The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 29, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Key West, Fla., that the President was relaxing with indoor painting of a Colorado mountain scene this date, amid cloudy, rainy weather. He had been able to hit some golf shots shortly after his arrival the previous day, pleasing his doctors, as they had wanted him to pursue outdoor activity. But it had rained most of the night. According to White House press secretary James Hagerty, the President had telephoned the White House in Washington during the morning and Mr. Hagerty had reported that there was no work of necessity requiring his attention.
In Moscow, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev warned the West this date that the recently exploded Soviet hydrogen bomb "can be considerably increased" in power and was the "equivalent to many million tons of ordinary explosives." The statement occurred as he and Premier Nikolai Bulganin made reports to a joint session of the Supreme Soviet regarding their recent trip to India, Burma and Afghanistan. The speeches contained several attacks on "Western colonialism". The story indicates that the telephone line between Frankfurt and Moscow, via which the story had been dictated, had been broken by the Soviet censor for five minutes after Mr. Khrushchev's statement on the hydrogen bomb was mentioned. He had said that although "we do not want to boast about our military and technical strength", he wanted to remind the West about the recent Soviet detonation. He urged people who were "trying to increase tension" to remember the results of the test. He charged President Eisenhower with "crude interference" in the internal affairs of the Communist-ruled countries of Eastern Europe, in response to Christmas messages which the President and other American leaders had broadcast to Eastern Europe. He accused the U.S. of seeking to "re-establish capitalism" within the Soviet bloc of nations, saying it was, however, impossible to turn back history. He said that the Christmas messages from Americans, generally stating that the speakers were praying for the liberation of the Eastern European countries, had been "incompatible with the Geneva spirit", leading to "the incitement of passion". He said that he spoke of the President in such a manner unwillingly, because he respected him so much, but that agreement on disarmament had been "hindered by a change in the position of the United States."
The Army's Nike guided missile antiaircraft program had been stepped up to the point where new batteries were going into operation around American cities and military installations at the rate of several per month. Without disclosing actual figures, Army spokesmen said this date that the deployment of the missile batteries was going along well and that they were meeting requirements in training programs for crews. About 17 cities thus far had Nike protection, ranging from Norfolk northward along the Atlantic Coast, across the northern border area toward Seattle and down to Los Angeles. The Army was also planning to send some Nike batteries to danger points outside the U.S., announcing recently that batteries were to be installed in Alaska and Okinawa. When defense needs for those batteries were filled, the Army would begin to provide Nike bases in Europe. The weapons had been undergoing Arctic tests for at least two seasons at Fort Churchill in Canada, where Canadian-American crews had been firing them, with a spokesman indicating that there were no present plans for delivering Nike missiles to Canada.
The Administration planned to ask Congress for power to commit the country to a ten-year program of economic aid to friendly nations, with the sum for any nation varying depending on the size of the project to be backed. A maximum, ranging from 500 million to a billion dollars, was being considered, with the money to be disbursed in annual installments. Senator Walter George of Georgia, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told newsmen that there would have to be a serious reappraisal by Congress of the foreign aid situation, that sentiment had been growing in Congress to trim economic aid way down as many free world countries, particularly in Europe, had shown excellent economic progress. Congress had normally insisted that economic aid be granted only on a year-to-year basis, without long-term commitments.
Arthur Edson of the Associated Press reports that an overwhelming majority of Democratic leaders believed that Adlai Stevenson was now the best bet to win the presidential nomination again in 1956, that of a poll of 126 Democratic governors, state chairmen and members of the national committee, 76 had stated that Mr. Stevenson would be the likely nominee, while only five had said that Senator Kefauver would achieve the nomination, with 45 either stating no comment or identifying others. Those who believed that Mr. Stevenson would achieve the nomination, however, said that his lead was so slight that it could vanish before the convention in August. At least five had said that the race was a tossup between Mr. Stevenson and Senator Kefauver.
Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, had called on the Administration this date to forward promptly its recommendations for flood insurance if it wished its proposals to be considered. Before he had made his statement, the Housing and Home Finance Agency had announced that it had almost completed a legislative program for flood-disaster indemnity assistance, which it intended to present to Congress at the start of the January session, but did not mention specifically flood insurance. The Senator said that he was being pressed for quick action on the problem of flood insurance protection and that the Administration had delayed several times the issuance of its recommendations.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges declared at a press conference this date that he believed the primary factor involved in the school segregation issue was the state's interest in keeping its public schools, and that something could be worked out to accomplish that goal while at the same time doing what the people of the state wished. When asked whether a special session of the Legislature would likely be called before the opening of schools the following fall, he said that it was "entirely possible", depending on what the State Advisory Committee on Education proposed as a program. He was also asked about a recent decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which had held in the McDowell County segregation case that, given the administrative remedy passed by the Legislature the prior March to afford a hearing to determine whether assignment of pupils to a particular school was proper, segregation cases would first need to be decided by the administrative body and then, on appeal from any unsatisfactory ruling, by the state courts, as also provided by the new law, before they could be appealed to the Federal courts, referring to the doctrine of exhaustion of remedies. The Governor responded that he believed the decision had given the state a great deal more time to work out its problem. He said that he believed that the whole matter would be worked out on a local basis as defined by the 1955 Legislature, which had given local school boards broad powers regarding assignment of pupils. He said that he believed that local advisory committees were needed but would not quarrel with action by the Advisory Committee in asking that the local advisory groups temporarily suspend activities while suggested assignment regulations were worked out by the Committee. When asked whether he believed preservation of the public schools was more important than preserving segregation, he demurred, saying that he did not wish to make the comparison. He was also asked about a Virginia proposal, whereby segregation would be preserved through the doctrine of interposition, effectively enjoining the Brown v. Board of Education decision until a constitutional amendment incorporating the ruling would be adopted by three-fourths of the states. The Governor said only that he was studying it and expected to make a statement on his position the following week, indicating that he believed the proposal was "much more dignified" than other proposals which had been made. Had he studied law, he might have understood how ridiculous and silly it was to suggest that a decision of the Supreme Court should await implementation until a Constitutional amendment embodying it would be ratified, when the decision was squarely based on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868. To call that argument circular is to give it credit as an argument at all. But, Governor Hodges never went to law school.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that Representative Charles Jonas and Senator Sam Ervin had informed the newspaper this date that the farm question would be the paramount issue in the coming session of Congress, followed closely by taxes, spending, Social Security, highways and Federal aid to school construction, but that none of the issues would hit the floor of either house without a typical pre-election Congressional fight in committees. Senator Ervin said that he anticipated a bill passing which would establish fixed 90 percent of parity on basic crops.
In Dallas, authorities revealed the previous day that a 12-year old girl, who had cried for six days to use the telephone to call her parents, was being held in juvenile homes during the interim, including on Christmas, in a strange mix-up of records, as police could not find the records of what was done with her, as nine sheriff's deputies had been unable to locate her, and the people who knew where she was had been unable to contact her parents. The Dallas County Juvenile Department had shut down for the Christmas holidays for 2 1/2 days. Her mother said that the girl could have contacted relatives if she had been allowed to use the telephone. The solution had come from a detective who had once searched records but failed to find the child's card, looked through the records again, found her name and eventually located her by telephone. The previous Wednesday, the parents, in a comfortable middle-income bracket, had become involved in a quarrel and the father had gone to the home of relatives for the night, with the mother, after seeing that her daughter was in bed, having gone for a drive to think about the quarrel. The girl had awakened, finding the house empty, became frightened and began walking to a friend's house, when police picked her up during the wee hours of the morning and sought to locate her parents but could not. Police had overlooked the record the following day when the parents began searching for her. The girl had been sent to a maximum security juvenile home because of the hour of her detention, and was then transferred to a residence for homeless girls. The supervisor of the maximum security home said that she had sought repeatedly to call the parents through Saturday afternoon, when the Juvenile Department had closed for the holidays. The manager of the home for homeless girls said that the child had cried because she was not allowed to use a telephone. After her parents had eventually located her, the child's mother said that she was out of her home frequently while searching for the child and even changed her base of operations to her mother's house, that the girl would have called her or her grandmother, had she been able to use the phone. All of the Christmas presents, which the girl was supposed to have received on Christmas, were still waiting for her when she and her parents were reunited.
In Los Angeles, testimony in Federal court, in a lawsuit filed by Rita Hayworth against her employer, Columbia Pictures, for breach of contract, had revealed that Ms. Hayworth was earning $12,500 per week, that she had to be portrayed sympathetically on the screen, and that her fourth husband had blocked the Hollywood comeback of her second husband. Columbia was counter-suing Ms. Hayworth. The vice-president of Columbia had testified regarding how her fourth husband, singer Dick Haymes, had taken over the dealings between Ms. Hayworth and the studio, indicating that the studio had loaned to Mr. Haymes $50,000 the previous year, with a provision that Ms. Hayworth would pay it back from her salary at the rate of $10,000 per year. Ms. Hayworth had divorced Mr. Haymes a month earlier. The Columbia executive said that the second husband, Orson Welles, whom he described as an "actor of great stature", had been the first choice for a top role in "Joseph and His Brethren", in which Ms. Hayworth was to have been the star. He said he believed it was a delicate matter and had suggested to Mr. Haymes that he ask Ms. Hayworth how she felt about it, and that Mr. Haymes had replied that she would not even consider it and to forget it. So the studio had. Other stipulations in her contract were that her pictures had to be made in Technicolor and that the budget had to be at least $700,000. Well, aren't we special?
On the editorial page, "Confidential Plans for Public Schools" indicates that the Advisory Committee on Education had stated two weeks earlier that it was preparing a report which would "strengthen the assurance of the preservation of the public schools" in the state and "yet not require any child of any race to be forced to attend a mixed school against his will." The Committee had also pulled quietly local study groups from the problem.
It finds that it would be presumptuous, however, for anyone to guess what the Committee was planning, as its deliberations remained confidential, as being between the school boards as "clients" and the Committee as "counsel". That left the public wondering what the Committee was planning. Because the local study groups had been removed from the equation, local school boards were also confused, with Greensboro superintendent Ben Smith having said that the Committee had virtually told them not to do anything until they told them what to do, and that it was "very confusing".
It suggests that while the Committee was not expected to conduct its business in the public eye, the removal of the local groups should be made public in detail, as the local school boards deserved to know whether the schools would be run locally or from Raleigh and why any changes were being made. Every citizen should know what plans were being made for the schools so that they could have an intelligent say regarding their future.
"Across the River and into the Hoop" indicates that while basketball had its origins in New England, it had come of age in the Midwest. Dr. James Naismith, its inventor, had made the first basket in 1891, and by 1905, the Western Conference had established intercollegiate competition. Indiana, in particular, had been a center of "artful dribbling and shot-making", largely the result of an active high school basketball program in that state. Across the Ohio River, Kentucky soon turned out national powerhouses as well, and, eventually, the New York area came into prominence with well-coached teams.
North Carolina had sought to keep pace, but the sport had not enjoyed a golden era in the area, despite an occasional George Glamack, former UNC player, delighting the fans. But local basketball had never attracted any sustained national interest until N.C. State coach Everett Case came from Indiana nine years earlier, bringing with him some imports, and State was off to the races, quickly becoming a national contender.
UNC, Duke and Wake Forest had been stressing the sport since the end of World War II in response.
The effort had become evident in the most recent Associated Press poll, with State ranked third, UNC, fourth, and Duke, eighth. Earlier, Wake Forest had won Charlotte's Carrousel basketball tournament, and all four teams would compete, starting this date, in the Dixie Classic in Raleigh.
It thus concludes that North Carolina had become the collegiate basketball capital of the nation, with better play seen nowhere else in the country, even if the individual players were still largely imported from other places. North Carolina high schools were beginning to turn out comparable stars also, and after half a century of basketball supremacy, the Midwest had lost its crown to North Carolina.
By the way, the individual scoring record at UNC at the time, 45 points, was held by George Glamack, set February 10, 1941, to be tied on the ensuing January 14, and again on February 7, both by Lennie Rosenbluth, broken by the latter the following season, on December 3, at 47, that record standing until December, 1964, when Billy Cunningham, No. 32, no relation to Bob Cunningham on the current edition of the Tar Heels in 1955-56, would break it with 48 points, broken again, by Bob Lewis, No. 22, with 49 points, the following December, a record which still stands. And we heard both of the latter records set on the radio. There was no televising of games much to speak of in those days, no color tv, no instant replay, no video tape, no college shot clock, no three-point shot, dependent for good reception on the weather, no personalized computers, not even any Gatorade, none of these sissy gimmicks which kids today have. You had to gut it out with paper cups with a little water tossed in, or at unruly fans, during time-outs, and salt tablets. A ten point lead could be almost insurmountable in the second half, none of this evaporation in a matter of seconds with those sissy three-pointers. It was pure skill that won in those days. And when you wanted to go to a game in person, you had to hitch the wagon to the single-tree and get the old hag out of the barn to pull it through the three-foot snow drifts which usually piled up by mid-January, and go 75-mile or more to get 'ere, had to leave pert near 4:30 in the morning on Friday to make a 2:00 Saturday af'ernoon game, tote ye books with ye so as to miss no school work. And if you wanted to write about it, you had to pump the printing press with your leg af'er hot-firing the lead for the print to be set and roll that baby by hand and leg pow'r. Spoiled brats today just don't get it. Have it handed to ye on a silver platter, and ye just don't appreciate it, just want more.
"Tax Bites Man" tells of two IRS officials having intended to jolt their Washington friends with a Christmas card which was inscribed, "A Simplified Tax Return", accompanied by the verse: "How much did you make?/ How much did you spend?/ Waddya got left?/ Mail it in!"
It indicates that the actual tax forms operated under a sterner philosophy, that one mailed in not only everything one had left, but also everything else one could beg, borrow or steal, "hopeful that not a red cent would fall into the hands of those miserable poets."
"Incredible News from Papa
Dionne" remarks on the story that the father of the four
surviving Dionne quintuplets had not come home for Christmas or even
sent a Christmas card to their parents, with their father contending
that they were being influenced by "outsiders", that while he exhibited
"none of the eloquence or energy of King Lear's classic
complaint
It says that it had not followed the Dionne sisters very closely in recent years, and knew nothing beyond their father's words regarding the reason for their apparent rejection of their parents, hoping that it was only a misunderstanding and that there would be a happy ending. It finds it just as incredible to believe that they had rejected their parents as would be news that Little Orphan Annie had been nabbed in a roundup of juvenile delinquents.
A piece from the Rocky Mount Telegram, titled "$ugar and $pice", suggests that readers had probably been told that little girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but that they should not believe it, as it has it on good authority that they were made of hotdogs, ice cream, cereal, candy, eggs, soda pop, milk and, above all, money.
The Youth Research Institute had determined that it cost between $15,000 and $16,000 for parents to raise a daughter to the age of 17, not counting the additional amount to be expended if the daughter decided to pursue higher education. Even when considering the income tax deductions for a dependent, the parents would still have to spend $4,800.
The Institute had determined that the girl would digest 5,720 hotdogs, 6,156 ice cream cones or bars, 5,624 eggs, 7,742 bottles of pop, 2,096 pounds of meat, and 4,338 quarts of milk. She would have slept 65,520 hours, played 49,504 hours, worn $2,160 worth of clothing and outlasted about 78 pairs of shoes.
It points out that one father, who apparently was not overly impressed with the Institute's findings, had volunteered also that his teenage daughter had, within the previous three years, spent at least 10,000 hours on the telephone.
The obvious question it neglects to answer is how much it would cost to raise a boy to age 17, to provide fair comparison.
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee having discussed with Senate friends the idea of asking the Senate to appoint a special counsel to prosecute those guilty of planting Adolph Wenzell of the First Boston Finance Co. inside the Budget Bureau for the purpose of hatching the Dixon-Yates deal. Such an appointment would be unusual, as it would go over the head of the Attorney General, who was supposed to prosecute on behalf of the Government, and would indicate essentially that the Senate had no confidence in Attorney General Herbert Brownell. Senator Kefauver assumed that Mr. Brownell, however, would never prosecute officials of his own Administration, including Budget Office director Rowland Hughes and Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Admiral Lewis Strauss. Mr. Pearson suggests that there was reason to believe that would be the case, for Mr. Brownell was too busy trying to prosecute members of the former Truman Administration for matters of which the Attorney General had been aware three years earlier and need not have awaited an election year for action. Senator Kefauver had pointed out that the Attorney General, while sending a staff of 13 prosecutors to St. Louis to "get Truman", had completely neglected the conflicts of interests of former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Talbott and former buildings administrator, Peter Strobel. If they had been guilty of a conflict of interest, they were punishable by a fine of $2,000 or two years in jail or both.
A precedent existed for such an appointment of a special counsel, as eventual Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had been so appointed to investigate wages and hours and the Ballinger-Pinchot case, and Mr. Brandeis had done such a notable job in the position that he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Eventual Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts and former Senator Atlee Pomerane had been appointed to prosecute Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty from the Administration of President Warren G. Harding regarding the Teapot Dome scandal. At the time, the country had lost confidence in the Justice Department, and President Calvin Coolidge, successor upon the death of President Harding in 1923, had therefore appointed the two as special prosecutors, with Mr. Roberts doing such a good job that he also was appointed to the Supreme Court.
Senator Kefauver planned to point to various failures of Attorney General Brownell, the latest being his dismissal of charges against the Greek shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, who had been a client of Mr. Brownell when he had been practicing law in New York. The case against Mr. Onassis had involved purchase of American ships and then transferring them to foreign registries, the case against him having been primarily developed by the Justice Department under President Truman, though the final indictment had been brought after the start of the Eisenhower Administration. The Justice Department subordinates—apparently including future Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who had prepared, in September, 1953, a report on the matter for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover—did not realize originally that the Attorney General had represented Mr. Onassis and his company personally, or that Mr. Brownell and his law firm had informed Mr. Onassis that it was legal for him to transfer the American ships to foreign registries. As it would have been quite embarrassing for that fact to come out at trial, the criminal case, just prior to Christmas, was quietly dropped.
Mr. Pearson concludes that those were some of the reasons why Senator Kefauver wanted a special counsel appointed to examine the Dixon-Yates deal and other conflicts of interest within the Administration.
Senator William Jenner of Indiana
had been suggesting that his senior colleague from that state,
Senator Homer Capehart, would lose his bid for re-election the
following year by 250,000 votes. (He would win, and during his next campaign, in 1962, would strangely appear, along with Clare Boothe Luce, to have astonishing prescience regarding the coming Cuban Missile Crisis, some two weeks before anyone in the U.S. intelligence services, and therefore the Administration, knew of the probable presence of soon to be operational MRBM missiles, with offensive capability, on that island, 90 miles off the Florida coast. He even already had the solution: blockade. Nevertheless, he would lose in November, 1962 to young Birch Bayh. The best laid plans of mice and men, and Wurlitzer Jukebox owners...
The supposedly impartial commission which had just been appointed to study the Administration's security program was considering Julian Sourwine, a McCarthyite, to be the staff director. Mr. Sourwine had just completed a witch-hunt against the New York Times, having subpoenaed 22 of its staff for secret examination.
Congressman Jim Wright of Texas, 33, eventually to become House Speaker in 1987, had delivered 104 speeches to his constituents.
Doris Fleeson indicates that New York Governor Averell Harriman had regarded as one of his better Christmas gifts the fact that the President had belittled him to Republican Congressional leaders as a "Park Avenue Truman", that to be singled out by the President was a sure way to attract attention and Governor Harriman had been suffering from lack of coverage compared to that of his rivals, Adlai Stevenson and Senator Estes Kefauver. The Governor also believed that it was helpful in the states with large electoral votes to be regarded as a Truman Democrat.
Mr. Harriman was the only declared Democratic candidate for the presidency who had been pinning responsibility for Administration failures directly on the President, having begun doing so prior to the President's heart attack, and had continued to do so as he believed that was where responsibility belonged. Some of the Governor's friends had told him that he was being too abrupt and outspoken, suggesting that he was simplifying the issues too much and would be vulnerable to a charge of demagogy. He had replied that while it might be so, he believed it necessary for candidates to be direct and positive.
Even before the President had broken with his custom of refraining from any personal wisecrack about a rival, the Governor had been a favorite target of Republicans. He had begun life as a Republican and was one of the richest and most social of them all, seeming, as had FDR, therefore to be a traitor to his class. His Tammany Hall connections were also a convenient source of material for alarmed observers. But Mr. Harriman and New Yorkers could argue that Tammany leader Carmine DeSapio represented a new look in political leaders.
The Governor had also angered the Taft Republicans, beginning in 1950, when he had addressed the AFL convention as an aggressive defender of the Truman foreign policies, having said then that the aims of the Soviets would have been better served had the U.S. been following Taft foreign policy, to which the supporters of Senator Taft had cried "foul". But Mr. Harriman had refused to retreat.
Mr. Harriman had worked closely with General Eisenhower during the war and postwar years, when both had been appointed by FDR and President Truman.
Public opinion polls did not suggest that Governor Harriman had a very good chance against the President or even to receive the Democratic nomination, as important New Yorkers were openly supporting Mr. Stevenson and had raised substantial funds for him. But there were many Democrats who believed that Mr. Stevenson would stumble and that Governor Harriman, with the backing of the large states and the West, would become the nominee and could be elected. They argued that the Republicans would wage another fear campaign regarding radicalism and labor in the coming election year and that the public would not believe it of Governor Harriman, with his famous family and financial standing, while it might work against other Democrats.
The Congressional Quarterly suggests that both Democrats and Republicans could claim that they had kept most of their campaign pledges from 1952, while each could also charge that the opposition had broken pledges. The confusion was from the fact that party platforms were usually put forth as generalities and credit for action or blame for inaction could be confused, as each party borrowed planks from the other, fulfilling the opponent's pledges and then claiming popular rewards.
According to the Quarterly, Democrats had promised to protect producers of basic farm commodities with "mandatory price supports … at not less than 90 percent of parity," while Republicans had "aimed at full parity prices for all farm products in the marketplace." Both parties had failed in those promises, with the Administration forces having defeated the Democratic efforts to continue rigid supports at 90 percent, and the previous Republican Congress having enacted the President's program of lower, flexible supports, with the result that farm prices had declined.
Democrats and Republicans had pledged to work for reduction of Federal spending, and while spending had been cut, the parties had not always agreed on where the cuts should occur. The Republicans had sought to balance the budget and reduce the national debt, but had failed so far to do so, as the deficit had continued and the debt ceiling had been raised, with bipartisan support. The Republicans had also promised a general tax reduction, and the Democrats had favored reducing taxes, especially for people in the lower income brackets. Republicans had also promised to revise the tax laws. Taxes had been cut and the revenue laws revised, but Democrats had tried and failed to enact tax reductions for lower income groups.
Both parties had said that they would seek peace in Korea, and a cease-fire had been signed in July, 1953 after negotiations guided by the Administration, but a final settlement had not been achieved.
Democrats had promised more than the Republicans in their Social Security plank, and there had been bipartisan support in Congress for extension of coverage and increased benefits.
The Democrats had called in their platform in 1952 for repeal of Taft-Hartley, while Republicans had promised to amend it, and neither party had been able to fulfill their pledges.
Democrats had pledged minimum wages "consistent with present day progress", while Republicans had no minimum wage plank. The President had recommended an increase in the minimum wage from 75 cents to 90 cents per hour, while Congress had raised it to one dollar per hour, with bipartisan support.
The Republicans had said in their platform that the responsibility for education had always rested on the local communities and states, while the Democrats had said that Federal aid for new school construction, teacher salaries and school maintenance and repair was needed. Congress had set up a conference on education at the request of the President, and schools had remained a local matter, as action had been deferred on the President's limited plan for Federal aid.
Democrats had called for expansion of highway funding, while the Republicans had no highway plank. The President had recommended a major road-building program, but enactment of it had been thus far blocked.
The parties had differed in emphasis on reciprocal trade, with the Democrats opposing any restrictions and Republicans advocating "true reciprocity" and safeguards against unfair import competition. Congress had extended the reciprocal trade program for one-year periods in 1953 and 1954, when the Republicans controlled both houses, and had extended it to three years in 1955, under Democratic control. Protection against foreign competition was strengthened, but Congress had rejected oil import quotas. The President had used an escape clause to raise tariffs on three commodities and had turned down eight recommended increases.
A letter writer says that America could not be alert to the quickly changing currents of foreign politics unless the Administration and Congress could keep the people informed of those changes, urges giving the people the facts so that another Pearl Harbor could be avoided.
A letter from the commanding officer and the inspector-instructor of the Third Cargo Co. of the Marine Corps Reserve in Charlotte tells of many children having enjoyed a Merry Christmas because of the generosity of the warmhearted people in the Charlotte area, with the success of the "Toys for Tots" program, and they thank everyone who had donated toys, as well as the newspaper and all of its staff for its support of the program.
A letter from the captain of the North Carolina Wing of the Civil Air Patrol thanks the newspaper for a fine job in calling attention to the CAP's 14th anniversary, especially to reporters Emery Wister and Margaret Watkins.
Fifth Day
Framed Edition
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