The Charlotte News
Saturday, November 27, 1954
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senate Majority Leader William Knowland stated this date that the U.S. should place a tight blockade on Communist China if it refused demands for the immediate release of 13 American airmen, including 11 Air Force personnel and two Army civilian employees, jailed as spies, as announced by Peiping radio earlier in the week. The Senator told a press conference that he hoped that U.S. allies would join in such a blockade through U.N. action, but that the U.S. should undertake such a blockade alone if the allies did not offer to participate. He praised the action of the Administration in sending a strong note to the Communist Chinese Government, but said that he feared that the Chinese would pay no more attention to it than they had to similar protest notes in the past, such as that regarding the recent shooting down of a U.S. photo reconnaissance plane over Hokkaido Island in Japan by two Communist Chinese jets. The Senator said that the time had come to use more than words to protect Americans abroad, that since the withholding of the Americans was in violation of the Korean War truce of July, 1953, the U.N. would be justified in placing a blockade on China. He said that he had not yet spoken with Administration officials about the prospect of a blockade but had discussed with the State and Defense Departments the problem of Americans being held as prisoner by Communist countries. A demand from the State Department for the release of the 13 Americans had been submitted the previous day through the British Foreign Office, as the U.S. did not maintain diplomatic relations with China. The note accused the Chinese Communists of violating the Korean Armistice and warned that there was a limit to the patience of the American people. It also made a preliminary demand for punishment of the Chinese Communist officials who were responsible for the imprisonment and for compensation for the wrong done to the 13 Americans. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., also delivered a note of protest to U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, with a request that it be circulated to all 60 member nations.
Senator Knowland also said this date that he hoped the Senate would vote on the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy by December 11, that the Senate had more important matters at hand, such as the release of the 13 Americans and the shooting down of the photo reconnaissance plane. All indications were that Senator McCarthy would be released after 11 days from Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was recuperating from his sore elbow, caused by a supporter shaking his hand too hard against a glass table, prompting an 11-day recess in the proceedings so that he could fully recover. He had been seen driving around on Thanksgiving Day, and indications were that he was better. Debate on the Senate floor was set to resume on Monday.
The President this date asked a special committee of five Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Dulles, Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Oveta Culp Hobby, to make a comprehensive survey aimed at stamping out narcotics addiction in the country, especially regarding the illegal trafficking and use of opium, with an eye toward recommending legislation to the upcoming session of Congress, starting in January. He asked for a determination of what the states and local agencies had accomplished and what they were equipped to do in the field of law enforcement and rehabilitation of victims of narcotics addiction, and sought receipt of a report on the subjects as promptly as possible.
In Lewisburg, Pa., Alger Hiss, who
had been convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison for five years
for his denial before a 1948 grand jury that he had provided in 1938
secret Government documents, obtained via his position at the time in
the State Department, to admitted former Communist courier Whittaker
Chambers, was released
In San Francisco, Vice-President Nixon was facing a lawsuit for $150,000 in damages for assault, battery and false imprisonment, based on a civil complaint filed by a man who had been ejected from a political rally in San Mateo on October 29 after shouting, "Tell us a dog story, Dick." Guards had begun escorting the man from the auditorium, but when the speech ended, the Vice-President called him back and lectured him on freedom of speech. The suit claimed that 12 men, acting under the supervision of the Vice-President, had assaulted, battered and falsely detained the plaintiff, and that as a result he suffered severe emotional distress. Of the $150,000, $50,000 was being sought for punitive damages and the remainder for his actual damages. He just wanted to hear a dog story, Dick. What is your problem? This is the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. Had someone addressed such a comment to FDR, for example, he would have probably simply replied that Fala was getting along fine, thank you.
From London, it was reported that ten seamen were feared dead in wrecked ships and hundreds of others left fighting for their lives in hurricane-force winds striking the Irish Sea to the coast of Holland. A Liberian oil tanker carrying 42 Greek crewmen had split in two off the coast of South Wales, 35 of the crewmen having already been rescued from the stern section and rescue being undertaken by U.S. helicopters of the remaining seven aboard the forward section. A similar number were trapped inside an upended bird-watching lightship in the English Channel, already feared dead.
In Vatican City, reliable sources of the Vatican said this date that Pope Pius XII, 78, had suffered a recurrence of his hiccup attacks which had afflicted him the previous winter, and had also been vomiting. The sources said that the Pope would return to Rome later this date from his summer home as originally planned, but would cancel a scheduled visit to Rome's Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. The physicians for the Pope had warned him recently that his strenuous schedule would cause him problems unless curtailed.
In Geneva, Switzerland, Harold Dahl, 45, an American flier and soldier of fortune, was convicted this date of stealing $33,000 worth of gold to finance a gay time with his mistress in Monte Carlo and was sentenced to a two-year prison sentence. He had been accused of taking the gold from a Swissair plane he had been piloting from Paris to Geneva in October, 1953, then depositing it in the apartment of his mistress, who was a former Swissair hostess who had been arrested with Mr. Dahl in December, 1953, but later was released. Both the defendant and his mistress claimed that he had won substantial sums playing roulette in Monte Carlo and that a package he was seen carrying from the plane contained only two bottles of cognac. He had come into international prominence during the Spanish Civil War which had placed Generalissimo Francisco Franco in power, flying planes for the Republican forces but having been shot down by Franco's men and sentenced to death, then given a reprieve and eventually, a pardon, after appeals from his wife, whom he had since divorced. He had remarried and was said to have three children living in Canada with his wife. He was a native of Illinois.
In New York, the 1955 Social Register had dropped John Jacob Astor, the former Ellen French Vanderbilt, one of twin daughters of former Rhode Island Governor William Vanderbilt, and New York investment broker William Langley, who had married into the entertainment world. Mr. Langley said: "The blue book is a personification of bigotry and is as un-American as Communism. It is outmoded, narrow-minded and a weapon of a limited, blind minority… The Register belongs to the gaslight era when people frowned on entertainers of any kind. This is 1954, not 1904." Each of the omitted persons had married outside recognized social circles during 1954, presumably the reason for their being dropped.
In Cambridge, Mass., a woman celebrated her 43rd birthday the previous day by giving birth to her seventh son and 17th child, the oldest of whom was 24. Was the newborn the one they call…?
On the editorial page, "Progress in Suburbia, but Midtown—??" indicates that in recent months, four large commercial developments had been undertaken around the edges of Charlotte, the Cotswold development, the Park Road development, a third on Wilkinson Boulevard, and during the current week, plans had been announced for developing the Thompson Orphanage property into a five million dollar shopping center, prompting it to question what the horizontal commercial expansion meant in terms of the city's future. It suggests that it meant that suburban residents to the east, south and west of midtown would be able to do much of their buying without going near Independence Square downtown. It meant that bus service in the fringe areas would become increasingly important and that midtown businesses might suffer or wind up moving to the outskirts.
It concludes that the business build-up in suburbia was certainly welcome, but it also portended trouble for midtown commercial establishments and was thus of concern to city officials and taxpayers, underscoring the need for offstreet parking downtown and the property setback program, plus urban redevelopment to establish a long-range program to integrate the expanding community.
"Hoseman M'Gettigan, Ladderman Flocko" tells of Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov becoming a new-found military hero as Soviet historians were doing their best to rewrite generally the personal histories of present Communist leaders, now informing of how Mr. Malenkov had helped to win World War II, with the Great Soviet Encyclopedia saying that he had been at Stalingrad, Leningrad, Moscow and all over, doing "great work in organizing the forces for struggle with the German-Fascist usurpers."
It indicates that the exploits reminded of those of "Hoseman McGettigan" and "Ladderman Flocko" , two intrepid firemen who had supposedly lived in Philadelphia during the hectic era of newspapering, when reporters were paid on the basis of "space rates", the number of inches of copy which were printed, causing reporters to be eager to obtain big stories. Fires in which firemen were hurt usually rated enough space to enable the lucky reporter to buy a meal and a fifth of liquor, with the result that the two named firemen were always falling off ladders, getting burned or run over. One day, fires had broken out simultaneously in different parts of the city, with one story saying that both of the firemen had been seriously hurt again and taken to a particular hospital, while the other fire story then came in saying that the same two firemen were in a different hospital after being injured in the other fire. The city editor then declared that the two firemen had just died and that the next time one or both of them were hurt in a fire, "the whole damn staff is fired."
It suggests that possibly some Russian editor had already found that Mr. Malenkov had served on the Eastern and Western fronts and run things from the Kremlin all at the same time, but that he knew enough to keep his mouth shut in a society built on fiction. "We're surprised, though, that the Russians haven't claimed they invented 'Hoseman McGettigan' and 'Ladderman Flocko.'"
"No Bargain" indicates that the average taxpayer was not obtaining a bargain in the special Senate session to consider the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy, that the select committee which had recommended unanimously censure had been authorized to spend $30,000 for "necessary expenses", with each Senator having been allowed 20 cents per mile for travel to and from each Senate session during fiscal 1953, when members only made one round-trip, with the mileage cost for the entire Senate then running more than $47,000. The cost for printing the Congressional Record for a session could be figured at $84 per page, with the price for the first week of the McCarthy debate having averaged $3,360 per day.
It concludes that while the price was high, it was a necessary expense, but because of it, there was all the more reason for the Senators to get the business over with swiftly after Senator McCarthy recovered from his "'sore elbow'".
"Dear You and You and You" indicates trouble with address salutations for letters, sometimes wondering whether to address a woman as "Miss" or "Mrs.", that the resolution, if in doubt, was to declare her single—the more modern approach since the 1970's being to use "Ms."
It wonders, however, what salutation one used when addressing a group which included men and women, that "Sirs and mesdames" sounded stilted and "Ladies and gentlemen" suggested that a political speech was about to ensue. It says it had solved the problem by simply skipping the salutation completely, and suggests that if anyone knew a better way to do it, they could inform them, along with how to address a person who had a name which could be masculine or feminine.
You could just say: "Dear Whoever You Are and Will Be:"
"Off to the Elysian Fields" indicates that according to the automobile ads, the new model cars
for 1955 were either "motoramic, futuramic or merely dynamic",
while colors ranged from a combination of cerise and white to
chartreuse and forest green, with horsepower rated as high as 235 and
perhaps more. "Va-va-voom!"
It imagines how the future ads would sound, such as: "Get a Star Jet Special now. Don't be forced to keep your feet on old terra firma when you can glide through the lower stratosphere." (That is not far off predicting at least the Jetsons.) It provides another couple of similar space-age alternatives and concludes that without question, the present population was getting around in a hurry, not yet to the lower stratosphere but perhaps to Elysian Fields, where it was hoped that one could move in a more leisurely manner and that the cares of the Atomic Age would be left behind.
A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "The Cracked Gavel", tells of the Senate gavel having been retired after 165 years of service during debates, since the first Vice-President, John Adams, had, in 1789, used it to convene and keep order in the first Senate, through the early debates on the Bill of Rights and the duties of the new Government, so contentious that Vice-President Adams had to break tie votes on 20 occasions.
It was then wielded by the third Vice-President, Aaron Burr, who served under President Jefferson, who had been the second Vice-President under President Adams, and Vice-President Burr had provoked such acrimonious attacks against him that it led to a duel with Alexander Hamilton, whom Mr. Burr killed, then returned to the Senate to preside over the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.
The same gavel was on the dais in 1856 when Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had begun his tirade against the character of Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina and his associates in the "crime against Kansas", part of the battle over slavery being extended to the territories. A few days later, Congressman Preston Brooks had gone onto the Senate floor and caned Senator Sumner at his desk, following which there was a move to expel Mr. Brooks. For two years the seat of Senator Sumner remained empty, as he was recovering from his injuries, a protest against affronts to a Senator's right to speak in the chamber.
The gavel had survived the bitter debate surrounding the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson in 1868, was still around when Montana Senator Thomas Walsh exposed the motives behind the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding Administration in 1923, bore up under "Hell 'n' Maria Dawes", the nickname of Vice-President Charles G. Dawes during the term of President Calvin Coolidge, and the blows which Vice-President John Nance Garner had struck for freedom during the New Deal years, was only slightly worn by the fight over packing the Supreme Court under FDR in 1937 and the acrimony of the Republican 80th Congress in 1947-48.
But the last session, it points out, had been too much for the gavel and it had cracked. The Senators had now assembled in extraordinary session for the censure debate and vote on Senator McCarthy, and would have a new gavel, tipped with ivory from India, to preside over it. The piece concludes that it would need a lot of stamina to get through the ensuing 165 years of Senate debate without also cracking.
Drew Pearson indicates that when U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., had expressed regret at the death of lead Soviet U.N. delegate Andrei Vishinsky, it meant considerably more than the usual official condolence, as the Ambassador had gone further in private, saying that it was a shame that Mr. Vishinsky had died at this particular time when he had shown himself much more conciliatory toward the U.S., having recently accepted the President's atoms-for-peace plan, which Russia had previously rebuffed.
The White House, in part through Ambassador Lodge, had been working on holding a Big Four conference the following spring, as originally proposed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and which the President had previously opposed. But in the previous month, the President had decided to go along with it, pretty much overruling the State Department advisers who were convinced that a Big Four meeting would get nowhere. The speech of French Premier Pierre Mendes-France, also proposing a Big Four meeting, had been made with the advance approval of the White House, in return for which, the French Premier had promised to push for ratification of the Paris and London agreements regarding rearmament of West Germany and its membership in NATO.
Those developments had produced a coexistence diplomatic puzzle in Washington, which would need to be solved by U.S. Ambassador to Russia Charles Bohlen, who had returned from Moscow following a friendly talk with Premier Georgi Malenkov at the recent reception commemorating the 1917 Russian Revolution, at which Premier Malenkov had told Ambassador Bohlen that the door was open to future friendly conversations. Ambassador Bohlen would advise the White House on how far he believed the Russians would go.
The White House had received an analysis of the midterm election returns, with a breakdown of the political issues which had hurt the President the most, concluding that it had been unemployment and the Dixon-Yates utility combine contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, pushed by the Administration over Democratic objections that it was an inroad to destruction of cheaper public power in favor of the more costly private utilities. The analysis also showed that the farm program of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and his favoring of sliding price supports rather than fixed 90 percent of parity supports had not hurt him appreciably during the elections. Other Republicans disagreed, however, including Senator Irving Ives of New York who had run unsuccessfully against Averell Harriman for Governor, having lost some farm support in upstate New York. But the President was sticking by the White House analysis. He also appeared to be sticking by the Dixon-Yates contract, despite advisers warning that his position on it had hurt him badly. But New York business friends had urged him to take a stand against public power and he appeared to be maintaining that position.
Upper echelons of the Labor Department were figuring that the new Democratic Congress would be better for them than had been the Republican Congress of the previous two years. McCarthyite Congressman Fred Busbey of Illinois had blocked money for a badly needed study of Oklahoma and Arkansas migrant farm labor, after Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had begged the Budget Bureau for the money, blocked by Mr. Busbey in the Appropriations Committee for being "socialism". Only the full weight of the White House and the Senate had reversed Mr. Busbey, who was defeated in the midterm elections, to appropriate a paltry $50,000. Undersecretary of Labor Arthur Larsen remembered how Republican Congressmen had grilled him for two solid days on the plan to liberalize unemployment insurance so as to afford four million dollars more in workers' benefits, on the basis that it was a violation of states' rights. Democrats had come to Mr. Larsen's rescue and paved the way for enactment of part of the plan. The Labor Department was now pitching for a cut in industrial injuries and improvement of workmen's compensation laws, with Secretary Mitchell having begun addressing the problem a year earlier, believing that public opinion was building to prevent the two million annual workplace accidents and 15,000 deaths, estimated to cost businesses 4.5 million dollars. Mr. Mitchell pointed to a 44 percent drop in the injury rate in North Carolina laundries after a safety program was initiated there. Undersecretary Larsen, former dean of the University of Pittsburgh Law School and who had handled workmen's compensation cases in Milwaukee some years earlier, was the primary force behind that campaign. He had written a two-volume legal study of workmen's compensation and accident prevention and was now writing a model code for guidance of the states.
The Federal Power Commission had found a new tactic for ducking regulation of natural gas prices, by first refusing to be bothered with it, until the Supreme Court earlier in the year had addressed the issue and ordered the Commission to begin the regulation. Thus far, however, nothing had happened, though the Commission was pretending to follow the Court's orders, while actually staging a filibuster by making a major issue of every detail and holding hearings on a series of trivial matters, to provide time to Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson, a champion of the oil and gas industry, to push a bill through Congress to terminate FPC's regulating power. Mr. Pearson notes that Senator Johnson had seen to it that FPC did not get $300,000 during the summer to begin fixing rates, cutting its budget so badly that it could not even begin answering all of the mail it was receiving.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the importance of the upcoming DNC meeting in New Orleans on December 3 for the purpose of choosing a new chairman to replace Stephen Mitchell, Adlai Stevenson's handpicked chairman in 1952. The anti-Stevenson forces were hoping to obtain someone who would not be aligned with Mr. Stevenson, in the hope of derailing his favorite status as party nominee for 1956. They were hoping for a dispute to arise between former President Truman and Mr. Stevenson regarding the selection, to enable that derailment.
There was tentative agreement between the former President and Mr. Stevenson regarding the selection of former Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Finletter, but he had declined, hoping to be selected as secretary of defense in a Stevenson cabinet and viewing the party chairmanship as not a good path to it.
Mr. Mitchell favored his old friend from Indiana, Paul Butler—who ultimately would be selected and serve through 1960. But President Truman had said that Mr. Butler was not acceptable, apparently because he was a political enemy in Indiana of Frank McKinney, the predecessor to Mr. Mitchell and an ally of the former President.
They tell of others who were also vying for the spot, explaining that it was always the lot of the front runner for the nomination to be challenged within the party, and caution that despite all of the signs favoring Mr. Stevenson for the 1956 nomination, it was still too early to suggest that he had the nomination in the bag.
Robert C. Ruark suggests that the cigarette, beer and liquor advertisers revert to the hard-sell tactic rather than continuing in their soft-sell methods, taking the form of claiming that their particular brand was either less prone to cause lung cancer, add calories or cause a hangover, respectively. He thinks the tendency toward the negative had caused each industry to suffer, placing such emphasis on the concerns they sought to eschew, such that doctors, for instance, were now in agreement that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer.
"I think the boys better huddle a little bit about this soft-selling and get back to a technique which says something about liking our product because it tastes better or gets you stiffer faster or relaxes you like a bump on the skull. Else, someday, you'll see a full-page ad saying: 'As long as you gotta die, drink (smoke) our brand. Scientists find it takes more time to kill you a little less horribly.'"
A letter writer indicates that as a citizen of Charlotte, he wished to answer the magazine article titled, "Sin with a Southern Accent", saying that the whole story was untrue, that the city was as good as any in the nation, that naturally, with 150,000 people present in the city and county, there would be weak spots which 10,000 law enforcement officers could not correct. He asserts, however, that the police and sheriff's force could match any in the nation in following their duty under all types of conditions and suggests ignoring the magazine article.
A letter writer expresses surprise at Senators Sam Ervin and Alton Lennon of North Carolina and the stands they had taken. Senator Lennon had made a good impression on the people of the state when running against former Governor Kerr Scott, but had spoken so independently to the independent voters of the Congressional district during the midterm election campaign that it had hurt him considerably in the district and if he should happen to offer his services for state or national offices again, he would need to apologize to the local voters for appearing to tell them how to vote, urging them to vote against the Republican incumbent Congressman Charles Jonas. Senator Ervin, meanwhile, had been in Washington "giving orders to the Senate on how to censure Senator McCarthy". He thinks both Senators were determined to nail Senator McCarthy to the cross, and says he does not approve of the stand of either on that point.
A letter writer indicates that he had never written a letter to any newspaper in his life, but that during the morning, something had happened which made him feel good all over. It had been his pleasure to have traveled all over the U.S. and Europe since World War II and in so doing, he had become very cynical about the world, but had now opened a neighborhood food store on October 28 and did not know the neighbors well. He had casually mentioned that his wife was visiting her parents on Thanksgiving Day and that he had to open the store, prompting a couple to bring him a cup of coffee early Thursday morning, plus a barbecued chicken dinner, potato salad, coleslaw, and baked sweet potato pie. He says he had hardly known their name and that it appeared to him to be "the height of pure religion—no phony phraseology—real living." Thus, he had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, despite his long day of work, and the incident of neighborliness had caused him to renew his belief in his fellow man.
Well, they didn't even give you any turkey or cranberry sauce. What's the deal? What kind of service is that on Thanksgiving? And turkey is eight to ten cents per pound cheaper this year compared to last year. You ought know that as a grocer. You should have just thrown it on the floor and tossed them from your store. Dick would have had his henchmen do it for him if it had been him, figuring they were taunting him in some way. Barbecued chicken... You have to stand up and be a man for yourself.
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