The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 27, 1957
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Tehran that two American aid officials had been murdered and the wife of one of them kidnaped when bandits had attacked their cars on Sunday night, according to an announcement by the commander-in-chief of the Iranian police. He said that two Iranians had also been killed in the incident. The U.S. Embassy had withheld identification of the Americans but one source had identified them. The Iranian general said that the party had been driving in two cars from a town in southeastern Iran to a port on the Persian Gulf when the bandits attacked, that the Americans had exchanged fire with the attackers for nearly an hour, but the bandits had finally reached the cars and attacked the occupants with knives. One of the U.S. citizens killed had been a native of Ireland and had become a naturalized citizen in 1934, had attended George Washington University, Stanford and Columbia, having served in the Navy in 1944-45 as a reserve officer. The kidnap victim was his wife. The other murdered American had been working for two years in southeast Iran in a community development program assisting villages in agriculture, education and health.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence within the Teamsters, Nathan Shefferman testified this date that he had made purchases totaling $85,000 for Dave Beck, president of the union, over a period of years ending in 1953, indicating that he did not know that the money belonged to the union. The items purchased ranged from washing machines and refrigerators to knee drawers, nylons and "possibly garden hose". Mr. Beck was present during the testimony, sitting behind the witness, and smiled at some of the testimony. For the second straight day, there was a huge crowd present for the hearings, with Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Committee, having stated the previous day that the Committee had information that Mr. Beck had used some $322,000 of union funds for his personal benefit. The previous day, Mr. Beck had appeared, a subpoena was issued in his presence, and he then proceeded to plead the Fifth Amendment to all questions except the basic ones as to whether he was president of the union. Mr. Shefferman said that he was out of his office between 90 and 95 percent of the time and consequently did not have personal knowledge at the time of what money had paid for the items purchased for Mr. Beck, indicating that he had paid with his own money and then was reimbursed later. He said that he first had heard about union money being used during the tax investigation by the IRS. He said that some $400,000 worth of materials had been purchased for many people both in labor and industry throughout that same period. The Committee had asked him to identify a list of sample items purchased for Mr. Beck, and the list covered a range from $64 for five dozen diapers to $1,242.45 for "chairs, table, loveseats, settees, etc." There were some gasps from the gallery when he read off $317,000 for shirts. Mr. Shefferman said that Mr. Beck wore "pretty good shirts". (That figure was a misprint, as nothing of the kind appears, and it would be almost four times the $85,000 total expenditure purportedly made by Mr. Shefferman for Mr. Beck from union funds. It was reported elsewhere as $317.50, which still mangles the $217.30 figure, as correctly reported, for instance, in the Raleigh News & Observer. And for the wise guys who might say, "Well, duh," we respond that you never knew with the Teamsters in those times, duh. Had Mr. Shefferman been in the moment, he might have speculated that Mr. Beck gave away most of his $54 worth of golf balls, purchased with union funds, to Mr. Hoffa.) He said that he did such buying for many union officials, obtaining for them discount rates as a good will gesture to promote his business, that the total of such buying was around $400,000. During questioning by Senator Barry Goldwater of the Committee, Mr. Shefferman named several other such labor leaders. When one of the leaders he had mentioned, UAW president and AFL-CIO vice-president Walter Reuther, was asked by the press about the statement, he said that he had never heard of Mr. Shefferman and that it was "an obvious attempt to smear people who are fighting racketeers to try to cover up for racketeers." Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy pointed out that there was no evidence in Mr. Shefferman's records that any of the claimed purchases for other labor leaders had come from union funds.
In Prague, Olympic champions Harold
Connolly
In Minneapolis, it was reported that the Secret Service had said this date that two men had been arrested with a huge cache of counterfeit $20 bills, admitting having made the counterfeit money in a Salt Lake City printing plant. The special agent in charge of the St. Paul office said that there was reason to believe that about $600,000 in counterfeit money had been printed. The counterfeit bills had been found packed into seat cushions of the car in which the men had arrived the previous day in Minneapolis, coming under suspicion when they decided to carry the cushions into their motel, at which point the motel operator called the police. Both men surrendered without resistance, a revolver having been found in their room and a rifle and pistol having been recovered from the cushions. A few of the bills apparently had been passed in Minneapolis, and it had not been determined whether there had been any previous attempts to pass the bills. The agent said that the counterfeiting job was relatively poor.
In Raleigh, there were indications this date that amendments might be in store for a proposed "work-release" law which would allow some first-offender prisoners to work at their jobs by day and return to prison at night. A hearing before a joint Judiciary Committee brought a series of questions which indicated the possibility of amendments. The director of prisons, William Bailey, argued in support of the bill, which had the strong backing of Governor Luther Hodges. Mr. Bailey said that the plan would enable prisoners to be self-supporting and allow them to support their families while in prison. He said he believed it would save taxpayer money and, more important, would likely save men and at the same time their families. He said that he had discussed the plan with 36 of the state's 39 Superior Court judges and all save one had favored the principle of the legislation. The committees took no action on the bill, but it was expected to be brought to a vote the following week. A State Senator who was a former Superior Court judge said that persons who had not actually served prison terms and instead had received fines and a probationary suspended sentence, but were dangerous, could be given the two-year work-release term, including those convicted of murder. (That latter part seems a little counter-intuitive, perhaps stretching the point a smidge too far, but we suppose they knew what they were doing. It seems unlikely, however, that the person deemed dangerous or who was convicted of murder would be given a probationary sentence in the first instance.)
In Charlotte, City Council member Everett Wilkinson became the last incumbent to announce for re-election in May.
Howard Whitman, "one of
America's leading writers on human affairs", provides the third
in a series of articles on mental health, indicating that nearly
everyone was skirting along the edge
You may read the rest for yourself,
as, candidly, we put little stock in amateur advice regarding
psychology, or in this instance today, sociological analysis of the social milieu with an eye toward counseling the individual regarding his or her common malady experienced within it, ennui, as most of it proves about as helpful as an indicted ham
sandwich. That does not mean anything, and neither, we suggest, does
most amateur advice about psychology or the social milieu in which the individual finds him or herself amid the common herd, feeling supposedly "common" reactions to it, within and without you. It is best just to talk things
over with friends or family, or a person one can trust, and then
filter the advice through one's own experience, not necessarily
accepting as gospel everything you are told even by the most trusted
of friends or family, who may be well-meaning, but do not know every
nook and cranny of your life, as no one does except thou. Thus, know
thyself first, foremost, and last, and adjust accordingly. But if you
want to read this crap by Mr. Whitman, you may. We are bored silly by
it and so will go have an indicted ham sandwich instead. That which he has recommended in his first piece, encouraging a troubled person to take responsibility for their own actions, is fine and dandy in theory, but in practice, based on our observation and experience, does not work, for a person who does not know how to take responsibility for themselves in the first instance, to the point that they have become a neurotic burden on family, friends, and associates, is not going to adjust any better by being told to take responsibility for themselves. They will likely only get worse. Mr. Whitman, we conclude, was a quack. You would be better off reading issues of Psychology Today, plus some Freud and Jung, or taking a good course or two in psychology
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that in the village of Ohkumni on the Korean Peninsula, there was a church made of mud and straw, while in Charlotte there was a G.I. who remembered it. Sergeant Ray Alexander had been born in Long Creek, where he was raised, had been a Marine in World War II and served in the Army during the Korean War, and had signed up for another Army hitch in 1955. He had wound up with his old outfit, the 11th Engineers, during his second hitch. He was a chaplain's assistant and since there was no chaplain, he took upon himself the responsibility of putting up a squad tent and planning religious services for the G.I.'s and townspeople. He had written home to Charlotte for clothing and his wife had gotten the First Baptist Church interested in the project, the members having sent ten shipments of clothing, enough to put stateside clothes on every Korean in the village. After a year, the sergeant had figured that it was time to build a church, as there were 45 Korean adults and 126 children trying to get into the tent. But there was no money available. The church members pledged to work instead and had gone out into the rice paddies and dug buckets of mud, mixed it with straw and shaped it into blocks, forming the church. They plastered it with lime meant for a G.I. football field and covered it with Western roofing materials purchased with donations from Charlotte citizens. A blacksmith in Seoul had forged a bell for the church, and, according to the sergeant, they ended up with a Christian village. The church was the biggest building in the town and the only place where the people could get together. They held services on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The sergeant was now back home, having as his assignment the Post Office recruiting station, with orders to find church groups and civic clubs to which to take a slide projector and tell them his story. "The story of the U.S. Army, the world's toughest organ of death and destruction, and of the mud church at Ohkumni, Republic of Korea."
In Hollywood and New York, not mentioned on the front page, relegated to the entertainment page, the Academy Awards presentation would occur this night, to be broadcast live locally on WBTV between 11:00 and 12:15. That coincides with the second half and overtimes of the UNC-Kansas game the prior Saturday night. What gives? There is some kind of weird zombie conspiracy at work to prevent us from being able to watch these programs.
In any event, the winners will be: for Best Director, George Stevens, as predicted, for "Giant"
On the editorial page, "State's Cushion against Racial Shock Passes One Task, Heads for Another" tells of the Supreme Court having turned down three petitions for certiorari the previous day, including one in a North Carolina case on the basis that the parents of black pupils seeking admission to a white school had not exhausted their administrative remedies under the state's new pupil assignment act.
It indicates that it was a victory in the sense that the Supreme Court did not declare the act unconstitutional, though also not indicating that it was constitutional, leaving the lower court decision intact.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had stated in July, 1955, in the wake of the May, 1955 Brown v. Board of Education implementing decision, that the latter case had not decided that the Federal courts were to take over and regulate the public schools of the state or that the states had to mix persons of different races in the schools or require them to attend particular schools or deprive them of the right of choosing the schools they wanted to attend, rather had decided that a state could not deny, on the basis of race, any person the right to attend any school that it maintained.
It finds that the sense of that decision had been echoed in the decisions in the Virginia and North Carolina cases which the Supreme Court had left undisturbed in denying the petitions the previous day. It reaffirmed the right of the states to prescribe enrollment standards as long as those standards were not based on race or color.
It also finds that the enthusiasm expressed in Raleigh following the Supreme Court's refusal to change the lower court decisions had been justified, and from all appearances, the state's cushion against the shock of desegregation by means of the pupil assignment law was not unconstitutional, permitting the hope that there would be moderate solutions allowed as long as they were honest and constructive attempts.
But it indicates that the enthusiasm should not be misleading, as the Court also had not endorsed the status quo, that the true test of the act would be in its practice. Some desegregation would be required to prove that the assignment law was not an instrument designed to perpetuate total segregation, and it suggests that if the pupil assignment law was wisely and honestly administered, the test would be met.
"Give a Cheer for the Mighty Mite" indicates that the favorable report by a State Senate Judiciary Committee had recommended two bills designed to restore representative government to North Carolina, but victory was not yet imminent. It would likely result from attrition or weariness of the foes of reapportionment in the eastern part of the state, who opposed it merely on the basis of pride.
Two bills to amend the State Constitution had been proposed, changing the methods of reapportioning the Legislature to reflect shifts in population, and those measures would now go before the whole Senate for debate the following week. Even if they passed the Senate, the greatest challenge would still remain in the State House, where Representative John Kerr, Jr., had already announced what he described as a "public burial" for the bills. Each successive Legislature had done likewise since the last decennial census in 1950, at which point representation should have been adjusted in the State Senate.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Toys for the Times", tells of the London Times providing news of an English toy fair which had opened in Brighton recently with a small jet-propelled V-X rocket as a featured attraction.
While a miniature rocket, it nevertheless rose some 100 feet into the air and could, if the parachute failed to deploy, thus produce a sizable hole in someone's roof, assuming that it had a parachute.
It indicates that it was the latest in a long tradition of toys and games reflecting present-day interests. The Times correspondent noted that a British toy soldier concern had added model soldiers of the Egyptian Camel Corps and Infantry, and the piece comments that, presumably, Israeli soldiers were already on sale, as the British had the world market in toy soldiers more or less sewed up.
But when it came to games, American ingenuity triumphed, and the piece is looking forward, therefore, to Milton Bradley or Parker Brothers or Selehow and Richter introducing a summer game called "Clear the Canal", with the object being to negotiate a miniature tanker from the Red Sea to Port Said and avoid landing on any squares representing obstacles, which would result in lost spaces. And if one landed on "Dulles issues a policy statement", the player would have to return to the start.
Drew Pearson indicates that certain New York bankers were attempting to cash in some "worthless" Czarist bonds which they had bought for pennies on the dollar from small investors. The Government's Foreign Claims Settlement Commission had twice ruled that the so-called "Russian ruble" bonds would not be honored, but the bankers were again trying to pressure the Commission for payment. The bankers wanted a cut of the 9.1 million dollars which Russia had put up in 1933 to settle American claims against the old Czarist government, part of the deal whereby U.S. recognition was given to the Bolshevik regime. The U.S. was still retaining most of the 9.1 million dollars but was gradually paying off the Czarist bonds expressed in dollars, with any of the bonds expressed in foreign currencies, primarily rubles, deemed worthless. As a result, the big bankers were able to buy them up cheaply and were now claiming a share of the 9.1 million dollars, at least half of which, they hoped, would be used to pay off the "Russian ruble" bonds. He names the largest holders of the bonds, including Guaranty Trust, whose president was William Kleitz, who had been a guest at the exclusive White House dinner the President had given for King Saud of Saudi Arabia, and who had contributed $500 to the President's 1956 campaign. Another major holder was Carl Marks, no relation to Karl Marx.
Within a few days, the Commission would decide whether the bankers could convert their small investment in "worthless" bonds into a multi-million-dollar windfall.
Humorist Ludwig Bemelmans wrote books on animals, such as "Fifi the Poodle", and his wife attempted to save animals, having garnered the support of four Congressmen to help her reform the brutal slaughtering methods used by most American meat packers. The Representatives were William Dawson of Utah, Edgar Hiestand of California, Martha Griffiths of Michigan and George Miller of California.
Stewart Alsop indicates that Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey would likely get his way on budget-cutting, despite his power within the Administration not being quite what it had been.
The requested defense budget for fiscal 1958 was increased by somewhat more than two billion dollars, though less than the six billion sought by General Nathan Twining, chief of staff of the Air Force, who said that the increase would be necessary to maintain current Air Force strength.
Mr. Alsop indicates that it was too early to make any precise predictions about the defense budget, but that the best guess was that it would be cut back by between one and two billion after being increased by the Senate by 900 million the prior year, leaving it at approximately what Secretary Humphrey wanted in the first place. The Secretary was not enthusiastic about foreign aid and was likely disappointed with the Fairless Committee, largely his own creation, for its failure to propose significant cuts in the foreign aid program. The current estimates in Congress were that foreign aid would be reduced by between one and 1.5 billion.
The Eisenhower-sponsored program for Federal aid to schools, proposed at half a billion, and probably the most important part of the Eisenhower "new Republicanism", had appeared a few weeks earlier likely to pass easily, provided the civil rights hurdle could be overcome, but now there was an increasing tendency within both parties to shy away from the bill. It was likely to pass only if the President made a genuine fight for it. If it did not pass, it was unlikely that Secretary Humphrey would be upset. Likewise, he would not mind heavy reductions to the costly farm program, another aspect of "new Republicanism".
Thus, it seemed likely that something close to the type of budget which Secretary Humphrey wanted in the first place would emerge from Congress, where the most intense pressure in years was being applied to cut spending, primarily pressure applied by Secretary Humphrey, supported by the Chamber of Commerce and similar organizations. Meanwhile, support for the President's budget was tepid, including by the Administration itself. Indeed, recently, the President appeared to agree with Secretary Humphrey on the need for budget-cutting, without saying where he would make the cuts. Thus, under the circumstances, Republicans felt no obligation to defend the budget, and, naturally, neither did Democrats.
Mr. Alsop finds it a tribute to the power and pertinacity of Secretary Humphrey, who was accustomed to getting his way, and if he got his way by watering down the entire Eisenhower program in defense, foreign aid, and domestic fields, no one appeared to care very much, not even the President.
A letter writer remarks on the published story regarding the San Francisco earthquake of the prior Friday and and the aftershocks through Saturday, having stated that the Richter scale rating had been set at 5.5, compared with an estimated 8.25 for the 1906 catastrophic earthquake and resulting fire. The writer indicates that on a logarithmic progression, the 1957 earthquake would have a value of 316,000 and the 1906 earthquake, 178 million, indicating that the earlier earthquake was 563.291 times as severe as the one the previous weekend. He thus suggests that the earthquake of the prior Friday was just a "little shimmy dancer's wiggle" compared to the one in 1906. He indicates that he would settle on the basis that the 1906 quake had been over 500 times as severe as the 1957 quake, and not as reported, only 100 times as severe.
The editors note that, lacking seismographs or even logarithmic tables, they would rely on the letter writer.
Assuming the accuracy of the subsequently estimated 1906 quake based on its damage, occurring before the Richter scale was formulated in 1935, the letter writer underestimates the differential in the two quakes, with the actual strength of the 1906 quake having been about 750 times larger than the earthquake of the prior Friday, with each advancement of a point on the scale being representative of an increase in intensity by a factor of ten. But in addition to intensity, duration of the shaker is also a major factor in its destructiveness, as well as the soil type which is shaking, with fill being most susceptible to causing major damage, as in the 1989 earthquake in the Bay Area, turning the ground essentially into churning soup for its duration. The nature of the soil is why, for instance, Mexico City is especially susceptible to destructive earthquakes, as it is built on an ancient filled lakebed.
A letter writer addresses the pay obtained by members of the City Council and the County Commission, which he indicates did not even cover the operation of their cars. They attended one meeting per week, among other responsibilities, and he favors raising their salaries, which he believes would attract more candidates for the positions.
A letter writer addresses the debate over the site for the new health center, this writer opposing placing it in Independence Park, as it would defeat the original bequest of the land for park purposes. She favors placing it near Memorial Hospital.
A letter writer from Lincolnton indicates that J. Winslow Mortimer, who drew the cartoon strip, "David Crane", was very unrealistic, obviously not knowing the internal economy of the Methodist Church, which he proceeds to explain.
The editors respond that their comic strip editor assured them that the strip was not based specifically on any particular Protestant denomination.
A letter writer thinks that teachers were overpaid, not underpaid, that if they would devote half the time teaching that they did to their salaries, everybody concerned would be better off. He says he was the father of seven children, with six of them in school.
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