The Charlotte News
Friday, May 3, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Joseph McCarthy had died at age 48 the previous day of "acute liver inflammation", which has since been further identified as cirrhosis of the liver, associated with his longtime alcohol abuse. He had been at Bethesda Naval Hospital for the previous five days undergoing treatment—with some subsequent reports indicating that he was actually in the throes of delirium tremens. (The newspapers had indicated generally that he was 47, but, as a story on the page corrects his date of birth, he was actually 48.) Funeral services were to be held in the Senate the following Monday, an unusual ceremony in recent years for deceased members of Congress but not unprecedented, the most recent having been for Senator William Borah of Idaho in 1940. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had spent much of the morning working on plans for the funeral. He said that any such service in the Senate could be held at the request of a family member. Mrs. McCarthy had made the request. The Senator's death reduced the Republican minority to 46, against 49 Democrats, and the seat would remain vacant until a special election in Wisconsin the following August—the seat ultimately to be filled by Democrat William Proxmire. Senator McCarthy had been censured by the Senate in December, 1954, after investigation by a special committee chaired by Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah and on which Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina was a primary force, the censure resolution stemming from Senator McCarthy's conduct and charges made against Army officials leading to and during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings of the spring of 1954. Ultimately, the censure, albeit technically called a "condemnation", was for obstructing Senate processes and violating ethics rules, based on a resolution introduced in June, 1954 by Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont, Wayne Morse of Oregon and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.
We recommend to Democrats, incidentally, once they retake the House in the 2024 election, to hold similar hearings as to whether there ought be censure of the House Republican leaders who launched frivolous inquiries during the 118th Congress into President Biden based on demonstrably false claims, abusing their oversight responsibility in the process for obvious political reasons, and who launched for the same reasons baseless impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, premised only on policy differences regarding immigration, and who recently cited frivolously Attorney General Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress and made a referral to the Justice Department merely for conscientiously doing his job in refusing to provide duplicative matter, already having provided a written transcript of testimony made in the video recording of the deposition being sought, which was obviously being demanded for the sake only of potentially taking out of context short clips for use on television in the campaign of 2024, and because such use would jeopardize future investigations by special counsels.
Ed Creagh of the Associated Press
reports that critics of Senator McCarthy would say he used bullying
tactics, while defenders would claim he was the victim of
below-the-belt blows—sounding rather familiar regarding Trump,
whose political mentor was the Senator's loyal chief counsel, Roy
Cohn. The Senator had not always been a fighter. As a Wisconsin farm
boy, he had been shy, bookish and hard-working. It was not until he
began running for office, first in college for student government,
and then in Wisconsin politics, that he had begun to "give 'em
hell". He had lost his first campaign, to be president of the
Marquette University Debating Society, but later beat his opponent in
a class election by a single vote, with the question raised as to
whether young Mr. McCarthy had violated a gentleman's agreement not
to vote for himself. His response had been, "Naturally, I'd
vote for the best man, wouldn't I?" While a circuit judge in
Wisconsin, his handling of a milk price case was heavily criticized
by the State Supreme Court as "an abuse of judicial power".
That Court also took a dim view of his running for another office
while still on the bench, and the State Bar had urged his disbarment.
When he was elected to the Senate in 1946, he arrived as just another
freshman, but more personable than many and with a flair for
publicity. (As the piece neglects to point out, taking a tempered approach in the wake of his immediate death, part of his winning campaign strategy had been to exaggerate substantially his war record, including his claim of numerous "combat missions" when no more than two involving any actual combat were flown, leading to his award of two air medals only after he became a Senator, and his claim of having incurred a serious leg injury while in the service, actually based on falling off a ladder during a Navy hazing ritual administered to all aboard ship when crossing the equator for the first time, all of which ultimately earned him the nickname among critics as "tailgunner Joe" for his routine of strafing empty fields and cocoanut trees while riding as the tailgunner in a scout plane, magnified at his direction in Marine Corps press releases to heroic "enemy action" for hometown consumption in Wisconsin where he had departed his judgeship, having his sights on higher political office after the war.) Early in his Senate tenure, he had fought for a rationing measure which would have
given more sugar to a soft drink firm, just before a sugar lobbyist
endorsed a $20,000 promissory note for him, as later revealed. He
received $10,000 for writing an article for Lustron Housing Corp.,
manufacturer of prefabricated homes, which later went into bankruptcy
after defaulting on a large Government subsidy, the article having
been written while the Senator served on a committee investigating
that firm. Inquiries arose in the press regarding his campaign
financing, as well as his acceptance of Pentagon papers denouncing
generals, as well as his campaigning to get hostile Senators from
other states, such as his infamous use in the 1950 Maryland Senatorial race of
a knowingly fabricated photograph purporting to show Senator Millard
Tydings smiling with American Communist leader Earl Browder, which
had helped to defeat the Senator. His greatest publicity arose from
his infamous suggestion that there were various numbers of
"card-carrying Communists" within the State Department,
first made in a Lincoln Day speech in Wheeling, W. Va., in February,
1950, an assigned topic by the RNC, which he played for all it was
worth, giving at least three widely varying numbers of people before
finally settling on 57
The Navy announced this date that the major fighting ships of the 6th Fleet were moving out of the eastern Mediterranean, where they had been rushed during the crisis in Jordan the previous week, indicating that they were returning to the central Mediterranean to take part in previously scheduled NATO naval exercises. Amphibious elements of the Fleet, including a reinforced Marine Corps battalion of 1,600 men, would remain in the eastern Mediterranean with a number of escort ships. The carrier U.S.S. Forrestal, the battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin and the heavy cruisers, U.S.S. Salem and U.S.S. Des Moines, were the principal warships presently steaming westward to take part in the exercise "Green Pivot", a phase of general exercises involving the naval forces and ships of most of the maritime powers of NATO.
In New York, a large manhunt was underway this date for an unknown thug who had shot and slightly wounded gambler Frank Costello the previous night. Sixty detectives and six superior officers had been assigned to the case in an attempt to avert a possible outbreak of underworld warfare, some being assigned to apprehend the lone gunman before allies of Mr. Costello could catch up with him. Mr. Costello, sometimes called the "boss of the racketeers", had been grazed in the scalp by a single bullet fired as he entered the lobby of his apartment residence on Central Park West. Police, apparently believing that a second attempt might be made on his life, posted two detectives in the lobby of the building. The chief of detectives said that the gunman apparently had thought that he had hit Mr. Costello where he wanted—presumably meaning in the head. There was an ongoing legislative inquiry into a controversial parole violation case involving Joseph "Socks" Lanza, former Fulton Fish Market racketeer, but the chief of detectives said that he did not want to comment on whether he believed there was any connection. The gunman had run into the lobby of the apartment building, fired the shot and then ran away. Both Mr. Costello and the doorman said that it happened so fast that they could not identify the shooter. What appeared to be a flattened .32-caliber bullet had been found in the lobby.
In Atlanta, two men wearing stockings over their heads had robbed a branch bank of more than $19,000 shortly before the bank had opened this date, the bandits holding up two employees as they were transferring money from the bank to a drive-in window at the rear of the building. An assistant teller said that the two men had worn stockings over their heads but that their faces were uncovered. (Were their derrieres also uncovered?) She had gotten only a brief glimpse of them, however, and they appeared short and stocky. Both men had revolvers and appeared middle-aged. They had run out to a parked Chevrolet with a white top and blue bottom, bearing Illinois license plates over Georgia license plates, and then had driven away. The car believed to be the getaway car was found abandoned several blocks away. Perhaps, by then, they had covered their faces to avoid being identified.
In Mobile, Ala., a 19-year old drugstore clerk testified in Recorder's Court the previous day that her former husband had forced her at gunpoint to dig her own "grave" while in the nude, and, prior to that, had also made her fight his present wife. Her former husband, 24, accused of assault and battery, denied the charges. The former wife testified that she had divorced him recently, ending their three-year marriage. She said that he had taken her to a nightclub the previous Friday and had demanded that he fight his present wife, whom she said she had nothing against and she supposed had nothing against her. She had said she did not want to fight but her former husband had hit her and kicked her and so she and the present wife began fighting. Later, her former husband had struck his new wife and knocked her unconscious and then had poured beer on her to revive her. He had come into a nightclub where the former wife was sitting the following night and forced her to go with him to a country road south of Mobile, pointing a shotgun at her and forcing her to take her clothes off, had then provided her a shovel and told her to begin digging, that it was her own grave. She said that her former husband's companion had helped her because she was unable to dig in the hard ground, after which she pleaded with her former husband to let her get dressed, and they then returned to Mobile. The testimony would continue this date. The former husband may have taken one of the episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" far too seriously, or, maybe, he had just been to one too many second-rate drive-in movies, not that Mr. Hitchcock's presentations were not vastly superior to the latter.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that the annexation bill before the Legislature was expected to obtain State House approval the following week, but that the fight over it would be carried to the floor of the House by Mecklenburg County Representative Jack Love, the principal opponent of the bill. The Local Government Committee had provided its approval of the bill the previous afternoon. The annexation would increase the population of Charlotte by an estimated 32,000 people by 1960.
At City Hall in Charlotte this date, prospects brightened with the approval in committee of the annexation bill, with five of the seven members of the City Council, plus Mayor Philip Van Every and City Manager Henry Yancey, having gone to Raleigh the previous day for the hearings before the Committee. The bill would provide for an annexation election on June 17.
In Dallas, Tex., new heavy rain on the upper Brazos River had brought fresh flooding this date, while Wichita Falls prepared for possibly its worst flooding in seven years. A downpour of 6.25 inches during the night had been recorded on the Brazos near Mineral Wells, and Dennis, which had been evacuated during the 16 days of heavy rains, again was suffering high water. The 270 residents of that town had been warned to evacuate. Water was again rising at Bennett, near Dennis, and Dennis had been partially evacuated after earlier rising of the Brazos, with about 50 families still not able to return to their homes.
On the editorial page, "The High Price of Charlotte's Victory" indicates that the city had paid a high price for its victory on the annexation bill the previous day, but that it had been worth it, as annexation was necessary. Assuming House acceptance of the Local Government Committee's report recommending the bill, it was probable that desirable objectives could be achieved.
It congratulates the Committee majority and those citizens who had spoken out in favor of the measure, through personal appearance as well as thousands who had signed letters and petitions.
But the price paid was that local disputes over the issue had been aired in public, which it suggests should have been avoided and ought be avoided in the future, as it damaged the community's reputation in the state. The arts of compromise and conciliation, essential to the effective functioning of democratic government, it urges, were needed in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.
"The Assembly Can & Must Save Lives" indicates that the Legislature could save the lives of hundreds of North Carolinians merely by "looking the other way" in considering a proposed compulsory automobile inspection law for the state, as the other way was the future. A parade of friendly witnesses in favor of the bill had appeared before the House Roads Committee during the week, but the Committee had suggested that it was more concerned with the badly administered bill of ten years earlier and thus more concerned about its political interests than the future safety of motorists in the state.
The earlier attempt at inspection had been fraught with long lines and time-wasting administrative requirements, infuriating the public, and so it was understandable that the legislators wanted to guard against any repeat. But the overriding fact was that no one died from auto inspections while the failure to inspect vehicles did result in many deaths. The Department of Motor Vehicles had stated that even if only 5 percent of the accidents were caused by mechanical failures, a conservative estimate, more than 50 people who were dead from accidents would still be alive.
It thus urges the Legislature to act on the bill.
"Where Are the Homes Coming From?" tells of the president of the National Association of Home Builders, from Charlotte, mincing no words when addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the week in Washington, sizing up the consequences of the Administration's "tight money" policy bluntly and effectively as it regarded available housing across the country.
He had said: "The G.I. program which helped spark the greatest postwar housing boom is dead and forgotten by all but those unlucky veterans who failed to realize in time that 'tight money' meant no homes for their families. Many of you manufacturers who provide the materials and equipment for the homes of America are cutting back production, laying off workers, trimming your sails against a gathering storm. And with every day that passes, our housing inventory is depleted by another 1,200 new homes that are needed now and for future, but which are not being built."
He went on to say that those in the home-building industry questioned the wisdom of a monetary policy which restricted nothing other than the housing needs of the American people, while encouraging Caribbean cruises on credit but denying a workingman the opportunity to decent housing.
It suggests that his outcry could not be dismissed as unadulterated selfishness on the part of a special interest group, as the housing needs of millions of Americans were at stake, and with the severe credit restrictions, those needs were not being adequately met. There were more than 170 million people in the country at present, a level of population which the experts had predicted a decade earlier would not be reached until 1965. Some 4.2 million babies were coming into the world every year in the country, and in addition, about 1.6 million couples were getting married each year, while the country produced fewer than 900,000 new homes every year. By 1965, the population was expected to reach 192 million and the demand for housing would increase commensurately.
If private industry failed to meet the need, then government would step in and do the job, but private industry's hands were tied without favorable mortgage and credit conditions. It suggests that the defenders of private enterprise, both in and out of the home-building industry, ought carry the lesson to Congress and the White House.
A piece from the Washington Post & Times Herald, titled "Front Page News", indicates that subscribers to the Scotsman out of Edinburgh had undergone a jolting experience when they picked up their favorite newspaper recently and saw that, for the first time in a century, its front page carried news and headlines instead of only the classified ads. As the Manchester Guardian had made a similar switch several years earlier, it left only the London Times as the last world-famous British daily carrying only classified ads on its front page. But the Times had hardly altered anything in its layout since the days when the fictional Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson had pored over the personal columns in their gas-lit Baker Street flat.
Many British dailies had once operated on the assumption that the readers needed no prompting from major headlines to decide what news was important. But as the breakfast hour was shortened and the news became more complex, the front page had become a sort of index of the public state of mind. Competition from the tabloids had also quickened the trend.
It wishes the Scotsman well in its bright new kilts, but confesses to a certain gratification that the Times still stubbornly resisted change. "Who cannot feel a certain nostalgia for a newspaper tradition which gives the endless minutiae of local life more prominence than the doings of statesmen and starlets, placing 'Situations Vacant' and 'Flats To Let' before the litany of woe which daily assails our eyes?"
Drew Pearson indicates that the Interior Department had just spent more than $38,000 to redecorate plush new offices for top Fish & Wildlife Department officials, including $541 for an oriental rug which the new commissioner did not even want. The Department blamed the expenditure on Congress for elevating the Service to a full-fledged branch, entitling officials to fancier offices. It had cost, for instance, more than $8,200 to make the new Assistant Secretary's office fancier. Another $27,800 had been spent for suites for the directors of two new bureaus, Commercial Fisheries and Sport Fisheries and Wildlife. He cites it as how one Department practiced the economy being preached by the President.
He tells of Congress voting to give higher status to the Department following efforts by commercial fishing interests, indicating that they were losing business to foreign competitors and that the industry thus demanded more influence inside the Government. Thus, Congress created the new post of Assistant Secretary.
The scandal magazine Confidential might have to close its doors in California and later elsewhere in the nation. California State Attorney General Pat Brown, future Governor, had taken both the publisher, Robert Harrison, and the printers of the magazine into court in Los Angeles on May 14 for publishing obscene matter and for criminal libel. Mr. Brown, deeply religious, contended that the scandal sheet had caused divorces and broken homes, and had led to blackmail, whereby blackmailers had shaken down prominent people on the threat of "telling Confidential". Mr. Brown had received overtures from representatives of the magazine, indicating that they were ready to quit publication in California.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the President was depicted by some of his associates in Washington as returning from his Georgia vacation full of fight, wanting his program passed by Congress, intending to cajole and charm members to put it across, and, if necessary, to exert pressure on recalcitrant members of his own party. If so, it would represent a major change in the character of the Administration, which had never shown any real stomach for a fight.
Repeatedly, it had been the practice to wait out crises, such as with the school construction program of the previous year, when some exertion on the part of the Administration might have gotten it passed. Instead, the effort had been so perfunctory that the bill had died in committee and its chance of passage in the current session was slim because of the increased demand for economy.
Whether the President would or could do anything effective to push his mild civil rights program was moot because the experienced Southern minority had seen to it that the bill had built-in roadblocks—though that bill would eventually pass during the session. His biggest fight would be over the budget and particularly over appropriations for foreign aid, assuming he wanted to make such a fight.
It would not be enough for the President to issue statements of urgency at his press conferences, as that had not been effective during the previous four years. He would need to exert full-time effort at detailed leadership, which was foreign to his habits. But there was no one within the Administration who commanded the respect in Congress and the ear of the public, who could do the job for him. Vice-President Nixon, who avowed his adherence to "modern Republicanism" during the week by endorsing the Administration's record budget in a speech before the United States Chamber of Commerce, could not do the job, as any effort by him to lead Congress would be resented bitterly by both parties.
The President's effort would have to be exerted in large part toward public understanding of the budget and the need for a continuation of foreign aid, but no plans had been revealed for a series of radio and television speeches to that effect. The President had a special handicap in that the interests of his Administration did not have compelling representative voices in either house of Congress, where Republicans were generally either so junior as to lack weight or were temperamentally disinclined to leadership, with the fighters primarily on the other side, the reason that the burden of the fight would have to be borne heavily by the President, himself.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island, 89, could stake out a claim to being the oldest man ever to serve in Congress on May 26, topping by a day the current record set by Representative Charles Manley Stedman of North Carolina, who had died in 1930 while still serving in the House. But there was a chance that researchers might find another member of Congress who was even older at death or retirement.
The previous August 14, the Library of Congress had said that as far as it had been able to determine, Senator Green would become the oldest member to serve on November 28, 1956, surpassing the record previously of Representative Robert Doughton of North Carolina, who had retired in 1953. But after there had been much celebration of that record in the press and in Congress, a private researcher had found Mr. Stedman's record.
Senator Green said it was just another record he could shoot for, but not an impressive one, as he found age not something of which to be very proud.
Both the Senator and Mr. Stedman had been soldiers, teachers, lawyers, Democratic convention delegates, gubernatorial candidates, had made money in transportation and were elected to Congress at the age of 69. Mr. Stedman had served in the House from March 4, 1911 until his death, while Senator Green had been elected to the Senate on November 3, 1936. The Senator said that he did not wish to serve after he reached age 100.
Only recently, the Senator had abandoned his wrestling workouts in the Senate gym, but still walked two miles from his University Club residence to the Capitol most mornings. He feared that those walks might someday lead to his injury or death because he might be unable to step out of the way of a speeding vehicle, adding that if that were to happen, he wanted to be carried into court on a stretcher and then with his last gasp, wanted to make a dramatic appeal for traffic safety. (Drew Pearson had recently recounted that he had complained to a police officer of being nearly run down near the Capitol by a speeding car, but that the police officer was indifferent and rude to him, not understanding that he was a Senator, of which Senator Green did not bother to inform him.)
The Senator advised that the key to the country's future was flexibility, which had to be built into the domestic and foreign policies.
A letter writer indicates that the municipal primary the prior Monday had been a victory for a well-financed, well-organized political machine over unorganized opposition, indicating that the method of selecting municipal officers was rapidly becoming a farce, whereby any incumbent group, whether good or mediocre, could freeze out the opposition, as incumbents controlled the organized machinery and their combined money paid the workers. The writer says that he had visited about half of the precincts on election day and had observed that at least 3,000 voters were taken to the polls by paid machine workers and had been handed marked sample ballots to guide their decisions. He finds the old system of electing members of the City Council by wards in party elections, while having its faults, would be better than the current system, and he suggests doing something about it.
A letter writer says that people were rushing through life trying to find happiness without finding it, that there was only one way to do so, by taking God in as a life partner. "People who go to a bottle to find peace never find it there." She finds that people were rushing to and from work, and dropping dead from heart trouble, that the key to a long, happy life was never to curse or drink or live in sin, or become so restless as to be unable to tolerate life and want to end it all, when all one needed was a friend closer than a brother and ready to bear one's cross.
A letter writer says that after reading of the vote in the Legislature on the annexation bill, he believed that those who had voted for the low number to go to Raleigh to represent the people ought feel in part that they had been short-changed. He indicates that there were many counties in the state which held a grudge against Charlotte and Mecklenburg because it out-rated them in many ways. Mecklenburg had four State Representatives who had done their duty completely, and if it could obtain a fair and honest vote, the annexation bill would be passed by a large majority in the House. He indicates that a state vote on a city bill should never be permitted.
Herblock, as indicated below his cartoon this date, had been named "Cartoonist of the Year" by the National Cartoonist Society. Mr. Block, it comments, doubtless was delighted to receive the recognition, even though it had been only one among many over the years for the two-time Pulitzer-prize winner. It indicates that his pen name had been adopted while a student at Lake Forest College in Illinois, and he had used it ever since. Earlier in the month, he had won his fourth Sigma Delta Chi award and was runner-up for the NCS award the previous year. He was the staff cartoonist for the Washington Post and Times-Herald, and his cartoons were distributed by the Hall Syndicate to subscribing newspapers.
Perhaps, given the news on the front page, he should the following day depict a sinister underworld gunman, marked with the skull and crossbones and labeled "100-proof", holding a revolver to the liver region of Senator McCarthy, depicted naked, and ordering him to dig his own grave—but that would probably be in some questionable taste at the moment for too much of the general public in 1957. It also might tread too much on the territory of Hieronymus Bosch's "Final Judgment", center of the left triptych panel, although that more resembles J. Edgar Hoover, who, as indicated, would die exactly 15 years to the day later.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.