The Charlotte News
Thursday, May 24, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that investigators for the Senate Internal Security subcommittee had urged the State Department this date to expel from the U.S. Arkady Sobolev, chief Soviet delegate to the U.N., along with one of his top subordinates, accusing Mr. Sobolev's staff of using "coercion, force and duress" in an effort to induce nine Russian sailors to return to their homeland after obtaining asylum in the U.S. Five of the sailors had suddenly departed New York by airplane on April 7, under Soviet escort, and dispatches from Russia had quoted them as saying that they had gone home voluntarily. But the four sailors who remained said that the men had been coerced. The subcommittee rebuked the State Department and the Immigration & Naturalization Service, saying that the two agencies had failed to take effective action to protect the young sailors. It said that there were no "realistic efforts" to learn whether duress had been used on the sailors and that unjustified concessions had been made "in response to Soviet pressures and truculence." Testimony in executive session had been made public by the subcommittee as part of its report, disclosing that Government officials had learned of the sailors' impending return to Russia the night before they had departed, but had concluded that there was no evidence then to warrant blocking their departure. The five sailors had been among nine crewmen of the Soviet tanker Tuapse, who had been granted asylum in the country the previous October after their ship, bound for Communist China with a load of jet fuel, had been captured by Chinese Nationalists off Formosa. In recent hearings, the subcommittee had heard testimony from the four crewmen remaining and from others, indicating that the five who had "re-defected" to Russia had been kidnaped by the Soviet agents. Under the agreement establishing U.N. headquarters in New York, the U.S. reserved the right to take action against any official who engaged in activities "outside his official capacity", and the Government had invoked that provision the prior April 25 in expelling two lower-ranking members of the Soviet U.N. delegation, whose activities on behalf of the five sailors had been deemed "particularly objectionable".
A three-year extension of the G.I. home loan program had been proposed to the Senate this date as an amendment to the multibillion-dollar omnibus housing bill, with Senator Herbert Lehman of New York indicating that he planned to sponsor the extension with Senators Lister Hill of Alabama and John Sparkman of Alabama, making the surprise announcement as the Senate prepared to take up the housing bill. It would increase Federal Housing Administration loan insurance authority, continue public housing development and provide special low-cost housing for the elderly. The G.I. loan program was presently scheduled to expire for most veterans on July 25, 1957, but its extension had been urged by home-builder and real estate groups, and by veterans organizations. They had contended that action had to be taken during the current year to prevent a major slowdown in home construction. Senator Lehman said that his proposed amendment would apply to both the loan guarantee and the direct loan programs operated by the Veterans Administration. As of the end of 1955, the VA had estimated that it had underwritten 4.26 million G.I. home loans with a total principal of about 33 billion dollars, about one in every five of which loans had been paid off in full.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges said this date at a press conference that it was safe to assume that a special session of the Legislature to deal with the school segregation problem would not be held in June and that a date for the session should begin to firm up the following week. He said that work had begun on drafting bills which would be presented at the special session and that he and his staff would be talking to several key legislative leaders before the final drafting was completed. He said that he had read with interest news stories of the State Supreme Court decision the previous day in the Old Fort school case, dismissing an appeal brought by four black parents seeking to have their children and other children admitted to the white school at Old Fort, the Court having held that the parents should have filed their suit as individuals instead of as a group.
In Laurinburg, N.C., a 21-year old woman, being held in the Scotland County jail on charges of attempted safe robbery and possession of burglary tools, had unsuccessfully attempted suicide the previous night in her cell, according to the sheriff. The woman, from Falls Church, Va., who had described herself as a Washington, D.C., dress and fur model, had been found lying on the floor of her cell the previous evening by a jailer, apparently having tried to hang herself. He said that her face was almost black when he reached her and that he applied artificial respiration for about 25 minutes to revive her and then had taken her to a hospital where a check revealed that she was uninjured, and then was returned to her cell.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of it being probable that there would be a light vote in the Saturday primary, that the weather forecast was not conducive to a large vote, that there would be little heated political activity on any front in the final rounds and that the odds favored a second primary in the lieutenant governor's race. Estimates for the Saturday turnout in Mecklenburg County were set at around 25,000. If the weather, which presently was forecast to be partly cloudy with scattered showers in the afternoon, turned worse, then the vote could drop considerably. Registration figures were lower in the county at present than in 1954, when there had been 87,962 registered Republicans and Democrats eligible to vote in the primary.
Donald MacDonald of The News indicates that a man appearing in court during the morning, on trial for disturbing the peace at the Merita Grill, stated that if women could wear slacks, then men ought to be able to wear dresses. He had been charged with smashing sugar bowls, cream pitchers, cups and gum machines at the grill and with assaulting its night proprietor, who spoke only limited English, such that her testimony had to be interpreted by her daughter, who had to be restrained at times from giving her own testimony, at one point calling the defendant "a disgrace to the community". The proprietor said that the defendant, a female impersonator who was named Max but went by "Maxine", had kicked her and threatened to take her life if she notified police of the disturbance. She said he had been dressed in a blue plaid skirt, white sweater and ballet shoes, wore his hair shoulder-length and used heavy makeup and wore earrings. His defense attorney maintained that a waitress at the grill had provoked the disturbance by calling his client "a vile and horrible name". The solicitor objected on the grounds that the waitress, who had since resigned from her job, was not present and that no evidence had been introduced to show that any such conversation had occurred. If you want to know the rest of the details of this exciting case, you will have to turn to page 2-A. In any event, the headline indicates that the defendant wound up with a fine.
As covered in an editorial below, a man who had received criticism from neighbors decided that instead of leaving a plain concrete block structure, he would apply brick veneer to it to improve its exterior appearance. The property he owned was in a rural zone designated under the city's perimeter-area zoning ordinance as not permitting commercial or business operations. The man told the newspaper that workmen were on the job at the moment putting the walls in shape for protection against weather. Whether he would comply with an order and suspend building operations would be decided by a conference with his attorney, after an order had been issued by the City Building Inspection officials to cease construction of an automobile storage building on his property. The order had followed an appeal by a group of protesting residents to the Board of Adjustment regarding the City Building Inspection Department's issuance of a permit to the man to erect the building.
Will O'Mae Adams of The News reports that Spangler Construction Co. would develop a 304-home subdivision on Shamrock Road east of the Charlotte Country Club, at an expenditure in excess of four million dollars, as announced by the president of the company this date. The new subdivision would be called Shamrock Hills and he said that homes would be of brick veneer, ranging in price from $12,500 to $14,750 dollars, averaging approximately $13,500, with some of them completely air-conditioned.
In Accra, Gold Coast, Africa, a
police officer this date ordered Louis Armstrong
In Tampa, Fla., it was reported that some courts had ruled that a dog was entitled to one bite, as was the limit for Tampa mailmen. After a dog once had bitten a carrier, the householder had either to keep the dog confined or have the mail delivered at the post office, General Delivery. It happened two or three times per week, according to the assistant superintendent of the mails, and in most cases, the carrier had been bitten. Occasionally, mail was stopped where a dog repeatedly threatened and was known to have bitten someone other than a mail carrier. The superintendent said that 95 percent of the people cooperated in confining a dangerous dog, but one woman had held out for six months. If the carrier was bitten, the Government paid for his treatment and sick leave until returning to duty, usually out only a day, but if the dog only tore the carrier's clothing, the mailman had to pay for it himself. The superintendent said there was one case where the carrier was in the hospital for three weeks, and another where a man was forced to retire on Government disability after being bitten. Regulations stated that the official stop-notice of delivery had to be delivered by regular mail, a bit of a paradox.
Duke Power Co. meter readers had discovered one way to overcome ferocious dogs, as it was stated in the company's current safety bulletin that two Greenville, S.C., meter readers told of how they had soothed a growling canine by producing a dog biscuit. One woman had come out of the house and complimented the company for trying to win the dogs over, giving the meter readers a handful of cookies. The safety director at Duke said that he figured that dog biscuits were cheaper than hospital bills.
On the editorial page, "Zoning: The Alarums Come Too Late" tells of the experts admitting that zoning was like trying to carve with a sledgehammer and where it worked as part of a bigger plan, there was a chance to refine it and make it cut sharply enough to mold a city of simplicity. It finds that zoning needed refining in Charlotte and in perimeter areas. It provides details, concentrating on the story on the front page this date.
City Manager Henry Yancey had observed the previous day before the City Council that once a building was erected in a location, it usually remained there, and that the vital point was that the city could not afford to continue letting a person have a permit for a mill and not be able to do anything about it until the mill started grinding. Permits ought be issued before the start of construction and not afterward. Greater care needed to be taken in the issuance of permits which might involve non-conforming uses.
It indicates that zoning was merely good housekeeping and a contribution to the cause of what Justice John Harlan, grandfather to the current Justice, had once called the "tranquility of every well-ordered community." But it had to be constantly adjusted to meet the needs of an increasingly complex society. Charlotte's zoning efforts might not collapse from its ailments, as Mr. Yancey feared, but it could not achieve maximum effectiveness either, and adjustments were definitely in order.
"Charlotte's Dilemma: Din vs. Dollars" tells of the City Council's uneasiness about having stock car racing at Memorial Stadium not being without cause because of the noise generated by it. But the expected returns to the Park Board of $100,000 during the course of five years was inviting.
The sound of auto racing was ferocious on Saturday nights and could cause a public nuisance for neighbors. Thus, it wants additional research on the matter and expert, objective opinion to be adduced. The evidence gathered in Winston-Salem at Bowman Gray Stadium was not sufficient, for that facility was situated in a valley with different acoustical characteristics. The City Council, it urges, ought carefully consider all sides of the issue before providing a long-term contract.
"Mint Museum: A Lecture on Neglect" tells of the Charlotte Mint Museum having lectured members of the City Council during the week on its need for repairs and improvements by displaying the dilapidated condition of the building to them, letting the building speak for itself regarding its inadequacies, made plain by the wilted collars of members of the Council, roasted in the building's attic, where the Museum stored its paintings, beneath a leaky roof.
The Museum offered advantages to the community, with "a middling good collection of paintings, a center for the teaching of painting, sculpture and the dance, an exhibition center for student work, and a drama workshop" producing compelling performances above the ordinary level of amateur production. Its most devoted adherents would not claim it to be a hive of creativity, but it was a working incubator of culture and a feeder of talent of which Charlotte would be poorer for the loss.
It concludes that the Council should see to it that the ravages of neglect were righted.
"Too Many Just Didn't Give a Whoop" indicates that the public opinion poll taken by the newspaper on the upcoming local primary races, the judicial race and the mayoral race, had proved, if it proved anything, that there was astounding apathy in the community. More important than the 2 to 1 edge which Superior Court Judge Hugh Campbell enjoyed over his opponent, Arthur Goodman, was the fact that 134 of the 379 respondents to the poll had not bothered to register for the primary. Another 92 listed themselves as "undecided", the combined number being more than the number of straw votes received by either candidate in the race. Yet, the competition for the post had been widely hailed in the newspapers as Mecklenburg County's "hottest" political contest.
It was now too late to register for the primary and one could not vote if not registered. But it finds it was not too late to start developing a deeper awareness and keener appreciation of the responsibilities of citizenship. It suggests that the citizen who did not register to vote and did not vote did not care and was an enemy of democracy, making a mockery of self-government, and not deserving freedom of choice on the ballot. It urges that voters should wake up soon if decent government was to be maintained in the county.
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "North Carolina Folk Talk", indicates that there was a short story by William Polk in his new book, The Fallen Angel, which ought to be sealed in the cornerstone of the next new building which was erected in the state, and brought to light 100 years hence, when the "pungent Carolina dialect, already waning in the mountains and fading along the seacoast," had been utterly lost. The story was titled "A Dark House and a Bloody Fight", packed with vivid colloquialisms which Mr. Polk had collected in his years of listening to Carolina talk.
Uncle Buck, "a bowdacious and savigorous" hero, had set out one spring day, about "dusty dark", to attend an "infare" at his neighbor's house, along the way had "dreened a jug of white mule", and when he got there, the place looked "like a hooraw's nest", as everyone had brought their children along. "They was chaps in dresses and in hippins, teenintsey babies, breast babies, arm babies, lap babies, knee babies, porch babies, and yard babies, not to mention briar-patch chillun."
It goes on quoting from the story and indicates that it was only from the introduction to it, but finds it quite an introduction to North Carolina folk talk.
Drew Pearson tells of Pan American Airways having recently hired three people, the nephew of the President, Milton Eisenhower, Jr., Robert Murray, former Undersecretary of Commerce, who had helped get the White House to reverse temporarily a Civil Aeronautics Board ruling for Northwest Airlines and against Pan Am, and Roger Lewis, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, who had held a key position in the Administration when important contracts were provided to Pan Am for guided missiles and overhauling Air Force engines. Mr. Pearson suggests that the interesting thing to watch was whether those new and influential persons would cause the White House and the CAB to side with Pan Am when it was awarding the Great Circle route via Alaska to Japan. Northwest Airlines had originally been provided the route at a time when Pan Am could have obtained it but did not apply. Instead, it took what looked like the more lucrative route across the Pacific via Honolulu. But as transoceanic planes had improved, the Great Circle route had become the more efficient to Japan and so Pan Am was now seeking the right to fly that route.
A year earlier, the CAB had awarded the route to Northwest for seven years, whereupon Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks had persuaded the White House to reverse the CAB decision. He had also gotten the CAB decision reversed to allow Northwest to continue its route from Seattle to Honolulu. Undersecretary of Commerce Murray had helped Secretary Weeks in persuading the White House. But that had caused such a furor that the President stepped in personally and reversed his own White House advisers.
Since the previous year's failure, Pan Am had now hired the three individuals mentioned at the start of the piece and had now applied to CAB for the right to fly the Great Circle route over Northwest Airlines, with the hearings presently in progress.
Walter Lippmann discusses President Soekarno of Indonesia, visiting Washington the previous week, coming to the country at a time when the Administration and some members of Congress were reappraising U.S. policy in Asia. The invitation to him had been intended to mark a new approach to the neutralism of the newly independent Indonesia.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that to listen carefully to Dr. Soekarno's statement to Congress and what was implied by what he said had been a sobering experience, as he spoke with zeal and fervor as an apostle of the revolution which was rising against the West, having its influence across Asia and Africa, it having been evident as he spoke that only the first phase of the reappraisal was taking place.
The reappraisal entailed correction of errors in U.S. policy which were recent and had resulted, for instance, in the Korean War. Prior to 1950, the country had not taken the view that all nations ought to join a military coalition of which the U.S. was the leader, that neutralism or not joining U.S. alliances was morally wrong and unfriendly to U.S. vital interests, that with grudging exceptions, joining those military alliances was the passport to economic aid in the Marshall Plan, initiated in 1947, economic aid having been provided ahead of military aid. The NATO alliance had not been established until 1949 and had not been conceived at the time of initiation of the Marshall Plan. The Korean War had compelled the country to rearm itself in Western Europe and had led to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Asia.
There was now an effort to persuade Congress to agree to some demilitarization of U.S. policy, and President Soekarno had made it plain how necessary demilitarization of the country's relations with newly independent countries like Indonesia was. More than that, his address had dispelled any notion that with a few changes of emphasis in U.S. foreign policy, all would be well.
In the welcoming addresses and in his responses much had been said about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but the analogy could not be carried very far, as the revolution of which President Soekarno was a leader and spokesman had a depth, scope and energy without precedent.
The revolution was not only anti-colonial in the sense that it was a rebellion against foreign rulers, as President Soekarno had gone beyond that point to raise the question whether the revolutionary movement meant to stop short of the expulsion of all Western power and influence from Africa, South Asia and the South Pacific. What gave the revolution its enormous energy was the determination to undo the human consequences of three centuries of white domination and at the same time overcome the economic and technological backwardness of the former colonial lands. His address had made it plain that if that revolution could be carried out by democratic means, he would prefer it, but that the revolution would have to be carried out, and if necessary, by totalitarian means.
The revolution was running from Morocco to Tunis through the Middle East, to Aden, to Ceylon, to Singapore, to Indonesia, and probably to Formosa and Japan. The Western nations were on the defensive throughout that area and all of the key positions remaining to them were under attack, leaving the feeling that the Western nations were fighting rear-guard actions, as the French in Africa, the British in the Middle East, and the U.S. in Formosa and beyond.
Mr. Lippmann suggests that the West had to ask itself questions without certain answers, that a new relationship between the emancipated East and the democratic West would have to be found. In 1950, the answer to the question was plainer than it was at present, and he suggests that the West should have looked to India to be the mediator, wonders whether it was too late, whether the damage done by the crudely militaristic policies was irreparable such that opportunities which once had existed were now gone. He concludes with the hope that nothing was irreparable.
Doris Fleeson tells of the Justice Department having been refurbishing a number of old issues for the campaign, including civil rights. But there was one for which it did not expect to find time until the following year, that being Dixon-Yates.
Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, had recently begun inquiries about the suit filed the previous year against the Government by the Dixon-Yates interest, after the Administration had canceled their contract when the city of West Memphis undertook to supply the necessary power which would have been supplied by Dixon-Yates, to substitute for power being drained off by two nuclear plants at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky. Dixon-Yates wanted several million dollars to compensate it for money expended in preparation to build its own power plant, prior to the cancellation of the contract. Senator Anderson had been informed that the Justice Department "hoped" to file its answer to the lawsuit the following month, and it was not anticipated that the trial would begin for about another year. The legal talent on the Joint Committee had suggested that the Government move for summary judgment, as no genuine issue against it was involved, but that had been coldly received, and the Justice Department said it did not want to be rushed.
The Dixon-Yates contract had been defended for many months by the Administration before its cancellation, and then the Government refused to compensate Dixon-Yates for the money expended because of a conflict of interest which had developed in the activities of Adolph Wenzell, the utility finance expert, shown by a Senate investigation to have acted both as a part-time consultant of the Budget Bureau and as a confrere with his old firm, the First Boston Corp., which specialized in utility financing. In the midst of the controversy, First Boston had announced it would not take a fee for its services in the financing of Dixon-Yates but would consider that it had performed a public service. First Boston was not involved in the lawsuit, nor had it ever protested against the Government's action in cancellation of the contract. Yet, Mr. Wenzel, not an employee of Dixon-Yates, had been involved with First Boston. Ms. Fleeson indicates that if the Government was correct and Mr. Wenzel's activities involved a conflict of interest, then First Boston had to be said to be on the defensive.
Dixon-Yates was not asking for damages from the Government, but only for its expenses. Senators had never been able to trace the full course of the contract through the White House and did not know what influences prevailed upon the Atomic Energy Commission to make the contract for the production of power which the AEC was not, itself, intending to use. It was the apparent use of the AEC as a power broker which gave the issue its impetus, with AEC members protesting its interference with the primary mission of the Commission. White House chief of staff Sherman Adams had refused to testify about the contract before a Senate committee on the ground of separation of powers. Trial of the action in the Court of Claims, she suggests, might develop a court test of the claim, depending on how the case was presented.
A letter from pollster Samuel Lubell of New York comments on the editorial "Moderates: History in a Hurry", finding it an excellent review of his book, Revolt of the Moderates, offering a comment that although he had found changing social and economic patterns in the South indicative of a three-party pattern, he did not specify how the third party would be formed. He says that the main pressures for a third party, as he saw them, arose out of the desire of so many Southerners to maintain the old one-party Democratic rule locally while defeating the Democratic Party nationally. That latter drive was taken care of when there was a Republican in the White House and so it had been his conclusion that the forces of insurgency in the South would be weaker in years when there was a Republican President or when the odds favored a Republican victory, but that a Democratic President would start up the "thermostat of insurgency" anew. He concludes by saying that the theory applied currently would mean that a Southern revolt was less likely in the current election year than it had been in 1952.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., tells of the concert by Jan Peerce at Winthrop College Auditorium the previous December having garnered seven encores. He finds the beauty of Mr. Peerce's legato style to have been matchless and his art on the level of Arturo Toscanini, far beyond the grasp of the "musically misguided" previous letter writer on the subject. He gets back to his desire to have the Metropolitan Opera visit Charlotte, finding the previous letter writer to be off point, and invites him to join "opera loving friends" in Rock Hill in bringing the Met to the Carolinas, as it visited Atlanta annually.
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