The Charlotte News

Thursday, August 25, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: For the first time in our rendering of these pieces, we cannot determine whether any one of these pieces was actually by Cash. We simply don't know. The last piece seems not to have any of his characteristic style; the first four pieces are likewise pretty sterile, devoid of any indicators crying out that they were by Cash. Who knows? Maybe he took a day off.

On the other hand, all five may have been by him. For instance, "Uprightness or Corruption?" is not too far afield, albeit it without the pique to the police, of "You Draw the Moral", October 30, 1938, the latter clearly by Cash for its signature to the "little reader".

So we include them.

Not every day is poetry.

While that notion of labeling people as This or That whose ideas one finds disturbing or perhaps merely less than commonplace might usually be a Red one to ride, this same Witch can come, too, in many shades of horse, whether proposing itself as anti-This, anti-That, always embellishing itself with plaudits of nationalism and patriotism, wrapping itself most rotundly and rudely in the starry red banner waving blueback stripily, and taking other seemingly whitenized salutary blessings unto itself, while offering up the one central dangerous This or That within society, often powerless, foreign, lacking in financial resources, as the black-spotted goat for the society's troubles, that which belongs behind borders and fences, always with the ultimate motive of stimulating irrational fears and divisiveness born of feeling and prejudice, eschewing thought or analysis as something of a part with the evil of the This or That, ultimately for the sake of drawing attention to the Witch's own power of discernment, spotting those witches of the This or the That, thus enabling the Witch to have the perception in the eyes of others of Power, even if the reality is usually at base that the power is more than not some half-educated dumb what-not, while the This or That is usually that created almost entirely of whole-cloth pluckings and fostered on hearsay, whispered in rumors, rumors taking on the patina of fact, spawning other rumors, until the locomotive is steaming down the tracks in such full force array, headed irretrievably to its splashing wreck on the slicked, tricked curve of headline glory, that no fact could possibly stop it from being absorbed into history as the time of the This or That as trapped by the Power Witch--all the while the vaunted This or That having attributed to its acts and spells levels of effect on society which the This or That never usually imagined, often never even intended, as well those who supposedly follow the This or That. And, as often as not, as one depends on the other for sustenance, the Witch and its witches of the This or That, after the wreck at the curve and the smoke all clears away to show merely a half-educated dumb what-not and a This or That which was never this or that, wind up allies in the land of Disrepute.

Thus, we kill it aborning if we can, this Witch stinting all munificence in society, with the simple, old and wise proverb: Fear not but fear itself.

A Washington business tip-sheet doubts that income tax exemptions will be lowered at the next session of Congress. Reason advanced is that millions of people would have to go through the torture of making out returns for the first time and sending a check to the Collector of Internal Revenue--not in 1939 but in the Spring of 1940, which is an election year. That would be bad politics.

By the same token, it would be bad politics for the administration to champion lower income tax exemptions in 1940. True, the first effects wouldn't be felt until the year after, but the opposition could be counted on to let the novice taxpayers know what they had been let in for.

It looks as though heads of families who make less than $2,500 a year and single individuals who make less than $1,000 are safe for at least two more years. In fact, if they could just manage--and they are a numerous class--to hold national elections every year, income tax exemptions might stay where they are. Otherwise they are bound to come down.

Greenwood County, S. C., must count that day lost whose low descending sun brings no additional benefit from the New Deal in Washington. Greenwood lies in the west-central, predominantly rural part of the state. Its population is 35,078, or was at the time of the 1930 census. And doubtless, if there is anything to publicity, it has grown considerably in the meantime, and the place must be running over with jobholders.

It would be interesting to add up all the loans and outright gifts Greenwood County has received from this or that agency of the Federal Government. The sum would be off to a whopping total of $2,850,000 ($650,000 gift, $2,200,000 loan) with the single entry of Secretary Ickes' allocation for the Buzzard Roost power plant. Two known items for inclusion are a previous loan of $143,000 from the Rural Electrification Authority (for power lines) and an additional REA loan, just approved, of $93,000 for the same purpose. To these should be added all Federal sums spent in Greenwood by CWA, FERA, WPA, PWA, HOLC, FHA, NYA, FSA and the other alphabetical Brewsters whose initials escape us at the moment.

From the known loans and grants alone, however, Greenwood County has received in Federal largesse about $65 for each inhabitant. The rest must run the average out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $150.

The FBI office here announced last week the arrest of a man named Blanks at Asheville for pretending to sell $300 in counterfeit bills for $100. The fellow was out of the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta under parole, though he "had a long list of offenses charged against him and had been convicted before in U. S. District Court." All of which inevitably leaves us wondering however it happened that he could have been considered eligible for parole.

The current FBI report shows that 126,218 (43.6 percent) of the 268,264 persons arrested in the United States during the first six months of 1938 already had prior fingerprint cards on file in the FBI offices. And of these, more than half had records for previous convictions on major charges, such as murder, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny and related offenses, arson, rape, forgery and counterfeiting, narcotics sales, etc. Moreover, 83,073 of them had been convicted more than once, as Mr. Blanks appears to have been.

All this puts the whole parole system in a very bad light. Crimes by paroled prisoners are likely to have the effect presently of so arousing public anger that parole will be abolished out of hand. Which would be a pity. For parole for men who are not habitual criminals and who can be restored to the ranks of decent, law-abiding citizens is obviously desirable. Nor can we understand why there should be any great difficulty about drawing the line. Did anybody really have any belief that Mr. Blanks turned loose, would not go straight back to his old tricks?

Nearly everybody we have talked to has expressed disappointment that Colonel Kirkpatrick couldn't persuade the County Commissioners to see the auditorium project his way. The general feeling is that this must be the last time around for all the easy money to be had from PWA and affiliates; that the people of the city are going to have to pay back their share no matter how much or how little they get of it; and business locally needs all the immediate stimulus it can get, even if local governments have to put out something of their own in the bargain. They're paying for relief, anyhow.

Bargain--ah, yes! Let's lay aside the auditorium, which would have represented only about a 25 per cent Federal grant, and take up a project of a kind dear to the New Deal, which impels the Federal Government to be not only generous but positively magnanimous. If it's bargains we're looking for, the choice of the lot is to be found on the Federal Housing Administration's counter.

A full 90 per cent of the first cost of slum-clearance housing is borne by the Federal Government. Thus, for the $350,000 that the City expects to have to put out, along with privately contributed money, to obtain a $450,000 grant for a million-dollar Memorial Hospital, it could get a $3,500,000 slum clearance project going. We are suggesting no such figure, but illustrating, rather, how much more favorable are the terms of FHA grants (90 PER CENT) than PWA grants.

Other cities are not blind to this opportunity. In North and South Carolina alone the following sums for slum clearance have been earmarked or already allocated:

According to the relative sizes of these towns and their allotments, Charlotte should have underway at least $2,500,000 in low-cost housing, 90 per cent of which would be at the Federal Government's expense. Whether the money should be spent on one huge development or on several smaller in separate undertakings is a detail. The pressing point is that Charlotte is about to be left in the cold.

It isn't like us, and we don't begin to understand it. It's up to the City Council, of course, to take the initiative--not necessarily to put in for an FHA project but to appoint a committee, either of its own members or private citizens, to examine the possibilities while they still exist. That in itself will cost nothing, as there is no obligation to buy. But there is, we are positive, an obligation upon the Council's [part at least to look into any proposition offering 90 PER CENT in exchange] for 10.

There is something reassuring in the number and variety of persons who made affidavit that Pine Harbor, boating, dining and dancing place on the Catawba, was a public nuisance. That it is or isn't a public nuisance, the court will determine when the temporary padlocking order issued by Judge Hill yesterday comes up before Judge Harding for adjudication. Meanwhile, "a disgrace to Mecklenburg County... a rendezvous of vice, assignation, drunkenness, lewd and indecent and immoral conduct..." it has been sworn to be by--(1) a County Commissioner; (2) a Grand Juror; (3) two Deputy Sheriffs; and (4) a Rural Policeman.

In these five persons are represented the County's governing authority, the citizenry (through the Grand Juror), and two police agencies. And we tell you, messires, that it is time for all upright people, both in private and public capacities, to take a hand in restoring the integrity of government in the city and county and in making the law master over the worst elements in the community, instead of the reverse.

We tell you that conditions which exist lead inexorably to a showdown between uprightness and corruption--the corruption which gets its money, and equivalent of power, largely from the two sources of liquor and the numbers game, both wholly illegal. We tell you that the power of the proprietors of this corruption is such that they can influence elections, putting their own favorites in office in the expectation of repayment in the form of protection and political favors.

We tell you that the outward manifestation of this corruption, liquor-selling, the daily butter 'n' eggs lottery and prostitution, is far less of an evil force than the secret concentration of too much power in the wrong hands. Pine Harbor is only an outcropping, and the possible padlocking of Pine Harbor will not for a moment break the grip of the corrupt or interrupt the flow of money into their hands. What will unseat them, however, is the same force that brought Pine Harbor into court, and that is the coalition of the dominant upright forces in the community, both official and private, in the determination to escort corruption to the bar and restore the authority of the law.