The Charlotte News
Friday, January 28, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Moscow, Britain had asked the Soviet Union this date to try to restrain the Government of Communist China and bring about a cease-fire regarding Formosa, lest the dispute result in general war. The British Ambassador, Sir William Hayter, had talked for a half hour with the Soviet Foreign Minister, V. M. Molotov, at the Kremlin this date, and the British Embassy said that Ambassador Hayter had acted with advance knowledge of the U.S. State Department in seeking to enlist Soviet support for a move by New Zealand, backed by Britain, in the U.N. Security Council to effect a cease-fire, which, it was understood, would include a proposal to invite the Chinese Communists to attend a Security Council meeting to discuss peace in the standoff with Formosa. A spokesman for the Embassy said that the British charge d'affaires in Peiping was delivering the same message to the Communist Chinese Government. After the discussion at the Kremlin by Ambassador Hayter, the secretary of Mr. Molotov had telephoned the British Embassy to inform it that the Soviet Government intended to publish its version of the interview in the following day's Soviet press, and a British spokesman refused to speculate on whether that indicated a favorable reaction by the Soviets.
The Senate leadership pressed this date for quick approval of the President's Formosa defense policy, but critics indicated that they wanted to do some more talking about it. Senator William Knowland of California, the Republican leader, indicated that he believed a vote should come this date, that it would be bad psychologically to delay it further. Senator Walter George of Georgia, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had told the Senate the previous day that it should not use "trifling amendments" or long delays to diminish the psychological impact of the resolution, designed to provide the President with advance approval of action to protect Formosa and the Pescadores in the event of imminent attack by the Communists. The resolution had passed the House the prior Tuesday by a vote of 409 to 3. There was no question in anyone's mind that it would also pass the Senate, but the question was when. Senator Earle Clements of Kentucky, the acting majority leader in the absence of Senator Lyndon Johnson, said that he would hold the Senate in session this night or order a Saturday session if it would result in a final vote. Senators Knowland and Richard Russell of Georgia, the latter chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that they thought some of the steam had been taken out of the opposition by a statement issued the previous day by the White House, wherein, following a conference with military officials, the President had made it clear that U.S. forces in the area of Formosa were designed purely for defensive purposes. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, however, contended that the statement was "a tacit admission" that the resolution was broad enough to permit preventive war against the Chinese mainland, the Senator indicating that he wanted to discuss the issues further.
Relman Morin, in the fifth and last of a series of articles on the stock market, indicates that when one read about "the greatest bull market in history", the reader was looking at a story which went beyond Wall Street, reflecting many factors in the society. Some people were gambling and the number of those was probably increasing. There was also institutional buying, with the purchase of stocks by big organizations as a counter-force to inflation. An argument existed that the market at present was only catching up with the true values of many stocks and bonds. But the figures reflected more than only an adjustment, representing massive confidence in at least the immediate future, and to some, regarding the long-term outlook for the entire U.S. economy. The figures meant that a great many people believed their stocks would increase in value and pay out dividends because the companies which had issued the shares were going to continue to grow and earn. But since no one could read the future, the only thing one could do was to look at present bases and trends and make one's own projections. Mr. Morin indicates that, for example, the nation's population at present was estimated at 163 million, and by 1975, based on Census Bureau estimates, would climb to 200 million, resulting in more consumer purchases of many basic and luxury items. The chairman of the Ruberoid Co., for instance, had recently written that since the current rate of new families was about 700,000 per year, about 700,000 new units of housing had to be added annually if housing standards were to remain at present levels, and that since about 300,000 houses were demolished annually, the total basic need was about a million new units per year. Mr. Morin wonders, therefore, how fast the housing industry would need to build to keep pace by 1965 or 1975, and, as well, how fast the steel industry would have to produce, in addition to all other industries associated with construction, together with the need to produce more electricity for heating and lighting the millions of additional homes. He questions also whether the country would be using atomic energy by that time. The gross national product for 1954 was estimated at 350 billion dollars, and in his recent economic message to the Congress, the President had called for a GNP of 500 billion dollars by 1965.
In Chicago, a man, who had been reported as dead and buried, had walked into the coroner's office the previous day and said that he was the person they were looking for and that he was very much alive. He revealed that the man who had been buried with his identity the previous November was another man of the same name and same age who had been a resident of skid row. Officials of a painters union had paid for the burial on the belief that he was a former member of their union. But a friend of the man who was still alive had met him a few days earlier and learned that he was unable to receive his old age and security benefits any longer because of his reported death, causing union officers to investigate and have his name restored to the roles, enabling him again to receive benefits.
The organization of the National Right To Work Committee had been formally announced in Washington at a press conference by E. S. Dillard of Charlotte, chairman of the 12-member committee and president of the Old Dominion Box Co. He had introduced Fred Hartley of New Jersey, the former Congressman who had co-authored the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, as the new president of the new national organization, saying that the committee's principal belief was that unionism by compulsion was utterly wrong and was a "rising menace" to the future of the country, a sentiment echoed by Mr. Hartley in accepting the presidency of the organization.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges, at his press conference this date, gave high praise for the report of a special commission which had studied the state's institutions of higher education and had proposed creation of a state board of higher education to eliminate duplication of effort and to plan for the future of higher education in the state, the Governor indicating that it was one of the most important reports which had been released in the state. The Governor also said that he saw no need for the General Assembly to adopt a statement of policy on the school segregation issue at the present time, that the state had already expressed its policy both in its brief filed with the Supreme Court in advance of the oral arguments concerning the implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and in the report of a special segregation advisory committee. In its brief, the State had asked the Court for the longest possible time to effect desegregation of the public schools and that local school authorities and Federal district courts be provided broad authority to meet specific local situations in implementing desegregation. The advisory committee had proposed that local school boards be given complete control over the assignment and enrollment of pupils to the various schools within local communities.
In the State Senate, bills were introduced this date to make it easier to obtain a divorce, proposing to reduce the required pre-divorce separation time from two years to one to bring the state in line with many other states and thus equalize access to divorce between those who could afford to travel out of state to seek a divorce and those who could not, to increase the 55 mph speed limit, and to remove trial of certain motor vehicle violations out of the courts presided over by justices of the peace.
New 1955 license plates were required to be on display in North Carolina by the following Tuesday, but as of this date, thousands of owners had not bought their tags. The State Highway Patrol had instructions to begin citing drivers starting at midnight on Monday if they still had their 1954 license plates on display. The law actually required new plates by January 1 every year, but the Legislature had always allowed motorists an additional month-long grace period.
A late January cold wave had engulfed wide areas of the eastern half of the nation this date and there was no indication of immediate relief, with snow, subzero temperatures and strong wind being in prospect for the Midwest, which was hardest hit by the coldest weather of the winter season, also impacting the Eastern and Southern regions, where temperatures dropped. In northern Minnesota, -36 degrees was registered in International Falls the previous day, rising to 17 below zero this date, with other far below zero readings found in northern sections of the north central region, subzero temperatures having been registered in parts of New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. It was 22 in Birmingham, Ala., and 19 in Chattanooga, Tenn. What was the temperature in your town or rural byway?
On the editorial page, "Foolish Is as Foolish Does" tells again of there being 172 streets in metropolitan Charlotte with exactly the same name of at least one other street, and that Jefferson Standard Broadcasting Co. had applied for a change of the street name on which it was locating its new building to Jefferson Place, and the address number to 1, requiring not only a change of name of the existing Henry Street, but also taking the street number out of order in the 1800 block. The Planning Commission had turned down the application on the recommendation of the City engineer because there was already a Jefferson Street and because of the disordering of street numbers.
It recounts of a City Council meeting the previous day, however, at which Mayor Philip Van Every had urged cooperation in the job of planning for Charlotte's orderly growth, introducing the new planning director, William McIntyre, with smiles and cheery greetings. But then the Council had voted to approve the application by Jefferson Standard Broadcasting, ignoring the advice of the planners.
It quotes the New York Times from the previous week, which had stated that their City Council never behaved "so foolishly" as when it was engaged in "foolish business", indicating that it hoped the Times did not mind the News borrowing the phrase.
"Open Season" indicates that it appeared to be the season of suppression of news, finding that Chiang Kai-shek's Government in Formosa had banned all news regarding juvenile delinquency, suicide, gambling and narcotics, while in South Korea, President Syngman Rhee had urged that 85 percent of the newspapers be suppressed, that five newspapers had been suspended recently in Jordan and three on Cyprus, and that Newfoundland's Premier had told the Government workers there not to talk to reporters.
It then alludes to the new rules passed by the North Carolina General Assembly allowing executive committee sessions by all committees, except in the final vote on a pending bill, and suggests that the lesson was clear, that vigilance was still the price of liberty.
"'Relativity' and Sandy Graham" tells of State Highway chairman A. H. (Sandy) Graham seeking a 150 million dollar bond issue for construction and improvement of the state's primary road system, which Governor Luther Hodges was opposing. Former News editor and associate editor Burke Davis had indicated that people in Raleigh remembered a dispute over a road bond issue in 1921 totaling 50 million dollars, which was passed on its second reading by a vote of 127 to 3, with Mr. Graham having been one of the three opposing votes, along with that of two Republican members of the Legislature.
"Southern Viewpoints—Dime a Dozen" tells of the Governor of Georgia—unclear as to whether it was the immediately past Governor, Herman Talmadge, or the current Governor, Marvin Griffin—, having vowed to "champion the Southern viewpoint at all times".
It indicates that there were numerous Southern viewpoints, not just one, listing a number of prominent Southern politicians, writers, and evangelist Billy Graham, each of whom had their own viewpoint.
"And we're safe in saying that the area of agreement would be nil among late, articulate southerners like Jack Cash, Huey Long, Howard Odum, Theodore Bilbo, Tom Wolfe, Henry Grady, George Washington Carver, DuBose Hayward, Willis Smith and Jimmy Street."
It concludes, therefore, that there was no single Southern viewpoint, that the South consisted of "many things, many voices, some strident, others calm." It also observes that with increasing numbers of Yankees coming to the South and adding their voices, it was hard to "segregate a single, sho-nuf southern viewpoint."
If not to differ, we must at least beg to question whether Theodore Bilbo belongs in any wise within the company of the deceased group in which he is included by the piece, as a supposed "articulate" Southerner, as that which the late Senator from Mississippi more often than not articulated was the foulest of overt racism ever uttered on the floor of the Senate—of which Jack Cash, for instance, cited more than one such instance, having made reference also in The Mind of the South, in the context of discussing Twentieth Century Southern demagogues, to the Senator's campaign to deport all black Americans to Liberia.
Of course, the voice of Bilbo
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "A Rose Is a Rose, and That's Enough", tells of Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine and Representative Frances Bolton of Ohio having jointly sponsored a resolution to make the rose the national flower.
The piece indicates that it has nothing against the rose but was satisfied with the bald eagle as the national symbol and believes that it would not be appropriate for the eagle to display in its talons a bouquet of a dozen roses, and so, instead, suggests that a more appropriate national symbol from the realm of flora would be corn.
Drew Pearson tells of a secondary reason for the President having submitted his Formosan policy to Congress during the week having been to get his impetuous foreign policy advisers out of his hair, after they had been feuding among themselves during White House conferences. He hoped to head off Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford and his constant nagging for action in the Far East, pressing so hard for military action against Communist China to the point that it was beginning to wear on the President's nerves. The President could now pass the buck to Congress and point out to the Admiral that he was morally obligated to consult with the Congressional leadership before ordering important military action. Privately, the President had commented that veteran politicians such as House Speaker Sam Rayburn would be in no hurry to put the nation's sons again under arms.
The President, himself, had decided to consult Congress on the matter, and his advisers had agreed that it would be good politics to stick the Democrats with partial responsibility for the Far Eastern policy, something, however, which the President impatiently dismissed, saying that his conception of the Presidency was that too much power had been undertaken by President Truman in arbitrarily taking over the coal mines and in sending U.S. forces into Korea without first consulting Congress—though as to the latter point, in addition to the obvious distinction between the actual invasion, without prior warning to the Administration, by land incursion of South Korea and the openly threatened invasion by Communist China of Formosa across water, there is a good deal to lend favor to the notion, as set forth yesterday, that President Truman had the advance approval of Congress for sending forces to Korea, in the form of the 1949 Mutual Defense Assistance Act, expressing Congressional favor for the policy of the President making special agreements with the U.N. Security Council, consistent with Article 43 of the Charter, to provide to the U.N. a contingent of U.S. forces for the purpose of being at the ready when an Article 42 military action was declared by the U.N. to be necessary to preserve the peace, as it was so declared at the time of the invasion of South Korea by North Korea in late June, 1950, even if, because of the Soviet disagreement on certain particulars, no agreements for such provision of forces had yet been made among the five permanent members of the Council, though the other four had reached agreement as between themselves, the Article 42 commitment of forces to a particular action pursuant to such special agreements, "subject to" Congressional approval which was tacitly provided in the 1949 Act, not needing Congressional approval per the 1945 U.N. Participation Act.
President Eisenhower also said that he intended to use Congress as an excuse for quieting his advisers who had been trying to push him into war with Communist China. Meanwhile, the President's diplomatic and military advisers had been battling behind the scenes over whether to defend the Nationalist-held islands off the coast of mainland China, with Secretary of State Dulles being against the defense of any island outposts, favoring defense only of Formosa, itself, and the adjacent Pescadores. But he realized that it would be political folly to say so publicly and so had tempered his statements in his talks with Senators. The Joint Chiefs had long favored defending key offshore islands, including the Tachens, which the Chiefs believed served as a vital radar warning post to watch for planes from China's big jet bases around Shanghai. Quemoy, located directly opposite Formosa and about five miles off the mainland, was necessary, according to the Chiefs, to guard against any invasion attempt of Formosa, as low fogs hung over the Formosan Straits, and Quemoy and other nearby islands served as valuable observation posts in the event that a Communist Chinese invasion force would seek to attack Formosa under cover of fog.
Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, both big businessmen, were proposing to permit the railroads to acquire airlines, steamship and trucking lines, thus causing greater monopoly in transportation, acquisitions which were presently barred by law. They also favored permitting the railroads to increase or decrease rates at will, with no supervision from the Interstate Commerce Commission, meaning that the railroads could lower rates in one area until a smaller rail line or trucking line was put out of business, and then increase the rates subsequently. Mr. Pearson notes that the monopoly committee of Senator William Langer had just warned that a rash of mergers had led to the depressions of 1890 and 1931, and that the nation was now experiencing another rash of mergers which could lead to another depression. He also notes that the railroads were suffering from the President's proposed superhighway construction program, beneficial to truckers, and from the subsidies to the large airlines, while the railroads, unlike the truckers, maintained their own roadbeds and, unlike the airlines, built their own stations and received no subsidies.
Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield had not liked the fact that former Congressman Harlan Hagen of Minnesota had defied him in voting, while in Congress, to increase the pay of postal workers, and so now was opposing his becoming director of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, having gotten the White House to stop the appointment. Mr. Pearson comments that it did not pay to oppose the Postmaster General.
Vic Reinemer, associate editor of The News, discusses the history of the paper and associated industries in the Carolinas and the South as a whole, imparting that paper during colonial times was primarily made from rags, with a paper mill having been established in 1766 in Salem, N.C., and another mill started in 1773 in South Carolina, then spreading to Marietta, Ga., where Confederate money was made until General William Sherman burned through the state in 1864, destroying the latter mill in the process. The Jefferson Land's mill rose again, however, and became the first in the South to make groundwood pulp, in around 1870. With the abundance of forest land available in the South, the wood pulp industry began to thrive with the production of paper.
Presently, the nation of 164 million people used 400 pounds of paper per year per person, and almost half of it came from the South, which had a mill investment of 2.5 billion dollars, which paid an annual payroll of 250 million dollars.
In North Carolina, 2.5 million dollars had been invested in a new plant in Gastonia during 1954 and five expansion programs during the year totaled about 1.5 million dollars, at plants in Charlotte, Grover, Ahoskie, Hendersonville and Roanoke Rapids. During 1953, new firms had invested 2.2 million dollars and existing firms invested $325,000 in expansion. The total output of the industry in the state had been 194 million dollars in 1953.
Mr. Reinemer then covers the investment, expansion and payrolls for the wood pulp paper industry in each of the other ten Southern states.
The only thing we can add is that if
you ever encounter a community where there is a paper mill, you will
know it by the sulphurous
A letter writer from Monroe comments on the editorial of January 12 regarding sex education in Charlotte, finding that there were two assumptions made by the editorial which this writer considers fallacious, the first being that syphilis and gonorrhea had been virtually eliminated, pointing out that while deaths from syphilis had steadily declined, deaths from the disease in 1952 had still only been exceeded by respiratory illnesses and tuberculosis among infectious diseases, with gonorrhea morbidity ranking second and syphilis morbidity ranking third among communicable diseases in 1951, and that there was a large amount of undetected and transmissible gonorrhea. He cites the Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook of 1954 as the source for his data and asks whether the editors had any current data to the contrary. He also indicates that another invalid assumption of the editorial, in his opinion, was that sex education in the schools was laudable, finding that the primary responsibility for such instruction rested with parents to impart in private to their children. He thinks parents ought to turn off the TV sets, stay at home from the clubs and intelligently devote themselves to their "most priceless physical possessions—their children."
The editors respond that the rate of syphilis infection per 1,000 population had dropped in Charlotte from 11.7 in 1944 to 1.6 in 1954, and that the percentage of early infectious cases had dropped from 53 percent in 1950 to 18 percent in 1954, that among civilians in the country at large, 156,000 cases of syphilis and 245,000 cases of gonorrhea had been reported in fiscal 1953, a considerable decrease from that of 1947. The incidence of infection had been higher than the number of reported cases in earlier times, before health educators had broken down the taboos associated with the diseases. It also states that the whole program of sex education in the schools was geared to the parents' responsibility as teachers.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that the people of Chesterfield County would vote on January 29 on whether to establish a greatly needed hospital in the county, and he wonders how anyone with love in their heart could vote against such a much-needed facility for the sick and suffering of all walks of life, urging voting for establishment of the hospital.
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., indicates that he had read with mixed emotions the editorial supporting the old-age lien law, indicating that aid for the aged or infirm was a Christian need and made the difference between a Christian nation and one operated under the Oriental or European forms. He says that forcing a person, who had acquired through hard work and thrift a small home and property, to deed it to the state or anyone else was a disgraceful form of professional welfare work. He finds that the administration of welfare in North Carolina and South Carolina was a national disgrace.
Framed Edition
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