The Charlotte News
Friday, September 2, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that only one minor incident had been reported along the Egyptian-Israeli frontier the previous night, after Israel had announced conditional acceptance of an appeal to end the fighting. An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said that Egyptian infiltrators had blown up a well shortly before midnight, northeast of the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. In the same area the previous day, Israel had claimed that two Egyptian jet fighters had been shot down by Israeli planes. Israel had announced the previous night acceptance of the U.N. cease-fire proposed by Canadian Maj. General E. L. M. Burns, chief of the U.N. truce supervisory commission, a proposal strongly backed by the U.S. and Britain. Estimates of casualties during the previous nine days of fighting in the Gaza area had reached as high as 61 killed and 91 wounded. That toll had risen sharply when Israeli troops and half-tracks had blown up an Egyptian military headquarters in the Gaza region on Wednesday night, with the Israelis declaring the raid as punishment for previous Egyptian attacks and a warning against future hostilities. Israeli radio said that 40 Egyptians had been killed and 40 wounded, and that the attackers "could easily have occupied the entire Gaza Strip." Egypt reported that ten of its men had been killed and 12 injured, while private sources placed the Egyptian losses at 17 dead and ten wounded. An Israeli spokesman said that one attacker was killed and eight wounded in the increased violence in the Gaza area, a 6 by 30 mile strip of land held by Egypt, after negotiations between Egypt and Israel on easing tensions had broken down on August 24, with daily clashes or raids having occurred across the border since that time.
In Detroit, American Motors Corporation this date became the first of the "little three" automakers to settle their contract dispute with the UAW on the pattern set by the Big Three automakers, ending a strike which had been called by the union for the previous midnight. The settlement differed in one major aspect from those reached by the Big Three, with AMC's layoff pay plan not coming into effect until a year after those settled by G.M., Ford and Chrysler, to start on September 15, 1956, at which time AMC would begin paying into a trust fund which would become available a year later, whereas the Big Three benefits would become effective on June 1, 1956. The year delay, according to UAW vice-president Leonard Woodcock, was to enable AMC to become "a permanent success in the auto industry" and to help a group of 3,000 displaced former Hudson Motor Car Co. employees in Detroit. AMC had been formed the previous year by a merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corp. and Hudson, and Mr. Woodcock indicated that economic problems had attended that merger, such that the settlement was designed to help AMC meet those problems. He said that the layoff pay plan, wage increases and other benefits of the new agreement amounted to a 14-cent per hour package for the first year of the three-year contract, including a flat wage boost of between six and eight cents per hour for all employees, with additional six-cent raises to occur in 1956 and 1957. The UAW had previously estimated that the value of the Ford, G.M. and Chrysler packages had been in excess of 20 cents per hour during the first year, with their wages averaging about $2.10 per hour before the new contracts had been signed. The vice-president of AMC said that his company had been paying three cents per hour more prior to the signing of the new contract. The UAW had still not settled with the other "little three" companies, Studebaker-Packard Corp. and Kaiser Motors Corp., with Studebaker's 9,000 employees having struck the previous day, refusing to extend the contract which had expired Wednesday at midnight.
In New York, the Transport Workers Union this date ordered postponement of a strike of 35,000 non-operating employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a strike which had been scheduled to start at midnight this date. The postponement resulted from the President stepping into the dispute by creating an emergency fact-finding board, which, under the Railway Labor Act, usually postponed strikes for 60 days.
Also in New York, clothing belonging to a missing suspect in a $305,000 Queens bank robbery and to the suspect's wife had been discovered in Folly Beach, S.C., in a bungalow where the previously reported arrested man had been staying who was wanted on a warrant out of New York for first-degree murder and another out of Boston for a jail escape during which he had used a machine gun to assault a guard. That defendant had waived extradition after the Federal District Court had denied a defense motion for change of venue to South Carolina. An automobile abandoned by the suspect in the Queens robbery had been found also at the cabin near Charleston. The clothing and automobile were left in the custody of Charleston authorities, after U.S. marshals and detectives of the New York Police Department had brought the murder and escape suspect back to New York to face the murder indictment, stemming from a tavern fight in July, 1952, in which he allegedly had killed a friend. A warrant for the arrest of the wife of the Queens robbery suspect was issued in Federal District Court in Brooklyn the previous day, charging that she had harbored her husband in a house on Long Island following the robbery, which took place on April 6 at a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Also in New York, scores of policemen were combing a densely wooded area in Staten Island, searching for a 14-year old girl who had screamed for help to her mother over the telephone before the line had gone dead. The girl had left her home in the Charleston section of the island the previous afternoon to shop in nearby Tottenville, and about four hours later, her mother's telephone had rung, with her daughter's voice screaming for help, apparently from a local connection. A small boy located near the home of the girl said that he had heard a scream coming from a nearby baseball field, but had seen nothing. Police used floodlights to search the wooded areas around the girl's home the previous night.
In Philadelphia, the first witness at a coroner's inquest into the death of the young heiress bride of a Miami Beach policeman had testified this date that he had been told that "much pressure" had been applied at the City morgue to release the body immediately. The medical examiner did not inquire of the witness as to the source of the alleged pressure. The witness said he was summoned to an apartment by two police officers on August 24, who told him that a young woman had died suddenly, and he found the heiress, daughter of the vice-president of Food Fair Stores, a large national grocery chain, lying on the bed, covered by a blanket, appearing to be wearing only her bra. A couple who rented the apartment were present at the time in the bedroom, along with another couple identified as the girl's parents. Two physicians were also present, one a family physician for the young woman's family and the other having been summoned from across the street by the occupants of the apartment. The young woman was dead when he arrived.
It would turn out that her death had been caused by a botched illegal abortion attempt by a third-party inserting instruments into her body to try to induce the abortion at a time when she was estimated to have been in her sixth to seventh week of pregnancy. The abortion was inchoate. Such things, it is safe to assume, will become the norm again, unfortunately, in some states after the brilliant five-Justice majority of the politicized Supreme Court overturned last spring the 49-year old precedent in Roe v. Wade, purely as a political payoff for appointment of giant mediocrities to the Court, especially those three appointed by Trumpy-Dumpy-Do, people who cannot seem to keep their personal politics and/or purported religious convictions separate from their judicial duties, an outrage to any system of equable justice and rendering the Court a giant joke. Their "legal reasoning" amounts to a worse joke, except among cynical idiots who believe that the Supreme Court ought to be politicized to counter-balance the inherent politics of the executive and legislative branches, never so designed, obviously, except to idiots, by the Founders, which is why all Federal judges are appointed for life. It is not so that some charlatan "president" can cynically abuse his appointments power to place on the Court, as a political payoff to a coalition of nuts and Federal court imbalancers, such Federalist Society parrots, with the aid of undoubtedly the worst, most partisan Senate Majority Leader in modern history, McConnell, also the prisoner of the ultra-rightwing, authoritarian lunatics of his party, who perpetually want to try to turn back the clock to some earlier time which they fancy was more innocent and less complicated, inevitably a product of their childhood naivete gleaned from some third-rate historical drama on television or at the movies, not from reading and understanding history as it was actually recorded through time, never innocent or uncomplicated as perceived by the informed adults of the given time.
In London, Ontario, nine Russian farm experts continued their tour of Canada, with flowers greeting their arrival, presented by "Friends of Russia", while shouts of "murderers" were issued by a small band of anti-Communist demonstrators. The Russian visitors were planning to travel from London through the Niagara Peninsula, spending Sunday at Niagara Falls.
In Pageland, S.C., funeral arrangements were still incomplete for two men who had been electrocuted the previous afternoon, killed instantly when a power pole they were erecting near Ruby had come in contact with a live power line and artificial respiration had failed to revive them.
In Los Angeles, it was reported that Southern California was enduring a record-setting heatwave, with the previous day having had a record high of 110 degrees in the city, breaking by one degree a 64-year old record. Nearby Tujunga hit 120 degrees, while it was comparatively cool in the normally scorching Mojave Desert, reaching between 90 and 103. The forecast temperature for downtown Los Angeles for this date was 108. Hot winds had fanned a brush fire in San Dimas, 25 miles east of Los Angeles, destroying 12 homes and scorching 200 acres. Farmers in interior valleys reported that tens of thousands of chickens had succumbed to the heat, with 12,000 having been reported at one ranch in suburban Bellflower, while commercial flower crops had also been damaged. Several offices had been closed the previous afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. San Diego County authorities said that the 104-degree heat recorded there had been a major disaster to the multimillion dollar poultry industry, with a farm bureau director having estimated that nearly 6,000 chickens and turkeys had succumbed in their pens. (Sell the wilted chickens to Col. Sanders in Kentucky for a special on farm-fried meals.) Several persons had been treated in Santa Monica for burns on the soles of their feet, received as they set out for the surf across the hot beach sands. At neighboring Torrance, city construction projects had been halted when concrete had set before it could be poured and tar boiled in the streets. Los Angeles had set a record for the amount of water consumed the previous day, 692 million gallons, but officials said that there was a plentiful supply on hand for the area. Dozens of automobiles had stalled on freeways, with their engines vapor-locked, and minor traffic snarls had resulted. Hundreds of people spent the previous night and the night before in parks and on beaches, with temperatures remaining in the 90's and 80's at night. Authorities attributed four deaths to the heat the previous day, which had been the second day of the heatwave.
Harry Shuford of The News indicates that the North Carolina State Highway Patrol was beginning a "saturation" campaign in Mecklenburg County this evening, as thousands of residents were beginning their exodus for the Labor Day weekend, with all days off having been canceled for the patrolmen and schedules reset to keep as many of them on the roads as possible at all times. Highway checkpoints would also be established and all electrical devices for determining speed would be in operation. "Cub packs" would be utilized, consisting of four or five patrol cars concentrating in certain areas and stopping as many cars as possible for routine checks of driver's licenses. (We suppose that the Highway Patrol had never heard of the Fourth Amendment at that point, it having not been promulgated enough apparently in North Carolina by 1955. It does not apply to established checkpoints, at least up to the point of intrusive searches, but does apply to stopping of an individual vehicle, whose operator is exercising the right of travel, such that probable cause of a violation of some sort must first be detected by the officer before halting the motorist's travel—that is probably anywhere north of Argentina.) The official weekend, for accident statistics purposes, would begin at 6:00 p.m. this date and end on Monday at midnight, covering 78 hours. The vice-president of the Carolina Motor Club said that travel information requests for the weekend were 3.5 percent above those of the previous year, usually a good indicator of how heavy highway traffic would be during the holiday weekend. A sergeant for the Highway Patrol said that there had been 11 fatalities in traffic accidents during the 1954 Labor Day weekend and that the Patrol would strive for a better record in the present year.
In Charlotte, Federal Hill-Burton funds would be used to build almost half of Presbyterian Hospital's 67-bed, $991,000 proposed addition, with the U.S. Public Health Service having approved the addition this date, expanding the hospital and adding surgical and other facilities. The Federal Government would furnish $463,000 of the total cost. The new beds would enable the hospital to accommodate a total of 348 patients.
Emery Wister of The News indicates that 2,500 seats were being installed in the new Auditorium off Independence Boulevard, along with red carpet and an abstract, modern mural of Harlequin design, representing drama, being painted on the walls and ceiling of the mezzanine lounge by Elizabeth Mack, art director of the City schools. The job of installing the seats was set for completion a week from the following day. The Auditorium was scheduled to open that next day, on Sunday a week hence. The seats were to be upholstered in seven colors, though the seats remained in their boxes and it was not known what the colors would be. The metal frames for the seats would match the upholstery colors. Mrs. Mack said that the best way to view her mural was to "use your imagination", pointing to a design consisting of a series of checks and squares, which she said represented an actor. The mural was to be completed by the following Thursday.
Put up a velvet Elvis, as he will be appearing next door in the Coliseum next June. You've never heard of the boy, but you'll see. He's gonna be more popular than Je-he-sus.
On the editorial page, "Time for Drive on Tax Delinquents" indicates that while 55,000 city and county residents were opening their 1955 tax bills during the week, totaling about 11 million dollars, there were still some 7,900 residents who remained delinquent with their 1954 tax bills, despite their names having been published two weeks earlier, prompting about 600 to pay their bills. A second listing was now going to be made to try to force others to make payment.
It urges that, while it does not recommend doing away with mercy for the impoverished, more stringent efforts ought be undertaken to collect the delinquent taxes, which totaled nearly $165,000, such as garnishments of wages and salaries or placing liens on bank accounts, real estate or automobiles. It indicates that during the period of 1944 to 1954, the 11,000 persons who had been delinquent in payment of their local taxes owed a total of $355,000, which, had it been paid, would have defrayed quite a bit of the tax burden on those who did pay their taxes promptly, and bringing more stringent consequences to bear would make the good citizens a little happier about carrying their share of the load.
"Clare Boothe's Celluloid Curtain" indicates that Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce had determined that she would simply announce her presence away from Venice if the film festival there insisted on showing "The Blackboard Jungle", as she found the film would reflect adversely on U.S. prestige abroad, whether shown as an entry in the prize competition or as an "invited" entry excluded from competition. She so advised the festival officials, and despite Italian protests against intervention and Hollywood complaints of censorship, the festival had apparently decided to side with Ambassador Luce.
It suggests that it was not sure that the choice had been wise, as the festival was a competition in craftsmanship and not in propaganda, with the films entered being the responsibility of the firms which produced them, not the American Government. It indicates that it was true that the film in question was about violence in New York classrooms populated with teenagers of the lower socioeconomic strata and that it might have shocked Italians, just as it had shocked many Americans. But there were other ways to lower American prestige, such as demonstrating that a Government official could decide what citizens of another country might view in the theaters or meddling in the institutions of other nations.
It finds that if Ambassador Luce's wisdom was sufficient to determine that a movie really would damage American prestige, she was also keen enough to keep the situation from becoming an international incident. It concludes that her intervention was not a skillful exercise of diplomacy.
"Ten Years after the Pacific Victory" tells of Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigematsu having ten years earlier been one of the central figures on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri during the formal surrender by the Japanese, signing the unconditional surrender documents, prompting a U.S. official to remark that Mr. Shigematsu was having "a little trouble with the pen." Since that time, he had served 4 1/2 years of a seven-year sentence imposed by a war crimes tribunal and then had again risen to a high place in Japanese politics, reappointed as Foreign Minister. In that capacity he had visited Washington to outline a plan to rearm Japan and establish a military partnership between Japan and the U.S., much as such an alliance had been established between the U.S. and West Germany.
By 1958, according to the Foreign Minister, Japan would likely have an armed force of 200,000 men, enough to permit withdrawal of U.S. troops without concern that Japan would become a tempting target for the Communist Chinese or the Russians. It finds that he had talked reasonably in saying that Japan did not want to "fraternize with Russia", would rather trade in Southeast Asia than with China, and that the Japanese were united in their dedication to the cause of peace.
Nevertheless, it suggests, because he had served as one of Japan's warlords, it produced a feeling of uneasiness about the dependability of Japan's current leaders, posits that a friendly Japan was essential to Far Eastern security and so the U.S. had to recognize the leaders its people chose, concluding: "How times change."
A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "Food from the Basket", indicates that country picnic food was no treat, not including the food which rural women's organizations served at civic clubs in church basements and community houses, which it regards as good, instead focusing on the food which farm families brought to their own picnics, which were heavy on sandwiches with mayonnaise-smeared tomato circles stuck between slices of store-bought bread, with boiled ham and even spam sandwiches being just as numerous. It suggests that people who said grace over fried ham and red gravy in their own dining rooms apparently preferred something lighter and more moist, such as deviled eggs, during their picnics.
It indicates that the picnics were fun and in that spirit, those who packed and unpacked the lunches liked to let beet pickle juice trickle onto banana cakes and flatten the chocolate pies and brought a few pastries from the supermarket, "to keep the atmosphere from being too homelike and ordinary." It suggests that dinners on the lawn were a great institution, "[b]ut to a city fellow who happens along, they sure are a letdown."
Drew Pearson's column, being written by staff while he was on vacation, tells of a mind-reading device being developed by scientists at Du Mont Laboratories, with successful tests having been conducted. It was based on the same principle as the electroencephalograph, measuring brain waves, enabling scientists to learn of mechanisms of interpersonal communication. The scientist heading the project, Dr. Thomas P. Goldsmith, said that they felt somewhat like scientists must have felt when on the threshold of discovering atomic energy. The column notes that Du Mont Laboratories assured that the device was a long way off and that no formal news on it would be issued for another five years.
Former President Truman had called off his planned trip to California for political barnstorming because he was sore at Ed Pauley, the former DNC treasurer who was an oil millionaire. Mr. Truman was supposed to be the feature attraction at a Democratic fund-raising dinner which Mr. Pauley was promoting in Los Angeles, and was ready to make the tour against Vice-President Nixon, whom he detested, when he heard that Mr. Pauley had entertained the Vice-President, causing him to decide he would not be the guest of anyone who licked the boots of Mr. Nixon. A dozen Democrats, including DNC chairman Paul Butler, begged him to reconsider, but he remained resolute in his refusal.
Michigan Congressman Clare Hoffman had barely escaped going on record as a public power advocate, highly out of character for the conservative Republican. At a hearing, he was taking his usual stance that low-cost public power was a Government giveaway, when the subcommittee counsel interrupted to say that they had another witness from the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association, at which point Mr. Hoffman said that he knew the witness because he had sent many letter to the members of the subcommittee, indicating that he wanted them to manufacture the bulbs, set up the telephone poles and creosote the ends of the poles, wanted the REA to go into all business. He said he was "in favor of all that, too, just before election"—but when the transcript of the hearing came to him for correction, he thought twice of his statement and lined out the latter remark.
Stewart Alsop, in Rabat, Morocco, tells of Col. Le Boeuf, retired French Army officer who headed a semi-clandestine movement called "Presence Francaise" in Rabat, stating that the Musselmen of Morocco killed infidels and then went straight to Paradise, perhaps regretting their atrocities for a bit but willing, nevertheless, to kill savagely in the name of Allah. The colonel's movement was dedicated to maintaining French presence in Morocco at all costs and regarded the downfall recently of the resident-general, Gilbert Grandval, as its greatest achievement.
Some believed Presence Francaise an admirable, patriotic organization, while others saw it as a French version of the Klan, using terror as its chief political instrument. It was widely believed that the organization was involved in the anti-Moroccan rioting the previous July and the recent assassination of several moderate Frenchmen.
Mr. Alsop, nevertheless, finds Col. Le Boeuf a charming old man at over 80 years old, though appearing ten years younger, who had come to Rabat in 1907 when the independent country at the time was in anarchy, serving as the French officer during the pacification of Morocco which had begun in 1912, and having been there periodically since.
He had been asked to head Presence Francaise only three months earlier, when it consisted of only 14 young men, whereas the previous week, 3,000 people had come to Rabat to hear the colonel denounce the weakness of the French Government and M. Grandval. He said that the movement spoke for the majority in Morocco, not just Frenchmen, because the Berber tribesmen were loyal to France. Someone asked him whether the Berbers had slaughtered 50 or so Frenchmen on August 29 during the rioting, at which point he gave a lecture on Moslem psychology, something he believed to have been misunderstood by foreign journalists, explaining that in 1912 some Berber tribesmen who had surrendered to them only eight days earlier descended upon them, but to help them. He said that they were still living in the Middle Ages, unable to govern themselves, as evidenced by the recent atrocities. The French, he said, had made the country out of chaos and they would not leave it to become a helpless minority at the mercy of the Musselmen.
Mr. Alsop says that, in a sense, it was almost true that the French had made the country, that it was French brains and French capital which had built the large cities and developed the neglected land, eliminating the chaos. It was also true that Presence Francaise spoke for the majority of Frenchmen in Morocco, though many of its adherents were motivated less than the colonel by earlier memories and more by profits. It was also true that the majority of Moroccans, even the illiterates in the hills, supported the nationalist movement. In the end, he finds, nine million Moroccans could make life intolerable for a few hundred thousand Frenchmen, including the colonel.
Robert C. Ruark, still in Palamos, Spain, tells of his friend Bernard Baruch having celebrated recently his 85th birthday, explains that he wore a woolly red hat when quail hunting and in the evening drank an old-fashion, smacked his lips and said, "Damn, that's good, ain't it?" No one was allowed to smoke at the table until after the meat course, even though he had once been a chain smoker until quitting some twenty years earlier, but did not think it polite to smoke during the main course. He loved food, including sweets. His intimates called him Bernie, some called him chief, and Mr. Ruark called him "Mr. Bernie".
He goes on in detailing Mr. Baruch's lifestyle, telling of him once getting sore at Mr. Ruark for getting the gout at age 33 without money when it had taken him until age 70, with a million dollars for each year, before he had gotten it. He believed heaven was a carbon copy of the Carolina woods during shooting season, and Mr. Ruark agrees. He concludes by wishing him a late happy birthday, "with profound thanks and love, and that includes the bobwhites."
A letter writer from Myrtle Beach, S.C., takes issue with editorial writers who kept shouting that the South was not trying to steal the Yankee industries, wondering why they were wasting their breath, thinks that, instead, it should be admitted that the industries from the North were desired by the South. He also notes a spate of criticism aimed at pulp books, with people thinking that they were all written by Ernest Hemingway and other such "goliaths of print". He says that he had read several books recently in a 35-cent series and had not bothered to find out the authors, with one having been titled The Velvet Doublet—by James Street, not considered a writer of pulp fiction—, a story set in the time of Columbus, which he had found interesting and instructive. Another was Don't Tread on Me—by Walter Karig—, about John Paul Jones, who had been a salty character. He says that had they been anything other than pulp, he would not have had the chance to read them. He also notes that some of the worst literary tripe was written by the authors with the biggest names, and he indicates that tripe had its place in the literary field as much as did the "trash written by the big authors." They had the advantage of being low-cost and if they were not liked by the reader, the book could be used as a present to others.
Apparently, though not naming the editorial, he references in the second part of his letter the recent editorial on paperbacks, appearing August 29. In any event, as a doctor who had routinely written letters to the newspaper in favor of preservation of segregation, he would have served himself, his understanding of the South, its socio-historical background, and his community much better had he, instead of wasting his time on quite so many works of pulp fiction as he indicates, saved his sheckles enough to purchase, for instance, The Mind of the South, the first 1954 paperback edition of which had sold for 95 cents.
A letter from the chairman of the Arrangements Committee of N.C. State College, thanks the newspaper on behalf of the College, and particularly the friends and alumni residing in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and surrounding counties, for the newspaper publicity provided their annual Wolfpack Meeting on August 29.
A pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which Is Expressed A Further View Concerning The Controversy Between Labor And Relaxation:
"People who enjoy their rest
Think vacation is the best."
And those who prefer work
Often get labeled uncool jerks.
Framed Edition
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