The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 21, 1957
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had formally submitted a trimmed-down 3.865 billion dollar foreign aid budget this date to Congress, telling it that the only sound way to obtain a substantial tax cut was "to succeed in waging peace." He cautioned economy-minded legislators that they faced a grave responsibility to maintain foreign aid "at a level dictated by the dangers we face. The safety of our country, the preservation and strengthening of world peace, the minimizing of risk to American lives and resources in future years all imperatively demand that we hold fast in our worldwide collective security effort." The President was repeating familiar arguments in a special 5,000-word message to Congress, and this night would back up his bid for keeping the foreign aid program rolling in a second radio and television address to the nation. He had pointed out that he had already reduced his request for foreign aid to friendly nations by 535 million dollars below his budget estimate presented in January, that about 500 million of which was from savings in the military assistance program, and told the legislators that everyone was seeking to cut the cost of government and "all of us want taxes reduced when possible without injury to our country." He said that in the face of present world conditions, any substantial cut to foreign aid would be foolhardy, ill-advised and ill-timed.
The House Appropriations Committee this date had voted to cut by nearly 2.6 billion dollars new Defense Department funding, indicating that the military threat to the free world appeared, "in certain respects, to have somewhat abated." It cautioned, however, against "complacency", recommending more than 33.5 billion dollars in new appropriations for the Army, Navy and Air Force for the ensuing fiscal year. The President had requested nearly 36.2 billion dollars for the armed services, which had received over 34.6 billion in the current year. The cut amounted to 7 percent of the President's request, but nearly 1.3 billion dollars of the cut was what Congressional circles normally described as "phony", leaving an actual net reduction of not quite 1.3 billion, or less than 4 percent of the total. The Army, for example, had been allowed to use for regular activities 400 million dollars to be transferred from its stock and industrial funds. The Navy was given an extra 190 million dollars by similar transfers. Those were revolving funds which the services used to operate their industrial and commercial type programs. The President had asked for new cash instead. Another 516 million dollars of the reduction had been in line with President's recent advice to Congress that the amount could be trimmed from Army procurement and production funds because it probably would not be obligated within the year. A 180 million dollar cut in Navy funds was attributed to heavy unobligated balances and to new pricing policies.
In Kansas City, it was reported that
the year's deadliest tornado
In New York, evangelist Billy Graham
Charles Kuralt of The News specially reports from New York that the sinners in Hector's Bar at Broadway and 50th Street were very nearly hidden from the passersby by two large signs in the window which read: "HEAR BILLY GRAHAM TONIGHT". He finds it tough to explain the free billing but indicates that the signs provided a special sermon of their own about the Reverend Graham's pilgrimage from Park Road in Charlotte to the Gomorrah where he was currently packing them in at Madison Square Garden. "No matter how many times Billy points his finger at the polite crowds and politely compares them to the Epicureans of doomed Athens, they keep coming back." While there had been many snide predictions about what would befall him in Manhattan, after a week, there were few people snickering and some were listening. A week earlier, the newspapers had been poised to bury the well-planned $300,000 crusade in a torrent of ridicule if there would be so much as a single seat unfilled by a repentant transgressor, but with 19,000 people showing up on the opening night and almost as many each night since, the newspapers had fallen back and regrouped. The Herald-Tribune had opened its front page to a daily one-paragraph sermon by the Reverend Graham, which would run as long as he did. The Times, which was dedicated to running texts of Presidential addresses, had run the text of the evangelist's addresses. The Journal-American was devoting space on its front page to a series of articles on Reverend Graham, written by Dorothy Kilgallen, whom Mr. Kuralt indicates would feel more at home at Hector's. She had spoken of his "electric blue eyes, glittering with sincerity", as if he were a matinee idol. The Wall Street Journal had run nearly half a page on the business methods of Billy Graham, Inc., concluding that the corporation might teach Wall Street a thing or two. Murray Kempton of the Post, the most cynical of the pre-crusade deriders of the evangelist, had admitted after one night, "He is a young man whose sincerity appears as genuine as it is obvious and it is impossible not to hope our city gives him welcome." Mr. Kuralt indicates that New York was welcoming him, with signs like those on Hector's appearing at every subway stop. Andrew Tully of the World-Telegram had said that reporters were baffled when they sought to figure out the reason for his popularity, as he was "an authentic square who lets people see and hear his show for free," but "a good square, a man who is peddling the slightly laughable but inoffensive doctrine of 'Love Thy Neighbor' in the asphalt jungle." Mr. Kuralt cannot explain why Hector's allowed the large Graham signs to hide its bar or why 16,000 people had been present the previous night, sitting for 90 minutes "without so much as a hot trumpet or a scantily clad dancer to break the sacred spell." He suggests that the only explanation might be that the sin of New York was just a surface posture, that the real sinners had not visited the Garden, for they had other places to go, that the only explanation for his success might have been that there were thousands of New Yorkers, just as there had been in London, Los Angeles and Charlotte, who thirsted to hear the old-time gospel, the old-time facts of sin and salvation. He suggests that those people might be outnumbered, "but just for the record, it should be noted that if Billy Graham's magnetic fortune continues at its present clip, and if the New York crusade is extended as his staff thinks it will be, he will outdraw 'My Fair Lady' by the middle of July."
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Raleigh that a desperate last-minute bid against the Charlotte annexation bill by local Representative Jack Love had failed this date, and the bill had passed its third and final reading by an overwhelming margin in the State House, 84 to 16, and, having already passed the Senate, would become law by the end of the week, as the Senate was expected to concur with the amendment changing the date of the election on the annexation bill to July 15, the election to be by Charlotte residents and the residents of the affected areas. Mr. Love had sought to amend the bill to make the proposed date of annexation December 31, 1961 rather than December 31, 1959, with the vote against that amendment having been 65 to 41. If the vote approved the annexation, 30 square miles would be taken into the city limits, including 30,000 new people, with the bill also providing that the City could purchase property and start preparing for facilities before the annexation date. The annexation had been in the works since March, 1954, when former Mayor Philip Van Every had announced that he would ask the City Council to study the need for the extension of the city limits. The City-County Planning Commission had subsequently conducted an analysis of 21 sectors in the perimeter area, making no recommendations for or against annexation of those areas, but the study had provided the Council the information as to what annexation would mean in terms of taxes, costs and services. The Council had finally recommended annexation generally of the area studied by the Planning Commission, with a few exceptions. A series of town hall meetings had been held for the residents of the perimeter areas, explaining why annexation was necessary from the point of view of the city and what people could expect in the way of taxes and services. City officials had then asked the local legislative delegation to the General Assembly to introduce and support a special election on the annexation proposal, as only the Legislature could grant authority for a joint election with the ballots of city and perimeter residents being counted together. The City could have called for separate elections without any special legislative authorization, but it was believed that the procedure would not offer good prospects for success, as many of the anti-annexation voters were in the perimeter areas.
In Raleigh, the Senate Judiciary Committee this date approved a legislative reapportionment measure which would amend the State Constitution to provide the state a 160-member State House and a 100-member Senate. Under the measure, each county would have one member in the Senate and in the House, each county would have a representative, with the additional 60 members to be allocated among the large counties on the basis of population.
In Charlotte, a woman, 60, was found by her landlord during the morning stabbed to death, sitting in a chair, with a doctor summoned to the scene indicating that she had died of a hemorrhage in the right chest cavity as a result of the stab wound. By noon this date, the police had no suspects in the case and no weapon had been found. The woman had been living at the address for six years and the doctor could make no estimate of the time death, indicating that she had been dead for several hours when he arrived, but indicated that it might be possible to fix the time of death after further examination. The woman had several bruises on her body, but according to the coroner, the bruises appeared to be old and had not contributed to her death.
At McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, the "Spirit of St. Louis II", an Air Force jet seeking a new trans-Atlantic record, had refueled over the Azores during the morning this date, less than 3 1/2 hours after its takeoff from McGuire just after dawn on the anniversary of the flight of Charles Lindbergh exactly 30 years earlier. Its route would be different from that of Mr. Lindbergh, but the goal was the same, Paris. The airplane was an F-100F Super Sabrejet, capable of an official top speed of 622.135 miles per hour in level flight, and was being piloted by Major Robinson Risner, a 32-year old Korean War ace from Tulsa. He hoped to travel the 3,680 nautical miles to Le Bourget Field outside Paris in about 6.5 hours. It had taken Mr. Lindbergh a few seconds less than 33.5 hours to make the trip in 1927.
On the editorial page, "Pass the Bond Issue and Go Home" finds adjournment fever to be running rampant in the current session of the Legislature, while nearly 500 public bills, plus several hundred local measures, remained to be considered, with more than a 100 bills having been introduced in just the previous week.
It finds that the General Assembly could speed the time of its adjournment while also contributing to the state's long-range welfare by reaching an early and favorable decision on the capital improvements bond issue proposed by Governor Luther Hodges. The measure under consideration would allot 7.65 million dollars for educational institutions and 2.34 million dollars for mental institutions, releasing ten million currently budgeted for improvements which could be used for recommended State employee pay increases. It finds the proposal to be a just and necessary solution to a fiscal conundrum and that both the capital improvements and the salary increases were badly needed, with the Governor's formula providing a logical answer to both needs and ought be speedily approved. With the books in order, it suggests, the rest would then be easy.
"Mecklenburg Has a Stake in This One" finds that the General Assembly could not overlook, in its haste to adjourn the session, the necessity of solicitorial redistricting. Mecklenburg had become a self-contained judicial district in the 1955 biennial session, but still had to share its solicitor with another county.
A bill in the State Senate had been introduced the previous week which would increase the number of solicitorial districts from 21 to 30, making them coterminous with the new judicial districts, and pursuant to it, solicitors would also receive a slight increase in pay and and "overtime" provision for their expense allowances. It would complete the judicial adjustment half-finished two years earlier.
It would significantly improve the efficiency of the administration of justice in Mecklenburg County, as well as in other areas where a single solicitor had to divide time and energy between more than one judicial district. It thus regards it as required legislation, deserving of high priority in the closing days of the session.
"Boomerang" indicates that Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker had boasted to an audience in Houston on Armed Forces Day that the Army at present provided everything needed for efficient killing, "from the silent thrust of a bayonet in the hands of a determined combat soldier to the burst of missile-borne atomic warheads."
It finds that in boasting of America's weapons of destruction with such callous abandon, he also had placed a weapon in the hands of the nation's enemies, consisting of his words.
"Quarantine: Comfort in a Nuisance" indicates that the Health Department's vigorous efforts to enforce its quarantine on dogs in south Mecklenburg County had to be continued, despite it being a nuisance. It was designed to prevent a rabies epidemic, which could cause horror and the loss of lives. Seventeen rabid dogs had been found and the potential for such an outbreak from them had to be eliminated.
Thus, the Department had appealed for owners of pets to maintain them penned up and was continuing a drive against stray dogs.
"Mec Dec Is around Somewhere" expresses regret that the visiting group of editors during the weekend had not been able to view a tremendous local asset, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, for it having been mislaid temporarily. It assures that one could never tell, however, when it might turn up, as it was around somewhere.
It says it existed in the pride and conviction of the searchers for it, one of the best places it could be, and they believed without proof that it existed, while actually finding it could add nothing to the value of that tradition. It suggests that it might be better if it remained in some unknown hiding place, for if found and showcased, it might then be ignored, as were the statues of the war dead. Or, even worse, it might be found to be less courageous than local residents believed it was, or that the date of its dispatch might prove to be later than May 20, 1775, its putative date of origin.
As things stood, residents had a perfect Declaration and the fact that they could not show it to anyone else did not make it any less of a local asset.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Lord in a Lather", wants the reader to remember that they had kept their temper when Francois Mauriac had been accusing Americans of attempting to drown all European civilization in a sea of Coca-Cola, and even when Prime Minister Nehru of India had been accusing the U.S. of seeking to corrupt the ultra-spiritualized Asian masses with electric refrigerators and washing machines, although finding that it all sounded rather reminiscent of the lugubrious ballad of the 1890's, which went: "You may tempt the lowah clawsses/ With youah villainous demi-tawses—/ Bid Heaven will protect the woiking goil!"
Now, however, Lord Conesford had blamed American influence for the "pretentious illiteracy" of contemporary British authors and journalists, leading the newspaper no longer to be able to hold its peace. In a speech recently before the Authors' Club in London, he had inveighed against "this horrible habit—imported from America" of padding out sentences with meaningless words or terms, and was determined to fight to eliminate it. One of the phrases he was upset about was "bipartisan policy", which he said could not possibly mean what it was supposed to mean.
The piece allows that it had not been recognized by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, but Webster's International accepted the word "bipartisan" to mean that which "represents or is composed of two parties."
It indicates that it was the British, as recently as 1955, who had introduced the word "partisan" in the sense of an adherent or factionalist, and it suggests that if there never had been that kind of partisan in Britain, there would never have been bipartisans in America. It thus suggests to Lord Conesford, "Physician, heal thine own." It finds that many Americans believed that it had been the British corrupting American idioms rather than the reverse.
It finds that Lord Conesford's compatriot, Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha, had been guilty of perhaps the greatest single crime against the English language committed during the current century, that being the invention of the word "triphibious" to describe a military operation involving land, sea and air forces. It finds that if any such word had really been necessary, which it doubts, "tribious" would have sufficed and would have been less insulting to the etymologists.
Recently it had read of the new descriptive name for the mountain artillery units, whose mules had been replaced by helicopters, as "airphibious", and thus concludes: "For shame, for shame, Milord Conesford!"
Drew Pearson indicates that Congress at present was in a wild, free-wheeling mood which had not been seen in Washington since the days of President Hoover, a mood whereby every Congressman wanted to get in their cut at the budget so as to be able to brag about it back home, and thus the budget might not be cut intelligently but rather piecemeal when it reached the floor of the House. Neither the President's television appeal of a week earlier nor Congressional leaders had been able to arrest the trend. The leaders had not even tried, with Republican leaders all being in the opposite wing of the party from "modern Republicanism", thus delighted at the way the budget was being cut, and the President's appeal for the budget had brought as much critical mail as favorable response, bitterly disappointing to him, the reason he had pulled punches in his press conference the day after the TV address, announcing to Congress that he would not retaliate against Republicans who opposed him and would not even work directly with the modern Republicans who were on his side.
Mr. Pearson regards it as like pinning a "kick me" sign on his own back, while telling courageous friends, such as Senators Clifford Case of New Jersey and Jacob Javits of New York, that their battles for him would be unrewarded. No President since the time of Mr. Hoover, who had never understood politics, had used such tactics with Congress, essentially the abdication of power, which might mean in the current case that the White House would not be running the country for the ensuing 3 1/2 years, but rather Congress would be.
Responsible Congressional leaders, such as Congressman George Mahon of Texas, chairman of the Military Appropriations subcommittee, were worried over the economy rush and what it would do to the armed services. He had warned House leaders that they had to stop the meat-axe cutting when the defense budget came up for a vote.
When Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and President Eisenhower had decided recently, when the former had visited with the President on his Gettysburg farm, adjacent to the battlefield, that they would have fired Generals Robert E. Lee and George Meade for their errors in the battle, they had forgotten some errors that they had made, albeit not in the heat of battle, during World War II, their greatest mistake having been to cut off the gasoline of Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton when they were racing for the German border, bringing their offensive to a dead stop so that General Montgomery could catch up, with most war strategists having pulled their punches in evaluating that error, while some believed that it had caused many thousands of American casualties and had delayed winning the war for some three months.
The Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime infiltration to the unions and management would try to balance its anti-labor investigation by looking into a small telephone company in Ohio, with Committee investigators probing reports that the company had ordered detectives to "get" four labor leaders by running them down with an automobile.
The late Senator Joseph McCarthy's private papers had revealed that he had once wanted a three-man national commission to investigate Communism, the commission to have consisted of Federal Judge Harold Medina, elder statesman Bernard Baruch and labor leader David Dubinsky.
The President hoped to use two top Democrats to sell his foreign aid program to Congress, former Senator Walter George of Georgia and former Congressman James Richards of South Carolina, both of whom were highly respected, but Mr. Richards was begging off any lobbying of his old colleagues.
Stewart Alsop, in Baltimore County, Md., tells of the new, ugly CIO office building, divided in two by a beaverboard partition, on which was tacked childish scrawl, colored pictures of Maryland's birds and beasts, patriotic mottoes and the like, while on the other side of the partition were 30-odd healthy-looking, surprisingly well-behaved children, those with whom the President's school aid plan was primarily concerned.
To obtain a first-hand look at the school crisis, Mr. Alsop had just toured Baltimore County and neighboring Ann Arundel County, talking to teachers and school officials, as well as peering into classrooms. In a suburban area as Baltimore County, the reasons for the school crisis were easily visible in the rows on rows of small, new homes "stretching out like a vast tent city. We Americans have reproduced like rabbits since the war, and at the same time we have been moving out of the big cities into the suburbs as though we were fleeing a plague." The two counties he had visited, similar to other suburban areas all over the country, had tripled their school populations in just a single decade, and despite a lot of new school construction, there remained not enough classrooms for the children and, as a result, classes had to be conducted in churches, union halls, or any other available space.
The President's program for school construction asked the question whether the Government ought provide funds to build schools so that the children in the CIO building he had observed could move into a regular classroom. The National Education Association, which designated the two Maryland counties as being typical of the problem, believed that it should be up to the Government, and Mr. Alsop had started his expedition with that idea in mind. But he says that he was now wondering about it.
He had asked a bright, middle aged female teacher in the union hall how she was getting on, and she said that it was just fine, that the hall was nice and quiet, away from the main school, with plenty of room for the children. Another teacher to whom he spoke, who was holding classes in a neighboring Baptist church, gave the same assessment, word for word. That was his impression from his brief visit, finding that the school crisis was serious and could become a lot more so, already causing much inconvenience, though not quite as desperate as sometimes suggested.
In some classrooms, he found that the children were pretty crowded, but that the classrooms did not resemble the black hole of Calcutta, that in some schools there was a double-shift system, with some of the students attending in the mornings and some in the afternoons, a system which was obviously unsatisfactory, making it necessary to cut out such subjects as music, art and sometimes remedial reading. But the children were, nevertheless, attending school and learning.
Robert C. Ruark says that he had paid a call on a gracious lady in Wilmington, N.C., his hometown, recently, to whom he referred as Miss Lily or Aunt Lily and she called him Bobby, "little, fat Bobby", referring to his mother as Miss Charlotte. She was in her 80's, according to her, though she had been nurse to his own mother, and so he assumes that she might have been born a technical slave, as she was completely African.
She had the face of a fine piece of sculpture, absolutely coal-black, and might have come from Somali stock, as she had a mean wit which took a Somali turn.
Wilmington was in the anti-integration belt, but according to Lily, white and black folks of quality did not have to be integrated. She had as much dignity as a duchess or marchioness, and as much pride as a queen. She ran her little patch of ground competently, kept her house antiseptically immaculate and raised her chickens and plants, reaping her crop, herself.
Mr. Ruark's brother occasionally did her in-town shopping for her, as she lived by Wrightsville Beach, and on many occasions, he had attempted to smuggle a free steak into the shopping bag, but never with success, as Lily counted her purchases and always paid his brother to the penny for them, then tipped him a dozen eggs for his time and trouble.
At the moment, she was barely speaking to most of his family, however, being mad at her baby, his mother, because she had not been around lately, and was mad at his brother who had gone to New York on a holiday without saying goodbye to her, and was mad at him because he had not called on her in 30 years. But she was a forgiving person and it would not be long before he and his mother would be removed from her black list, provided they played their cards right.
He indicates that when he had kissed her hello recently, it had struck him that "quality folks don't make too many problems that can't be eased out by a smidgen of friendship and a smatter of decency."
A letter writer finds that the members of the City Council, who had turned on member Martha Evans when she had suggested that an assistant to Police Chief Frank Littlejohn ought be provided, had been filled with an anger which could not reason logically. She had indicated that the chief was doing a fine job, but before she could go any further, the other members had begun criticizing her statement. The writer thinks that the budget ought be increased to allow for a salary for an assistant. She also says that she was grateful that the school board could see that as the community grew, the City School superintendent needed two assistants.
A letter writer indicates that when he read of the awful tornadoes and floods which were happening in some states, it was cause to get right with God, citing 2 Chronicles 7:14, which he finds meant that God would heal the people of everything destructive, provided they asked for it in prayer. He finds that people were presently so busy with education, training, and other types of activities that they were not concerned about prayer, that they were fine whether their church had a Wednesday evening prayer meeting or not. He says that if the world would ever be saved, it would be done through prayer in the churches and in the homes, that education, training and church suppers and socials would never do it.
Nowadays in North Carolina, apparently, at least judging by the lunatic who is the 2024 Republican gubernatorial nominee, it is no longer prayer in the churches which is going to work to bring peace, but rather guns and the need to use them to kill some people which will be the means of fulfilling the peaceful agenda which he hopes to bring to the state, just exactly and precisely as the agenda
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