The Charlotte News
Monday, October 22, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Warsaw that leaders pledged to guide Poland on a new course, independent of Moscow, had taken the reins of the ruling Communist Party this date and swept out the old-guard Stalinists from policy-making posts. Wladyslaw Gomulka, 51, a Communist who had become a national hero by defying Stalin, had emerged at the top after a shakeup of the powerful Polish Politburo the previous night. Surrounding him in the streamlined, nine-member ruling group were other men said to favor his demand for disentanglement from Soviet controls, all remaining pledged, however, to continue a Communist Government. Among the Stalinists who had been tossed from the Politburo had been Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Polish-born Soviet Army hero installed by Stalin as head of Poland's military forces in 1949 to hold the country in the Soviet sphere. The election of a new Politburo, with Mr. Gomulka in the key post of first secretary, had climaxed a three-day meeting of the Party Central Committee. The Soviet Union had exerted intense pressure to keep its men in places of authority. Despite tension, and reports of clashes between Polish and Soviet troops, Warsaw remained quiet throughout the meeting. Before he had officially assumed power, Mr. Gomulka issued a virtual declaration of independence from Moscow, denouncing, in a fiery speech to the Central Committee, what he called misrule of the previous 12 years, saying: "There is more than one road to socialism. There is the Soviet way. There is the Yugoslav way. And there are other ways." He had been the Polish Communist Party chief once before, in the original Communist Government established following World War II, then known as a friend to the Soviets. He had been a member of the Workers movement since the age of 22, had been in and out of jail for subversive activity prior to World War II, and twice had sought refuge in neighboring Russia. But he had refused to go as far as others in turning his native Poland into a Soviet satellite. On the orders of Stalin, he had been jailed in 1951 on a charge of following an independent course similar to that of Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia. After his release from prison in December, 1954, he had become a symbol of so-called national communism, and the Polish Communists had rehabilitated him earlier in the year. His sweeping victory might herald fateful changes in other parts of the East European Soviet satellite bloc, with some Polish Communists indicating that they anticipated Hungary to take a similar course by returning to power former Premier Imry Nagy, who had been deposed in 1955 as a rightist. The previous day, thousands of Hungarian students had issued ultimata to authorities, threatening street demonstrations unless their demands for more freedom and better living conditions were met within a fortnight. Some Polish sources had predicted that Mr. Gomulka's emergence would potentially cost Nikita Khrushchev his position as Communist Party Secretary in Moscow, that the Soviet reconciliation with Tito threatened dissolution of the satellite empire. Mr. Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders had rushed to Warsaw the prior Friday in an apparent attempt to head off the rising tide of independence in Poland. It was widely believed in Warsaw that a threatened coup d'état by the pro-Moscow Rokossovsky forces had caused the liberal majority of the Central Committee to insist on halting the movement of Soviet troops during the course of its session. A source had reported that on Saturday, the Committee had questioned Mr. Rokossovsky closely about reported troop movements, and he had reportedly responded that troops who had been reported surrounding the capital were actually only on routine maneuvers and that he had immediately ordered them back to their barracks when the rumors began to circulate that a coup was afoot.
It was believed in Washington that Russia's Premier Nikolai Bulganin almost certainly would respond quickly to a letter from President Eisenhower accusing him of meddling in the U.S. political campaign. His letter was certain to become a major political issue in the last two weeks of the campaign, with both Republicans and Democrats seeking to use it to their advantage in the debate over continuance of hydrogen bomb testing, the cessation of which Adlai Stevenson had advocated. Officials who forecast this date that Mr. Bulganin would reply promptly said that they expected him to deny any intention of interference in the political campaign with his surprise message the prior Friday, renewing his appeal for an end to atomic and hydrogen bomb testing. The President had said that the Soviet Premier's newest plea had seemed to impugn his own sincerity and was "personally offensive" to him for its attack on Secretary of State Dulles. Observers believed that if Mr. Bulganin adopted the same strong language as the President, it would virtually end prospects that such interpersonal messages ever could lead to concrete steps toward world disarmament. But many American officials had felt for months that the Kremlin was relying on the personal exchange of messages with the President as convenient propaganda instrument more than as any serious attempt at negotiation, and so would not be disappointed at their cessation. The President had said that if an ambassador had done what Mr. Bulganin had done, he would be expelled from the U.S. The President, in effect, accused the Soviet leader of seeking to give a helping hand to the campaign of Mr. Stevenson, who had asserted that the danger to mankind from radiation from hydrogen bomb tests was growing steadily. The President had rejected Mr. Stevenson's suggestion, saying that a foolproof inspection system had to be agreed on before the nation could safely halt testing. Mr. Stevenson did not comment on the President's formal reply to Mr. Bulganin, which the White House had made public the previous afternoon. But in a statement commenting on earlier remarks by White House press secretary James Hagerty, Mr. Stevenson had deplored what he termed an effort to dismiss the Bulganin letter as a "propaganda exercise".
The President might add several major appearances to his speaking schedule in the closing days of the campaign, according to Mr. Hagerty, when asked this date by newsmen whether the President might undertake a major campaign swing in several states or cities. But he said that the President's plans were not firm and that appearances might be divided into two or more trips. On Thursday, the President was scheduled to deliver a televised speech at a Republican rally in New York's Madison Square Garden. He was working this date on an address to be delivered the following day at the 75th anniversary dinner of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners to be held in Washington's Sheraton Park Hotel, not to be broadcast. The union president supported the President, but the union, itself, had taken no official stand in the campaign. On Wednesday afternoon, a CBS television program featuring the President would be aimed at the women of the country, in which he would be questioned by a panel of seven or eight women in an unrehearsed program, the women having been chosen by the head of the women's activities of the RNC to represent a cross-section of the country. The previous day, the President had pledged to "keep moving forward" in a program he said had done "more for small business than any prior Administration."
Meanwhile, the supporters of Adlai Stevenson claimed this date that he was leading in 21 states over the President, representing 235 of the necessary 266 electoral votes for victory, and that a "driving finish" would give him victory on November 6. Mr. Stevenson was planning to speak in Madison Square Garden the following night, and was seeking big-city support in some of the larger states among the 12 which the Democrats listed in the doubtful category. Strategists had crossed off 15 states, with 105 electoral votes, as definitely going to the President. With the exception of a Farm Day Show speech at Springfield, Ill., on Thursday and a later tour of upstate New York's smaller cities, Mr. Stevenson would concentrate on the big-city vote in vital areas. He was scheduled to speak in San Francisco and Los Angeles the following Saturday and would then go to Boston for a major speech the following Monday. His list of appearances yet to be arranged included ones in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Chicago, with others possibly to be added. He was expected to hit the Administration hard on foreign policy the following night. He chided the President in a statement the previous day for what he said was an "out of hand" dismissal as a propaganda effort of Premier Bulganin's proposal for ending hydrogen bomb tests, saying that he would make efforts to halt such tests the first order of business of his administration. He admitted that there was nothing new in the Soviet Premier's proposal, but said that the U.S. could not afford through dismissal of the matter to let the Russians continuously appear before the rest of the world as more devoted to peace and disarmament than the U.S. He was expected to step up his attacks on the President in the larger states listed by his strategists as doubtful. That group included Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio and Oregon, representing 191 electoral votes. His supporters regarded the prospects in those states as ranging from "very doubtful" in Michigan to "improving sensationally" in Illinois. They were less optimistic about obtaining Ohio's 25 electoral votes than some of the local Democratic candidates in that state. He would not go to some of the less populous states.
Vice-President Nixon set out on his third and final transcontinental tour of the campaign, concentrating on Michigan, Illinois and California. In Pocatello, Ida., Senator Estes Kefauver, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, cautioned against over-optimism on the effects of the Polish uprising, saying that it was doubtful the Government would be democratic in the Western sense of the word.
The Supreme Court this date let stand an order to speed up a lawsuit filed by black parents on behalf of their children seeking immediate admission to all-white schools in Dallas, Tex. On September 5, 1955, 27 black students were not permitted to enter white classes after seeking an injunction in U.S. District Court in Dallas to enter immediately, the District Court having said that the request was premature. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, however, had reversed that decision the prior May 25 and remanded it for the court to hold a full hearing on the matter. Counsel for the school district had then appealed to the Supreme Court, indicating that the school district was complying with the directions of the high Court in trying in good faith to work out a solution to the problem, but the Court this date rejected the request for review, leaving the Circuit Court order in effect.
In Tallahassee, Fla., the Inter-Civic Council, a black organization, said this date that it had abandoned the carpool it had sponsored to provide transportation for blacks boycotting buses in protest of segregated seating. The Reverend C. K. Steele, president of the Council and head of the Tallahassee chapter of the NAACP, said: "The war is not over. We are still walking." The chairman of the Council's transportation committee said that they were not only not offering transportation but were not even offering advice, as the Council had voted to drop its sponsorship of the carpool at a mass meeting of the boycotters the previous night, that action following a conviction the prior Saturday in City court of the Council and 21 of its officers and members on charges of operating an illegal transportation system. The Council said that the verdict would be appealed, after the judge had sentenced each defendant to pay a fine of $500 or serve 60 days in jail, suspending the jail term and putting each on probation for one year.
In Augusta, Mont., it was reported that a large grizzly bear had killed one hunter and mauled another in a battle in the western Montana mountains in a wilderness area 40 miles west of Augusta on Saturday. The victim was a 29-year old farmer who had died the previous day from his wounds, and his companion had received a claw wound in his foot. The survivor said that the bear had jumped them as they were looking for elk, that he had backed up and tripped in brush, whereupon the bear grabbed his ankle and stuck a claw through his heavy logging boot. He kicked at the bear and it reared up and noticed his companion on a knoll, whereupon the latter had fired two shots into the bear, which then retreated. The hunters decided to track it down before it could harm others and after four hours, they found it, whereupon the survivor of the duo had emptied his clip of 30-30 shots into it, but before he could reload, the bear had charged, the deceased victim having fired two more shots until his gun jammed and he yelled for his companion to run for safety. The latter had run to the camp to get the other six members of the hunting party and when they returned, they found the farmer severely mauled and the bear gone. They took the farmer to a riverbank for first aid, where the bear again surprised them, but was then felled by two slugs in the neck from a rifle fired by another member of the party, the bear finally falling dead about ten feet away from them.
In Lincoln, Ill., an attempt by two State policemen to catch a traffic violator this date had resulted in a gun battle which left both officers wounded, with two men under arrest and two of their companions having fled on foot. One of the wounded officers was in serious condition in a hospital and the other was being treated for a broken leg. Authorities believed that the four men had been fleeing from a Sunday holdup of a Joliet drug store. The officers had seen a car almost strike a tanker truck making a turn from U.S. Route 66, and when the officers attempted to flag down the car, it had sped on, with the police giving chase and finally forcing it to halt near a service station, where the two officers asked the driver to produce his license, at which point one of the two men in the backseat slipped out and began firing at the officers over the roof of the car, wounding one officer in the leg and twice hitting the other officer in the stomach, once in the shoulder and once in the ankle, with the officer who had been wounded in the leg indicating that he had fired four shots from his service revolver at the gunman.
Julian Scheer of The News, in the first of a series of five articles, after using an interview technique which successfully had uncovered voters' attitudes before the Pearsall Plan referendum the prior September 8, regarding amendments to the State Constitution permitting public funds to be used for tuition grants to private schools for students not wanting to attend integrated schools, and permitting local school districts to conduct a vote to abolish their public schools, now was employing the technique to ferret out how Mecklenburg voters felt about the current political campaigns. He reports that Charlotte and Mecklenburg housewives liked the President and Representative Charles Jonas, but slightly less so than in 1952, and as to Mr. Jonas, in 1954. The effort had not involved a formal poll, but merely informal discussion with the housewives while they were shopping in supermarkets, conducting their kitchen chores and the like, in an attempt to ferret out their thinking. Indications were that both Mr. Jonas and the President stood to obtain the substantial part of the vote of the housewives in the county but that the race would be much closer than previous elections. The most significant trend indicated, in a survey of more than 100 housewives in every section of the city and county, that they would be engaged in switching their votes, with many registered Democrats who had voted for the President in 1952 returning to the party and set to vote for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. To a smaller extent, some who had voted for Mr. Jonas in 1954, would switch to Ben Douglas, his opponent, in 1956, though the number was small. It appeared that a closer presidential race was forecast for the current year and a slightly closer Congressional race, among at least the housewives of the county. Some of the women were disillusioned over the fact that Mr. Stevenson was a divorcee, saying such things as, if he could not run his own home, how could he expect to run the country. Most of the women who had said that they voted Republican in 1952 and would switch in 1956, all registered Democrats, said that they still liked the President "personally", but did not like the Republican Party, one woman saying that the last time she thought they needed change, but not the kind of change which they got. The wife of a textile worker voiced concern over the textile import issue and a young mother was concerned about segregation, though those were individual remarks practically unduplicated by others. One woman said that while she had voted for the President in 1952, he was now a sick man and she would have to vote for Mr. Stevenson, though health of the President was not a major topic of conversation. The primary reason for changing back to the Democratic Party was simply to return to the fold out of a sense of party loyalty. Some of the better educated respondents liked Mr. Stevenson because they found him to be an intellectual and believed therefore that his cabinet would be first rate, one asking how one could compare him with the President, Vice-President Nixon or Secretary of State Dulles, as he would bring a fresh outlook to government.
On the editorial page, "The South Today: Death of a Cliche" suggests that the first man to have called the South the land of magnolias and molasses might have been Ponce de Leon or it might have been Uncle Remus, but for roughly 443 years, since the region had been discovered by a band of Spanish badmen, its reputation had been "one big julepy cliche."
It finds that millions believed that the South had not changed since the mythical Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, while others wished that it had not.
A recently published book of selections from the writings of the late Anne O'Hare McCormick, titled The World at Home, added a new variation to the well-worn theme. She had written: "It is easy to understand why European intellectuals, discovering the South in increasing numbers, find themselves more at home there than in other parts of the country. The oldest and the most native America is nearer and more intelligible to Europe than is the wild ethnic mixture of the newer America, made out of so many Europes that it is strange to any as rayon must be to a silkworm—a chemical reaction rather than a race. The South conforms to an order the European recognizes. It is individualistic, traditional, stratified, leisurely, homogeneous, as nations are."
It indicates that even though she had written the passage in 1930, it fit the popular stereotype perfectly, with the new variation being the part about European intellectuals being drawn to the South, the piece suspecting that they had been drawn more to the gothic South, as pictured in the novels of William Faulkner, than to the real South of the past and present. It finds the region no longer individualistic to the extent that its "way of life" differed in every important detail from other regions. Its traditions were being dissolved in the wake of astounding industrialization and an influx of population from other regions. The same was true for a Southern society which had allegedly been "stratified, leisurely, homogeneous." It was now fast becoming urban, industrial, hard-working and prosperous, suggesting that in time, even the stereotype might break down.
There was no longer one South, but many Souths at present, with the region having outgrown its odd adolescence and finally maturing as part of the entire country, not just "Uncle Sam's other province," as Allen Tate had once described it.
A part of that maturity was an enormous diversity, which it finds perhaps best illustrated by the words of W. J. Cash in The Mind of the South: "Anyone may see … it … simply by riding along any of the great new motor roads which spread across it—through brisk towns with tall white buildings in Nebraska Gothic; through smart suburbs, with their faces newly washed; through industrial and Negro slums, medieval in dirt and squalor and wretchedness, in all but redeeming beauty; past sleepy old hamlets and wide fields and black men singing their sad songs in the cotton, past log cabin and high grave houses, past hill and swamp and plain…"
It concludes that the South wore many faces, "some of them bright, some of them dark and cadaverous. But its diversity is its new strength. It is no longer a cliche."
"They're Not Cheering at Chapel Hill" tells of UNC head cheerleader, Jim Bynum, having told the student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, that what they were planning could not be properly called a pep rally because of the indifference of the fans to the fortunes of the football team, with less than 200 of the 7,000 students having shown up for a pep rally before the Georgia game on October 13. The DTH had deplored the attitude, stating that it was not doing the University, the football team or any individuals any good at all.
The piece suggests that it was also not doing them any harm, that it was possible that some students were expending their energies in reading books or giving and taking ideas in bull sessions instead of engaging in shouts at pep rallies, and were therefore, if so, also doing themselves and the University some good.
It suggests to the DTH not to despair, but rather to urge the recruitment of peppy students with scholarships, as football teams were assembled. It indicates that the University did not depend on skilled athletes simply to turn up in the student body, that it went out and found them, induced them to contribute their weight to the line. "Why should the University expect a scientifically selected team of athletes to inspire spontaneous sports spirit among thousands of students who have never had a scout check their ability at rah-rahing? Obviously, most of them are rank amateurs. And there is nothing, DTH, that rouses the amateur spirit like amateur athletics."
It fails to point out that, under new head coach Jim Tatum, who had won a national championship at the University of Maryland in 1953, whose team had finished number three the previous year, with only one loss in the Orange Bowl at the end of the season, and who had coached a team to an undefeated season in 1951, the Tar Heels were a pitiful 0-3 going into the Georgia game, emerging from it 0-4, albeit the two touchdown margin of defeat having been the closest of the four games to that juncture in the season. They had finally achieved their first victory the previous Saturday, ironically over Maryland, 34 to 6. And they would then tie Wake Forest the following weekend, before losing another game at number three Tennessee, then winning at Virginia, their final win of the season, closing it out with two more losses, to finish a woeful 2-7-1.
Undoubtedly, with the great success which coach Tatum had enjoyed at Maryland, the fans expected more, even if it was his first season, following three seasons under George Barclay in which they had won a total of 11 games, following, in turn, three seasons, in which they had won only seven total games under Carl Snavely, who had achieved great success in his earlier seasons. It was a worse season than any which coach Barclay had in his three years. Thus, it appeared there was no brightness on the horizon, despite the high salary being paid to Mr. Tatum, which had become controversial at the University the prior winter.
His teams would improve during the ensuing two seasons, in each of which they would compile a record of 6-4. But Mr. Tatum would die suddenly in the summer of 1959 from Rocky Mountain spotted fever and would be replaced by the defensive coordinator, Jim Hickey, who would go on to have a not so illustrious eight-year tenure, during which he had only one winning season, that being in 1963 when they went 9-2, were ACC champions and won the Gator Bowl against the Air Force.
We have discovered over the years since we began following closely UNC football in 1962 that it never ceases to amaze, usually in a not so inspiring fashion, given the talent fielded most seasons. C'est la vie. We still have basketball…
"He Barbecued Them All with Relish" tells of a rumor being floated that the late H. L. Mencken had liked the President, following Adlai Stevenson's claim that Mark Twain was a Democrat having been laid to rest by the Republican "truth squad".
The only thing the newspaper could find on the subject was that Mr. Mencken, prior to his death the previous January, had admitted that Mr. Eisenhower was a "better than average" President and was doing well, albeit having added the qualifier, "for a general".
Mr. Mencken had already denounced both Roosevelts, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman, and so it finds it inconceivable that he had ever worn an "Ike" button. He had described FDR's conception of the country as "a milch cow with 125 million teats" and, in referring to President Harding, said, "Gamaliel ... the benign blank ... [whose style] reminds of a string of wet sponges." Of President Coolidge, he said that that he had "no principle in his ornamentation that is worth any sacrifice, even of sleep. Human existence, as he sees it, is something to be got through with the least possible labor and fretting. His ideal day is one on which nothing whatever happens—on a day sliding into a lazy afternoon on the Mayflower, full of innocent snores." He found President Hoover to have "all the limber knavishness of the low-down American politician without any of the compensatory picturesqueness. He is like a lady of joy who lacks the saving grace of being beautiful." All of the quotes, it indicates, were contained in A Carnival of Buncombe, a new collection of Menckeniana, edited by Malcolm Moos.
It concludes that Mr. Mencken had "barbecued all presidents with the same impartial relish", that he could not even stand President Lincoln. He had supported FDR in 1940 for a third term only because "he ought to be made to bury his own dead horse." He referred to the New Deal as "an amorphous agglomeration of discordant hooeys." It finds that if anyone had ever caught him wearing a campaign button, it would have either been blank or "emblazoned with an obscene word."
A piece from the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, titled "Bounce Back with Beetles",
tells of an anthropologist, who had just returned from the interior
of New Guinea, having reported a new cure for "that depressed,
discouraged, unhappy feeling", that being to eat beetles. He had
visited pygmies who, despite a miserable environment, maintained
happiness by consuming the bugs, liking them roasted
The anthropologist offered no explanation for the phenomenon and the piece offers none, but suggests the possibility that the beetles took a nip or two of some fermented fruit and got a bit crocked, as with the robins of Albany, N.Y., which had eaten fermented cherries and wound up "bobbin' and glass-eyed. A beetle stoked up on fermented New Guinea fruit might make a whisky-on-the-rocks taste like ginger ale."
It decides, however, to stick to
aspirin or remain depressed, discouraged and unhappy
Drew Pearson tells of Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, former RNC chairman, having had some things to say about Mr. Pearson during the recent probe of the prices of the Salk polio vaccine. Originally, Mr. Reece had not planned to attend the hearings, held by Congressman L. H. Fountain of North Carolina, but changed his mind after reading some advance news of the probe in the Pearson column. He said that he took no exceptions to the column having used the information obtained, but was concerned about how a confidential memorandum had gotten to newspapers, containing conjecture of committee staff before the committee members, or before he, as the ranking minority member, had an opportunity to read the memorandum and before he even knew such a study was underway.
Mr. Fountain had expressed delight that Mr. Reece attended the hearing and said he did not know of the Pearson story until the previous day, stating he was confident that no member of the staff had leaked it. Representative Chet Holifield of California said that it was not the first time there had been leaks to the press and that Mr. Pearson seemed to have an unusual ability to obtain information on various subjects, that he did not know how he obtained it.
Mr. Reece said that he was not criticizing Mr. Pearson, that he had high regard for his journalistic ability, that he had also known his father who was a fine man, suggesting that the columnist could therefore "not be all bad."
The hearing then began, showing how six vaccine manufacturers had quoted almost identical prices to the HEW and how the State of Illinois had bought vaccine for only $6.63 per vial, though the Federal Government was paying $7.12 to the manufacturers for it. He notes that testimony of James Mintener, Assistant Secretary of HEW, had revealed that he had told Senators the prior year that the price quoted to the Government by the manufacturers was fair.
A letter writer from Maiden praises Congressman Charles Jonas, suggests that his opponent, former Charlotte Mayor Ben Douglas, having said that he could not work with anyone but a Democrat in the White House, had proven that he was not entitled to elective office, as he would have a Republican President, and, according to the writer, a Republican Senate and House. He favors Mr. Jonas and believes the district did not need Mr. Douglas.
A letter writer says that Mr. Jonas had voted against a motion in 1954 to recommit a bill which would have provided lumber operators access to national forests, when most conservationists and wildlife organizations had opposed the measure as another billion-dollar giveaway of the country's natural resources. In July, 1954, a motion had been made by Congressman Jere Cooper of Tennessee to recommit and eliminate the 4 percent tax cut for recipients of stock dividends, a motion which had been defeated. Mr. Jonas had voted against it. The letter writer indicates that the trickle-down tax bill gave relief to a few, while denying tax cuts to millions in the low-income brackets. He believes that the record spoke for itself as to who Mr. Jonas had at heart when he cast those two votes.
A letter writer from Lincolnton comments on a previous letter appearing October 17, regarding Mr. Douglas, approving of all which the previous letter writer had said. She says she had known Mr. Douglas since childhood and that soon after his father had died, shortly after they had moved to Gastonia, he had gone to work in the cotton mills of that city to help his widowed mother make a living. He had worked in two mills and later as a weaver in a third, had come up the hard way and knew what the working people had to contend with, had always been a person who wanted to help others. She indicates that if he were elected to Congress, he would try to serve all of the people and she urges everyone to vote for him in November.
A letter writer suggests disappointment in Governor Luther Hodges, who, after having stated that he could not bear the idea of Mr. Nixon as potentially the president, had received loud applause from the group before whom he spoke. The writer says that Mr. Nixon was not a candidate for the presidency and that the Governor was being impudent to set himself above the President's doctors. Senator Sam Ervin blamed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education on the Administration, when he knew that six of the nine Justices who rendered the decision had been appointed by either FDR or President Truman. (Actually, eight of the nine, at the time of the 1954 decision, had been appointed by the two prior Presidents, with only Chief Justice Earl Warren having been at that point appointed by President Eisenhower. By the time of the implementing decision in May, 1955, Justice John Harlan had joined the Court, grandson of the Justice of the same name who had been the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Both of the Brown decisions had been unanimous. With the recent retirement of Justice Sherman Minton, appointed by President Truman, and the recess appointment of Justice William Brennan, a Democrat, there were at present three Eisenhower appointees on the Court.) In any event, the letter writer, indicative of the confused politics of the time, did not appreciate the Brown decision, which he states Senator Ervin was aware that the President could not veto. He indicates that Adlai Stevenson demanded that the U.S. make an agreement with Russia to go no further with the development of the hydrogen bomb and that the country discontinue the draft, suggests that Mr. Stevenson could not be ignorant of the fact that the present Government had proposed to Russia repeatedly that all types of armaments be reduced with the condition that there would be mutual inspection to ensure compliance with the agreement, but that Russia had never been willing to allow such inspections. He says that Mr. Stevenson was also aware that an agreement with Russia with no ability to enforce it would be worthless. He finds that Bernard Baruch had accurately characterized President Truman as "an ignorant, uncouth man." He says that neither Governor Hodges, Senator Ervin nor Mr. Stevenson was an ignorant man. The newspapers repeatedly stated that the people did not like Mr. Nixon but provided no reason for it. He believes that Mr. Nixon was largely responsible for placing "Truman's buddy", Alger Hiss, in prison for perjury, and asserts that not even the most rabid partisan disputed that the Vice-President had conducted himself "with dignity and wisdom during the period of disability of the President." He finds it hard to understand how anyone could prefer Senator Kefauver, "who did all he could to keep duly elected delegates from several southern states to the Democratic national convention in 1952 from being seated, and did all he could to get the United States to abdicate its sovereign right as a nation to a super government of the North Atlantic Nations, over Mr. Nixon, that even the Senator's home state of Tennessee had accepted him as a vice-presidential candidate with great reluctance. He finds it also hard to understand how even Republicans called the Government a democracy and said that Thomas Jefferson had founded the Democratic Party, when, quoting from Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution, every state entering the Union was guaranteed "a republican form of government". Thus, he concludes, Mr. Jefferson had founded the Republican Party.
Like a lot of people, the letter writer confuses the term "Republican", in association with the party founded in 1856, with a republican form of government, which is to say only that it is a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, having nothing at all to do with any party label. He needs to take a civics class. But, who can blame him too much, with all the nonsense floating about in an election year.
A letter writer from Peachland refers to an editorial of October 12, in which the newspaper had endorsed President Eisenhower for re-election, states as a Democrat that he wanted to point out some misstatements of facts in the piece. He says that they had stated that Mr. Eisenhower had "brought us peace without the stigma of appeasement," when he believes that the peace accepted in Korea had been appeasement, as the Communists had gotten just about everything they wanted after being forced to a standstill by the U.S. armed forces, in no position to dictate terms, but nevertheless had been allowed to do so for political purposes. In Indochina in 1954, the French and Indochinese had been forced to give away half of the country to the Communists in appeasement. In the Middle East, appeasement, then bluffing, had caused the U.S. to lose every one of the countries which it had once called friends. He also finds that prosperity without war was a slogan which most Republicans used for justification for another four years, but finds that most of the prosperity had been enjoyed by the large corporations, while the small farmer and small businesses had declined in their incomes during the Administration's time in office, that the low-income groups, while possibly having an increase in income, had seen their small gains neutralized by the increased cost of living. He says that Mr. Eisenhower had stated during the 1952 campaign that he stood for all of the people and not just a few, but finds that his Administration had not backed up that statement, that a tax cut had been provided to owners of stocks and bonds but when it came time to provide a tax cut for low-income groups, who really needed it to sustain a better living standard, it was not done because the budget had to be balanced. In 1952, Mr. Eisenhower had said that he was for as much as 100 percent parity for the farmers, but now supported Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson's policy of flexible parity between 70 and 90 percent. Regarding HEW, former Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby had made a mess of the polio vaccine program and now that Department had allowed itself to be grossly overcharged by the drug companies for the polio vaccine it distributed. He finds that there was just as much influence peddling in Washington now as there had been during the Democratic Administrations, as borne out by the number of men who had resigned from the Administration for having conflicts of interest. He believes the only difference was that during the Truman Administration, any small mistake had become headline news, while presently the majority of newspapers either ignored the disclosures or buried them on back pages. He finds that the endorsement editorial had admitted that the course in the Middle East had been one of muddling and indecision, wonders why, if Mr. Eisenhower had been so much of an expert on world affairs, those relations had been handled so ineptly. He believes that the President had not demonstrated the leadership which was proclaimed, suggests that perhaps the Government was being handled by a small clique in Washington ruled, not by the President, but by the Vice-President and others. "What little influence Mr. Eisenhower has had in these first four years with the Republican Party will be gone, if they are elected for another term, as the party will no longer be able to use the 'hero' for a front in 1960." He also says that the President had stated in Columbia, S.C., in 1952 that he was for states' rights, but finds that the only such rights the Administration had supported was giving away millions to the big oil companies at the expense of schools of the nation, giving TVA away to the power companies and giving away the nation's natural resources. He says that he was certain that the majority of the newspaper's readers were "thoroughly disgusted" with Vice-President Nixon's "gutter type tactics in the past, and although they have cleaned him up for an election year, the majority of the people do not consider him a fit candidate to step in as president", which he would be if the Republicans were re-elected. He says that the Republican Party's policies had, in fact, not changed since the time of Presidents Taft, Harding and Hoover. He suggests that, given the fact that the majority of the subscribers to the newspaper were Democrats, who probably disagreed with the endorsement, the proper thing to have done was to state modestly their preferences in the election and not fill half a page of "half-truths boosting them."
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