Tuesday, Apri1 4, 1956

The Charlotte News

Wednesday, April 4, 1956

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, at his press conference this date, said that he would never order American troops into a war without prior approval by Congress, adding that it might become necessary for U.S. forces to defend themselves in a local action, which he would not regard as a war. The statement was in response to a question as to whether the President might order into war, without prior approval of Congress, a contingent of 1,500 U.S. Marines deployed the previous month to the Middle East to join the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, a question prompted by views expressed the previous day by Secretary of State Dulles, indicating his belief that the President would not use U.S. troops without prior Congressional approval, absent an emergency.

The President also stated at the conference that the farmers had a right to be somewhat bewildered at the general agricultural situation, but again expressed confidence that they would see that the Administration was trying to help them by pressing the Administration's farm bill.

In New York, former President Truman said, in a speech to the annual awards dinner for the Overseas Press Club, that the Administration was misleading the nation when it claimed that the new Soviet "peace" tactics indicated that their policy was failing, finding the Communist threat "more dangerous now than ever before", that their changing tactics were instead the result of growing economic power. He called for a "bold, new program for foreign economic aid" to meet the Soviet threat. One of the awards at the dinner was presented to Clifton Daniel of the New York Times, soon to be wed to the President's daughter Margaret. In a message also sent to the dinner, President Eisenhower praised the awards as demonstrating "the high standards which American men and women of the press keep before them." Senator Francis Case of South Dakota said to the dinner that there appeared to be "less tension, less government by crisis" than four years earlier.

In Wisconsin, nearly complete returns from the presidential primary the previous day showed that 55 percent of the total vote had gone to the President, facing token opposition in the Republican primary, and 42 percent for the unopposed Senator Estes Kefauver on the Democratic side, with three percent going to a third-party candidate.

Representative Kenneth Keating of New York stated that he anticipated introducing Administration-backed civil rights legislation the following week, indicating a "fighting chance" of passage by the House while it would face a problem potentially in the Senate, where a Southern filibuster could stop it.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Emanuel Celler of New York invited Attorney General Herbert Brownell to present the Administration's civil rights program to the Committee the following Tuesday, with an aide to Mr. Celler saying he had yet to respond to the invitation. He said that the Committee would proceed on Democratic-sponsored civil rights legislation, already approved by a subcommittee, if Mr. Brownell did not appear. One of the Democratic bills was an anti-lynching measure and the other would create a Senate-House committee on civil rights and a civil rights commission within the executive branch. Administration proposals reportedly would include authorization for a civil rights commission to study and make recommendations in the area, plus a civil rights division of the Justice Department to investigate alleged civil rights abuses. It was also reported that the Department was revising a proposal to allow citizens having their civil rights impinged to go to court.

In Charlotte, a member of the City Council, Steve Dellinger, praised articles in The News regarding disrepair of the city's sidewalk. City Manager Henry Yancey said that he wished more adjoining property owners would take advantage of the City's offer to provide the labor for sidewalk repair if the owners would supply the materials.

Dick Young of The News reports that the City School Board this date requested from the County Commission $150,000 for purchase of a 40 to 50 acre site for a consolidated city-county school administration headquarters building.

The City Council in Charlotte approved this date issuance of a special police officer permit to a Park & Recreation Commission employee to keep a closer vigil on the park properties to prevent vandalism, a recurring problem of late, causing thousands of dollars in damage. The officer would have a radio-equipped patrol car. One Council member said that, in addition, new legislation was needed to place the responsibility for juvenile vandalism on the parents, a suggestion made by a member of the Commission, a suggestion which State Representative J. B. Vogler said he would present to the 1957 biennial State legislative session.

Julian Scheer of The News reports that Charlotte's rate per capita of reported alcoholism was the lowest in the country among cities of more than 100,000 population. It had a rate of 1,320 alcoholics per 100,000 population, based on a 1950 survey, with no significant upward trend in the meantime observed, as reported in December, 1955 in the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, in a study conducted by Yale researchers Mark Keller and Vera Efron. Charlotte's rate of 440 chronic alcoholics for every 100,000 adults tied Austin, Tex., for the lowest in the nation, with San Francisco, at 4,190 per 100,000, being the highest, while New York, Detroit and St. Louis were not in the top 25, with the second highest rate having been in Sacramento, at 2,780, and Louisville coming in third with 2,380. Mr. Keller told Mr. Scheer by telephone that the actual number of chronic alcoholics in Charlotte was lower, at 330, as the adult population was 75,000. The rate for the state was 580, with 13,860 alcoholics. (North Carolina, according to earlier studies by another researcher, had ranked 40th among the states in 1953 in the rate of alcoholism, compared to 43rd in 1940.) The rate was based on "alcoholics with complications", defined as those adults over age 20 "who have developed recognizable physical or mental symptoms due to excessive drinking," with there being three times as many alcoholics without complications, thus providing a rate of about 1,320 per 100,000 for Charlotte—or an actual figure of about 990. Mr. Keller described Charlotte as unusual because urbanization and alcoholism went hand in hand and usually the largest city in a state had a higher rate than the state as a whole, not the case in Charlotte, though explaining also that population density did not necessarily correlate with higher incidence of alcoholism, thus explaining the disparity in rates between San Francisco and much larger cities as New York. Charlotte was the only city in the state surveyed. Of course in New York and Detroit, there were probably more people shooting up heroin than in San Francisco.

A series of Midwestern tornadoes in ten states had claimed the lives of at least 53 persons and injured more than 325 others, with property damage estimated in the millions. The Grand Rapids area of Michigan suffered the worst death and injury toll, with at least 22 dead and more than 200 injured after a dozen twisters hit the area, destroying scores of homes, leaving some 2,000 persons homeless. Communities in Wisconsin, where eight were killed, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi were also hit.

In New York, actress Grace Kelly, preparing to sail to Monaco to wed Prince Rainier III, said, in response to a press question, that she hoped to have a large family. The wedding would be on April 18 and the couple would spend their honeymoon sailing the Mediterranean for about a month with no particular destination. She said that she hoped to return to America often but was noncommittal on whether she would continue her acting career.

On the editorial page, "Let's Leave Tom Jefferson out of This" comments on the statements the previous day to reporters by Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, in which he had commented on the internal division within the Democratic Party, predicting that "Jeffersonian Democrats" of the South were sick of Northern Democrats pandering to minority groups and "riding in a political automobile they can never steer", thus would revolt.

It wants to know from the Senator what Jeffersonian Republicans would do, being "stuck in a rudderless rumble seat" since the candidacy of Wendell Willkie in 1940.

It suggests that there was only one Jeffersonian Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, and if adherence to his states' rights views created a "Jeffersonian Democrat", then a penchant for his isolationist ideas suggested "Jeffersonian Republicans". Neither of those groups, which were primarily regional in nature, was in charge at present. States' right advocates were isolated within the South, and isolationists, in the Midwest.

It urges that if Mr. Jefferson were alive at present, he would not be isolated, but rather steering, as he was not the single-minded man whom contemporary political orators suggested by invoking his name upon their particular causes.

He was a states' rights advocate and an isolationist, supplying quotes corroborative of both positions. He was also an agrarian, a rationalist, and a civil libertarian.

It finds within the views of Mr. Jefferson as much comfort for the NAACP as for the North Carolina Patriots, as much for Republicans as for Democrats, as much for the National Association of Manufacturers as for the Americans for Democratic Action.

It concludes that nobody knew what in fact Mr. Jefferson would say if confronted by the issues of the present, whether his hatred for statism as practiced in Russia would turn him toward alliances with free Europeans, whether his passion for civil liberties would temper his love of states' rights. It suggests therefore to Senator Mundt that it would be better to leave Mr. Jefferson out of the 1956 campaign, along with George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt.

"Charlotte's Growth: Straight & Strong" suggests that in planning for the orderly development of a city, it was necessary to determine the exact nature of the "multitude of human impulses", as former Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, had defined a city. It was one of the announced objectives of the study of Charlotte's economic trends and potentialities being proposed by the director of the City-County Planning Commission.

It finds it a worthy project, indicating that Charlotte was still young and in a formative stage of development as a city, urges that it had to be recognized that cities were man-made and results measured by the participation of many people, regardless of the direction of their collective action, whether toward chaotic growth, mediocrity or high achievement. Charlotte's newly emerging urban problems called for new types of metropolitan planning and orderly regulation. It suggests that the project, with the full cooperation of the citizenry, could provide such plans.

"Not All Knots and Kerchiefs Anymore" finds that membership in the Boy Scouts had always been fun, had involved tramping off into a damp forest in search of nature's wonders, campsites and poison oak. But it had all changed, as scouting had grown up as the community had grown up, now having a varied program no longer restricted to distant woodlands but also on display within the city.

Such a display was the Boy Scout Circus, "Adventures in Scouting", to be held the following Friday and Saturday at the Charlotte Coliseum, sponsored by three Rotary Clubs in the city.

It concludes that despite the vanishing wilderness, the role of scouting in modern society was bigger and more vital than ever and its participants had much of which to be proud and much to show the community, looks forward to having fun at the circus.

"Sing Hinky Dinky, Parley Voo" nominates as Spoilsport of the Week the Pentagon fashion czar who had told the Army's paratroop guerrilla fighters, the 77th Special Forces Group, to discard their distinctive green berets, explaining to the Washington press corps that it made them look "foreign".

It finds that the berets not only gave them a dashing appearance but also served as a practical covering for creeping through the underbrush during squad maneuvers around Camp Lejeune.

It suggests an image of a West Point-type having made the decision, a man who probably wore European-type garb at home, climbed into his MG and sped away to Guido's for lasagna.

It says it was one of the things it liked about the country: "Except for the 77th Special Forces Group, it's so continental."

A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "a Small Privilege", finds refreshing the fact that some of the girls who cut pies in cafes using the eye method for determining the size of the cut rather than resorting, as in major restaurants, to a pie frame to ensure equal-sized cuts, in that it gave the customer the chance to get the biggest slice, "a very small privilege which should not be denied a person just because he must take his meals in a restaurant."

Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson and Attorney General Herbert Brownell having met privately recently to discuss the cheese scandal, what to do about the 2.5 million dollars which the Department of Agriculture had paid to the big cheese manufacturers merely for some fast paperwork. Theoretically, the Government had bought cheese from the companies and then sold it back a month later at a lower price while the cheese, in fact, had never left the warehouses, as he had reported in the column the prior June 24. Afterward, Comptroller General Joseph Campbell had ruled that the payments were unauthorized and improper but Secretary Benson had done little about it or even answered queries from North Carolina Congressman L. H. Fountain, who wanted the money repaid to the Treasury.

After the Comptroller General's decision, the Agriculture Department had gone to the Attorney General for another opinion, with three months having passed without issuance of a report. Eventually, Mr. Fountain had written a fifth letter to Secretary Benson, demanding to know why the matter had been brushed aside and when a decision would be forthcoming. Again, Mr. Benson did not answer, though a reply from Undersecretary True D. Morse on December 7 had stated that the Justice Department had not informed them of the date of its decision. After another two months, still with no word, Mr. Fountain had written directly to Mr. Brownell, who answered on February 15, indicating that the Justice Department had made its decision and was waiting to talk to Mr. Benson. Mr. Pearson tells of the two having gotten together and decided to do nothing.

He notes that Mr. Benson was moving to assess a $200,000 fine on 281 farmers who had raised wheat outside their quotas, while the cheese companies were able to keep the 2.5 million which had been ruled illegal by the Comptroller General.

Marquis Childs tells of the President having reportedly promised the major oil and gas producers that he would endorse a bill to deregulate natural gas in early 1957, after having vetoed the bill passed by the Congress earlier in the year on the ground that there had been "arrogant defiance" by the big oil lobbyists in seeking support for the bill. The gas companies had been upset by the veto, finding it to resemble the New Deal policies of the Truman Administration, when a similar bill had also been vetoed by the President.

The revelations by Senator Francis Case of South Dakota that he had been offered a $2,500 campaign contribution through a lawyer for the gas lobby as the bill was being debated had led to the investigation of the case, though carefully circumscribed to avoid a broader investigation of the oil and gas lobbying.

The oil industry had at its disposal a billion dollars in saved taxes from the oil depletion allowance and so was flush with funding for political campaigns. One of the reasons why the 27.5 percent allowance had survived was because it was a primary source of political contributions. There was a pending bill being sponsored by Senator John Williams of Delaware, joined by fellow Republicans Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, William Purtell of Connecticut, and George Aiken of Vermont, to reduce the allowance to 15 percent, but the bill had little chance of getting out of the Finance Committee to which it had been referred.

The investigation of the gas lobby had served to intimidate small and medium contributors. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon had a deficit in pre-campaign expenditures and would need $250,000 to wage an effective tv and radio advertising campaign, as he faced the toughest Congressional re-election effort of the year against opponent Douglas McKay, Secretary of Interior, who would be backed by the oil and timber interests and would have between a million and 1.5 million dollars available in campaign assets. Republicans on the new Senate lobby investigating committee had demanded investigation of such comparatively small liberal organizations as the National Committee for an Effective Congress which received its funds primarily in small contributions. Meanwhile, there was no indication that the large contributors had been deterred by the investigation.

Mr. Childs concludes that if the President had given his assurance of an endorsement of a gas deregulation bill for early 1957, then it would be one of the best examples of having one's cake and eating it, too, which Washington had witnessed in a long time.

Doris Fleeson tells of former President Truman having flatly rejected to his close associates the notion that he might be renominated for the presidency in 1956. She provides evidence that such was the case, as former First Lady Bess Truman and daughter Margaret had not changed their minds from 1952 in being opposed to the President running again.

Moreover, the President and Mrs. Truman would take a prolonged trip to Europe from May until late July, keeping the former President, therefore, away from politics until just a couple of weeks before the start of the Democratic convention in mid-August.

Former DNC chairman Frank McKinney, close to Mr. Truman, was gathering support for Governor Averell Harriman, another sign that the former President had no intention of running again. While Mr. Truman regarded Governor Harriman as a friend, it was not clear whether he would support him for the nomination. The President favored an open convention with the best man winning the nomination.

Democrats had also noted that Margaret Truman had chosen as her wedding day the date of the annual Democratic fund-raising dinner in Washington, dedicated this year to President Wilson. Ms. Fleeson indicates that the wedding would therefore keep Mr. Truman out of the smoke-filled rooms of Washington that weekend.

A letter writer says that he had arrived in Charlotte from San Francisco two months earlier and taken the city to his heart, finding it friendly to a stranger. He liked everything about Charlotte except the traffic, finds that pedestrians were not given the right of way at crosswalks, enabling crossing of a street only at one's peril. But pedestrians were also as apt to walk against the signals as were the motorists to disobey the signals. Often, a police officer was standing nearby, doing nothing to enforce the laws. He suggests that enforcing the law would help to cut down traffic accidents.

At least, complicating the mess, there are no streetcars, trolley lines and electric buses stalled for their conductors having become dislodged at a turn from their wires.

Framed Edition

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