chairman-designate Admiral Arthur Radford, and Senate Majority Leader Taft, that the war should have been fought against the Chinese Communists head-on, despite the costs and risks thereby of stimulating a general war with China, might become the majority American viewpoint had to have weighed on the minds of the Chinese and Soviet policy-makers, such that continuation of the bloody stalemate would have involved great risks, was likely a motivating factor in their finally agreeing to the prisoner of war exchange, the last major sticking point to the armistice for some 15 months.
The Alsops indicate that it was worth remembering that it could be helpful to sound tough in a negotiation and could also be dangerous to look weak at any point. The immediate cause of the war had been the disarmament policy of the Truman Administration under Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson during 1949 and 1950. It had tempted the Soviets into the Korean gamble, and they hoped that the new disarmament program of the Eisenhower Administration would not produce another similar challenge to the Soviets, which would "have to be met at infinitely greater and more terrible cost."
Marquis Childs indicates that Dr. You Chang Yang, the South Korean Ambassador to the U.S., had spoken jestingly of his country as the Ireland of Asia, in reference to the intense patriotism and fanatical devotion to country which the people had cherished through years of Japanese occupation, division and devastating war. President Rhee stood as a symbol of all which was proud, difficult, stubborn and downright impossible in the temperament of the Korean exile. While giving his age as 78, those who had followed his career claimed he was actually 83, and yet he was defying almost the whole world by insisting that South Korean troops would fight on alone despite an armistice, if it left Korea divided.
Mr. Childs indicates that the most charitable thing one can say about President Rhee was that he had been so blinded by the ordeal of war that he had lost sight of the realities confronting his people, that a continuation of the war could mean total destruction and genocide for Koreans. Their suffering could not be exaggerated, as nearly the entire peninsula had been laid to waste by the three-year war see-sawing back and forth from the Yalu River to the southern tip, as behind the lines, guerrillas had operated, killing, looting and burning. An estimated ten million persons were homeless and it was believed that the number of dead among civilians and military was no less than two million and probably closer to three million. The absence of accurate record-keeping in the confusion of the war had prevented accurate numbers from being recorded.
He indicates that Robert Alden of the New York Times, who was reporting from Korea, had recently cabled a description of the conditions prevailing in Pusan, the temporary capital, once a modern city, now reduced to "poverty, sickness and misery", acting as a symbol of the "wretched state to which the war has brought Korea", with suicides every day, persons being driven insane by mere survival against hopeless odds, and many dying of hunger and disease. If President Rhee succeeded in continuing the war, then the misery would only continue and likely be multiplied manifold times. A compromise settlement leaving the country divided would make it possible to rebuild and restore South Korea, an appeal contained in President Eisenhower's letter to President Rhee.
No less than a billion dollars would be needed to rehabilitate South Korea. One way for the U.S. to demonstrate its peaceful goal would be to move quickly for the rehabilitation of the land and the people. The U.S. had responded generously in the past to such needs after war, but President Rhee threatened American goodwill with his resistance to the peace.
Mary Hornaday, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, finds that most Americans who thought of Niagara Falls in June thought about honeymoons, but in 1953, New Yorkers were looking at the Falls anew in terms of private versus public development of water power. At a May 14 press conference, the President had said that the Niagara power development should be settled at the state level. Even though that had been virtually settled with the New York State Government, power from the project was openly competitive between public and private enterprise.
Insofar as the public was concerned, it was important that the scenic beauty of the Falls not be compromised by the power project. Cooperative use of water from the Falls by both the U.S. and Canada had been ongoing since 1910, but to the present, it had been only on a limited scale. Under the Niagara Redevelopment Treaty of 1950 between the U.S. and Canada, there would be newly enlarged such use. Ms. Hornaday explains in detail the plan. Congress had to provide by law for the public use and benefit of the U.S. share of the waters, and the question was who would do the job.
There were three bills pending in
Congress, representing the three different viewpoints in the country
on the subject. One was sponsored by Senator Herbert Lehman of New
York and Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., of New York, calling
for Federal development, while a second, sponsored by Senator Homer
Capehart of Indiana, Speaker of the House Joe Martin of
Massachusetts, and Representative William Miller of New York—who
would run in 1964 as the Republican vice-presidential nominee with
Senator Barry Goldwater, the H.E.N., representing the future of the Farm, to show up during Mr. Miller's speech
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