The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 28, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President would hold a press conference the following morning, according to press secretary James Hagerty, who said that he "wouldn't know" whether he would announce his intentions on whether or not to seek a second term or whether he planned also to make a radio and television appearance later the next day, which would likely occur if he did make his decision. Mr. Hagerty said that there were no plans for the President to hold a second press conference the following day, the question having been prompted by speculation that he would wait until later in the afternoon to announce his decision so as not to impact the New York Stock Exchange, which closed at 3:30. The time for the press conference the following morning was the usual hour for press conferences, 10:30. Mr. Hagerty also said that there were no plans to televise the press conference live, that there were no such plans for the future, as it had been previously. The White House occasionally had permitted filmed press conferences for later telecast after editing, but none live.
The Administration ruled out this date any compromise on the farm bill. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland said, following his weekly meeting with the President and Republican Congressional leaders, that the President had not changed his position against rigid price supports and believed that the Senate would defeat on a close vote the Democratic plan to restore fixed supports, a vote which was expected to occur the following week. Senator Knowland said that there was no discussion during the meeting that the President might veto the farm bill if it should reach his desk with a provision for abandoning the Administration's flexible price supports. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and Senator Allen Aiken of Vermont, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, had joined the White House conference, mainly concerning the farm bill.
Senator Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, the first Senator from that state ever elected to three successive terms, died this date at Bethesda Naval Hospital at age 63. He had become seriously ill on February 25, suffering a minor stroke while at the hospital, where he had gone 12 days earlier for a physical examination and treatment for high blood pressure. Prior to his stroke, he had responded favorably to the treatment and had expected to leave the hospital within a few days. The administrative assistant to the Senator said that he had suffered another cerebral hemorrhage early during the current morning and died soon afterward, having been semi-comatose for most of the previous two days, unconscious at the time of death. His death reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate to only one seat, 48 to 47.
Before the four-man special Senate committee investigating the contribution of $2,500 from the head of Superior Oil Co. to Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, who had declined the contribution, allegedly made to influence the Senator's vote on the natural gas deregulation bill, against which he had voted and which had subsequently been vetoed after passage, had appeared this date the chairman of the Nebraska Republican state finance committee, telling the Senators that a complete stranger had met him in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington the prior October 28 and handed him 25 $100 bills, saying nothing about the gas bill, though indicating he worked in the gas industry and wanted to make a contribution to the Republican Party in Nebraska. He said that the man had identified himself as the Nebraska attorney who had admitted previously to the committee that he had conveyed the contribution, originating from the president of Superior Oil, Howard Keck.
In New York, Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson said this date that he hoped that the Administration "isn't as rattled and confused as it appears to be" in its foreign policy, indicating that the previous Friday, Secretary of State Dulles had said that the new Russian economic and political challenge was a sign of weakness, which Mr. Stevenson said had amazed the whole world, then on Sunday, appeared to have reversed himself and said it was a threat for which the country needed to extend more long-term aid abroad, and then the previous week, had occurred the "off-again, on-again incidents of tanks for Arabia", referring to the first halted and then approved shipment of 18 light tanks to Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding the protests of the Israelis and many members of Congress for potentially destabilizing the fragile peace in the region. Reporters had asked Mr. Stevenson for comment on the Senate action the previous day by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, challenging Secretary Dulles to tell the "truth" about foreign policy and "not treat us as children." Mr. Stevenson spoke to reporters after an interview on the NBC program, "Today", having been asked during that program whether there would be a change in his campaign strategy should the President decide to seek re-election, responding that he did not anticipate any basic change, but also stated that he might alter his strategy if there were a change in the domestic or international situation. The previous night, he had suggested to reporters that the President call a meeting of white and black leaders in Washington to ease racial tensions, indicating that he had been "very much disturbed by mounting tensions in the South."
In Swampscott, Mass., a four-car Boston & Maine commuter train plowed into a second such train halted outside the station yard this date during a snowstorm, resulting in at least 14 persons being killed, with police indicating that as many as 20 persons might have died, with scores injured, as many of the 1,000 passengers aboard the commuter trains had been thrown from their seats. The lead car of the four-car train had been torn open "like a watermelon", according to one eyewitness. A large moving van was driven alongside the tracks and the bodies were placed in it. Both trains carried a high proportion of college students, many of whom were headed for institutions in Boston and others, for Burdette College, a business school in Lynn.
The New York Stock Exchange carried
nationwide reports the previous day of more than a half million
dollars in fake trades never made, and this date, Exchange officials
were conducting a search for the ghost who had reported the
transactions, having not the faintest idea how it had occurred or
whether any law had been violated. During the previous day, trading
of 2,440,000 shares had occurred, amid them the 14,000 fake trades.
About 30 minutes before closing, the nationwide ticker service
reported 1,000 shares of Philco Radio
Donald MacDonald of The News
tells of a young man, 24, who had been arrested the previous day in
Florence, S.C., charged with larceny, temporary larceny of an
automobile and not paying a bill at two Charlotte hotels, the result
of his courting a 20-year old girlfriend in Charlotte, whom he had
told he would fly to visit his parents in Chicago aboard his private
plane after proposing marriage to her about five weeks earlier.
Instead, according to police, he had gone to Florence with his wife,
who worked in Darlington, after taking $24 and a 1950 Oldsmobile from
his girlfriend, who told police that during their courtship, he would
take her out dining and insist that she order the most expensive
dishes, such as filet mignon. Police said that he was being financed
with his wife's money. He had married his wife, from Darlington, the
previous October after meeting her while working as a crop duster in
Darlington County the previous summer. He was originally from
Chicago. He had skipped out on the two hotel bills in Charlotte,
according to the management of each, owing $37.20 at the Selwyn and
$24 at the Mecklenburg. He also owed $12 to the YMCA, but police were
not sure that the management would prosecute him. He would stand
trial the following day in City Recorder's Court. The plot thickens
In Charlotte, a gusty wind blew away the clouds this date to end the rainiest month of the winter after .59 of an inch had fallen the previous day and night, to bring the monthly total to 5.85 inches, 2.3 inches above the monthly norm of 3.55. The Weather Bureau said that there was no rain in the forecast until the following Thursday.
Julian Scheer of The News welcomes Leap Year Day the following day, indicating that it came but once every four years, telling of Leap Year Day babies, with statisticians predicting that 19 such infants would be born in Charlotte the following day, having their true birthdays in consequence but once every four years. He wishes happy birthday to several such people of whom the newspaper was aware and indicates that one of them was born at the turn-of-the-century and had missed two birthdays—as 1900 was not a Leap Year because it was not divisible by 400, as was 2000 and so was a Leap Year. "See you in four years, friends." In the meantime, as always every four years, we shall fall behind you by a day and so see you next year.
On the editorial page, "Dark Shapes in the Silvery Lining" indicates that Will Rogers, 20 years earlier after visiting Russia, had written an open letter to President Roosevelt urging that he had better do something about aviation, as they were doing it in Russia, that he did not want to look out on the next war to see a cloud to end all wars, advising not to admire its silvery lining until he found out how many planes were hiding behind it.
The piece indicates that the Russians were still doing something about aviation, as authoritative reports from the Soviet hinterlands contained foreboding references to larger bombers, faster jets and successful experimentation in a relatively new field of aerial warfare, the intercontinental ballistic missile. Meanwhile, there were conflicting statements from the President, the Pentagon and politicians as to whether the U.S. was keeping pace with Russia in missile development. It finds it time to get to the bottom of the situation.
Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had said that there was a growing U.S. stockpile of ICBM's, representing the most modern and devastating weapon of war in existence, to add to the Strategic Air Command strength. But an unidentified Air Force official had quipped in reply that the only such stockpile of which he was aware had to be in Senator Saltonstall's office.
The President had assured that everything possible was being done to research and develop a missile program, based on what he was hearing from the experts in the Defense Department. But Trevor Gardner had recently resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force because he viewed the missile program as neglected.
In Raleigh the previous Saturday, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, former Secretary of the Air Force, had charged that the country had no stockpile of ICBM's whatever. Robert Hotz, editor of Aviation Week, appeared to support that view by indicating that the U.S. had no stockpile of ICBM's in operational service and that the first development program, the Convair, was still in the prototype construction stage, with the second such program, the Martin, just beginning a few months earlier.
Meanwhile, the Soviets had been reported four months earlier to have a ballistic missile capable of a range of 900 miles.
A Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator Symington, was preparing to look into the condition and progress of the Air Force to determine if present policies, legislative authority and appropriations were adequate to maintain a force capable of carrying out its assigned missions, and it finds that subcommittee owed to the public close scrutiny of the missile program.
Administration budgeters had advocated cutting the Air Force to obtain "more defense", but it finds that while such might be good politics, it was not necessarily providing protection in an age of peril.
"World Affairs: As You Like 'Em" finds that Secretary of State Dulles had not been talking sense of late regarding foreign affairs, a month earlier calling on the nation to "wake up" to the danger of the new-style Soviet economic and diplomatic penetration of the Middle and Far East, where the Communists were providing arms to the Arabs and an Arab-Israeli war loomed. But the previous week, the Secretary had told the Senate that the Soviet denunciation of Stalinism was proof that the Russians had failed. He had then gone to Philadelphia, repeating the failure line but recognizing a continuing Soviet threat, advocating long-term guarantees of U.S. aid abroad.
It finds that he was trying to soothe a worried Senate regarding U.S. foreign policy, despite knowing better, in his statement that the the Soviets had failed. It suggests that Stalin had been a contributor to the defense against Communism through his naked aggression and sullen conduct, bearing out the fears of the free world, making it easier to convince the free world nations to arm against that threat, while the new type of Soviet policy had a tendency to lull the West and neutral nations and could therefore pose a greater danger.
It suggests that if the long-term economic aid guarantees were needed, then Mr. Dulles ought to start fighting for such guarantees instead of shying away from opposition to them in Congress, and if U.S. foreign policy was the near perfection which he suggested, he should take that position and try to make a reasonable case for it. It finds dangerous and misleading, however, the Secretary's statements that there had been a Russian failure, when all the evidence pointed toward their success, and that U.S. policy had been complete and effective.
It finds it hard to reconcile the fact that the planes which had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 had been produced in imitation of Western industrial methods which had begun with the Open Door policy, with the ideas of Secretary Dulles that the Soviets were imitating U.S. economic aid measures, indicating failure of their prior policy.
"The Long Strings of Political Obligation" finds it unlikely that Oregon Senator Richard Neuberger's proposal to finance political campaigns with tax money was unlikely to pass. He had referred to it as the bill of Teddy Roosevelt, who had done nothing with the idea after first proposing it as President to the Congress in 1907.
It finds that Congress was not interested in innovations and had been getting along for years with so-called campaign spending limit laws, which were unworkable and permitted all types of fudging and connivance considered essential to financing high-pressure campaigns. The cost of campaigning was tremendous, even in one-party states, and primaries doubled the demands for money. Candidates could not obtain enough from small contributions of ordinary people, and so the spending laws permitted large contributions through loopholes.
Candidates spent as much as it took to win, with reports of the 1954 midterm elections for Congress indicating a total expenditure of 13.5 million dollars, probably half of what was actually spent.
The large contributors typically wanted something in return, such as the recent contribution of $2,500 by an oil lobbyist to obtain support of the natural gas deregulation bill from South Dakota Senator Francis Case, which he had turned down, ultimately voting against the bill.
It indicates that a way had to be found to enable public officials to escape such financial obligation and thereby to protect the public, and the plan of Senator Neuberger to limit party spending to amounts appropriated by Congress might work, if adopted. It finds it had more promise than various other plans to raise spending ceilings, which were not observed under present law, suggests that the way to remedy the situation was to get larger contributions into the open where voters would know the source and amount.
Drew Pearson tells of Attorney General Herbert Brownell moving vigorously against underworld figure Frank Costello, regarding whom the Democrats had long pulled their punches. On July 21, 1947, the column had pointed out that it was not generally known but that Mr. Costello could be deported from the U.S. if anyone really wanted to get tough about it, for he had not disclosed that he had previously served a jail term for carrying a concealed weapon when he originally became an American citizen in 1925, at a time when he was breaking the prohibition laws, despite his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution. Mr. Pearson at the time had reported of various members of the Justice Department urging action against Mr. Costello, but not until Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had focused the spotlight on him, had Attorney General James McGranery finally moved.
Now Attorney General Brownell was moving vigorously, and in New York, the U.S. Attorney was taking Mr. Costello to trial in April on three counts, two of which alleged failure to give his record of arrests and listing of an erroneous occupation when filing for citizenship, and third, failure to adhere to the laws and Constitution.
The female supporters of Senator Kefauver were deserting him. Faye Porter of California, once a strong supporter, was now telling him that she was supporting Adlai Stevenson, and Liz Snyder of California said the same thing.
Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson was relating of the trouble he had with some new India cattle brought into the country, as they had "foot-in-mouth disease".
Politicoes in Washington claimed that there was something Freudian about Vice-President Nixon's selection of his favorite poem, Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!", as it had been written following the assassination of President Lincoln. Mr. Pearson suggests that perhaps Mr. Nixon was trying to get back at his old adversary, Chief Justice Earl Warren, when he paid tribute to the anti-segregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education as being of "a great Republican chief justice", as the remark was not calculated to help the Chief in the South. The remark had boomeranged, however, and hurt the Vice-President on both sides of the line, as blacks recalled that he lived in one of the restricted parts of Washington and had signed a restricted covenant agreeing not to sell his home to blacks, Jews, Armenians, Persians or Syrians.
Senator James Eastland of Mississippi was asked whether he would withdraw his two daughters and son from a Quaker school as a result of it admitting black children, and his only reply was: "No comment."
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that Secretary of State Dulles, in his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had elevated Coueism to a major technique of U.S. foreign policy. Dr. Coue, they explained, was "an amiable, bearded pseudo-physician who brought a new panacea out of France in the 1920's." He suggested that by taking thought, one could cure oneself of anything from a hernia to the blind staggers, by repeating often enough, with enough loud conviction, that "every day, in every way, everything is getting better and better." The fad had caught on for awhile until it was observed that the blind staggerers went on staggering and the hernia sufferers could not do without their trusses. Now, the Alsops suggest, Secretary Dulles had resurrected this panacea from obscurity.
He had told the Committee that the Soviet Union was losing the cold war, that "the unity of the free world has caused the Soviet policy to fail, and right today they are trying to figure out a better one… At this moment in Moscow, they are having to revise their whole program. If we in this country had to admit that, we would be advertised all over the world as having failed. They have failed." The Alsops find those statements to be remarkable as they were wholly unsupported by any intelligence data and not believed by any of the U.S. ambassadors or by any member of the higher staff of the State Department, with the possible exception of a couple of courtiers who believed whatever was currently expedient. They were also not accepted by any of the country's major allies.
With the exception of Secretary Dulles, all expert opinion attributed the important changes of Soviet policy to a new self-confidence, derived from the great improvements in Soviet military posture and gains in heavy industry, which Secretary Dulles had mentioned to the Senators. Secretary Dulles, himself, had earlier adhered to the majority view, having stated in previous press briefings that the Kremlin's abandonment of the rigid and brutal Stalinist line in favor of a more flexible and less doctrinaire policy had greatly increased the dangers and risks to the free world.
Meanwhile, throughout nearly all of Asia, the Communists were making rapid progress, as observed by John Cowles and Paul Hoffman during their recent Asian tours. In the Middle East, the outlook was so bad that leading members of the staff of Secretary Dulles had suggested that the odds on an Arab-Israeli war were about even. And even if war danger were overcome during the current year, it was universally admitted that the new Communist political offensive in that region had already scored many successes, that Communist infiltration in certain of the Arab states was quite advanced.
There were also signs of grave deterioration in Western Europe, with France in chaos, likely to lose its position in North Africa, which made France a major power. Britain was in the midst of an acute economic crisis, with Far Eastern and Middle Eastern revenues being the only thing which balanced Britain's books, causing the Communist pressure in those areas to threaten Britain with irretrievable bankruptcy of the type which would destroy the country's great power standing. Even in West Germany, U.S. policy rested solely on the frail foundation of an old and very ill man, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The future German army was not shaping up well and almost every American observer agreed that if anything happened to Chancellor Adenauer, Germany would move rapidly toward a neutralist position, probably departing NATO in exchange for German reunification.
They conclude that it was not a pretty picture, but that perhaps the method of Dr. Couie would work in foreign policy, despite it having been a dud in medicine.
Robert C. Ruark, in Binda, Australia, says that he had never run into picnic races before, finding it as strenuous a sport as he had ever encountered. The preliminary to the picnic was a black-tie dinner for about 100 people at a property roughly the size of Rhode Island, after which they would proceed to a race course at a place called Funny Hill, where they would eat food and take a social drink with everyone there. The horses had run and the imported bookmakers shouted their prices, with his hottest tip having run backwards from the starting post, the jockeys looking as dishonest as any jockeys he had ever met and the horses looking as dishonest as the average horse, which he finds shifty.
After the races, he skipped the ball as he was too tired. "I imagine that the life of the Aussie stockman is much the same as we enjoyed in the South in the old Scarlett O'Hara plantation days. There is the same pattern of hard work combined with opulence and interdependence on each other's society."
He finds it a lonely life even if one which was lively, "but I reckon that one picnic race in a lifetime for an effete foreigner is enough."
A letter writer hopes that the President would run again as he had been "a wonderful and a constructive and great President."
A letter writer finds the most
inspirational event since the Brown decision to be the
city-wide "pilgrimage" of black citizens in Montgomery,
Ala., walking in protest of the segregated municipal buses. She says
that she admired their stand and agreed with those who likened it to
Gandhi's passive resistance, though finding it not to be passive to
walk home after a long day of work, that it was active and set an
example for black people everywhere. Prior to reading of that news in
the newspaper, she says that she had read an un-inspirational story
of a Charlotte judge who had told an Indian accused of an offense
that it was what happened to him when he ran around with black
people. She had hoped it was a mistaken quote and had been looking
for a correction, wonders why he had not said instead "the wrong
kind of Negroes". She says that there were too few voices of
Southern white people in the South to protest injustice and thanks a
previous letter writer of February 17 for doing so, finds his letter
one of the finest she had ever read on the subject of segregation.
She says that she was a native of Mississippi who had been brought up
singing "Dixie" with enthusiasm, but had also been trained
to take the Pledge of Allegiance with sincerity, including its words,
"with liberty and justice for all", and to practice
personal Christianity by trying to adhere to the Golden Rule, finds
that a happy day
A letter writer suggests that there would be bad trouble regarding integration, suggests that if "colored people wanted better schools they can help to make them better. Colored people make good money." She finds that color had nothing to do with God's distribution of talents, that sometimes a black person had a lot of talent and sometimes a white person did, but that God had not meant black and white people to mix or would have made them yellow. "God made us different colors. He made us different ways. The sensible people get along just fine. The bigots make trouble trying to be superior. God made this good earth for everybody to live on peaceably. There is plenty of room for everybody. When we all get to be equal everybody knows it. They don't have to go around bragging about who is superior. May God bless us all and give us sense."
We hope and pray that you eventually achieve some.
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