The Charlotte News
Monday, January 16, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had sent to Congress his budget message, with projected balanced budgets for the current fiscal year and the following year, while urging higher Federal spending of nearly 66 billion dollars in the ensuing fiscal year. He said that the budget could remain balanced for the ensuing 18 months by slim margins only if Congress gave him utmost cooperation in holding down spending and by awaiting a prudent time to implement tax cuts. It allowed for some debt reduction but not for tax cuts, urging Congress to keep corporate and excise taxes at their current levels rather than allowing them to drop as scheduled on April 1 to the levels prior to the Korean War. He estimated that Government revenue would exceed the proposed spending by 435 million dollars, that spending would increase in the ensuing fiscal year by about 1.5 billion over the current fiscal year and that predicted revenues for the following year would be 1.8 billion higher than the current year.
The budget request for the ensuing fiscal year asked 1.4 million dollars for operation of the Southeastern Power Administration, which marketed power from seven Federal-owned dams in ten Southeastern states, set to increase to thirteen dams, the request being $218,000 more than in the current year's budget.
Former President Hoover this date renewed his proposal made some weeks earlier that an administrative vice-president be appointed to assist the President in administrative tasks, though former President Truman opposed the idea. Mr. Hoover testified before a Senate Government Operations subcommittee, chaired by Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, as it started a search for means to lighten presidential burdens in the aftermath of President Eisenhower's September 24 heart attack. White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had written to Senator Kennedy that while the experience of the Administration had not brought to light such questions requiring the services of an administrative vice-president, such as suggested by President Hoover, he was aware of no objection which they would have should the Congress decide to make such an office available to the President for use. Mr. Truman had said that he opposed the idea because it was the President's duty "to see that the functions of the President are not infringed upon by either the legislative branch of the government or the judicial branch." Mr. Hoover had suggested that the administrative vice-president would be appointed by the President with Senate approval and be given "such administrative and coordination duties within the law" as the President saw fit.
In New York, the charge against the Rev. J. A. DeLaine, that he was a fugitive from justice in South Carolina, had been dismissed this date in municipal felony court because no warrant of extradition had been received from South Carolina Governor John Bell Timmerman, Jr. The minister was a leader in the fight against segregation in schools and was under indictment in South Carolina on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill, apparently related to those efforts. The African Methodist Episcopal clergyman had surrendered voluntarily to the New York district attorney on November 25. The minister's attorney had made a motion to dismiss rather than continue the case, as sought by the prosecutor, to January 25, the expiration date of the 60-day period allowed by the law for holding a man for extradition. The magistrate granted the defense motion. The National Council of Churches had urged the magistrate to consider the possible risk to the minister's life if he were sent back to South Carolina.
Also in New York, a longstanding church feud had brought two clergymen into open competition the previous day before the altar of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn. The Rev. William Howard Melish, acting director of the church for seven years and recently removed from that job by a vote of the vestry, was nevertheless determined to conduct Sunday services as usual, while his rival, Rev. Robert Thomas, appointed by the bishop of Long Island to conduct services at the church until a newly nominated rector could be installed, also conducted services, each presiding at separate altars for distinct small groups of parishioners.
In Huntington, W.Va., an Eastern Air Lines Silver Falcon passenger plane, with 32 passengers and a crew of three aboard, had skidded on hard-packed snow from the runway at the airport the previous night during a routine landing and narrowly missed plunging 400 feet into a ravine. The plane was en route from Louisville to Charlotte, and had dropped onto a ledge in scrub growth some 60 feet below the runway, but there were no injuries. The passengers had continued to their destinations on another flight.
In Columbia, S.C., two South Carolina State Representatives wanted to ease a scare thrown into a host of residents of the Carolinas when that state's Tax Commission had announced a crackdown the previous summer on importation of whiskey without South Carolina tax stamps, both asserting that "promiscuous stopping of vehicles and searching of automobiles" for the unstamped product had "incurred the ill will of many of the citizens of this state and many inhabitants of our neighboring states", proposing that the South Carolina General Assembly pass a measure which would permit importation of small quantities of tobacco and whiskey, provided they were not intended for resale.
Dick Young of The News indicates that parking bans might be required on State-financed city streets or urban highways, that a proposal to that effect would be made by the State Highway commissioner at a meeting of the Commission on January 26.
On the editorial page, "Robert M. Hanes, Citizen Extraordinary" tells of Mr. Hanes retiring as president of Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. this date after 25 years of service, finding that his imprint on the banking world was permanent and that his influence would continue. He would devote a large part of his future activities to public service, as he already had in the past.
It tells of his having been one of the leaders in the development of the National Credit Association, which had aided many banks in the early Depression years prior to the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In 1939, he had been elected president of the American Bankers Association and was later chairman of that Association's Small Business Credit Commission and president of the Association of Reserve City Bankers.
He had also served two terms in the State House of Representatives and one in the State Senate, as well as serving on a State sanatorium board and education commission. In April, 1949, he had been appointed chief of the Belgium-Luxembourg mission of the Marshall Plan and was named director of economic affairs for Germany, chief of the Marshall Plan mission at Frankfurt and economic adviser to the high commissioner for Germany, returning to his post at Wachovia in early 1951, while continuing to serve until late that year as a member of the Marshall Plan advisory committee on fiscal and monetary problems. Throughout his career, he had been a strong supporter of educational programs across the state and had founded and headed for three years the North Carolina Business Foundation.
He was one of the most respected persons in the country in banking and the piece says that the state was fortunate to have such a man aboard, expresses certainty that he would likely give more.
"Nixon, the Tale, and the Donkey" tells of Vice-President Nixon, during the midterm elections campaign in 1954, having traveled the country excoriating the Democrats for having tolerated Communists in Government during the previous two Administrations and claiming that the Republican Administration had cleaned them out, prompting DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell to call him a liar. RNC chairman Leonard Hall had then demanded that Mr. Mitchell withdraw the remark or withdraw his "fair play" pledge with both national chairmen had signed at the outset of the 1954 campaign.
But the previous week, the Civil Service Commission had issued a statement revealing that about 41 percent of the persons fired by the Administration had been hired by it in the first instance and that 5.4 percent "of Mr. Nixon's imagined horde of subversives" had been re-employed by the Government. The Administration listed a person as being fired for being a security risk, even though they were rehired by another agency, and, moreover, Mr. Nixon had not explained in 1954 that security risks were not necessarily subversives, but that the category also included drunks, heavy drinkers, blabbermouths, etc.
It suggests that the Commission's report would produce more fair play in the 1956 campaign than had the pledge by Messrs. Mitchell and Hall in 1952, and that if Mr. Nixon tried to pin the "'security tale' on the donkey, that glass house he's living in might come crashing down with noise enough to stampede an elephant."
"What's with This Lambs
Lettuce?" tells of dreaming of the germinations to come from
seeds advertised in seed catalogues, finding it a pleasant pastime,
but wonders about a plant called lambs lettuce or corn salad,
wondering whether it was the same thing as lambs quarter, which "used
to be put, most providentially, into the same pot with a mixture of
turnip greens, rape, mustard and poke salad, thereby making all of
the parts of the mixture more delectable
If you do, you can write the Charlotte News and let them know. We think it is that they muffed the recipe on the eggs not seen.
A piece from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, titled "A Gridiron Racket at Chapel Hill?" tells of Maryland football coach Jim Tatum having resigned recently to become coach at UNC, suggesting that UNC was trying to re-enter the ranks of big-time football, of which it had not been part since the graduation of Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice after the 1949 season.
It finds it lamentable, says that the University of Virginia, while dispensing scholarships to players, had not sought to hire a big-time football coach, such as Mr. Tatum—whose teams had won the national championship in 1953 and had finished number three in the season just ended, losing only in the Orange Bowl to number one Oklahoma.
Shirley Povich, writing in the Washington Post sports column, had said that the two institutions were serving up high-pressure football of the type which had caused several colleges to drop the sport and the Ivy League to cut it back to manageable size, wondering whether there would be such frenzy over a comparable faculty member being sought from Maryland by UNC.
The piece finds it a good question, indicating that if the new football program of UNC were to be "anything like the gridiron racket that's been running at the University of Maryland, North Carolina's old grads had better look sharp."
Drew Pearson tells of the Interior Department going to great lengths to shield and coach witnesses testifying before the joint committee chaired by Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina, investigating the giveaway of timber rights in the Rogue River National Forest.
The head of the Bureau of Mines at Norris, Tenn., was summoned by the committee to answer why he had approved an assay by a firm located in Mobile, Ala., regarding the value of gold ore in a mining claim in Oregon. Previously, no mining company had found a measurable amount of gold in that ore and yet the Mobile firm suddenly found a lot of it present. Since the assay, however, the ore samples had been dumped in the river and no gold mining had been done, only timber cutting, the actual reason for a family in Mobile lobbying to obtain the forest land for only five dollars per acre.
But when Senator Scott sought the testimony from the head of the Bureau of Mines in Norris, he was informed by the Department of Interior that he was not available, that he was in Tennessee tending to his hospitalized wife and could not leave. The Senators, however, discovered through committee investigators that the wife was not in the hospital, that instead a former wife was waiting in Washington to serve a subpoena on the man for non-support. The associate solicitor of the Interior Department then admitted that he had lied, claiming that he had been seeking to protect the man in question so that he would not be jailed for non-support. He then advised the committee that they could serve the man at a hotel in Alexandria, Va., after the solicitor learned that if a witness was subpoenaed, he could not be served with another subpoena while responding to the first.
Less than a week after the President's rosy report on the State of the Union, Secretary of State Dulles provided a long, gloomy report to the Senate in executive session on the state of foreign relations. He complained about Communist gains in the recent French elections, the West German realignment which had reduced Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's majority, and Prime Minister Anthony Eden's slipping prestige at home. He also expressed concern regarding the brewing trouble in the Middle East, North Africa and the Far East. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota responded that he was having difficulty squaring the Secretary's account with the State of the Union, to which Mr. Dulles responded that the overall picture looked good.
Congressman Kenneth Keating of New York was drafting a whitewash report on Peter Strobel, the public buildings boss fired because of a conflict of interest, the report ignoring seven cases of improprieties and nine violations of the code of ethics cited by Mr. Strobel's own boss. The report stated that one of the deals was "unethical", but orders had been issued from New York Republican headquarters that a whitewash occur and Congressman Keating was following orders.
A letter writer, who withholds his name, says that he was quite disgusted by some of the "radical letters" published in the newspapers regarding the issue of segregation, indicating that he was a white man who chose his friends and associates, "in a social way, among the whites." He says that he did have some good friends among "colored people who are decent and respectable citizens, but no social contacts with them." The writer also says that there were some "so-called white trash" with whom he had no social contact and did not care to have. He points out that one prior letter had boasted of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, when there was no such thing, and that among the majority of black people in North and South Carolina, there was white blood. He asks whether an intelligent white person really believed that their son or daughter would marry a black person just because the children went to the same school, that among persons of different religious faiths, most married within that faith. The writer suggests that some of the "'Negro haters'" who were extreme and voiced their resentment against black people might be doing their fellow man a good turn by trying to educate some of the whites against cohabitation with blacks.
A letter writer from Whiteville
submits what he believes to be an "ethnological and
philological" analysis of what constitutes "Anglo-Saxon
culture", says that Southern whites were actually "Mercian" and not Anglo-Saxon, wants Old English taught in the schools—the rest of which you may read in detail if you want, as it is so full
of moronic nonsense that we do not care even to examine it further, for this
individual has written other letters of the same stripe in recent
weeks, at first appearing in each of his letters to make some valid points, but upon closer thought and examination, is not worth spending more than 20 seconds in throwing his
thoughts into the wastebasket
If he had gone to a decent school, he would realize that Old English is, to some degree, taught in the schools via literary studies, that sufficient understanding
A letter writer from Zirconia indicates that with degenerative diseases ever on the increase and one out of four suffering from cancer, it was pathetic to hear that the "greatest evil" was "mixing of the races". She says that she was not in favor of interracial marriage because of the "difference in emotional tempo between Negro and white." She doesn't believe that the "more lighthearted Negro is anxious for marriage with the more stolid, hurried, ulcer-nursing white." But she says that if people wanted to worry about future generations, they should consider erosion, food adulteration, food and water poisoning, and atomic radiation, that the possibility of one in a thousand mixed marriages ought be somewhere around 36th on a worry list. She adds that there was nothing impure about a mulatto anyway, that any healthy person with a clear mind and conscience was pure enough for society and God and good enough to sit at her table or in the White House, that the idea of purebreds was an insult to man's higher purpose. She indicates that God was not a racist as some appeared to think, that if at one time the Bible condemned marriage between Jews and Gentiles, it had been because at that time, Gentiles were pagan. She quotes John, chapter 10, verses 14 through 16, and suggests that it be placed beside everyone's bed.
A letter writer says that about a year earlier, he had suggested in a letter that Governor Hodges call an election and let the people decide the issue on segregation, wonders whether people were going to stand by and let "the nine robes in Washington" direct them, that the Supreme Court was not a lawmaking body, that the two Brown v. Board of Education decisions constituted "a bluff to fool the South." He thanks God that Virginia had called that bluff, setting the stage for other states to follow, including North Carolina, and urges that everyone who agreed should write Governor Hodges, as he was going to do.
A letter writer says that often in current times, people were quoting the Bible to justify expressions of prejudice and to rationalize racial segregation and its attendant evils, discrimination and second-class citizenship, says that passages could be taken from the Bible out of context to justify virtually anything and that it was shameful to use passages distorted in interpretation or deliberately manipulated so that "base and selfish motives may be served." He says that those who believed that racial segregation was wrong, unconstitutional and not in the Christian spirit did not need to seek out Biblical passages to support their belief, that the great truths revealed throughout the Bible gave complete assurance that they were right. He quotes from the 1 John 4:20-21: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also."
Framed Edition
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