The Charlotte News

Thursday, June 6, 1957

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence within unions and management, had appeared this date Anthony Conforti, president of the Chicago Bakers Union Local No. 1, testifying that he had deposited some $9,000 of union funds in his own savings account on orders from his union "boss", but had not kept the money. He conceded that it was a strange way to handle the money, but had not questioned the orders which he said had come from George Stuart, then the international vice-president of the Bakers Union. He said that pursuant to those orders, he had channeled the money into a union bank account, had drawn it out in cash and deposited it in his own savings account and then made withdrawals and provided the money to Mr. Stuart. Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy had asked him whether it had not struck him that it was a strange way to handle the money and Mr. Conforti had responded that he believed it was and that was why he had used his own money to open the account. He said he had withdrawn $1,750 of his own money from a safe deposit box to start his own account. Mr. Stuart was scheduled to provide later testimony to the Committee, which said that he would be a key witness in the general inquiry into the Union's affairs, as would be James Cross, the president of the Union. In a statement prepared for the start of the hearings, Committee chairman Senator John McClellan of Arkansas said that he expected the testimony would concern the misuse of union funds, the officials involved to be given ample opportunity to explain some transactions which appeared to be irregular, and with the operations of certain local unions under trusteeship, as the Committee had received a large number of complaints from dues-paying members about dictatorial and undemocratic practices. He said the hearings would also concern certain relationships between management and labor officials which, if not satisfactorily explained, had to lead to the "inference of impropriety and collusion between those individuals to the apparent disservice of members of the union."

In Washington, Dr. Linus Pauling had been subpoenaed by a Senate Internal Security subcommittee for questioning regarding his campaign to halt testing of hydrogen bombs because of the danger to humans from radioactive fallout, extending into future generations. The subcommittee counsel said this date that the subpoena called for Dr. Pauling to testify at a public hearing on June 18. He was head of the biochemistry department at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and was among the scientists who had warned of radioactive fallout dangers, having earlier in the week originated a petition which had been signed thus far by 2,000 scientists, warning of the dangers. The counsel for the subcommittee said that it was trying to find out whether any Communist organization was behind the efforts to halt the testing of hydrogen bombs and other nuclear weapons. The President had stated at his press conference the previous day that he had noticed that in "many instances scientists that seem to be out of their own field of competence are getting into this argument," regarding the danger of nuclear fallout. He said that it appeared to be almost "an organized effort" but that he did not mean to insinuate that it was a "wicked organization". Dr. Pauling, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954, had said the previous day in Pasadena that the 2,000 scientists who had signed his petition were thoroughly qualified to speak as experts on the subject.

In New York, evangelist Billy Graham preached a sermon to 18,000 persons in Madison Square Garden the previous evening, based on the text of John 4: 1-29, in which Jesus defied the racial hostility between Jews and Samaritans by teaching a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. The Reverend Graham said: "Jesus had no national animosities… Jesus had no racial prejudice... Jesus had no bigotry … whether a person walked different or talked different or had a different color of skin." He said that God looked on the heart, not the physical characteristics, that God had made "of one blood all nations". He touched on the subject only briefly but it was one which he had mentioned repeatedly throughout his New York Crusade. In one sermon, he had said that he had known of many Christians who would "sit down and say, 'Oh how I love Jesus,' and hate a man because of his color." He said it was an abomination to God, and amounted to taking the name of God in vain. He had said in another meeting that he knew of hundreds who hated others without cause, using as an excuse the color of their skin, which he found not confined to one section of the country, but rather occurring all over the world. He said that God did not judge a person "by their color, by their social status or their standing on Wall Street." At the end of the sermon, 622 persons had responded to his plea to "yield your life to Christ", bringing the total number thus far during his Crusade in New York to 13,306 who had taken that step. The Crusade was entering its fourth week, and attendance at Madison Square Garden had totaled 392,500, with the drive presently scheduled to run until July 21, with the possibility of the meeting being held in Yankee Stadium on the closing date, and at the Polo Grounds on June 30. Arrangements, however, had not been completed for either of those two outdoor arenas.

In Washington, a Federal judge this date had refused an habeas corpus petition to order former Army Specialist William Girard brought home from Japan, but set a hearing date for the following Tuesday to determine whether to bar his trial by a Japanese court. The judge had rejected a request that he produce Mr. Girard in the court immediately, but signed an order directing that he not be turned over to Japanese authorities for trial in connection with the death of a Japanese woman until the court heard further arguments. Technically, the hearing would be for the Government to show cause why Mr. Girard should not be brought to Washington. The U.S. had agreed to permit his trial by Japanese civil authorities, despite the incident having occurred in connection with his duty as a member of the Army, because it had been determined by the State and Defense Departments that he was acting outside his duties when he had shot the Japanese woman while scavenging for scrap metal in an area which he had been assigned by his commanding officer to protect against scavengers. He had contended that he had fired a warning shot only and had not intended to harm anyone. Were he to be returned home, he presumably could not be prosecuted at all because his enlistment in the Army had expired, and so it was assumed he could not be subjected to a court-martial. The incident had occurred, however, while he was serving as an Army Specialist 3rd Class. The habeas corpus petition filed by two attorneys had contended that Japan had no jurisdiction to try him for the offense with which he was charged because the shooting had occurred under U.S. sovereignty and that thus any offense he had committed was only against the United States, not against Japan. One of his attorneys had said that "certain agitators" in Japan had made much of the case and had likened him to "a sacrificial lamb, merely for the purpose of appeasement."

In Raleigh, the State House Propositions and Grievances Committee had postponed indefinitely this date action on a bill which it was told was "directed against the activities of Frank Sims, registered lobbyist for the North Carolina ABC Association". The bill was introduced by the sponsor of the statewide liquor referendum and would prohibit members of the state, county and city ABC boards from lobbying, making it a misdemeanor to do so. State Representative Frank Snepp of Mecklenburg said that Mr. Sims was the only person registered to lobby who would be affected and that the bill "was aimed at him." Mr. Sims was a member of the ABC Board in Mecklenburg County. The sponsor of the bill said it was not aimed at any one person but only designed to prevent anything in the future which might reflect badly on the legislature or the ABC boards. The name of Mr. Sims had been mentioned as having paid for the hotel room at the Sir Walter Hotel in Raleigh, involved in the alleged receipt of free liquor from liquor manufacturer lobbyists, for distribution to the hotel rooms of state legislators, having come to light through the Raleigh News & Observer the previous week.

Julian Scheer of The News reports from Conway, S.C., that W. Horace Carter, the uncompromising North Carolina newspaper editor, who also published a weekly in Horry County in South Carolina, was scheduled to appear this date before the grand jury investigating misconduct in the Horry County sheriff's department. He told the newspaper that he would make an appearance but would be accompanied by some friends who would provide his bond if he were arrested. Stationed in Tabor City, N.C., the editor's newspaper stories had touched off the county and Federal grand jury investigation of the Horry County sheriff's department. There had been persisting rumors since the prior March that Mr. Carter would be arrested on some charge and jailed if he entered Horry County. He had been subpoenaed the previous day to appear in the morning of this date and was undecided until late the previous night on whether he would obey the subpoena, indicating that the subpoena was illegal and that he could decline it until a legal subpoena was served. On the prior Monday, a Federal grand jury, meeting in Columbia, had handed down true bills of indictment charging Sheriff John Henry and eight of his deputies with civil rights violations, having allegedly violated the civil rights of two black men arrested in Horry County. A Federal grand jury would go into session in Charleston in October to investigate white liquor payoffs. The stories published in Mr. Carter's Loris newspaper had touched off the Federal and county grand jury investigations, and he had also told of alleged pressuring of amusement operators by the sheriff's department, reporting that the department forced operators to take boxes from a distributor of the department's choice. Mr. Carter considered not entering Horry County until immunity from arrest was offered, but it had not been, and he told the newspaper that he felt that because other witnesses had been pressured, he felt a moral obligation to them to appear, as he had more facts to provide which would make the other witnesses appear stronger. He had been advised by his attorneys not to appear without immunity. He said that he understood that the solicitor, however, had stated that he had immunity from everything except treason, breach of the peace and a felony, and he believed they could not arrest him for any of those offenses as he had not broken any laws. He said the subpoena had come as a surprise since the county grand jury had been recessed. Meanwhile, a defendant in a whiskey case had testified that he paid a Horry County deputy $75 as "protection" money, and that defendant had been indicted the previous day for perjury involving the statement made the prior Tuesday during his trial for unlawful possession of whiskey. The solicitor had asked that defendant whether he would plead guilty to bribery, but he declined, and the solicitor had then drawn up a bill of indictment for perjury, apparently resulting in the renewal of the grand jury investigation.

In Charlotte, Waldo Cheek, 44, president of Skyland Life Insurance Co. and former State Insurance commissioner, had died the previous day, apparently following a heart attack. He had collapsed on the street a half block from his office during the morning. He had been prominently mentioned as a possible future gubernatorial candidate, and was active in Mecklenburg County Democratic politics. He had graduated from Wake Forest College in 1934 and had also graduated from the Wake Forest Law School in 1937. He had practiced law in Asheboro between 1937 and 1949 and had been a representative of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Asheboro between 1939 and 1949. He had been chairman of the Randolph County Democratic executive committee in 1948-49. At the time of his death, he had been treasurer of the Democratic Party in Charlotte and was seeking to revitalize the party in Mecklenburg County. He had been appointed Insurance commissioner in June, 1949 by Governor Kerr Scott, filling the unexpired term of William Hodges, who had resigned. He was then elected to that position in 1950 and re-elected in 1954. He was one of the nation's best-known insurance executives, having been awarded the Chartered Life Underwriter designation in 1950. He resigned as Insurance commissioner in October, 1953 to become a consultant with the Independence Life Insurance Co. in Charlotte and was named the company president in March, 1954. He was a former member of the board of trustees of Wake Forest College.

In Fayetteville, N.C., the State Highway Patrol reported that a flat-bed truck, filled with migrant farm laborers, and a tractor-trailer, filled with potatoes, had collided in a fiery crash at an intersection this date, killing 16 persons and injuring between 25 and 30 others. A fire which had broken out in the flat-bed truck had caused most of the fatalities. It was believed to be the worst traffic accident in the state's history. The Patrol said that 41 laborers from several states had been aboard the truck, which had pulled into the path of the tractor-trailer at an intersection nine miles north of Fayetteville in the early morning. An operator of a nearby country store said that he had not counted the victims, but that one of the boys had said that he had counted 37 at one time, all laying down, "some dead and some injured, some squirming around". One laborer said that the workers, after camping overnight near Mount Olive, had been en route to Dunn to harvest beans. The driver of the tractor-trailer had been only slightly injured, but the driver of the flat-bed truck was among those killed.

In Chicago, the National Safety Council said that the Fayetteville crash had not set a record for number of deaths in a collision of trucks, that 19 persons had been killed in Texas in such a collision in August, 1947 and that a record in truck-bus collisions had been set in September, 1950, when 10 persons had died in a crash in South Carolina.

In New York, a man could not cry because disease had interrupted his tear glands, also causing him not to receive normal moisture to his eyes, becoming dry, scratched, and ulcerated to the point where he was going blind. Surgeons had intercepted a duct which brought saliva to the mouth and switched it to one eye, thus providing him sight-saving moisture. But then, whenever he ate or saw food, his eyes watered just like one's mouth watered when hungry. He commented that he needed a little moisture for his eye and they had given him Lake Erie. The surgeons had fixed that problem also, as the same disease had also blocked the drainage duct which removed the moisture normally produced in a healthy eye, providing him artificial drainage through a tube into his nose, such that now he had an eye which was normally moist and which did not flood so much when he saw food.

The Hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, incidentally, had been established since 1950 and so the man's case did not give rise to it, though perhaps the reverse, the venue's name maybe having inspired the doctors who performed the surgery for the sake of the man's sight. Thus, take heart, as the watery inundations occasioned by crying, whether from sadness or laughter, may be a good thing for enabling passing of eye tests, as long as not impeded by the intercession of too much gazing into nuclear detonations, well into old age.

On the editorial page, "Charlotte College: Opportunity Awaits" finds that the swift transition of Charlotte College from a post-war expedient to a substantial symbol of Charlotte's pride and progress had been pointedly dramatized by the week's commencement exercises.