The Charlotte News
Wednesday, November 10, 1954
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President said this date at his press conference that Russia appeared to be showing a somewhat more conciliatory attitude in the latest incident involving the shooting down of a plane over Japan, a few miles from the Kurile Islands, Soviet territory. He said that the plane, on a photographic mission, had a right to be where it was on Sunday when it had been shot down by two Soviet planes. He also said that such things were never clear-cut and that this incident was also clouded to an extent, that he believed the Russians had shown a different attitude toward the U.S. protests regarding the incident from that demonstrated in the past, but that he did not know what might come of it. Most of the press conference had regarded the incident. He said that the area in which it had occurred was in the northernmost small islands off Hokkaido, Japanese territory, but that some of those small islands were also claimed by the Russians, claims which had never been recognized by the U.S. or Japan. In response to a question on whether fighter plane escorts would be advisable in the future, he said that if planes were to be flown in a risky area, they should not become sitting ducks. He refused to cast any judgment on Ambassador Charles Bohlen for attending an anniversary party in Moscow, shortly after becoming aware of the shooting down of the plane, before all of the details had been known about it. Several members of Congress had criticized the Ambassador for doing so. The President said it was a snap judgment which had to be made in the moment. He also said that there was no truth in reports that Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese Nationalist forces on Formosa had been ordered by the U.S. not to attack the Communist-held Chinese mainland, that the U.S. sought to deal with its partners as such and make agreements with them instead of giving them orders.
The President asked the Senate this date to ratify the SEATO treaty, describing it as "an important link" in the free world defense against Communist aggression, saying in a special message that it was designed to promote security and peace in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific by deterring Communist and other aggression in that area. The pact had been signed in Manila on September 8 by the U.S., Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Britain. The White House said that the President was not anticipating action on the pact prior to the beginning of the 84th Congress. He wanted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to study the treaty in the interim so that there could be an early vote on it at the beginning of 1955.
The joint Atomic Energy Committee this date defeated a Democratic attempt to block immediate signing of the Dixon-Yates contract with the Atomic Energy Commission to enable the private utility combine to provide electricity via TVA lines to West Memphis, Ark., to offset power provided by TVA to the nuclear plants at Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Committee acted shortly after the President had said at his press conference that he still favored the controversial proposal. The Committee voted 10 to 8, strictly along party lines, to table a resolution put forward by Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, which would have called on the AEC not to sign the contract, to enable the AEC more time to study the matter after the convening of the 84th Congress in January, which would be under the control of the Democrats. Immediately after the vote, the Committee resumed its hearings on the matter. Republican Representative Sterling Cole of New York, chairman of the Committee, said that in all probability the vote was predictive of another vote yet to come on the question of waiver of a 30-day period of study, required by law prior to signing of the contract. Representative Chet Holifield of California, a leading opponent of the proposal, said that he did not believe the vote was in effect a vote on the question of the waiver.
Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, who had chaired the select committee of six Senators who had unanimously recommended censure of Senator McCarthy, told the Senate this date that the committee had sought to act with "whatever wisdom, calmness, fairness, courage and devotion" they could muster. He said that they would not act, however, as a prosecutor of the case, that they were not there to argue that their interpretations had to be followed. Senator McCarthy, predicting that he would be censured, had released a prepared speech the previous night which he said he intended to deliver in the Senate, probably this date, in which he called the committee the "unwitting handmaiden" of the Communist Party, that he was "the symbol of resistance to subversion" and that the nation's fate was in some respects tied to his own. The grounds recommended by the committee for censure were that Senator McCarthy had acted contemptuously toward a Senate Elections subcommittee which had investigated him in late 1952, and had repeatedly abused Brig. General Ralph Zwicker the prior February when he had appeared as a witness before Senator McCarthy's Investigations subcommittee, regarding questioning why an Army Reserve dentist, under the command of General Zwicker, had been promoted from captain to major and thereafter honorably discharged from the Army, following his having taken the Fifth Amendment before Senator McCarthy's subcommittee regarding questioning as to his past associations with subversive organizations. The committee also jad recommended censure for his vituperative remarks regarding a fellow Senator, Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey. Senator Watkins said that the committee did not mean to insinuate that the Senate could not consider any or all of the charges on which the committee had made no recommendations for censure, having made findings of facts thereon. Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Wayne Morse of Oregon had originally submitted about 40 specific charges against Senator McCarthy in their bills of particulars, following the original resolution introduced by Senator Flanders. The select committee had grouped the charges into five categories and recommended censure on two of those categories.
As pictured on the front page, the
Iwo Jima Memorial
In Greenville, S.C., the Air Force announced plans this date for the largest combined Air Force and Army training operations in the Caribbean area, Operation Shockwave, set to begin on December 1 in Puerto Rico and continuing for two weeks. The operation was designed to provide air movement training for units of the Air Force and the Army. More than 2,500 men would be airlifted from Remy Air Force Base in northeastern Puerto Rico to Roosevelt Road Naval Air Station, diagonally across the island.
In Nara, Japan, a 45-year old professor, accused by coeds of mixing whiskey and wooing as part of the Nara College curriculum, had announced his resignation from the faculty. Fifty female students had claimed that he had offered to improve their grades if they cooperated with his style of education, some claiming that he had taught them behind locked classroom doors to drink whiskey and make love, which the professor described as ridiculous. The students held a rally at which they called for his expulsion, and the faculty agreed, after which the professor said that he could "not be bothered with these trivialities" and therefore resigned to devote his time to study.
In Binghamton, N.Y., police were hunting for a burglar who had gotten away with $110 in cash, taken from the freezer compartment of an ice cream truck, where the driver had placed it for safekeeping.
In Raleigh, new Governor Luther Hodges was sworn in the previous afternoon, succeeding Governor William B. Umstead, who had died of congestive heart failure on Sunday at age 56. The new Governor was expected to spend most of his first day in office becoming familiar with office routine, and was scheduled to hold his first press conference during the afternoon, expected to issue a statement regarding plans for his Administration.
Harry Shuford of The News, in
the first of a series of four articles on education in Charlotte
public schools, reports his first-hand observations from the
classroom, starting with how a child learned to read in the first
grade, utilizing a book with pictures associating words, for example,
depicting a boy, under which was written "Jack", such that
when the children had it firmly in their minds that Jack was the boy
depicted, they then learned other things about him from additional
pictures and associated words, for instance "run". (His
name was "Jerry", not Jack, and his companion was Alice.
Get it right. You apparently cannot read.) He indicates that, strange
as it seemed, words such as "the" and "what" were
often the toughest ones for first-graders to understand initially
because they could not be conveyed through pictures, and yet because
they were repeated so often, soon became the easiest. New words were
gradually introduced in subsequent stories, along with those they had
already learned. By the second grade, the pictures were no longer
needed to suggest the meanings of every new word, as children were
able to interpolate the meanings of words not associated with
pictures, such as "high", able to glean from the context of
the word what it meant
On the editorial page, "Howard W. Odum and Dixie's Destiny" laments the death on Monday of the UNC professor, indicates that his words would echo long in the conscience of the South and the nation, as he had been one of the country's foremost sociologists. "He dared to snap the cords of a sentimental-romantic straitjacket that had inhibited social research in Dixie for generations."
As early as 1911, he had examined critically all of the historical, economic, scientific and social forces which shaped the region's past and present. When he came to the University in 1920, he had already produced a notable monograph on the social and mental traits of blacks, and in Chapel Hill, had founded the Institute for Research in Social Science, and later had begun work on the series of studies which culminated in Southern Regions of the United States, published in 1936.
It indicates that no other individual, with the possible exception of former UNC president and former Senator Frank Porter Graham, had done more to elevate UNC to its high position in the country's academic world.
Many North Carolinians had scoffed at Dr. Odum's pioneering efforts in the field of socio-economics at UNC, some resenting it when he showed how blacks, cotton mill workers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers, the wasted resources and the region's psychological patterns had affected Southern progress. But those who derided the research learned eventually to appreciate the achievements wrought by the professor and to take pride in the University's new reputation, largely the result of Dr. Odum's research. His awareness of Southern problems had been matched by his ability to express his knowledge of those problems clearly, forcefully and with honesty, pulling no punches about the shortcomings of the South, while providing a certain warmth of understanding.
It quotes from Southern Regions that the South would have more than itself to thank when it succeeded, and, unfortunately more than itself to blame when it failed, that it reflected a "peculiar fortune in social heritage" often likened to Germany, in the sense that when facing a crisis, it had a tendency to take the wrong turn, that the main task ahead was not a catalog of its handicaps or to look back, but rather to turn "regional potential into regional reality and national power."
It concludes: "The life's work of Dr. Odum was an emphatic affirmation of the South's ability to overcome its handicaps and find its rightful place in the sun."
As we have indicated previously, Dr. Odum had been an early adviser sought out by W. J. Cash in 1929 and onward, at the beginning of his effort to provide a look at the cultural mind of the South through time, from its origins to the present when he wrote, the two having exchanged a number of letters, with Dr. Odum providing his input as to how to approach the task which Cash had outlined to him he intended for the book, eventually published in 1941 after a decade in preparation.
"Fly-Spies Take Necessary Risks" indicates that during the previous three and a half years, 46 U.S. airmen had died in encounters with Soviet planes, such as the one which had occurred on Monday off the Japanese coast, resulting in one death from the 11-man crew, and it questions why the U.S. continued to dispatch planes to the dangerous fringes of the Iron Curtain and what action ought be taken by the U.S. when its planes were shot down. In the North Pacific area, where much of the country's heavy weather originated, weather missions were flown close to Soviet territory, with espionage being a major collateral objective of many of the flights. Aerial cameras could pierce deep into enemy territory from high altitudes, testing radioactivity in the upper atmosphere, determining whether atomic explosions had taken place. Some planes carried submarine detection devices while others fixed the locations of Communist radar or monitored Communist radio broadcasts. Where geography permitted, as in Central Europe, Russian airmen flew similar missions near Western territory. Both Russian and American airmen occasionally flew over hostile territory, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally.
It indicates that aerial espionage was a part of the world of the present and would be for a long time to come, that planes would get shot down and airmen inevitably killed. The missions were necessarily part of a good defense system. It suggests that the U.S. would not be inclined to pay reparations to Russia when one of its planes was shot down a few miles from the U.S. coast and thus the U.S. should not become excited over the Russians' reluctance to pay damages for shooting down U.S. bombers within sight of the Russian mainland. But U.S. bomber crews, it posits, should be quick to respond when attacked, or carry adequate fighter plane coverage.
"Foundation Probe" indicates that foundation money supported studies of such subjects as enzyme mechanisms in biosynthesis, new evaluation of Starling's Law, electrolyte excretion by kidney units, decreased peripheral resistance, autonomic blocking agents, and deoxyribonuclease. They also obtained money to study "segregation, integration, propagation, automation, fluoridation and constipation". (All they were saying was "give peace a chance".) Yet nothing was listed in the volumes which the editors had seen for developing the art of growing hair on the head.
"No, Mother, You Buy Sonny's P.J.'s" indicates that textile unions and management had agreed that consumers should subsidize textile production. Emil Rieve, head of the Textile Workers Union of America, suggested that the Federal Government should distribute textiles to needy nations overseas as part of the foreign aid program, and distribute clothing to needy Americans in the same manner as surplus food.
Management had chosen a more subtle
approach, with the Men's Pajama Institute trying to get the Air Force
to issue pajamas
It suggests that the most successful tack which the textile union and management could take to promote sales would be to get Christian Dior to inaugurate the Long Look, which now graced the face of taxpayers.
"Question" asks: "Is there a councilman around who plans to do something about smoke abatement now, instead of saying something about it next spring before the election?"
A piece from the Rocky Mount (N.C.) Evening Telegram, titled "Leave It to the Gypsies", indicates that the gypsies alone appeared to have eluded and defeated the otherwise all-embracing tyranny of the Soviet Union, that the word from Russia was that the gypsies, in open defiance of numerous edicts from Moscow, had freely marched from one end of the country to the other, causing it to conclude that the Communists, despite their skill and perverted science, had been unable to control the wild, free gypsy spirit.
From the Ukraine to the distant reaches of Asia, the gypsies had been reported in camps, on the move, living off the land, telling fortunes and entertaining as usual with their wild, wonderful music. That they had been able to remain free in Russia raised questions about what had occurred to America's gypsies. For it had not been too many years since it had been fairly common to see a tribe of gypsies camped along the road in a little patch of woods.
Prosperous times in the country appeared to have done more to domesticate the gypsy than tyranny ever could. Gypsies were still around, traveling with carnivals or holding forth in fortune-telling stands, but they had become capitalistic and civilized, now drove big cars and lived in trailers, hotels or their own homes. Mothers no longer warned their children about the danger of being kidnaped by gypsies and the American roads had not known of a gypsy campfire for years. It concludes that in a way it was a pity.
Drew Pearson indicates that the two factors which had hurt Senator McCarthy most during his acrimonious career in the Senate were his attacks on members of the Eisenhower Administration and his vindictiveness against fellow Senators who opposed him. He recounts the record of vindictiveness toward several Senators, starting with Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. When the latter had insisted on probing the reason why Don Surine, one of Senator McCarthy's staff investigators, had been dropped from the FBI, a friend of Senator McCarthy approached Democratic Senators on the Senate Investigating subcommittee and warned them that if the cross-examination continued, Senator McCarthy would insist on publishing the police records of Senators, aimed particularly at Senator Symington, who, in his youth, had gone on a joyride in a neighbor's car without permission and later pleaded guilty to the charge, though the neighbor later wrote a letter minimizing the importance of the incident.
Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, also on the subcommittee, had asked probing questions of Roy Cohn, after which Mr. Cohn had cornered him and whispered: "Want to get rough? We can get rough, too." Mr. Surine had then brought to the hearing room a file marked, "Senator Jackson's Record", and ostentatiously placed it on the table where everyone could see it.
When John J. McCloy, former High Commissioner for the U.S. to West Germany, presently head of Chase Bank, had influenced the speech at Dartmouth by General Eisenhower, during the 1952 presidential campaign, regarding the General's dim views of "book-burning" in European Information Service libraries of the U.S., instigated by Senator McCarthy's staff, investigators for Senator McCarthy had gone to Germany to probe Mr. McCloy's operations, and the Senator accused him of destroying records on Communists inside the War Department.
Senator Robert Hendrickson of New Jersey had signed the subcommittee report condemning Senator McCarthy's finances, after which Senator McCarthy threatened to fight Senator Hendrickson's re-election, characterizing him as the only man in the world who had lived so long "with neither brains nor guts"—one of the recommended grounds currently for his censure.
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland had refused to confirm Senator McCarthy's charges in 1950 of Communists in the State Department, after which Senator McCarthy raised money from Texas and from the Chicago Tribune to defeat Senator Tydings in his bid for re-election in 1950, circulating a manufactured composite photograph of the Senator smiling with former American Communist chieftain Earl Browder.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had signed her declaration of conscience in 1950, indirectly criticizing the behavior of Senator McCarthy, after which the Senator maneuvered one of his friends, Robert Jones, into running against her in the 1954 Republican primary.
Struve Hensel, Assistant Defense Secretary, had written a report on the attempts by Mr. Cohn and G. David Schine to browbeat the Army into providing favors for Private Schine, after which Senator McCarthy obtained Mr. Hensel's income tax returns and sent two investigators to browbeat Mr. Hensel's mother-in-law, telling her that her daughter had been in a hit-and-run accident, seeking thereby to scare her into giving information.
Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, who had served on the committee probing Senator McCarthy's finances, had been charged by Senator McCarthy with having three Communists in his office, after which Senator Hennings asked the FBI to investigate, and the charge was disproved.
Time discusses philanthropy in the U.S., amounting to about 4.5 billion dollars per year, the present charity solicitation campaigns being undertaken by about two million fund-raisers, most of whom were amateurs.
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, philanthropy had been considered the responsibility of the very wealthy to the not so rich. John D. Rockefeller, with a casual gift of 35 million dollars over the course of 20 years, had started the University of Chicago, and since that time, the Rockefellers as a family had been unparalleled in terms of their benefaction, reaching a total by this point of nearly a billion dollars. During the last 19 years of his life, Andrew Carnegie had given away 333 million dollars to causes as varied and personal as medals for heroes and organs for churches.
But now, charity had become democratized and organized. While there were still many large contributors, as the Fords, the Mellons, and many Texas millionaires, such as Hugh Roy Cullen, philanthropy now consisted largely of corporate gifts, accounting for 49 percent of all funding, and the labor force, accounting for 30 percent. The increase of the practice of payroll deductions for charity and the interest of big management and labor in charity had contributed to great progress in eleemosynary activity.
During the previous 20 years, the national concept of charity had undergone two great changes, the most important of which having been the increased role of government in public welfare, beginning in the wake of the Depression. It was estimated that about 45 billion dollars from Federal, state and local governments would go to welfare work, about 40 percent of all money spent for governmental purposes in the country.
There was little of the charity cases of earlier times. The New York Times sponsored an annual Christmas drive for the city's hundred needy cases, and in 1932, the list had included families who were starving or with incomes as low as a $1.25 per week, whereas in 1954, the neediest persons no longer were without food or shelter, but needed vocational guidance, psychiatric care or help in planning their budgets.
Private philanthropy had been relieved of a major burden with the increase of governmental welfare, and the national funds for fighting disease, including polio, heart disease, cancer, cerebral palsy and about 55 other similar foundations and societies, were examples of a new trend, with the polio fund having collected more than a million dollars in 1938, its first year of existence, and in 1954, raising 65 million dollars in two campaigns.
Some charities duplicated the efforts of others, while others collected more than they actually needed, such as the Seeing Eye dog fund. Others were poorly managed or wasteful or had uncertain purposes. But the great majority were efficient, thrifty and well-managed.
The largest charity in the U.S. was the hometown community chest, operating in 1,800 communities, including in every city with a population of more than 100,000, except New York City, expanding at the rate of 100 communities per year. It had been formed in Cleveland in 1913, and Cleveland still had an outstanding Community Chest, of which it provides detail. Detroit had also developed a large show around its Community Chest campaign, with Jackie Gleason and Miss America having been guests of honor this year. By the end of November, most of the 310 million dollars which the various chests across the country were seeking as a goal would have been received or pledged. The chests functioned independently, though intimately associated with them were the community welfare councils, which appraised local needs and resources, eliminated duplication of services, filled gaps in the charity program and stimulated new sources of income. Charities had to submit their budgets to the local council and accept any revisions recommended thereby, plus agreeing to conduct no individual campaigns for operating funds, before they were permitted to join the community chest. The chests allowed for one charitable appeal for all of its agencies.
The United Fund collected together the chests and all individual charities into one large campaign, without, however, any budgetary control over the national organizations. The idea had received wide public support, but the major health crusades had resisted it. Opponents believed that unilateral fund drives could raise more money and that the individual had the right to choose their own charities. About 600 communities presently conducted united campaigns, spreading from industrial cities, such as Detroit and Akron, to smaller and more diversified towns. The previous year, a group of citizens in Durham, N.C., had organized the Society for Financing the Fight against Dread Diseases, collecting a record $83,000 for the national agencies. But all of the agencies, except the American Heart Association, had refused the Society's contributions and instead sought their own campaigns in Durham, which had flopped. Angry at the idea that policies surpassed need, Durham planned to continue the Society and to spend its funds elsewhere if the national agencies continued to refuse them.
Most of the large national health agencies had joined united funds when they had found that local forces were too strong for them. The most historically independent of the charities, the American Red Cross, had shown increasing signs of participation in United Fund drives. It remarks that the Red Cross and the polio foundation had more justification than other national crusades for going it alone, as they dealt in disasters and epidemics, unable therefore to predict needs. Only the polio foundation among the dread-disease agencies had refused to join any United Fund, instead resting solely on its own March of Dimes. It had done very well, with critics pointing out that nearly twice as much money went to fight polio, with an incidence of 1.1 deaths per year per 100,000 of population, than to fight cancer and heart disease, with a combined incidence of 502.3 deaths per 100,000 per year.
The concept of united charitable solicitations had spread around the world, with more than 500 Community Chests existing in other countries, including South America, Japan and the British West Indies. Human want was receding commensurately and the health of democratic societies was improving. Many people believed that American charity was the heartbeat of the country's greatness.
D. W. Brogan, writing in the Manchester (England) Guardian, finds that religion was increasingly being pushed to the American people. For instance on the New Haven Railroad, one found printed three forms of grace before meat, Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, though no grace after meat was printed. On the filthy wall of a Harlem slum, a poster appeared advertising the good results to be expected from regular church attendance, suggestive of irony, as the depicted little boy and little girl belonged to Westchester or Fairfield County, rather than Harlem. "This is a God who rewards here and now. 'Grace and gear,' as Burns puts it, still go together in America."
Perhaps the oddest example of
American religiosity was to be found in popular music, with God
having invaded the jukeboxes, not with spirituals or hymns, but
rather with its own special form of religious music, such as "Talk
to the Man Upstairs
He finds such religious tunes not
good, not even as good as a California wine firm's current commercial
jingle. He had recently been in a bar, presided over by a former star
of the Howard Athenaeum of Boston, full of young people horsing
around, with a young man and young woman being rapt in the pursuit of
love, providing nickels for the jukebox, gazing into each other's
eyes as the tune "Steam Heat"
Framed Edition
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