The Charlotte News
Monday, May 28, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Tokyo that Japanese scientists had announced that their instruments detected that the U.S. had set off another hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll this date, comparable in power to the one detonated on May 21, the first hydrogen bomb dropped from an airplane. The Atomic Energy Commission had no immediate comment. It was actually the Rooskies obliterating Bikini in the name of peace.
The Supreme Court this date decided 5 to 4 that state and local taxes could be levied on military housing built and operated by private firms on Government lands. It applied to projects built under the 1949 Wherry Act, designed to provide better and cheaper housing for military personnel and their families. Justice Felix Frankfurter had delivered the majority opinion and Justice William O. Douglas had written a caustic dissent, joined by Justices Stanley Reed, Harold Burton and John Harlan.
In St. Louis, a mistrial was declared this date in the case of Harry Schwimmer, an attorney on trial with two former Truman Administration officials, all charged with conspiracy to defraud the Government, Mr. Schwimmer having been charged with attempting to bribe the other two officials, Matthew Connelly, former appointments secretary for the former President, and Lamar Caudle, former head of the tax division of the Justice Department. Attorneys for the latter two defendants said that they also would seek a mistrial for their clients. The trial had begun three weeks earlier, but Mr. Schwimmer became ill the previous Wednesday and so testimony had to be halted, and the Federal judge was apprised this date by Mr. Schwimmer's physician that his health would be endangered if he were to continue as a defendant in the trial at present.
Floods from torrential rains had covered some roads and thousands of acres of farmlands in the central sections of Illinois and Indiana this date, with nine inches having fallen during the weekend in Illinois, the heaviest rains having fallen in Champaign, DeWitt and Logan Counties.
In Matthews, N.C., near Charlotte, a 16-year old boy had died this date of a gunshot wound which police had described as self-inflicted. County Police said that the boy had been alone at his brother's home when the shooting took place. An officer quoted the brother as saying that he believed the boy was preparing to shoot crows in a cornfield near his home when the weapon, a .410-gauge pistol, had discharged accidentally. The boy had lived with his brother and sister-in-law since his mother's remarriage.
Governor Luther Hodges won the Democratic primary on Saturday for a full term as Governor, having come to office after the death of Governor William B. Umstead in November, 1954, succeeding to the office as Lieutenant Governor. In the lieutenant governor's race, Luther Barnhardt, president of the State Senate, had won a close victory over Alonzo Edwards, but Mr. Edwards could call for a primary runoff if he chose. Raleigh businessman and former Appalachian State College football coach and star Duke athlete Kidd Brewer had, surprisingly, failed to make a dent in the vote for the office. He had been campaigning for two years for the position and had used a family quartet plus a mobile campaign headquarters in his effort. As indicated in an editorial below, the Southern Manifesto of the prior March 12 had figured in the losses of two members of the North Carolina Congressional delegation who had refused to sign it, Congressmen C. B. Deane and Thurmond Chatham, though Congressman Harold Cooley, who had also refused to sign the document, had been re-elected against a well-known Raleigh radio commentator and author, W. E. Debnam. Mr. Chatham's opponent, Ralph Scott, a well-known solicitor in the district, had harped on the segregation issue in the campaign against Mr. Chatham, one of the state's richest businessmen. A strong mill and railroad vote in Richmond County had enabled the defeat of Mr. Deane. Former Senator Alton Lennon, appointed to the position by Governor Umstead following the death of Senator Willis Smith in mid-1953, but losing in the next election in 1954 to former Governor Kerr Scott, was elected to Congress—though, as with all of the primary contests, actually only receiving the Democratic nomination at this stage, for all practical purposes, however, winning the general election as there was little more than token Republican opposition in most of the districts, with Congressman Charles Jonas of the Tenth District being the only Republican in the North Carolina delegation at the time.
Julian Scheer of The News tells of standard bearers of the Democratic Party in the county having spent the weekend pointing with pride at the primary election results, concluding that State Representative Jack Love had been defeated and that a write-in vote in the fall for Ed O'Herron might work. Mr. Love had wrested the party leadership from the old guard of the party less than a month earlier and had succeeded in shoving W. M. Nicholson into the chairmanship, then had demonstrated some organizational strength in Raleigh at the state Democratic convention. But in reaction, the old guard had pushed the opponents of Mr. Love in the race and a spontaneous wave of financial help had come to those candidates, the three having each polled more votes than Mr. Love in the final tally. Those whom Mr. Love had supported had also not done well.
Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that voters had decided to continue the operation of the County-operated tuberculosis Sanatorium, prompting the chairman of the hospital Board of Managers this date to call for the immediate completion of the Sanatorium, indicating that he favored an expanded construction program to include provisions for the mentally ill at the hospital near Huntersville. The unofficial vote had been 16,849 to 7,024.
In Concord, N.C., a man watching the stock-car races off Wilkinson Boulevard the previous day from a tree was charged in County Recorder's Court with trespassing and sentenced to 30 days on the roads, suspended on payment of a $25 fine plus costs. A County police officer testified that the defendant refused to leave his perch in a tree outside the fence at the Wilkinson Boulevard speedway during the previous afternoon's races. The police officer said that he had rousted about a dozen other race spectators from the trees but that the defendant had refused to come down, daring the officer to come and get him. The officer said that he had answered that he would not go up to get him, but that when he came down, he would be waiting for him, and the man stayed up in the tree for another 45 minutes to an hour. The proprietor of the racetrack had ordered him to come down from the tree, and the judge found that such an order was enough to support the charge of trespassing.
A picture appears of a third grader from Iredell County, whose teacher reported that during the school year he had read 386 books, most of which were on the eighth and ninth grade levels, preferring books involving historical biography, one sitting on his desk being a biography of Myles Standish. But we do not like the way he is scowling at us. Hey, kid, how much do you retain from those books? That is the question. You could read one book thoroughly, learning from it everything it had to offer, and be just as accomplished as reading 386 books of which you retain probably little or nothing. He claims to have read 43 books per month or about 11 per week. Call in Joe Friday and give him a polygraph. We don't like his attitude. What are you going to do with all that useless information anyway, win the "$64,000 Question"?
On the editorial page, "The Election: A Man and a Document" tells of Governor Luther Hodges, who had steered the state with wisdom and moderation through two years of unrest since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, having eliminated as a weapon in the gubernatorial campaign race prejudice through his record of sensible and thoughtful leadership in a time of great tension. His overwhelming victory in the Democratic primary offered new hope that the state would solve its social dilemma without demeaning its democratic heritage or destroying its public schools.
It comments on the Southern Manifesto, "an ineffectual protest against the decision", having resulted in the defeat of two non-signing Congressmen and forcing a third into a mud-slinging struggle for survival. In the Fifth and Eighth districts, Representatives Thurmond Chatham and C. B. Deane, respectively, had been defeated as non-signers. Yet, in their stead had been elected two men whom it finds not unworthy of the office, Ralph Scott in the Fifth and A. Paul Kitchin in the Eighth, both of whom it says were qualified by training and experience to make excellent members of Congress. Representative Harold Cooley had survived a determined effort to defeat him, also a non-signer of the manifesto.
It concludes that where race was a key issue, a majority of the voters in the state reaffirmed distaste for the Brown decision, but nowhere had given a mandate for violent and self-defeating attempts to circumvent it. Sensible and thoughtful leadership in Raleigh had received a vote of confidence and capable and responsible members of Congress were being sent to Washington.
"The Longhairs Lost a Private Preserve" tells of Jacques Barzun, the famous poet and critic of American life, having written in Music in American Life, published during the week, that the air was not yet saturated with music to the point where "one more note would precipitate in crystalline form the nine symphonies of Beethoven but we are not far from this dangerous pass. One cannot drink a glass of beer without its dilution in Handel's Water Music, nor take a taxi without running the risk of Italian opera… The captive audience knows a new kind of servitude, which makes one regret the old punishment that went with the pillory—namely loss of ears."
It suggests that what had irked Mr.
Barzun was that longhair music was no longer the private possession
of the longhairs, that it had "gone common", finding a mass
audience and a mass appreciation. It finds that divesting a snob of
his reason for snobbery was like robbing a fretful mastiff of a bone.
It suggests that art grows best in the open market and it sees no
particular sense in confining it to a private preserve, concluding,
"Now, if we could just have another round of that Water Music
"Our Very Own Southern Manifesto" tells of sub-manifestoes having appeared since the original Southern Manifesto, with the sub-manifestoes masquerading as editorials, platforms and appeals, as well as other affirmations, most smacking of the Upper Mississippi or Early Devonian school of political declaration, full of earnest conviction and something closely resembling omniscience, leaning on such phrases as "history proves" and "it is a fact that".
It says it had little use for manifestoes ever since H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had written their American Credo in 1920, but had decided to bow to the trend and issue its own "Manifesto In Progress—Being A System Of Beliefs And Disbeliefs Wherein Life Is Examined From A To B".
It proceeds then to say: "That catnaps are too good for cats. That there is some good in all politicians. That gall is divided into three parts—Republican, Democratic and Southern Democratic. That the Great Seal of the United States is actually a mammal. That a stitch in time hardly saves anything at all anymore. That watermelon is best eaten with a fork. That the Scotch-Irish are the salt of the earth even if they have lived in this country for only a couple of hundred years. That the quality of mercy is, too, strain'd. That winters aren't as cold as they used to be but summers are hotter. That Sherman was right. That life is a trap. That going to bed early and getting up early hasn't got anything to do with health, wealth or wisdom. That most women are good drivers. That postmasters in small towns don't read all the postcards. That there are people out there—watching. That everybody ought to live within their income even if they have to borrow money to do so.
"There it is and we'll stand by it, by jing."
Eric Sevareid of CBS, in a transcribed broadcast, bearing the title "Smile, Podnuh, When You Say That", tells of there being an effort "to emasculate and degrade the time-honored guardian of the faith, pillar of our past, ideal of all right-thinking, red-blooded American youths—the Western Cowboy." The first manifestation was turning the "tobacco chewing, hard ridin' woman-hatin' leather-lunged cowboy into a clean-shaven, white-hatted fancy-dan moonin' around with a guitar in the ranch house patio." That had practically destroyed the true vision in the minds of a whole generation of Saturday night moving-going kids. But now the television cowboy was going to be only a sentimental square who sent his sombreros to a dry cleaner, was wholesome, lacking any distinction between the cowpuncher and the local scoutmaster.
Those who were doing this transformation in New York comprised the Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication and Dissemination of Offensive and Obscene Material. They were trying to get the television people to promise that henceforth cowboy heroes would use proper grammar, that instead of "Them's fightin' words, stranger," they would say, "Sir, we have not been introduced, but my inference must be that you are impugning my integrity."
Mr. Sevareid says that "this ain't all", as "Buck will now meet his pals, associates that is, not in bars or poolrooms, but, (to quote NBC for the first time in our life) 'in railroad stations, post offices and other innocent places.' We can see it now: Buck is just extracting his copy of the Christian Science Monitor from his mailbox when Two-Gun Peter dismounts from his sorrel, Man-O-Peace, and says, 'Are you in the mood for a quick lemon squash at the Y?'"
Drew Pearson tells of long distance telephone lines burning up between California, Chicago and Washington regarding the question of Adlai Stevenson's record on old age pensions when he was Governor of Illinois. Attorney General of California Pat Brown and Paul Ziffren of Los Angeles, both top strategists of Mr. Stevenson's California campaign, were the first to inquire. They had called Mr. Stevenson's campaign manager in Chicago to say that George McLean, the powerful leader of the old age pension movement in southern California, had published in his National Welfare Advocate a scathing review of Mr. Stevenson's pension record as Governor, showing that he had vetoed a bill for a ten percent increase in the aid to the needy in Illinois. Messrs. Brown and Ziffren were worried over what that would do to the vote for Mr. Stevenson in southern California.
Mr. Stevenson's Chicago campaign manager telephoned around, calling Congressmen James Roosevelt and Cecil King from southern California, both delegates for Mr. Stevenson, and both friends of Mr. McLean. They promptly sought out Mr. McLean in Washington, in a good position to do so as they were introducing his bill to overhaul public assistance, a bill sponsored in the Senate by Senator Kefauver. Mr. McLean agreed to compromise by publishing a statement by Congressman King praising Mr. Stevenson's record for old-age pensions and also agreed to omit a previously planned account of Mr. Stevenson's record in approving the "shame list". But Mr. McLean also ran a full-page photo of Senator Kefauver over the caption, "Kefauver—Friend of the Needy", while on the editorial page he ran a letter from the president of the Illinois Pension Union, giving Mr. Stevenson's record on pensions and on the shame list, the latter being the list of elderly receiving government aid, made public in Illinois, something which the elderly had bitterly resented.
Marquis Childs, in Hollywood, Fla., tells of a sign advertising "Free hot dogs and hear Sen. Estes Kefauver" outside a local community center having drawn about 200 people to hear the Senator speak primarily to the elderly regarding the need to raise social security benefits for the aged and needy.
Generally, there appeared to be little excitement around either the Senator's or Adlai Stevenson's campaigns, with the need being to have some gimmick to attract people to hear either candidate. One reason for the indifference was the fact that there was no runoff primary for the gubernatorial nomination, as Governor LeRoy Collins had won a clear majority for re-election over four opponents, a first in Florida primary history. Governor Collins had championed moderation and respect for the law while his opponents used the crudest type of fascist appeals.
But more important was the bland assurance expressed in a variety of ways that the President would win re-election in November, regardless of what anyone said or did in the meantime. Thus the voters found little point in bothering about what any Democrat said. One service station attendant told Mr. Childs that he would vote in the primary for either Mr. Stevenson or Senator Kefauver, but believed he would vote for the President again in the fall.
He finds the blind faith in the President not unlike that which FDR had enjoyed during the 1930's, having little to do with what the President did or said regarding public issues, with the man being a symbol which inspired the belief that his very presence in the White House somehow ensured the national well-being. Voters were swayed by the family-oriented image of the President.
Mr. Childs observes that the phenomenon was quite different from 1948, when reporters went around the country hearing that Governor Thomas Dewey would inevitably defeat President Truman. For one difference, the President was currently in the White House.
The experts who had been following the Florida primary closely believed that Mr. Stevenson had an edge in part because he had much more organizational support. But those experts qualified what they were saying by the fact that many Northerners had migrated to Florida and were, at heart, Republicans, although having registered as Democrats to participate in the Democratic primaries and might deliberately vote against Mr. Stevenson to try to kill him off as the principal contender.
Estimates were that the total vote would be only around 450,000, roughly half the number who had voted in the gubernatorial primary. The total Democratic registration was 1.275 million and the total Republican registration was only 162,000. Four years earlier, General Eisenhower had received roughly 55 percent of the vote and Mr. Stevenson, 45 percent. Those who understood Florida politics from a relatively objective viewpoint believed that the state would vote for the President again against any Democratic opponent presently on the scene and by about the same ratio as in 1952.
He ventures that one reason for Mr. Stevenson and Senator Kefauver finding it so hard to make themselves heard was because they had so little to say which seemed relevant, either in swiftly changing Florida or in terms of nuclear weapons and other major issues of the day. Both had expressed good thoughts which had a liberal sound in the abstract, but thoughts about colonialism and anti-colonialism, about monopoly and small business, did not appear to reach the people where they lived, distracted by many things in the modern world. While that could change if the current prosperity began to wane, as it seemed to be doing with the automobile layoffs in the North, the two leading Democrats, as of the present, were searching for someone to listen to them even for just a few minutes.
A letter writer comments on an
editorial of May 24 regarding proposed stock car racing
A letter writer seeks to encapsulate the history of the Western world in one letter to the editor and asks whether people were seeking to find nothing better for humanity than the law of the strongest surviving. "Yet we teach logic and reason in our schools. We attempt to found our laws upon principles of equity. We pray in our churches."
He had obviously drunk from the well of Profundity during the weekend.
A letter writer says that she and several others had been students at the Presbyterian College, later renamed Queens College, in its early days and were compiling its history, which they hoped to complete soon. She says they had the names of the first graduating class and would appreciate very much receiving a list of graduates of the second and third classes. They had a copy of of the charter issued in 1896 and the Mecklenburg Presbytery Minutes, providing full detail of the establishment of the college.
A letter from the news chairman of the Sharon Barbecue Committee indicates that their records had now been completed and that the continuation of the recreational program at Sharon School was assured for another year after their successful barbecue the previous month, with 6,000 people having braved inclement weather to support the cause. He thanks the newspaper for its publicity and support and lists children who had won prizes for selling tickets.
Aletter from the president of the Charlotte Rose Society expresses their appreciation for the publicity given them in the newspaper for their fourth annual rose show.
A letter from the director of local Civil Defense thanks the newspaper for its reporting on the recent southeastern conference for female leaders in Civil Defense.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.