The Charlotte News
Monday, March 26, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the chief Communist organizer of Tiflis University, S. Djorbenadz, had been fired for failing to indoctrinate the students successfully and for failing to eliminate national and racial pride, as disclosed in the March 24 issue of the University newspaper, "Dawn on the East", which had reached Moscow this date. The article which disclosed the firing also revealed that the students had indulged in mass cutting of classes in Marxism, Leninism and dialectical materialism since the prior September. According to University figures, between September 1 and December 31, more than 94,000 man-hours of classes had been skipped without excuse. The newspaper said that the students had organized themselves into groups and gone to movies instead of classes while teachers "lectured in virtually empty auditoriums." It said that especially organized in that manner were groups in the West European language and literature school. It said that since the beginning of 1955 "there were 176 registered cases of students breaking rules of socialist order and some of the students were punished and, for instance, 41 students were detained by the police during the first 2 1/2 months of this year." The newspaper spoke of cases of "hooliganism" among the students and charged the Communist Party committee at the University with bypassing "immoral behavior in some students." The story notes that Tiflis, located in Georgia, was the birthplace of the late Joseph Stalin.
In White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., the President teamed up with Sam Snead for a round of golf this date, ignoring a pelting, nearly icy rain to get in a few holes in advance of the scheduled arrival later in the day of the President of Mexico and Canada's Prime Minister. The three leaders were getting together at the Greenbrier Hotel for a discussion of matters of mutual interest and to become better acquainted. Mr. Snead was the official golf pro at the hotel. The President was followed around the course by his White House physician, Maj. General Howard Snyder, who told newsmen that he was not too concerned about the President golfing in the rain, as long as it was hitting him from the back. The press were only permitted to follow the President for the first two holes, to which the President had walked and was setting out on foot for the third green, spurning an electrical golf cart which followed him with a Secret Service agent aboard. The President told White House press secretary James Hagerty and appointments secretary Bernard Shanley, who were teaming up to play the President and Mr. Snead, that if they could not beat a coronary case, they were in "a heck of a fix." On the first hole, the President had shot a two over par six, while Mr. Snead and Mr. Shanley had fives and Mr. Hagerty hit a seven. The President also had a six on the second hole.
Some Democrats were looking for alternates to the two active candidates for the party's presidential nomination, with speculation the previous day arising regarding three Governors, A. B. (Happy) Chandler of Kentucky, Averell Harriman of New York, and Frank Lausche of Ohio. Meanwhile, the active candidates, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and Adlai Stevenson, focused their attention on California's June 5 primary, which would be their last direct competition. Senator Kefauver was campaigning there and Mr. Stevenson planned to fly there later in the week to talk with campaign workers. People in the Stevenson camp suggested that Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri was a dark horse contender of growing strength. Texas Governor Allan Shivers declined to say the previous day, when asked on an NBC television program to name persons he would support, whether that would include Senator Lyndon Johnson, with the Governor mentioning only Governor Lausche. Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana said that he welcomed reports that Governor Chandler might seek the nomination, though the latter had not commented. Senator Johnson, being touted as a potential dark horse, had said that he was not running. Meanwhile, RNC chairman Leonard Hall took on his Democratic counterpart, Paul Butler, in a sometimes noisy CBS television debate from Philadelphia. When Mr. Butler had asked whether the people could hope for successful guidance of foreign affairs should the President delegate duties to others, Mr. Hall had responded that "the President has not asked that any powers be delegated at all." The latter accused the Democrats in Congress of "stalling" on new farm legislation and that it could cost farmers a billion dollars during the current year. Mr. Butler pointed to a big gain in the proportion of Democratic to Republican votes in the previous week's Minnesota primary and said that it suggested dissatisfaction with Administration policies, including the farm program. Mr. Hall responded that Republicans were not in the Minnesota primary, that they were "on the sidewalk watching".
The Senate juvenile delinquency subcommittee stated this date in its report on "motion pictures and juvenile delinquency" that it had found increasing emphasis on "sadism, brutality and violence" in the movies, indicating that it had found that movies, comic books and television "have a tremendous influence on the young child in his early development." It found that professional people generally viewed "the presentation of brutality and violence in those media as definitely deleterious to the personality development of normal pre-delinquent and delinquent children" and the subcommittee stated that it was advised that motion pictures "could provide the many so-called 'trigger mechanisms' that may initiate and provide the content for antisocial behavior on the part of emotionally disturbed children." Senator Kefauver, chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement that the report culminated a year of intensive study and that once the industry realized that they were not concerned with the entire motion picture output but only with those pictures which dwelled on brutality, violence, sadism and crime, the industry had quickly joined with them in taking a critical look at certain portions of their product. He said that it was believed that the majority of people in the film industry were sincere in their efforts to make good products. The report said that the production of Western and crime movies had remained constant or had increased slightly while the production of non-crime movies had decreased greatly. The report stated that it was against any form of censorship of movies and felt that the industry generally did a good job in regulating itself, but found many difficulties in administering the industry's motion picture production code, among them being that the administrators could only recommend and not force changes to a script. The subcommittee recommended an overhaul of the production code, that the administrators of the code consult with "professional people from the behavioral sciences", that research projects be initiated in universities to study the effects of all phases of the mass media, particularly on juveniles, and that studios producing films for television submit them to the production code administrators for approval. It singled out several motion pictures for criticism because of emphasis on crime and violence, among them having been "Big House, USA", "Crashout", "Kiss Me Deadly", "Black Tuesday" and "Ten Wanted Men". If you are a juvenile and watch those in series, you may wind up like the poor chap depicted on the front page. Caveat emptor...
The Government reported this date that the nation's cost of living remained unchanged in February from the January level, with food prices having declined slightly but the costs of nearly everything else having increased somewhat. The Bureau of Labor Statistics index was at 114.6 percent of the 1947-49 average base period, the same level as in January.
In Masontown, Pa., a twin-engine Navy plane carrying a crew of three had crashed this date in the Monongahela River, with State police stating that there was no indication whether there were any survivors. It was the third military plane to crash in that river since December 22, 1954.
In Pensacola, Fla., three fliers had been killed and a fourth was missing in the fiery collision of two Naval trainer planes over Baldwin County, Ala., this date, with the Pensacola Naval Air Station public information office stating that the planes had been single-engined SNI Texans from an auxiliary field of the Naval Air Station, flying in dual formation at the time.
In Raleigh, it was reported by the Raleigh Times this date that Richard Kluckhohn, son of two members of the Harvard faculty, his father a well-known anthropologist, would plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Wake County Superior Court during this afternoon, based on the slaying of a woman the prior May 13, shot dead on the Raleigh street below Mr. Kluckhohn's hotel room, which he had described as a "horrible accident" occurring while he was dry-firing his gun, which he claimed he did not know had discharged into the street through the window of the hotel room. He had been convicted the prior June of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to between five and ten years in prison, but the State Supreme Court had reversed the conviction and granted him a new trial. It was not yet known what his sentence would be as a result of the guilty plea.
In Charlotte, Mecklenburg County Police were dragging a privately owned fish pond off Old Mt. Holly Road for the body of a baby this date, but stated they did not know whether the body was there or not. Two young girls, ages 11 and 13, had reported seeing a woman approach the lake the previous day and return without the small baby which she had been carrying, and then speed away in a blue truck driven by a man with a crewcut. Nothing concrete had yet been learned by midday this date and the dragging operation continued.
Moderating weather spread over the major peach-producing areas of the Carolinas the previous night and spared the crop from further damage in the North Carolina Sandhills section and in the South Carolina Ridge section, as well in the rolling, blossom-pink hills of Spartanburg, Greenville and Cherokee Counties. Frost in many sections on Saturday night had apparently caused damage in several areas, but orchard owners reported that it might be several days before the loss could be assessed. A killing freeze a year earlier had left the Carolinas peach crop barren of fruit, a loss estimated at 26 million dollars.
On the editorial page, "Channel 9: How Soon and How Long?" indicates that Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every had asked the FCC how soon it would be before Charlotte would have a second television station on channel 9, an inquiry which it finds good, suggesting that the Mayor might repeat it every other day.
It ventures that everybody knew that
the real answer was eternity
It concludes that whatever the
problem was regarding the delay, it was unreasonable, as the Mayor
had said, that Charlotte should be deprived of a competitive medium
of entertainment, instruction and advertising, leaving channel 3,
WBTV, as an unwilling monopolist in the field, expressing its own hope
for activation of channel 9
"Oh, for the Life That Late We Led" finds that there was always a calamity merchant poised and ready to announce that the country had never had it so bad, hearkening back to supposed earlier times when life was not so complicated.
It finds that the history of the world was "a saga of perpetual incivility", that there had always been a "present plight", that every age had something to bother it, whether glaciers and mammoths or the Black Death and bad kings in different centuries. Sigmund Freud had not invented neuroses and Pavlov had not perfected the conditioned reflex.
Now, it finds, there was the dean of the Psychoanalytic Clinic of Columbia University who said that the cloistered family unit of former times was a better place to rear children than the present "culturally invaded" home. Dr. Abram Kardiner had told the American Orthopsychiatric Association during the month that the parental role in cultivating emotions had been partly usurped by literate, though not mature, electronic gadgets and periodicals, with the result of "an age of enormously increasing anxiety".
It indicates that until fairly recently, there had never been great masses exposed to newspapers, magazines and television screens, and thus society had never had the raw material of electronically-produced mass anxiety. But there had also not been massive retaliation, flying saucers or a Republican Administration in a long while either, finding that any of those things could produce anxiety at a given moment, but probably no more so than a saber-toothed tiger at the entrance to the cave or a 20th Century professor longing for the bad old days.
"Magic Formula" tells of Clem Whitaker, partner in the advertising firm which had conducted the AMA's campaign against national health insurance, having stated that the job of managing political campaigns had become "a mature well-managed business, founded on sound public relations principles and using every technique of modern-day advertising."
It finds that if that were the case, the "bewitched, bothered and bewildered Democratic Party ought to farm out its Great Dilemma (who to nominate) to a Madison Ave. agency without further ado. All the men in the gray flannel suits will have to do is find the one magic blob of humanity that has a nickname, a slogan, the right profile, a telegenic personality, a good-looking, cloth-coated wife, born on St. Patrick's Day and a little dog named Checkers. He'd probably carry everything but the Gold Coast of Africa."
"Sing Rockaby Baby to Rock 'n' Roll" finds that rock 'n' roll music was enabling radio to survive against the competition now offered by television and movies. Kids loved the new music, according to the disc jockeys, "and the beautiful (ugg) thing about rock 'n' roll music for radio is that it's so versatile. You can make a rock 'n' roll tune out of anything from a Mother Goose rhyme to a mambo and it all sounds the same—even the lyrics."
It finds it all very simple, such as
"Rock Around Mother Goose"
The top-selling record in the music
industry was the "Rock and Roll Waltz"
It finds that it pointed out that
radio was on a mass rock 'n' roll binge which appeared destined to
stay for awhile, and it indicates that it was not complaining though
having become slightly tone deaf since the onslaught
A piece from the Baltimore
Evening Sun, titled "Poetic Exchange", indicates that
some years earlier, an interesting shuffle among poets had taken
place, as T. S. Eliot, an American educated at Harvard, had become a
British subject, and then subsequently, W. H. Auden, an Englishman
educated at Oxford and for some time a resident of the U.S., had
become a U.S. citizen. Some 20 years earlier, Mr. Eliot had returned
for a time to the U.S. to fill the second oldest chair of poetry in
the Anglo-Saxon world, the Charles Eliot Norton professorship at
Harvard, and now, Mr. Auden would return to England to take the
oldest chair of poetry, the professorship of poetry at Oxford, to
which Mr. Auden had recently been elected in a close vote, defeating
Sir Harold Nicholson and G. Wilson Knight, succeeding C. Day-Lewis, a
poet
At least one man, Professor H. W. Garrod, had occupied both chairs, having been Oxford professor of poetry from 1923 to 1928 and the Norton professor of poetry in 1929. It thus suggests that eventually, Mr. Eliot might also be chosen for the Oxford chair and Mr. Auden, for the Norton chair at Harvard, which it suggests would round things out quite nicely.
Drew Pearson regards problems facing Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson on the likely two most important issues before the Senate, the election reform bill to limit contributions and the investigation of contributions from lobbyists regarding the recently vetoed gas deregulation bill. Senator Johnson did not want to record contributions to primary election campaigns and had maneuvered any investigation of the gas lobby out of the hands of Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, who had planned a forthright probe, into the hands of a diluted and thus far inactive Senate special committee. Mr. Pearson thus examines Senator Johnson's relations with potent figures in the natural gas industry, including Brown and Root, the Texas contractors who had purchased the big-inch and little-inch pipelines from the Government and now operated them as Texas Eastern Pipeline, also owning Texas Eastern Production, producers of gas and oil. Brown and Root had heavily contributed to Senator Johnson during his political career and he had used their private airplane even during the debate on the gas bill to fly back to Texas. He had suffered his July 4 heart attack at the home of George Brown in Virginia and he had visited at that home on several weekends during the battle over the gas bill.
In Texas the previous month, Lieutenant Governor Ben Ramsey, a friend of Brown and Root, had been called before a state grand jury to answer questions about contributions to his political campaign. Vernon Sanford of the Texas Press Association, who had handled some of Mr. Ramsey's advertising, had been indicted, and Mr. Ramsey, defended by Brown and Root attorney Everett Looney, was not indicted. Senator Johnson the previous year had arranged for Mr. Ramsey to be the DNC committeeman from Texas, and at that time, Mr. Ramsey was considered Brown and Root's probable gubernatorial candidate, though no longer considered so since being called before the grand jury.
The IRS had maintained a public record of Brown and Root's activities for Senator Johnson, having made a thorough investigation of that firm's taxes, until it was suddenly stopped by President Roosevelt on January 14, 1944 after then-Congressman Johnson had called on FDR the previous day, along with Alvin Wirtz, a Brown and Root attorney and former Undersecretary of the Interior. President Roosevelt had summoned Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Elmer Irey and three days later, on January 17, a special agent from Atlanta was sent to Texas to close quietly the Brown and Root tax investigation.
Mr. Pearson indicates that he had recently obtained photostatic copies of approximately 1,000 Treasury Department reports, letters and exhibits in the matter of Brown and Root as they related to Senator Johnson, that the documents were in a safe deposit box available to any authorized Senate committee or any editor for personal inspection. He had found that the documents revealed that Senator Johnson was not interested in having the public know about political contributions in primaries or in having a Senate committee dig too deeply into the gas lobby. Senator Johnson had been confronted with the evidence in the case and his chief explanation was that former Governor W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel, against whom Congressman Johnson had been running for the Senate at the time in 1944—apparently a bit off on dates, as he had narrowly lost to Governor O'Daniel, by the hairs of the chinny-chins in the graveyards, in the special Senate race of 1941 and intended to challenge him in the 1948 election until Senator O'Daniel determined not to run again—, had stirred up the tax probe of Brown and Root. Senator Johnson admitted calling on President Roosevelt on January 13, as had been reported in the newspapers of the time, but claimed that he did not discuss the Brown and Root tax matter, but, says Mr. Pearson, the Treasury records strongly indicated to the contrary.
The IRS record showed that one device used to finance the campaign of Congressman Johnson had been to make out checks to employees of Victoria Gravel Co., a Brown and Root subsidiary, and then use part of that money for campaign expenses. On May 26, 1941, for instance, $5,000 had been paid to an individual who delivered it to the home of Congressman Johnson, that money having been charged off as a business expense by Victoria Gravel. Mr. Johnson had later stated under oath to IRS agents that he had mailed $2,500 of the money to his campaign headquarters. In another case, Victoria Gravel made out a check for $2,500 to Randolph Mills, an employee of the company, and he had deposited it in his own bank on the same day, then withdrawn it and turned it over to the finance chairman of Mr. Johnson's campaign in Houston. A long list of similar withdrawals were either proved or were in the process of investigation when the investigation was ended. Brown and Root, whose tax liability had originally been estimated at more than a million dollars, with the fraud penalty of more than $500,000, had its case settled for $372,000.
Mr. Pearson concludes that the details of the IRS findings would be reported the following day and that the important point was not so much what the Treasury had lost but that Senator Johnson had been the victim of a system which required tremendous amounts of money to get a Senator elected.
The Congressional Quarterly discusses the Minnesota Democratic presidential primary in which Senator Kefauver had been the surprise winner over Adlai Stevenson, until then considered the front-runner for the nomination, with the Quarterly suggesting that now Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri may have become the dark horse possibility for the nomination as a result. The Senator was recognized as an accomplished administrator, having been Secretary of the Air Force before becoming a Senator, though his national political vote-getting capacity was unproven. The party organization in Missouri, with the exception of former President Truman, had laid the groundwork, without the Senator's consent, for having him put before the convention as a favorite son candidate.
Senator Kefauver was still opposed by most of the party organization and the bandwagon for Mr. Stevenson had slowed, while Governor Averell Harriman as a possible nominee was drawing active opposition from the South, with the reasoning thus being that Senator Symington might obtain support from all factions.
His most vigorous opposition to the Administration had been in defense policy and spending, contending that it was accomplishing economy at the expense of security. His position on other issues was less well known. On civil rights, he advocated gradualism in accommodating the law as set forth under Brown v. Board of Education. He had voted against the Administration's flexible price supports in the recent omnibus farm bill, as he had also done in 1954. On tax cuts, he favored waiting on any until there was adequate defense and improved government efficiency, suggesting that true integration in the Defense Department could save five billion dollars without reduction in military strength, thereby balancing the budget.
A letter writer suggests that the way to stop vandalism of public property was to take boys and girls 16 years or over and let a stern judge try them, sentence them to the roads at hard labor and wear stripes, with girls sentenced to the kitchen. He finds it foolish to advocate that parents pay the penalty. He says he had used his belt on his boys any time it was necessary, that the Bible said, spare the rod and ruin the child, that he was raised to work and his boys had worked. He thinks that juvenile courts should not try children over age 12, that they should go to adult court, and that parents should not encounter interference on imposition of corporal punishment, that schools ought be allowed to give a "good switching" for not obeying school rules and regulations, that a boy should be put to work reasonably as soon as he turns seven and that girls should be taught to do housework, that they should not be allowed to visit soda shops and parks later than 9:00 p.m. if under age 14, imparting that he had seen children in the park alone late at night. He says that until he was 16, when not working, he had to wash his feet and go to bed by 9:00 and then arise at daylight. He says he saw small children in chain stores picking up things and heard them sassing their parents when corrected, that the rod was the only answer.
Well, that's why they have hot rods.
A letter from the district manager and 23 others who were "employes of a well-known life insurance company, servicing over 50,000 policy-holders in Mecklenburg County", tells of petitioning for officials of the city to endorse daylight savings time for Charlotte.
A letter writer commends the March 21 editorial, "Daylight Saving: What about August?" She says that she also was opposed to that "stupid, senseless scheme called daylight saving time."
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., expresses appreciation to the North Carolina Automobile Association, which had meant much to him during the previous several months, playing a great part in his education.
A letter writer indicates that there was a family living near the unnamed writer's family and that their children played with their children all the time, that they were dirty and appeared hungry all the time and that they had fed them occasionally, that the writer had called the Health Department several weeks earlier to see if they could force the parents to clean up the children, which they had said they could not do, that if it was a dirty yard they could make them clean the yard. They had then called the Welfare Department and they had suggested that the writer's family investigate, and so the writer thinks that the Welfare Department ought be investigated.
A letter writer indicates that to all readers and those interested in the "awful sin of segregation", she is sure that they were not aware of the punishment which awaited them at the judgment, as God was not a segregated God, because he, out of one blood, had made all nations, with the blood of both white and black men being red, as that of all men. She says that it was good that the nation did not have a segregated President, that she believed he was trying to do justice to all. She thinks it was wrong for a judge recently to suggest that when white boys began to run around with black boys, they would soon be in trouble. She had seen where a black woman had gone to a white church and they led her out of the church, indicating that when they led her out, they had also led Jesus out, that the church needed God. Jesus had said: "It is better that a millstone be hung about your neck and you cast in the depths of the sea, than for you to offend one of these little ones." She finds the same thing true of the mob which had formed to prevent Autherine Lucy from attending classes at the University of Alabama, believes that if all men were not loved alike, one could not be a Christian, that material possessions would not admit one to Heaven. "The white man is dust. The black man is dust. So get your mind off the color and get your heart right with God."
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., congratulates the FBI undercover agents and HUAC for focusing the spotlight on the "Communist enemies of freedom in our midst" in the South, also expressing thanks to WBTV for its report to the people on those individuals. He believes that the HUAC subcommittee should have held longer hearings in Charlotte than the three days recently in mid-March. He says that he knew one of the men who had appeared before the subcommittee and refused to answer questions, that when he was young, he would have never dreamed that the individual would have come to that pass, that he was not raised by his parents to advocate the destruction of the Government. He noticed by the testimony of the FBI undercover agent, Odis Reavis, that he was employed as a worker at Western Electric in Winston-Salem and that while he was posing as a member of the Communist Party, members of the NAACP had asked him to take part in one of their meetings, and yet that latter organization claimed to have nothing to do with the Communist Party, that if the man's statement was true, he wonders why he was invited to an NAACP meeting, that none of the white members of the Patriots of North Carolina, Inc., had so been invited. He cautions people against joining any organization without making sure of what it stood for, as he believed "something is under this racial issue besides just wanting an education and to mix the people in different walks of life in this country—especially in the South."
It's them Commie miscegenators, ain't it?
Framed Edition
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