The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 7, 1954
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Washington, Owen Lattimore, former State Department consultant on Far Eastern relations, was indicted by a Federal grand jury this date on two counts of perjury stemming from his denials that he had been a "follower of the Communist line" and a "promoter of Communist interests". Two counts of an earlier indictment for perjury against Mr. Lattimore, delivered in December, 1952, had been dismissed as unduly vague by the Federal District Court and then affirmed on appeal, leaving five remaining counts which would be consolidated with the current indictment. One of the previously dismissed counts had alleged that Mr. Lattimore had committed perjury before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee by denying that he had been a Communist sympathizer or promoter of Communist causes, the courts having held that the word "sympathizer" was vague. The new allegation stated that he had "knowingly and intentionally followed the Communist line in public and private statements, in his conversations, and in his widely disseminated writings, both in the United States and other parts of the world." Mr. Lattimore had consistently denied the allegations that he had any sympathy with Communist causes. The allegations had stemmed from investigation of the Institute of Pacific Relations by the subcommittee, previously chaired, prior to 1953, by the late Senator Pat McCarran, and had been forwarded publicly by Senator McCarthy.
The Administration showed signs this date of pressing for a pre-election showdown regarding its politically sensitive plan to feed private power into TVA lines, calling the previous day for review by the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee of that plan, seeking a waiver of a legal provision which would prevent the contract between TVA and the Dixon-Yates combine of Arkansas from taking effect before the following year, without Committee approval of an earlier date. Opponents of the contract raised anew protests of "skulduggery", calling the proposed contract "scandalous". Reports had circulated the previous day that the contract had been approved, with an aide to Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas having received word to that effect. The AEC said only that the contract had not been signed. Assistant White House press secretary Murray Snyder said from Denver that the Administration knew nothing about it. Senator William Langer of North Dakota, chairman of a Senate anti-monopoly subcommittee which had been investigating some aspects of the proposed contract, demanded to know from the AEC by midafternoon whether the contract had been approved at all. That subcommittee was calling more witnesses this date, and had sent a letter to AEC chairman Lewis Strauss, saying that the members deemed it highly improper for the Government to enter into a contract while the investigation remained unresolved. Only two subcommittee members, Senators Langer and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, had been active in the hearings, both opposing the contract. Representative W. Sterling Cole of New York announced that the Atomic Energy Committee which he chaired would open a public investigation of the contract, probably starting the following Wednesday. The President had directed the AEC to negotiate a contract with Dixon-Yates for power which would replace that which TVA supplied to AEC plants in two other locations, with Dixon-Yates to construct a 107 million dollar steam plant at West Memphis, Ark., with the electricity generated by it to serve TVA customers over TVA power lines. Dixon-Yates was comprised of Middle South Utilities, Inc., headed by Edgar Dixon, and the Southern Co., headed by E. A. Yates. Administration spokesmen had said that the plan was the most economical and practical way of supplying future power needs to the area of West Memphis, but opponents had indicated that it would harm and perhaps eventually destroy TVA by being an inroad to turning over public power generated at taxpayer expense to private utility groups, who would pass on higher rates to consumers, and would ultimately cost the Government more than a TVA steam-generating plant. Negotiations on the plan were still occurring between AEC and TVA, with TVA director Harry Curtis having said the previous night in Knoxville, Tenn., that he did not believe it logical for the contract with Dixon-Yates to be approved at present, that the contracts were "so interwoven" that they ought be considered together. The Administration had moved the previous day to bring the issue to a head by informing Mr. Cole's Committee that the AEC was ready to present information concerning the Dixon-Yates contract. Hearings had been scheduled many weeks earlier but had been postponed at the request of the AEC. The contract, originally authorized by executive order of the President, had been authorized anew by Congress during the summer after a failed Senate filibuster of the bill by Democrats and independent Senator Wayne Morse, led by Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee.
IRS commissioner T. Coleman Andrews said this date that the Government had a better than fighting chance to collect additional taxes on "windfall profits" from postwar FHA-insured apartment building projects, which were being investigated by the Senate Banking Committee, before which Mr. Andrews had testified. He did not disclosed exactly what the IRS proposed to do. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, chairman of the Committee, said that a question repeatedly asked by the average person as a result of the Committee's investigation was whether any of the money lost on the loans could be recovered. He called on Mr. Andrews to determine whether any tax laws had been violated. The FHA-insured loans had been based on overvalued appraisals of the construction projects, with the builders then pocketing as profit the difference between the loan amount and actual costs, amounting to several million dollars overall.
Samuel Lubell, in the fourth of a series of reports on the upcoming midterm elections of November 2, examines the Senate races in three states he had visited, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, to obtain a gauge as to the efficacy of the President's efforts to translate his own personal popularity into the midterm election results for Republican candidates. In each of those states, Democratic Senators, Guy Gillette of Iowa, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Paul Douglas of Illinois, were opposed by lesser-known candidates who were using support of the President as their main campaign asset. Based on his many voter interviews in the three states, Mr. Lubell, analyzing how the persons had voted in the 1952 presidential election and how they said they would vote in 1956, versus how they had voted in Senate races previously in their states, had found two conclusions: that the appeal to support the President by voting Republican gained more favor in the cities and towns than among farmers; and that within the cities, the same appeal was accepted most strongly by families doing well economically or with sons of military age, reflecting their gratitude to the President for ending the Korean War, but was greeted without enthusiasm in areas of job layoffs and cuts in overtime pay. A third conclusion was that the appeal was more effective against a Democratic candidate whose legislative position was unclear to the public than against one who had been independent on major issues. In Iowa, for example, Mr. Lubell had found many more persons than in Minnesota or Illinois who said that they had no strong feelings one way or the other about their Senator, with some expressing the feeling that Senator Gillette had been in office too long while others favored him because he had experience, while the most commonly expressed attitude was that there was nothing much they either liked or disliked about him. He also found in Iowa the largest number of persons who said that they would vote Republican to support the President, with one Des Moines woman saying that she had backed Senator Gillette in 1948 but was switching to the Republican candidate because the President had kept the country out of war and she was for what he wanted, a continuing Republican Congress. Her neighbor was also turning against Senator Gillette because "the white-collar class has taken a beating since 1944 and Eisenhower's trying to do something about it." Other Iowans had told Mr. Lubell that they had favored Senator Gillette in the past because President Roosevelt had tried to purge him in 1938 for not being supportive of New Deal legislation, but that they now wanted a "real Republican".
In Gastonia, N.C., North Carolina Secretary of State Thad Eure, attending an 11th Congressional District rally, had charged that absentee ballots were selling for as high as $85 each in the sheriff's race in Graham County, saying that the situation was "a disgrace to the state", that scores of persons had procured the absentee ballots and were selling them. He said that a local absentee ballot law which applied only to Graham County, in the far western part of the state, was being abused in wholesale manner. Under the ordinance, anyone who would be out of the county or otherwise unable to vote on election day could procure an absentee ballot from the local board of elections, and, according to Mr. Eure, more than 100 such absentee ballots had been delivered to the board the first day it met to receive absentees. An administrative aide to Senator-nominate Kerr Scott said that on a visit to Graham County, he had found absentee ballots being sold on the street corner for $75 per ballot. The aide said that the winning candidate would be the one who could get as many as 100 absentee ballots. Mr. Eure said that he had never seen anything like it and that he had warned in Robbinsville that someone was going to be indicted, that the names of Senators and Congressmen appeared on the ballot, but they had told Mr. Eure that they did not believe that any grand jury would indict regarding the practice and that any petit jury would be so split that it would not be able to return a conviction. He said that Graham County Democrats had raised $4,000 for the campaign, but were wondering whether it was worthwhile to spend it, given the absentee ballot situation. The State Board of Elections said that official action would be necessary before it could investigate the allegations.
Near Willows, Calif., the bodies of 13 men killed in a crash of an Air Force B-50 weather reconnaissance plane had been recovered, according to the local sheriff this date. Three members of the crew had parachuted to safety just before the plane had crashed the previous night, while a fourth member was thrown clear of the wreckage. The plane had been on a routine mission from Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, Tex., before hitting the ground in a huge ball of fire, visible for miles. The Air Force gave no hint as to the cause of the crash.
In Alexandria, La., five men had died in a helicopter crash about five miles west of the base, occurring the previous night during rainstorms and strong winds in the area.
Near York, S.C., a 36-year old Cramerton resident had killed himself with a shotgun in a barn as law enforcement officers moved in to arrest him for the alleged rape of his nine-year old niece in Gaston County, N.C., according to the police chief. The textile worker had said previously that he would never be taken alive. The chief said that his officers had not fired a shot at the man and he had not fired at the officers, that when the officers reached the barn, he was already dead. The department had received a tip that he was in the woods near the highway intersection and it was not until daylight that officers could see sufficiently to determine that he was in the barn. He had also been wanted for the theft of two cars in Gaston County, having taken his sister's car at gunpoint and fled in the vehicle.
In Columbus, O., a firm named the Columbus Buggy Parts Co. had gone out of the business of buggy parts many years earlier and now handled only auto parts, according to the operator of the business, which still, nevertheless, received dozens of orders each year for parts for buggies. Change your name.
In Miami, the Weather Bureau reported that Hurricane Hazel, small but violent, had brushed by the Dutch West Indies islands off the coast of Venezuela this date and was headed westward in the Caribbean, continuing its forward movement at about 19 mph, expected to increase slightly in intensity and size during the ensuing few hours, packing winds of 100 mph over a small area near its center with gales extending outward 100 to 150 miles to the north and east. Northwest storm warnings were displayed in the Dutch islands of Bonaire, Curacao and Aruba. No land areas lay in the immediate path of the storm, which remained about 1,000 miles southeast of Florida. The chief storm forecaster in Miami said that it would take another 24 hours before forecasters could discern much about where the hurricane was headed. He said that it probably would continue to move to the west northwest until it reached the longitude of Jamaica and eastern Cuba, where it might then curve to the north.
The News promises that the "Buz Sawyer" comic strip in the newspaper could substitute for the Weather Bureau during the onset of the "Howlin' Hazel" hurricane, as Roy Crane, creator of the comic strip, was keeping it current with the times, with the hurricane having been depicted in the strip as ripping along, about 380 miles east of Key West the previous day, heading west northwest, as Buz phoned a fellow military officer to request information as to its location, preparing to penetrate the hurricane to its eye in military aircraft. In this date's strip, Buz would begin his flight into the storm, to inspect at closer range the mystery "VX-1" object spotted in the eye, possibly a non-U.S. submarine, a porpoise or a mermaid, maybe a vixen. Meanwhile, the Associated Press had reported that Navy planes had penetrated Hurricane Hazel, as it continued its journey northward.
Batten down the hatches, eastern
North Carolina, as you have about eight days until it hits. Take it
from us. We're on the scene
On the editorial page, "Across the Channel—Now the Atlantic?" indicates that it had been a fruitful season for diplomats, with oil flowing again in Iran after months of negotiation by American, British and Iranian officials, with Trieste finally having been resolved, given to Italy under an arrangement agreeable to Yugoslavia, with a Suez agreement having also been negotiated, and now the nine-power conference in London having determined the plan under which West Germany could be rearmed and join NATO with full sovereignty, while satisfying its old nemesis, France, as to oversight of the rearmament to assure it did not get out of control.
Under the latter agreement, West Germany would have a 500,000-man army, a tactical air force of 80,000 men and a small coastal navy. NATO supreme commander General Alfred Gruenther would have new powers to deploy and integrate troops under his command, in peace or in war, and occupation controls over West Germany would be immediately relaxed, with restoration of West German sovereignty soon.
Britain had been the hero of the conference for providing its pledge to continue to maintain on the mainland of the Continent its four divisions and tactical air force, thereby having surrendered some of its sovereignty to General Gruenther and the continental powers of the Brussels Pact, which included Britain, France and the Benelux countries, to which would be added Italy and West Germany. The various parliaments involved in the agreement would now have to ratify it, the prospects for which appeared positive.
Former President Truman, Adlai Stevenson, former Secretary of State and now-Governor James Byrnes of South Carolina, former U.S. High Commissioner to West Germany John J. McCloy, former Secretary of State George Marshall, and almost 150 other men of stature had jointly declared that the military forces of the U.S. and Canada should be integrated with those of the European countries through NATO, and that NATO should become more than a military alliance, calling for creation of an advisory Atlantic Assembly, representative of the legislatures of the member nations, to establish a program of tariff reductions and elimination of trade restrictions. They supported making NATO a central agency to coordinate the political, trade and defense policies of the member nations, to number 15 with the addition of West Germany.
It concludes that the latter was the goal of the free nations if they were to achieve the unity which was, as the President had declared, their "only hope of survival." It suggests that it did not detract from the length of the step taken at London to remind of the urgency of that goal.
"No Time for Half-Cocked Action" indicates that the City School Board had acted properly and with appropriate tact when it had pushed aside any consideration of immediate integration of Charlotte's public schools, after a petition by the NAACP signed by 500 black parents had asked that segregation be ended at once. The petition contended that since the decision of May 17 in Brown v. Board of Education, the schools were operating in violation of the 14th Amendment by remaining segregated, a condition which should be corrected. The Board, in response, had been polite but firm, expressing appreciation for the offer of assistance by the NAACP local chapter while emphasizing that any hearing or action on segregation would, at present, be premature, as the local Board was dependent on the advice of the State Board of Education, which had delayed any implementation of Brown until the Supreme Court would have an opportunity to deliver its implementing decision, expected in the spring.
The editorial opines that the Board was on firm ground, as local officials were powerless to act, that a debate on segregation at the present time would serve no purpose, especially with feeling running high in many circles, likely to produce only harmful expressions of opinion. It urges patience until the implementing decision could occur.
"Parking: A Dual Responsibility" tells of Charlotte's parking model possibly to be eased, as the City Zoning Board had given its full support to a proposal for an ordinance to make developers provide off-street parking space, the Board emphasizing that such an amendment to the Zoning Code would be in the public interest.
It agrees, indicating that a large part of the responsibility for Charlotte's parking problem was with the businessmen and property owners, as they had the most to gain or lose from accommodating or not their customers in providing a place to park. But it also asserts that the City also had a responsibility to provide a certain amount of off-street parking at a reasonable price and not wasteful of land capable of higher economic use. It concludes that it would take private and public efforts to solve the problem.
"It Pays To Hire the Handicapped" indicates that some of the handicapped had been veterans of the world wars or Korea, that some had been afflicted by disease, some had been skilled in another occupation which they could no longer follow because of their handicap, while others were congenitally afflicted, but that all were their neighbors. Only an employer could give them the opportunity most of them needed to use the talents they had developed in spite of their handicap.
An employer could make a taxpayer out of a person otherwise burdensome to the community. At the end of fiscal year 1952, nearly 65,000 men and women had been rehabilitated to employment by vocational rehabilitation programs, with about 32,000 of those having been dependent on their families while another 11,000 had been able to go off the relief rolls, and all of them, it was forecast, would, in four years of work, pay back in taxes to the Federal Government a total of 22 million dollars, the amount which the Government had put into the rehabilitation program in 1952. In addition, the handicapped worker frequently inspired workers around them by their courage and skill and thus helped to boost morale and efficiency in the workplace. There also would be inner satisfaction from helping a man or woman regain their individual independence to make their own way.
It concludes, therefore, that it paid to hire the handicapped, to the employer, the employee and to the Government.
A piece from the Greenville (S.C.) Piedmont, titled "Political Ordeal", indicates that a reader had passed along a story regarding an experience of a certain candidate for public office in Georgia, as it had been related in the Wiregrass Farmer & Stockman, that the candidate for county commissioner had listed his election expenses as being the loss 1,349 hours of sleep, two front teeth and some hair in a personal altercation with an opponent, donation of one beef, four shoats and five sheep to a county barbecue, donation also of two pairs of suspenders, four calico dresses, five dollars in cash and 13 baby rattlesnakes, the kindling of 14 kitchen fires, putting up of four stoves, walking 4,078 miles, shaking the hands of 9,689 people, telling of 11,568 lies, attending 16 revival meetings and having been baptized four times by immersion and twice by some other method, having made love to nine grass widows, hugging nine old maids, and being bitten by dogs 37 times, only to be defeated.
It indicates that, no doubt, the two or three candidates for the South Carolina General Assembly, who had gone through the campaign, contested before their county executive committees a handful of votes which had made the difference in the election, with a final appeal made to the state executive committee, nevertheless losing, would understand how the Georgia politician had felt.
Drew Pearson, still in La Paz, Bolivia, indicates that Henry Holland, Assistant Secretary of State, had stood on the balcony of the Bolivian Presidential palace facing a great crowd of people in the square below, with the President's reception room ceiling behind him, pock-marked with the scars of machine-gun fire, the room containing a marble-topped table cracked by a bullet, reminders of the precarious life led by the Presidents of Bolivia. Beside Mr. Holland had stood President Paz, who had been in office longer than any other recent President and who had traveled with Mr. Holland past cheering crowds of Indians over 300 miles of new Bolivian highway, that ovation demonstrating to Mr. Holland that President Paz was the hero of Bolivia's Indians, who comprised 90 percent of Bolivia's population. Mr. Holland was called upon to make a speech, and speaking in perfect Spanish, indicated that he was happy to be present with President Paz and the people, whom he called "compañeros". From that point forward, Mr. Holland was the friend to the Indians, the President and to the National Revolutionary Movement, as he had identified himself with the new Bolivian land reform program undertaken by the Government, the seizure and nationalization of the tin mines, and the other drastic measures which were part of the Movement. When Mr. Holland said he now considered himself a part of the Movement Party, though intended as a jest, Bolivian exiles and opponents of President Paz had stormed with rage, and many Americans had taken notice, as supporters of the President, who made up the great majority of the people, were delighted. The principal newspaper in La Paz had commented the following day that Mr. Holland's visit had been the most successful since that of Henry Wallace, probably prompting great notice by conservative Republicans in the U.S. Former Vice-President Wallace had endeared himself to Bolivians, not only by playing three sets of tennis on the same day he arrived in the two-mile altitude of La Paz, but also by demanding that the tin mines increase their wages to miners, conditioning U.S. continued purchase of tin on that increase.
Mr. Holland's statements had not been by accident and represented the most important policy of the U.S. toward a South American country in some time, backing popular political parties whose reforms, even though radical, might prevent the rise of Communism. Demonstrating that Mr. Holland was not alone, Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa had stated, when speaking on the new American-built Andean highway, that he had come to Bolivia with some misgivings but after seeing the people and the support given to President Paz, had come to realize that they were fighting for principles, that he had never seen more effort on behalf of a country than their own for Bolivia, offering any service he could provide to them. The decision by the Administration to support the Movement had been made a year earlier by the President's brother, Milton Eisenhower, visiting La Paz during the summer of 1953, deciding that President Paz was the best bet Bolivia had to combat Communism, that the land reforms he had instituted had been overdue and that the U.S. should not interfere with the nationalization of the tin mines. He understood that Bolivian tin would become the major source of that necessary commodity should Southeast Asia become Communist.
The new policy was not unlike that which had transpired in the Twenties when Mexico had seized its large estates and redistributed them among the peasants, the State Department having first objected, with Secretary of State Frank Kellogg during the Coolidge Administration having written a series of notes which caused Latin American relations to reach a nadir, at which point President Coolidge had sent Dwight Morrow, a millionaire partner of J. P. Morgan, as Ambassador to Mexico, surprising the world by endorsing the Mexican land reforms, setting a new benchmark for Mexican-American friendship.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that the President considered the London agreement regarding West German rearmament "a great triumph", for which the President could claim a large share of the credit as the architect of what was becoming known within the Administration as "the partnership policy". That policy had been outlined by the President to Secretary of State Dulles before the latter had departed for London, the President indicating that he had been doing a lot of thinking about the country's relations with its allies after the failure of France to ratify the European Defense Community treaty, and had concluded that the time had passed when the U.S. could set forth policy for the whole Western Alliance and expect the allies automatically to fall in line, instead favoring a partnership within the alliance whereby the U.S. would be the most powerful partner but still a partner. Those decisions which principally concerned Europe had to be made in Europe and not in Washington.
The Alsops consider it more of an attitude than a policy, an attitude which Secretary Dulles had taken with him to London, reflected in the fact that there were British, French and German drafts of the proposed agreement on rearming Germany, but no U.S. draft. Secretary Dulles, nevertheless, had clear ideas about what he had wanted, one thing being a British offer to maintain forces on the Continent during the life of the proposed agreement, not badgering the British to extend that offer but holding frank discussions with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, in which he calmly described the probable reaction in the U.S. to failure to reach agreement at the London conference. Mr. Eden then initiated a British Cabinet meeting on the evening of September 28, at which Prime Minister Churchill presided, with the Cabinet discussing for the first time seriously since NATO had been formed the possibility of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe, with the result the next day, following a brief speech by Secretary Dulles, that Mr. Eden had spoken at the conference, making the offer to keep four divisions in Europe indefinitely, an enormous British concession to France.
Nevertheless, French Premier Pierre Mendes-France suddenly increased his demands as the conference was about to end, and Mr. Eden, for the first time in his career as a diplomat, thoroughly lost his temper, while Secretary Dulles maintained his. Thanks to some generous concessions by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Mr. Dulles was able to succeed in effecting compromise proposals which had saved the day.
The Alsops posit that it might be that the President had spoken too soon by calling the conference a "great triumph", as the enemies of Premier Mendes-France had suspected, even if unjustifiably, that the Premier had always wanted to prevent a real settlement with West Germany and would use the issue of the industrial Saar region to scuttle the London agreement. There remained also the necessity for ratification of the new agreement by the French, German and other parliaments, which was by no means a certainty. The Soviet reaction also might be violent.
Doris Fleeson, in Denver, indicates that Democrats of the mountain states had said that they would largely base their campaigns on the great regional issue of water. Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah had long been in a running battle with California for access to water from the Pacific slope. California, under the far-sighted leadership of former Governor Earl Warren, had reached out to ensure its own water supply.
The battle for water, already complex, had been complicated further by the drought affecting the entire area. For example, Denver Water Board officials—who, presumably, were not water-boarding anyone—had warned the previous weekend that water restrictions were still essential and that the drought conditions might become even worse the following year.
The Democratic argument was that Republicans in the area had not been sufficiently alert to the problem, were fatally handicapped by the conservative Eisenhower Administration placing budget-balancing ahead of the nation's development, and by the powerful California influence within the Administration, that Southern Democrats in Congress had and would cooperate with their mountain state Democratic colleagues, whereas Eastern Republicans were determined to slow down the development of the West. They were stressing the reply to Vice-President Nixon, who was going to campaign in Colorado during the current week, with an exchange between the Vice-President and former Congressman and aide to President Truman, John Carroll, the Democratic Senate nominee in Colorado, being illustrative. Mr. Nixon had said that a Democratic Congress would mean "ADA-left-wing" dominance, of which Mr. Carroll would be an exponent, to which Mr. Carroll had replied that the Vice-President did not want a strong Colorado Senator in Washington and knew he would fight on water, the great issue between Colorado and California, of which Mr. Nixon was a former representative, thus supported his opponent, who would be a freshman and easy to handle in Washington.
Other principal Democratic Senate candidates in the area were also New Dealers, including Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, who was being challenged by Governor Ed Mechem, and former Senator Joe O'Mahoney of Wyoming, who was being contested by Representative William Henry Harrison for the seat left by the death of Senator Lester Hunt the prior June. All of the Democratic candidates in the area had been anticipating an attack from the Vice-President, whom they referred to as "McCarthy in a white shirt". Their response to the "back Ike" appeal would be to reply on local issues and appeal for regional solidarity to protect them from what they referred to as the California-Eastern leadership of the Republican Party.
A letter from the region's CIO representative indicates that equality was the basis for patriotism and that no citizen should love the state which oppressed him, that the proposed amendment to the State Constitution, limiting each county to not more than one State Senator regardless of population, was "an outright mockery of democracy." He indicates that state revenues and expenditures showed extreme imbalance in large counties which contributed more to the state in taxes than they received, while smaller counties were just the reverse. He believes that the proposed amendment would weaken democracy in the state by giving the minority control of State Government.
A letter writer from Maiden indicates that Senator Arthur Watkins, chairman of the six-Senator select committee which had unanimously recommended censure of Senator McCarthy on three grounds, ought be proud of its report, as "Moscow sure had a day of rejoicing when they read the committee recommendation to censor [sic] that Great American and patriot who has devoted his life and all of his means to fight crooks, communism, pinks, Reds, subversives, fellow travelers and what have you…" He says that he was a Republican and a member of the Catawba County executive committee, and still believed that the Republican Party ought carry out its campaign pledge of 1952 to rid the Government of "Communists, crooks, Reds, pinks, fellow travelers or anyone who opposes our Republic, our Constitution, or the flag for which it stands." He hopes that God would give them more men and grant them more power with the fortitude and courage of Senator McCarthy.
Amen. Hail His Eminence! He cannot be censored.
A letter from former Mayor and present City Council member, Herbert Baxter, indicates that because of his many years in public life at City Hall, he felt an urge to address the press during Newspaper Week, as it was the medium which stimulated public thought and protected the American way of life by promoting continually the "four freedoms", congratulating the newspaper for helping to build a better city by printing newspapers in a readable and factual manner. He says that the city was proud of its two newspapers, the News and the Observer, and the challenging record which they had set in presenting facts on all issues so that the citizens could form their own opinions. Those who worked at City Hall realized that their plans and projects could never have been completed without the help of the press. Such projects as better schools, more water and wider streets had been supported by the civic-minded newspapers in the community, and he thanks the newspapers for their help in the past, their consideration of the present, and their guidance for future plans for Charlotte.
A letter from City and County health officer M. B. Bethel seeks to refute the arguments put forth by the anti-fluoridation advocates, indicates that if fluoridation were ever shown to be truly harmful to the human body, despite its prevention of dental caries, it would be withdrawn from the city's water supply, but that stooping to name-calling, innuendo, unenlightened personal opinion and vilification was far more baffling than illuminating. He indicates that the American people, North Carolinians and residents of the county in particular, believed that those who were qualified to speak on the matter should be heard, and they believed that fluoridation was beneficial without doubt. He expresses appreciation especially to the newspaper for its having informed readers of the matter and providing support for continued fluoridation.
A letter from a professor and chairman of the department of pedodontics at UNC in Chapel Hill indicates that he had just received a copy of the editorial on fluoridation which had appeared on September 20 and congratulates the newspaper on it for its benefit to the children of the state, indicates that if the foes of fluoridation really knew the great problems which existed in the mouths of children and the inability to combat dental caries in any other way as effectively as with fluoridation, they would not continue their fight. He expresses complete support for fluoridation of communal water supplies.
Sure, you're a dentist and a professor of dentistry, but what about the ordinary people who obviously know more about the whole matter than you drill-pushers who only wish to inflict pain on the poor, unsuspecting children? It's a Commie plot and you know it. Censor the children's mouths if they have problems, and leave Senator McCarthy alone to do his patriotic work.
Framed Edition
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