The Charlotte News
Friday, July 12, 1957
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Southern Democratic Senators had tentatively agreed this date to permit a vote during the middle of the following week on a motion to take up the controversial civil rights bill, with their spokesman, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, having stated that he was authorized to work out the details with Republican Minority Leader William Knowland of California, the sponsor of the motion, and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas. Earlier, Senator Johnson had told newsmen that he hoped that agreement could be reached by all sides to have a vote either late the following Tuesday or early on Wednesday, indicating that he believed that there were 20 additional Senators who wanted to speak before the bill was brought to a vote in the Senate. He expected the vote to be about 2 to 1 in favor of the motion by Senator Knowland to call up the bill, indicating also that the Southerners were not seeking to delay or procrastinate. Senator Russell had told reporters that there was no possibility of a vote on Senator Knowland's motion before the following Tuesday and that he would prefer that it be delayed until Wednesday or Thursday. Senator Knowland had said, before a breakfast meeting at the White House with the President, that he favored a vote early the following week, by Monday or Tuesday. Prior to going to the White House, Senator Knowland had ruled out any immediate steps toward modifying the Administration's bill, which had been passed by the House the previous month. He said that there were not going to be any amendments agreed to or any negotiations or agreements looking toward amendments until after the bill became the pending business in the Senate. Nearly all Southern Democrats had attended the 45-minute meeting in the office of Senator Russell, who said that they felt justified in debating the motion to take it up, that the bill had pursued "a very unusual course" in that there was no committee report on it, and so they felt justified in at least putting on the record an analysis of it. He said, however, that, frankly, the opponents of the bill could not muster their full strength against a motion to take it up for a vote.
In Knoxville, Tenn., a controversy had erupted in U.S. District Court this date regarding pictures taken by Time and Life magazine photographers of the Clinton desegregation disturbances the previous fall, with defense attorneys questioning a photographer as to whether the magazines had slanted their pictures to lower and degrade the 16 defendants on trial, including John Kasper from Baltimore, an avowed segregationist who allegedly had incited the violence. All 16 defendants were charged with contempt of a Federal District Court order which forbade any interference with the desegregation efforts ongoing at Clinton High School. The witness had been A. Y. Owen, 41, a freelance photographer from Oklahoma City, who said that he was employed by Time and Life. When the defense attorney had made the statements about the pictures, the Government attorney had jumped to his feet, shouting objections, which were sustained by the judge, after which the defense attorney said that he could appreciate the Government's apprehension about Time and Life magazines, again eliciting an objection from the Government's attorney, again sustained by the judge, admonishing the defense attorney not to repeat such a statement. The defense attorney had asked the photographer whether he had any special instructions from the magazines when he came to Clinton, and he said that he did not have instructions to slant the story one way or the other, that he had no prejudice whatever and tried to shoot both sides as fairly as possible. When asked why he had not gone into the defendants' homes and shown them as they really were, he said that they had tried to do so but had received negative answers from some of them. He was then asked whether that was after they had "smeared" them in the magazine, again prompting objection by the Government's attorney, again sustained with another admonition. The defense contended that the photographers had presented the defendants in an unfair light during the disturbances of the previous November 29 and 30, after the Government had introduced the photographs into evidence to identify some of the 15 defendants. The Government was at the stage of its case-in-chief in which it was seeking to prove a conspiracy between Mr. Kasper and the other 15 defendants.
The State Department announced that Secretary of State Dulles would fly to Ottawa July 27 for talks with the new Prime Minister of Canada, John Diefenbaker.
In Stockholm, it was reported that four Latvian fishermen had tied up their captain in the mid-Baltic and had taken their fishing trawler to Sweden to request political asylum.
In Geneva, it was reported that Russian scientists believed that they had found a fourth type of polio virus, against which present vaccines would offer no protection, according to a Soviet female doctor this date.
Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had ended four weeks of testimony before the Senate Finance Committee this date and had told newsmen that he had one more job to do before he retired from the Cabinet, that being the refinancing of 15.8 billion dollars of the public debt. He said that he had been working nights on it while he had been there.
In Geneva, Prince Saddruddin Khan had postponed his wedding to a London model for six weeks this date because of the death of his father, the Aga Khan.
In Hong Kong, it was reported that American Donald Blackwood had returned from 2 1/2 months in Communist China and told reporters that his decision to visit the mainland had been "an irresponsible gesture on my part and I'm sorry I made it." He said that he did not like being watched all the time without seeing anything. The 25-year old former G.I. had taken with him his South Korean wife and child, and said that they had spent most of their time in a sixth floor hotel room in Canton. He said that the Chinese had allowed his wife out to buy food and necessities for their children but that he was kept inside all the time. He said he had gone to Communist China of his own free will, with the desire to see the country and with the intention of learning more about its people, but he said that what he had seen had not impressed him and that he had not seen much, had no desire to return. He and his family had been expelled by the Communists at the Macao border the previous afternoon on the ground of their illegal entry. An official of the U.S. Consulate said that normal procedure called for the Consulate to mark Mr. Blackwood's passport valid for return to the U.S. only. He had been discharged as an Air Force sergeant in Korea and had gone to work thereafter as a salesman for a clothing firm in Seoul. He, his wife and son had arrived in Macao on April 26, ostensibly as tourists, had vanished 36 hours later, leaving behind a few suitcases and an unpaid hotel bill. Portuguese police had finally reported that Mr. Blackwood had paid $50 to a Chinese sampan owner to ferry the family 500 yards to Communist-held Lappa Island, where they had arrived at midnight on April 28. Within a few hours, the Communists had taken them by motorboat to a small Communist naval base where they stayed overnight, after which they had been driven to Canton in jeeps. Three days before their departure, the Communists had taken Mr. Blackwood to see some movies, parks, cultural centers and museums. He said that their attitude had seemed to be that since he had entered the country illegally, he was not welcome, and that they did not invite him to return.
In Washington, a Federal District Court judge had denied a motion for mistrial in the bribery case against Midwest Teamsters Union chief Jimmy Hoffa, the motion having been based on the mistrial granted the previous day to his co-defendant, Hyman Fischbach, because the latter's attorney had become ill. Edward Bennett Williams, representing Mr. Hoffa, had argued that his client could not put on an adequate defense with Mr. Fischbach having been granted a separate trial. He said that the latter had intended to testify at their joint trial to seek to refute testimony by the Government's primary witness, lawyer John Cye Cheasty, who had been the object of the attempted bribe as a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee investigating organized crime and racketeering influence on unions and management, approached by Mr. Fischbach, an acquaintance of Mr. Cheasty, to provide Mr. Hoffa with files from the committee, Mr. Cheasty then having reported the effort to the Committee and then cooperated with the FBI and the Committee in catching Mr. Fischbach and Mr. Hoffa providing payment for the information sought. Mr. Williams had stated that Mr. Fischbach was now refusing to testify on behalf of Mr. Hoffa and would provide his version of the situation only when he actually came to trial later.
In Camp Whittington, Japan, William Girard, whose case had been decided the previous day by the Supreme Court in an emergency session, holding that he could be turned over by U.S. authorities to the Japanese civilian authorities for trial for manslaughter in the death of a woman he had killed while on guard duty as a sergeant in the Army at an Army firing range he was assigned to protect, trying to ward off metal scavengers, had indicated this date that he did not dread a trial in Japan as much as members of his family back home did, expressing confidence that the Japanese court would acquit him on the charges. He issued the statement a few hours after the Supreme Court decision. He said that he did not believe he needed any more help from his American lawyers, that they had done all they could. When asked whether he thought the court fight to have them returned to the U.S. had been worthwhile, he said: "Yes, with all them people back there fighting for me."
Near Maebashi, Japan, police said that the previous night a brother had killed his own brother in a medieval-style duel, with each being armed with an ancient six-foot spear, the older brother, 42, having stabbed his younger unemployed brother, 32, in the neck, piercing his jugular vein, causing him to bleed to death. The older brother was jailed and told police that the quarrel had started when he returned home and found his brother berating their 66-year old mother, that when he had intervened, his brother had grabbed a spear and challenged him, and he had also taken a spear and fought, indicating that they were both drunk. The spears were antique family treasures.
In Dinard, France, it was reported
that actor Tony Curtis had been struck in the eye by an arrow this
date during the shooting of a movie scene
In Paris, actress Ingrid Bergman and her 18-year old daughter had left for Rome this date, where the daughter would meet for the first time the twin daughters and a son of Ms. Bergman from her marriage to Italian film director Roberto Rossellini.
In Raleigh, the office of Governor Luther Hodges had announced this date that State Adj. General John Hall Manning had resigned, effective August 18, and that the Governor had appointed Capus Waynick of High Point to succeed him.
In Apex, N.C., three armed, masked bandits had held up a branch bank this date, locking five employees and three customers in the vault and escaping with between $25,000 and $30,000, according to a bank official. The robbers had spent about 20 minutes inside the bank during the mid-morning peak hour. A special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Charlotte said that it had been reported, but not substantiated, that three women had been present in the getaway car with the robbers. A bank vice-president, five other employees and two customers had been herded into the vault and locked in as the robber left. The bank vice-president had spoken through the door to customers, providing them with an address of a vacationing bank employee who lived nearby, and she was summoned to open the vault in a matter of minutes. The bank vice-president said that he saw only two men in the bank, but believed that a third man was with them outside. He said that a man with a handkerchief over his face had come up behind him and told him to put up his hands, and he had first believed it to be a joke. The time lock on the safe was set not to open until about ten or fifteen minutes later and he told the man that he could not open it, to which the man had replied that they would wait until it opened, at one point saying that they would bust it open.
Dick Young of The News reports that in the newspaper's telephone survey of voters regarding the city limits extension issue, set to be voted on the following Monday, a 4 to 1 majority favored the extension, with a greater than expected approval of it among voters in the perimeter areas to be annexed. About 500 persons had been called in the survey, with 159 within the city limits favoring the annexation, only five opposing and five being undecided, while in the perimeter area, 63 had favored it, 52 were against it and six were undecided. A total of 129 persons said they were not registered and were not questioned further, while 34 of the people in the city who were registered and 14 of the perimeter residents said that they either would not vote or had not decided whether to vote. Such telephone polls had been successful in the past in predicting results, with some of those results listed.
Julian Scheer of The News reports, in the last of his series of articles on the issue of annexation, that there was an organized drive headed by a man who was pushing hard for the extension, being head of the Chamber of Commerce committee, which had sent out 68,000 pieces of mail and planned to do a telephone campaign all day on Monday. Opposition, which had been strong during the course of the 1957 legislative session when the matter was presented to the General Assembly in the form of a local bill authorizing the vote, had since been scattered and unorganized. There had been a vote in 1947 which overwhelmingly had approved the previous extension of the city limits, with little opposition. If the current annexation measure passed, 30,000 people would be added to the city at the end of 1959, with city services being extended to those areas in 1960. City taxes on individual property owners would also not be assessed until 1960.
You can call the Elections Board office at EDison 3-5289 to address any questions.
On the editorial page, "Let's Not Confuse the Responsibility" indicates that the City of Charlotte had no responsibility to provide water to the suburban area of Thomasboro, the previous water supplier having been a private company which had gone out of business in May, while the County did have the responsibility, having assumed it under an emergency declared by the City-County health officer.
The water needs of the community had to be met and until the County could find a way to shift or share the burden, it would have to carry it. Thomasboro would not become part of the city until the effective date of annexation in 1960, and the health officer had found that connection of City water mains to the present water lines of Thomasboro could pollute the city's supply.
It concludes that if a way could be found for the City to do something for Thomasboro which the County could not do, the City should take reasonable steps to help alleviate the crisis, and in the meantime, the seat of responsibility remained in the courthouse.
"A Jury Box Must Be Filled with Care" comments on reports that a state law had been violated repeatedly in the county by selection of jurors who had already previously served at least one time in the prior calendar year, forbidden under state law, passed in 1938.
It finds that though the law might be an inconvenience to having sufficient numbers of jurors available for service, it had to be obeyed as long as it was on the books. Some attorneys believed that observing it would discourage use of "professional" jurors, those who sat too frequently on cases and thereby formed strong approval or disapproval for particular attorneys. But on the other hand, there was nothing inherently inferior about jurors being called in from the street when there were inadequate numbers of regularly selected jurors to fill the jury box, the so-called "tales" jurors—pronounced in the Latinate form, as "tallies", not "tales".
It concludes that as long as the law had been revealed, it should be studied and in the meantime enforced.
"The Secrecy Bug Bites Everybody" indicates that when the Commission on Government Security had proposed jailing newsmen who published information labeled either secret or top secret, the Congressional reaction had been a mixture of resentment and silence, a reaction it deems proper. It finds that the press was not immune to responsibility but that publishing information harmful to national security had been isolated and not the sort of thing which invited a gag of the type the Commission had proposed.
It finds that such proposed legislation would only encourage greater governmental secrecy and the already indiscriminate use of the "classified" categorization for information. The chairman of the Commission had complained that he could not prove alleged "'betrayal'" of defense secrets because the facts were "'apparently entombed forever, with the final rights of classified burial, in the bureaucratic graveyard of a maze of files.'"
It finds the lack of interest in Congress in that proposal of the Commission to be encouraging, but that it was distressing that Congress had held a third of its committee meetings in executive session, with ten major committees having held more than half of their meetings in private, including 90 percent of the hearings held by the Special Committee to Investigate Political Activities, Lobbying and Campaign Contributions, and 53 percent of the hearings before the House Public Works Committee, leading the piece to wonder what was so secret about lobbying and campaign contributions, and public works, suggesting that Congress could tidy up its own house regarding secrecy.
"King Solomon Couldn't Hold This Job" indicates that despite King Solomon having been the wisest man of the Bible, he would not be allowed to serve on official committees of the City of Singapore, provided the members of the Singapore Council of Women had their way.
They had urged the Singapore Government "not to appoint on any official committees men who maintain harems." They believed that such men held antiquated and outmoded views which did not make them fit to advise the city on modern customs, traditions and laws.
Solomon reputedly had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and so, it suggests, if he were called to Singapore to utter a new proverb, it might be: "Thousand women in harem good. Thousand women in Singapore Council harem-scarum."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Operation Bird-Lift", indicates that the writer was having some trees taken down around the home and that the crew had been removing a hickory standing near the back porch which had grown to the point where its branches extended over the roof such that its falling leaves and nuts were constantly clogging the gutters, though it had been a source of joy and food for the squirrels.
But they had no idea that other wildlife depended on it until one of the workmen called down to the crew, saying that there was a bird's nest in the tree and asked what the owner wanted to do about it. By that point, the tree had already been partially dismembered, but no one in the household and none of the children of the neighborhood wanted to disturb the little vireos in their nest.
The tree-cutter finally came up with the solution, that they would saw off the branch where the nest was located as gently as possible and then tie it, with the nest still in it, to a gum tree a few feet away, to which everyone immediately agreed was the best way to handle it. The transfer was then made without any of the birds being harmed or touched, and the parent birds soon adjusted to the new location, all in a matter of minutes.
Thus, tragedy had been averted and gentleness and compassion had triumphed, to make everyone feel better, even if the squirrels seemed to see what was happening, watching glumly as the branches on which they had recently been cavorting were removed, along with their green hickory nuts.
The things columnists, bored with broader observations of the times, will come up with to fill space...
Drew Pearson indicates that some weeks prior to Soviet Ambassador Charles Bohlen having left Moscow, he had reported deep churning inside the country, which the Ambassador had associated with industry and domestic economy, predicting that because of the inner turmoil, there was no danger of war with Russia for many years into the future. In another report, he had expressed the conviction that the Russian people had become so enamored of peace that it would take intensive propaganda for their leaders in the Kremlin to convert them to an acceptance of war, and also said that the leaders in the Kremlin were convinced that modern warfare would be so suicidal to both sides that no one would win, and that therefore the future of Russia lay in a peaceful, though vigorous, struggle to control the minds of men.
Those reports had already been used by Harold Stassen as a guidepost for his arms limitation talks in London, and had been one reason that Mr. Stassen had believed that the Russians were actually ready for an arms agreement. The reports of Mr. Bohlen were now being reviewed further following the crisis in the Kremlin of the prior week, with the conclusions being that there was deep trouble inside Russia, that the people as well as the satellite countries had to be given the alternative of more freedom or strict Stalinist-type suppression, and that those who believed in providing more freedom to the people had won.
Congressman John Rhodes of Arizona had run afoul of an unwritten rule of the House, whereby members refrained from criticizing the pork-barrel projects of fellow members, especially when they were from different states. Mr. Rhodes had taken the unusual step of writing a circular letter to members of the Interior Committee, asking them to vote against a 32.2 million dollar irrigation project in the district of Representative O. C. Fisher of Texas, calling the latter's bill a "thinly disguised municipal water project" for the city of San Angelo, claiming that it was not a proper assignment for the Bureau of Reclamation. That had upset Mr. Fisher, such that he did some quiet checking and wrote that, "An examination reveals that Mr. Rhodes' allegations are largely a rehash of testimony given by the sole witness who has ever expressed any opposition to our project—a Mr. Calvin McGowan, whose brother is Mr. Rhodes' secretary. The McGowan opposition was based upon the fact that some of the land which will be taken for the lake site is owned by the McGowan family." (Congressman Rhodes, having become by August, 1974 House Minority Leader, succeeding Congressman Gerald Ford in late 1973—just as we were trudging up the hill on Hillsborough Street to campus in a foot of snow one cold December morning to take our exam under Professor Sitterson on New Deal and subsequent U.S. history—when the latter was appointed by President Nixon to be Vice-President, thereafter confirmed by the Senate, to succeed resigned Vice-President Spiro Agnew, would again be involved with a water issue, being among the small group of Republican leaders, including Senator Barry Goldwater of his arid state, who would visit the White House and advise President Nixon that he had no chance of surviving certain imminently ensuing impeachment by the House and the following trial in the Senate on the article of impeachment just recommended by the House Judiciary Committee regarding obstruction of justice, thus leading to the President's resignation days later on August 9.)
U.S. diplomats had been harmed so frequently by the investigations of the late Senator McCarthy or by the changeable Kremlin that they were extremely hesitant about expressing public optimism regarding future relations with Russia. But if the current Kremlin situation stemmed from a stirring of the Russian people, it could be a major opportunity for the U.S. to obtain closer friendship with the people. Mr. Pearson indicates that he had frequently emphasized, as had the President at the Geneva summit conference of July, 1955, that the best guarantee against war was friendship among people. For years, the U.S. had not worried about war with England, France or Canada for the reason that the American people had too much common sense and friendship to make war against them, and that the people of those countries understood one another. But with different systems and language, plus the intervening Iron Curtain, friendship with the Russian people was difficult.
Walter Lippmann tells of the Kremlin purge of V. M. Molotov and five other high Soviet officials having been made public in two stages, in the first of which there had been an official communique which charged the men with opposing the reforms adopted since the death of Joseph Stalin in March, 1953, and in the second, that they were charged with capital crimes subjecting them to trial and execution.
Mr. Lippmann suggests that the Soviet Union had apparently not reached the point in its political development where it could adopt a new policy without destroying the men who stood for the old policy, a point which had been reached in Western Europe at around the end of the 17th Century. He suggests that the Soviet Union belonged to the 20th Century in terms of technological development but was backward by around 300 years in its constitutional practices.
He finds the official explanation of the purge to be plausible if read in the framework of the primitive political theory wherein a disagreement on important matters could be solved only when the losing faction had been destroyed. It was a recent and advanced idea that there could be and ought to be such a thing as the loyal opposition. At the level of policy, Nikita Khrushchev's complaint against Mr. Molotov was that he had become a narrow-minded and cantankerous old fogey who had made himself the leader of a faction in a state where factionalism was considered a crime and treason against Leninism and the laws of the revolution. Mr. Molotov, according to the official communiqué, had been "'at variance with the party line'", meaning not merely that he had voted against it but that he had been conspiring against the party, had "'failed to see the new conditions, the new situation'" which had existed since the death of Stalin. He had taken a "'conservative attitude'", clinging to "'obsolete forms and methods of work that are no longer in keeping with the interests of the advance toward Communism.'"
In domestic affairs, he had opposed the policy of appeasement of national feelings of the constituent republics, had opposed the decentralization of the industrial machine, opposed offering the peasants greater economic rewards and opposed the agrarian policy which sought to increase production of milk, butter and eggs. In foreign policy, he had "'showed narrow-mindedness and hampered in every way'" measures "'to erase international tensions.'" He opposed the Austrian Treaty, the "'normalization'" of relations with Japan, the improved relations with Marshal Tito, and the goodwill missions of Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev to foreign countries.
The size and speed of the purge indicated that opposition to Mr. Khrushchev had been formidable and that for some time to come, his new policies would prevail, that he would attempt to govern the Soviet Union with sufficient leniency and favor to win the passive assent of the people, though not with their active consent. In a speech the prior Saturday at Leningrad, he indicated that he believed he could do so by "'catching up with the United States of America'"—not in its constitutional development but—"'in industrial production per capita of population'" and "'in the production of meat, milk and butter.'" He would attempt to consolidate what he called the Communist camp, those countries extending from North Korea, China and North Vietnam on the Pacific to East Germany and the Iron Curtain countries in Eastern Europe, turning away from Stalinism in those countries and regarding it as an empire with its capital in Moscow. He would turn toward a type of federated association of national Communist states, with the Soviet Union at its head.
Mr. Lippmann ventures that in terms of U.S. foreign relations with Russia, the reforms of Mr. Khrushchev should be considered aimed at stabilization within the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit, as Mr. Khrushchev believed that Stalinism would have made the Communist world unmanageable, leading to the type of internal convulsion which, it appeared, was that for which Secretary of State Dulles had been hoping and waiting.
Doris Fleeson indicates that there had been a charge made by highly respected Southerners that Attorney General Herbert Brownell had engaged in deliberate deception in dealing with the pending civil rights legislation, which he had authored. The President had admitted his distress over what the Southerners had claimed was in the bill, indicating that he did not understand some of the phrases. But what he did not realize, says Ms. Fleeson, was that he could not afford to let any impression obtain that his Attorney General was attempting any subterfuge with respect to that inflammatory issue. The President had failed to defend Mr. Brownell strongly against any such charge and still had not done so.
Thus, the opening stages of the debate on the bill had placed Mr. Brownell on the defensive, and he did not have the standing and popularity in the Senate which would enable him to rally defenders to his side. Instead, the Senators were not impressed with his legal attainments and many resented what they regarded as the political conduct of his office. Mr. Brownell had paid heavily for his early attack on the loyalty of former President Truman.
She indicates that it was difficult for a layperson to judge the merits of the Southern indictment against Mr. Brownell, as was being developed by Senators Richard Russell of Georgia, Sam Ervin of North Carolina and others, with the record indicating that Mr. Brownell had stressed only the "right to vote" aspects of the bill and had turned aside Senator Ervin's attempts to obtain from him a firm commitment regarding its effect on related issues such as school segregation.
The Southerners had chosen the ground for their fight in the Senate where there was unlimited debate and which contained the South's best orators, lawyers and parliamentarians. That of which the Southerners complained had been scarcely mentioned in the House.
She indicates that it was not necessarily proof of any malicious intent for the bill to refer to Reconstruction statutes, as it did.
The South enjoyed enormous advantages in any civil rights fight, having genuine convictions and able, respected and well-liked men to fight for those beliefs. The body had made an art of the tyranny of the numerically weak and it could be expected to find, seize and exploit any weakness of the other side, any disingenuousness, any failure to defend ground or any opening which might occur.
Republicans had begun with the votes to pass the bill and had liberal Northern Democrats in their corner, but other Senators could be swayed and she concludes that the situation was ready-made for the doubters and the hesitant.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that Congress had produced a bill designed to make it easier to purchase a house by lowering minimum down payments and contributing Federal money to the tight mortgage money market. If one's bank was willing to accept the new minimum down payment required by the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA would take the risk out of lending by promising the bank to pay for the mortgage if the borrower defaulted, and in exchange for that insurance, the FHA would make certain demands on the bank, including establishment of the amount of the minimum down payment.
The old minimum down payment for an FHA-insured loan had been 5 percent of the first $9,000 of the appraised value of the home and 25 percent of the remainder, whereas the new minimum would be 3 percent of the first $10,000, 15 percent of the next $6,000 and 30 percent of the remainder, such that the new minimum down payment on an $18,000 home would be $1,800 instead of $2,700, with the highest mortgage which the FHA would insure being $20,000.
In some areas, builders had constructed FHA-approved houses selling for less than $10,000, and the minimum down payment on those homes, usually in the suburbs, would now be 3 percent instead of 5 percent of the appraised value, with the maximum mortgage which the FHA would insure being $8,000 under the new measure, compared to $6,650 previously for such homes.
It indicates that the bill might increase the chance of getting a home mortgage in the present tight money market, as the banker might have an easier time selling an FHA and G.I. mortgage to the Government for cash, with the result that the bank would have more money to lend. The new legislation would enable the Government's mortgage trader, the Federal National Mortgage Association, to buy an additional 650 million dollars worth of FHA and G.I. mortgages from the banks.
The maximum construction costs for public housing had been raised in the bill from $1,750 to $2,000 per room for regular units and from $2,250 to $2,500 per room for units built specifically for the elderly.
There was more Federal money available for slum clearance, with the bill adding another 350 million dollars to the nearly exhausted 900 million dollar fund for slum clearance and urban renewal. Each state's maximum portion of the Federal slum clearance fund would be raised from 10 percent to 12.5 percent of the total money available. The bill would also provide cities with a choice of having the Government pay either two-thirds or three-fourths of the slum clearance project, with the three-fourths formula disallowing some expenses which the two-thirds formula included. The Federal slum clearance money was a grant and did not have to be repaid.
Additional Federal funding for the elderly, veterans and families of moderate income persons had been in the Senate version of the bill, pushed by Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, chairman of the Banking & Currency Committee, but had been eliminated in a joint conference on the legislation.
The perennial controversy regarding how many public housing units ought be authorized by the Government had been sidestepped in the current year, whereas the 1956 housing bill had provided for 35,000 units per year for two years, so that the pace was unchanged by the new legislation.
A letter writer provides a copy of a letter he had sent to Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, in which he expresses his dismay that the Senator had sponsored the civil rights bill, which the writer regards as "obviously sectional, so anti-Constitutional, so vindictive and so punitive to the South." He regards it as based on the false premise that one race was generally denied the right to vote, indicates that he had been active on behalf of good government in Mecklenburg County for many years and assures that the citizens of the county were urged to vote by secret ballot at every election, that their problem was general apathy toward any voting. He finds that the civil law ideology was Roman in origin, and that in ancient Rome they had never known of trial by jury, that it had developed out of English common law before becoming part of the Bill of Rights, in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments, in criminal and civil trials, respectively, coupled, in the criminal context, with the presumption of innocence. He indicates that without the right to trial by jury, the law would return to the era of the Roman Empire.
The writer refers to the 1957 civil rights bill providing for the Government's ability to seek from a Federal judge a contempt citation for anyone found to violate the measure, which sought to protect primarily the right to vote in Federal elections, that is for President, Vice-President and for the Senate and House. The Southerners in Congress had failed to obtain an amendment to the bill assuring a jury trial in all such contempt cases. The writer does not seem to realize, however, a confusion probably engendered by a confused press on the topic, that contempt is a separate specie of justice, arising in both civil and criminal contexts, with civil contempt, subjecting a person to fines but not incarceration, thus not falling within the ambit of the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial because of no restriction thus potentially inhering on "liberty" under the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the jury trial only being available in the criminal context when a liberty interest is at stake. The civil rights bill merely was codifying with respect to interference with voting rights that which could be performed by any Federal judge through issuance of an order, as in the ongoing Knoxville case of the 16 defendants accused of violating a court order by interfering with school desegregation, and the jury trial would still be mandated under circumstances where a liberty interest was at stake and the defendant subjected to potential incarceration after conviction.
As finally enacted the following September, the Act would make that distinction in its Parts IV and V, in the former providing for civil contempt remedies and in the latter, regarding more serious criminal contempt, providing, at the court's discretion, for trial by jury or not when there was a criminal contempt exposing the defendant to incarceration, and allowing the defendant, when the court would determine without a jury that the sentence should exceed 45 days, to have a new trial with a jury. The fact that incarceration for up to 45 days could be imposed at a judge's discretion under the Act without according a jury trial, had been the result of compromise in Congress to obtain agreement on the bill, and that provision could still be challenged for its constitutionality on appeal of any such conviction obtained without a jury, likely therefore as a bottom line, leading judges under such circumstances when criminal contempt was at issue, to avoid reversal, to accord a jury trial right when requested by a defendant, thus also exposing the defendant to the potential for longer incarceration, up to six months imprisonment instead of only 45 days, after conviction.
The Act also distinguishes between direct contempt, that occurring in the presence of the court, and indirect contempt, acts outside the court's presence, the Act making it clear that it did not intend to affect the traditional province of the courts in punishing by fine or incarceration direct contempt, not generally entitled to trial by jury for its immediacy, to enable maintenance of order in the courtroom.
To allay the fears of the letter writer, that tradition, too, had come from Anglo-Saxon law, not forgetting that ancient Britain had been under Roman rule during the time of the Roman Empire, and so...
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