The Charlotte News
Friday, October 22, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the U.N. in New York, Russia and the major Western powers reached agreement early this date on the language of a resolution to set up new disarmament talks. They had agreed, according to sources, that the Disarmament Commission would authorize Britain, France, the U.S., Canada and the Soviet Union to hold closed-door meetings similar to those held in London during the summer. The Commission would consider all disarmament plans which had been placed before it, including the British-French compromise, the Soviet agreement to delay atomic bans until a halfway mark had been reached, the U.S. plan for a control agency, and Indian proposals covering a number of disarmament contingencies. Sources indicated that the new agreement did not necessarily imply any advancement in disarmament, that its chief importance was to form a basis for new talks in a spirit of harmony rather than with sharp divisions on procedure from the outset. The General Assembly the previous day had defeated Communist China's final chance to achieve U.N. membership during the year by voting 45 to 10, with three abstentions, to accept the credentials of Nationalist China.
In Paris, with the threat of complete failure of French-German talks on the Saar region overshadowing their decision, the 14 NATO members this date formally invited West Germany to join the organization. French Premier Pierre Mendes-France joined the invitation, but had told reporters earlier, indicating full support by his Cabinet, that he would not sign any agreements reached during the week unless he received a satisfactory settlement of the Saar dispute, in effect setting a 24-hour deadline for France and West Germany to reach agreement on the future status of the region, wealthy in coal and steel. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer appeared quite happy as the 14 foreign ministers welcomed West Germany to NATO as its 15th member. British Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden commended Secretary of State Dulles for his policy of working out the arrangement, and Mr. Dulles commented that the step would "help achieve a solution of European problems." Plans had been made for the signing the following afternoon of the agreement to restore West German sovereignty, ending the Big Three occupation since the end of the war, and enlisting West Germany as a full partner in the Western defense system.
Samuel Lubell, in another of his series of articles on the midterm elections, indicates that among all of the Senate contests, the battle presently in New Jersey had to be considered in a class by itself. New Jersey was the only state he had visited thus far in the campaign where people had complained about dirt being spread regarding candidates, asking why they could not stress the good things about them. Many voters, both Democrats and Republicans, planned to sit out the election, with the outcome appearing to be dependent on who would not vote as much as who would. The claimed "leftist sympathies" raised against the sister of Republican Senate candidate Clifford Case would likely deepen the apathy of voters, as Mr. Lubell's interviews of voters had been conducted before those charges were raised. His interviews had shown that the anti-Case revolt among Republicans had subsided to a great degree, as many had come to realize that his defeat could cost the Republicans control of the Senate. He had been in Teaneck, a typical North Jersey suburb, the day Mr. Case had made his television defense of his sister as having participated in a left-wing study group some years earlier while not being the same person of the same name who had been active in Communist-front organizations, as had been charged. Mr. Lubell encountered one man pruning tree branches on his front lawn, who indicated that the only reason he would vote for Mr. Case was to back the President, whom he believed had been a fine President, while indicating that they were saying Mr. Case was "leftist underneath", and that if there was anything to the charges against his sister, "those things run in families." When Mr. Lubell asked him for a drink of water, he invited him into his house, just as Mr. Case was finishing his speech, prompting the man to inquire of his wife as to what he had said, receiving in reply that he had said the woman they had written about was not his sister but that his sister had belonged to "some organization" years earlier, causing the man to shake his head ruefully, remarking: "It doesn't look good. Maybe it's better not to vote."
In New York, the President, concluding a two-day visit to the state, made new appeals for enactment of his health reinsurance program and for election of a continued Republican Congress, declaring the previous night that his program for expansion of voluntary health insurance plans, pigeonholed by the Congress the previous July 13, was the "logical alternative to socialized medicine." He said that his plan would be submitted to the new Congress in January, and that Americans would not long be denied access to "adequate medical facilities", that the program for voluntary health insurance was one further step in achieving that objective. Under the program, the Government would underwrite up to 75 percent of the losses suffered by private and nonprofit insurance companies as a result of voluntary expansion of their health and medical programs. He spoke before about 2,000 persons who had paid $100 each to a charity, at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The following day, the President would attend an outdoor luncheon at his farm in Gettysburg, to promote Pennsylvania Republican candidates for Congress and state offices. He authorized the release of a statement for New Jersey that he had not changed his position "one iota" from support of former Representative Case for the Senate seat, effectively a rebuff of Senator McCarthy, who was against Mr. Case. Mr. Case had stated that if elected, he would favor ousting Senator McCarthy as chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Investigations subcommittee.
Former Arkansas Governor Sid McMath testified this date before the Senate anti-monopoly subcommittee that the "power monopoly" had tried to "crush" any elective officer in Arkansas who recognized that there was a "people's side to any conflict" involving the power interests. He said that the Arkansas Power & Light Co. had offered to support him for a third term in 1952 if he would oppose construction of a steam power generating plant by a group of cooperatives under the Rural Electrification Administration, that if he supported the Ozark REA plant, the power interests would use every means at their disposal to destroy him politically. He had been defeated in the 1952 Democratic runoff primary by present Governor Francis Cherry. He was testifying generally regarding the Administration's proposed contract between the Dixon-Yates private power combine and the Atomic Energy Commission to enable the Arkansas combine to produce electricity for the area of West Memphis, Ark., presently being served by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The power would replace energy which TVA supplied to AEC plants at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky. Mr. McMath said that the manner in which the Dixon-Yates contract had been obtained, without competitive bidding, was further evidence that the power interests only paid lip service to the free enterprise principle.
In Raleigh, National Guard units assisting coastal communities digging out from the damage caused a week earlier by Hurricane Hazel would be called off active duty on Sunday, according to Governor William B. Umstead's office. The Governor's secretary indicated that the beach towns ought be able by then to take over police functions and other tasks being performed by the Guardsmen. Adjutant General John Hall Manning had indicated an initial estimate of the cost of calling out the Guard units to aid in the hurricane stricken areas to have been $35,000, which might be reimbursed from Federal disaster funds. Lt. Governor Luther Hodges, accompanied by the Governor's personal secretary, had flown over the damaged areas between Topsail Beach, N.C., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., the previous day, with the secretary indicating that the damage along the beachfront was "incredible", particularly in the Brunswick beach area.
The President this date allocated $555,000 to supplement state and local relief efforts in North Carolina areas hit hard by the hurricane, after Governor Umstead had sent a telegram to the President asking for the additional aid.
The front page has other photographs of the damaged areas.
The Miami Weather Bureau reported this date that there were no storms on the map at present which might turn into more hurricanes.
The newspaper promises that on page 11-B, one could see "The Greatest Reading Show on Earth". We do not wish to miss that.
On the editorial page, "Protecting America's Policyholders" tells of the Federal Trade Commission having accused 17 insurance companies of false and misleading advertising, the first crackdown against practices in the insurance business since the FTC was authorized by Congress to examine the industry six years earlier. Four of the companies were among the largest in the field, Mutual of Omaha, Bankers Life & Casualty of Chicago, Reserve Life Insurance of Dallas and United Insurance of Chicago. The Commission had released a long list of alleged misrepresentations, of which no one company was accused of all.
A day after the charges were made public, repercussions were occurring throughout the nation. In Charlotte, State Representative Arthur Goodman presented a five-point plan to fight what he called "rotten practices" of health and hospital companies in the state. Doctors and hospital administrators had long been aware that some people were being victimized by deceptive advertising and sharp practices within the industry. The main offenders locally were fly-by-night firms which managed to escape regulation by the state's insurance commissioner.
It finds that the FTC's procedure of lumping all 17 firms together with a set of "typical misrepresentations" to be open to serious question, as some of the firms might not be guilty of the more serious allegations. Each cited company would have 20 days to respond to the charges, but, it suggests, their responses would not attract the same publicity as had the accusations.
It indicates that regardless of the outcome of the particular charges, there was need for greater supervision of the health and accident insurance business within North Carolina. Mr. Goodman had suggested making the insurance commissioner an appointive position rather than elective, but the piece doubts that change would have the intended effect of removing political pressure from the position, suggests that it would only take the choice away from the people, where it belonged. Other suggestions by Mr. Goodman, however, had merit, including the spelling out in insurance advertising of exceptions to coverage, bonding of insurance agents and mandating that they be residents of the state for at least a year preceding the selling of insurance in the state, and that health and accident companies pay as much to the policyholder as he had paid on the policy after it had been in force for at least three years, before the firm had any right to cancel. It suggests that the 1955 General Assembly should consider those points carefully and act on the problem before other North Carolinians were victimized by the practices.
"Tar Heel Industry: Bigger and Better" indicates that few North Carolinians were aware of the great expansion of postwar industry in the state. Former Charlotte Mayor Ben Douglas, director of the State Department of Conservation & Development, had told the Charlotte Board of Realtors during the week the story of 89 million dollars worth of industrial growth in the state during the first nine months of 1954, at a time when most of the nation was concerned about a recession. There were 184 new and expanded industries announced in North Carolina during that period, providing 13,200 new jobs, with an annual payroll of more than $731,000. Of the new plants, 85 would be completely new and 99 would be expansions.
The previous year, North Carolina had 144 new industries and 95 plant expansions, with a total investment of 61.6 million dollars, providing 16,264 new jobs.
The 1954 expansion had been especially healthy because diversification had been stressed, with 18 of the new industries being in textile products, 14 in food and kindred products, 12 in apparel, 12 in lumber and furniture, six in stone, clay and glass products, four in machinery, four in electrical machinery, three in chemical products, two in petroleum and coal products, two in the printing and publishing field, and one each in tobacco manufacturing, fabricated metal products and transportation, among an assortment of other categories.
It finds that Mr. Douglas, in campaigning for new industry for the state, had wisely emphasized advantages of locating in the state, possessed of plenty of manpower, materials, markets, space and a favorable climate. Cheap labor was disappearing and had always been a negative factor because cheap labor could also indicate inefficient labor, suggesting poor markets, and therefore turn out costly to industry.
"Milk and Honey for OUR Poets" reports that an upper-middlebrow journal had bemoaned the fate of poets in modern America, finding them unable to make enough money to keep a sparrow alive.
While it tells of being in support of poets being able to eat daily, it reminds that Percy Bysshe Shelley had once written that "poets' food is love and fame." It suggests therefore that too much milk and honey was bad for the working artist, as foods softened the mind, dulled the wits, and distorted the vision. "Instead of Love, the well-fed poet thinks of loving; instead of Life, he thinks of living. Somehow in the process, art is squeezed out of the picture."
It suggests that too many modern poets were sleek and well-fed and agrees with whoever it was who had said that a poet should always be hungry and have a lost love.
A piece from the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News, titled "Yankee Doodle", tells of the post office having adopted olive drab colors for their vehicles after World War I because of the surplus of camouflage paint, with the color scheme now adopted being red white and blue, which it finds apropos to the facts that most of the mail carried was white, that the Post Office Department usually ran in the red and that the employees were now blue over a vetoed pay raise.
Drew Pearson again, as the previous day, looks at Secretary of Interior Douglas McKay's criticism of him for having told of the Secretary's "generosity" with respect to the Rogue River National Forest, giving 454 acres of public land to a private mining company, and his giving consideration to the release of Alaskan oil reserves for private oil company exploitation. He explains in more detail that former Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman under President Truman had refused to do so in the face of entreaties by the private interests involved.
He also explains that there was an order drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Orme Lewis, which would open up the wildlife refuges of the country to private oil drilling. He again attributes these giveaways to the "generosity" of Secretary McKay, acting without any authority from Congress.
The Congressional Quarterly discusses the Democratic prospects to take over the Senate and House from the Republicans in the November 2 midterm elections, telling of the outcome hinging on 18 of the 37 Senate races and 133 of the 432 House races in 34 states, three having already been won by the Republicans in Maine in September. It had also found that 17 of the 33 gubernatorial contests could influence the power of state delegations to the presidential nominating conventions of 1956.
Ten states would have close races for both the Senate and governor, California, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Wyoming. Maine had already elected Democratic Representative Edmund Muskie in its gubernatorial race, as well as re-elected Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith. With ten appointed Senators and some party switches caused by the appointments by opposing party governors after the deaths of Senators Lester Hunt of Wyoming, Pat McCarran of Nevada and Robert Taft of Ohio, politicians were concentrating on party solidarity between the Senate and gubernatorial races.
Of the 37 Senate seats up for election, the Quarterly believed that 19 were safe, 14 Democratic and five Republican seats. Presently, there were 49 Republicans and 46 Democrats, plus Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, an independent, constituting the Senate. Republicans would continue to have organizational control by winning 48 seats, with the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Nixon. But Democrats could organize the Senate by an equal number, as Senator Morse had indicated that he would vote with the Democrats, a switch from his previous stance of voting for organizational purposes with the Republicans in 1953. The House was comprised of 218 Republicans, 212 Democrats, and one independent, with four vacancies.
The midterm campaigns were primarily being fought on local issues and the personality of the individual candidates, but both parties were worried about public apathy and low voter registration. Republicans believed that the President's popularity and the effort of the Vice-President on the hustings would help them, in light of there being no great national issues. But Democrats were now saying that the gaffe by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson the prior week, when he indicated a preference for "bird dogs over kennel-fed dogs", regarding unemployment, would give them an issue to take to voters, suggestive of the Administration's insensitivity to the plight of the unemployed worker. Republicans believed their major issue was the need of the President to continue to have the support of a Republican Congress, pointing to his having ended the Korean War and the vigilance of the Administration in ferreting out Communists in the Government and cleaning up the "mess in Washington", while providing lower taxes, expansion of Social Security and "a return to the free enterprise system".
Some Democrats were seeking to climb on the President's coattails, but primarily the Democratic campaign presented the issues of unemployment, Government giveaways, the farm program and Administration benefits for big business. They also stressed that because of opposition within his own party, the President could not carry out his program, particularly on foreign policy, without Democratic support.
Two temporarily Republican Senate seats in Wyoming and Nevada could go to the Democrats as a result of a bitter primary fight in Wyoming and an attempt to avoid an election in Nevada. It also discusses briefly some competitive House races.
The Quarterly had found that labor surplus areas were listed in 68 of the 113 marginal House districts, and despite Republican stress on the farm program of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, some Republican candidates were opposing it while some Democrats were backing the flexible supports of the Administration program.
In the last stages of the campaign, Republicans were stressing the issue of having removed Communists from government and believed that they could hold the Senate because of fewer seats at stake, 15, compared to 22 Democratic seats. The Democrats, with prior midterm elections of the out-party favoring them, claimed that they would take the House and might win both chambers.
Robert C. Ruark tells of Alger Hiss set to be released from prison on November 27 after having served three years and eight months of his sentence for conviction of perjury before a grand jury in 1948. Mr. Ruark believes that he was getting off light, considering the fact that the statute of limitations had expired for espionage, the classified documents he allegedly provided to Whittaker Chambers, based on the latter's claims, having been transmitted in 1938. Mr. Ruark also includes the potential for treason, which was not chargeable in any event because the Soviet Union was not then at war with the United States, and, of course, was an ally during World War II.
He regards Mr. Hiss as a pathetic figure who had been among the "intellectual snobs", who were "intelligent, vastly read on dull subjects, knowledgeable (I still hate the word), and they worshiped at the shrine of the assorted double-domes that Mr. Roosevelt had drafted into his braintrust from the various self-consciously liberal universities where it was smart to be as far left as you could sway without actually carrying the card.
"The dames were usually dowdy,
either too tall or too dumpy, with mousy hair that needed washing,
and an air of fierce intensity on any subject whatsoever. They had
discussions, never talks, and as the discussion merged with the
booze, it wound up in a gaggle of angry geese.
"But they were our intellectual self-styled aristocracy, and they got literally drunk off their superiority. They were architects of everybody's future for acute intelligence was too good for the masses, poor dears, who had to be steered by the self-anointed few.
"They high-toned themselves right into the eager arms of the Communists, and shortly you will see a product of the elite corps of Superbrains. He will be coming, bent, out of a prison, futureless and an object of scorn—just like any poor bum that got thrown into the drunk tank or stuck up a filling station or embezzled a bank. He paid a high price, indeed, for mental ascendancy over the herd."
As indicated, Mr Ruark despised Mr. Hiss. Meanwhile, Mr. Ruark was down at the bar drinking with his worker buddies. Never mind the sole questionable source of the charges against Mr. Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, having been a confessed former spy for the Communists, or that the documents in question could have as easily been supplied by Harry Dexter White, or that, as Congressman Nixon, then of HUAC, had admitted, the documents supposedly passed to Mr. Chambers were all innocuous, containing information which anyone could have obtained from the newspapers—tending to run counter, therefore, to Mr. Ruark's two columns during the week favoring broadening of the information which prisoners of war could impart to the enemy, to include any form of phony or innocuous information if it would save the prisoner from torture or death. And it should be stressed that his recommended lenience regarded those who actually collaborated with a declared enemy against which the nation was at active war, whereas under the worst case scenario, Mr. Hiss was aiding a nation which was not an enemy or engaged in war against the United States or its allies in 1938. Facts and consistent application of logic don't matter too much down at the bar.
And don't bring up the Venona papers, right-wing stooge, as those confirm nothing beyond a hunch that a reference by the Soviets, in a thinly disguised code, referred to Mr. Hiss as "Ales". Who is to say, even if so, that it was not an intentionally supplied bit of information to the codebreakers in 1945 to suggest that a trusted member of the delegation to Yalta, Mr. Hiss, was a spy for the Soviets, when, in fact, it was only Mr. Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley and a few other nuts?
A letter writer indicates that Davidson College and Queens College had in their charters specific restrictions against employment on their faculties of anyone who was Jewish. He thinks, in light of the present controversy regarding segregation, that readers would want to know about other types of discrimination being practiced in and around "Christian?" Charlotte. He suggests that when it was remembered that when the man whom Christians worshiped was a Jew, it was pathetic that two "so-called" Christian colleges should keep alive such outmoded practices. He says that one person whom he knew, who was highly trained and eminently qualified for consideration, was never remotely considered on at least two occasions when he applied for a job, denied because he was a Jew. "How long, or Lord, how long?"
A letter from the secretary of the Charlotte Alumni of UNC thanks the newspaper for its cooperation in publicizing the October 14 luncheon meeting of the group.
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