The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 30, 1954
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator William Jenner of Indiana, during floor debate this date on the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy, had angrily taken to task Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont for a broadcast which Senator Jenner said included a statement by Senator Flanders referring to the Soviet peoples as "brothers" at a time when Russia was shooting down U.S. planes and Communist China was imprisoning U.S. military men on trumped-up charges, prompting rejoinder by Senator Flanders that Senator Jenner "has taken leave of his intelligence." Senator Jenner repeatedly interrupted Senator Flanders, asking him why he had used the terms "brothers" and "friends" in reference to the Soviet people. Senator Flanders said that he was trying to make an appeal to the Russian people directly for friendship, going over the heads of the Russian Government. He also said that the broadcast was based on a two-year old script embodying a message he had been trying for a long time to get across to the Russian people. Senator Flanders had introduced the original resolution of censure and Senator Jenner had been one of Senator McCarthy's prime Senate supporters against it. At the start of the session, Senator Flanders had placed in the Congressional Record the transcript of his Thanksgiving Day broadcast made over the Government's Voice of America radio network, and about a half hour later, Senator Jenner asked to be heard, addressing the broadcast.
Meanwhile, under a unanimous consent agreement, voting would begin the following afternoon on the resolution of censure, with a final vote likely by sometime on Thursday.
The President, according to White House press secretary James Hagerty, indicated that Senator William Knowland's proposed naval and air blockade of Communist China would amount to "war action". Senator Knowland had renewed his call for the blockade after the nationally televised speech the previous night by Secretary of State Dulles regarding an overview of foreign policy, in which the Secretary declared that the first duty of the U.S. was to "exhaust peaceful means" to protect the rights of Americans imprisoned by Communist China, rather than "now resorting to war action, such as a naval and air blockade." Newsmen had inquired of Mr. Hagerty whether the President agreed with the statement of Secretary Dulles, to which Mr. Hagerty replied that he did and approved completely of the entire speech, saying that Mr. Dulles had consulted with the President several times regarding it. In a television interview this date on Dave Garroway's "Today Show" on NBC, Senator Knowland was asked about the speech of Secretary Dulles and said that the country would "react vigorously" to Communist provocation in Asia.
Secretary Dulles, in his speech the previous night, had also said that "coexistence", as being proposed by the Soviets, was a "tricky word" in the absence of any renunciation of international Communism's "effort to rule the world by methods of force, intimidation and fraud." He did not specify what the State Department planned to do about the 13 Americans, including 11 Air Force crewmen, imprisoned in Communist China on espionage charges. Informants suggested that the U.S. might ask Russia to intervene with Communist China, but it was expected that the principal action would be concentrated on mobilizing world opinion against the imprisonment. The Secretary said that the U.S. was committed to the U.N. Charter, that international disputes ought be settled by peaceful means, and that therefore the first duty was to exhaust peaceful means for sustaining the country's international rights and those of its citizens rather than resorting to war action such as a blockade.
In London, Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, celebrating his 80th birthday
Harry L. Golden recounts the swearing in of Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina the previous day in Washington before a large group of well-wishers from his home state. It had prompted former Senator Frank Porter Graham to remark: "I can visualize the scene when Andrew Jackson was inaugurated and the people came from the hinterlands to see the ceremony; that's because he was a man of the people and for the people." John Clark, a Senate photographer, stated that it was the biggest crowd he had seen in his ten years at the Capitol. A waiter on the staff of the caterers said that it was the biggest crowd he had seen at a swearing in since that of Huey Long. The crowd had filled three sections of the Senate galleries during the official ceremony, but there had been many more outside in the hallways, on the staircases, looking at statues and standing around in small groups, talking "Tar Heel talk" and of Senator Scott. The most conservative estimate placed the crowd at 600, and they appeared to consist of the same coalition of "egg-heads" and "branch-heads", the latter being the nickname given to his supporters by Mr. Scott, who had helped him win the Senate seat, including novelists, poets, editors, college professors, students, farmers from more than 20 counties of the state and many of the state's political professionals. He had been sworn in within the Senate caucus room where the Army-McCarthy hearings had taken place the previous spring. A rumor was going around that Senator-elect Strom Thurmond of South Carolina would switch to the Republican Party in January or at least vote with them for organizational purposes, but that rumor was balanced by another one that if he did so, the Democrats already had the promise of Senator William Langer of North Dakota to vote with them in organizing the Senate.
In Raleigh, it was announced by Governor Luther Hodges at a press conference this date that John Larkins, a veteran of seven terms in the State Senate, would serve as the legislative liaison for the Governor during the 1955 General Assembly session. He also stated that he favored proposals of a report issued the prior Friday by a commission appointed to study reorganization of State Government, that the state's tax appeals machinery be reformed, and, in principle, that the budgets of the State Auditor and State Treasurer be removed from control of the Governor so that those officers could be independent, though the Governor suggested that the proposal presented a problem which would be difficult to resolve, as under the budget law, a Governor could cut all State salaries, if necessary, to balance the budget, and if the Auditor and Treasurer were removed from budget control, then such a cut would not apply to their offices. The Governor said he did not know how that problem could be resolved but that he believed it could.
In Detroit, a strike at Chrysler was averted this date as negotiators between the company and UAW reached an agreement in the dawn hours following 19 hours of continuous efforts to settle the matter. The strike could have shut down all of Chrysler's operations and idled 150,000 workers, leaving a competitive battle between only Ford and G.M., but instead preserved Chrysler's place in the 1955 auto market competition. At issue had been contract terms for 850 office workers at Chrysler, with their salaries agreed to be covered by applicable provisions of an agreement for salaried engineers negotiated by the Briggs Manufacturing Co. before Chrysler had purchased its automotive plants earlier in the year.
From London it was reported that a British freighter had sunk in the Irish Sea this date under hurricane-force winds, with at least 15 of its 40-man crew drowned, while other ships had rescued 19 survivors and picked up three dead bodies from the water, reportedly sighting at least 12 other bodies floating face down. Hope for the half-dozen others aboard was slight. The known death toll of seamen during the five-day storm which had sunk four other ships in waters around the British Isles had reached 37.
In Louisville, Ky., a jury was selected for the trial of a newspaperman, a copy reader for the Louisville Courier-Journal, accused of advocating sedition. He and his wife had purchased a home in an all-white neighborhood and then transferred it to a black person, then were indicted along with four other persons after the house had been dynamited the previous spring. The judge upheld the right of radio and television reporters to make recordings and take pictures in the courtroom during the trial, but said that he would rule later on other defense motions. The defendant, on leave from the newspaper with pay, was the first of the six indicted to be tried on the sedition charges. In addition to his wife, the other four were a truck driver accused of setting off the explosion, the driver's roommate, a social worker and an unemployed factory worker and former social worker, all charged with conspiring to damage the property of the black owner to achieve a political end involving Communism, part of a plot to stir up racial hatred in Louisville.
The case brings to mind the 1948 Supreme Court case of Shelley v. Kraemer, which held that attempts to enforce privately contracted restrictive covenants, prohibiting use of real property by non-whites, entailed state action when enforcement of the restrictive covenants is sought in the courts, and thus becomes violative of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause at the point of attempted enforcement. The same principle ought eventually be available to have the currently controversial Texas anti-abortion, fetal heartbeat law invalidated as unconstitutional, despite the ostensible absence of state action through private lawsuits, the state action, however, arising, as in Shelley, at the point when any enforcement of the law is attempted through the courts. The recent decision by the Supreme Court in the matter specifically indicates that the constitutionality of the law was not before the Court and thus was not decided, that the decision was limited to the question of the issuance of a pre-enforcement injunction, including against state judges and clerks of court, which the Court held could not lie by virtue of the Eleventh Amendment and sovereign immunity. The case, in other words, at this juncture, does not in any manner undermine the constitutional First Amendment right to privacy, as previously established in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and reaffirmed in the abortion context in Roe v. Wade in 1973. To avoid confusion, this is a different case, involving a different statute, from that under consideration in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, on which oral argument was recently held before the Court, involving the question of constitutionality of a Mississippi statute banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, before the generally recognized period of viability, bans before which imputing and violating the woman's right of privacy recognized in Roe for the reason that the state has a compelling state interest in preservation of the Due Process right to life of the fetus only after the fetus can survive outside the womb, that is become viable, a point generally considered by medical science to occur at between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. Rather than engaging in cheerleading exercise on one side or the other of this issue, it is better to focus on the law and the Constitutional limits of state laws, so that a rational result might ultimately occur. We caution state legislatures, and the constituents pushing them from back home, emboldened by Texas and Mississippi, to be careful of that for which you might wish. Those of you who want less gov'ment in your lives ought be advocating for the the principle of the right of privacy and the continued sustenance therefore of Roe, not against it. Once breached, where does it stop? In your living room? General Pickett, suh, you must look to your division.
In Cleveland, O., the trial of Dr. Samuel Sheppard for first-degree murder in the killing of his wife, Marilyn, the prior July 4, continued, with the testimony of a coroner's medical technician, Mary Cowan, that a green bag which had been found in a hedge outside the Sheppard home during the afternoon of July 4, had no bloodstains on it, but that on Dr. Sheppard's watch inside the bag there was human blood with the same "M-factor" as the blood of Mrs. Sheppard. The bag had also contained a signet ring and a key chain belonging to the doctor, none of the items bearing fingerprints. The defense was contending that the intruder who had actually killed Mrs. Sheppard had taken the items hastily and then dropped them as Dr. Sheppard chased him, after having been awakened during the wee hours of the morning from a long nap taken on the living room couch upon hearing his wife's screams in the upstairs bedroom and being knocked out momentarily therein by the bushy-haired intruder, regaining consciousness and giving chase to the intruder, who had fled the home on its lake shore side, where Dr. Sheppard said he again encountered the intruder and was again knocked out, this time for an undetermined period, until regaining consciousness eventually and finding the intruder gone, at which point he returned to the home and checked his wife's condition, finding that she had no pulse, then called a neighbor who was also mayor of the village and told him that he believed "they" had killed his wife.
In New York, the four-day old premature daughter of singer Mary Ford and guitarist Les Paul had died early this date in the hospital after an operation, having been their first child.
On the editorial page, "A New U.S. Policy in Asia Emerges" indicates that a momentous change in U.S. foreign policy was shaping up for Asia, with the Administration planning to do in that region what the Truman Administration had done in Europe with respect to foreign aid. The President had rejected the advice of the majority of the Joint Chiefs, who wanted a military showdown with Communist China, and instead was planning a "Marshall Plan" for Asia, with a liberalized trade policy which he had once advocated and then abandoned under pressure from the Republican right-wing.
Senate Majority Leader William Knowland and his group of supporters, however, believed that coexistence with the Communists would be disastrous, potentially resulting in the loss of all of Asia to the Communists. The piece finds it difficult to understand their reasoning, that expressions of willingness to negotiate and unwillingness to get into another Asian war without gross provocation could not justly be condemned.
It believes that the announcement by the Communist Chinese of having sentenced to prison for espionage 13 Americans, claimed to be CIA operatives shot down over North Korean territory during the Korean War, at the same time the Communists had released a Canadian flier, appeared to be a coldly calculated attempt to separate the U.S. from its allies and induce the U.S. to send its planes and ships over the Chinese coast in an attempt to regain face. It finds that there was no satisfactory method by which to obtain release or redress for the prisoners or full information about their cases, but it was clear that 11 of the 13 who were Air Force personnel should have been released in accordance with the terms of the Korean Armistice in late July, 1953. Of the two American civilians, one, according to his family, had worked for the CIA, while the other had been an Army civilian employee.
It suggests that the least unsatisfactory U.S. action might be to exploit at the U.N. the sentences, most of which appeared to be on trumped-up charges, but that the most important need at present was for the Administration to explain its emerging policy toward Asia instead of trying to appease the right-wingers. Secretary of State Dulles, who had delivered a televised address the previous night on foreign policy, had an opportunity to explain and gather support for the new policy, but had instead chosen to cover old ground, a rehash of the previous seven years. In 1947, the Truman Administration had come up with the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe, but the program had never been adequately sold to the people, and it suggests that the current Administration should not make the same mistake regarding its policy toward Asia.
"Congressmen Can Curb Secrecy" refers to the Congressional Quarterly report on the page regarding committee meetings held in executive session during the current Congress, amounting to 38 percent of the total meetings, finding that it was necessary and understandable that certain matters pertaining to national security had to be discussed confidentially but that there was no good reason why, as had been the case, a committee had to close its doors when discussing agriculture, labor, education or other non-security matters.
It indicates that Congressmen from the Carolinas would head five of the 19 House committees starting in the new Congress in January, including North Carolina Representatives Graham Barden, as chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, Harold Cooley, as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Herbert Bonner, as chairman of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, and South Carolina Representatives John McMillan, as chairman of the District of Columbia Committee, and James Richards, as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Each of those committees had held a substantial number of executive sessions during the current Congress, especially the Education and Labor Committee, which met in secret 92 percent of the time. In the Senate, Senator Olin Johnston would head the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, which had met in secret 47 percent of the time.
It suggests that if the committees to be headed by members from the Carolinas would continue the practice of secret sessions, many of their constituents would want to know the reasons for it, and invites the members to state their plans and views on the subject for publication in the newspaper, indicating that the current suspicion was that many members of Congress simply did not want the people to know some of the people's business.
"Question!" indicates wholehearted agreement with Senator McCarthy's suggestion the previous day that no good could be achieved by continuing the censure debate beyond Wednesday, urging a vote. It finds that it was long past time for the vote and hopes that the Senate would vote for censure. It finds that his "painful" rest in the hospital recovering from his sore elbow had not activated his conscience, that he had the temerity the previous day to tell his colleagues that he would be the last "to deliberately administer abuse to anyone else." He had not apologized for his many abuses or the many lies he had told.
It reiterates its position that censure was too good for him, but advocates letting it be administered, promptly.
Maybe, since Senator McCarthy had been a boxer, as stated in an editorial in recent days regarding his sudden hospitalization on a lame excuse in the face of the fight for his political life, he had come to realize that he was washed up in the ring
"A Salute to the Blue Devils" indicates that after Duke University's football team had soundly trounced UNC 47 to 12 the previous Saturday, the shout among the Blue Devils supporters was, "On to the Orange Bowl." A day later, the invitation was tendered and it indicates that Duke deserved it, though it was not one of their great teams, as proved by its games against Army and Navy, but that they had played like a great team the prior Saturday in Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. Within the ACC, Maryland had been the chief competitor for the bid, and it was unfortunate that the contest could not be settled on the playing field between the two schools.
Duke coach Bill Murray, it opines, had the best representative from the conference, with a great quarterback and fast running backs, and it believes Nebraska, Duke's opponent on New Year's Day, would have a rougher time than even the one they had in the Rose Bowl in 1941 when they had faced Stanford. It concludes: "Go get 'em, Duke."
UNC, it should be noted, under coach George Barclay, while posting a respectable 4-2 conference record, would wind up 4-5-1 overall. Thus, the result of the game with Duke, 7-2-1 after the UNC win and ranked number 14 nationally, was not particularly surprising. Maryland, however, and its coach, Jim Tatum, with the same overall record as Duke and ranked number 8 nationally in the Associated Press poll, had a legitimate bone to pick in the selection of Duke over it for the bid to the Orange Bowl, as the piece also chronicles. Duke was apparently selected for it being conference champion by dint of a tie blemishing the otherwise also perfect conference record of Maryland, though Duke had only played four conference games while Maryland played five in only the second season since formation of the eight-team conference. Coach Tatum, a graduate of UNC and coach there for a season during the war, would become UNC's head coach starting in the 1956 season. Duke would go on to win the Orange Bowl handily, 34 to 7.
A piece from the New Orleans Item, titled "Oops!" indicates that some Republicans had a difficult time repeating with a straight face their claim about making a thorough cleanup in Washington, after it had been revealed by Democrats that the Navy, which ran a restaurant in the basement of the west wing of the White House, provided a napkin with the inscription: "The White House Mess".
Drew Pearson indicates that if the Senate ever investigated how the so-called "Ten Million Americans" were mobilizing McCarthy petitions, as it probably would not, some interesting extracurricular methods would be adduced. A representative of Mr. Pearson's column had dropped in on one of the hottest "Joe-Must-Stay" centers just outside Boston to see how the signatures against censure were being collected, finding that the atmosphere smacked somewhat of a "football rally with undertones of the Nazi-Communist fear technique in the background." In Newton, Mass., for instance, a loudspeaker in the home of a prominent local lawyer blared invitations to passersby to come in and sign up, the announcement appearing to be more against Communism than for Senator McCarthy. He details other such local efforts around Boston, in one instance having found that when a person asked what happened if they signed the petition twice, the response had been a shrugged, "I don't know, you're not supposed to."
Down the hall from the McCarthy headquarters in a hotel in one town, a radio station disc jockey was holding forth, and when he saw a "Citizen for McCarthy" sign on a door near his studio, he placed a sign over his door which read, "Citizens against McCarthy", a few minutes after which, the sign was torn down, prompting the disc jockey to express his views on Senator McCarthy via the airwaves, resulting in a barrage of mostly violent and unprintable mail in response. He said that his phone calls had increase by 150 percent, that the people who were against him did not bother to call as much as those for him, but that when they did, they were at least civil, while the others just called to cuss him out. He had taken some of the mail to the ladies at McCarthy headquarters to show them how vicious the supporters of the Senator could be, and when he got there, the previously nice ladies turned into monsters, swarming around him to the point that he was scared and had to leave. The ladies at the headquarters said that the disc jockey was a "terrible man", having come in recently and accosted some of them, that they believed that they had their right to their opinions and should not be attacked for them, that he was "obviously just a Communist sympathizer." By the following day, a professor of biology at Merrimack College, who was one of Senator McCarthy's most ardent supporters, had been telling people that the disc jockey had come to the headquarters to beat some of the women up.
Stewart Alsop—as his brother Joseph, according to the editors, was flying to the Far East to report on the developing crisis there—in the first of two columns on the inner conflict within the Administration on the Asian crisis, says that of the two diametrically opposed schools of thought, one was that the U.S. should not passively accept an "atomic stalemate", as it was characterized by Senate Majority Leader Knowland, that while the country had atomic superiority, Communist China should be prevented from consolidating its power so that it would not otherwise dominate Asia and cause all of Asia to become Communist, hopelessly compromising the U.S. position in the Pacific at the point of the atomic stalemate, depriving the Western alliance of its markets and resources, causing the alliance to crumble, leaving the U.S. eventually isolated in a Communist world. Within the Administration, the advocates of the position included Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford, chief of Naval Operations Admiral Robert Carney and chief of staff of the Air Force Nathan Twining, as well as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Walter Robertson.
Mr. Alsop finds it difficult to fault the logic which led to those conclusions, but that the conclusions also had a surprisingly optimistic corollary, that it would not be very difficult to prevent Communist China from consolidating its position to establish military and industrial power, that a combination of U.S. sea and air power plus local anti-Communist forces, with properly applied pressure, could ensure the disintegration of the regime. Mr. Robertson was perhaps the leading exponent of the view that Chinese Communism would collapse in the face of such U.S. pressure, but all of the advocates of the position were convinced that limited U.S. action would bring about the desired results.
In consequence, the majority of the Joint Chiefs, during the previous few months, had proposed to the President that U.S. air and sea power be used to save Indo-China, when that was being debated the prior spring before the late July French armistice, and, in September, that U.S. air power, if necessary, ought be used to hit inland targets on the Chinese mainland to support the Nationalist-held offshore islands against attack. In both cases, Admiral Radford was supported by Admiral Carney and General Twining and in both cases, the premise was that the job could be done without involving U.S. ground forces or any large degree of national mobilization. But in both cases, the President supported the position of General Matthew Ridgway, chief of staff of the Army, opposed to the position because inevitably the Army would have to be used, and vetoed the proposal.
Thus was the conflict within the Administration on Far Eastern policy, which he regards as an inner crisis of great magnitude within the Government which could be concealed for some time depending on how events developed in Asia. But sooner or later, he warns, the conflict would have to be resolved as no government could proceed indefinitely with two such divergent opinions on basic issues of policy.
In the second column the following day, Mr. Alsop would explain why the President had decided to veto the majority view of the Joint Chiefs.
Marquis Childs indicates that lines were being drawn for a struggle over control of the direction of foreign policy which promised to pose for the Administration its severest test yet. Senate Republicans intended to set the course of that policy, with Senator Knowland as their chief spokesman in seeking to force a break in diplomatic relations with Russia. The Republicans in the Senate were largely united in that effort, ranging in ideological stance from extreme, such as Senators McCarthy and William Jenner of Indiana, to the more moderate Senators Knowland and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire. Their power within the Senate to checkmate policy might be greater than their power to set a new course contrary to the President's intentions.
The Administration was planning a program of economic aid for Asia which would parallel the Marshall Plan for Europe, and even though the Republicans would no longer control committee chairmanships within the new Democratic Senate, the Republican Senators could work effectively to block such a program. Repeatedly during the previous two years, it had been demonstrated that the White House was working under a severe handicap among Republicans, requiring Democratic support for passage of the Administration's program, and now some Eisenhower Republicans in the Senate who had supported the President in the past, such as Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, had lost in the midterm elections. The prestige of the Dewey wing of the party had been greatly diminished by Governor Dewey having removed himself from politics and by the defeat of his candidate in the New York gubernatorial election, Senator Irving Ives, losing to Averell Harriman.
Mr. Childs finds it hardly coincidence that the effort by these Senate Republicans to break diplomatic relations with Russia came at a time when Ambassador Charles Bohlen had returned from Moscow to advise the Administration on the sincerity of the Russian overtures of peaceful coexistence. While the return might be as routine as the State Department claimed it was, those opposed to coexistence believed he was bringing a new Soviet proposal for disarmament and world peace. Those Senators were also typically avowed enemies of Ambassador Bohlen, as one of the first tests of the new Administration had been his confirmation as Ambassador to Russia, with Senators McCarthy and Bridges having led an active fight against him, though he was eventually confirmed by a vote of 74 to 13. Recently, Senator Knowland had criticized Mr. Bohlen for attending a dinner in Moscow at which toasts were made to Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov, at a time when news had just come of the shooting down of a U.S. RB-29 photo reconnaissance plane by two Soviet jets over Hokkaido island in Japan.
The Administration, aware that the struggle would only intensify in the new Congress, had been surveying the Senate for active support and the outlook was not cheerful, with the President's advisers placing considerable hope on two new Republicans, Senator-elect Clifford Case of New Jersey and Senator-elect Gordon Allott of Colorado, both of whom were deeply indebted to the President for his support during the campaign and both of whom would be loyal to his program. But as freshman Senators, they would need overcome a great deal of resistance to make themselves heard above the hostility being voiced by senior Republicans.
The same group of Senators who wanted to break diplomatic relations with Russia would also try again to obtain passage of the Bricker amendment to change the constitutional provision on ratification of treaties, weakening Presidential power in the treaty-making process. That proposal had failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority by only one vote in the 83rd Congress, and that had been the vote of a Democratic Senator cast at the last moment.
The Congressional Quarterly, as stated in the above editorial, indicates that during 1954, committees of Congress had barred the public during 41 percent of their meetings, an increase over the 1953 session when 34 percent were held in executive session. Overall for the 83rd Congress, 38 percent of the hearings were closed, a number which would be higher if all executive sessions which could not be tallied were included.
The higher 1954 percentage was the result of an increased percentage of closed sessions in the House committees, even though the Senate committees were more secretive during both sessions, providing the relative breakdown in tabular form. The most secretive of the major committees in 1954 had been the House Education and Labor Committee, which held 54 of its 59 meetings behind closed doors. In the Senate, the most secretive of the committees had been Foreign Relations, meeting in executive session 77 percent of the time, while among joint committees, Atomic Energy led the way with 71 percent of its meetings held in secret. It lists other committees of both chambers which held ten or more meetings in executive session and which accounted for more than half of its meetings.
In contrast were the Senate Appropriations Committee, holding only 32 percent of its 210 meetings in closed session, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held only 24 percent of its 167 sessions away from the public. In the House, the Judiciary Committee had the most meetings, 156, with 62 percent being in closed session, followed by the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, meeting 151 times, of which only 12 percent were closed. The latter was therefore one of the busiest and yet least secretive of the major committees in the 1954 session, along with the House Armed Services Committee, which met 133 times, with only 33 percent of its meetings closed.
There were several hundred other committee sessions which could not be ascertained as to status.
It also indicates that committees had a comparatively free hand in determining whether to open or close their meetings, that according to law, "all hearings … shall be open to the public, except executive sessions for marking up bills or for voting or where the committee by majority vote orders an executive session."
The Christian Science Monitor tells of the quart-sized milk bottle being on the way out, according to the manager of a farmers' cooperative, that in several cities, it was being gradually replaced by a gallon jug, increasing milk consumption, lowering prices and producing more income for dairy farmers. But with the shape of ice cream cones having changed, and the increasing proliferation of automobiles, one instinctively had to resist further change in the American scene.
It would reduce the number of milk bottles confronting consumers upon their return from a vacation and reduce the clatter of milk bottles late at night. But there would also be the sentiment attached to the loss of the welcome provided on the doorstep by a quart bottle of milk, not the same with a gallon jug, giving rise to memories from youth, including the memory of the milkman's friendly horse.
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