The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 6, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev this date had publicly denounced three ousted Kremlin leaders as "cunning" plotters who had planned to seize control of the Soviet Communist Party and the Government. He had further accused former Premier Georgi Malenkov, former Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov and former deputy premier Lazar Kaganovich of opposing all Government measures "for easing world tension and strengthening peace throughout the world." He said of the fourth in the deposed anti-party group, Dimitri Shepilov, that he was "the most shameless double-dealing individual." He made the accusations during a speech in Leningrad, the first time he had publicly condemned the ousted men since they had been expelled from the party and Government posts earlier in the week. London monitors who had heard a report of the speech broadcast by Moscow Radio had initially reported that Mr. Khrushchev had singled out Mr. Malenkov as "the worst" of the group, but later, the monitors said that he had not made such a statement, that they had misheard what he said, catching the mistake during the replay of a recorded version for translation.
In West Berlin, it was reported that 5,000 university students had staged a silent demonstration this date against the scheduled cut in their subsidies, marching under a hot sun and squatting in the street before a Berlin office of the West German Federal Government. There had been no violent incidents.
In Seoul, South Korea, a U.S. soldier guarding a pipeline post in Inchon had accidentally shot and killed a three-year old Korean boy this date, according to the Army, and a board of officers had been assigned to investigate the matter.
In Imari, Japan, a landslide had rolled over 17 houses this date, with two bodies having been recovered and ten persons still missing, after heavy rains had loosened a section of a hill looming over the houses. Residents of eight of the homes had anticipated the landslide and fled.
In Taipeh, Formosa, it was reported that Chinese Communist forces on Amoy had fired 26 shells at Little Quemoy this date, without causing damage or any casualties, according to the Chinese Nationalist Defense Ministry. The report did not mention whether Nationalist forces had retaliated.
The National Safety Council said that death during the 102-hour holiday period had been "encouragingly low" thus far and "well below" the Council's estimate that 535 persons would die in accidents during the holiday, with thus far at least 242 traffic deaths having been recorded, another 133 having drowned and 56 having died in miscellaneous accidents, the overall total thus being 431. The holiday period would end at midnight on Sunday. The Council said that the traffic deaths were running on a level on par with a non-holiday period of the same duration and complimented drivers and law enforcement officers for doing a "good job". The Associated Press had recorded during a 102-hour test period 378 deaths on the highway, plus 146 drownings and 110 miscellaneous deaths between 6:00 p.m. June 19 and June 23 at midnight. Thus far, Texas and Pennsylvania had recorded the most traffic deaths, with 18 each, and 29 and 24 overall, respectively, followed by New York and Ohio, each with 16 traffic fatalities, New York having the second most overall with 27, followed by California and Michigan, tied with 14 deaths each from traffic accidents, with California tied for third with 24 overall deaths, followed by Ohio with 22 and then Michigan with 21. North Carolina had suffered seven traffic deaths and ten overall. Louisiana, with one traffic death, had 12 drownings, the most yet in the nation in that category, plus two miscellaneous accident deaths. Do not go swimming in the Louisiana bayous, as the gators may get you.
In Copemish, Mich., seven members of one family had been killed and an eighth was critically injured in a crash between a car and a truck the previous day, the worst July 4 holiday accident reported anywhere in the nation thus far.
In Edenton, N.C., searchers early this date had recovered the bodies of the conductor and engineer of a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train, killed when it crashed through a trestle into the Albemarle Sound the previous day, after three other crewmen had been rescued in the early morning hours after the accident. A sixth crewman, a signalman riding in a rear car, had been uninjured. The northbound train, pulling 77 cars, had been about halfway across the 5.1-mile trestle when the pilings of one section of it had collapsed, causing the front of the train to plunge into about 20 feet of water. The two diesel engines pulling the train from the Morrison switching yards near Washington, N.C., to Norfolk had been submerged with a boxcar resting on top of them, with one car prevented from plunging over the trestle by its coupling with the car behind it.
Andrew F. (Pinkie) Littlejohn, 65, a retired Associated Press newsman, had died early this date after a brief illness. He had retired the previous April 1 following a 43-year news career, 34 of which had been with the A.P., plus service on the Charleston (S.C.) News & Courier, the Greenville (S.C.) News, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and the Columbia Record. He was born in Gaffney, S.C., and graduated from the Citadel in Charleston.
In New York, a standing-room only crowd of 19,200 heard evangelist Billy Graham and actress Dale Evans in Madison Square Garden the previous night, with Ms. Evans singing a medley of gospel songs and telling how she had "accepted Christ" nine years earlier, saying that she and her family would not be able to live in a land of make-believe like Hollywood had it not been for Christ. She had five adopted children and two of her own, with the adopted children including a Korean and an American Indian. Before beginning his sermon, the Reverend Graham asked all of those under age 25 to stand, and an estimated 60 percent of the crowd had risen.
John Kilgo of The News reports that an accused attacker and robber of a minister in 1953 would be brought to Mecklenburg County on July 20 to stand trial for the beating of the "Good Samaritan" preacher. The accused was presently serving time in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta for the associated crime of transporting a stolen automobile across state lines, and Mecklenburg County police had filed a detainer on him and would be at the prison gates upon his release on July 20 to bring him back to Charlotte. County Police Chief Joe Whitley said that his trial would be held "right away" on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. The beating had taken place on June 25, 1953, when the preacher had picked up the man as a hitchhiker around midnight and offered him a ride to Charlotte, telling police that the man had jammed a blunt instrument into his side and ordered him to drive down a road, until he reached a bridge, at which point the preacher was ordered to pull over and get out, whereupon he was severely beaten and robbed of his watch, wallet and car. The car was subsequently found wrecked in Baltimore on July 19, 1953. The man was arrested in Baltimore on October 21, 1953 and subsequently was found guilty of transporting the preacher's car across state lines, for which he was serving his time in Atlanta. The minister had identified him from a photograph. The defendant would have a preliminary hearing in Mecklenburg Recorder's Court and if probable cause on the charge was found, the case would be tried in Superior Court. At the time of the attack, the minister had been the pastor of the Smallwood Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, and was now living in New Zion, S.C.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that the blackout which had caused the circus aerialist, a performer in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Charlotte two weeks earlier on Sunday, appearing before a matinee crowd of 5,000, to fall 35 feet to the concrete floor of the Coliseum as she and her husband performed without a net, had been determined to have been caused by a type of anemia, compounded by swinging in the hot air. She had undergone a transfusion and would have more. She said that she had been worrying about the reason for the fall since it had occurred and did not want to make the mistake again. She was determined to be out of the hospital by July 18, on her 27th birthday. Her doctor had told her, however, that it would be 16 weeks before she could be up again, but she maintained that was not the case and that she would rejoin the act much sooner than that. She had suffered a broken wrist, leg and pelvis when she struck the floor and was not able to sit up yet. Cards and letters from about 500 people, many of them strangers, had helped to make her hospital stay more pleasant and a large number of visitors had come to wish her well. The congregation at Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, where she and her husband had attended when they had lived in Charlotte two winters earlier, had been wonderful to her, she said. She had seen her young son the prior Thursday for the first time since the accident. She said she did not dislike Charlotte or the Coliseum as a result of the fall, saying it was the most beautiful building in which they had ever been, but could not say that it was the coolest.
Julian Scheer of The News reports of an army of 2,000 volunteers preparing an all-out campaign this date to get out the vote on July 15 for the city annexation election, which had been called the most extensive campaign in the city's history, with nearly all of the city's 65,000 registered voters being contacted by phone, letter or postcard. The campaign was being organized by a special Chamber of Commerce city limits extension committee. The 23,000 citizens who had signed a pro-city limits extension petition earlier would be contacted by mail, and more than 45,000 citizens would be contacted by postcard, with more than 20,000 to be contacted by telephone.
In Charlotte, the previous Sunday's planetarium show at the Children's Nature Museum had been canceled by an untimely bolt of lightning, as with power to the sky room cut off, it had been impossible to project stars and planets on the planetarium's 14-foot dome. The sky show the following Sunday in the afternoon would feature Antares, the "red giant", and Saturn, the planet which was so light it would float in water, with it being the last sky show until fall after school would open. Don't miss it.
Starting Monday, Elmer (Fat Boy) Wheeler, whose picture appears, would begin telling in the newspaper how to live with a bald head, in an 18-chapter series, having previously explained how to lose weight rapidly, which had, nevertheless, caused him to go bald. Can't wait for that…
On the editorial page, "Big Customer for the 'Big Egg'" indicates that it had taken a fire in Baltimore to bring ice hockey to Charlotte, but it had not taken such luck to get the NCAA to recommend holding the Eastern Regional Basketball Tournament at the Coliseum the following March. It had only taken the determined salesmanship of Dr. Tom Scott, athletic director at Davidson College, and John Belk, head of the sports and recreation committee of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, winning out over bids submitted by Durham and Philadelphia.
It suggests that their efforts had made a substantial contribution to the community's economy and its reputation as a significant U.S. city. It finds that they had a good product to sell, the spacious Coliseum in the sports-conscious city and surrounding area, with the surprising support of hockey also helping their cause. But Philadelphia had a large trade area and Durham had offered its coliseum rent-free. With the Coliseum smaller than the Palestra in Philadelphia, it was not willing to cut its fee, and so it had apparently won on its merits, as set forth by Dr. Scott and Mr. Belk.
It finds that the Coliseum was emerging as a civic institution measuring up to the hopes and dollars which had gone into its construction, with the "Big Egg", as the Coliseum was fondly called, increasingly drawing customers befitting its quality and capacity, 11,666 for basketball—a devilish number which we recall quite well.
"Our IQ Just Isn't up to the IGY" finds the International Geophysical Year being very big in the news, while being small on its calendar of upcoming attractions. The IGY was actually 18 months in duration and its understanding of it had not gotten very far, it apparently being devoted to scientists during that period seeking answers to various perplexing questions about the universe.
It wishes them luck in their effort to determine, for instance, what happened on the sun to create the turmoil in the earth's atmosphere which followed a solar flare. It indicates it would be trying to understand the question during the IGY, and that it was only one of the questions to be answered in one of the fields of study, with many others in such areas as meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, ionospherics, aurora, geomagnetism, cosmic rays, gravimetry, geodesy and seismology. Scientists knew very little relatively speaking about the earth's geophysical science and so they were excited about the prospects of expanding their knowledge, even though only a small number would understand what they would discover, with the trickle-down theory working more slowly in the field of education than in economics.
It indicates that public opinion would ultimately shape U.S. policy on the banning or continuation of hydrogen bomb testing, with no ability to have informed public opinion because even the scientists who had perfected the weapon disagreed on the danger which testing posed through radioactive fallout.
It finds that a person sitting before their television set watching events thousands of miles away might be proportionally more ignorant of the forces which affected their future than those who scoffed at Christopher Columbus, believing that he would sail off the end of the flat earth. But, it suggests, the latter-day Columbuses had to sail on and on, having to know what there was to know. "But while they seek new answers, it would be wonderful if more of the non-scientists understood more of the old answers. Like, for example: Are there flying saucers?"
"The Sad Arithmetic of Auto Racing" indicates that News sportswriter Max Muhleman, whose report the previous day on the race track mishap in the exposed pit area in Raleigh, and his previous series carried on the front page the previous month regarding the dangers to crowds of spectators posed by race cars, had quoted a race promoter that every track ought have a retaining wall protecting the infield which might contain pit crews, fans or track personnel.
The piece finds no prophecy in that report, just simple arithmetic, as race cars would go out of control and there was nothing between the cars and the people but a few yards of track, leading to injuries and death. Rules of various racing associations were supposed to prevent that kind of peril but were not, as tracks in the Carolinas were drawing increasing attendance. It suggests that if the promoters continued to fail to enforce the rules, then a law should be passed which would be enforced.
A piece by Carl Spencer, titled "A Blast of Okra Seeds", indicates that the South had been faced with many problems during Reconstruction following the Civil War, with one old veteran having once said, "Going was tougher'n trying to make a bumper crop on a piece of poor rocky land with a lame mule."
One particular problem was that landowners often would awaken to discover that a part of their small crop had been carried off or hauled off during the night, with thieves quick to learn which fields had no enraged farmers lying in wait for them with heavily loaded shooting irons. One such farmer in Wake County, who had suffered several losses, was nevertheless opposed to bloodshed. So, he had obtained two strange looking contraptions constructed for the purpose of keeping prowlers away from the premises at night, each being a small gun fashioned as a cannon, with a small seven-inch barrel revolved on a three-pointed metal base, with the gun capable of being loaded with either heavy or small shot. The parcel owner preferred okra or cane seeds as his ammunition. After the gun was loaded and an intruder stumbled over a string which activated the barrel, a heavy load of seeds was discharged at the intruder.
The grandson of that farmer had added that he had heard his father tell of how the guns had been used on several occasions and that unfortunate trespassers had been victims of the hot okra seeds. The grandson was a Southern Railway engineer and owned the old gun, reputedly used even before the Civil War.
The gun is described in great detail, should you wish to frighten away trespassers with hot okra seeds.
Drew Pearson, writing from Kansas City, indicates that former President Truman had been in his usual "bouncing mood" when he had seen him recently, with a big pile of mail on his desk and the American flag beside it, saying that he had just come back from "stirring up the animals in Washington", as someone had to do it. Mr. Pearson had reminded the former President that the last time they had talked in February, 1956, he had predicted that there would be a war over the Suez Canal, five months before Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser had seized the canal and nine months before war had started the prior November. Mr. Pearson had asked him how he knew war was coming, to which he replied that Russian arms had been going to Egypt and when there was an arms build-up, there was war. He said that if he had been in office when the arms shipments occurred, the U.S. had enough ships in the Mediterranean to implement a blockade against any Russian ship bringing in Russian arms, and the U.N. would support the country in preventing a war.
He continued that at the Potsdam Conference in July, 1945, he had proposed that all important waterways be internationalized, including the Suez, the Dardanelles, Gibraltar, the Danube and the Panama Canal. He believed that they had to be internationalized to maintain the peace and that it should have been done before Premier Nasser had seized the Suez. He explained to Mr. Pearson that the British had been lukewarm to his proposal at Potsdam and Stalin had said that he could not do anything about the Dardanelles until the Montreux Convention expired. Mr. Truman said that Stalin wanted to control the Dardanelles and take it away from Turkey, as he had always wanted a base in the Mediterranean, and now Russia had one in Albania and another in Alexandria, suggesting that Stalin was standing up in his grave laughing.
When Mr. Pearson asked him what he believed the way was to bring peace to that part of the world, the former President said that history had begun in the Middle East, pointing to the Suez Canal area, or in the Balkans. He said that Hitler had been after the oil and a route through the Suez, and that there would be no peace until they readjusted things, as 200 families owned most of the arable land in Iran and about 20 families or so owned the best irrigated land in Egypt. He said that he had a survey performed while in the White House which showed that the only way there could be peace was to settle all of those problems, pointing to the entire map of the Mediterranean from the Adriatic to Morocco. He said that they had to give the people there a chance to live and eat and that there was no reason that they all could not get along together, something he had told Ibn Saud when he had met with him. He had told him that they were all cousins and that they had to get along with the Jews even if they called the Arabs illegitimate, as they could call the Jews that, too. Ibn Saud had laughed heartily in response and said they did not deny that Abraham's wife had driven them out into the desert.
When Mr. Pearson had asked Mr. Truman whether any Cabinet officer had ever opposed him or President Roosevelt regarding the budget in the same way Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey had opposed President Eisenhower, he said that it had not occurred with any of his budgets, but that former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau had come to see him and wanted to go to Potsdam, and he told him that the place of the Secretary of the Treasury was in Washington, at which point Mr. Morgenthau said he would have to resign, to which the President had responded, "All right, you can write it out now," and he handed him a piece of paper and he resigned.
He also brought up former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, whom he found to be "a great old boy", but who had opposed him on his appointment of Ed Pauley, former treasurer of the DNC, to be Undersecretary of the Navy in 1946, leading to a dispute between the separate recollections of Mr. Ickes and Mr. Pauley anent an issue arising in September, 1944 regarding the tidal oil lands and a significant contribution to be made to the DNC by oil interests in exchange for Roosevelt Administration support of giving the oil lands back to the states, the dispute regarding whether there was any such offer by Mr. Pauley of a quid pro quo, in which former President Truman had not taken sides in 1946, leading Mr. Ickes to resign in disgust—at least as it had been reported at the time. Mr. Truman said he had a special reason for appointing Mr. Pauley for the Navy job, as he had been tough enough to keep the admirals in check, but could not make Mr. Ickes understand that point, and he had come to Mr. Truman and told him that he opposed Mr. Pauley's appointment and wanted to resign in six weeks. The President told Mr. Pearson that he had said to him, "You have resigned already."
Stewart Alsop finds that the public face of the Eisenhower Administration had changed less than with any Administration in recent history, while behind the public face, the Administration had been changing in a subtle but important way, one such way being that the late Senator Robert Taft, who had died in July, 1953, had ceased to have an important influence on it, with a symbol of that change being the departure of two of the most important Taft allies within the Government, Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey, who had been the Ohio treasurer for Senator Taft prior to the Eisenhower Administration, maintaining strong Taft views, the other being John Hollister, departing as chief of the foreign aid agency, who had once been the law partner of Senator Taft and one of his closest personal friends.
The departure of those two men was ending the once-famous "four-H club", its other two members being the late Budget director Rowland Hughes and the extremely conservative Herbert Hoover, Jr., who had been replaced as Undersecretary of State by Christian Herter, who was a solid backer of the President. That club had backed the Taft approach to foreign and defense policies within the Administration, and with its break-up, the late Senator no longer had a voice within Administration affairs.
By contrast, Senator Taft's rival, former New York Governor Thomas Dewey, was still very much indirectly involved in the Administration, though not often directly consulted any longer. Attorney General Herbert Brownell had been associated with Mr. Dewey since his days as Governor and was credited with persuading the President to make civil rights a main party issue during the current session of the Congress, the most important political decision thus far during the second Eisenhower term. White House press secretary James Hagerty was also an original supporter of Governor Dewey, and had more influence within the Administration than most press secretaries. The President's special economic adviser, Gabriel Hauge, had been placed on the Eisenhower campaign train as a speechwriter and economic specialist by Governor Dewey, and also had increasing influence within the Administration, as the chief theoretician of "modern Republicanism", consulting often with the President, with his influence likely to increase with the departure of Secretary Humphrey, with whom he often amicably disagreed.
Almost every important change within the Administration represented that movement from the Taft right to the Dewey center, as in the case of Robert Anderson replacing Secretary Humphrey, with Fred Seaton replacing Douglas McKay as Secretary of the Interior, and Marion Folsom replacing Oveta Culp Hobby as Secretary of HEW.
Mr. Alsop nevertheless finds it to be an oversimplification to define the change within the Administration merely in terms of Taft and Dewey or right and center. There had been less of a shift from right to center than a kind of settling down process, with one Administration official confiding that they had come to office with "fire" in their eyes but then found that they could not turn everything upside down so easily as they had initially believed.
Hardly anyone in the Administration talked about "the Eisenhower crusade" anymore, and the "Eisenhower train", another phrase rarely used any longer, had discovered that there was a major difference between crusading and the complex, often tedious business of governance. Any reasonably able person, given a job to do, tended to become an advocate and an enthusiast, but contact with harsh realities changed a person's views. Thus Mr. Hollister, for example, who had not been a fervid advocate of foreign aid previously, now hotly defended an adequate foreign aid program. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had come to the Administration determined to cut the defense budget sharply, and while having done so, had more recently taken the position that he had gone far enough in that regard. Secretary Folsom, strongly conservative, had become convinced after exposure to the facts that there was a need for Federal aid to education, just as Senator Taft had years earlier.
Mr. Alsop concludes that change within the Administration was less a conscious shifting to the left than a largely unconscious response to the realities of the world situation and the domestic political and economic requirements. He wonders whether Senator Taft, had he been elected President in 1952 and lived beyond mid-1953, would have differed in any basic way from the course of the Eisenhower Administration.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, finds that current times were so secure, save the atom, that the fun of gambling in life was missing for young people trying to settle down. "It is a serious, sober bunch of sprouts that we have raised through World War II and the Korean troubles." He finds most of them to act like old folks, starting to go steady and enter marital status at 14 or 15, generally adopting the air of "young fogies".
Most had been raised by their mothers while their fathers had been away at war through a time of unprecedented prosperity, not having to deal with the poverty of the Depression.
Even in the South, which generally underpaid journalists, graduates were being courted by the newspapers, with some starting as high as $100 per week, when he remembered a $12 per week copy boy job to have been considered an opportunity for a person with a Columbia master's degree.
And he goes on in that vein.
"Nope, I feel kind of sorry for this bunch. Even before they start, they got it made."
A letter writer from Monroe finds the state of the nation not to be good on Independence Day, 1957. "Where in many communities the adult population is reduced to the level of children by being supplied drinking water to which a diluted poison has been added by our scientists, who, ignoring the cause of tooth decay, foists on the public this quack 'remedy' to prevent tooth decay in children," referring to fluoridation of water. He finds that the Supreme Court had become "'one of inspired choice in policy rather than a court of law as we used to know it.'" He believes that the President had used his prestige in 1953 to force through the Senate a treaty stripping servicemen overseas of their traditional rights as Americans, whereby if they were accused of crime off duty they could be tried in civilian courts of the foreign nation, and in 1957 could be, by treaty with Japan, tried for crimes committed when on duty. He believes that the idea of reaffirming the faith in fundamental human rights within the U.N. had been made a mockery by reaffirmation of allowing membership in the body to Communist dictatorships, and that the foreign policymakers shipped materials of war to the Communist dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, but refused to provide any aid to the patriotic Hungarians who had fought for freedom from Communist dictatorship. He thus finds the U.S. to be "a land where material prosperity abounds and moral soundness disintegrates."
Mek Amurica Grate Agin.
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