The Charlotte News

Friday, April 15, 1955

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the Soviet Government had this date called for speedy conclusion of an Austrian independence treaty and withdrawal of all occupation troops from Austria no later than the end of the current year, via a joint Soviet-Austrian communiqué issued during the afternoon in which the Austrian Chancellor, Julius Raab, had assured Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov that Austria would not join any military alliances or permit the establishment of any foreign military bases within its territory. The Soviets also pledged to settle reparations against Austria for the equivalent of 150 million dollars worth of Austrian goods, to return to Austria all former German property within the Soviet zone, including the Danube Shipping Co., and to return the Austrian oil fields and refineries which the Russians had been operating during their ten-year occupation of the country. Austria had agreed to deliver the Russians crude oil in an amount to be agreed on between the two nations, in exchange for the return to Austria of the oil properties, and had agreed to pay a sum yet to be determined in exchange for return of the Danube Shipping Co. property. The communiqué also stated that the two countries had agreed to begin negotiations in the near future to normalize trade between them and that the Soviets took a favorable view of return of all Austrian interned civilians and war prisoners, following withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops. Mr. Molotov, Chancellor Raab and their aides had been engaged in negotiations in Moscow since Tuesday, and the communiqué was issued two hours after the Chancellor had left for Vienna aboard a Soviet military plane, saying that he and his aides left "happy people". The Soviets had made their independence of Austria conditioned on a guarantee by the other three occupying powers that Austria and Germany never would again merge, as had been the case during Hitler's regime, in 1938, at the time of Anschluss, though the point had not been included in the joint communiqué. The agreement would now have to be approved by the U.S., Britain and France, the other three occupying powers, before it could be incorporated into an independence treaty, which would then have to be ratified by the four occupying powers. It was anticipated that a Big Four meeting would be called soon to conclude such a treaty. The Austrian Deputy Chancellor said that Western agreement to the new treaty provisions was almost certain, after the Austrian delegation had been keeping the Western allies abreast of the developments at the Moscow conference. State Department officials had stated the previous day that Russia's reported attitude at the conference had been "encouraging".

Before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee this date, State Department security chief Scott McLeod testified that he had set out to prove, following passage of the 1953 refugee relief act, that its critics had been wrong in saying that it would not work. He said that he had viewed that as a challenge to make it work by successfully administering the emergency immigration program. He was the first witness before the subcommittee as it began public hearings on the termination of Edward Corsi as the Assistant Secretary of State for immigration, fired only 90 days after having been hired to the post, with the post having been eliminated, while Mr. Corsi was being heavily criticized by Representative Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, co-sponsor of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act, after Mr. Corsi had described the Act as "un-American" for its establishment of quotas based on national origins. Mr. Corsi had stated after his dismissal that the refugee act had been sabotaged by "an intolerant minority" in Congress and the State Department, including Mr. McLeod, among others. Mr. McLeod detailed difficulties he had encountered in placing the "complex law" into operation, stating that he felt "something of a record" for speed had been established in drafting and publishing regulations for administration of the law. He said they had to be worked out with several other agencies, which had been accomplished in just 120 days after the law had been enacted in August, 1953. In response to questioing by the refugee act's sponsor, Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, he said that he was under a great deal of pressure from groups interested in immigration to speed the program along, and that he had been exerting pressure on subordinates to make the law effective as quickly as possible.

In Atlanta, it was reported that operations had been halted by picketing this date in U.S. Steel's giant Fairfield, Ala., plant, the largest steel mill in the South, while a general strike in Birmingham loomed in sympathy with striking telephone and railway workers. A United Steelworkers union district director reported that the plant, which employed about 20,000 workers, was closed by mid-morning, and a company official said that a survey was underway to determine to what extent operations had been impacted elsewhere. The United Steelworkers representative predicted that all businesses and industries in the Birmingham area would feel the effects of the strike.

In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges told newsmen at his weekly press conference this date that if he had to make a choice between a tax on soft drinks and one on tobacco, he would tax soft drinks, as a means to raise necessary revenue for the coming biennium. He said that he anticipated that the General Assembly would come around, after a scrap, and reach agreement on the tax issue. He also praised Assistant Attorney General I. Beverly Lake for his oral argument on behalf of the state before the Supreme Court two days earlier regarding the implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education, stating that he was impressed by the presentation, that Mr. Lake had been "straightforward, logical and impressive" and appeared to have received at least "courteous and attentive" reception from members of the Court. Mr. Lake, an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary candidate in 1960 and future State Supreme Court Justice, had argued for delay in implementing desegregation to afford the state time to work out local problems and enable the population to accept the notion of integration, to avoid a "death blow" to the state's public schools and "turmoil and confusion from which only our enemies could derive any satisfaction."

In Greensboro, N.C., defense counsel for Junius Scales, accused in Federal Court, by the fact of his admitted Communist Party membership, of violation of the Smith Act, prohibiting the teaching and advocacy of the overthrow of the Government by force or violence, sought to discredit the testimony of an FBI undercover agent, presently a Charlotte attorney, who said that he had spied on Mr. Scales while posing as a member of the party. During cross-examination this date, the undercover agent said that he reported to the FBI between once or twice daily and once per month during November and December, 1948, during his early acquaintance with Mr. Scales, stating that some of his reports had been typewritten, some telephoned to the Bureau, and some scribbled on the back of a matchbook or on tissue in a bar. Late in 1949, Mr. Scales had put into effect much stricter security measures regarding their meetings, requiring the undercover agent, when he met at the home of Mr. Scales in Carrboro, to go across a field, through an alley and into the back door, always at night, and that their meetings in automobiles had also become more frequent during that period to reduce the chance of being seen together. When asked how he had become aware of Communist activity in the area of Chapel Hill and Durham, the undercover agent stated that a man had predicted to him that people would show up in sizable voting strength to support the Progressive Party campaign of former Vice-President Henry Wallace in 1948 and that the electoral showing would be the signal for the revolution. He also said that he had been told that a reporter for a Durham newspaper had attended Communist meetings and had heard party members advocate violent revolution.

Donald MacDonald of The News tells of safe-crackers having broken into the Park Road School the previous night, the seventh school to be hit in a series of safe-crackings or attempts at it within the city and county during the previous four months. The intruders had failed to make away with anything of value, but, according to the school's principal, they had wrecked several doors and broken windows throughout the building. It was the second break-in of a school building during the week, after yeggs had knocked the dials from a safe after breaking into the principal's office of the Elizabeth School on Tuesday night, with evidence showing that the thieves had sought to blow open the safe door with explosives during that entry. In the attempted safe-cracking the previous night, the thieves used a pole of a type used in lowering or raising windows, and when that had apparently failed, broke into a room where stage equipment was stored and took a shepherd's crook used by the children in a Christmas play and sought to fish articles through a hole they had made in the safe's walk-in door. When that failed, they had bent a wire flower stand into the shape of a book and sought again unsuccessfully to pull things from the safe. The principal said that they had also broken a door glass inside the school cafeteria, smashed open a cash box which contained no money, ripped a telephone pay station box from a wall, all resulting in a haul of about 50 cents to a dollar. It lists the other school break-ins which had occurred since January 4. The thieves who entered the Park Road School perhaps needed to practice up at the fair during the fall in the crane game. At least they could provide their children, should they have any, with lunch money for a day or two.

In New York, a female secretary said that the previous day she had submitted $11.71 in cash through a bank teller's window and asked for a certified check in return to make a quarterly payment on her state income taxes, and the teller made out the check and gave it back to her in an envelope, which the woman then placed in her purse without examining it, then returned to her office intending to mail it later. About an hour afterward, perturbed bank officials had located her and asked if they could have the check back, for it had been made out for $2,300,011.71. Had she been quicker on the draw, she might have sent the check on to the yeggs in Charlotte for having gone to all that trouble in busting into the school for so little reward.

Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every and his wife would leave this date for Holland as the guests of the Bulb Growers Association and the Government of Holland. The invitation had been extended because tulips grown in Charlotte had been adjudged to be the best of all grown in many Southern cities, after the Holland bulb growers had sent their bulbs to numerous Southern cities the previous year and offered the free air trip to the mayor of the city where the best tulips were grown. The engineer for the Park and Recreation Commission, who had planted the bulbs in a bed on the island in the lake of Freedom Park, had sought the advice and assistance of J. B. Ivey, the department store executive and champion tulip grower. A picture shows the champion tulips and Mr. Ivey. The Mayor and his wife would simply tiptoe right out of Charlotte. But it seems that they really didn't have much part in the production of the champion tulips. Guess that's just the way it goes…

In Tallahassee, Fla., a man was awakened by a shotgun blast, which probably saved his life, as he sat up in bed to find his house on fire, the heat having caused the gun to discharge. Lest the Second Amendment "rights" people go crazy at having discovered, at long last, a beneficial purpose for guns, nowadays we have something called smoke detectors for the purpose.

In New York, entertainer Arthur Godfrey this date fired six more performers from his television and radio shows, but had not done so on the air, as he had in October, 1953, when he had publicly fired Julius La Rosa. CBS announced that Mr. Godfrey had discontinued the services of the Mariners Quartet, Marian Marlowe and Haleloke, all of whom were singers. Three writers, Charles Warner, Preston Miles and Charles Slocum, were also terminated. Mr. Godfrey had made no mention of the terminations during his morning show.

Walter Lippmann, as noted in a front-page story, was joining the list of syndicated editorial writers for the newspaper, with his first piece appearing this date.

On the editorial page, "Highway Safety: Laws into Attitudes" indicates that in 46 years, the state's motor vehicle laws had grown by irregular enactments, producing a crazy-quilt pattern of statutes and ordinances.