The Charlotte News

Tuesday, January 24, 1956

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, in his annual economic report to Congress this date, proposed a restoration of standby controls over consumer credit, saying that the country's booming economy at present was advancing at a "tamer" pace, with the "underlying trend" still appearing upward, as the country was "at the threshold of a 400-billion-dollar economy" following a year of spectacular growth. But he also said that an early reduction of taxes could not be justified and urged economic self-discipline first to reduce the national debt, which stood at nearly 280 billion dollars. He called for more liberal home repair and improvement loans, five-year repair loans up to $5,000 to be Federally insured at the discretion of housing authorities, against the current limit of three years and $3,000, as well as loans, grants and technical help to bring industry into chronically depressed areas, a six-point antitrust program, fresh appeals for quick passage of such proposals as the ten-year highway improvement program, the five-year school indemnity program for flood victims, and U.S. adherence to the multinational Organization for Trade Cooperation. His big surprise was a suggestion that Congress consider re-enacting the Federal Reserve Board's authority to regulate down payments and repayment terms on purchases of automobiles, appliances and other consumer items, for use "only when the economic situation demands it and under proper administrative safeguards." He also asked Congress to postpone the automatic drop in corporate and excise taxes scheduled for the following April 1, and to allow an extension of the temporary 281 billion dollar debt ceiling, the permanent debt ceiling being 275 billion. He said that total production of goods and services at the end of 1955 was at an annual rate of 397 billion dollars, 30 billion higher than the previous year and an all-time peak. He said that personal income of Americans had also hit a record high of 312.2 billion dollars in the last quarter of 1955, without the artificial stimulus of inflation.

From Raleigh, it was reported that a sleet and snow storm, the worst of the winter thus far, had hit the state the previous night and this date, with heavy snow and a frozen base reported from the western mountains to the coast, many highways being too slick for travel and some schools closed. The heaviest reported snowfall was 12 inches at Newfound Gap on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, with four inches recorded at Elizabeth City on the eastern side of the state. The Weather Bureau reported that most of the snowstorm had ended by mid-morning, with the outlook being for cloudy and cold weather for almost all of the state for the rest of the day, and becoming quite cold this night, with temperatures to be between 10 and 20 degrees in the mountains and 20 to 26 elsewhere, while fair and cold weather was predicted for the following day. Charlotte had reported a low of 25 degrees, among cities across the state to Wilmington, all with below-freezing lows.

Mecklenburg County schools had been closed this date, while the City schools continued to operate, with curtailed attendance because of the thin layer of snow making travel to school treacherous. The County schools were expected to reopen the following day. One parent had telephoned the school board office early in the morning saying that she had arrived with her child at Tryon Hills School but that nobody was there, as all the teachers had been struggling to reach the school. Another report had indicated that a youngster walking toward Shamrock Garden School had slipped on the icy pavement and fallen, breaking his nose and knocking out two of his teeth. A special bus operating to the new Eastway Junior High School encountered difficulty and anxious parents began phoning the school office as their children huddled in clusters at various corners waiting for the bus, which had not shown. Principal Jack Horner of Myers Park High School said that attendance was fairly good at the school, but that two teachers had slid off the road and were still missing by mid-morning—and they had better have a good explanation or they would have to stand in the corner to eat their curds and whey. All schools reported many tardy students, all of whom were excused, with many of the schools omitting their homeroom periods and first-period classes because of the shortage of pupils.

Charles Kuralt of The News tells of the snow having created a giant traffic snarl in the city this date, with hundreds of cars having been abandoned at the curbs by early morning motorists, while crowded buses ran hopelessly behind schedule on all lines and many collisions had occurred because of skidding automobiles. Almost everyone was late to work and many had walked long distances because of the streets being too slippery to navigate by car. Not much more than a half-inch of snow had fallen, but intermittent rain had turned the streets into "dangerous glazed ribbons". A harried taxicab dispatcher facetiously said that he had turned down "more than 1,500 calls" during the morning, and Carolina Transit buses from outlying areas had been canceled, while through buses were reported more than an hour behind schedule. By noon, street crews had scattered ash and sand over most of the city's treacherous bridges and grades, with sanded midtown streets enabling a heavy flow of traffic across Independence Square to proceed almost at a normal pace. But in the suburbs, many motorists found progress impossible in areas where many accidents were occurring. There had been no delay for incoming airplane flights at the airport and airline schedules got back to normal at mid-morning.

Donald MacDonald of The News tells of an oil truck running into a freight train and an ambulance, setting off a chain reaction which left four cars damaged, because of the slippery streets. City and County police and State Highway patrolmen had been called out to investigate at least 25 accidents by mid-morning.

An ice hockey game was scheduled for the Charlotte Coliseum the following week, and the sports-page preview indicates that the present snowfall had nothing to do with it. Paul Amen, Army assistant coach, was being touted as the next head football coach at Wake Forest College, with details on the sports page.

No murders, shootings, escaped prisoners, bank robberies, or murder trials were reported this date, just a lot of snow and sleet and slick streets. And that's the way it was...

On the editorial page, "'Sunny' Jim: Just Like He Said" tells of its disappointment in new UNC football coach Jim Tatum's statement, which it had read in a headline, that "winning is everything", having lasted only as long as it had taken to read the headline, for it realized that winning had always been everything at UNC, which had forced out Carl Snavely after his teams began returning mediocre performances after 1949, and had fired George Barclay after three seasons, when he did not produce a winner.

It regards Mr. Tatum as a businessman, hired to prove that under his tutelage, "a stable of muscular youth can be rounded up and trained to beat anybody that comes down the pike in a new science that developed out of the game called football." It finds that Mr. Tatum was correct in pointing out that the product of that science was victory, the only product the alumni would accept.

It indicates that, understandably, the coach's frankness embarrassed some of his friends, who would have preferred to call the new science a game, but finds that it passed understanding why that "plucky band of anti-professionals, who insist that universities should be known by its scholars rather than its scatbacks, are angered by Mr. Tatum, known in the trade as 'Sunny Jim.'" He had done nothing but confirmed the arguments which the academicians had been making for years, helping them to win their argument that winning was everything.

"And that will be the rule as long as the University of North Carolina engages in this on-campus business enterprise."

"A Frown for Dragnet Fund-Raising" tells of motorists on U.S. Highway 29 near Lexington having encountered on Sunday a roadblock put up by young men who said they were March of Dimes workers, with the State Highway Patrol and local police vehicles parked at right angles to the highway at that point, giving the appearance that the roadblock was official.

The editorial says that having encountered that roadblock, it had been transported bodily into the "never-never land of a Warner Brothers gangster film where the cops close in snarling, 'Come outta there with your hands up!'" It was awakened from the daydream only when one of the captors produced a basket and invited a donation for the polio drive, to which it had contributed.

It indicates that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was an extremely worthy organization and deserved support, but finds that flagging down motorists on a 55 mph stretch of a Federal highway was at best a risky proposition and that State and local law enforcement had shown poor taste and worse judgment by participating in the stunt. It was happy to report that the Mecklenburg County March of Dimes drive operated on more sensible lines.

"Good Old Ruby!" tells of County commissioner Sam McNinch being concerned about escapes from the Huntersville Prison Camp, suggesting that it would be comforting to local residents. Mr. McNinch had said that if the authorities at the camp could not keep the prisoners from breaking out, they should move them.

It counsels that the quickest insurance against future escapes would be to give an extra biscuit per day to Ruby, the bloodhound who proved that escape was not worth the effort for the three prisoners the dog had tracked down in less than three hours on Saturday.

"Change Is the Why of the 'Y'" tells of Charlotte's YMCA, despite being handicapped by cramped quarters, continuing as one of the great and wholesome influences on the youth of the community, and finds it a pleasure to salute it during National YMCA Week, pondering briefly the reasons for its success.

The YMCA movement had begun out of meetings for prayer and Bible reading more than a century earlier in England, and behind it was a record of constant change, shifting methods and new emphasis, keeping up with the changing needs of a changing world, keeping alive a wholesome interest in social and religious welfare.

The Charlotte YMCA had achieved its remarkable success by remaining close to the needs of the boys and young men it served, recognizing that young people were not the same as they had been in 1844, facing new problems and enjoying new opportunities, keeping pace with the times. It predicts that it always would, provided residents of the city would give it the tools it needed to do the job.

"Didn't Read It" indicates that the Life article regarding the contention of Secretary of State Dulles that the country had been to the brink of war three times since the beginning of the Administration, had been laughed at and denounced around the world, with some praise having occurred in the U.S. But a week after its publication, one world statesman had not even read it, that having been the President, as he had announced the fact at his press conference the prior week.

It finds that it suggested that the President did not need much help from the Congressional committee trying to lighten the President's workload by ridding him of foolish, trifling duties, that by ignoring the article, the President had shown he already had the hang of keeping his agenda pared to the essentials.

A piece from the St. Petersburg Times, titled "How's Your Social Standing?" indicates that some years earlier, Life magazine had conducted a large study of the American classes, pigeonholing groups of high brows, middle brows and low brows by what they drank, read and so on. Now, a study had been done by Robert Sullivan for the January issue of Catholic Digest, along similar lines. The author had said: "Suppose you're invited to ride in the car with another couple. If you and your wife get into the back seat together without any discussion as to who will ride where, you mark yourself as lower middle class. If the two wives sit in back, this is somewhat more savvy… But if you, as the visiting husband, get in back with the hostess wife, that shows you are really hep."

He also said that paper napkins in the home were considered by snobs to be a mark of insufficient breeding. It indicates that as a paper napkin user for a long time, it had always considered the snobs themselves to be of insufficient breeding, and, regardless, they were now making paper napkins hardly discernible from the linen variety.

It goes on with Mr. Sullivan's divination of classes by such habits and accouterments, and concludes that if one were so lacking in culture as to enjoy the company of one's wife, the person should use paper napkins and not have a dining room, and be of good cheer, for even the upper-upper class were not entirely content, as the study had also said that the higher one's standing on the social scale, the more conscious of it one was likely to be and the more the person would want others to be conscious of it.

Drew Pearson suggests that the most important question raised by the controversy surrounding the Secretary of State's recent statements in Life regarding the the Administration having been at the brink of war on three occasions since 1953, each time having averted it, was whether the U.S. was drifting toward war or could maintain the peace, with all other questions being unimportant. The political feuding between Democrats and Republicans caused by the magazine article did not amount to a hill of beans by comparison.

He finds that Mr. Dulles was correct in his basic theory that war could be prevented if the U.S. took a firm position and made that position clearly known in advance, but that the position had to be so clear as to be completely unequivocal without vacillation. Regarding Indo-China, however, the Administration had vacillated substantially, which was why the West had lost Indo-China, not saved it as Life and Mr. Dulles had contended, a tragic loss, which Mr. Pearson indicates was largely the result of Vice-President Nixon having said in the spring of 1954 at a meeting of newspaper editors that the U.S. was prepared to use troops should the Communist Chinese enter Indo-China. The President then said that the U.S. would not deploy troops and Secretary Dulles had said one thing one week and another the next, with the result that the Chinese Communists, sensing the confusion, continued to advance.

The magazine article and Mr. Dulles had also claimed that "war was avoided" against Quemoy and Matsu as a result of the "Dulles policy of boldness". But the Communist Chinese had been building airstrips and amassing troops opposite Quemoy and Matsu for some time, and despite the Secretary's boldness, war certainly had not been avoided. Three high U.S. officials had just visited that area, obviously worried about war, including Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Arthur Radford, and Air Force chief of staff Nathan Twining.

He indicates that the disdain of the Chinese for the policy of Mr. Dulles developed from the U.S. indecision and vacillation. On September 12, 1954, the National Security Council had flown to Denver for an unprecedented meeting with the President, in which the Council had urged that a definite policy of boldness be adopted regarding Quemoy and Matsu, and that authorization be provided to bomb the Chinese mainland in case the Communist Chinese attacked, but the President refused to accept that policy, postponing any decision.

In the Life article, Mr. Dulles, referring to the policy of risking war around Formosa and Korea, had stated: "It took a lot more courage for the President than for me. His was the ultimate decision… The President never flinched for a minute on any of these decisions. He came up taut." Mr. Pearson finds that, instead, weeks and months had passed without any decision from the White House, while the NSC kept Quemoy and Matsu up in the air, with the indecision having leaked to the Communist Chinese for the fact that many high U.S. officials had been forced to fly to Formosa to impart the bad news to Chiang Kai-shek and seek to pacify him. Meanwhile, the Communist Chinese had continued to build airstrips and concentrate troops opposite Quemoy and Matsu, notwithstanding the alleged Dulles policy of boldness.

Three months later, in January, 1955, the President had asked for a special resolution from Congress to provide him power to retaliate on the Chinese mainland, even with atomic bombs, should the Communist Chinese attack Formosa and the Pescadores, the sought authority "to include the securing and protection of such related positions and territories of that area now in friendly hands." He had not specifically mentioned Quemoy and Matsu, which was perhaps, speculates Mr. Pearson, why the Communist Chinese had continued to build bases and bring up artillery opposite those two offshore islands, obviously intended to test the Dulles policy.

He concludes that the present indecision regarding Quemoy and Matsu could plunge the country into war.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of U.S. intelligence having collected convincing evidence that the Soviets had built an MRBM, capable of a striking range of approximately 1,500 miles. (They refer throughout the piece to intermediate range ballistic missiles, IRBM's, but, at least by subsequent classifications, those were deemed to have about twice the range of MRBM's, which had the ranges they describe. The Jupiter MRBM would go into development by the Air Force in 1956.) Development of the same type of missile was currently the purpose of the newly authorized U.S. high-priority weapons development program of the Army and Air Force.

There had earlier been rumors from several sources, notably Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, that the Soviets had such a missile, but it was the first time that the Pentagon definitely had virtually conclusive evidence of the fact, with a family of such missiles having a range of between 800 and 1,200 miles of striking capability, confirming the suspicion that the Soviets had achieved great advances in developing missiles. The data was not yet available to determine whether the Soviets had also developed satisfactory accuracy of the guidance systems for such missiles and whether they could be fitted with a nuclear warhead, albeit a relatively minor problem compared to development of the missile, itself, with the guidance system also no more complicated than the design of the missile engine, metallurgical issues and other problems which the Soviets appeared to have solved.

The Alsops suggest that, given those facts, it was likely that soon the Soviets would pass from the testing stage of the missiles to the production of them in significant quantities. It was also likely that the Soviets were well on their way to building an ICBM, the ultimate weapon which could carry a nuclear warhead between continents. Premier Nikolai Bulganin had recently made a public boast of that point.

The Russian MRBM tests were also decisive proof that the U.S. had lagged far behind in missile development. Until a few months earlier, the U.S. missile program had neglected intermediate ranges, the subject of an inter-service quarrel. There were short-range, tactical missile projects, such as the Army's Redstone Laboratory, and there were also long-range projects sponsored by the Air Force, the Atlas project for developing the ICBM, the Navajo, for an intercontinental ramjet, and the dubious Snark, for a long-range pilotless aircraft.

A few months earlier, the National Security Council had provided overriding priority to guided missile development, probably prompted by the reports of the test by the Soviets of their MRBM. Final approval of the Army's plans for producing such a mid-range missile at the Redstone Laboratory had been granted only the previous week by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Science Advisory Committee.

In addition to the Army project, there was one more MRBM project, controlled by the Air Force. Both projects were going forward concurrently in a crash effort to get the earliest possible results. There was some Air Force criticism that the extremely belated attempt to obtain MRBM's would interfere seriously with the more important attempt to develop an ICBM.

They conclude that the Soviets, with their MRBM in testing, had obtained a decisive headstart in the race for the ICBM, which the U.S. was now trying to catch in a crash effort, but that by any reasonable standard, the Soviets were ahead of the U.S. in an important category, at least for the present, regarding guided missile development.

It is time to kick this candle into high gear, along with your '58 and '59 Fords and shuffling buffalo. You can build the guidance systems for those suckers at Western Electric in North Carolina, at a new plant in 1961 across from Wake Forest's new campus in Winssen-Salem and stop the Rooskies dead in their tracks before they stop us. If you're raising cactus out in Arizona or just hell up in Chicago, and want to be a rocket engineer, just call that number or write. You can see exciting Wake Forest football, get down there vicariously right with the center, Amen.

Those Jupiters, incidentally, deployed in Turkey at the time, which had become obsolete by October, 1962, wound up saving the day as their agreed removal was the unofficial quid pro quo for dismantling and removal of the offensive missiles deployed by the Soviets in Cuba—which nearly blew the whole thing.

A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., tells of a recent study by Stanley Jacobs, who had asked 69 editors why relentless bigots could get their letters published in newspaper columns, having resulted in some interesting information, with most of the 40 editors who had replied saying that they received "very few" or an insignificant number or about one in 50 letters which demonstrated racial and religious hostility. Robert Lucas of the Denver Post had said that they received about two such letters per month, with a current news item regarding a crime by a minority person perhaps causing a slight increase. The Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat, the Lansing State Journal in Michigan and the Tampa Tribune in Florida had reported that hate mail averaged as high as ten percent, with the Minneapolis Tribune having estimated that their amount was about half that. Most of the editors had agreed that they received fewer overtly prejudiced letters than they had ten years earlier. E. D. Lambright, the editorial director of the Tampa Tribune, had said that they received more anti-racial letters at present because of the reaction to the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but fewer letters with anti-religious overtones. The letter writer indicates that regardless of disagreement by an editor with his readers, no worthy editor would seek to shut out the readers' viewpoints, with the right of freedom of the press carrying with it the responsibility of permitting free expression by readers. But he questions whether an editor should publish a hate letter. To that question, Mr. Jacob's survey had received a response from the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle that most letters criticizing or condemning a race or religion were unacceptable. The Reno Gazette stated that the rules of common sense, good taste and decency reflected what was published in the letters column. The Minneapolis Tribune said that if they suspected that a letter was part of an organized campaign, they did not publish it. The Dayton Journal-Herald examined letters for factual inaccuracies, "super-heated emotional tone and dogmatic infallibility." The Capital Times of Madison, Wisc., was an exception to the general attitude, saying that under the Bill of Rights, the American citizen had a right to criticize a race or religion. The Portland Oregonian stated that they would publish letters critical of a race or religion provided they appeared written with "honest conviction", but did so only sparingly because such letters always provoked many replies and there was no end to the argument. The writer concludes that he guessed that hate letters were double the national average in the newspapers of the Carolinas, with the dailies appearing to have pushed aside all ideas other than pros and cons on segregation, saying that he had no answer to the problem, that perhaps, like the editor who had stated, "good or bad, let them come, I have white space to fill", the answer lay in the need to get the paper out.

A letter writer from Marion, who withholds his or her name, responds to a previous letter writer, finding him 100 percent correct about the methods of teaching reading in the grammar grades, preferring also the old methods of teaching, saying that he or she did not have the material advantages which the children enjoyed at present, but that those advantages would not mean much if their education did not come up to par, finding his or her own education to have been more thorough, especially in the grammar grades, than what the children were receiving. The writer says that even his or her mother-in-law, who had attended school in a one-room schoolhouse, could outspell some of the high school students of the present time. The writer says that one of the things which had been most irksome about the new methods was not allowing the children to bring their books home, but teachers would remark, when some student was not keeping up with the class, that it appeared he was not doing his homework. When the writer had asked the teacher recently why the first three grades of students were not allowed to bring their reading books home, she had told the writer that school authorities did not want them to do so because parents would help the children. The writer wonders what was wrong with helping students with the actual material they would be using in class. The same teacher had admitted that she did not agree with the method but did not know what to do about it. The writer says that if the fault was the result of not having enough books to go around, then the parents ought be allowed to furnish each child with a book which they would purchase themselves, and if that were the case, the problem was with the state for producing below-average students who graduated from high school and found it hard to keep up with their college work. The writer urges that the people of the state wake up and do something about the problem lest the future college graduates in the state would lack the ability to compete with others across the nation, resulting in the lack of production of outstanding scientists, statesmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. "We will be in and of a state of mediocrity."

A letter writer wonders why no awards were given out to the advertising departments of the newspapers, which paid all of the salaries of the writers and staff members who received awards.

A letter writer from North Belmont would like information on the number of books not in the Hebrew Bible but which were in the Septuagint Version, which dated to the third century B.C., consisting of the two books of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Song of the Three Holy Children, History of Susanna, Destruction of Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, the two Maccabees, and some chapters from the book of Esther. She says they probably had their origin in Alexandria and wants very much to find and read those books.

The editors respond that the apocryphal books of the Old Testament could be found in An American Translation: The Complete Bible by Edgar Goodspeed and five other scholars, also known as Goodspeed's New Testament, and published by the University of Chicago Press. They indicate that it could be purchased in religious bookstores and that the books could also be found in some old family and pulpit Bibles.

A letter writer says again that the smoke problem in Charlotte would never be controlled no matter how much was spent on the matter and wasted. He says that in Charlotte there were so many one-way streets, no left turns, no right turns, no parking, and no stopping or standing signs that half of the buildings on N. Brevard and in the first block of E. 6th Streets were vacant most of the time because no person could make enough money to pay the rent, as motorists had to drive all over town to get there and then had no place to park. He thinks that taxpayers ought to have some rights and get something for their tax dollars, but supposes that the voters would continue to keep the same men in office all of their lives.

He needs to leave Charlotte and move into the country.

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