The Charlotte News
Saturday, February 7, 1959
ONE EDITORIAL
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Bonn, West Germany, that Secretary of State Dulles had called this date for the Western allies to face down the Soviet attempt to force the allies from West Berlin, "if need be by common action". He had said that the allies had to find a way to meet "the Soviet challenge to our rights in Berlin." While he had not made clear what he meant by the word "action", it appeared that he had force in mind. As the Secretary had arrived in Bonn for talks with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, reliable diplomatic sources in Paris had said that Mr. Dulles and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and West Germany would meet in Paris on March 15, with their main purpose being to hear a report from British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan regarding his trip to Moscow. The sources said that an invitation to the Soviet Union to attend an East-West foreign ministers meeting could come from the Paris meeting of the Western officials. Mr. Dulles had talked over the March 15 meeting on Friday when he had met with French Premier Charles de Gaulle. The March meeting in Paris suggested that the Western powers would seek a meeting with the Soviets sometime in April, closely following the tenth anniversary of the formative meeting of NATO in Washington on April 2. NATO members would be filled in on the proposed meetings the following Wednesday when their council would meet and NATO Secretary-General Paul Henri Spaak would meet with Secretary Dulles during the latter's stay in Paris. The NATO council would also be called on to approve the Western replies to the Soviet note of January 10, calling for a 28-nation conference to work out a German peace treaty. The Western notes would reject the Soviet bid, according to diplomats, but would officially set forth the West's willingness to hold a foreign ministers meeting with the Soviets, the U.S., Britain and France. Diplomatic sources indicated that the West had agreed on the broad lines of an approach to the Soviet Union but that vital details remained to be worked out.
At Cape Cape Canaveral in Florida,
it was reported that the U.S. had launched its second-generation
missile program with the debut of the powerful Titan
In New York, Attorney General William Rogers, in a speech prepared for a meeting of Fordham University law alumni, expressed the belief this date that resistance to public school integration was beginning to soften and that "reason and wisdom are coming to the fore." He said that there was a much wider acceptance of the realities and a growing recognition that intransigent resistance could lead only ultimately to the destruction of public schooling in the area concerned. He served notice that the Justice Department would not tolerate defiance of Federal court integration rulings, that all "appropriate steps to vindicate the court's authority" would be undertaken, for example, through the institution of contempt proceedings. He expressed hope, however, that state and local authorities would maintain order themselves without the need for Federal action. He expressed warm praise for the week's peaceful integration of 21 black students in schools at Norfolk and Arlington, Va. He said that there was "cause for encouragement" and that "voices of moderation are being heard in many quarters, and with greater frequency and clarity. Many people who have been adamant up to this point are beginning to listen. There are signs that more thoughtful and reasoned progress is in prospect."
In Columbia, S.C., it was reported that Margie Pusser was free this date to take over the Chesterfield County probate judgeship after former judge W. E. Redfearn apparently had exhausted all legal means to regain the office. The State Supreme Court had refused on Friday to review the circumstances under which Mrs. Pusser had been elected. The former judge had asked the high court to throw out the ruling of the State Board of Canvassers, which had awarded the judgeship to Mrs. Pusser. The latter had been prevented from taking office by a temporary restraining order pending the outcome of Mr. Redfearn's appeal. The court had said that it had been the intent of the voters in 119 contested ballots to vote for Mrs. Pusser, although they had followed the procedure recommended for voting for all Democratic nominees. Mr. Redfearn had continued his legal fight to regain his judgeship despite a murder charge pending against him, having been accused in the September pistol slaying of a Chesterfield funeral director, a longtime friend.
In Mineral, Va., it was reported that every morning, a man went to a neighbor's house where he fed the dog, three cats, a hog and a small herd of beef cattle, then went away and the neighbor's house again fell silent, with no lights coming on at dusk, as the cats meowed in loneliness and the dog, "Checkers", who loved to play and race around with anyone he trusted, peered suspiciously from the corner of the house when strangers approached. On the road, the rural delivery mailbox had small metal letters on top which bore a name of a feed truck driver scheduled to begin a promising new bank job, but who had not picked up the mail for four weeks. The man and his wife and their two young daughters had left the driveway and passed the mailbox on Sunday afternoon, January 11, and hours later, had vanished under strange circumstances. The neighboring farmer said that as far as he knew, they did not have an enemy in the world, and he had known three generations of that family and had watched the four drive away on that Sunday afternoon. He described them as "a nice, normal, quiet couple and two nice girls". The family had driven to Richmond for the day and on their way home had stopped off at the home of the wife's parents at Buckner, then headed the final 16 miles to their own home at Apple Grove, 30 miles west of Richmond. On the following Monday afternoon, their late model car had been found at the side of a country road, half the distance home, appearing to have been forced to the side of the road and then hurriedly abandoned. A few belongings and the ignition keys had been left behind. A deputy sheriff said that they had expected to find the family in the adjoining field somewhere dead and when they did not find anything that night, they figured that perhaps they would find them the next morning in the daylight. But a large search had turned up nothing and the mystery had grown. In four weeks, 625 square miles of the rugged back land of Louisa County had been searched and hundreds of leads had been tracked down. But authorities were no closer to knowing the family's whereabouts than they had been the night when the car had been found on January 12.
Elizabeth Prince of The News reports that the Charlotte Day Nursery had complied with North Carolina law which required licensing of all daycare facilities for children. The commissioner of the State Department of Public Welfare, Dr. Ellen Winston of Raleigh, had said that the local facility had been licensed, following a report from the Fire Prevention Bureau, dated July 2, 1958, recommending a license. She indicated that the state board had been licensing the local nursery over a long period of time because of the excellent program it had for children. She indicated that the licensing of daycare facilities under law was fairly recent. State Attorney General Malcolm Seawall had stated the prior March 18 that in his opinion, a person or organization could not lawfully operate a day care facility, as the one described, without first obtaining a license from the State Board of Public Welfare. Dr. Winston indicated that it was the first time that the law had been clearly interpreted for them, and she said that licensing was essential for the protection of a young child. She indicated that there were 63 daycare centers licensed in Charlotte and over 200 day nurseries licensed in the state. For licensing purposes, the facilities were divided into two categories, those which were licensed to care for nine or fewer children, regarded as "foster day care homes", and those licensed to care for ten or more children.
Bob Slough of The News reports that a group of Charlotte citizens had met during the morning for the second time to discuss the organization of a Citizens Committee to help promote good government in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The seven men attending the meeting at a local restaurant had heard H. C. Wolf restate the purpose of the group of interested citizens, Mr. Wolf having been elected temporary secretary at the previous Saturday's meeting. Several members attending the meeting had also pointed out that the Citizens Committee's purpose was not to offer a slate of candidates for the City Council but to furnish the public with information about local government.
Emery Wister of The News reports that the Salvation Army's Transient Home for Men housed as many as 18 men per night, a house which could become a tomb for them should a careless match or spark ignite it. He indicates that the steps to the home quivered and shook as one walked up to the porch of the old frame house, inside of which was much the same as the outside, old, rickety, with plaster coming off the walls. The local commander of the Salvation Army said that they needed a better home and that they were ashamed of the place, the only sub-standard Salvation Army home in Charlotte. The house, reports Mr. Wister, was as clean as the two men who worked there could make it, but plaster was continually falling off the walls and ceiling, upstairs and down. Men walking across the second floor shook the house so that plaster was always falling, according to one of the workmen, who also said that they tried to keep it clean but it was almost impossible. There were four rooms upstairs and five downstairs, and the transients slept on the second floor. To get there, they had to walk up stairs which were sound but might become impassable in case of a fire. There was a fire escape in one of the bedrooms, but the door opened from the outside instead of from the inside, a code violation. Paper was coming off the walls upstairs and down and bare plaster showed on the stairwell and huge hunks of it had fallen away. There were several beds in each bedroom and all, including the floors, were scrupulously clean. But ratty window blinds and dingy walls made all of the rooms very depressing. The house was about 75 years old, according to the commander, and they planned another one in the same location, but indicated that it would cost $48,000 for the brick building alone. He hoped that the people of Charlotte would give them the money. A kitchen, dining room with television set and bedrooms for caretakers and an office were on the first floor of the present structure, and each man had to register just as he would at a hotel. An overnight lodger was served dinner and breakfast, but if a man dropped in around lunchtime, he was also given that meal. The house was heated by two large oil stoves and there was a large gas range in the kitchen, not fire hazards, but the electric fuse box with its exposed wires might be if a little insulation were to rub off the wires. The house had 13 beds but cots could be placed to accommodate five more men if necessary. If there were more than 18 men, they were kept in the Salvation Army's Red Shield Boys' Club around the corner. The commander said that they did the best that they could but that it was a terrible old house, the only building of which they were ashamed in Charlotte.
We think it's a front for the CIA.
On the editorial page, "The Plea of a European in Our Midst", an editorial book review of Education and Freedom, by Vice-Admiral of the Navy Hyman Rickover, indicates that the Admiral was not a very nice guy and would not be invited to join any clubs where a person had to smile when annoyed, clamp one's lips shut when tempted to curse and hide one's contempt for triflers. The collection of speeches and essays was full of impudence and impatience.
It attempted a hard sell and would probably make a lot of people very angry, according to Charles Van Doren in its preface.
It hopes that it would, even taking into account that a hard sell always ran the risk of making more enemies than friends for a cause. But Admiral Rickover had taken the way of the hard sell, assuming that the Russian technological threat had brought about the hour for American education to snap out of its repose in complacency and mediocrity. He said that the nation could and had to surpass the Soviet Union in national achievement, for the reason that the people's lives and liberty might be at stake.
To his essay on educational criticism, he had brought his trailblazing experience in developing the first nuclear-powered submarine, having run afoul of "an intellectual toryism—an inflexibility that may have its roots in an educational system which does not prepare young people for life in a constantly changing world, subject to recurrent boulversements which rapidly make old attitudes and procedures obsolescent and demand all our leaders to have flexible and versatile minds." The pursuit of progress, not a stupid adherence to outmoded standards, had created that peculiar "toryism". It suggests that the resulting problem might be called the "supervisory gap".
Admiral Rickover had been forced to jeopardize his tenure in the Navy to cope with his many "supervisors", but to him it was a "categorical imperative" that the U.S. had to have a startling new weapon, the nuclear submarine. The Admiral had complained that at every turn of his venture, he had to wrestle with the caution of his supervisors, who moved in a world bounded by protocol, budgets, payrolls and such prosaic matters which did not and ideally could not intrude on the visions of the technicians.
It finds that the Admiral had not clarified just how the "supervisory gap" related to the maladies of American education, much less how one might have bred the other. But the book stood to be judged as a series of somewhat disjointed essays, united by the theme that American education was presently too late with too little in a crucial era.
He found that the schools were mired in progressive theory, with bright children being neglected and that when it came time for the scientists to be trained, there was little alternative, as the basic disciplines, particularly mathematics, had often been neglected. The schools of education, presently on the defensive more than ever, had lashed out against their critics with all of the savagery of those who partially saw but feared to admit their culpability and heresy.
The Admiral had laid some blame on the public for having given the schools and the teachers no mandate to veer so sharply as they had done from all which was classical and purely academic, acquiescing in that trend, allowing mediocrity to be prized. "In the face of spiraling enrollments, we have given the old gray mare a carrot or two when what we needed was a new horse. 'In the period 1940-54 during which we upped educational expenditures 78 percent, we benefited from an increase in the gross national product of 192 percent [in constant 1947 dollars]. We preferred to spend the lion's share of this windfall on ourselves rather than on the education of our children.'" He had gone on to say that the elementary and high schools would have to enlarge their teaching staffs by at least 500,000 in the ensuing decade merely to maintain the present pupil-teacher ratio. He had pointed out that the nation spent 5.3 percent of disposable income for maintenance of its cars, one and a half times what was spent for maintenance of the public elementary and high schools.
The book had found that the debate was between the Europeans and the non-Europeans, with Admiral Rickover being the European par excellence in the country's midst, daring to hail the superiority of the European system, in general, over that of the U.S., urging a pedagogical crash program to change the U.S. general direction to that of European standards. He noted that the Russians, presently gaining such elaborate dividends, had done the same thing years earlier. Russian education had begun its upgrade some 30 years earlier when its czars had realized that they had to throw over the proletarian-centered schools where the "Soviet man" was to be molded and adopt the individualistic system of Europe. Similarly, the malady of U.S. schools, as the Admiral saw it, was the dream of molding the "American man" as kindly and democratic, helpful, even on guard against "insects and vermin which carry disease". The trouble was that education was lost along the wayside.
The Admiral had cited for other rapid changeovers the Prussian example after their defeat by Napoleon, when public universal, free schools, of rigid standards, had been installed. Rapid victories in the wars of unification, then European supremacy, had been, he supposed, precious benefits from that change. One victim had been France, where, for its own elementary schools having been patterned after the Prussians, the wheel had come full circle.
It finds that the Admiral had wisely left the English educational system alone, indicating that Alexis de Tocqueville had observed long earlier that English education, like the whole tenor of English life, defied single categories. "In schools, where everyone often wears the same uniform, as in the 'club,' there is such a strange mixture of conformity and anarchy, individualism and collectivism, classroom and character-building, that the British system is better as a curio than an example."
It indicates that the Admiral's answer was, generally, to hold up the European example and urge the U.S. to copy it, as the Russians were doing. "Certainly for the young Russian, diligence in the schools is often the only alternative to a bleak burial in obscurity. For the Frenchman, winning the Croix de Travail, being the 'head' of the class, is a national dream; the alternative is the humiliation of being mediocre."
It finds that, in short, the key was motivation, and the question was whether Americans had it.
Drew Pearson tells the untold story of how a great man had stepped down from power, that on the morning of January 29, Senator Lyndon Johnson, presiding over the Senate Preparedness Committee, had been handed a note by Rhode Island Senator Theodore Green, 91, wanting to see Senator Johnson in his office as soon as possible. Senator Johnson then went to Senator Green's office where the Senator from Rhode Island was alone. He asked the advice of Senator Johnson as Majority Leader, reminding that he had made the nominating speech for him. He handed Senator Johnson an editorial from the Providence Journal urging Senator Green to resign as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee because of his age, faulty hearing and failing eyesight. He admitted that he could not hear the way he once had and was embarrassed by it and said that he had an operation on his eyes and had obtained some new glasses but could not see as well as he had hoped. He asked for Senator Johnson's advice on whether he should resign. Senator Johnson did not hesitate, advising him not to do so, that he might spread his work around and make some of the younger Senators, such as J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, do more of the work. He said that under no circumstances should he resign. There was some additional discussion and then Senator Green thanked Senator Johnson for the advice and said he would let him know of his decision.
Late that afternoon, Senator Johnson received another note saying that Senator Green wanted to see him again in his office, and when Senator Johnson went to the office, he found Senator Green with his head down on his chest, his eyes closed as if asleep, then looking up as Senator Johnson entered and chuckled, saying: "I've got a lot of service out of the Majority Leader today. I've decided not to take your advice. I'm going to resign, though not because of these slanted newspaper editorials. The newspapers have fought me all my life, ever since I first ran for office when they tried to count me out. They never had an honest vote count in Rhode Island until recently. So I'm not paying any attention to the newspapers. But there are three things I love in life. One is the United States of America. One is the Senate. One is the Foreign Relations Committee. In fairness to them I'm going to resign as chairman. I think it's better that way. I can't always hear the witnesses and I can't always read the statements they turn in. I come up every Saturday and Sunday and spend all day reading in order to keep up, but I have to confess I fall behind. So it's only fair that I resign."
Senator Johnson, whose eyes had filled with tears, argued with Senator Green, but the latter had pulled out his resignation letter and handed it to Senator Johnson. When the letter had been read to the Committee, tears had come to the eyes of almost every Senator, except Senator Green. A resolution had passed unanimously in the Committee not to accept the resignation. Senator Green, however, had responded: "I appreciate your confidence, but it isn't your decision. I've made my decision and my resignation is hereby accepted."
Walter Lippmann indicates that in the controversy over the defense budget of the Administration, the inquiring bystander had to accept the fact that the basic issue was not one which could be settled definitely. There was an armaments race, but who was ahead at present and who would be ahead two years hence was not something which could be measured quantitatively, even assuming the best of intelligence. That which statesmen had to estimate was actually what was likely to be the judgment of other statesmen about the existing balance of power, and in making those judgments, they had to take the calculations of the experts in various specialties, with the necessary discount of those calculations, remembering that the experts were essentially looking at war games and not the whole reality. The calculations were invariably theoretical abstractions.
At base of the argument between the Administration and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri was whether the balance of power ought be calculated in terms of ICBM's or whether in terms of the whole complex of armaments and the international political situation.
Mr. Lippmann indicates that he was not suggesting that Defense Secretary Neil McElroy and the Administration were right, as he indicates that he thought they were very wrong, but did not believe they were deliberately misleading the country, rather arguing their case so badly that they were losing public confidence, with the fatal error in the decisions of the President being to make the paramount issue the Federal budget balancing at the existing level of taxes together with a promise of reduction of taxes before the 1960 presidential election. He posits that the country was facing one of the great climaxes of the cold war and that the President's decision about making the budget paramount reflected a failure to understand the nature of the cold war, making the military estimates in the budget suspect. There was no law, moral or legal, which required that the President refuse to raise taxes or mandate that they be lowered and to exist on that dogma was to tell the people and the world that national defense was not the first but only the secondary consideration of the Government.
It followed from that inevitably that Secretary McElroy's assurance regarding the overall strength of the nation's defenses was unconvincing, as no one was prepared to believe that by some lucky coincidence the money necessary for national defense was just the same amount of money which the nation could afford to spend under a balanced budget without raising taxes. That initial error in the assumption had forced Mr. McElroy into making the disastrous announcement that the U.S. had withdrawn from the missile race. While he might be right that with fewer missiles, there still could be an overall balance of power, it was not good for the Russians and was bad for the nation's allies to be allowed to think that the richest nation in the world was unwilling to pay what it cost to stay in that part of the armaments race. The announcement had been lamentable in preparation for the impending negotiations which Secretary of State Dulles was presently undertaking in Europe with the West Germans, French and British.
Mr. Lippmann asserts that defense ought be the first priority and that if the President would not say it, perhaps Congress ought to do so through resolutions, and then there ought be a substantial increase in the military appropriations, sufficient to put the country back into the missile race. At that point, an increase of taxes ought be voted so as to balance the larger budget.
He indicates his awareness that the extra money invested in making more of the existing missiles might be "wasted", in the sense that the missiles soon would be obsolete and good only for the junk pile. But the armaments race was in the same sense inherently wasteful as the objective was to make weapons which would never be used and yet would soon become obsolete. Nevertheless, the country was in an armaments race and it would be a great day for mankind if it could be ended. "But if the race is to be ended, this will be done only if and when we are able to reach general political settlements with the Communist powers. The race of armaments cannot be ended or suspended merely because we wish to balance the budget without raising taxes, or because it would be good politics to reduce taxes before the next election."
Robert C. Ruark, in Nairobi, Kenya, indicates that it had been nine years since he had first gone to Nairobi and that the faces were more familiar this time, but the face of the town had lifted, along with its feeling since he had been there two years earlier, as well as since three, four and six years earlier. It had a new airport at Eastleigh, with new hotels being constructed and vast new office buildings, along with slum clearance. One no longer got the impact of the smell and feel of Africa as he had done when he had first driven through Race Course Road, going through the native slums, "the howling, wreaking bazaars, in which every smell known to the East mingled in one magnificent heady stench—a blend compounded of rotting fruit and dust and curry powder and wet plaster and ancient living."
He finds that the noises were as exciting as the sights and smells, with 50 shrill dialects mingling with the blare of Indian and Arabic radio broadcasts and the tinny speech of hand-cranked phonographs.
He goes on with his description, indicating that the natives in town seemed better dressed than earlier and that almost all of them wore European clothing, no longer seeming "to stare flatly with the African's masked gaze, but look more obliquely, more slyly. And alas, considerably, respectfully at the white bawanas and mem-sahibs."
Mau Mau had come and had been put down and a new secret order, the K.K.M., seemed to have been effectively dispersed. But isolated attacks on people had persisted and had increased, and the newspaper was full of politics bordering on violence. "Somehow you hear a low mutter of distant thunder in today's Africa, thunder which will not be followed by the relatively brief squall that was Mau Mau, which at the time was described as an ulcer indicative of the state of the restless world of color."
A letter writer from Hamlet indicates that he had noticed in the newspaper the previous day that Virginia had repealed its state law that all children of a certain age had to attend school, such that the law effectively now read that a child did not have to attend any school unless his parents decided that the child had to do so. It was interesting, he posits, that North Carolina had a law which said, in effect, that a child had compulsorily to attend school regardless of what the parents said. He indicates that some people, among whom he counts himself, had been saying since Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954 that, in effect, schools had to be desegregated, based on that decision, which he regards as unconstitutional. "Now we ask is it constitutional for a state to say that parents must send their children to school?"
The editors note that an amendment to the state's compulsory school attendance laws had been passed by the 1956 special session of the Legislature, providing that when a child was assigned against the wishes of his parents to a public school attended by a child of another race and it was not reasonable and practical to reassign the child to a non-mixed public school, and it was not reasonable and practical for the child to attend an approved private school, then the child would not be forced to attend school. That provision had been made to enable granting of "education expense grants" under the Pearsall Plan.
A letter writer indicates that whoever had compose the article on staph disease not having invaded the Charlotte hospitals had been "all wet or badly misinformed." She says that the previous year her sister, having just had a baby in December, 1957, was suffering "the tortures of hell with that disease, and the hospital bill was hers." Yet, it had not been her fault that she had contracted it. Her infant also had traces of it and they both were presently under a doctor's care for having had it, having to take allergy shots, pills, etc., amounting to hundreds of dollars over the course of the previous year. The hospital had not been very sanitary when she had been there nine years earlier, indicating that she had been given a "spit" tray for her toothbrush and then after a night nurse used it for her roommate in which to vomit, rinsed it in cold water and returned it to her to use. (Yum-yum—cool, clear water.) She indicates that the same doctor who had been treating her sister had also had another patient in the same hospital who had contracted staph. She believes that the air-conditioners might be part of the cause, drawing in and putting forth germs into the air. She says that two years earlier she had been in another hospital for a little less than a week and had yet to see them mop or dust, having had a serious operation and had to fend for herself even on the night of the operation. She wonders what the hospitals were charging so much for as it was obviously not labor on their part.
A letter writer from Martinsville, Ind., says that she was writing from the Sanctuary, a refuge for homeless dogs upon a hill farm in southern Indiana, of which she was part of the staff, "the one fighting woman who is trying to hold the place together. In times past those who love dogs have been good to us, and so we ask again, bearing in mind our debts in gratitude. We need food of any sort and old towels, blankets or pieces. Almost anything has an application here." She indicates that 45 cold nurses and warm hearts offered their salute.
Framed Edition
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