The Charlotte News

Wednesday, January 21, 1959

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that the distant sounds of firing squad guns had been the curtain raiser for a massive Havana rally this date in support of the revolutionary Government's summary executions. A dozen men of ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista's defeated armed forces had been executed in Pinar del Rio, the westernmost province of the nation. All had been convicted of murder and other war crimes in a three-hour trial. Those, plus 19 previously unreported executions, 11 at Cardenas in Matanzas Province and eight at Jiguani in Oriente Province, had boosted the nationwide total number of executions to 247. Three others had been reported under death sentences in Pinar del Rio and 38 in Oriente. Havana workers had taken the day off to participate in the rally. Fidel Castro had called for half a million persons to throng the park in front of the presidential palace during the afternoon. The revolutionary leader said that it would be Cuba's answer to foreign criticism of the swift retribution for those convicted by military courts of crimes against the people during Sr. Batista's dictatorship. The first of a series of public trials in Havana had been announced to begin on Thursday in the city's 15,000-seat Sports Palace. A total of 216 men were known to have been executed by firing squads after military trials elsewhere in the country. Thirty-nine had been reported under sentence of death in Oriente and 15 in Pinar del Rio—though at variance with the numbers given earlier in the same story. Sr. Castro said that the rally in Havana would support justice and the demand that the U.S. return the war criminals who had fled there. No formal request for extradition of followers of Sr. Batista, however, had been reported thus far in Washington. Many Cubans were expected to come into Havana from the provinces to demonstrate their support of the executions.

The President said this date in his press conference that Russia had to come to understand that the U.S. simply would not be pushed around in working for world peace. He said that it had been the gist of his message to Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan as the latter departed for home following his U.S. visit. On a domestic political matter, the President said that he would favor repeal of the present constitutional ban on a third term for Presidents. He had said repeatedly that he would not be interested in running for a third term, primarily because of his age. There was no indication in what he had said this date that there was any change in that view. The subject had come up when a reporter had recalled that the President had once said that he thought it "not wholly wise" for the third term ban to have been written into the Constitution as part of the 22nd Amendment in 1947. In reply, the President said that he still thought it was not a particularly wise decision, adding that if the American people wanted to make any man their president, then it should be up to them and he saw no objection to more than two terms. He had gone on to say that he would rather see the amendment repealed than maintained. It was the President's first regular press conference since December 10 and only the second since November 5, although he had answered questions from reporters at a National Press Club luncheon a week earlier. The visit by Mr. Mikoyan was much on the minds of reporters and had been the subject of early questions. The President said that the Kremlin leader had offered no new proposals for relief of world tensions during their meeting at the White House the prior Saturday. Referring then to the farewell message he had sent the Deputy Premier on Tuesday, he said that the latter had to be sure that America wanted peace. Regarding other topics, the President said that he could not see that a bill put forward by Senator Lyndon Johnson to create a Federal conciliation service to handle civil rights disputes would be fruitful, but added that he was keeping an open mind on the matter. He called again for extension of the life of the Civil Rights Commission, which had been formed by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but had not gone into actual operation until a few months earlier because of stymied appointments. It was scheduled to expire the following September. Senator Johnson's bill provided for such an extension. Regarding integration, the President indicated that the Federal Government was working on and studying the question of what to do about children of U.S. military personnel who were being barred from public schools.

Changes made in the Labor committees of the new Congress pointed this date to increased chances for action on labor-management control legislation and possibly other measures. Democrats had increased their margin on the House Labor Committee from 17-13 to 20-10, and on the Senate Labor Committee from 7-6 to 9-6. Moreover, the Republican side of the Senate group had taken on a less conservative tone, with Senators Winston Prouty of Vermont, Jacob Javits of New York, Clifford Case of New Jersey, and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky serving for the Republicans, with Senators Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the latter the new Minority Leader. Coupled with the committee revamping were indications from the Labor Department that the Administration was not too unhappy with the anti-corruption bill which had been introduced on Tuesday by Senator John F. Kennedy. Some additions and changes of the latter bill were expected to be included, however, in the Administration's program which would go to Congress soon. Senator Goldwater was expected to sponsor the President's labor proposals in the Senate, saying that he and Senator Kennedy were trying to achieve the same things but over different routes. He said that the bill introduced by Senator Kennedy had some good points but "will not slow down Jimmy Hoffa", as Senator Kennedy had said it would. Mr. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters Union, had no comment, but the AFL-CIO indicated support for the bill sponsored by Senator Kennedy. Mr. Hoffa had been a chief target in hearings of the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in labor and management, chaired by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, who was drafting a bill of his own. Advance word was that the President's recommendations in the Administration bill would closely resemble what had been proposed the previous year. If so, they would parallel much of the Kennedy bill, with the common points calling for secret ballot in union elections, strict accounting of union funds, criminal penalties for labor-management corruption, and a few changes in the Taft-Hartley law. But there were differences also. For example, the Administration bill sought that the ban of shakedown picketing included in the Kennedy bill, be extended to prohibit picketing in any case where workers indicated they did not want a union to represent them. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell also was expected to insist on behalf of the Administration on tightening labor boycott restrictions, making union officials more accountable to union members for union funds and giving the Government power to investigate welfare-pension fund operations.

In Des Moines, Ia., RNC chairman Meade Alcorn called on Republicans this date for full-time efforts to elect a president and win back Congress in 1960. He said in a report prepared for the party's executive committee that the RNC planned to draw on every population group for "an all-out drive to recruit a vast army of Republicans who will march to victory in 1960." He said he was convinced that they could no longer afford "the luxury of part-time dabbling in politics. This applies to us as individuals and as a party." He spoke out as the subcommittee to pick a site for the presidential nominating convention appeared to be narrowing its selection to three cities, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Because San Francisco representatives had made a determined pitch at a closed meeting of the subcommittee on Tuesday, members appeared inclined to include that city in their calculations, after previously appearing to lean toward either Chicago or Philadelphia. Mr. Alcorn said that San Francisco had made a "persuasive proposal", offering $350,000 in cash and extras totaling an additional $205,000. Los Angeles had also made a lucrative offer but chances that it would be selected had about vanished after the Democrats had picked that city for their convention. An independent check of back dates showed that since the birth of the Republican Party in 1856, the two major parties had met in national convention in the same city only five times, in Chicago in 1884, 1932, 1944 and 1952, and in Philadelphia in 1948. Neither party had ever held a national convention previously in Los Angeles. Mr. Alcorn said that the Republicans had to put on a new look which would make them appealing to all types of voters, saying that they must and could win the support of the farmers, the workingman, the member of a nationalist group, the doctor and the lawyer, the businessman, the veteran and the housewife, and "a great array of others upon whom the future of the nation directly depends." (The inclusion of members of a nationalist group may have ultimately proved the party's downfall in 1960.) He said that they had to bring youth into the party in active and significant roles. In a pointed reference to the National Committee meeting which would begin the following day, he said that the Republicans intended to do everything possible to regain the majority position which they once held in the Midwest.

In Kansas City, it was reported that the winter's worst storm had moved rapidly through the Ohio Valley this date, pushed by a sub-zero surge of arctic air. Temperatures had fallen in the snow-packed Great Plains, with readings as low as 12 to 25 degrees below zero predicted for this night in eastern Nebraska and South Dakota, pretty icy. The extreme cold was expected to extend as far south as Texas and Arkansas. Snowfall had begun to diminish during the morning across most of the mid-continent and was expected to end as far east as Kansas City by early afternoon. Strong winds continued throughout the plains, causing considerable drifting. Snow depths had ranged up to 11 inches in northern Missouri, and many roads were either blocked or reduced to one-way traffic. Along the eastern edge of the cold wave, sleet and freezing rain had gripped the Mississippi Valley. St. Louis was almost paralyzed by a hardening ice layer which had snapped power lines and made streets and highways dangerous. The Weather Bureau said that the storm center was in the lower Ohio Valley at mid-morning and moving northward into the Great Lakes region. Eleven deaths had been attributed to the storm, all of the victims having been killed in traffic accidents on ice or snow-covered roads. Three had been killed in New Mexico. Montana, Pennsylvania and Iowa each had reported two deaths and Oklahoma and Kansas had one each.

In New York, it was reported on Monday night on the CBS radio program, "The Business of Sex", narrated by Edward R. Murrow, that unidentified speakers from the business world and the demimonde had told of company policies which included keeping prostitutes on public relations payrolls or paying them monthly fees for dealing with customers. As spokesmen from the top ranks of big business generally denied the practice, New York Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy ordered an investigation. Mayor Robert Wagner's office said: "We will not tolerate such scandal and vice in the city." Mr. Kennedy, acknowledging the difficulty of detecting call-girl set-ups, appealed for any information which might aid in the probe. He promised to protect informants but threatened to prosecute any businessman found employing prostitutes. A promise not to disclose names had been made to participants on the Monday program by CBS officials, who refused on Tuesday to identify the speakers to police. The Deputy Police Commissioner, James R. Kennedy, said that the network employees "fully cooperated to the limit they could" and that he respected their right to refuse, that no one was going to jail for the refusal—an apparent reference to Marie Torre, the New York Herald Tribune television columnist who had recently served a ten-day jail sentence for contempt of court for refusing to divulge to a judge her news source in a lawsuit brought by singer-actress Judy Garland against CBS for alleged libel in claiming that she did not want to work in fulfilling her television commitments to the network. She had sought during discovery the revelation of a CBS executive's identity who had made certain statements which Ms. Torre had included in her column, Ms. Torre having refused to identify the executive in question despite the court ordering her to do so on the basis that the right to information by litigants in the course of litigation superseded the confidential informant privilege of a reporter, ordinarily subject to First Amendment protection. Mr. Murrow was to be questioned this date, but Mr. Kennedy said he expected it would not be fruitful. A parallel investigation had been promised by Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan. The Deputy Commissioner said that he would discuss the program's contents with Mr. Hogan, but added that he did not believe there was a sex ring or syndicate operating in the city. Chief Magistrate John Murtagh, co-author with Sara Harris of Cast the First Stone, a book on the problem of prostitution, said that it was "undoubtedly true to a degree that vice is used to promote business," but to what extent no one knew. He said that the program appeared to exploit the subject for audience appeal. In Washington, the chairman of the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee, Al Hayes, suggested an investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Labor-Management relations, saying that he was shocked that Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, the chairman of the Committee, and Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, the ranking Republican member, had declined comment. Outraged comment had come from Akron, O., where General Tire and Rubber Co. distributors were holding an organizational meeting. Denouncing the program, General Tire vice-president L. A. McQueen said, "No legitimate business concern in this nation would permit the use of such unethical selling practices." A spokesman in New York for more than two dozen firms in banking, manufacturing, oil, steel and utilities said that they had never heard of any company hiring call girls to advance business. They declined use of their names. One executive familiar with the garment industry conceded that some sales manager might cement friendships with buyers by providing girls as part of an evening's entertainment. Be sure to carry your tires with you, to avoid losing your wheels—especially in the Wild, Wild West. (Query whether the coincidence of this program presented by Mr. Murrow having appeared in the same time frame during which the Republicans were meeting in Des Moines to plan their push for victory in 1960, later led daytripper G. Gordon Liddy to claim that the purpose of the burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate on the night of June 17, 1972 was for the purpose of discovering evidence of use by leading Democrats of a call-girl ring—about the most preposterous explanation any serial liar could conceive as a cover in case of being caught, which was perhaps a prime reason why CREEP chairman and former Attorney General John Mitchell told the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate in July, 1973 that when Mr. Liddy first proposed the scheme of dirty tricks, called Gemstone, in a meeting they had in Key Biscayne, Fla., he had wished that, instead of listening to him, he had thrown him out the window. Don't tell anyone, but the probable reason for the break-in was to determine whether DNC chairman Lawrence O'Brien, former aide to President Kennedy, had acquired any information linking some people associated with the burglary, namely the Cuban operatives and their ring-leader, Frank Sturgis, who were brought together in 1960 with the connivance of then-Vice-President Nixon, to overthrow or assassinate Fidel Castro, with the assassination of President Kennedy, the "Bay of Pigs thing". The wicked flee when no man pursueth.)

In Hollywood, film producer and director Cecil B. DeMille, who had been responsible for more than 70 films, had died at age 77 of a heart attack this date. He had been one of the founders of Hollywood and had become a legend in his own time. He had been ill for a week prior to his death in the early morning hours. His daughter and her husband were with him at the time of death. His wife was in the house but not at his bedside as she had also been ill. He had spent money like it was water, in amounts which topped even Hollywood's free-spending studio heads and had been amazingly active to the point when he became ill. The last film which he had actively produced had been "The Ten Commandments", but he had supervised production of "The Buccaneer" and was making plans for a new film about Lord Robert Baden-Powell, who had founded the Boy Scouts. He had entered show business as an actor and in 1912, at a luncheon with a glove salesman, Samuel Goldwyn, and a vaudeville cornet player, Jesse Lasky, the three decided to take a fling at the new medium of motion pictures. They formed a company, acquired rights to "The Squaw Man" and sent Mr. DeMille west to make it into a movie. He had rented half of a barn in a pastoral suburb, Hollywood, and the rest was history. Mr. DeMille, the late Mr. Lasky and Mr. Goldwyn had become the moguls of Hollywood. Mr. DeMille had estimated that his films had been seen by more than 5 billion people, roughly twice the population of the earth. Box office returns were nearing a billion dollars. He was reared in a religious atmosphere, reflected in many of his films. But they were judiciously larded with sex and excitement as well. Among his best-known productions were: "King of Kings", a silent movie about the life of Christ which was still being shown; "The Ten Commandments", in both silent and wide-screen versions; "Male and Female"; "The Sign of the Cross"; "The Crusades"; "The Plainsman"; "Union Pacific"; "The Story of Dr. Wassell"; "Samson and Delilah"; and "The Greatest Show on Earth", which had won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1952. Most of the top names in movies at present had worked for him. Mr. DeMille's trademarks were clashing battles, violent storms, lavish banquets, great fires, chases, mobs, milk baths for leading ladies, and impassioned lovemaking. He had been born on August 12, 1881 in Asheville, Mass. His father had been a school teacher who studied for the ministry at one time and it was from his father's habit of reading the Bible aloud each night that he absorbed his feeling for the epic qualities of religion which marked his movie-making career. His parents lived in Washington, N.C., where Mr. DeMille had spent part of his boyhood and where he still had relatives.

In Plainfield, N.J., a woman was arrested the previous week by a patrolman who found her slumped over the wheel of her car with a half-gallon jug of sherry in the back seat and a pint of the liquid missing. She insisted that she was not intoxicated, and a magistrate had agreed to let her drink a pint of sherry in court on condition that if she flunked the drunkometer test, she would be found guilty of drunk driving.

On the editorial page, "Tar Heels Who Can't Hear the Boom" indicates that economic progress in the state boomed on, loudly, insistently, under the brilliant field command of Governor Luther Hodges. In almost every phase of his campaign toward higher payrolls and industrial diversity, he had won victories. But even the Governor had to know, on the eve of another General Assembly, that some 90,000 North Carolinians could not hear or savor the boom.