The Charlotte News
Saturday, June 23, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President's physicians had informed him this date that he would be able to leave Walter Reed Army Hospital and return home in about a week, provided his recovery continued as it had to date. All of his vital signs were normal. It was also announced that the President had reportedly discussed political matters this date for the first time since being hospitalized on June 8 for his attack of ileitis, with an aide indicating that the President had given no hint as to whether he intended to remain in the presidential race. He had received a full report on the previous day's meeting of the Republican group planning the arrangements for the Republican national convention in San Francisco, set to begin August 20, and he was pleased with the report, according to press secretary James Hagerty, the latter stating that he was particularly pleased over various appointments, presumably including the selection of Governor Arthur Langlie of Washington as the keynoter of the convention. Mr. Hagerty said that the prediction of RNC chairman Leonard Hall that the President would remain in the race had not been discussed with the President.
Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico said this date that opposition from Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson would add strength to plans by Senators to increase Air Force appropriations. Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and Henry Jackson of Washington questioned Secretary Wilson's fitness for the job in the wake of the latter's comment that Senate plans to increase the defense outlay were "phony". Mr. Wilson had told reporters on Thursday that he saw no need for the money which Senators had proposed adding to the President's 34 billion dollar defense budget, to provide for more planes, men and bases, stating that it applied both to a 1.16 billion dollar increase voted by the Senate Appropriations Committee and a $500,000 counter-proposal from Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican member of the Committee. Senator Bridges had joined Democrats in criticizing Mr. Wilson's comments, Senator Bridges calling them "an unwarranted slur upon the Senate." Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, who wanted to maintain the President's original budget requests, stated that Mr. Wilson talked too much. Senator Symington, who was a former Secretary of the Air Force during the Truman Administration, led the floor attack on Mr. Wilson, stating: "I believe a majority of the Congress and the American people will agree that the usefulness of this Cabinet officer has come to an end. Over the years, he has bewildered the people with his continuous statements, statements not supported by the sworn testimony of many of his highest ranking officers. He has now seriously impaired much of the morale of our Defense Department all over the world." Senator Jackson called for the resignation of Secretary Wilson, saying he had urged it three years earlier and that since that time, Mr. Wilson had continued to confirm his original position that he was not qualified to be Secretary of Defense. No Senator came to the defense of Mr. Wilson, but Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, the Republican Whip, defended the President's budget figures, though not mentioning Mr. Wilson.
In Midland, Tex., two large 80,000-barrel oil tanks, ignited by lightning, continued to burn early this date, threatening hundreds of surrounding tanks at one of the world's largest crude oil tank farms. The fire could be seen for miles and emitted a great pall of smoke, lighting up the downtown part of Midland, approximately four miles away. A thunderstorm and intermittent showers were helping to keep the fire from spreading. There was no official estimate of the damage and firemen said that they had no hope of extinguishing the fires in the tanks, that the principal efforts were directed to preventing their spread.
In Columbus, O., two boys, ages eight and 10, had suffered third-degree burns of the face and arms from an explosion which sent hot oil spurting 20 feet into the air, after they dropped a book of lighted matches down a pipe into an underground storage tank for waste oil at a gasoline station to see the effect. The blast caused by igniting fumes in the tank, apparently had extinguished the fire and no other damage had been caused.
In Warren, O., the manhunt continued for a 37-year old man who had gone on a shooting spree after becoming angry with his estranged wife, following her having sworn out a warrant against him for assault and battery, having fatally gunned down two of his sisters-in-law and kidnaped and killed a teenaged girl whom he did not know, each killing having occurred at separate locations. His wife was being held in protective custody, and the sheriff expressed a lack of belief in the suicidal implications of a note left by the man to his wife, in which he had stated: "Wanted to get you," and "hope to meet you in the other world."
In Atlantic City, N. J., Samuel G. Kling, a Baltimore attorney and author of several books on marriage, had told the Maryland State Bar Association the previous day that unhappy marriages far outnumbered blissful unions, that for every four marriages, there was one divorce, and of the three remaining marriages, only one was truly happy, that the other two were merely tolerated for one reason or another, that couples remained unhappily married because of religious scruples, for the sake of the children, from sheer inertia, cowardice, lack of gumption, reasons of vanity, status or prestige. He said that 50 years earlier, marriage had been for life but now the average duration was about a decade, that in almost half of the 81,000 divorces surveyed from 1949, the marriages had lasted five years or less. He said he was convinced that youthful marriages were an important factor in the shocking divorce rate, that those who married at age 20 or younger had a 14 percent higher than normal rate, but that where the couple were between 21 and 25, divorces occurred in only 6 percent of the cases. He proposed a sweeping study of marriage and divorce laws, especially those which permitted youthful marriages.
Start with "The Killer"
In the vicinity of Asheville, N.C., after a plane was believed to have crashed nearby the previous day but had landed late in Charlotte, a second airplane was reported missing and probably crashed in the nearby mountains this date, the latter having been an unidentified plane of the Air Force Flight Service at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, apparently having gone down near Mt. Mitchell after reporting that it was in distress the previous day. A sheriff's posse had searched the rugged mountain area the previous day but had found no signs of the plane, despite witnesses having described generally the area where they saw the plane disappear.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that the last-minute campaign gimmick thrown into the 11th Congressional District Democratic primary race by supporters of Solicitor Basil Whitener had angered his opponent, Ralph Gardner of Shelby, the gimmick having been to distribute handbills which read, "Free—$100", circulated in Cherryville during the morning by a service station operator. The handbills stated that a vote for Mr. Whitener would enable the voter to pick up a ticket at the polls and then participate in a drawing for $100 at the service station immediately after the polls closed. Mr. Gardner had filed an informal protest with the Elections Board in Raleigh and threatened "every possible action" to have the votes out of Cherryville thrown out from the runoff primary taking place this date. The secretary of the Board told the newspaper that he had never heard of anything like it and that he had told Mr. Gardner he could take it to the Board but thought it was a matter instead for the courts. Mr. Gardner had therefore asked a lawyer to seek an injunction against the drawing, but a judge had turned it down during the morning as being too late. Mr. Gardner said he would also consider the scheme a violation possibly of the lottery law and the Corrupt Practices Act, and that the credentials committee of Congress might eventually be consulted should Mr. Whitener win the race—as he would. Mr. Whitener could not be reached for comment. The service station owner said that the scheme was his own idea and had been used at four ballot boxes in Cherryville. Reports from the polls indicated a heavy vote in the district this date.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that voters in Mecklenburg County had shown little interest in the runoff primary, as polling places throughout the county reported one of the lightest votes ever recorded, with none of the polling places contacted by the newspaper at noon having reported as much as a 5 percent turnout thus far among registered voters, with most places indicating that not even one percent had voted. There were three races at stake for Democratic nominations and one for a Republican race, all involving local races.
In London, during the showing of a Western at a movie theater, all of the children in the audience had shouted encouragement as the villain had galloped down a gulch at the head of a swarm of wicked horsemen, believing they were supporting the sheriff's posse, because the moviemakers had dressed the good men and bad men in similar costumes and it was impossible, in the confusion of the action, to distinguish them. The Times of London had received letters from many readers deploring any tendency to "improve" Westerns, and a noted British screenwriter, T. E. B. Clarke, had written: "From decades after the first screen cowboy bit the dust, convention decreed that good men should wear white hats and bad men black hats. It is unfortunate to find them no longer paying such meticulous attention to their dress." The Times had stated: "Surely a distinguishing characteristic of a good man is his ability to discharge up to 20 shots from a six-chambered revolver without going through the formality of reloading."
In Shoshone, Ida., a bee had caused an automobile accident after the car had stopped, when, according to a man from Tacoma, Wash., he thought there was a bee in the backseat of his car, so pulled off the highway and onto the bank of a canal to be out of the way of traffic, but the canal bank had given way and the car had toppled into the water.
On the editorial page, "River Traveling at Your Own Risk" suggests that during the weekend there would be a considerable amount of dousing and carousing at the Catawba River, plus possibly some dying, as occurred each summer, there having been two deaths during the current year, with nothing in place to prevent additional tragedies other than the exercise of care and caution.
It urges that there ought to be the added safeguard of a river patrol, but the project appeared lost in jurisdictional disputes between Mecklenburg, Gaston and York counties, the latter in South Carolina. Enabling legislation had been passed by the North Carolina Legislature in 1955 to provide for such a patrol, and boats would be made available through the Boy Scouts stationed on the river, ready for patrol duty. It suggests that ingenuity to devise a system whereby the counties, singly or jointly, could legally operate the patrol only remained necessary for it to become a reality.
It hopes that the absence of a patrol would suggest to those who would engage in recreation on the river that they were traveling at their own risk, and also hopes that it suggested to the County Commission the probability that a volunteer patrol, even without authority to make arrests, might enlarge the safety factor and perhaps save some lives.
"Here Come the Censors Again" tells of censors in Connecticut taking to the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, John O'Hara and Joyce Cary in a campaign for a "literary cleanup", similar to one which had recently been instituted in Communist China. In addition, a commission had recommended a censorship bill to the Rhode Island Legislature, based on its finding that The Turn of the Screw by Henry James merited erasures. In South Carolina, a censorship bill was pending which would remove "certain books that are antagonistic and inimical to the tradition of South Carolina", partially inspired by Jerrold Beim's Swimming Hole, portraying white and black children swimming in the same creek. A religious group in Nevada had asked the booksellers to remove such novels as Mr. Roberts and From Here To Eternity. A school board in Louisiana had banned Time, Life and Look magazines from school libraries because of their coverage of segregation. The West Virginia Textbook Advisory Committee had asked the Americanization Committee of the American Legion to examine social science textbooks used in elementary schools for the presence of "subversion". And in St. Louis and Chicago, "objectionable" books were coming under fire.
It indicates that while certain books, particularly those which featured lust, hate, vengeance and excessive violence, could have harmful effects on the minds of children, parental watchfulness could do wonders and society had an obligation to protect against pornography. But in other areas, the censor could become sinister, as censorship was always dangerous, doubly so when based on the belief that books had to be banned to prevent people from obtaining new ideas which differed from the extant pattern. It suggests that for those who imagined that they were protecting morals, censorship might be more immoral than any book could be, and indicates that there had to be a better way, perhaps as suggested by the Very Reverend Dr. James A. Pike, dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, who had urged: "… the long-range job of helping to bring into the minds and hearts of men of all ages the right kind of taste, the right kind of inner basis for the exercise of freedom."
"Prime Time" indicates that WBTV's intentions to televise in prime time FCC hearings on a charter for a competitive channel 9 in Charlotte merited sincere commendation, as the station could have chosen a no more graphic method of demonstrating its desire that the community have a more varied television diet, and posits that the demonstration should argue for the quickest possible decision by the FCC, which would be further supported by widespread citizen interest in viewing of the hearings.
"It Didn't Happen at Kitty Hawk" tells of a new aircraft carrier to be named the Kitty Hawk in honor of the town where the Wright brothers had made their first manned flight, the piece pointing out that it had actually occurred four miles away at Kill Devil Hill, where there was now a village named Kill Devil Hills. But the Navy had chosen the name wisely because Kitty Hawk suggested a thing in the air and the business of carriers was to put things in the air.
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot in 1903, at the time of the first flight, had given birth to a legend that the Wright brothers' "monster bird hovered over the breakers and circled over the rolling sandhills at the command of its navigator and, after soaring for three miles, it gracefully descended to earth again, and rested lightly upon the spot selected … as a suitable landing place." But that had never happened, corrects the piece, as the plane had not circled over the sand, hovered over the breakers, soared for three miles or descended gracefully, but instead had gone into the air for 12 seconds, for a distance of 120 feet and then made a sudden, erratic descent. On its third flight, it was lying on its back after being caught by a sudden gust of wind.
The Virginian-Pilot had reported that Orville Wright had "cried Eureka! as did the alchemists of old," which the piece doubts, despite there having been alchemy involved. For the Wrights had transmuted the base metals of imagination and effort into a golden achievement.
It indicates that North Carolinians would take particular pride in the new carrier and in its planes which would circle, hover and soar, then descend gracefully and rest lightly on the decks of the Kitty Hawk.
William Brinkley, writing in Don't Go Near the Water, in a piece titled "Tar Heel on a Pacific Island", relates of Mr. Seguro having been introduced by Mr. Siegel to Congressmen Smithfield of North Carolina and Janson of New Jersey, with Mr. Seguro then disappearing hurriedly inside his home before reappearing with an earthenware jug and a couple of Dixie cups, handing each Congressman a cup while twice tilting the jug and asking that they drink up. Representative Janson had immediately started coughing and choking, at which point Ensign Siegel had reached over and started pounding on his back, as the Congressman asked whether it was aviation gasoline. Mr. Siegel told him it was "palm toddy", prepared from fermented cocoanut sap by Mr. Seguro.
Congressman Smithfield, who had swallowed his without difficulty, looked pleasantly surprised, indicating that it tasted like North Carolina "white mule", Mr. Siegel indicating that the natives liked their liquor and that their host would be happy to offer them samples of drinks prepared from corn, rice or shredded cocoanut. Mr. Janson vehemently stated that he did not want any, but said, holding out his Dixie cup, that he would "take a little sweetening."
Drew Pearson tells of Juan Trippe, head of Pan American Airways, having complained to a House subcommittee recently regarding a story in Mr. Pearson's column, but succeeding only in being criticized as a result. He had not liked the story that Pan Am had hired three men close to the Administration, including the President's nephew, son of Milton Eisenhower, and two former officials, one of whom was Roger Lewis, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. When Mr. Trippe began to explain the matter, he was cut short by subcommittee chairman Emanuel Celler, who said they wanted to ask about Mr. Lewis, and then began the questioning, which Mr. Trippe was then forced to answer, acknowledging that Mr. Lewis had left the Air Force to become a vice-president at the airline and that it had a contract to run the guided missile range at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, that the contract had already cost taxpayers 34 million dollars, including a million-dollar fee for Pan Am. He was asked whether he was aware that Mr. Lewis, as Assistant Secretary, had approved that contract, and Mr. Trippe replied that he was aware it was sponsored by the Defense Department and not the Air Force.
Counsel for the subcommittee then introduced several contracts showing that Mr. Lewis had taken an active part in deciding who should get the contract, though acknowledging that Mr. Lewis had been instructed by Pan Am to stay out of the negotiations with the Air Force relating to the guided missile project or other projects with which he had connection while in the Government. But he would also supervise company projects related to national defense, including the guided missile program. Mr. Trippe contended that the Pan Am contract had been initiated before Mr. Lewis had become a high Air Force official. But counsel for the subcommittee produced a letter showing that he had participated in the approval of the missile-range contact. Mr. Trippe also stated that Mr. Lewis had submitted his resignation from the Government before being approached by Pan Am and accepted the employment only after receiving clearance from Air Force counsel. But counsel for the subcommittee pointed out that Mr. Lewis received a special option to purchase 15,000 shares of Pan Am stock two months after joining the company.
Stewart Alsop discusses whether the Soviets would show off their intermediate range ballistic missile to Air Force chief of staff General Nathan Twining and other Western air chiefs currently visiting Moscow for the Soviet air show. The U.S. had "hard" intelligence that the Soviets had been regularly testing supersonic ballistic missiles in ranges over a thousand miles, four to five times greater than those achieved in the U.S. thus far for comparable missiles. It was not known, however, whether the missiles were operational weapons equipped with hydrogen warheads and capable of being guided accurately to targets or were only experimental prototypes.
If the Soviets showed their missile, they would do it as much for the British Secretary for Air, Nigel Birch, French General Paul Bailly and the other NATO air chiefs, as for General Twining. For it would mean to the other NATO members that their air defenses were obsolete or soon would be, and that their countries would soon be subject to attack by those missiles. General Twining would view it as indicating that the U.S. strategic air bases in Europe and elsewhere would soon become indefensible, which would entail losing between half to a third of the striking power of the Strategic Air Command, considered the principal air defense for NATO.
Some in the Air Force believed the Soviets would refrain from showing the missile to avoid giving the appearance of saber-rattling, but most believed that the Soviets had not invited General Twining merely to demonstrate a new civilian aircraft capable of carrying 150 passengers, which would surpass anything in the West, as a Soviet air engineer accompanying Nikita Khrushchev had bragged during the earlier London visit. It had been suggested that the Soviets might even invite the observers to their Arctic or Ukrainian missile range to let them track the flight of the 1,500-mile missile, to demonstrate that it was not just a prototype. But it would be surprising if Westerners were allowed to view the secret installations.
The Soviets might display a supersonic bomber to which they had given the highest priority. They might demonstrate their long-range turbojet, the Bear, refueling in midair the heavy jet bomber, the Bison, to dispel the notion that they had not yet mastered midair refueling. Or they might demonstrate their new ground-to-air missiles which purportedly were vastly superior to the U.S. Nike.
The show the following day should serve to remind the West that the Soviets, while smiling of late and preaching peaceful coexistence, had been hard at work developing the means to threaten the existence of the West, whether or not those means would be on display.
A letter writer addresses the issue of the potential for odors drifting from York County, S.C., out of the proposed Bowater Co. paper mill to be constructed there, suggesting: "To stink or not to stink. That is the question." He agrees with the newspaper's editorial regarding jurisdiction, that people in a threatened area ought be in agreement regardless of boundary lines and should decide whether the mill would impact given areas or not, and then, based on those findings, take appropriate action. He calls for an end to childish bickering about jurisdiction. He concludes that paper mills did emit foul odors and that how much and how often depended on their hours and days of operation, the direction of the wind and proximity to the plant. He indicates that of those who had written, some had indicated that they knew there was a bad smell from paper mills, while others said they did not know and did not care, wanted the paper mill payroll regardless. But there was one category which had not yet been heard from, those who stated that they had smelled paper mills, liked the smell and would enjoy living near one, the writer suggesting that perhaps more people from that group should be heard from, if they existed.
A letter writer from Monroe disputes the newspaper's statement in an editorial that separation of church and state is provided in the First Amendment, quoting same, finding no mention of separation, proceeding to advance an elaborate argument that the Establishment Clause, the logical basis for separation, does not mean what it says.
Of course, he is quite wrong. If Congress, and, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states, cannot establish a religion, then necessarily there is separation of church and state, no more complicated than that, becoming only somewhat murky when the question arises as to what is state action under given circumstances and what constitutes a state action in furtherance of a religion. For instance, the Supreme Court upheld in 1947, in a 5 to 4 decision, the busing at public expense of Catholic parochial school students as providing an essential service necessary to education, comparing the service to provision of police and fire protection, without thereby becoming unduly involved in teaching or promoting Catholicism, thus maintaining the wall between church and state "high and impregnable", not permitting "the slightest breach", even if the four dissenting Justices viewed the public busing as such a breach for causing taxpayers to subsidize a service to religious schools.
Parenthetically, if you attended church as a child near a pulpwood plant and subsequently, for unknown reasons, developed a decided aversion to religion, you might wish to consult a regression therapist
Framed Edition
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