The Charlotte News
Wednesday, May 29, 1957
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles, in speaking of the anti-American rioting taking place in Formosa, said this date that a better way had to be found to cope with the problems of stationing large numbers of Americans in foreign countries. He told a press conference that the presence of thousands of Americans in Formosa was in his view a cause of the rioting and that one way to deal with the problem of resentment by foreigners might be to reduce the number of official American personnel present, especially military personnel, wherever possible. The Secretary also said that the U.S. would accept for disarmament any area of the world where an inspection system could be implemented quickly, but that because of opposition from West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, it might not be possible to include European territory in the first stage of a disarmament agreement. He also said that the possibility of a Big Four meeting on German unification remained many months away. He said that he and the President agreed with Chancellor Adenauer to talk with Britain and France about having a four-power meeting on the subject following any first-stage disarmament agreement with Russia. He also stated that the U.S. policy of barring American newsmen from Communist China remained unchanged, that some suggestions about modifying the policy were being studied by Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Berding, in charge of public affairs, but he did not say what those suggestions were. He further stated that negotiations between the U.S. and allied countries, notably Britain and Japan, regarding ways to relax barriers to trade with Communist China had apparently reached an impasse, and an announcement on the status of the talks in Paris was anticipated for the following day.
Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey resigned this date and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Anderson was appointed to succeed him. Mr. Humphrey had tendered a letter to the President asking to be relieved no later than the close of the current Congressional session, and at the same time, the President sent the nomination of the successor to the Senate. Mr. Anderson was a Texas Democrat who had served also as Secretary of the Navy in the Eisenhower Administration. The President left the effective date of Mr. Humphrey's resignation up in the air. He asked him to remain until the end of the current session of Congress to resolve several problems still pending. The resignation and the choice of Mr. Anderson as his successor had been generally anticipated.
In Chicago, Southern Baptists this date received an executive committee report urging a 16.5 million dollar budget and giving a boost to a movement to add 30,000 new Southern Baptist churches and preaching stations. The budget recommendation was one of the largest in the Convention's history. Out of it, 13 million dollars would be devoted to operations and capital expenses of all Southern Baptist Convention agencies, and of the remainder, 75 percent would be earmarked for the foreign mission board and 25 percent for the home mission board. A second major recommendation concerned the expansion movement to create 30,000 additional churches and preaching stations to be made an integral part of the Baptist Jubilee Advance.
In New York, two beer-drinking
buddies plunged 130 feet off a bridge into the East River in the wee
hours of the morning this date "to get a kick out of life",
the way Steve Brodie had 71 years earlier. (The stunt had been twice duplicated in 1929 and 1930
In Chicago, two small boys died in a parked automobile the previous night after an explosion of a can of gasoline had set fire to the car. The two boys, ages seven and six, had been playing with a hammer in the car.
In Columbia, S.C., the State Senate broke a nearly four-week impasse this date by voting 31 to 13 for a free conference on the deadlocked general appropriations bill. The major issue in the bill was the size of a teacher pay increase and the Senate vote signaled return of the House, which had been in indefinite recess for almost three weeks awaiting resolution of the matter.
In Raleigh, legislation to allow North Carolina counties to legalize horse and dog racing and pari-mutuel betting in "local option" elections had been given a "without prejudice" report this date by the House Judiciary Committee No. 2, with the bill slated next to go to the House Finance Committee. A vote by the Committee had defeated by a single vote an unfavorable report for the bill.
A State Senate committee postponed voting this date on a bill to allow the Town of Clinton to vote on legalizing ABC liquor stores, after hearing a number of opponents to the bill, with the vote likely to occur the following day after a hearing on a local option whiskey election for North Wilkesboro. A large group of dry forces had appeared at the hearing before the Proportions and Grievances Committee to oppose the Clinton bill.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the attorney for the small family-operated private water company which supplied water to approximately 85 Thomasboro families had said this date that the order to cut off the system at midnight Friday still stood, that his client had not received an extension from the State Utilities Commission in Raleigh to continue operation. People in the Thomasboro area, the attorney said, had been notified again the previous day that the distribution system would be turned over to them if they would form a corporation to operate it, requiring approval by the Utilities Commission. He said that the offer had been repeatedly made and still stood. The private company which had operated the system had found it unprofitable and a great source of worry, especially since the death of the head of the family. When the move to cut off the system was first announced in 1955, a movement had begun to annex Thomasboro to the city, but that had failed. The water company then continued supplying the water until the current cutoff date, with residents without their own wells being left without an immediate solution to the problem of having water.
The County Commission chairman indicated that the Commission would consider action if an emergency developed in the water situation, but he did not indicate what the action might be.
Another piece distinguishes the name of the private company supplying the water for Thomasboro from another similarly named company which operated community water systems similar to the one in question, but having no connection to the family-run business supplying Thomasboro.
John Jamison of The News reports that detectives had made six arrests late the previous day and during the morning to try to stop an ongoing vice ring. Among those arrested had been a couple who operated the Ritz and Franklin Hotels in Charlotte, charged with aiding and abetting prostitution. The other four arrested persons included two women charged with prostitution and two males charged with soliciting for prostitution, all four having barely arrived in town when the detectives arrested them. The case was described by one of the detectives as "unusual" in that hotel operators were charged along with the alleged pair of prostitutes and their pair of procurers, both of whom were bellhops, neither of whom had been in town for more than two weeks. One of the women was charged for prostitution conducted in one of the hotels and the other woman was charged for operating at the other hotel. One of the women told detectives that she had three children, aged between 21 and 26. Records showed that the other woman had a child who was a year old. Miss Kitty in Dodge City is the overall head of the operation.
In San Diego, jurors, who acquitted two women charged with kidnaping and attempted murder of a woman, had drawn a sharp rebuke the previous night from the presiding judge over the trial, who stated that he heartily disagreed with the verdict "in every respect" and added that they must have had preconceived ideas before they began serving on the jury. They had deliberated since Thursday after having sat through 50 days of testimony and argument, the longest trial in the history of the San Diego County Criminal Court.
In Los Angeles
In Des Moines, Ia., a heart specialist reported a new twist in interior decorating, after one of his patients requested a sample length of his cardiograph so that he could frame it as a reminder to lose weight.
On the editorial page, "Public Has a Stake in Labor's Turmoil" indicates that the whole affair involving Teamsters Union president Dave Beck had done irreparable harm to trade unionism in the country, that the effort of the AFL-CIO executive council to cleanse its ranks of the taint left by Mr. Beck and his use of union funds for his own profit had been well-intentioned and honorable.
But the council's zeal had only surfaced after the Beck scandal had erupted, although the misuse of funds had been a major issue in the labor movement for years. It caused wonder as to how effective codes of ethics would be in guarding the rank-and-file against future indiscretions.
It finds that a drastic crackdown being demanded by the anti-labor bloc in Congress, designed to cripple trade unionism in the country, would be most unfortunate, that it was unfair to punish all unions for the wrongdoing of a few. But the protection of union funds was clearly within the scope of public interest and new Federal legislation to accomplish it was in order.
Secretary of Labor James Mitchell had proposed to toughen the bill to regulate welfare and pension funds by making it a Federal crime, with penalties up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for tampering with the funds, a bill which would put sharper teeth in regulatory legislation already requested by the Administration and which would encourage stricter self-policing by all of the unions.
It posits that it would be a long time before the labor movement or the general public would forget Mr. Beck and it would be the duty of the leadership of organized labor to help them forget through continued house-cleaning and internal vigilance.
"A Pack of Gum, a Jug and Thou..." finds that the fact that North Carolina legislators were sometimes favored with gifts of liquor had perhaps been Raleigh's worst kept secret in roughly 150 years.
While the Raleigh News & Observer was holding forth on its front page regarding the indignation revealed the previous day when nine whiskey cases had been delivered to the Sir Walter Hotel "for distribution", the Greensboro Daily News had casually reported on its page 9-A that Mecklenburg Representative James Vogler had "distributed his hundreds of giant packs of chewing gum to House members last week, on behalf of his grocers association."
It finds it extremely doubtful that anyone sold his soul for a pack of gum and that the question of accepting favors was largely one of degree. It was also a matter which rested mostly in the conscience of the individual lawmaker, who knew when he was being compromised.
It finds the value of the News & Observer's expose to be that it flushed the danger out into the open where it could be seen and sized up by the public, who needed to be constantly reminded of the realities of politics.
"It's Too Late Now" indicates that what Governor Luther Hodges needed all along was a silent tax program, one which would have gotten through the General Assembly without a squawk.
"Put Kindergarten on the Shopping List" indicates that for the third year, the American Association of University Women was offering a moderately priced, six-week program aimed at giving pre-school children social poise and reading readiness when they entered the first grade. But to date, enrollment had barely covered the cost of running the kindergartens, to be held at Shamrock Gardens, Chantilly, Merry Oaks, Ashley Park, Park Road and Midwood.
It was not clear why there was such public apathy, as records for the previous two years showed that children who attended the kindergartens advanced more quickly than children who did not, when they reached school. A first grade teacher at Chantilly School, director of the summer kindergarten, said that kindergarten-trained children went into the second grade with more knowledge of arithmetic and spelling, and read materials decidedly above the usual level.
Across the nation, educators were regarding kindergarten training as essential to public schooling, with such cities as Columbus, Ga., having incorporated kindergartens into the tax-supported system. But unless the majority of parents of pre-school children recognized the value of kindergarten training for six weeks, chances of a full-time, tax supported program were slim.
It indicates that until the majority of children received the kindergarten training, Charlotte schools would not meet nationally recognized standards, and that the child who was slow in adjusting would hold the others behind in the first grade. It encourages parents to take advantage of the program.
Six weeks? We had to attend
kindergarten for nearly seven months, through the harsh winter snows
and ice storms. What gives?
Speaking of reading at a fundamental level, say third grade, try this exercise with your young student at home. Have them read this statute and this statute, and then ask them the challenging question which a grown woman judge in Florida seems mightily challenged to answer properly—at least within the confines of the English language and not within her originally native Spanish from Colombia, where everyone, we comprende, takes high siesta in the afternoon, and drinks Coca-Cola, and, we are certain, that's all—, whether these particular words in the first above-cited statute, "...or any attorney specially appointed by the Attorney General under law ... may, when specifically directed by the Attorney General, conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before committing magistrate judges, which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct..." convey the English meaning that a "special counsel" may be directed by the Attorney General to investigate a particular set of facts, pursuant to Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution, on the books since the document was ratified in 1789 and not amended since that time, providing that Congress, by statute, may allow the appointment by Department heads, such as the Attorney General, who heads the Justice Department, of such "inferior Officers" as the Congress deems proper, the aforementioned statute, as with all Federal statutes, being such an act of Congress.
Having resolved that problem, ask your young student to look at the second above-cited statute and ask him or her whether it says that the Attorney General may appoint officials: "1) to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States... and "4) to conduct such other investigations regarding official matters under the control of the Department of Justice and the Department of State as may be directed by the Attorney General." If that is what it says, does that not convey in the English language, not Spanish, not Gullah, the meaning, when combined with the previously cited statute, that it authorizes the Attorney General, by legislation duly passed by Congress, to appoint a special counsel? whether denominated "special counsel", "independent counsel" or "super whiz kid" being quite irrelevant to the inquiry.
And, for extra credit, we shall cite the applicable regulations, 28 C.F.R. 600.4 - 600.10, in question, so that your student can factor those into the mix, bearing in mind that the Constitution first sets forth the framework for such appointments, as authorized by legislation passed by Congress, i.e., in this instance, the above-cited statutes.
You may time the quiz if you want to make it especially challenging for your young student, choosing the time frame you think proper. But we suggest not getting overly excited if they provide what appears to be the correct answer rather quickly, and allowing yourself to think thereby that they are thus destined to become lawyers of the first quality. While that might become the case, we suggest that merely passing successfully this rather elementary quiz would only inform the teacher administering the test that the student is possessed of reasonably critical and logical faculties, while lawyering is usually a bit more complicated, involving sometimes much more abstract and complex issues to resolve. Yet, it should not be so abstruse in this instance, as we suggest that virtually any good student, proficient in reading and the English language in the third grade, can pass this simple quiz, if not then, certainly by the end of the sixth grade. For some reason, however, the judge down in Florida has encountered considerable difficulty with it.
Now, listen up. Calm down. We must help, not hinder. We must not, being courteous to outsiders who come into our community of fellow citizens, be unmindful of the difficulties of someone who comes from another country and may be experiencing some modicum of difficulty in translating in his or her mind English from their native language, such as Spanish, as we must reflect and realize that trying to comprehend the other's native language can be quite challenging also to us as students, beyond, perhaps, such elementary phrases as "beef steak", which our Spanish teacher in junior high school, in the ninth grade, originally an abogado in Havana, translated to Spanish one day for an inquisitive student as, "beef steak". But such complex phrases as, "¿Qué demonios está pasando por tu mente?" become muy dificil of translation into our native Ingles, and so do not be derisive of those struggling to pick up the finer points of the English language. This is a nation of immigrants and we all came from somewhere. And we all had to learn even our own native language at an early age, when the mind is quite a bit more plastic and thus admitting with greater facility of new concepts and information
We offer the caveat not to become trapped within the Humpty-Dumpty world of the Federalist Society and its determination to make words mean whatever they want them to mean, to suit their stated ends, first determining the ends to be reached and then deciding what the words ought mean to get to those ends, rather than the other way about, the only proper way of legal reasoning, as long as justice and fairness is the goal, determining what words ordinarily mean, including any recognized terms of art or specially defined words within the law, and then determining thereby what a Constitutional provision, statute or regulation is intended to convey, with due regard for the context within the whole under consideration, resorting to legislative history when necessary to resolve any ambiguities, none of which appear in the instant analysis, it all being quite straightforward through any non-Federalist Society-infected lens. And if you do not understand what the Federalist Society is, just look up the word "bunk" or, alternatively, "sophistry"
"The Senate's Never Been the Same" indicates that there were some sniffs and snorts among Senators recently when they opened their gift parcels from North Carolina Senator Kerr Scott, finding 69 different tobacco products from North Carolina, including cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco. But they did not appreciate the chewing tobacco, as they found it undignified.
It indicates that it was true that tobacco chewers were almost extinct within the Capitol in Washington, with the Washington Post & Times Herald reporting that Senator Scott was the only surviving example.
It finds it a pity, as some smart historian would one day trace the decline and fall of the Senate as a choice political institution to the disappearance of the "red-gallused, white-maned, bourbon-drinking 'chawers' and the coming of the new breed—that pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed martini-and-salad brigade that first established its beachhead during the New Deal."
The fine old brass spittoons had disappeared, as had Senatorial swearing, cane-thrashing and hog-rousing oratory. A Senator was now apt to be stodgy, humorless, chain-smoking, with an "exquisite sense of the fitness of things." But he still found it hard to concentrate for extended lengths of time on affairs of state and probably worried about it, whereas the chewer of tobacco never had, taking his cue from the milch cow back home. "Nothing contributed so much to contented contemplation as a cheek full of tobacco in a moment of stress. Busy jaws made for prudent laws. And only Whigs and reformers carried matches."
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Putting a Tax on Sin", indicates that in Oklahoma, the State Legislature, in common with legislatures everywhere, was searching for new sources of revenue, with the Daily Oklahoman having suggested that Oklahoma investigate a device being employed in Natchez, Miss.
Oklahoma and Mississippi were the last two "dry" states in the country, though actually being as wet as could be via bootleggers, who competed aggressively with one another for rapid delivery, provision of charge accounts, holiday specials and other merchandising schemes, though all unlawful. Mississippi had imposed a 10 percent tax on the sale of bootleg liquor and the bootleggers paid the tax regularly. The previous week, Mississippi had collected 1.4 million dollars from that source.
Because bootleg sales were likely higher and more prosperous in Oklahoma, the latter had decided that they might obtain twice as much.
The piece indicates that if all the hypocrisy in the world were taxed, the 16th Amendment, establishing the Federal income tax, could be abolished and the country could also buy out the Kremlin.
Drew Pearson says that the Senators who had visited Formosa the previous year had taken a long car ride over extremely dusty roads and then an hour-long flight in a bucket-seat airplane to take lunch with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang on their lake in the middle of Formosa, departing wondering why they had taken the long trip. Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma had asked Chiang whether he thought he could retake the Chinese mainland, to which Chiang had responded with "bow", which meant a toast to health, and after several more such toasts, said that there was no question that he could retake it. When Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri asked him how he would do so, he said, "When I land, the people will rise up everywhere and join me." But he had given no intimation that his own people would rise up against Americans first.
Now, there was embarrassment in Washington and New York following the anti-American riots in Formosa, the worst riots which any American diplomat could remember. At no time in history had an American embassy been invaded and gutted as the Embassy in Taipei. An embassy was considered sacred soil, the sovereign property of the U.S., as sacred as the soil of the White House or Congress, and even countries with which the U.S. had been at war, such as Japan and Germany, had respected that sovereignty. But in Formosa, American diplomatic property had been destroyed and Americans had been beaten by angry mobs, in a nation which would have ceased to exist without American aid. Had the incident occurred in a Communist country, diplomatic relations would have been immediately severed. The incident would result in a review of the entire relations with Nationalist China.
Among those upset were Senator William Knowland of California, sometimes called the "Senator from Formosa". He had sought to cut foreign aid to other countries but had insisted on maintaining aid to Formosa, as San Francisco's Chinatown politicians were among his staunch Republican backers.
At the Waldorf Tower in New York, General Douglas MacArthur was also quite upset, having told Republican Senators visiting him while he was in charge of rebuilding Japan, that Chiang could use Formosa as a base to land on the Chinese mainland and retake Communist China, that the Chinese people would rise up and welcome him. But he did not figure that the Nationalist Chinese would rise up against Americans first.
Also greatly upset was Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Arthur Radford, who had arranged to meet President-elect Eisenhower in 1952 during the latter's promised visit to South Korea before taking office, and who had managed to convince the new President, while the plane refueled on Okinawa, to "unleash" Chiang to attack the Chinese mainland.
Finally, Secretary of State Dulles, who had fired John Carter Vincent from the State Department for having exercised poor judgment because he had advised that Chiang was a weak reed for the U.S. to lean on, was likewise mortified by the rioting.
Doris Fleeson tells of an immediate effect of the President's loss of influence with other Republicans and Congress having been to downgrade the chances of Vice-President Nixon to be the party nominee in 1960. At the time of the January inauguration, following the landslide victory of the President the prior November, the tendency was to regard Mr. Nixon's nomination as inevitable and his chance of election strong. But at present, his close association with the President, "which has twice saved his political neck, is assuming the character of a tightening noose." (Had she been completely prescient, as well as ironic, she might have added the phrase, "...being left to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.")
The Vice-President was trapped, with the President, the White House staff and modern Republicans generally looking to him to fight for their program and carry on the political chores he had performed during the first term for the President. But the senior Republican Senator, Styles Bridges, had dismissed modern Republicanism as a catchphrase for "campaign purposes" and RNC chairman Meade Alcorn loved all Republicans equally, while Old Guard Republicans were senior on Congressional committees which would run the midterm campaign to try to recapture control of Congress.
U.S. News & World Report had recently asked 23 Senators whether they were modern Republicans, and only four, Senators Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, Thruston Morton of Kentucky, Jacob Javits of New York and Frederick Payne of Maine, indicated that they were. Two of those were serving in their first term, a third had announced his retirement in 1958 and all four were without influence.
For weeks, Mr. Nixon had "applied silence to these bruises of sound. But silence in politics is a form of speaking, indeed it can shout loudly. The politicians began to snicker." Columnist Walter Lippmann had suggested that the Vice-President was behaving like "a submarine in hostile waters," submerged most of the time. He had stated that such behavior was once normal for a vice-president but was abnormal for Mr. Nixon.
Complaints from the White House were credited with pushing Mr. Nixon into making his defense of foreign aid at the annual dinner of the American Iron and Steel Institute in New York the prior Thursday. He had said positive and good things in his address, but had also said things which were being interpreted as putting him on both sides of the issue, and it was reported that he had placed private pressure on some of the dinner guests, who included outspoken critics of the President's budget.
During the honeymoon for the second term, reporters had found the Vice-President available and willing to chat, but some were finding that no longer to be true, with his friends indicating that he should not be expected to defend policies he did not make. But having done so before, quite zealously, their arguments lacked great force. She finds it much too early to predict the 1960 convention outcome of the present strains within the party, but that the word "inevitable" in connection with the 1960 nomination was now clearly outdated.
Robert C. Ruark, still in Southport, N.C., where he had done a substantial part of his growing up, close to his hometown of Wilmington, tells of Bill Keziah, publisher of a weekly newspaper, the State Port Pilot, having died recently at age 71. Its masthead bore the slogan, "Most of the News All of the Time". There was also a salty column called "Not Exactly News".
He finds that there was nothing countrified, however, about the country weekly, with its format having been "as sharp as any big metropolitan daily, and still is."
Mr. Keziah had been deaf since age 6 from a disease, which left him in a coma for a year. While recovering, he had learned to read, had re-learned how to talk without being able to hear his own voice, and had become a crack reporter and writer when still young. His voice was strange to hear as he had no modulation controls, but his words were still quite intelligible. He was also an accomplished lip reader and wrote about everything.
Southport was the center of his life and he had one big enemy, Wilmington across the Cape Fear River, 30 miles away. The city had been forever an affront to him and if he had a gun, he would have shot it dead. He had been the greatest press agent for the tiny, salty town of Southport that ever was. "He had governors and senators in the hollow of his hand, and he hammered the press into accepting the simple fact (to him) that there was one county and one city in the world. The county was Brunswick and the city was Southport. Everything else was simply sticks." He made the town internationally famous.
His crowning achievement had been to get the Government to build a billion-dollar ammunition loading depot close to the town, at nearby Sunny Point. There had been some worry that the new people and new money would take over the town, but it had absorbed everyone, "and Sunny Point's Yankees joined the Confederates real fast."
He indicates that Mr. Keziah was the one man who marked Southport.
A letter writer responds to a letter writer of May 25 who criticized the City Council's custom of holding a pre-meeting, criticism which he finds unfair, that the meetings kept a lot of unnecessary fussing and fuming from being aired publicly such that the Council could transact the public's business in a business-like manner. He believes that if there were more closed meetings, a lot more could be done more efficiently.
A letter writer from Pittsboro says that within 90 days, he expected to see East and West Germany united again and Russia behind its historic Western boundaries, that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had abandoned NATO as a peacefully intended agency and had so advised Secretary of State Dulles and the other allied powers, was working on a United States of Europe in which trade barriers would be removed and resources pooled. Harold Stassen would work out an agreement with Russia to discontinue the manufacture of nuclear weapons with aerial or ground inspection or both. He finds the brightness of that picture darkened by what would take place in the Orient, however, where the U.S. had nearly strangled Japan to death by refusing to permit it to trade with its old customers, especially China and Russia, with the result that Americans were hated by the Japanese people, those tensions inflamed by the murder of a Japanese girl by a U.S. soldier, with the Japanese wanting to try him in their civilian courts while the Army insisted on a court-martial. There was also the Formosa problem, alienating further the Chinese, who contended that the U.S. was protecting Chiang and his defeated Army, contrary to the rules of international law requiring a neutral country to disarm a fleeing and beaten army before it could furnish it asylum or refuge. He finds that the U.S. colonial policy had been no better than that of the British and French. "Poverty, ignorance and well-nigh famine have characterized our Latin American colonies under our Monroe doctrine, and of all things to embarrass and humiliate us is the present status of our pet Negro colony of Haiti, which is in the control of the army with a provisional temporary government set-up of its choice."
At least in his overly optimistic view of Europe and his pessimistic view of the rest of the world, he did not, this time, work in his pet theory that integration would produce "amalgamation of the races".
A letter from the general chairman of the Piedmont Sales Conference indicates appreciation to the newspaper for helping to make its ninth annual conference a success.
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