The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 3, 1959
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Berlin that the Russians this date had held a U.S. Army convoy of four cargo trucks and five soldiers on the East German Autobahn, within sight of the West German border, as the convoy had been en route from West Berlin to West Germany. The U.S. Army charged that the convoy had been detained for more than 24 hours with the "obvious intention of creating an incident" on the 110-mile lifeline. The Red Army had been handed two stern protests and demands for immediate release of the men and the trucks. But the Russians had brushed off the Army protests and negotiations for release of the convoy had bogged down. The corporal in charge of the convoy had refused Soviet demands for inspection of the open cargo of the jeeps and the trucks the previous night and he and his men had spent the night in blankets in the trucks. The Army unit at the Helmstedt checkpoint, just over the border in West Germany, had been able to supply the men with hot meals. The Soviet Army had allowed the convoy to pass out of West Berlin on the 110-mile run through Communist East Germany, but stopped it at the checkpoint at Marienborn in the early afternoon the previous day, just as it was ready to cross into West Germany. The Army announced in the morning that it was in contact with Soviet officials in Berlin and Frankfurt and was trying to get the trucks cleared into West Germany. A U.S. Army spokesman said that the Russians had indicated only that they would take the Army's request under consideration, after the political adviser to the U.S. mission in East Berlin had presented the request. Allied military trains and civilian highway and air traffic were running normally in and out of West Berlin, even while the convoy was blocked. Western officials at the frontier said that the Soviets were refusing to allow the convoy to pass into West Germany, but were not preventing it from returning to Berlin. It had been the first serious interference since the prior November 14 regarding allied military traffic along the highway between isolated West Berlin and West Germany, at that earlier time, three Army trucks having been held up for 8.5 hours when the drivers refused to allow Soviet sentries to inspect their cargoes. That convoy had finally returned to West Berlin. Allied drivers were under standing instructions to allow the Soviet guards to look at only a convoy's manifest papers. The Russians in the past had gotten tough on technicalities when they wanted to show who was boss or to imply a warning.
Secretary of State Dulles was flying to Europe this date, apparently in a bid for allied support regarding some sort of counter-proposal to the Soviet Union anent the German problem. There was no indication, however, as to what he had in mind and it appeared he had a number of ideas to try out on the top officials in Britain, France and West Germany. Secretary Dulles and a small party of select advisers were headed first for London, next to Paris and then to Bonn, with the Secretary to be gone for about a week. Despite denials, there seemed to be considerable disunity among the four allies about how to meet the new Soviet pressure, demanding withdrawal of the Big Three Western military presence from West Berlin and leaving it a "free city" before there could be reunification.
In Moscow, it was reported that Soviet Defense Minister Rodion Malinkovsky had told the West this date that its nuclear weapons were outdated and said that the Soviet Union had ICBM's which could deliver hydrogen-bomb warheads with pinpoint accuracy. He told the 21st congress of the Soviet Communist Party that the West wanted to "unleash war with nuclear weapons, but this is an outdated means. We have perfected weapons, ballistic rockets—long, middle and close-range—that can carry their hydrogen charges to any point on earth … to the very point, for they are very accurate." A summary of the Defense Minister's review of Soviet defenses had been broadcast by Moscow Radio. He said that if war was imposed on the Soviet Union, "the rocket weapons will constitute the fighting force, capable of accomplishing the most important tasks in the air, on land and sea." He reported that the quality of armaments and technical equipment of the Soviet Army had improved rapidly in the previous few years and that at present, the Soviet Air Force had the most modern means of carrying out military tasks. He said that the Navy also had attained a very high level. He said to the U.S.: "It is written very frequently overseas that the United States Navy is capable of landing troops at any point on our coast. It appears to me that it would be a good thing for those overseas to give a thought about the vulnerability of their own seacoast." His claims had echoed Premier Nikita Khrushchev's opening speech to the congress a week earlier in which the Premier had said that "serial production" of ICBM's had been organized, and added: "If the Soviet Union can launch a rocket hundreds of thousands of kilometers into outer space, it can launch powerful rockets with pinpoint accuracy to any part of the globe." Mr. Malinovsky said that the Soviet armed forces would do everything possible to assure world peace as well as to provide the security essential for fulfillment of Premier Khrushchev's new seven-year economic plan.
Senator John Sparkman of Alabama said this date that he was confident that his 2.92 billion dollar omnibus bill would move through the Senate without reductions. A measure of similar size had been cut the previous year in an effort to speed Senate passage. The Banking Committee had approved Senator Sparkman's compromise measure on Monday after rejecting efforts of Republicans to reduce it and of liberal Democrats to increase funding for slum clearance. Floor debate on the bill would begin on Wednesday. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the assistant majority leader, said that night sessions would be held if necessary to get the measure through during the current week. The bill, the first major piece of legislation on the Senate floor in the current year, furnished an early test of sentiment on the President's hold-the-line plea on his budget. The measure would go beyond the 1.65 billion dollars in new money authorizations sought by the President. Senator Sparkman said that he had worked out his proposal in advance with Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, the Senate's Republican spokesman on housing legislation, and believed that it had a good chance to obtain White House approval. Senator Capehart would not speculate on that point but told reporters that he was not too unhappy about the measure, saying that it was far below the figures talked about in connection with the Government housing programs. The bill carried an emergency tag because some of the programs were running short of funds. The home-building industry had been pushing for legislation and Democrats believed that it might help prevent a veto. The Committee had made one important concession to the President, by voting to raise the interest rate on G.I. home loans from 4.75 to 5.25 percent, the new rate to be the same as for FHA-insured loans. The Administration had said that money for those loans had dried up because private lenders would not accept the lower rate. Democratic liberals on the Committee had succeeded in doubling the 17,500 units of new public housing starts which Senator Sparkman had originally proposed.
In Richmond, Va., it was reported that racially integrated classes had opened uneventfully this date in six public schools in Norfolk and had continued without incident 200 miles to the north in Arlington County. An allusion to "the niggers" had come from a cluster of white boys at one Norfolk high school, the nearest thing to an incident in either community, as racial integration had gotten its first full-scale test in the classrooms of Virginia. In an attempt to hold integration to a minimum and prevent it from spreading through the whole state, plans for a long-range program would be coming to a head in the ensuing few weeks in the office of Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., and the General Assembly. The Assembly could not find a way to halt integration entirely during a five-day special session which had ended the previous night. Police again kept vigil at the Norfolk schools this date and at Stratford Junior High School in Arlington, but again there had been no incidents to interrupt the calm transition. Integration had begun the previous day by order of Federal District Courts, starting at Stratford, where four black students had attended public school classes with whites for the first time in the history of the state and had done so again this date. At Norfolk, there had only been registration and class assignments the previous day in preparation for actual classroom study this date. The three Norfolk white high schools and the same number of junior high schools had been closed since September in a futile attempt to prevent integration. Seventeen black students had enrolled the previous day at the half dozen schools and had turned up again this date for morning classes, seven of them attending Norview High and five at nearby Norview Junior High. The school superintendent watched along with a police detail as the student body went into Norview High. A group of perhaps a dozen white boys at one entrance had jeered a bit as some of the students entered. One of them had hollered at his schoolmates, "What are you waiting for?" Another had hollered back, "The niggers, of course." (Apparently no one had the presence of mind to suggest to them to hold up their girlfriends' compact mirror.) There was not even that much of a demonstration at Norview Junior High as the five black students walked in together. Commenting on the low enrollment in the reopened Norfolk schools, the superintendent told reporters that many parents did not want their children to register on the first day because they were afraid of disorders, and he had told them that they could wait a day or two if they wanted to do so. The school board, according to the superintendent, had not tackled yet the problem of social activities at the integrated schools and he said that he, personally, was "discouraging any such activity at this time." As we stress below, this was not "the day the music died". So shut up about it. We have been tortured by that line, perhaps from some residually deposited, subconsciously held memories of the same date's news broadcast, since we first heard it in that stupid song in late 1971. Stupid is as stupid does.
The Federal Power Commission in Washington had ruled 3 to 2 the previous day that a license it had issued the previous year to the New York State Power Authority for a Niagara Falls power plant would interfere with the Tuscarora Indian reservation. The chairman of the Authority proposed to use 1,383 acres of Indian land for a water storage reservoir and he had promptly called the FPC findings "indefinite, contradictory and inconclusive." The head chief of the Tuscaroras said that they were very happy about the decision. The head of the Authority said that they were not going to stop work, as to do so would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and create chaos on the Niagara frontier. He had written the Commission that the Authority was passing up the offer of 30 days to argue against the findings, and asked instead that the findings be forwarded without delay to the D.C. Court of Appeals. He said that unless the latter cleared the way for them to take Tuscarora land promptly, they would complete their financing and get along with a smaller reservoir off Indian land, as they had no other choice. The Commission's majority opinion said that it realized its findings would result in higher costs for the electricity from the project.
In New York, it was reported that multimillionaire socialite Vincent Astor, 67, businessman and philanthropist, had died of a heart attack early this date in his New York apartment. He had just recovered from an illness and was planning a trip to his winter home in Arizona. He was head of a family possessing one of the nation's oldest and largest fortunes, having personally inherited an estimated 75 million dollars while still a 20-year old student at Harvard, leading him to be labeled "the richest boy in the world" at the time. He was a great-great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, a German butcher's son who had come to the country almost penniless in 1784 and had made a fortune in fur trading with the Indians. The original Mr. Astor had invested in Manhattan real estate and many of those holdings remained in the family, their value having increased many times through the years. An acute judgment in business matters had enabled Vincent Astor to expand still further the vast family holdings, adding other properties in oil, real estate and other enterprises throughout the country and in Canada. His business activities in later years had been numerous and varied.
In Charlotte, it was reported that rising temperatures partially had erased the thin coating of ice on roads which had put the Carolinas on the skids during the morning, but a repeat performance of the morning's ice show was forecast for this night. Rain from the south, mixing with cold air from the northwest had brought the year's first ice storm to the state this date and the rain was forecast to continue through the following day, though ice would likely disappear, along with low freezing temperatures by the following afternoon. A low of 31, two degrees above the morning's 29, was forecast for the following morning and a high of 50, 17 above the predicted high of 33 for this date, was expected the following afternoon.
In London, it was reported that a railroad worker had won 300,684 pounds, the equivalent of $841,815 on a soccer pools coupon for a twopenny bet, a world record. He had hit the tax-free jackpot by correctly forecasting eight tied matches on one selection, having done it with his 13th twopenny try during the week. He had sent in 30 selections, each costing twopence and the 13th had been the correct one. The first thought the man had was to quit his job, that of a 9 pounds, 15 shillings per week railroad worker, the equivalent of $37.50. He said that he was off to New Zealand to join his wife. He had worked part-time as a taxi driver to save the equivalent of $672 so that his wife could visit her brother in Auckland. He said that it was "lucky 13" for him from now on, that he had even altered his 13th selection at the last minute and it was the change that won him the jackpot.
In San Antonio, Tex., it was reported that the police received a call from the dispatcher to check a report of a woman chasing a round object which was unknown, and an officer found the woman very unhappy as something small and white had hopped into her coffee pot, then around the kitchen, ending up in the dishwasher drain. The officer had captured it and found that it was a golf ball with the tightly wound rubber core popping free through a break in its cover. Was the officer sure that it was a coffee pot at issue?
In Ukiah, Calif., it was reported by the sheriff's department that a man who was quick on the draw had managed to shoot himself in the leg on Saturday with the same .22-caliber pistol with which he had shot himself in the same leg the previous October 27. His name was Richard, not Irving.
On the editorial page, "A Milestone Was Passed in Virginia" indicates that history might remember Virginia's retreat from its massive resistance laws as the turning point on the South's road to reunion. Virginia had emerged early as the leader of Southern intransigence regarding integration of the public schools and had garnered a unique respect in the South, primarily because it had gone about its business of preparing its defenses with such "lordly swank and swagger". There had been no demagoguery in the state as that would have been uncouth. Its legal stratagems had been semi-hoaxes, but they each had borne the mark of elegance. Even "massive resistance" had been a misnomer, being more in the nature of aristocratic disdain.
While it lasted, doctrinaire adherents of "segregation at any cost" had loved it, cheered it and even thought it would succeed. It was difficult to believe, however, that the architects of the massive resistance effort had any illusions about its success, it having been more likely that they were buying time, putting off when massive resistance would give way to massive integration. They had paid a terrible price, as by the end of the previous September, nine Virginia schools in three communities had been closed by Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., with nearly 13,000 children forced to stay away, the consequent disruption of lives to haunt the state for years.
Time had run out the previous day, as a few black students had finally been admitted to previously all-white schools in Arlington County across the Potomac from the nation's capital and in Norfolk, with the transition having been peaceful. It was not massive integration, and it was unlikely that there would be massive integration in Virginia, with the pattern of biracial education to undergo only microscopic alteration. "What has happened is that, forcibly and rudely, Virginia has been brought face to face with something North Carolina discovered before it was too late: How moderate the expectations of the federal courts really are, how little it takes to satisfy the judges and how much can be left in the hands of local authorities."
Popular attitudes would remain pretty much the same and many white Virginians would still fear "mass mongrelization at bayonet point and speak uneasily of an end to racial integrity." Yet, one fact was inescapable, that being that the leader of mass resistance in the South had given up the previous day under protest an old and treasured institution and had accepted a new legal basis for its relationship with the minority race. It suggests that it would be what historians would remember as they measured the South's institutions in the 1950's against the prevailing standards of the nation at large. While a genuine reconciliation might be a long way off, perhaps as much as a half-century, a milestone had been passed in Virginia on February 2, 1959.
So you see, February 3 was not the "day the music died", for the folk movement had already quite replaced, for all intents and purposes, conventional rock 'n' roll, which had been reduced to easy-listening mush for the most part by this point anyway, at least for the time being until early 1964 with the British invasion, to revivify it, initially by echoing the freshness of the original rock 'n' roll scene without so much of the hillbilly backwash in the background, conventional revisionism to the contrary notwithstanding. Take your "good ol' boys and their whiskey and rye" and shove it. We have seen quite enough of that scene through time, staggering around and shouting various uncouth slogans, to last more than a lifetime. Why that silly song ever caught on has confounded us, both then and since. We never added it to our record collection. The music did not die. There was a light-plane crash in Iowa, and three musicians, one of whom was quite prominent at the time, had perished. It was sad, but the music did not die. Nor was there any reason for anyone to drive their Chevy to the levee to see the USA with Dinah Shore. Stupid lyrics, stupid song… Shut up about it. Ditto for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", another stupid song of the same time. What the hell was going on in your minds in late 1971, early 1972, as Richard Nixon and his henchmen were plotting the end of our democracy, not unlike the present time, though the present occupant of the White House means to go him one better. We tried to tell you then to vote for Senator George McGovern, but most of you refused to listen, the same way a spare plurality of you refused to listen in 2024, preferring to go your own tried and fool head-strong way, reliant on the Fauxx "News" bait-switch propaganda promulgated solely for their own self-interest. When will you learn? When will they ever learn?
"The Young Capitalists Earn an 'A'" finds that Charlotte's ambitious Junior Achievement program had earned an "A" for excellence in its first year of operation, having been such a success that plans for a greatly expanded operation in the ensuing school year were already being drafted. It indicates that the plans deserved the community's complete support.
Junior Achievement was an educational program in which young Charlotte residents between the ages of 15 and 19 organized and operated their own small-scale business enterprises. Meeting once per week throughout the school year, 250 teenagers learned about capitalism through actual experience. Adult advisers drawn from local business and industry offered expert advice. The youths selected a product or service which they wished to produce and went to work on it, electing officers, selling shares of stock in their company and using the working capital to purchase and process raw materials. They set up production lines, planned sales and distribution programs, paid salaries, commissions, rent and taxes, and, if their business was a success, paid dividends to stockholders. At the end of the year, they liquidated their companies and issued stockholder reports.
Charlotte had 16 Junior Achievement companies, counseled by 52 volunteers from 15 local firms, with more than 1,500 stockholders having a stake in the success or failure of the miniature companies. Students from half a dozen City and County high schools were involved. In the coming year, Junior Achievement planned to organize nine additional companies to accommodate another 100 teenagers.
It indicates that additional businessmen would be needed to assist in the operations so that the program would continue to grow and so that more Charlotte teenagers could become partners in progress with American business.
"Better Part of Wisdom" quotes from the New York Times: "After his opponent beat him in points in an eight-round London fight, a heavyweight boxer argued that his contract called for ten rounds and persuaded the referee to continue the bout. He was knocked out in the tenth round."
It finds that the moral was: "It is also a good idea to quit when you are behind."
"Who Introduced Elephant-Watching?" indicates that after carrying on fiercely about North Carolina lacking "a real metropolis", the Greensboro Daily News had committed another astounding breach of etiquette, now offering the argument that "North Carolina has no predominant city, despite the blustering claims of Charlotte and Greensboro."
It indicates that it was unaware that Greensboro had been claiming possession of anything more substantial than the state's predominant peapatch or predominant case of unmitigated gall, but it lets it pass, as the fact remained that Charlotte had been North Carolina's predominant city in 1775 and had never abdicated the position. The locals had first asserted their authority on the question of liberty in that year and later on practically everything else. The city's influence on the state's manners and morals, general culture, economics and education had been awe-inspiring. "While Greenburghers were still dabbling in bird-watching, we introduced elephant-watching. We think big, that's all. When the top blows off our Coliseum it's the biggest mess you ever saw this side of that other one in Rome. Maybe we'll even import some gladiators and revolutionize intercollegiate athletics."
"So what if we don't run the legislature over in Raleigh, as the GDN rather testily implies? A few more rebuffs and we'll succeed, elect Harry Golden governor and annex half the Piedmont. That'll show 'em who's predominant."
A piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, titled "The Dead of Winter", indicates that it was the dead of winter and dead it was, that from the second Sunday after Epiphany until the sun entered Aries, and Uranus and the moon were in conjunction, on March 21 when spring would begin, man encountered his most dispiriting ordeal, often taking all of his energy just to hope to survive the dismal period.
It was not the winter of sleigh bells, songs and parties, which ended a week or so after the New Year. Snow was no longer ermine and icicles were no longer crystal pendants. It was instead the season of sniffles, coughs, sinus infections, sore throats, fevers, agues and worse.
But the days were now getting longer and gradually the sun, clouded and fog-blanketed as it might be, had been "prolonging its contemplation of our part of the earth. Perhaps you already have noticed it. The alarm clock no longer goes off in the pitchblack night and there is a lingering bit of light in the street for the evening's homeward rush."
"It's the grim season, the year at its worst, no doubt about that. But there is help for getting through. The days are growing longer."
Drew Pearson indicates that the President had been a lot madder over the Republican criticism about him at Des Moines than he had conveyed at his press conference, privately boiling at the insinuation that his leadership was responsible for the Democratic landslide in the midterm elections of the prior November. The needling had a healthy effect, however, as those who met weekly with the President to map strategy could see him reaching for leadership as never before. He seemed to realize that he had only two years left in his term and that he had to repair the political damage and make his record as a great President. He wanted to leave the White House with the same popularity as when he entered in 1953. A year earlier, the President had been talking wistfully about the Queen of England and her relatively easy job of laying cornerstones and making speeches, but now seemed to realize that the U.S. could not be run that way. He now read the newspapers himself, did not depend on the news summary prepared by his staff, and asked more questions of Congressional leaders, providing more suggestions himself. He was irked at the way Senator Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats had stolen the initiative, but he was not sulking over it and was determined to catch up.
The President had sent a chiding message to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer recently, urging him to cooperate with the West in solving the Berlin crisis. The "diplomatic spanking" had been sent before the President had known that West German businessmen had agreed to sell Russia the 12,000 miles of steel pipe which the U.S. Government had refused to allow American businessmen to sell as requested by visiting Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, and if he had known the fact, possibly the message would have been stronger. The President wanted the Chancellor to cut off West Germany's trade with East Germany in case of a Russian blockade, and to announce it in advance. The East Germans relied so heavily on West German trade to keep their economy going that they might throw up their hands and tell their friends in the Kremlin to change their tactics, should the Chancellor cut off all trade. Chancellor Adenauer, however, who was urging the West to fight to the last man to save Berlin, had refused thus far to consider cutting off trade, claiming that such a trade boycott would hurt only the East German people who were anti-Communists, not the East German government. The State Department had refused to accept that explanation and had urged the President to keep needling the Chancellor, being convinced that the West German businessmen did not want to interrupt their lucrative commerce across the border, regardless of Berlin's fate.
Congressman Charles Porter of Oregon, the enemy of dictators, had helped to induce Fidel Castro to move his Roman holiday war crimes trials out of the 17,000-seat Havana Sports Coliseum, where they had every appearance of a Roman holiday, into the Army headquarters, considerably smaller.
R. H. Shackford, Scripps-Howard Newspapers correspondent, in the second of a series of articles on Communist China, tells of a Communist writer having described the beginning of the day of work in the communes: "Drowning the first cock crows, in the mists before the dawn, music is heard booming from the loudspeakers—it is the alarm signal for those who are to work in the fields today." The day would not end at sunset but would continue throughout the evening, with indoctrination classes beginning at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. following a supper in the communal mess halls. The routine was the same for 28 days of each month and for every day in the month, with no days off, if the peasant wanted to earn a tiny "bonus" over his bare subsistence. The regimen was the same for women, now that they were relieved of the "drudgery of heavy housework" and could work beside the men in the fields, on dam or canal construction, or in factories. Schoolchildren were also not exempt, working between two and six hours per day in addition to attending school, depending on their age.
Mao Tse-tung's new "chain gang empire" was organized along military lines, with the entire working population divided into corps, divisions, regiments, brigades, companies, and platoons. For big state projects, communes supplied their quotas of divisions or regiments.
The same Communist writer whom he had cited earlier had also said: "The main worker in the family, the elder son, leaves home first of all and comes back last; as deputy commander of the second [workers] company there is always work to be done in one's spare time. At exactly 5 a.m. the second company is on parade; 59 experienced peasants, 73 women ranging from 15-year-old enthusiastic girls to middle-aged mothers. The first platoon, led by the deputy company commander, is today going to bring in the harvest. The second is building pits for fertilizer [manure]. The third platoon is going to help a neighboring village which belongs to the same commune. When it is just beginning to get light, the first platoon already is in the fields. Groups within the platoon compete in the swiftness and precision of their work. The best educated and most developed man in the platoon, its commander, reads the latest newspapers aloud to the peasants after lunch, telling them of events in Formosa. By supper time one group has succeeded in outstripping the other in an area harvested. The deputy commander announces that the progressive group will be reported to battalion headquarters for commendation. He delivers to the victors the banner of honor under which they march back to the village. The platoon returns from work, as always, in column and singing. After washing and dining in the communal canteen, the workers disperse. The major proportion of workers of all ages hasten to use their spare time for education [in] evening classes and in the 'School for Red Specialists'."
Then, presumably, they would go to bed in segregated barracks for a few hours of sleep before the beginning of the next day and the same routine again.
The secretary of the party cell of the commune said that there had been a "profound change" in the peasants, so much so that they did not recognize many of them. Peiping's China Youth Daily had concluded: "Gone are the sultry living habits of the peasants." Peiping Radio said that "the commune is eradicating all old thinking and customs such as individualism and capitalism… Many housewives and loafers who never took part in production in the past now perform physical labor."
The alternative to laboring for the State was, or soon would be, starvation, with completion of the program for the State to take possession of everything, ultimately even the clothes on the peasant's back.
He indicates that the commune system presently being pushed in the cities as well as on the farms was what the magazine America had described as: "The demoniac phase of communism conjured up by Mao in the shape of the 'people's communes.' Here is a nightmare phantom of collectivism which for open horror, gross inhumanity and satanic ambition, dwarfs any devil materialized within the Communist bloc in 41 years."
Mr. Shackford adds that it was George Orwell's 1984 in operation. It was what Mao called "the great leap forward" to communism, but in fact was further away from the theory of pure communism than in Russia. The Chinese coolie's life had never been a good one, whether building the Great Wall of China or pulling boats up the rivers, but he had never been working solely for a predatory central regime, stockpiling the fruits of his productive efforts to build the power and prestige of the State for aggressive purposes.
Mao's objective was to convert every township, similar to a county in the current system, into a commune, plus city communes in factories, mines, Government departments, sectors of cities, etc. The Chinese peasants and workers "volunteered" to join, turning over to the commune everything which they owned except the clothes on their backs.
The commune was run by Communist Party functionaries and activists and once set up, took over control of everything, agriculture, industry, commerce, banking, education, cultural activities, military affairs. From then on, the peasant and worker got whatever he needed in those categories from the commune. Each commune had about 10,000 families, but could go as high as 20,000. Each member of those families capable of doing anything became a slave of the commune which, in turn, was a slave of the central state regime in Peiping.
Mr. Shackford indicates that the following day he would examine how the Communist Chinese were abolishing family life.
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, indicates that agrarian reformer H. Allen Smith, who was also a world traveler, bullfight critic and girl-watcher, had fallen in love with Mexico in his book titled, The Pig in the Barber Shop. Mr. Smith had expounded lavishly on a theme which had long intrigued Mr. Ruark, that half of American tourists were jerks. He disagrees with that statement, saying that he knew people who lived in foreign countries for years and still maintained a typically "tourist" attitude toward the people and the country, appearing to wonder what the people were doing there, and exhibiting a righteous wrath at the fact that the natives did not speak English.
Mr. Smith told of one English woman who had remarked approximately that "there is no reason in the world why English, if spoken slowly and distinctly, should not be easily understandable by anyone, anywhere." Mr. Ruark says that he knew towns in Mr. Smith's beloved Mexico where the locals did not even speak Spanish. He was not so angry as Mr. Smith at the reprehensible behavior of many tourists, with his own view tending more toward pity.
He finds that Americans made better tourists than the English, the French or the Germans. Italians and Spaniards were about the best, as they knew how to relax and usually spoke at least a fragment of three or four languages. The English had been handicapped by currency shortage and an unwillingness to realize that the Sudan was not a suburb of Surrey. The French were almost as querulous abroad as at home, and the German persisted in believing that he was beloved in lands he had ravished, a considerable error in his estimate. But the American bumbled along, and generally got home intact to live to come again and say hello to some old friends made on the first trip.
A letter writer finds that birds of
a feather flocked together, including bankers, lawyers, dentists and
doctors with their associations, merchants and their credit
associations, writers and their guilds, etc. He complains that only
Charlotte's firemen and policemen could not unite in an organization
of their own kind for their mutual benefit and pleasure, which, he
indicates, established them as God's lowest creatures
A letter writer comments on News reporter Elizabeth Prince's review of the Linn-Alexander dance program. She indicates that Virginia and Floria Vestoff, cousins, had been for years the dancing cigarette box on a popular television commercial, with their names never having been given. Virginia Vestoff had grown up and was presently a member of a fine dance group. The writer indicates that she was present at her naming, as her father, Valeria Vestoff, wanted the V-V to be carried on, and a fine job of it she was doing.
She fails to reveal the controversy.
Framed Edition
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