The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 7, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Army had announced this date that it would discharge 475,000 ready reservists and transfer 500,000 others to the standby reserve list, describing the action as an effort to terminate the military service liability of World War II and Korean War veterans, and to weed out the dead wood. The announcement said that the screening process would occur in the year following July 1, that when it was completed, it would leave in the ready reserve only those who were fit, possessed the needed military qualifications and would be available for immediate active duty in case of war or national emergency. The Army's present ready reserve had a nominal strength of 1,885,000, exclusive of the National Guard, which would number 407,000 by the end of the current month. The present strength of the standby reserve was only 8,500. The Army had said that most of the reservists who would be discharged from the ready category were those who had seen active service prior to June 19, 1951, most of that group having served during the Korean War. Priority for transfer from the ready to the standby reserve would be given to those who had served in Korea at any time between June 26, 1950 and July 27, 1953, the duration of the war. The Army said that ready reservists who were presently members of organized units and wanted to continue their military service would be retained. Young men who had volunteered for the ready reserve and who had no prior active service would not be included in the weeding out program. The screening would be automatic and reservists who did not object to discharge or transfer did not need to write to the Army.
Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin had written a new letter to the President, delivered via Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Georgi Zarubin at the State Department this date. A Soviet Embassy source had told a reporter that he understood that Ambassador Zarubin was going to deliver a letter to the President from Premier Bulganin. Since the previous summer, Premier Bulganin and the President had exchanged a series of letters concerned primarily with disarmament, but also including a proposal made by Premier Bulganin the prior January for a friendship treaty between Russia and the U.S. and other Western powers. The source at the Soviet Embassy declined comment on the subject of the letter.
In Bonn, former President Truman and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer appealed this date for patience and firmness by the free nations in the quest for world peace, following a conference lasting a half hour in the Federal Chancellery. The former President said: "We both hope that this (world peace) will arrive. If we are patient and do what we must do, we will get it one day." He said that his visit with the Chancellor had been "one of the most pleasant since I left the White House." Chancellor Adenauer would leave the following day for Washington to hold a conference with the President. He indicated appreciation for the "energy with which President Truman put forward the idea of restoring Germany" when he had been President, and that he shared his view that there would be success in maintaining peace if people remained patient and continued to have confidence in their aims. The former President told newsmen that he was "glad" that Adlai Stevenson had defeated Senator Estes Kefauver in the California Democratic primary on Tuesday. He had driven in the pouring rain with a three-man motorcycle escort to the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, having less than ten minutes, however, to take a quick look at the composer's papers before going to City Hall to sign the visitors' book.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this date affirmed the State Department's denial of a passport to singer Paul Robeson, who had refused to say whether he was or not a Communist, unanimously upholding the ruling of the District Court which had dismissed Mr. Robeson's complaint against Secretary of State Dulles. Writing for the Court, Judge Edward Prettyman said that Mr. Robeson had made no reply to the State Department's request that he execute an affidavit concerning present or past membership in the Communist Party, and that Mr. Robeson had then been told that he could have an informal hearing but would be expected to answer questions about his past and present membership. Instead of a reply, he had filed suit, contending that the passport regulations violated his Constitutional rights. The decision stated that Mr. Robeson had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies and so could not bring the suit.
In Raleigh, Governor Luther Hodges said this date that the State Supreme Court's decision the previous day in an Anson County school bond case gave a free pass to the state to issue bonds for school construction. He said that the 25 million dollar State school building bond issue would be marketed "just as quickly" as they could, as the sale of the bonds had been delayed pending the decision of the Court. It ha held the previous day that Anson County could proceed with the sale of the final $750,000 portion of a 1.75 million dollar bond issue which had been approved in 1952. The decision also cleared the way for the State to sell the 25 million dollars worth of bonds, the remaining portion of 50 million authorized in 1953. It also apparently cleared the way for the sale of several million dollars worth of bonds issued by other local school units. The Court had held that the State Constitution still mandated a State public school system, despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Governor also stated that he was pleased with rulings by Superior Court Judge Walter Johnston regarding condemnation of land for limited access highways, having held in two cases that the Highway Commission had the authority to condemn the right-of-way for limited access roads. The Governor said it would be good to have some legislation at the 1957 session of the Legislature to define the authority of the Highway Commission. He also stated that he had been notified the previous day that Federal legislation providing funds for hurricane damage repair had been approved by Congress and was awaiting the President's signature. The state hoped to obtain about six million dollars under the bill for drainage of hurricane-clogged waterways.
Helen Parks of The News tells of a spot check of local women leaders in Presbyterian churches, regarding the question of whether women ought hold high office in the church, having indicated a variety of opinions in the wake of the previous Saturday's historic vote of the annual meeting of the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church, wherein 234 men had voted to allow women to become elders and deacons of the church. It had passed by a narrow margin of only eight votes, with 226 having opposed it. The Mecklenburg delegation had brought the issue back to the local presbytery for approval, and if the majority of the 85 presbyteries approved the measure, it would go back to the Assembly the following year to become a law. The wife of the pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlotte said that she believed it would be unwise for the minister's wife to serve as an elder or deacon, as she had other duties in the church. She also said she did not believe the issue would pass the local presbytery and that if it did, it would still be up to the local church to make the decision. The former president of the local United Church Women's organization, who was an active worker at Myers Park Presbyterian Church, stated her belief, however, that there was no reason why any church office ought be restricted to men, that women could serve better as deacons, charged with the more mundane duties of the church, while elders tended to the spiritual service. She said she would never serve as an elder but would like to serve as a deacon, that women might help to put the house in order. An active worker at First Presbyterian Church said that she believed it was "a pretty come-off" if they did not have enough men to fill those offices, that it meant a lot to the children to see the men take responsibilities in the church.
Emery Wister of The News reports of Charlotte's hotels being filled to overflowing this date with colorfully-garbed American Legionnaires, members of the Legion auxiliary and the fun-loving 40 & 8. The three-day convention would open this date and run through Saturday. Approximately 4,000 Legionnaires and members of the auxiliary were expected to be present for the meeting, which would climax on Saturday night with an address by Civil Defense administrator Val Peterson in the Hotel Charlotte ballroom.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that it would be unlikely that the Legionnaire who had fired a cannon out the window of the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel at the previous year's convention would repeat the stunt in Charlotte, as predicted by the District 12 commander Jack Ingram the previous night, saying that they had gotten pretty excited when he had done it the previous year and that they could not have "that stuff" anymore. Legionnaires said there would no longer be hand buzzers, electric canes or even a water pistol fight at Independence Square. But it had not always been that way. In 1950, a World War I veteran from Asheville remembered that some of the boys had tossed a few pillows around and some of the feathers got loose. A bellboy recalled the incident and said it was downright dangerous to walk by the side of the hotel, that they had bought every paper bag in town and filled them with water, were tossing them from the windows on the 9th and 10th floors and were "real good shots". A World War II veteran from Asheville predicted that things were going to be very peaceful this year, as the World War I veterans were now getting very old and that the World War II veterans had never been as wild and rowdy as those of the earlier war. You had better not let former President Truman here you say that.
In Baltimore, secrecy which "disturbs the community and hides the failures of the professionals" in handling of juvenile offenders had been criticized this date by Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, addressing the Maryland State Conference of Social Welfare, indicating that problems regarded as juvenile delinquency represented "adult American failure—and failure all across the line in all the aspects of social health and social welfare." He related of one case history of a 15-year old boy awaiting trial while in a Maryland jail on a charge of shooting to death a school teacher, after he had previously been expelled from a Raleigh school after threatening a teacher there and then sent by his parents to live with his older brother in Maryland. Mr. Daniels said that because of secrecy in juvenile court cases, the first community knowledge in Raleigh that the boy had been a possible "young monster" had only come to light in the news story of the killing in Maryland. He said that the Raleigh Juvenile Court, which could have required a mental examination of the boy, had not done so, but instead operated under "its theory that secrecy must be preserved to protect the child." He said that under the cloak of that secrecy, the boy had been sent to the Maryland school instead of an institution, without either community knowing the facts of the case. The boy had not been a product of an undisciplined, irreligious or broken home, but rather of a "supposedly orderly" rural county, and the neighborhood in which he had lived had not been a slum. Mr. Daniels said that some socially trained people appeared to him to be too much concerned with the bookkeeping of welfare, devoting more time to eligibility for grants than the sickness of the recipients, that there was less need and less time to pause to contemplate the failures of the system until a boy shot up a schoolhouse, at which point they could only pause to wonder whether the boy and his crime had grown from "bad seed or barren ground."
On the editorial page, "School Needs Just Have To Be Met" indicates that at one time or another, every community felt the sweat of anxiety when problems presumed solved began rising slowly and ominously from the grave.
The previous day, the City School commissioners had authorized a committee to confer with County officials regarding plans for a new school bond issue, caused by the request for a new high school in north Charlotte. But it was clear that the needs for new educational facilities went deeper, as the County School superintendent, J. W. Wilson, had told Ann Sawyer of The News two weeks earlier that if everyone worked with them, they could house the children in September, but did not know how they would do so a year hence with the buildings presently being planned.
The problem of the County was not resolved by the previous bond issue and would not be solved with the next bond issue if the postwar population growth in the county continued apace. Both the City and County would have to plan presently to maintain the pace as they could, building for expanded enrollments, relief from overcrowding, replacement of obsolete buildings and new population centers. It promised some fiscal hardship and there were factors crowding in from the sidelines, such as the educational uncertainty accompanying continued segregation or integration.
Residents of Mecklenburg County had never been too poor to invest in their children, and when the choice had been between spending more tax money or forsaking the children, they had chosen the children.
"Too Few Cooks Can Spoil Broth, Too" finds it wise to call up reinforcements for Charlotte's war on juvenile crime, but that in voting to enlarge the Mayor's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency the previous day, the City Council had singled out only a few representatives of government for membership.
It finds that the situation called for the best minds to serve from both in and out of government, that the advisory committee ought be comprised of representatives of the police, the courts, the schools, the public welfare department, the mental health agencies, the employment security commission, the churches, correctional institutions, youth organizations, child and family service agencies, civic clubs, public information media and other organizations and individuals, public and private, who were concerned with the overall problem.
It suggests that the size of the group would not be a problem as an executive committee could be its brain center. It had to be remembered that the problem would not cure itself or be cured by a wave of the wand or by government fiat, that it would take hard thinking by a lot of dedicated people working together.
"Look Who's Yelling" finds a quote from Monday's Senate debate to have been ironic: "I think it is a shoddy, unusual thing to do to use the floor of the Senate to attack your opponent without any proof whatever," according to Senator McCarthy.
"Stevenson Can Patch up the Party" suggests that the California primary had been Adlai Stevenson's one big inning, transforming a tight but lackluster pitchers' duel into a go-ahead margin for the moderate Mr. Stevenson. The size of his victory had perhaps been the result of the extravagant campaign tactics of Senator Kefauver during recent weeks, engaging in reckless criticism of Mr. Stevenson's stand on civil rights and his veto of an inadequate pension bill when he had been Governor of Illinois, those tactics having damaged Senator Kefauver's moral image.
But, it finds, the California primary had also been a positive triumph for Mr. Stevenson, who had worked across the country to repair the confidence by the rank-and-file Democrats in him as a candidate, a difficult task as he had been trying to prove a negative and therefore had encountered difficulty communicating with the average citizen. As one pundit had pointed out recently, Mr. Stevenson's objection to the Administration was an example of his own intellectual strength and political weakness, it not having been so much that the Administration had done something that it ought not to have done, but rather that it had left undone things which it should have done. Mr. Stevenson's speeches therefore demanded too much thought of audiences to be crowd-pleasers.
He had launched his campaign with the words: "Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions… The people are wise—wiser than the Republicans think."
Among the front runners, Mr. Stevenson was the one hopeful behind whom various factions of the party could unite, as Senator Kefauver or Governor Averell Harriman of New York might produce factions within the party and even do lasting damage. Mr. Stevenson was known throughout the country from his nomination four years earlier and even if he could not win in 1956, he could preserve the Democratic Party for 1960, as few experts seriously gave any Democrat a chance to defeat the President in 1956. With Mr. Stevenson, however, again being the Democratic nominee, the nation would at least be spared the fate of utter boredom during the general election cycle.
A piece from the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, titled "On the Virtues of the Siamese Cat", tells of a Siamese cat which had persisted in awakening its owner and thereby had saved the owner significant property damage by fire and possibly injury or loss of life, which the piece finds ought to improve the appreciation of the alertness and intelligence of cats, qualities which were perceived as low or nonexistent by some.
It finds that the Siamese cat was a good watchman, growling loudly and if put to the test, fighting an intruder, all without barking at milkmen, nipping at children or in other ways making itself a nuisance.
Cats were also weather prophets of a sort, as they would not be playful before a rain, as observed by Jonathan Swift two centuries earlier in the lines, "While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er her frolics, and pursues her tail no more."
It finds the chief virtue of a cat to be that it took care of itself, burdening no one with its troubles unless it had a perfectly open and selfish motive, thus not so often arousing such affection as did dogs but not demanding so much attention either. It finds the cat to be a sturdy exponent of the competitive, free enterprise system and somewhat subject to the same cycles of over-production, that adding to those virtues the sense to wake up the household when the house was on fire, it had to be given a salute "or something unsentimental like a saucer of milk."
Drew Pearson tells of AFL-CIO President George Meany having about 99 percent support from the leaders of the organization's meeting in Washington during the week for his plan to eliminate labor bosses who engaged in conflicting business on the side. The other leaders appeared dedicated to purging those who had jobs on the side with employers while supposedly representing the employees.
But he had problems with the
Teamsters, especially Jimmy Hoffa
But Mr. Hoffa owned race horses, had once owned a racetrack outside Columbus, O., and his wife was co-owner of the Test-Fleet Co. which operated auto-carriers, delivering the products of the Detroit automakers all over the country. Mrs. Hoffa operated under her maiden name, Josephine Poszywak, while her partner, Alice "Johnson", was the wife of Bert Brennan, Mr. Hoffa's right-hand Teamster in Detroit. The two wives had inherited Test-Fleet after Mr. Hoffa had settled a strike in Flint, according to sworn testimony provided before the House Government Operations Committee. After the strike was settled by Mr. Hoffa, against the desires of local union leaders, Mrs. Hoffa and Mrs. Brennan had taken over Test-Fleet with an exclusive contract to deliver cars, and, according to the Congressional testimony, had made $64,000 in profits during the prior four years based on an investment of practically nothing. As the House Committee had begun to dig into those matters in 1954, Mr. Hoffa had suddenly made a deal through Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield to support Republican Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan for re-election, and after that point, the investigation had been suddenly stopped. Mr. Hoffa refused to answer various questions regarding the finances and holdings of his wife, appearing to be in contempt of Congress, but was never so cited, unlike some of the Harvard professors and school teachers who had come before Senator McCarthy in the past, when he had chaired the Senate Investigating Committee, presently chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas.
Mr. Pearson indicates that Mr. Meany
would have a relatively easy way of spanking Mr. Hoffa's operation if
the fighting were to get tough between the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO,
by withdrawing the local charter of the waste materials handlers in
Chicago, operated by Paul Dorfman, one of Mr. Hoffa's close friends,
whose wife and son
Mr. Pearson indicates that Mr. Hoffa had other interesting friends as well, and stuck by them regardless of their past, one being Johnny Dio, whom former Governor Thomas Dewey had convicted in New York for extortion when he had been Manhattan District Attorney. Mr. Dio had played a backstage role in the current battle between two Teamster factions for control of New York City, one of them having been led by John O'Rourke, former president of the New York Teamsters Joint Council, and the other by Martin Lacey, supported by Tom Hickey. The battle was so complicated that the average layman could not understand it, but basically Mr. O'Rourke wanted Mr. Hickey's job as vice-president of the Teamsters International Board, where he would sit alongside Mr. Hoffa, and Mr. Hoffa hated Mr. Hickey and wanted Mr. O'Rourke to win. It had only been a short time earlier that Mr. O'Rourke had been the close friend of Governor Dewey, but now was being probed by cohorts of the former Governor. Twice, Mr. O'Rourke had been labor campaign manager for Governor Dewey, in his run for Governor and once when he was the Republican nominee for the presidency. But now, the Dewey cohorts who ran the U.S. Attorney's office in New York were investigating Mr. O'Rourke for alleged mobster connections.
Mr. Pearson indicates that it was a cross-section of the cross-currents in the biggest union in the world and indicated why other trade union leaders were suspicious of and hostile toward the Teamsters, also indicating the tough job which Mr. Meany would have with the Teamsters in the new AFL-CIO.
He adds that Dave Beck, after he had sold his home to the Teamsters, had been the subject of a telegram to Jim Carey, head of the AFL-CIO electrical workers, stating, "Please advise whether rumor is true that Dave Beck has offered to sell Teamsters building back to the Teamsters."
Walter Lippmann tells of Marshal Tito's current visit to Moscow not fitting very well the standardized conception that nothing really changed in the Soviet Union and that the death of Stalin had made no difference since March, 1953, that there was little doubt that during the previous year, the Kremlin had worked for the reconciliation with Marshal Tito on the basis that it was Stalin who had been the heretic and not Tito, who was now being hailed as an exponent of the new orthodoxy at the Kremlin, against the old Stalinist view of the satellites as colonies to support Russia.
Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had told the Poles at a funeral the prior March that Stalin's attempt to make a satellite of China had nearly caused a rupture with Mao Tse Tung.
The new approach was a substantial change which could not be supposed as merely a propaganda stunt and the U.S. and the West deceived themselves to talk of it in those terms. The fact that the Kremlin was now glorifying Tito, the former rebel, was known by the Soviet hierarchy to resound in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other satellites where only recently Communists had been degraded and hanged for emulating Tito. There was evidence that the Kremlin was promoting Eastern Europe, with the changes in those satellites being toward increased national independence, the dismantling of economic colonial devices such as the joint stock companies, and a substantial increase in the freedom of the press. The changes in Poland, Mr. Lippmann had been told by reliable observers, was so impressive that they were beginning to look like a change of the political regime, and, he suggests, perhaps there was a movement within the Communist world from satellite colonialism to Titoist national autonomy.
If, as it appeared likely, the Stalinist satellite policy was being eliminated, it was plain why the Kremlin was going to such lengths to appease and woo Tito, who would be the symbol and living proof of how it was possible to have national independence within the Communist orbit. He thus became the argument for not breaking with Moscow, instead collaborating with the Soviets. In addition to being an example to the other satellites, Tito would be a missionary to the neutralists as well, showing that a country could be aligned with both the Western and Soviet coalitions.
Mr. Lippmann posits that no one who knew Western Europe at present would likely doubt the attractiveness of the Tito example. In Greece, and to some degree in Italy, perhaps also in France, there were strong tendencies toward what might be described as reorientation of policy within the framework of the existing alliance, and so it was no wonder that Moscow was doing so much to build up the prestige of Marshal Tito, who might be on his way to becoming the most important of the missionaries of Communism.
A letter writer comments on the editorial of June 1, "Court Test Needed in Bible Dispute", indicating that he had been a student in the Charlotte schools and studied the Bible under a competent teacher, finding it surprising that the newspaper would permit its staff to write such a piece without sincere consideration of all of the facts. He says that Bible instruction in the public schools was an elective subject, not compelled, and so the argument that minorities would be compelled to enter Bible study was fallacious. It also did not refer to different denominations but was a factual study. He thinks that if Bible study were eliminated from the public schools, then other electives also would be dropped. The piece had indicated that Bible study ought be left to the churches, but he believes that Bible study in the schools was far superior because the teachers had more knowledge in the schools. He says that the newspaper advocated segregation and praised the YMCA for its work, as well as the Better Business Bureau, wonders how it would know what to advocate and praise if it were not for the Bible. He says that no court should ever be able to provide a just decision on the matter, indicating that the students should be able to decide what they wanted to study in a democracy.
He ignores the First Amendment Establishment Clause in his attempt at exegesis of the issues. It is one thing to have as an elective a course in comparative religion, how the tenets and stories which serve as homilies differ and are analogous across the world's primary religions, quite another to conduct study of the Bible, per se, as distinct from a study of the history and development of Christianity as a religion, including its totemic underpinnings among Deep South Fundamentalists, or such a study of Islam or Buddhism, a study of Old Testament Narratives perhaps qualifying as an acceptable literary pursuit in English classes.
A letter from A. W. Black tells of a previous letter writer having seen "nothing but moral chaos and physical destruction", contending "in typical fundamentalist and biblilatrous [sic] fashion, that prayer is the only solution to the restoration of peace, harmony and tranquility." He views prayer as a "'manifest action [sic: 'manifestation'] of doubt'" rather than an exercise of faith, quoting from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. He finds prayer to be inconsistent with and contradictory to the theory of theism. He also finds it inconceivable that an omniscient, immutable deity could or would provide serious consideration to the multiple prayers offered by the expendable human beings, with every active prayer indicating a "mistrust of omniscient vigilance and omnipotent justice." He finds prayer ultimately to be "self-indulgence that provides escape from responsibility for those whose fatalistic attitude permits them to enjoy complacency, and serves no real purpose of material consequence."
Whether, incidentally, Mr. Black's often orthographically challenged attempt to convey "bibliolatrous" was the result of subconscious confusion synonymically with the phrase "libidinous
A letter writer, the same to whom Mr. Black responded, also responds to the same June 1 editorial on which the first letter writer commented, suggests that too much time was given to religious controversy, which had never been profitable, that the truth of the Bible did not need defense but only proclamation. "The only hope of our day is a new manifestation of the power of God."
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