The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 3, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President this date had stated at his press conference that the prospects were good for future tax reductions, but declined to forecast any cuts for the ensuing fiscal year. He said he expected rising national production and increased Government revenues to make tax reductions possible. He was asked whether he felt he could look forward during the remainder of his term in office to some reduction in present high income taxes on individuals and businesses, replying that he certainly hoped the country could have a reduction. He had gone on to say that certain programs which he had recommended need not be permanent, such as the proposed aid for school construction, which had been proposed for four years' duration and then would end completely. He said half jokingly that to stop such a program, he would favor a constitutional amendment if necessary. He mentioned disaster relief funds as another budget item which he hoped could be eliminated eventually by a system of insurance protection. He also said that he hoped that the states could be convinced that they ought to pay a larger share of the cost of some of the programs in which they participated.
In addition, he said that reports that he would resign before the end of his second term and turn his duties over to Vice-President Nixon were the "worst rot" he had ever heard since taking office. A reporter told him that there had been reports and rumors lately that he might step out of the Presidency when world conditions permitted, to which he registered some surprise and irritation, said he knew of no reason why any speculative writer ought doubt his basic integrity and honesty, that when he had announced in late February, 1956 that he would run for a second term, he had said that his doctors felt he would be able to carry on and that he, himself, had decided he was able to do so, adding that he had no idea where such reports had originated. Regarding his trip to Gettysburg the previous Friday, with reported speeds of his limousine reaching up to 75 mph, for which he had received criticism, he stated that he had issued orders that his limousine was never to exceed the posted speed limit at any location. He said that for many years, he had used the back of his car to carry on conferences and that on the trip the previous Friday, he had been engaged in a conference and thus had no idea of the speed the limousine was traveling. He chided the newsmen a bit by indicating that several of them had been accompanying him on his travels for years and none had ever before brought to his attention that he had caused any of them any inconvenience. A reporter told him the trip had received a lot of attention because some of the newsmen trying to keep up had been cited for speeding. Nowhere along the 80-mile route to his farm at Gettysburg did the speed limit exceed 55 mph.
In Shreveport, La., it was reported
that the Weather Bureau had indicated that a tornado had hit Avenger,
Tex., about 50 miles northwest of Shreveport, during the morning this
date, with the tornado moving southeast toward Jefferson, Tex. There
was no immediate report of damage from that tornado. Texas and
Oklahoma tornadoes and Colorado's worst spring snowstorm in 22 years the previous day
had left at least 20 dead, with tornado warnings still
posted early this date for sections of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,
Arkansas and Missouri. The heaviest death toll had been at Dallas,
Tex., where nine people were killed by a violent tornado which cut a
21-mile swath across the western part of the city, resulting in
almost 200 people being treated at hospitals for injuries. Some
people were missing. Assistant chief of police Jesse Curry—who
would be chief by 1963 at the assassination of President Kennedy—said
that the damage would run to at least 1.5 million dollars. The
tornado had come from a black rainstorm, with an estimated hundred
thousand people having watched it as it swayed a leisurely, jerky
course from the South Oak Cliff neighborhood through west Dallas and
northwest Dallas for 40 horror-filled minutes. Passengers and crew of
a Braniff Airlines plane watched from the air as it had to circle
following takeoff from Love Field. Traffic piled up in long jams all
over west Dallas. One man sobbed that the storm had "roared down
like a freight train and then was on us tearing our house down."
Blood oozed from a wound in his head and he trembled from shock as he
sat beside his injured wife at Parkland Hospital, which was jammed
with crying, wailing, bloody people, including dozens of children,
many of whom were numb and soaked with blood. Four of the dead were
children, one of whom was a month-old girl and three of whom were
in one family, ages five, three and two, respectively. Some panicked
while stuck in the traffic jams, one man indicating that he had to
get home as the storm was hitting his house and his wife was there,
with many abandoning their cars out of fear that the tornado was
heading toward them. The tornado had first been spotted near Red Bird
Airport, about ten miles south of the heart of north central Dallas,
and then had moved northward, spinning through residential, business
and manufacturing areas, slamming through Oak Cliff, part of the
Trinity industrial district—wherein Lee Oswald was staying in a boarding house in November, 1963 and from which he would depart on foot within 30 minutes after the assassination, entering a movie theater in the same neighborhood shortly after allegedly having shot Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit in the same area—, west Dallas and then on to the north
In Toledo, O., 27 race horses had died early this date when a barn had gone up in flames at the Fort Miami Raceway, which had opened a 44-day racing meeting the previous day. Every horse in the barn had either died in the fire or was burned so badly that it had to be destroyed. Track employees had formed a bucket brigade and set horses free from adjoining barns, with police and sheriff's deputies having helped round up the horses which had been set free.
In Raleigh, bills to separate the Prisons Department from the State Highway Commission and to create a new State Department of Administration had been approved this date by the House Committee on State Government. Meanwhile, the Senate Elections Committee had approved a bill to provide an avenue of appeal for persons rejected by county registrars in their attempts to register to vote, the bill being aimed at improvement of the state's legal position in a case in which a black voter was challenging the constitutionality of the state's literacy test for voters. The bill had been considered by the House Elections Committee and it had decided to vote on the measure the following Tuesday. The Federal case in question was to be heard by a three-judge panel in Raleigh on April 19. The chairman of the House Committee had reminded the membership of that fact and said that it was the opinion of State Attorney General George Patton and his staff that the District Court would dismiss the suit brought by the plaintiff, provided the new law would be enacted first by the Legislature. Another member said that he liked the old law and if the court would uphold it, he would rather keep it, believed that the proposed bill was "far-reaching" and had "ramifications which are disturbing."
In Red Springs, N.C., a $750,000 challenge gift had been offered for the "continuation of a Christian institution of higher learning" in Red Springs by an anonymous donor, as announced by the chairman of the steering committee of the Scottish College Foundation. The donation called for the community to raise $25,000 per year for five years, which would be matched by the donor at the rate of six dollars for every one contributed by the community. The Foundation had been conceived the previous summer after the Presbyterian Synod of North Carolina had declined to keep Flora Macdonald College open, deciding to set up a new college at Laurinburg by consolidating Flora Macdonald, Peace and Presbyterian junior colleges.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that the west side of Charlotte wanted a park, and a large delegation from the area was set to tell the City Council about it during the afternoon, with most of the residents having something to say on the subject, from some of whom he quotes. The Park & Recreation Commission had told the west side residents that they had to acquire the land themselves, at which point the Commission could deliver baseball and football fields, skating and tennis areas, as well as picnic facilities, and potentially a community center, but that all available funding for land was earmarked for other purposes. Privately, the residents said they intended to raise the money themselves if necessary, but believed it was the City's responsibility to buy the land, arguing that they had not benefited from the postwar bond issue and from their taxes as much as they should have. Mr. Kuralt says that looking at a map of City parks showed that they had a point.
Also in Charlotte, a move for greater utilization of school properties by opening them for recreational activities had been made this date by the City School Board. A meeting with the Park & Recreation Commission for discussion of an expanded program was called for and City Schools superintendent Dr. E. H. Garinger had been instructed to arrange the meeting.
Judd Saxon, a fictional character in a comic strip which would begin in The News the following week, is introduced to readers, a strip which tells of life in today's big business world. You won't want to miss that one. The writer for the strip, Jerry Brondfield, had a wide writing background, having written short stories appearing in Collier's, Esquire, Redbook, and television scripts for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Lux Video Theater", "The Search" and other shows. The cartoonist, Ken Bald, had done advertising art for such accounts as Ipana toothpaste, Arrid deodorant, Pepto Bismol, Beechnut gum and others. Thus, we assume that Judd will not only speak proper English, but will also have clean, white teeth, smell nice, be free from indigestion, chew plenty of gum, as well as exhibit other traits worthy of the artistry. He appears also to sport some dashing new trend in sideburns, separated from the rest of his hairline by a space, perhaps the new trendsetter on Wall Street, staying in touch at once with the rock 'n' roll and the Western shoot-'em-up set. He's quite a guy, replete with a bow tie....
In Philadelphia, the Wills Eye Hospital, believed to be the only institution in the Western Hemisphere devoted exclusively to the care and treatment of eye diseases, observed its 120th anniversary during the month.
On the editorial page, "Make the First Step Long and Straight" finds that commendable progress toward merger of the Charlotte City and Mecklenburg County school systems had been made during the week when a joint City-County study committee had begun work on the ways and means of accomplishing merger smoothly.
The beginning step was tangible evidence of the community's good intentions, and there were willing leaders available to try to put it into effect. But there were numerous operational problems ahead, some of which would be very delicate. Both school systems had pride in their own individual accomplishments, both had the community's respect as independent entities, and each would have to yield some of that independence and sense of identity to the merged whole for the common good.
Some steps toward consolidation could be taken immediately, such as combining administrative offices. The County Commission had earmarked a large sum for the purchase of a site for a joint administration building in 1956, but there had been controversy about whether the joint offices would be in a proposed City-County office building or in a separate structure in a suburban location. It suggests that it was time for that argument to be settled, with the important thing being that enough space be provided to bring together all of the loose ends of administration which were now scattered across the county.
It thus urges that such a first step toward consolidation be both ample and adequate.
"Hero in Search of a Happy Ending" finds that in the political flip-flop of the year, Governor Luther Hodges had abandoned the Advisory Budget Commission's request for a 9.1 percent increase in teacher salaries in favor of something more, though declining on March 5 to say how much more. A month after having originally stated the premise, he was still not saying how much more, and time was running out on the present legislative session which was two months old. In addition, the experts had been studying the matter for more than a year, and if the Governor had an answer, he ought provide it to the General Assembly promptly, concluding that he ought to fish or cut bait.
"Crafty Connivers Are Hard To Handle" indicates that by suggesting less instead of more legislative reapportionment, reporter, humorist, columnist and historian Burke Davis, former associate editor and editor of The News, would have them believe he was the state's leading "Hamiltonian Democrat".
It explains that a Hamiltonian Democrat was a person who believed that there should be as few hands as possible at the helm of government, and that all of those hands should be well-gloved. Such a person was also inclined to tip his hat upon seeing pictures of royalty in the public prints. The difficulty of identifying such a person did not mean that there were not a lot of them within the state. They were only masquerading at Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners as devout friends of the common man.
It finds that Mr. Davis was a devotee of the brilliant monarchist-minded Federalist who had been outgunned on the field of honor by Aaron Burr, that is, Mr. Hamilton. In the pages of the Greensboro Daily News, he had said: "Joking aside, and still with a plea of guilty of cynicism but denial of boredom and/or tired blood, Yr. Correspondent dares one further irreverence: Only long exposure within the House of Representatives can make clear the assemblyman's view of reapportionment and educate an outsider as to how one representative can win more rights and privileges for his county than a multitude. From afar, failure to heed the admonition of our ancient carpetbag-written constitution as to reapportionment might seem a willful and perhaps criminal challenge to the precepts of democracy. From up close, however, this Assembly, like its forerunners back to the dim times, seems pretty much part and parcel of the commonwealth's population… Pending the taking hold of the afternoon dosage of Geritol, Yr. Correspondent persists in his un-ideals: What this state needs is less, not more, reapportionment."
It indicates that advocates of reapportionment did not object to having a few mentally-agile men in the Legislature, but the idea of increasing the chances of sending their better string-pullers as the legislators by reducing the number sent did not ring a bell. The influential members of the State House who had gratuitously promised to re-bury reapportionment had been speaking not from wisdom, but from the power of numbers of the rural Representatives in the past, with the urban areas wanting a few more Representatives to increase their power.
The prescription for an underrepresented area proposed by Mr. Davis appeared to be to elect a first-class conniver and forget about proportional representation, but it indicates that the trouble with connivers was that one could never tell whether they were conniving for you or against you.
It suggests that by summer, Mr. Davis should go to several Fourth of July addresses and let himself be reinfected with the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, the shot heard round-the-world "and all that other stuff in the history books."
"Dulles Always Brings Us Back Alive" indicates that the Secretary of State always brought the country back alive just in time to read another of his derring-do biographies.
First, he had the country on the brink of war all over the map and now—presumably based on the book review by Stewart Alsop the previous day—they were being told that he had prompted Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt to clog up the Suez Canal, and was rather proud of his feat. "The road to Miltown gets shorter and shorter."
It indicates it was thankful for being saved in the past, but wonders what Mr. Dulles was doing about the future. "Doubtless the whole thing will be cleared up in a month or so in another beaming biography. We can wait."
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "(Laughter)", suggests that there might be some merit, though it doubts it, in a minor proposal by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota during the week, suggesting that the name of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations be changed to the Senate Committee on International Relations.
It finds the proposed new name to sound somewhat in the vein of one worldism which afflicted the country, but a more serious objection was that to abandon the present name would deprive Capitol guides of the oldest, mildest joke in their repertoire. On the House side, the committee was called the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and on the Senate side, it was dubbed the Committee on Foreign Relations. The guides said that the difference was because Senators were too old to have affairs—to which the piece, after parenthetically interjecting "yak-yak", indicates: "Hoo, boy! And twenty-three skidoo!"
Drew Pearson indicates that the President's sudden summons of Congressional leaders to discuss plans for an acting President in the event of a Presidential disability had come as a surprise to most in the country, though not to many inside the Administration, who had been concerned for some time over the President's nervousness, his persistent, hacking cough and his tendency not to concentrate for any length of time on difficult problems, as well as his habit of remonstrating his assistants as if they were buck privates. He had a continuing desire to get away from Washington, had not wanted to return from Thomasville, Ga., to initiate the Middle East doctrine, and would now leave again shortly for Augusta.
Meanwhile, there were difficult decisions ahead which only the President could make, with the result that his friends had been discussing a bill which would permit him to become a sort of President emeritus, entering semi-retirement, with full duties of decisions being taken over by the Vice-President.
It was an extremely touchy subject, because it bore out some of the statements made and denied about the President's health during the election campaign of 1956. The plan, therefore, was finally discarded, and instead, it had been suggested that an amendment to the Constitution ought be passed to allow the President to declare himself unable to discharge his duties, or that the Cabinet could, by a majority vote, rule him unfit to discharge his duties, in which case the Vice-President would become the acting President.
Congressional leaders who had been summoned to the White House to discuss the matter had studied the Constitution in advance, and in the end, had brought up the existing provision with the President. The President let Attorney General Herbert Brownell speak at the meeting on the matter of a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which Mr. Brownell then read, together with a letter which the President had proposed to send to Congress asking for its passage.
At once, House Speaker Sam Rayburn stated that if the President were to send the letter, the American people would never understand it, as they had elected him, not Mr. Nixon, and had elected him by one of the largest majorities in American history, not expecting him to abdicate. The President said that it would not apply to him because a constitutional amendment could not be passed and ratified before he would leave office, but the leaders in Congress did not appear to accept that contention as fact.
Marquis Childs indicates that the same persons within the Republican Party who had, for several months following the President's September, 1955 heart attack, urged him to run again for a second term, were now fearful that he was facing a divide in his position in the country, such that he either had to assert himself more forcefully than he had yet done during his Presidency on behalf of measures fundamental to his policies at home and abroad, or see his popularity in the country considerably go into decline.
For example, his foreign aid program would be diminished from its sought 4.4 billion dollars to the extent that it would cripple not only the aid program but also the foreign policy generally, unless he could convince between 25 and 30 Republicans in the House to go along with it. In previous years, the Democrats had saved the Administration on that and other issues, but now, according to those close to the situation, the Democrats were so torn by frustrations and divisions that they would not be willing to save the Administration again. It was unlikely that the President would work person-to-person with members of his party, as he continued to follow the maxim that having made his proposals to Congress, he had done his duty and it was up to Congress to determine whether to accept the proposals or not, that it was not ethical to exert direct pressure on Congress.
Regarding domestic policy, the President had placed the greatest stress on Federal aid to school construction, proposing an expenditure of 326 million dollars per year in grants to the states for four years, but it was the widespread belief that the measure was dead for the current session, despite the growing shortage of classrooms throughout the nation.
Much of the attack on the Administration, coming increasingly closer to the President, himself, could be traced to the statement by Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey the prior January, inviting Congress to cut the overall 71 billion dollar budget, seeming to some of the President's associates as an invitation not so much to reduce the budget by orderly means as to attack it with political axes. Many newspapers which had heaped lavish praise on the President in urging him to run again, were now attacking the Administration for reckless spending.
The President had taken a somewhat ambivalent attitude, appearing at one point to side with Secretary Humphrey and then at another, defending his budget as essential to his programs for the country and the world.
The attack on the President had begun to be manifested in small things, such as the recent criticism of his speeding at 75 mph through the Maryland and Pennsylvania countrysides to reach his farm in Gettysburg, as well as a recent press conference question about his use of Air Force helicopters. Yet, repeatedly the White House press corps had complained in the past of the speed of the motorcade traveling to Gettysburg, with little or no notice having been taken of that criticism. Observing the change in status of the petty criticism, one of the President's associates had remarked: "In the first four years it seemed that he could do nothing wrong. If the current trend continues, it may turn out that he can do nothing right."
Public opinion in the country was notably capricious, particularly with war heroes. General Ulysses S. Grant, following the Civil War, and Admiral George Dewey, after the Spanish-American War, had reached a level of popularity comparable to that of General Eisenhower in the wake of World War II. But ultimately, the tide of public favor had turned and those heroes had come down in public stature as fast as they had risen. Some of the President's most dedicated longtime admirers feared that such a turning point may have come for him, and that it would entail not only his loss of popularity as a public hero but also the end of his policies and programs.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the President would go to bat for Federal aid to school construction when he addressed the 100th birthday celebration of the National Education Association the following Thursday. It had appeared the previous week that the school bill might again wind up stuck in committee, as it had been the target of an effective attack by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as being caught up in the general economy wave.
Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare Marion Folsom had sent a letter refuting the arguments of the Chamber and at hearings before a House committee, had also argued against that position, but discovered that the House was under heavy pressure from the effective links between the Chamber and their local business interests back home. Secretary Folsom had gone to White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, the President's principal aide, and told him that the NEA's centenary dinner was upcoming and that it would be an appropriate occasion for the President to restate his support for Federal aid for school construction. The prior Friday, the NEA was notified that the President would make a few remarks in honor of the occasion, and the educators were jubilant at the prospect, with one of them having indicated that if the President would call the Chamber liars on the school figures as frankly as Mr. Folsom had done in his testimony, he believed they would win.
Ms. Fleeson suggests that they apparently had President Eisenhower confused with President Truman, as he would not be so blunt, but it now appeared that perhaps business, for having attacked the President's budget, appeared to him less perfect than it formerly had.
Mr. Folsom was one of the Cabinet's ablest administrators, who had originally started out at Treasury at the start of the Administration in 1953, remaining in that Department until he had succeeded Oveta Culp Hobby on August 1, 1955 as HEW Secretary. There had never been any question that Secretary Folsom was speaking by the book in his repeated assurances to Congress that the President was giving the Federal school construction bill the very highest priority, and it would be even more effective for the President to speak for himself in that regard.
It was understood that the President had several other steps in mind to help the bill as it began to proceed through the House and Senate. The Chamber had insisted that there was not so much need for additional classrooms, while Secretary Folsom had reaffirmed that there was a shortage of 80,000 rooms to meet the overflow enrollment and another 79,000 to meet obsolescence and population shifts.
Conservatives of both parties had always opposed Federal action regarding schools, and the current climate of economy provided an ideal excuse for opposing it again. Some members of Congress complained that the educators were less expert propagandists than the Chamber, while the educators replied that they were in part hampered by pressures of businessmen in the localities where they had to work.
A letter writer from Hamlet contrasts different lines of thought put forth in The News and the Charleston News & Courier, the latter being the oldest daily newspaper in the South. He indicates that in the March 27 issue of The News, an editorial commenting on the Supreme Court's recent refusal to accept petitions for certiorari from three lower Federal court decisions in Virginia and North Carolina school integration cases, had ended by indicating that nothing had occurred to change thoughtful opinion that some desegregation would be required to prove the pupil assignment law in North Carolina, passed by a special session of the Legislature the prior August, was not an instrument designed to perpetuate total segregation. On the same date, the News & Courier had ended its editorial comment on the same subject by saying: "It is important to remember that there is no such thing as a little integration. It is like a little adultery. Once it has entered into the life of a state, it becomes a stronger and stronger force. Baltimore, Md., began integration with a three percent mixing. Today, three years later, the mixing figure is 15 percent. For this reason, even the smallest degree of mixing must be prevented. Opposition to it, in order to be effective, must be total." The writer concludes by asking whether the reader had ever seen a woman who was only a little pregnant.
There is nothing like a stupid, non
sequitur analogy not to make a point. And, actually, come to think of it, we think we have: your mama
A letter writer from Rockingham comments on the proposal before the Legislature to lower the voting age in the state from 21 to 18, a move which had been opposed in a News editorial recently, this writer indicating that he was 18, single and self-supporting, but did not believe that most people his age could handle the responsibility of voting. He suggests that the average 18-year old never read anything in the newspaper except the sports page and the comics, had no interest in or information on the current political situation, with the person's main interests being schoolwork or job, automobiles, baseball and dating. He indicates that the majority of the letters to the editor on the subject had concerned the idea that a man old enough to fight was old enough to vote, to which he says, "Bull!" He believes it took a mature, sensible adult to handle the ballot and that a high school senior was not capable of doing so. He adds that there was no law forcing an 18-year old to serve in the armed forces. He also adds a P.S., indicating that there was no war on, and thus wonders why "these guys" were worried about fighting.
Hey, if Elvis is real cool about it, why should you not be? But he is over 21.
Framed Edition
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