The Charlotte News
Wednesday, July 3, 1957
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had said at his press conference this date that he would invite all other nations to make on-the-spot checks of radioactive fallout at any future U.S. atomic weapons tests. He repeated that American scientists were convinced that, in another four or five years, they could produce an absolutely clean hydrogen bomb and also reiterated that the U.S. stood by its offer to suspend nuclear weapons testing temporarily in an effort to reach an agreement on disarmament. He said that the country would go through with such an offer to Russia even though it might mean the loss of some scientific advantage in terms of peaceful usage of atomic power gained from continued testing. He also stated that the U.S. was ready to grant what he termed to be considerably more uranium-235 to friendly nations for use in peaceful applications of nuclear energy. Addressing civil rights, the President said that it was incomprehensible to him how anyone could regard his civil rights program as extreme, commenting on an argument made by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who had told the Senate the previous day that the measure would herald a return to post-Civil War reconstruction days. The President also said that he doubted that the civil rights program would make a very good subject for referendum, even if there could be one. Senator Russell had proposed that the program be put to a general referendum vote if it did pass Congress. The President said that the Constitution contemplated that Federal officials are responsible for legislation, rather than the general public.
The Senate Rules Committee approved this date a "clean elections" bill which would require public disclosure of virtually all campaign contributions and spending in elections to Federal office.
In Washington, a Federal District Court judge denied this date the defense motion for a mistrial in the bribery conspiracy trial of Midwest Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, accused of conspiring to bribe a staff member of the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence in unions and management, seeking to obtain advance information on the investigation.
In Washington, the D.C. Court of Appeals told the State Department this date that it must reconsider its denial of a passport to Donald Ogden Stewart, author and playwright.
In Orleans, France, U.S. Army officials said this date that they were seeking custody of a specialist 3rd class from New York, presently held by French civilian officials on a charge of killing an Algerian in Paris regarding payment for American cigarettes.
In Cameron, La., Arthur Everett of the Associated Press reports further of Hurricane Audrey of the prior Thursday, indicating that the residents of the sparsely settled bayou and marsh country were descendants of French Acadians banished from Canada in 1755 to a deceptively pleasant area of Louisiana, where they lived out their lives "amid a wild vastness more suited to birds and beasts than to humans." They still clung to the old customs. French, or a patois thereof, remained as the common tongue. They had heard the winds of the hurricane the previous Wednesday night, but treated it as just another phase of rugged marshland life, and many had ignored it. Audrey, the first hurricane of the season, had been premature, developing on June 24 near the juncture of Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, with the Weather Bureau having called it about average in size among the 50 Gulf hurricanes of the previous 57 years. But not since 1934 had a hurricane arrived so early in the year. A hurricane watch was issued by the Weather Bureau for the Texas and Louisiana coastal areas on Tuesday morning, and 48 hours later, the hurricane had hit Cameron almost head-on, packing 105 mph winds and a 20-foot tidal wave. After the impact on the village, there had been silence. Most of the area was below sea level. As 20,000 refugees streamed toward Lake Charles 30 miles north of the coast, an ominous sign had gone unnoticed, that few of the refugees were from Cameron, although it had been assumed that its 3,000 population had fled like others in advance of the storm. A Coast Guard plane had flown over Cameron shortly before nightfall on Thursday and the pilot noted widespread destruction and said that the town was under water. On Friday, a deputy sheriff reached Lake Charles with the report that Cameron's citizens had not fled the storm and that many had elected to ride it out, estimating that the possible death toll would be in the thousands. As helicopters and surface craft converged on Cameron, the tentative death toll rapidly rose above 100, with present estimates now being about 500.
In Tehran, rescue workers had come across the bodies of 400 victims in two earthquake-devastated villages in northern Iran this date, bringing the overall death toll to 750, with more than 3,000 persons missing. Property losses were huge from the quakes, ranging over a 500-mile arc extending to the Soviet border. They had spread death and destruction over the Elburz mountain range, along the Caspian Sea's southern edge and up to the Soviet border on both sides of the sea. Iranian officials estimated property loss at more than 12.5 million dollars and estimated that 1,500 persons had been seriously injured, with more than 100 villages wiped out and nearly 50 more partly damaged. The Shah, vacationing in Switzerland, ordered large-scale relief operations for the stricken area, estimated to cover 50,000 square miles. No fresh tremors had been reported this date, but the frightened populace had slept in the streets and fields the previous night. A quake lasting more than two minutes had flattened a string of popular resort villages ringing the base of the 18,600-foot Mt. Demavend, 35 miles east of Tehran, which had apparently felt the brunt of the shocks. There was no word of what had occurred on the Soviet side of the border. The Soviet Union's large Baku oil production center was on the western side of the Caspian Sea.
In Algiers, four Arabs had been executed in a prison this date for the slaying of three European boys the previous year, the boys having disappeared on May 3, 1956 while on a bicycle ride, and their mutilated bodies having been discovered in a mountain cave.
In Kansas City, a woman sobbed as she looked down at the body of her young husband who had been shot to death by his 75-year old landlord, stating that it had all been about some "old dishes". The landlord admitted that he shot the man three times with a pistol, telling police that he was disturbed because he noticed that little things had been missing from an apartment which the couple had occupied in his home, specifically noting a carving knife, a fork, a cup and a saucer. The 23-year old victim, an airman stationed at a nearby air base, had been shot as he and another airman, also 23, had been moving a refrigerator from the apartment. Police said that after the shooting, the landlord had walked back inside the house, sat down at a table and finished eating his dinner, where he still was when arrested. The couple had moved into the house on June 8, after the airman had recently returned from overseas duty, with part of the rental agreement being that they would feed the elderly landlord. The wife said that they could not afford it and had said that they would move out, and the landlord had told them that they had until midnight on July 2. The two airmen had loaded all of the household goods into a rented trailer except the refrigerator. The landlord, according to the wife, said that they could not take their own refrigerator until the dishes were found. She did not know what dishes he was talking about, "just some little old cheap dishes". Her husband had told him that they had paid their hard-earned money for the refrigerator and that they were going to take it. The landlord was currently being held without formal charge.
In Casper, Wyo., it was reported that a 10-year old boy, who had wandered away from a picnic atop 8,300-foot Casper Mountain the previous day, had found his way to a ranch at the bottom of the peak this date, 25 miles from the location where he had first become lost. He was described as exhausted but apparently in good shape, staggering into the ranch early this date.
In Salisbury, N.C., the body of a 25-year old man from Spencer, father of five children, had been recovered at around dawn this date from the Davidson County side of the Yadkin River. The man had left home on Monday morning to check fish baskets, but had failed to return.
Dick Young of The News reports that the Park Board's surplus could have sneaked up on the City Council just as easily in the current year as it had in the last, when about the same time the previous year, the Council had become greatly disturbed by the discovery of a surplus of more than $200,000, at which time a motion had been adopted to require the Park Board to submit a financial statement every three months. The Board had done so each quarter since, but when City Manager Henry Yancey was asked whether he had seen any of the reports during the previous year, he laughed and said that he had not. Neither had any of the members of the Council, according to Mr. Yancey. He said that financial statements did not create much interest and that he had not said anything about the reports and no member of the Council had asked about them. He said that the reports had been a guide to him and to the municipal accountant on how the Park Board's operations were coming along.
In Jackson, Mich., a report appearing in the Spectator, the Southern Michigan prison newspaper, written under the fictitious name John Temclo, tells, from the first-hand perspective of a man serving between seven and ten years for manslaughter, what it was like as he recalled the night when he had been driving and five of his friends had been killed in his car. He referred to it as a nightmarish ordeal that he relived every night, trying to break the habit, even going to the prison mental health clinic, but still waking up with visions of "five young faces that share the ride", haunting him. It had been three years since the accident but he was still their driver. He indicates that his prison sentence was not the real punishment for his "murderous, drunken drive that never ends. My prematurely white hair is only an outward sign. My limp and stiff leg doesn't bother me at all compared with the realization that I turned highway M12 into a concrete murder strip for five friends and neighbors." He quotes the judge as having said that a drunken driver was as dangerous to society as a drunken gunman. At first, he could not understand why motor manslaughter called for a long prison term, but now, after three years in prison, he could appreciate the judge's reasoning. He could not bring back the five people killed but could prevent the driver from causing other fatal traffic accidents. "Too many drinks at a party and too many passengers in my seven-year-old, souped-up jalopy were things I took with me on that ride three years ago." He says that the white lines had seemed to zigzag, as "reflected dancing moons on the white pavement gave a feeling of exhilaration, rather than of danger. A pair of oncoming headlights seemed just like two offset moons. There isn't any pain when two speeding cars crash head-on. The pain comes after for the survivors in horrible memories that won't go away. There isn't any noise for the people in the cars. They're unable to hear. And there isn't any more fun for them. Dead and injured don't have fun." He said that the news of what had occurred had come to him second-hand. After an all-night party, the six of them had piled into the car and headed for a highway drive-in restaurant for breakfast. "Goofed up with booze and benzedrine, I wheeled the old car with the confidence of a drunk kept awake by 'Benney'." The state troopers had told him that he had driven his jalopy head-on into an oncoming transport truck, after the truck driver had done his best to get out of his way. "The real punishment is the haunting memory of the gay ride turned a death ride. I can serve my prison sentence. I cannot bring back my friends." He says that he agreed to tell his story to the Spectator with the hope of keeping other drivers on the highways rather than in prison cells or in coffins. "Our highways are for service and pleasure. But a fleeting moment of carelessness of whatever kind can make them pathways to the grave—or to prison, where moonbeams dancing through steel bars onto a concrete floor may remind one of five happy, laughing friends and moons glistening on wet pavement just before another dawn."
On the editorial page, "Exiled Archbishop Vows To Continue Fight for Independence of Cyprus", a by-lined piece by News editor Cecil Prince, writing from Athens, indicates that the plight of Cyprus was a plague of the spirits in Greece, "invisible at first but as unmistakable as death." Only after a visit with Archbishop Makarios III, exiled leader of the rebellious Cypriots, could the depth of passion be accurately gauged.
They had been told at first that the Archbishop lived in a secret hideaway near Athens and that its location could not be revealed, especially to foreigners. But that turned out not to be exactly true, as his place of residence was well known in Athens, about 100 yards from the Soviet Ambassador's home, where the Archbishop was as safe among the Greek mainlanders as he would be on a street in Charlotte.
Nevertheless, an audience with the Archbishop had been secured only after some insistent representations to an influential Greek Government official, and when the arrangements were finally completed, the official had to accompany them, giving the taxi driver the street address. After they reached the villa, guarded by two Greek soldiers at a sentry box, they later learned that it was actually the house of the Archbishop's sister, and after his release by the British from confinement on one of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, it had served as his temporary home.
"Meeting Makarios is something of a shock. In the face of a man so frequently described as a terrorist chieftain and rebel leader, one naturally expects to find a certain ferocity of expressions and manner. There is no ferocity. Instead, there is a gentleness and a kindliness of attitude that might even be described as saccharine if it were not for his thoroughly disarming sense of humor."
He spoke passable English but preferred to speak through a Greek interpreter. His answers to questions were direct and precise, usually accompanied by a smile. He said that at the moment he was most concerned with the "terrible and inhuman tortures as suffered by hundreds of Cypriots" at the hands of the British in their effort to suppress the independence movement. He contended that British methods were encouraging the growth of communism on Cyprus, that the British had sought the aid of the Communists and had released Communist prisoners from their concentration camps, had approached local Communist leaders for support of the new constitution the British had offered, hoping that the people would become divided. The proposed new constitution, drafted by the British in lieu of immediate self-determination, had been described by the Archbishop as "5 percent privileges and 95 percent obligations."
He said that he was certain that if the question of self-determination would be settled satisfactorily, a profitable and beneficial solution to the question of bases for the West would be found, as they were of the West and just as interested in the security of the West as the U.S. Meanwhile, he was pressing for a British Parliamentary inquiry into alleged atrocities committed by the island's security forces, and would confer with Greek officials during the summer about taking the Cyprus question to the U.N.
When asked whether he had a political party, he said he had none, that he had the people. Mr. Prince finds that to be a fact, as to at least the Greeks on the island, who comprised 82 percent of the population.
The Archbishop was the head of the church in Cyprus but was not an ordinary churchman in the traditional Western sense, as he was an Ethnarch, or national leader, elected to the dual post in 1950, at the age of 37, by the clergy and the laity of Cyprus. All Greek Orthodox males who had reached the age of 21 took part in the elective process by naming their local representatives who then selected 44 laymen and 22 parish priests as electors. Those, together with 12 ecclesiastical dignitaries, elected the Archbishop. In his seven years as leader of the Greek Cypriots, he had become the acknowledged champion of democratic rights and national aspirations of his people.
In 1956, he had been arrested in Nicosia and forcibly deported to the island of Mahe. The British had released him about three months earlier but had decreed that he could not return to Cyprus.
The Archbishop had not given up, saying that they would carry on their struggle to the end, "passively resisting foreign rule in the island; we shall vindicate our rights in the United Nations, where the issue will shortly be raised by Greek Cypriots, and we shall do everything possible to achieve national freedom."
The U.S. Government had disappointed him but not the American people, whom he said he knew to be liberal and democratic and hoped they would make their feelings known. He had once studied at Boston University under a scholarship from the World Council of Churches and insisted that he retained a deep faith in the "American sense of righteousness". He had smiled broadly as he said that, with Mr. Prince finding it not to be a smile of humor but of gentleness and hope.
"Greensboro Is Ready for an Elephant" tells of Greensboro having the largest land area of any city in the two Carolinas, being a quarter the size of Chicago, with that fact having been duly recorded by the Greensboro Daily News, not in the least daunted by the suggestion of one citizen that Greensboro might also be the largest unexplored corporate entity in the world.
It indicates that the latter observation was not true but, in consideration of the size of its area, it was only fitting that Greensboro be designated as North Carolina's newest state park. In time, it suggests, Charlotte's famous escaped elephant, Vicki, might consent to a chase through the area, establishing Greensboro as a true metropolis.
It suggests that Charlotte might also contribute its ensuing fiscal year budget, a street being reconstructed, a traffic jam, a creek being deodorized, and a modicum of smog. "And all Charlotte would ask in return would be one bona fide, indisputable, indubitable, never-to-be-forsaken real-McCoy type of health center site."
Drew Pearson indicates that the increase in the price of steel would not be the only one to help increase the cost of living during the current summer, as it would be followed by a chain reaction of price increases, further decreasing the buying power of the white-collar worker, the farmer, the school teacher, the elderly living on pensions and anyone with a fixed or low income. Aluminum manufacturers were expected to ask a penny per pound more on August 1 because of a 15-cent per hour wage increase. The meat and glass industries would increase prices. The price of men's flannels would go up by three cents per pound, with ammonia increasing by eight dollars per ton and the leading television manufacturers seeking $20 more per set. There had already been a great deal of concern about inflation, but Mr. Pearson warns that the worst was yet to come, with the increase in the cost of steel not to be felt in the economy until the following January, when the politicians would attempt to fulfill the long-awaited promise of a cut in taxes, which, while no one would admit it, would not take place. The reason was that the increased price of steel, together with other spiraling prices, would add four billion dollars to the budget, absorbing most of the surplus on which both political parties had based their promises of a tax cut.
The largest part of the budget was for military hardware, including battleships, submarines, tanks, armored cars, trucks and guns, and with prices still going up, so would the price of that hardware. In addition to the extra four billion for the hardware, an additional billion would come from the higher interest rates. Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey and Undersecretary Randolph Burgess had increased the interest rate on Government bonds to the highest point since the Depression, with the result that interest on the national debt was also at an all-time high.
On two occasions, the President had appealed to business and labor to hold down prices and wages, and each time he had been promptly rebuffed by big business leaders who had done so much to elect him. They had done so just before and after February 6, when the President had publicly encouraged business and labor to "discharge their authority in conformity with the needs of the United States", indicating he was not merely asking them to be altruistic but rather reminding that their long-term good was involved and that he was asking them "to act as enlightened Americans." He said that if they did not, then the country would have to move more firmly with some kind of controls on the economy. But the businessmen had laughed at that advice because the following day, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, himself a big businessman, had stated at his press conference that the Administration was not considering any wage and price controls. The President had warned business and labor that unless they held down inflation "the United States has to move in more firmly with so-called controls." He had done so for the obvious purpose of trying to get business to stop inflation, but the man in charge of his business policy had then promptly cut the ground from under him.
Stewart Alsop tells of the President only a few weeks earlier having seemed to become an early lame duck, no longer in control of his party or his situation, whereas, now, while he would not get everything he wanted during the present session of Congress, he had considerably improved his position through what was being called in Congress "operation butter-up", whereby the President had ameliorated considerably the negative feelings among conservative Republicans by including them in his White House breakfasts, while also having taken his program directly to the people.
Conservative Republicans had realized that they no longer needed the Southern Democrats to form a coalition against Roosevelt and Truman Administration legislation. The Administration had also engaged in a campaign to win the minority vote back for the Republicans, making civil rights a key party issue. That part of the operation had also been as carefully planned as "operation butter-up", including the President posing with the friends of his black valet. Intense White House pressure had resulted in a party-line House vote to defeat the jury trial amendment to the civil rights measure, and a collaboration between Vice-President Nixon and Senate Minority Leader William Knowland had assured that the civil rights measure would reach the Senate floor for a vote and not continue to be bottled up in the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator James Eastland of Mississippi.
Even the most conservative among the Republicans were jubilant at that prospect, with one of them indicating that the defeat of the jury trial amendment had been the most politically significant vote of the current Congress. It meant that if the bill were defeated by a Senate filibuster, the Democrats would likely be blamed for the defeat, while the Republicans, if it succeeded, would obtain the credit.
The Republicans had been able for years to split the Democrats on the issue of civil rights, but until the current year, they had held back for fear of breaking the old conservative coalition with the Southerners. But now that it was understood that the coalition was no longer necessary to prevent "radical experiments", the Republicans in the House had, in their own words, "got smart". They had also become smart in other ways, notably regarding farm legislation, where Northern Democrats were badly split from the agrarian Southerners.
As a result, the Republicans suddenly felt a lot happier about their political prospects for the midterm elections in 1958, explaining in part why "operation butter-up" had been so successful, but the certain turn for the better in the President's position on party leadership and in the prospects for his program also suggested how great the power of the Presidency was when the President decided to exert it. Mr. Alsop concludes that the President was clearly on top of the situation again, as he had not been only a few weeks earlier.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the Budget Bureau was once again the instrument by which White House chief of staff Sherman Adams was making the power policy of the Government. The initial stab at public power by Mr. Adams had come in the form of the Dixon-Yates power contract for the Tennessee Valley Authority, with a Senate investigation having shown that it originated in the White House with Mr. Adams and the Budget Bureau. Later, the President had canceled the contract because of a conflict of interest between Adolph Wenzell, a New York investment broker who was a Budget Bureau consultant on power.
Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, an Eisenhower Republican, had tried hard during that struggle to explain to the President that which TVA supporters felt was involved in the behind-the-scenes operation of Dixon-Yates. He had failed, and the ensuing year he failed also in his re-election bid, in part based on the power issue. But in 1956, Mr. Cooper had again been elected to the Senate, together with another Eisenhower Republican from Kentucky, Thruston Morton. That had partly occurred from a Democratic factional fight, but their success was hailed nevertheless as a major breakthrough for modern Republicanism in the South.
During his time out of the Senate, Mr. Cooper had served as Ambassador to India and Mr. Morton had done a good job as Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional relations.
The current year was crucial for TVA, a great public power project and a world symbol of reclaimed land and lives in impoverished river valleys everywhere. A vacancy on the three-man TVA commission had occurred the previous month, giving the President his second appointee and effective control for the Administration's point of view. The previous Wednesday, Senator Cooper had gone to the White House to press for his and Senator Morton's choice for the commission, Representative Howard Baker of Tennessee, who served a Congressional district in the TVA area. But the President explained that he had decided against appointing any member of Congress to the commission and referred Senator Cooper to Mr. Adams, who said that they were "still looking", mentioning Arnold Jones of Kansas, deputy director of the Budget.
On Friday morning, Senator Morton had received a call from the White House indicating that Mr. Jones had received the appointment. Senator Morton knew Mr. Jones but had no knowledge of his TVA views or his experience with power projects, and protested that he needed to know how Mr. Jones felt. Mr. Jones then called on him to discuss it, and the appointment had gone to the Senate. Senator Cooper had heard about it from reporters and said that his opinion had not been consulted, that he had never met Mr. Jones and did not know his views.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that it was unusual treatment by the White House of Senators belonging to the President's own party, and was extraordinary when it related to friends and supporters of the President. It appeared that Mr. Adams was relying on the fact that the Kentucky Senators were personal friends of the President and gentlemen, who would abide such cavalier treatment.
Mr. Jones admitted that TVA was something new to him but otherwise refused comment. Sources in Kansas, who had known him as budget director for conservative Republican Governor Ed Arn, believed Mr. Adams had known what he was doing from his own point of view.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, finds that home looked good to the wanderer and it had not changed much. "Rain did not afflict the plain in Spain and the unseemly sun burnt up the grass. And then came the cloudbursts and drowned all the flowers. High winds, just like in Texas, blew down some of the trees. Cristina, the cook, has a cold, as usual—a cold which I shall certainly catch, as usual." His female boxer had bitten her brother so severely and frequently that they had to find a new home for her.
And he goes on in that vein.
The neighbors were still the same, with Salvador Dali still in his rhinoceros period of painting, and Artie Shaw having nearly finished his castle on his mountain while threatening his eighth attempt at matrimony.
"Yep, it's good to be home, even if the pipes did bust again. As usual."
Framed Edition
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