The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 2, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate had voted the previous night 67 to 20 to censure Senator McCarthy on one count of abusing his colleagues, and this date continued the debate on the issue of whether to censure him also for having "intemperately abused" Brig. General Ralph Zwicker before the Senate Investigations subcommittee, chaired by Senator McCarthy, the prior February. The Senator had said, among other things, that General Zwicker, a decorated war hero, was not fit to wear the uniform of a general for his alleged protection of the Army Reserve dentist who had been promoted from captain to major and then honorably discharged after he had pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the Senator's subcommittee earlier and refused to testify about previous subversive associations. Senator William Jenner of Indiana, a supporter of Senator McCarthy, attacked that censure count by offering an amendment to strike out part of its language, and was granted an hour of debate time. The amendment would have struck language that said that the Senator's actions toward General Zwicker tended "to destroy the good faith which must be maintained between the executive and legislative branches in our system of government." After making a speech, Senator Jenner then withdrew the amendment, a ploy so that he could have greater debate time. He devoted much of his speech to the dangers of the Communist conspiracy, claiming that the Communists had disrupted the work of the Senate, tying up the Investigations subcommittee to allow many "Fifth Amendment Communists" to continue in the jobs they held. He said that had begun in 1947 with the loyalty order of former President Truman, which had hamstrung the Republican-controlled 80th Congress to some extent. He said that the Communists believed they had won a large victory in the election triumph of the Democrats in 1948, but that in 1950, Senator McCarthy had "ripped the curtain" of Communist infiltration to the Government.

Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina, just sworn in to his seat, cast his first vote the previous day, against dropping the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy, voting with the majority in blocking the substitute amendment of Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, which would have, in effect, killed the resolution.

In Moscow, it was reported that the eight Communist nations represented in the Soviet-sponsored European Security Conference had called this date for integration of their armed forces and establishment of a joint command, should the West ratify the Paris accords to rearm West Germany as a member of NATO. The conference, ignored by the Western powers, had concluded its work by adoption of a declaration to that effect, formally signed late this date by Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov and the heads of the visiting delegations. The Communist Chinese observer at the conference gave his full support to the declaration. The eight nations represented, which would eventually form the Warsaw Pact in 1955, were the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Albania. A Russian marshal was expected to be named supreme commander of the organization, which would take the form of an Eastern European version of NATO.

At the U.N. in New York, the General Assembly rejected Soviet efforts to include Communist China and North Korea in the Korean debate, and the U.S. and its allies ignored the Russian call for new direct talks on Korea. The acting chief Russian delegate, Jakob Malik, proposed a new Korean conference the previous night after the Assembly's Political Committee had voted, over Soviet bloc opposition, to invite South Korea to join the debate, which began in the committee the previous day. The previous conference on the Korean question had been held the previous June in Geneva with the participation of Communist China, and had concluded in deadlock. A U.S. delegate made clear the U.S. position that at a time when Communist China was furnishing "fresh evidence of its brutal and illegal treatment of captured personnel of the U.N. Command", in violation of the Korean Armistice of July, 1953, "the members of the Committee would surely agree that conditions for negotiations were not favorable". He referred to the recently disclosed sentencing of 13 Americans as spies by the Communist Chinese, 11 of whom were Air Force personnel who had been captured over North Korea during the war after their plane was shot down, and who should have been released as prisoners of war in accordance with the Armistice. The U.S. indicated it would not negotiate unless the Communists accepted two principles agreed upon by the U.N. allies at the Korean phase of the Geneva talks, that the U.N. had the right to repel aggression and that elections in all of Korea should be held under U.N. supervision. Mr. Malik stated repeatedly that it was useless to expect a Korean settlement unless the Communist Chinese and North Korean regimes were allowed to participate in the discussion, an attempt at which the Russians had made unsuccessfully for the previous four years.

In London, Britain disclosed this date that it had urged Communist China to avoid "precipitate" action in the Formosa Strait, which could lead to war with the U.S. A Foreign Office spokesman said that, in consultations with Communist China's charge d'affaires in London, a policy of moderation had been urged. The spokesman said that Britain had also asked the U.S. to use its influence in forestalling any provocative action by the Chinese Nationalists. He said that the advice was consistent with the British Government's policy toward the islands off the Chinese mainland, stressing the importance of lowering tension and avoiding precipitate action. Britain maintained diplomatic relations with Communist China, which thus far, the U.S. had refused to extend.

Secretary of State Dulles the previous day warned Communist China that the U.S. would probably attack the Chinese mainland if the Communists attempted to conquer Formosa, a statement made by the Secretary while announcing that a mutual security pact would be signed with Nationalist China in the ensuing few days. He said that the treaty entailed U.S. retaliation against any Communist invasion of Formosa, and that the U.S. might yet consider a naval blockade against the Chinese coast if U.S. rights were not respected, taken to mean that if the 13 American prisoners were not released. The new pact, if ratified by the Senate, as anticipated, would assure U.S. protection for many years to Formosa and the Pescadores Islands. The islands had been shielded by the U.S. Seventh Fleet since the beginning of the Korean War in late June, 1950, and under the new treaty, that shielding might go on for several more years. The treaty was expected to be presented to the Senate early in 1955 for ratification, and several members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had indicated this date a favorable reaction to it. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Southeast Asia were already covered by similar treaties. The Administration, while taking a strong policy line on the Far East, was reported hopeful that gradually a modus vivendi could be found without resorting to war. The new pact with Formosa, as made clear by Secretary Dulles, was supposed to contribute to that purpose. He said that he anticipated an arrangement to be worked out with the Nationalists, whereby Chiang Kai-shek would consult with the U.S. before attacking the mainland. The British Foreign Office in London said that the Government had not been consulted on the pact but had been assured that it was "purely defensive".

In Vatican City, Pope Pius XII, 78, had taken a turn for the worse, having been confined to bed since his return from Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence, the prior Saturday. He had been suffering from a stomach ailment and hiccups which made it difficult for him to sleep, and had been unable to take food by mouth since the prior Saturday. He had been Pope since March, 1939 and his pontificate, complicated by the war and the conflict with Communism in its aftermath, had generally been considered to be one of the most burdensome in the Church's history. The Pope had appeared worn out when he returned on Saturday, having canceled a planned visit to a Marian basilica across the Tiber River to pray before an image of the Madonna. All of his general audiences had also been canceled at the orders of his doctor. The Pope would live until 1958, succeeded by Pope John XXIII.

Near Milan, N.H., the wreckage of a Northeast Airlines DC-3, which had been missing for two days, had been found broken in two atop Mount Success this date, with two of its seven occupants dead and the others injured or suffering from intense cold. A helicopter had flown to the wreckage atop the 3,780-foot mountain, about eight miles south of the town, and had begun removing the injured. It was the first crash with fatalities in the 21-year history of Northeast Airlines.

In Cleveland, O., in the continuing first-degree murder trial of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, accused of killing his wife, Marilyn, the prior July 4, the judge denied a defense motion for a directed verdict of acquittal at the close of the State's evidence, which would have meant, if granted in any respect, that the State had not presented any proof for the jury of at least one element of the alleged offense or connected it, at least circumstantially, to the defendant. The judge said that his decision did not mean that he held any opinion or even had the right to hold an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The defense case then began, calling as its first witness the defendant's brother, Dr. Stephen Sheppard, one of three brothers in the family, including Dr. Sam, who practiced with their father. Dr. Steve, as he was colloquially referred to, was the only relative of the defendant who had been allowed in court during the trial, which was now in its seventh week. (Normally, modern practice is, upon motion of either side, to exclude all witnesses who might have occasion to testify in the case from attendance of the proceedings during trial, so that no witness's testimony could influence that of another.) The State had concluded its case the previous morning, with the testimony of its 30th witness, Susan Hayes, a medical technician who had testified to having an affair with Dr. Sheppard, and receiving a ring and watch from him, and being told by him that he loved her and was thinking of divorcing his wife. The defense attorneys, in arguing their motion the previous day, had revealed some of the points which they would make during their case, one being a suggestion that whoever had attacked Mrs. Sheppard had intended not to kill her but rather to disfigure her. The defense was implying that a woman might have been involved in the attack. (Later, after the eventual acquittal of Dr. Sheppard in 1966 in his retrial after the Supreme Court would reverse on habeas corpus his 1954 conviction, based on a denial of due process for the carnival-like atmosphere pervading the trial, his subsequent defense counsel on both that habeas corpus petition and the subsequent trial, F. Lee Bailey, previously an unknown young lawyer, would state that he believed that the killers were the village mayor and his wife, neighbors of the Sheppards, that the wife had acted because the mayor was having an affair with Mrs. Sheppard, or at least his wife so believed. The mayor, a butcher by trade, had been the first person Dr. Sheppard had called after discovering his wife had been killed. That was not the same couple who had been watching television with the Sheppards on the night of July 3, at which point, around midnight, Dr. Sheppard had, by all accounts, fallen asleep on the living room couch, only to be awakened later, according to the doctor, by his wife's screams from the upstairs bedroom in the middle of the night.)

In London, questions had been raised over the controversial Graham Sutherland portrait of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, presented on Tuesday on the occasion of his 80th birthday, one being why the Prime Minister was not presented with any feet when his portrait showed him sitting in a chair—as pictured. Opinions were violent and there appeared to be no neutral ground regarding the portrait. Mr. Sutherland had won fame and great respect as a painter for his highly subjective landscapes, but had only recently turned to portraiture. He told newsmen that feet had once been in the portrait, but that he thought they destroyed it and so he painted them out. Lord Mailsham, a former Conservative member of the House, said, "It's disgusting—it's ill-mannered—it's terrible." But George Rogers, a Socialist member of Parliament and also an artist, said, "It is a splendid legacy to posterity." The Prime Minister, at the ceremony, had called it a "great example of modern art", Mr. Churchill, an artist, being known for his aversion to modern art. The Daily Express had reported that at a private viewing before the public unveiling the previous day, the Prime Minister had quipped, "It makes me look half-witted, which I ain't." Mr. Sutherland had expected the controversy, but seemed to be somewhat shaken by its violence, saying that it was Mr. Churchill as he saw him, that his idea of him was probably nothing like that of the man in the street. The art critics were sharply divided, with the Manchester Guardian calling it "surprising proof that the truly contemporary artist, for all his preoccupation with abstraction and purely formal problems, can be, when the need arises, as much of a humanist as Rembrandt." It went on to say that for a few years, the portrait would "seem shockingly unacademic", but that in the end would set the tone for a new kind of academism, helping to rescue official portraiture from the "dreary trough into which it has fallen."

Mecklenburg County Police and York County, S.C., officers had patrolled roads crossing the state line early during the afternoon in search of a gunman who had attempted to rob a female operator of a service station a mile south of Pineville on Highway 21. The robber was described as a ruddy-faced white man who had run from the service station to a waiting automobile after the attendant had pulled her own pistol on him and fired once in the direction of the fleeing man, but believed she had probably missed. The robber had fled with a companion who was waiting outside the service station and had been the driver of an older black vehicle, which headed in the direction of Rock Hill, S.C., displaying no license tag. Citizens across a wide area between Highways 21 and 49 had reported to police having spotted a vehicle matching the description. If you see such a black, older automobile with no tag and two men inside, be sure and call the police.

In Croydon, England, a man had sent the police a bill for a pair of spectacles, after he had reported the previous day that he had been walking past a traffic cop when the latter had thrust out an arm from his car in a stop signal, breaking the man's glasses and giving him a black eye.

On the editorial page, "The Recurring Crisis in the Schools" indicates that the financial crisis present in the local schools was also a nationwide problem and had been for some time and would continue to be for a long time into the future. The problem was more severe in the South than in other regions of the country because the South had to do more than the other areas to reach minimum educational standards and had less money with which to work to do so. Because of sharp increases in enrollment, North Carolina education had to run fast merely to stand still, let alone enable improvement, and by most measures, it remained below the national average.

An estimated 35 million dollars per year was necessary throughout the state merely to house the enrollment increases. The inability of state and city governments to carry the load alone had been recognized by the 1949 General Assembly when it appropriated 25 million dollars for school construction and authorized a bond issue for the same amount. The 1953 General Assembly had authorized issuance of another 50 million dollars in bonds. Both of those issues had passed overwhelmingly, as school bond issues usually did. But even after those bonds, another 50 million dollars per year, the source of which was not apparent, was badly needed in the state for the remainder of the decade.

The most immediate concern was the request to the County Commission by city and county school boards for a five million dollar bond issue the following month. The following Tuesday, school officials would decide which needs were of greatest priority, and they emphasized that five million was not all they would need, that another seven million would soon be needed.

It indicates that it was beyond question that the community, which had enrollment in schools growing twice as fast as in the state as a whole, needed several million dollars worth of schools promptly and that a bond issue was the acceptable method to raise the money, but that the question was one of timing and method, when and how to authorize expenditures quickly without endangering the city's and county's excellent credit rating and thereby increasing bond sale costs. It urges parents to ponder and discuss at PTA meetings the idea of 10- or 11-month school terms, a number of communities having added the extra two months to their school year on the basis that it was uneconomical to have such expensive facilities idle for more than three months out of each year.

Who do you propose to attend those extra two months? Everybody will boycott. What do you think this is, Communist China? Throw your books and notebooks in the river, students, and show them who's boss.

"The Senate Regains Some Lost Honor" indicates that the Senate had recaptured some of its lost honor by the previous night finally facing the issue of the censure of Senator McCarthy, an issue which some Senators had refused initially to notice and had then postponed until after the midterm elections. Only after conservative Senators had been accused by Senator McCarthy of aiding the Communists had the Senate been aroused to the point of indignation.

But the important thing, it says, was that the Senate had finally voted to censure the Senator, as he deserved, for his abuse of the Senate Elections subcommittee, and by the large majority of 67 to 20, exceeding a two-thirds supermajority. Similar margins for the other two counts of censure were likely.

The censure and the loss by Senator McCarthy of his committee chairmanship in January to a Democrat would lower his already sinking prestige. The vote the previous night was portentous for the Republican Party and the Administration, as the Democrats had shown remarkable unity on a fundamental issue, voting unanimously for the censure, while 20 Republicans, led by Majority Leader William Knowland, had voted against it. Two other Republicans, Senators John W. Bricker of Ohio and Homer Capehart of Indiana, would have joined those voting against it had they been present. Among the 23 Republicans who had voted for censure were several who would not be in the Senate in the coming Congress, including Senators Irving Ives of New York and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky.

The vote portended domination of Republican policy in the Senate by those who differed with the President on fundamental foreign and domestic issues, requiring the President to look to the new Democratic majority in Congress for much of his support.

"There Once Was a Man in Nantucket…" indicates that a man had written the Washington Post a letter recently telling of how he missed the ancient days of newspapering when a bright young reporter would dream up a jingle and drop it at the desk on his way out for a beer, the jingle then finding its way into print, where some other bright young reporter would see it and produce another verse before he went out for a beer also. Some of the better ones were written after several beers.

One that made the rounds started: "There once was a man in Nantucket/ Who kept all his cash in a bucket,/ But his daughter named Nan,/ Ran away with a man,/ And as for the bucket—/ Nantucket."

The next paper had added: "But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,/ The man and the girl with the bucket;/ And he said the man he was/ Welcome to Nan,/ But as for the bucket—/ Pawtucket."

A third verse was added by the New York Press: "Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,/ Where he still held the cash as an asset;/ But Nan and the man stole the money and ran,/ And as for the bucket—/ Manhasset."

It concludes that it would start another one: "A phlegmatic mon from Monroe,/ Betook a young lady in tow,/ They rode on Lake Giessen/ She said, 'Man, I'm freezin'.'/ And as for the mon—/ Monroe."

We compulsively add: "We shan't touch the bucket,/ Whether in Monroe or Nantucket,/ With a ten-foot pole,/ For fear that double-entendre could take hold/ And render the innocent a shucked cuckold."

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Breakfast", tells of it being Better Breakfast Month and that it was good because the American breakfast had appeared to be in decline, a sign and portent of decadence. Nutritionists were worried about the fact.

It suggests that four types of people were responsible for the decline, boys and girls who were afraid they would be late for school, office workers who would rather sleep than eat, women who were in training for the flat look, and sinners who had sat up too late the night before.

It bets that Longfellow's blacksmith ate a big breakfast, including black bread, beans, codfish cake and pie. George Washington, John Marshall, William McKinley and William Howard Taft all had appeared as big breakfast eaters, while Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson might have been subverted to an extent by the "continental breakfast", but it doubts it. Andrew Jackson and Calvin Coolidge had obviously not eaten enough breakfast.

A breakfast which consisted of a little cereal, a miniature glass of orange juice, a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, possibly accompanied by a single egg, was "almost as sad as no breakfast at all." Its idea of a complete American breakfast was one including a large bowl of oatmeal with plenty of sugar, salt, butter and cream, at least half a cantaloupe, eggs fried, boiled, scrambled, coddled, etc., bacon, old country ham, sausage patties, fried chicken and salt herring roe, rolls, toast, doughnuts, waffles, buckwheat cakes and biscuits, and a few cups of coffee. It indicates that it might take a little time to eat such a large breakfast but that it would be worth it. It says not to ask who was going to cook it.

Drew Pearson indicates that Secretary of State Dulles had known about the 13 American fliers held by Communist China since the Korean truce in late July, 1953. They had been mentioned frequently in Peiping radio broadcasts, but nothing had been done to secure their release. Mr. Pearson predicts that Moscow would intervene with Communist China to free the men as part of the current overtures by the Soviets for peaceful coexistence.

He also predicts that the President would not be able to prevent Senator William Knowland from continuing to be the Republican leader in the Senate, no matter how many times the Senator criticized the Eisenhower foreign policy. The President had been peeved at Senator Knowland, but when his "errand boy", Vice-President Nixon, had talked to the Republican Senate members, they would not accept another leader. Mr. Pearson indicates that they did not know whether "McNixon" was speaking for himself or the President, "because Dick would like nothing better than to get his fellow Californian, Senator Knowland, demoted."

Senator Herman Welker of Idaho had mistaken the new Senator from Nebraska, Roman Hruska, for a Senate aide and started ordering him around, at which point the new Senator told Senator Welker to get his own glass of water.

The Dixon-Yates utility combine had been dickering with the Steve Hannegan public relations firm to improve its public relations, as it needed. One of the golfing partners of the President was the head of the Hannegan firm.

When Congressman Charles Howell, who had run unsuccessfully for the Senate in New Jersey, got a letter from the Democratic National Committee asking for $100 to pay for the recount of Senate votes in Ohio, he had written a caustic note that if the Democrats really wanted to pick up another Senate seat, they could have spent money recounting ballots in New Jersey, where Republican Senator-elect Clifford Case had won by a margin of some 3,000 votes, while in Ohio, Congressman George Bender had won by 6,000 votes over interim Senator Thomas Burke, the Democrat.

The Venezuelan security chief was conferring with J. Edgar Hoover in Washington, and reported that Venezuela's oil areas, which could become a tinderbox in case of war, were safe from saboteurs.

The Food & Drug Administration had given a clean bill of health to use of boric acid in baby powders, finding it beneficial.

When Senator McCarthy had complained to a hotel about housing the Committee for an Effective Congress, the committee was booted out, and subsequently, Senator McCarthy gave the hotel a plug on the Senate floor. The Senator and his henchmen spent so much time at the hotel that a McCarthy table was reserved for them permanently.

General Buck Lanham, former aide to General Eisenhower and the first general to lead U.S. troops into Arnheim across the German border, was departing the Army to join the market relations network in New York. He once had performed the Army's most important human relations by integrating blacks into the armed forces, and would now perform public relations for Schenley, United Artists and Penn-Texas.

Marquis Childs discusses Indo-China, indicating that the July truce reached at Geneva with the French had provided for roughly half of the total area to remain under the control of the three Associated States, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, while the other half would be under the control of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh. But reports from Saigon provided an increasingly disturbing picture of chaos and corruption in South Vietnam, threatening the imminent loss of the whole country to the Communists.

At the same time, the Communists in North Vietnam were reported to be violating the armistice terms by using force and violence to prevent those who wanted to leave to go to the South.

Because the U.S. had refused to sign the peace settlement, there was little it could do about the situation. Secretary of State Dulles, at his most recent press conference, had explained that the U.S. was not legally in a position to protest to the Armistice Commission set up under the settlement, a protest which could only be registered indirectly through the British, who had been signatories of the settlement.

But U.S. help in substantial volume was still being provided to the nearly 400,000 refugees who had fled from the North to the South. Following the truce, 40 million dollars had been allocated to the refugee problem out of a total of 700 million dollars allocated in aid to Indo-China, and the Foreign Operations Administration had sent to Saigon on August 5 two top experts, Richard Brown, who had been head of the German refugee program in Frankfurt, and James Campbell, who had been in Hong Kong helping with refugees fleeing from Communist China, and they immediately had started a program of aid to the refugees. Two thousand tents were shipped initially, and another 8,000 had been shipped since that time, plus blankets, medical supplies and farm tools. Of the total aid set aside for the refugees, five million dollars was earmarked for the U.S. Navy to pay the cost of transporting the Vietnamese fleeing from Communism. The Navy had already carried more than 165,000 refugees, many suffering from malnutrition, tuberculosis and tropical diseases.

There had been only 47 deaths among the refugees and all save three of those had been infants suffering from tropical dysentery before they boarded the Navy transports.

The prospects for the refugees were not encouraging, as a tent colony was a poor means of housing, especially in the monsoon rains producing a sea of mud engulfing everything. The largest share of the money allocated for the refugees, nearly 30 million, was going to pay for the local cost of constructing refugee villages and resettling them. Members of the American mission were working hard to get the refugees out of the tents and into more permanent shelters.

Mr. Childs indicates that it was difficult to realize the extent to which almost everything in South Vietnam had to be started from scratch, as the French, with their colonial viewpoint, had completely dominated every phase of public administration, with the consequence that there were few trained and experienced public servants, and so an effort was being made on a small scale to bring Vietnamese to the U.S. for training. A Federal Reserve Board expert was in Saigon helping to work out fiscal problems.

Whether the free half of Indo-China could be saved from Communism was impossible to predict with any confidence, but the U.S. was making an effort to help with one of the biggest problems, the absorption of the 400,000 refugees from the Communist areas of the North.

An amendment to the Mutual Aid Act, introduced by Senator Henry Dworshak of Idaho, provided that no funds could be used for "dissemination within the United States or general propaganda in support of the mutual security program," and so U.S. Government personnel who undertook to tell the story of the refugee aid program might fall under that provision's ban, as the word "propaganda" had an all-inclusive meaning for many members of Congress. If the story could not be told for Americans to hear, then it was difficult to obtain understanding for a vital effort in the struggle against Communism, potentially a handicap in the propaganda contest with the Communist half of the world. If Russia, he suggests, had been doing a tenth as much for the refugees in their half of Vietnam as America was doing in the South, the fact would be advertised by every possible means.

Doris Fleeson tells of Democrats expecting to develop the following year a significant and politically potent attack on special interests and monopolies through hearings by the anti-monopoly subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, a subcommittee presently chaired by Senator William Langer of North Dakota, investigating the Dixon-Yates contract between that private utility combine and the Atomic Energy Commission to provide power to West Memphis, Ark., via TVA lines. The subcommittee had been refused an appropriation by the previous Congress, likely to be overcome when the Democrats would take control in January.

The only potential flaw was that Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee was in line to become the chairman of the subcommittee, outranked only by Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia on the Judiciary Committee, and his role as chairman of the latter parent Committee would tend to keep him from having time also to chair the anti-monopoly subcommittee. The only solution which Democratic leaders had been able to suggest was to have Senator Langer continue in his role as chairman. He had always behaved with notable independence in the Senate and had never hesitated to take anti-Eisenhower positions, as demonstrated by his taking on the Dixon-Yates controversy, which had been pushed by the President. Democrats secretly hoped that Senator Langer might eventually switch to become a Democrat.

Senator Kefauver was not so personally unpopular as present maneuvering might suggest, but there was some jealousy that a freshman Senator had ascended to consideration for the presidency so fast as he had in 1952, even though he had lost the nomination. Senior members of the party complained that he appeared to have a talent for the glittering surface of things but left the drudge work to them, with his committee's members protesting that he was never present except to grab headlines. Senior Senators, such as Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, did not want him participating as the chairman of another headline-making subcommittee. Many voters, especially women, had Senator Kefauver fixed in their minds as a crusader from his time as chairman in 1950-51 of the televised crime committee hearings, and that was powerful political medicine.

The anti-monopoly subcommittee's relations with the Justice Department would be one of the most interesting aspects of its activities, as it had, under the chairmanship of Senator Langer, been demanding from Attorney General Herbert Brownell an explanation of why he had consented to the filing of charges of bias against Federal District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl in a recusal motion filed by the Government in the case of Owen Lattimore, the Judge having been a former Republican Governor of Minnesota and popular among Republicans there. It appeared, however, that under the Attorney General, the antitrust division of the Justice Department was carrying on strongly, having at its head one of the ablest Assistant Attorneys General, Stanley Barnes, a former judge. Mr. Brownell had also vetoed the merger of the powerful Youngstown and Bethlehem Steel Companies.

The subcommittee planned to conduct what would amount to an audit of the antitrust division's actions, looking into Administration policies, which Democrats contended were fostering monopoly.

The Congressional Quarterly indicates that a pay raise for 2.3 million Federal Government workers was high on the agenda of the incoming Congress, with Representative Sam Rayburn, again to become Speaker, having said it would have priority in the coming year. Representative John Dingell of Michigan and Senators Olin Johnston of South Carolina and Matthew Neely of West Virginia would introduce bills early in January to provide Federal workers a 10 percent pay increase. But the movement toward the increase in pay might bog down in a legislative tangle as it had in 1954, when Federal pay raise provisions were incorporated into about a half dozen bills, with only one having cleared Congress in latter August, only to be pocket-vetoed by the President three days later. Senator Johnston had predicted on August 24 that the Congress would pass a pay raise bill in 1955 and would be able overwhelmingly to override any Presidential veto, though Congress had yet to override any veto of President Eisenhower, requiring a two-thirds majority.

It indicates that every state had a stake in the pay raise issue as each state had thousands of Federal workers. It provides further detail and indicates that the likelihood that a postal rate increase and reclassification of postal jobs to the Civil Service system, as favored by the President, would likely be closely tied to the pay increase issue in the following year, complicating its passage. Another likely complication was the need for Congress to raise its own salaries. Representative Dingell had agreed with Civil Service Commission chairman Philip Young that there was a need for both legislative and executive pay increases, but added that they should not be linked to the pay increases for other Federal workers. Such linking would almost certainly delay and could prove fatal to enactment of the Federal employee pay increase.

Congressional pay increases had only taken place five times in the previous century. Members of Congress presently received $15,000 per year, but a commission created by Congress in 1953 had recommended that salaries be raised to $27,500. It concludes that since 1955 was not an election year, Congress might act on that recommendation.

A letter writer from Conway, S.C., indicates that since 1942, he had been physically unable to do more than very light work and that even that had to be arranged so that he could have several rest periods during the day. He says that his right to earn a living had been taken from him in 1933. Trying to farm in the current year with the only crop worth harvesting, tobacco, he had been able to earn income of only $671.35 after warehouse charges, and then suffered a penalty of $421.46 for selling that tobacco, which left him $249.89 to pay for fertilizer, costing $123.50, kerosene for curing, $56.71, poison, twine, etc., costing $38.55, haulage to market, $7.77, and Tobacco Associates, 28 cents, leaving him $14.02 with which to pay taxes, grocery bills, etc. He says that it was the type of farming he had been forced to do since 1933. He had been told at the PMA office prior to 1951 that if he built a tobacco curing barn on his place, he would be entitled to at least an acre tobacco allotment, and in 1951, through the FHA, had been able to build a tobacco barn and pack house. But then he received only .6 of an acre allotment. When he had returned home from service in the Navy in 1943 with a medical discharge, he had attempted to reopen his country store which had been operated with non-rationed goods only during his absence, but was again blocked by a quota system imposed by wholesalers and by OPA rules which forbade selling certain merchandise at a profit unless done in a given period of time, that having been while he was still in service. Since his family had to eat, he began to borrow and go into debt, sinking lower each year. He believed that because of his disabilities during his period of service, he could always fall back on the V.A., but while a patient in 1950 at a VA hospital in South Carolina, he applied for a pension or disability allowance and learned that practically none of his actual injuries were listed and that several falsehoods had been entered by the Navy Department. Since that point, he had spent a considerable amount of time, effort and money to have his record cleared and had succeeded in one or two instances, proving that there were errors. He had learned, just as Senator McCarthy had learned, that the "'high brass'" would go "to any length and stop at nothing to shield and protect another 'wearer-of-the-brass.'"

You probably need to move to Cuba.

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