The Charlotte News
Friday, April 13, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that U.S. officials expected the U.N. truce supervision team in the Middle East to be doubled if present U.N. peace efforts by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold were successful. The U.S. was backing completely the U.N. peace mission and it was announced to the press the previous day at Augusta, Ga., where the President was on a working vacation, that he had sent personal messages to Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of Israel, with the indications being that he urged restraint on both sides in the present situation. The messages had been sent on Monday, in connection with the President's public statement, announced at that time, which in effect had told both the Arabs and Israelis that the U.S. was determined to oppose any aggression in the region. U.S. officials most feared that a continuance of the recent bloody border incidents would precipitate a general conflict which neither side could stop. The Palestine truce supervision organization, under Canadian General Edson Burns, had played an important role in trying to avoid such incidents. Dispatches from Cairo the previous night were somewhat optimistic about the peace mission, one of the aims of which was to obtain withdrawal of forces from border areas, with another being to obtain guarantees of complete freedom of movement for the U.N. truce supervision team. The President and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden had offered at the conclusion of their talks in Washington in February to provide additional manpower for General Burns if he wanted it, and it was learned this date that the General had discussed that possibility with U.N. officials.
In Jerusalem, it was reported that tension had eased noticeably across Israel this date, in the wake of pledges from Israel and Egypt to hold off any new shooting action except in self-defense. The previous night had passed quietly with no incidents being reported since the previous day's aerial engagement over Israel's Negev Desert and one exchange of rifle fire across the Gaza frontier several hours afterward. Unofficial reports from Cairo said that Arab commando squads were being withdrawn from Israel, but an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman asserted that Egypt was "trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the world." A 13-year old boy, wounded on Wednesday night in an attack on a school, had died. The Israelis claimed that his death had brought the total victims of the Arab commando squads to 14 dead and 32 wounded since the prior Saturday night, while the Israelis claimed to have killed 13 of the commandos and captured six. The relaxation of tension over Israel was indicated by increasing preparations for Independence Day, to be ushered in on Sunday evening. The streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and many other smaller cities were being decorated for the main celebrations on Monday of Israel's eighth anniversary as an independent state. Secretary-General Hammarskjold, in Cairo, reported that Egypt and Israel had promised not to commit warlike acts against each other, with both countries, however, emphasizing that they had reserved the right to act in self-defense. Shortly after the Secretary-General's report was made public at U.N. headquarters in New York, it was announced that Prime Minister Ben-Gurion had written the Secretary-General protesting that Egypt was continuing hostile actions. In Cairo, the semi-official Egyptian News Agency said that Israel had agreed in principle to a proposal by the Secretary-General that Israeli and Egyptian forces withdraw 500 meters, slightly less than a third of a mile, from the frontier. Israel had rejected the same proposal by Egypt the prior summer, contending that the withdrawal would only make it easier for the Arab commandos to cross the frontier. Egypt had been reported willing to withdraw from the Gaza Strip border but not from the frontier between the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula. In the previous day's aerial action over the southern desert area, Israel had claimed that one and possibly two Egyptian planes had been shot down, while Egypt said that one Israeli plane had been shot down, with the Israeli Army having announced earlier that their planes had all returned safely to base. Israel reported that two of its fighters had intercepted four Egyptian planes and brought down a British-made Vampire jet. A military spokesman had said that the jet had crashed 20 miles inside Israel and that the injured pilot had been captured, the pilot having been quoted as saying that his plane was on a patrol mission.
In Augusta, the President this date announced the retirement of General Alfred Gruenther as NATO commander, effective around the end of the year. The General was retiring from the Army and as supreme commander of NATO because of personal reasons, according to White House press secretary James Hagerty, though saying he could not elaborate. The President named as the successor General Lauris Norstad, presently serving as the air deputy to General Gruenther. The latter was a personal friend of the President and had served as NATO commander since 1953 after having been the deputy supreme commander during 1951-52 when General Eisenhower had been NATO supreme commander. A few months earlier, General Gruenther had undergone what had been described as minor surgery at the Army's Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, and this date Mr. Hagerty said he did not know whether the General was giving up his post for health reasons.
Mr. Hagerty also said this date that the President might go on nationwide television and radio the following week to explain his decision either to sign or veto the farm bill. Reports persisted that the President had already decided to veto the measure, but Mr. Hagerty declined comment. He said that the President and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson were planning to meet the following day and it was quite probable that they would decide whether the President should make a statement, that no decision had yet been reached regarding the possible broadcast but that it was being considered.
In Dallas, Tex., Dr. George Glockler, chief scientist for the Army Office of Ordnance Research at Durham, N.C., and Dr. Paul Block, Jr., publisher of the Toledo Blade, had attacked the problem of Federal secrecy and security in speeches the previous night before the division of chemical literature of the convention of the American Chemical Society, agreeing that continued progress in science and technology might eliminate the need of keeping discoveries secret. Dr. Block urged basing of the nation's security on progress rather than on the effort to keep others from catching up with the nation. Dr. Glockler said, "Scientists will publish again to their hearts content … with the condition that the free nations maintain their lead in science and technology so that it matters little if other groups borrow from them." He said that physicists who studied uranium fission at Columbia University in 1939 had been the first to invoke secrecy on atomic information, recognizing that the basic scientific discovery that neutrons were emitted during the fission process could be useful to a potential enemy, thus acting as patriotic citizens, against their ingrained principles and beliefs that scientific discoveries ought be told to the world. He added that citizens of the nation would have to suffer restrictions for the good of all.
The Federal Reserve Board this date had hiked the bank lending rate to its highest level in a year to head off inflation amid the 1956 business boom, approving, effective immediately, an increase from 2.5 to 3 percent the discount rate for the Minneapolis and San Francisco Federal Reserve banks, and for nine other banks, all except Chicago, from 2.5 to 2.75 percent. The directors of the Chicago bank had not met the previous day. It explains that the discount rate was the interest rate at which member banks could borrow from the Federal Reserve to meet the lending needs of their customers. Normally, all 12 Federal Reserve banks adopted the same discount rate within a short time and thus general agreement on a new rate of either 2.75 or 3 percent was expected shortly. Not since May, 1953 had the Reserve System's general discount rate been as high as 3 percent, and had not been more than 2.5 percent since October, 1953. The changes announced by the Board late the previous day had been forecast by some economists and business writers, and so had brought little immediate reaction. The increase came in the face of increasing demands for credit, with business loans by Reserve member banks having increased in March by 1.25 billion dollars over those of February, a one-month increase of five percent. Consumer credit was also reported to be increasing. It was the fifth increase in the rate since the previous April 14, when the rate had been moved up from 1.5 percent, reaching 2.5 percent by November. Those previous increases had also been designed to restrain the use of credit during the business boom, which had continued throughout 1955, and after a brief pause early in 1956, had again started moving strongly. It explains that an increase in the discount rate made it more expensive for commercial banks to borrow to satisfy the demands of their clients for credit, and the commercial banks passed the increased borrowing costs on to their clients.
In Parris Island, S.C., it was reported that the commander of the Marine Corps base, Maj. General Joseph Burger, had said the previous day that there would be "no whitewashing of anything this court of inquiry finds out", regarding the investigation of the deaths of six recruits who had drowned during a forced march by Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, a drill instructor from Massachusetts, who had stated that he had marched the 78 recruits into a tidal stream in the swamp the prior Sunday night "to teach them discipline", a march, according to General Burger, which he was not authorized to conduct. The General was serving on the court of inquiry and he said that the investigation would be one of the most thorough in the history of the Corps.
In Hillsboro, O., school officials hoped to be able to provide tests this date to determine the grades to which 24 black children ought be assigned in a local all-white school, the children having been held out of classes for almost two full years in protest of being assigned to an all-black school. The Federal courts had ordered the school board to integrate the 24 pupils immediately and to integrate the following fall about 50 others who had been attending the all-black school. The decision to put the children in the classrooms immediately following their grading tests was decided at a special meeting of the local school board the previous night. The black children, accompanied by several mothers, arrived at the all-white school at the opening bell this date, just as they had done every morning for nearly two years. In the past, they had been told that they would not be admitted, and, until the previous day, had left the premises quietly. This time they remained in the office of the principal throughout the school day, and one of the mothers said that they were going to spend the school hours in the office every day until the children were admitted to the classes. Some of the children had taken naps on the office floor and others played or read books. There had not been enough chairs to go around and the mothers had taken turns sitting down.
In Orangeburg, S.C., a student strike by 1,000 undergraduates which had been called off the previous day, had been resumed this date at the South Carolina State College for Negroes. The administration of the College promptly issued an ultimatum to return to classes. Students had attended early classes but then struck again, with a student spokesman not providing a reason. The four-day boycott, which had begun the prior Monday, apparently had been brought to an end when the administration agreed to consider student grievances, aimed principally at the president of the institution. The agreement was contingent on resumption of classes, and as soon as the boycott resumed this date, the Faculty Council and the president promptly issued the ultimatum, saying that the agreement had been violated. The ultimatum noted that academic deficiencies, by virtue of unauthorized cuts, were piling up, that students either should return immediately to class, withdraw from school or risk disciplinary action, such as discharge. It said that grievances would be considered and an attempt made to make adjustments, provided class attendance was resumed.
In San Francisco, a Superior Court judge sentenced a sobbing 25-year old woman to a year in jail for kidnaping a three-day old baby. She promised that she would not disappoint the judge, following pronouncement of sentence the previous day. The judge said that she was "emotionally unstable" and had to be re-educated. She had admitted stealing the baby from a hospital crib on September 19 and taking him to her Stockton home. The father, a physician, had made emotional public appeals for return of the baby, after his wife had collapsed in shock following the kidnaping. The woman who had taken the child handed it over to a priest nine days later, after being spotted by police.
In Sacramento, a woman called the IRS office this date and asked whether she qualified as the head of the household. An agent asked her who lived with her and she responded that it was only her parakeet.
In Louisville, it was reported that 24 defendants, including three speeders, had come before a judge in police court at nearby Shively, and "Reckless Joe", a dummy neatly dressed in a dark blue suit and resting in an open casket, also appeared in the courtroom, with the judge saying that he believed the exhibit made a terrific impact regarding his reminder that speed and crime did not pay.
In Monte Carlo, actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III walked hand-in-hand through the palace gardens this date, as communicated to the press by a palace spokesman. The bride-to-be slept in the palace for the first time the previous night, while the Prince went to his nearby villa at midnight after turning over the 200-room palace to Ms. Kelly and her parents. The spokesman said that Ms. Kelly and the Prince had spent part of this date writing letters, snowed under with good will notes, telegrams and gifts from all over the world. They had concluded their first evening together with a family dinner, with an announcement indicating that ten members of the two families were present.
On the editorial page, "Eisenhower Should Veto the Farm Bill" urges that the President look beyond special interests and questionable political considerations and exert aggressive leadership in a vital economic field by vetoing the current farm bill and urging Congress to draft a substitute in the interests of the nation as a whole. It finds the current bill to be bad, not an attempt to compromise as the President had indicated he was willing to do on the matter, instead combining the Administration's soil bank program, which would authorize payment of up to 1.2 billion dollars per year to farmers not to produce crops which were in surplus, with the high, fixed support prices, which would only encourage production. It finds that combination "utterly ridiculous", designed to garner votes for the Democrats.
It suggests that by signing the legislation, the President would be repudiating Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and his own "program for all Americans". While there were political dangers in exercising a veto, as the possibilities for a new bill during the session were dim, the President had to consider the needs of the farmers in relation to the needs of the nation as a whole, not in relation to the needs of farm-belt politicians.
"Moral and economic considerations should be placed above political considerations."
"The Schools: Years of Uncertainty—IV", in its fourth consecutive installment, looks finally at the overall picture at present regarding the attempt to preserve the public school system in the state by continuing segregation, as essentially recommended by the State Advisory Committee on Education, which had favored a four-part plan of pupil assignment, voluntary segregation, tuition grants to be paid by the State for students who wanted to attend private, nonsectarian schools, and allowing school systems to abolish by vote their public schools.
It suggests that hope and charity, with faith and hope on the part of the citizenry and charity on the part of the Supreme Court, would also be required. It finds that the Committee's plan was imperfect, trying to dodge without defying the Court's desegregation ruling, with such a plan full of uncertainty as not one of its four factors carried any guarantee of success.
It indicates that voluntary segregation would work in some areas and fail in others, that pupil assignment would delay segregation, but could not be expected to preserve it, particularly as advertised by the Committee as a means of effecting total and permanent segregation, likely therefore to be struck down in the Federal courts as unconstitutional state action to preserve segregation. Tuition grants to private schools were presently nothing more than an idea, as the private schools did not exist, and if the Legislature, in its special session during the summer, sought to create and supervise them, it would be inviting an order from the Supreme Court that such schools were involved in state action and thus would have to be desegregated. It opines that if, as a last-ditch effort, communities did resort to private schools, curricula, academic standards, teacher standards and textbook selection would become haphazard, for if the State wanted the Supreme Court to recognize such schools as truly private and not public in fact, while masquerading as private, it would have to keep away from them.
It suggests that in the tuition grant-private schools scheme, lay the incongruity of the Committee's whole report, having said essentially that if the public schools were to be saved, they had to be endangered, reasoning that North Carolinians would not stand by the public schools any longer unless there was an available option to abolish them by majority vote in each community to avert "'intolerable'" desegregation.
It finds therefore that it was easy to see how hope was a necessary part of the Committee's plan, hope that voluntary segregation and pupil assignment would work to the extent that "'intolerable'" situations could be averted, and hope that if communities were empowered to close their public schools, they would not resort to it, and hope that if the public schools were closed, children could still obtain a decent education. The largest measure of hope, it suggests, had to be that the Supreme Court would exercise great charity toward an effort to bridge a chasm between Federal law and local custom.
It adds that it was not suggesting that the Committee's report was not realistic and sincere when considered in the context of the dilemma, but that conceding the sincerity and realism, the fact remained that in trying to preserve the public schools, the Committee was asking that they be subject to abolition by forfeiting the State's responsibility under the State Constitution to provide for them. If the Legislature authorized amendments to the State Constitution, permitting communities to abolish the public schools, the people would then have to ratify it, deciding at that point if the game was worth the candle.
"Even for Small Favors, Many Thanks" suggests that "never count your boobies before they are hatched" was an admonition worth remembering when considering the outrageously crazy, mixed up subject of taxes, as taxes were expected to defy the laws of gravity and the citizen who thought differently was automatically earmarked for a padded cell.
Nevertheless, it insists on believing reports from the Mecklenburg County Courthouse that the County tax rate would decrease in 1956, the happiest news to come from those halls in years. The County Commission chairman had said that only "a cent or two" would be shaved off, and so it suggests there would be no sweeping change back to "normalcy" in the days of Warren G. Harding. The rate was presently 96 cents per $100 of valuation, and it had been 91 cents in 1954, 76 cents in 1953 and 69 cents the year before that. It finds solace, however, in the fact that the upward spiral had been halted.
The chairman of the County Commission attributed the slight reduction to a 40 million dollar increase in the countywide property valuation, thanks to the tax supervisor, Rufus Grier, and his staff.
It ventures the hope that even more belt-tightening diligence could be mustered in the future, in both budgeting and tax collecting.
"Adlai Had To" indicates that Adlai Stevenson had to make a good showing in the Illinois primary the prior Tuesday and had, that if Minnesota had proved he was down, Illinois had proved he was not out.
Senator Walter George of Georgia had made the fanciful comment that Illinois had reinstated Mr. Stevenson as the front-runner in the race for the nomination, but the piece finds that opinion would not hold water. The results, however, would encourage sentiment for Mr. Stevenson in the upcoming Florida primary, which he had to win or be both down and out. If he did win in Florida, Southern Democrats could decide that they would rather follow Mr. Stevenson than chase a phantom third party, as apparently Senator George already believed at present.
A piece from the New Orleans Item, titled "Woman's Place", indicates that it had been made clear in a Los Angeles courtroom a few days earlier that women not only had a right to serve on juries but that there were cases which only a woman could judge fairly. The case in question was involving a fracas in a Hollywood nightclub, wherein a woman had complained to her husband that a male stranger had pinched her on the hip, at which point her husband had socked the stranger, who then sued for damages, with the husband then filing a cross-complaint suing the man for damages, with the question before the court being whether there had been a pinch before the punch or whether the punch had been a pointless reply to a presupposed pinch, the jury having decided for the the man whom the husband punched, who was "declared to be a non-pinching punchee."
It suggests that no one could deny that it was the presence of several women on the jury which had finally settled the matter, as they said that they had tried pinching themselves, with and without their girdles, as they sat the way the woman had said she had been sitting on the barstool, and they had come to the conclusion that the stranger could not have pinched her.
Drew Pearson tells of one amazing feature of the income tax fixing for the Brown and Root contracting firm in Texas having been that the firm was still getting some of the largest Government contracts, including current construction of U.S. air and naval bases in Spain. Yet all U.S. officials had to do was to look at the Treasury and Labor Department records to see how the contracting firm had thumbed its nose at the same Government from which it still received the lush contracts. The firm had to have friends in high places, one being Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, who had received large campaign contributions from Herman and George Brown. Mr. Pearson presents the official record of the firm's operations, taken from a Senate Labor Committee report, regarding the manner in which the firm had violated the Davis-Bacon Act, which required companies with Government contracts to pay minimum wages prevailing in the area where the contract was being transacted.
The report indicated that where the firm had a direct hand in a project, it had been embroiled in labor difficulties and violations of the contract and specifications which touched on working conditions. It had violated the law while working on the Bull Shoals Dam in Arkansas, by hiring carpenters and paying them only apprentice wages, and by switching part of their work to a materials company so that it could avoid paying the Davis-Bacon minimum wages. The report found that the apprentice setup of the firm had been a racket which gave the firm all the benefits, that it could have paid the men the going carpenter's rate, but had instead adopted a cheap policy of so-called apprentice service.
The records of the NLRB also showed that the firm had twice been challenged for unfair labor practices or for strike-breaking. When the Oil Workers Union had gone on strike against the Celanese Corporation at Bishop, Texas, in July, 1948, Celanese officials had hired Brown and Root to come in with what amounted to strike-breakers to maintain and operate the plant, eventually breaking the strike. Later, Celanese had been forced to appear before the NLRB on a charge of refusing to negotiate. The UAW had charged Brown and Root with unfair labor practices at their Houston tank machinery plant, charging that they were spying on union meetings, threatening reprisals against union members and had discharged 19 workers as a result of their union activity, with the NLRB having found against the firm in 1954. The Board also found that the firm was guilty of violating the Taft-Hartley Act in an action brought by the Tri-States Building Council, after the firm had refused to rehire 300 workers, the NLRB ordering that back salaries had to be paid. That case had been dragged out on appeal, however, and the $80,000 owed to the men in back pay still had not been remunerated.
The Senate report had concluded that there was "no room for a general contractor like Brown and Root which has shown such wanton disregard of working conditions, classification, wage rates, etc., on work being performed by the United States government. This firm should not be presently employed on a Federal project."
After that report issued, however, the firm and its associated contractors had been given the largest Government contract of all, to build the U.S. air and naval bases in Spain, the contract having been awarded without competitive bids by the Eisenhower Administration. Mr. Pearson notes that the firm also served as chief stockholders in the Texas Eastern Pipeline, which transmitted natural gas from Texas, that during the battle over the bill to deregulate natural gas, George Brown had been in frequent conference with Senator Johnson, who spent weekends at the Brown farm in Middleburg, Va., and used the Brown and Root plane to fly to Texas.
Carroll Cone, vice-president of Pan American Airways, had been taking bets that the President, in the end, would not run.
Leaders of the campaign of Senator Estes Kefauver were getting somewhat suspicious over the large amount of press he was receiving in certain staunch Republican newspapers, wondering whether Republican publishers figured that he would be easier to defeat than Adlai Stevenson. The Chicago Tribune had run a feature story with diagrams on how to write in Senator Kefauver's name in the Illinois primary, appearing to suggest that the newspaper wanted to set back Mr. Stevenson in his home state.
The big city bosses were currently pumping hard privately for Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri to be the Democratic nominee, saying he would be easy to work with.
Mike Di Salle of Ohio, the former price control administrator and Mayor of Toledo, was presently running for governor of Ohio, with four candidates running against him in the Democratic primary, whom he would beat easily.
Former Secretary of State under President Truman, Dean Acheson, would soon endorse Mr. Stevenson for the nomination.
Chester Bowles, former Governor of Connecticut, former Ambassador to India, had been helping Mr. Stevenson with his foreign policy speeches.
Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell wanted to go to Montgomery, Ala., to participate in the bus boycott, but had been told by his friends to stay away.
Doris Fleeson tells of the Illinois Democratic primary having restored Adlai Stevenson's chances for the nomination, albeit only against a write-in campaign by Senator Kefauver. Nearly complete returns had given, however, 720,000 votes for Mr. Stevenson, compared with 756,000 for the President, a four percentage point victory, whereas in 1952, the President had won Illinois by nearly half a million votes, or ten percentage points, despite it being Mr. Stevenson's home state where he served as Governor. The results suggested that Illinois and, notably, Chicago, had changed their mind about the President, as Cook County gave the President 231,582 votes to Mr. Stevenson's 445,821, a much better relative showing for the latter than in the 1952 general election. In addition, the results had not shown any upsurge for Senator Kefauver.
Isolationist sentiment also appeared to have diminished, despite Chicago being a home to it, with the prior presence of the late Col. Bertie McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, having been a solid isolationist and one of the mainstays of the movement. Senator William Knowland, a favorite of the isolationists, received very few votes, though offering only token opposition to the President as he was on the ballot only because it had been too late to withdraw after the President had announced his intention to run again at the end of February.
The farm revolt had also not been a factor, except in counties where agriculture was largely marginal. The Farm Bureau Federation, which spoke for the more prosperous farmers and supported the Administration-backed policy of flexible price supports, was strong in the state.
She finds that the primary had been drab, unmarked by any contests attracting enthusiasm, with only about 30 percent of the usual vote cast, lending excuses to both the Republicans and Senator Kefauver.
She indicates that the primary vote, while not proving who would win the nomination, did show whether voters were mad or glad about particular candidates or issues.
A widespread suspicion had existed that the black vote since the Brown v. Board of Education decision, with Chief Justice Earl Warren having led an unanimous Court in making it, would reflect possible defection to the man who appointed the Chief, but there had been no evidence of such defections in the black precincts, which could have, if shown, caused great concern among Democrats nationally, as Chicago had a spreading black belt comprised of refugees from the South, having always had a large black population.
Robert C. Ruark, in Goroka, New Guinea, tells of the natives having always abused the land, and fought and killed their neighbors. When the colonizer came in to change radically the native from the Stone Age to the Twentieth Century, a certain amount of consideration for the native thinking had to be maintained.
The missionary was the great educator, but when he attempted to sell the native the white man's God, at the expense of polygamy, he encountered difficulties. While the native with three wives might be convinced to give them up, they would be left stateless and the children of the marriages, likely to be left homeless and tribeless. When there was an attempt to get the native to plant money crops, such as coffee, and to convince him that the white man would buy some land and help him with the coffee plantation, the first question would not be how much coffee would bring on the market but rather whether the white man who came to plant the coffee would shoot their pigs if the pigs were to get into the coffee. For a pig, to a native of New Guinea, was a ceremonial animal, symbol of wealth, an object of adornment, meaning more than pieces of silver.
The native had lived so long in strife that his sense of insecurity gave him ulcers. In the case of the Goroka natives of the Assare area, that insecurity extended to the relationship between men and women, where a more active hostility between the sexes was manifest than anything one might see in Hollywood or Reno. Men believed that women could literally bewitch them, often believing that the woman had no active part in procreation but was simply a vessel of necessity, regarding her more as a midwife than a mother.
In the local administration of New Guinea by the Australian Government, the regulations started at the bottom, with emphasis on such things as stopping of the killing of one another and getting to work, on medical attention, infant welfare and dietary improvement, as well as on the village schools, agricultural extension and finally roads and outlets for new produce. There was, for instance, no recruiting of labor in that area, no compulsory assignment of manpower to white plantations, but rather a central labor bureau at which the native could register for work if he so wished, for a wage which would run $40 per month for a bossboy down to three dollars for a common laborer, while the cost to the employer was $10 per week for the native's subsistence, blankets, tobacco, clothing and salt. The laborer could also till his own coffee, which was bringing between $700 and $1,500 per ton, with a good acre yielding a ton and the latest highest prices per ton having been paid to a native crop.
Mr. Ruark says that in a world of constant strife, as in Africa, North Africa, Cyprus and the Middle East, it was a pleasure to see some white people doing some correct things with unsophisticated black people in New Guinea. He suggests that as an example of how not to do it, people could simply look at the world, at Biak or Rabaul or Wewak, and see, in part, how the Japanese had lost a portion of the war.
A letter writer comments on the recent articles in the newspaper regarding sidewalks in the city and the repairs needed for them, indicates, as a resident of Tuckaseege Rd., that they had no sidewalks, broken or otherwise, and that the street was not paved all the way to where a curb would ordinarily be, that once in a while a road scraper would plow up some fresh dust, that the City had built Freedom Drive to relieve traffic, instead of improving their street, and that two bridges were too narrow and ought be replaced. He says that a petition to pave the road was being passed around and a resident had sought to get the City Council to widen the bridge over a creek. He wishes the newspaper's assistance in informing the City Government of their need.
A letter writer says that he had read in the newspaper where it had been estimated that there were over 1,000 alcoholics in Charlotte, which she suggests might be true, but wants to know about those who drank and laid around while their families went hungry. She says that if she were one of those who had passed the law to sell it, she would be afraid to go to bed at night for fear of a hurricane destroying her, as the whiskey was destroying homes and lives. She says that God would reach out and stop all of it on Judgment Day, advises that everyone ask themselves whether they were ready to go if called.
A letter writer says that something should be done to force the accused on trial to answer all questions and say if they were presently or ever had been a member of the Communist Party. He is certain that no patriotic American would hesitate to answer such a question, and that when a person on trial refused to answer questions and resorted to the Fifth Amendment privilege, or any other amendment, they convicted themselves. He asserts that any person who would join an organization with an aim to overthrow the Government ought not be allowed to live in the country, and should be shipped to Russia, or be prosecuted and punished as traitors.
A letter from the chairman of the College Improvement Committee of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce expresses thanks to the newspaper for its splendid coverage of the Charlotte College situation during the previous few days, indicating that the influence of the newspaper in the community was tremendous and that the understanding displayed by a the newspaper of the college situation had been of great benefit to many people.
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