The Charlotte News
Monday, April 30, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, having just returned home from Britain after a visit with Prime Minister Anthony Eden, told 10,000 cheering Russians this date that the U.S. was moving in the direction of cooperation with the Soviet Union. His speech had been broadcast and televised throughout the Soviet Union, having occurred just after he and Premier Nikolai Bulganin had landed from their ten-day British tour. Both leaders praised British hospitality and the results of their negotiations with Mr. Eden, but denounced the Labor Party and the British Socialist movement, accusing it of following "a reactionary anti-Soviet policy." The story suggests that the overtures to the United States indicated an aim by the Soviet leaders to develop direct negotiations with President Eisenhower, a move foreshadowed by a Pravda editorial the previous day, long understood within the diplomatic community in Moscow. U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Charles Bohlen was present at the airport to hear the words of the returning Soviet leaders. Mr. Khrushchev said that it seemed to them that the U.S. was already beginning to show desirable signs of "moving on the road of cooperation. An example was the speech President Eisenhower made to American editors. We cannot agree with many things he said, because they did not help good relations." But he went on to praise most of the things uttered by the President, such as that a Soviet Government genuinely devoted to the legitimate interests of the Russian nation "can have friendly relations with the United States and the free world for the asking." Mr. Khrushchev said: "Little by little we can reestablish confidence. Eventually we may reach agreement on disarmament and have normal trade and cultural relations with the U.S.A."
Secretary of State Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this date that Russia's new leaders appeared mindful for the first time of "the yearnings of the Russian people for greater freedom," but that they had not "gotten religion" yet. The Committee was deliberating on whether to approve the President's requested 4.9 billion dollar foreign aid program. Secretary Dulles said that if they wanted the Russians to forgo "their old policies of violence", the U.S. had better continue doing things which had led them to desist, indicating that Russia had been deterred from aggression by "the network of mutual security treaties … backed by our mobile striking power." He said that new Russian economic offers to neutral nations were another argument for a far-ranging foreign aid program, making it "more imperative than ever" to continue the program "with greater flexibility and with greater assurance of continuity than ever before." The President had sought authority to make foreign economic aid commitments for some major development projects for up to ten years in advance, a request which was highly controversial in the Congress. Mr. Dulles said that the President was convinced that any substantial reduction in the foreign aid program "would greatly endanger the security of the United States."
In Havana, the Government of Cuba announced this date that it had freed former President Carlos Prio Socarras less than 24 hours after it had crushed a civilian revolt at Matanzas, the Government claiming that 11 of the rebels had been killed and a number of them wounded, while only three Cuban soldiers had been wounded. The former President had been arrested and held for questioning in connection with the three-hour uprising 60 miles east of Havana, but had been released on orders of El Presidente Fulgencio Batista. As a result of the revolt by about 70 civilians, the Government had canceled Constitutional guarantees for 45 days, going into effect immediately. The former President, who had been repeatedly charged with plotting against the Government, had been arrested with a number of his friends. He had been ousted by Sr. Batista in a bloodless coup in March, 1952, and had been taken into custody at that time purportedly to protect his personal safety. When word of the revolt had reached Havana, El Presidente reportedly had left the capital to take personal command of the Army. The Government communiqué said that all police, Army and Navy leaves had been canceled and that all members of the armed forces had been ordered to quarters. Reliable informants said that Fidel Castro, who had led an abortive uprising in July, 1953, may have led the revolt.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli Government said this date that its casualties from weekend incidents on the Egyptian-Israeli border had numbered three dead and one wounded. An official Israeli announcement said that a second soldier had died this date as a result of a mine explosion under a military vehicle, the first having been killed the previous day at the time of the explosion, occurring in a village close to the frontier of Egypt's Gaza Strip. Israel also reported that a farmer had been killed in another incident the previous day. Egypt and Israel were parties to a 12-day old cease-fire agreement and each blamed the other for the violation. U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was nearing the end of his peace mission to the Middle East, which had begun on April 6, holding a final meeting in Cairo during the morning with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi. Sources in Cairo close to Mr. Hammarskjold expressed the belief that the disturbances would not affect the outcome of his mission. He had met the previous night with Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser and planned to leave Egypt later this date for his last discussions with Israeli officials, concluding his mission, scheduled to report back to the U.N. Security Council in New York by May 4. A well-informed source in Cairo said that Egypt was now willing to accept Mr. Hammarskjold's proposal that Egyptian and Israeli forces on the demarcation line be pulled back out of sight of each other, with the exact distance being determined by terrain and local circumstances. Egypt had previously been reported to insist that troops withdraw 575 yards on each side of the line, as proposed by Premier Nasser the previous fall. An Israeli spokesman said that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett had complained to Mr. Hammarskjold of "acts of renewed Egyptian aggression". An Israeli Army source said that the mine which had blown up the previous day had been laid recently well inside Israel. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Egyptians had returned the mutilated body of the Israeli farmer, 22, indicating that he had been dragged across the Gaza border the previous day by Egyptian soldiers.
The House Agriculture Committee this date unanimously approved a new farm bill containing most of the provisions endorsed by the President, the bill having been drafted by Committee chairman Harold Cooley of North Carolina, containing the soil bank plan favored by the Administration, but not the authority sought by the President to make advance payments under that plan whereby the Government could have paid as much as 500 million dollars during the current year to farmers who agreed to take acreage growing surplus crops out of production. An effort to substitute a bill which contained the prepayment provision had failed in an executive session this date by a vote of 19 to 15, along strict party lines.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that the two teenage boys, ages 13 and 15, whom Charlotte Police Chief Frank Littlejohn had the previous Friday placed in a jail facility, contravening state law, because there was inadequate room at the Morrison Training School, remained in jail this date. State law provided that no child under 14 could be placed in jail and also that children 14 and 15 could only be jailed for felonies, and had to be housed separately from hardened criminals. The Morrison officials had returned the two boys to Charlotte with apologies for their crowded conditions, after they had been declared to be "incorrigible" by the Juvenile Court the prior Wednesday, both having long records of vandalism, auto theft and truancy. Chief Littlejohn had quoted from an editorial appearing in the Greensboro Daily News which called for detention homes in local communities, saying that the State had an inescapable obligation to provide sufficiently large training schools to take boys and girls who were sent to them by the courts, but that the local communities also had an obligation. The two youths were in good spirits and were being provided with changes of clothing and baths this date, being fed regular meals and treated "as humanly as possible", according to Chief Littlejohn. He said that he intended to hold them until there was room at Morrison or until something was done about establishing local detention quarters for juveniles, that his first duty as a police officer was to protect society and that if he turned the boys loose, they would be back with their mates, and would "inoculate a great many more youngsters with the idea that there is no punishment for them."
In Chapel Hill, top awards for photographic excellence had been won by The News and its photographers the prior Saturday night at the closing banquet of the Southern Short Course in Press Photography, with entries in the competition having come from all over the South, from Florida to Washington. The newspaper received the Graflex Award for the "best newspaper exhibits", the second consecutive year the newspaper had been declared to have the best photographic coverage in the South. News photographer Jeep Hunter had received the first annual Tom Franklin Memorial Award for the best single picture in the competition, that being a dramatic shot of the new sign at the Charlotte Municipal Airport, framed under the wing and whirling propeller of a plane, as reprinted on the front page this date. The same photograph had earlier won first place for Mr. Hunter in the pictorial category, and he had been named "Photographer of the Year", having also won another first place award for his portfolio of ten pictures which he had selected as the best of his work during the year. Mr. Franklin had served as a photographer for the newspaper for many years and had founded the Tom Franklin Studio in Charlotte. The award was voted by all of the photographers attending the Short Course, and was presented by the late Mr. Franklin's son, Tommy Franklin, who was a prize-winning photographer for the newspaper also, having won during the competition first place for spot news photography with a picture of a policeman shooting at a rampaging steer. The newspaper had also won two second-place awards, one in the sports picture category, by Tom Walters, and an entry taken by freelance photographer Hugh Morton and published in the newspaper.
On the editorial page, "Richard Nixon: The Wahoos Can Wait" finds that the Republican ticket for 1956 was now settled after the Vice-President had proposed himself for re-election, with the approval of the President, that is, assuming the Republican convention assembled for no other purpose than "wahooing" approval of the drama which had just played out between the President and the Vice-President before the Washington press corps, which would be normal convention practice, as it was customary for presidential candidates to pick their running mates.
But the campaign was going to be abnormal, with the Republican convention, based on the President's health status, being called upon, effectively, to nominate two presidential candidates, as it could not be assumed with certainty that the President could survive a second term. The fact that the President had endorsed Mr. Nixon was quite normal, as he had made an excellent Vice-President, being an effective administrative assistant, a flexible bridge between the Republican Party's right and left wings, and having gone into the political arena "with mayhem his purpose" while the President sat with dignity somewhat behind the scenes. It regards Mr. Nixon, therefore, as a deserving politician, following in the tradition that a party rewarded its faithful and deserving members.
But it also finds that the reward did not have to be the chance automatically to become President, that such a chance ought be reserved for those who had demonstrated character and intellect capable of rising above partisan infighting and internal divisions to achieve unity, leadership and inspiration. The party had such men in addition to the President, but Mr. Nixon was not one of them, based on what he had said to the American people, not what he had done in his capacity as a Representative, Senator and finally Vice-President, where his record in each role had been good.
In the role of party leader, however, he had gone beyond responsible utterances "with a drumfire of distortion, invitations to disunity, and disregard for facts and truth." He had called enemies Communists and crooks without doing so directly, flowing from "assiduous cultivation of the art of verbal lynching, an art responsible men scorn."
As examples, it cites his comment on former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whose policies Mr. Nixon now defended as Republican policies, but earlier had spoken of them as the product of "Acheson colorblindness—a form of pink eye—toward the Communist threat in the United States." He had spoken of the Eisenhower Administration having "unleashed" Chiang Kai-shek and liberated the satellite countries, campaign rhetoric which now embarrassed Mr. Nixon. Yet, he had continued, characterizing Adlai Stevenson as a "Ph.D. from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment," the piece indicating that Messrs. Nixon and Dulles were "honor students in that college." In 1954 in Las Vegas, Mr. Nixon had charged that if a Congress of Mr. Stevenson's choosing were elected out of the midterm campaign, "the security risks which have been fired by the Eisenhower Administration will all be hired back."
It finds the latter foolish and reprehensible talk, as the Eisenhower Administration had hired 41.2 percent of the 9,267 persons it had fired as "security risks" and had re-employed 5.4 percent of them in other agencies. It thus finds it silly to suggest that a Democratic Congress would rehire Republicans, much less Republicans who had been deemed "security risks" by a Republican Administration.
It urges that there were hundreds of other similar willful and dishonorable distortions in the record of Mr. Nixon as a party spokesman, and that the record demanded that the convention "consider prayerfully whether it would be serving the best interest of the party or the nation by giving misfortune the chance to make Mr. Nixon president of the United States." It concludes that the agreement between the President and Vice-President that Mr. Nixon would have that opportunity ought not be blindly accepted. "The wahoos can wait until the convention considers."
Well, despite 20-20 hindsight perhaps having recommended to the contrary, the Republicans had little choice in the matter as "All the Way with Ike and Dick in '56" had that ring, whereas "Vote Das Iron Beater and Christian Herter in '56" somehow did not make it.
"Progress: Clang to Oorah to Wahp" quotes from Edmund Wilson's I Thought of Daisy: "'Dad was really a bright man, though,' Daisy presently went on… 'He invented all kinds of things—he invented a kind of siren… Did you ever hear them talk about auto horns—in a store or anywhere, I mean?' she asked. 'It's a shout. There is a toot-toot, and a beep-beep, and an oorah, and a blah-blah, and a blurb-blurb. Dad's was a kind of oorah—and it was a humdinger, too.'" It likens Daisy's dad to the inventors of the present.
It cites Automobile Facts, reporting that one company had always tuned its horns to the musical notes of E-flat and G, a combination which was found pleasing to most ears, coming out as "wowp". To make it an even more pleasant harmonic combination, a third note, B-flat, was presently being added, such that it now came out "wahp". It finds that it would just as soon have a return to "oorah", that things had never been quite right since cars stopped issuing "ding-ding" and "clang-clang", that the trouble had begun when the bulb horn had made its appearance and "poop-poop" became fashionable, followed successively by exhaust whistles, powered sirens, hand-operated klaxons and Gabriel-trumpets tuned to play a snatch of "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" or "How Dry I Am".
It finds it obvious that the future
held in store a continued search for "pleasing harmonic
combinations" in the age of high fidelity, that soon notes of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would issue from horns
After five years of that cacophony,
music would completely disappear as an art form, concluding that it
did not classify itself as anti-horn, that it depended on whether it
was the honker or the honkee, but rather yearned for "the good
old days when the horseless carriage rattled and clogged so
ferociously that there was no need for any discordant 'musical'
warning
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "Pass the Spinach", tells of news from Lakeland, Fla., possibly forcing re-examination of the subject of childhood, as pupils at an elementary school there were planning their own lunchtime menus and were reported to be asking more for spinach than for ice cream.
According to tradition, children had always hated spinach, with an early and famous New Yorker cartoon showing a mother hovering over a child, admonishing him to eat his broccoli, while the child responded, "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it."
When Elizabeth Hawes had authored a book titled Fashion Is Spinach, nearly everyone knew what she meant. It suggests that perhaps a sequel to the work might be in order, titled Spinach Is Fashionable, as it certainly appeared to be at the school in Lakeland.
They have neglected the impact of Popeye cartoons on the younger set. Throw a little vinegar over the spinach and it is quite palatable.
Drew Pearson tells of the New York longshoremen having taken Dave Beck, head of the Teamsters, off the hook just prior to a showdown with George Meany, head of the merged AFL-CIO, regarding unity of that latter organization with the racket-ridden Teamsters—to become the focus of Senate investigation the following year by Senator John McClellan's Investigating Committee. But insiders believed that there would sooner or later have to be a showdown between Mr. Meany and Mr. Beck, head of the largest union in the world. It would prove a test of the ability of the AFL-CIO to remain unified as well as for Mr. Meany personally, with labor leaders throughout the country being attentive to see whether he would stand up to Mr. Beck or whether he would be as William Green, who had been a benign figurehead of AFL while its big unions dominated the organization. Those who knew Mr. Meany were betting on him, as he had stood up to Mr. Beck previously, as well as to John L. Lewis, head of the UMW, and a law unto himself. Mr. Beck might duck a meeting scheduled for the following day on the basis that he was "busy".
Mr. Meany was shrewd enough not to have a showdown immediately and so the meeting the following day would likely result in referral to the regular meeting of the organization's executive committee in June, with final action possibly referred to the convention. Those who knew Mr. Meany were certain he would not give ground, while those who knew Mr. Beck were equally sure that he was one of the toughest and shrewdest operators among the unions, who usually got what he wanted and when he did not, called a strike or fired people.
When word had leaked that the Teamsters board had voted to buy his house in Seattle for $160,000 and then allowed him to live there for the rest of his life, Mr. Beck had become angry at the adverse publicity and immediately fired his entire public relations staff. An attorney and public relations expert who had worked with Eric Johnston, head of the motion picture association, persuaded Mr. Beck, however, to hire them back on the basis that the firing would only worsen his public perception.
Mr. Beck had not known that one of his own board members, seeking control of the New York Teamsters, had leaked the house purchase. The person who had secretly arranged the purchase of the house had been convicted of taking money from an employer to cross a picket line against a strike of a union local.
Mr. Beck had again made headlines when it was reported that the Teamsters board had voted secretly to purchase his furniture for about $40,000 and then loaned the furniture back to him for his lifetime. Once again, Mr. Beck had fired his public relations staff, but the previous adviser who had talked him out of the first firing had resigned and so the staff remained fired.
Mr. Pearson notes that considerable speculation had been aroused as to why Mr. Beck had wanted to sell his house and furniture, that the explanation was possibly that he was under investigation for income taxes and needed the capital gains tax deal on his house and furniture to pay off back taxes.
Mr. Beck wanted to control the waterfront, where trucks loaded and unloaded and union jurisdiction between the Teamsters and longshoremen tended to merge. In 1934, Mr. Beck had a date with Joe Ryan, convicted former head of the longshoremen, to merge the unions together, but Mr. Ryan had gotten drunk and never came to the meeting. Had the meeting occurred, Mr. Beck might have been controlling the waterfronts of both coasts since that time, as part of the deal was to push out Harry Bridges, head of the West Coast longshoremen. Now, Communist elements among the West Coast longshoremen were reported ready to make a deal with Mr. Beck to bypass Mr. Bridges.
Originally, Mr. Beck and Mr. Meany had been on the same side regarding the East Coast longshoremen, with the former having urged Mr. Meany to oppose Joe Ryan's racket-ridden International Longshoremen's Association and support, with Mr. Beck, the AFL longshoremen.
Marquis Childs tells of the preachments of the President, since the campaign of 1952 and as early as 1950, regarding his desire to see Alaska and Hawaii admitted to the Union, having not met with practice, that if the Administration were to press the matter in Congress, a pending bill, rather than languishing in committee, might be passed.
There was major Southern opposition to statehood in each case, based on racial prejudice aimed at the Nisei in Hawaii, notwithstanding their brave service during World War II, and at the Eskimos in Alaska. There was also opposition by conservative Republicans to the admission of Alaska based on the notion that the salmon industry in the territory might, in the event of statehood, become subject to enforced Federal regulations, harming big business dependent on the salmon from the state's waters. Alaskans believed that retired General Lucius Clay, head of Continental Can Co., which benefited from the Alaskan canned salmon industry, had convinced the President not to push Alaskan statehood.
The former Governor of the Territory, Ernest Gruening, who had served from 1939 to 1953, had made a fiery speech at the constitutional convention held in Alaska the previous November, in which he laid out the case for Alaska being a subservient colony of the "mother country", with discriminatory freight and portage rates, in comparison to the 48 states, which increased the cost of living for residents but which served the interests of big business.
The distinction had long been made in Congress between the territories, arguing that Alaska with its vast, unsettled territories was far less ready for statehood than was Hawaii. Hawaii represented an outstanding example of persons from the East and West getting along within the same territory.
Alaska was prepared to undertake the "Tennessee plan" to try to force statehood, adopted by Tennessee in 1796, when the territory elected two senators and representatives, who then went to Washington to seek seating and admission of the territory as a state. California, Oregon and Michigan had followed that plan previously. Alaska would soon send its elected senators and representative to seek seating. While they would not be seated, the case would be made for admission.
Overcoming the inherent resistance to national expansion by Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans, who formed, as on other issues, a bloc which could effectively filibuster a bill in the Senate, would be necessary to enable admission of the two territories to statehood, but Mr. Childs finds that the likelihood of it occurring either in the remainder of the 84th Congress or in the ensuing Congress to be virtually nil, while hope remained in the territories that the preachments would eventually be matched by practice.
Alaska would finally be admitted as the 49th state in early 1959, and Hawaii would be admitted later that year.
A letter writer looks at the recent zoning problem which faced those, including the writer, who lived in the county, finds it "the most unheard-of thing that the City Council has ever dreamed up", as those in the county had nothing to say about the procedures of the city and so she fails to understand why the City could tell them what they could or could not do, as they did not receive any benefits of the city, such as water, sewer, garbage disposal or fire protection. She finds that the attempt to characterize the apartment building of State House candidate A. G. Brown as a business rather than a residence, in violation of zoning regulations, to be unfair, as she had been through the building and believed it was one of the nicest in the neighborhood, had seen Mr. and Mrs. Brown working hard on the building which was to be their home, work about which she believed Mayor Philip Van Every knew little, as she regards his work as appearing to consist mainly of giving orders to tear down what hard-working people sought to build for themselves. She urges members of the Council to ride out Rozzell's Ferry Road and view some of the shabby buildings which had already been taken into the city limits, urging that they would have plenty of work cleaning up some of them without coming out into the county. She hopes that Mr. Brown would win his race and would do exactly what he intended to do, and assures that he would receive her vote, as she believed most of the people in the county felt as well.
A letter writer comments on the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, wondering where it would lead and if the proponents of desegregation, and particularly those who had given it new life recently, had ever given any thought to its final conclusion if put into effect in reverse order, that the unfortunate thing was that the masses of blacks who were not in sympathy with the NAACP and its adherents would be the ones who would suffer the most. The writer asks whether those innocent blacks would sit by idly and be disorganized by the NAACP or whether they would speak in a unified voice of their own. He finds that opinions were crystallizing into "black and white" without people being too aware of it or too affected by it, that if the white person with the background of the "New Deal sociology writers of undetermined origin" of the previous decade, echoed by educators in high school and college, and clergy, wanted to integrate, they should go ahead and do so voluntarily as individuals, and "in doing so let them also banish themselves (or be banished) from the so-called white race and pitch their tents where their hearts are." He thinks that the "ramming" of mixing of the races down one's throat on the basis of color was completely repugnant to the white Southerner who had lived with and understood the black from the cradle to the grave. He thinks it too early to speak of Federal bayonets enforcing Brown v. Board of Education, but that it might occur, though he does not think so, as no law could be enforced which was as unpopular with the public as the decision was. "Chew on that with your false ideas for a moment, and think out a solution." He says that he is a Southerner, although he had never felt previously that he had to be proud of the fact, and held in higher regard a great many blacks than he did ten times that number of "so-called 'whites'". He concludes that the NAACP was not the answer.
A letter writer commends her good friend, Arthur Goodman, whose social and economic views were in keeping with City Government, State Government and the Federal Government, not backing any minority group or upholding any organization which was not strictly fair in its policies, earnestly believing in a "square deal for one and all regardless of color or creed, whether you are rich or poor," and, in her opinion, was the reason he ought be the next Superior Court judge. She had known Mr. Goodman and his wife for 15 years and found him to be one of the kindest men she had ever known, proud of his Hebrew lineage and living by the same Golden Rule by which the writer tried to live. He had given much to the handicapped of the city, as she was aware, for she and her husband had an only child who was 16, an invalid and complete shut-in. She concludes that a vote for Mr. Goodman was a vote for good government.
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