The Charlotte News
Wednesday, February 8, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, in a special message to Congress this date, urged overhaul of the immigration laws to eliminate "inequities" and to enable 220,000 immigrants to enter the country as permanent residents each year, saying that he thought the increase of about 65,000 over the present annual quota of 154,657 was justified by the past growth and current economic condition of the country, that it would constitute recognition of "our responsibility of world leadership." He also favored speeding up of the deportation process of unworthy aliens, those who had "been found to be criminals of the lowest character, trafficking in murder, narcotics and subversion." He said that Attorney General Herbert Brownell would submit a proposal in that area later. The message related primarily to recommendations for revision of the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which had become law over the veto of former President Truman. President Eisenhower recommended that the quota program be based on the 1950 census rather than the 1920 census, as in the present version of the law. Another recommendation was that Congress set aside a quota of 5,000 from the increased overall annual quota of 220,000, to be available for admission of aliens "without regard to nationality or national origin." He said that it would "enable us to meet some of the needs of this country which develop from time to time for persons with special skills and cultural or technical qualifications." The President also called for enactment of legislation to permit use of unused quotas in each succeeding year.
At a press conference this date, the President said that he believed he would have enough information by March 1 to decide whether to seek re-election, that his announcement would come shortly after that date regarding his decision, provided he had the information by then which he felt he needed, with speculation being that he might then provide a nationwide television and radio broadcast on the subject. (It might be noted that President Johnson, in 1968, who had suffered heart trouble and a heart attack the prior July 4, 1955, delivered his television broadcast on March 31, announcing that he would not seek a second full term as President.) President Eisenhower said that he would have no objection to Chief Justice Earl Warren running for the presidency on the Republican ticket if he decided not to run again, but doubted very much that it would be proper to ask the Chief Justice to run, those remarks having been in response to a request that he clarify what he had said in response to questions two weeks earlier at his press conference about the Chief Justice, indicating at the time that he felt politics and the Supreme Court should not be mixed, leading to the interpretation by some that he was against the idea of Mr. Warren running for the presidency. The Chief Justice had said the previous year that under no circumstances would he leave the Court to seek political office. He had been appointed to the Court by President Eisenhower in October, 1953 as Governor of California, in the wake of the death in September of that year of Chief Justice Fred Vinson. Some Republicans had spoken of drafting the Chief Justice as a presidential nominee should the President choose not to run again—just as Chief Justice Vinson had been mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate in 1952. The President was asked whether his brother Milton had any ambitions to run for the presidency, at which the President smiled and said he had no information about that.
The President also said that guided missile development had been given priority and that in certain areas of missile production, the U.S. was ahead of Russia, while in other areas, the Russians were ahead, that overall, the U.S. was doing all it possibly could to maintain a strong position in that area. The question arose as Trevor Gardner, Air Force research chief, apparently was planning to hold a news conference during the afternoon about persistent rumors that he was ready to quit because of his dissatisfaction with the missile program. Mr. Gardner was reported to be seeking more money and attention for the research job and a tighter division of responsibility among the services for carrying it out, having sounded out Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson on the matter during the latter's vacation in Miami. The President was not asked about Mr. Gardner and made no specific comment on the matter. The President had proposed in his budget message of the previous month funds for missile development which could be profitably spent with the resources and scientists presently available, indicating that the program was going forward as rapidly as possible with the resources at hand.
Regarding the potential for further hostilities between the Arabs and Israelis, the President pledged that he would continue to do everything he could to prevent further outbreaks potentially erupting into war, with talks presently getting underway among representatives of the U.S., Britain and France regarding the Middle East situation. He was also asked about the presently pending bill to deregulate natural gas, passed by Congress and sent to him two days earlier, whether he would veto it, replying that he always believed that the Federal Government ought not interfere with the states any more than was absolutely necessary and that the bill would exempt producers of natural gas from Federal price regulation at the well, but that he had not yet made up his mind whether to veto it or not.
The President also commented on the outbreak of rioting and violence at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in response to the admission of the first black student, a young woman, Autherine Lucy, who, as reported the previous day, had been temporarily suspended by the University for her own safety, resulting in a quelling of the demonstrations and violence. The President said that he found the violence deplorable but that the Federal Government should not intervene as long as state and local authorities were coping with the situation, that the Justice Department was investigating the incident as it did all cases where Federal civil rights statutes might be involved, adding that the Supreme Court, in the Brown v. Board of Education implementing decision of May, 1955, had returned to the Federal district courts the enforcement of its desegregation decisions.
Relman Morin, Associated Press political correspondent, in the second of a series of four articles on the President's decision whether to run again, tells of the President, who stressed the need for higher energy in administering his office, having been "tackling things in the old manner", according to an aide, Max Rabb, secretary of the Cabinet, since he had returned to the White House a month earlier, following his September 24 heart attack. Mr. Rabb said that the President did not "want any mush", that the agenda for the Cabinet meetings was just as difficult as it had ever been, with the President taking on "the toughest problems" and having been "firm and decisive" in dealing with them. The President had recently underscored the importance of physical energy to a person in the Presidency, which he listed as one of the factors in his decision whether or not to run for a second term, speaking of the "zip and zest that you can take into conferences." He had stated at that press conference a couple of weeks earlier that perhaps he felt "very zestful" that day, but realized that he had suffered a heart attack. The President was working shorter hours, beginning about 90 minutes later than usual, and after a light lunch, resting for a prolonged period, before returning in the afternoon for about three more hours of work. Even before the heart attack, he had been stating that the Republican Party was not so lacking in inspiration that it was dependent on one man. For months, people in Washington had been trying to discern from his words what his decision might be, coming up with totally different interpretations. In the past, when General Eisenhower had been fathomed for his intentions whether or not to run in either 1948 or 1952, he had often made statements on the record which did not accurately foreshadow his later actions, for instance stating in Europe before departing the Army to be president of Columbia University, that he did not want anything to do with politics, and then in 1950, shortly before his appointment as supreme commander of NATO, stating that he had no intention of doing in 1952 anything different from what he was doing then. Thus, Republican leaders at present who hoped he would run again refused to admit that anything he had said on the subject could be taken as evidence that he had reached a decision not to run. Mr. Morin reviews some of the opinions of the top Republican leaders at the present time, with one saying that the President now knew what it meant to retire. In each of the conversations, the story that he was bored while away from Washington appeared. The President had been asked at a press conference about that issue and he had replied that he had a thousand things to do and so did not think he would be bored. The party leaders had concluded that unless the doctors provided the President a very bad report, that he could not take another four years, he would run again, but there were also people in Washington giving 5 to 1 odds that he would not run, with people taking the bet.
In Berlin, it was reported that
Communist East Germany had raised the threat this date of a possible
blockade of Western air traffic into isolated West Berlin, the threat
coming from the Presidium of the Volkskammer, the lower house of the
parliament, in a protest over "spy balloons"
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, the Navy announced this date that a patrol bomber, missing on a rescue mission to Antarctica, had been found in Venezuela with all aboard safe and uninjured. The Neptune plane was sighted on the ground in the Orinoco Delta area, and appeared to be without serious damage or signs of fire. The plane had departed from a naval station in Maryland the previous day to help in the search for a small otter plane missing with seven men aboard in Antarctica since February 3.
In Dunn, N.C., former Senator Alton Lennon, who had been appointed to the Senate by the late Governor William B. Umstead after the death of Senator Willis Smith in June, 1953, but had been defeated by former Governor Kerr Scott in the 1954 Democratic primary, had declared his intention to enter the Congressional race in the 7th District, located in the southeastern portion of the state, in opposition to incumbent Representative F. Ertel Carlyle, though the formal announcement would not be made until Thursday, after Mr. Lennon's intentions had been released prematurely the previous day through letters mailed to his supporters in the area, turned over to the press. He charged Mr. Carlyle, from Lumberton, serving his fifth term in Congress, with being absent from a public hearing held in Raleigh on December 19 by Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, which had dealt directly with the damage and loss to homes, crops and farms caused by Hurricanes Hazel, Connie, Diane and Ione, in 1954 and 1955. He said that "being a Congressman is an important full-time job, and since your Congressman is on a year-round salary, he should devote 12 months out of the year to his duties." Mr. Lennon would ultimately win the primary race and be elected the following November, serving in the House for eight terms thereafter, until 1973.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Monroe that 26 women and men had been arrested in the biggest crackdown on bootleggers in the history of dry Union County, with most of the sales of the liquor having occurred in Charlotte, the result of an undercover investigation by a plainclothes officer of the Monroe Police Department, who had started making purchases two weeks earlier, with many having been made at business and residential locations within the city limits of Monroe.
Donald MacDonald of The News tells of a former janitor at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse, having been accused by a woman of having sold her a 50-cent drink of whiskey, having been found not guilty during the morning in County Recorder's Court after being charged with violating liquor laws. He was congratulated by attorneys and police officers who had known him during his years as a Courthouse janitor, with one spectator observing that the janitor had drawn almost as large a crowd as had "Shorty" in his murder case—the man who had been found guilty of second-degree murder in January after emerging on January 3 from the trunk of his wife's car at a drive-in restaurant, carrying a combination rifle and shotgun, and ultimately shooting to death the other man in the front seat with his wife, whom he suspected of having an affair with her.
On the editorial page, "Can Waste Law Be Enforced Now?" finds that the promise the previous day of an early crackdown on the waste ordinance was like the repetition of an old, stylized municipal folk song, with its one outstanding characteristic being familiarity.
Charlotte had dealt with the problem for about six years and it had taken until the prior June 1 to establish a date certain for enforcement of the ordinance. Several of the industrial plants along Sugar Creek had cooperated with the ordinance, while others had not.
It finds that too much time had been wasted and that a workable enforcement program ought be put into effect immediately, and if not, the citizenry was owed a detailed explanation.
"Gas Beclouds the Senate's Integrity" indicates that there had been a scholarly and polite debate in the Senate on the bill to deregulate natural gas, but that, nevertheless, it was strongly suspected that the Senators would simply go along with the lobbyists in casting their votes. It relates of some of those efforts.
It says it had no argument against the decision on the bill as there was much to commend it, but that there was also much to fear from it should the gas and oil interests treat the freedom it afforded them with the same abandon with which they sought passage of the bill.
The Senate had voted unanimously to investigate the alleged bribe offered to Senator Francis Case regarding his vote for the bill, and it urges that it ought proceed with dispatch and repudiate the tactics used on its members by organized supporters and opponents of the bill. It suggests that it ought also to say the bill was decided on its merits, but at the present time, that remained open to argument.
"Fair Spring Has Not Come This Far" tells of Emery Wister's suggestion on the front page the previous day that spring was in the air to a degree, and it indicates that it had also heard croaking frogs on Monday night and on Sunday had seen a red bird in what appeared to be a new coat, as well as a butterfly. It noticed several dogs lying on the ground also.
But in other respects, it had found that winter was still very much present, concluding that spring was for the front page, while on the editorial page, it was still cold and wet, that frogs were for rank optimists and cardinals in new coats were just silly show-offs.
"Fat on the Post Office Waist" tells of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield planning, according to magazine articles, to get rid of the fat in the post office. He had consolidated rural routes, closed several thousand small post offices and curtailed office service. The President, acting on the advice of Mr. Summerfield, had asked Congress to raise the three-cent stamp to four cents in an effort to put the Post Office on a business-like basis.
But now, the new budget for the Post Office was seeking funds to purchase stamp-dispensing machines which provided change and expressed thanks for purchasing stamps, with each of the first seven such talking dispensers costing $4,000, to compensate the inventor for his 11 years of research.
The piece finds that the 11 years had been wasted and that Congress ought reimpose the Post Office reduction plan, eliminate the talking dispensers and ask the Post Office to deliver the mail and "forget the lip".
A piece from the Jackson (Miss.) State Times, titled "Papa Was Stubborn", tells of the writer's father having been stubborn, staunchly defending certain points of view which did not agree with contemporary theory, maintaining, for instance, that there was less crime in the old days than at present. The writer tried to convince him that he had just heard less about it in earlier times, since his backwoods area at that time had consisted of about 50 square miles. He also was of the opinion that people lived longer in earlier times than they presently did, about which the writer had also argued with him, citing statistics, which his father believed were only propaganda devices of insurance companies.
He tells of some other ideas which his father had, including that the writer was smarter than his father had been in his youth, the writer indicating that if he denied that statement, he would prove that he was not so smart, and if he accepted it, that his father was more discerning than he was, thus smarter. So he had kept his mouth shut and thought of a wit's comment that with every year that he grew older, the smarter his father appeared to become.
Drew Pearson tells of strange paradoxes in recent headlines, one being the firing of Wolf Ladejinsky because he had developed a conflict of interest by investment in a Formosan glassware factory, while at the same time, Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma informed his colleagues that they did not need to worry about a conflict of interest or Senate Rule 12 in voting on the natural gas deregulation bill.
Another headline had quoted Senator Lyndon Johnson as being worried about protecting "the integrity of the Senate" because Senator Francis Case of South Dakota had not the courage to tell the Senate about an offered $2,500 contribution sent to his office to influence his vote on the gas bill. Simultaneously, however, Senator Johnson had shunted to one side the campaign contribution bill, sponsored by Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, previously approved by the Rules Committee, which would make it more difficult to infringe on the integrity of the Senate through such contributions from groups or individuals interested in bills before Congress.
He indicates that the paradox with respect to Senator Monroney was amazing, as six years earlier, he had been elected because his predecessor, Senator Elmer Thomas, had a conflict of interest of the same type which Senator Monroney now championed. Senator Thomas had been chairman of the Agriculture Committee, able to influence farm products. He speculated in various farm products, including cotton, butter and eggs, and when Mr. Pearson had reported it, the Senator had called him a liar, after which a Senate investigation proved Mr. Pearson correct. He indicates that the people of Oklahoma had not liked the conflict of interest and Mr. Monroney had therefore campaigned on that basis, but was now trying to help his fellow Senator from Oklahoma, Robert Kerr, who, with his partner, owned 100 million dollars worth of oil-gas reserves.
The paradox in the case of Senator Johnson related to various activities. When he had been a young Congressman in 1938, he had hired a room in the rear of a building in Washington and passed out $110,000 in cash to fellow Democrats who needed election help, the money having come from oil and gas interests in Texas. He had helped many Democrats when they were up for re-election, with the money also coming mainly from his friends in Texas, which was why some of the "so-called Senate liberals" had voted with him in support of the gas bill. He cites as example Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, who had spent his life battling against the big utilities. When he had run in 1952, big Texas oil man H. L. Hunt had contributed $3,000 to his opponent, while other major oil interests also contributed substantial money to oppose him, a total of $9,450, including $2,950 from Mrs. Hunt. But now, Senator Mansfield was voting for the gas bill so that when he would run for re-election, he would not face gas and oil money and could call on Senator Johnson for some extra campaign money if he got into a pinch.
He indicates that the same thing was true in the House, that when Congressman George Miller of California had been running in 1954, he received a call from Speaker Sam Rayburn to see if he needed any money, and when he said that he did, Mr. Rayburn had sent him $2,500. As a result, when the gas bill had come to a vote the previous summer, Mr. Miller had voted for it, despite having spent his entire life championing labor and the consumer. He was a good Congressman, as Senator Mansfield was a good Senator, but was up for re-election and it was expensive to run for Congress.
A letter writer wonders why Charlotte could not have a subway system like other large cities with a traffic problem.
A letter writer says that "Mr. Thursday", who had died recently after having for 17 years gone to shops in the city every Thursday just to bring happiness to those who worked in them, would be missed by many friends, as he had touched everyone with whom he came in contact.
A letter writer from Hickory urges
studying the life of Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court from March, 1836 to the time of his death in 1864. He provides
a rather detailed history of Justice Taney, including his handing
down of the infamous decision in the Dred Scott case, holding that a
slave was property, not entitled to citizenship, upholding the constitutionality of fugitive slave
laws. The writer appears to think it was a proper decision. And he
goes on, concluding that it was his view that the 14th and 15th
Amendments would be abolished in the same manner as had been the
Prohibition amendment, "not with swords and bullets
A letter from four doctors tells of electroshock therapy being a treatment for depression and for certain mental illnesses. It takes to task a judge who had made the statement that he had heard of people having broken their backs during the course of the therapy. It indicates that the judge who had made the statement would not want to increase the anxiety of people who were mentally or emotionally ill, was generally a thoughtful person interested in mental health, not critical of the efforts of medical science to find relief for physical pain and mental suffering.
A letter writer discusses some local issues before the City Council, appearing to hold a good deal of sarcasm about them, the reduction of firemen's hours, the effort to reduce smog, replacement of rotted trees, which he says are harmed by the "box car trucks racing up and down" his avenue, but finds the "tree squawk" only good for enabling Councilwoman Evans "and her followers" to "climb those tall trees to locate the smokestacks that don't smoke anymore. Then you can get out on the sidewalks and get a good coating around the ankles and the other tin smokestacks, about head high, will give a good coating around the neck and face. Those 102 truck lines operating in and out of Charlotte supply many times more smoke than all other smoke producing outfits." The smog engineer, Mr. Frost, "will have to get himself a few thousand condensers to muzzle those smokestacks."
A letter from the corresponding secretary of the Charlotte Music Club thanks the newspaper for the music calendar edited by Edwin Bergamini, whom she regards as a capable critic, finding his reviews of the many musical performances in Charlotte to be fine contributions to the newspaper.
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