The Charlotte News
Tuesday, July 19, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed Note: The front page reports from the summit conference in Geneva that the Big Four foreign ministers had agreed this date to take up the question of reunification of Germany, the central issue of the conference in the view of the Big Three Western leaders, as the first item on their agenda, as the first working session of the conference got underway this date, following the opening statements of the four heads of state the previous day. Shortly before this date's meeting got underway, the President stated to a reporter that he was not discouraged by developments thus far, despite what some U.S. officials had described as the "negative" attitude of Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin regarding the German problem. The Big Four foreign ministers agreed unanimously during the morning on a four-point agenda, with German reunification as the first item, apparently a concession by the Soviets to the Western powers, followed by European security, disarmament and "development of contacts between East and West". The meeting of the foreign ministers had lasted only for 90 minutes, indicating that there had been little difficulty in deciding on the order of business. The three Western foreign ministers said that any additional items would be referred to the heads of state for decision. The four heads of state would meet this afternoon to begin their discussions of the agreed agenda items. Western leaders were reported to be moderately optimistic after the policy outlines had been provided in the opening statements of the previous day. Sources indicated that the last item on the agenda, regarding East-West contacts, would include the President's proposal for more freedom for the Communist satellites. Premier Bulganin had declared the previous day that the present conference was not the proper place to take up that question. It would also provide the four powers an opportunity to discuss East-West trade, a subject which the Russians believed to be of great importance. The sources indicated that Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov had raised Far Eastern problems and that such a discussion could take place under the East-West contacts item. Top officials of the three Western powers expressed satisfaction over the friendly spirit of the conference thus far.
The previous night, the President and the other three heads of state at the conference, along with members of each delegation, including the President's old friend Georgi Zhukov, Soviet Defense Minister, drank champagne toasts to the success of the summit and the winning of an enduring peace. The President and Mr. Zhukov chatted briefly after the dinner, given by the President at his Lake Geneva villa. There was no word on whether there had been any progress toward ironing out differences between the East and the West. It was the first time that the President and Mr. Zhukov had met in nearly ten years, when they had both been military administrators in Germany following the end of World War II, and had talked through an interpreter at the dinner, with the President's son, Maj. John Eisenhower, joining in the conversation. The two men had become friends and had regularly exchanged letters during the previous decade. Other Soviet officials attending the dinner had been Premier Bulganin, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, as well as Secretary of State Dulles and other American officials. White House press secretary James Hagerty indicated that Mr. Zhukov appeared pleased when the President gave him two gifts for his daughter, a portable radio and an inscribed pen set. She had been married in Moscow the day her father had left for Geneva and he had missed the wedding. Mr. Molotov had walked the length of the table to toast Mr. Dulles, with the Soviet Foreign Minister saying that he was "happy to be here", despite there having been "some differences in the past" between the two men.
In Washington, a 32-year old vacuum cleaner salesman had told police this date that his wife had forced him at gunpoint into an apartment of a 19-year old girl and then killed her with a single pistol shot, the wife having told police that the shooting had been accidental. She said that she was suffering from incurable cancer and that doctors had given her only a year to live. The victim was a clerk in a shoe repair shop. A detective said that the salesman had said that he had left the victim's apartment shortly after 1:00 a.m., finding his wife waiting for him in a car outside, at which point she took a pistol from a paper bag and told him that she wanted to see the girl, pointing the gun at him, forcing him to lead the way to the apartment which had been rented jointly in the name of the salesman and the girl as husband and wife, that when they entered the room, the girl had been in bed, clad only in her pajama top, the wife then ordering her husband to sit on a couch, whereupon she shot the victim with a .22-caliber pistol, the victim having been pronounced dead an hour later at the hospital. The wife had told police that she had forced her husband into the apartment but that after she had entered the room, she had instructed both her husband and the girl to sit on the couch, that the girl had then lunged at her, striking the pistol and causing it to discharge accidentally. The owners of the rooming house stated that the husband and the girl had registered as man and wife the previous March.
North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges had told a Lincolnton Kiwanis and Farmers Club meeting this date that he did not believe that the state was at a point where there had to be serious consideration given to proposals to meet the segregation issue by abandonment of the public schools, that it would only be a last resort "if it should be decided that that is a proper step to take." The Governor stated that he did not intend to be "forced around by pressure groups", after having referred to a request by the NAACP that he take steps to remove from office Assistant Attorney General I. Beverly Lake, who had earlier suggested preparations be made at the local levels for operation of schools by private corporations to circumvent the desegregation of public schools. The Governor stated that other Southern states had been considering similar proposals, but that such had not previously been suggested for North Carolina. The Governor said that it was the hope of state leaders that a way could be found "to preserve our public schools within our Southern tradition." In an interview the previous day, the Governor had said that he thought the state would "seriously consider" abolishing the public schools rather than face mass integration, but this date said that such proposals would only be a "last resort". In a separate interview the previous day, Dr. Charles Carroll, State superintendent of public instruction, said that "the elimination of the public schools is not the answer to the desegregation problem."
Duke Power Co. had reached an all
time one-hour peak of electric energy production during the hour
before noon the previous day, at 1,833,000 kilowatt-hours, to supply
industrial and consumer requirements. The announcement predicted that
still higher peaks would be established this date and through the
summer. The generating capacity of the company was in excess of two
million kilowatt-hours and Duke was engaged in a large-scale
expansion program, aimed at meeting the estimated substantial
increase in the region's power
Charles Kuralt of The News, in the second of a series of articles on the increasing population above age 65, finds that trying to discover what aging was led to contradictions even among experts, meaning different things to a doctor, a social worker, an anthropologist or an economist. There was some agreement on what aging was not, that it was not a disease, that no one died from old age, but rather from the collection of toxins which built up through the years or from some specific ailments such as cancer or heart disease, that it was also not an empty stage between life and death, unless the old person and his community allowed it to become that. Aging could not be halted but could be slowed. Life did not begin at age 65, but it did not end at that age, either. A doctor at Charlotte's Mental Health Clinic said that certain physical changes took place in the brain, which were not important, that it was the old person's reaction to the change which was important, that if a "mentally ill" old man had a good attitude toward his fellow human beings, he usually recovered. Another Charlotte physician said that someone who had outward interests and drives was better able to overcome illness, that introspection magnified symptoms. The former director of the Hawthorne Center's Golden Years Club said that a man had told her that he had moved to a nursing home to die, had no close friends and was not needed, but that when he had joined the club, he had made friends, had moved home and was needed to sing bass when they sang a hymn, filling in when they square-danced and fixed the table for lunch, making him feel that he would like to live a long time. Science had virtually eradicated the diseases of youth, including diphtheria, typhoid fever, smallpox, and infantile diarrhea, such that greatly increased numbers of people now reached old age. Only recently, however, had gerontology, the branch of science which studied the aged, been developed. Only one American university had set up a special division of gerontology and there were no professors of it in the country. Mr. Kuralt indicates that it would be a long time before that science began to catch up with the great amount of research yet to be done on aging. Meanwhile, the cost of chronic diseases increased every year, with the City-County Health Department's Charity Hospitalization division paying out about $85,000 during the current year to maintain older men and women in nursing homes in the county, most of which money being used as a supplement to the inadequate Old Age Assistance payments to the sick, needy aged. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more went toward home visits by doctors, treatment for the mentally ill and private hospitalization and medical care. Local authorities believed that a great deal of that financial cost could be eliminated and that most of the savings would occur in time, as greater knowledge about prevention and cure of ailments of the aged was developed. (It is pronounced, incidentally, in this context, as "age-ed", not as...)
Harry Shuford of The News indicates that City Manager Henry Yancey had said this date that the old rock quarry on Reid Road was being turned over for the purpose of establishing a new public dumping ground and that the old quarry on Tremont Avenue had been filled to a point where no more dumping could be allowed.
Emery Wister of The News indicates that much-needed rain and relief from the high temperatures might take place during the afternoon, according to the Weather Bureau, though a high of 98 degrees would be reached against a low of 73, with skies being partly cloudy the following day. A tornado warning had been issued the previous night, prompting several phone calls to Charlotte radio stations, and a representative of the Bureau explained that the weather observer was only following new normal procedures in warning of the possibility of a tornado, that previously the custom had been to issue tornado warnings only when a tornado was actually approaching, but that because of the swiftness with which a tornado struck, leaving persons in the path of it little time to escape, Congress had ordered the Bureau to issue warnings whenever conditions were favorable for the development of a tornado, and the previous night, there had been such conditions, with an observer stating during the morning that it was possible that a tornado had passed over the city without touching the ground.
In Charlotte, a man had become a grandfather and a great-grandfather within 24 hours, with both children having been born at Presbyterian Hospital the previous week, both grandchild and great-grandchild having been boys.
In Chicago, fluoridation of the
city's water supply had been ordered by Mayor Richard J. Daley "for
the good of the children
In Long Beach, Calif., preliminary
judging began this date in the Miss Universe
On the editorial page, "Our Aged Are at the End of Their Rope" tells of the series of articles presented by Charles Kuralt of The News during the week regarding the problems of the aging population, after age 65, finding that most persons in that category were "at the end of a tangled economic, social and psychological rope", and that they needed help. The help they were receiving, however, was sporadic and not unified, such as the Golden Years clubs providing the aged recreation and the new "Over 40" club which promoted their employment, both of which were fine. But older people were not simply shuffleboard players or units of the labor force, their problems deriving from national overemphasis on youth and the productivity of youth, and could not be solved except by a unified community effort.
It finds that such an effort would include social workers, doctors, government officials and employers, as well as old people, themselves. It ought begin, it ventures, with a conference regarding what could be done to educate the aged for living in families or for living alone, how people over age 65 who wanted to continue working could find a job, how much recreation, health service and housing for older citizens were available in Charlotte, whether financial provisions were adequate, and what could be done to assist thousands of younger men and women to prepare against their own time of aging.
Statistics showed that by 1975, the population of Mecklenburg County would be twice what it was at present, and the aged population would by that point create a deadly drag on the community if they were not able to achieve the full exercise of their powers of mind and body. It urges that there was needed planning for conservation, reclamation and use of older people, and the provision for opportunity and respect for them. "The aged can't get along without us, and a day is rapidly coming when we can't get along without them, either."
"Gov. Hodges Raises a Big Question" indicates that the Governor had left a lot unsaid in his rejection of the NAACP demand for the ouster of Assistant Attorney General I. Beverly Lake because of the latter's proposal of a private school system to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education and the inevitable desegregation of the public schools. It finds that the Governor had been properly indignant over the organization's impertinent demand and had been correct in rejecting it out of hand.
It finds that Mr. Lake had as much right to free speech as did the NAACP, although the lack of restraint on the part of both could be criticized. It asserts that the episode boiled down to an "intemperate speech" by Mr. Lake, attracting an "extremist reaction" from the NAACP.
Mr. Lake's advice to communities that they begin preparation to set up private schools to avoid integration had been far afield from the Governor's stated position, but the Governor had stated on Monday that he believed the state ought "seriously consider doing so." It finds that the Governor's statement in that regard had further confused the situation, that he had not reminded that Mr. Lake had veered sharply from the State's position, as contained in the report of the Governor's special advisory committee on education, that North Carolina should "try to find means of meeting the requirements of the Supreme Court's decision with our present school system before consideration is given to abandoning it or materially altering it." The report had listed the objectives of preservation of public education in the state and preservation of peace throughout the state. The Governor had said of the report, in addressing the Legislature earlier in the year, that it was an "unanimous document of great significance", and he supported it. He had given no indication since that time that his position had changed.
The Governor's statement of tentative support for Mr. Lake's proposal and that he would "use every means" at his command to retain his services, had raised the question of whether the Governor was moving away from the middle ground regarding the issue of desegregation of the schools. It suggests that perhaps the Governor's understandable irritation with the NAACP had led him to omit detailed comment on Mr. Lake's speech regarding the establishment of private schools. It concludes that because of the lack of completeness of the Governor's statements, his forthcoming address to the people on "how we can try to save the public school system of North Carolina and at the same time permit each race to have its own schools" would be eagerly awaited and would be timely.
They are starting to sound too much like Lester, only utilizing more polite language.
"Our Halo May Now Be Fitted" tells of it being too full of brotherly love to protest the new policy of South Carolina in enforcing against North Carolinians the transport of North Carolina liquor and cigarettes into South Carolina without a tax stamp from that state, in an effort to ensure their instate revenues from same.
It also indicates that it was too good-natured to be irritated by gendarmes who delayed vacation or business trips of North Carolinians and too conscious of interstate relations to imply that South Carolina was being high-handed and picayunish—going on in that vein and concluding that they were feeling so good this date that they can hardly stand it.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Under a Plastic Sky", indicates that it had been inevitable that air-conditioned buildings ought be followed by weather-conditioned parks, streets and entire communities, and that it did not doubt that the new plastic building material, the pneumatic brick, could be used, as its inventors claimed, to achieve a Riviera wherever masons set them. It finds that sooner or later it would lead to enabling people to live under a sky of translucent plastic, through which no rain would ever spoil a ballgame and no snow would ever tie up traffic.
The airspace in the pneumatic brick provided insulation against heat and cold, enabling farmers to grow several crops each year on the same acreage and probably allowing the Federal Government then to store the crops and save millions of dollars in the construction and rental of storage space.
It suggests that once December and July had become indistinguishable from one another, all opposition to reform of the calendar would disappear, and, indeed, all need for the calendar at all would be eliminated.
It suggests that there would be drawbacks after a few halcyon, weatherless years, as travel outside the insulated igloo would become as difficult and hazardous as it had been when man had lived in caves. It foresees a time when only the most adventurous and eccentric would want to travel at all in actual weather. People were already saying that they would rather stay at home and be comfortable than go on a vacation.
It quotes from Rebecca West in The Thinking Reed, remarking on the "reassuring appearance of an American industrial town, with its evidences of the existence of a new race which can find absolute contentment in the consumption of sweet foods and drinks, the possession of radios, and the contemplation of films." It wonders who would want anything more, once it became possible to have them "under a cloudless plastic sky, from which no rain falls and no winds blow".
Drew Pearson, in Geneva, indicates that the most important question on everyone's mind at the Big Four summit conference was whether the new attitude of the Russians was present to stay and what was behind it or whether it might be reversed very soon. Secretary Dulles had told Senators before leaving for the conference that it was because Russia was presently weak, but the President had said that Russia was in fact strong. Thus, no one knew the answer; yet, that answer was quite important if any worthwhile and dependable agreements were to be made at the conference.
Mr. Pearson indicates that European diplomats with whom he had talked came closest to giving an answer, that while Russia was strong militarily, it was weak politically and economically, and had discovered that it might have a treacherous ally in Communist China. It had long been known that the Kremlin was not happy about the leadership in Communist China. Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had made a trip to China the previous fall, during which the Communist Chinese had made economic demands which Russia could not possibly fulfill, causing Mr. Khrushchev to realize that the day might come when China's 600 million people might turn against Russia's 200 million people, at which point Russia would need friends in the West. Mr. Khrushchev had also realized that Russia was in no position to risk a war or stand up in a tough way to the West, despite its great progress in long-range planes and guided missiles.
European diplomats had made a careful study of Russian weaknesses, which tended to indicate the best answer to the Kremlin's diplomatic strength or lack thereof. Part of that study had indicated that Mr. Khrushchev, speaking before the Communist Party's Central Committee on January 25, 1955, had stated that some party leaders had acquired the habit of talking only about successes, avoiding discussions of shortcomings and difficulties. He said that it was necessary to cut down on the impermissibly great losses of grain during the harvest and was intolerable that delays in harvesting on many of the collective farms had resulted in losses of up to a quarter of the standing crop, sometimes more. He had continued that many officials went no further than making speeches and drafting resolutions on "fodder and do not organize a resolute struggle to increase the fodder production." He also said that the construction of silos and silage pits was "very bad", that there had been cases of the machine and tractors station mowing the grass on some collective farms, reporting fulfillment of the haying plan with M-T-S workers even receiving bonuses for that, while the hay on the collective farms remained ungathered because it was not raked or stacked. He had also said, quoting the poet Mayakovsky: "If your name is a cow, you must give milk and have an udder. If you have neither milk nor an udder, the devil with your name." He put forth figures showing that the Soviet cow population had dropped by half a million between 1928 and 1952, while the beef cattle had dropped by 2.2 million head. He did not mention the reason why that had occurred, which Mr. Pearson indicates was because Russian peasants had butchered the livestock and eaten it, as they had been forced otherwise to sell it to the state.
It appears that the fodder production depended on the udders.
Mr. Khrushchev also stated, regarding housing and plumbing, that officials of the building industry had no reason to brag, that they should learn from their friends in Czechoslovakia, but did not want to learn, relating that he had visited a new hotel in Sverdlovsk, wherein the bathrooms had been very badly built and the standard of decorative work was not high, the pipes in the sanitation unit being covered with rust and the joints between the pipes being very badly made, which Mr. Khrushchev found, as a former steamfitter, "extremely indignant".
Pravda had said on February 26, 1954 that the machine-building industry had fallen short of quotas on sewing machines, watches, bicycles and metal bedsteads, that the food ministry had failed to provide the required amounts of fish, meat, butter, macaroni and potatoes, and that an end needed to be put to bureaucratic methods in management of enterprises. Pravda had gone on to state that "to check the illegal trade practices and black-marketeering in summer goods, the Georgian Communist Party has discharged the chiefs of the bread and grocery chains in the Georgian Soviet Republic", that Soviet unrest had resulted partly from shortages and consumer goods, which were so scarce that they were sold on the black market. Among the items listed as sold on the black market were shoes, sweaters, furniture, spirits, radios, cars, cloth, farm products, coats, enamelware, furs and movie tickets.
To relieve food shortages, Mr. Khrushchev had launched a major collective farm program, sending thousands of tractors to Central Russia, plus office workers and city-slickers who knew little about farming. To some extent, he had succeeded in that program, but what he could not control had been the weather and the natural desire of every farmer to work for himself.
On the other hand, the U.S. military had warned that Russia had neglected its consumer goods to push its military might and that its military might made it the strongest nation in the world at present.
Doris Fleeson discusses newly appointed Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare Marion Folsom, succeeding retiring Oveta Culp Hobby, indicates that Mr. Folsom, presently the Undersecretary of the Treasury, was well-liked in Congress, with Representative Jere Cooper of Tennessee, the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, saying that Mr. Folsom knew more about Social Security than any person in America except Arthur Altmeyer, who had served on the original Social Security board and had been a member of FDR's preliminary study commission in 1934, along with Mr. Folsom.
Senator Irving Ives of New York had, however, voiced his displeasure at not having been consulted about the appointment of a New Yorker to the Cabinet, which had occurred several times since the start of the Eisenhower Administration. It was customary to consult with the Senators from the home state of the appointee, and the failure to do so was embarrassing to Senator Ives, depriving him of the appearance of having influence with a President of his own party. The Administration had also not consulted the RNC, as Secretary Hobby was told by the President to pick her own successor.
Ms. Fleeson points out that had the President consulted with Senators and Congressmen earlier when he had appointed Allen Whitfield as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, he might have been spared the lack of enthusiasm shown by Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, from which Mr. Whitfield hailed. That lack of enthusiasm translated into political trouble for the appointment, which had to be withdrawn.
She tells of FDR having once said that politicians wanted to be heard even more than they wanted results, and he had routinely provided flattering attention to members of Congress in such matters, sometimes backfiring because the politicians thought they were getting promises when actually it had been only charm.
A letter writer indicates that the best thing for the Southern states to do was to accept as gracefully as possible the Brown v. Board of Education decision and end segregation in the public schools, giving integration a chance for a few years, that if it did not work, the South could then say to the Supreme Court that it had tried to obey the decree but that it would not work, and that it was up to the Court to reverse its ruling and allow the South to segregate or ask Congress to repeal the 14th Amendment, just as the 18th Amendment had been repealed when Prohibition did not work.
First of all, Congress does not have the power to repeal portions of the Constitution, only the power, by two-thirds majorities of both houses, to propose to the states amendments, which then have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. So good luck with your retreat to the Civil War. Before stirring up such nonsense, you might at least try to open a good encyclopedia and do 15 minutes worth of research on how amendments work. Moreover, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment only extend to the states the requirement of recognition of the principles embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and otherwise the rights recognized as foremost by the Bill of Rights, embracing, overall, the basic concepts with which the Declaration of Independence began, that "all men are created equal", and that of the Preamble to the Constitution, that its purpose was, "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". If you repeal or refuse to recognize the Fourteenth Amendment, you might as well repeal the entire Constitution or, failing that, move to a totalitarian state where, on the roll of the dice of the day at the local casino, you could become master or slave, depending on your predetermined good or ill fortune in the estimate of the powers of the moment.
A letter writer, owner of the Statesville Avenue Grill, congratulates and thanks two police officers for locating and capturing a person responsible for a theft recently from his restaurant, indicates that they needed more such fine policemen in the community.
A letter writer describes several things, such as the "growl and sputter of power mowers", "one beer drawn every eight seconds", "a juke box blares out 'Hippity Hop' and soothes the savage beast with an old version of 'Stardust'", "cars heading for the river on Saturday with cane fishing poles in evidence", "no local peaches, just a few from California", "cooking out on a barbecue grill … city sprinklers diligently spraying the streets just before a rainstorm … schoolrooms with tightly-drawn drapes or shades … Davy Crockett hats, tents, suits ... everywhere the wail of 'Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee' ... or for sweet variety's sake, 'Born in a taxicab in Tennessee, slowest cab you ever did see'…"
She makes no point, just lists these several randomly observed things.
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach,
S.C., suggests that the intent of the planners of the nation had not
been to arrange things so that a "fringe movement of our nation,
however wild, might go into a packed court and get decisions that
gutless men ruling the states would feel bound to follow." He
wonders why the South could not make its own decision regardless of
the Supreme Court "which has long been a tool of other
interests". "Since the Yankees who packed the Supreme Court
and who have emasculated the laws of New York to the point that the
constitutional right to have and hold arms is now nothing, but is
replaced by, I believe they call it a Sullivan Law, making it a
felony to do what the founders of this nation decreed we could do
years ago, why not let them take care of the Negroes of the South
that want this superior brand of freedom? Let them have these pests
of our body corporate moved to New York and the other metropolises of
subversion." He says that he had personal contact with many
young black teachers and about 25 black school principals, and he had
yet to find one who had not stated that black school teachers could
not compete in learning or educational background with white teachers
or who thought it advisable to have integrated schools since it would
not add value to the pupils. He says that he knew the people both as
a physician and a scientist, and made up for them free collections of
fossils and shells, that many were from areas where black children
outnumbered whites by three to one. He indicates that he did not
counsel violence in government, but that the rights of millions of
people were involved unfairly by "12 old
politicians"—presumably including the three-judge special
panels of the U.S. District Courts passing on how to implement Brown.
He wonders "why not tell them to go to and stay put", that
it was so bad that in Washington, a Federal Government head would not
move without the legal part of his department providing approval. He
compares the situation to the Communist Party in Russia, with a small
minority ruling the Russian
A letter writer indicates that while reading "This Week" of July 10, he had noticed an item which said that by following Genesis 12 and 13, archaeologists in the Near East had recently unearthed 220 ancient towns in the Negev, that a chain of destroyed cities pointed to the correctness of the story of rebellion against Chedorlaomer, as described in Genesis 14. He indicates that a previous letter writer had stated that there was not a single branch of science which coincided with Genesis, that science dealt with realities, not fiction. He wonders what "coincides" meant to that writer.
Framed Edition
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