The Charlotte News

Friday, October 8, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Denver, the President would deliver this night, via television and radio, a nationwide address, urging that voters maintain the Republican Congress to enable him to complete passage of his program. Republican Congressional candidates, according to Vice-President Nixon, were hoping that the speech would give them "a shot in the arm". The summer White House in Denver was billing the address as "the greatest single effort" of the midterm campaign, with the RNC footing the bill for the address over 158 television stations and 534 radio outlets, to be carried live over an augmented CBS television network and by NBC and the Mutual radio networks at 9:30. Other television and radio networks would play recorded versions at various times later in the night. Vice-President Nixon would also deliver a speech. Assistant White House press secretary Murray Snyder said that in addition to the general public, about 2.1 million party workers and recruits would be watching the speech at about 26,500 "Precinct Workers Day" rallies all over the country.

Samuel Lubell, in the fifth in a series of articles about the midterm elections of November 2, indicates that a curious feature of the election was that the very successes of the Administration appeared to have helped to weaken Republican political prospects. Voters in the five Midwestern states, whom he had interviewed recently, told him that the thing which they liked most about the President's term thus far was that he had gotten the country out of Korea, a nearly universal response from farm and urban voters. But it was not proving to be as strong an asset for Republicans in the midterm elections as might be expected. The sentiment was strongest among those with sons of draft age, but it redounded primarily to the President personally, and only in small part to individual Republican candidates. He relates that two years earlier, a carpenter's wife in Detroit had told him that she and her husband had argued for days before deciding to vote for General Eisenhower, being afraid of another depression under a Republican administration but finally determining, because they had a son in the Air Force and wanted him home, to vote for the General, following his promise to end the war. When Mr. Lubell had interviewed this woman recently, she stated that the President was still a fine man, but that her son had been laid off from his job and her nephew was out of work, that she always voted a straight ticket and that this time, it would be Democratic. It represented the idea that voting would be based on the pocketbook this year. In areas such as Evansville, Ind., where unemployment was fairly high, or in the dairy country of western Wisconsin, he had found as many as half of the voters who had voted Republican in Congressional elections two years earlier, now switching to the Democrats. In other precincts in cities such as Minneapolis and Cincinnati, he had found hardly anyone who intended to change their party vote from that of 1952. He regards the differences as reflecting uneven impact of economic readjustment following the end of the Korean War. While some complained of job layoffs and short-time on the job, others admitted that they had never had it better. There appeared to be no single nationwide wave of outraged protests, but there were two conflicting currents of feeling, one of discontent, favoring Democrats, and one of satisfaction, favoring Republicans. Sometimes, one could see the two currents battling one another on the same city street, as he had found in Detroit.

The Senate Banking Committee would close out a series of hearings this date in its probe of the Federal Housing Administration, but its chairman, Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, said that anyone who felt injured by the testimony thus far would still have a chance to appear before the Committee. He said that would include specifically Representative Prince Preston of Georgia, who, earlier in the week, had accused Senator Capehart "of indulging in character assassination and … in politics on the eve of an election." The Committee had heard testimony the previous day which indicated that Mr. Preston had been an unlisted stockholder in an FHA-insured apartment project in Savannah, and had made nearly $50,000 out of the deal, with Senator Capehart saying he might never have brought the case to light had not Mr. Preston criticized the Committee in a speech in Georgia. Mr. Preston admitted making a profit, but said it was an entirely legitimate transaction. Senator Capehart said that after this date, the Committee would devote most of its remaining time during the ensuing four months to preparation of a report on its findings. The hearings in the scandal had begun the previous April and had included a nationwide tour of six major cities, uncovering a routine practice of overstating the value of apartment construction projects, with the difference in the actual costs and the loan proceeds being pocketed by the builders and investors as profits.

The Agriculture Department this date estimated the year's Government-restricted cotton crop to be 12,511,000 bales of 500 pounds gross weight each, 679,000 bales more than the forecast of the previous month, compared to 16,465,000 bales of the previous year and the 10-year average of 12,448,000 bales. The Department had sought, under a rigid production control program, to limit the crop to about 12 million bales, with the controls having been imposed with the approval of growers in a plebiscite, designed to prevent accumulation of price-depressing surpluses. The Department had reported that the condition of the crop on October 1 was 71 percent of normal, compared with 77 percent at the same time the previous year and 72 percent for the 10-year October 1 average.

In Robbinsville, N.C., it was reported that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation had arrived in Graham County this date to investigate a report made in Gastonia the previous day by North Carolina Secretary of State Thad Eure that both Democrats and Republicans were purchasing absentee ballots within the county for as much as $85 each. Democrats of the county had denied the previous day that there was any such ballot purchasing. State Attorney General Harry McMullan ordered the SBI to enter the case after reading of Mr. Eure's statements, and the local solicitor also promised to check on the matter. State law made it a felony for any person to sell or buy a vote, and also made it incumbent on the State Attorney General, the local solicitor and all prosecuting attorneys of courts inferior to the Superior Court to make diligent inquiry and investigation regarding any violations of state election laws. Graham County Republicans had called a meeting the previous night to discuss the situation, but did not release a statement because of illness of the Republican chairman, intending to draft a statement and release it subsequently. Up to closing time the previous day, the local election board had delivered 342 absentee ballots to civilian voters and 84 to members of the armed forces. According to a local attorney who was a former member of the Legislature, in 1935, an amendment to a 1933 law had exempted Graham County from the 1933 act, and thereby allowed any person who had voted by absentee ballot to reclaim the ballot prior to election day and vote a straight ballot in person at the polls. In 1937, however, Graham and three other counties were placed under the 1933 act, prohibiting that practice.

In and around Roswell, N.M., search crews in boats and on horseback made their way through mud and debris resulting from the most devastating flood in years in the richly irrigated Pecos Valley, seeking nine missing persons. There were also four known dead. The flooding had hit half a dozen communities in one degree or another and impacted untold numbers of farms and ranches. Damage could not yet be estimated, but it would run into the millions of dollars.

In Manila, it was reported that a typhoon had ripped across the northern Philippines this date, leaving an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 persons homeless and flooding vast areas of rice land, according to authorities. The storm had hit with 100 mph winds on the east coast of Luzon, but dropped to 70 mph as it moved inland and finally whirled into the South China Sea.

In Miami, Fla., it was reported that violent turbulence in Hurricane Hazel this date had injured a crewman aboard a Navy storm-hunting plane. There were no details as to his injuries and he was not identified. The hurricane was now packing 115 mph winds around its well-defined eye, having become so turbulent that the Navy pilot had radioed, "No further penetration advised." It was at the time centered about 100 miles due north of the Gulf of Venezuela on the southern coast of the Caribbean Sea, about 1,000 miles southeast of Florida. After penetrating the eye of the hurricane, the Navy plane had emerged and headed for the naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The crew reported that the hurricane had a circular eye which was well-defined, about 25 miles in diameter, with many spiral bands converging toward its center, and maximum winds of 115 mph in its west quadrant, 20 miles from the eye, with higher velocity believed in its squall bands. The southern and western quadrants were the weaker portion of the hurricane and its highest velocities were in the eastern and northern portions. The chief weather forecaster at the Miami Weather Bureau said that Hazel was getting to be a "very severe storm", continuing to move almost due west, with its forward motion having slowed to less than ten mph.

In Raleigh, the United Telephone Co. had promised to improve service to nearby Angier subscribers, who had voted earlier in the week to stop paying their bills until the service was improved. The chairman of the group said that telephone service was usually poor after a rain and if the improved service held up after the next rain, they would resume paying their bills.

Harry Shuford of The News tells of the City Water Department superintendent having this date termed the recent practice of watering down football fields for local high schools a "public service", while residents, observing drought conditions, had called attention to the practice after seeing the Fire Department being used to spray down the fields. The superintendent assured the public that there was plenty of water on hand and that no shortage was in sight for Charlotte. Thus, there was no reason for football games to be played under dusty conditions. He said if there were any change in conditions such that it appeared they could not spare the water, then they would cease the practice.

In Cleveland, a restaurateur glanced into his car the previous day, observing a monkey nonchalantly unwrapping tissue from new knives, forks and spoons, and throwing the silverware about the car, then, observing the owner, jumped toward him, apparently seeking to bite him. At about that time, a patrolman happened to come by, who had experience with monkeys while in the Coast Guard in Brazil and now had one of his own, talked some monkey-talk, and pretty soon had the 22-pound monkey sitting in his arms. The animal protective league was now searching for the owner of the monkey, believed possibly to be "Chico", a notorious West Side spider monkey with a lengthy record for escapades. Book him and throw him in jail. Coddling criminals...

On the editorial page, "Amendment No. 3 Must Be Defeated" urges defeat of the proposed amendment to the State Constitution, approved by the 1953 General Assembly, which would provide that no county could have more than one State Senator. It presents its argument for voting against the amendment, generally, that instead of correcting an inequity, it would write into the State Constitution an inequity whereby citizens of counties such as Mecklenburg would be denied the opportunity to work for equal representation they deserved in the General Assembly, that the Assembly should follow the State Constitution and undertake the constitutionally mandated redistricting after each decennial census to provide proper representation commensurate with the population of each judicial district and county.

"Strengthening Democratic Institutions" indicates that with pressures producing an atmosphere of fear within the country, it was particularly gratifying to see a target institution, the Ford Foundation, stand its ground and refuse to be bullied, in the face of recent criticism in Congress.

One of its fundamental objectives was "to strengthen democratic institutions and processes", and its current president had declared in the Foundation's new annual report that it was worth risking criticism to do so, that philanthropic agencies welcomed criticism, but that criticism based on a "willful misconception of the purposes of a foundation, or which is motivated by partisan or selfish consideration, does a distinct disservice to the public welfare."

It indicates that the Foundation ought be commended for its courageous stand, that it and many other private foundations had made significant contributions to American life in the past and should be encouraged to continue their good works.

"Keep an Eye on the Little Rascals" indicates that Senator McCarthy would never be a dictator for he was too tall at 5 feet, 10 1/2 inches, sometimes wearing elevated shoes to place him closer to the desirable six feet, explaining to someone who had asked him why he wore such shoes, that it was because of "war wounds"—which had actually occurred during a traditional "King Neptune" initiation ceremony aboard a Navy ship for having crossed the equator, during which he fell off a ladder.

It indicates that the point of the story was that dictators were small men in stature, determined to be "big men" in other than physical proportions. Harrison Salisbury, correspondent of the New York Times, recently in Moscow and having returned to the U.S., had written a fascinating account of life in Russia, where a six-man junta presently ruled, comprised of Georgi Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, V. M. Molotov, L. M. Kaganovich, Nikolai Bulganin and A. I. Mikoyan, each of whom stood about 5'4" tall, about the same height as Joseph Stalin. Hitler had been about two inches taller, and Mussolini was 5'2", the same height as Napoleon. Vargas, the late dictator of Brazil, stood only slightly taller than 5 feet.

It thus indicates that one should not worry much about the big demagogues, that the "little rascals" were the ones of whom to be wary.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Minority Parties", indicates that for years earlier, the University of Vermont had indicated that its population was gaining on the cow, with humans still 30,000 behind. It finds that Vermonters were such nice people that it was rooting for them, despite its affection for the products credited to cows and the pastoral scenes which they typically inhabited.

Across the nation, it would not be the first time that cattle had been counted, with humans having always been in the majority since the first cattle census of 1840, that year having been the closest contest, when domestic cattle were 90 percent as numerous as people, with untold thousands of wild steers inhabiting the Western plains in addition to the domestic cattle. It notes that there were plenty of wild people, too. It reminds that women had been denied the vote at the time.

It suggests that humans ought ponder the sobering estimate that people were outnumbered, 2 to 1, by rats in 1954. "The two-legged kind are still a small minority, thank goodness."

Drew Pearson, en route through South America, makes various notes regarding observations gleaned from his visit to Bolivia, tells of the U.N. doing a great job for the Andean Indians of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, having established an Indian farm co-op at the highest lake in the world, Lake Titicaca, where the Indians had been given a million acres of land through the efforts of the U.N., not through Bolivian government land reform. The Indians had also wanted along with it several head of cattle, for which they had been caring for years, but the U.N. representative had finally persuaded them to pay for the cattle on the installment plan, and they had agreed and were current on payments. The man who had donated the land had been a former student at Iowa State University and West Point, later putting the Bolivian army to work at irrigation, well-drilling and health projects instead of politics. But he had been in dispute with the Bolivian National Revolutionary Movement and was presently in exile. Bolivian President Paz, offers Mr. Pearson, needed to obtain some of that energetic young talent back.

Lake Titicaca had some of the largest trout in the world, at 30 to 40 pounds, as the Peruvian and Bolivian governments, which shared the lake, had gotten together in 1939 and stocked it with trout, and for 10 years no one had fished the lake so that they had grown to be the biggest in the world, but also the most voracious, devouring all other fish in the lake.

American missionaries were doing fine work in South America.

One of the great problems facing President Paz was the number of political prisoners in jail, criticized by the U.S. Ambassador, Eddie Sparks, urging the President to release them. The President said that a former President had been hung from a lamppost and he did not want to see that happen to himself. The President, however, was in a nearly impregnable position, thanks to the Indians, who adored him for the land reform program, redistributing the land from the large landholders to the Indians who had formerly worked the holdings under a feudal system of peonage.

About a year earlier, when Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana had visited La Paz, opposition leaders had staged an incipient revolt, hoping to discourage U.S. funding for Bolivia, seizing two leaders of the Paz Cabinet and keeping them in hotel rooms, at which point the Indians came down from the plateau above La Paz carrying rifles, crowded the streets, and made it clear that if anything happened to the President, the white population would be massacred. They had not dispersed until the President came onto his balcony and told them to go home. He now had his own private Indian army, thanks to the fact that nearly all Indians carried rifles. The regular Bolivian army was in the background, used primarily for engineering and health cleanups, whereas it had previously been a political weapon, used to overthrow presidents and seat replacements.

Ambassador Sparks had done an outstanding job in South America, but would be replaced the following week by Ambassador Jerry Drew, as the high altitude of Bolivia necessitated frequent rotation of U.S. envoys.

Mr. Pearson goes on with a few more notes regarding his impressions of Bolivia.

The Congressional Quarterly indicates that according to the Bureau of the Census, nearly 100 million civilians would be old enough to vote by the time of the midterm elections on November 2, but chances were that only about 42 million would actually vote, 42 percent, the percentage of voters who had voted in the 1950 midterm elections. During the 1952 presidential election, more people had voted than at any other time in the country's history, 61.5 million, about 62.7 percent of the eligible civilian voting population, with 57.6 million, about 59 percent of the eligible voters, having voted in the Congressional elections of 1952. The latter figure was typically 2.5 to 4 million votes less than in presidential elections of the same year. But in the midterms, votes dropped off precipitously.

The Quarterly's analysis, based on the census data, indicated that the West was the fastest growing area in the country, with the Western states having shown an increase since 1950 in voting population of 1.279 million, a 10.1 percent gain, with other regional gains being far behind, the South and border states having a 3.2 percent increase, the Midwest, 1.9 percent, and the Northeast, 1.8 percent. California accounted for most of the increase in the West by adding 940,000 new voters, the most of any state in the nation, a 13.3 percent increase. California would likely have the second largest delegation in Congress when redistricting would occur after the 1960 census, second only to New York. California and Pennsylvania each currently had 30 Representatives in Congress, but Pennsylvania had gained only .4 percent in voting population since the 1950 midterm elections. New York had 43 members.

After the redistricting following the 1950 census, California had gained seven seats in the House, while Pennsylvania had lost three and New York had lost two.

Florida was the next gainer in the previous four years, with 406,000 additional voters, while Texas was third, with 235,000, and Michigan, fourth, with 223,000 new voters. Florida had picked up two House seats and Michigan, one, in the last redistricting. The states with the largest loss of population since 1950 had been Iowa and West Virginia, with Iowa losing 54,000 and West Virginia, 53,000.

Many people among those eligible to vote would not be able to cast a ballot because of failure to meet state requirements for citizenship, residency, registration or payment of poll taxes.

The Census Bureau total included the civilian population 21 years or older for all states, plus civilians between 18 and 21 in Georgia, as Georgia allowed voting at age 18.

There were 2.5 million members of the armed forces of voting age, many of whom would cast absentee ballots. There were also about 2.5 million aliens and residents of the District of Columbia and the territories who would be old enough to vote but had never been granted voting rights.

In North Carolina, based on the census data, there would be 64,000 more civilians of voting age by the midterm elections than there had been in 1950, an increase of 2.8 percent. In the 1950 election, 22.8 percent of the voting age population in the state, 2.289 million, had voted for members of Congress, while in 1952, 48.7 percent had voted in the Congressional elections. In 1954, the state would have 2.352 million civilians of voting age.

Doris Fleeson, in Denver, indicates that reporters had applied the phrase "gilt by association" to the effort by Republicans to obtain some of the magic of the President in the hope of bolstering their efforts in the midterm elections. It was particularly evident around Denver, where the President maintained his summer White House.

Vice-President Nixon, House Speaker Joe Martin, as well as the President, had hit the hustings in the area this week, and the heretofore lethargic campaign had begun in earnest, meaning that soon, a determination could be made whether the Democratic trend was temporary or would continue through the election. Time was growing short for any October bombshells, such as indictments of prominent Democrats, which had been confidently expected from the Justice Department, where the Department spokesmen had said that such anticipation had only been a figment of DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell's imagination, with Mr. Mitchell responding that when the courts had thrown out indictments against two Democrats, Attorney General Herbert Brownell had decided to relent.

Some of the Republican leaders, along with Vice-President Nixon, were again seeking to tout the Administration's record on eliminating subversion from the Government as a feather in its cap, but were not sure that the strategy would work. The President and Vice-President were set to make nationwide telecasts this night from a Colorado Republican rally, which would be watched across the country for new cues and fresh inspiration.

In Colorado, Republican Senator Eugene Millikin was not up for re-election and had not been well. But the gubernatorial election was of interest to both parties. Senator Edwin Johnson was running on the Democratic ticket in the gubernatorial race, and having been a former Governor and a good vote-getter, stood a good chance of winning.

A letter from the assistant to the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Charlotte, responds to a letter of October 4 which had registered objection to the church conferences, notably the Methodists and Baptists in North Carolina, which had endorsed integration of the public schools and churches and condemned segregation. He indicates that the mainstream of the Christian Church had stated very clearly that it believed segregation was against the will of God. He quotes from a statement issued the prior August by the Anglican Congress meeting in Minneapolis, indicating "shame and grief over the tensions in race relations caused by discrimination", urging members of the church to teach the full implications of their faith with regard to race, and to welcome people of any race at any service conducted by a priest or layman of any ethnic origin, and to bring them into the congregation and its organizations. He indicates that the Anglican Congress had represented 40,000 Christian members of the Anglican Communion, the Episcopalians of the country. In addition, the World Council of Churches, representing most of the Protestant churches of the world, with an estimated 430 million members, had condemned segregation in even stronger terms, as had the Roman Catholic Church, with about 250 million Christians as members. He urges elimination of the notion that it was a small number of Christians who were trying to support integration, when actually it was virtually the whole of the Christian church which had condemned inequality of opportunity based on skin pigmentation, as being a violation of the purpose of God and his creation.

A letter writer thanks the News for its October 4 editorial, "The Colonel and the Corporal", calling attention to and criticizing the disparate treatment in the cases of Col. Harry Fleming and Cpl. Claude Batchelor by Army courts martial, the colonel having only been discharged, while the corporal received a life sentence, based on essentially the same allegations of misconduct while prisoners of the Communists during the Korean War. He asserts that the corporal should have received the same treatment as the colonel. He urges that the disparate treatment would tend to discourage young men from enlisting in the armed forces, and that the public should protest the treatment, reminding that the world looked on from the sidelines at the game of justice.

A letter writer responds to the same editorial, thanks the newspaper for it, urging that the American people should demand an explanation of such inconsistency and treatment.

A letter writer, the Young Democrats Convention co-chairman, thanks the newspaper for its cooperation in coverage of the convention held September 16-18 in Charlotte, helping to make it a success.

A letter writer from Morganton indicates that one could think of many improvements which should be made at the State hospitals, but she could only speak knowingly of the hospital at Morganton, finding a problem with patients not being able to receive visitors on Sundays, bad for the patients and an inconvenience to those who wished to visit them and had to work the other six days of the week. As a nurse, she had written of the issue to Governor William B. Umstead, who forwarded her letter to the superintendent of mental institutions in Raleigh, who wrote in response that they did not have a full staff of attendants and nurses on duty on Sundays and consequently could not make that a visiting day. She urges volunteering to work as a nurse or attendant on Sundays so that it could become a visiting day.

A letter writer indicates that he had read an article in the newspaper sometime earlier in which it was reported that the superintendent of the Good Samaritan Hospital was appealing to the Charlotte City Council and the County Commission to obtain more money to pay for charity patients. He suggests that the taxes to support such care came from white taxpayers, while about 90 percent of the Welfare Department's funds went to support black citizens in many ways. He thinks it was high time for the white people to make some demands, one being that the tax department of the City and the County collect taxes from black residents, abolish the Welfare Department, and eliminate the upkeep of unwed black women and their children and let them "take care of their own and the white people theirs."

You are just full of human charity, aren't you?

A letter writer expresses interest in what Samuel Lubell had written in his series regarding Midwestern voters, with the dairy and poultry farmers operating at a loss and the corn belt farmers being a little less in dire straits, with some of them still willing therefore to go along with the President, albeit with reservations. He finds that Mr. Lubell's observations were very different from two years earlier when there was a general feeling of happiness and prosperity, combined with an attitude of throwing the rascals out, and that he had been accurate in noting the trend away from the Democrats in 1952. Now, even the press was not so confident of a Republican victory in 1954. He says that there were about four million unemployed persons in the country, according to the official reports, not including short-term layoffs, which he believes would run the total to about six million, about ten percent of the working population. Overtime pay had also become largely eliminated. He finds that the Midwestern and Western problems of farmers occurred also locally and wonders how long it could go on, with unemployed persons living off unemployment stipends. Though Mecklenburg County was no longer agrarian in its orientation, he suggests that its residents should pay heed to the plight of the farmer and the laborer, and help to secure a better economy.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.