The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 17, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that Russia's top lieutenants in that city, including former Premier Georgi Malenkov, had been quiet this date regarding reports leaking from Moscow that Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had denounced deceased former Premier Stalin as a blundering murderer, a denunciation which had reportedly caused riots in Tibilisi, in Stalin's former home state of Georgia, in protest of discrediting him. Mr. Malenkov, who had for years been Stalin's secretary and was known as his "eyes and ears", had shown up two hours late for an appointment this date for his tour of British power stations, the lack of punctuality being unusual for a Soviet official. His current role in the Soviet Government was as minister of power stations. The story indicates that lights had been seen lit in his room in the Soviet Embassy until far past midnight the previous night.
In Beirut, Lebanon, earthquakes had wiped out two villages and taken a total of 172 lives in the country the previous night, as police and military troops continued to sift the wreckage in search of victims. Three tremors had shaken the country at five-minute intervals, described as the worst in current memory, with about 25 towns and villages having felt the shaking. Beirut apparently had suffered little damage, the worst of it having been in southern Lebanon and the Bekka Valley. The Government-controlled radio station throughout the night and during this date had broadcast appeals for calm, while providing the latest information on damage and proclaiming three days of mourning for the dead.
In Moorhead, Minn., that state's presidential primary race was moving toward a climax on the following Tuesday when Adlai Stevenson and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee would face each other for the first time during the current election season, in the nation's second presidential primary. Mr. Stevenson said that he would deliver a major farm policy address in the Concordia College fieldhouse, as part of a Greater Moorhead Days celebration, and Senator Kefauver, whose supporters were turned down in their effort to have him invited to address the same audience, said that he would be "out handshaking" while Mr. Stevenson was giving his speech. He originally had said that he would speak in the Moorhead Armory four hours before Mr. Stevenson provided his address, but late the previous night had changed those plans, saying that he would follow his original schedule, which called for him to tour the 9th Congressional District in the northwestern part of the state. Both candidates had been delayed the previous night by a heavy snowstorm, with Mr. Stevenson keeping an audience of 1,500 waiting for nearly an hour in Rochester, while Senator Kefauver, winding up a tour across the iron range, had been two hours late reaching Eveleth, where 250 people were awaiting him at the auditorium.
In New York, it was reported that the Northeast this date had been hit by a fierce late winter storm which had taken 44 lives. Nine ships had been driven aground, four of which belonged to the Navy, and a vast area from Virginia to Canada, and as far west as Ohio, had been pummeled and battered by the tempest, which also hit coastal areas with gales and driving rain. Land, sea and air transportation were brought to a standstill in many places, as winds reached up to 70 mph in Scituate, Mass., tossing a 7,000-ton Italian freighter within 50 yards of the beach and ripping its hull open. A rudderless, gasoline-filled tanker had narrowly escaped disaster off Long Island, with the vessel, unable to steer, wallowing helplessly as winds steadily pushed it nearer land, until a shift in wind direction had provided rescue as it had gotten within 2 1/2 miles of the beach, and was taken later in tow by a seagoing tugboat. Most of the deaths attributed to the storm occurred in automobile accidents or over-exertion while shoveling or battling through giant snowdrifts. Some places in New York and Maine recorded nearly two feet of snow, which was whipped into mountainous drifts in some places. Hundreds of locations received more than a foot. Northern and central Ohio received ten inches of snow in some areas. Outside the Northeastern corridor, the weather was generally dry and fairly normal.
In Charlotte, the mercury had dropped to 29 the previous night, following on the heels of the year's heaviest rainfall and some high winds, the Weather Bureau indicating that rainfall had amounted to 2.38 inches, .67 of which had occurred during the previous 24 hours, and that winds had reached 52 mph the previous afternoon. The forecast was for the present cold front to begin moving out the following day, to be replaced by springlike weather, with a high of 58 predicted for the following day and 65 for Monday.
A wind estimated at between 25 and 30 mph was listed as the chief cause in turning an otherwise controllable blaze into a fire which had destroyed the main building of a tractor company on Mount Holly Road in Charlotte the previous night, doing about a million dollars worth of damage. The exact cause of the blaze had not yet been determined.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that Mecklenburg County State Senator F. J. (Jack) Blythe had announced this date that he would seek re-election to the office, seeking his third term and being the first candidate to announce for the position. The story includes a synopsis of his biographical background.
Also in Charlotte, the city held its
first St. Patrick's Day Parade this date, as Irishmen and friends of
Irishmen, about 250 in all, had marched up Tryon Street, led by radio
personality Grady Cole, singing and shouting their way along,
preceded by a motorcycle escort of City policemen. Near the front of
the parade was the "official" vehicle, a cart pulled by a
lawnmower, on which was riding a man dressed as "Mr. Green
Thumb", actually Richard McGoroon. Marines were also present,
as was Harry Golden
Not on the front page, the four regional finals took place in the NCAA basketball tournament this night, with Temple nipping Canisius 60 to 58 in the Eastern Regional, Iowa beating Kentucky 89 to 77 in the Midwest Regional, SMU beating Oklahoma City 84 to 63 in the Western Regional, and San Francisco beating Utah 92 to 77 in the Far West Regional. AP 15th-ranked Temple, 26-3, would face fourth-ranked Iowa, 19-5, and defending national champion, undefeated and top-ranked San Francisco would match up against seventh-ranked SMU, 25-2, in the national semifinals in Evanston, Ill., the following Thursday night.
In the 12-team N.I.T. in New York, dwindling rapidly in reputation in recent years from its former preeminence as a post-season tournament, previously attracting as many or even more nationally ranked teams as the NCAA tournament, with some teams occasionally able to participate in both, the only ranked teams from the final Associated Press poll of the prior Tuesday among the participants this year were third-ranked Dayton, sixth-ranked Louisville, and 18th-ranked Oklahoma A&M.
Time to lay down the gauntlet and go bowling
On the editorial page, "Legislature: A Plague on Mecklenburg" indicates that rural legislators seeking to perpetuate their unconstitutional grip on State Government, had brought no real arguments before the Commission on Legislative Representation during the week. It posits that there were two reasons for that fact, one being that there were no valid arguments for the Legislature's failure to provide urban areas representation proportionate to their population, and, second, that the rural bloc, controlling the Legislature, did not need any arguments, that it could do as it had done in 1951, 1953 and 1955, vote to avoid the State Constitutional requirement for redistricting after each decennial census, by setting up a study commission.
It indicates that the Legislature's persistent refusal to obey the State Constitution's mandate for redistricting suggested the tenacity with which Georgia "wool hatters" had perpetuated that state's county-unit voting system in primary elections, a system which gave a voter in rural Twiggs County 143 times the voting power of a resident of urban Fulton County, permitting the nomination of gubernatorial candidates who failed to win either a majority or even a plurality of the popular vote. It also deprived urban residents of proportionate representation in the General Assembly. It comments that there was one major difference in the two situations, that it was legal under the State Constitution in Georgia.
"Now for a Little More Harmony" indicates that a majority of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra had voted recently that it was dissatisfied with the leadership of their conductor, James Christian Pfohl, and that by midweek, the dispute had spread through the city's musical community, reaching the agenda of the Symphony's board of directors. Much had been said on both sides of the argument, and in the end, it was the board's responsibility to reach a decision on whether the Orchestra would retain Mr. Pfohl's services, which they decided the prior Thursday to do for an additional year.
It hopes, in the interests of the community and its musical life, that the vote of confidence would be accepted with good grace by all concerned. Mr. Pfohl had been a vigorous force on the local musical scene, working with great energy and imagination to bring good music to the masses of the community. On Thursday, he had vowed to provide a better and stronger orchestra than ever before, and the piece believes his statement was sincere and that there would be a new and brighter era of music in the city.
"Bad Air: Quick, Watson, the Needle" finds that the portmanteau "smog" had boomeranged, as some well-meaning citizens believed that it was invariably either smoke or fog or a combination of the two, leading them to believe that when neither smoke nor fog was present, there could be no contamination of the air.
But there were other sources of contamination, as Charles Frost, Charlotte's air pollution control engineer, had pointed out recently in the newspaper, indicating that the end of furnace-firing for the year did not mean the end of contamination. It finds that it was important for the citizenry to understand that basic idea, that there were man-made contaminants of the air, as well as natural sources, such as pollen and dust, in some areas, sea spray and marsh gas. Some liquids entered the air by natural evaporation, and once there, condensed and formed mists, while other liquids were discharged directly into the air of modern cities, with some experts estimating that 8 percent of the gasoline used by automobiles was not burned up, as no mechanical device was completely efficient.
Man contributed far more to pollution than did nature and so effective control could only come from studying what man contributed to pollution, and then doing something about it. Other cities, where the problem was much more serious, had undertaken more stringent control measures than needed in Charlotte, such as in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Louisville. In New York, for instance, the municipal air pollution control department had ordered a crackdown on buses, with gasoline or diesel buses not permitted to emit visible smoke after they had moved 100 yards or more, and none while stationary. Bus drivers could not leave the engines idling for more than three minutes while a bus was standing at a route terminal, and all gasoline buses were provided nine months before they had to be equipped with fume-reducing devices.
Charlotte was finally working out its solutions, and its pollution was a serious and growing problem, even if not as great as in the larger cities. It suggests that by starting at present with a strict program, it might be able to head off the crisis which other communities had endured. It concludes that the citizenry owed Mr. Frost's agency their wholehearted support by undertaking such measures as controlling dust in the city's unpaved parking lots, and other such seemingly minor tasks, all contributing to a chain of action in reducing pollution.
"Inflation Notes" finds that there was no reason to be sad about the rising cost of soda pop, as prices were up on many things. Once, scientists had valued the chemical contents of the human body at 98 cents, but recently, an expert had estimated that the atoms in the body had an energy potential of 11,400,000 kilowatts per pound, valued at 570 million dollars, thus a 150-pound man would be worth 85.5 billion.
"Feel better now?"
A piece from the Florida Times-Union, titled "Outdated Adage", indicates that if any new refutation of the time-worn adage, "like father, like son", were necessary, it had been provided by the enlistment in the Air Force of the son of Sgt. Alvin York, the most famous infantryman of World War I. The son, Thomas, was contemplating making the military his career. His father had been a conscientious objector when he had entered the Army, and it was only after intensive persuasion and soul-searching that he had changed his views and, during his fighting, wiped out a whole German machinegun company.
It finds that few fathers could hope in present times to have sons in their own image, that it was more likely that a son would be very unlike his father. Even if they were not personality opposites, it was more the exception than the rule when a son followed in his father's vocational footsteps. Just as Sgt. York had not influenced his son to join the infantry, it would probably be the case that he would not influence him to enter farming either. Whether Sgt. York wished to influence his son on either matter was a moot point. Many fathers did want to influence the career choices of their sons, as it was flattering to the paternal ego, even if requiring self-deception to believe that the father had provided a compelling role model.
It suggests that some fathers did inspire such free emulation, but in the highly fluid society of present times, family occupational traditions were becoming increasingly meaningless.
Drew Pearson says that he had recently gone to Topeka, Kans., to talk to two Republican Party leaders about the farm-belt resentment and what Republican leaders in Washington ought do about it. One was the 1936 Republican nominee for the presidency, Alf Landon, and the other was his protégé, Fred Hall, the youngest Republican Governor in the nation. Former Governor Landon was in his shirtsleeves, looking philosophically out over the Kansas prairies from his skyscraper office building. He had grown old gracefully and showed no bitterness over the way his party had let him down in the 1936 landslide of FDR, the most lopsided presidential election in U.S. history to that point. He rode horseback in the morning, caught up with his mail, especially long letters to Mr. Pearson's old partner, Robert Allen, drilled a few oil wells and enjoyed life, set to turn 70 on his next birthday.
Governor Hall, whom Mr. Landon had helped elect, was restless, dynamic, and bursting with energy in his fight against Old Guard Republicanism. He was charting his primary course, though the election was still months away, against the Old Guard faction of the party which had ruled Kansas for years, including some of the President's good friends. Governor Hall was nevertheless strongly for the President and had defeated them three different times in races for Lieutenant Governor and Governor, predicting that he would do so again in 1956. Those friends of the President included Senator Frank Carlson and Harry Darby of Kansas City, Republican national committeeman and one of the original drafters of General Eisenhower for the presidency. To them, Governor Hall was an upstart who was challenging their right to dominate Kansas politics, and the Old Guard, despite the tradition in the state that a Republican Governor was allowed to run unopposed, was seeking to defeat the incumbent, seeking to enlist White House support in that effort. White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had sent for Governor Hall the previous fall, when the Governor was attending the governors' conference in Washington, and told him that they hoped there would not be any trouble in Kansas, that the President did not want anything to happen to his friends and so did not want anyone running against Senator Carlson for re-election or anyone to challenge Mr. Darby for the national committee. Governor Hall told Mr. Adams that he was just as anxious as anyone to keep peace within the party, but, shortly after he returned to Kansas, he found, though keeping his pledge that he would not allow anyone to run against either Senator Carlson or Mr. Darby, himself opposed for renomination in the primary.
Mr. Pearson had later talked to Mr. Landon about the fight and asked him whether the farm revolt might lead Kansas to vote Democratic in 1956, with Mr. Landon indicating that all of the ingredients were present for that which had occurred in 1930, when there had been drought and sliding farm prices, coupled with bitter dissension inside the Republican Party, such that George McGill, a young Democrat of whom no one had heard, was elected Senator. Now, there was also drought and a widening gap between farm prices and the farmer's costs, and there was dissension within the party with opposition to Governor Hall. Mr. Landon said that he believed the President would carry Kansas, but that it would not be easy.
He had asked Governor Hall why the state which had produced William Allen White and Henry Allen had become conservative, and he had responded that he supposed it was because during the Depression so many young people had moved away, failing to find jobs in Kansas, leaving for the East or California, while the old people remained, tending to be conservative. He said that, basically, the state was still progressive, that there was a large core of good government people within the towns, who wanted honest government, the core of his support. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the President when the latter had recently vetoed the natural gas deregulation bill, but Senators Carlson and Andrew Schoeppel were not. Governor Hall said that the gas lobbyists were working in the Kansas Legislature, and that on the last day of the most recent session, the cigarette lobbyists were passing out cartons of free cigarettes on the Senate floor.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that Adlai Stevenson had taken a "bad knock" in the New Hampshire primary, where Senator Estes Kefauver had run unopposed and had so won overwhelmingly over the paltry number of Stevenson write-in votes. They speculate, however, that Senator Kefauver might take such a knock in Minnesota, where the two Democratic candidates would be pitted head-to-head for the first time.
They suggest that what had just happened underscored the seriousness of the party's dilemma, that in Senator Kefauver, it had a candidate with proven mass appeal but who was detested by the party organizations throughout the country, likely therefore unable to win the nomination regardless of his primary performances, while in Mr. Stevenson, it had a universally respected candidate who had also ingratiated himself to the party organizations since the 1952 election. But the latter was not only a loser in that election, he seemed to have lost some of his original appeal to the general mass of voters during the interim. His problem, therefore, was how to attract the attention of the country and arouse the voters, impressing them with his personality, complicated by the conviction of Mr. Stevenson and his political managers that he was far out in front in the race for the nomination, as he was. Their fear of jeopardizing the lead in the Democratic race for the nomination thus had caused Mr. Stevenson to play it safe in many ways.
They regard that strategy as probably correct prior to the convention, even if the Democrats would prefer a candidate who would stir and excite the country to one who would be merely moderate, literate and inoffensive.
They indicate that the actual general election campaign in the fall would last only about seven weeks and it appeared impossible for the President's enormous lead to be overcome in such a short period by a Democratic opponent who would play it safe right up until the convention. Thus, the Stevenson camp was presently divided on that strategy, with one group of his advisers, probably in the majority, wanting him to continue in the present vein, while another had been pleading for a novel approach, indicating that with the exception of the farm issue, every domestic issue had been smothered by the country's prosperity, leaving the real issues within the sphere of foreign and defense policies. They were advising therefore that Mr. Stevenson make them principal themes of his campaign, rather than simply treating them superficially, as he had thus far.
But with apparent peace and no immediately visible foreign threat, no U.S. presidential candidate had ever sought to do quite what those advisers were counseling, though it was at least logical. They contended that the world situation was at least deteriorating at a frightening rate in every area of serious importance to the U.S., and that the country had thus far accepted the reassurances of the President, with the voters therefore unaware of the growing danger, suggesting that it made the Administration that much more vulnerable for failing to ward off the danger itself and for not telling the country the truth about it.
About the same line of argument was being applied to the defense problem, and the advisers counseled an unrelenting attack on both foreign and defense issues on the ground that the presidency would not be worth having if no such attack were made. The next president would have to deal with the world situation which was now taking shape and if Mr. Stevenson did not make a clear and forceful record of warning against the growing dangers, then as President, he would be held personally accountable when the troubles began to come to a head.
To date, the result of that debate had been some uneasy compromise, with Mr. Stevenson, when he would appear before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April, slated to make a critical speech on foreign and defense policy, with one other such speech planned before a national audience at a fairly early date. But, the Alsops observe, that was very different from the more difficult strategy of making the foreign and defense issues the dominant theme of the campaign. Mr. Stevenson would likely be driven to make foreign and defense policy his main theme before the end of the campaign, for it ` was hard to see any other themes on which he could rely to make a dent in the President's personal popularity or awaken the interest of the prosperous and contented country.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates that the suggestion that some Democrats might form a third party, was being put forth to split the party so that there would be an excuse to support the Republicans, as had happened previously. Former South Carolina Governor James Byrnes and Senator Strom Thurmond, plus a few more "would-be Democrats" had proved, he says, in the previous few years their plans for their own benefit, not for the party as a whole or for the South as it was at present. He believes that a person ought come out into the open and be either a Republican or Democrat, and not say one thing and then try to lead others their way to form a third party so that a Republican administration could be elected, as in 1952. He urges care in selecting who would lead the nation, states, county and other local governments, that when the President had visited Columbia, S.C., he had thrown his arm around the shoulder of former Governor Byrnes and stated to those within hearing range that he believed in states' rights, without Federal intervention in the affairs of state laws and ways of life. This writer says that everyone knew what had occurred with regard to states' rights during the Eisenhower Administration, says that those who wanted the present type of government ought vote for the Administration, to obtain more Federal Government instruction on what the people had to do. He says that he would never be part of any third party, that he might be poor and unlearned, but did not intend to fall for that "undercover move of the Republican Party and their friends."
A letter writer wishes to impart an idea on the "colored race problem of our great country, state and the South." He asserts that the great majority of the "colored people" were satisfied in the South and that they ought be, as they had made great strides since the Civil War, with lawyers, doctors, educated preachers and schoolteachers among the black citizenry. He asserts that there were good, first-class school buildings as well. He indicates that it was the white taxpayers of the South who had provided those things, believes that there was not more than half of the "colored population" who paid their part of the taxes at present, but that they were still reaping the pleasures of the great country. He says that if he were on the Board of County Commissioners, he would recommend that a tax census be taken of the county and see to it that those who were not paying taxes and who would never pay them, catch up. He says that he had gone to school 65 years earlier in a building which was a long, log structure with a large fireplace at each end, that they had only attended four months each year and spent eight hours per day in class, learning more in those four months than children did at present in nine months, as they had gone there to work. He hopes that the County commissioners would think about what little he had said in the letter and that there would be a Board who would "look after taking in that which is right instead of floating bonds and spending all the time."
The children, nowadays, just want to go down there to the schoolhouse to have sex, smoke cigarettes and drink wine and beer all day, every day, get drunk and vandalize the public parks, all while they're having sex, sex and more sex, don't they? You had to walk to school, no doubt, every day, three or four miles, maybe longer on some days, when the road washed out, sometimes in waist-deep snow, sometimes in hurricanes and williwaws, and so you know the meaning of buckling down to work, not like these spoiled softies of the current crop of young 'uns.
A letter from Senator John F.
Kennedy, appearing appropriately on St. Patrick's Day, thanks the newspaper for its thoughtful and kind remarks
about his recently published book, Profiles in Courage
Incidentally, Representative and future House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, who interviews Senator Kennedy in Houston in the above-linked film, apparently televised locally in 1956, had not been a signatory to the "Southern manifesto", contesting and vowing to reverse or circumvent by lawful means the Brown v. Board of Education decision, read before the Senate and House the prior Monday, joining the overwhelming majority of the Texas delegation, only five members of the 21-member delegation having signed it: Representatives John Dowdy, O. C. Fisher, Walter Rogers, Martin Dies, who apparently signed subsequent to the reading, as he was not listed in the Congressional Record of the prior Monday as a signatory, and Wright Patman, later chairman in 1972 of the House Banking Committee, which would initiate the first investigation, prior to the election that year, of the June break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate, "following the money", an investigation which was quickly interdicted and stopped by manipulation from the Nixon Administration, assisted on the ground by House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. Apparently, the other members of the Texas delegation, including Congressman Albert Thomas, who would be honored for his long service in the Congress by President Kennedy at a dinner
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