The Charlotte News
Friday, May 18, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn said this date that he regarded a 1956 tax cut as a "possibility but not a probability", even though the prospect of the midyear surplus had been boosted by more than 1.5 billion dollars. That appeared to be the consensus among Congressional leaders in the wake of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey's announcement that the June 30 Federal surplus was now estimated at 1.8 billion dollars, with the last previous estimate having been in January, at 230 million. Key members of both parties on the House Ways & Means Committee, which initiated tax legislation, generally supported the President's stand that any surplus ought first pay off the national debt before any tax reduction would take place. Democratic leaders, however, were keeping a close eye on future fiscal moves of the Administration, ready to move quickly with tax-cutting legislation of their own, should the Administration indicate any intention of initiating a tax reduction program. The new surplus estimate had come as no surprise to members of Congress, as booming national income and tax receipts had been noted there. Only a few hours earlier, Congressional tax experts had forecast a surplus of 2.3 billion for the present fiscal year and a surplus of 2.2 billion for the following fiscal year, though Secretary Humphrey had made no forecast for the next fiscal year. The announcement by the Secretary had stated that a balanced budget, for which the President had been striving for three years, now appeared assured for the present fiscal year.
In New York, a retail price increase of a penny per pack of cigarettes was predicted for the following week by a spokesman of the United Cigars-Whelan Stores, Inc., following an increase in the wholesale price announced this date by Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., stating that the wholesale price of Chesterfield regular and king size cigarettes would go up by 45 cents on all shipments, an increase of nine cents per carton, roughly a penny per pack. That put the wholesale price at $8.55 for regular and $9.00 for king size in thousand lots, less the customary cash discount of two percent. The United Cigar spokesman said that the action by Liggett & Myers had come as a surprise, but that it would definitely mean a retail price increase, probably of a penny per pack in more than 1,000 stores of his chain throughout the country. In Winston-Salem, the president of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., E. A. Darr, said that he had no comment on the increase, and the same response had come from spokesmen for American Tobacco Co., P. Lorillard & Co., and Phillip Morris, Inc. They're just not talking. Ask them no questions, hear no lies.
In Norfolk, Va., a woman who was accused of bilking her building and loan association employer of nearly three million dollars was facing a ten-year prison sentence after being convicted of lying to Virginia's banking regulatory agency about the financial conditions of a local firm. She would next go on trial for embezzling more than a million dollars from the building and loan association for which she served as assistant secretary-treasurer, and faced 14 other charges, including one accusing her of taking 2.8 million dollars from the same employer over a period of 22 years. She could receive a total prison sentence of more than 200 years on all of the charges. The jury of six men and six women had provided her the maximum penalty on the conviction for lying, following a two-day trial and one hour and 42 minutes of jury deliberations. She remained free on $50,000 bond. The State had said she had stolen her firm's money and used it to purchase lavish gifts for friends and family. She had worked her way up from being a bookkeeper to the top, and had enjoyed a reputation as a generous giver to charities. In her home, she had taken care of her blind sister.
Donald MacDonald of The News tells of a quick-thinking 41-year old grandmother, with her clothes on fire, having rescued her grandchild and possibly saved the life of her pregnant daughter in a fire-explosion in Charlotte this date, caused by an old-fashioned gasoline iron exploding during the morning, setting the home ablaze. The woman had grabbed her 18-year old daughter and led her outside, rolled her over on the ground to extinguish her burning clothing and then returned to the house to rescue her 15-month old granddaughter. The daughter was pregnant with her next child, due the following month, and was admitted in serious condition at Memorial Hospital, with first, second, and third degree burns over 40 percent of her body. Her condition was now said to be "satisfactory". In less serious condition was the grandmother, who received burns on her right arm and right hip. The fire had started when the mother and daughter were in a middle bedroom preparing to do some ironing, at which point the explosion occurred. Firemen from headquarters and Belmont stations had given the two women first aid before the ambulance had arrived. Fire Chief Donald Charles, who had gone to the scene, estimated that the damage to the building was several hundred dollars worth.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of State Representative Jack Love during his first day of the 1955 legislative session, his first, remaining largely unknown until the last days of the session, when he became fairly well known. The previous day, Mr. Love had gone into the chamber again, this time receiving a large welcome from well-wishers and handshakers who would not leave him alone. He was now confidently and quietly bullish, whereas a year and a half earlier, he had been almost sheepish in his first term. He had received more than the passing attention given most politicians in the state, but had not yet staggered the state's hierarchy. He said that he was not interested in bowling over anybody, but his dual role as kingmaker and king was, apparently, appealing to him. A week earlier, Mr. Love and other unhappy Mecklenburg Democrats had taken over the party leadership with the promotion of W. M. Nicholson as county chairman, succeeding David McConnell, who was not a candidate to succeed himself. Linn Garibaldi, representing the same party faction as Mr. McConnell, had been defeated by the Love group with the resounding Nicholson win.
Dick Young of The News tells of steps for the establishment of a detention home for juveniles to be taken immediately, with the urgency for establishment of such a home having led this date to instructions to a subcommittee of the Mayor's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency to proceed at once for rental of quarters which would serve as a juvenile detention home. Welfare Department superintendent Wallace Kuralt, chairman of the subcommittee, said that he would call a meeting soon to initiate negotiations for the home.
City and County officials expressed concern for constructive handling of juvenile problems in the future, being less concerned with previous errors regarding record-keeping than in doing a constructive job in the future of taking care of the problems of juvenile delinquency, as also expressed in the conference of the Mayor's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. It had been known for some time that there was a discrepancy and a lack of record balance in 27 instances of juvenile delinquents, and there was some discussion about those past errors. Both Mayor Philip Van Every and City Manager Henry Yancey had been insistent, however, that they were not interested in past mistakes as much as they were concerned about doing a proper job in the future. The Mayor said that it was not the purpose of the conference to try to put the blame on anybody for past errors, that what they wanted to see was that the errors would not recur.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that a 35-bed psychiatric ward in a general hospital had been named as Charlotte's minimum need by a visiting psychiatrist this date, Dr. Lloyd Thompson, professor of psychiatry at Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem. He indicated that such a ward would require a staff of about 35 people. He was visiting Charlotte this date at the invitation of the Charlotte Eastern Lions Club, to make a survey of the psychiatric needs of the city. There was presently no facility in any of the four general hospitals in the city for care of acutely disturbed mental patients. Out of the conference had emerged the fact that some cities in South Carolina, smaller than Charlotte, including Columbia, Spartanburg and Greenville, had psychiatric wards in their hospitals, and at present, each of the four private Charlotte psychiatrists had an average of ten patients each in local hospitals, with one of the doctors saying that there would be more if there were adequate facilities available. During 1955, 237 patients had been admitted by psychiatrists to Memorial Hospital, with others having gone to other hospitals and still others coming under psychiatric care after being hospitalized. All of those patients could be managed successfully in ordinary hospital rooms, but patients who had violent tendencies were confined in the County jail or admitted to the State hospitals. Dr. Thompson had said that a considerable savings of time and money could be realized with a well-equipped local psychiatric hospital ward, such that patients could be successfully treated in early stages of mental illness before they became so disturbed that they had to be committed to a State hospital. He said that in addition to the 35-bed ward, there should be initiated a teaching program for nurses. At present, the only psychiatric facilities in the state in general hospitals were in Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem and at Duke Hospital in Durham. Figures of the National Mental Health Association had been cited to show that one psychiatrist was needed per 10,000 people across the country, with Charlotte falling far below that minimum.
On the editorial page, "Hooray for the Democratic Tigers" comments on the Democratic state convention in Raleigh having been a "country circus featuring tired tigers, threadbare barkers and pensioned off trapezists", when compared to the national conventions to come. It had been too small to hold up the big headlines it received. "But circus is circus, and so is politics, and it's good to see the conventions finally getting underway."
It indicates that the state convention had not done much as there was not much to do, with a popular Governor at the head of the ticket in the state and most of the delegates agreed that Adlai Stevenson should be renominated as the party standard bearer in 1956. The primary races were family fights and intervention should not take place there.
The orators had flailed the "princes of privileges", promised to "restore the government to the people" and bemoaned the farmer as the "forgotten man", who, it suggests, was the most unlikely "forgotten man" one would ever run across.
It finds them tired words but ones which reached their hearers "like credos newly minted for the crusades that must be launched if the unpolitic voter is to be rousted out of his apathy and into a polling booth on election day."
It indicates that politics provided the only national pageantry which the young nation was willing to put up with, and "if the Raleigh pageant was uninspiring, it was interesting and necessary nonetheless. Hooray for the tigers!—tired as they were."
"The Better Business Opportunity—III", in the third in its series of three editorials on the Better Business Bureau in Charlotte, focuses on the Bureau's function in inspiring public confidence in the rightness and worthiness of the free enterprise system. All Bureau programs, from fraud prevention to truth-in-advertising, were tailored to that end.
The national association of Better Business Bureaus wanted the business community to provide its own policing effort. Bureaus existed in Charlotte and 110 other cities across the nation, cooperating nationally to show that the majority of business firms were able and willing to regulate themselves. The Bureau's truth-in-advertising program was a good example, preventing deceptive advertising which tended to foster a chain of deception, with one business seeking to outdo another in deceptive practices, thus hurting all businesses. The Bureau stepped in with its code for truth-in-advertising, geared to the public interest and the problems of competition.
The Bureau had commented in its annual report recently that "the public distrust that was never aroused, the abuses that were prevented, the things that did not make headlines—these were the most important gains for business from Bureau operations."
All of Charlotte's businesses had profited from the Bureau's operations, keeping money in Charlotte by keeping fraudulent and sharp dealers out, bringing money in by helping to create a healthy and clean climate in the business community. Its largest contribution had been building public confidence in free enterprise and its insistence that free enterprise merited that confidence.
It indicates that the Charlotte Bureau was understaffed and its job was growing with the growth of the city, that it needed the support from the 1,000 eligible businesses which were not members, and it wishes the Bureau success for its membership drive the following week.
"No More Doubts about the Skyscraper" indicates that with a much larger view port to see the rising construction of the new Wachovia building in Charlotte, there was no doubt any longer that it was actually coming to be. It had previously shared the sentiment of a recent letter writer who had complained about the shortage of peep holes for those wanting to view the emergence of the new building. It ventures that the writer had not said so, but it could be perceived that he had doubts as to whether it was actually occurring.
After the letter had appeared, the bank appeared to respond with larger ports. "It's the staring, disbelieving eye of the sidewalk superintendent that makes foremen, architects, plumbers and masons work like fury to build a skyscraper just as it looks in the drawing." It is happy to see the peep holes, as it knew it could run the piledriver faster than it was going at present.
A piece from the Omaha World Herald, titled "Beware the Official Dog", indicates that some state legislatures were considering choosing a state dog. Pennsylvania had failed to choose the Great Dane by only a single vote, after supporters of poodles, pugs, pomeranians, boxers, cockers and the rest finally had conquered the Great Dane lobby.
The fact had distressed columnist Bill Vaughn of the Kansas City Star, who saw the official dog craze spreading west and enveloping Missouri and other states, which had enough trouble keeping straight state trees and state flowers. It finds him correct, that unofficial dogs were often a problem and an official dog could be a downright nuisance.
Drew Pearson finds that the scheduling of the presidents of the American Republics Conference in Panama, along with the visit of Marshal Zhukov to Washington shortly before the November elections, had been one of the shrewdest pieces of international-political diplomacy in some time. Even most Latin American diplomats in Washington had not been aware that the President intended to fly to Panama on June 25 for a meeting of the Pan American presidents. Only the President of Panama and a few strategists in the White House knew what was taking place largely in secret. On May 2, the Pan American Union had passed a resolution commemorating the 130th anniversary of the first Pan American Conference, called by Simon Bolivar, deciding that Pan American ambassadors ought meet in Panama on June 22. The White House, however, had the presidential meeting planned in advance, and approximately two days later, invitations were being issued by the President of Panama to the presidents of the American Republics, with President Ricardo Arias having been told in advance to issue the invitations and that President Eisenhower would accept, as he had immediately. Had that not been the case, President Arias would not have issued invitations to the presidents of the potent South American nations, such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
With NATO rapidly weakening and the U.S. losing ground in Europe, Mr. Pearson suggests that the Panama meeting of the presidents could set a new landmark for closer cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. He ventures that what some of the top diplomats had not realized in the past was that every time the U.S. built up Africa with foreign aid, it hurt the country's neighbors in Latin America. The more coffee which was produced in Africa, the more Brazil and other coffee countries suffered. The more cocoa which was produced in Africa, the more Ecuador suffered. Tropical Africa and parts of Asia were big competitors of tropical South America. By the same token, few areas in the world had such completely dovetailing economies as tropical Latin America and industrial America. He suggests beginning to build up the old friends in Latin America.
Richard Stengel, who was running for the Senate in Illinois against incumbent Republican Senator Everett Dirksen, was a cousin of Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees.
Joe Glazer, the "political minstrel" of Akron, O., had recorded "The Ballad of Richard Nixon", which was selling fast, and so he was glad that the Vice-President had decided to seek renomination at the Republican convention in August. Mr. Glazer had now recorded other political songs, "The Give Away Boys", "The Dixon-Yates Song", and "Love That Team".
Marquis Childs, at the U.N., finds that with peace and disarmament on the front pages, the memory of potentially imminent war just a month earlier was fading fast, as the prestige of the U.N. and the skill and determination of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold had averted, at least temporarily, the prospect of conflict in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, the elements of conflict remained and the slide toward war had merely been arrested, with the cease-fire achieved by Mr. Hammarskjold still being a long way from permanent peace. Pressure was now building for him to return to the Middle East to try to construct with Israel and the Arab states a full settlement. Secretary of State Dulles, according to reports at the U.N., was eager to have the Secretary-General seek to reach agreement on such problems as the Arab refugees and the allocation of the Jordan River water, with the U.N. Security Council to consider a resolution which might or might not call on Mr. Hammarskjold to return.
Mr. Childs indicates that it was understandable that the Administration would want a second mission by the Secretary-General. So far, Secretary Dulles had been able to stick to a policy of restraint on arms for Israel, with those who looked on the matter objectively believing that restraint had served the cause of peace. But with the election coming in November, the pressure on the Administration was bound to grow, as Democratic candidates were seeking votes with an appeal to send arms to Israel to match the Communist shipments to Egypt. France and Canada were being encouraged to sell modern weapons to Israel.
If Mr. Hammarskjold would undertake a second mission in the near future, it would enable the Administration to buy some more time and take off some of the heat, as the Administration could point to the need for continuing restraint on arms shipments in the face of ongoing negotiations. But Mr. Hammarskjold was not going to be persuaded or pushed into an effort to settle the great problems between Israel and the Arab states, as such a mission, he believed, would be foreordained to fail and could undo all which he had already achieved. He was determined, according to a reliable source, to refuse such a second mission. He believed that to try to achieve a larger settlement at present would appear as one imposed by outside powers, the U.S. and Britain in particular, and that it would be resisted therefore by both Israel and the Arab states. The suspicion of the three-power guarantee of the Egyptian-Israeli borders, which Mr. Hammarskjold had to overcome during his first mission, would be revived.
Mr. Childs indicates that what had been achieved in the first mission had been both overrated and underrated. Because the fear of war had been so great, public opinion had seized on the cease-fire as proof that peace had already been achieved. To have broken the chain reaction which inexorably was leading to open warfare was a remarkable victory, with that achievement having served as a lesson for the future to stop wars while the chain of events could still be broken. Had such a process been understood earlier, it was conceivable that the Korean War might have been averted. But at the present stage, with the prospect of peace still frail, to send it back to the U.N. with the responsibility for its future, would do more harm than good for all concerned.
A letter writer comments on the departure for Tacoma, Wash., of Melvin Sipe, who had brought the Charlotte Opera Association orchestra to a high level of perfection. He believes that it was his baton which had contributed so much recently to the great success of the performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida at the Charlotte Auditorium. He expresses thanks to Mr. Sipe for that performance, which he had witnessed. He also praises Edwin Bergamini, the music critic and reviewer for the News, for his musical insight and awareness of the talent on display, when he predicted that the nation would hear more of Mr. Sipe. He also finds it encouraging that there were many present at a recent meeting of the Fine Arts Council at the Mint Museum, including representatives from most of the city's cultural groups. An interesting talk by Ralph Burgard of Winston-Salem had provided the recipe for success at the Winston-Salem Fine Arts Council. Mr. Burgard had said that the job had not been an easy one, but in the end, all cultural groups benefited through the Council, making the city a better place for people to live and raise their children. The writer indicates that the experience of about 75 fine arts councils across the nation indicated that all of the arts flourished and developed when they were willing to accept and promote a fine arts council, that pettiness, jealousy, rivalry and envy gave way to confidence, unity, trust and cooperation in the realization that all cultural forces in the city were directing their efforts toward a common goal. He hopes that Charlotte would take advantage of its cultural resources and enhance them by strengthening all cultural organizations through a dynamic, energetic Fine Arts Council.
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