The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 3, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Milwaukee that Wisconsin's normally Democratic industrial centers had turned out in strength for early voting this date in the presidential primary, which could be indicative of the comparative strength of the President and Senator Estes Kefauver. An unseasonably warm and showery spring day, the type that usually brought out the vote in rural Republican strongholds, had spread over the state to prepare the way for what might become a heavier overall turnout than pre-election estimates. Senator Kefauver had no opposition in the Democratic primary and the President had only token opposition in the Republican primary. The Senator, in an appeal issued from Washington and directed primarily at farmers, seemed to be gambling on a good showing, which might demonstrate how he would run against the President were he to become the nominee. There was no party registration in Wisconsin and so voters could cast ballots in either primary. Four years earlier, when there had been a three-way contest in the Republican primary, the ratio of Republican votes over Democratic votes had been 3 to 1. Senator Kefauver was hoping that his total would be well over a third of that cast for the President. The Republican chairman in the state said that he anticipated the vote to be split about evenly between Republicans and Democrats, a division which the Democrats would hail as a victory. Senator Kefauver was stumping for votes in Florida, where that primary would occur on May 29, and he would again face Adlai Stevenson. In a speech at Orlando, he had described as "hogwash" and "political propaganda" the contention "that I am not acceptable to the South." He said that he regarded the Florida vote as "a testing ground for sentiment in the entire Southland." He reminded that he had been elected to public office from the South, in Tennessee, although he had from the beginning of his career taken what some had referred to as "the national viewpoint". He said that the decision in Brown v. Board of Education was the law of the land. Senator Kefauver, along with his Tennessee colleague, Senator Albert Gore, and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had been the only three Southern Senators from eleven states who did not sign the "Southern manifesto", read in the Senate and the House on March 7.
Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota said this date that the South "is weary of riding in a political automobile which it can never steer." He told a reporter that in 1956, there might be a "revolt of Jeffersonian Democrats" in the South. The Senator had spoken in several Southern states during recent weeks, finding that "a political uneasiness and uncertainty is pervading all the states of the old South", that they were restless at being "strait-jacketed" in the grip of "a one-party system which rejects its policies, and resents its political leadership", reaching its height in 1952 when four Southern states had voted for General Eisenhower. He believed that those Southerners had "about had enough of the Rooseveltian formula of pitching the party policy to attract Northern minorities while relying on Southern docility and political prejudice to furnish over 100 electoral votes in each election." He stated that the racial controversy was but one manifestation of the "wide-open split" between Northern and Southern Democrats, that there was a whole pattern of programs and policies which Mr. Stevenson, Governor Averell Harriman and Senator Kefauver and the DNC offered as "lures" to Northern voters in big metropolitan cities, repugnant to the states' rights advocates who predominated among Southern voters. He found that the political trap was increased by the knowledge that eight of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court, who had unanimously decided Brown in 1954, had been appointed by Democratic Presidents—though a second, Justice John Harlan, grandson of the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the separate-but-equal doctrine of which for passing muster under the Equal Protection Clause Brown had overruled, had been appointed by President Eisenhower following the death of Justice Robert Jackson in the fall of 1954, Justice Harlan having been confirmed, after some delay, in early 1955, thus participating in the unanimous Brown implementing decision in May of that year. Senator Mundt also said that the "Southern manifesto", if it meant anything at all, had been "a warning shot over the prow of the ship manned by Northern Democrats, that the days of docility and blind obedience to the demands of their city-machine associates are over."
In Washington, Dr. Lowell Coggeshall, special assistant for health and medical affairs to Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare Marion Folsom, had said this date, in a speech prepared for a cancer crusade luncheon, that advances during the previous decade led them to believe that control of cancer was "a possibility not too remote from accomplishment". He said that statisticians estimated that more than 40 million persons presently living in the country would have cancer, that they did not know how many would die from it, but that they did know that probably at least a third of them might be saved with application of existing knowledge. As to the other millions, he said, saving those lives presented the greatest challenge which research had ever faced. He stated that advances in treatment of cancer during the previous decade had included use of chemical compounds to reduce or retard tumor growth, use of compounds called antimetabolites to replace essential elements necessary for cell growth or life, use of hormones to slow down cancers and leukemia, and use of radioactive isotopes to cause regression of tumors. He said that there was renewed interest in theories, once virtually discarded, that at least some cancers might be related to a germ or virus, that there were some instances in which viral diseases had a pronounced effect on cancer, citing as an illustration one patient who had contracted chickenpox, had run a high fever for days, and upon recovery, when doctors had taken a look at his tumor, found that it had almost disappeared.
White House press secretary James Hagerty stated this date that a published report this date by Drew Pearson, that the President had spent more time golfing at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., the previous week than in conferring with the Canadian and Mexican heads of state at the North American summit meeting, was "completely inaccurate". Mr. Hagerty said that the first 18 holes of golf which the President had played had come in advance of the arrival of either leader, and that on the second and last day of the conference, the President had played 12 holes late in the afternoon, after having spent virtually all of the earlier part of the day in conference with the two leaders. But how long did they discuss holes at the meeting, and how many were considered par for the course?
Harry Shuford of The News tells of an official of the Federal Food & Drug Administration having testified this date in Federal District Court in Charlotte, during the trial of a man charged, along with another man, of selling drugs in Charlotte in interstate transportation without license or prescription, that one of his agents had witnessed numerous sales of "goof balls", "yellowjackets" and other such drugs to teenagers in the city, the drugs having been among those which the two men were charged with selling. They were legal to sell only by a doctor's prescription and most were barbiturates. He said that an agent had reported being with one of the two defendants for a ten-hour period during the previous year and quoted the agent as saying that the man had made about 30 sales of "goof balls" totaling about 240 tablets, and about ten sales of "yellowbirds" and "yellowjackets", totaling about 40 tablets, and that about half the sales had been made to truck drivers and the other half to giggling teenagers in cars. He said that the teenagers' cars sometimes contained all boys and sometimes both boys and girls, who looked to be of school age, according to the agent's report. He said that the agent also reported that the youngsters would drive into a service station where the agent and the defendant were, place a quarter or a dollar down on the counter, in return for which the defendant would place the tablets in a plain envelope and give it to the youngsters.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that County officials this date were considering what to do with the U.S. Naval Ammunition Depot, set by the end of fiscal year 1956-57 to be decommissioned by the Government and might be sold to the County, along with its 2,300-acre parcel. The Navy had said that it no longer needed the facility, which had been a shell plant during World War II. A local fact-finding committee had been formed to consider the possible uses of the property, provided the County and City could buy it at a nominal price. If it were placed at auction to the highest bidder, however, the County could not purchase it, and it had still not been determined whether another Government agency, which had first option on the property, might take it over.
Dick Young of The News reports that a study of Charlotte's economic trends and potentialities might soon be the next objective of the City-County Planning Commission, with the possibility of immediate launch of such a study to be discussed at a session of the planning board during the current afternoon.
In Boiling Springs, N.C., Gardner-Webb College had received a gift of $10,000 as a scholarship and loan fund.
In Daytona Beach, Fla., fire of an undetermined origin had destroyed a hotel, theater and two stores early this date, with the fire chief estimating that about $500,000 worth of property damage had been done, the city's worst fire since one which had destroyed the Breakers and Daytona hotels nine years earlier. Fire officials said that initially they thought the fire had been set and had questioned a suspect, but had later released him. Fireproof buildings on each side of the fire area had helped prevent spread of the flames. The fire had started in the theater and spread to the adjacent Orange Hotel, where about 100 guests were evacuated. About 700 theater patrons had left the structure about a half hour before the fire was discovered. By the time it was brought under control, the 46-room hotel was completely destroyed. There is no indication of any injuries.
In Drumright, Okla., it was reported that a rash of tornadoes had struck two dozen towns in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri during the night, killing at least seven people, with the most furious twister having hit Drumright, leaving five dead and 100 houses smashed. Fifty persons had been injured in Oklahoma. Two had been killed in southeast Kansas, where weather observers said that they had reports of 14 tornadoes. Four twisters had hit the extreme southwest corner of Missouri, with police reporting that two persons had been injured and $100,000 worth of damage had occurred at Joplin.
We are not in Kansas, anymore.
On the editorial page, "The Queen Should Look Her Best" indicates that Charlotte was so graceful and elegant, when compared to Greensboro and Raleigh, its "country cousins", that there was being bandied about in the sticks the rumor that some Charlotte neighborhoods were so chic that they were served by firehouses with unlisted numbers.
It finds, nevertheless, that for such a regal lady with money to burn, Charlotte's face was sagging shamefully, with the sidewalks being a mess, with more creases and wrinkles than a Guy Rowe portrait. A survey of ten blocks of north and south Trade Street the previous day had revealed extensive damage in every block, and photographs in the newspaper had already documented some of the damage, with more pictorial evidence to come. It suggests that rough walkways were not only dangerous to those unsure of foot, but trapped rain water and served as catch-all's for the filth of the city, marring its beauty. There were smooth and level stretches, but the exceptions distorted the rule.
The Chamber of Commerce had expressed timely concern and the suggested improvements would cost little money to produce satisfactory results, as the City had long earlier offered to provide the labor for the construction of new sidewalks, provided that adjoining property owners would supply the materials.
It concludes that "the old girl simply cannot let herself go to rack and ruin when cosmetics are so handy and so inexpensive."
"Politics, TV and William Schneider" tells of William Schneider having run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, arguing that Senator Robert Taft and General Eisenhower were leftists. The Republican convention would not let him in and, earlier, CBS radio and television had also rejected his request for free time equal to that provided to the views of Senator Taft and General Eisenhower. Thus, Mr. Schneider had gone to the FCC in complaint, and the agency had awarded him roughly $60,000 worth of free time from CBS.
It indicates that anyone who was a citizen and 35 years of age and willing to accept the presidential nomination could have accomplished the same result by merely declaring their candidacy, as the law was, according to the FCC, that if a network provided free time to one candidate in a political campaign, it had to do the same for all other candidates for the same office.
It finds it a noble Democratic equation, but that after the ruling regarding Mr. Schneider, networks had concluded that their only safe course was to give free time to no one, as there were 18 parties and 12 candidates in the 1952 presidential race. It lists the parties, including the Vegetarian and Republimerican, says that if all had demanded free and equal time, there would not have been room for the soap operas on program listings—a definite boon to quality viewing time, nevertheless.
It suggests that the Schneider case provided great substance to the plea of CBS that Congress ought modify the FCC regulations so that networks could broaden presentation of candidates and issues of the major parties without having to provide equal time to small factions and candidates with limited appeal. CBS was prepared to present a series of televised debates in 1956 between the two major presidential nominees, modeled after the Lincoln-Douglas Senate debates of 1858. Doubtless, it ventures, those debates would be lively, informative and in the public service, but the network had remembered the case of Mr. Schneider.
It urges that Congress revise the rules at the national level, recognizing that the nation was comprised primarily of two major parties, sometimes a third, and that the guarantee of equal time, conceived to protect the public, was actually operating to limit information which the electorate needed to make its choice.
"The Last Chapter Is Always in Doubt" indicates that the Soviet Union's apparent concession on the major issue of disarmament the previous week had Western hearts pounding furiously with hope, producing a "pathetic cacophony of memory and desire." Since Russia appeared to be accepting in principle the idea of inspection and controls, including the President's aerial flyovers, there was immediate talk of a new "Geneva spirit", as in the immediate aftermath of the July, 1955 Big Four summit.
It finds that there was something almost tragic about the manner in which the West seized on such straws and clung desperately and naïvely to them, betraying something in the nature of the West which was apparently lacking in the East. As George Orwell had once written of the English, Western traditions had established a sentimental belief that everything came out all right in the end and what one most feared never really happened. Nourished for hundreds of years on literature in which right invariably triumphed in the last chapter, people believed almost instinctively that evil always defeated itself in the long-run.
But it questions why should it. Diplomacy involving Russia had no place for sentimentality or an instinctive belief that evil necessarily destroyed itself and that the good guys lived happily ever after. It posits that the time was at hand for hard-boiled realism, poker faces and stubbornness. Negotiation was necessary, "but the delighted oh's and ah's when Ivan sheaths his stiletto only give aid and comfort to the enemy's ego."
"After the First Robin, Baseball" tells of News sportswriter Sandy Grady having written the previous afternoon that at around 5:30, the dinner gong rang again and that sometimes the reward was steak, that downstairs a pitcher named Jake Jacobs was "whanging the git-tar and doing the Tennessee Ernie bit (he never seems to stop). There is a movie two blocks away ('I Am a Camera' is showing now)." It indicates that he was writing about the Charlotte Hornets baseball team, in training in Florida.
A few weeks earlier, Fernandina
Beach was just an ink blot on a Florida road map, but now they were
reading eagerly of the git-tar players
Guess the cross, after all, is in the ballpark…
A piece from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, titled "Perilous Ideals", suggests that there was something fine about ideals but that there seemed to be something wrong in achieving them. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm of New York had decided that the nations which came closest to the ideal way of living exhibited the worst signs of "mental unbalance". The U.S. and those countries of Europe enjoying the most democratic, prosperous, comfortable and peaceful lives had more mental cripples than the have-not or have-little countries.
It questions who would differ with
his data in an age of psychoanalysis, suggests that perhaps fighting
for democracy, struggling for security was the way of health, and
that possibly there were more neuroses from hanging on to what one
got than in battling to get it. "Or to paraphrase an over-quoted
bard, achievement can make crackpots
Drew Pearson tells of Canadian officials not being happy when the first concrete proposal, made at the White Sulphur Springs summit meeting of the heads of state of Canada, Mexico and the U.S., had been the removal of the Canadian advertising tax on Time Magazine. The fact that the President had personally presented the proposal to the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis St. Laurent, before presenting the other problems facing the world, had caused Canadian diplomats to wince. The Prime Minister had been very polite and promised to study the matter, but others in the Canadian entourage were privately sarcastic, with some stating that the President should feel that he had already paid his debt to Henry Luce and Time by appointing Clare Boothe Luce as Ambassador to Italy and giving Life the interview with Secretary of State Dulles, titled "Brink of War"—in which the Secretary had put forth for the first time his theory of "brinksmanship". It had also been remarked that, in view of the way Time and Life had continued to slant the news in favor of the President, it was only natural for the President to try to remove the Canadian tax on Time. The tax was imposed on only two magazines, Time and Reader's Digest. The Canadian edition of Time was printed in Chicago at a cost which enabled it to sell advertising at about half the rate of Canadian magazines. Reader's Digest was printed in Montréal and also cut into the advertising revenue of Canadian publications. Politically, it would be difficult for Prime Minister St. Laurent to curtail the tax, despite the request coming from the President, personally, as such curtailment would immediately become an issue in the next election and the Prime Minister's opponents would claim that he was kowtowing to American imperialism, which had become an issue in Canada for about the first time since 1911, with Canadians talking apprehensively about being swallowed up by the U.S.
Ambassador Luce, after helping to lose the 1953 Italian elections to the Communists, had settled down to doing an excellent job in her post in Italy. Thus, he comments, perhaps the political payoff to Time had paid off.
The President liked the informal diplomacy at White Sulphur Springs so much that he wanted to try it on Prime Minister Nehru of India when he would visit the U.S. the following July. But State Department officials were not sure it would work on him, as he was precise and exacting, would not sit while the President played golf, as did patient President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines of Mexico and polite Prime Minister St. Laurent of Canada. Spokesmen for both men had graciously stated that they were busy with other matters during the President's golf game, but the President had spent more time on the golf course than he did in conferring with either or both of the leaders. He spent 90 minutes in joint conferences with them, plus an hour with each alone, whereas he had spent more time playing eight holes one day, 12 holes the next, plus a final 12 hole round on the third day. (As indicated on the front page, White House press secretary James Hagerty denied the report.)
Prime Minister Nehru had visited White Sulphur Springs on an earlier trip when Louis Johnson was the Secretary of Defense under President Truman, and had not particularly liked the gala dinner given for him there. He was a philosopher and a mystic, while the primary guests invited to meet him were big businessmen.
At a secret Pentagon meeting, Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker had sought to obtain some money from the B-52 bomber program, saying that the country did not need more B-52's and that fewer should be purchased, that the Army needed the money for more important projects. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had cut the Army Secretary short, however, saying that they were going ahead with the B-52 program, and, if necessary, would take a couple of hundred thousand dollars from the Army to pay for it. The Secretary also scoffed at the furor over guided missiles, repeating a favorite General Motors expression: "The sales department is way ahead of the production department."
Despite political advice to Adlai Stevenson to cut out his wisecracks, he sometimes had difficulty restraining himself. In talking to friends about the President's heart trouble recently, he had said, "Maybe I should demand equal time on the stethoscope."
Texas Governor Allan Shivers, according to insiders, wanted to lead a Southern revolt at the Democratic convention in August, planning to walk out and take with him other rebels of the South and attend the Republican convention in San Francisco. Governor Shivers had supported General Eisenhower in 1952.
Joseph Alsop, in London, tells of responsible and experienced leaders in the British Government having imparted to him in recent days that the present situation in the Middle East felt like the time just prior to Munich in September, 1938, that finding a way out of the crisis was so urgent that it might be a matter of hours and not just days before it boiled over. The latter part of this statement had been made by Prime Minister Anthony Eden to President Eisenhower in a personal message a few days earlier through an American official with whom the Prime Minister had discussed the present situation in the Middle East.
The British messages to Washington had sought U.S. action on several fronts and clear proof of American support for the Baghdad Pact in the form of economic aid, a request made by Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to Secretary of State Dulles. At present, the U.S. response had not yet been received. Even though Prime Minister Eden had just visited recently with the President, some British Cabinet members had advocated another visit, either by Mr. Eden or by a qualified personal emissary.
The cause of the great concern was the recent abrupt dismissal of Lt. General John Glubb from command of the Arab Legion in Jordan, revealing a greater fundamental insecurity in the British position in the region than had been previously thought.
He suggests that perhaps the British view was wrong, but the wisest men in London thought that there was an immediate danger of a new coup in Jordan, financed by Saudi Arabian oil and organized by the Communist underground, spurred on by the violent propaganda of the Egyptian radio. Another successful coup in Jordan, installing an anti-Western government, would place the pro-western Government of neighboring Iraq in serious danger, and in that and other ways would directly imperil Britain's access to Middle Eastern oil, on which it depended. It would also vastly increase the likelihood of an Arab-Israeli war during the current year and the chances of war were already thought to be even by some of the highest authorities in London.
Jordan was not the only location where the situation was thought to be near the boiling point. Britain did not have the military strength and economic resources needed to contain the Middle Eastern situation alone, and there was no common Anglo-American policy in that region which had yet been agreed upon in working detail. No agreement had ever been reached in Washington on the practical implementation of the so-called Tripartite Declaration, under which the U.S. was committed to join Britain and France in punishing any aggressor in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Under those circumstances, Britain was seeing its crucial oil source being threatened by the Communists, as complacency appeared to reign in Washington. Mr. Alsop reminds that just as Britain's jugular vein ran through the Middle East, the strategic and political jugular vein of the U.S. happened to run through Britain.
Doris Fleeson tells of RNC publicity director Richard Guylay having stated to reporters that the recent news of the farm revolt did not rub off on the President, a response which Ms. Fleeson regards as being according to the Republican policy book. RNC chairman Leonard Hall did not blame the President for anything and his strategy was to sell the peace and prosperity-maker, the President, as being far above the battle of sectional or vested interests. His confidence rested on his own conversations with hundreds of people, his mail from thousands of other people, and his study of many polls, national and state, plus some private polling he had personally ordered. A polling expert had assured him that the popularity of the President was a genuine fact of life, and the Republican campaign would be built around it.
She indicates that Mr. Hall was not ignoring the ominous signs from farm areas, but that even if he was right about the President, she ventures, serious discontent in those areas could cost the Republicans control of Congress again. Six Senators were up for re-election from Midwest farm states, including Senators Frank Carlson of Kansas, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Francis Case of South Dakota, Milton Young of North Dakota, Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin and Everett Dirksen of Illinois, and if any one of those Senators were to lose, he would take House members with him.
Midwestern Republicans were among those who had been writing Washington friends with such comments as: "The Democrats ought to be down on their knees thanking the Lord for Benson," and "Dr. Gallup may turn out to be the best friend of the Democrats and the worst enemy the Republicans have."
Robert C. Ruark, in Lae, New Guinea, tells of the country, "a brave new world as fresh-cut from the past as television," being on the boom. In the previous few days, he had talked with modern pioneers who were the first white men to enter Stone-Age territory, true latter-day explorers whom he ranks with Columbus, Cortez or Balboa. They had been wounded by the arrows of cannibals, had stood off howling mobs of savages, been starved and had fought fever and found gold and towns like Lae, Madang and Moresby, which had doubled or even trebled in size.
Airplanes had 72 approved strips on which the land, plus countless informal patches of grassland which could be used as landing strips. The airplane had opened up New Guinea, just as the war had caused roads to be built where no roads had previously existed. There were new thriving towns which had not existed five years earlier.
Yet, 20 percent of the native population was still fighting. He had been at a place recently where a patrol had been in the hills chasing the murderers of seven other tribesmen, and the patrol was attacked with arrows. There was one tribe which still preserved its dead and placed them in niches on a high mountain, to which he had flown close enough to see the corpses. He had talked to men who wore arrow wounds and who had killed countless natives in earlier times, more than 20 years earlier when he was in college at UNC.
Things were changing in that last outpost of the Stone Age, but the scenery remained as "frighteningly beautiful as ever. There is still unexplored territory, still natives who never have seen a white man, and there is still gold in them thar hills."
A letter writer comments that tears
had filled her eyes as she had watched on television "The King
of Kings", which she found to be a great visual sermon, with
some phases of it reminding her of present-day turmoil. The majority
had wanted Jesus crucified because they felt that their prestige,
high position and power were threatened by him and his followers.
Pontius Pilate had found him innocent, but the majority demanded that
he be crucified. When it appeared to some that Pilate would release
him, one in authority, Caiaphas
Framed Edition
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