The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 9, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Hong Kong that the Government there had announced this night that three Americans held by the Communists as prisoners of war, who had originally refused to repatriate to the U.S. after the Korean War, but were now seeking return home, would cross the Chinese-Hong Kong border the following day, according to the British charge d'affairs in Peiping, who had learned of the repatriation plans from the Chinese Red Cross.
The President was planning to provide a 15-minute radio and television address to the nation the following Friday night regarding the Big Four summit conference, scheduled to start in nine days in Geneva. According to White House assistant press secretary Murray Snyder, the President would indicate some of the world problems which he expected to be discussed during the conference, and would describe his hopes for accomplishment from it.
The Administration and the City of Memphis were at odds this date over whether the city had given "proper assurance" that it would build its own power plant and thus obviate the need for the Dixon-Yates contract to build a power plant at East Memphis, Ark. White House press secretary James Hagerty said the previous day that an example of such assurance would be a vote by the mayor and city council that the city would assume the sole responsibility of providing its own power. The mayor of Memphis replied that on June 23, the City Commission had passed a resolution authorizing the construction of a steam plant and believed that was sufficient assurance.
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina this date urged amendment of a House-passed customs simplification bill to avert what he said would amount to reduction of tariffs on textiles and other goods imported into the country. In a note addressed to Senate Finance Committee chairman Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, he objected strenuously to the enactment of any legislation which would "further reduce or tend to reduce tariffs on foreign goods imported" into the country. The Finance Committee was presently holding hearings on the House bill.
In Woodmere, N.Y., two youths were held early this date by police as they sought to unravel the mystery of the fishing boat which supposedly had caught fire after a boiler explosion and was sinking, according to a radio broadcast received by a commercial vessel, prompting a 30-hour Coast Guard search of the Atlantic early on Thursday, costing between $40,000 and $50,000, finding only a life jacket and an oil slick, but no sign of any wreckage or other indication that there had been any disaster, having concluded that it was a hoax. Nassau County police said that one of the youths, a 21-year old former crewman on a commercial fishing boat, had admitted that he had broadcast the phony distress signal to show his 17-year old friend how a "real radio works". The two had broken into the radio shack of the boat on which the older youth had been employed and since discharged six weeks earlier, and were charged, as a result, with third-degree burglary. They were also expected to be turned over to Federal authorities for prosecution by the FCC, as soon as a warrant could be obtained from a Federal judge, subjecting them to a $10,000 fine, a year in prison, or both, for submitting a false distress signal.
In Seguin., Tex., Representative John J. Bell of Texas, who had helped to set up the Texas veterans land program when a state legislator, was indicted the previous day on charges of conspiring to steal nearly $155,000 from the state in that program. He denied any guilt in the matter. Two others were indicted with him.
In Chicago, police this date investigated the disappearance of Howard Rushmore, the 43-year old editor of Confidential Magazine, missing since early Thursday. He had come to Chicago from his home in New York City, but had failed to keep an appointment the previous day with a detective, who was supposed to aid him in a story on which he was working regarding the death of former Secretary of the Navy and Defense James Forrestal in 1949. He had appeared on a Chicago television program Wednesday night and stated that he was looking for a Chicago Communist Party leader. Mr. Rushmore, who at one time had been the film editor of the Daily Worker but had broken with the party during the 1930's, had been a witness against the Communist conspiracy before several Congressional committees. Until the previous fall, he had been a reporter for the New York Journal American, specializing in matters regarding Communism. When he had returned to his hotel after the program, he had received a message from the desk clerk that a man who had given the name "Larry", had called and asked to meet him at 1:15 a.m. at a certain intersection, and he had then left by taxi to meet the man, but had not been seen since. Mr. Rushmore's wife, the woman's page editor of the Journal American, was the daughter of a Charlotte couple, who said that they had been expecting either Mr. Rushmore or their daughter to visit them in Charlotte soon.
In Manchester, N.H., the nude body of a four-year old girl, missing since the prior Wednesday, had been found the previous night in a shallow grave in the cellar of a young neighbor's home, police indicating that she had been sexually abused and then killed with an ax. A 17-year old shoe factory worker, who had volunteered in the search for her, admitted the killing. He said that the little girl had threatened to tell her mother after he had sexually attacked her, at which point he killed her. He said that he lured the child into the cellar of his home during the afternoon on Wednesday. He would be arraigned this date on a first-degree murder charge in juvenile court.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges joined a special advisory committee in recommending that segregation be continued in the public schools of the state during the coming school year, after the committee had made its recommendations to local school administrative units the previous day, following a lengthy meeting which included a conference with a group of black citizens. The Governor said that he believed the committee's report contained "good and sound advice". It said that if the local school units did not have time to complete their studies by the opening of school in September, they should continue to operate as they had in the past school year.
Kelly Alexander, president of the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP, said that court proceedings would be initiated against local school systems unless "concrete action" was taken soon to end segregation. He said that local school units were being petitioned to end segregation starting with the coming school year in September, and that petitions to admit black children in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County schools were in the mail.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of Thompson Orphanage and other local institutions in Charlotte being smothered with tickets to shows, circuses, fireworks displays, and any other entertainment which came to town. But there were only 82 children living at the orphanage and yet there were hundreds of tickets, and so the director of the orphanage wanted to warn residents against becoming victimized by a fly-by-night charity, inviting people to buy 100 tickets to certain entertainments and then send them to the orphanage, when most of those tickets could not be used.
In Dublin, Ireland, there was not a pint of porter to be had in any pub, with temperatures hovering around 80 degrees, after 2,200 bartenders of the city had gone on strike, in support of demands for the equivalent of a $3.50 per week wage increase and better working conditions, as demanded by the Irish Vintners Association. The strike had begun politely, but shortly after the pubs had closed, police had to be called in to quell a number of "heated discussions" in the streets of the city.
On the editorial page, "County Police Should Patrol River" finds that all the ingredients were in place for making the Catawba River a safe recreation area, after local legislators had pushed a law through the previous session of the Legislature to enable the County Commissioners to establish a patrol force on the river by peace officers from both Mecklenburg and Gaston Counties, as the river ran through both.
It finds that the County police were the best qualified by training, experience and reputation to handle the patrol chores, as opposed to the sheriff's department. It believes that unless there was some jurisdictional problem with having the County police act as the patrolling force, the Commission should appoint them.
The law they would be charged with enforcing prohibited reckless operation of boats on the river, including a ban on speeding and driving while drinking. It also required that all boats be equipped with life preservers, life belts or buoyant cushions for every passenger, and that boats operated after dark have lights. It finds the rules sound and that with proper enforcement, the river would become a safe place to play.
"Unmasking the Fly-by-Nighters" indicates that fly-by-night promoters of fund-raising drives did not consider Charlotte fertile ground for their schemes anymore because of the Solicitations Information Review Board screening process to keep them out of the community. The Board's success was due in great part to banker G. Douglas Aitken, who had resigned as chairman during the current week after having worked long and hard on the project, deserving the appreciation of the entire community. He had saved the community a great deal of money and guarded residents from making unwise charitable contributions.
The Board, established by the Chamber of Commerce and aided by the Better Business Bureau, reviewed the qualifications of organizations seeking permission to solicit for donations in Charlotte. It had no authority to prevent a solicitor from seeking charitable contributions within the city, but its existence and ability to publicize its findings tended to discourage the fly-by-night organizations. It congratulates Mr. Aitken for his excellent record of service and expresses confidence that his successor, C. G. Sellers, would carry on in the same fine tradition.
"The Combers Will Fold in the Stretch" finds that baseball was a mess, with the Charlotte Hornets in the second division of their league, and the parent club in Washington sinking ever deeper into the American League cellar, while the New York Giants, who had been so exciting the previous season, were not doing so well in the current one. It thus thinks it time for desperate measures and so decides to back the Chesapeake Chi-Wa-Wa's of the South Central Tidewater Softball League.
It provides a report from its correspondent on that club, indicating that they were not doing too well, and, after considerable additional detail, concluded with a P.S., that they would play in the World Series against the Drivers Gay Gulls, and that it should not go more than four games.
A piece from the Christian
Science Monitor, titled "Ersatzes for Ersatzes", tells
of the ersatz age having followed the Iron, Copper and Stone Ages,
and now being briskly apace. It finds that the latest advancement had
occurred with the victory of a young woman in a barking contest
versus five dogs, after an audition to represent Rip Van Winkle's dog
in the premiere of Ferde Grofe's Hudson River Suite
It suggests that the public was already hardened, or numbed, by the art of make-believe when it came to sounds being artificially produced, such as coconut shells representing horses' hoofs on pavement. It was common knowledge that, in many instances, actors and actresses had outdone on the stage their counterparts in real life.
"What intrigues us is what will happen when the ersatzes for the ersatzes come along. Will characters start substituting for actors, bona fide dogs for barking ladies; will people start looking at people again instead of television and at nature instead of at documentaries?"
Wait until they develop CGI and a
younger audience finds it difficult to distinguish between that and
footage of actual actors, having already lost the sense of how movies
are made and edited together, some people obviously, by the proliferation of asinine comments on YouTube, believing that it
is just one long, continuous shoot, then edited down into palatable
segments from the best of extemporized scenes, dreamed up by the actors
and actresses themselves, with the director's job being to yell
"cut
Drew Pearson indicates that a dispute was occurring in backstage conferences between the two conference committees of the House and Senate regarding research funding for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy and muscular dystrophy, with Senator Lister Hill of Alabama wanting more money to be spent on health research, while Congressman John Fogarty of Rhode Island, also a Democrat, wanted to stick to the more restrained budget put forward by HEW Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby. In the past, Mr. Fogarty had been a champion of public health and had stood fast against the attempts by Congressman John Taber of New York to slash public health appropriations. But for some strange reason, during the current year, Mr. Fogarty was now siding with Mr. Taber's approach. Senator Hill wanted an additional 24 million dollars to be spent on research for the primary killers among diseases. That program had been approved by the country's top medical specialists and had been passed by the Senate, but not the House, thanks to the opposition by Mr. Fogarty.
Senator Hill's father had been a surgeon who conducted the first successful operation on the human heart, and so the Senator had a keen interest in medicine and was convinced that medical science was on the verge of discovering cures for cancer, leukemia and heart disease, pointing out that in the prior 14 years, life expectancy had been increased by 8.5 years, chiefly the result of research into the causes and cures of such major killers as rheumatic fever, appendicitis, influenza, syphilis and tuberculosis. He believed that without more Federal funding, however, it was doubtful that the progress could be sustained, as there was a shortage of between 22,000 and 45,000 doctors in the country, a great need for money to finance research, the need for 150 million dollars to build laboratories for the research, and the need for 600,000 to 800,000 more hospital beds. The advisory council which helped to steer the Public Health Service had recommended an appropriation of 139.6 million dollars during the year, but Secretary Hobby had wanted only 73.9 million. The Senate had compromised by providing an additional 24 million.
Mr. Pearson points out that, in contrast, the Agriculture Department received more than 51 million dollars for agricultural research into the cause of bangs disease in cows, hog cholera, hoof and mouth disease and various other agricultural diseases and problems.
Various Democratic leaders, including Speaker Sam Rayburn, in Congress had approached Congressman Fogarty to urge the additional funding for medical researchbut Mr. Fogarty still persisted in refusing to accept the additional appropriation.
Walter Lippmann tells of Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev having complained to a member of the Western press on July 4 that they were speculating too much about why the Soviet Union was taking a new line, while paying little attention to what the Russians were saying, preferring to read tea leaves. Mr. Lippmann says that it was not quite true, that the Western press was paying very close attention to every word the Russians were saying, but they had not yet explained why they had changed, why they believed their new "decisions" were "the only right ones", as Mr. Khrushchev had stated at the garden party. They had also not explained why Mr. Khrushchev and other top Russians were now speaking of politics at garden parties, when that had never been the case previously.
He says that it appeared to him that there was a difference between Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov opening up a bit, as he had when he was in the U.S., and Mr. Khrushchev opening up at a garden party, that the new ways of Mr. Molotov fit the theory that there was a new tactical policy in the Kremlin, while Mr. Khrushchev opening up did not have the same implications, as he was a person not accustomed to dealing with foreigners and not much aware of how things appeared to foreigners, having no habit of subtlety or complication, unlike the experienced diplomat, Mr. Molotov. That contrast had brought back to Mr. Lippmann's mind a talk he had with the late Mayor Ernst Reuter of West Berlin in the early spring of 1953, a few weeks after the death of Stalin, when the Mayor, once a Communist leader and still in contact with Communist officials in East Berlin, had been certain that there would be a great change in the Soviet Union with Stalin gone and no one other than Mr. Molotov left of the generation which had produced the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Those who would now be the rulers had grown up in the Soviet Union and had known what World War II had cost the country, were proud of what the Soviets had won as a result of the war, paying only lip service to the old revolutionary ideals. Mr. Reuter had known many of them and stated that they were materialists in a literal way that the old Bolsheviks had never been, that they wanted to develop the country and make money, to enjoy personally the material pleasures of better living. Mr. Lippmann says it was not a literal report of what Mayor Reuter had told him that evening in Washington, but was the point of what he had said. It corresponded closely with the fact that in other revolutions, the original revolutionary ideal had almost never outlasted the original generation of revolutionists.
He indicates that the present ruling oligarchy within Moscow belonged to that new generation who would, according to Mayor Reuter's theory, be "more materialistic, more isolationist, more turned inward, less adventurous, less conspiratorial, less zealous, than the generation of Lenin and Stalin."
Mr. Lippmann is also reminded of a talk which he had two years earlier with a high European diplomatic official who knew Russia before and after the revolution and also believed that the death of Stalin would produce a new chapter in Soviet life, predicting that the army officers would be the successors of the original revolutionists. When Mr. Lippmann had asked him why not the hierarchy of the Communist Party, he had responded that the party would lose its original revolutionary zeal which had bound it together, whereas the army, cloaked in glory from the war, would become the focal point of the national feelings of the Russian people. He had said that the implications for the West were that the Russians would take no serious military risk to expand the Communist orbit and would make no concessions which diminished the strategic security acquired from the war.
Mr. Lippmann believes that something of the sort was what Mr. Khrushchev had stated at the garden party when he had remarked to the representative of the Western press that something would come of the Geneva Big Four summit meeting, set to start nine days hence, provided the West talked to the Soviets "honestly and sincerely as equals." He was concerned that the U.S. was perceiving the Soviets as negotiating from a standpoint of weakness and that Russia be treated as an equal in their war-making abilities.
Mr. Lippmann thus concludes that it would be better for the Western cause if Secretary of State Dulles resisted the temptation to boast about the superior strength of the West and instead acted on the assumption that there was a balance of power. He again states that rather than stressing the notion of limiting the size of the military establishment, concentration ought be on the problem of their deployment and mobilization, that it was one thing to reduce forces at the point of highest tension in the world and quite another to disband those forces. He suggests that it would be possible to negotiate with more confidence and boldness about the regulation of armaments if nothing decisive and irreparable were done toward actual disarmament.
The Congressional Quarterly states that in the 40 roll call votes through June 26 on which the President's position had been clear-cut, Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina had supported the President 63 percent of the time, while Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina had supported the President 65 percent of the time. Generally, Republican Senators averaged 71 percent support, while Democrats average 57 percent.
On the 22 roll calls in the field of foreign policy, both Senator Ervin and Senator Scott had supported the President 86 percent of the time. Republicans had supported the President in foreign policy 74 percent of the time, while Democrats had done so 75 percent of the time. During the full 1954 session, Republicans had supported the President 73 percent of the time on all types of legislation, while Democrats had done so 38 percent of the time. Senator Ervin gave his support 36 percent of the time, voting against the President's position on 33 percent of the 40 roll call votes thus far in 1955. Senator Scott opposed the President's position 25 percent of the time.
Senators Eugene Millikin of Colorado, Frederick Payne of Maine, and William Knowland of California, tied at 93 percent support of the President for the highest amount of support among Republicans in the Senate, while Spessard Holland of Florida led the way for Democrats at 83 percent support, the only Democrat providing over 80 percent support. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had missed most of the 1955 roll call votes because of his having to convalesce in Florida from his back surgery the previous fall and subsequent complications from it, had the lowest Senate score for support of the President's policies, with the next lowest among Democrats having been that of Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico at 28 percent, opposing the President 25 percent of the time. The lowest score of support of the President among Republicans was that of Senator William Langer of North Dakota, at 18 percent, opposing the President 68 percent of the time.
Twelve of the 49 Democrats in the Senate and three of the 47 Republicans scored under 50 percent support.
Representative Charles Jonas of North Carolina, representing Mecklenburg County, the only Republican member of the North Carolina delegation, supported the President on 52 percent of the 29 roll call votes in the House on which the President had a clear-cut position, compared to the Republican average of 62 percent support and the Democratic average of 51 percent. Those providing the most support were Republicans Joel Broyhill of Virginia, Gerald Ford of Michigan, and Howell Holmes of Washington, all at 93 percent, while Virginia Representatives J. Vaughan Gary and Burr Harrison, led House Democrats with 76 percent support.
Of the 231 voting House Democrats, 96 had scored under 50 percent support, while 47 of the 203 Republicans registered under 50 percent support.
On the ten House foreign policy votes, Representative Jonas scored 40 percent support, while Republicans averaged 49 percent and Democrats, 69 percent. In 1954, Mr. Jonas had scored 71 percent support on both foreign and domestic policies combined, and thus far in 1955, had voted against the President's position 48 percent of the time.
Party splits were sharpest in the East, where Republicans scored 65 percent support and Democrats, 48 percent. The gap was widest in the Senate, where Eastern Republicans supported the President 78 percent of the time and Democrats, 49 percent of the time. Southern Senators had the highest Democratic score at 60 percent support, while the Midwest had the lowest support among Republicans, with 64 percent in the Senate and 61 percent in the House.
A letter writer responds to a previous letter writer who had stated, in favoring segregation, that he believed as Abraham did, referencing the Genesis story wherein Abraham, objecting to a Canaanite wife for his son Isaac, directed that a servant find one elsewhere, then locating Rebekah in Nahor to become the wife of Isaac. He says that a thorough reading of chapters 24 through 26 revealed that Rebekah had perpetrated a crime so diabolical as to brand her as one of the "most treacherous, hypocritical, unfaithful, unfeeling and inhuman" women recorded in the Bible. Thus, Abraham could not have made a worse choice as a bride for his son. Genesis 12:13 told of Abraham being a notorious falsifier, in Genesis 22:10, an attempted murderer, and in Genesis 16:4 and 21:10, having debauched his maidservant, and then turned her and the child she bore him into the wilderness to die. The writer concludes that the previous writer, like others who looked only at one side of the issue, had quoted only such parts of the Bible as appeared convenient to support his view of maintaining segregation, avoiding those parts which contradicted or refuted the notion. He concludes that, as a wise sage had once said, "There are none so blind as those who refuse to see."
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