The Charlotte News
Friday, April 19, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence in the Teamsters stated this date that they would explore more deeply payoffs to Teamsters officials in Scranton, Pa. The Justice Department had obtained Federal indictments accusing three business agents of the Scranton Local 229 of receiving illegal payoffs from business firms, and the Committee had ordered its staff to inquire as to why no charges were being brought against any of the companies or their officials. Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Committee, told reporters that it was something they needed to find out and it might become the subject of an investigation by the Committee. A special Federal prosecutor in charge of the Scranton case stated that if they indicted both men in such cases, they would not be able to make one testify against the other. He said that the grand jury decided which one was the more guilty and returned the indictment against that person, with the other then serving as a witness. A man from Texarkana, Tex., who had been named as one of the businessmen making the payments, said that he had sent a telegram to Senator McClellan asking for the right to appear before the Committee as a witness "so that your committee can correct the injustice done me" at Thursday's hearings.
At Bowling Green, O., an Ohio State University researcher, Dr. Robert Stuckert, said this date that a study indicated that more than 21 percent of Americans classified as white were descendants of persons of African origin. The graduate instructor of sociology at the University said that it was possible to estimate that in less than two generations, more than half the persons classified as white would have some African ancestry. He said that one conclusion stood out from the data, that the belief in racial uniformity of an individual's ancestors might be "the basic myth of the white man's past." In a speech prepared for the 66th annual meeting of the Ohio Academy of Science at Bowling Green State University, Dr. Stuckert said that the research project had been undertaken "to determine the validity of the popular belief in the non-Negro ancestry of persons classified as white." He described the popular definition of a Negro as that of "a person having any known trace of African ancestry, regardless of how far back one must go to find it." He stated that to social scientists, "defining a racial group generally poses a problem. A definition of a race has yet to be proposed that is satisfactory for all purposes. This is particularly true of the term 'Negro' in the United States." He said that all persons were classified into three categories, white persons of non-African ancestry, white persons of African ancestry and Negroes. Statistical computations in the study had been based on a number of assumptions, and with one exception, according to Dr. Stuckert, the assumptions made "would tend to minimize the final estimate." At one point in the study, two alternative assumptions had been made, one being that there was selective mating and the other being random mating. He said that under selective mating, the probability of whites of non-African ancestry mating with persons classified as Negro was one-tenth of what would be expected if mating were random, with the figure of one-tenth having been established on the basis of previous estimates of the relative size of the mulatto population and studies of the mixed ancestry of Negro groups.
In Pittsburgh, David McDonald had been re-elected president of the United Steelworkers Union this date.
In Chicago, three burglars had been shot to death early this date in a violent gun battle with seven detectives as they prepared to break open a State Street department store vault containing a half million dollars. The gunmen, including a former policeman, had walked into a police trap at the store and were mowed down by police machine gun and shotgun bullets. The detectives had been hiding in the 11th floor credit department for seven hours after receiving a tip on the planned burglary, escaping unhurt. The three gunmen, carrying burglary tools, had been about to attempt to open a safe when the detectives ordered them to surrender, at which point the burglars had opened fire, with the police, armed with three machine guns and four shotguns, returning fire, killing all three of the burglars. It was not disclosed how the men had gained entrance to the store, located in the heart of The Loop. But there was no evidence of forced entry. Police officers speculated that the men might have hidden in the store after closing time.
In San Francisco, the police were searching, for the fifth consecutive day, for a hit and run motorist who had struck and brutally dragged a machinist to his death. The 62-year old man had been trapped under the right front fender of a car which had hit him as he started across a Mission District intersection. A zig-zag 1,200-foot stream of blood marked the car's path as it jerked forward, swerved and slowed before dislodging the man's mangled body. Some 50 persons watched in horror from the streets as the incident occurred, with one man having viewed it from his third-story window. Two motorists had chased the car in vain. No one had obtained the license number but some witnesses said it was either a 1952 or 1953 Mercury. One woman, who had two new fenders on her 1952 Mercury, had been stopped seven times by police. San Francisco newspapers appealed for leads in the case and The Examiner offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who provided information which would lead to the identification and conviction of the hit-and-run killer. Nothing was being left to chance, according to a police captain who headed the accident investigation bureau, estimating that 6,000 man-hours of police work had already gone into checking the hundreds of leads which had been provided. Every officer on the street was watching for a clue. Automobile agencies had opened their books to police investigators to check on buyers of 1952 and 1953 Mercurys. A sergeant who headed the ten-man hit-and-run detail for the police department said it was the biggest such manhunt in the city's history.
In Collinsville, Okla., the police chief and his force were looking for dynamite caps, finding them in the coat pocket of a little girl, in an old coal pit and by a hotel. Luckily, none of the estimated 100 dynamite caps, taken by a couple of young teenagers who were "goofing around" at a brick company, had exploded. The police chief said that someone could have, however, gotten their head blown off. About 85 of the caps had thus far been recovered. The boys had also taken some dynamite sticks. Apparently some of the caps had been handled by schoolchildren for two days and it had not been discovered until early the previous night that the caps were scattered around the community, with the police notified that some of the children were playing with them. One boy said that he had tossed a couple of them into a wastebasket at school, and another boy said that he had thrown about ten into a creek. One of the boys who admitted taking the caps had led police to an old coal pit where about 15 of the caps and the sticks of dynamite were recovered. He said that they had built a fire and thrown in some of the explosives to see what would happen, but that nothing had. Ordinarily, the caps were exploded with an electrical charge. Next time, boys, hook those suckers up to a live electrical current, while holding the wire as you stand in water. You will get a real charge out of that.
In Raleigh, the State House and Senate Joint Health Committee this date heard the supporters of a bill which would establish a State board of examiners to regulate psychologists, with the Committee having taken no action on the measure and its chairman having said that he did not know when action would be taken. No opposition to the bill had been asked to be heard. The Moore County attorney had urged the Committee to approve the bill so that the State could have some way of getting rid of frauds in the field. Several members of the State Hospital Board of Control had been present and urged passage of the measure, as did members of the State Psychology Association.
Christians throughout the world commemorated this date Good Friday, when Christ suffered death on the cross. Approximately 4,000 visitors, mostly Arab Christians, were in the Arab-controlled Old City of Jerusalem, where most of the holy places were located. Only 400 pilgrims, with few Westerners among them, had crossed the Palestine armistice frontier from Israel. The small number of the latter reflected the tense atmosphere in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Sinai war from the previous October and November. Travel restrictions had been removed too late for any great influx of tourists. There was the traditional tracing of the Way of the Cross, with pilgrims carrying heavy wooden crosses along the route followed by Jesus from the scene of his trial to the crucifixion on Calvary. It was Easter week for both Eastern and Western Christians, though following different calendars, coinciding during the current year. Moslems celebrating Ramadan prayed at the Dome of the Rock and Jews were completing their Passover holidays. At the Vatican in Rome, pilgrims from many countries assembled in St. Peter's for Tenebrae services, with the highlight of the mournful service being the slow extinguishing of all except one of 15 altar candles, with the remaining candle being symbolic of Christ, hidden momentarily behind the altar as a loud noise reminded worshipers of the moment Jesus had died. Pope Pius XII would deliver his Easter Sunday speech to millions over direct broadcast via radio to nearly a score of nations, and for the first time, to be broadcast on television in Europe. In Konnersreuth, Germany, 3,000 pilgrims had gathered in the rain outside the cottage of Therese Neumann, the 59-year old Bavarian woman who each Good Friday appeared to suffer the agonies of the Crucifixion. In 1926, she had been first reported to display the Crucifixion stigmata, marks on her body corresponding to the wounds of Christ.
Charles Kuralt of The News tells of a woman and her friends, all over age 50, in the Latta Park Best Years Club, having decided to hold an Easter egg hunt the previous day, with the director of the park center having planted the eggs around the park, while the ladies fanned out to find them, rejuvenating childhood memories. One woman said that there had been no Easter egg dye to color the eggs in her youth, that they had boiled broom straw for the brown eggs and used green grain to produce the green eggs, sewing calico around some of them. The laughter of the ladies had echoed down the little valley of the park and brought attention from a group of schoolchildren who were also on their Easter egg hunt, turning and looking curiously at the sight of women old enough to be their grandmothers laughing and walking over the grass. One of the women said that in Alexander County, it had been the custom for the parents to color the eggs and place them in the hen's nest for the children to find on Easter morning, while another said that they had hunted for the eggs in the schoolyard in their little town of Buchanan, W. Va. The woman who won the prize for the hunt had found seven eggs, while another woman had found six. One woman laughed that she had only found two, but that it was enough for dinner, but then stopped laughing and looked around at her friends walking slowly in search of specks of color in the grass.
The weather forecast was for warm and cloudy weather on Easter, with the Weather Bureau predicting a low of around 60 on Sunday, and a high of 80 in the afternoon. Warm, somewhat windy weather with scattered showers was forecast for this date, the following day and Easter, but no hard rain was predicted. The Rooskies were going to leave Easter alone.
On the editorial page, "Arrogant Senate Defies the People" indicates that for 36 years, the General Assembly had stood in defiance of the State Constitution, refusing to abide by the provisions requiring proportional representation in the State House and Senate.
But during the week, the Senate had not only renewed its disobedience of the Constitution but had revived an attempt, already defeated by the people at the polls, to legalize that disobedience, having withdrawn its attempt on Thursday to limit all counties to one State Senator each rather than to deal justly with the counties entitled to two Senators each, Mecklenburg and Guilford.
It finds that the withdrawal of the proposal did not eradicate the arrogance which the Senate had displayed and that it was no longer possible to excuse its disobedience to the Constitution. The State Senators from Mecklenburg and Guilford Counties had appealed to the body's honor, honesty and integrity, showing that every consideration militated in favor of obedience to the State Constitution, and that the Weathers Commission plan for legislative reapportionment would provide new safeguards for rural areas already over-represented in the General Assembly. The response of the Senate had been to wreck the Weathers plan and go beyond, defying the people by voting for a measure which the people had already rejected.
There was no hope apparent for reapportionment at the present session of the Legislature or in the future, with the smaller counties having made it clear that they were not going to abide by the State Constitution, that they intended to maintain their control of the Assembly. The fact that a citizen of Mecklenburg County had only one-twentieth the voting power in the Senate as a citizen of Northampton County did not matter to them. The fact that Mecklenburg, with one-twentieth of the state's population, had only one-fiftieth of the representation in the Senate and one-thirtieth in the House did not matter. The fact that Mecklenburg paid one-tenth of the state's taxes did not matter. The fact that a small county such as Franklin received from the State $2.38 for every tax dollar it paid, while Mecklenburg got back only 38 cents per dollar, did not matter.
The only thing that mattered was the possession of power for the smaller counties, and it finds that the Senate had done a disservice to itself and to the state. But it concludes that though there had again been a defeat of reapportionment, the public schools were still teaching American history.
"UCS Agencies Must Toe the Line" indicates that the quarrel within the United Community Services in Charlotte over the operation of the Rescue Mission had been regrettable, but that the community could still salvage a lesson in social responsibilities from the pride and pique exhibited during the week.
The Mission had performed a useful public service, providing help to the helpless, and had undoubtedly honorable intentions. But there was considerable evidence presented to suggest managerial problems, operational inefficiency and questionable administrative practices. In consequence, the Mission had been requested to conform to the standards of all UCS member agencies. But it had been unwilling or unable to do so to the satisfaction of UCS. An audit of the Mission books by a Charlotte accounting firm had revealed apparent instances of mismanagement.
It finds that such matters could not be taken lightly by UCS or by the people who contributed to the support of all United Appeal agencies in a single annual donation. The member agencies had to toe the line and earn the public's confidence by conforming strictly to standards of sound management and administrative efficiency, and if they faltered, they did harm not only to themselves but to the whole cause of combined fund-raising.
It urges that the Mission continue its valuable service by reversing its decision to withdraw from the UCS and instead to place its house in order, submitting to the necessary and reasonable standards of efficiency, economy and good administration, and that if it was not willing to do so, there was no logical place for it within UCS.
"Whatever Became of Individualism?" indicates that it had read in the current issue of Time an item on Sylvester L. (Pat) Weaver, the former boss of NBC, who had once been considered the top individualist of radio's top brass in the country, but was now considered a "one-man Groupthinker."
It finds it inevitable that Groupthinking should become the newest and most fashionable form of intellectual expression, but was not too happy about it. José Ortega y Gasset had warned the West years earlier of the coming of the Mass-Man, having defined "mass" as "commonplace". It finds the trend to have been downhill to mediocrity since conformity had become a thing of extreme virtue in the U.S., with the trouble being that conformity tended to crush everything which was different.
It indicates that it was not for the individualism of the great cats, but was against the conformity of the beehive and the anthill. It likes the old intellectual tradition of exuberant humanism, that which Hippolyte Taine had called the "classic spirit", where the mind was committed and yet dispassionate, "ready to stand alone, curious, eager, independent."
It concludes that group thinking left it cold.
It appears from the same column in Time, incidentally, that Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, had, while assistant press secretary to FDR at the time of the Yalta Conference between President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin in February, 1945, been an original "catch-and-kill" man of his time, though of a quite different type of prey and for quite a lot different reasons, for the sake of instilling in the public FDR's continued outward viability as a world leader in the effort to construct the post-war peace at Yalta, not for the purpose of winning the Presidency as purely a personal vanity prize, as in its latter-day form, involving stories caught by a notoriously yellow-sheet tabloid to prevent adverse publicity regarding alleged extramarital affairs with an adult film star and a Playboy playmate, in the closing days of an election campaign, ultimately "won" by the person at whose direction the predatory kills were made, only by dint of the anachronistic electoral college, losing the popular vote to his opponent by three million, and had there been a shift of as few as 39,000 votes in the three states of Michigan, won by the electoral college winner by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin, won by 23,000, and Pennsylvania, won by 44,000, which certainly could have been the case but for the successfully chased, caught and killed
We do not know, incidentally, whether, given that President Eisenhower was the 34th President, there is some strange irony in that number, which, however, before it is over, is likely to climb eventually as high as 88, as with an old mobile and the "Rocket to Stardom"
The lesson appears to be that one should always be careful of that for which one wishes and reaches to attain, far beyond the grasp of one's best talents and experience, as you surely might get it, but in the least expected way, when you follow the urging of the madding crowd and their moneyed enablers, the Groupthinkers, disembodied of the individual's carefully studied wisdom and solemn consideration.
While on the subject of Groupthink versus individualism, it is worthwhile to read carefully Federalist Paper No. 74 on the subject of Presidential pardons, aptly numbered for subsequent history as it was in 1974 that President Nixon resigned the Presidency and his successor, Gerald Ford, issued to him an unconditional pardon for all crimes he may have committed while President. The paper indicates, notably:
"The reflection that the fate of a fellow-creature depended on his sole fiat, would naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution; the dread of being accused of weakness or connivance, would beget equal circumspection, though of a different kind. On the other hand, as men generally derive confidence from their numbers, they might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency. On these accounts, one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government, than a body of men." [Emphasis added.]
While the framers of the Constitution did not make explicit provision for any other than one exception to the President's pardon power over Federal offenses, that exception being impeachment, the clear language of the Federalist paper, to which any student of the law would have to look first when the Constitution is silent on a unique claim arising in the history of the republic, makes it apparent in its language "fellow-creature" that the pardon power contemplated was to others only, as no one other than a truly schizoid personality, the Jekyll and Hyde character, could stand apart from him or herself and be sufficiently objective to treat the self as a "fellow-creature"
Moreover, the expressed exception for impeachment, which can only be had as to the President for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors", implies clearly that no self-pardon power for impeachable crimes could be exercised by a sitting President, rather limited to the context of the Nixon-Ford scenario, where the successor President pardons the predecessor after removal from office or resignation.
The overall tenor of the Constitution and the times in which it was ratified by the states present it as a document opposed to autocratic or royal rule by the edict of high office. Self-pardon, by contrast, would harken back to the days of royal rule of the colonies and thus, no doubt, was not even contemplated by the framers in the wake of the Revolution, hence the silence on the subject as being so self-evident as to be unworthy of comment, suggesting disgracefully that the American people might one day elect such a despot to the Presidency, not eliminated by the electoral college through its original purpose, long since abandoned in favor of state by state bean-counting, to have a group of selectmen in each community and state to be able to vote for a replacement for any such despot who might improvidently be anointed by the people, the electoral college having long since been turned precisely on its head.
The President, unless the occupant of the office were so divorced from reality as to be no longer fit to serve, pursuant to the provisions of the 25th Amendment, suffering from King George III syndrome, or subject to impeachment for the very attempt at self-pardon for his own thus implicitly acknowledged high crimes and misdemeanors, cannot engage in self-pardon. The fact that it has never been attempted by any President facing impeachment or by any governor of a state facing impeachment or criminal prosecution, save in a few purported instances of questionable authenticity, never, in any event, challenged in the courts as they were not taken seriously, establishes the historical precedent throughout the history of the nation.
The self-pardon concept, as with so many others in the Strange Case of the past eight years arising in the context of the Presidency—arguably stretching back to the eye of newt having come to the fore in 1994, nay, even to 1963—, is an "alternative fact" which does not exist.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Unsung Mule", finds that, unlike several other animals, the obvious wonders of the "magnificent mule" had never been immortalized in song, and suggests it high time that something be done about it.
"The shamefully maligned mule enters the world a bastard and an Ishmaelite, denied the inspiration of ancestry and the hope of posterity. And yet he is man's most dependable servant, and he remarkably emulates man's intelligence. When the dinner bell rings, the mule stops to be unhitched. He always knows when to stop. When he is tired, no matter where he is, he will stop to rest. When he is overloaded he abruptly declines to pull, and when he is whipped to go faster, he always slows down before he injures his breathing organs. No matter how hungry he is and no matter what is placed before him, he never eats too much, and all the pressure of thirst can't make him overdrink. He is a supreme master at health conservation."
"The mule is a wonderful teacher, and it seems almost a pity that the tractor has come along to make him become increasingly extinct."
The piece forgets a standard
Drew Pearson again discusses the suicide of Canadian Ambassador to Egypt E. H. Norman, in the wake of the revelation by the Senate Internal Security subcommittee of information, debunked in 1951 by the Canadian Government, that Mr. Norman was a Communist. The matter had caused problems both with Canada and Ireland, to which Scott McLeod, the State Department's security head whose office had allegedly approved the release of the information, had been appointed recently as Ambassador. As a result of that fact, some opposition to Mr. McLeod's appointment had arisen in Ireland and Senator Paul Neuberger of Oregon had asked for an investigation. A question was whether Mr. McLeod and the security office of the State Department had been cooperating with the subcommittee in conducting a McCarthy-type witch-hunt.
Canada charged that the U.S. was meddling in its affairs by trying to decide whom it should have as its Ambassador to Egypt, a charge denied by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, chairman of the subcommittee. The Senator had stated on the Senate floor that there were two hearings held and they were not investigations of Ambassador Norman, but of personnel in the U.S. State Department. The record did not bear that out, however, showing instead that State Department personnel, John Emmerson of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, had been questioned for the sole purpose of embarrassing Ambassador Norman, with the counsel for the subcommittee, Robert Morris, gratuitously reading into the record the derogatory FBI report against Mr. Norman, then proceeding to ask Mr. Emmerson repeated questions about Mr. Norman, regarding when he had last seen him, what friends he had, and whether he had ever criticized the U.S. or U.S. policy in the Middle East. Senator William Jenner of Indiana had joined in the badgering.
The State Department had denied that it had ever approved publication of the record on Ambassador Norman, claiming that the testimony of Mr. Emmerson had been released by the subcommittee. But Mr. Pearson finds it difficult to see how the two could be separated. The subcommittee had issued the statement: "The transcript was cleared for publication by the State Department." Subsequently, Senators had withdrawn that statement.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had issued a statement: "The FBI has not made available to the Senate Security subcommittee any reports or files or information pertaining to the late Egerton Herbert Norman." The subcommittee had asked the State Department to obtain the report on Mr. Norman from the FBI, and the FBI had provided it to the State Department, and the State Department had then provided it to the Senate subcommittee.
Mr. Pearson adds that during the Truman Administration, raw FBI reports had been withheld from Congressional committees.
Doris Fleeson indicates that between House Speaker Sam Rayburn calling for a tax cut and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia heading an investigation of the Administration's tight-money policy, the honeymoon of Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey was definitely over. The Senate Finance Committee headed by Senator Byrd had voted unanimously for the investigation of the money policy, which many Democrats in the Senate and House had long wanted, with the question presently being how Senator Byrd, a fiscal conservative, really felt about the present increase in the cost of carrying the national debt, whether he shared the view that it represented special privilege for the bankers while being bad for everyone else. The answers would come from the Senator's choice of Committee counsel and his conduct of the investigation. He had a wide-open resolution to perform the investigation and he could conduct it into areas as far-reaching as he wanted. His stature as a fiscal conservative would protect him from attacks on his motives, to which most other Democrats would be subjected.
It had been clear for some time that Democrats were determined to have an investigation of the tight-money policy, with an effort by Speaker Rayburn to place it in the hands of a House committee headed by Representative Wright Patman of Texas having failed when Southerners had rebelled against the leadership of the Speaker, attributed to a payback to Republican conservatives for their support on the civil rights issue.
The turning point in Senator Byrd's thinking about the matter appeared to have been reached the previous week when the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, had cross-examined Undersecretary of the Treasury Randolph Burgess. Both Senators Byrd and Kerr were self-made men who had made a great deal of money and respected each other's knowledge in that area, while on most other matters, they had split, with Senator Kerr going left and Senator Byrd going to the far right.
Senator Kerr possessed the art of translating complicated matters into simple language, and when he had begun questioning Mr. Burgess, had developed that the Treasury Department was presently paying 1.2 billion dollars more in interest on only 30 percent of the public debt than was being paid in the last year of the Truman Administration. That part of the public debt was the Eisenhower part, with the other 70 percent having been inherited, primarily coming out of the war. The entire debt eventually would have to be refinanced, and Senator Kerr had been able to demonstrate that if refinancing of the remainder was done under the current system of the Department of the Treasury, servicing of the debt would cost four billion dollars more annually than it had in the last year of the Truman Administration.
The Finance Committee already had before it a proposal to raise the interest rate on Series E bonds, which were proving less attractive to investors. Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee had offered an amendment to the proposal, calling for a study of the high interest rate by a joint committee of the House and Senate. The Democrats believed that Senator Byrd, through his investigation, could solve the problem, and the experts assured the Senator that his Committee had jurisdiction and ample power. The Democrats also had an ace in the hole in that Senator George Malone of Nevada, a Republican, sat on the Finance Committee and had signaled that he was in accord with the six Democrats, in opposition to the tight-money policy, which would give the Committee a 7 to 6 majority.
A suspicion existed in some quarters that Senator Byrd had taken over the investigation to dilute it, but Democrats believed that the skeptics were wrong.
A letter from Harry Golden, editor and publisher of the Carolina Israelite, indicates that until he had read of State Senator Wilbur Jolly's proposed amendment to the state "sterilization law", he had no idea that the Lord had moved Mt. Sinai to Franklin County, as Mr. Jolly had proposed that proof that a woman had given birth out of wedlock to two children, who were not twins, would be prima facie evidence that the woman was "feeble-minded". He suggests that it meant that there would be hundreds of women dragged to the mutilation block under such a law, to be sterilized, while the men, who had an equal share of responsibility in the matter, were left untouched. He finds it to be of Biblical proportions, wonders what if the next "illegitimate child" turned out to be another Leonardo da Vinci, who had been illegitimate, or the colleague of someone of the stature of Joan of Arc, the patron saint of all the people who had kind hearts and gentle souls, who had carried her banner proudly beside her colleague in arms, Jean Duvois, Bastard of Orleans. He indicates that the tenth article of the laws passed at Nuremberg by Adolf Hitler had concerned sterilization of "the unfit". He finds that illegitimacy rates went down as self-esteem went up and the latter was achieved only by hope for a brighter future made bright by the prospects of less isolation, less indignity and less poverty. He suggests as an alternative to have Mr. Jolly propose an amendment to eliminate all welfare payments to mothers of illegitimate children, and after the end of the first year of such a policy, if there were fewer illegitimate babies, he would buy Mr. Jolly a copy of John Locke's The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, upon which the present free society rested.
A letter from a Charlotte justice of the peace indicates that there were five justices of the peace in Charlotte, and they were not reaping a harvest in profits, as many cases were dismissed with no costs being assessed. He says there was no decent living for a justice of the peace, and that if State Senator Perry Martin, who had proposed to take them off the fee system, would pay their expenses, the letter writer would gladly give him the profits. He says that the proposed law would require 40 justices of the peace in Charlotte, all to be paid salaries and provided furnished offices, secretaries, and stationery regardless of how little business they did. He indicates that a justice of the peace presently paid all of his expenses and had to pay taxes out of his small earnings, indicating that the "belly-achers" were usually "birds who got caught speeding and hates anyone who made them pay for it", but that the justices of the peace in Charlotte did not try traffic violations. "Our lawmakers are not going to tax the citizens to please any one layman or some sore-headed lawyer that cannot make a living and wants to be a lazy judge in a small claims court at a big salary at the expense of the taxpayers. A good lawyer would not have it."
A letter writer says that she was one of the group which had gone to Raleigh the previous week to oppose annexation of Charlotte, and was disappointed to find that the Mecklenburg Representatives did not appear interested in their arguments, but only were attentive when the supporters of annexation spoke. She regards it as an insult and violation of common courtesy, making it apparent that they were not going to consider their side at all, finding it disappointing.
A letter writer from Rock Hill, S.C., indicates that it would only be a few more days until channel 9, WSOC, would go on the air in Charlotte as a second television station. He gives kudos to Earle Gluck, Larry Walker and their associates for having fought for the station through a period of between seven and nine years.
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