The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 26, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Rome that some 30 million Italians were expected to go to the polls in local elections the following day, to demonstrate whether the country's majority center bloc could halt the political tides to the far left and far right, a major test of the Soviets' new coextensive line in the country with the largest Communist Party in any Western nation, with more than two million members. Letters from Italian-Americans in the U.S. had urged their kin to reject the Communists. The vote would have no direct effect on the national government, whose center bloc was headed by the Christian Democrats, holding a thin majority won in the 1953 general elections. That center bloc had lost strength in the previous two elections, while in the 1951-52 local administrative elections, the Communist-Socialist alliance of the left had held its own in the north and gained 200,000 votes in the poverty-ridden south. The Monarchists had doubled their strength in the south at that same time and the Fascist Italian Social Movement had nearly tripled its vote there. In the 1953 general elections, the center bloc had dipped to 49.7 percent of the overall popular vote for the Chamber of Deputies, having won 62.7 percent in 1948. Premier Antonio Segni had made a final plea on behalf of the center the previous night in Milan's Cathedral Square, saying that they had to win so that Italy would remain Christian and free. In the 1951-52 local elections, the Christian Democrats and their allies had controlled 3,878 community councils.
In Detroit, with unemployment and layoffs continuing to mount in the auto industry, the 500-man General Motors Council of the UAW this date had thrown its support behind the drive for a shorter work week. The Council had voted unanimously in Detroit the previous day for "a substantial reduction in the work week with full 40 hours pay" to end what it described as the "morale-breaking short work weeks." Walter Reuther, UAW President, supported the resolution at a press conference, though not pointing to any specific aims. Studebaker-Packard Corp. had announced the previous day that it was shutting down its Studebaker assembly operations in South Bend, Ind., for a week, beginning the following Monday, with several thousand to be idled thereby. Chrysler Corp. had said that 13,500 employees would work only on Monday and Tuesday the following week, with the shutdowns affecting all Plymouth plants and most of the firm's body-making plants, all of the latter of which were in the Detroit area. The previous day, the Michigan Unemployment Security Commission had reported that the state's unemployed stood at 220,000, with 128,000 in Detroit, predicting that the unemployed would average 200,000 for the remainder of the year. Under existing contracts, nothing could be done until 1958 when current contracts between the UAW and the automakers would expire. The average hourly wage of autoworkers was presently at around $2.19, under the three-year contracts signed in 1955. Under those contracts, workers laid off after May 2 would become eligible on June 1 for supplemental unemployment compensation from company-financed trust funds in states which approved or did not object to those payments on top of regular state unemployment compensation. All of the layoffs thus far had been attributed to what the automakers described as "an endeavor to balance production with the retail market." Retail dealers had inventories of about 900,000 new cars.
In Cincinnati, police said that a 43-year old water meter reader had admitted fatally stabbing a young society matron of the city the previous April 11, after he said he had become incensed at the woman and stabbed her after she told him to use a door into the garage to read the water meter rather than permitting him to enter through the rear door of the house. The woman's body had 24 stab wounds and had been found inside the front door of the home in a fashionable neighborhood. The man had been one of the first suspects questioned in the case and had been released, but questioned several times since, the questioning having been resumed the previous day after police had noted several discrepancies in his story. He had told police that the woman said to him, "Don't make a fool of yourself," after she had directed him to use the garage door instead of the rear entrance.
Donald MacDonald of The News reports that a construction worker and his wife had been burned to death early this date when flames had destroyed their four-room frame house just outside the Charlotte city limits.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that although local voters had not gone to the polls in great numbers during the morning in local elections, estimates remained firm that total turnout would be more than 20,000, about a fifth of whom had cast their ballots by 11:00 a.m. Saturday morning was traditionally light in voting and so the overall estimate appeared to be accurate. The largest turnout thus far had been at the precincts served by Myers Park High School, where 391 persons had voted, while at Chantilly School, where 2,975 persons were registered, only 250 had thus far voted during the morning. And he goes on down a list of several other precincts. The most active campaigning had apparently been done by the supporters of State Representative Jack Love, who had workers at most of the precinct polling places. There was a very light black vote, although that was traditional during the morning, as most black voters would not turn out until late afternoon.
Mr. Scheer also reports that interest in the statewide primary was as varied and unpredictable as a student's first day in school. There was good weather in Mecklenburg, where most of the interest centered on the Superior Court judgeship race and that of the State House, where Mr. Love was the incumbent, running against James Vogler, Frank Snepp, Mahlon Chandler and A. G. Brown. Otherwise, things were drab during the campaign in Mecklenburg.
Sid McAden, chairman of the County Board of Commissioners, had been enduring such Saturdays every two years since 1940, but his personal feelings had never changed, always producing anxiety, nervousness and excitement, just as for the scores of other candidates. For controversial candidate Mr. Love, the day meant campaigning, having gone to some precincts and planning to get to most of them during the course of the day, and then would listen to the returns at home afterward. Judge Hugh Campbell was a novice at political campaigning, and would join his brother-in-law and family to hear the results of the judgeship race during the evening. Harry Stokely, candidate in the gubernatorial race, was taking orders via telephone for canned goods, saying that business was good but that he could not tell about politics. He was challenging Governor Luther Hodges on the segregation theme, saying that it had been nice to run, that his record was clean and that it had cost him $7,000 to tell his story to the people, but that he did not see any wings sprouting either.
Charles Kuralt of The News tells of one voter who had voted at the Newell School this date, shunning the voting booths, which he found too dark, and sat down at a corner table to study the choices on the ballot, marking them quickly, folding them and dropping them into the boxes, saying that he had read the newspaper and made up his mind, that he believed in "the mass of people ruling". He was 82 and had voted in every Mecklenburg County election since March 21, 1908. He had been carried to the poll by a woman who had been ferrying voters from the County Home to the school for the previous 19 years. About 20 of those residents had gone to the polling place this date, not as many as usual because many were not physically able and there was not as much interest in this election. The 82-year old man who had voted had been a contractor before succumbing to the Depression, and he had always voted Democratic, saying that it was hard for a Southern man to be a hypocrite. One of the women who had ridden with him to the school to vote had taken a Republican ballot and voted for school board members only. The man said that it was all right, however, as it was a free country and that was a blessing. Mr. Kuralt concludes that the hundreds of other Mecklenburgers who had also marked their ballots this date would know exactly what he meant.
In Pasadena, an engineering student at the California Institute of Technology reported to police that his small sports car had disappeared. It had shown up the previous day in the basement of one of the buildings on campus, having been disassembled, hauled into the building and then reassembled.
On the editorial page, "Two Local Courts—Two Sets of Rules" tells of effective law enforcement demanding reasonable uniformity, uniformity not being practiced between Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in their respective Recorder's Courts, as reported on the front page the previous day. A reckless driving conviction in the County could draw no more punishment than 60 days in jail and/or a $100 fine, while in City Court, the judge would impose up to the maximum sentence allowed for any misdemeanor, two years in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.
It explains again the problem, having developed out of 1947 amendments to the Motor Vehicle Code, rendering both treatments ostensibly correct, though an opinion of the State Attorney General had stated that the lower sentence was the correct maximum at present.
The judge in the City Recorder's Court had stated that if a defendant did not think that a sentence of more than 60 days or $100 was proper, they only need appeal and, though he had several times sentenced a defendant to more time or a higher fine than that, not one of their good lawyers had filed an appeal.
It finds it too important a matter for even momentary conflict in application of the law, as a lack of uniformity was a disservice to the cause of justice and traffic safety. It suggests that the Attorney General's opinion ought be adopted until a ruling of the State Supreme Court would settle the matter, or the Legislature would amend the law. Either way, uniformity of application ought be the rule.
"The Big Eye Bent on the Candidates" indicates that this date, voters would vote in the primaries in Mecklenburg County and across the state, suggesting that running for office was "climbing under a microscope and asking 30,000 voters to take a look and pronounce you germ free," with some voters failing to find surface bacteria but wanting to look much closer at the candidate, some deciding that the candidate looked shifty, ugly, dishonest or just plain stupid.
"Richard M. Nixon, a man with
heavy jowls, was under a king-sized microscope during his hound's
tooth television talk in 1952," prompting a California farmer to
write him: "Was it mumps or was it chewing tobacco? I say it's
mumps. Joe says it's chewing tobacco. Please settle our bet." (It's like grandmother used to say, "Get that old lantern-jawed
It ventures that some candidates offended the public's intelligence and taste, placing the lowest common denominator too low, looking to the voter's stomach instead of the head. But voters also were capable of cruelties and exercised them.
So, turning away from the microscope, it indicates that it offered thanks to the winners and losers for giving a choice. It had seen some small bores among the candidates and some who were too big for their britches, but among them all were no vermin. It concludes that it would not have been much of an election day without "the boys under the big eye."
In 2023, the Republican House and
Fox News, both indistinguishable for the most part, are only
interested in one thing, placing the boys of "the big guy"
under the microscope, looking in every nook and cranny, no matter how
disreputable, for proof that the "big guy" in the "crime
family" really exists, somewhere, anywhere, in that damned
laptop computer, meanwhile continuing to tout their political hero of
the moment, the one-man crime syndicate, indicted thus far twice, in
New York state court and in Federal District Court in Florida, soon
likely to be indicted in Federal District Court in Washington, and in
state court in Georgia. But that big guy is tender to the heart of
the Big Aussie, to whom Fox News is far more tender, he being the
source of their pocketbooks, than to any truly American value or
tradition. Fox News wants us all down under
"Foreign Aid: No Idea, No Action" indicates that ever since Moscow had mounted its own foreign aid offensive, Washington had been in search of an idea to combat it. The Administration wanted to add long-term commitments to foreign aid for up to ten years at the discretion of the President.
Search for a new idea would continue with the aid of a special presidential commission to be authorized by Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Committee bill had directed that the President appoint such a commission, but refused to approve of long-term commitments, while reducing military aid funding by a third, as well as refusing to go along with an Administration proposal on particulars of how military aid would be distributed.
It finds that the Administration had failed to provide a new and challenging concept in foreign aid, demanded by the fact of the new Russian foreign aid policy. The House Committee would simply provide less money for the old concept. Congress would continue to view the Russian program with alarm and rebuke Secretary of State Dulles at any sign of optimism. In the meantime, the Kremlin would continue to push its aid on underdeveloped nations. It suggests that in the future, "with all deliberate delay", the Congress might decide to translate alarm into positive action.
Louis Graves, writing in the Chapel Hill Weekly, in a piece titled, "On Mailing Letters", states that in Bring on the Girls, its authors, P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, talked of their collaboration in playwriting, stating that during a stay in London, Mr. Wodehouse had astonished Mr. Bolton by pitching from his top-floor apartment window the letters he wanted mailed, with Mr. Bolton wondering what would occur if someone stole the stamp and threw the letter away, Mr. Wodehouse responding that he had found from long experience that the inhabitants of London did not behave in that manner, that someone always picked it up and posted it, saving him the task of descending four flights of stairs and then re-ascending after mailing a letter.
Mr. Graves indicate that he was reminded by the story of a time when he was passing Christ Church in Raleigh on a Sunday half an hour before services were to begin. He had gone inside and left a letter to Nell Battle Lewis, of the Raleigh News & Observer, near the door in the center aisle, not realizing that she attended Good Shepherd Church and not Christ Church. Nevertheless, a member of the church congregation had picked up the letter, and after services, had taken it to Ms. Lewis's home. He indicates that one would expect people attending church to be on a higher level of honesty than those on the streets generally, but reckons that there were a large number of people who mailed letters they might find on a sidewalk or in a post office lobby, that it happened often in Chapel Hill, where he had picked up and mailed lost letters, more often than other people had mailed his own.
He relates that one day the previous week, Phillips Russell had called him on the telephone to report that he had found on the street and mailed a postcard addressed to the brother of the wife of Mr. Graves, who lived in Nashville, causing Mr. Graves some pall of guilt as the postcard had been entrusted to him to mail.
Drew Pearson suggests that some
readers may have interpreted his suggestion of the previous day, that
the President appoint Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce to a high
post in the State Department, possibly as Secretary, with Mr. Nixon
as Undersecretary
A diplomat had to look ahead and prevent international disputes, not try to extinguish them after they began, something Mr. Hoover and the State Department had not done with regard to Cyprus, now having reached a crisis stage. With Mr. Dulles away most of the time, Mr. Hoover had to run the State Department, and was totally unqualified to do so.
During the 1920's, when Mr. Dulles had been retained as a lawyer by the New York banks and bond houses, he had made several trips to Germany and each time on his return, had given statements to the press that Germany was a sound investment, safe for American bondholders. The result was that each time, more Americans invested in Germany, money which was eventually lost. At the same time, it had been no secret that American economists were concerned about the unsafe foundation of the German economy and the heavy reparations forced on Germany vis-à-vis France, as they knew the money being invested by Americans was being siphoned off as part of those reparations and that eventually the whole bubble would burst. It had been one reason why the bankers had hired Mr. Dulles, to allay those fears. In 1928, he had said, "Our bankers have performed a great service, both to this country and to the world." In October, 1930, he said: "Germany has made great progress. Her national income and government income have grown to a point where the reparations charge constitutes a readily bearable percentage." The end result of the encouragement by Mr. Dulles was that the American people had helped to finance Hitler in waging World War II, one of the great blunders of Mr. Dulles, though not the only one.
In the spring of 1939, during a speech before the Economic Club of New York, he had stated: "These dynamic peoples," referring to Germany, Italy and Japan, "determined to take destiny into their own hands and attain that enlarged status … which had been denied them." It was essentially an apology for Hitler and Mussolini, made after Hitler had taken all of Austria through a rigged plebiscite and all of Czechoslovakia, following the debacle of Munich in September, 1938. It also followed Mussolini having taken, in 1936, Ethiopia, and Japan having occupied much of northern and central China.
On October 29, 1939, after the Nazis had undertaken the blitzkrieg into Poland, embroiling, in consequence, all of Western Europe in war, Mr. Dulles had made a second speech before the National Council of the YMCA, stating: "There is no reason to believe that any totalitarian states, separately or collectively, would attempt to attack the United States. Only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplate war upon us."
Mr. Pearson concludes that Mr. Dulles had made many speeches and statements since 1939, including such comments as "agonizing reappraisal", "massive retaliation", and "brink-of-war", which he would rather forget.
Stewart Alsop, in Jacksonville, Fla., comments on the upcoming Florida primary between Adlai Stevenson and Senator Estes Kefauver, finding that Mr. Stevenson was fighting for his political life, doing what he hated doing but doing it well. He had never wanted to enter any primaries and now that he was in them, at the insistence of his advisers, he hated it, describing the primary system as "this mad endurance contest."
Mr. Alsop indicates that spending a day or so on the campaign trail with him caused one not to blame him, as only a madman, or possibly Senator Kefauver, could possibly enjoy the primary routine. He provides an itinerary for a typical day during the week for Mr. Stevenson, placing demands on the candidate to put up with endless frustrations and delays, dealing with inevitable crises along the way, seeking to make real contact with voters and, above all, to be nice when he did not feel like being nice, to smile when he did not feel like smiling, all of which was almost intolerable, especially to a candidate as Mr. Stevenson. Yet he was doing it all very well, still being interesting, courageous, highly intelligent, though at times contrary. He made more jokes than ever, many of them genuinely funny, being self-deprecating along the way, making himself the butt of most of his jokes, calling himself an "unemployed politician". The counties he had won in the 1952 election, he did not visit.
Much had been written about the "new Stevenson"—just as Mr. Nixon would become the "new Nixon" in 1968, after his failure in 1960, though the newness in the latter case would be for very different reasons than the newness in the former, referring to less eggheadedness, less aloofness. Mr. Alsop comments that it was true that the defeat of Mr. Stevenson in Minnesota had persuaded him that he had to fight to survive and that in some ways, he was fighting harder than in 1952, but was essentially the same old Stevenson, saying, accurately, that he could not change if he wanted to do so.
Walter Lippmann tells of Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, with the support of the President, having insisted that the dispute among the military services not be argued in public, saying that the Administration would not tolerate the type of propaganda which had been initiated the previous weekend by the Air Force and the Army.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that whether it was wise to suppress the argument depended on the nature of the dispute. Mr. Wilson viewed it as between "the roles and mission business", which service would receive the new expensive weapons. He was very annoyed that the services had gone over his head, hoping to create public opinion and Congressional support for their service. Mr. Lippmann believes that as to that part of the dispute, the issues ought be settled within the Pentagon and the National Security Council. The role of the Army in aerial defense, the value of one guided missile over another, and the military capabilities of aircraft carriers, were questions which neither the general public nor the Congress were competent to decide.
But at bottom, there was a much larger question, raised sometime earlier by General Matthew Ridgway, regarding high strategy in the age of nuclear weaponry. There was no clear policy as yet decided by which the services could be guided. It would clear the air if the Administration admitted as much and that the military art was developing faster than strategic understanding of its consequences, something which would benefit from public discussion. Such discussion was needed not only within the Pentagon regarding strategic roles of the Army and Navy, but also in such matters as differences between Secretary of State Dulles and foreign aid administrator Harold Stassen, as there was no firm decision yet about the role of the Army in future wars and neither Mr. Dulles nor Mr. Stassen had an agreed view of what to say about the recently announced reduction of the Soviet Army by a million men in the ensuing year.
The unresolved question was whether the Korean War was a precedent which established a new policy or whether it was a unique exception to a settled policy. Many seemed to think that it was a precedent and if so, the country had to be ready to fight in a series of wars of that type, causing General Ridgway and the Army to have been correct. But if it was an exception to the rule that when it came to Asia, the country was not a land power but a sea and air power, then the responsibility of the ground Army had been greatly reduced.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that providing religious instruction in tax-supported schools often resulted in "inconciliatory atmosphere", as pointed out by recent incidents. Cadets at West Point for many years had been required to attend Protestant and Catholic chapels conducted by clergymen paid and selected by the Academy, while Jewish cadets attended services at a synagogue in town. The Protestant chaplain had always been chosen from the Episcopalian denomination, and now the Baptist Joint Committee and the American Lutheran Church had protested against that practice, though it presently continued. Another incident had taken place in New Jersey, where schoolchildren in one area were read five verses of the Bible daily, in accordance with state law, with the King James Protestant Bible being used. The local Catholic Church claimed that use of that version was "contrary to and forbidden by the religious beliefs" of Catholic children, and since a majority of the children were Roman Catholic, their priest had urged that the Catholic version of the Bible be substituted. A compromise developed whereby only those verses of the Bible which were identical in both versions would be read. In another incident, in Woonsocket, R.I., Catholic educators stated that the custom of releasing students for a late hour one day each week from public school to attend religious schools was unsatisfactory, asking that the hour be changed so that instead of the last hour in the day, the first hour would be used for religious instruction, with dissatisfaction following when the local Protestant clergy and the rabbi had claimed that the time change would be impracticable for their religious programs. All of the members of the school board were Catholic and had unanimously overruled an inter-faith advisory committee, and voted to change the religious hour. The three non-Catholic members of the advisory committee had issued a statement bitterly opposed to the move and had withdrawn their children from the release-time program. He concludes that direct or indirect involvement of the government in religious activity was and should be a matter of grave concern for those who desired harmony and unity in their communities.
A letter writer from Pittsboro finds
that the newspapers had been very liberal, both editorially and in
presentation of news, regarding the presentation of the portrait of
Frank Porter Graham to UNC, being displeased by that liberality. He
had been displeased during the campaign for the Senate in 1950, when
he perceived that the University had helped Senator Graham, finding
that it was politics
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.