The Charlotte News
Friday, June 3, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Belgrade, Kremlin leaders wound up their eight-day visit with President Tito this date, the latter apparently having held fast to his independence while echoing Soviet sentiments on German unity and Communist Chinese claims to Formosa. Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Deputy Premier A. I. Mikoyan left by plane for Moscow during the morning after their aides had left earlier in a separate plane, scheduled to stop in Sofia, Bulgaria, on the way back to Moscow. Marshal Tito had driven Mr. Khrushchev to the airport in his Rolls-Royce and remained on hand to see his guests leave. Mr. Khrushchev had spent more time bidding farewell to U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia James Riddleberger than to any of the other diplomats present, after the two had a tense exchange the prior Saturday evening at a dinner party, described by Drew Pearson. A declaration of general principles had issued from the meeting, indicating that the way needed to be paved for peaceful solution to world problems. Mr. Khrushchev did not sign the document, despite having led the six-man Russian delegation. Among other things, the declaration said that Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union supported "the satisfaction of the legitimate rights of the Communist People's Republic of China with regard to Taiwan…"
Rowland Evans, Jr., reports that the President's 3.5 billion dollar foreign aid program had sped to the House this date after comfortably surviving all attempts in the Senate to reduce the total, passing by a vote of 59 to 18. Senate passage of the previous night marked the first time in five years that a global aid authorization measure had won Senate approval without a cut. Attempts to require that a major part of economic aid be made as loans rather than grants had been defeated. Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, a member of the Appropriations Committee, told the Senate that he considered the authorization a "maximum", that they were not signing a promissory note and guaranteeing to redeem that amount in the forthcoming appropriations bill. The Tito agreement on Communist China's rights to Formosa would likely provide a role in the measure's ultimate fate. Senator William Jenner of Indiana had mentioned during debate the previous day the declaration of principles signed between the Yugoslavs and Soviets, but it had come late in the debate and played no part in the outcome. Senators Mike Mansfield of Montana, Henry Jackson of Washington and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota indicated that the agreement would be used by opponents in their efforts to reduce the program, as the bill would permit Yugoslavia to receive 40.5 million dollars in defense support appropriations in the coming fiscal year and an undisclosed sum in the form of military items, such as planes and guns.
Counsel for the Senate Investigations subcommittee Robert F. Kennedy said this date that contract changes approved by Air Force Capt. Raymond Wool had provided an extra $90,000 profit to a Chicago hat manufacturer. Mr. Wool, who had denied receiving any bribes in the matter, had testified that he approved the changes in a two million dollar contract with manufacturer Harry Lev to produce white Navy caps, but said that he could not tell how much profit that involved, and could not have determined it before Mr. Lev started production. Mr. Kennedy then asked Capt. Wool whether he knew that was not true, that the captain had denied a similar request for changes regarding the manufacture of Navy raincoats, but that Capt. Wool had denied the request, the captain responding that he did not recall that contract. He acknowledged that Mr. Lev had made a profit of about $41,000 on a change to the contract regarding packing of the caps. He also said that he saw nothing unusual about granting the contract to Mr. Lev for the seven million caps, despite the fact that at the time he had no factory for the manufacture of the caps in Puerto Rico and had never manufactured them previously. The Navy said that it was unusual for such a large order to be given to one manufacturer and that it had opposed the award of the contract.
In Detroit, labor talks centered this date on the extent of employer liability under a supplemental jobless pay plan which Ford Motor Co. had reportedly accepted in principle. Ford's acceptance of UAW's guaranteed annual wage demand, that employers foot part of the bill for maintaining workers' income when they were laid off, provided hope that a scheduled strike on Monday among Ford's 140,000 workers could be averted. The Ford offer would amount to a guaranteed semiannual wage instead of a full year of guaranteed wages, as sought by UAW President Walter Reuther. The company had reportedly offered to supplement workmen's compensation payments paid by a state for the first four weeks the worker was idle, providing the worker with an aggregate of 65 percent of regular take-home pay, the amount obtained in his pay envelope after tax and other deductions. For the ensuing 22 weeks, Ford reportedly proposed lesser company-financed payments which would form an aggregate of 60 percent of take-home pay, whereas the UAW had originally demanded combined company and state payments roughly equal to full normal take-home pay and later reduced that to 80 percent before taxes and other deductions.
In Paris, evangelist Billy Graham said that he hoped that his first crusade in France the following week, beginning Sunday, would persuade more Frenchmen to turn to their Bibles. He said that he did not expect the same kind of large turnout which had been the case in his seven-week tour of Britain.
In Atlanta, a Northern Methodist leader, Bishop John Wesley Lord, criticized this date the Alabama Methodist Conference for opposing integration. Bishop Lord was the presiding Bishop of the Southern New England Conference of Methodists, presently meeting in Manchester, Conn. He said that the attitude of the Alabama Methodist delegates probably was "a hangover resentment" to the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, holding segregation in the public schools to be unconstitutional. He said that the principle they advocated was wrong, as the society was moving away from discrimination and the church should lead the way. "The days of the second-class citizen are ended."
In New York, a publicist announced this date that a move was underway to promote James Farley, former Postmaster General and DNC chairman under FDR, for the Democratic nomination for the vice-presidency at the 1956 convention. Mr. Farley declined comment. The publicist said that Senators Walter George and Estes Kefauver, the latter to be the vice-presidential nominee, nosing out Senator John F. Kennedy in an open convention, had expressed interest in the movement, both saying that Mr. Farley was a good Democrat and that they wanted to see him honored by the party.
In San Quentin, a young woman,
Barbara Graham, who lived the easy way
In Cleveland, four gunmen, wearing stocking masks, held up a branch office of the Cleveland Trust Company this date, minutes after it had opened, getting away with about $50,000, then fled in an automobile.
In Mineola, N.Y., two funeral chapel employees were accused this date of a macabre theft of $3,780 worth of winning tickets on a horse race from a dead man's pocket. The deceased, of New York City, had gone to Belmont Park on May 25 with a tip on Kitty Lightner in the eighth race, having bought seven $100 tickets to win and placed them in his secret pocket in his jacket, then began watching the race, until his horse won, at which point he fell over dead of a heart attack. He had told his son that he intended to bet heavily on that horse, and when his son learned of the horse having won, he was surprised that there were no tickets or winnings found in his clothing, and so notified police and track detectives. When the two men sought to cash the tickets the previous day, detectives arrested them and charged them with grand larceny.
Harry Shuford of The News indicates that City School superintendent Dr. Elmer Garinger had said this date that integration would have a great effect on only a few local schools, which could be counted on the fingers of one hand, as the City schools were located within natural geographic and racial borders. He said that Central High School and Harding High School were the two senior highs where there might be large numbers of white and black students when integration would come, with the present school district borders preserved. County School superintendent J. W. Wilson said that the problems faced by any of the County schools in future integration would be different from those of the City system, explaining that while there was a lower percentage of blacks in the county, the white and black populations were more dispersed, with few concentrated white or black areas such as were found in the city. Dr. Garinger said that for several years, the local school construction program had been designed to place new schools as near as possible to the center of geographic and racial sections, such that students who attended schools at present would attend the same schools even under an integrated program. He said that the Sedgefield elementary and junior high schools served areas almost exclusively white, while to the east of that section was Myers Park, also white, and to the west of it was South Boulevard. The only elementary schools where both white and black students would attend in any numbers were those toward the center of town in the older sections, and even those, he said, might not remain that way as there was a tendency for the white population to move away from some of those areas. Alexander Graham and Piedmont Junior High Schools would also likely wind up integrated, with the latter, however, remaining practically all white under an integration program, as both races would likely attend Graham.
In Charlotte, school was out and
young children celebrated not having to read for awhile such things
as, "This
On the editorial page, "Make Tax Evasion Unprofitable" indicates that too often, all the citizen had to do in the face of a tax lister of personal property was to deny ownership of certain types of property. It indicates that fortunately, such people did not outnumber those who honestly listed their property. Outright tax evasion, however, was common enough to present a serious fiscal problem.
During the week, the county tax supervisor had announced plans for stern measures to remedy that situation, by indicting on misdemeanor charges those citizens who failed to list their personal property.
It indicates that John Horne Tooke, a politician of William Pitt's day, had refused to report properly his income for taxation when collectors insisted that he had income in excess of the 60-pound exemption, saying: "I have much more reason than the commissioners to be dissatisfied with the smallness of my income. The act of Parliament has removed all the decencies which used to prevail among gentlemen, and has given the commissioners the right by law to tell me that they … believe I am a liar…" (Why it suddenly interjects that paragraph, we could not tell you.)
It indicates that tax evasion was neither noble nor smart, but rather a shirking of civic responsibilities, and it suggests that such evasion should be made extremely unprofitable within the county.
"Tips Are Too Risky" indicates that tinkerers who sometimes seemed comical had invented such things as the automobile and the airplane, and so people now called them researchers and tough industrialists were seeking such tinkerers. The Hoover Commission underscored during the week the false economy of inadequate research programs, both civilian and military. It criticized HEW and the Budget Bureau for failure to seek funds to support a backlog of 723 research programs, citing the development of the Salk vaccine in a university laboratory. It suggested that military services were slow in encouraging study of radically different weapons.
It points out that the suggestion for the atomic bomb, after the Germans had begun their research on it, had come from a private citizen, Albert Einstein, in 1939. The development of the hydrogen bomb had come from a community of scientists brought together by the Government and provided the tools which they needed. The Russians had just demonstrated advanced intercontinental bombers during their May Day parade, and the President had admitted that Russia had outrun U.S. estimates on air power development, and there were opinions that they had achieved superior air power. It showed that the U.S. no longer had a monopoly on inventive genius.
It concludes that the country could not afford to risk being tipped off in time by an Einstein, that it had to encourage its scientists and give their work financial support and direction.
"Let Men of Peace Speak the Words" indicates that the U.N. had been founded in San Francisco ten years earlier in an atmosphere of hope and apparent goodwill, just as the world was emerging from World War II and people wanted to see a monument to peace built out of the ashes of conflict. There had been wars and rumors of war during the past decade, and conflicts in ideologies, with some Americans believing that the organization had been tainted by those factors. The anniversary of the U.N. would occur on June 20 "when the tribe of the dove has increased and the vulture has learned to coo in dangerous deception."
A majority of Americans still supported the U.N. despite it having been not much more than a monument to peace, reflecting the world as it was, not in the image desired. Its mere being, however, was of great value.
It regards it as fortunate that the President would forgo a fishing trip so that he could attend the commemorative ceremony and it hopes that former President Truman would change his mind and also attend. It regards it as important that men of peace, such as Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, speak the words of peace "so that the difference between the cawing and the cooing will ring clear."
A piece from the North Carolina Guide, titled "Illiteracy or Antiquity?" indicates that the speech of North Carolinians was as varied as the topography of the state, that the people in the mountains had retained many early Scotch and English ways of speech, with much hillbilly or black speech quite likely being derived from enunciation of fashionable London or Edinburgh of a century or so earlier, indeed the talk of Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift.
As George Wilson had stated in The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Shakespeare had used "blowed" for blown, (albeit in the context of a character from Henry V, Capt. Macmorris, who spoke in uneducated patois, stating, for instance, "be Chrish" for "by Christ", "tish" for 'tis and "ish" for is, Fluellen, it might be noted, within the same scene, speaking of "more better opportunities", though not, apparently, in the double comparative sense as it might be a'first misread, but rather as "more, better opportunities", the printer's devil, perhaps, rather than the author of the play, having mistakenly, in hasty repose, omitted the comma); Francis Bacon had used "mought" for might; and Elizabeth had used "hit" for it. It lists several other words which might suggest illiteracy but actually had high authority in antiquity, such as "arter" for after, "git" for get, "chainy berry" for China berry. Dialect was often funny, such as "giggle soup", which was liquor, "slipper-slide", a shoehorn, or a "claphat woman", one who was hasty. It goes on listing several such words and phrases and concludes that speech, especially at its worst, had aristocratic descendants on the "dialectal family tree".
Drew Pearson indicates that to ensure that the President picked an outstanding successor to HEW Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby, it would be a good idea for the appropriate Congressional committees to look carefully at the entire Department. He indicates that one trouble with Secretary Hobby was that she was so gun-shy about being dubbed a "welfare state" executive that she had run away from some of her most important duties. For instance, he wonders why she had increased the amount of rat droppings permissible in grain for human consumption, explaining that history since the latter Truman Administration, wondering who gave the order to abandon Government inspection for rat droppings and weevil, who had sought to fire two Food and Drug Administration officials because they insisted on grain inspection, how much rat manure and weevil were presently permitted in grain. He also wonders why Secretary Hobby wanted to reduce medical research by ten million dollars in 1953, and why she had taken a stand against hospital construction under the Hill-Burton Act, briefly explaining each topic.
Doris Fleeson discusses the Brown v. Board of Education implementing decision which had been announced on Tuesday, reflecting, in her opinion, the moderate temperament of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the decision having "uncompromisingly affirmed the principle that racial segregation in public education is unconstitutional and commanded national obedience to it". She indicates that the working politicians of both parties were content with the decision, that the Court had relieved them of the race issue in the presidential campaign for 1956, and that if things were to go well, "probably for all time." She says that there would be exceptions in the Deep South but that generally speaking, the mainstream of American politics would not be influenced by the race issue any longer.
She finds that events had been moving in that direction for a long time and that there were many reasons why such momentous decisions could be handed down in such an atmosphere, not the least of which aspects being prosperity, as discrimination tended to disappear when there was work and high wages for all. As long as the South continued its present remarkable industrial expansion, the pressures of its black population would recede.
Twenty years earlier, the overruling of even a minor New Deal measure by the Supreme Court, to which FDR had not made an appointment until that of Justice Hugo Black in 1937, was treated as high drama in Washington. Now, the senior member of the Court was Justice Black.
Chief Justice Warren had read the Brown implementing decision calmly and in a friendly fashion, only slightly more decisive as he reached the crucial phrases of the order. She indicates that the Chief Justice was a political technician of a high order who had gotten his experience in a state with high growth, presenting him with virtually every national problem in exaggerated form. The Chief Justice had obtained another unanimous decision in Brown, proving that he had impressed his moderation on the Court.
She finds that the decision to provide more time to the Southern states to work out their desegregation plans had been courteous and that it should also please the South because, to a degree, it acknowledged their contention that race was a social problem within the region, while its acknowledgment also shrunk its dimensions to relatively small areas which were being told that ultimately they had to conform.
Norman Cousins, writing in the Saturday Review, indicates that for some years the country had been concerned with the lot of underprivileged peoples throughout the world, but had yet to do anything for one of the most underprivileged peoples of all, Americans. The country had more food than it could eat, more money per person than anywhere else in the world, with its 6 percent of the world population holding 80 percent of the wealth.
Americans had everything they needed except the most important thing, time to think and the habit of thought. Civilization was put together by thought, not by machines. Man's uniqueness was represented, not by his ability to make objects, but to sort them and relate them. Only man among the animals had the capacity for comprehension.
The role which the U.S. was expected to play, to exert world leadership to prevent a nuclear war, was not a simple one, with "leadership requiring not so much a determination to smash the other fellow as an understanding of the lessons of human experience." That leadership required thought, but he regards it as questionable as to who was doing the thinking in a sustained and incisive manner, and whether there was actually time to think on the part of anyone, including the President. It was not a matter of a political party, with Washington only a reflection and projection of the national character and temperament. If officeholders were too busy to think, they did not differ from business executives, college presidents, teachers, workers or housewives.
He regards the paradox as being that Americans were busy doing nothing, never before with so much leisure time, exceeding working hours. But people had nevertheless persuaded themselves that they were too busy to think, read, look back, or look ahead, too busy to understand that the wealth and power of the nation were not enough to safeguard the future unless there was also a genuine understanding of the danger which threatened and how to meet it.
War in Asia appeared imminent and yet people talked about it as if it were some "unpleasant little business at a distance instead of the curtain raiser for a war in which the big bombs will be dropped on the enemy." Meanwhile, the citizens were informed by the Government that there was no real defense against atomic attack, all requiring some thought. He concludes that if the country would be saved, it would require a proper place for thought and that there was no point in passing the buck or looking for guilty parties.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that blacks of the South would fare better if outsiders would let them attend to their affairs as they had in the past, suggesting that there would be more trouble over segregation as time went on, indicating that Southerners believed they had a right taken away from them by the Supreme Court. He does not call them justices in his way of seeing things. He believes the NAACP should stay in the North, for it was only a troublemaker, "causing hatred between the races of Dixie." He wonders why Justice Hugo Black had not been appointed Chief Justice at the death of Fred Vinson instead of the Californian, Earl Warren.
Had Justice Black been named Chief, the decision in Brown would have, undoubtedly, been much harsher on the South. This writer does not understand the Supreme Court very well. He tends to think that a Southern accent is indicative, at heart, of a good old boy who will ultimately wink and do the bidding of the Confederacy, just as many people not very studious thought, and perhaps still think, was the case with Senator, Vice-President and President Lyndon Johnson. Accents, especially during this period of time, could sometimes be a very poor gauge of both depth of thought and sensitivity to such matters as race relations and progress in societal relations, especially, as there are, as has been pointed out, several Southern forms of speech.
A letter writer wonders when the President would wise up and fire Secretary of State Dulles, whom he believes had done nothing but follow the old line of former Secretary Dean Acheson under President Truman. He favors the appointment of Senator Walter George of Georgia as Secretary, concluding that about the only thing one could say of Secretary Dulles was that he approached "every problem with an open mouth."
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