The Charlotte News
Saturday, January 10, 1959
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Moscow that the Soviet Union had proposed this date that a German peace conference in Prague or Warsaw take place within two months and provided representatives of the Western Big Three drafts of a peace treaty. The Government also "expressed desire to settle the Berlin question", according to the Soviet News Agency Tass, albeit providing no details. The Soviet notes had been in reply to Western rejections of an earlier Soviet note of November 27 which had proposed that the U.S., Britain and France withdraw their troops from West Berlin, leaving it an unarmed "free city". In similar Western rejections, the three nations had suggested that the Big Four conference be called to consider the whole German question, including reunification. There was no immediate indication which nations Russia intended to meet in Warsaw or Prague. Tass said that the Soviet draft treaty proposal had been given to the Western Big Three "for transmission to governments of the states and other states who took part with their armed forces in the war against Germany, as well as to the governments of the German Democratic Republic [Communist East Germany] and the Federal German Republic [West Germany]." The West had refused repeated Russian suggestions that it sit down with East Germany to discuss a peace treaty or reunification, the West objecting that the East German regime was illegal because it did not have popular support and therefore did not deserve a place in the discussion. The statement of Tass said: "The conclusion of a peace treaty with Germany would play a part not only in safeguarding peace in Europe but also in solving the all-national task of the German people, the unification of Germany." The note had also expressly replied to the notes of the U.S., Britain and France regarding the Berlin question and expressed the desire to settle the Berlin question through the "states concerned". The U.S. reply to the earlier Soviet note had said that Berlin ought be discussed "in the wider framework of negotiations for a solution of the German problem as well as that of European security." The envoys of the three Western powers had been called separately to the Soviet Foreign Office to receive copies of the 12-page note with the draft treaty enclosed. India's chief of mission and the East German ambassador also received copies. One envoy said that he believed that the draft had been circulated in the West previously. The U.S. Embassy spokesman declined comment until the note and draft treaty had been reported to Washington.
In Havana, a leader of one of the rebel groups which supported Fidel Castro had sought this date checks on the power of Cuba's provisional Government which Sr. Castro had set up. Sr. Castro had publicly criticized the man as a troublemaker, ostensibly because his group had seized some arms earlier in the week. A leader of the student-backed revolutionary directorate, Faure Chaumont, wanted a legislative group organized to prevent one-man rule during the provisional period of government. He said on Friday that the directorate wanted free elections within a year instead of the 18 to 24 months for which provisional President Manuel Urrutia, whom Sr. Castro had installed, had called. Both he and Sr. Castro had said it would take that long to get Cuba back on an even keel. Sr. Urrutia had dissolved Congress on Tuesday on the ground that it was packed with supporters of ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista.
In Chicago, it was reported that an anonymous telephone caller this date had threatened to blow up the plane which would carry Russian Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan to San Francisco. He had booked passage on a United Airlines flight due in Chicago from the East Coast in the late morning, set to depart for San Francisco 35 minutes later. A spokesman for United said that the telephoned bomb threat had been made to a reservations agent in the airline's Loop office in the wee hours of the morning. The spokesman said that the anonymous voice was described by the agent as a low masculine voice with a heavy accent. United had reported the call to the bomb squad of the Chicago Police Department, which had sent officers and detectives to Midway Airport. The United spokesman said that Mr. Mikoyan's flight had originated in Boston and was en route to Chicago via Hartford, Conn. He said that searches had been conducted of the plane and safety precautions carried out at both Boston and Hartford. The plane carried 58 passengers. No change in plan was indicated by Mr. Mikoyan and his party, touring various cities of the country. Members of the bomb squad had checked the baggage of the party and a police guard was assigned to watch the luggage and convey it to the airport from the Hilton Hotel. One member of the Russian party responded to inquiries about its reaction by pointing to the U.S. State Department security officer and saying: "That's their business." The Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Mikhail Menshikov, a member of the touring party, had told newsmen: "We always have a lot of threats." He asked if police knew about the bomb threat and, when assured that they did, commented, "They'll take care of it." Mr. Mikoyan had mixed sightseeing with speech-making during his 24-hour stay in Chicago. He predicted a more important ambassadorial post for deposed leader V. M. Molotov.
In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that a Federal judge this date had ordered the School Board to take positive steps within 30 days to implement a plan of integration in the city's closed public high schools. The judge left unresolved the question of how the Board would integrate the four schools, which had been shut the previous fall by proclamation of Governor Orval Faubus, after the Supreme Court in September had ordered continued integration during the school year at Central High School, which had begun desegregation the prior year. The order had put into effect an integration mandate issued on December 2 by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, the judge pointing out in his opinion which accompanied the order that the mandate did not require his court to direct that the high schools be opened. "But it was implicit in the order that when and if the high schools are opened, they must be operated as a non-segregated system." School Board members who could be reached for comment said that they wanted to read the opinion before making statements about it. A Board member said that the judge had put them in an untenable position if he expected them to open the schools in violation of the State school-closing law, that they could be punished by fine or imprisonment. The law had been passed in a special session of the Arkansas Legislature the prior summer, empowering the Governor to close any school which was under court orders to integrate. Governor Faubus and an attorney for the NAACP had declined immediate comment. The president of the Board also declined comment until he had a chance to go over the order with the Board's attorney, who was not available for comment. The order had also followed the appellate court's mandate by enjoining the Board from leasing public school facilities to any private group for operation as segregated schools and "from engaging in any acts, whether independently or in participation with anyone else, to impede, thwart or frustrate the integration plan mandated against them."
In Atlanta, a Federal judge this date struck down racial segregation in the Georgia State College of Business Administration, which threatened eventual disruption of the 19-unit State University system. The judge ordered the admission of qualified black applicants to the College, only strictly impacting that institution; but his findings would apply to other units of the system which had a total approximate enrollment of 35,000. It outlawed a key regulation of the system for denying black admission to a white college, a requirement that an applicant had to be endorsed by two or three alumni. The order said that the alumni certificate requirement was "invalid as applied to Negroes because there are no Negro alumni of any of the white institutions of the University System of Georgia, and consequently this requirement operates to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Negroes to comply with the requirement, whereas white applicants do not face similar difficulties. The requirement, therefore, violates the equal protection clause to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." University system and State officials generally declined to comment until they had studied the order. Georgia law required the closing of any part of the system required to integrate. Such closing would be limited to the affected school or department of an institution, but its effect nonetheless would be demoralizing. The judge ruled in favor of three young black women who had been denied admission to the institution in 1956. All in their twenties and all from Atlanta, they were Barbara Hunt, a clerk in the registrar's office at Atlanta University, a black institution, Iris Mae Welch, a clerk in a black drugstore, and Myra Elliott Dinsmore Holland, unemployed. Originally there had been four petitions, but Russell Short, also of Atlanta, had dropped his case in the course of the litigation. The ruling was the second blow in as many days to segregation in Georgia as another Federal judge on Friday had ruled segregation illegal on Atlanta buses.
In Washington, it was reported that American Airlines had prepared this date to get its planes back in the air as union leaders gathered to act on agreement to end the airline's 22-day strike by pilots. Anticipating speedy ratification, American began recalling furloughed employees and made plans to resume operations the following day. Federal mediators said that although there was a chance of a hitch, they did not expect any. A settlement in principle of the dispute between American and the Air Line Pilots Association had been announced Friday by Federal mediators. The union promptly had summoned its 24-man master executive committee to meet this date to act on the agreement. No details had been announced pending agreement on specific contract language. American's strike had involved approximately 1,500 pilots and copilots and had resulted in the furloughing earlier in the week of some 20,000 other employees. The chief issue had been wages. Pre-strike pilots' pay had ranged between $400 and $1,600 per month. The new contract was expected to increase pay to a top rate of about $2,400 per month for senior pilots on new jet airliners which American hoped to place into service shortly. In the previous three months, strikes had grounded four of the nation's five biggest domestic airlines. Capital Airlines had been idle for 37 days in October and November as a result of a mechanics strike. On November 23, TWA had been forced out of operation when its ground crews had struck, resuming operations on December 8 after the dispute had been resolved. On November 24, Eastern Air Lines had been struck by flight engineers and mechanics, and had returned to service on January 2. The only one of the domestic "Big Five" airlines to escape any shutdown had been United. The walkouts had seriously disrupted transportation facilities during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
In Stamford, Conn., it was reported that a string of 15 cars in a New York-bound freight train had jumped their tracks on the New Haven Railroad early this date and slammed against an empty mail train on another track, but no one had been injured.
In Los Angeles, two young desperadoes who had held a family hostage for six hours and then donned sailor uniforms to slip through a police blockade, remained at large this date. The search for the two gunmen had spread through southern California after it became clear that they had escaped from 300 police officers making a house-to-house search through a square-mile section of suburban Anaheim. The officers were called in from a dozen neighboring communities when the two youths had vanished on Thursday night after a gunfight with a police officer who tried to arrest them for a $60 liquor store holdup. Twice during the night, officers searching every house and yard in the vicinity, called at the home of a couple to ask if everything was all right and twice the woman assured them that it was. Meanwhile, the two fugitives, one armed with a shotgun and the other with a pistol, had stood with their guns aimed at her two children and her husband, threatening to shoot them unless she kept the police from entering. Also in the house had been her husband's nephew and two of his Navy shipmates. They had all been held captive by the gunmen for six hours until dawn, when they put on sailor uniforms and forced the woman to drive them through the police lines. The woman was released unharmed at the home of a cousin in an adjoining town and the men gave her back the sailor outfits, having changed into their own clothes while in the car. Whether they had a coin to flip is not reported.
Yielding to a City Council ban on any unionization of the Charlotte Police Department, the local police union had folded quietly this date, after an unanimous vote of its membership. The union had received its charter on October 14, just a month after former Police Chief Frank Littlejohn had left the Department. He had always been a bitter opponent of the unionized police force. The Council had given police officers until February 1 to get out of the union.
In Hendersonville, N.C., it was reported that Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota would address the Executive Club this night.
In Tokyo, it was reported that Communist China had built a 6,336-mile highway network in Fukien Province, the coastal area facing Formosa, as reported by Peiping Radio this date. Another 5,000 miles were planned for the current year.
Next in the News Spotlight Series, starting Monday, would be "You Too Can Have an Ulcer", in which a prominent New York newspaperman, Herbert Kamm, would tell, half-amusingly and half-painfully, of his battle with a stomach ulcer. He was the magazine editor of the New York World-Telegram & Sun and was one of the finest journalists in New York City. He had won his battle, but the fight had changed his whole way of living, and he imparts how the reader might conquer an ulcer.
On the editorial page, "America's Greatest Political Adventure", an editorial book review of The Coming of the New Deal, Volume II of The Age of Roosevelt, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., indicates that the weather had been disagreeable on March 4, 1933 when FDR was inaugurated the first time as President. He had said: "The nation asks for action and action now. We must act and act quickly." There had been a burst of applause and in another minute or so, the inaugural address was over and the nation embarked on the greatest peacetime adventure in its history. The Age of Roosevelt had begun.
Mr. Schlesinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor at Harvard and son of a distinguished historian, was using The Age of Roosevelt as the working title for a long history of those turbulent times. The previous year, the newspaper had reviewed Volume I, The Crisis of the Old Order, "a brilliant study of the decay of U.S. leadership in the 1920s and the conditions which brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to power."
Volume II, The Coming of the New Deal, dealt with the first two years of the long, 12-year Roosevelt Administration. But those two years contained enough social, economic and political drama to enliven a century. In 669 pages, Mr. Schlesinger had skillfully captured both the excitement and significance of the times, finding it a "superb achievement, almost a masterpiece."
The New Deal had not been a radical invention, as the whole enterprise, as pointed out by Henry Steele Commager, had been conservative in character. Its first chore had been to save the structure of the banking system and then had gone quickly to work to save big business, the farmers, the nation's natural resources and, finally, the political institutions. To do so, President Roosevelt had brought to Washington the New Dealers, an army of brilliant men who were at home in the world of ideas and delighted with the play of the free mind. The early effect had been stimulating. Newsman Thomas L. Stokes, who covered FDR's arrival in Washington, had said: "It was one of the most joyous periods of my life. We came alive, we were eager." Rexford G. Tugwell, one of the original members of the FDR braintrust, had called it a "renaissance spring … a time of rebirth after a dark age." Mr. Schlesinger had written: "At his worst, the New Dealer became an arrant sentimentalist or a cynical operator. At his best, he was the ablest, most intelligent and most disinterested public servant the United States ever had."
The accomplishments of the First Hundred Days had been monumental and Mr. Schlesinger recorded them with loving care. FDR had been inaugurated on March 4 and on March 9, Congress had passed the Emergency Banking Act. On March 20, it passed the Economy Act, on March 31, the Civilian Conservation Corps Act. The gold standard had been abandoned on April 19 and in May, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and the Truth-in-Securities Act were passed. In June, there had been the abrogation of the gold clause in public and private contracts, the Home Owners' Loan Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Glass-Steagall Banking Act, the Farm Credit Act and the Railroad Coordination Act.
Mr. Schlesinger had written: "This was the Hundred Days and in this period Franklin Roosevelt sent 15 messages to Congress, guided 15 major laws to enactment, delivered 10 speeches, held press conferences and Cabinet meetings twice a week, conducted talks with foreign heads of state, sponsored an international conference, made all the major decisions, in domestic and foreign policy, and never displayed fright or panic and rarely even bad temper."
Mr. Schlesinger had found him a "profoundly enigmatic President." He kidded the solemn, soothed the egotistical and inspired the downhearted. But there remained a sense of ambiguity and craftiness about him. "He could be hard and frightening when he wanted to be and he played the political game with cold skill. Charm, humor, power, persuasion, menace, idealism—all were weapons in his armory."
The honeymoon had been short for some early admirers. Big businessmen who had embraced the New Deal in 1933 had begun to see it in 1934 as an agency of totalitarian tyranny. The American Liberty League had been formed, which FDR called the "I Can't Take It" Club. It counted among its members former New York Governor and 1928 Democratic nominee Al Smith, John W. Davis, the 1924 Democratic nominee, and the du Ponts, but the vast majority of Americans were still captivated by FDR. Mr. Schlesinger had written that at no point on record had the American Liberty League construed "liberty" as meaning anything other than the folding stuff. "At no point had it shown convincing interest in the suffering of people who lacked plantations in South Carolina or houseboats on the Caloosahatchee."
Mr. Tugwell had written in 1933, "I do not think it is too much to say that on March 4 we were confronted with a choice between orderly revolution—a peaceful and rapid departure from past concepts—and a violent and disorderly overthrow of the whole capitalist structure." People were hungry and were getting hungrier. There was widespread unrest. But FDR and his New Dealers had brought hope and new ideas. Collier's Magazine had said later in 1933, "We have had our revolution and we like it."
It indicates that Mr. Schlesinger wrote with considerable persuasiveness that the tenets of the First New Deal between 1933 and 1934 were that technological revolution had rendered bigness inevitable, that competition could no longer be relied upon to protect social interests, that large units were an opportunity to be seized rather than a danger to be fought, and that the formula for stability in the new society had to be combination and cooperation under enlarged Federal authority. The New Deal's big tool in industry was the National Recovery Act, the much-abused "Blue Eagle" insignia. It was fashionable at present to view NRA as a flop, and its contributions to recovery had been limited. It had been a hastily improvised holding action, but it could be credited for a whole series of enduring achievements in the social field, discussed with skill by Mr. Schlesinger. NRA had established the principle of maximum hours and minimum wages, had abolished sweatshops and child labor, had made collective bargaining a national policy, had given new status to the consumer, stamped out many unfair trade practices and set new standards of economic decency in American life. Mr. Schlesinger had written that, "For all its defects, NRA represented an essential continuity which in face of crisis helped preserve American unity."
It finds that Mr. Schlesinger's Volume II was no starry-eyed tabulation of FDR's early successes, but was basically an adventure yarn full of cliff-hanging suspense and exciting twists of plot, a peek backstage at the people who made history and a critical rendering of the history they had made. The portraits of early New Dealers were often cruelly revealing. Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, was characterized as having "no airs, no polish, no small talk, no wit, no front". General Hugh Johnson, the first head of NRA, was said to be a person unequaled in Washington for having "labored so long, shouted so loudly, smoked so many cigarettes or drank so much liquor." Donald Richberg, general counsel and executive director of NRA, was said to have "cynical humor, great ambition … cunning." Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, was described as having "pungency of character, a dry wit, an inner gaiety, an instinct for practicality … and a compulsion to instruct". Harold Ickes, Secretary of Interior, was "the incarnation of lonely, righteous and inextinguishable pugnacity". Harry Hopkins demonstrated "insouciance and cynicism". Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, had "a pervading mixture of insecurity and aggressiveness".
It finds that the only inconclusive portrait in the book was that of President Roosevelt, himself, whom Mr. Schlesinger found had not one personality but a ring of personalities, each one dissolving on approach, always revealing still another beneath. He would no doubt emerge more clearly as the significant project unfolded. It finds that Mr. Schlesinger without doubt was producing one of the most important works in American historical literature.
We feel impelled to observe, regarding the time since 1959, that if the Republican Party would get over its decades-long love affair with negativism, trying to undo the New Deal, rather than embracing it as did President Eisenhower, it would be far more in tune with the broad base of the American people. Instead, it has sought, especially since the late 1970's, after the disaster of Watergate, to put forth faux versions of FDR standing ultimately for the exact opposite policies, packaged in a pleasing personality promoted to the level of cultish following, first in the form of an actor during the Eighties, and now in the form of a failed businessman-playboy masquerading as some grand wizard of economic magicianship, who is nothing more in fact than a super-slick, sleazy salesman of the lowest order, the bait-switch artist who tells a particularly vulnerable and gullible segment of the population what they want to hear and then delivers a product which is not only inferior but dangerous to all its users. Rather than trying constantly to sell the people what they consistently say with their votes they do not want, the sham trickle-down economics of past failed policy while offering crumbs of social policy, anti-pro-choice, anti-immigration, anti-equality, anti-this, anti-that, to satisfy the decades-long and generational pet peeves of the lowest common denominator of American society, even embracing and nurturing now actively neo-Nazi and neo-Klan adherents' dreams and desires of a tomorrow which belongs to them, if the Republican Party gets on track with a policy of true service to the American People consistent with the Constitution and its true spirit of liberty and justice for all equally, without exception for supportive billionaires and Trump lock-step adherents below, it might actually win elections legally and with the approval of a majority of the people on occasion. Salesmanship only lasts but a short time, until the people who bought the product realize it is a cruel joke on them and then there is the Devil to pay, followed by retrenchment in defensive mendacity of the slick, sleazy salesmen of the ersatz merchandise. It is an inescapable pattern, being repeated at present.
Drew Pearson indicates that political observers accustomed to keeping score on the ebb and flow of American politics had given the edge in the previous ten days to the Republicans. In November, after the Democrats had elected the largest number of Senators in two decades and had rolled up a big new margin in the House, some observers had been predicting that the Republicans were just about down and out, but now had decided that there was life, after all, still in the party. That which had perked up opinion was that they had resorted to the democratic processes, whereas, in contrast, the Democrats had deserted those processes in passing on the gag rule of Congressman Howard Smith's Rules Committee, continuing to allow one man, Speaker Sam Rayburn, to decide that issue. There had been no democratic debate in caucus, as everything had been decided in advance, even the seating of contested Congressman Dale Alford of Arkansas.
Meanwhile, the Republicans had battled things out by the democratic process for their new leader in the House, Charles Halleck, who would be no different in policy from their old leader, Joseph Martin, but the fact that they had staged a battle and changed leaders had given the party a healthier look.
Simultaneously, Republican Senators had also staged a healthy battle between Senators Everett Dirksen and John Sherman Cooper for the minority leadership position. The Old Guard had won, but battling it out had given the public an impression of vigor.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had issued a special bulletin berating Mr. Pearson when he called attention to its lobbying against the school construction bill, having been especially irate over his mention of the fact that crowded, inadequate schools could lead to fires. The Chamber, he suggests, might well read the report of the American Institute of Architects, which said: "Chicago's disastrous school fire has focused attention on the unsafe conditions which exist in thousands of obsolete school buildings still in daily use. Despite prodigious efforts of communities during the past few years to provide adequate educational facilities for their booming enrollments, the rate of construction has barely kept pace with increased attendance. Overcrowded classrooms and outmoded buildings are all too common in U.S. cities and towns today."
Mr. Halleck could now be called "three-Cadillac Charlie", for immediately after the war, when automobiles had been extremely scarce, he had acquired two Cadillacs by means which remained a mystery. During the current week, he had taken away Joseph Martin's Cadillac.
When hard-hitting Congressman Chet Holifield of California had called on Speaker Rayburn to revamp the gag rule which muddled up legislation in the Rules Committee, the Speaker had replied: "Howard Smith will have to play ball like everyone else. No one is bigger than the Democratic Party."
Astute Senator Lyndon Johnson had sent some campaign funds to help out Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico in his race for re-election the prior November. Now, Senator Chavez, once a battler for civil rights, was siding with Senator Johnson on the question of ending filibusters.
Joseph Alsop indicates that at the most stirring opening of a Senate session in recent history, Vice-President Nixon had been pale, tense, and plainly ill at ease. Under the stern, intimidating glare of Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Mr. Nixon had given his crucial rulings hesitantly, nervously, and unclearly regarding whether Senate rules carried over from one Senate to the next. He finds it to have been a curious confrontation between a master parliamentarian and a master politician.
One reason for Mr. Nixon's uneasiness had been his consciousness of his own parliamentary weakness. He was no more a "Senate man" than former Vice-President Henry Wallace had been. Otherwise, he could hardly have brought himself to raise his doubts regarding the Senate being a continuing body with enduring rules.
When he had raised those doubts in 1957 and then reiterated them at the beginning of the 86th Congress, politician-Nixon had been speaking. But there had also been another, purely political reason why he was not at ease. In 1957, he had defied the entire Republican high command in the Senate, including the behind-the-scenes actual leader, Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, as well as the official leader, Senator William Knowland of California, and the chairman of the party conference, Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts. Each of them had been bitterly angry with Mr. Nixon and each showed that anger in his own way. Senator Saltonstall had expostulated; Senator Bridges had used his cutting tongue; and the violent Senator Knowland had come close to a physical explosion. According to one of those who had been present, they "came as close to blows as men can without actually using their fists." It had been no wonder that the scene had become a major legend in the Senate's history.
In the 1959 episode, led by Senator Bridges, the Republican conservatives were still working with Senator Johnson to prevent any overly drastic change in the Senate rules by the advocates of civil rights. Senator Bridges therefore had gone to the Vice-President the day before the session had opened to make the same arguments which had been made in 1957. On this occasion, Mr. Nixon had done his best to be accommodating on lesser points of procedure, agreeing, for instance, to hold that the old rules retained their force until they were directly challenged, but flatly refusing to change his stand on the main point. Senator Bridges had practical arguments to offer. Even in 1957, Mr. Nixon had been primarily the candidate of the Republican conservatives, and now, with his nightmares haunted by the specter of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the conservatives were Mr. Nixon's necessary mainstay. Yet the Republican conservatives did not care at all about civil rights and cared very deeply about preserving the Republican-Southern conservative coalition.
For that reason, Mr. Nixon's stand had outraged his strongest supporters in his own party and particularly in the Senate. He had not diminished the outrage by pleading his necessity to "represent the Eisenhower Administration's" position on civil rights. The President's complete tepidness on the civil rights issue was too flagrantly apparent. Mr. Nixon's own efforts to promote a much stronger civil rights policy were quite well known. In short, it was well understood that he had been representing himself, and not the President.
Those facts, in turn, spoke volumes about the political strategy which Mr. Nixon intended to use to ward off the threat of Governor Rockefeller, to be plainly based on the assumption that the conservatives would have to join the Nixon camp in the end, if only because Mr. Nixon would be the lesser of two evils. On that assumption, he would not be bound by the traditional conservative attitudes and would be free to compete with Governor Rockefeller on his own ground. Holding the old group aligned with the late Senator Robert Taft while sounding like Governor Rockefeller would be something of a feat, but Mr. Nixon intended to try it.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the opening of the new Congress found the vanquished in ferment and the victors held firmly in leash by their Southern leadership. House Republicans demanded and got more vigorous, acute leadership with the help of Vice-President Nixon and White House aides, though they had not changed direction and showed few signs of wanting to do so. Republican Senate insurgents had elected their choice for second in command and demonstrated an ability to work in concert for new goals and a more progressive course of action.
The majority leaders in both houses had scored impressive personal triumphs to which some price tags were attached. Speaker Sam Rayburn had committed himself to House approval of fairly comprehensive liberal legislation in return for an harmonious and traditional opening of the session. Those debts would be called in time by a liberal Democratic bloc possessing an unusual grasp of legislative detail and self-discipline rare among any reformer. In the Senate, Majority Leader Johnson operated at the top of his form, putting the filibuster on a track with his own mark and headed straight for the compromise destination he had plotted for it. His virtuoso performance dealt purely with the procedural matters and he had won only the initial skirmish. Liberal strategists were determined to end the filibuster and enact a strengthened civil rights bill and were now obliged to find new tactics with which to counter Senator Johnson. It was a struggle in which reputations for political capacity would be made, enhanced, or perhaps lost completely.
Senator Johnson had set the pace in a dazzling display of a leader determined to lead. His grasp on the parliamentary situation never faltered and he had taken brilliant advantage of his power as a leader in control of the calendar. At exactly the right moment, he exploited the camaraderie and confusion of opening day when new Senators particularly were emotionally involved with their families and supporters.
Vice-President Nixon, whose constitutional duty was to preside over the Senate, had been acclaimed as a political craftsman, and civil rights advocates were counting heavily on his help. But he seemed thrown completely off balance by Senator Johnson's sudden, swift penetration of the liberal lines. Even Mr. Nixon's voice had faltered as he weakly attempted to stave off the threats by Senator Johnson to the whole liberal position.
The laymen in the galleries could not have realized how extraordinarily ignorant of Senate rules and practice the young Vice-President seemed. They must have noticed that he lacked assurance, much less boldness. With experienced Senators, Mr. Nixon had lost much ground, as they had expected at the very least more adequate preparation for the struggle which everyone knew would mark the opening day.
She finds that nothing like the Senate's opening day had been seen since FDR had laid out the first New Deal track to hit precisely the destinations he set for it, and two of the old FDR engineers, lawyers Thomas Corcoran and Benjamin Cohen, were advising Senator Johnson. Such ruthlessness had a price attached to it, which FDR had always managed to pay. It remained to be seen whether Senator Johnson had any such hold on the American voter.
Robert Taber, CBS
In Sr. Castro's mind, at least, it meant a swing toward something resembling the politics of the New Deal under FDR. Sr. Castro would not call it socialism, but rather social justice. Cuba had thousands of rural families, tenants and so-called squatters, who could not raise the money to pay rent on small plots on which their ancestors had squatted for centuries. The island also had millions of acres which were idle. It had much of its best land planted in sugar, the major cash crop, and imported the major part of its food.
Sr. Castro had told Mr. Taber some of those things when he had first interviewed him deep in Cuba's Sierra Maestra Mountains, nearly two years earlier. He had landed a little more than three months before with scarcely 100 armed men behind him, but even then, the post-revolutionary program was taking shape and diversification of agriculture and land reform were even then top items on that program. If all went according to plan, limits would be set on the acreage of any single holding for certain types of crops, primarily sugar. The acreage deemed excess would be distributed to smallholders who would use it to grow good crops and would pay for it at normal prices over a long term. Idle acreage would be expropriated and redistributed to landless rural families, of which there were perhaps 200,000. Sr. Castro wanted a vast road-building program, as thousands of square miles of the highland territory over which he had marched had only footpaths and mule paths. He also wanted rural electrification and above all, industry. That in turn could have its effect on the U.S. If some of the movement's top policy planners had their way, it would mean tariff barriers to protect a nascent industry, and possibly currency restrictions to keep the sugar money in Cuba.
Sr. Castro was many things, but not a likely recruit for Moscow. He was the son of a landowner and in some respects, was a provincial aristocrat in the Spanish tradition. He was a devout Catholic, like the vast majority of his followers. He was an optimist, a man who was convinced that he could invade a country of 5.5 million people with 81 followers and take over the government within a little more than two years, and so had to be an optimist.
Mr. Taber remembered seeing him with a ragged blanket draped over his shoulders, standing on a hill one early, misty morning, trying to shoot a half-wild chicken with a pistol at 50 yards. He knew that it looked ludicrous and it was, but when he saw Mr. Taber, he just turned his head, grinned and went back to what he was doing. They were hungry and needed the chicken. He adds that they did not get it.
A letter from the chairman of the board of governors of the Shrine Bowl tells of a resolution having been adopted by the board in appreciation of the publicity given the 22nd annual Shrine Bowl all-star football game played the prior December 6 in Charlotte for the benefit of the crippled children of the Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children in Greenville, S.C. The resolution thanked The News and its sports pages and staff for presenting effectively the annual contest.
A letter writer commends pianist Jerry Ball for helping to raise money for the March of Dimes, indicating that the greatest gift anyone could give was one which did not seek headlines or popularity but rather was performed for the good it could do.
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