The Charlotte News
Monday, July 9, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senators Herbert Lehman of New York and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had predicted this date that former President Truman would keep his hands off the national convention contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Both Senators supported Adlai Stevenson for the nomination, having won the 1952 nomination with the help of Mr. Truman. Senator Lehman said that Mr. Truman's recent statements that he wanted to remain neutral in the nomination process had to be taken at face value, adding that there was no question in his mind that Governor Stevenson would be nominated and that President Truman would support him wholeheartedly, as he would any other qualified candidate.
In Athens, Greece, it was reported that earthquakes and repeated tidal waves had struck the Aegean islands off southern Greece this date, killing at least 40 persons. The brunt of the earthquakes had been felt on the island of Thera, where 30 persons had been reported killed, and Ios, where at least ten were said to have been killed. Police said that an unknown number of victims still lay beneath the debris on Ios. Tidal waves had struck Crete three times in less than half an hour and large waves had also hit Samos and Kalimnos in the Dodacanese, as well as four other islands. It was reported that on Thera, an eruption of a volcano had occurred and the Government announced that most of the houses on that island, with a population of nearly 10,000, had collapsed and that the rest were uninhabitable. On Patmos, a tidal wave damaged the historic monastery where St. John had written Revelations of the New Testament. The Government rushed relief and supplies to the islands. It appeared to be the worst earthquake since August, 1953, when a series of major quakes had devastated the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece, killing an estimated 1,000 persons and leaving 130,000 homeless. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena had recorded a major earthquake on its seismograph on Sunday night, and Dr. Charles Richter had said that its magnitude was about 7.6, .7 less than the disastrous San Francisco earthquake of 1906—the piece not pointing out that for each point on the Richter Scale, the severity of the quake goes up arithmetically by a factor of ten.
In Westbury, N.Y., police disclosed this date that the previous night another futile attempt had been made to make contact with the kidnaper of the month-old baby boy taken from his carriage in the backyard of his parents the prior Wednesday afternoon. The mother of the child had sat alone for hours in a parked car on a street in Queens, complying with the instructions of the purported abductor, but no one had shown up to claim the $5,000 ransom payment which had been demanded for the return of the child. It had been the second time that communications believed to be from the kidnaper had sent the mother alone on a mission to try to reclaim her son. Three men had been picked up in Queens for questioning after three telephone calls had been made to the residence of the parents early this date. Two of the calls had been traced to taverns and one to a drugstore, but police declined to say what the telephone calls concerned. One of the callers purportedly had stated: "I'm sick and tired of this mess. Let's get it over with." Police said that two of the men picked up for questioning were involved with the phone calls and the third had purportedly seen the callers, but a police official said that there was no proof at hand and that there was no indication that the two men had been involved in the kidnaping. No charges had been filed. As indicated, the accused kidnaper would be arrested in August and would indicate that he had left the child beside a busy highway the day after the kidnaping, claiming that the he had been alive at the time. The police would then search that area and find the dead body of the child.
Emery Wister of The News reports from Concord that a group of men had searched southern Cabarrus County this date looking for a pack of wild dogs which had become a menace to the community, but four hours into the search at noon this date, the only tangible result had been a dog believed to have been wounded but still at large. The men, working under the direction of the dog warden of Cabarrus County, were armed with shotguns of various gauges. No rifles were used for fear of injuring bystanders and those in the party. One dog was reported to have been wounded out of a pack of five early in the morning, and the others, along with the wounded animal, had dashed back into the thickly wooded area and escaped.
Julian Scheer of The News, in the fourth in a series of articles on the Park & Recreation Commission, this date tells of the superintendent of the program, Marion Diehl, and his duties. According to park attendance reports maintained in June, July and August, nearly 800,000 people had used park facilities through June, 1955, a large increase over the 275,000 in the same period in 1949, at the time the $999,000 bond issue was passed essentially establishing the Commission as a viable agency.
Dick Young of The News reports that the City Council this date had taken an attitude of charity toward the Commission, under fire for the prior two weeks because of its unknown surplus, which was slated for discussion the following Wednesday, prompting the Council to decide to wait and see what would occur before taking any action.
Mr. Scheer also reports that Mecklenburg Democrats, who had gone into hibernation during the hot weather, were out in force again, with a pseudo-interparty fight brewing around the appointment of a member of the State House of Representatives for the special legislative session, set to begin July 23 to consider the public school desegregation issue. Arthur Goodman, a Charlotte attorney who had resigned the post in January to run for a Superior Court judgeship which he had lost, was the favorite to be nominated, based primarily on his support by most party members. But a fight among precinct chairmen could turn the tide.
In Mexico City, a Mexican fireman had invented a pushbutton device to subdue holdup men preying on taxi drivers, whereby simply stepping on a button on the floor would cause the driver's door to be thrown open, permitting the driver to escape, while locking all of the other doors automatically and shooting the cab full of teargas, trapping the holdup man inside. The inventor admitted that there was a flaw, that the taxi driver might accidentally hit the button and incapacitate an innocent fare, but said he did not think it would happen very often.
In New York, a prankster had poured a bottle of liquid detergent into the fountain in Rockefeller Plaza, beneath the huge gilt statue of Prometheus, Greek god of fire, and within a few minutes, white foaming bubbles had gathered around the statue, whereupon attendants shut off the fountain and washed away the foam. Guess it was bound to occur from the mischief of some unbounded character.
On the editorial page, "A Whole New Constitution Is Needed" tells of former News editor Burke Davis, following North Carolina's 1956 Democratic primary, having observed an aging black man in the Richmond County Courthouse frowning and stumbling as he read and wrote passages from the State Constitution to secure his challenged right to register and vote. As he finished and won his first vote, he had carefully written on the test paper, "Const. 1868."
The piece indicates that it had not only dated the registration procedure, "more than a little barbarous", but also the outmoded document which had permitted it. For a constitution which was a model of justice and political efficiency, 88 years old was not necessarily an excessive period of time. But the North Carolina Constitution was no such model, and while it had certain admirable qualities, it was far from ideal and through the years had become little more than a hodgepodge of amendments adopted with too little thought and interest.
In consequence, the General Assembly was being asked to tinker with it again. It indicates that the need for changes was obvious, but North Carolinians needed to face squarely the need for an entirely new document which would provide the efficiency, responsibility, economy and leadership which the state needed to solve 20th Century problems of government.
Dr. Robert Rankin, chairman of Duke University's political science department, had recently written that people were living in a new age and that there were many constitutional provisions which not only did not fit present times and needs but also seriously hindered governmental agencies and individuals in the performance of their duties, that revision of the State Constitution ought take place within the ensuing decade as a necessary part of any program to make State Government more effective and efficient.
Hugh Lefler and Albert Newsom, in their history of North Carolina, had noted that the 1868 Constitution had been written primarily by scalawags and carpetbaggers, with as many as 30 amendments having been added in one year in 1875. It suggests that the 1868 Constitution retained certain basic weaknesses which needed attention, such as an inadequate executive department and an inefficient judicial system, plus outdated references to governmental functions no longer necessary or proper, and biennial legislative sessions, to mention only a few. It recommends formulating and ratifying a new Constitution geared to protection of certain basic rights but with flexibility and adaptability needed to meet the problems of a modern state.
Eventually, a new State Constitution would be ratified in 1971.
"Try Stuffing Your Ears with Cotton" tells of the political candidates and parties about to become blatant and shameless all over again during the 1956 presidential campaign, as the campaigns were no longer carried on in smoke-filled rooms but were the result of Madison Avenue advertising.
Business Week had reported that the DNC was advising its candidates all across the country that if they could afford it, they should hire professional advertising and publicity experts to assist them. The DNC and RNC would spend around six million dollars, with additional millions paid by affiliated groups. The Republicans had already contracted for two million dollars worth of television time.
The political speech would be the least offensive of the advertising assaults on the electorate, as instead of so many dreary speeches, there would be merchandising, with jingles, political spots and slogans, for each of which it suggests an example from 1952.
It indicates that the dangers of that type of technique were fairly obvious, as it discouraged debate and distorted the issues, often dealing in deceptive over-simplification.
Stanley Kelley, Jr., of the Brookings Institution, until recently a political science instructor at Johns Hopkins University, had discussed the rise of "gray flannel politics" in his new book, Professional Public Relations and Political Power. In it, he warned that those who aimed to control the government regarded mass persuasion as their central problem, thus causing the specialists in mass persuasion to rise correspondingly in their influence, suggesting that the same trends which had brought such persons into political life would push them into political decision-making, with their effort being to tap strong emotions—interest, anger or fear.
The editor of Tide, an advertising and sales publication, had said during the previous campaign that advertising demonstrated beyond question that it could sell a good idea as successfully as it could sell a good product.
It finds it worrisome that it could do the same thing for a bad idea, and in politics, there was no such thing as a double-your-money-back guarantee.
"A Great Scratching in Lafayette Park" tells of a serious investigation having been undertaken around the White House regarding the squirrels in Lafayette Park across the street, for their having the seven-year itch, with there being great concern that they would spread it to the White House squirrels, already under threat of banishment should they return to their old habit of digging divots in the President's putting green. They had been on good behavior, and Senator Richard Neuberger of Oregon had taken up their cause.
If they were to be banished from the White House grounds, it finds it not clear where they would go, concluding that the nation would be saved trouble in the long run if an iron curtain were thrown up immediately around Lafayette Park.
A piece from the Detroit Free Press, titled "Serves 'Em Right!" tells of the Davy Crockett craze invading England, causing the adults acute pain because the air was full of arrows shot all over the landscape by would-be young frontiersmen.
It says it understood how the English felt and sympathized with them, as it was ducking arrows not long earlier, inspired by a British Robin Hood television program.
Drew Pearson tells of reports on near air tragedies being buried within the files of the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Civil Aeronautics Board, showing inexcusable negligence or buck-passing on the part of Government officials and some of the airlines. Because of the increasing air traffic, there were near misses in the sky occurring several times each day.
One file showed a failure of an important airline to change its propeller mechanism on a DC-7B when warned to do so, and the CAA having failed to force the change until after a near accident. In November, 1955, the Hamilton Standard Propeller Co. had informed all operators of the DC-7B that it was replacing the driveshafts of its propellers on the plane with an improved part. But the CAA did not make the change mandatory and Pan Am continued to operate the DC-7B's until it was possible to change the propellers. On December 28, 1955, a Pan Am DC-7B caught fire in one of its four engines while flying between Tehran and New York, and when the plane was about to attempt a forced landing by moonlight on a beach at Venice, the engine had fallen out and it was able to continue and land safely at Rome. A CAB examiner retrieved the motor which had fallen out and found that the governor driveshaft had failed, just as the Hamilton Co. had warned, with the CAB examiner reporting that four such failures had occurred during the fall of 1955. Nevertheless, CAA, which enforced safety rules, had not grounded the airplane so that propeller shaft defects could be remedied until after the near accident, finally making the change mandatory in January, 1956.
Another tragedy could have been prevented, occurring March 17, 1955, when a Pan Am Boeing 337 was ditched 35 miles off the coast of Oregon while en route to Australia, after losing one of its engines and going out of control, resulting in three people being drowned and one dying of shock. The CAB investigation revealed that the pilot had been unable to increase the power of the three remaining good engines to compensate for the loss of the engine because of electrical failure. Both the airline and the CAA had been forewarned of the problem in December, 1953, by the Hamilton Co., which had recommended that circuit breakers and fuses be reduced to prevent such a failure. But the CAA had not made the change mandatory, and Pan Am had not made the change on its Boeing 337's. Only in April, 1955, following the accident, had the CAA forced all airlines to make the change on that airplane.
Former President Truman, who had just returned from Europe, had promised Democrats that he would wage his usual "give 'em hell" campaign against the Republicans during the fall.
Pennsylvania Democrats may have found a way to counteract the big money going to Republican campaign coffers, having organized in Lancaster "Dues for Democracy", a plan whereby people would donate a dollar per month for five months, payable on the first of each month.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop examine both the Democratic vice-presidential nomination for the convention set to start August 14, putting forth the scenario of Senator John F. Kennedy running on the ticket with Adlai Stevenson, presumably having the presidential nomination secured, and the scenario put forward by the Stevenson supporters for Mr. Stevenson winning in the fall, finding the latter less than convincing. The claim was that the South, including Texas but probably excluding Florida, would return to the Democratic column, with only the normally Democratic border states and a small number of Northern states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Massachusetts, for example, then being necessary to win. But the Democrats were assuming a repeat Eisenhower-Nixon ticket and would need the Northern industrial states to counter the popularity of the President, planning to do so with the slogan: "A Vote for Eisenhower Is a Vote for Nixon".
They would begin that theme at the convention by hammering home the importance of the vice-presidency. To do so, the convention planned to end the presidential balloting on Wednesday, August 14 and then provide a day to build suspense regarding the vice-presidential nominee, with speeches from former President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt on Thursday, then the vice-presidential nomination on Friday, followed by the acceptance speeches. There was not unanimous enthusiasm for the idea in the Stevenson camp, as the acceptance speech of the nominee on Friday night had no precedent and the concern was that it would go unheard by weekend vacationers. The advisers did, however, agree on stressing the importance of the vice-presidency and focusing Democratic fire on Vice-President Nixon in the fall.
Mr. Stevenson thoroughly disliked Mr. Nixon and would, according to one adviser, "needle the hell out of him" if he tried to be high-handed during the campaign. But the main task of needling Mr. Nixon would go to the vice-presidential candidate, one reason that Senator Kennedy was currently considered the leading candidate for the position. He was considered an able and attractive campaigner and was a devout Catholic with a strong anti-Communist record, thus considered impervious on the Communist issue, which Mr. Nixon had used repeatedly against the Democrats. It was also believed that Senator Kennedy would attract back into the Democratic column many of the normally Democratic Catholic voters in the large industrial states who had defected in favor of General Eisenhower in 1952.
Senator Kennedy's vote against high fixed parity support prices on the farm issue during the current session had been the primary talking point against him within the Stevenson camp as they were relying on farmers disaffected by Administration farm policy.
They conclude that the vice-presidential candidate would be chosen with great care and fanfare at the convention, with Vice-President Nixon in mind. But the heavy emphasis on the President's health lingering underneath that stress demonstrated how hard-pressed the Democrats were to find a winning issue.
Of course, Mr. Stevenson would leave the vice-presidential nomination up to the convention since he was a repeat nominee and to emphasize the importance of the second spot. Senator Estes Kefauver would then narrowly defeat Senator Kennedy for the nomination.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain,
believes that Primo Carnera would not get very far with his 1.5
million dollar lawsuit against Columbia Pictures for Budd Schulberg's
"The Harder They Fall"
He indicates that Mr. Carnera had been a fighter who could not fight, who could not have knocked out "your oldest great-aunt if he had been wearing brass knucks and the old lady was tethered to a tree." It had been generally admitted in print through the years that when Jack Sharkey had taken a classic dive in Miami, "the splash was heard in Italy, whence poor old Gargantua came". Mr. Carnera had been operated by the mob, as were fighters at present. Leon See had found him in a traveling fair as a Greco-Roman wrestler and had put him into Jeff Dickson's Salle Wagram in Paris to see if he could stand up to a man half his size.
Mr. Gallico had wandered into the joint by accident and found out all he needed to know about Mr. Carnera's capabilities. Mr. See had brought Mr. Carnera to America and made a deal with the mob, producing a series of set-up fights. Mr. Carnera was then steered by several mob types and the ensuing fights were fixed, leading to the fight with Mr. Sharkey in which he had knocked the latter out with a punch which no one had seen, not even connecting with the chin. The mob had then kicked Mr. See out of the picture and stolen most of Mr. Carnera's winnings, at which point the fixers constructed a match with Tommy Loughran, who proceeded to murder Mr. Carnera, with the match nevertheless being ruled as no decision after Mr. Loughran became overly tired leaning on Mr. Carnera.
Next, they paired Mr. Carnera with Max Baer, who beat him into bad health. They then set up a match with Joe Louis, who crippled him, after which another hack, Leroy Haynes, had torn him apart, at which point the gangsters let him go and he limped into a career of being a wrestler, where he was a "pathetic giant".
Mr. Ruark concludes that Mr. Carnera had no case, as his privacy had been "invaded by gangsters with guns, thieves and murderers a long, long time ago."
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that the Supreme Court's decision to strike down state sedition laws had been, according to Representative Howard Smith of Virginia, a "crippling blow to the safety and defense of our country against subversion." The writer indicates it was an opinion shared by many others who realized the diabolic cunning of the Communists. He finds disturbing the revelation of the Court's philosophy as expressed by the majority opinion, substituting emotion for reason and denying the evidence of the senses, having found that the Smith Act of 1940 had superseded the enforceability of state sedition laws which proscribed the same conduct. The writer finds it in direct conflict with the fact that the Smith Act was a Federal statute and stated that nothing contained therein should nullify state laws, a fact noted by the dissent in the case. "When influential men deny the evidence of their senses and substitute emotion for reason they reap the harvest of distrust and disrespect. And when they are concerned with public order in these days of unrest they made themselves pliable dupes for the Communists, who in their militant atheism have leagued with the father of lies."
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