The Charlotte News
Saturday, March 31, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had stated in a letter to Governor Leroy Collins of Florida that he would consider calling special conferences to deal with civil rights problems, should Congress not act to create a bipartisan race relations commission, that one such conference might be a meeting of Southern governors and attorneys general, as proposed by Governor Collins. The President had stated in his State of the Union message in January that he would recommend establishment of a bipartisan study commission to investigate complaints of infringements of civil rights. But the Administration had not yet provided Congress its recommendations in that area, as Justice Department officials reportedly were redrafting parts of the program, which presumably would call for creation of a bipartisan group. The President also stated to Governor Collins that it seemed to him that the progress already made in certain parts of the South before and since the Brown v. Board of Education decision represented a clear indication that there could be even greater progress through "moderate and responsible leadership supported by a spirit of patience on the part of all of our people."
In London, it was reported that
Moscow radio had said this date that Russia had accepted the basic
idea of President Eisenhower's "open skies" aerial
inspection plan and proposed a three-month arms freeze to be followed
by all-around cuts in conventional arms and armies, while tests of
all hydrogen weaponry would be banned. The proposal called for
immediate agreement on reduction of conventional armaments, which the
Soviets contended would facilitate agreement on prohibition of atomic
and thermonuclear weapons and their removal from national armaments.
Russia made the proposal at the five-power U.N. disarmament talks in
London, presently closing its second week. The U.S., Britain, France
and Canada were also represented at the conference. Although the
Russian proposal had been made in secret, some details had emerged
from the conference, but the report by the official Soviet news
agency Tass was the first broad public disclosure of it. It stated
that there would be a three-month freeze on arms and armaments at the
level they had been at the end of 1955, that after those three
months, the U.S., the Soviet Union and Communist China would begin
cutting their armed forces to a level of between one million and 1.5
million men each, with Britain and France cutting their forces to
650,000 men each, those reductions to be completed in 1958, with
corresponding reductions in conventional armaments and military
appropriations. Creation of an international control agency to check
on "fulfillment of obligations" at big ports and airfields,
army bases and depots and munitions factories was also included in
the proposal, with such an agency to make recommendations to the U.N.
Security Council "on measures of preventing and stopping the
actions of violators of the agreement." In addition to the
immediate ban of thermonuclear tests, there would be a ban on atomic
weapons in Germany, creation of a "zone of limitation" in a
section of Europe including East and West Germany, and that the Big
Four powers would agree on how many troops they could station in
territories of other states within that zone. It also proposed a
conference to settle the question of Communist China's armed forces
with that country being a participant. Neither the White House nor
the State Department had any comment on the broadcast
The President's soil bank program had won the unexpected approval of Senate and House confreres as part of 1.7 billion dollars in payments to farmers, 1.2 billion of which represented the soil bank plan of paying farmers to take land out of production. The confreres had voted the previous day to authorize 500 million additional dollars for buying pork and other perishable commodities not eligible for regular price supports. (That could be a pork barrel part of the bill.) It was still undecided by the conference whether they would agree to make soil bank participation voluntary, as the Administration was seeking, or compulsory, as the Senate had voted in its bill. The soil bank program was the major recommendation of the Administration for new farm legislation for the year, but the Senate, and now the joint conference, had tied it to rigid price supports and other provisions opposed by the Administration, raising the threat of a Presidential veto. The soil bank proposal, which had not come before the House, had been approved the previous day in virtually the same form as it had emerged in the Senate bill. One of its two sections would provide 7.5 million dollars per year for four years as payments to farmers who cut back allotted production of cotton, wheat, corn, rice, tobacco and peanuts.
In Aberdeen, Wash., a 76-year old man had allegedly killed three others and himself, according to the local coroner, all killed with a .38-caliber revolver fired at close range into their heads. Gasoline had been poured over the bodies and splashed through the rooms. No motive for the killing had been established. The local sheriff's deputies had put a scenario together under which the perpetrator of the crime had arranged with an Aberdeen funeral home for his own funeral and burial, at about which time two of the victims, who were believed to be in-laws, had moved in with the man, and acquaintances said that the perpetrator had told them that he had agreed to will his property to the two in return for their care until his death. The third victim had come to the home a week or ten days earlier to visit. The postman had discovered the bodies after no one had answered a knock on the door, seeing one of the bodies lying on a bed, prompting him to call the sheriff's office. Meanwhile, the funeral parlor had received a letter from the perpetrator, including a copy of the funeral arrangement agreement, which had said that by the time they received it, they could come out and get him, that he would be in the chicken house, which is where the authorities found his body, nearby which were found a suit, white shirt, long underwear, necktie and socks, all of which were new and fit for burial attire.
Near Charlotte, repairs on the Buster Boyd Bridge across the Catawba River, which had twice been postponed the previous year because of objections by local citizens, would get underway the following Tuesday morning, with two residents of Charlotte having expressed unhappiness about it, one, the district manager of a cotton oil company, having stated that the April closing would interfere with farmers who crossed the bridge to pick up fertilizer to ensure their good crop. He and others had objected the previous year when the Highway Commission, following one postponement, had announced plans to close the bridge for repairs the previous September, with another postponement announced shortly afterward. He said that a closure in January or February would have been better. The 30-year old bridge was reportedly in danger of collapse from heavy summer traffic when state engineers inspected it a year earlier, and it had also suffered damage when a truck had smashed into it.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that County Police Chief Joe Whitley had expressed alarm this date at the "deplorable" accident rate after a Monroe man had become the 11th traffic fatality in Mecklenburg County during the year. The latest victim had died in the hospital during the morning as a result of head injuries sustained in a wreck on Highway 74 east, about two miles from Charlotte in the wee hours this date. At the same hospital, in critical condition, was his companion, a man also from Monroe. According to the County police, the car had been traveling toward Charlotte when it ran off the road and turned over on the grass median, with the car a total loss, a witness reporting that it had been traveling at a high rate of speed at the time. Because of the extent of the damage, police could not determine who was driving at the time of the accident. Thus far during the year, eight persons had been killed in traffic accidents in the city and the Charlotte traffic captain described the situation as "extremely grave".
On the sports pages of this date, two stories would be of special interest to residents of Charlotte, one concerning native born Whitey Lockman and his bid with the New York Giants, stating that he was having a good spring training, with Bob Quincy reporting that he explained his problems of waiting to see what his competitors did. Ronald Green reported on a $60,000 pitch-and-putt course in the making for Charlotte golfers, which would be constructed by the following fall.
Thousands of North Carolina Christians would greet Easter the following morning at traditional worship services commemorating the Resurrection of Christ. Some showers were expected the following night in the western and northwestern sections of this date, with more general rains on Monday. Most schools were out on Friday and Monday, and students were participating in Easter egg hunts, to continue through Monday. The major sunrise service in the state would be in Old Salem, where some 25,000 persons had gathered the previous year for the Moravian Church observance, where Bishop J. Kenneth Pfohl would lead the program, as he had for the previous 25 years. Dr. Paul Scherer of the Union Theological Seminary faculty in New York would speak at Charlotte's 29th annual sunrise services in Freedom Park. At Fields of the Wood near Murphy, N.C., more than 5,000 persons were expected for probably the state's earliest Easter services, beginning at the religious park of the Church of God of Prophecy at 4:30 a.m. At dawn, explosives to simulate an earthquake would be set off as part of the outdoor pageant, with Christ played by one of the more than 30 members of the cast, reenacting the Resurrection, with an all-night service preceding the pageant. Other sunrise services would be taking place at various locations across the state, which are also provided.
Easter weekend weather would be clear over Charlotte and temperatures would continue to be springlike, according to the Weather Bureau. The low early morning temperature for the following day was expected to be 38 degrees but by church time, was expected to climb to a high of 70, ten degrees warmer than the anticipated high for this date.
On the editorial page, "The Easter Story" quotes the Book of John from the Bible, chapter 20, verses 1 through 17.
"Easter 1956: An Urgent Need for Faith" suggests that modern man might or might not be standing at the "crossroads" on Easter weekend, 1956, being difficult to judge such things. But it indicates that it did know that never had there been a greater need for faith, "the great moving force which has transformed persuasion and belief into a kind of passionate intuition that has always brought out the best in mankind."
It posits that in the present decade, there was great and fearful social unrest, with many doubting as a result. But faith could rid the mind of those "oppressive specters. Where faith shines, man is armed against fear. And fear is what haunts him most today."
It suggests that the promise and possibility of rebirth stemmed directly from the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, as God's promise to mankind that all men could be reborn again and that all souls could be redeemed from the bondage of sin. But without faith, there was no hope for either man or the world. If man believed only in his own sin without believing in the miracle of redemption, then his religion rested on insecure ground.
It concludes that there were great tasks ahead for mankind, as there had always been, and that people of sturdy faith had invariably survived to rise above their hardships, as such people always would.
"FDR Is Not Running This Time" stresses that, contrary to appearances, FDR was not running for the Presidency in the current year, that his name ought be withdrawn before the health issue regarding the President became even more confused.
For the candidacy of FDR in 1944 had become the stock answer in some quarters to criticism of the President's decision to run again, with the argument being that if the Democrats ran an ill man for the Presidency in 1944, there was nothing wrong with Republicans running a victim of a heart attack.
It finds that the answer went for naught for if the parallel had any pertinency, it was suicidal for politicians who were using it, for the reason that FDR's health had not held up, as he died just three months after the beginning of his fourth term.
It posits that the health issue for the voter in the current year was whether or not to trust the health of the President for another four years and that, if not, whether his running mate had the capacity and temperament to replace him, with FDR's motives or judgment having nothing to do with the situation.
"All You Have To Do Is Find Them" indicates that despite its editorial lament of March 3, the ancient and honorable art of mixing metaphors had not completely vanished from the continent.
It cites a speech by Arthur Bruen at the National Installment Credit Conference in St. Louis, warning against accepting packed prices for new cars and exaggerated valuations of old cars traded for them. He said: "You must wring the water from both sides of sale if you are to see the transaction in the raw."
It cites another example from the House Merchant Marine Committee, where someone had stated: "Isn't it about time for maritime labor and management to get together on long-term plans or must the golden goose be killed before the barn door is locked?"
It concludes that it proved that "still water is only skin deep and that if one will only leave no stone unturned and listen one will encounter more mixed metaphors than one can shake a stick at."
A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "One More for the Book Booters", tells of publisher Grossett & Dunlap being happy about Tom Swift, Jr., stating in a publicity blurb sent to book editors that he was as talented at foreshadowing the miracles of invention as his father had ever been. Books telling of his adventures were being written by Victor Appleton II, a series begun a couple of years earlier, filling a void created when the original Tom Swift shelf had reached its end shortly before World War II.
Junior, in 1952, had invented the flying seacopter, although the account of it had just come off the press. Meanwhile, the Defense Department was still struggling with such a contraption on its drawing boards. But Tom's gizmo could "travel through the air in normal helicopter fashion, or beneath the surface of the seas as a submarine. The 'copter is raised or lowered in the water by motor blades located in its center section. The blades are powered by a steam turbine. The superheated steam required for this power is manufactured by an atomic reactor (as you might have known) located below the blades and turbine housing…"
It says that there was more and it would be glad to give the publisher's memo to the first person who called wearing a spaceman's antenna. Its interest lay not in the genius of Tom Swift, Jr., but in what the library people were likely to think of him. Upon the advice of the American Library Association, they had just gotten through taking out the elderly Tom's series from the stacks, as his improbabilities and redundancies offended the librarians. It notes parenthetically that while he had figured out the photo telephone in 1914, some three decades before wire photos became generalized, and had pioneered in submarines, giant searchlights and electric locomotives, doubts continued to be entertained about the prospects of his electric rifle, skytrain and ocean airport. It questions whether the son would be allowed to dwell where the father was not welcome.
It suggests that the question was not likely to become the subject of theses for doctorates among students of library science, as second-generation boy wonders did not seem to be as enduring as their elders, asking that the reader consider, for instance, Frank Merriwell, Jr., who had shown up half a dozen autumns in the past but did not stay around long enough to collect his Yale football "Y" at the spring sports banquet.
Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and the American Dairy Association having fallen out over the Dairy Queen of 1956, Ruth Marie Peterson, 20, of Minnesota. She had been crowned in the presence of Secretary Benson, who initially refused then to pose with her sharing a glass of milk with two separate straws, the Secretary believing it was unsanitary and told photographers to leave. After he had been reminded by his staff, however, that if word were to leak that he had spurned such a photograph, it would not look good in the press, he agreed to have the photograph taken. After that point, the Secretary and his staff had been enthusiastic about Ms. Peterson and were sending her on a tour of Japan the following month to boost American milk, at least the dried variety, of which there was an abundance of surplus being held in Government warehouses. The Secretary wanted to expand the markets for the dried milk, and so was also sending Ms. Peterson to Spain, Italy and Colombia. But the American Dairy Association was not pleased as they favored fresh milk. The Minnesota branch of the Association had nevertheless put up $2,500 for Ms. Peterson's tour of Japan, while the Department was footing the bill for her trip to Colombia. Her trips to Spain and Italy had been canceled at the behest of the parent ADA.
Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee had called Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota during the former's trip through California, shortly after Senator Kefauver had beaten Adlai Stevenson in an upset in the Minnesota primary. After the phone call, Senator Humphrey said that one could not help but like "that guy", that he did not know what he had but he had something, with another Senator remarking, "vote appeal", with which Senator Richard Russell of Georgia agreed, saying that he had learned that in the Florida primary in 1952 against Senator Kefauver.
Senator William Jenner of Indiana was a shrewd, instinctive politician who came from the backwoods with an acute sense of smell regarding public mood. Two weeks before the 1955 Indiana municipal elections, he had predicted to the Indiana voters that the Republicans would get the "darndest licking we took since 1930", that they would lose every city except Fort Wayne. And the Republican mayors of 70 Indiana cities had all lost, except in Fort Wayne. Recently, the Senator was approached by the same Indiana friend who found him no more optimistic about Republicans in the future, having gone on record publicly that his colleague, Senator Homer Capehart, would lose to former Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard in the general election. He said that he had been pleading with the RNC, but its chairman, Leonard Hall, only looked at him and said that the polls showed that the President was far ahead and that the Republicans were going to win by putting the President on television where he could talk about "peace, prosperity and progress."
Marquis Childs tells of the little-noticed announcement of the visit to Washington of Prime Minister Nehru of India the following July having possibly far-reaching consequences for U.S. foreign policy in Asia. The Prime Minister had a lot to do with initiating the ambassadorial-level talks between Communist China and the U.S. in Geneva, which had come close to a stalemate, with Peking radio having been putting forth threats that they would be terminated, with the implication that military action against Formosa might follow unless the U.S. showed greater willingness to negotiate the points which the Communists deemed vital.
The announcement of the visit of Prime Minister Nehru with the President would, in the belief of Washington observers, result in Communist China's Foreign Minister Chou En-Lai suspending drastic action. Intelligence reports also showed no signs of preparatory action by the Communists against Formosa. Prime Minister Nehru and Chou remained in close personal contact regarding many aspects of Asiatic policy. Shortly after the President's September 24 heart attack, Chou had sent a long message to Nehru expressing concern that the President apparently had been eliminated from the world scene, that Chou had come to believe after the Big Four Geneva summit conference the prior summer that the President was a man of peace and believed it doubtful that those who were running policy in his stead would pursue the same policy.
Prime Minister Nehru had also been impressed by the President's words at Geneva and following the conference had exchanged a series of letters with the President in which the latter urged the Prime Minister to visit Washington and the Prime Minister urged the President to visit India where he would receive a warm welcome.
When Secretary of State Dulles had visited New Delhi during his recent tour of Southeast Asia, he had personally renewed, on behalf of the President, the invitation to visit and the Prime Minister had agreed, one of the beneficial results of the Secretary's tour, which had been heavily criticized. Signs of improvement in U.S.-Indian relations were evident from the meeting. Walter Reuther, head of the combined AFL-CIO, was visiting the Indian National Trades Union Congress as a good will representative from the U.S. and would talk to Nehru and other Government leaders. There was also hope that Chief Justice Earl Warren would informally visit India the following summer and Nehru was expected to urge the visit when he arrived in Washington.
But basic differences remained between the two countries, with Prime Minister Nehru having denounced recently SEATO and the Baghdad Pact, expressing that SEATO powers had spoken of the need to settle the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir through a U.N.-conducted plebiscite, which India was resisting.
Fundamental differences also remained with Communist China, as the Government there still held 13 of the 19 Americans whom the Communists had said the prior September would be released. The U.S. had refused a meeting at the foreign ministry level until the Chinese renounced the use of force against Formosa, which the Communists said they would never do. The State Department assumed that the stalemated talks could be maintained indefinitely without risk of attack on Quemoy and Matsu, if not on Formosa, itself.
It had been said that the talks between Prime Minister Nehru and the President would be friendly, in the same vein as those of the recent North American summit conference, but Mexico and Canada had no real differences with the U.S., whereas the differences with India could not be glossed over in ceremony, placing the visit of Nehru on a different and more serious footing.
A letter writer states that throughout the recent investigation of the Welfare Department, the writer, who chooses to remain anonymous, had kept hoping that the Department would point out some of the conditions for which the County Commission and all citizens of the county shared responsibility, making the Department's work more difficult than it needed to be for want of adequate budgets for welfare aid and limitation of staff positions, preventing workers from doing as much constructive work with persons who needed help as they wanted to do. While one case of neglect had been examined, there were hundreds of other cases of neglect about which the citizenry heard nothing, persons in need of financial assistance. Welfare budgets were generally estimated on a minimal basis to cover the needs of an individual or family and then only 70 percent of any budget was provided. But as landlords, utility companies and other bill collectors rarely accepted payment of only 70 percent, recipients of aid had to obtain the other 30 percent from their already inadequate food budgets. Children of families receiving aid were granted about 55 cents per day to cover their share of the family's complete needs and no child whose family received welfare was allowed to have free school lunches, despite their being fed inadequately in their home meals. Money for school lunches was quite limited and made available through school funds to equally deserving and hungry children. It concludes that people in need in the county did not receive adequate assistance to enable them to meet minimal standards of physical health or security enough to protect or promote mental health. The writer urges the citizens of the county to become better acquainted with the problems which the Welfare Department's employees faced every day.
A letter writer from Lincolnton offers something for the "nation's so-called do-gooders to think about", that Abraham Lincoln was the best friend which the black race ever had and yet, he suggests, if President Lincoln were alive at present, he would be on the South's side in its opposition to the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and against the NAACP and other organizations which were seeking "to force integration upon the people of our nation." He quotes from a speech from Charleston, Ill., in 1858, the fourth debate with Senator Stephen Douglas over abolition of slavery, in which Mr. Lincoln had stated: "I will say then that I am not now nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I'm not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe forever forbids the two races living together in social and political equality." He also states that when President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, he had said, in part, "I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro in our social and political life."
And so, the writer would have people believe that society and its attitudes should not have advanced in the century since that time, that time had stood still since the Civil War.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., quotes from three press accounts, one from the October 14, 1955 U.S. News & World Report, from a dispatch of December 1, 1955 by reporter William Longwood to the New York World Telegram and Sun, and from a January 15, 1956 dispatch by Cairo correspondent Osgood Caruthers of the New York Times, all essentially saying that the "Voice of the Arabs" radio was becoming an influential propaganda medium in the Middle East and Africa, and, in the wake of the Soviet arms barter for cotton with Egypt the prior fall, had been providing praise to the Soviets while condemning the U.S. as "imperialistic". The writer concludes that it was argued that the U.S. should not antagonize Egypt, but that the Government was allowing the British and French Governments to condemn the nefarious activities of Egypt in stirring up bloodshed and hatred in North Africa and the Middle East, finds the position as strange as the Government's attitude regarding failure to arm Israel because it did not want to launch an arms race. He concludes that if Secretary of State Dulles had lived in the time of King Saul, he would have refused David a slingshot because he could not handle a sword the size of Goliath's.
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