The Charlotte News
Monday, July 2, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Berlin that the Communist Polish Army this date had sealed off the East German border with Poland to intercept rebel workers fleeing from a massive police roundup in the city of Poznan, where riots had broken out on Thursday and lasted for three days. West German travelers coming from Poznan said that the Communist Army had heavily reinforced its frontier garrisons, and tanks for the first time were patrolling the Oder River. The travelers reported thousands of steel-helmeted troops blocking highways leading to the West and removing Polish suspects from cars and trains, indicating that a giant purge was underway in Poznan, estimating that arrests were as high as 2,500 men and women.
In Tallahassee, Fla., the Reverend C. K. Steele, president of the Inter-Civic Council and leader of a bus boycott which had resulted in suspension of segregated city bus service the previous Saturday, had told a mass meeting the previous night that policemen in the city had decided to run them out of town or at least off of the main business streets, not realizing that they were in town not to break laws but to pay bills and provide businesses with patronage, at least to those friendly to them. He told newsmen later that the police appeared to have opened a campaign of harassment and intimidation of blacks in the downtown area. The boycott had been organized to protest segregated seating on city buses, resulting in the suspension of service by the transit company which had operated the bus franchise in the city since 1940. Reverend Steele said that police were rude and subjected blacks at police headquarters to the "third-degree" for violations ordinarily considered minor, such as parking violations. Police officials were not immediately available for comment. The transportation committee of the Council was planning to use a church-owned bus and two station wagons to augment a volunteer carpool which had given rides to blacks during the previous month. Emergency transportation for whites would be the subject of a special City Commission meeting sometime this date, with Mayor Fred Winterly having said the previous night that they were going to have to do something about substituting for the suspended bus service.
In New York, an atomic research laboratory in Queens had a double explosion this date, with the Atomic Energy Commission having swiftly investigated and found that there was no radiation hazard outside the building. Nine persons had been injured in the blasts at the Sylvania Electric Products Co., which said that the explosion was not of a nuclear origin. Reports had quickly spread through the city that it had been, causing the AEC office switchboard to light up. The blasts had occurred within seconds of each other, damaging the second floor of the metallurgical laboratory at the company's 56-acre plant in the Bayside section of Queens, the plant reportedly being part of Sylvania's long-term program for peaceful uses of atomic energy. Some 50 firemen, 20 policemen and one photographer had been detained at the plant for examination for effects of radioactivity, and other reporters and photographers had been barred from access because of the secret nature of the work, with the AEC having indicated that the operations were classified. Police said that at least 200 employees had been in the plant when the first explosion had occurred and two Roman Catholic priests had administered last rites to at least five of the injured.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that recreation consultants in Charlotte had recommended abolition of the Park & Recreation Commission following a nine-month, $14,000 study of facilities in the city, suggesting replacement of the Commission by a Metropolitan Recreation Commission to administer a parks plan for the whole county, finding that Charlotte's present recreation facilities constituted only a third of what they ought be to match national standards. The commission envisaged would have 12 members, four appointed by the City Council, four by the County Commission, one from the City and County School Boards, plus the chairman of the County Commission and the City Manager. It would also have a general superintendent and other administrative workers. The recommendations had fallen into the background after they had been made the previous March and had received no official discussion since that time. The consultants had listed as shortcomings of the current park board that it was not sufficiently representative of the citizens of Charlotte, was not properly coordinated with other governmental groups, had not taken leadership to set effective standards for competitive sports organizations, and had a weak summer program.
Dick Young of The News reports on the same story, indicating that City Council member Steve Dellinger had recommended abolition of the Park Commission this date, with two other members of the seven-member Council having indicated that they would also favor such a proposal, and a third saying that he would give it careful consideration, while a fourth opposed. Mr. Dellinger had suggested that the Council seek an enabling act during the 1957 session of the State Legislature to make the Park Commission a regular department of the City Government, as with police, fire, traffic engineering and other departments.
With the Park Commission under public scrutiny, the question had arisen regarding a paint contract for special ceiling paint work at the new Park Center, with a supposed connection having been discovered between the low bidder for the job at $1,400, and a member of the park board who was in the paint business. But the connection had been found not to exist, with the president of the paint company telling the newspaper that there was no such connection with the firm and that the member of the board had requested that the paint company not use his brand of paint to do the work, and that another brand had been used. Well, what was the brand? Enquiring minds want to know, now. And was it oil-based or latex? Probably watered down so they have to repaint next year.
Julian Scheer of The News reports that when the new Park Center would open in the middle of the month, residents of Charlotte would have a $450,000 structure erected on the basis of the $334,000 of insurance money received from the fire which had destroyed the old Armory Auditorium, with costs far exceeding the money allotted for the building. But Park & Recreation Commission officials said that everything was appropriate and the taxpayers would not be asked for any funding. An additional $17,000 had been received from the City for the Commission's share of the 1955 tax surplus, and the total of $351,000 had been placed in a local bank with notes to mature when bills came due. Of that amount, 300,000 had already matured and $50,000 would mature at the end of the month, with interest having accumulated of $3,875. Mr. Scheer provides a breakdown of the total bid costs, running to more than $440,000, with a difference of more than $89,000 from that available to the Commission, but the officials of the Commission explaining that it was simple, as the bid costs included more than $67,000 for heating and air-conditioning which was a luxury item. To find out more on this hot issue, you will have to turn to page 2-A. Everybody's talking about it… They want heated and air-conditioned parks.
Ann Sawyer of The News indicates that a survey of smelly Little Hope Creek would be made by the Mecklenburg Drainage Commission, a three-person board, pursuant to a request this date by the County Commission to survey the creek and make recommendations for clearing it. The Drainage Commission chairman said that they would need a signed petition from landowners before they could do the work, giving them permission for the right-of-way to put a drainage ditch where it belonged, removing any trees or flowers in the process. The survey would turn over its recommendations at the July 16 Drainage Commission meeting.
In Klamath Falls, Ore., a prospector who had staked out a uranium claim at the busiest downtown intersection of the town was suffering this date from appendicitis, lying inside his tent which he had pitched along the curb. A doctor had been called in but the man refused to move, saying that if he left, he would lose everything, expressing certainty that he was on the verge of becoming a millionaire with his staked claim, contending that his Geiger counter had sensed uranium beneath the streets and that he was the lawful claimant because he was a descendant of George Nurse who had founded the town and retained the mineral rights. The man had staked his claim the prior Friday and pitched his tent nearby, then started digging up the street, said he would not move until officials recognized his claim and allowed him to mine it. He had retained a State Senator to handle his legal claims, and the Senator had asked the State Department of Geology to inspect the claim, and was also planning to file a case to stop an expected eviction action by the City.
In Newark, N. J., the Miss America pageant was being threatened by a New Jersey Supreme Court decision banning games of skill played for prizes, having first banned skeeball, pokerino and other Boardwalk games in Atlantic City, and the local prosecutor having ruled on Saturday that the $2,000 in prize money could not be paid to top finishers in the state Professional Golfer's Association championship, the previous day indicating that the Miss America Contest probably was illegal also because it was a competition for prizes. The executive director of the pageant replied that in their wildest imaginations could any contest which offered educational opportunities to young women such as the pageant be considered illegal unless the offer of competitive scholarships was illegal. Pageant officials would consult their attorney this date and then ask the State Attorney General for clarification of the Supreme Court ruling, which had said that games which used equipment bearing numbers on which something of value was bet were illegal. Precisely, the Miss America Contest...
On the editorial page, "Last of the South's Red Hot Poppas: The New Look in Regional Politics" tells of things having been going badly for Governor Earl Long of Louisiana, with the Legislature bucking him and unable to silence his opposition by snatching microphones from their hands or by expressing willingness to settle disputes with fisticuffs, as he put it, "I ain't got no medals for runnin', you know."
It finds that Governor Long, as he admitted, was losing the "snap in his garters" and was on the way to becoming the "last of the Red Hot poppas in Louisiana politics." Replacing such men were a new breed of Southern politician, such as Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina, whose "urbanity and gentlemanly manners charmed" the television audience recently on a couple of national programs, providing balanced comments on politics, the Governor having been sought increasingly by columnists and reporters for national journals. Whether one agreed with his comments was beside the point.
Senator Russell Long had inherited the support and name of his father, Huey, but little of his father's manner. Herman Talmadge of Georgia could not be brought into a tirade by a Northern reporter, as one had sought to do on "Meet the Press" in 1952. Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee, with a glamour boy smile and tailored clothes, was being sought by a television network as a star, or perhaps might join Billy Graham's Crusade. The new look was more than superficial, more than not having deceased Senator Theodore Bilbo not addressing a woman of Italian descent as "my dear dago" or deceased Senator "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman of South Carolina not striding across a campaign platform and knocking his opponent from his chair with the explanation that he could not stand how he looked, or a John Sharp Williams not saying, "I'd rather be a hound dog and bay at the moon from my Mississippi plantation than to remain in the United States Senate."
Former Governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond, now running for the Senate, who, like Mr. Tillman, had hailed from Edgefield, told of Mr. Tillman: "He had only one good eye and it would grow larger and glow like a coal of fire. The effect was almost hypnotic. His voice sounded like the raging of a wild beast. His speeches were highly inflammatory. He would set people rolling in the aisles in emotional frenzy!"
It finds the changes in Southern politicians to be a reflection of the change in Southerners, as the poverty and injustice of the Reconstruction era had left violence behind which was now disappearing after time and new prosperity, as the South attracted attention with industrial development and atomic energy installations, eliminating "the need for arm-flailing politicians to remind the nation in impotent rage that the South exists and will have its economic rights." The South wore shoes and even manufactured some as the old sense of inferiority faded, replaced by a strong identity between the atomic worker at Oak Ridge and the steelworker at Pittsburgh, with the North Carolina tobacco grower understanding that he was on equal footing with the Connecticut tobacco grower.
The remaining demagoguery in the South attached to the race issue, but even there, new elements of dignity and restraint had developed. "For every southern politician who screeches, wall-eyed and purple-visaged in the general direction of Washington and the Supreme Court, there are two who argue with eloquence and dignity," with the latter carrying around the nation. It finds the stage almost clear in the South of the "Red Hot papas, the race baiters and fake country boys."
One of the few one-gallus types remaining was Governor A. B. "Happy" Chandler of Kentucky, who had told the Governors Conference the previous week that the Democrats "could go farther and do worse" than to run him for the presidency, causing the writer of the piece to feel "the comfortable assurance that the party would do just that."
"Two Shrill Voices in a Voodoo Ritual" quotes Richard Rovere in his Affairs of State: The Eisenhower Years: "The magic of McCarthyism lies largely in its Luther Burbank touch with humble and unpromising materials; working with a mass of trifling, unrelated, and as a rule purely negative facts (or positive unfacts) it can produce whole fields of Shasta daisies."
It indicates that in denouncing the Supreme Court as a "pro-Communist" body, Senators McCarthy and James Eastland of Mississippi had demonstrated the previous week that a repugnant form of political voodooism was still being practiced in the nation's capital, opining that the smear ought be repudiated by both friends and critics of the Court. While the Court was not sacred, and had of late rendered decisions which were susceptible to question, the issues it decided were always controversial or they would not be before it for judicial review. Yet, the two Senators were capitalizing on people's fears and diverting public attention from real issues.
It quotes from the two Senators, exchanging comments on the floor, first about the Court itself and then about Chief Justice Earl Warren, regarding the latter, Senator Eastland having said that he was not accusing him of being a member of the Communist Party but of taking the same position Communists did when he said that the Communist Party was just another political party, while Senator McCarthy had said that he was not accusing him of being a Communist but that there was something "radically wrong with him."
The piece indicates that the prospect of Communists taking over the Supreme Court was about as likely as the Holy Rollers becoming a state religion, and it was just as ridiculous to suggest that the Communists were influencing the Court's decisions. It finds the criticism of Chief Justice Warren to be a form of verbal trickery, reminding of the simple but fallacious syllogism "proving" that John Doe is a Communist: "John Doe believes in free public schools. U.S. Communists quote the Communist Manifesto, which demands free public schools. Therefore, John Doe is a Communist."
It concludes that as with any other institution in the country, the Court was subject to criticism, but that honorable critics would base their arguments on reason, high principles, logic and facts, not on irresponsible smears.
Drew Pearson tells of Kraft Foods Co. having cashed in on Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson's cheese deal and then tipped off its customers so that they also could profit at taxpayer expense. The vice-president of the company had been a member of Mr. Benson's Dairy Advisory Committee which had recommended that the Department purchase cheese from processors and then sell it back at three cents per pound cheaper, with the cheese never having left the warehouses of the processors, amounting to the Government simply paying a generous profit for a paper transaction, with its stated purpose being to help the dairy farmers, not the cheese companies, which actually received the benefit. The same vice-president of Kraft had then gone about taking advantage of the program, writing to the company's largest customers to inform them how they could share in the windfall profits, those customers having included Nabisco, which collected more than $108,000 from the Department, Heinz, which made nearly $25,000, United Biscuit Co., which made $12,000, and Campbell Soup Co., which tried to sell back five million pounds of cheese but had never closed the deal.
By that point, Kraft had notified even small customers in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia as to how they could also participate, with seven firms having made a total of more than $18,000 off the Government. Kraft had also mailed letters to 11 retail customers, including grocery chains, bakeries and food companies, which made nearly $164,000 in all. Meanwhile, the company was reselling its own cheese to the Government for the substantial profits, collecting more than $725,000 for seven cheese deals made after the program had officially expired.
Eventually, the Justice Department had ordered the companies to return their windfall profits, but it had taken Attorney General Herbert Brownell and Secretary of Agriculture Benson nine months after Mr. Pearson's column had first exposed the story on June 24, 1955 to admit the mistake. But so far, none of Kraft's customers had returned any of their profits.
Walter Lippmann tells of Western Communist leaders being profoundly embarrassed by Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev's campaign to degrade the deceased Joseph Stalin, as they had served him obediently for many years, now denying that his rule had been a reign of terror, justifying the purges and executions. Togliatti and Nenni, the Communist leaders in Italy, Thorez in France, as well as Communist politicians in Britain and the U.S., could no longer claim that they had served Stalin out of fear, as could Secretary Khrushchev. Those foreign leaders did not have to embrace Stalinism, but now that he was being demolished at home, they had lost face and looked foolish. In addition, Secretary Khrushchev had made it known how little he regarded the foreign leaders by not sending them a copy of his famous diatribe against Stalin. They had received their information from newspapers in the West, supplied by the State Department.
Pietro Nenni, leader of the Italian Socialists in partnership with the Communists, was so upset that he was now calling Stalinism "the most vast propaganda hoax in the memory of the world." Mr. Lippmann finds it to raise the question as to why many Italians had not been so taken in, as the primary charges now brought by Secretary Khrushchev had been long published, with the only thing new in them being that they were now officially confirmed by the successor head of the Communist Party. Mr. Lippmann posits that the foreign Communist leaders had been victimized by a hoax, not because they were intimidated or because they had been bribed, but rather because they were in the grip of their own will to believe that the revolution in Russia had been showing the way and thus had to be followed, becoming the dupes not only of Stalinism but also of Leninism, because they had misjudged the essential character of the Soviet experience.
Karl Marx had taught that socialism would develop out of the most highly developed capitalism, and yet Russia, the first Socialist state, was a society which had only primitive capitalism, rendering the Marxist prophecy not only wrong as to where socialism would begin but also as to what it would be like after it began.
Stalinist Russia had been concerned with the forced and rapid industrialization of a backward country, with Stalin organizing an economy which would enable Russia to compete in productivity with Western capitalism at the expense of a whole generation, his objective being not to lead the West to socialism but rather to make Russia catch up with Western industrialism. It had been an extreme form of self-deception for a Socialist such as Sr. Nenni to look for leadership from a country which had never developed a modern industrial system and had never known civil liberties or democratic institutions, conceiving the Soviet system as a successful demonstration of how, by ignoring human costs, a country which was primitive in its economy and not accustomed to constitutional government could be industrialized rapidly and made into a powerful state.
If Soviet Communism was conceived in that way, Mr. Lippmann posits that it answered many puzzling questions, for instance as to why it had made such progress in Asia and the Middle East while making no progress in Europe or otherwise in the West. The Soviet system might be achieved in other underdeveloped and pre-democratic societies, but in the West, it would not only be considered reactionary but also irrelevant, explaining why Western Communism had been so alienated from the interests and sensibilities of Western peoples.
Recently, Secretary of State Dulles had made a speech in San Francisco in which he stated that while the Russian Communists had now "dissociated themselves from Stalin, not even this much gain is registered by the Chinese Communist Party." Mr. Lippmann finds that the explanation could be that the Chinese were still Stalinist because they were still in the early stages of their own forced industrialization, of which the target date for fruition was 1967, with the Russians, according to that view, having now achieved a formidable industrial system and thus having outlived the process of Stalinism.
He posits that taking that view was to regard Stalinism as a totalitarian terror required for an inhuman purpose, to compel a generation to sacrifice itself for the sake of transforming a primitive peasant economy into an advanced industrial economy. Such a view enabled appreciation of the crucial importance to the future of mankind regarding what Prime Minister Nehru was doing in India, demonstrating that there was a humane and liberal alternative to Stalinism in development of a backward country, explaining why Nehru, far from being a stooge of Moscow, was the most formidable rival in Asia and indeed the only rival there of Secretary Khrushchev and of Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung.
Marquis Childs indicates that although the Senate Committee on Constitutional Rights was about to issue its concluding report, it did not have the benefit of the views of Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who was the agency head most directly concerned in the Government with the Constitution and its interpretation. He finds it the most conspicuous example of a trend increasingly evident in the Administration to avoid taking a stand on issues which might be considered controversial.
There had been some concern over a book by Robert J. Donovan purporting to provide the "inside story" of the Administration from Cabinet minutes, emblematic of the frustration in Congress. On November 1 and 15, and on December 1 of the previous year, Attorney General Brownell had been invited to appear before the Committee to discuss the security program, civil rights, the guarantees of freedom of the Constitution and other issues of the type, with an invitation having been renewed on February 24, May 11, 29 and 31. Following the testimony of former Washington Senator Harry Cain, now a member of the Subversive Activities Control Board and critical of the Administration's security program, Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri and others on the Committee felt that it was imperative to obtain the Attorney General's views on security in government, as Mr. Cain had charged that the extension of the security program and its abuses and excesses presented the threat of fascism, citing cases where injustices had been done to innocent individuals through arbitrary and often blundering operations varying from one agency to another.
Mr. Cain's term on the Board would expire in a few weeks and he would be dropped by the Administration. Over a period of 18 months, he had repeatedly sought an interview with the Attorney General, wanting to tell him of the cases which had come to his attention involving such abuses, but the Attorney General had never directly replied to his requests and in a recent television interview, had said that because the Subversive Activities Control Board was a quasi-judicial body, he believed it would be improper to talk with a member of it.
The Supreme Court had recently handed down a decision holding that the present law did not permit the application of security procedures to non-sensitive jobs in the Government, causing a radical overhaul of the security system, prompting the Justice Department to reinstate 17 persons who had been suspended from non-sensitive jobs for security reasons, albeit leaving larger questions still unanswered, such as whether the system should be curtailed to fit the court ruling.
In the same television interview, Mr. Brownell had said that he favored an amendment to the present law which would permit all agencies under the security program free to decide what jobs were sensitive and which were non-sensitive. He had not stated a position on a bill introduced by Senator Karl Mundt and by Representative Francis Walter, which went much further than the Administration's security program, equating security and the public welfare such that even a janitor in the Agriculture Department would be subject to the same type of tests as an intelligence officer within the armed services, and would also wipe out all veterans' preferences. The aides of Mr. Brownell had said that he was reluctant to testify as long as the commission named by Congress and the President to investigate the security program was still in an exploratory stage. But the commission could not remove the cloud of uncertainty surrounding the program, Mr. Childs suggesting that it could only be done by Congress working with and through the Attorney General, often making for trouble, but being the American way, while government by commission, which appeared to be only government by delay, was no substitute for it.
A letter writer indicates that after
reading Steve Allen's letter to a critic
A letter writer tells of stop signals having been erected on each side of Sylvania Avenue some weeks earlier which alerted people to danger, and he advises that they follow that warning, as his observations showed that the average speed was between 50 and 60 mph down five blocks of the avenue, among the primary offenders being truck drivers, with police only coming out in response to complaints for a short time. He says that he had called the traffic office regarding the truckers' violations without result and urges readers both to call and stay out of their path, as the "speed kings will lay you cold with six feet of clay to hold you until Judgment Day."
Is he also talking about Elvis? If so, you can listen to him or watch him on the tv or in the movies, but beware emulating any star, as more often than not they tend to have quite thick clay feet, not to mention heads—which is why they sought stardom in the first place. Art? Not really. If that had been the goal, they would languish pleasantly in semi-poverty if not its abject form. Also beware of turning any politician or Government leader into a "rock star", as the cult of personality is the same any way you twist it.
Framed Edition
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