The Charlotte News
Wednesday, June 22, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in San Francisco, Russian Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov was expected this date to bring into the open his demands for a U.N. declaration pledging all of the organization's 60 member nations to work for peace, with Western diplomats believing that it would be the centerpiece of his foreign policy statement to the meeting commemorating the U.N.'s tenth anniversary. Mr. Molotov had been reported the previous night to have given the Western Big Three foreign ministers a partial reply to their proposals for setting up the summit meeting in Geneva, starting July 18, with informed quarters stating that he had balked only on one important point, the Western proposal to limit the talks to four to six days, Mr. Molotov not wanting any limit. There appeared to be little doubt that some form of a peace declaration would be approved at the tenth anniversary meeting, with the main problems being procedural and form, as prior to the meeting, it had been agreed that there would only be speeches regarding the U.N. and no actual business conducted. The Western diplomats believed that it was a Soviet propaganda move, but said that they would agree to a declaration proposed by the representative of the Netherlands, the General Assembly president, which said that the delegations unanimously supported all peace attempts, not requiring a formal vote. It was not known whether Mr. Molotov would accept such a statement without a formal vote. He had originally bought up the peace resolution in a private meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold the previous Sunday, with both Mr. Hammarskjold and the Netherlands representative indicating that they did not believe that the meeting was the place to adopt resolutions. On Monday night, Mr. Molotov had discussed his plan with the Western Big Three and they had also objected to it. He gave no indication, however, that he was prepared to alter his position.
In Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this date unanimously expressed complete confidence that the President would express the views of the American people and negotiate successfully at the coming Big Four summit meeting, stating in a report to the Senate its recommendation that the body reject a resolution by Senator McCarthy aimed at forcing the Big Four leaders to discuss the question of the Soviet satellites, indicating that the resolution "would be meaningless if not actually harmful." The report said that it would have the effect of expressing a lack of confidence in the President at a critical point in world history when American unity in foreign affairs was particularly important. The only member of the 15-Senator Committee who did not vote for the recommendation was Senator William Langer of North Dakota, who was simply not present for the vote. Leaders of the Senate were aiming for a vote of the full body by nightfall, and all signs suggested a solid rejection of the McCarthy resolution, based on it tending to tie the President's hands at Geneva, as expressed by former Vice-President and Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky. Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader, denounced the resolution as an effort to "place a loaded gun at the President's temple." Senator William Knowland of California, the Minority Leader, told Senator McCarthy that he was seeking to intrude on "an executive function", Senator McCarthy having replied that the Senate had a right to advise the President. The Senator then told the press in advance of the Senate debate that the Committee's decision had been "disappointing" and "a great blow to the peoples in the satellite states", that is Eastern Europe, North Korea and elsewhere. The resolution would express as the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should obtain prior approval of Russia to discuss the question of liberation of the satellite nations, and would have the effect, without such approval, of placing the Senate on record as opposing any form of Big Four meeting.
Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens resigned this date and the President reluctantly accepted the resignation and nominated Wilber Brucker, general counsel of the Defense Department, as his successor. Mr. Stevens cited "compelling personal considerations" as his reason for resignation. He had been a principal in the previous year's Army-McCarthy hearings, but neither Mr. Stevens nor the President made any reference to that event. The resignation would become effective at the end of July. Mr. Brucker was a former Governor of Michigan between 1931 and the end of 1932, and had also previously been the State Attorney General and District Attorney for Saginaw County in Michigan. He had succeeded John G. Adams as counsel for the Army, Mr. Adams having resigned shortly after the Army-McCarthy hearings, as had Roy Cohn, top aide and counsel to Senator McCarthy.
In Rome, Premier Mario Scelba turned in the resignations this date of the coalition Government with which he had battled for 15 months against Italian Communism while backing the West. A communiqué from the morning's heated Cabinet meeting had stated that the Council of Ministers had agreed unanimously on the presentation to President Giovanni Gronchi of their resignations. The Christian Democrats, the party of Premier Scelba, had pulled the rug out from under him and started a Government crisis. If the President accepted the resignations, conferences with party leaders would begin immediately to pick a new premier to succeed Sr. Scelba. If the resignations were refused, the Premier would face a test of confidence in Parliament immediately, with his own party split in a revolt against him. His party held only 262 of the 590 Chamber of Deputies seats, far short of a majority, forcing the Premier to rely on a coalition with three minor centrist parties to achieve the votes necessary to pass his policies. The rightist Christian Democrats, headed by former Premier Giuseppe Pella, wanted to end the coalition and form a Cabinet only from their own party. The coalition had also encountered opposition from left-wing Christian Democrats, who favored an "opening toward the left", some form of coalition with the fellow-traveling left-wing Socialists, headed by Pietro Nenni, of which faction the President was a member. There was some speculation that the President might pick a Christian Democrat agreeing with his views as the new premier. The announcement had come as a surprise, because Premier Scelba had been considered to have a fair chance of succeeding in his attempt to strengthen his coalition.
In Asheboro, N.C., the sheriff reported that an 80-year old man had admitted killing his wife, also 80, with a hammer after what he had called continuous nagging during their five years of marriage, saying that he was "fed up with it." He told the sheriff that they had argued on Sunday evening about him being gone all day and that she had slapped him, that he had then hit her with his fist, at which point she ran to the back porch, whereupon he followed, picking up a mechanic's hammer and then hit her several times, the final blow knocking her through a screen door and into the yard. The coroner said that she had suffered several skull fractures, a broken jaw and 12 scalp lacerations. Both the husband and wife had previously been widowed. The husband, a real estate dealer in Franklinville, was charged with murder and was awaiting a preliminary hearing without bond.
Elizabeth Blair of The News tells of a new wing to be built on the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, increasing bed capacity by 67 beds and adding to surgical and other facilities, to cost an estimated $991,000, with completion anticipated by early 1957. With the additional beds, the hospital would accommodate 348 patients.
The General Assembly in 1955 had
passed a law whereby any person of majority who neglected to care for
his or her parents when they were too old or infirm to support
themselves, could be fined and imprisoned. The statute had been
co-sponsored by six State Senators, including Senator F. J. Blythe of
Mecklenburg County. He said that 34 states had such a law at present
and that some required support of aged parents to a greater extent
than did the North Carolina law. He said that the law had been
greatly mutilated during the course of legislative proceedings and
that he favored having it more specifically spell out the
responsibility of children toward their parents. Well, you go back to
work on that before you go putting people in jail for not supporting
ma and pa. They need to work
In Charlotte, a man who posed as a State Revenue Department tax agent had attempted to bilk a Charlotte grocer out of $93 during the week, but, according to police, the grocer had outsmarted him. The grocer told the man that he had already paid all of his taxes, but the man then looked over the books and ordered the grocer to pay him $93.26, at which point the grocer began locking up his store, telling the man that he would be happy to go down to the tax office with him. At that point, the flimflam artist wasted no time in making a quick exit, with the grocer describing the route he had taken in his car thereafter. A check with the State Revenue Department had revealed that the man was an impostor, as the agents carried necessary credentials and identification when calling on businesses.
On the editorial page, "Correcting a U.S. Military 'Scandal'" indicates that the reluctance of Congress to provide a practical program for a trained military reserve force was disgraceful, that the Senate, with an opportunity to come to grips with the problem, had been stubbornly sitting on its hands for weeks, while the House had permitted itself to be diverted by a variety of relatively insignificant side issues.
It finds it no minor matter and that it was not the proper subject for a game of politics, that the President had rightly indicated a few days earlier that trained men in the right place at the right time were vital to the nation's security. Recent public opinion polls had shown strong support for a more vigorous reserve training program. Thus, it finds that it was time for the Congress to act, for the reserve program had been in trouble since the end of World War II.
Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had said the previous summer that the reserve program in the U.S. was "a scandal", and the President had said that the country had failed miserably to maintain a strong, ready military reserve in which it had believed or professed belief for 150 years.
The Administration's bill proposed a ready reserve force of 2.9 million men, above the present limit of 1.5 million, with an additional special corps of 250,000 youths who would have six months of intensive training and then go to the reserves for 7 1/2 years, with those failing to keep up with their assigned duties facing recall to active duty.
It finds that the country could accept nothing less, and that members of Congress owed it to the nation to make a realistic beginning on reserve legislation. Such side issues as the anti-segregation rider concerning National Guard units only, it finds, should be dispensed with swiftly, so as not to overshadow the overall problem.
It asserts that members of Congress ought heed the advice of Missouri Senator Stuart Symington, former Secretary of the Air Force, who had said that except for possible peripheral wars of the future, the reserves would be more important than they had been in the past, that in previous wars, the weakness of the reserves had proved to be one of the most serious handicaps the country had to overcome after being attacked, and that in a possible future war in the hydrogen age, continuation of such an unfortunate policy could prove fatal to the national security.
It concludes that the duty of Congress was clear and it could not afford to dally any longer, that the President's 1955 reserve program should be passed without delay or crippling modifications.
"Charlie and Foster, Meet Oveta" finds that Oveta Culp Hobby, HEW Secretary, should head the list of nominations for new members of the "National Foot-In-Mouth Club", chartered by Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State Dulles. It finds that Secretary Hobby had established her credentials for membership when she said that no one could have foreseen the public demand for the Salk polio vaccine, having further established her qualifications by additional comments made about the vaccine. On a radio program the previous Monday, she had sought to shift responsibility for vaccine control, or lack thereof, to Surgeon General Leonard Scheele, saying that responsibility under the law controlling vaccines ran to him, rather than to her, adding, however, that she was "not dissatisfied" with his work. She also pointed out that the Surgeon General was a presidential appointee, although the Public Health Service which he ran was part of HEW.
It indicates that if she had enough control over Dr. Scheele to judge his work, it would appear that she had enough control to demand from him months earlier a safe, workable vaccine program. If she could not assess him positively, more than "not dissatisfied", she ought get the President to appoint a new Surgeon General, although it had seen no negative evidence against him. It also finds troubling that Secretary Hobby had labeled a proposal for the Government to provide free vaccine to all youth under age 19 as "socialized medicine by the back door". It agrees with her that free vaccine should be limited to those who could not afford it, but finds that there was no value in placing a political label on what should be a humanitarian project.
In their annual contributions to the March of Dimes, the American people had paid for development of the vaccine, inconsistent with anything considered socialistic. It believes the people were more interested in immunology than ideology when it came to fighting polio. When Secretary Hobby had licensed the vaccine, she had assumed responsibility for its safety and could not now evade that responsibility, even if she had not lived up to it.
"Battles and Declarations before Goats" tells of North Carolina Representative Carl Durham having recently introduced a bill in Congress to direct the Postmaster General to issue in 1956 a commemorative stamp regarding the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, with a statewide campaign having already been launched to support the measure.
It finds that Guilford deserved its commemorative stamp far more than some other recent candidates announced, for instance one proposing to honor the centennial of the Angora goat in America, as proposed by a Texas Congressman.
It thinks that Mecklenburg ought to have its commemorative stamp for the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, even though the bicentennial of it would not occur until 1975. But given the long and expensive campaigns which some communities waged to obtain such honors, it was not too early to begin. If the U.S. could have a stamp honoring the centennial of the first poultry show in the country and another honoring the first flight to Basra, Iraq, it could also afford to commemorate the Mecklenburg Declaration, and suggests that such a stamp ought be issued in a respectable denomination.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Psychology and the Sand Man", tells of a psychologist investigating sleeping habits, having concluded that most persons hated to arise in the morning. But his explanation, that people were secretly reluctant to face the day's uncertainties, would draw disagreement from many people who slept in, with the plain fact being that many people simply liked to sleep. It was the result of needing to recuperate from the work of the previous day before starting on a new one, not the dread of the hydrogen bomb or other modern day perils.
It acknowledges advances in psychology in probing of the mind, but finds that fear and guilt did not have to be the root cause of every human action. It suggests that psychologists were as Pavlov's dog in investigating human conditions, always needing to ascribe them to some hidden fear. "Anyway, he's not going to rout the sandman any earlier for us with his accusing pencil. We ain't afrued of nobody. Just sleepy, doc."
Drew Pearson tells of the powerful oil and gas lobby having put the heat on the nation's mayors to support the gas bill presently before Congress, which would overrule a Supreme Court decision and bar any Federal regulation of gas transmitted through interstate pipelines. The result of the lobbying efforts was a battle of the mayors across the country. In another sense, it was a fight between two Mayor Clarks, the Mayor of Philadelphia, Joseph Clark, a Democrat, who was fighting for the consumers, and the Mayor of Minneapolis, Alex Clark, a Republican, fronting for the oil lobby.
The bill which the oil lobby wanted passed would cost consumers higher gas bills, estimated to be 400 million dollars annually. Thus, Mayor Clark of Philadelphia had begun rallying other big-city mayors against the bill, having lined up more than 50 mayors, representing 30 million consumers, to wage a protest against the bill in Congress. The oil companies had gotten the Mayor of Indianapolis to put out press releases in favor of the bill, arguing in the name of free enterprise that producers should be free to raise field prices. He had shown up in Washington with letters and telegrams, which he contended were spontaneously sent from other mayors who sided with him. He so testified to the Senate Commerce Committee. But the actual truth was that the messages were secretly solicited by the oil companies. Mr. Pearson tells of how that had come to light and lists some of the mayors who had sided with the oil lobby, representing cities whose consumers would be hard-hit by gas price increases, including Wilmington, Del., Spokane, Wash., Peoria, Ill., Canton, O., and several Indiana mayors.
The oil lobbyists had also pressured mayors who had sided with the consumers, causing four big-city mayors to reverse themselves after initially joining Mayor Clark of Philadelphia, and enter the fight against the Supreme Court decision, including mayors of Kansas City, Kans., New Orleans, Savannah and Tampa.
He concludes that it would be interesting to see whether Congress would vote for the oil lobby or the consumers. He notes that a third Mayor Clark, L. C. Clark of Tulsa, had also gotten into the battle, having started out on industry's side, promising to line up mayors for the oil lobby, but having switched at the mayors' conference in New York, after running into Pittsburgh's Mayor Dave Lawrence, siding with the consumers, causing the third Mayor Clark also to join Mayor Clark of Philadelphia against Mayor Clark of Indianapolis.
By the way, the ability of Congress, in this instance, to overrule a Supreme Court decision was because the decision only interpreted an extant Federal law, and did not involve a constitutional principle other than the flow of oil and gas in interstate commerce, thus being subject to regulation by Congress. So, the advocates of somehow overruling Brown v. Board of Education with some type of Congressional legislation fell in a different field, the far rightfield, through the fence and out of the ballpark into the river, that decision, being rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, and insofar as Bolling v. Sharpe and the D.C. schools, in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, therefore not being subject to any overruling Congressional legislation, except an effort to abrogate the Fourteenth Amendment by constitutional amendment, requiring two-thirds of each house to propose an amendment to the states, or that by two-thirds of the state legislatures, and then ratification by three-fourths of the states. Congress had no means, any more than did the legislatures of the states, to circumvent the Fourteenth Amendment or any other individual right of the people, whether expressly contained in the Constitution, or existing within the penumbral rights as part of the expressly recognized fundamental rights, via the Ninth Amendment.
Thus, the smart-aleck of Fox "News" or the radio talk show genius might ask, how do they regulate the guns? That, "the right to keep and bear arms", from the Founding, has never been an individual right, only one enabled and informed by being a member of a "well regulated militia", the present majority of the Supreme Court and their most recent outrageous rulings to the contrary notwithstanding, in time to be abrogated by minds basing their rationale on the law rather than political payoff for appointment to the Court, doing obeisance to the Federalist Society agenda.
Walter Lippmann tells of the coming Big Four summit conference actually to involve eight nations, that in addition to the Big Four would be West Germany, Communist China, India and Japan. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had made that stipulation clear during his visit to the U.S. West Germany was now a key player in NATO. Japan was negotiating directly with the Soviet Union for a peace treaty. The U.S. had begun talking through intermediaries with Mao Tse-tung in Communist China. India had become a mediating power which no one could afford or would dare to ignore.
Within recent weeks, it had become clear that all of those principal powers were in basic agreement on three general propositions, that war, meaning thermonuclear war, was impossible at this point, and that there was no alternative, therefore, to peace, at least other than the avoidance of war, that while the great powers could not wage war, they also could not make the concessions necessary to settle the major issues, that given the first two propositions, they had, nevertheless, to find ways to relax the most dangerous of the tensions.
In the West, that had not been the popular view, with Secretary of State Dulles, Chancellor Adenauer and British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan having indicated great concern over the fact that the public expectation differed greatly from what those representatives believed could or should be accomplished in the forthcoming talks. The popular view was that to relax the tensions, it was required that settlement of the major issues take place, such as German reunification and resolution of the Formosa issue. Officially, however, the view was that the tensions had to be relaxed before the major issues could be settled.
Competition in armaments had reached a stalemate, such that war and the threat of war could not be used as an instrument of national policy, whether it was for liberation or conquest. Thus, diplomacy was now the only tool left to try to construct a peace. But, without war as a tool, diplomacy had also changed because in the past, war was always the ultimate sanction available. Without it, the major powers would feel no compulsion to make major concessions to settle the major issues, leaving only ways of making more certain that the stalemate would endure.
None of the major powers was prepared to make the major concessions necessary for settlement, as made clear on the Western side during the visit to the U.S. by Chancellor Adenauer. He did not want to negotiate at present for German reunification and a German peace treaty, and the Western powers agreed with him. He did not want to negotiate on the major issues having to do with Germany's eastern frontier until there was a German Army and until West Germany was the leading European member of NATO.
The Soviets had also taken the position which ruled out any genuine negotiation regarding their satellites, having declared that their military arrangements with those satellites were not negotiable.
Yet, all of the major powers were engaged in negotiations about the smaller issues, such as prisoners of war, detained civilians, nuisances and cruelties behind the Iron Curtain, trade embargoes, the aimless shooting in the Formosa Strait, fabricated accusations and propaganda regarding prevention of war, provocative deployment of armed forces, and other such cold war issues. If resolution of those smaller issues was what the governments expected and represented that for which they were hoping from the conference, it would be wise, Mr. Lippmann posits, for them to say so, in which case they would not need to worry so much about the expectations of the people being too great. It would then no longer be so necessary for so many American politicians, with the exception of the President, to prove that they were not Communists every time they spoke on television, that they were not fellow travelers or dupes, or that they were second to none in their capacity to say what had been often said before and did not need to be stated again.
A letter writer indicates that the true meaning behind the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education was that "all men are created equal." It stood for the difference between right and wrong and represented the principles of God. "We must give equal opportunity to every person in the good, free life we Americans are exposed to. The Negro has not had his chance yet."
A letter writer, chairman of the Mecklenburg County Unit of the Citizens Committee for Good Government in North Carolina, comments on the recent local debate regarding the sale of beer in Charlotte, finds that the fact that Mayor Philip Van Every and all members of the City Council, save two, had favored continued Sunday sale of beer showed the type of Mayor and Council the city had. He opines that beer, wine and whiskey brutalized, cheapened and coarsened human character and that every resource ought be used to decrease the manufacture, sale and use "of such evil forces."
A letter writer responds to a recent letter writer, whom this writer thinks had better wake up, as he was 50 years behind the times, that there was no one now who worked from dawn to dusk, given the Federal Wage and Hour Act of 1938. He contends that Southerners liked "our Negroes, not as a race, but individually," that there were some of whom "we are proud" and would be willing to share "about everything except bed and board with them." He finds that those blacks appreciated the help they had received from the white race. He also asserts that it was the previous letter writer's type with whom they did not wish to associate, but that when they accepted the "good Negro", they would also have to take "his class also". Thus, they intended to fight to the end against integration. The letter writer had said that younger people did not believe in violence, but this writer wants to know then why 15 and 16-year old blacks in New York were having gang wars. The previous writer had urged not worrying about one's neighbors but rather about nations, while this writer says that people were dependent on their neighbor, that the other nations would not take care of Americans when they were sick, that it would be better to forget other nations and worry about one's neighbor, in which case the letter writer would be able to have money for more things than food. He also finds, regarding the letter writer's contention that if a black person owned a nice car, he would have to hide it at work or risk losing his job, that "they are only hiding them from the city tax collector."
Have you had a taste of ol' Lesta's
chicken down 'eya? You should go on down and have you some, right
away, and you'll feel much betta. Lesta, he don't sit black people in
his restaurant, but he employs them in his kitchen, has nothing
against them, just those integratas and agitatas and ______ from up
Nawth. Praise be to Guv'na Wallace!
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