The Charlotte News

Sunday, December 18, 1938

SEVEN EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: A celebration of the 35th anniversary of the airplane...a celebration of the view Sir Anthony Eden must have enjoyed, sanitized as it was from the self-fulfillingly prophetic hustings of the streets below, from the Empire State...a realistic assessment of the nature of corporate monopoly, as seen through the looking glass...and a discrimination between that which is named local Red propaganda and that which is ordinary Democratic-Republican politics. Thus today's print.

We always knew that nine-month, twelve-year school plan, plus bussing to insure against overcrowding, the exhortation toward the right to vote and equal opportunities in education insured to everyone were Cawm-munist inspired praw-paganda. Jesse Helms tawld us so. He must have done red the News from Mawn-roe, down theya in them days. Don't that beat all? Prob'ly gawt on his ham radio and told awl his friends up nawth in New Jersey, too. In turn they done prob'ly tawld all theya friends down theya in Latin America, to guard against them Red programs. Don't that beat all?

Going Up, She Goes!

In passing, not because there appears to be anything that can be done about it but simply to keep our hearings, let it be noted that the national debt has set a dizzy new high. Up, up, up it has gone from about twenty billions at the commencement of President Roosevelt's terms until now it is pushing forty billions and heading for the fiscal stratosphere.

It is no mystery, as in the case of the little drops of water and grains of sand, what makes this gigantic debt. It is little daily deficits, trifling matters of a few more millions spent than taken in. Consult any daily Treasury Report. As a rule it will show something like this:

Taken In...................................................... $13,572,395.40

Put Out.........................................................   24,682,458.57

Adaptation

At Dayton yesterday they paid tribute to Orville Wright, who, with his brother, 35 years ago at last made good the ancient dream of man to take upon himself the wings of the morning, when they lifted their plane from the sands at Kitty Hawk. It was not exactly unto the uttermost parts of the earth that they flew that gray and gusty December day, certainly. The precarious contrivance actually stayed aloft only twelve seconds. But it was the beginning, and today the successors of that first crude biplane do go winging, almost with the speed of the morning lights, into the uttermost parts of the earth and to all the isles in the midst of the sea.

Wright himself looks at that with astonishment. He confesses that he had not dreamed it would be so. With his brother, he had thought that the invention would never be used for much but sport and scouting in war times. But his marveling at what has come to pass must contain almost as much misgiving and consternation as delight. For looking at Spain and China and the ascendancy of Lord Hitler, Wright must have times when he doubts that the invention of the plane was a boon to humanity, after all.

But there is comfort for him. The thing was plainly in the cards. Otto Lillienthal had built a successful glider as early as 1891. Langley had almost flown in 1892. And there were a dozen men at work on the same problem when the Wrights solved it. It would have happened in any case, and if humanity turns the invention to ill uses, that is the fault of humanity and not the invention.

From a Tower in the Sky

The Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, member of Parliament, is now a day and a half out from New York bound for Southampton and, in due course, 17 Fitzhardinge Street, London. A week's crowded visit, "every moment" of which he said he had enjoyed, was topped off with a view, under the direction of the Hon. Alfred E. Smith of New York City from the Empire State Building, and the orderly, geometric, incredibly impressive city pattern which the Rt. Hon. Gentleman from Oxford saw from the that eminence, and its blending on the horizon with the blue distance of the sea and the beginnings of the provinces, is a sight that no Englishman is likely to forget.

For this America that spreads away from that shaft is bound to excite the envy of a British statesman. To one compelled to think of Empire in terms of sea lanes and strategic fortifications, of cannibals in South Seas and fighting Irishmen in Dublin, of savages in Africa and fishermen in Nova Scotia, of loyal Canada and restless India, of balances of power ruthlessly negotiated as a defense against ruthless oppression, the whole governed from a light little isle smaller in area then the American state of North Carolina--to one whose mission it has been to preserve the unity of so disjointed a territory and the legions of its polyglot peoples, this America must look simplicity itself. Ocean-locked, homogeneous in our way, self-contained and astoundingly rich in resources and the skill to employ them: here ought to be empirical paradise, whose governing would consist only of a certain benevolent supervision. But, alas, it is not so.

The same quality that in so short a time has made this nation great beyond its dreams has made it impatient for perfection. Its very passion for government of its own still emits in the form of a passion to surrender its freedom to that government. Lacking a common enemy against whom to unite, it divides up among itself, and being blessed with plenty, it decides that scarcity is the ordained state.

And in the want of a menace, it invents them in series, so that to one who apprehends its constant turmoil, the complacent atmosphere of old London, where the cops say Yes sir, thank you sir, is a haven from change, constant progress and surging ambition. But all this is not visible, of course, from the towers of the Empire State. Whence Anthony Eden, seeing only the orderly form and not the restless spirit, in all probability heaved a sigh and wished a wish and took one last look and sailed away to England.

The Balky Argentine

The fact that it is the Argentine which is most suspicious of and hostile to the United States at Lima looks curious at first glance.

This is the South American country which is most like our own--the climate being much the same. And it probably comes closer to having a democratic government than most of the other Latin countries. It professes, indeed, to be terribly afraid of imperialism. It says, with all appearance of frankness, that, while it trusts Mr. Roosevelt's intentions, another administration might go back to "the marines" policy. But that, after all, is very improbable: we have learned our lesson. And in any case, the Argentine is the farthest away of all the Latin countries--far too remote for us to ever attempt to practice imperialism on it. At its worst, our imperialism, confined to the West Indies, and to Central America, has never come within 3,000 miles of the country.

What, then, explains its attitude? Quite probably the very fact that it is like us. Buenos Ayres, the third city of the Western world, is a great commercial metropolis, requiring a far vaster trading clientele than the 12,000,000 Argentinians. More, the Argentine interior is mainly engaged in the raising of wheat and cattle for export. And--the United States is largely engaged in raising wheat, and cattle for export. And--the United States, the great commercial country of the world, explicitly aims at increasing its trade in South America with the proposed Pan-American agreements and its new Pan-American propaganda. The Argentine probably suspects that that isn't going to help her own trade a bit.

Site Ed. Note: Another one untitled for some reason, separated from the rest of the print above by only a short "---". So again, we'll oblige the orphan left behind and slighted by life's less fortunate circumstance, especially it being near Christmas:

"Pop" No Southpaw; New Jaycees' Pitcher

[Untitled]*

It has been our general experience that a man known to his familiars and unfamiliars as "Pop" is likely to be a pretty good sort, steady, amiable and reliable. With this to go on and the assurance of his many friends, we feel safe in saying that the election of M. N. ("Pop") LeNeave to the presidency of the Junior Chamber of Commerce is cause for congratulation to the organization and its new head. We'd say it if the "M" in his name happened to stand for, as it probably used to, Marechal LeNeave, but all the more confidently because it has been set aside for "Pop."

Not Useless

The boys, like General Iron-Pants Johnson, who have been arguing that there was no real reason for the monopoly investigation, must be a little flabbergasted by the revelations concerning the glass industry.

To date, testimony and evidence have been offered to indicate:

1--That two large companies, Corning and Hartford-Empire, own 95 per cent of all glass-making patents.

2--That Corning owns 43 per cent of the Hartford-Empire stock, and that there is an interlocking directorate between the two.

3--That they jointly employ their monopoly to choke off competition, as by refusing to license a Detroit company to make beer bottles, and confining the making of electric light bulbs almost entirely to Corning and General Electric.

4--That they go even further, indeed, and, in cases when other and smaller companies are using patents which are not the property of Corning-Hartford-Empire, deliberately bring multitudinous patent infringement suits, not in the hope of collecting but of so harassing the victims that they'll either be driven out of business or into paying high royalties for the use of Corning-Hartford-Empire patents. One manufacturer testified that such suits were costing him from $50,000 to $100,000 a year until he finally gave in and agreed to use the patents of the two giants. And still another testified that he was forced out of business in Texas by such tactics, in order to preserve that state as a monopoly for a company operating under the Corning-Hartford-Empire wing.

All this seems to be legal enough, though few people think that it is really legitimate. But in any case, it does show that monopoly plainly exists. And that, of course, is precisely what the investigation was meant to find out.

Red Bait for Suckers

A Communist, we gather, is a sort of amalgam of orthodox Democrat, Republican, and Dr. McDonald. At least we were about to gather that from reading the Legislative Program of the North Carolina State Committee of the Communist Party. For virtually everything in the program seems to have been picked up bodily from either state or national platforms of the parties named, or from their supporters.

Thus, the program favors a State teachers tenure act, a nine-month twelve-year school term, freer textbooks, increased teachers' salaries, school busses enough to eliminate danger from overcrowding. Every last one of those things, we believe, was recommended by the Governor's Education Commission which turned in its report not long ago. It may be that the Reds go a little further than the Commission in a spot or two, but the difference is scarcely more than a hair.

Again, the program proposes equalization of educational opportunities and facilities for Negroes, and of the salaries paid Negro teachers, and that's exactly what the Governor's Commission on Negro Education advised.

Further, the program proposes a wage and hour bill for Tar Heelia. The State hasn't got to that yet, but South Carolina, the topmost citadel of Bourbon democracy, has, though it doesn't cover all the workers as the Reds want. And if the Democratic Party in the state hasn't put it in its platform, most of the labor organizations, made up mainly not of Reds but good Democrats and Republicans, have.

Yet further, the program finds that Wall Street (a composite name for Yankee financial and industrial interests) is responsible for the plight of the Southern farmer and the general poverty of Dixie. That doctrine is as old in these parts as Populism, and it is a part of the stock in trade of hundreds of Democrats of the far Right, as for instance Cotton Ed Smith of South Carolina. Nay, it even includes Josiah William Bailey and everybody else who argues that discrimination in freight rates is the root of our trouble.

And again, the program proposes a $30 a month pension for all needy old people. That is just half of what Henry Cabot Lodge, heir to the most far Right tradition of far Right Republicanism proposes, and it is a great deal less than a Republican who was running for Congress in North Carolina last month, proposed--a great deal less than our own Philly Ritch, a Democrat-Republican-Democrat, proposes.

Still again, the Reds want to abolish the absentee ballot and guarantee the right of all citizens to vote. The first is exactly what the Republicans and a great army of Democrats, including ourselves, are demanding. The second refers to the Negro, of course, and about that Democrats and Republicans alike are mum, but is it any secret that Negroes vote by the thousands in Charlotte, by and with the consent of the Democrats?

And finally, the program proposes to abolish the sales tax, as one designed to soak the poor. And that, precisely is the platform on which Dr. McDonald, no Red rebel Democrat, came within an inch of being elected Governor in 1936. And it is exactly the program which most of the highly respectable and highly conservative merchants of the state are fighting for right now.

Most moderate, these Reds. They want to have the State operate the tobacco warehouses, but otherwise what they propose will hardly outrage anyone. Most moderate, almost too darn moderate, in fact, to be convincing. For over the back of the program we find them quoting approvingly from the American Communist constitution which announces still that they propose eventually to "establish common ownership of the national economy... according to the scientific principles enunciated by the greatest teachers of mankind, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, embodied in the Communist International..."

Ah, now we know what face that was we have been seeing dimly behind all this marvelous moderation as we read--what legend we felt vaguely but with conviction should be graven at the head of this program. The face was the face of old Phineas T. Barnum. And the legend was that immortal one he coined: "There's a New Sucker Born Every Minute."

 


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