The Charlotte News
Tuesday, March 6, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Bonn, West Germany, that the Bundestag, the lower house of the parliament, this date had approved, by an overwhelming vote on a show of hands, permanent legislation to rearm West Germany for the defense of Europe, passing the so-called "Soldier's Law" which would permit the fast buildup of a powerful German army, navy and air force. Fourteen constitutional amendments intended to place firm civilian controls on the armed forces had been passed by a vote of 390 to 20. The legislation would now go to the upper house for final approval, which was expected to occur by March 16. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's supporters were joined by anti-rearmament Socialists in pushing through the amendments, with the deputies proclaiming that the amendments would prevent the armed forces from again becoming a "state within a state", as they had been under the Weimar Republic which had preceded Hitler. The new law would authorize the Government to recruit an elite group of 150,000 volunteers, to form the backbone of the projected 500,000-man armed force. The law also provided the rights and duties of soldiers, sailors and airmen.
In London, it was reported that former Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov would head a delegation of Russian electrical experts in a visit to the British capital during the current month, the visit having been arranged sometime earlier, according to a British Government official, but the Russians had not announced until the previous day that Mr. Malenkov would head the group.
Senator Walter George of Georgia said this date that the Nebraska lawyer-lobbyist John Neff had engaged in "manifestly improper" activities on behalf of the natural gas deregulation bill, but that he had done nothing illegal. The Senator headed the special investigating committee which concluded its public hearings the previous day into Mr. Neff's offer of a $2,500 campaign contribution to Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, who had rejected it. Senator George said that the evidence indicated that Mr. Neff had engaged in a "clear pattern" of activities in five states to generate support for the measure, that he appeared to be "trying to make good with the people who put up the money" in an effort "either to bolster existing sentiment or create sentiment for the gas bill." A Federal grand jury had been conducting its own inquiry to see if there was enough evidence of any violation of the law. Senator George also commended Senator Case for informing the Senate during the debate on the gas bill that he was rejecting the $2,500 offer, which had originated with Howard Keck, president of the Superior Oil Co. of California. After the bill had passed the Senate and House, the President had vetoed it on the basis that "arrogant" tactics had been used in its behalf.
Total farm income had fallen by nearly a billion dollars the previous year, according to the Agriculture Department this date, while the non-farm income had risen above 1954 levels. The major factor in the decline was a further drop of about 10 percent in farm product costs, offset to some extent by a 3 percent increase in the volume of farm production the previous year. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson had said that farm income would increase if Congress acted promptly to enact a soil bank plan, recommended by the President, under which the Government would make payments totaling up to 1.1 billion dollars per year to farmers for voluntarily taking land out of production of surplus crops, but would also eliminate the Administration's flexible price support system and restore high, rigid farm price supports, which were opposed by the President and Secretary Benson.
Westinghouse this date accepted a Government mediation plan for settling the 142-day strike at its plants, but no word had yet come from the striking International Union of Electrical Workers regarding whether it would accept the plan. The settlement provided for a compromise on all pending issues. The strike, begun the prior October, involved about 55,000 workers in 40 plants, and was the longest major walkout in 20 years. The IUE was reported balking at some of the terms of the proposed settlement, one such term being the phase of the plan which would submit to arbitration the question of whether or not some 37 discharged workers would be restored to their jobs.
In Norfolk, Va., a former officer of the now-defunct Commonwealth Building & Loan Association had waived a police court hearing and her case was sent to the grand jury this date regarding a charge of stealing $174,661 from her former employers. She had been at liberty since her arrest on December 29 on a $25,000 bond, but the district attorney had moved to increase it to $50,000, and the police justice agreed. She had been charged with larceny of $100,000 during 1955 and the police justice granted a motion by the prosecutor to amend the warrant to the stated sum. Auditors had reported that they had discovered shortages of approximately $2,219,000.
In Raleigh, trustees of the proposed consolidated Presbyterian College heard reports this date from three committees as a decision neared on where to locate the new four-year institution among five eastern North Carolina communities, Lumberton, Laurinburg, Rocky Mount, Wilmington or Fayetteville, with the balloting expected to go on through successive votes during the afternoon and into the night, with the possibility being that a final decision would not come until the next day.
In Buies Creek, N.C., a Campbell College professor had been fired because he refused to answer questions "concerning his political or religious views as they affect the college." The professor had been subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC subcommittee set to hold hearings in Charlotte in mid-March. The trustees of the College said that they had conferred at length with the instructor concerning his attitudes and beliefs in view of his recent subpoena, but that he had declined at the request of the trustees to make a statement clarifying his position or to submit to a leave of absence pending the outcome of the hearings. He had admitted having been identified as a Communist by a Charlotte attorney who had been an undercover FBI agent and by a former student whom he had taught, saying he did not wish to dignify charges leveled against him by a self-confessed, paid spy and by an informer who boasted that he recruited his teacher into the Communist Party and then reported him to the FBI. A few years down the pike, you can attend John Wooden's basketball camp at Campbell in the summertime, as long as your parents don't object to the clear Commie connections. Bruins... The Russian Bear...
J. A. Daly of The News reports that Charlotte and North Carolina shippers and receivers of freight were in a dither this date over actual and prospective increases in railroad, express and motor truck transportation charges, both interstate and intrastate.
In Charlotte, a statue dedicated to the World War I doughboy infantryman, which had been located near the old Armory-Auditorium for 20 years, was going to be moved to a more suitable location at Freedom Park, after local veterans organizations had asked permission of the Park and Recreation Commission to make the move. There was the possibility that there would also be yet another move of the statue later.
Near Chicago, a 16-year old boy
yielded to the orders of school officials in suburban Forest Park and
shaved off his week-old red beard. He had been shaving for two years
and had been sent home by school officials with orders not to return
until he was clean shaven, telling him that their students had to be
dressed properly and that a beard was not proper. The student had
started growing the beard a week earlier so that he could participate
in the suburb's centennial celebration in June. The boy's mother and
the student conferred with the mayor and police chief, both of whom
questioned the authority of school officials in the matter but
persuaded the youth to shave
In Trento, Italy, a 35-year old woman had become a mother and a grandmother within 11 days, having given birth to her seventh child on February 21 and then the previous day her oldest daughter, 19, having given birth to her first child.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Dr.
Douglas Kenny of the University of British Columbia suggested that if
a person only received a few moments of awkward silence after telling
what the teller believed was a ripping good joke, the likelihood was
that the person was telling either the wrong kind of joke or that the
joke had the wrong kind of ending. The assistant professor of
psychology called it the discrepancy hypothesis in a paper titled,
"The Contingency of Humor Appreciation on the
Stimulus-Confirmation of Joke-Ending Expectations", printed in
the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. The professor
said that the title of his article was funnier than any of the 30
jokes he tested in the preparation of the report. He concluded that
the more predictable the punchline of a joke, the funnier it was to
the listener, disputing the idea held since the days of Aristotle
that the surprise ending was better. He had first gathered the 30
jokes from college humor publications, from the works of Sigmund
Freud and other sources, none of them being naughty. He had then
chosen 114 University students and divided them into two groups, the
first having perused the 30 jokes and rated them in three ways, those
with predictable endings, those having moderate expectation and those
with surprise endings. The second group evaluated the same jokes on a
humor rating scale, between very funny and highly unpleasant. An
example of the jokes which had rated highest was one in which a coed
said that she would like to see the captain
On the editorial page, "Air All the Facts in the Hottle Case" finds that there was a great need for revelation of the Welfare Department's role in the case of the seriously abused three-year old child who had died the previous Christmas Eve after being assaulted repeatedly and brutally by her stepmother, occurring after the Welfare Department had investigated and approved the home. It indicates that any lingering doubts and suspicions had to be dissolved if the agency was to operate efficiently and with the full confidence of the citizenry.
It finds that there had been substantial misinformation and misunderstanding on the part of the public arousing a large part of the alarm, and so the County commissioners needed to conduct a thorough study of the matter. The Department had enjoyed an excellent reputation through the years and the piece is certain that it had nothing to hide.
We note that the newspaper had properly refrained from allowing reporter Charles Kuralt to report on the matter, as he would have the appearance of bias toward his father's agency.
"Is This the Way the Wind Blows?" tells of State Representative Edward O'Herron, Jr., possibly not seeking re-election to his seat, a prospect which it finds unfortunate, as, through the years, he had represented Mecklenburg County with considerable skill and devotion, as well as exercising legislative leadership, being highly regarded as an authority on North Carolina's fiscal affairs, making important contributions in that little understood field. He enjoyed great respect among his legislative colleagues and had been prominently mentioned for the speakership of the House.
It hopes that he would ultimately offer himself for re-election.
"The Senate Must Hang Out the Linen" finds that the probe of campaign spending and lobbying was mired in Senate reluctance, with the depth of it gauged by the continuing wrangle over rules and the chairmanship of the bipartisan committee, and by comments of Senator Barry Goldwater, a member of the committee.
The Senator, after admitting that he took some of the oil money offered but declined by Senator Francis Case from the Superior Oil Co. and its ruling family, the Kecks, but explaining that he had not done so during the Senate debate on the natural gas deregulation bill, said: "If everybody who received a contribution from Keck went before the committee, I imagine half the House and Senate would be up there."
The piece finds that Senator Goldwater had thus explained the reluctance and unintentionally dramatized the need for the investigation to begin, urging that half the House and Senate therefore ought be brought before the committee, as well as politicians who received campaign money in large amounts from labor unions, about which Senator Goldwater had complained.
It indicates that the oil lobby had already indicted the Senate by exerting unethical pressure for the natural gas measure, that although punitive action against individual Senators would not help, public examination of the size and methods of various lobbies was required to prove to the public it had not misplaced its confidence in the Senate. Remedial legislation was needed, as current laws on lobbying and campaign spending were inadequate. Not only did the public need protection but members of Congress also needed protection from suspicion created by exposure to lobbying efforts like that in the instance of Senator Case.
It concludes that the Senate was going to have to hang out its linen and that it ought to get started right away doing so.
"An Unseemly Sop from the Archivist" tells of Thomas Jefferson having said that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was spurious, but that it had been left to North Carolina historian Hugh Lefler to deliver the unkindest cut of all, when he said that people should quit arguing about it, after it had been admitted to the State Hall of History as an auxiliary exhibit to a display of the State flag, which bore its putative date, May 20, 1775. Dr. Lefler had said that he would quit asserting that the "weight of evidence is against it."
It suggests that he had underestimated Mecklenburg County residents, as had Dr. Christopher Crittenden, head of the State Archives, with his "unseemly sop of admitting the Declaration to explain the date of the flag," that it was only a stratagem to weaken Mecklenburg residents in fighting the good fight.
It says that they had only just begun to fight, that if they could not prevail against such figures as Mr. Jefferson and Drs. Lefler and Crittenden, they would at least maintain a lively interest in history and perhaps produce historians one day who could deliver the correct verdict on the matter.
A piece from the Memphis Press-Scimitar, titled "Plenty for All, But…" suggests that all troubles and problems came from one central fact, that mankind had developed technology at such a rapid rate that people could produce all the things that any member of the human race anywhere needed for a prosperous and happy life, while spiritual and mental development had not proceeded at a correspondingly rapid rate such that mankind lacked the wisdom to live with one another in such a way that all could have enough and each enjoy what they had.
It posits that man lived the best and fullest life close to nature and technology made it possible to live as comfortably in the country as in the city. Yet, instead of directing economics, economics were pushing people around and the population of farms and villages was decreasing while big cities were growing larger and more crowded.
Instead of building and using a mass transportation system in the urban areas, each person was stubbornly insisting on driving a private vehicle, with vanity demanding that the car every year get bigger and more luxurious, more like a powerful personal locomotive, though used primarily for short trips and errands. Then, people fumed when the streets were choked with traffic.
Factories could produce plenty for all but people had not learned to get along with each other and strikes resulted, with the consequence that the factories did not produce anything.
A surplus of food was being produced but it was often ruined in the process of mass production which made much of it not fit to eat.
Clean air was being polluted with smog and the pure streams with refuse.
It indicates finally that after performing the miracle of splitting the atom, people had so neglected research into how to make minds behave and reach the minds of other men, while growing everyone's soul and helping other men to grow theirs, that people cowered in terror at the prospect that the human race would destroy itself, perhaps in the present time.
Men had achieved the conquest of the environment of which the ancient philosophers hardly dared to dream. "Let us start the conquest of ourselves so we can use the victory over nature we have won. Now. Tomorrow may be too late."
Drew Pearson tells of the use of a chemical derived from petroleum as a "freshener" in rolls, cookies and other bakery products, though having been banned three years earlier from use in bread after the FDA had successfully fought its use. Polyoxyethelene monostearate was still being used in the other bakery products because of complicated legal procedures designed to hamper the FDA in protecting the public. Members of Congress, certain food manufacturers and FDA administrator George Larrick were seeking to plug a loophole in the law by requiring Government approval before chemicals could be added to food products, pointing out that during the previous 15 years, approximately 25,000 such chemicals had been screened by manufacturers and 24,600 had been discarded as unsafe, with an estimated 150 of the 400 presently still in use having never received adequate testing.
One Congressman, Joseph O'Hara of Minnesota, had authored a bill ostensibly designed to close the loophole, actually, however, leaving FDA virtually powerless, having to go to court every time they wanted to ban a chemical after finding it dangerous. A representative of the Manufacturing Chemists Associations, Inc., was the chief source of pressure on Mr. O'Hara, who had the backing of several representatives of the food and packing industries. Nine food industry groups were backing the chemical firms in their drive to maintain the loophole.
Chief Justice Earl Warren and the 11 chief judges of the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal were opposed to the position of the chemical industry as they believed the overworked Federal trial courts were not competent to decide highly scientific matters, agreeing that the FDA should have the power to enforce its findings. Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Biggs, Jr., had so testified before the House committee, but Mr. O'Hara had been adamant. The general counsel for HEW had argued that they did not ask physicians for legal advice, disturbing to Mr. O'Hara, adding that he had given the bill about the most distorted view of anybody of whom the counsel had ever heard. Mr. Pearson says that Mr. O'Hara was still blocking the FDA in its attempt to protect housewives.
Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had been discussing the advantages of a balanced budget at a closed-door meeting of the House Appropriations Committee, telling the members that as long as income could be balanced against outgo, the country would not go bankrupt. Representative J. Vaughan Gary of Virginia agreed and expressed the hope that the Secretary's estimates of receipts would prove correct for fiscal year 1957 and that Congress would find the means of reducing expenditures without weakening national defense. The Secretary said that it would be wonderful if they could do it.
Representative Charles Boyle of Chicago, 48, recently had become a father for the ninth time, tying Representative "Gus" Kelley of Pennsylvania, 72, as the "champion dad" of Congress.
Democrats were getting laughs with a grisly joke about two Democrats meeting on the street, one saying to the other, "Wouldn't it be awful if anything should happen to Ike and Nixon became President?" The other Democrat responded, "What about if Sherman Adams died and Ike became President?"
Jacob Michael, Zionist owner of the SS James Monroe, carrying the 18 light tanks to Saudi Arabia, had admitted publicly that his family owned the vessel, having earlier denied it to Mr. Pearson. He says that he was now seeking to transfer the ship to another port.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop discuss the dismissal by King Hussein of Jordan of British Lt. General John Bagot Glubb as military commander of the Arab Legion, indicating that one citizen had asked them why he should care as he did not even know where the country was. Yet, they comment, U.S. interests and even the future of the country were both directly involved in the crisis in the Middle East and thus it was well to try to be clear about what had really happened and then to examine what it really might mean.
What had occurred was that three relatively novel pressures had upset the established order in Jordan, the first of which, and probably the most important, having been the increasing nationalism which had made it increasingly intolerable for all of the former colonial peoples to have Westerners in key positions in their countries. All over Asia, the position occupied by General Glubb as head of the Transjordanian Army had been an anachronism, one which might have carried on much longer had it not been for the two other pressures.
The second pressure was more of a temptation, with the Saudi Arabian Government extremely wealthy by Middle Eastern standards, derived from American oil royalties, a substantial share of which had been used to subsidize the politicians and the press in neighboring countries, having had a great impact on Jordan, small and poor. The Government of Jordan had long been subsidized by the British, with the whole bill for the Arab Legion having been picked up by British taxpayers. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, primarily the former, had recently been offering to pay the bill which Britain had always underwritten, with the dismissal of General Glubb meaning that the Jordanian Government had been transferred from the British to the Saudi Arabian payroll.
The third pressure was the new Soviet political offensive in the Middle East. There had been Communist infiltration of the masses in Jordan, much further advanced than most people realized. When the British had sought to bring Jordan into the Baghdad Pact, the Communists led the riots which had defeated the British attempt, with that Communist influence having likely softened King Hussein such that he was willing to do business with his family's Saudi Arabian enemies. Communist agents, disguised as Arab Nationalists, also had far-reaching influence at the court of King Saud in Saudi Arabia.
The money which King Saud was dispensing was American money from the royalties of the Arabian-American Oil Co. The British influence in Jordan, symbolized by General Glubb, represented the last remnants of the British imperial position in the Middle East, a kind of visible guarantee of British control of the little Arab sheikdoms to the south of Jordan, such as Bahrain and Kuwait, also reinforcing the Western links of the much larger neighboring state of Iraq, the key member of the Baghdad Pact. The Alsops indicate that if anything unlucky happened to Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq, it would not only break the Baghdad Pact, but would interrupt the flow of oil from those areas to Britain and Western Europe, without which Britain would go bankrupt. The Western European economies, even if they would not become totally bankrupt, would come to a halt for want of Middle Eastern petroleum. The jugular vein of Western Europe and Britain was the oil from the Middle East.
Thus, they conclude, the future of America's principal NATO partners was in play in the Middle Eastern power game, in which the Jordan crisis was a major incident. The power game was all the more important to the U.S. because the U.S. was reliant on Britain and Western Europe for their control of the overseas airbases on which the striking power of the U.S. strategic air command was wholly dependent. What had occurred in Jordan could eventually affect the concept of massive retaliation, and so to that extent, the U.S. was involved.
Marquis Childs indicates that within the previous month there had been a sharp struggle among the inner circle close to the President over the future of Vice-President Nixon, with the pro-Nixon faction having been divided over whether he should remain on the ticket. But now it was as certain as anything in the uncertain business of politics that the Vice-President would remain, particularly so since RNC chairman Leonard Hall had provided his public blessing to Mr. Nixon.
There had been a point at which, however, the anti-Nixon faction thought that they had persuaded the President that he should find another running mate, being careful not to argue against the character or capacity of Mr. Nixon, for whom the President had a great and frequently expressed admiration. Their argument was based on the belief that because of the opposition to Mr. Nixon among independent voters and among certain minorities, he would be a liability to the ticket. The most articulate persuaders in that group were reported to have been General Lucius Clay, long-time friend and associate of the President, and Sidney Weinberg, senior partner in Goldman Sachs in New York and a veteran supporter of the President.
Paul Hoffman, spokesman for the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was also said to have been a part of the anti-Nixon faction, but he had insisted that he had nothing to do with it.
The three men had helped to generate the enthusiasm which made it possible, in the months leading up to the 1952 Republican convention, for General Eisenhower to defeat the late Senator Robert Taft for the nomination, and they continued to have the confidence of the President during his term in the White House. Just as they thought they had succeeded in their move to sidetrack the Vice-President, the pro-Nixon faction began a counter-attack.
The latter faction consisted
primarily of Attorney General Herbert Brownell, former New York
Governor Thomas Dewey and Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey.
The three did not view all issues the same, but they were united in
their belief that dropping Mr. Nixon from the ticket would be more
disruptive to the party and the country than going ahead with the
same team. To change the running mate would provide doubts to the
public about the President's ability to complete a full second term,
given his September heart attack. The Vice-President also had
powerful support within the party, being a hero to many Republicans
who regarded him as a young St. George with the record
It had been reported that Mr. Dewey was interested in the second spot on the ticket but that had been denied on his behalf, and he had said several times that he hoped his party would offer the same ticket in 1956 as it had in 1952.
The Brownell-Dewey-Humphrey triumvirate was as smooth and as efficient as anything Washington had seen in a long time, with the Dewey-Brownell combination being an old one going back almost to the beginning of Mr. Dewey's early political career. Mr. Brownell had made major blunders, but he continued to be an effective and ruthless political operator. Mr. Humphrey was the most persuasive and able member of the Eisenhower team, despite what anyone might think of his conservative budget-balancing views.
A letter writer says that in the
10th Congressional District around Charlotte, Republicans would need
many machines to collect the dust of the Democrats, as well
throughout the nation, with the Democrats having as their best point
Vice-President Nixon, "the one
A letter writer says that one of the institutions of higher learning in the state would soon retire three instructors because they had reached the age of 65. She indicates that it was harmful to the economy to have people who were able to work being unemployed, as they had to be supported in some way and the way to do so was not through adding taxes to the already overtaxed working person. She says that a person had the right to the dignity of work and that it should not be taken away regardless of age, finds it unbelievable that an institution which supported higher ideals could do such a thing.
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